JOSEPH RACKMAN
JOSEPH RACKMAN ( , l I s I ((III \1 \ I s 1 Alesson I learned in Germany—of all places! In Germany, for three weeks, I prayed with an intensity that I had not experienced in years. Day after...
...His trip to Germany was under the joint auspices of the American Jewish Committee and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a West German political foundation which cosponsors with the AJC exchange programs for American Jews and West Germans...
...She sat next to the rabbi during the service...
...In the 1960s author Elie Wiesel wrote that he was able to visit Germany for only 48 hours before departing in disgust...
...I know, Rabbi Weisz, that she did not read from a parchment scroll as is prescribed...
...You can't tell her to hate her grandfather because he caused Jews to be killed...
...He understood, however, that we are one people, bound by the covenant of Abraham...
...She can't get angry at him...
...Across the ocean, in Miami Beach, the son of my Talmud teacher was becoming bar mitzvah on the same Shabbat...
...But I do wish to share my Judaism with Jews who are willing to worship that way...
...True, the girl's ceremony was very different, but it represented an entry into the same people...
...I do not wish to worship with a choir...
...She wore a pale blue dress that made her look almost grown up...
...I do not wish to hear organ music at a Shabbat service ever again...
...somebody in the audience whom she recognized had caught her eye...
...Not a single one of our American Jewish Committee group of 20 was unmoved...
...To those who do not like to study, I say let us work together to build synagogues of all kinds and day-care centers for our young and homes for RACKMAN continued from page 19 our elderly...
...Her face was full of expression...
...To ignore Germany is to fail to learn from Germany...
...I am invited to Rabbi David Weisz's home for lunch after Shabbat services and hear him attack the non-Orthodox...
...It is difficult to learn from our enemies, particularly the worst enemy we have ever known...
...It is the simplest of truths that I had found in Germany...
...He has since revisited Germany, but his reaction then was understandable for someone who lived through the Holocaust...
...They knew the truth: We are all Jews...
...I met a very nice girl who told me that her grandfather had voted for the Nazis...
...When we were marched off to the camps, Reform and Orthodox together, wasn't that enough for us to learn that we are one people...
...I tell you, Rabbi Weisz, that these two children—the strictly Orthodox boy in Miami Beach and the Reform girl in Berlin—are linked together by history and by destiny...
...She quickly recovered her composure and returned to the business at hand...
...A lovely 12-year-old girl became bat mitzvah...
...The lesson is so obvious...
...Just at the right moment, he placed his hand lighdy on her shoulder and gave her strength...
...To those who do not wish to study Jewish ritual, I say let us study Jewish history together...
...I tell you, Rabbi Weisz, that she was Joseph R. Rackman is a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Squadron, EUenoff Plesent & Lehrer...
...Kristallnacht was not limited to Orthodox synagogues...
...That is the lesson I learned in the land of Germany...
...There are indeed differences among us...
...Hider's minions did not ask whether their victims had prayed in a Reform or Orthodox synagogue...
...We talked about anti-Semitism there: "It's not really bad," he told me, not worse than anywhere else...
...She started the service by lighting the Shabbat candles on the pulpit...
...In Germany, one feels intensely Jewish...
...But you should have seen the pride in her face as she joined her people...
...It was a traditional ceremony and the boy read from the parchment scroll and gave a profound speech on the Talmud...
...And now I speak to Rabbi Weisz...
...I wish, rabbi, you could have been with our group the evening before, as we attended services in West Berlin's Reform Temple...
...After the prayers, she went to the podium and sang a beautiful Hebrew song—about a lovely evening in Israel and how she felt at home there...
...But, Rabbi Weisz, that was the bad part and now I shall tell you of the wondrous part...
...To those who find the complexities of the Talmud archaic, I say let us study Jewish philosophy together...
...When the rabbi came over to bless her, she nearly started to cry...
...One time, I was coming back from a soccer match and heard a drunk sing Nazi songs...
...entering the covenant of Abraham, the covenant that unites us as a people...
...The Nazis destroyed any place where Jews gathered to identify with each other and to pray with God as best they knew how...
...She sees him as a fine grandfather...
...But that does not mean it is the right reaction for a generation born after the Holocaust...
...And then her face broke out in a smile...
...She recovered quickly...
...Indeed, you would have trouble with a woman reading from a parchment scroll in the first place...
...Yes, I found the organ music offensive to my ears and I did not like the female choir...
...In West Berlin—well before the wall came down—I attended services at an Orthodox synagogue where I met a Princeton student, Randy Schoenberg, who had been in Berlin for four months...
...Day after day, during morning, afternoon and evening prayers, I found myself reexamining prayers I had so often recited by rote...
...Then she read from the Torah...
...When we were marched off to the camps, Reform and Orthodox together, wasn't that enough for us to learn that we are one people...
...I found myself suddenly stopping at various points during the service to consider the meaning of sentences and paragraphs I had recited thousands of times...
...In Germany, I could not take any of the prayers for granted...
...He took her places and showed Jier a good time...
Vol. 15 • April 1990 • No. 2
