We had not come to stay. Next year, my parents told me, or the year after that at the latest, we would return to Tel Aviv. They repeated this intention as often as they postponed our departure, which they did the next year and in every year that followed. We lived in a state of provisional existence. The temporary solution thus became a permanent condition.

Under no circumstances did I want to become a Viennese Jew. When I talk about my family now, many people automatically assume that we, the Rabinovicis, were originally from Vienna and that we returned to our homeland after the war. Far from it. My mother was born in Paris and spent her early childhood in Vilnius before being deported to the camps. My father was originally from Romania and met my mother in Israel. Before I was born, therefore, we were already living in a foreign country: perhaps my parents were able to move to Austria because this was a place where they themselves had never been persecuted.

I cannot remember ever having been unable to speak or understand German, but my parents used to describe how indignant I was, still just a tiny tot, when I could not make myself understood. Holding my mother’s hand, I used to toddle around the grey streets of 1960s Vienna, a city where young women walking with their children still had to step aside and make way for the older Viennese ladies with their hairnets and dachshunds. I came from a country where it was acceptable for little boys to be a bit cheeky and forward. In the Austria of my childhood, however, girls were expected to curtsey and boys to make a small bow out of respect. I, on the other hand, used to shout at the older people in Hebrew: “Chamor,” I screamed – the Hebrew word for ‘donkey’ that makes a harsh, guttural sound in the back of the throat: “Chamor! I’m so small and I already know how to talk, and you’re so big and you don’t understand me.” I wanted to learn this new language as quickly as possible. When my parents spoke Ivrit (Hebrew) to me, I answered in German.

My parents took me to the Vienna Opera and to concerts. They dressed me in my smartest clothes, making me look like a little grown-up, because in Austria in this period, even young boys had to wear a suit and tie to attend such events. I was also allowed to go and watch Kasperle (Punch-and-Judy) shows. To me, the Austrian children always seemed really stiff and well-behaved. They reminded me of bread dumplings: mealy, white, puffed-up balls. When Punch asked: “Is everybody here?”, all the kids around me replied with a single clear voice: “Yeeess!” I didn’t feel at home here, but when I visited Israel, I felt increasingly alien there too. So in Austria I played the role of the southerner among Alpine folk, while in Tel Aviv I presented the perfect little boy from Vienna who bewildered and delighted his relatives with his polite use of Bitteschön (If you please) and Dankeschön (Thank you kindly). The native sabra became a born Yekke.

I recall being invited some time ago to take part in a discussion with a class of high school students. Not for the first time, the discussion revolved around notions of home, homeland and nativeness. The majority of the young people at this high school were from immigrant families, but there were also some among them who are referred to as ‘true’ Austrians; this is because their ancestors did not come to Austria in recent decades, but came here from Bohemia, Moravia or Budapest, for example, maybe fifty years ago. These pupils said to the others, their migrant contemporaries: “Why don’t you think you are Austrian? We’re no more Austrian than you are. We’re not even sure what ‘Austrian’ is supposed to mean, but whatever it is, you’ve long since become it.” But the girls and boys who came from Turkey, Bosnia, Russia, Chechnya or Syria simply laughed. “What are you talking about?” they said. “Don’t you see how different we are from you? Even just the way you talk, how you sit, how you walk, how you move.”

The Majority Austrians had no idea what these Minority Viennese pupils meant, but I understood them very well. I knew that feeling of being different. I could remember it. I knew how strange the children in this country had seemed to me at first. I was surprised by how still they could sit. Yes, they do move differently, the child I once was thought to himself. In the kindergarten in Vienna, we were made to go to the toilet in pairs. I could not comprehend where I had ended up. Don’t get me wrong: children in Israel at that time were also subject to disciplinary measures, but the educational methods used were different. If you broke a rule in that Viennese kindergarten, you risked getting a clip round the ears. Boys who felt so sick that they threw up were reprimanded for having got the floor dirty. I didn’t want to put up with that kind of treatment. I rebelled against it for so long that my mother eventually stopped sending me to kindergarten.

“No,” some of the immigrant pupils in the class I was talking to objected: “No. We’re not true Austrians. And in any case, we’re not going to stay in this country.” I recognised my former self in them. Back then, I had also not reckoned on still being in Vienna decades later, and even though, in the eyes of all too many people in this country, I am still not a ‘true’ Austrian and never will be regarded as such, I am someone who has devoted himself to speaking and writing German, and who is continuing to live his life in Vienna.

Authors who write in German even though it is not their first language often attract attention because they tell of modern life between different countries and between different social groups in a region. They have long since stopped being a small minority. Quite the opposite, in fact: the couples dressed in traditional costumes are now the actual minority – a minority that is unwilling to integrate into our modern age – but who am I to criticise them? Everyone has the right to be unhappy in his or her own way …

While society seems to be more colourful than ever before and the whole world is talking about its diversity, the tabloids and right-wing extremists rail against immigration and brand cultural difference as evil. A mood of agitation prevails and shapes everyday life. If youngsters talk to each other in Turkish on a tram in Vienna, they are often told that they should damn well learn German. The mere fact that they are not talking German raises the suspicion that they can’t.

