One Loss, Many Celebrations

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Bar Mitzvah, John F. Kennedy School Berlin, Juedisches Waisenhaus, Ohel Hachidusch

This year began with the death of my mother. My sister Andie and I are still adjusting to the fact that we no longer have parents. In April we brought mom to her final resting place next to our father in Bozeman, Montana.

In the middle of the year Olivia graduated with Honors from the John F. Kennedy School of Berlin and we celebrated at the Abitur Ball in Wannsee. She’s now headed to California for a gap year internship with Yosemite National Park. In September she will begin her studies at the University of Glasgow. She’s going to study Statistics!

In August we splurged on a family vacation in Gran Canaria to celebrate Andie’s sixtieth birthday. Everyone needed a break from work and studies so we stayed at a resort and spent a lot of time at the pool. We squeezed in a little bit of sightseeing too.

Sam’s bar mitzvah, led by Cantor Jalda Rebling at the Jüdisches Waisenhaus Berlin, was the biggest family event of the year. Andie had just moved to Santa Barbara when one of the worst fires in California history broke out. She left in the middle of the Thomas fire to be with us for Sam’s coming of age ceremony on December 16th. We’re also grateful that my brother-in-law Todd and his wife Barbara who live in Malawi took time out from their family vacation in Amsterdam to join us.

Another special bar mitzvah guest was my friend Mike, who I met through this blog. He drove all the way from Chalon-sur Saone, France in his rather ancient VW van to celebrate with us. Mike is a phenomenal photographer and human being. Please have a look at his photo-essay, Samuel Brian Swarthout Becomes a Bar Mitzvah, a beautiful gift to our family.

Thanks for reading my blog this year and best wishes for 2018.

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What You Should Read for Rosh Hashanah

My Rosh Hashanah gift to myself was the luxury of lying in bed for hours at night reading Shulem Deen’s riveting memoir, All Who Go Do Not Return. Deen writes with a simple and elegant style of his journey into and ultimately away from the ultra-Hasidic Skverer sect in New Square, New York. This book deeply touched me because of my own struggle to understand and accept ultra-Orthodox Jewish practices, so different from my own beliefs in a more open and inclusive form of Judaism. A shared heritage seems to increase the stakes for coming to terms with cultural differences.

What’s so impressive about Deen’s memoir is his ability to describe the tragic consequences of his loss of faith and exit from the Hasidic world without bitterness or contempt. The reader comes away so impressed with this effort that despite being appalled by many of the Skverer practices he describes, it would be a dishonor to allow hateful feelings to surface. It’s refreshing to encounter such a calm and measured voice while so much of the world is awash in the politics of hate. What better book to read for the Jewish New Year than one that shows how it’s possible to confront cruelty with integrity.

Deen’s book also gave me the inspiration to continue with my own memoir writing and Book Project on Restored German Citizenship. As the number of submissions and my list of publishing contacts have slowly grown, I’m still seeking to refine my voice and writing style. I’m just finishing up a new draft of my citizenship story for the book and am inspired to continue working on it until it fully captures my personal journey.

My Chanukah Lights

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Berlin, Chanukah, refugees

The menorah sparkled a little brighter this year, either to give more hope for a brighter future or because I bought longer, fancier candles. Drawing us close together, the lights remind me of the many ways my family lit up my life throughout the year. But the flames also beckon us to help light the way for others, as Berlin’s thousands of volunteers are doing through their refugee relief efforts. I borrowed former President Bush’s term “points of light” to describe these volunteers in my recent article, The Women’s Room, for the Jewish Women’s Archive.

Happy Chanukah and thanks to my kids for being such incredibly wacky, funny, and bright lights in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for 2016, the year our first-born child will leave home for college. But I have no doubt that he and his siblings will make the world a brighter place wherever they may go.

Cruising into the New Year

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Berlin, carsharing, refugees, Rosh Hashanah

Our sweet beginning to the Jewish New Year came in the form of a nice set of wheels to cruise around Berlin on a Sunday afternoon. Berlin may have one of the best transit systems in the world, but that doesn’t mean my feet are happy at the end of a long day. I’m married to a man who doesn’t like cars, but he took pity on me with another birthday coming up and registered for DriveNow, one of Berlin’s carsharing services.

