Being Jewish in the New Germany

Chapter 3: Russian Immigration and the Revitalization of German Jewry

Since 1990 a mass migration of Russian Jews has been under way, primarily to the United States and Israel. However, literally tens of thousands have also settled in Germany. The Jewish immigrants have since transformed the life of a community that had an uncertain future at best. Ironically , this massive population movement has certain parallels with a similar movement of Jews from East to West at the end of the Second World War when the concentration camps were liberated and thousands of displaced persons (DPs) moved across the Continent. Homeless, lost, and mostly destitute, many then resided—primarily in DP camps—on the soil of the nation that had almost succeeded in wiping out their people. In contrast to that earlier migration, however, Jews are now coming to Germany willingly, this time as seekers of a permanent stable home. This time they did not migrate in the aftermath of war, but nevertheless in a period of intensive change and insecurity. The East has moved west and the West has moved east, altering European spaces of identity that, typical of diasporas , no longer coincide with territorial boundaries. In 1989, before the Berlin Wall came down, the point at which my main narrative begins, the story of Jewish life in Germany had improved, but it was not particularly optimistic. There were 20,000 to 30,000 Jews in the Federal Republic (West Germany), 6,000 in Berlin, and about 500 Jews in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 200 in East Berlin.1 Most were elderly and their numbers were diminishing. Then came the opening of the borders, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet empire. Those decisive years, 1989–1990, marked the beginning of a flood of immigration. Few Americans seem to be aware how this population shift has, in fact, saved the Jewish community in Germany from 40 3 R u s s i a n I m m i g r a t i o n a n d t h e R e v i t a l i z a t i o n o f G e r m a n J e w r y certain extinction and made it the third largest in Europe, the ninth largest and fastest growing in the world. And few people, as the thesis of my book contends, understand how this migration and the reconstitution of the Jewish community in Germany may change our thinking about diaspora. Today the German Jewish Community proudly announces a membership of more than 100,000 (estimated most recently at 108,000), with 12,000 in Berlin. Eighty-nine synagogues are under its aegis, ranging from the largest in Berlin to smaller ones, such as in Rostock in the East or Kassel in the West. In some, Russian Jews make up virtually the entire community . In fact, 85 percent of the Jewish population in Germany is from the former Soviet Union and since 1989, over 190,000 Jews have emigrated from that dissolved empire and its successor states, primarily from Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic states. While the numbers indicate a sizable immigration, more importantly a closer analysis shows that not all Jews from the former Soviet Union, nor all Jews in Germany for that matter , are members of the official Jewish Community and therefore counted in these figures. An examination of the obvious question why all Jews are not official members reveals important idiosyncrasies about Jewish life in Germany, the relationships of German Jews to their immigrant brethren and of these “new Jews” among themselves. Migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to Germany is not unprecedented . In the early decades of the twentieth century, before Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, an uneasy peace existed between the so-called Ostjuden and their overwhelmingly secular German Jewish hosts. Eastern Jews were more religious, more Orthodox, and outwardly more clearly distinguishable . They were also generally poorer and more provincial. In Berlin many lived in the area called the “Scheunenviertel” (the barn quarter ), a less than desirable part of town adjacent to the well-known Alexanderplatz , the scene of Alfred Döblin’s famous novel of the same name. Coincidentally, I lived in this area when I did my research on Jews in the GDR in the early 1990s. At that time one could still see traces of Hebrew inscriptions on crumbling walls. The new “Ostjuden” who populate Germany today are also met with ambivalence, although the Community is officially committed to...