Formerly discriminated “Ostjuden” are now the backbone of Jewish life
More than 200,000 Jews have emigrated from the former Soviet Union to Germany in recent years – they are the future of German Jewry.
Those who think statically might be surprised by the composition of today’s Jewish congregations in Germany. But society is a dynamic process. The current community has little in common with the Jewry of the scholar Moses Mendelssohn or of the writer Lion Feuchtwanger, who dominated Jewish spiritual life until the 20th century.
On the basis of a 1700 year old history, German Jewry developed a close connection to its homeland; this is visible in Yiddish, a combination of German and Hebrew elements. Pride in their country as well as experienced anti-Semitic slurs pushed many German Jews to view the “Ostjuden” with contempt.
Walther Rathenau, industrialist and author, denounced his co-Israelites and urged them to assimilate. This was a bow to anti-Semites and it proved to be in vain: in 1922, Foreign Minister Rathenau was assassinated by rightwing radicals.
The Nazis didn’t differentiate between German Jews and “Ostjuden”. They murdered as many as they could. When in 1950 the Central Council of Jews in Germany was founded, there were less than 30,000 Jews in Germany. Most of them had been dragged from Eastern Europe or had escaped to Germany after 1945. For them, Germany wasn’t ‘home’, but an unloved exile.
This small group gradually became the de facto German Jewish community. When the Soviet Union imploded after 1990, more than 200,000 Jews came from there to Germany. They soon became the majority in the Jewish congregations.
Many families with old roots felt their social position was eroding and that the post-war Jewish community was being changed too radically. Nevertheless, the new arrivals were integrated or at least encouraged to do so.
Today, the newly arrived dominate the Jewish population. The majority of Russian Jews knows little about the Jewish religion or its customs and traditions. They are, however, trying to acquire them and are giving German Jewry a new face with their intellect and their energy. This issue focuses on this phenomenon.