das Urteil (judgement)

Friends, this post is not about what I did this week. Instead, I would like to tell you a story. For those of you who have known me since I became a Bat Mitzvah, I apologize, for I have already shared this with you in my d'var Torah. Indeed, it is a story that I have heard since I was very young and it was told to me by my favorite storyteller, Joel Ben Izzy. And, yes, I do have a favorite storyteller!

I've been thinking a lot about the beggar woman, the Baker and King Solomon recently, especially in the context of what it means to have a punishment that fits the crime. Two weeks ago, I visited the site of the Wannsee conference where about two dozen Nazi officers sat down to a beautifully catered lunch and unanimously supported the beginning of the Final Solution. Last week, I was in Sarajevo where the wounds of war are so fresh that the sense of injustice is palpable everywhere. What I have noticed, though, and what is most unsettling to me is this: while most of the major players of the Holocaust and the Bosnian War are so well known, they are but a miniscule fraction of the perpetrators of such horrors. It is relatively easy to judge an Adolf Eichmann or a Slobodan Milosevic, but what about all of those people who watched their neighbors being "relocated" and turned a blind eye so their children could live. Were they not also perpetrators? How do/should/can we judge them? I guess I've been thinking about this story because I wish that fairness were this logical and that justice were this simple...

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In the old days of Jerusalem, there was a bakery. This bakery baked the freshest, best-smelling bread you could find. The smell would come out of the bakery, through the marketplace and the streets of the Old City -- and people would line up to by that bread, or sometimes, just to smell it.

And so it happened that there was a poor, old woman, a beggar, asking for coins. She suddenly found herself standing in line in front of that bakery, not to buy the bread, but just to smell it. As she was smelling the bread, the baker came out and shouted, "You! What are you doing?" "I am smelling the bread in your bakery," she said, "it smells delicious." "I know it does," said the Baker, "I bake it! But, if you are going to stand here, you must pay me for smelling my bread." The women protested, "Wait, that's not fair. I was simply smelling your bread, not eating it." And the Baker replied, "I know, but you must pay me for smelling my bread."

In those days, and even today when a difference of opinion occurs, people gather around and start to argue, and a huge fight breaks out, really. All the merchants and customers came and said what they wanted to say, and someone finally said, "Baker, if you have such a good case, take it before King Solomon. He will judge it fairly."And that's what the baker did.

He dragged the woman behind him into the court of King Solomon and said, "Your Highness, this woman has been smelling the bread in my bakery and I insist that she pay for it." The court laughed at this ridiculous claim, but at that point, King Solomon turned to the woman and asked, "Is it true? Have you indeed been smelling the bread from this man's bakery?" She replied, "Yes, I smelled it, but I didn't eat it, must I pay for just smelling it?" "By the law of our land, you must pay," the King told her and the court grew quiet. "How much money do you have?" asked King Solomon. "I am a beggar, I have only these few coins. Here, count them. Must I give them to him?" King Solomon counted the coins, and they clinked as they fell back into the metal cup where they had been kept. "It's half a shekel," the woman said, "it is all that I have."

And now, King Solomon turned to the Baker and said, "You have been paid." "What do you mean?" the Baker exclaimed, "What do you mean, 'I have been paid"? She has to give me the money! Didn't you hear the coins?" The wise King Solomon replied, "The sound of those coins is payment for the smell of your bread."

Sarajevo ~ a reflection

According to our tour guide, Senan, Sarajevo is "the Jerusalem of the Balkans." Aside from the fact that there do not seem to be too many Balkan cities contending for this title, in many ways it seems like an appropriate comparison. As I have mentioned before, Stanford's European campuses are meeting in Cordoba, Spain in November to discuss/debate/examine the role of Islam in Europe. Therefore, the exploration of religion in Sarajevo became a priority of our trip. Our first afternoon in Sarajevo aptly illustrates the intertwined and complex relationships between religions and between religion and state. As we were lead through the Old City, Senan and Bellina (a Bosnian student who was accompanying us) pointed out that the most important buildings for the four most recognized religions of BiH were located within a 5 minute walk of each other.

