March 16 – April 3, 2022
He knew I was from Israel. The grocery bags gave it away.
When we first arrived here in Germany we made a point to find the kosher grocery store and purchase a few necessary items there. We had our Israeli grocery bags – the ones with the store names written in Hebrew that we have acquired over the years. They are good bags – larger than the typical American size, but not overwhelmingly large so you can’t fill it that full. As we left the kosher market the shopkeeper warned us to not use those grocery bags; it wasn’t safe to be out with Hebrew writing to so prominently displayed.
Not wearing a kippah on our way to and from shul is one thing, one way to stay inconspicuous. That’s been where we’ve drawn a line. The kids wear their camp shirts which all have Hebrew on them. My grocery bags clearly show that we have some connection to Israel. And we have a mezuzah on our front door, of course.
Recently, and for the first time, someone made note of my grocery bags. I had just unloaded the donations from my car at the Ukraine relief donation center here. I spoke in English with the first volunteer who helped me. A second man joined him to help and after first speaking to me in English, saw the bags, and asked me in Hebrew if we had come from Israel. He had a sparkle in his smile and a twinkle in his eye. There was no threat of malice whatsoever. I told him yes, and he replied with a thank you in Hebrew and off the two men went with my donated items.
March 2nd, our Aliyah anniversary, a date when I have sent out an update from us for the last 11 years, came while we were on a family road trip during vacation week. We noted the date and that it had been 12 years since we had arrived in Israel. So much has happened in our lives since that day. I have been thinking about March 2nd now for a month and trying to come up with something to share about life here in Germany.
Two themes have risen to the fore. One, the intensity and inherent conflict that is life in Israel. Two, the historical anti-Semitism and violence from this part of the world and the specter of it returning today.
To the first point, I can say that most notably, we have all felt the benefit of living in a less intense place. This move has afforded us a degree of quiet and the distance from so many things. Much like the summer after I finished college when I let my brain decompress by reading romance novels so voraciously that I had to start keeping a spreadsheet so I wouldn’t check a book out twice! This past half year here in Germany has been a bit of a decompression for me, for Ben, and for the kids as well. Israel is a pressure cooker of a place, full of life, of color, sounds, and smells. It is a blend of the good and the challenging with a not insignificant amount of the bad. It’s the kind of place that calls for a break every now and then; to step away and gain perspective.
This has become one of the main points I share when people ask me if we are happier here or in Israel. I start by mentioning how amazing life in Israel is – the intensity of every day really underscoring how valuable and precious everything is. The colors, the smells, the spices and foods, are all so much more in Israel; there is a vibrancy to life that is unique to Israel. And, after leaving Israel and going through that initial decompression, it became very clear to me how this intensity of life is also pervasive in our social interactions, which are often on the edge of conflict. In line at the grocery or the bank, driving through a traffic circle, or waiting to get on or off a train. Everyone is Israel is jockeying for position and that position comes at the expense of someone else lest you be a “frier”. This is so ingrained in life in Israel we often don’t even notice it. It wears you down, the relentlessness of it. It makes you hard and jaded and cynical. To my mind, it’s counterintuitive to the principles of Judaism. It may well be an Achilles’ heel of Israel in the long run.
Interestingly there was a discussion on this subject recently on a podcast I listen to. The hosts discussed the value and purpose of Israelis leaving Israel for a period of time to recharge and gain perspective. Israel is a small, crowded, hot (most of the year) place filled with basically your entire, extended family. Intense.
To the second point, the atrocities perpetuated on the Jews of the area throughout history. As I mentioned earlier, we recently took a road trip. Our route took us south, through the Black Forest with a short detour into France, and then on through Austria and into Liechtenstein. We also did a short day-trip to Antwerp recently. All along the way we drove past forests and wooded areas. My mind kept overlaying what it might have been like to hide out in those forests during World War II, how many people ran through those forests seeking refuge, how many people were killed in those forests and others. The thoughts came to me like haunting memories; the history I had learned in high school and college eerily coming to death before my eyes as we sped along the road. I was struck by how much history is tangles in the branches of these forests.
