Lauren Bialystok: In search of the new Germany

This column is not about Germany.

Germany is a nation. It has a government, an army, a history and a culture.

But growing up in a middle class Jewish home in North America in the 1980s, Germany was not a nation.

Germany was synonymous with the greatest conceivable evil. Most of my family had been murdered in the Holocaust, and I unconsciously associated all things German with Hitler and the Nazis.

As a kid, I only heard German spoken when my father subjected us to another movie featuring SS guards. I sometimes heard Yiddish spoken, but despite its striking resemblance to German, it was a good language. My bubbie -- my maternal grandmother -- doesn't even make a distinction between the language and the culture. She used to ask me when I would learn to speak Jewish.

I never learned to speak Jewish. But halfway through high school, I learned to speak German.

This wasn't easy for some of my relatives to swallow. They learned to deal with it, I think, because it represented another opportunity for scholastic achievement. More A's on my report card were always acceptable.

Still, Germany was not a viable political or cultural entity. France was a place I could go to study. There were countless other countries I could visit as a tourist. I traveled all over Europe with my family, but we never went to Germany.

Why? Because Germany wasn't a nation. It was a taboo.

So when I announced my study abroad plans to my extended family around this time last year, it didn't sound like a plausible destination.

My 90-year-old grandfather, who was raised in a small city in Poland, gave a little jump. "Oh mein Gott."

My grandmother, who hasn't bought a single German-made product since 1945, shifted uncomfortably and touched her throat. I could see her struggling to assimilate this shocking news into her hitherto unchallenged conviction that everything I do is perfect.

"Why are you wanting to go to Germany?" There was disgust in her voice when she pronounced the last word.

I wouldn't dream of trying to convince my grandparents that Germany is a fascinating, modern, safe country to visit. They survived World War II. They're entitled to feel whatever they want.

But my grandparents weren't the only ones who seemed to wonder why I would possibly put myself in Germany for seven months.

When I told my Jewish friends where I was going to study abroad, most were suspicious. I felt like I was being silently expelled from the community for breaching the most fundamental law of North American Jewish youth: "Thou Shalt Go Abroad to Israel" (or in its milder form, "Thou Shalt Sure as Hell Not Go Abroad to Germany").

It was an honorable discharge only because I am a philosophy major and, well, Germans have made some contributions in that department.

The process of declaring my study abroad plans made me realize that Germany -- the nation -- is still a frightening enigma to many North Americans.

It's not that our generation is outwardly prejudiced against the Germany of today because of the events of World War II. It's just easier not to confront a set of assumptions that has been shelved in the back of our minds for many years.

If we could treat all areas of prejudice this way, life might be lot simpler.

Russia? Commies. Germany? Nazis. Afghanistan? Muslim fundamentalists. What more do you need to know?

Obviously, a lot. Clinging onto dismissive generalizations like these ultimately tells us nothing useful.

If we want to be able to say anything about the "other," we have to be prepared to take a closer look -- and acknowledge the complexity of our reservations.

A one-hour upbeat talk show about the Islamic religion doesn't tell us everything we need to know about Afghanistan. And an exclusive trip to the greatest art galleries in Germany doesn't do justice to a profoundly disturbing historical reality.

Any encounter with a foreign culture is difficult, even when you don't start with a prejudice as radical as the North American Jewish perspective on Germany.

The beauty of study abroad is that it forces you to into an inherently awkward situation. You will never love everything about a foreign culture. But by separating out what you love from what makes you uncomfortable, you learn a tremendous amount about your own culture and the biases you came with.

I didn't go to Germany to prove that I could survive seven months of discomfort. I already loved the German language and I was fascinated by Goethe, Hegel and Kant. I went to Germany to reconcile that love and fascination with my painful cultural legacy.

Now, maybe, I'm in a position to say something about Germany the Nation.

Lauren Bialystok is a senior Philosophy major from Toronto, Ontario.

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