Arrived in Berlin this morning. The flight went very smoothly. I haven’t gotten any homework done yet, but have big plans to do so. I didn’t like the transfer in Amsterdam—I had to walk about 20 minutes to get from where we arrived to my gate to go to Berlin, also go through security (why again? I was going straight from one plane to another) and passport control (which I did not have to do again in Berlin, so that was good).
Mom’s friend Juergen picked me up at the airport, which was so nice of him. He took me to breakfast at a really cute Waldhotel restaurant (which may have actually been called Waldhotel). It was great to have the excellent German broetchen (roll) that you just can’t get in the U.S., with good butter, cheese and mettwurst (salami). Between being really tired (I only slept maybe an hour on the plane) and not being fully fluent in German, I didn’t quite understand all the stories Juergen told me. We talked about Mom, and he didn’t know whether she died in the hospital or at home, so I told him how that went. He also told me some stories about his kids, and I talked about my family, and we talked about Mom. I showed him the memorial book I made about Mom, and he liked it. Also due to being tired and arriving in Germany without Mom, I did some crying.
I got to the hotel around noon, puttered around for a while, napped for about 2 hours, then met the rest of the group to go to services.
The group seems nice. I don’t know everyone’s names yet, and found myself first gravitating toward the women (Eleanor, who is a friend from school, Jackie, who is a Conservative rabbi, and a little bit Batya, the wife of one of the Orthodox rabbis), and then toward the other Reform rabbis (there are two of them besides me—Jeff and Michael). We three Reform rabbis are going to go to an egalitarian service tomorrow morning that is not within walking distance of the hotel.
But this evening the whole group went to the synagogue on Pestalozzistrasse 14, described in our itinerary as “Reform, separate seating, organ and choir.” To an American, already “Reform” and “separate seating” seem contradictory. The service was very interesting, and didn’t quite fit into any of our American categories. There was an organ and choir, and a fairly performative cantor, so there was not a lot of musical participation from the congregation, though as I looked around I did see some people singing along. In that way it was like what we would call Classical Reform. However, almost all the prayers were done in Hebrew—maybe two were in German. That’s not like Classical (American) Reform, which would have a lot more in the vernacular (I don’t know if German Reform historically did more in the vernacular—I think maybe not). Men and women did sit separately, with the men in the middle section of pews facing front, women in the balcony (which was on three sides of the sanctuary) and in side pews facing the middle. I sat on one of the sides, and was very close to the men with no physical barrier. Women did go up to the bimah for candlelighting and kiddush (the bar mitzvah boy’s family, including mom and sisters). There were also women in the choir. I would probably describe the service as egalitarian with separate seating. By the way, the rabbi has an orthodox s’micha.
Of course they didn’t read Torah tonight, so I don’t know how egalitarian that is—I asked a congregant if women ever read Torah, and he said, “No one does. No one knows how.” He said b’nai mitzvah kids don’t read from the Torah. I didn’t follow up and ask what the b’nai mitzvah kids do during the service, or whether boys and girls do the same thing. I’m guessing they do, but I can’t say for sure.
Security was extremely tight, both at the synagogue and at the Jewish Community Center where there is a kosher restaurant where we had dinner. At the synagogue, not only did the security guards (Israeli) go through our bags and send us through a metal detector, they also asked if anyone gave any of us anything and asked us to bring it to the synagogue, and if there was anyone with us who was not a member of our group.
Dinner was OK—the food was not fantastic. The rabbi from the synagogue where we went to services came and took questions. Someone asked if antisemitism is increasing, and he said Absolutely, attributing it to the success and visibility of Jews in an economy that is basically declining (an economic situation that always makes Jews a target, he said), and to the strength of the Muslim community in Europe and their basic hatred of Jews (I don’t endorse his opinions, I am only reporting them). Apparently each political party has 4-5% right-wing antisemites, and he said this adds up to 30-35% of the population when you add up the parties. I’m no statistician, but I question that, because it seems to me that it assumes that all the political parties are the same size, and if they aren’t, don’t the percentages come out differently? Hmmm. Loren or someone who is good at stats, help me out here.
I also met a young man who is a student at the Abraham Geiger College, a fairly new school where he is studying to be a Reform rabbi. Someone asked him where he’s from, and he said, “western Germany.” I asked where specifically, and he said, “Bielefeld”! I said Mom was from Lage, and he was surprised. We had an interesting, though brief, conversation about how the orthodox got a stranglehold on funding for Germany’s Jewish communities from the government. Basically, he said that before WWII, cities, even small ones like Bielefeld, had Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox synagogues (although I tend to think that Conservative didn’t so much exist in Germany before WWII—at any rate, there were different kinds of synagogues in each city). After the war, so few Jews came back that each city could only sustain one synagogue, and it would generally be as orthodox as its most orthodox member. So it ended up that most synagogues were orthodox even if their members weren’t. Then the orthodox got named as the offical Jewish organization, and refuse to recognize non-orthodox synagogues, so those synagogues don’t get government funding. This is probably over-simplified, but I hope I got the basic gist of it. It was an interesting discussion, and I’d like to talk to this guy again. I don’t even remember his name. Maybe I can get his email address and correspond with him a little.
I need to try to get some sleep and see if I can beat the jet lag.
hi Reb Heidi-
Your statistical insticts are right on - the rabbi's adding of percentages and generalizing to the population at large are false at best. Gotta keep reading - I'll post more later. L :)
Posted by: lmichele | 11/29/2006 at 10:11 AM
ah, if only we all had trained data analysts in our corner!
Posted by: mikerose | 11/29/2006 at 02:14 PM