10/09/2024
"Wir wünschen Frieden euch allen"
Read below to see what this bit of German means - and the shock of who sang these words to us.
Rosh Hashanah 5785, Day Two
(Temple Gates of Prayer, Flushing, Queens)
Why are we here today? Obviously, it’s Rosh Hashanah! So, a follow-up question - Why is it Rosh Hashanah? Really, why is it still Rosh Hashanah? Even in Israel, when most holidays are only one day, Rosh Hashanah is two days long.
Let’s remind ourselves how new Jewish months - any new months - were determined in ancient times. In those days, the new month was established after witnesses testified before a rabbinical court that they had seen the new moon. The new moon meant that the monthly cycle of dates could begin again. After the rabbis had confirmed the testimony, word was sent to Jewish communities throughout Israel and beyond. But because it took some time for the news to reach far-flung communities, just to be sure that the holiday would be observed on the correct day, the tradition arose of observing the major festivals for two days outside of Israel, a correct day and sort of a spare day, to cover themselves.
Within the land of Israel, the system worked just fine for most Jewish holidays, which begin in the middle of the month, when there's a full, beautiful moon like the one we will see on Sucot, providing enough time for it to be clear when the holiday actually had to begin. But Rosh Hashanah is the only Jewish holiday that begins on the first of the month and there was no wiggle room, no space for error. What if it was a cloudy night? You can’t violate biblical law and observe Rosh Hashanah on the wrong day just because of some clouds! Therefore, the tradition was established of observing Rosh Hashanah for two days even within Israel, even though the Torah ordains only one day. As the Book of Leviticus, Vayikra, states: in the seventh month, on the first of the month, you shall observe a cessation of work - a day of remembrance, of sounding the shofar. Day, not days. Yet, here we are. Though, today, we now know exactly when the new moon will come, thanks to Google and our generous funeral homes and kosher stores providing us with free calendars, regardless of the particular weather on that day, we still maintain this two-day custom, tying us closely to the world of our ancestors. And, here’s something else - while we’ve now spent all of this time talking about Rosh Hashanah as a two-day celebration, it is referred to in some places as yoma arichta - that’s Aramaic, the language of the Talmud. Yom Arichta means “long day” that it’s really not two distinct days; that it is, in truth, one LONG forty-eight hour day, an extended day. So, indeed, we have some confusion and some contradiction over whether this is really two distinct days or one long one.
Either way, there is an almost indiscernible shift between the first and second mornings of Rosh Hashanah - from the celebration and grandeur and newness of yesterday to… something else… today. On the surface, our two days’ services seem to be nearly identical. We have entirely the same prayers and page numbers and it can be a challenge for your clergy to keep things fresh. Our Reform friends and neighbors - at home and even here, upstairs - they don’t often have a 2nd day service identical to the first; they take folks on parallel experiences, perhaps, in nature. We here at the shul have also brought in musical accompaniment, just for today, to try, right on the surface, to make a differentiation between the days; to offer complementary but not identical services, two days in a row. But the difference, I think, is deeper, too, if you look closely enough. Notably, first, with our Torah reading. As you might have seen, we don’t read the same Torah portions on both days. The two readings come from one chapter apart, Genesis, Chapter 21, yesterday and Chapter 22, today.
Yesterday, we read about the stories of Abraham’s treaty with the Philistine King Abimelech, the birth of Isaac despite Sarah’s advanced years, and the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Today, Isaac, just having been born just in the last chapter - and we really don’t know his exact age in today’s chapter - is bound by his father for sacrifice and saved at the very last minute with a ram sacrificed in his stead. Connected stories, but not the same. Some real repentance, Teshuva, is needed on Abraham’s side and, it can be argued, on God’s side as well. And there is another small but crucial difference in the service - not even in the service, but afterwards. Yesterday, we concluded with Shana Tova Tikateivu - May we be written for Good in the Book of Life. Today, we say Shana Tova vTikateivu v Techateimu - may we be written for good AND sealed for good. It’s a small difference - a one word difference! - but it’s also an important shift. It is a move towards the sealing that we usually associate with Yom Kippur. We are, today, moving away from the celebratory birthday of the world, over to the more solemn themes of teshuvah of Yom Kippur.
