Free I Sleep in Hitler's Room by Tuvia Tenenbom

lady by the name of Sister Jutta-Maria. A Smiling Nun. She had a boyfriend for two years and then decided she wanted more from the relationship, but the only way she could get it, she thought, was by marrying Jesus. That’s Christ, Jesus Christ. She’s five years a sister, and she’s getting close to Jesus. In three years, that’s the plan now, she will marry Him.
    How does Jesus look?
    “He’s not Italian. He has a short beard and brown hair.”
    Is he a good kisser?
    “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” She asks in reply.
    Me? Protestant! American Protestant from New York.
    No Jew, no Pole, no Jordanian, no German. I can’t believe I change my identity so often. Psychiatrists would say that I suffer from Arrested Development or something related. But I just like it. I was given one life to live, and I want many more. You can try it too, it’s very uplifting.
    Is Jesus a good kisser?
    Here Sister gets more cautious. “He’s not a, a, not a—”
    Not what?
    “You know, not a, how do you say it in English? I don’t know. He is not a, you know.”
    Well, let’s try to figure it out.
    How will it happen? I ask her. Will Jesus come to your room in the cloister at night and say, “Hello, Sister Jutta. Here I am!”
    “Jutta-Maria!” she corrects me. Her birth name is Jutta, true, but the Virgin appeared to her and told her that “she wanted to hear her name out loud every time people call me.” So, she smiles, “I added the name Maria.”
    Good. Now, let’s try to imagine the Courtship Scene: Jesus will come to your room in the cloister at night and say, “Hello, Sister Jutta-Maria. Here I am!” What will you do?
    First, she tells me, she’s going to check it out, make sure it’s Him. Her father is a policeman and she’s not just trusting everybody.

    “Are you tempted?” she says, changing the subject.
    Is she “starting” with me, does she want me to take her to my Ritz bedroom? No, no. She offers me chips. Chips, she says, are very tempting. She used to have two packs a week before she fell in love with Jesus. But today she craves it only once every two months. She lives in a cloister, and when temptation calls she goes to the Head Sis and tells her of the problem. And the Head Sister says, “I am happy to give you chips.” But not always. Sometimes there are no chips. Stuff happens. Jutta-Maria offers me chocolate, which is Temptation number 2. That’s the way she sees it.
    I say, Thank you, I’ll conquer Temptation today!
    She looks at the Head Sister, sitting nearby, and asks if she could have the chocolate later.
    Yes!
    Sr. Jutta-Maria now explains some Hebrew to her American Protestant visitor.
    “
Maria
,” she says, “means
beloved of God
in Hebrew.”
    This American Protestant is very happy to study Judaism and Hebrew in Munich.
    My journey into Germany ends up being a journey into Judaism.
    Life is full of surprises!
    Manfred should have seen how I conquered Temptation. He’d be proud of this Pole.
    I’m in Munich’s “
Messe
,” which is a big convention center. This is one of the locations where thousands of German Christians, Catholic and Protestant, are attempting to get a bit closer.
    Margot Kassman gives a speech a few feet away. Dressed in black, she reads her speech from prepared pages. The audience repeatedly applauds. Journalists and photojournalists mix in the crowd. Lots of media here. Some of the photojournalists take pix of other photojournalists.
    She doesn’t strike me as a charismatic person, but the folks here seem to be her followers. I know very little about her. She used to be a bishop or something and resigned after she was caught driving while “intoxicated,” as they say in New York. I wonder what my Half and Half of Hamburg thinks of her! I can see him in his office, on the sixth floor of the
Die Zeit
building, laughing for hours!
    It took Margot a lifetime to be given a bishopric, and a glass of wine or a mug of beer to lose it.
    Come hither,