Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 22:11:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Richard Isaac
To: GAYJEWS List
Subject: Report from the East
Hello and Shana Tova to all,
I'm recently back from my trip to Eastern Europe with my friend Julie, who
is also Jewish but not gay, and I thought I'd share some of my experiences
for those who might be interested.
On our first day in BERLIN, we went to the Jewish community center
(Fasanenstrasse off the Ku'damm) where we had lunch, and looked at their
displays of Jewish ritual objects in the lobby and their quite extensive
library. There was also a Jewish bakery and quite a good bookstore not
far away (Joachimstalerstrasse). Security was very tight at all Jewish
locations, with policemen stationed outside and metal detectors inside
most places.
PICTURE: At the Jewish Community Center
I went to services at a Reform congregation on Pestalozzistrasse, one of
five functioning synagogues, all "Reform" or Orthodox (though ostensibly
Reform, women sat separately on the sides or balconies) in a lovely
synagogue restored since its destruction in Kristallnacht. (I was allowed
to keep my Swiss army knife at Shabbat services since I spent 10 minutes
talking to the security guy in Hebrew, and besides they couldn't find a
bag to put it in.)
I saw a few other synagogues in Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg
(Rykestrasse) from the outside, and visited the Jewish Museum in the Neue
Synagoge. It was saved from destruction by a German officer on
Kristallnacht (he is profiled in the museum), but eventually fell into
disrepair and was partially razed in the late 1950s. Recently it has been
renovated and the striking gilding on the cupola can be seen far and wide.
There are several Jewish restaurants (Oren and Beth Cafe) nearby as well
as the new Jewish cemetery, which is empty of gravestones (except for
Moses Mendelsohn's) and is simply a park now, with a few memorials to the
Holocaust on the edge. Though it was a lovely sunny day, one odd thing
did happen while I was standing by Mendelsohn's grave: a sudden gust of
wind brought a number of heavy tree branches crashing down not a yard from
my feet. Quite a shock!
The old Jewish cemetery in Prenzlauer Berg was really quite fascinating
and sad: it was quite large, very lush with a heavy tree-cover; thousands
of graves I would guess, some of them quite lovely and dating from the
1700s, but a very large fraction of them were toppled over or broken,
vandalized by the Nazis and only now a little bit of restoration is
occurring. I spent a good long time walking through the place. There was
a group of German teens taking a tour through it, and I had a very long
chat in Hebrew with the guard, an immigrant from Baku (Azerbaijan) by way
of Israel. One thing I remember is how he commented about how he wished
he could wear a Magen David as freely as I did. We did not really
encounter any antisemitism though.
I don't think I need to mention gay life in Berlin, which is quite robust,
except maybe for rainbow flags I saw in apartment windows in Prenzlauer
Berg, which surprised me in this working-class East Berlin neighborhood,
and the Israeli I talked to for an hour in Hebrew while standing in a
crowd outside one bar. The Magen David came through again! (not what
you're thinking) Unfortunately, I did not manage to call Yachad Berlin,
the gay Jewish group there, which I regret (same for Keserge in Budapest).
On to PRAGUE, which was just an exquisite city. The Jewish Quarter
was quite lovely, and unlike Krakow, seemed to be lively, well-preserved
and well-promoted. There are several functioning synagogues, and the
Alt-Neu Shul (late 1200s) is encased in scaffolding, undergoing renovation
but we could go in and see its interior and the historic banner of the
Prague Jews. The clock on the High Synagogue/Jewish Town Hall has Hebrew
letters and runs counterclockwise. The Klausova Synagogue housed a
terrific museum of beautiful and ornate ritual objects used throughout the
Jewish calendar, as does the Maiselova. The Pinkasova is a fascinating
and touching tribute to the Bohemian and Moravian victims of the
Holocaust: all 70,000 names are inscribed on the walls inside the
synagogue, covering nearly every empty space, upstairs and downstairs.
Other than a few objects, the synagogue is otherwise empty. It lies next
to the cemetery, which dates from the 1400s to 1787, and the tens of
thousands of graves, some of them quite fascinating, are in some places
several layers deep. We also saw the Moorish Spanish Synagogue, but it is
not yet open to the public. There is Judaica for sale in several gift
shops in the area and some store signs are even in Hebrew. The area was
very well trafficked, and closed on Shabbatot (unlike Krakow).
We attended very informal Reform services (Bejt Praha) in the Jewish Town
Hall (2 Reform and 2 Orthodox services were listed in the Prague Post),
where a few Czech women (self-described mischlings) and about 10 North
Americans sat in the slowly darkening room and said the prayers and sang
lots of songs. It was a pleasure to teach the group a few new tunes for
songs in the songbook they had but they didn't know. My friend Julie and
I were invited to join Czechs Kamila and Anna and 2 North Americans for
dinner and drinks at a cafe nearby, where we spent a really wonderful
evening talking and laughing and drinking becherovka (www.becherovka.com).
