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.

Anger is a meadow.

February 2011.  They gathered in the streets.  Mobs of people.  And they were angry.  Angry with the status quo.  Angry at the will of the leadership.  And there were police.  In riot gear.  No one knew exactly what role they would play.

Rocks flew.  Windows broke.  Glass was everywhere.

No, this wasn´t Egypt.  It was Friedrichshain, Berlin, Wednesday, February 2, right in front of my apartment.  And no, they weren´s angry with Angela Merkel.  One of the last squats in Berlin had been cleared out days earlier by the police.  It was the end of an era.

After the fall of the Wall, Berlin became a haven for artists and hippies, a symbol of the grunge alternative culture of the 90s.  Neighborhoods like Kreuzberg in the West and Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain in the East were colonized by flocks of young people who didn´t want to pay rent or live by someone else´s rules.  But even hippies grow up sometimes, and little by little the city and a newer gentrified generation moved in, and alternative Berlin became a thing of the past.  That is, except for a few corners of Friedrichshain and other areas that held on for dear life.

Supposedly 2,500 police arrived at 14 Liebigstraße to clear the place of the 20 or so leftists living there.  Later that night 1,500 people protested.  I happened to walk right through the protests, by accident, as usual. A friend had offered to help me move a table into my apartment, and so we found ourselves carrying a coffee table through the streets of Friedrichshain just as the protesters were assembling themselves, not ideal, but it went ok, and now I sort of have furniture.

If the protests had been one day later, it would have been particularly awful, as Malka, the friend who had visited the week earlier, was on her way back to Berlin from a poorly timed trip to Egypt that ended in an emergency evacuation through Jordan and Frankfurt.  I won´t go into much detail, as that is her story to tell.  Basically I ended up with a few extra Malka days.  As a refugee camp we were a lot less scheduled than during the first part of her Berlin visit.  It´s even possible that I made up for my failed hostessing skills.  She got to meet my friends, the other fellows and friends and co-workers from Germany, and got a much more authentic look at my life here in Berlin.

The definition of Anger in german is actually meadow...

The worst hostess ever

There she is.  The worst hostess ever.  That´s me in case you have accidentally stumbled upon this blog via a Russian travel website - which consequently actually seems to have happened according to google statistics.  (In other fun news, this is me posing under Napoleon´s hat in the German History Museum in Berlin.  I once saw Napoleon´s (supposed) seat cushion in a museum in the Caribbean, and ever since I have basically been reconstructing the guy, one inanimate object at a time)

But anyway.  The worst hostess ever.  I suppose I am not as bad as that lady who lives in a Gingerbread house, entices young children to visit, locks them in cages and then fattens them up before eating them.  I am definitely nowhere near THAT bad.  I just get really excited about having guests.  Too excited maybe.  A little to eager to make sure everything goes perfectly...

 It is amazing what I learned about myself and my host country when two friends from Boston came to visit in January.

They were my first visitors, and I should give them a lot of credit for flying to Berlin in the middle of January.  Lucky for us all, January in Berlin was incredibly mild.  We haven´t had more than flurries basically since the beginning of the year.

Malka and Hannah arrived on a Sunday morning, and I met them at the airport (actually I woke up at 4 in the morning out of excitement).  It was pretty incredible to seem them after about 8 months and to get news of Beantown, currently under about 3 feet/1 meter of snow.  People from Boston taught me what winter really is, so it is fitting that the girls brought me long underwear and wool socks, even though they had to peel theirs off just about as soon as we reached my apartment (it was about 50 degrees F).  They also brought me chocolate chip cookies, baked by Malka´s mom.  YUM.  And, 3 boxes of matzah ball soup mix.  I have whined about my need for matzah ball soup for weeks now, and the call was finally heard.  Malka offered to bring me matzah meal so I could make my own, but I refused.  What I miss is the mix since that is what my grandma uses (she also puts the matzah balls in wantan soup broth . uhh just like in the old country...)  The cookies were rationed out by the three of us over the course of the week - the matzah ball mix I am saving (just having the boxes in my room on my table is a weird little snippet of home).

