Restaurant owner Yorai Feinberg (on the right) and photographer Rafael Herlich are happy about the return of the picture Photo: Ralf Lutter
By Mareike Sophie Drünkler
It happened again in July! The Israeli restaurant Feinberg’s on Fuggerstrasse was again attacked with anti-Semitism. A work of art, a portrait of Jewish life, was desecrated.
With the celebratory return of this picture, the restaurant took a stand against hate on Thursday.
“Actually, I don’t want to talk about this topic anymore,” says boss Yorai Feinberg. “Most of the time it only gets worse after that. My restaurant should be about the delicious hummus and our famous falafels, not anti-Semitism.”
The 41-year-old has been running his restaurant for ten years now. During this time, there were repeated attacks and attacks by anti-Semites.
However, the incident on June 6 hit Feinberg’s particularly hard. A stranger took the picture off the wall and destroyed it in the restaurant’s toilet.
District Mayor Angelika Schöttler (59, SPD) said afterwards: “Anti-Semitism has no place in Tempelhof-Schöneberg.”
Tempelhof-Schoeneberg
Artist Rafael Herlich (61) reacted resolutely: he photographed the scene and turned it into a memorial that now commemorates the incident alongside the actual photograph.
His pictures show “proud, self-confident Jews”, just as he and his longtime friend Yorai Feinberg are.