Belting Jewish Prayers in German Nightclubs

Months later, when people ask me to briefly describe my experiences in Berlin, I tell them I felt Jewish during the day and queer at night.

This is a three-part column by Jenna Zucker that explores Jewish identity and queer identity while they travel in Berlin.

*

The week after trying on my new binder for the first time, I attend Shabbat services at what I am told is the only egalitarian synagogue in Berlin, a synagogue where men and women sit together. I can’t find the entrance to the synagogue, and I hesitantly ask the police in front how to get inside. I’m Jewish, I promise, I say.

I find a seat next to another young person with a haircut nearly matching my own. We are both wearing button-up shirts and pants. I introduce myself and ask if she comes here often.

The chanting begins.

“I wish we could talk more,” she says. “But here’s my number; let’s stay in touch.”

There are two men on one side of the room and women on the side I am sitting on. The synagogue is sparse and small. A hetero couple walks in and sits together on the side with many women. The man gets up and self-segregates to the left. Another hetero couple walks in. They sit together, and then the man leaves for the left side too. So much for egalitarianism.

*

I am trying to stay on track while watching my Google Maps bubble move toward Tiergarten, a park and beer garden, on Saturday morning. My mom is on the phone while I ride the double-decker bus.

“Is that German?” she says as the automated voice announces each stop. “It’s so weird to hear it from here.”

It’s strange to hear it from my seat too.

My grandmother was lost in a German forest after being freed from the German camp Allendorf. My maps dot is moving freely through a German city, and I am sitting in the front row of the upper deck: a prime viewing spot.

I describe my favorite Vietnamese restaurants to my mom as she updates me about her book clubs and work in New Jersey. Her voice fades as I walk through the crowds of blond German parents and children gathered near the park entrance holding lawn chairs, towels, and ice pops.

*

Hashkiveinu Adonai Eloheinu l’shalom v’ha’amideinu malkeinu l’khayim!

Jewish prayers and songs have been stuck in Ilana’s and my heads as we walk the streets and over the gold stumbling stones that weave reminders of the past throughout the city. You could walk through the city as if they were never there. People accidentally step on them running to catch the U-Bahn.

My maps dot is moving freely through a German city. 

Ilana’s and my faces poke out of layers of hats, gloves, and scarves, and our voices wind down the street corners and bounce against pre- and postwar buildings. My feet press into the ground from my queer Jewish body. A body the Nazis hoped they could prevent from existing.

I find the gold stones in unexpected places, haunting the city. Unlike many memorials that solely focus on death, these stones capture the prewar lives and contributions of victims that the Nazis tried to erase. They remind me of my grandmother’s life before the war. She describes herself as a quiet girl who loved mathematics and was close to her mother. Close like this, she said while crossing her fingers. My closeness with my grandmother continues this deep connection to our matrilineage, despite all my family has lost.

*

On Rosh Hashanah, after a weird service that was advertised as “young and hip!” but filled with people over the age of sixty, I find young people at a dinner organized by a new Jewish organization working to embrace Jewish communities in Berlin. I feel self-conscious about wearing my collared shirt and pants for the first time during the High Holidays. I’ve always worn flowery dresses and flowy shirts with leggings to my Aunt Linda’s house for Rosh Hashanah.

For dinner, I arrive at the home of recent graduates from where I go to college. I recognize one of them from my early days around Hillel. Fellow young strangers gather around the table, and we exchange names. As the dinner goes on, there are conversations popping up about Jewish experiences, institutions, and what it is like to be young Jews in Germany, especially as some of us are Holocaust descendants.

We are from a mix of countries including Germany and the United States. We share stories over apples, honey, and wine, with a few entrées in between. We go around the table, sharing our Jewish experiences and hopes for the New Year. I write down their contact information to keep in touch, and a few days later I text the group that I was invited to a queer Jewish drag show on Facebook. Many of them are interested in joining.

We share stories over apples, honey, and wine, with a few entrées in between.

*

There is a shooting at a synagogue in Halle, Germany, a city outside of Berlin, on Yom Kippur. Another Shabbat is approaching. I want to be present in a synagogue. But I am losing steam: Queer Jews are yet to be found. I imagine Jewish communities are gathering in mourning somewhere, but I am not well connected. I get an email from someone on the board of the Jewish study-abroad organization I have been in touch with who offers to meet, but our times conflict. I avoid Shabbat services in my shocked state.

Instead I spend the weekend at the spa with my program, floating in music pools and swirling in the mini lazy river. Helena, our program director, explains to us how low-cost spas and saunas are affordable in Germany for working-class people. Doctors are able to tell patients dealing with stress to go to the spas as a form of relaxation that is accessible to many. Maybe this is how the German Jews process their intergenerational trauma.

My friends and I strip out of our sports bras and shorts in the sauna, jumping from room to room in towels. We run under the cool showers. We jump to another sauna. Many of us feel frustrated about our breasts, but at this moment we lower our towels and embrace their presence. After years of half-hearted makeup, underwire bras, and flowy skirts, I shed it all. Sweat drips down our faces. Our bodies are out in the open.

*

“Od yavod shalom aleinu . . .” A drag performer strums on his guitar. “Od yavod shalom aleinu . . . SALAM!” The audience jumps up and down. “SALAM!” I grab a drink. I am beaming with joy. My eyes are watering with joy.

After years of half-hearted makeup, underwire bras, and flowy skirts, I shed it all. 

The drag show is called Jews! Jews! Jews! Another drag performer is pouring honey down her back and biting into an apple to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. I am giggling, my body bumping next to the young Jewish people I met at Rosh Hashanah dinner. The MC shares how Jewish drag connects her to her Judaism in a way that she cannot find in a synagogue or conventional Jewish practice.

Months later, when people ask me to briefly describe my experiences in Berlin, I tell them I felt Jewish during the day and queer at night.

But tonight, colorful lights and alternative outfits fill the room. Radical Jewish queerness is being embraced. It is nighttime, and I am both Jewish and queer. I am cackling to the jokes about bubbes and atonement for Yom Kippur, and queer Jews are kissing and rejoicing. Some of my study-abroad friends, a few secular Jews, understand the jokes and laugh and dance with me.

I never want to leave the version of Berlin that is created in this room, in all its reclamation, complexity, and pride. I am jumping up and down, and out of the gender binary. I am belting Jewish prayers in the club. This is perhaps not what my rabbi may have imagined for my Jewish future at my bat mitzvah, but I am praying in protest: Had it not been for many miracles, strength, pain, and sources of luck, I would not exist. We would not exist. I’m a Jew! Jew! Jew!