And that’s what I would like to focus on today, the theme of Teshuvah that we are transitioning into on this second day of Rosh Hashanah. I’ll begin by reminding you what I focused on last Yom Kippur. I spoke about personal teshuvah and I discussed national teshuvah, particularly that of Germany, where we spent nearly three weeks this summer, 2024. We had heard in advance and then saw firsthand how Germany continues to do teshuva, or repentance, by strengthening democracy, by creating an inclusionary society, by responding resolutely to far-right extremism, by educating its young about the Holocaust, by offering sanctuary to Jews fleeing Russia and Ukraine and being a true friend to the State of Israel.
Maybe you remember this photo? It is a picture of German passports. One brand-new, never having been used - my German passport, that I received when I reclaimed my German citizenship in Spring of 2023. I am a citizen of Germany and, as such, I have a passport. And the other… my grandparents’ German passports. Their passports are from 1939 when they left Germany, just before it was too late to leave. Thank God they did; if they hadn’t, I would not have been born; the family line would have ended with their generation and they would have, almost certainly, been deported to their deaths at Auschwitz just as their parents, my great-grandparents, were in 1940, because who could not get a visa to come to the United States. I openly admit that our choice to voluntarily seek citizenship of Germany was a fraught one, a controversial one, to want to be a legal part of the country from which my grandparents fled with only what they could carry on their backs. I can only hope that my grandparents would be happy with our choice and would understand the reasons for us doing so.
Last year, to remind you, I spoke about the process of getting our German citizenship and how moved we were when I told the German Consular official in New York City what a big deal this was for all of us. Her response stays with me until today. She stood up from behind her counter and said “Indeed, this is a very big deal. And this small gesture by the People of Germany - the Nation of Germany - today does not begin to make up for what happened to your family members. Still, we are so grateful that you have made this decision.”
Some not-so-small part of me wondered whether this was a show or, at best, an anomaly? Were these voiced words of Teshuva - repentance - by a consulate officer - a paid foreign service ambassador - in New York City truly representative of the whole of the German people? I was moved, of course. But, also, I was eager to see for myself the national project of Germany, repairing its past as a nation; to see whether this project was possible and successful and what I might experience with my own eyes. And when an invitation came from my parents to me and to Rebecca and our kids; and my sister Yael and her family to actually go to Germany, to visit the very towns from which my grandparents had escaped, we said yes, though with no small level of trepidation.
Our parents had actually been there before - twice, in fact. This trip was their third. And for those of us, for those of you, who grew up seeing numbers tattooed on neighbors’ arms, and for those of us who refrained from buying German goods - don’t ever think of buying a Mercedes, weren’t so many of us taught? - and for those of us whose parents fled Germany “just in time,” and for those of us whose grandparents were sent to their deaths because they couldn’t flee Germany before being sent to concentration camps, the idea of visiting Germany three times and taking children and grandchildren along is a psychological paradox. Yet, that’s what our parents did. My mother explains that it took her many years to have the courage to visit her parents’ homes in Germany and see the house from which her parents, my grandparents were abruptly uprooted.
She went to Germany for the first time in 2009, my mother told us, because she wanted to see the very basics, where her parents came from. She knew very little about the family. But thanks to an amazing bit of luck, she discovered on a distant family member’s genealogy chart that my grandmother's cousin, and her daughter still live in Germany. So, their plan, on their first visit, was to both see places - two villages, Binau with 1,400 residents and Winnweiller, with 4,000 and to meet these complete strangers who were also blood relatives. That trip of my parents in 2009 led to another, in 2013, where they returned to that small village of Binau. By “small village” I mean that we might have more residents living in these two square blocks of Queens than live in that entire, picturesque, sparkling-green mountain village, with a river running through it. Don’t we often imagine Germany in gray and black and white - both, literally, from the historical photos and movies that we have seen but also from the starkness of our communal memories of Germany?
Binau is anything but - it is a gorgeous village of tidy, well-kept homes and small parks. They don’t even have a full grocery store but a meat truck - like an ice cream truck, but with all of the varieties of wurst meats you can imagine - pulls up on Thursdays. The town boasts a ranking team of kids Tisch-tennis. You know what a tisch is, of course, from a wedding, a table! Tisch-Tennis? Table tennis; ping pong! It’s a stunning little town led today by the newly-elected Mayor Dominic, who turns 27 this year. It was our impression that he is going places… beginning his career in Binau.
