And then the Shanghai Jew embraced me and wept for his life
It was just another sermon on a Friday night at my beloved congregation of elders here in Southern California—though I regard every opportunity to preach and teach as an honor and a privilege. Who should ever presume the license to stand before people who have to come pray and remember their dead, and then actually start talking about something that he or she thinks is important?!
But it was still Germany helping the fledgling Jewish state and it was the government policy of what is today Europe’s leading economy.
My theme was the remarkable and death-defying Jewish community in Germany. Did they know that the German Minister for Family Affairs had just visited a new Jewish school in Berlin, mingled with the students, honored the rabbi, and publicly acclaimed the resurgence of Jewish life in the former Reich state that only 70 years ago was exterminating the Jews of Europe?
Did they know that the fastest-growing Jewish community, per capita, on this earth is in Germany? Did they understand that more Israelis emigrating from Israel now arrive in Germany than any other nation—more than the United States?
Did they realize that when my father of my boyhood friend in the Israeli village of Kfar-Saba finally saved enough money to lease his own taxi cab, that the vehicle—like virtually all Israeli cabs—was a Mercedes-Benz? Yes: Yossi Kluner’s dad Isaac, who had brought his Russian family to the renewed Jewish homeland in the 1950s, was achieving his dream because Israel’s foremost trading partner in those early days was West Germany.
Yes, it was partially the result of guilt and reparations and treaty agreements that were signed in the foul smoke of the liberated death camps. But it was still Germany helping the fledgling Jewish state and it was the government policy of what is today Europe’s leading economy, most progressive social democracy, and the nation that has taken a harder look at the Holocaust it wrought than, say, its genocidal partners in France, Poland, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.
Germany is no utopia of contrition and it has its share of neo-Nazis—just like the United States, Britain, Italy, and Spain have their share of fascists, skinheads, and more polite and well-groomed racists. But Berlin is one of the most welcoming and happening and cosmopolitan city centers on the Continent and Germany rivals Canada and Australia in aligning with the United States in favor of Israel’s security, scientific and medical attainment, and its democratic foundation.
After the service last night, a kindly gentleman, in his 80s and robust, approached me. “Rabbi, I’m a Holocaust survivor.” He was born in Poland, where the golden Jewish civilization of arts and theology was decimated by the Nazis—with 3,000,000 Jewish victims. I hadn’t known this about this lovely man with pale, sweet eyes. “Yes, I was in Shanghai,” he said, in one grateful breath evoking one of the few miracles of that unspeakable era. The Japanese Vice-Consul in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, had personally taken pains to save some 20,000 Jews and ensconce them in the famed, decidedly coarse, “Shanghai Ghetto.” (Sugihara was enshrined as ‘A Righteous Among the Nations’ by the government of Israel).
“My God,” I exclaimed to the gentleman. “And here we are talking about it in California in 2012. How good is my portion!"
The old man’s eyes filled with tears. Without another word, he leaned over and embraced me with a hug that felt like life and that I still feel this morning. And all the while, we had been talking about Germany.