As a group of Holocaust survivors got together for their latest meet-up in Frankfurt, they opened their weekly copies of Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine and found tucked in the folds a vibrant little magazine called EDA.
“They were so happy to see the magazine,” said Richard Ettinger, the editor-in-chief of EDA Magazin. The magazine is a newly created publication of the Jewish Student Union of Germany (Jüdischen Studierendenunion Deutschland) founded by the organization’s President, Hanna Veiler.
“It was also like, ‘Oh, there were some Holocaust survivors in Frankfurt that looked at our magazine,’ and they were very happy about this German-Jewish identity that is coming up in such a colorful way,” he continued.
Ettinger, who is pursuing a master’s degree in comparative literature, was asked to lead the magazine and agreed on October 6, 2023, to take the position.
“And then the seventh happened, which definitely changed a lot because we had already a little plan [of] what we are going to do and how we are going to fill this magazine with Jewish life and young Jewish voices,” he said.
Starting a magazine
There is no one particular theme for the magazine issues, Ettinger explained, but rather, they work from the status quo and try to bring together different voices, and those voices shape the narrative of the magazine.
Copyeditor and contributing writer Antonia Sternberger joined the magazine in May. She worked on stories that spanned a wide variety of topics, such as social media and friendships after October 7, the Jewish student group at her university, and antisemitism in fandoms, a community of fans devoted to a topic.
“I felt like the safe space that I was a part of for a few years was taken away from me, because all the Jewish people in the fandom, all the Zionist people in the fandom, all the allies, basically got shut out and insulted and threatened, and just discriminated against,” she said. “And then I wrote that article, and that felt like a catharsis already.”
“A young Jewish woman actually wrote to EDA, saying that she’s also part of that fandom and how much this article helped her,” Sternberger added. “And now we also befriended each other. So I think that was one of my most memorable moments because it was like, ‘Oh, my article helped someone,’ and there was someone out there that kind of needed to read that there is someone who gets her.”
Ettinger noted that among the impactful stories published by EDA was Alexandra Krioukov’s article “Kugelsicheres glas,” (bulletproof glass) about growing up in the Jewish community and attending security-heavy synagogues and Jewish schools.
“It’s just part of the reality, but it never made me feel unsafe,” said Krioukov, a law student. “It was just so, so common to grow up knowing abstractly someone in the world hates you, and abstractly someone in the world wants you dead, probably.”
“I started thinking about how unfair it is that my non-Jewish friends never had that, growing up, their parents never needed to explain to them why someone hates them,” Krioukov added. “There’s just lots of questions for me with that—Does it change how you see yourself if no one hates you?”
The magazine’s name, which has Hebrew roots, is one of the aspects Krioukov likes about it.
“It means peoplehood or nation – there is machaneh, which is like peoplehood or a nation connected by an outside enemy, and eda is like peoplehood connected by [an] inside connection, or by itself holding it together through common and shared experiences,” she said.
“There is not an outside projection on us,” Krioukov added. “When you go to German media, they have some kind of view of you, and they project that o to you sometimes. With EDA, it’s really like our home base, we can just express our young Jewish selves and invite people to watch.”
International contributions
The magazine also includes the work of contributors from Austria and Ukraine and is in touch with others in the UK and Israel. Ettinger noted that he worked to bring Muslim voices to their magazine.
“There were two students that I could bring aboard, which was a good experience because in the Muslim community, there are also different voices that want to still have the bridges not burned down between Judaism and Islam,” he said.
One international contributor is David Maltsev, a young Chabad Orthodox Jew from Dnipro, Ukraine, whose artwork was featured in a section of EDA’s March 2024 issue dedicated to Jewish students in the country. .
“The Jewish life here is actually very strong,” Maltsev said. “A lot of people left the country in the first weeks of the war, but a lot of people came back, and a lot of new people started going to the synagogue and to the community and started new projects.”
Maltsev is working on a series of paintings called The Portrait of a Synagogue, about people and characters from his home synagogue.
“In paintings, it’s definitely not so [much a] way of intellectual explanation of something, but I always was dreaming about the people, when they’re looking at my paintings, to feel some warm feelings to Yiddishkeit, to Jewish life,” he said.
