Herr Zimmerman knocks tentatively on the door of my office in the library; he has come to ask a favor from me – to write a recommendation for a medical student who wants to apply for a scholarship to support her thesis on Jewish medicine in Germany in the middle ages. I agree to meet and discuss her work, and find a delightful sincere young woman who explains that there were several renowned medical practitioners, including some outstanding women, who wrote treatises which she wants to compare with modern medicine. After I am satisfied with the interview we become more personal, and I learn that she moved with her family ten years ago from Lithuania to a town in East Germany where she became involved in the Jewish community. I tell her she is the second (only) Jewish person I have met here, and ask whether she happens to know anything about the local community. She does. There was a split several years ago between the officially recognized community which is comprised of a few hundred people from the former Soviet Union who know little about practice and tradition, and a smaller group that is more versed and in which I would be more likely to find people who speak Hebrew or English. She finds their website, all in German, but it does not have any contact information, and she then mails me an e-address through which I learn of the location and time of Friday night services. I have one opportunity to attend before I return home.
The synagogue is in a street lined with blocks of flats on the edge of the town center in an old building which could do with a fresh coat of paint. There is no outward sign of this being the place, as opposed to Berlin where all Jewish buildings are cordoned off and guarded by police, although if one looks closely there is a security device high up on the wall. The entrance is through the back and up the stairs to the second floor, where twenty or thirty people of all ages are talking and mingling, waiting for the service to begin. The rabbi is a retired engineer, born in Hungary, who speaks fluent Hebrew, since he spent some years in Israel as a young man, and his welcome is warm and embracing. He was recently ordained and is soon to be appointed as the official rabbi of Hannover, which has the largest progressive community in Germany, and he comes to Goettingen once a month. He leads a traditional service with much beautiful singing and a drasha on the weekly portion, and it includes the opening of the ark – a simple wood cabinet with one torah scroll – because, he explains, there are no shabat morning services. At the end, there is a prayer for people, mentioned by name, who are ill, and afterwards there is a kiddush with food that people have brought, including two delicious home baked challot.
I feel at home, among my kind, and meet two Israelis, the first I have seen here, except for a colleague who came to a conference organized by the institute. One is a student, and one a post-doctoral scientist who is there with her husband, a small girl and a four week old baby boy, who is held by the gabai most of the time and whom the rabbi blesses. The husband is a protestant priest and they live in a small town where he is a pastor of one of the churches, but his baby was circumcised (by a traveling mohel) and he wears a kipa and takes part in all the goings on; and the rabbi shares occupational notes with him. I think, there is a future.
