Israel in Germany

The day she flew into Münster/Osnabrück and found herself on foot with two suitcases alone in Münster, she found how welcoming the Jewish community in Münsterland could be. They immediately took her in and helped her get settled. Coming to a strange land to study, so far from home, takes great courage. But this young woman is not short on courage. People wanted to know how her German language skills had been so finely-tuned so quickly, considering she grew-up a speaker of Hebrew. She believes that the upper level German language course she took at the Goethe Language Institute in Israel had something to do with it. Perhaps having a German-speaking Opa from Vienna helped as well. Last evening as the local Synagogue opened its doors for the curious among the Münsteraners, she was our guide and our source of information about Judaism. The session was a barrage of questions about every aspect of Jewish life in general to the specifics of how many of the Jewish community here actually can speak or read Hebrew. Reading Hebrew is one of the keys to being able to take the Torah down from its resting place and reading aloud to the congregants. The other factors include gender and age. You must be able to read Hebrew fluently, be male and at least 13 years of age. To pray properly in a synagogue you need to have a minyon which means ten males over 13 years of age who have been through bar mitzvah. Sometimes they have to place a call to get the ten there despite the fact that there are around 900 members in the community. Somewhere between 60 and 95% are east European, mostly Russian, from the former Soviet block. A reminder to wash your hands before participating in most synagogue activities is posted in Cyrillic above each sink. All three custodians are Russians who speak rather limited German if any. She explained to us that the congregation is officially conservative since liberal Jews can still pray in a conservative setting but conservative Jews could never participate in a liberal setting. She carefully described how the kitchen is kosher and how to get kosher meat you would have to order over the internet or send for it from Dortmund where the resident rabbi slaughters meat the kosher way as well as pursues his quest for scholarly knowledge. Women of course sit upstairs and they don't need to cover their heads or pray. They already have a good relationship with God is what she told us. She said the community is immensely important to her even though she is not terribly religious herself. She explained how a synagogue is much more than a house of prayer. They have no rabbi but they do have a choir and a song leader and a multitude of other active groups. The building was erected in 1971 but they need to expand because the community is growing. When asked about life in Israel she responded with a short story which is a common Jewish way to make a point. She said a survey was taken in which people were asked whose side they would take: the residents of the Gaza Strip or those in Israel. Respondents sided with the Gaza Strip inhabitants. One year later the same respondents were asked in a slightly different context if they would side with Israelis or the rest of the Middle-East and people sided with the Israelis. It seems people like to take the side of the underdog. It seems she is one of three members of the congregation who speak Hebrew. I was trying to put that together with the fact that one needs a minyon of 10 to pray and that one needs knowledge of Hebrew to read from the Torah. Perhaps being able to read aloud is different from being able to speak and function in the language.
We learned that if you honor the Sabbath as the conservatives do you cannot allow your soup to boil on that day but you can place it on a hot plate which maintains a constant temperature. She told us that this synagogue is not orthodox because if it were members would have to live within 200 meters of the building and that the high price of real estate simply wouldn't allow that. She passed around a piece of an already-spoiled Torah hand-written on soft leather and explained that the readers aren't allowed to touch the Hebrew letters with their fingers and must use a silver pointer instead in order to protect the integrity of the written letters. As we exited the synagogue we could see a green-striped police car keeping watch. I wondered if it is always there in the evening or only because of the open house event.

Head Grades

or as they are called here in the State of North Rhine Westphalia, "Kopfnoten" are appearing today on the report cards for the first time since the 1970's. These grades should evaluate the pupil's work habits and social behavior. They are broken down into six separate categories: readiness to achieve, reliability, carefulness, readiness to be responsible, conflict management, and cooperation skill. The re-introduction of these marks is the result of a new school law. The fact that there is controversy about this is somewhat surprising to me. The headlines and the quotes assert that these young people will be stigmatized for life by such marks on their record, that they won't be able to get a job and that prejudices will be cemented into place. I personally wanted to take the professor of pedagogy who does educational research to task. I would like to see him managing a group of insolent, attention-deficit 13-year-olds over the course of a year. I am wondering how sensitive he would remain to their fragile egos. Take the teacher's perspective. A few days before the grades are handed out, the teachers take an entire day to meet and discuss the pupils' grades. Since the pupils are organized into classes, roughly three per grade level, all the teachers for that class must meet. These meetings begin early in the morning with grade level 5 and go on throughout the day, ending with grade 12. Grade 13 had already received their grades. At-risk pupils who are in danger of having to repeat a grade as well as outstanding pupils are mentioned. Strategies for helping pupils are presented. Since the head grades are dealt with as a class, we have to vote on any aberration from the norm. The class teachers often have collected this information in advance, but sometimes individual pupils still needed to be discussed and voted upon. Since I am used to assigning citizenship grades myself for my pupils, this was all very strange to me. Since all of the grades assigned to a given pupil are on the table, nothing is secret. If a certain teacher appears to be a hard grader or an easy grader it is evident to everyone. What does this indicate about the teacher? You can see the advantages as well as the disadvantages of this structure. It would be hard for a child to fall through the cracks or "be left behind", as Bush is so fond of saying. It still really sticks in my gut that teachers should be afraid to label a student with anti-social behavior as anti-social. Why cover-up the truth? Perhaps parents don't want to know the truth about their children. From what I have observed the teachers here are very knowledgeable about pupils' personal and familial problems. It doesn't mean, however, that we can make those problems go away. It is tradition that the grades are handed out during period three and then the school day ends early so that the rush to go home doesn't coincide with rush hour. This is fine with me since on Fridays I don't teach until period four which gives me a day off. One of my grade 8 pupils tried to convince me that another tradition is to play games during the last class meeting before grades. I mostly just ignored him. It gives me a slight feeling of dread leading up to the last ten days of school which take place after grades have been handed in. Why would anyone even come to school? But I have been told that school will go on as usual.

