Tikum Olam, the repair of the world – what a beautiful term. Basically, this is a humanistic task, explains Eva Haller, but it was “especially recommended to us Jews in the early rabbinical writings”: You come into the world and leave it a little better when you leave.
Of course, Janusz Korczak (1878/or 1879 to 1942) also knew this term. The Polish-Jewish doctor and reform educator ran an orphanage in Warsaw. He accompanied his children when they were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp in August 1942 and went with them to the bitter end, where he too was murdered. A Jewish educational institution founded in Munich in 2009 is named after him, the European Janusz Korczak Academy, of which Eva Haller is co-founder and president.
After years in the Sonnenstraße, the EJKA is now located in an old building on the Blumenstraße, near the Sendlinger Tor, beautiful rooms over two floors. Eva Haller receives a friendly welcome. But she has a very, very busy schedule, after half an hour she takes a look at her watch and signals quite clearly that the conversation needs to be speeded up a bit.
Haller was born in Romania in 1948, her mother was Hungarian and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. The father was a Russian Jew who fled to Romania before the pogroms. When Eva was four years old, the family moved to Vienna; This was followed by moves and stays in America, Canada, Belgium and Italy. Eva Haller came to Munich when she was almost 60 years old. She now has a German passport; When asked about her roots, where and how she locates herself, she frowns briefly and then says: “First of all, I’m human. And very importantly, I’m a woman. And I’m Jewish. And I’m European.”
She gives synagogue tours in six languages
She studied journalism at Columbia University in New York and in Brussels, then Romance and Semitic languages in Tel Aviv. She worked as a journalist, including as a foreign correspondent for Radio Judaica, then was an assistant in the history and literature departments at the Universities of Padua and Venice. From 2006 to 2009 she worked in the youth department of the Munich Jewish religious community and also organized international youth exchange programs. To this day, she gives tours of the Ohel-Jakob Synagogue on St.-Jakobs-Platz in Munich, in all the languages she speaks: German, English, Hebrew, French, Italian and Hungarian.
In 2009 she finally took over the management of the newly founded EJKA. The academy wants to impart knowledge about Jewish life, provide educational work, promote intercultural and interreligious dialogue and thus break down reservations. While the Jewish communities (there are 13 in Bavaria) maintain inner-community life, “we want to be the link, the bridge to the outside world,” explains Eva Haller. The projects are diverse, all start small in Munich, are then expanded to Bavaria and finally to all of Germany; there is also a Janusz Korczak house in Berlin and Duisburg.
Challah bread and the seven-armed candelabra are integral parts of Jewish life.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
One of these bridges is “Youthbridge”. The two-year project brings together young Munich residents, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, from different communities – be it Turkish, Russian, Greek, Croatian or Sinti and Roma; it is intended to counteract anti-Semitism, radicalization and exclusion and encourage young people to work for diversity and tolerance, for democracy and society. “Fraueninsel”, an integration project for women who have fled from the Ukraine, and “Shalom Ukraine” for refugee Ukrainian children and their relatives, which received the Bavarian Order of Merit last year, are relatively young.
The academy also includes a family center, a forum for intercultural encounters, and a small publishing house. The employees attach particular importance to media work; In 2013, the academy founded the first Jewish media competence center. She has also set up an interactive exhibition: “With Star of David and Lederhose”, Jewish local history away from well-known stereotypes. Another offer is called “Rent a Jew”: Jews go as speakers in schools, adult education centers, universities or church communities, wanting to counter the stereotypes. “Don’t talk about us, talk to us” is Eva Haller’s guiding principle.
“Judaism in a box”: Eva Haller always has this suitcase with her when she visits schools.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
She herself is also on the road a lot, throughout Bavaria, in schools and other institutions. She is particularly fond of schools, she says, “even though I already have white hair.” Dealing with young people, their expressions, their body language is familiar to her, “after all, I have seven grandchildren”. She also doesn’t give dry lectures, but always has this Judaica suitcase with her the size of a long-distance suitcase – “Judaism in a box,” she jokingly calls it. Stows in it, among other things: challah, the Friday bread, shrink-wrapped in plastic, together with the fringed doily on which it is placed. Tefillin, the prayer capsules. A seven-armed Hanukkah candlestick. A kiddush cup. Kippot, the kepis for men. Young people can touch all of this, try it out and ask questions. Incidentally, she can also use the case with older people, Haller adds, to “dispel prejudices and break fears.”
She’s turning 75. Time to retire? No, definitely no
Of course, Eva Haller and her comrades-in-arms also sense that anti-Semitism is still there, “everywhere on the street,” and that it’s even increasing. “It’s stressful when people are humiliated or insulted – regardless of whether they’re Jewish or not,” says Haller, adding dryly: “But it’s wishful thinking that everything works out.”
On June 18, Eva Haller will be 75 years old. You don’t see it at all, but ask carefully: Are you thinking about retirement? “No!” A very definite no. First of all, she doesn’t feel her age at all, she says, “at most late in the evening” when, as always, she got up at 7 a.m. and was out until 11 p.m. Secondly, she feels like every person who has a life’s work: it is difficult to find a successor who will continue it with the same commitment and passion. Thirdly, she has to press ahead with her new “heart project” to set up a Jewish adult education center for all of Bavaria after the long-standing focus on youth work. And anyway: “I’m still curious enough about everything. About new experiences. About people.”
And to the repair of the world. “There are more than a thousand reasons to cry every day. For example, when you watch the news,” she says. “But crying won’t get us anywhere.” Better to keep taking small steps. To make the world a little bit better.