Mazel Tov! It's Berlin!

Today I went to the Berlin Jewish Museum. Now, it doesn't take Einstein to figure what a great many exhibits in this museum focus on; it's a museum about Judaism in Germany. Don't think too hard.

But, all joking aside, it's an INCREDIBLE facility. The museum actually covers Jewish history in Germany dating as far back as the 1000's. Oh, and the architecture is brilliant. The front facade of the building looks like this:
Like I said, that's just the front facade. The rest of the building is this labyrinth of odd angles and corners in clean chrome and blank white-washed concrete. The architect who designed it ensured that there were "voids" in random places; the idea is for the museum's visitors to experience a sense of loss in these empty places, even though they are otherwise surrounded by Jewish history.
This is called the Holocaust Tower. It's a dark, almost triangular room with very high walls; the only light in the room is a small crack in the ceiling. The architect designed this strange space to be open to interpretation -- I thought it was a pretty bleak space with a tiny (almost nonexistent) ray of hope shining through the ceiling.
This has thousands of metal faces to pay homage to the victims of war and injustice. I can't remember the artist's name, but the exhibit was pretty awesome.


This was the Garden of Exile. The idea was to create the feeling of being disoriented, even sick to your stomach; the whole garden had huge pillars of stone/concrete at weird angles (but all very uniform), with a sloped floor. It was like an optical illusion; you always felt you were walking at an extreme angle. The disorientation is a literal way of relating to Jews who were exiled from their home countries during various pogroms, and even during the Holocaust.


This is a sheet of stars that would've been distributed in various Jewish communities during the National Socialist regime.

These are graves of Jewish WWI soldiers. When Hitler came to power, all of the grave markers of WWI Jewish war heroes were taken down and replaced with new ones that all read, "Unknown German Soldier." It wasn't until after the war that families tried to reclaim their loved ones' grave sites.
This was from the "wishing tree" in the older part of the exhibit. Many scholars believe that Eve didn't tempt Adam with an apple at all; they believe she tempted him with a pomegranate. So, the idea behind this tree was to write a wish down on a paper pomegranate and hang it on the tree. Sorry if the text isn't visible here, but this one said, "I wish my daughter will never need a wheelchair again, and my son will find peace." It almost brought me to tears. And yes, I wrote down a wish and put it on the tree, but if I told you, I'd have to kill you.


This is a huppah that I thought was particularly beautiful. Jewish wedding ceremonies take place under one such tent.


...and this random thingy was in front of the Berlin Museum of Modern Art, which I also visited today. I'm not sure if it was some kind of art piece, but a bunch of kids were climbing on/bouncing off of it. Looked like fun. And it was purple. So of course, I had to take a picture.