Germany boosts Judaism

"The Germans, the Israelis, and the Polish complain that only Russian is spoken anymore," says Kessler. "They say, 'This is not my community anymore. It is no longer that which I remember from earlier. I am getting out.'"

The immigration policy, the only law in Germany allowing for permanent immigration, originated as an effort to help Jews escape rising anti-Semitism in the former Soviet states following the collapse of communism. At the time the law was passed, the German leaders also made it clear that they felt a moral obligation to help Jews.

Despite the problems immigration is causing, the numbers coming to Germany are a far cry from the 100,000 a year who elected to go to Israel in the 1990s. While that number is tapering off, Israel is now home to 1 million Russian speakers. Likewise, the United States has absorbed over a quarter of a million Jews from the former Soviet Union since 1989.

Yet while the United States and Israel are countries born of immigration, Germany has long resisted welcoming foreigners. Nevertheless, most Russian-speaking newcomers say, despite reports of rising anti-Semitism in Germany, they feel quite welcome.

"When my family came," says Irina Sosnowski, a 23-year-old native of Krasnoda in the North Caucasus, who has been in Berlin since 1991, "Jews didn't really have much of a future in Russia. In Germany, I feel almost at home."

Igor Chalmiev, a native of Baku in Azerbaijan and now head of integration at the Jewish Culture Center in Berlin, has similar recollections. "Everyone [in my country] said the Jews were guilty of communism," he says. "They said Marx was Jewish, Lenin was Jewish, Trotsky was Jewish. And we had a big "J" in our passports. It was better to come to Germany."

Ironically, some of the current problems within the Jewish community come directly from Germany's liberally written immigration law for Jews. The government considers a Jew to be anyone born to a Jewish mother or a Jewish father. However, according to the Halakha, the Jewish law used by the German Jewish community, only matrilineal descendants are Jewish. Thus, thousands of those allowed into Germany on the so-called "Jewish ticket" are prohibited from joining the official Jewish community.

In addition, many have been able to come into Germany with falsified papers or even false identities created by purchasing passports from Jews who have elected to stay in Russia.

The bigger issue, however, is those Russian-speaking immigrants who are Jewish and who do join the community. Most of them, by virtue of growing up under communism, have only a very loose connection to Judaism. According to a recent survey completed by Juedisches Berlin, only 14 percent of incoming Jews join the community for religious reasons.

The result is a community that is changing quickly from the relatively homogeneous group of observant Jews who settled after World War II, to a group encompassing two distinct languages, two different cultures, radically different needs, and a growing variety of convictions as to what it means to be Jewish.

"In the bigger picture, I suppose it is part of the normalization process," says Kessler. "But on the other hand, it creates such chaos and such a huge number of competing interests. I don't have anything to do with orthodoxy but I am in the same organization [the Central Council of Jews]. I also don't have anything in common with the grandma from the retirement home but she is in the same organization. It is all very complicated."

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