Berlin is “In” and one of the most fascinating tourist destinations to emerge in the 21st century. It is a vibrant, trendy city where some of the world’s most innovative artists, musicians, filmmakers, fashionistas and literary giants come to be inspired. For Jews, the former seat of the Third Reich, presents an intriguing paradox.

For pulsating just under the surface are our ghosts. The ghosts of a people who transformed Berlin from a provincial backwater capital into an avant-garde cosmopolitan metropolis more than one hundred years ago and then were snuffed out.

Jewish History Travels will take you to a Berlin you will never forget. Led by Jewish educator and historian Claire Simmons, Berlin will get under your skin.

You will be mesmerized by the city today and haunted by a Berlin where the marriage of Jewish modernism and Jewish tradition inspired this city’s greatness and then plotted against the very people who shaped and championed its success.

We will celebrate 2000 years of Jewish life in Berlin at the Jewish Museum just blocks from Checkpoint Charlie- the infamous crossing point between East and West during the Cold War. Freedom and freedom of expression will be our watchwords as we walk along the remains of the Berlin Wall, gather at the Brandenburg Gate and stand at the site of the 1933 book burnings in Berlin. Albert Einstein, Billy Wilder, Max Reinhardt and Kurt Weill, who all fled Berlin in the 30’s along with 80,000 other Jews will be our companions as we stroll the grand avenues, relax in the cafes, savor the Wiener Schnitzel that may remind us of our Bubbes’ and come to terms with the outsider status of Jews in Germany then and now and our own rich and complex history in this amazing city.

Join me in Berlin for this vibrant and intellectual colloquy
that will touch your life.