EDA also collaborated with a magazine by the Austrian Union of Jewish Students, Noodnik, Krioukov noted. The two student publications each exchanged and published two pages, with their respective design and content.
Impact of October 7
Tel Aviv-born Noam Petri holds roles at both JSUD and EDA, as vice president and editor of chutzpah and politics, respectively, and detailed the magazine’s creation.
“Before the seventh of October, we had a project Hannah [Veiler] and I talked about—we need to build something for Jewish students, to find a way where they can discuss on a regular basis, sometimes on an intellectual basis,” he said. “So, EDA was born.”
“[We] came to the conclusion that we need to have a magazine for Jewish students in Germany,” Petri added.
JSUD is a political representation of all Jewish students in Germany, and its first task is to improve Jewish students’ lives, Petri explained. It organizes Shabbat weekends, seminars, and demonstrations.
“We try to organize something from students, for students,” he said. “And our second task is fighting antisemitism in Germany, especially in the universities, and especially after October 7. We fought many battles all over Germany, against radical and extremist groups.”
The team at EDA works to find ways to self-finance, as funding is one of the main challenges for the publication. The magazine won a prize for voluntary work for Jewish life in Germany, Ettinger said, and receives some funding through networks, including the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland) and Nevatim.
“It is very beautiful to see people that are willing to fight for a cause, to speak up, to do it without getting any money, because our work is voluntary,” Ettinger said.
Events in Israel impacted Jews around the world, and those in Germany were no less traumatized.
“We had the idea to talk about that, how it is influencing us, because as students at universities, we were like the main target by all different kinds of groups,” Ettinger said. “Out of nowhere, we were like a person who’s not part of the community anymore.”
In Germany, there is a mixture of how Jews connect to their identities.
“You have Jews that are more living as just a German person and having this, ‘Okay, I’m Jewish as well,’ and then you have people who are more in the communities,” he said. “I was always more in the communities because I felt at home there.”
“But on the other hand, I had the feeling there were also people who were taking it back a little bit, too,” Ettinger added.
October 7 was a turning point for many in Germany, Krioukov explained.
“For me, the main turning point is the very abstract thing we all grew up with, but I didn’t necessarily feel scared, turned into a very real thing again,” she said. “We knew with German history and everything that Jews are being hurt, that’s a reality, but since it didn’t happen in front of our eyes, in a way, it was abstract.”
“And then when it really happened that Jews were in this amount killed because they’re Jews, I feel like it turned a lot of things, and it just became this very real thing again,” she added.
Satire and Jewish humor can bring a smile to peoples’ faces during tough times, Petri said.
“In my opinion, Jewish jokes are [the] funniest jokes in the world,” Petri said. “And I like satire very much because, especially in these days, I think we shouldn’t only complain about the situation, we need to do something against it, and I think Jewish humor helped the Jewish people in very dark days to fight against these conditions.”
One of the magazine’s goals is for print copies to be available at various German universities, Sternberger noted, and to show other students what young Jewish life looks like.
“Young Jewish life in Germany exists, and that’s it’s so diverse, and so rich and full, and that there’s a whole world that they probably don’t know anything of,” she said. “Because when they think of Jews and of Judaism, they only think of the Holocaust.
“They think about dead Jews, but not about Jews that are alive and still live their lives and celebrate their culture, so I think that’s my main hope.”
Combatting some of the antisemitism that is derived from disinformation is another goal of the publication, Sternberger explained.
“We also can spread hope for all the Jewish people in Germany,” she said. “Then they see all the young Jewish people that tell their stories, that they’re open and vocal about their struggles, but also about their hopes and fears and dreams, and just everything that makes life, life.”
Another issue of EDA will be published in the summer, Ettinger said, and they are working to have more issues out in print.
“Those individual voices are so different to the common narrative stereotypes about Jews,” he said. “I think it’s a very beautiful thing to have, and it can make prejudices and stereotypes go down. It can fight antisemitism in a way, which is through art, through literature, and through writing.”
“We also want to give non-Jews a perspective, to show them—this is Judaism, this is so colorful, how different, how individual Jews are in Germany,” Ettinger said.