Meet me for Coffee – Vera Leininger – Interview for Heinrich-Heine University Duesseldorf – 2022.

(original in German here: https://www.philo.hhu.de/fakultaet-1/wissenschaftskommunikation/kaffee-mit-vera-leininger)

Věra Leininger was born in Prague and fled to Austria and then to Germany shortly after graduating from the high school in Prague. She received permission from the former President of the Government, Antwerpes, to study at the University of Cologne but had to attend a preparatory one-year course prior to starting with studies [because of learning German]. This experience greatly influenced her, meeting many young people from different countries. She then studied Judaic Studies, Eastern European History, Medieval and Modern History, and Theatre, Film, and Television Studies in Cologne. Her first seminar paper was on the Warsaw Ghetto, [where she had to analyse and interpret a caricature from the 1930ies]. After completing her Master’s degree, she worked as a research assistant at the Martin Buber Institute in Cologne and earned her Ph.D. at the University of Cologne with a dissertation on the Jews in Prague in the 19th century. Her research brought her back to her birthplace, Prague, where she primarily reviewed legal documents about the everyday lives of Jews in Bohemia. After completing her Ph.D., she attended a training program to become a screenwriter, and was immediately hired by a film production company for the English-script-development department. After a year of script reading for Hollywood, she decided to go to Singapore – for a year. She ended up staying there for more than eight years, teaching, coaching and working in the art scene and film industry managing own company Movie-Arts-Media. She had several exhibitions there, and coached other artists, adult and children. After returning to Germany, she worked as a research assistant at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, and then as a freelance writer and translator, translating works such as “The Prayer for Katerina Horowitz” by Czech-Jewish Holocaust survivor Arnošt Lustig, which was performed as a traveling theater play in the Czech Republic, Poland, Eastern Germany, and Bavaria. She also translated his final interview, an ethical manifesto about decency and human behaviour, into German. During this time, she was also considered as a candidate for the position of director of the Theresienstadt Memorial and defended a proposal at the European Research Council Project in Brussels on “Jews, Neophytes, and Rabbis.” She had various exhibitions of her artwork in Prague, the old synagogue in Lieben, and Cologne, where she currently resides. Since 2020, she has been working with Dagmar Börner-Klein on the DFG project on Jewish biblical interpretation in the Middle Ages at HHU.

Currently, Věra Leininger prefers to drink “kopi jahe,” a Javanese coffee sweetened with cane sugar and infused with fresh ginger juice and cloves, or a strong espresso with little sugar.

What is your current main occupation?

I am working on an exciting project on Rashi and Yalkut Shimoni. Rashi is still one of the most well-known medieval Jewish commentators on the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. The Yalkut Shimoni is an extensive commentary on the entire Hebrew Bible that is widely used but whose dating and authorship have not been definitively established. We are comparing and analysing the texts and examining and interpreting the scholarly discussions that began in the 19th century about these texts. This has led me back to Prague, because one of the first representatives of the Science of Judaism, the Chief Rabbi Solomon Judah Leib Rapoport, proposed a dating of the Yalkut that was widely discussed among his contemporary colleagues. Rapoport was an extremely controversial and extraordinarily talented individual with profound knowledge of medieval Jewish traditional literature, whose research was later overshadowed by some of his colleagues.

What do you recommend to students studying Jewish Studies?

Keep all paths and your eyes open, absorb everything you can, and do not be discouraged by the amount of the information. Read as much as possible, watch films, listen to stories, and critically evaluate information. Ask questions!

You lived in Singapore for eight years and worked there as a lecturer in film, screenwriting, and visual arts. What led to this decision?

