...

The girl at the cash register was young. She saw the name on my EC-Karte. She looked at the card. She looked at me.

“Ich weiß, wo Ihr Name herkommt!”

She looked happy. She didn’t look dangerous.

“Ja?” I said.

“Der Name stammt aus Österreich. Mein Großvater kam aus Linz.”

Her face fell. I felt bad. Why is this my fault?

“Alles gut. Ich weiß, was du meintest. Er ist ein jüdischer Name.”

The girl bloomed. “Wusste ich doch!”

Of course she did. Turns out she’d just taken some class on Jewish culture, and afterwards she’d visited Tel Aviv, and isn’t Israel beautiful?

I paid and left.

At least she felt better.

...

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are up in LA. Most of it is people drawing swastikas on things. Someone drew a swastika outside our previous apartment building in Prenzlauer Berg, and there was another one in Marcella’s elevator in Kreuzberg. It was carved into the metal doors.

...

My first Thanksgiving in Berlin I went to a student potluck in Dahlem. After dinner, a friend of my new friend Anne began to tell us a story. It was about her dentist. He seemed very nice, but then he overcharged her. Typical Jew.

This was supposed to be funny. My German wasn’t as good then, so it took me a few moments to get the punch line. The biggest clue that something was wrong was the look on Anne’s face.

Before they left Anne apologized. She told me later that she yelled at her friend on the train home. The friend was so embarrassed. She wanted Anne to tell me that she was sorry.

It was 2012. That friend probably doesn’t remember this. I wonder if Anne remembers.

...

My parents’ synagogue in the Valley hired armed guards after Trump was elected.

...

Having dinner with my old roommates. The opera singer roommate started talking about how she wanted to sing some Kurt Weill songs in her next show, but she couldn’t, because his heirs wouldn’t give up the rights, because they were worth so much money. Typical Jew.

Again, it took a moment for what she had said to really sink in. This is why I can’t do yoga in German, incidentally. No matter how good my German gets, there will always be at least a half-second delay between words being spoken and the meaning of those words hitting my brain. I can’t relax in German. I have to stay alert. I can’t let my guard down.

It’s hard to find a WG-Zimmer in this city. I tried to carefully suggest that maybe...

Nope. Everyone knows about Jews and money.

I let it go. I didn’t start a fight.

...

Maybe I should start more fights.

...

I got pulled over by bike cops once, in 2015. I crossed on a red light in Mitte. I handed them my California driver license. They huddled around it, laughing. They asked me to pronounce the name of my birth city out loud.

In the version of this story saved in my memory, they also repeated my last name over and over, laughing.

...

I have brunch at a café on Rykestraße in Prenzlauer Berg and stare at the Jews going into services just like all the other brunch goers. I think about saying Shabbat Shalom but worry that they’ll feel like I’m mocking them. And anyway, I don’t wander around Los Angeles saying Shabbat Shalom to anyone, ever. Why does that become so much more important here?

...

My first day ever in Germany was a beautiful early fall day. I only meant to stay a semester, but that day, walking along the Dreisam in Freiburg, I knew I had to stay longer. It felt right in a way I can’t explain. I belonged there. I belong here.

...

Up until August 2019, the German “sorry about the whole Nazi thing” law, otherwise known as the Restored Citizenship Law, didn’t apply to the descendants of women. Yeah. Up until 1953 if a German woman married a non-German man, she was automatically stripped of her German citizenship. And until just a few months ago, that law superseded the Restored Citizenship Law, which grants citizenship to victims of the Nazis and their descendants. My German grandmother, who lived for the first eight years of her life on the same street I live on now, married my Austrian grandfather in 1948, in Israel, the same year Israel itself was born. My dad was born there in 1950.

My citizenship application was rejected ten years ago. We’re trying again. We found Omi’s birth certificate in Standesamt Mitte.

I don’t need citizenship to stay here. I married an EU citizen (he’s Spanish, not Jewish, but, as a friend of my mom’s said a few years ago, “Don’t worry, at least he looks Jewish”).

I don’t need German citizenship. I want it.

...

I walk past Stolpersteine on my way to work. There are Stolpersteine outside of my fucking apartment building. I step on them too, just like everybody else.

...

Where I grew up, kids would just ask “Are you Christmas or Hanukkah?” on the playground.

…

Pro tip to German gynecologists everywhere: No one wants to talk about the Holocaust during a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Somehow I thought this would have been obvious.

...

I had to marry someone in order to stay in Germany. My great-grandma had to marry someone in order to get out of Germany. Funny.

You don’t get the rest of either of those stories. Those are mine.

...

People are saying it’s happening again. I tell my parents’ friends that I’m safer in Germany than in the US. Fewer shootings, anti-Semitic or otherwise.

...

How do I feel about the shooting in Halle? I wouldn’t have been there. I don’t really go to synagogue. I don’t really participate. Maybe I would have been at a synagogue in Berlin. But I’m more likely to just stay home. Do something else.

I feel bad knowing that I wouldn’t have been there, but I also feel safer.

...

“You are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Pirke Avot. Ethics of Our Fathers. It’s a Jewish thing. I don’t know much about it.

I guess it means that we all have to keep struggling. The world isn’t perfect. It never will be. And it’s not my job, or your job, or Americans’ job, or Germans’ job, or anybody’s job, really, to make the world perfect. Because it never will be.

But it’s all our jobs to keep trying anyway. Trying is the point. You have to try.

