The New Year

“Alle Reisen haben eine heimliche Bestimmung, die der Reisende nicht ahnt.”

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

-Martin Buber, Die Legende des Baalschem (1908)

This weekend was the second time I’ve asked my grandmother to show me how to bake the perfect potato kugel. I knew she had planned to bake a honey and sponge cake for Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year) and I requested that we also make a kugel, even though it’s not a traditional Rosh Hashana dish.

Although in German, kugel means “ball,” potato kugel is more than a potato ball, it’s essentially a cake made out of potatoes. My little sister Susu describes it as “a very dense latke.” Latkes, Yiddish for potato pancake, are traditionally served during Chanukkah and are the baby, deep-fried version of the kugel.

Although I won’t disclose my grandmother’s brilliant recipe, here is the key to a very good kugel: grate, don’t process, the potatoes. After a lifetime of making potato kugel, my grandmother is now the world’s fastest potato grater, out-grating me, over sixty years her junior! The result is worth the labor-intensive prep. It’s the ultimate comfort food, with enough starch to sedate anyone into masticated bliss. It’s so good that my family places it above mashed and fried as the best way to enjoy potatoes. We like to eat it with ketchup, sour cream or applesauce.

It was important for me to spend quality time with my grandmother this past week. Rosh Hashana did not just mark the New Year but also my last days at home for a very long time. Tomorrow, I will begin my yearlong journey as the first Jewish Service Corps (JSC) Fellow in Germany.The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the organization that runs the JSC program, provides aid to Jewish communities in over 70 countries, and has been warmly referred to as “the Joint” by generations of Jews for almost a century now. JDC rescued hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust and later, helped feed and rehabilitate survivors in the displaced-persons camps. Two of those survivors were my grandparents. With the JDC’s help, my grandparents survived four years in DP camps in Germany and were resettled in The United States in the late 1940s.

Thus, my journey this year will allow me to do more than just put to use years of studying German and Judaism. This opportunity, in ways, allows me to pays homage to the work JDC did for my grandparents. Yet, Jewish-German issues have changed tremendously since the 1940s. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Jews in East and West Berlin were reunited and joined by thousands of Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. Because of the large numbers of Jewish immigrants, Germany now has the fastest-growing Jewish community worldwide.

This year, I will explore what kind of challenges Jews originally from Former Soviet Union, but now living in Berlin, face: religious, cultural, educational, etc. In the process, I hope to help plan and develop programs that address these challenges and strengthen their community.

As I look forward to helping this community cope with major transitions, I must reflect on my own current transition, as well as those I witness around me, traditional and natural. This weekend marked the beginning of the year 5770. Today marks the first day of fall. As the sun hangs closer to the horizon, the sky here in Columbus, Ohio fills with flocks of birds flying south for the winter. It seems only natural that tomorrow I fly to Berlin to begin my year working abroad.

“5770 sounds like a good year,” my Uncle Danny told me this weekend. I have to agree. After squeezing in one last cooking lesson with my grandmother before leaving and spending the weekend celebrating Rosh Hashana with my family, I feel ready to kick off this year and this blog in BERLIN!