Our tour provides visitors with an insight into the living conditions and environment of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages. The families of Jewish traveling salesmen had settled along the main trading routes up and down the Rhine River. The Jewish communities that formed in Speyer, Worms and Mainz became significant as centers of Jewish cultural and spiritual life in this period. This tour through the world of the Middle Ages investigates the political and social circumstances of life in this era within the context of the life of the Jewish community, which revolved around the synagogue, the bath house, the Torah school, the communal oven, dance halls and inns. On the threshold of the Early Modern Era, Jewish experience during the Crusades, which was marked by pogroms, oppression and exile, determined the daily and religious life of Jews in the area comprising today's Germany.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

The experience of peddlers and traders, military suppliers and court agents leads into the west and south of Germany. In the many tiny principalities of Early Modern Germany, most Jews lived in extreme poverty in the country. Merchants and cattle-traders found an economic niche as middlemen moving between town and country. The broad dispersion of their community led Jews to develop new social structures in small rural communities. Piety shaped the daily lives of Christians and Jews, and the two groups interacted as neighbors more closely than they had done in the towns. In contrast, court Jews led spectacular lives as financiers and diplomats dependent on the will and whim of their German lords. A tiny minority, they moved continuously between two worlds: that of the noble courtiers surrounding their lords and that of the Jewish rural communities.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

What does "kosher" mean? Is artificial light allowed on Shabbat? Why are Jews circumcised? The answer to these questions show the Jewish faith to be a way of life, in which the religious and the mundane are inextricably entwined. The Halakhah, Jewish religious law, shapes the activities of practicing Jews in all facets of life: family, work and interaction within the Jewish community. With the changing conditions of life, religious rituals, too, evolved over the centuries. Likewise, the broader society in which Jews lived influenced their religious practices. The laws governing food (kashrut), Shabbat as the highest holiday and the life cycle all help illustrate the significance of traditions passed on by generations of Jews.

This tour may be booked in German Sign Language.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

This tour concentrates on the Haskalah, the period of the Jewish Enlightenment that began in the 18th century, and on its most famous protagonist, Moses Mendelssohn. As no other, Moses Mendelssohn embodies the spirit that sought to open Jewish tradition towards the surrounding culture in which it existed as an enclave. Jewish men and women began to adapt their language, culture and traditions to their environment. As a representative of the Haskalah, Mendelssohn championed the synthesis of both cultures-Jewish and Christian. He lived as a cosmopolitan, enlightened thinker and glowing supporter of Frederick the Great, while strictly observing Jewish religious law. The commitment of Mendelssohn and others like him for greater interaction between the Jewish and the Christian worlds met with opposition from contemporaries on all sides. Orthodox Jews saw their traditions jeopardized; Christians were loathe to show tolerance.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

Industrialization created new opportunities for social mobility, and a German-Jewish middle class emerged. But how could Jews integrate into German society and still remain Jewish? This tour discusses different blueprints for German-Jewish identity: Some Jews, like Heinrich Heine, succumbed to the pressure of their Christian environment and converted to Christianity. Others became champions of the political left—they included both Ferdinand Lassalle, who wanted to overcome discrimination with his vision of a more just society, and Karl Marx, who viewed religion as the "opium of the masses." Many, like Theodor Herzl, were drawn to the Zionist movement, and numerous patriotic Jews hoped to gain recognition by serving their German fatherland.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person

With the end of the 19th century, a new pace begins to shape the life of Germans, especially in the young capital city of Berlin: technological discoveries, cultural developments and a different need for communication increasingly define daily life; the social and natural sciences bring new aspects to bear on academic research; banks and big businesses modernize economic life. Throughout this tour, music, theater, film, art, literature, new popular media and examples drawn from the modern, consumer world marked by retail stores and ready-made clothiers provide an impressive picture of this era. The contribution made by Jews to the modern world is diverse, and extends to all facets of urban life. Their professional opportunities are circumscribed by a tension between their wish for respect and recognition, on the one hand, and the calumny and discrimination they endure, on the other.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

In the first years of National Socialism, exclusion and expulsion characterized the life of Jews in Germany. After 1941, they were threatened by deportation and extermination. This tour focuses on the responses of German Jews to their disenfranchisement and persecution by the National Socialist régime in the context of the Nazis' policy of persecution.

We consider the reaction of Jewish institutions as well as the private bearing of individuals. Personal objects and documents furnish visitors with a picture of this time, in which Jews fought to preserve their human dignity, to resist, and to survive.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

From the creation of the world to the Middle Ages and the Modern Era right through to the present, this tour follows the tracks of women. Personal objects and biographies of women document the connection between family and vocation. Above all, a picture of piety emerges: a piety that for centuries was self-understood, shaping every aspect of a woman's life. With time, fulfilling traditional religious duties became less important for Jewish women. The reform movement of the 19th century engendered a new consciousness of women's rights and opportunities. New developments at the close of the 20th century include egalitarian services in synagogue. Jewish and non-Jewish women alike confront fixed notions of the roles that women were expected to play in religion, society and politics, roles that have been and are the subject of debate.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

This tour seeks out places and themes that highlight the primary features of the exhibition "Two Millennia of German-Jewish History," and offers visitors an overview of the history of Jewish settlements and culture in Germany from late antiquity through the present. We present selected outstanding and characteristic objects in their cultural and historical context, inviting our visitors to further explore the museum on their own.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)

The museum building designed by Daniel Libeskind has given Jewish history in Germany a new and challenging architectural presence. Is architecture a special form of Jewish identity? The history of the buildings that have housed Jewish institutions or that have been inhabited by Jews is closely linked to the general development of human settlements, and it can be traced by examining Jewish community buildings, cultural facilities, commercial architecture and private homes. Touching upon a range of topics, including the evolution of Jewish architecture, the restrictions it was subjected to, and its ultimate destruction, the "Architectural Observations" tour of the museum building provides telling insights into the varied history of Jewish life. Weather permitting, participants will also have a chance to view both the exterior and the grounds of the museum.

Fee: 60 euros per group plus additional 2,50 euros per person (reduced admission fee)