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Author Tenenbom in Jerusalem: "It's that simple"
Photo: private
At the beginning of September, the »FAZ« published a contribution by the Berlin writer Mirna Funk. In it, Funk accused the publicist Max Czollek of deception: She wrote, in essence, that Czollek appeared as a representative of an emphatically left-wing Jewish religion, but concealed the fact that, according to the traditional rules, he was actually not a Jew at all. The writer Maxim Biller had previously attacked Czollek. Josef Schuster, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews, was also critical of Czollek.
The debate that has developed from it stands in the area of tension of the Jewish tradition, the so-called Halacha. According to her, only the person who has a Jewish mother is Jewish. Are these rules still up to date? The discussion is also overshadowed by German history: the Nuremberg Laws of the National Socialists once released any person who had even a Jewish grandfather for persecution. And then there is the notorious word attributed to Hermann Göring:
"
I decide who is Jewish
"
.
Tuvia Tenenbom, New York-based bestselling author, is now writing here with books such as
"
Alone Among Germans
"
and
"
Alone Among Jews
",
in which he dealt intensively with questions of identity and ongoing German anti-Semitism. Tenenbom is currently in the Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim, where he is working on a new book.
“Who is a Jew?” Is one of the most explosive questions in Israeli politics, but in truth it was decided ages ago, read in the biblical book of Ruth, our first convert: “Where you go, I go too, and where you stay, I will stay there too. Your people are my people and your God is my God. Wherever you die, there I die too, there I want to be buried. ”In other words: It is about identifying with the Jewish people, their beliefs and customs, and about publicly acknowledging them: I am a Jew, yours People are my people, we belong together. As simple as that.
In Germany I often meet Germans who tell me that they are Jews or that they feel like Jews, but on closer inspection they do not identify in any way with the Jewish people, but only with a certain form of modern Judaism with which they identify Love for the Palestinians connects.
These Germans are more Palestinian than Jews - but in truth they are neither one nor the other.
Germans who love teaching Jews on a wide variety of matters, often in a derogatory way, are by no means the grandchildren of Jews, but the grandchildren of those who hate Jews.
Just because you agree on certain issues regarding, say, gay or transgender rights, you are far from being a Jew.
Germans who urgently needed their medication
Confession to Judaism is not about solving the psychological problems that some Germans - I beg your forbearance - have with their SS grandparents. And regardless of whether you convert to Reform Judaism or to the Orthodox, that is a legal process in itself and has little to do with identity. I know a number of Germans who converted to Judaism - and that among the ultra-orthodox Haredim - and still believe in Jesus. They are Jews by law, but in the eyes of many Jews, including myself, they are psychotic Germans in dire need of their medication.
All of this has a lot to do with German history, but when one of those who, for whatever reason, have decided in favor of Judaism in Germany, encounters a "real" Jew, they often feel more sick and not so much after shared identity.
more on the subject
Best-selling author Tenenbom on a trip to Germany: God says: "Fuck you" by Sebastian Hammelehle
Attack in Halle: The storm we warned you about by Max Czollek
Writer Maxim Biller turns 60: "I would probably even have flown out of the concentration camp" A SPIEGEL conversation by Lothar Gorris
For example, I am not religious.
But when I walk the streets of Mea Shearim, a neighborhood whose customs and behavior I do not share, I still feel all these people there as part of my family, as my brothers and sisters.
Shared identity, shared past and future, and most importantly, shared fate is what makes you a Jew.
Henryk M. Broder, regardless of whether I reject his political views, is a German Jew.
Maxim Biller, even if I agree with his political stance, is a German German.
Broder would die for his people.
Biller doesn't.
And the rest of all these Germans who are Jews according to the Nazi definition, regardless of whether it comes from Göring or Himmler, belong more to the NPD than to any assembly of Jews.
