A Double Burden: Israeli Jews in Contemporary Germany

Explores the delicate interplay between emigration of Jews from Israel to Germany and the construction of a new identity in the shadow of antisemitism both past and present in their new home.

Critically analyzing Israeli-Jewish migration to Germany, A Double Burden combines complementary approaches from the social sciences-quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic research-to track migrants' reasons for moving, their families' reactions, their settlement in the new country, and their social and economic integration, construction of identity, and perceptions of old and new antisemitism in Germany. Each chapter is placed within a relevant theoretical framework, the entire discussion set against the background of present-day international migration in general, migration to Germany in particular, and the Jewish experience in unified Germany. Rich with empirical evidence and presented with exceptional clarity and accessibility, A Double Burden will appeal to scholars of migration studies, the Israeli Diaspora, and German-Jewish life, as it also illuminates trauma and memory among third-generation Holocaust survivors.

Uzi Rebhun is Professor of Jewish Demography and Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jersusalem in Israel. His previous books include Jews and the American Religious Landscape. Dani Kranz is a DAAD Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in the Center for Austrian and German Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Heinz Sünker is Rudolf Carnap Senior Professor at the Bergische University of Wuppertal in Germany and Honorary Professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.