German-Jewish author Mirna Funk will be among the participants at the Jerusalem Writers Festival beginning May 27 – one of a shorter-than-usual list of international writers that the festival managed to recruit this year. Funk will then return to Berlin, the town where she was born and still lives, but a few weeks later there will be a twist in the plot when she moves to Israel with her nine-year-old daughter, Etta. This is not the first time Funk has tried to live in Israel, but this time she hopes it will be for good. Her previous attempt was about a decade ago.
Q: I assume you decided to make aliyah before Oct. 7. When you saw what happened here and the events that followed the massacre – the ongoing war, the missiles from Iran, and the situation in the north – did you reconsider?
"Israelis need to understand that they don't really have any experience of antisemitism and they do not know what it means to be a minority. There's something very stressful about the constant fear of losing your job, not being able to get a new job, losing your friends – just because you're Jewish. It is very disturbing when, in the middle of a business meeting with ten other people, all of whom are there solely for business, the question raised in small talk is whether Israel should disappear from the map. In the Diaspora, you live in your own ghetto. Back in 2014, I lost almost half of my friends here, and many people younger than me are now experiencing a similar loss of friendships. This kind of thing happens every day and it is a difficult experience.
"Obviously, it's hard to live in a country like Israel with constant missile and terror threats, but in the end, you live here with people who, while they may have different opinions from you, aren't your enemies and don't think your nation-state doesn't have the right to exist. Living as a minority in such an antisemitic atmosphere is exhausting. It makes you feel isolated and alone; you don't feel free.
"I've been to Israel several times in recent months. The first time was in early November, about a month after the massacre. The atmosphere on the streets was sad, but at least you could sit with people, be heartbroken, and feel that the people around you care about what you feel and think. In other places, not only can you not feel that way, but people also look at you as if you are a genocidal killer the moment you show that you are in pain and that you are sad because of what happened on Oct. 7."
Q: Do you think that most Diaspora Jews feel the way you do? Can we expect to see a big wave of aliyah soon?
"I am connected to the Jewish community and Jewish institutions in Germany. I have many Jewish friends here, I am involved socially and publicly, I write for Jewish newspapers, and so on. Ninety percent of the Jewish community in Germany today is made up of immigrants from Russia, who arrived in Germany twenty or twenty-five years ago. They have already left home once and are now facing a situation where they may have to leave again. I don't want to speak for them, I'm not a part of that community, but I do not doubt that they feel isolated and confused and on the other hand it's difficult for them to think about moving again.
"Among the younger generation, those who came to Germany as children and want to build a life here, many are asking themselves what kind of life they will have here. Why do you have to work so hard to explain what a Jew is and what Israel is? Why do you need to justify your very existence? In Germany, a Jew is not an independent person but a Zionist subject. It is an uncomfortable position to live through. Therefore, I believe that we will see a large wave of aliyah. I'm one hundred percent sure of that. We started seeing this in France a decade or so ago, and I think we'll soon see a wave of aliyah from Britain, and I also believe from the United States, although there it will take a little more time. And yes, we will also see more German Jews make aliyah."
Funk was born in East Germany in 1981 to a communist Jewish family with extensive cultural roots and political connections. Among other things, she is the great-granddaughter of the famous East German writer Stefan Hermelin. Only about 5,000 Jews lived in East Germany at the time. Funk was only eight years old when the wall fell, and Berlin was united into one city. "My great-grandfather emigrated to the Land of Israel in 1936 and, after a year and a half, returned to Europe," she says. "After World War II, the family chose to move to East Germany. As communists, they wanted to be part of the Soviet enterprise. Judaism was not of religious significance to us, but it was always clear that this was our cultural identity. Jews in the Diaspora always had a different understanding of their Jewish identity than Jews in Israel, and this was even more complicated in communist countries. Sometimes, they were not allowed to preserve Jewish tradition, but Jewish identity was always there, of course, in the shadow of the Holocaust.