The tabloids often claim that teaching standards are falling due to the presence of foreign pupils in classrooms. Because of them, it is alleged, the native offspring are not learning how to express themselves. I have a different experience, and when I listen to some of the politicians talking in parliament on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, I know for certain that it is not due to us immigrants that they cannot construct a proper sentence or formulate a clear thought.

The demand for assimilation is not primarily motivated by wanting foreigners to speak German; it is more about telling them that they should kindly unlearn their own language. Ordering people to assimilate is, however, a paradoxical request. During the early twentieth century in Vienna, for example, it was only people of Jewish origin who were described as Assimilanten (assimilated). It never helped the Jews, however, if they tried to escape the hatred through assimilation or camouflage. In fact, the opposite was true: over the course of history, the more Jews assimilated and the more they tried to finally be less Jewish, the more they became and were – for this precise reason – Jews. Complete assimilation is an illusion, because the assimilated person always remains the Other.

Jewish people turned to Zionism in the twentieth century because the hopes they had placed in enlightenment and emancipation had ended in utter catastrophe. They were no longer willing to content themselves with the diaspora because they had experienced and suffered what it meant to exist as a nation without sovereignty in a world of nation-states. The ‘Jew’ had remained an outsider everywhere – someone who could be outlawed from one day to the next. To banish this threat, the State of Israel was founded, but the problems it was supposed to help overcome are still far from being fully solved. The foundation of Israel did not eradicate antisemitism. On the contrary: a hatred of Jews exists despite and, to a certain extent, probably also because of Israel. This hatred sometimes pretends to be purely political, but behind many a statement that claims to be merely legitimate criticism lies the monomaniacal fervour that is nothing other than the old resentment of Jews.

I remember a debate I once had with the Imam of Sarajevo. He was keen to stress the importance of cultural roots in order to claim that the Enlightenment was ultimately an idea that derived from Western Christian thinking. I disagreed. People, I said, do not have roots, they have legs – which is fortunate, especially for those who have to run for their lives. But the reply I had given to the Imam with good reason definitely pointed to what he had meant when he talked about the power of tradition, because my response – I can hardly deny it – had in a certain sense been a typically Jewish one.

At the same time, I must correct myself, because the discussion I got caught up in with the Imam is one I can also imagine having with more than a few orthodox rabbis who believe that the Judaism they adhere to is no different to that with which Moses and King David once lived. Such religious individuals, who are not to be confused with all Jewish believers, revel in an early history that does not want to acknowledge its historical development. They deny how what they now are once came into being.

Many years ago, I travelled to the Grand Canyon with a friend. The evening before we headed down into the canyon, we had dinner at a restaurant. Surveying the selection of hearty dishes on the menu, we came across: “Viennese Schnitzel. The original. Topped with a fried egg.” We laughed about the certainty with which the schnitzel topped with a fried egg was deemed to be “the original”, but afterwards I asked myself who could have any idea of how the original Viennese schnitzel was actually made, and how it might have tasted? In any case, this is ultimately irrelevant or, as the Viennese would say, wurscht. No matter how the schnitzel was originally made, the cutlet would be pretty tough and rancid by now, and it would definitely stink to high heaven.

Years ago, I discovered that social scientists talk about the so-called ‘pizza effect’. According to this theory, pizza was originally a food eaten by poor people in Naples, and it was not until Italian immigrants took it to the United States, where new toppings were added, that it became a delicacy; pizza was then re-imported to Europe and declared a national dish. The term ‘pizza effect’ is also used with reference to Hinduism, which had not previously been considered a unified religion. Only after people in the West brought together its various movements and traditions did it also become established as a separate religion in India. And isn’t it also true that the döner sandwich first become famous as a snack in Berlin?

Hasn’t all culture always been a form of assimilation? And wasn’t every holy scripture initially nothing but a heretical statement? The term ‘pizza effect’ was, incidentally, coined by Swami Agehananda Bharati, who spent many years as a Hindu monk in India before becoming a professor of anthropology at Syracuse University in the United States. Originally, however, Agehananda Bharati was born Leopold Fischer in Vienna in 1923.

The late Rafael Eitan, an Israeli general and later an objectionably nationalist politician, was once asked by an interviewer whether he, the cold-blooded soldier, liked music. Eitan said that he loved Israeli folk songs. “Which ones?” the journalist asked, to which the general replied: “The Russian ones.”