Unlike any place I've ever been to before, in BiH there are three major religions all of which are very closely associated with an ethnic identity. So, if you practice Islam, for example, you are automatically defined as a member of the ethnic group "Bosniaks." Ethnic Serbs are (Christian) Orthodox, and ethnic Croats are Catholics. The fourth religion that most people talk about in Sarajevo is Judaism, not because there are many Jews (now, the Jewish pop is ~ 700), but because Judaism has been part of the fabric of Bosnian society particularly in Sarajevo since the 1500s. All of the four religious sites that we visited that afternoon were incredibly beautiful and their proximity did, in fact, remind me of Jerusalem :)

Photos from top downwards: 1) inside the main Mosque; 2) the Catholic Church; 3) the Orthodox Church; 4) inside the old Synagogue which is now the Jewish museum.

Perhaps because I am an American and grew up being indoctrinated with the idea of separation of Church and State (at least in theory) the notion of being idenitified not only by one's religion, but also by default one's ethnicity is completely fascinating and also perplexing. While meeting with some delegates from the European Union and discussing BiH's potential candidacy as a "member state," we asked what were some of the main issues preventing Bosnia's proposals. The official mentioned the economy (of course) and also the necessity for a functioning government which can produce a sense of national identity. Now, I may have misunderstood the system of government in BiH, but to my knowledge each of the three ethnic/religious groups (Islam, Orthodox, Catholic) have their own leaders and have attempted to govern together. Herein lies my question, how can a people feel or experience a sense of national identity when the criteria of one's identity is, by nature, so devisive? This, of course, raises many more questions than answers. For example, how does a country with such a horrific recent past memorialize the events to create a collective identity and memory when the perpetrators and victims were of the same nationality? It is not often that one builds memorials and writes entries in textbooks about how this great nation committed atrocities against its own people...These questions are unfortunately all too familiar for me, as I am considering many of these same points when thinking about memorialization of the Holocaust.

With these issues in the forefront of my mind, it became much more difficult to formulate an opinion about "whether I like Bosnia," as many of my classmates have asked. One the one hand, it is a poor country with little to no infrastructure, a corrupt (non-existant) government, and seemingly, a lack of public interest to progress the country. One the other hand, this is a beautiful country devestated by an unbelievable tragedy that gets far less attention that it should. Its people perservere and are incredibly welcoming (at least the ones we met) and the country's history is astonishing. Sarajevo is a place where, for centuries, religions lived together and created their own society without much conflict and that should be remembered and commemorated. And, they have some kick-ass baklava.

I highly encourage you to explore Sarajevo on your own, should you ever find yourself in the Balkans. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to visit a country at once so different from any place I've been and also seems like a mixture of many places I've been before. If anything, Sarajevo has given me the opportunity to reflect on my culture, my country, and my identity in addition to refocusing my interests in human rights, exploration, and adventure.

Sarajevo ~ an introduction

Note: I am still trying to work out a cohesive and not thoroughly boring way to convey my thoughts on this immensely complex subject of Sarajevo to you all, so this entry will be completed in installments. This is the first and I will have more to share with you soon.

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Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enem est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur?

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is a man's lifetime unless interwoven with the memory of earlier times? ~ Cicero

Sarajevo is a place that perfectly exemplifies Cicero's notion of living with a constant awareness of the past in tandem with being completely present. I have found that it is impossible to try to understand Sarajevo, indeed Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), without understanding and learning about its recent tragic history. To provide some assistance for those geographically challenged among us, BiH is a Balkan country surrounded by Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro, and it used to be part of country formally known as Yugoslavia.

As you might be able to see on this map (depending on your contact/glasses prescription), there are two main "federations" in BiH. One is Republika Srpska and the other is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One can think of them like states with their own "functioning" political system and laws, and their own representatives at the national level. The word "functioning" is in quotation marks because BiH currently has no federal government. Their national elections were last year, but for reasons that I do not fully understand, no government has been instated since that point. Throughout our trip, we met quite a few Bosnians and all of them, regardless of age, gender and country of origin spoke quite candidly about the amount of corruption at every level of the government and state-run facilities. For example, one music student I met very fervently pointed out that she had not known anyone at the national music academy and did not have to bribe anyone to get it, unlike many of her classmates. The lack of a functioning government, let alone a trustworthy one, is a problem that infuses many aspects of Bosnian society and is something that I will return to later.

