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Kosher or not? Paul Spiegel and Observance in the Jewish Province

Reported by Susan R. Boettcher <susan.boettcher@mail.utexas.edu>,
Department of History, University of Texas

Outside of a few big cities in Germany, an observant orthodox Jewish
life is impossible. Anyone living long enough in the Federal Republic
notes holes, like the absence of Jews in traditionally Jewish businesses
like jewelry stores, delicatessens, and clothing discounters. More
troublesome for the observant traveler is the absence of the orthodox
rabbinical certification of widely-available foods (like the "circle-U"
of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis on many American products) that reduced
a colleague who visited Wolfenbuettel recently to a diet of salad served
on paper plates. He lost seven pounds in two weeks. In Germany as
elsewhere, this kind of thing keeps the orthodox out of the provinces;
outside of urban centers, congregations tend to reflect a certain
self-selection. Because, until the last few years, so few Jews lived in
Germany, the presence of non-orthodox Jews was a negligible phenomenon.
Since 1989, however, the population has increased from about to 25,000
to slightly less than 100,000. This immigration has created a dynamic
situation that has put business as usual under increasing challenge when
congregations are founded away from communities with the infrastructure
(butchers, grocers, ritual baths, prayer quorums) to support orthodox
observance. In the context of such a bold challenge to the Jewish status
quo in Germany, however, Paul Spiegel's recent book, _Was ist Koscher?
Juedischer Glaube, juedisches Leben_, [1] a clumsy riff on modern
orthodoxy in Germany, sets up a narrative of German Judaism as always
already in decline, a venerable but uninspiring tradition. It is a book
for the ambivalent status quo, and fails to display the courage and
creativity that will be necessary for the continued development of
Judaism in Germany.  The numerous liberal communities that have sprung
up in the wake of the _Wende_, while young, offer a different
alternative

Despite or perhaps because of what Ruth Ellen Gruber has called "Virtual
Judaism," (an example: the sudden, astounding popularity of klezmer
music) the praiseworthy attempt to revive a Jewish cultural presence in
the German media is filled with minor but irritating imprecision. Those
sensitive to the nuances of liturgy will notice that "Shalom Aleichem,"
a song sung on Friday evening before the ritual blessing over wine, is
occasionally played on the Saturday afternoon radio programs on
Deutschlandradio and NDR4, while liturgical melodies associated with the
Sabbath morning service are from time to time heard on Friday evening. A
recent NDR interview with a Jewish woman during Chanukkah yielded the
information that the family lit a single candle, instead of two, on the
first night of Chanukkah. Of course, anyone listening to "L'Chah Dodi,"
the hymn welcoming the Sabbath, on the radio Friday night, is not in the
synagogue singing it.  Before the last seven years or so, these
listeners included a lot of Jews living in the German "province."

The frequent combination of these musical infelicities with dreary
documentaries about the events of the Holocaust (example: a survivor is
interviewed about childhood memories with mournful klezmer in the
background) is enough to deflate the Sabbath feelings of anyone in the
province or not. The apparent success story of the integration of
post-Soviet Jewish immigrants in Berlin does not entirely mitigate this
feeling. Outside of Berlin, as in Fuerth and Hannover, the question of
how first to accommodate and assimilate the newcomers and then what to
do when their numbers allow them to control synagogue elections has
caused more than a little tension.  Even with the newcomers, the message
about the future of Judaism in Germany has been mixed. Despite
occasionally rosy pictures of life in Berlin, the Jewish high school
there, like the offices of the _Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland_
(the political, cultural and religious umbrella organization for Jews
residing in Germany) themselves, is still surrounded by iron bars and
guarded by the police. (Tourist tip: food at the café in the
_Zentralrat_ building is probably the safest lunch in Germany). Metal
detectors guard synagogue entrances in Hamburg and elsewhere, and guards
scan the crowds at the Westend synagogue in Frankfurt on the High
Holidays, occasionally asking unfamiliar guests to pull out their
passports. In most cases, regular attendance at synagogues following the
orthodox rite, the so-called _Einheitsgemeinde_ typical in cities that
unlike Berlin can only support one synagogue, has not been significantly
affected by the newcomers' presence.  In many communities, the need for
nursing homes is still greater than that for schools. Before the
background of this general picture, it wasn't a promising fall to be
Jewish in Germany--the foiled attempt at a terrorist attack on the new
Jewish center in Munich, and the frightening media and popular fall-out
from the Hohmann affair (after Juergen Moellemann's expulsion from the
FDP only a year earlier) were hardly heartening. The additional
information provided by the controversial report on Antisemitism in the
EU confirmed for many German Jews things they had expected all along.
[2] Despite low numbers, an apparently hostile public atmosphere, and
the still vulnerable position of the synagogues, however, it should be
emphasized, Jewish life in Germany can be incredibly diverse and
remarkably creative.

Both the media situation and the statements of Jewish opinion makers,
however, tend to obscure the variety and creativity of the community.
Take the recent book by Paul Spiegel, the current president of the
_Zentralrat_ , _Was ist koscher?_,  which is selling well in its second
printing, briefly made the _Spiegel_ best-seller list, and appeared on a
number of 2003 "recommended books" lists.  Spiegel's election was a
relief to many Jews outside the orthodox community. Spiegel published an
autobiography shortly after assuming leadership of the _Zentralrat_ in
the summer of 2000, [3] which suggested that he might be more relaxed
than his predecessor, Ignaz Bubis. Bubis' suspicion of Germany was
pronounced. He insisted his body be buried in Israel because a German
grave was sure to be desecrated. The Berlin grave of his predecessor,
Heinz Galinski, had been bombed. (Bubis' Israeli grave, as it turns out,
was desecrated anyway--by an Israeli). Bubis had also been a virulent
opponent of any Judaism that diverged from the orthodox Ashenazic rite,
a supreme irony since all of the major directions in post-emancipation
Judaism have their intellectual and cultural roots in Germany and, as
Jay Geller's research reveals, many of the founders of the _Zentralrat_
had survived precisely because they were non-orthodox and had married
non-Jewish women. [4] Almost immediately after Spiegel's succession, the
politics of the _Zentralrat_ became friendlier to the so-called
"liberal" Jewish communities. This designation refers in most cases to
egalitarian treatment of women (some of the "liberal" communities follow
the orthodox rite exactly, while giving women equal liturgical
representation). Indeed, during the summer after Bubis' death, the
mechitzah, a ritual wall between men and women during worship services,
was removed from the synagogue in the Oranienburgerstrasse--a display
case of Jewish life for tourists in the new capital city.

In the context of this sea-change, Spiegel's attempt to explain Judaism
to non-Jews in Germany reads as more than a disappointing roll-back from
the viewpoint of growing numbers of liberal Jews. It dismisses the
energy and creativity that have distinguished German Jewry over the last
decade. Spiegel chooses to define modern orthodoxy as Judaism, as it is
allegedly the practice of most Jewish congregations in Germany--and
because it is the variant to which most secular or non-religious Jews
are attracted. But can a nostalgic attraction to the imagined past on
the part of a non-observant segment of the community really serve as
justification for a particular religious practice? Its attractions are
manifest--modern orthodoxy appears to represent Judaism without
compromise, with a pre-lapsarian purity of observance. For the
uninformed, it also carries the romantic halo of the shtetl. But the
shtetl was not a German phenomenon.  For a long time, reputable research
on the origins of responses to the traditional Judaism of the
pre-emancipation period in Germany, like that of Michael Meyer, has
suggested that the golden age never happened. As far back as
congregation records in Germany reliably trace, Jews fell away,
complained about the burdens of observance, and cut ritual corners. Even
modern orthodoxy, it should be remembered, is a recent creation:  an
attempt to re-assess the stubborn and (to some people) embarrassing
remnants of traditional Judaism that persisted after emancipation.

Spiegel's presentation of the history of the different directions of
modern Jewish practice obscures this background, however, presenting
orthodoxy as the real thing and repeatedly characterizing non-orthodoxy
as a compromise.  On this view, individuals who observe a non-orthodox
variant of the dietary laws, for example, want to make themselves
comfortable or at least only uncomfortable to a certain degree.  But
from the viewpoint of the liberal community, such judgments amount to a
dismissal of the creativity with which Jews in Germany have dealt with
the challenges of their situation in recent years. As the rites of the
liberal communities that have developed in Germany over the last decade
clearly show, re-negotiation of relationships between tradition and
contemporary circumstance is hardly a sign of comfort or laziness. The
accumulation of ritual, liturgical and practical knowledge and the
development of practice within a specific local context require not only
a critical mass within a community, but also a great deal of time and
effort. Because the efforts dealing with the public ritual and
ceremonial culture of liberal Judaism in Germany have been conducted
overwhelmingly by women, Spiegel's narrative reads like a further slap
in the face precisely to the group doing much of the work in an area
where no real alternative has been offered by the orthodox.  In a
section on bar mitzvahs, Spiegel justifies the current custom in German
orthodox circles of throwing a party for twelve-year-old girls so that
they at least get a few gifts and don't feel left out. Liberal
communities in Munich and Hannover address the question of feelings of
being left out quite differently. They educate girls to chant from the
Torah just as boys do, in order to prepare them for complete
participation in the developing liberal German rite.