What we did:
Well, they got the Rachel style tour of Berlin, which means I walked too fast for way too long until they exhaustedly reminded me about things like, uh, food (I can´t help if I was raised to believe that eating lunch is a sign of personal weakness).  We looked at lots of buildings (Hannah is an architect), and I didn´t really know what most of them were, but I guessed anyway.  We stared at the canal a lot (I like water).  I gave them my first official tour of the Centrum Judaicum, and took them to the Berlin Wall memorial.  We sat in cafes and walked through farmers and crafts markets.  I introduced them to the Döner kebab (Turkish immigrants´fast food contribution to German cuisine... some kind of processed meat roasted on a spit, stuffed into flat bread with salad - it´s more popular in Germany than sausage!).  We visited the city of Potsdam, former capital of the Prussian empire, toured palaces and learned that gardens suck in the winter - no flowers and all the statues get covered with wooden boxes, visited one of the Russian BUKAS who lives in Potsdam who overfed us with all of the "german" food and beverage she had in her fridge (a very jet-lagged Malka fell asleep on her kitchen table).  We went to the city of Dessau to visit the Bauhaus - an important early 20th century achitectural school.


 We got a private tour (the benefit of being a tourist in Germany), and I attempted to translate the very very enthusiastic guide who talked for two hours with us (they were good sports) and then we stopped in Wittenberg where they saw the home and famous church where Luther posted his 95 Theses (ok, I sort of stole some of the tourism ideas from the Humboldt foundation study trip).  And while I worked they toured about a million museums (many of which I have not even visited yet) and due to a lack of cell phone, we had to be pretty old-fashioned and actually plan places and times to meet up.  Ok, I was sort of bossy, over enthusiastic about something, under enthusiastic about... others... but all in all, it was a great trip.

Observations we made together about Germany:
Every commercial property is either a bakery, a döner stand, or a shoe store.  Even non-German cuisine manages to incorporate cabbage in a shocking way.  Public transportation here is amazing (I told you I am sort of obsessed with public transportation).  They actually tell you when the next train is coming... and then it comes on time.  Americans smile a lot more at strangers (oh I have so much to say about this - I think the further east you travel in Europe the less socially acceptable it is to smile at strangers... apparently in Russia it means you are basically an idiot).

They learned some German words: I was really critical of pronunciation, despite the fact that my own is atrocious.  Some favorite words were "entschuldigung" which means "pardon", and is truly just fun to say, and "tschüss" which is "bye" and sounds like a combination of the word "juice" and "Jews"!  It can also be said in a sing song voice, "Choooooooooss" or made cutesy "Choooseeeee".

Then Hannah had to head back to Boston, and Malka stayed for a few more days.  At Malka´s suggestion we spent the day in a small town near Berlin, called Werder, relaxing, wandering around, enjoying the Sunday coffee and cake (kaffee und kuchen) culture in a small cafe in rural Germany.  Then we took two days and visited Dresden, a city I had not yet seen.

Malka had her first experience in a hostel (now that is a truly German travel experience), I learned about Malka´s obsession with cheese... she really likes it a lot... attended Malka´s first Opera (!!) - Carmen- at the famous SemperOper:

,












 saw the famously restored Frauenkirche, a church that was totally destroyed in WW2 bombing (literally there was a bit of a wall remaining:  (the dark area is the only part from the original building)

 and now the church is brand spanking new - not an uncommon occurrence in German post war, and post reunification "restoration" if you could even call complete rebuilding that.)  

We also visited the new synagogue in Dresden

 a giant cube shaped building meant to allude to the ancient temple, but which looks more like an Egyptian tomb.  Inside it is quite beautiful, 

 and I found it quite interested that the synagogue and the community center are divided by an empty courtyard where the old synagogue, destroyed in Kristallnacht, once stood (see, even on vacation I am still always at work).  New synagogues in Germany tend to represent some of the most innovative architecture of the last decade - and although my focus is of course historic buildings, it is quite understandable that congregations in large cities composed mostly of new immigrants from the former USSR, are making their own new, fresh marks on German city scapes.

