A Jewish Family in Germany Today

“[T]hese accounts offer numerous extremely intriguing insights and thought -provoking contrasts.” - Lars Fischer , European Review of History

“Bodeman’s book does not answer questions but rather raises them. (And this is the reason that it is fascinating and deserves many readers.)” - Thomas Kuhne , Central European History

“Michael Bodemann’s A Jewish Family in Germany Today is an addition to the. . .field---and a very good one at that.” - Anthony D. Kauders , Holocaust and Genocide Studies

"[I]n this timely book, which generally encapsulates the attitudes of many Jews living in Germany in the 21st century, they touch on a myriad of topics, from their Jewish identity to their thoughts on Israel."
- Sheldon Kirshner , Canadian Jewish News

"Bodemann does an excellent job dealing with questions related to the Jewish experience in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s." - Jay Geller , H-German, H-Net Reviews

"Bodemann's most important contribution is to allow the family to speak for itself. Its members are by no means representative, but their stories confirm the heterogeneity and diversity of Jewish life in Germany." - Karen Remmler , TLS

"The Kalmans . . . have a fascinating story that is as much about the problems of running a family business, the difficulties Holocaust survivors face in trusting others, and dysfunctional family relations as it is about Jews living in Germany." - Lynn Rapaport , American Historical Review

"This interesting, indeed fascinating book, will appeal to sociologists with a variety of interests. . . . Readers of this book will be left with a deeper appreciation of the enigmatic forces which shaped European Jewish life during the war, and beyond. They will have more questions than answers, which is what one expects of any good sociological work. Such is the human condition, in all its mystery."
- Morton Weinfeld , Canadian Journal of Sociology

“The lives of the Kalman family provide the perfect palette from which to understand the conflicts and the compromises and commitments that Jews have had to make to live not only in Germany but in the modern world.” - Sander L. Gilman, author of Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies, Histories, and Identities

“These interviews are valuable and frank documents. The experiences of the Kalman family are representative of many Jewish families in the period 1945–2000. Y. Michal Bodemann’s astute questions and obvious intimate acquaintance with the family bring out the problematic aspects of being Jewish in Germany today. He deals not only with questions of anti-Semitism but also with the secularization process of German Jews.” - Jack Zipes, coeditor of Unlikely History: The Changing German–Jewish Symbiosis, 1945–2000

“Why did Jews choose to live in postwar Germany? Most scholars have looked for answers to this question in the official institutional history. Y. Michal Bodemann turns our view to the private sphere and thus reveals for the first time a more intimate and at the same time more complex picture of the German Jewish community as mirrored by one family.” - Michael Brenner, author of After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany