On the way to the site of the former Bornplatz Synagogue on Grindelhof, a street in Hamburg, posters hang on some of the walls bearing the faces of hostages taken during the October 7 terror attack in Israel, including young children. Some of the posters have been ripped down and are lying in the muck on the ground. The symbolic "Missing" posters have become controversial acts of protest in many cities: put on display out of solidarity with the Jewish victims of the attack and then torn down by others.

Grindelhof is a special place for Jewish life in Hamburg and, more broadly, in Germany. The synagogue that once stood here – defiled by the Nazis in 1938 and later demolished – is to be rebuilt here at its historic location. The large, neo-Romantic house of worship capable of seating 1,200 people was once the largest synagogue in northern Germany.

Every year on November 9, the anniversary of the November Pogrom – also referred to as the "Night of the Broken Glass" – the Hamburg Jewish community gathers here to commemorate what happened 85 years ago, when the Nazis attacked Jewish facilities across the country, arresting 30,000 Jews and killing dozens. This year, the evening’s motto was: "Never Again Is Now!"

The anniversary came at a difficult moment. Five weeks have passed since Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel. During that time, German domestic security authorities have registered around 1,800 anti-Semitic offenses in the country. Once again, the Star of David is being daubed on the sides of German buildings.

Ahead of last week's commemoration, DER SPIEGEL spoke with Jews around the country, asking them about their sorrow, their anger and their plans. Life goes on, but how? One young woman from Hamburg will soon begin her military training in Israel. A father from Bergisch Gladbach, a town near Cologne, is hoping to keep his children from seeing the terrible images from the October 7 attack on their smartphones. A culture manager in Dresden had to cancel a Jewish cooking festival. And the leader of a Jewish community in Wuppertal says he doesn’t want to miss the right moment to leave Germany, adding that he has already packed his suitcase.

1. For Stefanie Szczupak, who is intent on rebuilding a synagogue in Hamburg, a world has collapsed

Archeologists are currently in the process of excavating the site of the old Bornplatz Synagogue, where they are finding evidence of past horrors. They have discovered ornaments, broken windowpanes and, on some objects, traces of the fire from the 1938 attack. The work is overseen by armed security guards, and the school next door is under protection as well. "Unfortunately, there is no other way," says Szczupak.

She is a member of the board of trustees for the Bornplatz Synagogue and also ran the Jewish school for many years. She is vocal about her view that the reconstruction of the synagogue is a "statement against anti-Semitism," adding that "we want Jewish life to return to this place." It is a project that appears to have become more urgent in recent weeks.

The 56-year-old says that since October 7, several worlds have collapsed for her. First is the Jewish world, the idea of Israel as a safe haven and possible refuge. She says she has never really considered moving to Israel, but its existence as a potential sanctuary has always been important to her, particularly as a mother. "If worse comes to worst, there is a country where there are a lot of other Jews and where my family and I can live in safety," she says, describing her former approach to Israel. But that feeling is now gone for her.

Her faith in the solidarity of society around her has also crumbled. In Germany, she says, the idea of "Never Again" is frequently cultivated, particularly in the days surrounding the November 9 anniversary of the 1938 pogrom. "Now, though, instead of 'Never Again,' voices are saying 'Yes, But.'" Or nothing at all. Szczupak was shocked by the deafening silence of the masses following October 7.

Since then, she has also come to think of her involvement in recent years as "useless." "I always thought: We’ll start a dialogue, and then the others will understand that we are people too." But what, she now wonders, did all of those projects actually achieve. She is baffled by the public displays of delight  at the killing of Jews and by the apparent understanding for the actions of Hamas.

Szczupak grew up as the daughter of a Shoa survivor and is steeped in stories from concentration camps and of the mass slaughter of the Jews. Her father managed to survive both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz death camp. She still has the pants of her father’s concentration camp uniform – the ones he was wearing when he managed to escape from a death march. She remembers sitting under the dining room table and listening to the stories told by her parents’ guests, some of whom were also Holocaust survivors.

They were stories from a world that she was ultimately unable to understand. Only now, after seeing videos of the horrific atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists on October 7, does she think she has a better comprehension of what happened back then. "You don’t just see the deeds themselves, but also those who celebrate or justify them." She can guess just how helpless her father must have felt back then. The feeling of being alone with all the injustice as murderers are being applauded in the streets. It is a feeling that is now part of Stefanie Szczupak’s present.

2. In Dresden, Valentina Marcenaro had to cancel the Gefilte Festival, a Jewish culinary celebration

Has something as seemingly simple as a food like humus become a political flashpoint? Is it now impossible to enjoy a serving of gefilte fish without thinking of the Middle East conflict? Valentina Marcenaro, 50, chairwoman of Jewish Week Dresden, is sitting in her office in the Neustadt district of the city and talking about how the decision was made to cancel a Jewish cooking festival in the state capital of Saxony. The Gefilte Festival had been scheduled to take place in early November.

Some of those who had been scheduled to take part in the festival, she says, were too scared "to identify themselves as Jewish," Marcenaro says. She says she would have loved to have gone ahead with the celebration, with its numerous events focused on Jewish food – just as in previous years. But there was too much insecurity. "You shouldn’t try to argue against fear," she says, "you just have to respect it."

Marcenaro describes herself as a German-Italian or as an Italian Jew but says she’s not particularly devout or religious. She only occasionally attends services at the synagogue. Her connection to Judaism, she says, is more cultural, and her most sacred scripture is her Jewish cookbook. She hadn’t been intending to stay in Germany for long when she moved to Dresden in 1998 to learn German, but she met a man and stayed. In working for the Jewish Week, she hopes to teach people aspects of her faith of which not many people in German society are aware, day-to-day things. Marcenaro’s projects in Dresden tend not to be focused on remembering the past. Rather, she highlights aspects of Judaism that are part of contemporary culture.

Dresden is currently home to around 700 Jews, with many of them coming from Russia and Ukraine and the vast majority arriving after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In East Germany, the terror of the Nazi period was followed immediately by the anti-Semitism of the communists. Whereas around 30,000 Jews lived in West Germany in the late 1980s, only a few hundred called East Germany home.

Marcenaro says that Germans are "rather inhibited" when it comes to all things Jewish. For many in the country, Jews are merely a canvas for their own feelings of guilt. That is another reason motivating Marcenaro to bring people together for a meal: "So that they can learn more about Judaism." When visitors – as has happened in previous years – can bring a Jewish dish home with them and integrate it into their everyday lives, it is "the best recipe against anti-Semitism."

Cultural understanding through shared meals – it is a wonderful, and not entirely new, idea. But it’s also rather naive, of course. In the United States, the term "hummus wars" has reentered the debate. An accusation coming from Lebanon holds that Israel stole the national dish of its neighbor to the north. Others have actually seriously tried to argue that Israeli cooks are behaving in a "colonial" manner by claiming Arab dishes as their own, thus contributing to the disappearance of Palestinian culture. The New York Times recently reported on calls on social media for boycotting Israeli restaurants and, vice versa, on a flood of negative online reviews for Palestinian restaurants. The debate over the Middle East conflict has apparently entered the kitchen.

For Marcenaro, it’s all "nonsense." What others see as cultural appropriation, she views as diversity. That is the amazing thing about the Jewish cuisine, she says, the numerous influences from the many countries where Jews live. In Eastern Europe, Jewish families make borscht, a Ukrainian stew made of cabbage and red beets, while in Sicily, they eat the sweet-and-sour eggplant dish Caponata Siciliana. Israeli cuisine is interspersed with Arab delicacies like falafel and hummus.

Marcenaro has a pomegranate made of porcelain sitting on her desk, a gift from Israel. The fruit isn’t just the logo of the organization behind Gefilte Festival Dresden. It is also traditionally served during the Jewish new year’s festival Rosh Hashanah. Because of its many seeds, it is seen in Jewish culture as a symbol for fertility and abundance. And Marcenaro does not want to lose her faith that new beginnings are always possible.

3. A computer scientist in Bergisch Gladbach hopes to protect his children from horrific images on their mobile phones

Since the massacre of October 7, Assaf Landschaft has been spending even more time in front of the screen than before. "The war is being perpetuated online," says the 49-year-old computer scientist from Bergisch Gladbach, who has been living in Germany for the last 20 years. It is a war of images, video clips, cries for help, fury and hate. The pull of these messages has gripped the global public, and Germany is no exception – nor is Bergisch Gladbach. The horrors are passed around digitally without pause. There is no ignoring them, especially not for Jews.

It began with the perverse strategy pursued by the Hamas terrorists of maximizing the effects of their crimes by broadcasting them on social media channels. They filmed their attacks on Israeli citizens, documented the abuse they meted out, recorded the executions they perpetrated and, in some cases, even sent the videos to the victims’ families. Much of it – unbearable as it is – was published without restrictions on the internet, distributed through channels like X, Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook. Some of the videos are now marked with warnings like: "Danger: cannot unsee."

Assaf Landschaft isn’t interested in talking about the images he has seen in recent weeks. "I don’t want to contribute to further distributing these horrors." Since the beginning of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, images of Palestinian suffering have joined them – dead children, crying mothers, people buried in the rubble. It seems almost as though a global competition is underway for who can show the most indignation.

Landschaft is primarily worried for his sons, aged 11 and 13, both of whom, like all children their age, spend a fair amount of time on their mobile phones. Normally, he says, the internet is a kind of adventure playground for his children, full of new ideas. "In truth, though, it’s more of a battlefield at the moment." He wants to protect them from the images from the Middle East, pictures that are likely even more difficult for them to digest than they are for adults. But as a computer scientist, and as a father, he has come to realize: "I can’t ultimately control what they see on the internet." He would have to take away their mobile phones and computers, and he isn’t willing to take that step.

In Israel, parents’ associations have called on families to delete the TikTok app from their children’s phones. But Landschaft says his children are more than able to get around all kinds of controls for certain apps and websites. He prefers to rely on dialogue and talks with his sons about how they should approach the news coming out of Israel – the country where their father was born. He tries to explain to them how to filter information and how to distinguish reliable news sources from propaganda. It’s far from easy.

The war is changing social networks, says Landschaft. And the social networks are changing their users. Since 2003, he has been active on the business platform LinkedIn, where the focus is normally on career, networks and sharing know-how. But now, the conversations are full of politics, he says, with most of the posts focusing on the conflict in the Middle East – and there is a tremendous amount of pressure to take sides. "The focus is no longer on listening to each other, exchanging views and finding similarities. It’s about being right."

4. In Hamburg, an 18-year-old Jewish woman has decided to join the Israeli army and has lost her best friend because of it

Her father has come along to the interview, we’ll call him Ilan. His daughter, Yael in these pages, also prefers to remain anonymous. But they do want to tell their story – one about the rift October 7 has left behind between people in Germany who used to be friends. And about a father who cannot fathom how quickly loyalties can vanish and the mood can change. They are sitting in a café in Hamburg and have ordered a bottle of mineral water.

"I will join the Israeli army in January," says Yael. She's 18 years old, a young German woman with an Israeli passport. Her father, an entrepreneur who has been living in Germany for decades, is approaching 50. Yael is currently in the process of getting her driver’s license. If you ask about her hobbies, she’ll tell you that she likes watching movies with friends, particularly Harry Potter films.

After growing up in Hamburg, Yael moved to Israel when she was 15 where she went to a boarding school just south of Tel Aviv. She liked living in her father’s homeland, "much better than in the school in Germany," she says. Then, in May 2021, she gained firsthand experience of what it means to live just 45 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. After weeks of tensions during Ramadan, violence erupted, and a hail of Hamas rockets was fired at Israel. Yael and her fellow students heard the sirens and went down into the bunkers, just as they had practiced. Everything was shaking, Yael remembers, adding that she could see the smoke trails of the Israeli defensive missiles. The conflict lasted 11 days.

Her father did not get involved in his daughter’s decision to join the army. She has already completed the suitability test. "I want to give something back," she says. "I was protected for three years. Now, I want to protect others."

In January, she will move back to Israel, where she well receive basic training and take Hebrew classes. She says she hasn’t yet thought much about what exactly she will learn in the army, what tasks she will be asked to perform and which unit she wants to be assigned to. But she knows that she will soon be holding a weapon in her hands and will have to be prepared to use it in a possible conflict. "I’m not afraid of it," she says. As she talks, her father looks at her with a mixture of pride and concern.

Concern due to the fighting in Gaza, concern about the possibility of a larger Middle East conflict, but also concern about the mood in Germany.

Then Yael tells the story of what happened between her and her friend. It was three weeks ago. Her friend, the two of them had been best friends since fifth grade, had just returned from their vacations; they had looked at each other’s pictures on their phones and laughed together.

Until the friend mentioned the incident at the hospital in Gaza, where a shell struck nearby, killing many civilians. They talked about it. About the suffering in Gaza, the suffering in Israel. About the oppression of the Palestinians and the Israeli settlements. "She told me that I would be part of a genocide if I joined the Israeli army.” She doesn’t think that she could be friends with an Israeli soldier.

