A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

(Picture note: I like to walk along this face of the city walls towards Mt. Zion and enter the Old City through the Zion Gate. This is the view. I am having a good year.) Something rather magical has been happening during my time here Israel , and it happens every time I open a siddur and every time I open my lips that I might declare G-d’s glory, as it were— I understand the language. Now maybe this is a silly statement. I mean, after all, our sages warn us of the dangers of praying words that have no meaning to us. Some of the most pious among us meditate seven seconds on every word in the Amidah —so my statement bears a little concern. Up until this time, I have escaped most concern by understanding that I was in a process of learning the language. Certainly none of us pop out of Mother’s womb fully intact as fluent comprehenders of the Holy Language. Surely I must be allotted some time to catch up for the thirty-some years I spent reading King James English as t...

The reality on the ground is always more complicated than the emotion of the moment or of nostalgia of the moment can promise. Yes, in Germany unemployment is still very high, in some places in the East obscenely high. Yes, there is a burgeoning neo-Nazi movement in the East that comes from a people who, due to Soviet techniques and propaganda never confronted the Holocaust and therefor look nostalgically at Hitler. Yes, Germany is a real country with real problems and is by no means a paradise. What it is, however, is a country where it is more safe than only a handful of other countries for Jews to live. What it is is a country that has tried to make Teshuva (Jewish concept of "returning" or even repentance) for its holocaust, unlike pretty much any nation that I can find in history has ever done. It seems most prefer to cover up or forget to mention their crimes in history. What it is, is a country whose most recent revolution began with floods of people fleeing to Hu...