We picked up our Mini Cooper Countryman in Wilmersdorf after stopping at the Fehrbelliner Platz refugee center to make a donation of much needed train tickets. The atmosphere outside the shelter was calm and peaceful, giving no hint of the desperate hunt underway in Berlin and other cities to find more space to shelter the thousands of asylum seekers entering Germany. We support using the former Tempelhof airport as a temporary shelter. The facility has space for a few thousand people and would become one of Europe’s biggest refugee shelters if approved. It seems fitting for the site that was the staging ground for the Berlin airlift during the Cold War to once again become a locus of emergency relief.

Driving away from the refugee center and north towards Mitte to check out one of the city’s popular third wave coffee joints, I felt the most like a Berliner that I’ve ever felt. We are privileged to live and raise our children in this city at a time when Germany is opening its arms to people who have been forced to flee their homelands. As established Jewish residents of Berlin whose families were refugees in another era, we can offer help and understanding to asylum seekers who do not yet feel at home here. Germany may never be their Heimat, a term that has a much deeper meaning than “home”, but it offers the hope of a new beginning.

At 31 cents a minute, I’m not sure how much driving we’ll be doing in the coming year, but fortunately there are many great ways to cruise around Berlin. While we’re on the move we hope to make small, ongoing contributions to help alleviate the refugee crisis. It’s easy to find ways that you can help out online. Shana Tova!

Digital artwork by Olivia Maude Swarthout

Shabbat Shalom Yolanda

Tags

Berlin, Jewish Sabbath

A few Friday nights had come and gone without our usual ritual of lighting the sabbath candles. There was no particular reason other than the tired inertia that the family slips into at the end of the week. We forgo the chance to renew ourselves when we are the most in need, separated in space rather than united in Heschel’s sanctity of time. But last night we brought the sabbath light back into our home.

Stuffed with Mexican food, we took an after-dinner stroll from Wittenberg Platz to Viktoria Luise Platz before heading home. As big as she is, I didn’t notice Yolanda at first because it was dark out and she is tucked back into a corner. There she stands in all of her bronze glory and waits for the passerby to behold her. I was entranced by her size and strength, her uninhibited stance, and her defiance of societal standards of beauty. I stood before her and felt uplifted, while the three male members of my family quickly lost interest and moved on.

We took the U-Bahn home and lit the candles, and I thought about Yolanda, a woman of Berlin, maybe even a Jewish woman, a woman to represent all women.

Flipping the Jewish Narrative

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American Jews, anti-Semitism, German Jews

Despite a resolution to spend Passover in Berlin this year, a decline in my mother’s health caused us to schlep the kids across the Atlantic for a family vacation in Los Angeles. We missed celebrating our freedom with Ohel Hachidusch, but enjoyed the community seder at my mom’s current residence, Sunrise Senior Living in Studio City. When Rabbi Mitzi asked if any of the residents wanted to share a personal liberation story, there was no response. I’m not sure if the residents felt too enslaved by their circumstances to think of one or if they just wanted to move on to the beef brisket that was about to be served. During the long silence, my kids all looked at me, waiting to see if their mom would seize yet another opportunity to talk of reclaiming our Jewish roots in Germany. To the family’s relief, I decided to keep quiet.

But while I’m here I do have a chance to tell people of my frustration with the chorus of Jewish American voices calling for the Jews to flee Europe just as they fled from Egypt long ago. These pundits have such an easy fix for the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, never mind the fact that the Anti-Defamation League found a 21 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents across the U.S. in 2014. I hope European Jews will support efforts to combat anti-Semitism in the U.S. instead of urging American Jews to run away from it.

I just picked up a copy of the Jewish Journal and was surprised to see publisher and editor-in-chief Rob Eshman proclaim “Let my people stay”! Based in L.A., Eshman was writing about the Jews of Europe and argued that we need to overcome our narrative of flight and instead ask the question: “What do European Jews need to do to stay?” Eshman’s more thoughtful perspective emphasizes using the tools we have to build alliances within and beyond our Jewish communities to fight all forms of extremism. I can’t think of a better message to advance the freedom that we celebrate on Passover.

Images of Light

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Chanukah

I’m grateful to many people for bringing light into my life during the past year. One of those people is a friend in France whose photography and soulful reflections always brighten my days. He has graciously agreed to share some seasonal images of light and related commentary on this site.

Chanukah is about light, rededication, candles, latkes, games and symbolism on one level and has a higher meaning at another level. At the higher level Chanukah is a time to reflect on the lives of others and those who helped prepare you for the path you have taken in your life: a teachable moment involving questions and discussion within your family. The photograph below depicts a sunset and yet there remains light to celebrate.
A light that will never leave you.

