November 26, 2004/Kislev 13 5765, Vol. 57, No. 13
New life for shul
TOBY AXELROD
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 During their first meeting ever in Berlin, the standing committee of the Conference of European Rabbis poses in front of the Rykestrasse Synagogue and Lauder Beit Midrash on Nov. 16. Photo by Toby Axelrod/JTA |
And this time, not one, but more than 25 rabbis were there.
It was the first time that the Conference of European Rabbis had held a meeting of its standing committee in Berlin. For many, the scene was emotional.
Here, where Nazis had ripped out the bimah, ark and eternal lamp, Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, wrapped in his prayer shawl, led a service together with Yitzchak Ehrenberg, chief rabbi of Berlin.
"It was a mystical experience," said a woman on the female side of the makeshift mechitzah.
Such experiences may occur more frequently as of December 2005, when a new Talmud study center opens in this 95-year-old shul and the apartment building that surrounds it in former East Berlin.
"This is the most exciting project I have ever had the privilege to be involved with," said the CER's executive director, Rabbi Aba Dunner of London, surveying the roomful of rabbis and guests.
The Nazis "thought they got rid of us. And, three days after the anniversary of Kristallnacht, this place is filled with Jews," he said, referring to the 1938 pogrom that heralded the intensification of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
The center - which will have room for up to 100 students - is a project of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and local Jewish philanthropist Roman Skoblo, a doctor and real-estate dabbler who bought the property about two years ago, after a local grass-roots group campaigned to save it.
The project is an outgrowth of the Lauder foundation's Beit Midrash, which opened four years ago with nine students in a restored former Jewish school nearby. Today there are 28 full-time students and another 80 regular attendees. A program for women opened in Frankfurt in 2001.
Rabbi Josh Spinner, vice president of the Lauder Foundation and head of the Beit Midrash of Berlin, said the new Talmud center will provide a traditional Jewish education for men and a "rabbi track" for those who choose it.
"This is a sign for the growth of Judaism, not only in Berlin," Skoblo said. "It contributes to the reactivation of something that was almost buried."