All in all it was great to have Malka and Hannah visit.  I hope they enjoyed their first experience in Germany.


(Pictures of the first part of the trip will be added later.  Hannah has a fancy camera and was our personal photographer!)

February Resolutions

  Much like blogging, it often seems that by the time I get around to making New Year´s Resolutions, the optimal time has passed.  Rather than lazily letting life pass me by, forever remaining the same, flawed person you knew (and loved) last year, I have decided to initiate February Resolutions.  And, while I can´t tell you what those resolutions are (if you say them out loud then you can actually be held accountable for them, you know), I´ll just insinuate what a shame it is that it took me until now to get back on the blogging train.

 The New Year.  There are a lot of moments in the year when I like to be pensive and think about where I was last year, what has changed, the highs, the lows.  In fact, I will pretty contentedly take any and all opportunities to do so... where was I last February 9th... But, for some odd reason, New Years really doesn´t do that for me.  No matter how great or awful the year has been, by the time December 31 comes around, I am just ready to move on with it already.  Unfortunately I learned the hard way four years ago that if I am not actually awake at midnight to physically experience the change of the year, it takes me about 5 times as long to actually acknowledge that a new year has begun, and then I am off kilter for most of the year.  Yeah, I know, lame and pathetic.

Much like the ill-fated New Years of 2006-2007 (it was really one of the more absurd nights of my life), 2010-2011 was also celebrated in Italy, this time in a small village with new friends, gathered around a fireplace.  Without the familiar televised image of Time Square - an illuminated, electrified ball dropping,  thousands of people counting down, wearing ridiculous hats and sounding noise-makers, finding a face in the crowd to kiss, the holiday was nearly unrecognizable.  A minute or two after midnight, everyone began shouting Tanti Agori (which they had been shouting for days regarding nearly every occasion - Christmas, a birthday, anything worth wishing congratulations or well wishes) and kissing everyone in the room, everyone... twice.  And that was it, 2011.  It was real, the future, and I was in it.

A few days later it was time to leave Italy, this time by train.  For 17 hours.  It wasn´t supposed to be 17 hours.  But this is a new year, and none of us knows the rules yet.  In any case, it was a beautful 17 hours.  If they could figure out how to build the tracks, I would happily take a train to the moon.  I could write a whole blog about how much I love and appreciate public transportation, but for now I will just tell you that despite delays, missing a train, changing trains 6 times, and getting locked in the wrong train with no electricity (and being the only person with enough survival instinct to bang endlessly on the train door until someone noticed us), I still love trains.  Love ´em.  It helped that I met the most delightful Italian Social Anthrologist, with whom I shared the journey, cups of coffee, breath-taking views of the snow-covered Alps, and observations about the world.

At the end of the day, I was back in the Berlin Train Station, homeward bound, and then back in the Centrum Judaicum, doing my thing.  And this is 2011.  And this is where I will spend it.  And that´s alright by me.

Rachel and Bing discuss the birth of Christ aka Christmas in Italy 2010

Christmas.  The Christmas season in the US is said to start the day after Thanksgiving.  This always seemed a tad long to me.  And then I moved to Germany.

Christmas season in Germany begins around the first week of October, when chocolate santas (better known here as The Christmas Man) and countless varieties of gingerbread start appearing in stores.  I think it´s just that in the US we have so many other holidays that have been inflated by Hallmark over the years - Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, that there isn´t room in the stores to start stocking... stockings... until a bit later (admittedly the first two holidays mentioned haven´t really been over-marketed yet, but I won´t be surprised when they start selling Columbus cookies (spice cookies would seem appropriate) - it´s just a matter of time).

Anyway, I think Christmas is great.  What isn´t always so great or easy, is explaining to people that I don´t celebrate it.  I thought it would be easy.  Well-intentioned, concerned, caring people would ask me: Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?  And I would say, I am Jewish... end of story.  Instead this just illicited puzzled looks and a repeat of the question, "Yes, but why aren´t you going home for Christmas?" as though my response were a totally unrelated nonsensical utterance akin to:

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my hypothetical nonsensical answer: "I like cake!"

wip: "That´s nice, but seriously, why no Christmas?"