During Chanukah I visit a special place in Gurs, France. Here I reflect on the past year and dedicate myself to practice forgiveness and truth. I believe that each person has his or her unique method for lighting the dark; a candle, a kind word, a prayer, a small gift, or the recognition of another person.

Thanks to my friend in France for this contribution. As we approach the winter solstice, I hope each of you experience light in your homes and hearts to help guide you through the dark days ahead.

The Push-Me Pull-You of Israel

Tags

Diaspora Jews, Israel, Jewish identity, Passover

It will take some time to unravel the twisted knot of emotions that wove its way through me over the nine days we spent in Israel. My sensory delight in the sweet smell of jasmine, the warm and inviting limestone architecture, the abundant sunshine, and the rich tastes of hummus and falafel expanded during each day of the trip. While my senses enjoyed this daily barrage of gifts, my brain was constantly working overtime to fill in the multi-colored canvas that is Israel. Each day the land and the people drew me in, but not without moments when my buttons were pushed and I drew back. I felt a bit like Dr. Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, the gazelle-unicorn whose two heads try to go in opposite directions whenever it moves.

The highlight of our trip was spending time with our cousins who we first met in 2011, but with whom we already share a deep bond (see Shrinking the Family Diaspora). That bond was strengthened as we picked up where we left off three years ago and wrote a new family history into the moments we spent together. But sadness and even anger bubbled up within me while trying to make sense of the ultra-orthdox Jews whose demeanor and conduct sent a loud message that said “keep away — you are not one of us.” Driving through the Mea She’arim area and provoking the rage of its residents was probably a bad idea, but even worse was the feeling we had while walking around Jerusalem of being invisible in the eyes of those who are a part of our history but who reject us as Jews.

Visiting Israel during Passover made it more challenging for us to connect with Jewish life since our family is fairly secular and does not keep kosher for the holiday. We often found ourselves gravitating toward Arabic areas and had our most spiritually uplifting experience at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem on Easter Sunday. Although we spoke with no one during our brief visit, we felt not only welcome and accepted, but also a sense of peace that spoke of the human potential that has yet to be achieved in the Middle East. I hope to share some further reflections as I unravel my thoughts and emotions and try to get my head pointed in just one direction.

Guten Rutsch: A Yiddish Origin?

Tags

German Jews

Germans don’t just wish each other Happy New Year, they express their hope that you have “a good slide into the new year.” After I learned how to make this new year’s wish in grammatically correct German — “Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr” — I was curious about the origin of this fitting phrase. Many sources claim that the phrase comes from the Yiddish term Rosh Hashanah which designates the Jewish New Year. While there are other theories about the origin of “Guten Rutsch,” the German Consulate in the U.S. has stated that “it is actually the ‘corruption’ of a phrase adopted from Jews wishing each other a “Guten Rosh”, a good beginning.”

Regardless of the origin, it feels right to slide away from the old year and into the new one. So in the final days of this year, I wish my readers a good slide into 2014.

Happy Hippie Holidays

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Berlin, Chanukah, Gutshof Gatow, Ohel Hachidusch

Holiday mania has hit Berlin. Massive displays of chocolate and marzipan have taken over the grocery stores, and Christmas markets and stalls are going up everywhere. The crowds are as thick as ever, but that doesn’t mean the Germans are filled with holiday cheer. During a long wait in line at a store last week, the man in front of me was arguing with the checker while two women behind me were hurling invectives at each other over who was first in line.

A good way to escape holiday stress is to head outside the central city into one of Berlin’s many pastoral enclaves that line its lakes and rivers. We spent part of the last two weekends at Gutshof Gatow, an organic farming estate where visitors can purchase products made on site or sit and enjoy house-made kuchen and coffee. On Sunday we made beeswax candles for Hanukkah with Ohel Hachidusch. For those of us new to this craft, we received instruction from Anna Adam, Ohel’s artist extraordinaire, who delivered our materials in the Happy Hippie Jew Bus. Anna and Cantor Jalda Rebling travel the land in this decked-out, pseudo-60’s VW bus to bring Jewish life and creativity beyond the Jewish cultural hub of Berlin.

Though I’m not quite ready for this year’s early Hanukkah, we do have enough tapered beeswax candles for the first few nights. And then there’s Thanksgiving, my favorite American holiday which I will never give up as an expat. I’m not much of a hippie, but it’s great to stay laid back during the holidays. So bring on the Hanukkah Geld and roast turkey!