The hotel where we (the entire Stanford in Berlin program) stayed was in the Old City, which looked something like a cross between Istanbul and Vienna. Most of the Old City was rebuilt after 1995 (the end of the war) and is quite beautiful and cozy feeling.

However, I would say that most of the city looked more like this:

During the war (1992-1995), the city of Sarajevo was under attack from troops supplied and financed by Serbia and Croatia. From April of 1992 to February of 1996, Sarajevo was under siege -- food, water, electricity and other vital supplies were cut off from its inhabitants. On average, over 300 shells made impact in Sarajevo PER DAY of the siege. It is estimated that over 10,000 people in Sarajevo died during this period. Bearing this history in mind, it begs the question of whether or not a functioning government was, is, or should be the priority of peoples whose lives have been so severely traumatized. Quoting our tour guide, Senan, "What use is a deputy secretary of finance when your children had to eat grass for vitamins for over three years?"

Up next: Bosnia and the EU, Islam in Sarajevo and "the Jerusalem of the Balkans"

in living color

I am a visual learner. I like making charts, color-coding my notes, studying vocabulary with post-its on my wall, drawing diagrams - are you getting the idea yet? Therefore, I've decided to provide you with some beautiful things I've noticed in Berlin this past (almost) month by color if you'll bear with me, as I've taken some of the liberties with the color wheel :)

Red and Orange:

Being a true California girl, I have always been rather skeptical of these ideas of "autumn," "changing leaves," and "cold." At the risk of maintaining your trust, I will say that I did live in New York for a year, but the climate the entire year was pretty much grey and any season was blocked by hella concrete. For those of you not from California, perhaps you cannot relate to my total surprise and excitement when I walked through a park on my way to school one morning and saw the entire street lined with red and orange leaves. My friend Michelle snapped this picture of the ivy changing colors on a building on Schönhauser Allee - it's pretty indicative of the loveliness of the season.

Yellow:

Berlin is definitely a biking city. On the sidewalks here, there are two different colored stripes of concrete - one is a bike lane and the other side is for pedestrians - and, in this way, one can easily tell a Berliner from a tourist because Berliners do NOT walk in the bike lane and almost get run over every 5 minutes because they can't remember that said bike lane exists. However, it is partially because of this lovely phenomenon that I realized that the Deutsche Post (USPS equivalent) is yellow! I now notice everytime I see the mailmen who deliver the post on bright yellow bikes and pick up letters from sunny mailboxes just like these...

Green:

I realize I just told you about all the changing leaves and how beautiful it is, but there is also a significant amount of nature that has not yet begun to transform. About a week ago, I found myself in the Tiergarten and ended up spending a few hours walking, reading, and sitting down on a bench watching all the people on their way somewhere. The Tiergarten is Berlin's equivalent to Central Park or Golden Gate park and was originally a hunting ground for the courts of Brandenburg and was beautifully landscaped about two hundred (ish) years ago. It has become one of my favorite Sunday haunts :) It is fantastically green and I often think about all the stories of wood-nymphs and other magical creatures that I would create if I were to sit amongst the trees there for a little while longer.

Blue:

Last week, or perhaps the week after, I was riding the U-Bahn home and suddenly was overcome by a sea of die Blau-Weissen, the Blue-Whites, otherwise known as a massive group of fans of Hertha-Berlin - the local soccer, I mean football, club. Some friends and I are trying to get to a game this month and were largely inspired by the spirit of our co-habitants on the train. Soccer is huge here and is definitely an appropriate excuse for taking long lunch hours, rescheduling meetings, and, of course, downing some liquid courage before verbally bashing your opponent's team. The Germany v. Turkey game last week was one of the most watched programs of the week on television. In any case, I fully intend to experience this aspect of German culture at least once and perhaps I'll end up looking like my fellow U-7 riders!

Violet:

On Wednesday, the City of Berlin began its "Festival of Lights." Essentially, for ten days in October, many of the city's most visited and beloved sights are lit up and have insane light shows every night. Last night, I was walking home from hanging out with some friends and looked up to see the TV tower aglow with violet lights. I obviously did not take this photo, but this is exactly what it looks like and I think that some of my friends and I will do a little walking tour at night, enjoy each other's company and check out those lights!

