jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

will be some immigrants who are deeply interested, some who are mildly interested, and some who are not at
all interested. And those who are deeply interested will outpace the veterans you refer to in their observance,
religiosity and any other quantifiable factors. Anyone who doubts this should visit our projects in Berlin or
Leipzig, or go to synagogue in Frankfurt or Cologne and look for the observant-looking under 40 crowd.
Veterans or immigrants?
As a starting point, you could also take the reverse perspective, just to realize that we are here now, and there
will be Jewish life in Germany in the long run. Therefore an investment must be made to make sure that the
Community structures are strong, successful, attractive, and viable. What we have now is a situation in which
a lot of resources are spent to encourage people to participate in – nothing. Is it important to play chess or
make sports outside or inside the Community, what does it mean for Jewish life?
I’d rather think we have to care for good schools, attractive and interesting, age-relevant education offerings,
synagogue services with a wide range, open to people who don’t know much about it, with other words, there
has to be quality! And if you have quality, you can also attract people. That’s the way we try to do it. The
strategic model is to build up a young, engaged “Gemeinschaft” (=community) with no political pretensions.
● No political pretensions – does this also mean no funding from outside?
Well, funding from outside yes, but funding that is channeled through the [established] Jewish Community.
Thus, last autumn [2008] we opened a Jewish primary school, and for this we get state funding [from the
Berlin Senate]. But we do not get state funding because we went around and demanded it. We get it because
we went to the (JC Berlin) Community leadership and asked them to support our project officially. In
general, we don’t ask for less than anybody else, but we don’t make it a political issue at all. We don’t want
to have a special connection to the Rathaus [city hall. O.G.], we just want to have funding for our school.
● Can you just say a few words about the beginning of the Lauder activities here in Berlin?
We started in September, 2000, with nine students in a small yeshiva program in the front annex of the
Rykestrasse Synagogue in the former East Berlin, and in the following year with a similar institution for
women, a midrasha in Frankfurt am Main, that eventually moved here, and today we are in this neighborhood
[Prenzlauer Berg, in central Berlin] with the yeshiva and midrasha. We have a core community of about 30
young, observant families; a kindergarten; a primary school which attracts kids from a much wider range, and
that’s my point, we can offer a highly qualitative Jewish experience, because there is a core of people who
really want it. And from this base, we can tell people, look, this is a great school, and it’s worth sending your
kid to this school and not to a non-Jewish school. Why? Because it’s a great school, and you get there what
you get in other schools plus a quality Jewish experience and this is indeed an argument to go to the parents
and to encourage them and say you should send your child to this Jewish school.
All in all we try to build a small community model with its own internal engine, positive and constructive.
The intention is also that it should be influential beyond its numbers because what happens here can also have
quite positive effects straight into the non-Jewish public. For example, there’s a successful young person who
studies in our yeshiva, and then goes to Charité Medical School [Charité the famous university hospital in the
Eastern part of Berlin], becomes a doctor at the Charité, wears a yarmulke, and doesn’t work on Shabbat in
the Charité. That is transformative and has a great impact. First of all in the society itself because this guy is
not walking around and demanding give me a job at the Charité because I am a Jew. No, the Jew is beside the
point. He’s saying he’s a Jew, he’s absolute clear in that point. But he’s also saying he’s a good doctor, and
you should give him a job, even when he’s wearing a yarmulke. Having a doctor like that, having a lawyer
like that, having a professor like that; this says to any Jew in the country, you see, it’s possible. You don’t
have to do it, but you can. Do not for one minute think that you cannot be an observant, educated Jew. If he
or she can do that, then you can, too. So the purpose of our project is to create a cultural paradigm which
fights against a negative mentality. This, in truth, is the crux of our outreach work. The special task as
outreach workers is to take away the obstacles, the excuses and the difficulties which otherwise hamper a
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