Moving there was initially just a search for something new, and when I arrived, it was love at the first breath. Besides the colourful and fascinating society, Singapore is also perfectly functional; it takes 20 minutes to file a tax return. Seriously – I was thrilled by the colours of the island and stayed. I had my own small media company and taught at the Australian Media School. I quickly made many connections in the local art, film and television scene, which latter at the time was composed of young people with diverse cultural backgrounds. At the same time, I was able to exert some personal influence, for example, on a class of Malay teenagers who came to class wearing combat boots and brown shirts because they were unaware of what nationalism [in the WWII in Europe] was like. I showed them the uncensored version of the film “American History-X” and it made them cry. Literary. After that, they came to class in regular clothing. Well, I still have many friends in Singapore and maintaining regular contacts. The birth of my son there also made Singapore a home for me.

You have also written screenplays. What kinds of films or series were they for?

Those were quite different projects: My first screenplay tells the story of a Jewish cultist [in 18^th century]. Although, it has not been filmed yet, producing historical films is quite expensive. However, I was able to place relatively well in some competitions in the USA. In Singapore, I wrote a black comedy about a couple who wants to kill each other, which was used for a Mandarin pilot. A revision of a script, for a movie which one of my students directed about the history of football in Singapore, which was generously supported by the state. Additionally, I have a pilot on hold about a Jewish woman in Prague during the Napoleonic Wars. The basis for this is authentic love letters I found in a Prague archive.

With your current research focus on Jewish history in the Middle Ages and modern times, you have apparently set a new professional focus. How did this come about?

I studied Medieval and Modern History, and I am familiar with the beginnings of the Science of Judaism in the 19th century. This expertise fits well with the project profile.

What experience at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Philosophical Faculty) stands out in your memory?

I had several opportunities to lead excursions to Prague with students of Jewish Studies at HH University, where I not only could show them the city with its “thousand towers” as they call it, baroque libraries, and museums, but also took them to the archives. It was a great joy for me to show how to investigate the old handwritten sources in an archive. A beautiful time was also when I taught a group of students in the “Creative Writing and Painting/Drawing” program at the Studium Universale. As part of this program, they were supposed to draw pictures and write stories about Düsseldorf, which resulted in a book with illustrations. For almost all of them, it was the first publication of their lives. The dynamics in the course and the enthusiasm of the participants were a great and exciting experience for me.

How do you imagine the university of the future?

In the future, students who are interested in a specialized topic for which there is only one or a few specialists can electronically participate in the lectures of these specialists worldwide. Participation in these events is free of charge and is accepted at the home university without any problems for the course of study. The students may not be interested in acquiring only points at the university, but in real education, and they have all the means at their disposal: All literature is freely accessible online for everyone everywhere, and students can also choose online tutorials on the scientific methods of the subjects and introductory questions.

Who or what inspires you?

I am fascinated by the ideas we use to interpret our world, including the stereotypes and paradigms that people create to “get a grip” on the world. I am inspired by the normal “little” (great) people who try to live their lives well and meaningfully despite all the adversities of fate. The successful underdogs. In Judaism, this is the concept of the Lamedvavniks, the 36 righteous people who preserve the world through their exemplary lives.

You have already seen a lot of the world – is there a place you would still like to explore?

In connection with the project on Rashi and the Yalkut, Dagmar Börner-Klein and I are working on a plan to travel on foot and/or by donkey from Mainz [Magenza in Germany] to Troyes [in France]. Rashi travelled several times from his hometown in Champagne to Mainz, where he studied in a rabbinical school. But how did he travel, which routes did he take? Did he travel accompanied, in a group, or alone? What did he bring with him? Books, which were expensive at the time and could be booty? How long did it take, how dangerous was it? Where were the stops for overnight stays or meals? We are very curious to see how this develops.

What book should everyone read?

Kundera’s novel “The Joke,” Jan Faktor’s novel “Georg’s Worries about the Past or In the Realm of the Holy Scrotum-Bimbams of Prague,” “The Facade” by Libuše Moníková, the many Singapore crime novels by Ovidia Yu, “The Frozen Rabbi” by Steve Stern, and “The Jewish Messiah” by Arnon Grünberg… and… and…

Interviewed by Andrea Rosicki. Heinrich-Heine University; translation and explanations in […] by Vera Leininger