jews and jewish education in germany today - The Westbury Group

● If you come to the Community because you’re interested in it, because there’s a good cultural program,
sports program, educational programs, including secular educational programs, then it’s ok, and you have to
wait and see what will happen and see what will excite and attract people in the Community?
I think that what I just said is a fundament for living together and then later you can talk about having
different religious movements, cultural directions; but that’s all for later, that’s the second step. First you’ve
got to find this basis.
● To what extent can you employ your earlier professional experience as a theater director in the
Community?
Of course when I came here to Germany in 2005 as a director I also had the idea I could do something in the
Community. But I wasn’t so active. I just put an ad in the paper. I have a big problem, but it’s probably only
a problem for me, because I am a true professional and I can’t work with amateurs. For me, when I’m
working with people who aren’t actors, it’s more like I’m the teacher and they are the students. That’s how I
feel. Because I’m now working in a completely different direction, I could incorporate my professional
experience as a director into my work as a Rabbi, of course.
Of course when I tell people things about religion, I do it in such a way to captivate them, I use some acting
skills. I have learned so much about Jewish paths and places in Germany. I’ve led some tours in Frankfurt, in
Amsterdam, and soon we’ll go to Mainz and there I show people where Jews lived, what they did there. In
this way I try to get people into the Community by telling them about the history and culture and religion.
● The tour group is made up of immigrants?
Yes. The tours are in Russian.
● Do you see a healthy pluralism developing in Jewish life in German, or is it simply too early and rather
weakens the entire Community?
What I’m now saying is absolutely just my personal opinion. Of course the various movements within
Judaism are on something of a confrontation course with one another. Each movement thinks it’s the main
one, and unfortunately sometimes is not so good to the others. I think for the future, for our religion in
general, regardless of in Germany or in Israel or England, that is not very good. I don’t think it’s good. There
are little fights in our Judaism; that’s not good, that’s not tolerant. They can’t even come together at one
table, and that’s bad.
● That means that because these movements have such negative relations amongst themselves, that this harm
outweighs the good from pluralism?
Yes, of course. People are conducting small wars, that’s worse. That there is pluralism, that’s not bad.
There’s something else I want to say about it. If you say that this synagogue is Orthodox, what does that
mean? That means either the Rabbi, or someone from the Community leadership is Orthodox because
practically all the others, almost 90%, are atheists because they’re from the Soviet Union, because they’re
new immigrants. But I think that the people who are in the leadership; they are the ones involved in the
conflicts, not the normal members. The members have no idea what’s going on. Just the people in power.
● That means that you don’t believe that the masses are Orthodox?
They are tending toward something more traditional than what they have brought with them from the Soviet
Union, but not Orthodox. When we’re talking about the future and if that’s for the people who came from the
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