"The 1980s saw the beginning of a conceptual change. After several incidents and because of the general atmosphere that had emerged in the country, my family understood that the communist system had failed and let them down. I had family in Israel, and I visited them immediately after the fall of the [Berlin] Wall. That's when I began to reconnect with my Judaism. It was a process that took years because I had to relearn a lot of things."
Contrary to Jews in the Soviet Union, who had no choice but to be part of the system, after the war, German Jews could choose whether to live in the East or the West. Did this choice make their Judaism look any different?
"I can't answer that question because everyone from back then is already dead, and I don't want to talk about their decisions. I don't know why they did what they did other than the fact that they truly believed in communism. It was a traumatic time; they lost many family members and the lives they had before were destroyed. There are obviously many psychological motivations as to why certain decisions are taken, and there are things that, in hindsight, seem strange, but I don't feel I can judge them. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt: it was a very traumatic time. Most of the Jews in East Germany were Germans, who had come to build the communist state, and many of them held senior positions in politics and culture. They wanted to build an Altneuland (Old New Land) in East Germany; they really believed it. It is also important to understand that of the Jews who lived in West Germany after the war, some 30,000, were not originally from Germany – most of them came as refugees from Hungary and Poland. The original community, about half a million people, was almost completely destroyed. The only survivors went to East Germany; only a few Jewish families remained in the West."
Q: In your first book, 'Winternähe', the heroine Lola is like you. Her father, like your father, fled East Germany a year and a half before the fall of the Wall, abandoning Lola and her mother. How has this personal trauma shaped your life?
"No one knew he was going to leave, none of us were ready for it. I was just told one morning that he had left and that there was no way I would see him again. No one believed then that the Wall would ever fall. He made a decision that was incomprehensible to me, and I felt the same way when we were reunited for a short time after the fall of the Wall. He soon fled again, this time to Australia, where he now lives with his new family. My daughter Etta is about the age I was when he left. At this age, you're already aware of the things happening around you, and all the time I think how unbelievable and incomprehensible it would be for my daughter to get a message one morning: Your mother is gone, you will never be able to see her again. This is an unforgivable betrayal. We had a lot of arguments about this, and I was never satisfied with his answers. He clearly felt ashamed and that there were circumstances that justified what he had done – my parents gave birth to me when they were 18, and he was 25 when he left. He didn't know what he was doing to me when he left, and his yearning for freedom outweighed his responsibility to me."
Q: How do you remember migrating from East Germany to the West?
"The split ostensibly ended in a day, but, in fact, there was a relatively long transition period. For about a year, I had to cross the border with a passport, and my father had to come and take me from there to the western part of the city. It took a while for the country to unite, and then it took more time for things to really change. I still went to the same school with the same teachers. In the east of the city, there are still houses where you can see history, bullet holes, etc. By the way, I still live in East Berlin, in what used to be the Jewish Quarter."
Q: You grew up in Berlin, went to university, and became a journalist and writer. How did your Jewish identity develop up until you decided to move to Israel for the first time in 2014?
"In the 1990s and early 2000s, Europe in general and Germany in particular experienced a quiet and apolitical period. Everyone was busy hanging out, partying, and building the new Berlin, and people were less interested in identity. At the end of the first decade of the new century, I began to see a change. I traveled back and forth between Berlin and Tel Aviv, and when I returned to Berlin, I realized that the era in which people remembered the Holocaust and were very cautious when talking about Jews was over. My peers began to break the taboo that had existed until then in Germany when it came to the Jews. This was something that was very strong in German society – you don't take on the Jews – but then suddenly a new generation arrived for whom maintaining this taboo was less important. For example, people started saying bad things about their Jewish landlords, and similar things I hadn't heard before.
"It is important to say that I am talking about a profound change in German culture itself and that this has nothing to do with the wave of immigrants to the country. In 2012. Israel conducted a military operation, Pillar of Defense, and as always events in Israel affected the Jews of the Diaspora, and we noticed a change in German society and its attitude toward Israel. I felt uncomfortable in Berlin and decided to move to Israel."
Q: You spent a year here and then moved back to Berlin.