When my mother visited in 2013, she received a different type of welcome. She came that year to place Stolpersteiners Memorial Plaques, in front of 12 RicheBucherstrasse, the house where my mother’s mother lived and from which her grandparents were taken from their home in October, 1940. There had been at the time seven - just seven - Jews in this whole town. The five other Jewish people still in Binau in addition to many other people from that area were taken and eventually murdered at Auschwitz. Putting in this memorial stone was not a straightforward process. It took four years to get the approval of the Mayor and town officials to erect the memorial. The woman who lives in the house, still, today - the woman who was born just after my grandmother left for America; who knew my great-grandparents before they were taken from that very house and sent to their deaths - she was allowed to decide if the memorial plaques could be placed on the sidewalk outside what is now her house. Thankfully, this woman made the right decision. The Mayor at the time was less than supportive but, to his credit, he attended the dedication with my parents.
Let’s fast forward to this past summer. We received an email from the present mayor, Dominik Kircher - we didn’t know at the time that he is 27 years old! - who wrote, "we look forward to your visit…[we] would like to accompany you on your visit to Binau. Mrs. Walter - the woman who lives in the QUOTE family home - is very excited about your visit and would like to welcome you." The greeting was like nothing we could have imagined. The Mayor, his girlfriend, the entire Town Council, all of the clergy in town, were arrayed in front of City Hall to greet us. We visited the immaculately maintained Jewish cemetery where, without much difficulty, we identified and then polished the graves of my great-great grandparents - remember, while my grandmother came to America and her parents died in the Shoah; my great-great-parents lived good and normal lives and died natural deaths in the village. We were able to make out my namesakes’ namesake - right there on the stone! We walked down to the building that used to be a synagogue. The mezuza spot, still noticeable on the door; it’s been eighty years since this was a Jewish space. The next time I go, I’ll bring a new mezuza with me!
And then, maybe, the most jaw dropping thing of all happened. Amongst the delegation greeting us were a husband-wife couple, co-pastors of the modest Lutheran church in town. They told us that they made a point of teaching their students and families about the Jewish community that used to live in the city which today has no Jews. They even taught them to sing in Hebrew. Really? I didn’t 100% believe them because I just could not imagine it. And, so, outside the home that my grandmother lived in before she came to New York City with the help of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the very same home from which my great-parents were taken directly to their deaths at Auschwitz in 1940, 84 years later, two Lutheran pastors sang the following - I’ll share the words first and then, sing the tune that they sang, that they teach, in two languages. The lyrics, mean, “We wish you all peace, we wish you all peace, we wish you all peace, we wish you all peace, peace, peace for the whole world. And then the two languages of this song that they teach to all of the children in their Lutheran Church:
Wir wünschen Frieden euch allen,
wir wünschen Frieden euch allen,
wir wünschen Friiiiiiiiiieeeeden euch allen,
wir wünschen Frieden, Frieden, Frieden auf der Welt.
And if that wasn’t a shock enough, they then switched to:
Heyvenu Shalom Aleichem,
Heyvenu Shalom Aleichem,
Heyvenu Shalom Aleichem,
Heyvenu Shalom Shalom Shalom Aleichem!”
Heyvenu Shalom Aleichem, they teach the German children in this town which has had zero - zero! - Jews since 1940, which didn’t agree to put up stumbling stone memorials until my mother, who is with us here this morning, insisted in 2013 that this was what was required for the community to do, as an act of Remembrance and Teshuvah! Now, they teach their Christian religious school students to sing Hevenu Shalom Aleichem in German and in Hebrew and so desperately want the children of this village to know the past in order to inform a very different future.
A note from the Mayor, in the aftermath of our visit, “It was a great honor for all of us to welcome you to Binau and to accompany your journey into your Jewish heritage. The time we spent together was meaningful for all of us and will remain in our memories.” One of the Christian clergy members went even further:
“On behalf of our preacher and our Vicar Tony Pacina and the whole Lutheran parish, I would like to thank you and your family for your visit and the possibility to meet you and to hear your family history which is so deeply connected with the small village Binau and the darkest chapter of German history. I was deeply impressed to meet people whose ancestors had to experience so much suffering. In great humility we were able to learn that you have no hatred towards our generation. You showed us that we don't have to feel guilty for what happened. And on the other hand, your visit teaches and reminds us that it is our responsibility and obligation that something like the Shoah never happens again.
He continues: “the fact that only two "Stolpersteine" have been laid in Binau and the people's [negative] reaction on the request to lay some more in front of their homes is a shame. Here we have a lot of work to do against forgetting and hiding behind walls. Maybe there will be more "Stolpersteine" on Binau's pedestrians in future. It is now on us "younger" people to remember and fight against ignorance and FOR remembrance and tolerance.
