It’s now Sunday morning, and I have boarded the train
from Bielefeld to Berlin after spending Shabbat in Bielefeld.
It was a great opportunity to experience Shabbat with a
smaller, outlying community, and I’m glad that the shidduch was made by Rabbi Ederberg.
My primary hosts were Irith Michelsohn and Yuval
Adam. Irith is (I believe) the
President of the Jewish Community of Germany.
Yuval is a professional singer (counter-tenor) who often leads services
in Bielefeld and other small Jewish communities around the region.
Irith Michelsohn and Yuval Adam
The congregation is almost entirely made up of Jews who
have emigrated from the FSU (Former Soviet Union).
It was a Shabbat of intersecting circles, and I tried to
draw those circles for people with the music I chose and the way that I
introduced or explained it.
The synagogue is lovely – VERY lively acoustically,
having been converted some years ago from being a Protestant church. Once upon a time (before the war), Bielefeld
had one very large synagogue. The
organizing principle—to this day—in Germany is to have one “unified” Jewish
community. This is because support for
the synagogues comes directly from the government. When people are identified as Jews, 9% of
their income tax goes to the Jewish community.
I think that it’s fair to say that there is a lot of competition for
this money between Progressive (Reform), Masorti and “traditional” Jewish
groups. It creates a certain challenge
for those trying to build the Jewish community and its institutions, because
people don’t have any sense of obligation to support synagogues.
Bielefeld Synagogue
It is a challenge for whoever acquires the resources to
organize a community. The Jews from the
FSU have very little, if any, Jewish background. Distinction between Reform, Conservative and
Orthodox doesn’t have much meaning for them.
They’ve got enough to cope with trying to adjust to life in a new
country.
Our services on both Friday night and Shabbat morning
were followed by light but delicious meals.
The Friday night attendance was probably negatively impacted by the fact
that Germany was playing Greece in a European Cup (soccer) quarterfinal at 8
p.m.! Which was doubly unfortunate,
timing-wise, as this Shabbat was the last visit by rabbinical student Ulrike Offenberg. Seems like she deserved a better Shabbat of
appreciation!
Ulrike Offenberg
Back to that idea about the intersecting circles. . .
Here I was in a synagogue that rang with the melodies of Lewandowski—the source
of many of our best-known Jewish melodies—melodies that began more often than
not as beautiful choral compositions written for and performed at the
Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue in Berlin, where I’ll be “soon enough.” But the people who have lately learned these
melodies in the Bielefeld synagogue aren’t the direct inheritors of those
melodies. Had they been able to practice
Jewish religious life in “the old country,” they probably would NOT have been
exposed to or sung the Lewandowski melodies, as the most Eastern European
synagogue traditions had different practices or melodies by different
composers.
On Shabbat afternoon, when I returned to my hotel, I
started looking over some of the music that I’ll be singing during the coming
week. I am singing some choral pieces in
a special program in Hannover on Wednesday, and have a solo in a Jewish choral work by
Schubert(!) as well as a challenging solo work to refine. Naturally, I got sleepy after a little while,
so I lay down and had a nice Shabbes nap.
After that, I went for a walk around the area of the hotel. It is situated in the Old Town area with lots
of shops, cafes, etc. I knew that there
was a music recital at 6:15 p.m. in the big church, and figured that I could
attend that.
I sat on a bench for about an hour, absorbing the scene,
with people of all ages walking and wheeling their bicycles. (Two things that are a bit different here
from how I perceive back home: a lot more bicycle use, and people take their
dogs out on trips – whether to the Old Town or on the train.)
Then I went off to the recital. I had misread the sign. I had THOUGHT it was an organ recital. (I LOVE good organ music played well.) But it turned out to be a combination brass
ensemble and organ recital. Imagine my
surprise when I noticed that, toward the end of the program (CIRCLE ALERT) came
a piece by Louis Lewandowski! Psalm
100. Consider THAT circle. Here I was in a CHURCH in Bielefeld, and the
music of this great Jewish composer was on the program! Truth be told, I didn’t know the
piece—probably wouldn’t have recognized it as Lewandowski. So maybe if I HADN’T known, it wouldn’t have
been one of my favorite pieces on the program. . . but it struck me as more
modern and harmonically interesting than most of the other music. (The program had a LOT of stuff from about
1650 to 1850.)
It was interesting trying to imagine how the text fit the
words—as I imagine it was originally written for choir. It ended in a fugue, which I assume was on
the words Ki Tov Adonai L’Olam Chasdo,
V’ad Dor Vador Emunato. (For God is
good forever in His graciousness. And to
the Nth generation is He faithful.)
I wondered whether anyone in the church knew who Louis
Lewandowski was. (He WAS a cousin of
Felix Mendelssohn, by the way.) I’m
guessing that the director of the musical ensemble did.
Toward the end of Shabbat morning services, I introduced
my setting for Yism’chu, after first having determined that they are familiar
with, and sometimes sing, the melody
which is most common in our (and many) congregations—a melody that often sounds
sad, sullen, funereal—depends on who is leading it; I try to give it a certain
lightness appropriate to the text—Yism’chu
b’malchutcha—REJOICE in God’s sovereignty.
I realized after singing my melody, which is in 6/8 and would be quite
difficult to sing in a way that doesn’t indicate a bright-side emotion, that I
had written it originally for a “guest appearance” at the synagogue at Hebrew
Union College in Jerusalem—which was essentially the same institution that
created the Siddur that we were using.
(There were two editions of the Israeli Reform Siddur at the
synagogue—one with German translation, but most with Russian translation.) AND the person who hosted me when I wrote the
piece, Eli Schleifer, now teaches at the Geiger College in Berlin. Circles, circles, more circles.
I gave the synagogue a copy of our Tifereth Israel
100-year history, pointing out that, although we started out as the Hungarian
congregation in Columbus, some of our key families came from an area that is
part of Germany. (I hope I was right
about this—I was thinking of the Wasserstrom family.) I also gave them one of the CDs from the Spirit
Series of the Cantors Assembly USCJ.
They gave ME some lovely post cards of the congregation (better than the
photos I took before Shabbat, I think) and a “taste of Bielefeld” collection of
handmade chocolates (yay).
