Rosa Lyenska only found out when she was a teenager that she was Jewish. She wants to be it too, but is it possible without God? And does it have to do without electricity on Shabbat? By Kristin Kasten.
Red rose petals lie on the polished stumbling blocks. The cold wind blew out the tea lights next to it. The brass-colored paving stones are reminiscent of the Adler family, who lived on Große Hamburger Strasse in the Mitte district of Berlin until the early 1940s. A young woman stops next to the memorial and lights a grave candle. Her long blonde hair falls forward over her shoulders. She takes two pieces of paper, protected by cling film, out of her black handbag. Then she kneels on the sidewalk and sticks the family’s life story to the floor with wide tape. An elderly lady stops and asks who lived there. The young woman reads out the names, leaves no one out. Eight human lives, five ended up in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
The young woman is Rosa Lyenska, 23, who bears the first name of her great-grandmother. She is one of an estimated 200,000 Jews living in Germany today – the country of the Holocaust, in which people of the Jewish faith are mostly viewed as victims or memorials, but not as living in the midst of society.
Most of Rosa Lyenska’s maternal family were also murdered. “When the war started, my great-grandparents lived in Ukraine. We were very closely related. Wealthy families who had worked for themselves. ”While Rosa’s great-grandmother fled to Azerbaijan with her daughter, the rest of the family stayed behind. “The Germans didn’t even bother to put the Jews in a concentration camp. They just shot them and threw them into mass graves. ”There is no place of remembrance.
Rosa Lyenska looks at the sticky notes. “Now people are really stumbling over it.” The student, who started her film studies at a Berlin university a year ago, is a member of the Jewish Student Union, which aims to draw the attention of passers-by by cleaning and decorating the stumbling blocks: ” The memory of the deceased is of great value in Judaism. “
The young woman, who grew up in Kassel, only gradually discovered her own family history. “As a child, I didn’t realize for a long time that I was Jewish. I don’t know how my parents did it, but we never talked about it. ”Her parents came to Germany in 1997 as contingent refugees from the Ukraine. First the Jewish mother, later the father was allowed to follow.
“Religion was frowned upon in the Soviet Union,” says Rosa. Her great-grandmother, who spoke Yiddish fluently, later joined the Communist Party and gradually moved away from Judaism. Likewise her grandmother, who was exposed to anti-Semitic hostility as a child and wanted a different life for her daughter. “Just like my mother, I grew up without a religion,” says Rosa. She shares her life story with many Jewish friends who also come from atheistic families. Today the Jewish communities have almost 95,000 members, at least 90 percent have migrated from countries of the former Soviet Union. Without them, there would probably only be Jewish life in this country in large cities. The communities could be even bigger: But more than half of the 200,000 people of Jewish descent who have immigrated to Germany since 1989 have not found their way back to the Jewish communities or have been turned away because only their father was Jewish.
Rosa Lyenska is a member of the Jewish Community in Berlin. Her attachment to Judaism came as a surprise to her family. Judaism is alien to your mother; her father railed against religions, “he thinks that they are only there to oppress people”. As a child, Rosa learned Russian in a synagogue. “For me it was just the Russian school,” she says today. When Rosa was ten years old, her parents sent her to the Jewish holiday camp for the first time. “We prayed there, but I didn’t realize that I was Jewish myself.” When she found out shortly after that she belonged to the people of Israel, she told everyone that she was half-Jewish. She had picked up the Nazi term in the history book. “It wasn’t until much later that I found out that if your mother is Jewish, you’re always Jewish.” The search for her Jewish identity began: She read books, asked questions and took part in holiday camps organized by the Jewish community I lacked any spiritual access ”. You just couldn’t believe in God.
“In Judaism, it is up to you what you believe in,” says Rosa, “there is no creed. Nobody has seen God, nobody can tell you what or how God is. ”Judaism outlasts – she thinks – rather through its traditions and values. And the feeling of being committed to the community of Jews, which Rosa also feels. “If I turn away from Judaism, 2000 years of family history will end with me.”
She feels pressure, but does not perceive it as a burden. She would like to continue Jewish life in Germany because it enriches her life and is an anchor. And she does it for her ancestors, for the victims of the Shoah and for the survivors.
Rosa Lyenska wants to enlighten, broaden the view of Judaism, and enable closeness. Also through actions like on this day. “You really stop,” says Rosa happily and looks at a couple who are bending over the pieces of paper. The student works in the youth center of the Jewish community, in the encounter project “Meet a Jew”, and even if she is committed to environmental protection, it has to do with her Jewishness and Jewish values – with the fact that she wants to take responsibility.
Every Friday evening at the beginning of Shabbat, she goes to her favorite synagogue in Charlottenburg, a red brick building that nestles in the facade of the house. “There are almost only old people in the synagogue. If we boys no longer go there, the synagogues will soon no longer exist. “
There has never been anyone who has forced this sense of responsibility on her, says Rosa emphatically. “And I never feel fake in the synagogue either.” Everyone can be a Jew in their own way. “The Orthodox Jews say that every Jew is a jewel whose potential contributes something to Judaism.”
Rosa Lyenska has many Orthodox friends who live by strict religious rules. “They wear long skirts, pray every time before they have a drink, they would never use any electrical devices on Shabbat,” says Rosa, “and I accept that.”
When she visits them on Shabbat, she adheres to the rules that apply there, does not use light switches, does not tear paper, and eats kosher. “I don’t see any differences between us as human beings.” Sometimes they discuss the interpretation of Judaism, such as the dress code. “I just don’t think it’s good when you reduce religion to clothing,” says Rosa, “and I don’t understand why rabbis who said something five hundred years ago have a higher status today than a rabbi who is now completely has found a new interpretation for himself. “
There is no right or wrong for Rosa Lyenska. “Judaism is forbidden to judge who is a real Jew and who is not,” she says in a calm voice. She has her own compass for everyday life: unlike her Orthodox friends, she uses the elevator and her cell phone on Shabbat, but tries to avoid plastic by buying unpackaged vegetables and fruit as much as possible. On Shabbat you thank creation – “and that is my interpretation”.
Only the thought of not being able to convey her faith authentically and credibly should she ever have children saddened her. Rosa does not believe in a god or in life after death. “It might be nice if you had the feeling that something is coming after life,” she says, but believing in it cannot be forced.
She will go to the synagogue with her children on Shabbat, sing Jewish songs, and read the Torah together in the evening. And ask the children questions about Judaism, arouse their curiosity. That, too, is quite typical in Jewish culture. “My grandma always told my mother that you are Jewish, you have to be the best in school because you have a handicap.” If the pogroms came back, she couldn’t take anything with her, except for her education.
When Rosa Lyenska looks at the stumbling blocks today, she wonders why nobody helped people. Three of the Adler family survived the Holocaust. The fate of other family members could not be reconstructed, is on one of the stumbling blocks. The Adler family was not Jewish. “I picked out a German Sinti family because not only Jews died in the Holocaust,” says Rosa, who came across the story of the Adler family on the website of the Stolpersteine Berlin coordination center. “Like the Jews, the Sinti were absolutely integrated; you would not have noticed that they were not originally of German origin.”
The elderly lady, who had asked for the name of the family, says in parting: “How wonderful that it is thought of.”