To avoid a long explanation about differing views among religions regarding messianism (I had this conversation with someone once a few years ago, and just about the only thing you can actually say is: "my ancestors just weren´t convinced" about 10 times) I have considered some other, more definitive responses:

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my possible answer:  "My family was consumed by man-eating lions."

wip: "I am so sorry, I will never ask you about Christmas... or going to the zoo... again"

or

well intentioned person (wip): "Why aren´t you going home for Christmas?"

my possible answer: "My family lives on Mars, and by the time I got home to celebrate, it would be Christmas 2011"

wip: "That is indeed too far to travel, better stay here."

Fortunately for me, however, I did have excellent Christmas plans with a wonderful family.  

So just before Christmas, I headed off to another country that knows how to rock Weihnacht (xmas), Italy!  

To make a long wonderful story short and less interesting, four years ago I happened to befriend an extremely nice Italian girl while I was living in Vienna.  Though she barely knew me, she invited me to come to spend Christmas with her family, who lives about an hour outside Venice.  It was amazing, and by the end of the visit I had begun a wonderful friendship and had been basically adopted by a great Italian family.

It´s hard to put into words exactly how it feels to return after several years to a place that holds such distinctive memories as those I have from my first Christmas in Megliadino San Vitale - to step off at the same tiny rural train station, to see once more the same medieval city walls engulfed in mist, to hear again a familiar and yet still very much foreign language.  Although four years isn´t really very long, I think it is through instances like this that you can actually detect the passage of time in your own life - that people around you have grown taller, shorter, more wrinkled, less baby-faced, louder, quieter, that they have been somewhere, changed in some way, despite a backdrop that is more or less consistent.

Megliadino San Vitale is a village of 2,000 people in the Padua Province of the Veneto Region of Italy.  It is one of 10 small towns and cities that together make up the "dieci comune".  The largest town is called Montagnana, a molto medievale (very medieval) city of about 10,000.

I had a great time getting to know the people, not only in my friend Giorgia´s wonderful family, but the many others in her village and the neighboring ones who took the time to speak with me.  It wasn´t easy.  I don´t really speak Italian, and most of them don´t really speak English, but I am a big believer that if you care enough you will find a way to communicate, and we did.  I can now speak a bit of Veneto dialect... most importantly I can understand things like "sentate e manya" (sit and eat), an order often given to me by    Giorgia´s Nonna.

Here is Nonna Bionda making homemade pasta.  Nonna Bionda is an incredible octogenarian who wakes up everyday at the crack of dawn to cook from scratch (her house is known by her family as the hotel and supermarket to all), terrorize the family cat, insist constantly that I am not eating enough - she once smacked me for neglecting to tell her that I don´t really like salami after sort of eating it for a week (I was being polite!).

I am incredibly thankful to the whole Munaro family for having been so welcoming to me (for a second time).  They generously took me into their home, shared their traditions with me, and treated me like a member of the family.  

Fortunately for me, I happen to have another friend from a nearby part of Veneto region, and one of the Chinese fellows, Bing, was visiting him for Christmas.  So, Giorgia and I headed to the city of Vicenza to see the guys.

I stayed with the guys for a few nights in Luca´s village Trissino at the foot of the little Dolomites.  We helped Bing prepare a 10 course Chinese dinner for Luca´s extremely patient family (they tried everything really enthusiastically despite being unaccostomed to a lot of new very spicy flavors).  As Luca´s camera broke midway through the cooking process, I took on the role of, "capturing the process".  Since this post is getting pretty long, I think I will just end with some photos and captions of Trissino, Chinese dinner, and our visit to nearby Verona.  Bing was particularly thrilled to learn that Jews "traditionally" eat Chinese food on Christmas... And of course, on the drive to Verona, Luca decided to see who was more educated on  Christmas, an American Jew or a Chinese Muslim raised under communism... hence "Rachel and Bing discuss the birth of Christ"... I totally won :)

Not spicy.

