The Friends and Supporters of the Leo Baeck Institute in Berlin have published an interview on their website looking at the work of our Director and Deputy Director. Excepts can be read below and a link to the full article (in German) is at the bottom of the page.
Joseph Cronin
When Joseph Cronin began working at the Leo Baeck Institute as a young doctoral student in 2012, he got to know some first-generation German-Jewish emigrants at board meetings – while serving coffee, as he recalls. Dr. Joseph Cronin has headed the Leo Baeck Institute London since September 2023.
For Cronin, German-Jewish history was always interwoven with a sense of Britishness, as strange as that may sound. He encountered more German Jews in England (from before 1945) than in Germany, and there is a unique narrative in this experience that fascinates him. They are refugee stories, but also stories of adaptation to the peculiarities of British culture.
Kinga Bloch
As a lecturer at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London, Kinga Bloch researches and teaches about the experiences of minorities in a society. She notices a great deal of interest in this topic among the students, as it is relevant to many of them on a daily basis. In the classroom, it is possible to connect with the reality of life for young people today and build a bridge to the experiences of Jewish minorities in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Questions about inclusion, identity and gender roles, ethnicities and religions also arise in this context. Experience has shown that digital media are well suited to teaching in this context, but there is a risk of incorrect sources or unverified content. Kinga Bloch is convinced that the discussion about the truthfulness of content can be conducted particularly well online and in public. By entering into a dialogue with outsiders via the aforementioned activities on websites and social media, the Institute also contributes to the verification of sources, which is essential for academic standards to be upheld.
Finally, it should be mentioned that Joseph Cronin and the institute work closely with the local Jewish community in their efforts to keep the heritage of German-Jewish culture alive in the UK. Jewish culture and history should not only be preserved, but celebrated. Perhaps over a cup of coffee together, which, in the traditional Viennese way, encourages conversation.
Read more (in German) at: https://fuf-leobaeck.de/2024/08/der-neue-direktor-des-londoner-leo-baec…