PICTURE:
Drinking becherovka with new friends made at Shabbat services,
Prague
The Canadian woman that night turned out to be the sister of a student I
know at the school I work at (small world!) and a lesbian to boot, so we
adjourned late in the evening to go see a drag show nearby at U Str^elce.
What a hoot -- it was nearly all in Czech (a Tina Turner and Cher lip-synch
notwithstanding), and very crowded. The crowd was very mixed (lots of
women, some of whom my friend said were "girlfriends," i.e. "beards" of
the gay men they accompanied) and really got into it. As usual, it was in
a cellar tavern, where your drinks are marked down on a slip of paper and
you pay on your way out. We also got together another night and had a
great time with her British gay friend and his visitor (and Julie) at
Stella's, a cozy cellar bar with comfy chairs. I also visited U Dubu
(above-ground!) which was unremarkable except for the 45 cent beers, and I
chatted with a Finnish diplomat.
Julie and I took a day trip to TEREZIN (the camp the Nazis used as
a showplace for the Red Cross), which was an odd experience, since the
town itself served as the camp (a prison fortress lies a short walk away),
but now has a good museum featuring children's art, and even a Jewish
restaurant (don't be fooled by the "chicken *ham*" on the menu). The
town, however, laid out on a grid, did not recover most of its expelled
original residents and was eerily deserted. Block numbers are still
barely visible on the corners of some of the town's buildings. The
fortress prison lies next to a national cemetery, which sports a huge
cross and a huge Magen David amongst the graves (as if Christians were
equally targeted with Jews). We passed much of the day with a couple from
Montana, and had a great time (in retrospect) trying to figure out the bus
schedule back to Prague and schmoozing on the bus once it finally came,
standing all the way...
The only discordant note on Prague was a late-night conversation Julie had
on the tram with a Czech man who asked her if she had read any Czech
writers. Only Kafka and Kundera, she answered. Oh, Kafka wrote as a Jew,
not a Czech, he answered.
Hm.
KRAKOW was very odd; it seemed to me a pale shadow compared to
Prague. Before the war, fully one-third of Krakow was Jewish but now there
are just two functioning synagogues (Remuh and the Templum). The Jewish
quarter (Kazimierz) was not promoted as a tourist site, and the streets
were relatively lifeless and nearly devoid of Jewish content: There are 5
Jewish cafes and restaurants in a small area (two named Ariel!) and
several of them are supposed to offer nightly klezmer music. But we could
only find one that did, and moreover the musicians were not Jewish (this I
found out from the half-Jewish Swiss woman who was the vocalist)... The
Austeria, where we ate dinner, served my meat dish with a cream sauce...
The bookstore owner invited me back to buy a shirt I was considering on
Saturday when he assured me they would be open... The Isaac Synagogue
(undergoing renovation and featuring some lovely Hebrew inscriptions on
the walls) was empty but for 3 or 4 lifesize cardboard photographs of old
Hasids, as if visitors needed to be reminded of what Jews looked like...
We attended Orthodox services at the Templum (which alternates with the
Remuh in offering services), where there were locals over 60 and younger
tourists. The locals (at least the ones in front of me) seemed quite
uninterested in the services and talked the whole time, but for a few
minutes during the silent prayer when the cantor turned slightly in their
direction... well, I won't go on complaining.
On the other hand, it was a great pleasure to spend most of our time in
Krakow with a woman from Australia and a fellow from New York we met on
the train. We hung out for the better part of 3 days, sightseeing
(Auschwitz/Wieliczka/Jewish Quarter) and discovering Krakow
(nightlife/restaurants). Funny how easily friendships are made on the
road...
PICTURE: Dinner
with Karen and Chris in the Jewish Quarter of Krakow
The cantor, Stein, had earlier given us a nice tour of the Remuh Synagogue
and the cemetery next door and chatted with us after services. While we
had another conversation with a Swiss couple in Hebrew, a busload of
Israeli teens arrived with military precision (guards on walkie-talkies
and all) for a special service. I also found time to follow the short
book "In the Footsteps of Schindler's List" and see the ghetto wall
remnant in Podgorze and Schindler's factory, still operating and now
making electronics (another busload of Israelis arrived at that moment).
In several locations, we saw grafitti with the Polish word for Jew in it
and a few swastikas and Maganei David. On the other hand, there is quite
an interesting Jewish museum in the Old Synagogue, and one of the cafes
was in fact closed for Erev Shabbat. All in all, it was a bit depressing
to see the state of Jewish life in Krakow, part of which was sustained by
non-Jews, or in a surprisingly un-Jewish sort of way.
