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April 23, 1999/7 Iyar 5759, Vol. 51, No. 30
Jewish community celebrates rebirth in Berlin
TOBY AXELROD
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
BERLIN - For most Germans, April 19 was the day that the nation's renovated Parliament building, the Reichstag, reopened as a gleaming, glass-domed symbol of democracy spun from the wreckage of Nazism. The Parliament held its first session that day in the renovated Reichstag, marking the return of the nation's capital to Berlin.
But for the nation's Jews, Monday had additional significance: The Central Council of Jews in Germany officially dedicated its new headquarters in Berlin. And, in another part of town, work began on a new school for Jewish teachers sponsored by the New York-based Ronald S. Lauder Foundation.
The confluence of events, coupled with memories of war-torn Berlin more than a half-century ago, had Jewish leaders looking forward to a bright future for their community in the new capital.
As a mezuzah was nailed to the front door of the building housing the new offices of the Central Council, Ignatz Bubis, the group's president, joined Rabbi Joel Berger, the national rabbi of Germany, in chanting prayers of thanks for having lived to see this day. Later, speaking to invited guests and reporters inside the building, Bubis said the move was a "logical consequence" of the reunification of Germany and the move of the government from Bonn to Berlin. But he called it a coincidence that the Reichstag opened on the same day.
German President Roman Herzog said the new Jewish office "opens a new chapter in the postwar history of German Jewry." And Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen praised the move as a "sign that the Jewish community is blooming and thriving."
Also moving into the building, known as the Leo Baeck House, were the Allgemeine Juedische Wochenzeitung, Germany's Jewish newspaper, and the European Jewish Congress, of which Bubis also is president. It marked the first time that the EJC opened an office in Germany.
The building formerly housed the College for the Science of Judaism, shut down by the Nazis in 1942. The school boasted such illustrious teachers as Leo Baeck and Martin Buber, and such students as Solomon Schechter and Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Also on April 19, renovations began, in the former East Berlin, on the former Talmud Torah of the Rykestrasse Synagogue, which will house the new school for Jewish educators founded by the Lauder Foundation. Joel Levy, the foundation's chairman in Germany, and his wife, Carol, followed architect Alexander Lempert from room to dusty room, imagining them filled again with the sounds of learning.
"This is Jewish life looking backwards and forwards, all at once," Levy said in an earlier interview. He said the Nazis had shut down the Talmud Torah, but the synagogue was the only one in Berlin to survive the Third Reich intact.
Last summer, Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski arrived from New York to begin teaching. Currently he has 14 students, who shuttle in from Hameln, Rostock and Cologne. Like Germany's Jewish community at large, about half of the students are of Russian background.
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