jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

● What is your experience with the reactions and attitudes of non-Jewish German authorities, politicians and
groups regarding Jewish life today and developments in Jewish life in Germany?
That’s a difficult question. For politicians and authorities in Germany, Jews are on the one hand untouchables
and on the other alibi Jews. The federal government has their alibi organization and is funding the Zentralrat.
In fact for the federal government everything Jewish is limited to the Zentralrat, and it’s the same at the state
or city level. There’s no real contact. There are a few organizations and the Christian-Jewish cooperation
groups, but that’s relatively limited. Otherwise, I don’t see any real interest from politics other than the
occasional symbolic act.
● How would you describe the general attitude from the side of the non-Jewish population?
Either disinterest or negative interest. Naturally, as the Jüdische Zeitung reports, there’s also positive interest
among church people, educational leaders, but this is the minority.
● What do you think about the German media coverage of events that relate to the development of Jewish life
in Germany?
Very one-sided. Either they report about the holidays and high holy days or if someone’s involved in a
scandal, and this scandal will be more or less covered and not always competently, but ok. Only very rarely
will there be any correct research when reporting about the content of Community life. In the best case the
Community chair has been spoken to, and the official view is taken, but only rarely do they try to get to the
bottom of the story. And that’s also understandable, because it’s not really of the utmost importance for the
majority of readers, but really competent reporting is rare.
● How is global Jewish life covered in the non-Jewish German media?
It depends who’s writing. It always depends.
● How is Israel covered in the non-Jewish German media?
That depends even more on who’s writing, because there are people who try to do it well and more or less
objective, Ulrich Sahm 11 for example.
However, there are also a lot of clichés in the German media. You could see this clearly in the last few
months as everyone in the German media used these clichés about Lieberman and no one bothered to read his
speeches before they tore them apart. One said that he’s racist and all the German reporters repeated this. Is
he racist? No, not really. Populist? Well, every politician is a populist, this isn’t anything new. But until now
Lieberman hasn’t said anything against what is in the documents ratified by Israel. Israel did not sign any
documents in Annapolis, so he doesn’t need to take this into consideration.
● What do you think of the development of Jewish media in Germany?
There is no independent Jewish media in Germany now. No chance. It would be really, really difficult. The
Jüdische Zeitung showed that the interest is there to be competitive, but especially in these times of economic
crisis, if only one paper will be supported by the Zentralrat which gives a lot of money to a rag like Zukunft 12 ,
which translates three-week old articles from the Community, you can’t talk about real competition.
● What do you think of having a Jewish TV channel in Germany, like they have in France?
11 Prominent German correspondent for several newspapers, radio and TV stations, working in Jerusalem.
12 Small journal of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
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