Mirna Funk: "Von Juden lernen"

"Much of what is being discussed today as if it were a novelty has been discussed by Jews for a long time. Let's learn from it."

Mirna Funk on the culture of debate and how we can learn to better tolerate views that we don't like.

The word machloket stands for Jewish contentiousness. In the Talmud, when two rabbis have a machloket, an argument, it is not about one winning and the other losing, but about both opinions existing in parallel for the sake of heaven (machloket leshem shamayim).

When it comes to Jewish life today, the discussion - especially in Germany - usually revolves around the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict or anti-Semitism. Yet Judaism is the oldest of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, which means that its culture and philosophy are thousands of years old. In her latest book, Mirna Funk takes up eight theories from the history of Jewish ideas and brings them into dialog with the "now".  These include, for example, "lashon hara", the prohibition of slander, or "tikkun olam", the duty to improve the world. Funk thus opens up a new perspective on political debates, the culture of debate and personal development: true-to-life, philosophically sound and unique.


Mirna Funk, born in East Berlin in 1981, studied philosophy and now works as an author and freelance journalist for 'FAZ', 'SZ' and 'Die Zeit', among others. Her monthly sex column has appeared in 'Cosmopolitan' since 2021 and she has been writing about Jewish life for 'Vogue online' since 2018. Her debut was awarded the Uwe Johnson Prize and the non-fiction book "Who Cares" became an instant bestseller.

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