Along our trip we spent a night in Bacharach at a youth hostel that is in an old castle. It was a unique experience to sleep in a castle, and at my age, I only need to sleep one night on a youth hostel bed, thank you very much. We enjoyed a hike around the castle and down to the Rhine and then back up. Along our path back up to the castle, we came across the ruins of the Werner Chapel. There was a plaque explaining the history of the chapel and it was chilling. I’ll let you read the plaque for yourself.
It was also inspiring and moving. Germany has clearly taken significant and meaningful efforts to maintain its memory of atrocities and take responsibility for them. Maintaining memory is a vital element of restitution. These memories can help pave the way to a better future. And in some cases, literally pave.
These plaques are inlaid in the sidewalk in the shopping district near our house. They, like many thousands throughout Germany, mark homes where Jews once lived, Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. It’s a bit startling to be walking down the street and look down to discover one or more of these bronze plaques. The history of this region is ever present and in so many ways, raw.
When we moved to Israel I felt like the history of the place coursed through me. It was history that I had learned and learned and learned, year after year. In formal and in informal settings. By no means was the history definitive, there were certainly open questions both about the biblical history and the more modern history. That history was my history. I felt like I could slip into the history because the history of Israel is the history of the Jewish people. Living in Israel felt so very natural to live amongst all of that history. And at the same time, I could see the difference in my experience compared to that of our Israeli friends who had grown up so deeply steeped in this history. It was a very strange and interesting tension to live with, sometimes unsettling.
When we made the decision to leave Israel and move to western Europe, my thoughts returned to this point of history and my place in it. I anticipated having a different connection to the history of this area because it wasn’t my history, not the history of the Jewish people in the Jewish State. I’ve certainly learned western European history, as one does if you are educated in the US. But that was an academic exercise, one of obtaining knowledge, learning from history. I was unprepared for how deeply moved I have been as we explore our new home. I sometimes feel like I am looking around with some kind of historical lenses on, thinking about what this place looked like in the WWI and WWII years. What was the experience of living in this place if you were Jewish and had a love for your home – in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands – and this home rejected you. Or protected you. It is as if there is a specter hovering around, casting a haze over this modern-day Europe, an historical tinged haze.
I find myself asking myself if I think this could be a place we might live for a long time. Is this a place where I feel secure. Not safe, that’s a day to day issue, like the constant police presence outside the synagogue and Jewish old age home. At least here in Düsseldorf, aside from the drunken tram riders, we’ve felt very safe. Rather, is this a place where I could feel secure enough to live long term? And if I don’t, what does that say about the world in which we live right now? What does it say about the lessons learned, or not learned, from the past? And if we are not yet in a place where a Jew can feel secure living in western Europe, what do we need to do to move closer to that being a reality?
A few weeks ago I popped into an Iranian spice store. How’s that for an opening of a joke – an Israeli American Jew walks into an Iranian spice store near the train station in Düsseldorf to buy sumac. Well, I did. In my very poor German and the clerks equally poor English he told me that he was Iranian. That wasn’t clear from the storefront. And he asked me where I was from since it obviously wasn’t Germany. Without missing a beat, I told him I was American and then added that we moved to Germany from Israel. And then my brain caught up with my mouth and I looked cautiously at the clerk. He was unfazed. And that made me feel a bit more secure in our decision to live here, now.
As you can see from the date on this post and it's length, it’s taken me a while to finish it. That is both a factor of time in front of my computer with sufficient peace and quiet, and a sense of where I was trying to go with this note. For those of you who have read this far, thank you. I’m going to share one final thought. Recently when listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Promised Podcast, they discussed a topic that deeply resonated with me because of our recent move. The first topic discussed on this episode was about Israeli left-wing activists who have left the country. The bottom line is that there can be a great deal of benefit in taking a break, taking a breather, from the hectic life that is in Israel. So for now, I can tell you that we are really soaking in the different pace of life here in Germany. This change has been a good one for us and I hope it continues to be so.
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