1    2 

mehr zum lesen

The girl at the cash register was young. She saw the name on my EC-Karte. She looked at the card. She looked at me.

“Ich weiß, wo Ihr Name herkommt!”

She looked happy. She didn’t look dangerous.

“Ja?” I said.

“Der Name stammt aus Österreich. Mein Großvater kam aus Linz.”

Her face fell. I felt bad. Why is this my fault?

“Alles gut. Ich weiß, was du meintest. Er ist ein jüdischer Name.”

The girl bloomed. “Wusste ich doch!”

Of course she did. Turns out she’d just taken some class on Jewish culture, and afterwards she’d visited Tel Aviv, and isn’t Israel beautiful?

I paid and left.

At least she felt better.

...

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are up in LA. Most of it is people drawing swastikas on things. Someone drew a swastika outside our previous apartment building in Prenzlauer Berg, and there was another one in Marcella’s elevator in Kreuzberg. It was carved into the metal doors.

...

My first Thanksgiving in Berlin I went to a student potluck in Dahlem. After dinner, a friend of my new friend Anne began to tell us a story. It was about her dentist. He seemed very nice, but then he overcharged her. Typical Jew.

This was supposed to be funny. My German wasn’t as good then, so it took me a few moments to get the punch line. The biggest clue that something was wrong was the look on Anne’s face.

Before they left Anne apologized. She told me later that she yelled at her friend on the train home. The friend was so embarrassed. She wanted Anne to tell me that she was sorry.

It was 2012. That friend probably doesn’t remember this. I wonder if Anne remembers.

...

My parents’ synagogue in the Valley hired armed guards after Trump was elected.

...

Having dinner with my old roommates. The opera singer roommate started talking about how she wanted to sing some Kurt Weill songs in her next show, but she couldn’t, because his heirs wouldn’t give up the rights, because they were worth so much money. Typical Jew.

Again, it took a moment for what she had said to really sink in. This is why I can’t do yoga in German, incidentally. No matter how good my German gets, there will always be at least a half-second delay between words being spoken and the meaning of those words hitting my brain. I can’t relax in German. I have to stay alert. I can’t let my guard down.

It’s hard to find a WG-Zimmer in this city. I tried to carefully suggest that maybe...

Nope. Everyone knows about Jews and money.

I let it go. I didn’t start a fight.

...

Maybe I should start more fights.

...

I got pulled over by bike cops once, in 2015. I crossed on a red light in Mitte. I handed them my California driver license. They huddled around it, laughing. They asked me to pronounce the name of my birth city out loud.

In the version of this story saved in my memory, they also repeated my last name over and over, laughing.

...

I have brunch at a café on Rykestraße in Prenzlauer Berg and stare at the Jews going into services just like all the other brunch goers. I think about saying Shabbat Shalom but worry that they’ll feel like I’m mocking them. And anyway, I don’t wander around Los Angeles saying Shabbat Shalom to anyone, ever. Why does that become so much more important here?

...

My first day ever in Germany was a beautiful early fall day. I only meant to stay a semester, but that day, walking along the Dreisam in Freiburg, I knew I had to stay longer. It felt right in a way I can’t explain. I belonged there. I belong here.

...

Up until August 2019, the German “sorry about the whole Nazi thing” law, otherwise known as the Restored Citizenship Law, didn’t apply to the descendants of women. Yeah. Up until 1953 if a German woman married a non-German man, she was automatically stripped of her German citizenship. And until just a few months ago, that law superseded the Restored Citizenship Law, which grants citizenship to victims of the Nazis and their descendants. My German grandmother, who lived for the first eight years of her life on the same street I live on now, married my Austrian grandfather in 1948, in Israel, the same year Israel itself was born. My dad was born there in 1950.

My citizenship application was rejected ten years ago. We’re trying again. We found Omi’s birth certificate in Standesamt Mitte.

I don’t need citizenship to stay here. I married an EU citizen (he’s Spanish, not Jewish, but, as a friend of my mom’s said a few years ago, “Don’t worry, at least he looks Jewish”).

I don’t need German citizenship. I want it.

...

I walk past Stolpersteine on my way to work. There are Stolpersteine outside of my fucking apartment building. I step on them too, just like everybody else.

...

Where I grew up, kids would just ask “Are you Christmas or Hanukkah?” on the playground.

…

Pro tip to German gynecologists everywhere: No one wants to talk about the Holocaust during a trans-vaginal ultrasound. Somehow I thought this would have been obvious.

...

I had to marry someone in order to stay in Germany. My great-grandma had to marry someone in order to get out of Germany. Funny.

You don’t get the rest of either of those stories. Those are mine.

...

People are saying it’s happening again. I tell my parents’ friends that I’m safer in Germany than in the US. Fewer shootings, anti-Semitic or otherwise.

...

How do I feel about the shooting in Halle? I wouldn’t have been there. I don’t really go to synagogue. I don’t really participate. Maybe I would have been at a synagogue in Berlin. But I’m more likely to just stay home. Do something else.

I feel bad knowing that I wouldn’t have been there, but I also feel safer.

...

“You are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Pirke Avot. Ethics of Our Fathers. It’s a Jewish thing. I don’t know much about it.

I guess it means that we all have to keep struggling. The world isn’t perfect. It never will be. And it’s not my job, or your job, or Americans’ job, or Germans’ job, or anybody’s job, really, to make the world perfect. Because it never will be.

But it’s all our jobs to keep trying anyway. Trying is the point. You have to try.

1     2