|
Established in October 2007, Germany Close Up – American Jews Meet Modern Germany provides Jewish American students and young professionals in their twenties and early thirties with an opportunity to experience modern Germany up close and personally. Program participants visit sites of historical events, partake in aspects of contemporary Jewish life in Germany, meet with Germans of all backgrounds while encountering Germany’s different facets in Berlin and other venues. We work together closely with the German Embasssy in Washington D.C. and its General Consulates, the Humboldt University in Berlin and other American and German institutes. The program was inaugurated in New York in January 2008 by the General Consul in New York and in Berlin in April 2008 by the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The purpose of the program is to allow participants to gain their own perspective on Germany through individual experience. Academic lectures and distinguished guest speakers will engage participants in discussion about the Shoah and Germany’s Nazi terror, in issues of memory and Germany’s continuing effort to come to terms with this terrible past, as well as Germany’s transformation in the last 50 years into a modern, reunified, and democratic country in the heart of the European Union which is home to the third-fastest growing Jewish community worldwide.  Germany Close Up is administered by the Foundation New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum (www.centrumjudaicum.de). It is supported and subsidized by the Transatlantic Program, as part of the German Federal Government’s European Recovery Program.
|
|
|
Dr. Dagmar Pruin – Director |
|
Before taking up her position as director of Germany Close Up in October 2007, Dr. Dagmar Pruin had been a fellow at the Hebrew Bible Department at the Theological Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin. She studied Theology and Jewish Studies at the Universities of Hamburg, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Göttingen (MDiv1997) and the Humboldt-University of Berlin (PhD 2003). Besides the Hebrew Bible her research interests include Inter-religious dialogue, with special attention to the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity, the German-Jewish dialogue and the relationship between religion and politics in Germany and the US. Her academic career includes visiting fellowships at the university of Stellenbosch in South Africa (2004) and at the AICGS in Washington D.C. (2006).
She is a founding member of the Program on Religion and Politics at the Humboldt University and chairs the research group's transatlantic exchange project on the relationship between religion and politics in Germany and the U.S. |
|
|
About Us 