I just finished reading two books by the same author, Tuvia Tenembom, both of which I highly recommend to you. In fact, I recommend you read them back to back, as I did. They really are companion pieces.

Tenenbom was born in Israel to a Haredi family. He excelled in his studies but, in his teens, began to drift out, eventually going to America, where he went to university and studies arts and science and all the other things forbidden to him as a Haredi youth. He eventually dropped out of religious life altogether. He became a writer and journalist. He speaks native Hebrew. He also speaks English, of course, Arabic, German and Yiddish, but I do not know at what level. In any case, he functions well in all those languages. He has two other outstanding qualities. He has the chameleon-like ability to adopt any persona and fit in anywhere and the warmth of heart that enables him to connect to people at a deep human level.

His publisher sent him to Germany for 6 months to do a work about Germany and later, to Israel where he spent 7 months and wrote about what he found. Both books are mind-blowing. If you are going to read only one, read the second, Catch the Jew, the one about Israel, because it is about current issues of life and death, the stuff on today’s firing line. The earlier one, the one about Germany, I Sleep in Hitler’s Room, is phenomenal background to what he found in Israel. The two interlock in the most amazing ways. In brief, everything in Germany seems to revolve around Jews and everywhere he went in Israel, he constantly crossed paths with Germany and Germans in contexts that seem illogical, even irrational. (What he found in Israel is not only about Germany but Germany is a main actor and not a positive one.)

Tenenbom reports a German he met in Israel working for the “Palestinian Cause,” who answered the question “why?” by explaining that she spent time in Israel and came to love the Israeli people. How is it logical, therefore, to work for the “Palestinian cause,” which seeks Israel’s destruction? It is not logical but it is what her verein does, so she does also. Why is Tenenbom bewildered? Because he has not really “grokked” his own discovery. (“Grok.” That’s 1970’s American slang, meaning to take a realization in and internalize it, fully and in depth, with all its ramifications. It comes from a book I never read.)

In actuality, he discovered the key to understanding the matter while trying to come to grips with Germany: what is Germany, what is it to be German? Every language has words that do not translate into other languages. Those are the words that reveal the deepest matters of the culture and the people. In Germany, he bumped up against the word verein repeatedly in contexts pregnant with significance.

The root word of verein is ein, meaning “one.” Many concepts have related meanings but don’t quite fit. “Union” is too specific. “Circle” is too limited. “Club” is too specific and too limited in terms of both size and scope. A verein is not a herd, not a pack, not a gang or a klatch (resorting to another untranslatable German word for a different kind of get-together). In any case, a verein is defined by a consensus, arrived at in some mysterious way, and it elicits a high degree of conformity.

Admittedly, man is a social creature and we all have a herding instinct, of course. People live in groups, societies of many kinds: families, clans, tribes, nations, etc. The survival value is clear. Mavericks, individuals who wander too far from the group, are vulnerable to predators. The road is a place of danger; predators lurk there. Mavericks, however, are the innovators, the expansive thinkers who discover and create. Loners are endangered, on the one hand. On the other, loners are likely to be dangerous. For better and for worse, they are the ones who do not surrender their minds to the group.

Tenenbom found precious little of that in Germany. He found, overwhelmingly, eagerness to surrender their minds to others, be it the government, the biggest corporations, the movement, the party, the social group; in short, the verein. The closest equivalent I can find in English is “getting on the bandwagon.”

The more you have experienced Germans and Germany, the better you will understand I Sleep in Hitler’s Room. I lived for two years in Geneva, where I had quite a lot to do with Germany and with a fair number of Germans, including some I have known and loved, none of whom conforms to any verein. My experience with them is a treasure in my life. There are also some I have known and not loved, who distinctly did.

Of the former group, all but one were women. Of the latter group, all but one were men. Twenty five years later, I had occasion to meet German men who had not surrendered their minds to Groupthink, but the German men I met, in those days fit one stereotype after another: stiff, inflexible, lacking in real spontaneity. They lived Life by the Numbers, did everything by-the-book. It you had read the book, you would have known exactly what to expect.

That was not true of many the women. They were open and expansive and courageous. They were warm and outgoing. They were empathetic and into other people and what makes them tick. They also had a clear sense of self and were into what makes themselves tick. They were blazing new trails and ploughing new ground. They knew, in their bones, the difference between a livelihood and a life and they knew they needed both. I don’t know how they could ever marry German men. It’s like putting their souls into a strait jacket.

But they did. One of the most outstanding of them was one who loved to be helpful, who had the most astoundingly deep empathy, the ability to somehow sense what was eating at a person and know what she could do to help, even if only to understand and to be there. One day, I was sorely in need of being alone, utterly away from people, to do some serious brooding. Out of the blue, she asked if I would like to borrow her car. How did she know that? That is how keen and how deep her empathy was. She married a man of the above description. I met him several times. He was a nice guy, smart, “educated,” meaning trained to fit into a high level socio-economic niche, a professional who knew the rules and was working his way upward, but living Life by the Numbers, doing everything by-the-book.

Was marrying a spiritual strait jacket like the woman who loved the Israelis but worked for the “Palestinian” Cause, because that is what was done in her verein? What a disappointing thought.

Nearly fifty years along, I would love to know how it turned out. She is another person who touched me with whom I have lost touch.

Read Tenenbom’s books. You’ll be glad you did.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR