Germany boosts Judaism

For more than 50 years, Jews who lived in Germany were often asked how they could live "in the land of the murderers," referring to the Nazi massacre of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.

Ezer Weizman, then president of Israel, while on a state visit to Germany in 1996, went so far as to say he couldn't understand how a Jew could consider Germany an acceptable place to live.

That, seemingly, has all changed.

Over the past 10 years, the Jewish population in Germany has more than tripled, from under 30,000 in 1990 to more than 90,000 today, with estimates going as high as 120,000. And Jews are still coming. New congregations are springing up, while older communities are being replenished with newcomers.

Last week, the German government signed an accord that confers official status on Judaism, placing it on equal footing with the Lutheran and Roman Catholic denominations. This clears the way for Jewish groups to receive *3 million ($3.24 million) a year in government money, to support such programs as rabbinical training and settling newly arrived Russian Jewish immigrants. (Germany has a similar arrangement with Christian churches to support schools and other institutions.)

"It's becoming normal to be Jewish in Germany," says Rachel Dohme, head of the Liberal Jewish Community in the small town of Hamlin. "In the next generation, it'll become a normal thing for Germans to have Jews around."

Unfortunately, however, as Ms. Dohme is quick to point out, it isn't that simple.

The rebirth of Germany's Jewish community is entirely a result of Russian-speaking Jews emigrating to Germany from the former Soviet Union. Close to 10,000 have arrived each year - over 70,000 in total - since a law was passed in the early 1990s. The small existing German Jewish community has been swamped and its demographics radically altered. Today, 85 percent of Germany's Jews are Russian, with some groups, such as Dohme's, without a single non-Russian.

Community members are quick to point out that such rapid growth comes with a cost. Immigrants, many of them elderly, need help finding housing, getting jobs, learning German, and struggling through German bureaucracy in an effort to get settled. While they receive financial help from the government, much of the work falls to the Jewish community.

"We don't have the resources to solve all of these problems," says Judith Kessler, editor of the monthly magazine Juedisches Berlin and longtime member of the Berlin Jewish community. "We don't have thousands of places in retirement homes, we don't have enough money to give each person help, and we don't have apartments and we don't have jobs. This means that expectations are not met and the Russians are disappointed and angry."

For their part, the German Jews, a group that mostly grew out of "displaced persons" from Eastern Europe after the war, are also not entirely happy about the ways immigration has changed their community. Many feel pushed aside and ignored as the focus of the Jewish institutions in Germany has turned toward the Russian-speaking newcomers. The Russian language dominates most gatherings, and the community center in central Berlin organizes chess tournaments and ballet evenings instead of rounds of skat, Germany's favorite card game.

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