In Vienna I know a man called Thomas Kiang, who is originally from Taiwan and owns a restaurant that is named after him. I like going to Kiang’s to eat spring rolls, wontons or ramen soup. Thomas Kiang’s brother, Josef Kiang, once opened a restaurant in Beijing where he served Austrian specialities such as Griesnockerl (semolina dumplings) and Tafelspitz (boiled fillet of beef). So which Kiang restaurant, one might ask, is the Chinese eatery, and which the Viennese? But perhaps there is no need to answer this question. Would it not be wiser to simply eat in one place and then in the other, in order to see whether you prefer Austrian cuisine in Beijing or Asian food by the Danube? But that might also be the wrong solution – after all, why shouldn’t something in one place taste better on one occasion, and a dish at the other place another time? Simply depending on what you fancy eating that particular day.

Is there, then, under such conditions of misfortune and disaster throughout the world, anywhere we can still call home? While all of those people who have a share in consumption and luxury living can be at home everywhere – on every continent and in every country – do we develop a longing for a place where we feel safe, in short, at home? The more diverse and indefinite our identity becomes, the more urgently we desire to give it an unambiguous name. The vehemence with which people’s origins, national affiliation or religious faith are defended underscores how contentious these notions have long since become.

The fundamentalist does not live suspended in his faith, but in conflict with a reality that is not in accordance with the laws and ideas of his holy scriptures. Not only do the scientific discoveries that have been made since the Enlightenment not correspond to the literal expositions – how the ancient books imagined the universe and its creation; it is also hardly possible to follow the rules that once established a set order for life. The fundamentalist lives not in belief but in opposition to doubt, and his ideology is racing against the continual development and diversity of society. The Austrian philosopher Isolde Charim has drawn attention to this in her texts: nowadays, we all – even the Orthodox and the fundamentalist – are in a certain sense ultimately converts, as we do not find our denomination impartially. It is highly unlikely that our predecessors would not have been considered believers in their respective religion. They basically had no choice. Most of them were unaware that any alternatives even existed. Today, on the other hand, someone who decides to leave the church is not an apostate or a heretic, but is making an individual decision. The fundamentalist opposes enlightened theology, opposes the critical reading of the Torah, the Bible or the Koran, and opposes reform, but his path is also a decision, not something predetermined over which he has no control. I know it could be argued here that it is difficult to talk about free will, especially with regard to these questions of spirituality. The devout person will declare that he has no choice, as he has ultimately been chosen. In this respect, he is similar to the person in love who justifiably declares that he has not fallen for his beloved of his own free will, because he simply cannot help but adore her; in our time, at least, he and she – unlike many of their ancestors – can love, marry, leave and find new love with whomever they want. In our present time, the believer – however fundamentalist they may be – is always a bit like the atheist, since someone who believes in the Christian god is simultaneously rejecting all of the other gods and religions that co-exist on an equal footing in our various countries. And in the same way that romantic ties now take many different forms, such as open relationships or polyamorous variants, there are numerous people who have no problem with living out their religiosity in very different denominations – combining Kabbalah with Zen Buddhism, Sufism, Vipassana and midnight mass, for example, and garnishing the result with a little wellness and homeopathic globules.

The desire for identity and a sense of home stems above all from the inhospitable nature of social reality. However, the desire for identity also reflects the feeling of having no value other than that of one’s own labour power and capital assets. This value, however great it may be, is countable, exchangeable and subject to general inflation. The person who wishes to lay claim to uniqueness therefore has good reason to insist on their own identity.

What sets me apart is also how I came to be who I am. What happened to my family is therefore not insignificant. Before my life there was death – there was murder and the mass murder of my relatives; what was done to them shapes my life. I have to talk about identity when I fear that it is being denied, but I also do not want to remain silent when others define me solely by this identity. My full identity will eventually be inscribed on my gravestone; until then, I still have some say in the matter.

Doron Rabinovici was born in Tel Aviv in 1961 and has lived in Vienna since 1964. He is a writer and historian whose work includes short stories, novels, essays, dramas and scholarly studies. In Austria, Rabinovici repeatedly takes a prominent stand against racism, right-wing extremism and antisemitism. His publications include Instanzen der Ohnmacht. Wien 1938–1945. Der Weg zum Judenrat (Jüdischer Verlag bei Suhrkamp, 2000); Andernorts (novel; Suhrkamp, 2010); Neuer Antisemitismus? Fortsetzung einer globalen Debatte, co-edited with Christian Heilbronn and Natan Sznaider (suhrkamp edition, 2019); Die Einstellung; (novel; Suhrkamp, 2022). From 2013 to 2015, in cooperation with Matthias Hartmann, Rabinovici brought some of the last surviving Holocaust survivors to the stage of Vienna’s Burgtheater in Die letzten Zeugen (The Final Witnesses). In 2018, his collage of speeches by right-wing extremist statesmen, Alles kann passieren! (Anything Can Happen!), was presented at the Burgtheater. His most recent work is the reading drama Der siebente Oktober (The Seventh of October), which premiered at the Burgtheater in 2024. Rabinovici has received numerous awards, including the Mörike Prize, the Heimito von Doderer Prize, the Clemens Brentano Prize, the Jean Améry Prize, the Anton Wildgans Prize and the Austrian Book Trade Prize for Tolerance in Thought and Action.