This might sound rather strange – I was initially introduced to Judaism, Jewish customs and traditions, and Yiddish language by a collection of Jewish jokes. As a teenager in Germany I found a yellowed paperback from 1963, Salcia Landmann’s Jüdische Witze, among my mother’s books. Mind you that these are jokes by Jews, not about them. I read the 200 pages of jokes from beginning to end over and over. It is the only book of jokes I ever read. Continue reading
The small Struwwelpeter Museum on Schubertstraße, a quiet residential street in Frankfurt’s Westend, had been on my to-do list for years. My yearly visits to Germany are always jam-packed so I was glad I finally made it to the museum last September. Continue reading
In recent years, the gluten-free diet wave has swept through Germany like through so many other industrialized countries. It catapulted the book Wheat Belly by US physician William Davis to the bestseller list (its German title, Die Weizenwampe, is even more colorful than the English – “Wampe” means fat belly in German). And, with the gluten-free wave, scores of gluten-free products have been washed onto supermarket shelves. Continue reading
Spoonfuls of Germany 