The Transition of Berlin Jewish Identity in Relation with Synagogues
MinJeung Koh
Honors in Berlin 2008
Abstract
In broad terms, this paper concerns a role of architecture to define identity of Jews in a metropolitan setting of Berlin. More specifically, the paper focuses on the use of synagogues in an urban setting to represent contemporary Berlin Jews identity and the ways in which these forms are employed to negotiate between communal identity and urban diversity. When German was under Hitler’s control, most of synagogues in Berlin were renovated into German style or destroyed by Nazis to repress Jews and their identity since synagogues were worked as their community center, religious temple and educational space. By destroying and suppressing the traditional gathering space of Jews, Nazis might be able to shape the identity of Jews, and that would be the reason why Jews built several synagogues in German style or hidden behind German styled buildings to at least save the values of Berlin Jews. Through several interviews and observations, I was able to interact with religious Jews and non-religious Jews in Berlin and heard about role of synagogues and values of contemporary Berlin Jews. After an intensive month of research, I have arrived at the following claim: Berlin Jewish community is on the dynamic transition state of its identity due to struggle between the Jewish tradition and the influence of German culture and what the roles of synagogues are as a religious and communal identity.
Background
After the World War II, Berlin was rebuilt from the ruin to a modern city with skyscrapers by diverse groups of people around the Europe from the old Berliners to new incomers like Turks. Because of it huge immigration history, Berlin became a unique city of fused diverse communities. Through the immigrations, different groups of people brought different cultures and traditions to Berlin which influenced architecture to arts and music and even the language of the city and the neighbors. Although all these elements are used to form identity of groups, from the past, architecture is often treated as a definite symbol of identity of religious or political groups; since architecture is a massive physical representation to public. And also, architecture is unique to each culture since it has developed in its own style due to influences of weather, topography, tradition and many other factors. Such as the Versailles was built to reveal the power of Louis XIV and the French kingdom, and St. Peters of Vatican city is out of human scale to reveal the divine power of Catholic and so on.
When I heard about hidden synagogues or synagogues built in German styles in Berlin to avoid Nazi destruction from a guide of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, I got interested in a topic of how did Hitler and Nazi tried to re-shape the identity of Jews through synagogues and how did Jews react to that. And also, how does the contemporary Berlin Jewish community try to find their identity in a diverse metropolitan city. During the interview with Iris (due to anonymity I notice that this is a false name) who works in one of the synagogues in Berlin, she let me know about many architectural background of synagogues. Due to her explanation, synagogues usually do not have a specific architectural style for exterior such as Gothic or Romanesque like churches, but it adapts local styles. Because of that, some were built in more similar to churches and some were built in more similar to mosques, which makes it not unusual to have something like a German style building for a synagogue. However, it is true that Hitler destroyed all synagogues which had been attached to public space and especially those were noticeable as a synagogue from the streets. That is the reason synagogues in contemporary Berlin are either in German style or hidden behind other buildings and located in a courtyard because only those things could avoid eyes of Nazi destructions. Most of problems of my research also caused from this. If I do not have exact address of synagogues, most of time it was impossible to find any of them during my field research. On the field, I visited six different synagogues in Berlin to study their exterior styles. Except for the New Synagogue in the Oranienburger Strasse, five other synagogues do not have any indication of synagogues like the Star of David or indication of religious space on the outside. The only indication was a small plaque on the walls of buildings and two to five police officers near them. Unlike most other religious buildings, those five synagogues even looks like a ordinary brick apartment building from the outside, so if pedestrians do not pay close attention to a boring brick wall repetitive building styles in residential areas, there are no chance to recognize synagogues. The other hardship was the tensioned and unwelcoming atmospheres of all synagogues that might cause by police officers, monitoring video cameras, fences and closed doors, but also my prejudice of Berlin Jews made me hard to approach synagogues. I thought Berlin Jews are protective and sensitive to strangers because of their history and Neo-Nazis. However, Elena (due to anonymity I notice that this is a false name) from the Jewish Culture Organization told me that she never felt any threats from any people in Berlin. Although media represents Neo-Nazis as a big threat in Berlin and Jews, in actual life it is not as big as represented in media and those police officers and securities are for the one percent possibilities of any unfortunate happenings.