Spicy

The guys.

                                           Getting pretty good at taking pictures of myself.

                                          But I still need some work.

Verona

Trissino

                                The Little Dolomites.

Erfurt

Part 2, at long last

 I think it took me so long to get around to telling you about Erfurt, because there was so much to take in and to understand about this part of my trip, that even now I am still processing it.

Erfurt is the major city (population 200,000) closest to the geographic center of Germany.  It is the location of the oldest synagogue in Germany, and in fact, in Central Europe (I have never heard a really good definition of where exactly Central Europe starts and ends... so I will leave you to imagine that on your own.  Go wild.  Just know, as soon as your mental map includes any synagogues built before 1094, STOP, you have gone too far!!).

As I arrived in Erfurt for the second time, I was met at the train station by Ines Beese, the director of the Klein Synagogue (small synagogue), dating to the 1840s and the Alte Synagogue (old synagogue) from 1094.  Both buildings belong to the city of Erfurt, not to the Jewish community, but as previously mentioned, are on very good terms with the community.

The Klein Synagogue now serves as a Begegnungsstätte, which is a term basically meaning meeting place.  The building, which served as a synagogue for only 44 years before the Erfurt Jewish community outgrew it, was converted into a private property, thereby saving it from the torments of Kristallnacht (it´s grandeer replacement was not so lucky).  Today it houses a small exhibit about the 19th and 20th century Jewish community in Erfurt as well as some information about Jewish life in general.  Pictured here is a traditional Shabbat table and some information about how the Jewish sabbath is celebrated.  I thought this was great.  It is of course interesting and important to share information about individual Jewish communities, but I am often disappointed to see how rarely basic, straight forward information about Jewish life and practices is available in Jewish museums.  The basics are pretty important, I think, if a Jewish museum or historic site considers tolerance education, demystification of "otherness" or debunking stereotypes to be anywhere in its mission or goals.

The Klein Synagogue also includes steps leading down to the now cemented-over ritual bath (mikve)

 and a spectacular view of the Gera river (a fresh flowing water source is necessary for a Jewish ritual bath)

                                                  (hmmm ritual purification sure looks chilly....)


The sanctuary is used for speeches, concerts, etc.

So that is a Begegnungsstätte.

As I have learned, however, there are a lot of words that can be used to describe the uses for historic buildings/monuments.  Most of them involve the word Mal (marker) or Stätte (site).  A Begegnungsstätte, according to my definition, is a site for interaction, usually public programming.  Any space could be a Begegnungsstätte if educational activities, talks, speeches, etc take place there. Then there is a Denkmal, which is sort of a general word for a monument or a memorial, a place to mark thoughts.  I sort of envision that anything that has a plaque on it is a Denkmal, although the plaque itself is an Erinnerungstafel (a memory board).  Then there is a Gedenkstätte, which means a memory place, and so a memorial.  And then finally there is a Mahnmal, which is basically just like a Denkmal, except it is implied that there is some sort of warning to future generations.

I bring up this tangent not only to show the complexities and specificities that German offers to the examination of historic sites and memorials (and not to put you to sleep), but because the concept of a Mahnmal is something of particular interest.  It is a relatively recent concept to mark and memorialize sites as warnings to future generations about societal mistakes, rather than memorializing moments of societal pride.  This is an area of memorializing that Germany continues to expand, pioneer and experiment with.

In fact one interesting example of what I guess might be defined as Mahnmale in Germany are known as  Stolpersteine, stumbling blocks.  Starting in 1993 small stones with the names of Holocaust victims began to be installed in the streets in front of their former homes in cities across Germany, and now in other countries as well.  Stolpersteine are only installed and dedicated after individuals do research on the victim to be memorialized, a way of making the process more personal.  There are to date over 25,000 Stolpersteine in Europe, despite criticism by some individuals and rejection by some cities.

Erfurt does not have Stolpersteine.  They have... the DenkNadel...