I hope this method can better help you visualize where I am and what I'm seeing everyday. It's so interesting how things like mailboxes can become really interesting when I stop to notice them.

Some of you (hi Mom!) are also wondering what I actually do here, so here's a quick run-down of the past week: Over the weekend, I observed Yom Kippur, had a really meaningful holiday and met some really interesting people at services. Sunday, I had the idea to go see a movie in English with German subtitles and was absolutely correct in my assumption that it would help improve my vocabulary! I saw "Tree of Life" with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and I would not recommend it. The vocab was definitely the highlight. My "Jewish and Muslim Berlin" class visited the Jüdische Friedhof (Jewish cemetery) and discussed the history of Jews in Berlin until WWI, and my field trip class took a walking tour of my new favorite neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg. Last night, I went to the second Sprachpartnertreffen (Speaking partner meeting) and had a great time with my Stanford friends and new friends from various German universities.

This week, I am visiting Potsdam (a city just outside of Berlin) on Saturday and am heading to Bosnia and Herzegovina on Sunday. The whole Stanford program is going and we'll be meeting with EU representatives, professors, and Bosnian students to learn about Bosnia's desire to become part of the E.U, the role of Islam in Bosnia, and the history of the war and human rights abuses there. I am beyond excited and intrigued and can't wait to share the experience with you!

die Erinnerung und die Reue (memory and repentance)

In fewer than 24 hours, I will be standing in this synagogue reciting Vidui, the confessional prayer for the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. For reasons that I will not go into here, this cathartic tradition has become one of my favorite spiritual practices.

Per tradition on Yom Kippur, we recite throughout the day "Al chet shechatanu lefanecha..." and asked to be pardoned and forgiven "for sins, which we have committed against You" (traditionally, the "You" = G-d). Something that has always fascinated me is this notion of collective responsibility that is implied within this prayer -- "Shechatanu" being the first-person plural conjugation, "For the sin that we have committed against you..."

Why is it that we should individually reach out to reconcile with those who we may have transgressed over the year, but ask to be pardoned and written into the Book of Life as a community? I find this concept of collective responsibility particularly salient in the physical and historical context in which I will find myself this Kol Nidre.

The Neue Synagoge ("New Synagogue") was built in the 1860s and was once the largest in Germany. Although it was spared total destruction during Kristallnacht in 1938, the building was completely destroyed in various bombings of Berlin during the Second World War, and finally rebuilt in the 1980s. Today, the community of worshipers numbers maybe 100 in comparison to the 3,000+ members that this synagogue was originally intended to accommodate. We will pray in what used to be the women's gallery - in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looks over a plot where the main sanctuary used to be, and it now remains empty as a memorial to the destruction and devastation of the Shoah.

It would seem that Berlin, and more broadly, Germany, has been struggling with and engaging in the idea of Vidui ("confession") for over 65 years. Each year, we acknowledge, "we have transgressed, we have robbed, we have slandered. We have oppressed, we have committed evil. We have gone astray and have lead others astray." Yet can an entire country confess to such things? Should an entire country confess to such things? The answers to these questions, of course do not lie with me, nor could I ever write them on this blog; however, this quarter I aim to explore the idea of reconciling that which cannot be reconciled.

Germany, it seems to me, is caught in the crosshairs of repentance and progress -- how can a country so steeped in guilt from three generations ago ever step out of that shadow? How does a country (Germany) or a people (the Jews) continue to grow and live while constantly being pulled back into a painful, horrific and shameful past? Do more memorials mean more memories? Do more memorials lessen the pain of the original acts? Should I, as an American Jew and grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, demand that Germany confess and repent forever? How can I, a twenty year old in 2011, demand that Germans my age take responsibility for what their grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents may or may not have done between 1933-1945? How can I not?

