rein für Passahfest - kosher for passover

"was kann ich fur Sie tun?" asked the counter attendant over her thick black rimmed half-glasses.

good question, i thought. what can she do for me? i have so many questions.

"sorry." i said sheepishly, "mein deutsch ist nicht sehr gut. haben Sie - "

"you need sweet wine or dry?"

"sweet, for charoset. thank you for the english." i examined the wine selection.

"this one is cheap. take it." she said gruffly.

the tiny kosher deli on goethestrasse was starting to fill up with other wives buying the ingredients for their seders. in a place like berlin, one is not a casual jew. and certainly, there are not non-jews doing the seder shopping. i felt like a fish out of water (gifilte fish out of jelly?) because, not only was there no english on the many jars and boxes, there was no german. the product labels had hebrew writing and occasionally a picture of the product. i didn't know what dan planned on doing with matzah meal or how to recognize it in hebrew. i became the problem customer. the store was small and the women behind me were in a hurry.

i puttered around the store reciting my list in english and inspecting label pictures while the woman in the glasses rang up my purchases. a fellow customer, knowing i needed horseradish grabbed a bottle for me and explained that, "they only have the red kind here."

"oh, thank you so much. what is the german word for horseradish?"

"meerrettich," she replied with an american accent. i must have looked at her blankly because she repeated it. "meer-ret-tich"

"thanks. well, i guess there's one word i won't need after this week." i was trying to make a joke but i was met with the berlin sneer. she was not new to the area.

i turned to the woman at the register. she looked antsy, arranging boxes and answering questions in german, as her wild black hair fell out of its rubberband. "alles," i said triumphantly. i had finally finished.

she peered over her glasses with an amused look and said slowly, in english, "aren't you forgetting something?" she motioned to the giant sized boxes of matzah directly to her right.

"oh, yeah. i guess we'll need some of that." i blushed. in reality, we only needed a tiny bit, just enough for my charoset sandwiches. dan doesn't even like charoset. i could have explained but i had caused enough back up already so i took the huge box and paid the exorbitant price.

on the long walk home, my arms now heavily laden with passover supplies, i thought about what had just happened. as an american living in germany i could say that every experience i have is a foreign one, but being a non-jew, married to a non-practicing jew, shopping for passover in the city who's history dictated killing 6 million people in the holocaust - this was a foreign experience.