Jewish spaces in Berlin and Budapest

Any researcher exploring European and in particular Central and Eastern European Jewry since the collapse of the Soviet Union could not possibly disregard one peculiar expression – Jewish space. Enormous attention has been paid to Diana Pinto’s paper “The Jewish Space in Europe”, especially to her reflections which either tried to revise the expression (the Jewish space of Pinto versus the judaisierendes Milieu of Bodemann) or to concretize or modify the meaning of the expressions stated above. Many examples have been put forward to prove the functioning of the Jewish space. But these proofs have been used – paradoxically similar to a racist way of thinking – rather to testify if one is a Jew or not. That is why researchers keep referring to the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow as the biggest and most incomparable one founded and organized by Gentiles in a former Jewish Quarter. Doing all this instead of analyzing how Jews and Gentiles relate to Jewish topics in public by framing the programs of festivals and other cultural events. In practice it means that in many cases, in towns of Central Europe like Budapest and Berlin, institutions, municipalities or the festival organizers decide the way of representing, understanding, presenting to the wider gentile audience the Jewish culture. As a case study we compare these processes in Budapest and in Berlin, where the biggest Jewish communities are to be found in Central Europe today.