c. 2006 Religion News Service

BERLIN _ By almost any benchmark, Boris Rosenthal is a German success story. Fifteen years after arriving here with his family and a few suitcases, the native Ukrainian juggles a teaching job with a blossoming musical career, and speaks proudly in his adopted language of having a “German” mentality.

But Rosenthal’s is no ordinary immigrant’s rags-to-riches tale. Sixty years after the fall of Nazi Germany, he is among an estimated 200,000 Jews from former Communist states who have flocked here in recent years, reviving a once-minute postwar community.

Since 1990, the number of registered Jews has soared from 30,000 to nearly 106,000, double that figure, some estimate, if you include Jews not registered with religious organizations. Indeed, Germany boasts one of the world’s fastest growing Jewish populations, thanks to a generous immigration policy drafted partly to atone for the Holocaust.

“Without this new population, the future of the community was very bad,” said Julius Schoeps, a professor of German Jewish history at the University of Potsdam, near Berlin. “There was no future.”

Now, along with memorials for the 6 million Jews who died in World War II _ including 150,000 or more Germans _ signs of the new Jewish generation are mushrooming across the country. In Berlin, home to the country’s largest Jewish community, there are seven synagogues, three Jewish schools and an array of kosher stores and cafes.

But the immigration boom is also fueling tensions between more observant, second-and third-generation Jews and the new arrivals _ who come here with a laundry list of needs and only a sketchy grasp of their religion. Even as they guarantee that Jews in Germany will not die out _ at least no time soon _ the immigrants also suggest an uncertain future.

“How will this Jewish community look in 20-30 years time? I really don’t know,” said Michael May, executive director of Berlin’s 11,000-member community. “I suppose most of the immigrants will be able to speak German. Younger people will be in positions of governance. But what kind of cultural interests, what kind of relations with Israel they would like to promote, what kind of image they will present to the German population _ all these things are unknown to me, and also to them.”

Such soul-searching coincides with new German guidelines requiring prospective immigrants to speak German and be under 45 years old. The measures _ tightening what has been a virtual open-door policy for Jews like Rosenthal since the fall of the Berlin Wall _ have split the Jewish community.

Some say the community cannot handle even the recent influx. Others argue more members are needed if it is to flourish, rather than merely survive.

For his part, Rosenthal believes the immigration boom has already slowed due to better conditions for Jews living in former Communist states _ conditions that did not exist when he decided to pull up stakes.

Like many “Russian Jews” here _ a catchall term for newcomers from ex-Soviet countries _ Rosenthal decided to emigrate for a mix of economic and political reasons. Stamped on his passport as his “nationality” in Communist-era Ukraine, his Jewish religion mostly amounted to a question mark _ and a reason for periodic discrimination.

“The Jewish movement only arrived in the Ukraine at the end of the 1980s,” said Rosenthal, a stocky man speaking in German through a translator during an interview. “I went to my first Hanukkah celebration, and I saw people crying. That’s when I understood that people need religion.”

His religion was also a ticket out. He stopped in Berlin en route to a new life in London, with his wife and young son in tow. “Then a friend said: `Why don’t you stay in Berlin? All Jews stay in Berlin,”’ Rosenthal recalled.

He found a job digging graves at a Jewish cemetery. He stitched back a career he had built in Ukraine as an orchestra conductor and singer. Later, he was offered another job _ as a music teacher at Berlin’s Jewish School, now tellingly nicknamed the “Russian school.” But beyond teaching their children, Rosenthal says, he has little to do with his fellow immigrants.

“I’m an exception,” he admitted. “The older members of the population have trouble integrating. When they go to grocery stores, they want to buy only Russian products. They believe Russian tomatoes, Russian bread tastes better.”

Rosenthal is an exception in other ways. Although many newcomers are engineers, academics and physicians, they have a hard time finding jobs in a country where unemployment hovers above 9 percent.

Joblessness among working-age immigrant Jews in Berlin is as high as 75 percent, according to one study. The wealthier “establishment” Jews are struggling to meet their needs _ one source of tension between the two groups. There are others.

“Many of these Russian Jews are intellectuals with a strong sense they’ve lost their social position,” says Irene Runge, an East German who heads Berlin’s Jewish Cultural Association. “They want to read Pushkin, they’re a cultural people. But the German Jews say: `You don’t play Mussorgsky, you don’t play Tchaikovsky. You have to do klezmer.”’

“The German Jews say: `This is German Jewry,”’ Runge added. “But in reality, there’s no German Jewry left.”

Since Jews first settled here during the reign of the Roman Empire, there has never been a single definition of German Jewry. Many of the 650,000 living here before the war, for example, had roots in eastern Europe. Later, a tiny, postwar population was fortified by new arrivals from Poland and elsewhere.

The mix of nationalities was on display one recent Saturday, during services at Berlin’s main Orthodox synagogue on Joachimsthaler Street. Old men in black-and-white striped shawls bent over Torahs as a tall Russian cantor led the prayers.

In the women’s section, an elderly Belgian recounted how her husband finally persuaded her to move to Berlin after the war.

“I never thought I would live in a country that had killed so many Jews,” said the woman, who refused to give her name. “But now it’s my home.”

A handful of charismatic rabbis, like Yehuda Teichtal, are attracting more recent immigrants to their services. “I believe Judaism has a very positive future in Germany,” said Teichtal, a Lubavitch Jew from Brooklyn who moved to Germany a decade ago to help revive the faith. “It’s going to grow in a very, very big way.”

Others are not so sure. Across Germany, an uncounted number of immigrants have not joined their local Jewish communities, either because they don’t meet membership requirements _ having a Jewish mother, or converting to Judaism _ or for lack of interest. That’s the case of an estimated 3,000 or more Jews living in Berlin alone.

“It’s increasingly a problem for my generation, because many people don’t see the benefit of being a member of the community,” said Serge Ladoniski, 30, who moved to Germany nearly 13 years ago from Astrakhan, Russia.

“Especially if, like me, you have a German education and are integrated into German society.”

A trained lawyer and member of a Jewish community near Hamburg, Ladoniski defines his Jewishness through family and culture rather than religious affiliation. But that may not necessarily be bad, some experts say. Faith is only part of a complex set of factors shaping Germany’s new Jewish population.

“Jewish is what they are,” said Runge. “Some are religious, some aren’t. Some like beer, some like vodka. But it’s all Jewish to them.”

MO/PH END RNS

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