Dear Friends – Shabbat Shalom!
It is truly wonderful to be here with you this morning. This is the first time that I have spoken from the pulpit at Temple since my retirement. I want to thank the clergy for inviting me to be here.
As some of you know, my family and I recently returned from a remarkable trip to the city of Leipzig, Germany. Accompanying me and Sue were our children, Elana and her husband Gregg, Ethan and Zahava, our grandson, Ezra - along with my sister, Nina, and her husband, children and grandchildren. All in all there were 20 of us who travelled together. But we were not alone. We were part of a delegation of approximately 60 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of former Leipziggers who were invited to return and learn about the city’s history, past and present.
Our mother, Sophie Kovalevsky Black’s was born in 1926. This year would have been her 100thbirthday, so the fact that we were able to travel together to honor her memory was immensely powerful as well.
The members of our group came from many different countries. Our family was the largest contingent, but there were several other multi-generational families as well. We had participants from the US, England, Canada, Australia, Serbia, and Israel. While everyone came from diverse backgrounds and experiences, we were all connected through the fact that our parents or grandparents had lived in Leipzig during the rise of Nazi Germany – and this reality shaped the trajectories of all of our lives. Some were descendants of survivors of the death camps, others’ parents or grandparents were saved by being placed in the Kindertransports to Britain. My grandparents – Esther and Abram Kowaelwski were refugees from the Ukraine who fled to Germany – “a civilized country” after a pogrom took place in their village of Zolotonosha shortly after they were married. They were able to get Visas to the United Stares because, even though our mother was born in Leipzig, she and her parents never received German citizenship. This fact saved their lives because, although the US quota for German-Jewish refugees was filled by 1938, no one was coming in from the Soviet Union – and they were classified as stateless refugees originating from the Ukraine. Everyone had a story. And everyone understood the realities of what it meant to be returning to this city – in their own way.
As I thought about how I might frame my remarks this morning, I realized that, given the limited amount of time that I have to speak, it would not be possible to share everything that happened to us during our trip. And so, instead, I turned to this week’s parasha to see if I could find a framework around which to wrap my remarks.
On this shabbat, we begin a new chapter of Torah, Devarim, or Deuteronomy. This final book is a series of sermons by Moses that recap the journeys of the Israelites from Egypt to the brink of the Promised Land. One of the fascinating aspects of Devarim is that while it tells our people’s stories of redemption and deliverance -it does so exclusively through Moses’ eyes. It is a first-person narrative. As a result, the details differ – sometimes slightly, sometimes extensively from the accounts that we read in the previous books of the Torah. We see Moses’s passion, hope, anger, frustration, bitterness and pain coming through in his recounting of events. This is as much a book about Moses as it is about the history of our people.
This morning, like Moses, I can only share my personal perspectives – but, by definition, it will be incomplete. Each of us experienced Leipzig differently – depending on our relationship with the history we were encountering.
For my sister, Nina and me, our time in our mother’s birthplace helped us to understand, on a much deeper level, the stories we had heard from childhood. We saw streets and places, heard the language and phrases, walked in parks and city-squares that were part of the lexicon of our experience – but instead of abstract concepts, they now came sharply into focus. Even the food I ate reminded me of the meals that my mother and grandmother would cook for us – from delicious tiny hamburgers to schnitzel and apple strudel. Our journey was very emotional. One particularly moving moment occurred when got off our train to Leipzig from Berlin and stepped into the Hauptbanhoff – the central train station – and realized that what we were seeing for the first time was the very last thing my mother and grandparents saw as they fled the city that had forced them to leave in November of 1938 – two weeks after Krystalnacht. My sister and I hugged each other and the tears flowed and flowed – as captured in this photograph that Sue took:
Our children, who had known my mother until her death 9 years ago, had a different experience. The Savta (Grandma) Sophie they had known related to them through the prism of a lifetime of experience. She was calm, wise and patient – most of the time.... But as children, Nina and I often bore the brunt of the fear and anxiety that that came from her witnessing first-hand the rise of Nazism as an impressionable child and that haunted her in adulthood as a young mother- and indeed, throughout her life. We remembered how she was always afraid that something terrible was going to happen to us and how difficult it was for her to let go of that trauma. It wasn’t always easy. The Shoah and the city of Leipzig was always present in our home.