AUSCHWITZ was quite an experience, very hard to describe (not to
mention how odd it was to see it promoted on tourist office windows on a
par with tours of the city and the nearby salt mines Shall we see the
death camp today, dear?). It was a beautiful day, pop music playing on
the bus to this very ordinary Polish town (right away it was hard to
comprehend that we were on a bus to Hell on Earth), tour groups passing
under the Arbeit Macht Frei gate, along the tree-lined avenues and
well-kept buildings and barracks of the Auschwitz I camp, yet passing the
collection of Zyklon B cannisters, the mountains of hair and shoes and
artificial limbs and eyeglasses, the gallows and torture cells and
assembly areas and walking into the gas chambers was almost surreal. I
found it impossible to step into the "standing cell" (enough room just to
stand) where some prisoners were punished though Julie did. Birkenau was
immense and mostly in ruins in contrast to Auschwitz; we spent quite a
long time walking along the train tracks, through the few remaining
barracks, around the ruins of the crematoria, through the high grass and
past the rows and rows of barbed wire. It was very powerful to be in this
place which represents the depths of human depravity, but at the same time
it was just simply not the same place of the imagination, no barking dogs
and screams and smells -- of course, and thank goodness. Does this make
sense? Words fail.
As for gay life in Krakow, I found zip. Went to the one address I had for
a bar there and there was no sign of any life at all, day or night. Bust.
Julie stayed in southern Poland to hike while I went on to PECS
(pronounced "paytch"), in southern Hungary for some warmer weather. It's
a lovely town, chock full of museums, churches and mosques, but it and
also had a beautiful synagogue. The old man at the door invited me in
although it was after the posted hours of operation (why should I have
believed the sign, I should have known better by then). He sold me a
terrific and very detailed English guide of the grand place and we talked a
little about the upcoming holidays. The Jewish community cannot of course
fill the synagogue, so outside of the High Holidays, they meet down the
street in a much smaller place.
Finally, BUDAPEST. Like Prague, there are about 10 gay locations,
plus the cruising ground along the Danube Korzo (river promenade). Went
to five of them (only two of them in cellars!), including two drag shows
(at one of which I met a terrific Kiwi lesbian couple, at another two
terrifically friendly Hungarian straight women plunked down to share our
table and talk for hours in perfect English), both of which were just as
popular and crowded as in Prague and also used some men-as-men sidekicks
for added humor, but used more American songs and were highly
choreographed. A couple places were unremarkable, but one struck me since
it was the gayest thing I had seen since Berlin: rainbow flags and Tom of
Finland on the walls, Streisand on the speakers. I couldn't help but
smile.
Not that this was the end of gay life there. Budapest is famous for its
Turkish and thermal baths. I went to five of those, too, some of which
were distinctly gay. I'm sure no details are necessary but don't jump to
too many conclusions either.
PICTURE:
Overlooking the Blue Danube, Budapest
We took an interesting van and walking tour of Jewish sites in the city,
and saw some of the 26 functioning synagogues Budapest has. While 600,000
Jews died in the Holocaust there, some 100,000 Jews still live in Hungary,
the vast majority in the capital. There was a medieval Jewish chapel in
the Castle District (Tanacsics ul.), a "hidden" synagogue (Frankel Leo)
which was off the street, smack in the middle of an apartment complex
courtyard (something to do with the prohibition on Jews owning land), the
Raoul Wallenberg memorial in a far-away neighborhood, and of course, the
"traditional" Jewish quarter, which is not so much home to many Jews any
more as it is to a number of synagogues (two of them in Moorish style), a
very interesting Jewish museum containing a really fascinating modern art
exhibit upstairs (including a few distinctly homoerotic pieces), several
Judaica stores, and the Jewish community's complex. Again, as in Berlin,
police presence was very noticeable and security very tight at Jewish
locations. We had two prix-fixe lunches in District VII, the Jewish area,
which were some of the best meals I had: one at a kosher kitchen (Hannah),
the other at the Carmel Pince, which was "Jewish-but-not-kosher," since
you could substitute the pork for the veal! We also ran into two local
women, one working at the opera and another at a train ticket
counter, wearing Jewish symbols on necklaces and wished them Shana Tova...
Speaking of which, we had the pleasure of ending our trip by attending
Rosh Hashana services at the Dohany Synagogue, which is the largest in
Europe (and 2nd in the world only to Temple Emanuel in NY). It holds 3000
people and was full to capacity. The building, which was used to house
7000 people during the Nazi occupation, has been recently restored to its
original splendor. While the congregation is "Neolog" (a Hungarian
variation on Reform), women are still separated and due to the crowd, were
asked to take their seats upstairs. (Tickets, by the way, cost $6.00 for
me and $4.00 for Julie.) Again, there was a dull roar throughout the
services as conversations proceeded throughout the service (which
surprisingly was over in less than an hour), especially among the many
hundreds standing in the back and outside. Afterwards, many hundreds
milled about in the streets under the floodlights and the gilded towers of
the synagogue.
So that's it, at least for the Jewish and gay parts of my trip. Mazal tov
if you got this far. Just wanted to share some of my experiences with you
and compare notes if any of you have been over there. Thanks for the
bandwidth!
* Richard Isaac
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\* * / Seattle
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Comments? Write me at RMIsaac@gmail.com