This morning I went with Jeff and Michael (the other two Reform rabbis on the trip) to the Orianenburgerstrasse synagogue, which is the Neue Synagoge (it isn’t, however, new). They were having a bat mitzvah this morning, so there were over 100 people there, I would guess—the rabbi said that normally they get 40-50 people on a Shabbat morning. The congregation seemed well educated—many congregants read Torah (mostly women), and did their aliyot very nicely. There was a lot of participation from the congregation in the singing and the prayers. The rabbi and cantor are both women—the cantor was ordained through Aleph (Renewal) I understand, and the rabbi was ordained through the Masorti movement (Conservative). Her name is Gisa Ederberg.
The service was lovely, and very comfortable for me. I would characterize it as very similar to what Reform has become in the U.S. That is, it was certainly not classical Reform—no organ or choir, the cantor more participatory than performative, most prayers done in Hebrew. But these days many American Reform congregations are doing a lot more Hebrew, as well as the participatory stuff. The prayerbook they use did contain the traditional versions of Sh’ma and Aleinu (they included paragraphs that are in Conservative and Orthodox prayerbooks, but were not included in Gates of Prayer, the current Reform prayerbook). There were a few prayers or sections of prayers that were done silently, but the minhag felt to me more like American Reform than American Conservative. I knew many of the tunes that they used, seating was mixed, and as I said, there were lots of women up front (though men had a few of the aliyot, so it wasn’t entirely women).
When we came back, we saw Jonah, the rabbinical student from the Abraham Geiger school who we met last night. We told him where we went to services, and how involved the women were, and he commented that the reputation of that synagogue is that if you go there, you’re a woman, a convert, or gay (I believe that he said all three of those, though he might have just said it’s the synagogue for women and gays—I don’t quite recall).
Michael, Jeff and I ate at a restaurant a couple of blocks from the hotel—I had homemade spaetstle with cheese and onions, which was delicious, and of course beer. I was meeting Trudi Katthaen this afternoon. Because we were a little late getting back here for lunch, I asked the man at the front desk of the hotel to send her to the restaurant. She hadn’t come by the time we finished, so I went back to the hotel but found I just missed her. I then walked back and forth between restaurant and hotel about four times, but unfortunately did not find her. I hung out in the lobby and she eventually came—apparently there was some misunderstanding about the directions, and she didn’t find the restaurant. At any rate, we finally connected, and we sat in the hotel and talked for about an hour, mostly about Mom. It was nice to see her, and she said it was important to her to see me and to get to talk about Mom with me. I felt the same about her.
I discovered that I’ve made a mistake—though the original itinerary I received says this program ends Friday, I arrived here to discover that it actually ends Thursday, and that’s when people are leaving. Since I bought a train ticket for Friday, I have to either try to change the ticket to Thursday and go to Tante Ruth’s house a day earlier, or I have to find a place to stay in Berlin Thursday night. I asked Trudi if I could stay with her, but she said it’s not good. I don’t want to ask Juergen, I don’t think. So I’ll have to get in touch with Ruth and see if I can come earlier, and then see if I can change my train ticket.
This evening we went to the Kurfuerstendamm and did some shopping—window and actual. I bought gifts for my family, on which I will not elaborate at this moment (why give it away before I get home?). I got to spend some time hanging out with Eleanor when we got back to the hotel, and that was really nice.
Fun quote of the day: Eleanor, quoting a friend talking about her husband: “We’ve been together so long I have callouses where he rubs me the wrong way.”
It’s very very late now, almost 2 am local time. Unfortunately, this afternoon, when my body thought it was early in the morning (really early), I was exhausted, but now that my body thinks it’s 8 pm, I feel like I could keep going for a while. Also, it’s always rejuvenating for me to sit around talking to people (and drinking a beer and some Aquavit—not Maltheser, though, they were out of that), which is what I’ve been doing for the last few hours (only two beers, though, and one Aquavit, for anyone who’s counting. Oh, and there were the two (small) beers with lunch).
Before I go to bed—and I don’t think I will have trouble sleeping—let me just say that I am greatly enjoying the food. Not so much the kosher food, but the breakfast! Yum. The broetchen are everything I remember, the mettwurst is okay, though not much better than the salami we get at home, but they have the sheep cheese marinated in oil, peppers and onions, which I love. Ah, the food. Good night.
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