To her grandchildren, Savta was a loving, caring, and brilliant source of encouragement, knowledge and unconditional love. They were all perfect in her eyes and could do no wrong – as we feel about our grandson, Ezzy. The 5 great-grandchildren who were part of our family were learning new perspectives about their Safta-Gedola (Great Grandmother) for the first time.
Another important perspective that was an integral part of our trip was the fact that so many Israeli descendants of former Leipzigers were part of our group. While they shared many of our same memories, stories and trauma that they inherited from their parents and grandparents who either escaped or survived, they also carried the additional stress that stemmed from the October 7th pogrom, the multi-front war, waves of missile attacks and the rise of international anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred that has followed in its wake. For these Israeli fellow travelers the idea of being in Europe at a time when speaking Hebrew is seen as a dangerous act – with multiple documented cases of attacks against their fellow Israeli travelers– was exponentially intensified by the fact that they were returning to the place that had caused so much pain and trauma in their family’s history. At each stop on our journey, learning about the horrors of Nazism was filtered through their own fears and experiences.
There was also the perspective of our hosts – the city of Leipzig. As I mentioned, we came as honored guests. In 1991, shortly after Germany was reunified after the fall of the Berlin wall, the leadership of Leipzig made the decision to invite former residents – those who fled and those who survived – to return to the city of their birth in order to acknowledge and make some attempt to atone for the horrors of the Shoah. About 15 years ago, when the number of survivors was rapidly dwindling, the city decided to expand the program and open it up to the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of former Leipzigers. It eventually became a biennial event that was scheduled concurrently with “Jewish Week” in Leipzig – when the city’s government, historical, cultural and religious authorities created a multi-faceted program for the entire city that remembered, celebrated, and tried to come to grips with the difficult truths of the fate of its former Jewish population. There were concerts, lectures, museum exhibits and many other events that were held throughout the city. There were so many activities that it was impossible to attend them all – but whenever and wherever we did, we were recognized and given seats of honor.
But in addition to the members of our group with whom we travelled, we also were accompanied - in a very real sense - by the most important contingent: the loved ones who no longer were alive, but whose experience in Leipzig shaped all of our lives and continues to do so today:
· Those whose parents, children and siblings were murdered in the Nazi death camps,
· Those who, like my mother and grandparents, managed to flee to safety;
· Those for whom the idea of returning to a city that caused them so much pain, sorrow, terror, and loss would be impossible,
We felt their presence in the synagogue we attended on Shabbat.
· We heard them in the German accents all around us.
· We saw them in our faces captured in the reflections of store windows and the long shadows cast during the hot summer afternoons.
· We remembered them in our laughter and our tears – every step we took they took with us.
· They were with us as we experienced the possibilities of redemption in a country that is doing everything in its power to remember, learn from and never repeat its horrific past.
We began our journey with a special reception at the old Leipzig City Hall – a building that dates back to the 14th Century. There we were greeted by the Deputy Mayor of the City (the mayor was in Dusseldorf and could not attend.) She welcomed us with powerful words where she told us that every German citizen whose relatives participated in the rise of Nazism – whether actively or passively - had to come to terms with the horror carried out in their names. There was no way to undo what was done, she said, but the main reason that the descendants of former citizens are invited to return over and over again was to help bear witness and show the hard and painful work of atonement in which they were completely invested.
After her remarks and a short program, all the descendants were invited to sign a book of remembrance that has an honored place in the center of City Hall. Each family received their own pages and wrote whatever came to mind.
There were many other powerful experiences – but I want to share two in particular.
The first was an exhibit at the Museum of the City of Leipzig that contained photographs taken by the Jewish photographer, Abram Mittelmann who lived in Leipzig and had a studio where he took portraits of many of the citizens of the city. Prior to 1936, Mittelmann took pictures of everyone – even Nazi officials. Eventually, he was boycotted by non-Jews, so his clientele shifted to members of the Jewish community exclusively. Mittelmann was able to escape Leipzig and move to France, but a trove of his glass negatives was discovered hidden in an attic in 1988. There were thousands of portraits of Jewish and non-Jewish residents. One of the big surprises for our family was the fact that my mother and grandparents were prominently on display – along with a video of my mother’s testimony for the Spielburg Shoah foundation. To see pictures of my mother and grandparents from the 1930’s was quite remarkable. To hear her voice as she talked about her childhood was overwhelming. For most of us, it was the first time we had heard it since she died in 2017.