This is a DenkNadel, a memory needle.  There are 5 in Erfurt.  Basically Erfurt missed the Stolpersteine phenomenon and decided, instead of jumping on the bandwagon late in the game, to do their own thing. A competition was held, and the DenkNadel was selected.  Like Stolpersteine, the DenkNadel has its supporters and its critics.  No longer is their concern that people will step on and disrespect or simply ignore this type of memorial, which stands 1.5 meters high (about 5 feet).  However, in some people´s opinion the solemn marker more closely resembles an ice cream cone.  They also cost about 350 Euro to install, making the process an expensive one.  In any case, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the extremely well-intentioned group (mostly students and volunteers) responsible for the DenkNadel.


Finally, there was the old synagogue.

      (seasonally inaccurate picture - but all of mine came out poorly, so please imagine snow and ice, thanks)

Built originally in 1094, the old Synagogue was used by the medieval Jewish community of Erfurt until 1349.  Usually the exact years aren´t really important.  I had a professor in college who always said, "it is the order of the events and not the actual dates that make a difference".  But, 1349 is pretty important.  It is right in the middle of the years when the Plague ravaged the world and decimated the population of Europe (by some calculations killing 50% of the European population).  But not all of the victimes of the plague fell victim directly to the high fevers and bloody boils... some were murdered.

Rumors spread that the Jews had poisoned the wells, resulting in the massive spread of disease.  In 200 cities and towns across central Europe the Jewish communities were wiped out.  Erfurt was one of these cities.  On March 21, 1349 over 100 Jews were killed, and about 900 others (the remainder of the community) gathered together in buildings that were then set on fire.

Although a Jewish community returned to Erfurt in following centuries, the old synagogue was forgotten.  It became a storage building for centuries, and then in the DDR, it was used as a dance hall.  The original use of the building was completely forgotten until the end of the 20th century, when renewed interest in Jewish history in Germany led to its rediscovery.  Then being used as a catering hall, the building was purchased by the city of Erfurt, and restored.

Reopened in 2009 as a museum, the old Synagogue is the first museum in Germany to use video iPod tours.  The video iPods, models and laser lights worked with the restoration decision to keep the former sanctuary space empty, mostly bare stone walls, low lighting, sparse outlines.  Taking a building back over 6 centuries means depending some on technology and the imaginations of visitors.  The upstairs space, used for exhibits, is restored as a 1960s dance hall.

And in the basement, the Erfurt Treasure is housed.

Hidden in 1349 under threat of violence, this treasure trove was uncovered in the late 1990s as an Erfurter family did renovations on their home.  Perfectly preserved and one of the largest collections of silver coins and jewels to ever be unearthed, the Erfurt Treasure is truly magnificent.  The only specifically Jewish artifact is the largest medieval Jewish wedding ring known to exist.  The ring is shaped like a small tower with Mazel Tov (Good luck/Congratulations) written on the tiny roof in Hebrew script.  The bottom of the ring is constructed of interlocking hands, a symbol of love and commitment popular at the time.  The original owner of the collection is unknown.  It includes enough silver coins to have paid the Jewish tax for the entire city of Erfurt for the year in which it was hidden.

Hopefully I will have the opportunity to return to Erfurt in the Spring when the medieval Mikve will be dedicated.

What exactly is a Thüringer Klöße? And other things you learn along the way.

Part 1:

    Yes, it is December, and so it may seem hard to imagine that I just returned from my first site visit.  But, it took a little bit of time before I felt ready to head out and really get this project fully underway.  When I asked my mentor where I should head first, he didn´t even have to think about it.  Thüringen.  Thüringen is a state in the very middle of Germany, a part of former East Germany.  According to my mentor, Thüringen is the friendliest place in Germany.

    Before I left there was research to do.  I identified six historic synagogues in Thüringen: three in the city of Erfurt, one in Mühlhausen, and two located in the small villages of Berkach and Aschenhausen.  Before the trip could take place there were emails to send, plans to make, phone calls to make (making phone calls in German is actually sort of terrifying - I tried to make myself a script, but as soon as some unsuspecting person picks up on the other end of the line, expecting that the person calling will be speaking German, I drop the script and just hope for the best).

