American Reform Rabbis to Teach Students in Germany on Jews

At the invitation of the State Ministries of Education of West Germany American Reform Rabbis are being sent this summer to the Federal Republic to teach students and teachers-in-training about Judaism, the Jewish people and the holocaust, it was announced here yesterday by Rabbi Maurice N.Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

“There exists in Germany today a virtual vacuum on any information on Judaism, other than its victimization in the Nazi era,” Rabbi Eisendrath said. “There cannot be anything but a warped view of Jews and Judaism, if the only contact with them is either to read of the tragedy, or of-the lingering bitterness which one imagines besets the Jewish people in relation to Germany and the German people.”

The program has received the endorsement of the boards representing the three constituent bodies of the Interfaith Commission. These are the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the Jewish Chautauqua Society — an arm of the National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods.

Plans for the project were outlined at a news conference by Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Director of the Commission on Interfaith Activities of Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Joseph Asher, Greensboro, North Carolina who proposed the project after a return visit in 1964 to Germany, from which he fled in 1936. Rabbi Brickner said in June and July of this year, at a time when the German academic year comes to a conclusion, between 10 – 15 Reform rabbis will be sent for a two-week stay to West Germany to lecture in the Gymnasiums to students on Jewish history, theology and religious practices. They would lecture in German and English and meet with smaller student groups to allow for greater personal contact and discussions.