Lidia Drozdzynski

My Secular Judaism

[German]

I feel I am a part of the Jewish community without being a member of it. How is that to be understood? I am nonreligious and the community is a place of religious faith. Does that mean there is no place there for me? My position regards both liberal and orthodox orientations. Because there is no cultural programme in an organised Jewish community, I count myself as a member of a quite large, loose group that is worldly and not organised. My work as a journalist is part of my secular identity, because that is when I concern myself in a professional way with everything that interests me about Judaism. And finally, there is the connection to Israel and the people who are close to me there and belong to my history.

As a child from an atheist, interfaith marriage, finding my identity was not easy. In addition, life defined me as Jew, before I could ever choose Judaism for myself. External events frequently outpaced my personal development.

I am the daughter of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father. Before the war, his name was Alexander Kahane. He belonged, therefore to the "Kohanim". Shortly after the war he changed his name and Kahane became Drozdzynski. He was a young and committed Communist, ready to sacrifice a great deal, even his name, for his ideals.

At the time of my marriage, I had the opportunity not only to take my husband’s name, but also to find my way back to "Kahane". I decided in the end to keep the clumsy and consonant rich version of my name. I looked back and determined there was a great deal of identity behind it, so I decided to remain "D - as in Dora," "R - as in Richard", "O - as in Otto" and so on, spelling out my name and therefore remaining longer in the memory of many a public official. Nevertheless, I still wish from time to time that I could take the name Kahane.

When World War Two began, my father was just fourteen. In the Lodz ghetto, Bundists, Zionists and Communists tried to ease the situation of the residents and encourage them to carry on. Youth organisations worked with them. They fought for a fair distribution of food rations, established soup kitchens and invigorated everyday life with cultural events. They listened to hidden radios to gain information. They formed the underground. It is likely that my father joined a Communist group during this period.

You can say in all seriousness that my father owed his survival in Auschwitz to his comrades from the organisation and that all his hope came from Communist ideals. He did not want to go to Palestine. That is why I was born in Poland, not Israel.

My father was a journalist and close observer of the mood at home and abroad. A break with the system was pre-programmed by the time it became important for me to blaze an ideological or religious trail. In March 1968, when I was 14, the first student strikes began in Warsaw. Schoolchildren were not allowed to leave the buildings and we were made to copy out dictated propaganda in our notebooks. I was already feeling like a member of the opposition and on the streets despite the curfew. The regime was anti-Semitic, as were many Poles. Out on the street I heard that and had my first shock. It made me into a Jew. Suddenly, my position was clear.

But I did not discover active Jewish life until I emigrated. When I want to put a positive spin on the anti-Semitic ranting of the Polish government in 1968, I say it forced me to leave Poland and genuinely strengthened my identity as a Jew.

The thought of conversion was always an alien one to me, because this step is a sign of union with G-d, to whom you obligate yourself to conduct your life in a way that I cannot and will not afford. For me, the synagogue is a place I go on the High Holidays to honour my father and symbolically demonstrate a bond to my murdered grandparents. I have only been going for a few years. This house, for me, is a place where I take time to meditate and hold disputes with my relatives. Sometimes, when I am standing in the synagogue, I see my father in front of me. He was a Communist, but he never stopped being a Jew. Then, I have to smile. He looks on at what I am and what I do. Sometimes he sceptically acknowledges the situation with a good-natured joke or parable. What else could he do? He collected Yiddish humour.

Part of my secular Judaism is being a chronicler or an archaeologist of the family's history. Here I feel I belong in a long line of "Second Generation" children who must understand these activities as a legacy and a lifelong task.

Lidia Drozdzynski works as a television and radio journalist in Cologne/ Germany.