Another fulcrum of Spiegel's argumentation--the eternal dynamic between
separatism and assimilation described so movingly in the historical
works of Jacob Katz--fits more convincingly into the long-term spectrum
of German-Jewish thinking than does his veiled attack on liberal
Judaism. The survival of Judaism after the Holocaust loaded additional
baggage onto this ongoing cultural problematic in Germany. Spiegel
minimizes the intense problem in the worldwide Jewish community of
exogamous marriage. Instead, he rephrases the assimilation problem in a
typically post-Holocaust German fashion by expressing his deep suspicion
of Germans who want to convert to Judaism. He, like many in the orthodox
community, claims that the primary wish of would-be converts is the
self-deceptive desire to change sides in the cultural rhetoric that has
characterized German collective guilt for the Holocaust. They want to
change teams from the _Volk der Taeter_ to that of the _Volk der Opfer_.
If nothing else, the dustup over Hohmann this fall was a sign of the
evaporating willingness of ordinary Germans to consider _das deutsche
Volk_ as a _Volk der Taeter_. It is only a subtle movement, of course,
from _Volk der Taeter_, Spiegel's expression, to the compound word
_Taetervolk_ which sprang from the lips of Hohmann to be selected as the
_Unwort des Jahres_ for 2003--the German equivalent of the Doublespeak
Awards. [5]

Of course, rabbinic Judaism has long cultivated a suspicion toward
would-be converts and in Germany this suspicion is even more
understandable. Ruth Ellen Gruber has also described some of the odd
qualities of German philo-Semitism. As a result converts in Germany are
subjected to a standard of scrutiny unparalleled in the rest of the
Jewish world. But phrasing one's distrust of converts in the way Spiegel
does demonstrably devalues Judaism as attractive in itself. It
reinforces the depressing dynamic of so much religious instruction in
Germany and elsewhere--the subtext of the Friday afternoon radio
programs suggesting that the Holocaust is the only defining event in
Jewish history.  Religious educators already know that this attitude is
like those yellow-tinted prescription sunglasses that make even the
brightest day seem overcooked and jaundiced. It's also tiring: smaller
Jewish communities can get overwhelmed by their need to spend so many of
their resources on commemorating the Holocaust [6]. Admittedly, focusing
on the Holocaust and its destructive impact on the community does fit
well into the narrative of Judaism in decline that underlies some
arguments for modern orthodoxy. More troublesome in its implications,
however, is the way that claims about the hidden motives of German
converts underline the ongoing prejudice that the German Jewish
community directs toward non-Jewish Germans even two generations after
the end of National Socialism--prejudices so severe that they would
constitute anti-Semitism if projected in the other direction.  Frankly,
the last thing the _Zentralrat_ needs to worry about is the stereotypes
that philo-Semites in Germany may be cultivating. Stereotypes about
Germans, however, are fully _salonfaehig_.  Spiegel's comment about the
blue-eyed children of Jewish women raped by medieval crusaders, used as
justification for the traditional matrilineal inheritance of Judaism and
collateral proof of the mercy of the Jewish tradition, suggests a
persistence of racial stereotypes that affects not only Europe at large,
but the synagogue as well.

