Deutschland

Germany. Germany. Just the sound of it was packed with baggage in history. It brought harshness and was unforgiving, yet familiar, banal and calming. I had been preparing for my journey but as the city came into sight and we got ready to land, I felt my heart beat, almost wishing for us to tilt back up into the sky and quickly head back home. I don’t know why, but I was quickly able to get over my minor panic and make my way onto this formerly cursed soil.
Most people I talk to find this angst silly. “Really, you mean you’re actually nervous?!? Forget it man. Get over it, what do you expect?” are the typical reactions. Not that they’re wrong, I just can’t help it.
I met a 29-year-old Swedish women from Brussels who was going the same way and we quickly found our way through Tegel and on to the U-Bahn to find our hostel.
I arrived at 17:45 and Mara had just gotten there a few minutes before. We checked in and hastily changed to try and salvage any possibility of making Kabbalat Shabbat. Back down into the U-Bahn to Oranianburger Strasse, where we easily spotted the golden dome of the Moorish style Neue Synagogue.
Built in the mid-19th century it survived a Kristalnacht fire, was largely destroyed by the WWII bombing. The East German (GDR) government agreed to rebuild the outside façade of the building, but together with the Gemeindscheft (Jewish community) decided that there was no longer a need for a 3200 seat sanctuary – in the style of the large 19th century Classical Reform heichalot like Temple Emmanuel, Sinai or Sholom - leaving the Hebrew quote and the façade.

The security guards gave us a stern guilt trip about our tardiness – apparently that just wasn’t done here – and we made our way up to a small packed room where an operatic hazzan was belting out the repetition of the Amidah. Egalitarian with traditional nusach, the small room was packed with a variety of characters, for whom Mara and I brought down the average age considerably. We talked with some American-Jewish tourists near-by and listened to an American-Reform Rabbi struggle through the Kiddush he was invited to lead having brought a delegation from his “Temple.”
On our way out, we made an attempt to schmooze, and decipher some of the intricacies of the community. We gently approached the four or so “young” people and introduced ourselves. We met Eva, a tall buxom blond haired woman with a backwards “Chai” necklace. After a short conversation we gathered that she was from a small town in the North and in the process of conversion. We met a Swiss Jew, and Israeli juggler in Berlin to study with a Russian master. Really only one person who was there lived in Berlin, grew up there and was “active” in the community, yet had only some vague familiarity with the conference this coming weekend that I am planning on attending.

I was excited to be there and I was able to locate the plaque which I learned the Marianne and Stanley Dreyfus helped to dedicate 20 years ago on the 50th anniversary of kristalnacht.
Our impressions of the community were later confirmed - that the façade of the outside of the schul had some correlation with its inside. This, of course, is awfully presumptuous of me having visited for one evening, but such is life.

There are definitely other schuls and other communities, which I hope to discover when the opportunities present themselves.

We met Mara’s aunt and uncle for Dinner, and enjoyed walking around trying to gain our bearings. So, this was Berlin…