New Years Concert

Much to my surprise there are several hundred Fulbrighters in Germany this year, but only six of them are exchange teachers like myself. Fulbright sent us the complete list and I discovered a young scholar and a school language assistant right here in Münster. From the scholar I learned that there is a German-American Society here and went to one of their events recently. If only I had known of them sooner, I could have enjoyed a full Thanksgiving Dinner. But that was simply not meant to be. So at the New Years Concert I had hoped to perhaps run into an American or two but instead found myself in a senior citizens residential center. The concert performers were pianists from the music conservatory who absolutely soared. The program went from Scarlatti to Siegfried Ochs. What profound beauty! What a privilege to get to sit in the front row on the left, right behind and to the side of the performers. Each of the musicians held me entranced in their own unique way. As the young Korean woman with red-tinted dark hair took us from Scarlatti to Haydn we were impressed by her modest demeanor. The Selbach twins, identical sisters with dark hair pulled back in a small bun, dressed in lacy black tops and dark slacks, played in absolute precision a four-handed Allegro by Schubert called "Life's Storms". It was many pages, in fact a whole book, long and they had to be assisted by a page-turner who turned out to be one of the later performers as well. The program was moving us next into the Romantic era with Brahms and Grieg, contemporaries who each reflected the spirit of their own national heritage. This young woman had an incredible amount of poise in spite of her light brown dreadlocks pulled back loosely to reveal a concentrated face. Then, since an American composer needed to be on the program, we were treated to two Gershwin Preludes followed by Shimkus' Parody Paraphrases of Mozart's Turkish Rondo. These were powerfully presented by the sole male performer. Finally we were treated to a re-appearance of the twins who once again, four-handedly stole the show. It was eleven humorous variations on a familiar German folk melody: "s' kommt ein Vogel geflogen" in the styles of various old masters: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Strauss, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Schumann, Verdi, Wagner and a Military March. This was so thoroughly entertaining that people just wouldn't stop clapping. All of this and no entrance fee. There was however a pink ceramic pig waiting for us on the table as we exited and we all knew that the money collected would go to support the activities of the German-American Society which takes care of visiting American students so people were generous. As I signed the guest book, noting who I was, I could see that the officers were interested in making contact. So as we remained behind sipping champagne there were people to meet and contacts to be made. I spoke with several people who had lived and/or studied in the U.S. and it was especially fun to find someone who had lived near Modesto and been involved with the Church of the Brethren. After all, how many Brethren are there in the world? I am amazed how many folks I have run into this year who in some way know about the Brethren. On day after school I was wearing my Manchester College pullover and discovered at the bike rack a student in grade 13 who said he knew about Manchester because he had spent a year in Indiana. Then there is the colleague at school who spent a whole week visiting friends in North Manchester, folks he had met at the U. in Marburg, where Manchester has a junior-year-abroad program. It was definitely an uplifting and joyful evening!

Sternsinger: Star Singers

Epiphany is not just a great idea in this part of the world but a day to celebrate the three kings of the Orient. Though it was January 5, one day early, I had seen a small band of costumed children out and about in the neighborhood, so I wasn't too surprised when the doorbell rang. Mind you, the doorbell might not have been for me since I live in a multiple-family dwelling. It could have been someone wanting to leave a package for someone else, or even a burglar, but as it was, it was children, children who wanted to sing to me. They came bounding up the many flights and out of breath and stood there in expectation. Well, since I had never welcomed Sternsänger at my home before I simply stood there and looked at them as well. I asked them what would happen and they beautifully and carefully explained the procedures. They would sing, I would put money in their tin for the poor children in Africa and sweets in their bag and they would write in chalk outside, above the front door the following inscription: "20 C + M + B 08". In true Münster style, it was raining cats and dogs and yet they didn't seemed the least disturbed. They were ready to explain what it all meant including the names of the three kings which I can no longer remember but I am sure if you think long enough about the C, M and B you can come up with at least one. They said that if you really think hard about it you could come up with the phrase in Latin which means: "God, bless this house!" using the same letters. I was so relieved, at last I had found a place for that huge chocolate Santa which had been given to me a couple of weeks previously and had caused me no end of grief since I just couldn't consume it, nor could I toss it. Which of the many disposal bins would accept a foil covered Father Christmas?? I love chocolate, I love eating chocolate, yet how much chocolate can one personally consume? But of course just looking at chocolate can be rewarding as well.
So I asked the children for a photo op and told them their images would go to America. A far cry from Halloween!