German-Jewish Relations

Wow, what a day.... we met with four different speakers on various issues.

We began with a post-breakfast talk with the director of the Neue Synagogue, Dr. Hermann Simon, and a Foreign Ministry representative (very cute). We talked a lot about the Jewish community in Berlin and in Germany in general. Dr. Simon described the Jewish community and the challenges it's facing especially with the young Jews and the "Russian-speaking Jews" (PC term, really). Some people took the opportunity to speak more about the German-Jewish foreign relations in regards to Israel. We also discussed the problems of integration among the Russians.

Second, we went to the AJC Berlin office and met with the executive director, Deidre Berger, who was just amazing. The AJC office is located right on Potsdam Platz and it overlooks the exact spot where Hitler committed suicide. Kind of weird and it was certainly a no-man's land for a long, long time so all the buildings around it were very, very modern (and ugly). Anyway, the director told us a little history of AJC Berlin and its role in European Jewish relations and discussed the importance of Germany as an ally to the Jewish people. She also talked about identities. She used to work as a foreign correspondent and in NPR Washington before taking a position with AJC in 1984 when she decided to move to Germany. Ms. Berger noticed that many of us were in international relations or political science and of course, Jewish Studies and she acknowledged that. We must learn German and Arabic as future leaders of the Jewish world. Eh, what about Hebrew? :-) So anyway, she emphasized democracy in the view of AJC and within the German politics and that it's one of AJC's goals- to promote democracy. I'll tell you that when she talked about it, I was wondering if I was taking democracy for granted because as someone pointed out later that there are so many shades of democracy and everyone has their own definition. For me, it's freedom of speech. For others, it could mean something else like the right to vote or participate in the government or whatever.

After her speech, almost every hand went up! So she took a few questions at time and wrote them down and then answered them. Someone asked about AJC's role in helping to shape the curriculum in German schools (which are NOT centralized and each school has its own curriculum not like in the US). He wanted to know if it's trying to work on really integrating Jewish history within German history. She said, of course, they recognized that only just couple years ago and are working on it. Some people asked about the political attitude among the Germans towards Israel. The Germans still call the Jews "co-citizens" and some other name to really single them out and AJC is working on to eliminate those terms as to help the Jews to feel even more integrated into the German society. I asked her about how, as American Jews with such varied interests and our own definition of our Jewish identity, can she expect us to be the next generation of leaders? How can we keep our identity from getting in the way of our work? She said that nothing's ever too personal and no American Jew should hide his or her feelings and views and that's what makes her a bit sad about the majority of American Jews who just don't think about it. Overall, it was a very successful visit.

We had pretty bad lunch- they served us these huge portions of noodle kugl with basically nothing except for some crumble of feta cheese. Needless to say, I didn't even really eat much of it and went for the Mediterranean platter instead.

After lunch, we walked down to Kruezberg, which is a very ethnic neighborhood filled with Turkish Muslims. Our guide, Wafaa, was a Palestinian. I think the whole room went very silent when she talked about her Palestinian background. Her parents had lived in Palestine and then became refugees after the establishment of Israel and escaped to Lebanon and then to Germany in 1970s. So she pretty much grew up in Germany all of her life. I must admit that when I first saw her, I knew that she could not be German or Jewish but when she opened her mouth to talk, I recognized the Middle East/Arabic accent (which strangely was a comfort to me as it reminded me of Israel). So anyway, she talked about the Muslim community, mostly Turkish. She was just incredibly open with everything that for a minute there, I thought, "TMI." Nevertheless, her attitude came from her parents who just basically accepted everything and was generally more secular than the Arabs that I've seen in Israel. Afterward, she took us on a little tour of Kreuzberg which is basically Turkish and then walked us to the Merkaz Mosque. By the way, in the entrance to Kreuzberg, there's a big sign in transliteration from Arabic-"Merkaz Kreuzberg." When I first saw it, I thought, what is a Hebrew word doing here? So anyway, she pointed out a couple of shops and explained that a lot of young people like to hang out in the area because it's really the only place in Berlin just to hang out. That's a good point- even though it's cold, I don't see anyone hanging out anywhere in Berlin. She also pointed out a couple of places where Muslim men could be "in closet" in terms of alcohol.

Then we walked down to Merkaz Mosque. Berlin has over 70 mosques and they're all in the backyards of different buildings. We saw the finished outer construction of the newest mosque, the first to be seen from the street. It's going to be very beautiful. She took us inside and then we took off our shoes and sat in a circle on the prayer carpet. I had never, ever been inside a mosque so it was all new to me. The first thing she pointed out after putting on her haji was the design of the rugs that are specially made for mosques. There's a "praying spot" where the person kneels down on and the design was architectural with columns separating each person with a point towards a certain direction- to Mecca (oh, someone asked why they allow pointed to one direction... wow, so naive). That was very cool. Then we asked a couple of pretty hard questions for her because she was a Muslim and a Palestinian. We did step away from the Israeli-Palestinian issues and just focused on learning more about her identity in Germany. She identified herself as a German Palestinian. We tried to bring up a bit about the Holocaust because of the prevalent Holocaust denial among the Muslim communities. She responded that she didn't believe in that denial.... it was tough for her. It was also something else for her to grow up with the Germans and learning about the Holocaust even though it had no connection with her. Otherwise, we really enjoyed her.

After the tour, we met with Aycan Demirel, the director of Kreuzberg Initiative Aganist Antisemitism. He only spoke in German, Turkish, and Arabic so our guides had to translate for us . It was a bit frustrating because of the lapses. So anyway, he talked about its mission to track anti-Zionist sentiments in Arabic countries and how that filters to Germany. The people watch for anything in the media so that they can ban it in Germany. He showed us one Turkish paper that compared Bush to Hitler and a couple of other things. It program mostly works on education for the migrants as to help them connect with the Holocaust as they tend to be quite ignorant of it. Apparently, they do support Israel to a certain degree as it's not anti-Israel. The program has a lot of trouble securing funds and grants to promote it further and enhance it, especially from the community. Many people are quite negative to it.

Finally, we had dinner with Dr. Jeffrey Peck, professor of Georgetown, to talk to us about Jewish-German history. Since we covered a lot in the past few days, he just promoted the summer program on studying just that and the current German-Jewish community in terms of relating to their identities and the rest of Germany. We took the opportunity, since Dr. Pruin was there also, to ask questions about the church-state relationship and American Jews in their relation with Germany.

Oh, we ate in an Israeli restaurant so in the back, there was a mini-market with Israeli products. imagine my joy when I saw that chocolate cake loaf! But for 4,5 euros when it was like 12 sheklim? I think I can wait.