Posted on 05/05/2016 12:09:43 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
When I tell people I'm moving to Berlin for the summer, I usually get one of two reactions:
1. Berlin! Such a cool city. I'm jealous! 2. Why? I would never step foot in Germany.
Berlin made headlines among Israelis when the "Milky controversy" broke out in 2014. An Israeli Berliner bragged how cheap the cost of living is in Berlin compared to Israel, if grocery receipts are the judge. According to the chocolate pudding index (the Israeli brand being “Milky), the difference is 300 percent.
My calculations are not necessarily financial, although I don’t think I could afford living in any other Western European city (and how can anyone afford living in London?). It also doesn't hurt that I was shocked to look at my produce bill recently to find that I had paid $10 for a kilo of grapes at my local produce shop. Plus, I can't stand the Tel Aviv heat and humidity.
When I first visited Berlin in April 2014 on a "heritage tour" with my father, who was born in a Jewish DP camp in Hannover to Polish Auschwitz survivors, I admit that Germany spooked me out. But the country was part of my history, and what its people did to my grandparents 70 years ago has shaped who I am. This was the “historical” visit with the free walking tours of Holocaust memorials, WWII monuments, and, of course, Checkpoint Charlie.
I returned to Berlin for my "creative" visit a year later to work on my album with talented producers based in Berlin. No museums for me this time (just a Jewish cemetery I happened to pass by). I enjoyed nightlife and restaurants, experiencing Berlin as a vibrant city filled with people who were similar to me: creative, intellectual, curious.
My "journalistic" trip to Berlin came this past January when I went to cover the Muslim refugee crisis for The Jerusalem Post, not long after reports of sexual harassment by migrants in Cologne had turned public opinion against Merkel’s refugee immigration policy. It was then I realized Berlin is a journalist's paradise.
Germany is at a crossroads: How will the country adjust to this mass migration? Will it allow shariah law to creep into governance? Will it take on a more anti-Israel policy? Will the people return to their nationalist roots, and how will that affect attitudes towards both Jews and Muslims?
Just as I have grown up on tales of the extreme victimhood of my people (on my mother’s side, I’m a third generation survivor of the Farhud, the expulsion of Jews from Baghdad), Germans have grown up on tales of the extreme aggression of its people. We are inverses of two extremes, which means both of us have major post-trauma. To that end, I'll fit in more in Germany than other European countries.
I think there are voices in my generation who don't want to live in constant reaction to something that we personally didn’t do or experience – in their case, murder; in my case, being murdered. I'm sure many modern Germans would like to think they would have never been Nazis, while I'd love to think I would have fought back, or at least left to Palestine for a chance at freedom and self-reliance.
Our nations' respective policies are also deeply affected by our past, and we sometimes act reactively rather than objectively rational and ethical. Some Germans feel the need to overcompensate for their despicable past with indiscriminate immigration policies. Some Jews feel a need to overcompensate for their tragic past by making the Jewish state an idol that would suppress Jewish and Arab individual rights alike for what appears to be the Jewish State's security.
The concept of “Never Again” should be self-evident. The Holocaust should have never happened. We should have never lost 6,000,000 of our own. The Germans were evil for being such aggressors, but I also think Jews were, to some degree, unbelievably weak for being such easy victims, for rarely putting up a serious, calculated, organized fight for their right to their property and their lives, until it was too late.
With Nazis (thankfully) dying out, and Holocaust survivors hopefully enjoying the remaining years of their lives in joy, I believe we are entering a post-Holocaust era, in which the third generation will study, learn from, and never forget the slaughter, but in which the Holocaust won't disproportionately dictate who we are, what we should be, and how we should act.
For we should act not merely from fear of repeating the past, but from rational ethics guiding our confidence that we could create a just, happy, and free future.
I believe, to that end, Jews should live in Germany. It is the apt correction that will serve as a touchtone of Germany’s standing as a liberal democracy. Any country that protects a Jews’ right to worship and live freely is one that will thrive. And if ever again a Jew is threatened just for being a Jew, I would hope that Jews would live true to its tradition of civil disobedience and fight back, scream out, shout.
But I know I would never truly feel comfortable in Germany, never truly strong, never truly free, if I didn’t have my beloved, beautiful Israel to come back to.
Good lick finding a place to live. Took me months just to find an apartment south near my office by Shoenefeld. I’ve never had problems in Berlin. The problem with Berlin is it’s full of New Yorkers.....
I didn't have that problem living in Traben-Trarbach for four years. If I could afford it, I'd retire and spend every summer there.
If I weren't married, I'd split time up in Lutjenburg, a wonderful town near Kiel. It comes alive during the summer, with the largest concentration of newly divorced women I've ever encountered. lol
You get away from the big cities, and Germans are as friendly as they can be.
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