This is a postcard featuring a drawing by the German painter Moritz Oppenheim. The caption on the postcard reads, “The Light – Or Chanuka” and shows a family celebrating Chanukah at home. In front of the window, a young boy is lighting the chanukiya, while some people who seem to be other family members are looking on. Two men are playing chess at a table in the middle of the room, some children are playing dreidel on the floor, and two women are watching the festivities. A group of men sitting at a table can be seen through an open door at the back of the living room. The house is lavishly decorated with elaborate windows, curtains, and furniture. The people are dressed in modern clothing and traditional Jewish head coverings. The scene is representative of the work of Moritz Oppenheim, who strived to depict German Jewish life of the 1800s with a positive combination of tradition and modernity.
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Chanuka - Chanuka celebrates the rededication of the Temple by Judah the Maccabee and his army after their victory over the Greeks in 165 BCE. One of the well-known miracles of the Chanukah story is the small portion of oil that was able to light the Menorah in the Temple and burn for eight nights. Chanukah begins on 25 Kislev and is celebrated by lighting a Chanukiya for eight nights. It is also traditional to eat fried foods (to symbolise the oil) and play with spinning tops known as dreidles.
Moritz Oppenheim – Moritz Oppenheim (1800–1882) is considered the first European Jewish painter, since he was the first to receive a classical art education and to gain recognition from non-Jewish German society. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Oppenheim was very connected to his Jewish background and sought to depict it in a positive light through his paintings. He worked during a complicated period for German Jewry: on the one hand, they were trying to become emancipated, free-thinking Jews who were assimilated into German society, while they were also striving to retain their Jewish identity. Oppenheim’s paintings reflect the pre-Emancipation world of the ghetto in a positive light for both his non-Jewish and Jewish audiences. Jewish life in Oppenheim’s paintings is a warm, family experience filled with books and learning in which children look to their elders for guidance and inspiration. Copies of Oppenheim’s works appeared in books and on postcards and porcelain and pewter plates.
The Jewish Community of Germany – The first evidence of Jews living in Germany is from the early Middle Ages. As in other European countries, the Jews in Germany prospered in trade, industry, agriculture, and money lending but were also victims of persecution, false accusations, and massacres. The cities of Mainz, Speyer, and Worms were great centres of Jewish learning, but at the time of the Crusades, entire communities were murdered there. In the fourteenth century, Jews were blamed for the outbreak of the Black Death, and following mass slaughter, many fled to Poland. In the following centuries the persecution of German Jews continued, despite the changes of the renaissance period. Change came towards the end of the eighteenth century with new ideas of religious equality and Moses Mendelssohn’s steps to promote integration and a Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) and to create bonds with the Christian society. The nineteenth century brought pogroms known as the Hep-Hep riots but also gradual emancipation. Jews became increasingly integrated into the German society, and many became part of the intellectual, financial, and political elite of the country. In 1933 more than half a million Jews lived in Germany. However, anti-Semitism was on the rise, and the Nazi party grew in strength. More than 300,000 German Jews fled the country in the early years of the Nazi regime, while the Jews who stayed were victim to pogroms such as the November Pogrom (named by the Nazis Kristallnacht), anti-Jewish laws, and ultimately deportation to ghettos and death camps in Eastern Europe. During the Holocaust more than 130,000 German Jews were murdered. After the war, the Jewish community of Germany slowly began to rebuild itself, and in the 1990s many Jews from the former Soviet Union arrived in the country, such that today the majority of Jews in Germany are of Russian origin. The estimated number of Jews in Germany today is approximately 250,000.