For those of you fasting tomorrow, g'mar chatima tova v'tzom kal. May we all think about how to better live our lives in the upcoming year.

der Kulturschock

I think this post would probably be more aptly called "die kulturelle Einführung" (the cultural introduction), rather than the culture shock; however, as the title suggests, I've decided to devote this post to some of my discoveries about the culture of Berlin as I've experienced it thus far. My anthropological/enthographic notes and musings are in no way meant to be reflective of anything other than my own thoughts - just a disclaimer :)

A couple of days ago, my friend asked me to "describe Berlin in nine words." With a city as complex as Berlin, this was not as simple as it might seem, but I think I've succeeded in doing so with some alliteration to help guide me through (3 words for each).

The Food: Bier, Bretzeln, und Bröt (beer, pretzels, and bread). While these are certainly not the only foods to be found in Berlin, I would say that these "food groups" are probably about 60-70% of what a daily Berliner ingests. "But, Doria," you might say, "pretzels and bread are pretty much the same thing!" And you would be correct, my friend.

The Society: Prompt, Purposeful, and Practical. Berliners (and here I would extend these traits to Germans in general) say what they think, they do what they say, and they are on time. Berliners do not seem to be a people of hyperboles or excess; rather, they do what they need to do in a timely and orderly fashion with the utmost efficency, sometimes to the point of hyper-regulation. In terms of looks, this city is not gaudy, nor is it completely, socialistically utilitarian - there seems to be an aesthetic of practical beauty. Things work and if they happen to be eye-catching, then all the better. Things start on time, which is a problem for someone like myself who consistently runs on JST (Jewish Standard Time - about 10 minutes later than everything else). For example, a group of about 6 Stanford students (myself included) arrived at the Berlin Philharmoniker at 8:01pm (I swear!) on Thursday night and were told that we were late and would have to wait until the short prelude was completed before we would be seated. The concert started at 8:00.

The Atmosphere: Creative, Controlled, Currywürst. Berlin is a very cool city. There is a very creative, progressive attitude towards art, music, public discourse, and the intersection of all of those things. Whether it's street art, gallery openings, or spontaneous physical theater performances in the Tiergarten, Berlin lives up to its reputation as a place that uses its fascinating history to create a dialogue around the human experience - in whatever form available. This creative side of Berlin is somewhat off-puttingly challenged (in my mind) by a kind of subdued control, or perhaps regulation, that I've experienced a little bit here. One example might be that there is no law against drinking in the streets here. In fact, people pretty much drink everywhere. However, DUIs in Berlin are extremely rare. I've been told that, if you are pulled over while intoxicated, your first offense lands you 3 months without a license. Your 2nd offense means that you are without your license for a year, and if you have a 3rd offense, you ain't getting behind the wheel again. Other oversimplified examples include jay-walking (very frowned upon) and not separating your garbage into recycling (green glass, brown class, clear glass, paper, plastic, and compostables). Both of these things are very regulated and people will tell you off if you're not doing what you're supposed to do. As for the Currywürst, I feel like it exemplifies a little bit of the mix of societies here. On the one hand, Würst is very German, so to speak, and the addition of curried ketchup is the influence of a migrating population. It is also extraordinarily accessible - meaning it is everywhere and super cheap and eaten by just about everyone (except for me).

I've also found that there are many different aspects, or tracks, of life here that seem to converge and intersect in interesting ways. For example, Berlin is a very young, vibrant city with a huge youth population, yet it is also an aging city with many elderly Germans as well. From what I've read and observed, this can create both political and social tension, as is evidenced by the most recent election here (the (young) Pirate party won way more seats in the Bundestag than most people anticipted). Similarly, the lives of "ethnic" Germans and German-immigrants seem to intersect far less than I had anticipated. My host father, himself an immigrant from Turkey, describes this city as "a world with parallel universes." I haven't really had the time to attest to this fact personally; however, from what I've seen, there is a lot less integration and acceptance of non-ethnic Germans than I would have hoped. Finally, I have been surprised and interested to see and experience how the Berlin Wall (or lack thereof) has contributed to a change in culture/society here. While Berlin is defintitely unified today, there are still emotionally palpable and visually striking differences between West and East. All the more reason to do some more exploring.

If you have stuck with me and continued reading through all of my ramblings, you deserve a mdeal, although I hope that you will accept some German chocolate instead. I do not have school tomorrow due to "Tag der Deutschen Einheit" (German Unity Day), so I will hopefully be able to engage in both festitivites and Hausaufgaben (homework). Happy Monday, friends!