    So last Sunday afternoon I headed to the train station and was off on my adventure to Thüringen.

    I arrived mid evening in the city of Erfurt, the biggest city in Thüringen, population 200,000.  I trudged three kilometers through the snow to my pension, settled in for the first of many quiet nights in central Germany.  The next morning, prompty at 8, I had my first interview.

    Wolfgang Nossen is the head of the Jewish Community of Thüringen.  I was pretty lucky to get a last minute interview with him.  After speaking to the two women who "hold the keys" for the synagogues in Berkach and Aschenhausen, the "key-holder" in Berkach recommended that I talk with Mr. Nossen if I wanted to ask any questions about how the building in her village is used, etc.

    So I did.  I learned that the Jewish community of Thüringen is responsible for three of the six synagogues I was interested in learning about.  Their main synagogue is in Erfurt.  It was built in 1952 and is the ONLY synagogue to have been built during communism in East Germany.  The community is also responsible for the restored historic synagogues in Berkach and the small city of Mühlhausen.  They are NOT the owners of the Aschenhausen synagogue, the rights over which the 170 person village of Aschenhausen apparently took the community to court and won in the early 1990s (need to learn more about that).  The other two non-Erfurt synagoges owned by the Gemeinde (community) get visited occasionally for a service or event, but are mostly administered and kept open by volunteers in their respective locations (aka lady in Berkach with a key to the synagogue).

   It was interesting to learn about the Jewish community of Thüringen.  Between the end of WWII and the fall of the wall, the Jewish community of Thüringen may have had a newly built synagogue, but the community was aging and very small.  Then came the Russian immigrants.  There are now 1,200 Jewish in Thüringen, although only 800 consider themselves "members" of the community, and only 500 actually live in Erfurt, the only city with an active synagogue.  Erfurt was one of the three communities to receive one of the rabbis whose ordination I attended, so it may be an interesting community to watch in the coming years.

Wolfgang Nossen, at work in the Jewish community of Thüringen´s main building.

   With no more interviews til Tuesday, I was off to the city of Weimar for the rest of the day.  If you have heard of Weimar, chances are you are conjuring up some image of Germany´s first fledgling democracy from 1918-1933, the Weimar Republic, the constitution of which, was signed, quite logically in Weimar.  Weimar is also known as the home town of Schiller and Goethe, and a major player in the Bauhaus architectural movement.

    Unfortunately I visited Weimar on Monday and Nikolaustag (St. Nicholas Day), which means that instead of soaking in culture, I saw this:

True, that ain´t Goethe, but St. Nick amusing children in front of the city government building (separation of church and state... not quite yet guys) was not bad.  And in addition to wandering through Christmas Markets (this country basically transforms itself into a big gingerbread cookie as soon as the leaves start to change colors)...

... I also soaked up a lot of snow.  So much in fact, that is became relatively apparent halfway through the day that if I didn´t find snow boots, I might get frost bite (it was touch and go for a while there).  I am not going to say that I have a reputation for showing up places with the wrong shoes, but let´s face the facts, I do.  I think I intimidate shoes.  They have no idea from day one that I plan on walking EVERYWHERE and that I do not care what a particular pair of shoes was intended to be worn for.  I will wear them for whatever I plan on doing.  No prisoners taken.  The result is that a lot of shoes just don´t live up to the challenge, and the result is an early, painful death.  So the rest of my Nikolaustag in Weimar was spent locating snow boots.  I reassure myself with the knowledge that Schiller very likey bought snow boots in the very same location.

     Then I was ready to spend the rest of the day blissfully wandering through the snow!

  

     The next day I was off to Mühlhausen... and if you haven´t had enough snow yet, here is a bit of my ride an hour west of Weimar to Mühlhausen, population: 36,000, number of synagogues: 1, number of Jews: (approximately) 0.

   I was picked up at the train station in Mühlhausen by Mr. Sünder, a college friend of my mentor, who currently works with the archives and historical activities of the city of Mühlhausen.  Born and raised in the city, Mr. Sünder was an excellent tour guide.  He took me all over the city, explaining much of the recent history in particular.

