I woke up early this morning to make sure I got to work on time, or rather early knowing that today I would lead my first tour of the Centrum Judaicum (in English, thankfully) for a school group from England.  The tour went well enough.  It was the first of many, and I know they will get smoother and better as I go, so no worries there.  A much more substantial impression was made on me in the process of preparing my tour.  One of the things that I like about the CJ, something similar to the Vilna, is that tour guides are given a lot of freedom in tour preparation.  Every tour group is different, every tour guide is different, and this is important to remember.  Especially when it comes to explaining religion and religious buildings, it is really crucial to be able to adapt tours to fit the circumstances.

At the Vilna I was ready to give tours basically half way through the first day I worked there.  Without sounding crazy, it is a bit hard to explain that I think of that building, the Vilna Shul, as an old friend, an elderly neighbor to whom you bring groceries and whose sidewalk you shovel in winter.  When I think of the number of hours we spent together, how well we knew each other, needed each other, explained and represented each other, I can´t help but personify 18 Phillips Street as a sort of love at first site (literally), a building that I moved across the country to be a part of, and that I miss at times, quite earnestly.  Although it has its own idiosyncracies (buildings, like people, are one of a kind), part of me felt that telling the story of Vilna was like retelling stories that my grandparents told me, and that their parents told them.  And when I took people on tours of the Vilna, no matter where they were from, or how old they were, I told them the story the way that I was told the story of Eastern European Jews, like a warm after-dinner conversation with family - equally rich in fact and anecdote and legend.

It took 4.5 months for me to be ready to give a tour of the New Synagogue Centrum Judaicum.  For one thing, German Jewish history is something I am still learning so much about.  There are the Schutzbriefe, the letters of protection, allowing limited numbers of Jews to settle in the Prussian Empire.  It is the home of the Jewish Enlightenment, and the Christian one for that matter, in fact Martin Luther and Moses Mendelssohn (father of the Jewish Enlightenment, and the guy who translated the torah into German) were born in cities just a few km away from each other, albeit a few centuries apart.  There is the process of 19th century emancipation, and the changes of identity that German Jews experience as they consciously think of themselves more and more as regular Germans who happen to be Jewish.  In this is the decision to build a building like the New Synagogue, simultaneously a symbol of permanence and pride in their Berlin community and an exotic "eastern" style Moorish architectural statement - a reminder that even an equal can remain to some extent an outsider.

And, of course, German Jewish history, particularly in Berlin, cannot be separated from the history of the Holocaust, even if I stand behind my belief that it is important not to let Holocaust history be the end or the beginning.  Still, it is an essential, gigantic, overwhelming part of German Jewish history.  And that being said, it´s a part of history I am still learning how to talk about, let alone teach about.  So, I guess I was a bit shocked at myself that reading up on the experience of Berlin´s Jews in the 30s and 40s to prepare for my tour kind of shook me up.  And I think part of it was that I am so fond of Germany, so comfortable here, so intrigued by the language and the people and the culture.  Though the holocaust never feels far away or long ago here, and my work certainly puts me in contact with this history more than the average person, I can usually (honestly I have to) approach it unemotionally (and that is not to say insensitively, but calmly and respectfully).  But reading about 800 years of German Jewish history in one night took my breath away.  Fortunately it was back by 10:15 this morning when it was time to talk to 24 high schoolers.

Later in the day I was invited by some friends to attend my first Fußball game in Germany.  It may seem like a strange activity to pair with this blog, but the game (which ended in a tie between Hertha Berlin and Energie Cottbus) was held at the Olympic Stadium, which was built for the 1936 Olympics, when Hitler presented his Third Reich to the world.  Just as much is remembered from that Olypics that was visible - the first running of the Olympic torch through various countries, the first televised games across the city - as what was not seen - namely the controlled, dehumanizing society Hitler was creating.  It is certainly not the last Olympics in which a government created an illusory society for the world stage.  The Olympic Stadium in Berlin is one of the few buildings from its era that sustained very little damage in the war, and so it is one of the few remaining examples of National Socialist architecture.

We were kind of wimpy and sat in the "family" seating section, as opposed to the general fan section, where you don´t actually have seats and just stand and jump and sing the whole time.  Next time I definitely want to see what it is like to be in that section though.  

I completely enjoyed my first really authentic German sporting experience, even though it was freezing cold, and by the end I couldn´t feel my feet.  As an American, football/soccer is a sport I am still learning to be enthusiastic about, but I am certainly trying.  A lot of people say that soccer (specifically during various World Cups) has been key in bringing a sense of pride and healthy patriotism back to a country that is understandably slow to wave its own flag. 

There were odd moments too.  Positively quirky was the jolly music played everytime Berlin, the home team scored a goal (it makes you want to grab a partner and skip in a circle), the way the man next to me gleefully shouted, "Du Scheiße!(you shit!)" every two seconds, the constant rhythmic jumping from the fan section, and the singing of pro Berlin songs to the theme of "Take me home country road".  Less pleasant was the way the fans extended their arms, often in enthusiastic cheer or anger, in a way that we all couldn´t help agreeing was eerily reminiscent of the Hitler salute.  Of course it wasn´t.  It had nothing to do with it.  Shame on us for reading too closely sometimes, for nitpicking at Germany.  But to an outsider, a first timer, it was too close, and in that stadium it just felt wrong.  In any case we happily created our own variation of a more friendly, open palmed, perhaps, arm gesture they might want to consider adopting.