From my point of view, we have made the first steps together, when we, women and men with both, Jewish and Christian faith, stood around the "Gurs memorial" in front of the Jewish cemetery and prayed together. That really touched and sowed hope deep in my heart. Thank you for that experience!
Further we have to thank Mr. Tessmer, former member of the German Parliament, who fought against all odds, unimpressed… by all hostilities that he faced for the remembrance of Jewish live in Binau. I hope Mayor Kircher and the community council will follow his example. We, preacher Esther M. Fauss, Vicar Tony Pacina and the Lutheran parish council, will gladly accompany them on this path that may be long and windy, but, thanks to the Hammerman family, the first steps are made, and I am sure many will follow. Many thanks and God bless you all!”
I could end the story with that remarkable letter but I have not even told you about a similarly exceptional visit to the village of my maternal grandfather, Winwiller. Nor have I described in great detail that city’s history museum - again, a city with no Jews - that has rooms and rooms telling BOTH the history of the Shoah and also the general history of the Jewish people. The museum is lovingly run by the eighty-three year old Werner Rausch - not Jewish, of course - who knew our family name, Freiberg, as his mother was the QUOTE Shabbos Goy for the family. He prepared a detailed presentation about the Jewish history in the town and told us about how children and adults come each year to learn about the Jewish community. He also takes care of the Jewish cemetery and brought us to the grave of my great-great-grandfather which had been cleaned and restored since my mother’s first visit in 2009. Adults and schoolchildren from throughout the German state regularly visit this museum; the national project to repair its past as a nation is well underway and ongoing in this small village of Winwiller. That very week, eight student groups, perhaps, even, summer camp groups - who goes to that sort of museum during summer camp? Germans do, that’s whom! Our distant cousin Sylvia summed it up best; “History here is present. You can’t shake it off if you try.” “History here is present. You can’t shake it off if you try.” And I would say that the history is so very-well preserved for a combination of factors - first, German organization - though we like to joke about it, it’s no joke; second, guilt, and most importantly, I think, a responsibility to keep the history when no one else is there to do so.
These were small villages and what you see in small villages does not necessarily translate to the larger cities. But, I will mention our visit to the beautiful - truly, top-level Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. We also sat in the courtroom where the Nuremburg trials took place. As a reminder, in that room, from 1945 to 1946, N**i Germany leaders stood trial - a fair and open trial - for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes. Most were found guilty in this fair and legal proceeding. In Berlin, the Holocaust Memorial is just steps from the famous Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstaag, the German Parliament. And we were both grateful and, to no small degree, disappointed - but it’s nothing surprising - to see police at not just every synagogue but even outside every kosher restaurant; the government is providing this protection. My kids El Al flight from Germany to Israel - they went to volunteer in Israel for a week with the Jewish National Fund when we returned home - their flight they said was practically surrounded by security officers to make sure that nothing went wrong.
Rosh Hashanah, today and yesterday, has several nicknames - one of them is Yom Zicharon - The Day of Remembrance. The source of this nickname is the Book of Numbers where the Jews are commanded to sound a teruah with their trumpets so that we remember God and we will be remembered by God and and be saved from your enemies” Your theology may allow you to directly connect Godly instruction to the people we met in Germany, living in places that only represented the darkest times in Jewish history for me, until now. But, as we come soon to the end of the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and begin to prepare ourselves for Yom Kippur and the teshuva that we are supposed to request and offer our friends, this summer showed me that Teshuvah is possible. Of all places, in Germany, the land not just of my ancestors but a land that I am now proud to also call one of my homes, legally if not in actuality. I hope to return some day soon and I hope that, perhaps, we can go together.
Our second day of Rosh Hashanah Greeting “Shana Tova Tikateinu v’Techateimu, or, shortened, Gmar Tov: May we all be written AND sealed for good in the Book of Life. May we take the lessons of teshuva from, of all places, modern 2024 Germany, and may we work toward a whole world where we can greet not just our longtime friends, but also our former enemies with Wir wünschen Frieden euch allen,- Heyvenui Shalom Aleichem. If we bring peace to you and you bring peace to me, so may that very peace spread to the four corners of the earth, our planet that so desperately needs it, today and always. Amen.
L’shana Tovah Tikavenu V’Techateimu! May we be written and sealed for this good in this blessed Tav Shin Pey Hey - 5785.
Rabbi Eytan Hammerman