However, the biggest struggle was my pre-assumption to my questions and unexpected reactions from the Jewish community. Since I expected religiously centered community around the synagogues, it made me confused that most of Berlin Jews, even new American or Russian immigrants Jews are not as religious as I thought. They do not think it is necessary to go synagogues every week, so most of people I met barely go to synagogues three or four times a year, and some of them even forget when the Jewish holydays are. Unexpected results of so many non-religious Jews made me confused and took time to understand their situations. Iris, Elena, Meredith, John and other Jews all told me that if all immigrant Jews decided to go to Synagogues, a lot of synagogue construction has to be going on right now since there are almost 30,000 Jews are in Berlin and synagogues in Berlin barely can hold 5,000 worshipers. Iris also told me that total of only 300 to 500 Berlin Jews show up to the every Friday to attend the service in Berlin. Elena, Meredith, Jeremy and Mike even believe that the quality make them Jews are not the religion. “I am a Jew because I am a Jew.”
Although the Central Judaism Foundation reconstructed the New Synagogue to link past and future and redefined fainted identity of Jews because the New Synagogue does not provide service except specially holydays, most of Jews do not accept the New Synagogue as a center of their community but just see it as a beautiful architecture. My interest of observing significant influence of the New Synagogue to the Jewish community and their identity was not possible and it was even worse than any of my expectations.
Elena told me during the Jewish community meeting that Jews are a community centered people and synagogues are used to be the center of the community and the Jewish identity; because traditionally synagogue was a space for education, worship and community center. However, now a day, education role of the synagogue is taken by schools and there are not many synagogues around Berlin to be work as a community center of neighbors. Traditionally fifty to hundreds households around a synagogue forms a community, but does not work in Berlin. That is why there are so many Jewish communities out in Berlin since people started their own groups to share there concerns, thoughts and happiness. As a universal theory of fluid identity says, Berlin Jews already started to form their new identity as a Jew.
Methods
Through out my research in Berlin about the identity of Jews relationship to synagogues, I used texts, interviews and observations. Since every method has their unique quality, I am glad that I used more than one method to do my research.
The first method was text and it was a great way to build up background knowledge about Jewish, Jewish culture and their history in Berlin. The texts that I used are from museums such as the Jewish Museum, the New Synagogue, the book called, “Viewpoint of Berlin” and websites of Jewish communities in Berlin. Since I did not have any background knowledge of Jews until I got interested in the topic, it took me a long time to build up the basic knowledge about Jews and German history – although it was solved pretty by having group tours. During this progression, I build up some bias ideas about Jews in general and Jews in Berlin, which brought hardship in later part of my research on the field. After reading all those texts about Jews, I thought Jews were very community centered and religious people since it seems like their religion is not just religion like Catholic, Muslim and Buddhism, but more like part of their life that something similar to habit of eating. However, when I actually met Jews in Berlin, it was not true. There are non-religious Jews were out there even more than I can even imagine because people adapt to their circumstances and being flexible. Texts are good to give more general idea, but they have limits of not able to describe current situations of individuals and society.
The other method I used was the observation. I observed the people who visiting the synagogues, joining the guided tour in synagogues and people who I interviewed with. It was a great way to get a big map of the current situation. After observing people in the New Synagogue, it has about one third of non-Jewish tourist and about two third of Jewish tourists. How do I know them by observing is not through their appearances, but their behaviors and conversations; although I was not able to understand all of their conversations. When they are Jewish tourists, it looks likely to put more attention to the pictures and exhibition materials in the New Synagogues, but when they are non-Jewish; they are more likely looking at the buildings and briefly skimming though the materials unless they are aesthetically beautiful. People who are joining the tour group of the synagogues can be recognized by their clothing and their questions. If they are Jews, they ask questions about current situation of Jewish communities, who are the Rabbi of the synagogue and so far, but if they are non-Jews, they are more interested in history then present and of course they did not dress up or wear the hat. Observation during interview is also important because people express their emotions during their conversations through attitudes, faces, gestures and tones. Some people are hard to notice those differences, but some people are pretty easy since sometimes they got more enthusiastic about the topic they like and sometimes they started to stop giving detailed thoughts about some topic. However, the big limitation of this method will be high dependency on my guessing. It gives a big map of what kind of people use what kind of space and how, but it does not help me to understand detailed situations of the communities or their thoughts.
