On Friday, we had several discussions about modern Germany, specifically regarding Jewish life. The day began with a panel discussion on contemporary Jewish life in Germany on which spoke three insightful women of different backgrounds – one who had emigrated from Israel as an adult, one born in the former USSR who moved to Germany as a child with her parents after the fall of Communism, and one born in Germany to two unobservantly Jewish parents.
All three speakers touched on the more formal nature of Germany’s Jewish community, compared to those in other countries. In order for the government to distribute money to German religious communities, we learned, they require there be one unified organization representing each community. The Central Council of Jews in Germany, as the umbrella organization of the German Jewish community, gets to determine who is eligible for membership in the community. They apply a traditional Halachic matrilineal definition of Jewishness, which excludes practicing and self-identifying Jews with non-Jewish mothers and non-orthodox converts. We collectively struggled with the implications of these structures on both the formal and informal German Jewish community – we came back, again and again to confusion as to what members of a minority religious community in a country with a shrinking population, would gain from excluding thousands of potentially eligible members.
Besides this overview of German’s unfamiliar religious structures, much of the discussion emphasized the real possibilities for “normal” Jewish life in Germany –
Most of the young German Jews we spoke to throughout our trip emphasized that they feel safe and respected in their country, and many cited the growing population of Israeli emigrants to Germany as evidence of the country’s acceptance of Jews. However, many members of our group were disturbed by a statistic we heard near the beginning of the trip that stated approximately 20% of Germans hold some beliefs that might be construed as anti-Semitic. Looking into that statistic, I found it comes from a 2012 report ordered by Parliament and is most likely to reflect the percentage of German adults who find truth in common Jewish stereotypes (such as: Jews are good with money, Jews control the media, etc.). Given the centuries-long history of anti-Semetic propaganda efforts in Germany and throughout Europe, I don’t find this surprising. Anecdotally, it seems to me that far more than 20% of the U.S. population harbors negative subconscious biases about nonwhite people, so this idea of latent prejudices is familiar to me. The question, when it comes to these lingering legacies of oppression, is how to effectively draw attention to things people would rather not acknowledge about themselves.
Over lunch, we spoke with Israeli journalist Eldad Beck about his experiences as an Israeli Jew and journalist in Germany. He presented a much less optimistic portrait of modern Germany, but it seemed to be one that resonated with many members of our group. He argued, based on his experiences living in Germany for 14 years and researching and writing two books about contemporary Germany, that the stories Germany tells itself about having processed the Shoah and squashed anti-Semitism are untrue. I was not surprised by his argument, given my partial understanding of the pervasive nature of violence and oppression. It also seems to me that the farther away we get from horrific crimes against humanity, the easier it is to tell ourselves that we’ve moved past them. As the last of the survivors of the Shoah die of old age, anxiety over the unending process of remembering grows.
He suggested a different context for the memorials and museums we’d been visiting, arguing we should view memorials as the result of individual advocacy rather than broad cultural change, a point that evokes questions about the significance and meaning of public memorials. If their presence doesn’t necessarily indicate cultural change, are effective memorials able to create cultural change? Mr. Beck also made an interesting point about German peoples’ understanding of the relationship between anti-Semitism and the Shoah, arguing that many Germans think anti-Semitism is large-scale genocide rather than a subtly oppressive set of beliefs, which make large-scale genocide possible. This resonated with my experience of interacting with white Americans who think racism is slavery and Jim Crow but fail to see the ways in which racism continues to operate in more covert and institutional ways today. I left this conversation thinking about the need for comprehensive and accessible anti-racist education.
On Friday night, we visited the Fraenkelufer Synagogue in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin for Kabbalat Shabbat and Shabbat dinner. We filed past a stern Israeli guard and into a beautiful sanctuary fitted with bulletproof glass windows, which were shut on this warm night for security reasons. I knew all the tunes, and as I sat with a friend from our group I quickly began to feel at home. I had no doubt that both the women from our morning panel and Mr. Beck were right in their characterizations of modern Jewish life in Germany. Apparent normalcy and latent anti-Semitism can and do coexist.