   

   The synagogue in Mühlhausen was "rediscovered" in the late 1980s, around the time many of these buildings seem to reenter the radar of their local communities.  The fall of the wall came as quite a shock to this (and to every other) part of the DDR, and the restoration was dropped until the mid 90s.  By this time Jewish immigrants were pouring into Germany, and apparently Mühlhausen hoped to put its historical synagogue back into use.  This hope would not be realized, as the new Jewish immigrants preferred to stay together in Erfurt and other larger cities.  Mühlhausen, at the end of the day, has a beautifully restored, fully functional synagogue... with no Jews.

   When I asked why the people of Mühlhausen were so enthusiastic to have a Jewish community again, there really wasn´t a concrete answer.   Jews, he said, were a part of the history of the city, and when there was the opportunity to restore not just a building but a way of life, the city had hoped to be able to make it a reality.  Today the building is accessible to visitors who can read a small exhibit about the history of the Jewish community in the city.  But, as with many similar buildings in Germany, the very friendly women from the protestant church who keep the building open, will gladly point you to a book if your questions about the community or Jewish life in general go anywhere past the surface.  School groups are likely the most common visitors to the building.

   Mr. Sünder also took me to see the Jewish cemetery, kept in pristine condition by the city (although it was locked for security reasons when I was there).  There are so many more extant Jewish cemeteries than synagogues in Germany, that I can´t imagine looking into them in more depth at this time.  But having seen some pretty dismal Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe and the US to be honest, it was good to see upright stones and legible inscriptions.

  Then Mr. Sünder asked if I had sampled Thüringer cuisine yet.  And so I learned what a Thüringer Klöße is...

I, perhaps like you, was initially fooled by these two spherical dumplings called Klöße.  They look like matza balls.  If you don´t know about matza balls a) I feel sorry for you b) you should just know that they are Jewish soup dumplings made from ground up matzah (crackers), egg, spices, and very likely the loving special touch of someone´s grandmother.

  A Klöße, my friend, is not a Matza Ball.  It is made from potatoes, which gives it an interestingly chewy texture (I have no idea how German cuisine manages to make so many things which in their natural state are not chewy, become chewy... I have never had a chewy potato product before).  I´ll admit that the Klöße went pretty well with deer gulasch (which is amazingly delicious) and red cabbage (um, we are in Germany, so obviously cabbage was a key element in this meal).  The big surprise was that in the middle of the Klöße are chunks of bread.  I can´t really explain this.  It is sort of like dumpling surprise.  

   On the subject of things I have eaten in Germany in the attempt to not offend/be open minded/really get in touch with this culture, Blutwurst.  Blood sausage.  This is not an experience I can blame on Thüringen, since it happened in Berlin.  And I suppose like most of my blog, it clashes pretty starkly with your average (is there such a thing) historical synagogue blog.  But it seems like a feat worth mentioning.  Like nearly everything in Berlin, it happened in the context of a Christmas market (if you can find something else to do in Germany in December, please let me know).  My wonderful, enthusiastic German hosts promised me the best blood sausage in the city.  

   Well, it was the best I have ever had.  That being said, knowing it was ONLY 30% blood, did not help with the appeal factor.  I hate less than a thimble-full, and i think it will hold me for a while (I was just impressed that I kept it down).

   Back to Mühlhausen.  After spending the rest of the day in various historical buildings in the city and holding my second interview, I was ready to retire to the Jugendherberge I had reserved.  It was supposed to be only 2 km from the train station, but in Mühlhausen, that is the equivalent of staying out in the boonies.  Mr. Sünder dropped me off, and then taking pity on me, invited me to dinner at his home.

   This turned out to be one of the hightlights of the trip.  I spent the evening chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Sünder, and I suppose it would be hard to say whether they were more delighted by their "authentic American guest" (their words, not mine), or if I was more delighted by hours of stories about life in the DDR.  Ok, no, I was definitely more entertained.  

Ok, still to come, part 2... Erfurt and the Oldest Synagogue in Germany.