"I came to Israel by myself to make aliyah, I fell in love with an Israeli, and I had an apartment in Tel Aviv and an apartment in Berlin. My first book had just been published, I was six months pregnant, and I had to be in Berlin for the PR campaign for the book and the birth. I didn't know Hebrew, and I wanted to have the baby in a hospital in Germany. I intended to return to Israel, but then I left Etta's Israeli father. He returned to Tel Aviv, and I decided to stay in Berlin as a single mother. It was a practical decision related to making a living. I was afraid to go to Israel and find myself without work."
Q: Now, of all times, you have decided to come back, and this time for good?
"I get that this might raise a few eyebrows, but for me it's simple. I am in the field of culture. I'm a writer, editor, and author. Over the past few years, as a Zionist who does not hide her views, I have faced a very anti-Zionist climate. The changes that Germany has undergone, including changes in the feminist movement, have created a situation in which my entire milieu is anti-Zionist. They won't say anything against Jews, but the moment you define yourself as a Zionist, you become a problem. My job opportunities have become limited, I can only write for very specific newspapers, and that restricts my ability to work and earn a living."
Q: That sounds awful. An author and journalist who has to leave her homeland because her views don't fit in with the cultural bonton. Dark days indeed.
"I always felt that I was part of the zeitgeist: I believe in equal rights, I believe that everyone can love whomever they want, I am progressive in my opinions. But because I am Jewish and believe that the State of Israel has the right to exist, I am no longer accepted in these circles. It's sad and it's strange. I don't want my daughter to grow up in a climate like that. She goes to a very nice Jewish school, and I'm glad she's been studying there, all the more so over the last few months – no one shouts at her during break, and no one says she loves a country that commits genocide. But the bubble she grew up in isn't the real world. When she goes to university, she'll be called a Nazi scum."
Q: Your mother tongue is German, and you speak English as well. What do you plan to do workwise in Israel?
"I'll change my name, just like my great-grandfather did, and open a flower shop. I'm only kidding. I will continue my work as a writer and continue to be a Jewish voice in Germany, but I will do so from Israel. It's hard to do that from a café in Berlin, and then go outside and get booed. I also hope to work in creating media and political connections between Diaspora Jews and Israelis, because I know that field."
Q: Did you consider moving to the United States instead of making aliyah?
"I'm a European, I'm East German, and I feel a lot more like Israelis than Americans. It's not my culture. I can't be polite; I speak very forthrightly and I can't say I enjoyed a meeting I didn't enjoy. I imagine I would have suffered there."
Q: Do you think that the breaking of the German taboo on Jews and Israel is likely to be reversed in a few years, or is this an irreversible process?
"My first book was about the rise of antisemitism in mainstream German culture. In this mainstream today, anyone who is a Zionist is called a 'genocide lover.' This process happened in the second decade of the century, that is, from 2010 more or less. Then, around 2015, waves of immigration from Arab countries, mainly Syria, made the situation even worse. Before that, there were a lot of Turks here, but they tend not to be antisemitic. The impact of this wave of immigrants has been evident mostly over the past five years, in social justice movements and solidarity with the American Black Lives Matter movement. Left-wing Germans who believe in social justice have become involved in Islamic immigrant culture, and the two groups agree on only one thing: Jews are bad. I don't think that the attitude toward Jews will improve in the next decade. And I think it will deteriorate in the United States as well."
In February, the Israeli-Palestinian film "No Other Land" won the award for Best Documentary at the 74th Berlin Film Festival, one of the most prestigious festivals in world cinema. When its creators took the stage to accept the prize, in the best tradition, they maligned Israel: Yuval Avraham, one of the film's co-directors said, among other things, "This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end." Accusing Israel of apartheid is a priceless gift for the antisemites and when it comes from an Israeli, it is cause for celebration. Funk responded to Avraham in a scathing article published in Haaretz, writing: "Yuval Avraham received a prize, and the Jews of Berlin were left to deal with the mess." In response, Udi Aloni, an extreme left-wing activist, who lives in Berlin, published an article attacking Funk in which he stated: "You were wrong, it is you who help the antisemites."