"I asked her if she still wanted to have contact with me," Yael says. But her friend said no. "She said that it wouldn’t be consistent with her moral values."

For Yael’s father, this terminated friendship is symbolic of what is currently going on in Germany. When push comes to shove, the society keeps Jews at arm’s length. Particularly those who stand up for themselves, like his daughter.

Ilan’s son, Yael’s little brother, was supposed to have celebrated his bar mitzva a number of days ago, a joyous occasion celebrating spiritual maturity. Over a hundred guests had been invited. But the father canceled the event. "I couldn’t stand the thought of celebrating and dancing while others were dying," he says.

Yael says she cried when she and her friend went their separate ways. As they parted, her friend said: "I wish you a nice life."

5. At the synagogue in Wuppertal, Leonid Goldberg doesn't want to miss the moment "when we have to leave"

How cruel can fate be? In 1943, the Nazis murdered former Wuppertal rabbi Joseph Norden in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Now, more than 80 years later, his grandson and great-grandson may have become victims of the anti-Semitic Hamas terrorists in Israel. For the Jewish community in Wuppertal, this has made the October 7 massacre feel like a continuation of the Holocaust.

If you read the original manuscripts of Joseph Norden's sermons from the 1930s, they read as though they could have been written for the present day. "Maror and charoset, bitter and sweet, we eat it together," Joseph Norden preached to his congregation at the beginning of Passover week in 1933, 90 years ago. "Isn't this a symbol that must give us food for thought, especially in these days when Jews are suffering so bitterly?" Norden wanted to impart confidence to his congregation at the start of the Passover celebrations, which commemorate the exodus from Egypt. He went on to ask: "Whether there is no sweet in addition to the bitter, whether this is no antidote at all?" Adolf Hitler came to power around two months later, with anti-Semitism on the rise. "The same Judaism for the sake of which suffering is inflicted upon us holds joy, happiness and exaltation in its bosom," Rabbi Norden said.

These days, Ulrike Schrader is finding it difficult to remain confident. She runs the Old Synagogue Memorial, which keeps alive the memory of the Jewish communities in Wuppertal that perished. She says she received the news a few days after the terrorist attack on Israel that Norden's grandson, Jochanaan Meinrath, 93 years old, and his son Manny, the great grandson of the former rabbi, had been missing since October 7. Jochanaan's parents had managed to get to Palestine in time to escape the Shoah.

There has been no sign of life from either of the rabbi's descendants since the terrorist attack. "It is terrible how the hatred of Jews by the National Socialists and today's anti-Semitism intersect in this family history," says Schrader. Relatives in the United States and Germany, she says, have since given up hope that the two might still be alive.

Is there an antidote? Leonid Goldberg doesn't know. "It's bad right now, really bad," the head of the Jewish community in Wuppertal says. " The Old Synagogue where Joseph Norden used to preach no longer exists. It was desecrated and destroyed during the Pogram Night of 1938.

Goldberg is in his office, opposite the New Synagogue, inaugurated in 2002, in the city's Barmen neighborhood. If you lean out the window a little, you can see the police car and several officers with machine guns slung around their necks in front of the synagogue entrance.

Goldberg says that radical, right-wing anti-Semitism in Germany is something that can be dealt with. But anti-Semitism "in certain immigrant circles" is starting to get out of control, he believes. Evidence for this is provided in the mass influx of anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent weeks, he says. But where is that pressure on the street leading?

There have also been signs of solidarity. It was comforting that more than a hundred people came to the synagogue for a service less than a week after the Hamas terror attack. There were public demonstrations of solidarity in front of several town halls in the municipality – in the cities of Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid. Unfortunately though, says Goldberg, he hasn't heard anything from the Muslim communities in the neighborhood.

A few days after the attack, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said he believed the country to still be safe for Jews, but Goldberg no longer believes that to be true.

"We shouldn't miss the moment when we have to leave," he says. Then, a few moments later, he adds: "The suitcases are packed and ready." He then takes a deep drag on his cigarette. "Or at least easily accessible in the attic."

6. In Berlin, 11-year-old Sara has nightmare in which she speaks Hebrew

How have Jewish children been faring in Germany since the Hamas attack? The aftermath of Halloween can still be seen in a single-family housing estate in the east of Berlin, with artificial cobwebs hanging in the hedges and plastic pumpkins making faces at the front doors.

