By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
One of the preeminent Berlin-born Jewish historians in Germany told his Mercer Island audience they should check out Jewish life in Germany today for themselves. The 120,000-plus Jews now living there, he believes, enjoy a sophisticated and rich culture much like the one Jews once enjoyed there before the war.
Dr. Hermann Simon, director and co-founder of the Neue Synagogue Berlin-Centrum Judaicum Foundation, and the son of Holocaust survivors who oversaw the renovation of Berlin’s historic Neue Synagogue, told his audience at the Stroum Jewish Community Center to consider reconnecting with their rich history, particularly if they have family roots there.
“This Jewish community is the third-largest in Europe and there are many Israelis living in Berlin,” Simon told JTNews.
“I’m a former East Berliner, from before the unification,” he said. “But before, there was a community of about 200 people. Now, we have 12,000. There is a hopeful Jewish life here and nobody expected it.”
This was Simon’s first trip to the West Coast that included a stop in San Francisco. His wife, Deborah, a German-English professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, accompanied him.
“This was our first time in Seattle and we loved it,” she said.
The Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Stroum JCC hosted the pair, which was coordinated by the American Jewish Committee’s Greater Seattle Chapter. The AJC maintains an office in Berlin and operates the Adenauer Exchange Program, nominating active members and sending them to Germany for 10 days, thereby fulfilling its mission to educate Jews about Jewish communities around the world.
“Germany is a very good place for Jews at this point and it has a very vibrant Jewish life,” said Rabbi Anson Laytner, executive director of the Seattle AJC office. “We are slowly beginning to realize that the culture and people that were responsible for the Holocaust is dying out.”
The way he sees it, Germans have confronted their history, undergone a process of soul-searching, and have purged their society of those sinister ghosts.
“We’re taught in Judaism to judge someone by their merit,” said Laytner. “You can’t hold people responsible for what their parents and grandparents did. Israel has had diplomatic relations with Germany [for over 40 years] and Germany is staunchly supportive of Israel. It’s a measured response, weighing the past with the present.”
The restored and rededicated Neue Synagogue was once the center of Jewish life in Berlin before the infamous “Night of Broken Glass,” or Kristallnacht, when Jewish businesses and synagogues were targeted and either seriously damaged or ruined. The Nazis then used the sacred space for storage and as a stable.
However, it was the allied bombing of Berlin during World War II that destroyed its façade and main sanctuary, rendering it unusable.
Some of Simon’s earliest memories were of standing in the main room of the synagogue.
“I was a little boy,” said Simon. “I remember going there when I was six or seven years old.”
Today, the synagogue houses the central archive of Germany’s Jewish community. The Centrum Judaicum Foundation is a center for Jewish history and culture that features permanent and temporary exhibits and collections of German Jewish history from in and around Berlin.
“I think it’s important that the American Jewish society learn about the Jews in Germany because they have many connections,” said Simon. “Jews in America have, perhaps, a different view of German Jews. I think connections are very important. It’s important to pass on the Jewish heritage to the next generation.”
Jewish life in Germany in 2007 could be considered a mix of good news and not-so-good news.
In June of this year, Barbra Streisand, the 65-year-old Jewish songstress performed for the first time in the country, serenading a packed house of adoring Berliners, whom she did not disappoint.
In addition, a replica of the Western Wall in Jerusalem was constructed and unveiled in late August of this year at the new site of the Chabad Jewish Community Center in Berlin.
However, a recent Anti-Defamation League poll of 2,714 Europeans in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland revealed that 39 percent of the 500 respondents surveyed in each country believed that Jews have too much power in business and finance. That number rose to 44 percent when asked if there is too much Jewish influence on international financial markets.
On the question of whether Jews were more loyal to Israel than their home countries, a hefty 51 percent said that they believed Jews were more loyal to Israel, prompting Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, to call it “troubling.” Foxman expressed concern that the Jewish conspiratorial stereotype was growing, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Another study by the German Social Democratic party-linked Friedrich Ebert Foundation found that 18 percent, or one out of five Germans, felt that Jews still wielded too much influence.
“We think living in Germany is safer than many other countries in Europe,” said Deborah Simon. “I wouldn’t be comfortable living in Russia or the Ukraine. We’ve personally come across open anti-Semitism in Poland. However, I think German society has really changed.”
It has, in fact, along with the rest of Europe. Germany is absorbing an influx of Muslims from other countries who are incorporating with the local Muslim population, which is mainly Turkish. Muslims make up about 4 percent of Germany’s population of about 82.5 million people.
“The Jewish community needs more contact with the Muslim community,” said Hermann Simon. “It will be one of the biggest challenges, but we must find a way to do it. It must be now. It is time.”
Jews in Germany also face a growing conflict from within.
Simon has publicly acknowledged the escalating tension between the now-majority of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union and the native German-speaking Jews who have enjoyed their post-war status as the dominant Jewish group.
Simon has called for greater acceptance of the newcomers.
“Life is mixed, and every metal or coin has two sides,” said the former numismatist who was once curator of oriental coins for the Bode Museum in Berlin. “But we have just opened a new synagogue, the Rykestrasse (Ryke Street) Synagogue, and thousands stood inside and thousands stood outside.”