Spiegel resorts approximately once per chapter to a joke as illustration
of his points, arguing that humor is the best teacher. Such jokes have
been a sore point in the Jewish-German relationship for years, where the
distinction between _juedischer Witz_ and _Judenwitz_ has been guarded
as a line between Jew and Gentile no less industriously over the years
than the Berlin Wall was guarded as the line between the communist
paradise in the East and capitalist pig-pen in the West. No educated
German would ever dare to tell either sort of joke. In the most recent
episode of the German cult series, _Schimanski_, a long-running spin-off
of the ever-popular _Tatort_, [7] the reckless Duisburger private eye in
the M-65 parka illustrates his ignorance with two anti-Semitic
chestnuts. He tells one of them to a prospective client; the other is
recounted in response to a joke from a Jewish acquaintance he seeks out
for information, after the acquaintance tells him a Jewish joke first.
In the context of the script, the audience finds the Jewish joke funny
and Schimanski's joke offensive, as it should--and since Schimanski has
a Jewish client, the jokes illustrate not his ill will but his general
cluelessness. Still, the film (with scenes in the Duisburg synagogue
that portray orthodox ritual and completely omit women) illuminates the
fundamental problem of Spiegel's jokes--he may be sharing with them with
his non-Jewish audience to let them know "what Jews are really like",
but as with other sorts of minority in-jokes, he is the only one who can
tell them. The signal these jokes send to non-Jewish Germans is that no
matter what Spiegel writes about his hopes for erasing the lines between
Jews and Germans, "normalization" will only take place under the armed
supervision of well-cultivated borders.  Recent events and debates
suggest that this cultural style has obviously had no lasting effect on
Germans; the unanswered question is what its consequences will be for
the German Jewish community.

Spiegel's turn to the apparently vital question of the day--a chapter
near the end of the book entitled "Muss man die Juden moegen?"--was
probably the motivation for the book. It takes as its unfortunate cause
celebre Michel Friedman, star of the talk show _Vorsicht! Friedman_.
Friedman, Vice-President of the _Zentralrat_ in Summer 2002, was
attacked by the late Juergen Moellemann of the FDP. Moellemann made the
repulsive charge that Jews in general and Friedman in particular caused
or at least exacerbated anti-Semitism--after which he was expelled from
the FDP. Spiegel's answer to the question he poses is not particularly
original. As he notes, once one questions the group stereotype, the
question can only apply it to specific examples. Spiegel explains that
it is only acceptable not to like Friedman (or any Jew) if one factors
his Jewishness out of the rationale. So you can dislike him because you
think he is an inflammatory, sleazy-looking, moralistic creep, as both
Jews and non-Jews in Germany did until recently--when events forced them
to downgrade their opinions.  In Summer 2003 Moellemann, a passionate
parachuter, jumped without his 'chute days after a federal investigation
for tax evasion and violations of the political party laws loomed on the
horizon. It looked like Friedman was home free when he took the concept
of _shande far di goyim_ to new heights. He was charged with the use of
cocaine and ordering delivery of smuggled eastern European prostitutes
to his hotel room. The moralist was accused of the post-unification
equivalent of white slavery, and he resigned from all of his activities
in disgrace. So is it it permissible to dislike the man because he is a
criminal, scornful of the law, an abuser of helpless women and a patent
hypocrite? According to Spiegel, only as long as you forget he is
Jewish. It's hard to do that, though, because Friedman himself kept
reminding us. Admittedly, I have never actually had a conversation with
a German, Gentile or Jew, who was a Friedman fan, though friends tell me
they are out there. For hypothetical Friedman fans, discretion is
obviously the better part of valor.

If Spiegel's book were really a description of Judaism in Germany as it
is, it would be easy to despair. The possibility that prejudice and
mistrust on both sides are alive and growing reflected not only in the
EU Report on Antisemitism but also in _Was ist koscher?_ should not
obscure that there is more to Judaism in Germany. But much of the more
is found in the hidden and modest group of liberal congregations. Many
of them are affiliated with the World Union of Progressive Judaism, and
their rite is "conservative" or "reconstructionist" in American terms.
Not only have these groups been able to avoid the most
anti-rationalistic and anti-ritual moments of Reform Judaism, they have
been challenged by the rhetorical power of modern orthodoxy in Germany
to approach Judaism from the traditional corner--with positive effect.
They join the older liberal congregations of Berlin. Many of them have
women active in leading services--and in Delmenhorst and Oldenburg, a
woman rabbi. Liberal groups in Munich, Cologne, Hannover and Berlin have
taken a lead in forming a new German rite and liturgy that reflects not
only the fractured heritage of German's Jewish communities but also its
strengths. They are complemented by liberal communities in smaller
cities like Goettingen and other places too far to make a commute to a
larger congregation convenient but where the population of the community
suggests that it would be impossible to maintain the orthodox rite. One
should not be tempted to consider the smaller numbers as evidence of
decline; often these communities, particularly in Lower Saxony,
reproduce the historical Jewish communities in the countryside formerly
marked only by graveyards. Such congregations, built from the ground up,
have had to undertake a radical learning process, not only in politics,
but also in religion, reconstructing a religious rite that they are
themselves just learning. They have offered an opportunity for
post-Soviet immigrants to learn alongside their German counterparts.
Even for Jews who did not grow up with its details, the edifice of
Jewish ritual can be at least challenging and at most frightening.
Liturgy mavens might criticize the hybrid tunefulness of these groups,
which reflects Camp Ramah and Israeli pop tunes equally with the late
nineteenth century melodies of Lewandowski and fragments of the Russian
tradition, but the liturgy is like the community: composed of pieces
brought together in hopes they will congeal. As a consequence, in many
ways these liturgies reflect not so much a break in the tradition as the
assemblage of everything that was memorable in predecessor traditions.

