God bless Randy. He had demanded that they go, and go alone, assuring them that he’d watch over Hannah so that Peter’s parents wouldn’t have to shoulder the entire burden alone. It had been desperation that led them to Europe, to a week in Munich with everything set up by Rina’s friend Ellen Nussburger.

I can’t believe I’m actually agreeing to this, Rina had told her.

You won’t be sorry, Ellie had responded. It won’t be anything like you think.

But it had been like she’d thought, her gut constricting as soon as she’d heard German as a living language. She had purposely declined going to Dachau. What Peter didn’t need was more destruction in his life, or in her life—come to think about it. But there remained a certain heaviness throughout the week, because it was impossible to walk the cobblestones of Kaufingerstrasse in the Marienplatz without thinking about all the Jewish blood that had been spilled on German soil. Every time they passed the Hofbrauhaus beer hall, it was as if ghosts were belting out the “Horst Wessel Song.”

The saving grace was Ellie’s work. Here was a woman who was trying to build up a religious Jewish community, not toss it into the furnace. The fact that Ellie and her husband, Larry, chose Germany was a testament to their nonconformity, but that was Ellie to a T. Rina remembered their years together in school, in kindergarten when both of them had been five years old and it had been Purim. All the other girls had dressed up as Queen Esther or some other unnamed princess. There were also a few ballerinas, several clowns, and a couple of butterflies. Ellie had come to school wearing a homemade costume that wasn’t much more than a sack. It was designed in sandwich-board style with two sides. The front was imprinted with a blue sky and white fluffy clouds with a big felt sun stuck in the center. The back fabric was black and glitter-studded with a crescent moon in the corner.

What are you? Amy Swartzberg had demanded to know of Ellie.

Ellie had retorted in her most adult voice: I am Bereshit—the creation of the sun and the moon. It’s a conceptual costume!

Rina had no idea what conceptual meant, but by the way Ellie had stated the word, conceptual had to be pretty darn important.

From the moment they had arrived overseas, Ellie greeted them with such warmth that soon Rina’s misgiving melted and it was old times again. Ellie’s enthusiasm was infectious.

This is Hitler’s worst nightmare, Rina, a resurgence of Jewish life where the Nazi party was born.

Not a particularly big resurgence, Rina thought, but everything had to start somewhere. Munich had several synagogues, a small kosher shop owned by a Moroccan French Jew in the main Viktualienmarkt, a kosher bakery in Schwabing, and a kosher restaurant in the old Isarvorstadt area. The Bavarians were a particularly unique lot. When they thought she and Peter were Americans of possible German descent because of their surname Decker, they were outgoing and friendly, boastful and proud. But the minute she spoke to them in Yiddish, a clear indication that she was Jewish, most probably with relatives from “that other period,” they’d remain polite but the conversation turned stilted, their words carefully chosen.