On 28 October 2025 the Haifa Center for German and European Studies (HCGES) together with the Archive of German-Speaking Jewry in Israel (AGSJI) hosted the international conference “Between Continuity and Transformation – German-Speaking Jews in Palestine and Israel”. The conference was organized on the occasion of the opening of the German-Speaking Jewry Heritage Wing of the Hecht-Museum at the University of Haifa in cooperation with the AGSJI.

The event brought together leading scholars from Israel and abroad to explore the migration, integration, and cultural legacy of German-speaking Jews — the so-called Yekkes — and to reassess their lasting influence on Israeli society. Arriving during the 1930s and 1940s, these migrants carried with them cultural traditions, professional expertise, and complex experiences of displacement. In Mandate Palestine and the early State of Israel, they played an important role in shaping cultural, intellectual, political, and economic life, while at the same time undergoing their own processes of transformation in a new environment.

Panels examined a broad range of topics including social and institutional change, cultural and intellectual transfer, religious and political engagement, and questions of memory, identity, and transnational belonging. Taken together, the discussions highlighted the tension between continuity and adaptation that characterized the Yekke experience, illuminating how German-speaking Jews shaped Israeli society — and how Israeli society, in turn, reshaped them.

The conference opened with greetings from Prof. Stefan Ihrig, Head of the HCGES, followed by Prof. Moshe Zimmermann from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a leading expert on German-Jewish history and antisemitism and an influential voice in public debates on history and memory.