Today’s German Jewish community represents and lives all the best traditions of our Jewishness: responsibility to preserve our cherished Jewish heritage, having the imagination to be open and modern to new challenges and the determination to jointly build a completely new Jewish Community – expressly and despite all the catastrophes. I wish for a Jewry which will never forget the history of our suffering and of our martyrs, but which will care more strongly for and is more aware of the positive dimensions of Jewry and which exhibits them with energy and vigor. In the end, only those who are enthusiastic will enthuse others; for a Jewry which not only desperately and sometimes agonizingly thinks how German it can be but how Jewish it wants to be.
We Jews stand in a long line of generations, and we must see that this is not only carried forward but that it never breaks. We must carry the torch of Judaism – our traditions, our culture, our knowledge – to those nearest us and to make sure that the fl ame of Jewishness is re-kindled in the hearts of our children. That is our own task, one we cannot delegate.
Jewry in Germany will be stronger and more diverse. It will be a Jewry which recognizes, measures and values its unique foundations, which not only reflects itself, but which actively and creatively participates in the debates that shape society. Our Jewry is increasingly supported by a growing Jewish cultural scene in Germany, carried by a respect for our new richness in diversity, fired by a new positive Jewish ‘spirit’. In Germany we will build a new Jewry with passion. It will be wisely founded, it will have strong roots so that it can grow and be healthy. It will reach far into another age. An ambitious plan, certainly. We will succeed.
Dr. Dieter Graumann is the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.