I have become untethered from moral certainty. As an observant Jew, I adhere to certain moral truths. As a liberal humanist, I acknowledge cultural and moral relativism. But I am disoriented by the moral judgements made by members of my cultural groups. My identity is on shaky ground. Two experiences are illustrative of this liminality.
On Friday, May 18th, 2012 I stood in a crowd outside the former home of my grandparents, Sally (Shalom) and Elise Halpern, Z”L, in Konstanz, Germany. My grandparents died in the Holocaust, and the Stolpersteine project was laying stones in front of their former home in their memory. Most of the people in the crowd were strangers to me, except for my daughter, sister and brother-in-law, with whom I had traveled from the U.S., and my son and (future) daughter-in-law who had traveled from Israel to join us in Germany. Also, the day before, we had met Petra, a young German woman who researched our family for the Stolpersteine presentation and laying of stones in front of our grandparents’ home, and we were standing that day in the assembled crowd listening to Petra tell our family’s story before the stones were put into the sidewalk. Two women caught my attention at this event. The first was a woman who came out of the building and began yelling at the Stolpersteine volunteers and at the artist (Gunter Demnig). Petra explained that the woman was the current owner, and she did not want the stones placed before her doorway. The woman angerly gave a number of reasons, such as the liability if the bronze nameplates became slippery in wet weather. Everyone ignored her, as she had no legal claim, and she quieted when the official ceremony began. Afterwards, she relented and gave our family a tour of her home.
