Grunewald im Orient

No talk of European forests here; the trees in front of the house and even when wandering around with a shopping basket in Talbiyeh and Rehavia (this is the "fourth realm," so to speak, where German emigrants transformed into Israelis) it is almost reminiscent of Dahlem, writes Mascha Kaléko from Jerusalem. Established as a garden city in the early 1920s, Rehavia became the center of German Jews, especially from 1933 onwards. Else Lasker-Schüler lived here, Gershom Scholem - and alongside these well-known names, a vibrant German-Jewish microcosm. Idyllically situated, yet with a challenging everyday life. Rehavia lay at the crossroads of a long-divided city. The present and past of the Shoah weighed heavily on its residents. At the same time, however, it was a place of German-Israeli rapprochement. Thomas Sparr paints a vivid and moving picture of a neighborhood and the people who lived here.