This is where 11-year-old Sara lives. To protect Sara and her family, we're not using her real name for this story. She also went from door to door on Halloween as "Wednesday" from the "Addams Family." Her dark curls reach almost to her waist and bounce as Sara makes her way down the stairs. She holds her large pink smartphone in one of her hands, with the neck strap dangling from it. The sixth-grader takes the subway to school each morning.

Sarah sits down at the large living room table, her mother next to her. As the conversation begins, Sara rocks her leg until her mother gently places a hand on it.

Sara, what is your experience with the situation in the city?
"I'm afraid to speak Hebrew when I leave home because I fear someone will hear – and then yell at or attack me."
What does that fear feel like?
She looks up at her mother and tugs on the sleeves of her black and white striped, long-sleeved shirt.
"I don't know how to describe it," she says.

Sara was born in Israel. When there were air-raid sirens and Sara started screaming, her parents would pull her out of bed. Her mother will later say that she has always been an anxious child - which is why Sara always talks with her parents on the phone on her way to school. She used to always speak with them in Hebrew, but they now speak German.

Sara's parents moved to Germany with her when she was five. "As a teenager in Israel, you live in fear that someone will blow up the bus on the way to school," her mother later recalls. They didn't want their children to grow up like that, so they moved to Berlin.

Her mother says to Sara: "You have a lot of dreams."
"Yes, I sometimes have nightmares about that too, and ... yeah."
What kind of nightmares?
"That I speak to my mother in Hebrew and then someone starts insulting me or something."
How do you like it in Berlin?
"It just sucks that my family is in Israel. I'm afraid that something might happen to them."

Sara's uncle, her mom's brother, volunteered for the army and he's now stationed near the Gaza Strip, she says. The family had actually wanted to fly to Israel over the holidays and had booked their tickets already, as they do every year. But they've now decided to skip it this time around.

And how are things in school?

"They're actually just fine. There's no one there who I'm afraid of."
Have you discussed the fact that Israel is at war in school?
"The teacher mentioned it once."

Her mother says that three of Sara's closest friends are Muslim girls. Fortunately, she says, the war against Hamas and the protests in Berlin haven't been an issue between the families. When Sara is asked at school what's happening in Israel, she just says: "I don't know."

7. In Frankfurt, Alon Meyer remains convinced that sports can build bridges

On a Saturday in October, Alon Meyer, 49, is standing on the sidelines of a soccer field in a tracksuit watching two youth teams in Frankfurt. Makkabi's C-Youth, his 14-year-old son's team, is playing FC Kalbach, a typical Frankfurt multicultural team with many children from Muslim families.

Kalbach is ahead, but for Meyer, the score isn't the most important part. "It's a fair game," he says with praise. Without any rough fouls or insults. Without any recognizable anti-Semitism.

Meyer, who works as a real estate agent, has been involved with the team for 40 years. He was a player, a coach and a youth leader - and he has been chairman of TuS Makkabi Frankfurt since 2007. Since 2013, he has also served as the president of the Makkabi German Jewish sporting organization. He is all-too familiar with the hostility and threats that people who walk onto a sports field or enter a gym wearing a jersey with a stylized Star of David can be exposed to. He himself, he says, has been insulted more than once as a "shitty Jew" who was overlooked by the gas chambers.

Meyer is traveling a lot these days. In mid-October, he appeared on a sports show of one of Germany's two leader public television broadcasters. He criticized the team FC Bayern Munich for failing to take sufficient action against a player who, in a social media post, wished for a Palestinian victory over Israel, but didn't say a single word about the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack. At the end of the month, Meyer plans to present a new reporting system for anti-Semitic incidents at an event organized by the professional football club Borussia Dortmund. Meyer hopes that all German sports clubs will install the system on their websites.

In a survey conducted in 2021, more than two-thirds of Makkabi soccer players said that they had experienced at least one anti-Semitic incident. And yet, most of the players aren't even Jewish, says Meyer. He points to the C-Youth boys out on the field. "Most come from Muslim or Christian families," he says. But they too, he says, are the targets of anger against the Jewish club. "Devout Muslims are disparaged as Jews or traitors because they are a player or coach on our team."

Since Meyer has had a say at Makkabi in Frankfurt, he's been trying to open up the club to people outside. Unlike some local Makkabi clubs, he never wanted to make it exclusive to members of the Jewish community. He wanted a community of people of all faiths, skin colors and nationalities, united through sport. In Frankfurt, this has made the club bigger, more visible and more successful, Meyer says. Around 80 percent of members are not Jewish.

