Artikel vom März 2002 aus New Voices Creating a Culture of Discussion Uriel Kashi, Fourth Year, Free University in Berlin, Germany To some American readers this might sound like a story out of a history book, but Jewish life in Germany does exist. Because of Germany's history, however, Jewish life in Germany is fundamentally different from Jewish life in other European countries and the United States. The Holocaust left its mark here. Since World War II, the German Jewish community has generally avoided any questions that might cause controversy. The German Jewish community, whose numbers dropped from 500,000 before World War II to 30,000 members of Jewish congregations in the 1980s, has rallied around the notion that its survival depends upon a powerful commitment to sticking together. But now, with the influx of 80,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union, it appears that the continuity of German Jewish life is assured. After graduating from school in Stuttgart, a town with very few Jews, I knew that if I wanted to lead an active Jewish life, living in Berlin was one of the few alternatives. In most German cities, there is typically just an Orthodox or "Conservadox" service, even though there are very few Orthodox members of the community. Berlin is one of the very few cities in Germany where there is more than one synagogue--seven, in fact. Here, religious Jews have the choice to attend Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox services. Still, the options open to Jews, especially activities for children and students, are both limited and uniform. There is no such thing as different streams of Jewish student life in Berlin. Instead, there is only one student group, the Berlin Jewish Student Union, which organizes weekly activities. Once a month at the Berlin Jewish Student Union there is a Kabbalat Shabbat sponsored by the Jewish Community of Berlin that attracts 50 to 60 participants. Although there is a sense of Jewish community, a political and religious consciousness hardly exists among most of the members of the Jewish Student Union. Most of the students who attend know some Israeli or Jewish songs, but almost no one really knows about the content of Judaism, neither in a religious nor in a political sense. But Germany does have an actively political group of Jewish university students called the Federal Union of Jewish Students. The core members of this group wanted to recreate the vibrant exchange among German Jewish intellectuals that had been so common in pre-war Germany. Together, we came up with the idea to organize a nationwide seminar to serve as a meeting place for Jewish students who often do not have contact with other Jews and to spark new discussion within the Jewish community. This first Jewish Winter University took place in Würzburg this January. Some of our guest speakers included thinkers whose ideas have been neglected or not discussed in Germany. For example, in the German Jewish community today, any criticism of Israel is very quickly attacked as "anti-Israel," "anti-Zionist," or even "anti-Semitic." To approach this subject we invited Moshe Zuckermann, an Israeli sociologist and historian at Tel Aviv University, who has critically analyzed the relationships between the different segments of Israeli society, as well as the Arab-Israeli conflict. We also offered representatives of Orthodox and Reform Judaism the opportunity to describe and discuss their approaches to Judaism, reflecting a trend in recent German Jewish history towards openness and pluralism. Finally, we had workshops dealing with topics like German-Jewish history in general, Jewish resistance during and after the Nazi reign of terror, and the Jewish history of the city of Würzburg. The words of encouragement from the participants in the seminars encouraged us to proactively create a dynamic German Jewish community. It taught us that as German Jewish students we must build new structures, communities, and relationships, or we will fade away. Only a society that creates a culture of discussion can develop its viewpoints and profess its own identity. For that to happen, each German Jewish student has to consider what it means to be a German Jew and to have the desire to breathe new life into Jewish culture in Germany.