Inge writes of God,

but she is not very religious.

I am not very religious, either,

nor are most of my friends.

Some more than others—

like Ruth Carlebach,

whose father is the most important rabbi

here in Hamburg.

Everyone knows Rabbi Joseph Carlebach.

Everyone knows he knows

everything about God and Torah,

and other things besides.

Does he know

about Ruth’s little tastes of trayfe1

at her friends’ houses,

tiny slivers of ham

just to see what it’s like?

I bet he does.

Ruth is curious; can you blame her?

I bet he doesn’t.

I bet he knows

that girls aren’t always perfect,

not even daughters of rabbis.

My family goes to synagogue

for the big holidays,

but not much otherwise.

We used to have big Passover seders,

with lots of friends and food.

We didn’t keep kosher even before

the Nazis outlawed kosher meat.

Imagine all the delicious treats

from the wonderful German delicatessen

I would have missed if we were kosher!

(Oh, the bologna! Oh, the ham—

yes, ham.

I am one of Ruth Carlebach’s tempters.)

We don’t go to that deli anymore.

They don’t want us as customers.

JEWS NOT DESIRED, the sign says.

Whether we are religious

or not religious,

all of my friends and I attend

the Jewish School for Girls.

Why?

Simple:

We are all Jews,

and the Germans don’t want us

in their schools.

For me it started when a nice lady

at my old school—

my public school,

where non-Jews and Jews learned together—

called me out of class

for something she called “race research.”

I was seven years old.

She asked me many questions

about my family,

about my “racial characteristics.”

I didn’t know I had any.

But the Nazis say Jews are

a separate race,

a bad and dirty race,

an alien race.

So the nice lady’s questions

were not really nice at all.

That was the end

of city schools for me.

Mother and Father took me out.

And after a while,

the Nazis said Jews could not attend the city schools,

even if they didn’t mind being treated badly

and being called dirty Jew

by teachers and other kids.

So now we are all Jews,

together in our all-Jewish private school.

I suppose this makes us feel

more Jewish than we did before,

even those among us who felt

more German than Jewish.

I suppose this also makes us think

about God

more than we used to.

Inge has never spoken to me

of God before.

But then, many things are happening,

and many things are being spoken of,

that never happened

and were never spoken of

before.