At the C-Youth League match in Kalbach, Makkabi players and boys from the Kalbach team give each other friendly high-fives. Meyer approaches the Kalbach coach and they embrace like old friends. The Kalbach coach, Farid, has Moroccan-Muslim roots and he used to play for Makkabi – on Meyer's team. It's not difficult to understand here how sports can contribute to the democratic project.

But the war in the Middle East isn't completely absent from the soccer pitch in Kalbach. "Are you for or against Israel?" a boy from the Kalbach fan block asks the DER SPIEGEL photographer as she snaps shots of Alon Meyer. Last year, Meyer says, was the first in which, to his knowledge, there were no known anti-Semitic incidents in Frankfurt sports. But he says he worries things won't stay that way.

A week after October 7, when Hamas called for international attacks on Jewish institutions, including those in Germany, Meyer joined forces with other Makkabi board members in Frankfurt. He says they were united in their agreement that interrupting matches and training in the way that happened in Berlin was out of the question for them. Meyer says he doesn't want to allow himself or his club to be driven off the pitch. He doesn't want to allow bridges that have been painstakingly built to be torn down again.

8. Manfred Levy doesn't have the strength right now to see both sides

Manfred Levy wears a chain around his neck with a Star of David hanging from it and a silver hand, the hamsa. It is used as a symbol both by Jews and Muslims.

Levy, 69, has given hundreds of courses and lectures to thousands of schoolchildren and teachers as a museum educator at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. He has repeatedly explained how similar Islam and Judaism are. He has given workshops in mosques and worked together with Muslim associations.

But since October 7, Levy has found it difficult to see the other perspective - to understand how the other side is doing. Which has been part of his job for many years.

There were moments in the past where he found himself at least able to consider why rockets might be fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. "I never thought it was good, but for me it was a possible logical consequence of a failed policy," he says.

He remembers how once, in an auditorium full of young people, a schoolgirl spoke up. She said the Israelis had shot her uncle in the back. Levy asked about her story. Then he told her what Israel means to him. How his grandparents left the Saarland with his father in 1935 and emigrated to Palestine. How they decided to return to their hometown in Germany in 1950, after the end of the Nazi dictatorship.

Without Israel, Levy told the students in the auditorium, he would never have been born. "My parents would have been gassed."

Levy says it was a good conversation because everyone made an effort to understand each other. But these days, he says it's not possible for him to have conversations like that. He recently declined a request from a school that invited him to speak about the current situation in Israel. Levy says he can't do it right now.

Since the terrorist act by Hamas, increased security measures have been in place at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. Only three people at a time are allowed into the lobby for the security check. Together with the police, the Jewish community recently offered a presentation for its members on what to do during an emergency, such as an attack.

Levy used to work as a teacher at a school in what he calls a "hotspot neighborhood." In his first English lesson, an eighth-grader wrote "Adolf Hitler" on his name tag. If students insulted each other as "Jews," Levy sought a conversation with them. Once, someone put lettering on a school fence reading: "Mr. Levi, you Jew." A swastika framed the words.

Levy has been asked many questions in his career. Why don't you celebrate Christmas? What do you think about the Middle East conflict? What does kosher mean? He has answered those questions patiently time and again.

On a Friday at the end of October, he is standing in the lobby of the Jewish Museum and wondering why one question has been missing these days: How are you doing?

Four words. You wouldn't need much more than that. And then to just listen afterwards. Perhaps, Levy suspects, the question isn't being asked because people are afraid of the answer.

9. In Leipzig, members of the ultra football fan scene offer to protect Eldar Fano's Jewish bar

There are also some stories that are sources of courage in these dark days. That of Eldar Fano, 42, of Leipzig, for example. Fano is Israeli, the owner of a small eatery – and he was full of anxiety as he drove to his hummus bar in the trendy Plagwitz neighborhood at noon on October 13. Hamas had declared a "day of rage" and called for attacks on Israelis and Jewish institutions worldwide. So on that Friday, Fano only wanted one thing, he says: to tidy up a bit, check that everything was in order and to not open his bar under any circumstances.

But a little while later, he did open his doors.

Fano says he found two men waiting for him outside his bar, clearly recognizable as soccer fans by their shirts and scarves. He had told them that his restaurant would stay closed as an exception because of the calls for violence, prompting the two men to make him an offer. He should stay and open up, and "we'll protect you and your bar," they said. The whole thing came as a complete surprise, Fano says. He then unlocked the door and brought them drinks and two plates of hummus. "It was awesome," he says, "they were total heroes."