I had the great privilege of spending a day with the First Lady of the State of Israel as part of the state visit of Israeli President Itzhak Herzog.
Michal Herzog is a remarkable woman. She is a lawyer and met her husband Itzhak, the 11th President of Israel, during her military service. Most recently, she served on the board of a firm that promotes corporate responsibility issues and the development of responsible management standards. On her first visit to Vienna, we first met on Wipplingerstraße for a brief look at the Mohren Pharmacy, one of the few pharmacies with a history dating back to the Middle Ages which has been preserved in its décor. At nearby Judenplatz, with its Shoah Memorial by Rachel Whiteread, the focus was on the narrative of Vienna's Jewish community in the Middle Ages. During the construction of the Shoah Memorial, the foundations of the Viennese synagogue, destroyed in 1421, were discovered. This also enabled more intensive research of the life of the Jewish community in the Middle Ages. At the back of the square is the so-called Misrachi Haus, where the Zionist-religious Misrachi Austria has been running a synagogue and youth club (Bnei Akiva) since the 1960s. Its rabbi, Rav Joseph Pardess, welcomed Mrs. Herzog, Celine Rodgold, the wife of the outgoing Israeli ambassador, and me to Judenplatz. Together we visited the foundations of the medieval synagogue and the permanent exhibition about Jewish life in Vienna in the Middle Ages in the Judenplatz Museum.
Our walk took us first to Hoher Markt, where we traced the disappeared Jewish history at the Vermählungsbrunnen (Marriage Fountain) and the place where the famous salonière Fanny von Arnstein lived, afterwards we visited to the City Temple in Seitenstettengasse. Chief Rabbi Engelmayer and IKG President Deutsch welcomed us, Chief Rabbi Engelmayer provided our guest with many details about the only Viennese synagogue which was not completely destroyed during the November pogrom of 1938. Afterwards, we visited the places where magnificent synagogues were located in the second district until 1938, first and foremost the Leopoldstadt Temple. Ms. Herzog was particularly impressed by our commemorative project OT, the light sign in the form of a bent Star of David by artist Lukas Kaufmann, which has been commemorating the history and lost architecture at a total of 25 sites of destroyed Viennese synagogues since 2018. I am pleased that I was able to awaken Michal Herzog's desire for more of Vienna and Austria with our joint immersion in Austrian-Jewish history.