Another powerful experience was when we dedicated three Stolpershteines – or “Stumble Stones” in front of the apartment where my mother and grandparents lived until they left in November of 1938. Stolpersteines are small brass memorial stones set into sidewalks to commemorate victims of Nazi persecution. They were initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, and each stone usually marks a person’s last freely chosen place of residence, with their name and life dates engraved on top. There are a little over 116,000 of these markers that have been placed throughout Europe. It’s interesting to note that, while we were in Leipzig, three other Stolpersteines were placed just outside our hotel – not for Jews, but for homeless and mentally ill individuals who were also murdered by the Nazis. There are stones that also have been placed for journalists, LGBTQ+ victims, Catholics and so many others who were slaughtered in the Death Camps.
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The Stolpersteine dedication ceremony was very powerful. The night before, I couldn’t sleep, so – as I am wont to do at times – I wrote a song using the text from the 118th Psalm –
“Even Maasu HaBonim, haytah l’rosh pinah –
the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”
I sang my song and my sister spoke about our family. Again – we wept copious tears as we added yet another piece to the puzzle of understanding of our mother’s childhood. While we were at the dedication, we met two remarkable families. One had volunteered with the Stolpersteine program to make sure that our stones would be well taken care of. They promised us that they would polish them and keep them from harm.
The other family lived in the actual apartment in which my mother and grandparents lived. The day after the ceremony, we received an email – in Hebrew – from this German, protestant family, inviting us for tea on Sunday afternoon. It turns out that the mother of the family – named Yvonne – was studying theology and she fell in love with Hebrew. She travels to Israel frequently and is a passionate student of both the Hebrew Bible and Jewish theology.
I cannot adequately describe the feeling of walking through the doors of that apartment. It was exactly as our mother had described it: the high ceilings, the room off the kitchen where their maid had lived, the locations of the coal-lit stoves that kept them warm in the winter (the stones were no longer there – but we could see the dark marks on the floor from where they had been), the view from the kitchen window out into the garden below… we felt her presence so strongly. This was the last place in her life that she had felt safe – like she belonged – until it all was snatched away by barbarism, cruelty and evil.
Many people have asked me if the journey to Leipzig was healing – if it provided me and my family some sort of closure. I’ve thought a lot about that question and the answer is, “no” – there cannot be true closure from the Shoah. And yet, it did serve to fill in many pieces of the puzzle of our mother’s life, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
I cannot say enough about the remarkable people that we met who coordinated and led our trip. The leaders, Sven and Katya, were compassionate, caring, attentive and warm. They understood the many layers of complexity that a trip like this brought with it. They gave us room to tell our stories, to breathe, to cry, to laugh and wonder in amazement as we explored a city that was part of who we were – and yet so far removed from our daily lives.
I want to conclude with a song that I wrote at the end of our trip. During our first few days in Germany, most of us spent a few days in Berlin. We then took the train to Leipzig – a short ride of about an hour. It turns out that I was sitting backwards in the train car – and that became a powerful metaphor for me – looking backwards and moving ahead.
The Train To Leipzig Backwards from Berlin © 2026. Rabbi Joe Black –Lanitunes Music - All Rights Reserved
[YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4KCq96VMQ]
We boarded at the Berlin station
Ours seats all faced the rear
This was no vacation
We didn’t come for souvenirs
This city that expelled us
A place once filled with dread
Whose invitation now compelled us
To look backwards, not ahead
CHORUS:
Our journey took us places we were scared of
Where our family’s story ends and then begins
Memories we dimly were aware of
The train to Leipzig backwards from Berlin
Arriving at the terminal
We stepped into the heat
Glass ceiling high above us
Harsh sun on cold concrete
Overcome now with emotion
As we retraced their sojourn
3 fled in 1938.
20 now returned.
The few photos we remembered
Were faded black and white
But like stoking dying embers
We brought color back to life
Reciting names and places
Etched upon the stumble stones
Dedicating sacred spaces
Resurrecting bones
CHORUS
BRIDGE
A city filled with mystery
Where music filled the air
Broken glass and history
Were scattered everywhere
This land of Bach and Mendelssohn
That’s trying to atone
For the panic and adrenaline
That filled our childhood home
CHORUS -
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