The most vital of these communities are now several years along.
Congregations that once struggled to maintain their attention through a
Friday night service can now follow the Saturday morning liturgy and
bring a respectable presence together for the High Holidays. They are
served by student rabbis from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam and
elsewhere, but they have educated their own membership sufficiently that
a congregant can serve as chazzan--a situation that would have been
unthinkable in much of the German province as recently as ten years ago.
They began by meeting in borrowed quarters, but have slowly succeeded in
constructing their own facilities, as in Goettingen, where the new
Jewish community center has quietly begun operating. Though their
numbers are smaller than the large orthodox synagogues of the big
cities, a larger percentage of the membership actively participates in
congregation activities. It remains to be seen, of course, what these
congregations will accomplish--but at their best moments, the liberal
communities provide the stuff of an alternative narrative for Jewish
history after the Holocaust in Germany.

Notes

[1] Paul Spiegel, _Was ist Koscher? Juedischer Glaube  juedisches
Leben_. Munich: Ullstein, 2003.

[2] Available, for example, at
http://www.nahost-politik.de/europa/eu-studie.htm [accessed January 21,
2004].

[3] Paul Spiegel, as told to Rafael Seligmann, _Wieder zu Hause?
Erinnerungen_. Munich: Ullstein, 2001.

[4] Jay Geller, _Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany, 1945-1953_ (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, forthcoming).

[5] See press releases at http://www.unwortdesjahres.org/
[accessed
January 21, 2004].

[6] There are four relevant commemorative days for Jews in Germany: the
November 9 _Kristallnacht_ or _Reichspogromnacht_ anniversary; the
January holiday for the victims of National Socialism; and the Jewish
commemorations of _Yom Ha-Shoah_ and _Yom Ha-Zikaron_. Appearances at
the numerous local commemorations of the German holidays in the many
local communities that mark them can  stretch resources and exhaust
energies in less urban areas where there may still be more cemeteries to
visit than local congregations. Signs of commemorative fatigue are
growing within non-Jewish Germany as well, as an acrimonious article in
a recent issue of _Der Spiegel_ treating the disputes over Degussa
involvement in construction of the Holocaust monument and the
proliferation of monuments to separate groups of victims of National
Socialism seems to suggest ["Jedem das Seine: In Berlin wird nicht nur
das Holocaust-Mahnmal errichtet, sondern ein Ensemble von Denkmaelern.
Dabei entsteht eine Hierarchie der Nazi-Opfer--die einen werden bedacht,
die anderen vergessen. Waere ein Mahnmal fuer alle Opfer nicht doch
sinnvoller gewesen?" in _Spiegel_, January 5, 2004 (2), 128-134]. At the
same time, the individual groups maintain their energies; in response to
a recent law passed by the Saxon _Landtag_ requiring that monuments also
consider the history of the vicitims of the GDR and Stalinist
dictatorships, members of the _Zentralrat_ announced their resignation
from any further cooperation with the _Stiftung Saechsische
Gedenkstaetten_
(http://www.stsg.de/main/stsg/ueberblick/karte/index.php) ;
representatives of Sinti and Roma groups as well as the  _Verband der
Opfer nationalsozialistischer Militaerjustiz_ and the _Verband der
Verfolgten des Nazi-Regimes_ followed its lead. Basic reports of the
events are available at the MDR homepage:
http://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/sachsen/1164663.html ; Text of the new law
at
http://www.stsg.de/main/stsg/ueberblick/rechtliche/gedenkstaettengesetz.pdf
[all accessed January 25, 2004].

[7] http://horstschimanski.info/home.html [accessed January 21, 2004];
the episode was entitled "Geheimnis des Golem" and aired on January 11,
2004 on ARD (click on "Geheimnis des Golem").

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