Interview was the most exciting and live method in my research which gave all those unexpected results. This method is the easiest way to gather individual thoughts, current situations and understanding changes. However, it has a big limitation. Unless I interview various groups of people, it is hard to get objective idea about the topic and easy to become bias. When I met my first interviewer in the New Synagogue, I thought most of the Jews in Berlin are religious as other places proud of the reconstruction of the New Synagogue. So when I got a chance to talk with Tobi about my project, and when he disagreed with my observations, I was little bit offensive. However, when I attend the Jewish community meeting, it was not true. They told me most of them are not going synagogues every week and some of them even barely going to synagogue one a year; which was a big surprise, but it was the truth. After I met with Iris, who works in one of the synagogue and heard about statistic number of how many Jews are in Berlin, how many of them are involved in Jewish communities and how many of Jews show up every week, I was so confused and was not sure what to believe. But as long as I get enough interviews, it is a good method to gather information and understand the situations.
Analysis
Studying character was not the thing that I used to do. So it was very hard at the first hand what to look at and what to pick up as a character of a person unless the person has very strong noticeable behavior or tones. However, after doing some training works during the class by doing small performances, I started to observe people deeply in their manner, attitude, outfits and gestures, so on. It was helpful especially when I was doing my observation work in the field as well as my interviews since both of them require observations, it got a clue about where to start my observation to understand the person. By looking at what kind of cloth their wearing, I get a sense of what kind of personality they have in general, such as person who are neat and clean, more conservative and more liberal. By looking at their faces, gestures and tone while they are talking, I can understand their attitude toward the topic like they like the topic or they are uncomfortable with questions or does not really interested being interviewed. Thinking about characters and presenting it also helped me to go out to the public with out less nervousness. When I got a chance to join the one of the Jewish community meeting and meeting 18 new people at the same time, I was so nervous to even approach to them in the restaurant. However, suddenly I got some brave mind saying to me I can do this! After that without thinking to deeply I approach to them and introduced myself. I was surprised after I finished my research and I think continuous performances in front of class helped me to less afraid of crowd of people. However, sometimes studying a character bothers me, too. When I start looking at some irritating motion of somebody, I just put too much attention to that I cannot even hear what the person is saying. I know it sounds stupid, but it was like that when I was talking one of those eighteen people in the group.
I am not sure the composition helped me to broaden my findings in Berlin, but it helped me to clarify my research to make it into performances. Since there are five people in the identity group with different topics of identity, we had to make it some what coherent, but also be able to show the unique part of my research. By thinking of my part in the final composition, it helped me to analyze what is the most important finding in my research. During my research I found out so many unique aspects of Berlin Jews that are not related to my topic which made me want to change the topic or wanted to shove in those discoveries into my research such a things like there are many Jews lived in East German when there were Berlin walls out there. They immigrated to East Berlin by their choice because they wanted to come back to their home town and they are socialists. Because people easily connect East Berlin with Nazis, it sounds really strange that many Jews chose themselves to move into East Berlin. They still think they are the “socialists,” but they emphasized it a lot that “I am a socialist, but it is different from what you think.”
There is also another story about Jewish immigration into Berlin. Jewish community is centered around the mother, so if you want to be a true Jewish your mother has to be a Jewish. If only your father is Jewish, you are not a real Jew. However, in German, if you want to be a German, your father has to be a German, not your mother. So if a Jewish woman who wants to move into Berlin who has her paternal grandmother a German Jew, then in makes her father a Jew but not a German. So even though her mother’s parents are both German Jews, she cannot be a German Jew in German law, but she is a German Jew in Jewish society, which totally confusing and does not make sense, but it was so fun to hear all those small stories. So while preparing for the final performances, it was so helpful to clarify my discovery and research since I have to take out the most essential part to compose it with in the group. In the process of creating the final performance together with in the group, I got a chance to hear about other people’s discovery about the Berlin identity in details and we shared thoughts about it as a big picture of Berlin. It was so helpful to broad my view of Berlin and my research since some parts that I was not clear about in my project, some other group member was able to explain to me because her interviewer was related to Berlin Jewish society. It was an individual research, but because of the final performance, it became a group work.
Future Suggestions for the Research
I want to meet other Jewish people in other German cities since some of my interviewers told me that only Berlin Jews are highly non-religious and most of other German Jews are religious. It might be true, but at the same time, it might not be true unless I found it out by my self. I also want to keep going on with this research of the identity of Berlin Jews and their relationship with synagogues, since it looks like the identity of Berlin Jews are on the stage of transition from traditional Jews to extremely non-traditional Jews. Since many synagogues in Berlin started to working on making their synagogues more welcomed space, I want to see how this project goes on to the Berlin Jewish community.
