BACKGROUND
Question. With Many Answers:
Why Jews Stay In Germany
WINSTON PICKETT
Special to The Jewish News
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During the Shabbat ser-
vice, the cantor and rabbi
call a throng of children to
the ornate bimah in a
synagogue that was
destroyed during
Kristallnacht and restored
after World War II.
Youthful, excited voices ring
festively through the air.
By all appearances, a nor-
mal,-thriving Jewish gather-
ing. But look again. At least
a third of the more than 350
people who have gathered
are not Jews but visiting
Christians. All have been
frisked and electronically
screened for weapons by a
policeman at the front door.
Welcome to West Berlin.
Why do Jews still live in
Germany? It is a question
that seems to haunt many
Jews, for whom the country
is forever branded as the
cradle of the Holocaust.
Question the 30,000 Jews
who live in the 56 Jewish
communities scattered
throughout the Federal
Republic of Germany and
you'll get 30,000 answers:
from the Israelis who have
come for economic oppor-
tunity; the Soviet Jews who
now make up perhaps a
quarter of the Jewish
population; the children of
Holocaust survivors; and the
aging survivors themselves.
Whomever you ask,
however, a simple fact will
emerge: Jews are in Ger-
many to stay. Perhaps not
forever, and perhaps with
one bag packed. But they are
there.
Rabbi Ernst Stein leads
the liberal Pestalozzistrasse
Synagogue in Berlin, where
the recent Friday night bat
mitzvah took place. He is a
60-year-old native of Ger-
Winston Pickett is the features
editor of the Northern
California Jewish Bulletin. In
December, he spent a week in
West Germany under the
auspices of the Konrad
Adenauer Foundation.
East Berliners protest neo-Nazi activities.
many who was ordained at
the Leo Baeck College in
London in 1985 and took
over the Berlin pulpit five
years later.
Despite its inordinate
wealth and its surfeit of edu-
cational and cultural pro-
grams, Stein says, German
Jews are starving for
energetic Jewish profes-
sionals — rabbis, cantors,
teachers. "If you don't have
these, you can't do
anything," he says between
telephone calls in his
capacious, book-lined study.
When Stein isn't manag-
ing the affairs of his
6,500-member congregation,
he is busy providing services •
to East Berlin's tiny, 200-
member Jewish community.
He returned to Berlin, he
says, after seeing "the
pitiful condition of German
Jews" in the 1970s.
He said he is not in Berlin
because he believes Ger-
many to be a viable place for
Jews to live, however, but
out of a sense of responsibili-
ty.
Jana Urbach's am-
bivalence is of a different
sort. A native of Prague, she
came to Bonn via South
Africa, where she was rais-
ed. Soft-spoken, poised and
thoughtful, she and her hus-
band manage a mid-priced
hotel. She is one of Bonn's
200 Jews, most of whom, she
says, are either foreign-born,
intermarried or both.
As a Jew, her identity is
secure. Her parents survived
the Holocaust. Her father,
Alexander Singer, was the
leading cantor of Prague.
She has lived briefly in
Israel. She sends her two
children to midweek Hebrew
school in Bonn, and she par-
ticipates in a once-a-month
adult Torah study group.
Still, she longs for the
warmth and cohesion of a
larger Jewish community
where she lives. And she
remains wary of anti-
Semitic sentiments she
hears around the hotel and
on the street.
Martin Poss was born and
raised in Hanover. He is one
of a segment of German
Jews whose East European
parents decided to stay on in
Germany after surviving the
Holocaust. Because of their
Polish heritage, he doesn't
quite feel German, either.
Nevertheless, he declares,
"Germany is not a bad place.
You can live here."
Self-consciously, though.
As a pensive social worker,
Nevertheless, he
declares,
"Germany is not a
bad place. You can
live here."
the 35-year-old dark-bearded
man who moved to Berlin 10
years ago has seen a rise in
nationalism and anti-foreign
sentiments, which he feels
could easily spill over to the
Jews.
Micha Guttmann is a
German of another stripe.
For a native, he is the an-
tithesis of what Israelis
derisively, and sometimes
affectionately, call a yekke —
the button-down, punctilious
German Jew. He dresses for
work in slacks and a
sweater, has an unruly nim-
bus of blond curly hair, and
drives a late-model, dark-
metallic blue Porsche with
newspapers, books and
videotapes scattered every-
where inside.