It isn't hard to spot Funk's contempt for Berlin's left-wing Israeli community. "Israelis have nothing in common with the city's Jewish community," she says. "Most Israelis who think like Yuval Avraham and Udi Aloni really do think this way about the State of Israel, it's not just a trend, but it must be said that they also receive a lot of applause for stating this position. Diaspora Jews, have a big problem with radical leftist Israelis who speak out against Israel in the Diaspora. Antisemites use the things they say to make our lives here miserable. Many of them do not understand the effects of their words. One day they will have children in school and other children will call them Nazi Zionists, and then, maybe, they will change their minds.
"They don't understand how German society works. They don't notice the little details. Jews who were born here or grew up here were often the only Jews in their neighborhood. I, for example, was the only Jewish girl in my class for many years. You develop a sixth sense and know how to behave around being Jewish. You have to know the Germans and German culture, and most Israelis who live here just don't get it. They can say whatever they want, but they need to have self-awareness: they aren't familiar with this society the way German Jews are. There are some Israelis here whose anti-Zionist views serve as a shield for antisemites who say terrible things and then immediately add: 'That Israeli Jew said exactly that, so why shouldn't I?'
"Helping your enemy and being submissive to them, I see this as a mental illness; I'm sorry, they can't see what's happening right in front of them. It's fine for there to be different opinions among the Jewish people, and it's even okay that there are Israelis who want the entire State of Israel to be Palestine. The problem is those who want our downfall say about such people that they are the real Jews, that they are the mainstream, opinion, while we – who just want there to be a Jewish state – are portrayed as arcane nationalists."
Q: In recent years, Berlin has become a favored haven for radical Israeli leftists. But listening to what you are saying it seems that they won't have an easy life there.
"Israelis are quite ignorant about the Jewish experience in the Diaspora. For a decade now, the Israeli left has been gaslighting us, the Jews of Berlin; every time we said there was antisemitism in Germany, the radical Israeli left said that we were paranoid and there was no such thing. Israelis here are divided into two groups: One is involved in real estate and high-tech business, and they are a tight-knit group that works mostly for Israeli companies. The other is a cultural-artistic group. Some of that group are in Berlin to take drugs and hang out; they don't understand the Germans and aren't connected to any local community.
"They don't understand that Berlin has changed a lot in the last five years, both politically against Israel and economically. Everything is more expensive. A few years ago, you could find a great apartment in Berlin for 2,500 shekels a month, but today you can't even find one room for 2,000 shekels. Of course, Berlin is multicultural, there are Americans and French people here and people from all over the world, and I can understand why many Israelis dream of Berlin. I love the city very much. But at some point, Israelis will realize that prices here have gone up, that health insurance is expensive, and that this is no longer the rosy dream everyone dreamed of. Berlin is not waiting for anyone, not even Israelis."
Funk has published four books, and her next book will be devoted to Jewish themes and their relationship to the present. "I list eight Jewish ideas… along with eight contemporary problems that can be solved through them," she explains. On May 25, she will appear at the Mishkenot Sha'ananim Jerusalem Writers Festival as part of a panel titled "Israel's Global Standing – Literature, Politics, and Post-Oct. 7 Israeli-German Relations." The discussion, moderated by journalist Dor Glick, will also be attended by German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert and journalist Sophie von der Tann.
"We'll talk about the Diaspora experience," Funk says. " It's important to talk about these things here in Israel. There is usually a disconnect between the Diaspora and Israel, but over the last few months of the war in Gaza, Israelis have suddenly realized that things are happening in the Diaspora that have a connection to their lives. Israelis need to know that our lives abroad are also affected by what happens in Israel. I think, and I have written articles about this, that Israel's fate will be determined on foreign shores. Perhaps Israelis will realize this when young people on today's American campuses take up senior positions in business and government 15 or 20 years from now. We must understand that this will greatly affect the State of Israel, and the Jews living in the Diaspora. In the end, we are one people with one destiny."
