jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

of charge and then also receive this scholarship, which I think is the key to studying abroad for people who
cannot otherwise sustain themselves.
The fund is set up like the existing 11 foundations that exist to cater to the Catholic church, the Protestant
church, the trade unions, the various parties in German parliament and the German National Scholarship
Foundation. As you can see, the Jewish target group has been missing so far.
● So the ‘Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich-Studienwerk’ has already been established?
It has already been established as a charitable organization. The necessary steps are being taken to fully start
our work with the budget year 2010. We also have an agreed budget with the Ministry of Education as of
2010. What we don’t have is funding for the preparatory costs, and as I said there is a structural gap in 2010
because the Ministry of Education does not bridge the time between setting up the foundation and the
beginning of operative possibilities.
● Is the Central Council of Jews in Germany (‘Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland’) incorporated in the
project of the Scholarship Foundation?
We try to have everybody from the Jewish Community represented on the boards. The assessors come from
all universities, and are Jewish professors in their various fields. We have liberal as well as orthodox
representation. The patron of the fund is the chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and on
the board of trustees we have the vice-president, that’s Dr. Graumann. We also have the executive director,
Stephan Kramer, represented and one of the board members is Benno Bleiberg, who is a member of the board
of the Jewish Community in Berlin. The aim is to make it as widely accessible as possible, also over all
denominational boundaries.
● Do you have a kind of overview at least from the Communities the Union of Progressive Jews if there are
generational differences when it comes to interest in Community involvement? If the elderly or middle aged
or young people are particularly interested or not?
First of all I think there’s no difference between Union congregations and general congregations. There is a
great interest in the elderly population because they see it as a safe haven and a focus forum for their social
contacts. It’s not necessarily a religious urge, but a social and cultural one. We have great difficulties in
getting young people into the religious instruction programs, and I must say that some very pessimistic voices
assume that we may only retain 3-5% of the immigrants in the midterm. Which means that of the 120,000
only 20,000 or 30,000 will remain in Germany, in which case there is no Jewish renaissance, but merely a
small firework.
● To clarify, you mean just 3-5% from all generations?
Eventually, when the first generation will have died, only 3-5% will remain. This means that we have not yet
found a mechanism in the Jewish Communities to interest the younger generation. I think one argument can
be that, for example, we do not have young professionals that can relate to families, young Rabbis who also
have children and young families. Currently we only have 70-80 year old people, and this definitely has to
change.
We have no interesting, or very few interesting programs for young people and I think the Central Welfare
Board of Jews in Germany (‘Zentralwohlfahrtstelle’) is absolutely incompetent in creating interesting youth
programs.
Netzer Olami, the youth organization of the World Union, has very successful youth camps in Russia, where
one can observe that hundreds and thousands of kids want to go to these camps. It’s the single most
successful program. I cannot see what the difference is between kids that have remained in Eastern Europe
and those who have immigrated because there is a very lively relationship between these two communities.
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