Around the Jewish World: Women Struggle for Role in German Jewish Community

Lara Damming overcame a tremendous hurdle when she came to synagogue last year wearing a skullcap.

Damming, a soft-spoken librarian from the former East Berlin, had approached the cantor at the local Rykestrasse Synagogue about her intention.

“He signaled that in principle he wasn’t against it, but he didn’t have the power to decide,” she said.

Then, Damming and a small group of women showed up at the synagogue wearing kipot one Friday evening last October – and have been doing so ever since.

Although the action was first greeted with raised eyebrows among some members of the congregation, it is sow accepted, despite that in the broader Jewish community, women wearing kipot has prompted some controversy.

Those overseeing the some 45,000 members of the Jewish community in Germany insist that its Orthodox traditions be maintained.

Hence the outcry when two small Jewish communities in northern Germany appointed Bea Wyler as the country’s first postwar female rabbi this summer.

But a growing number of women such as Damming say Germany’s Jewish community has little to offer them.

During the past two years, alternative services have sprouted up in response to what critics say is the rigidity and lack of democratic structures in Germany’s mainstream Jewish community.

“There is hardly any place for me in this community,” said Salomea Genin, one of the co-founders of an egalitarian service that was formed in early 1994.

“There don’t have to be new forms that turn the tradition completely around,” said Elisa Klapcheck, an American living in Berlin who is an active member of the group started by Genin. “But there must be possibilities in which I can relate my religiousness, my understanding of Judaism, to my life.”

Jewish women dissatisfied with the status quo, many of whom are from the United States and living here temporarily, have not only organized an egalitarian Shabbat service, but also hold a study group to mark Rosh Chodesh, the start of each Hebrew month.

At one recent meeting, the study session focused on the shofar. Along with giving each woman a chance to blow the ram’s horn, the session included readings and discussions about traditions surrounding the blowing of the shofar and whether women are allowed to do it.

Next month, the study session will focus on the mikvah, or traditional ritual bath.

California Rabbi Laura Geller helped the women establish the group when she visited Berlin in November 1993. After hearing the women’s complaints about what they felt were the lack of opportunities for them in the traditional community, Geller suggested the group as a practical answer to their discontent.

Community leaders have generally had a muted response to the formation of the women’s group.

Jerzy Kanal, the chairman of Berlin’s Jewish community, said he had nothing against the group – as long as they do not try to impose their ways on the established community.

But the group is growing increasingly activist, and some of its members recently challenged the established structures of Berlin’s Jewish community.

Unlike the United States, where congregants pay membership directly to a synagogue, Jews in Germany must register with the community – and the government – and they pay a portion of their income tax to fund the community.

Local Jews are members of the community, not of a particular synagogue. But there is the option of buying a seat at a particular synagogue regularly attends.

In the complicated politics of Berlin’s Jewish community, community members vote for a parliament, which elects the board of directors, which in turn have control over major community matters. In addition, each of Berlin’s five synagogues has a board of directors.

The women’s group is now opposing the Berlin community’s rules over how the synagogues’ boards of directors are elected.

According to its female critics, the community’s rules do not allow for women to be elected as members of the synagogue boards. A chief responsibility of board members is calling congregants to the pulpit for an aliyah – the role of reciting blessings over the Torah, which women are not allowed to perform in traditional synagogues.

“Since women are not fully integrated in the service, they cannot exercise this function” of calling congregants to the pulpit, said Benno Bleiberg, a board member in Berlin’s Frankelufer Synagogue.

“I find this requirement questionable,” he added.

But Bleiberg noted that the Orthodox-leaning mainstream of Germany’s Jewish community has existed since the Holocaust and that it is hard to change something that is 50 year old.

“We were much more progressive before the war,” he said.

Indeed, Regina Jonas, Germany’s only prewar female rabbi, was active in the community during the 1930s. But historical records indicate that she did not have an easy time.

The women who are active in the Rosh Chodesh group and the egalitarian service said that for the most part they do not want to break up the current structure of the community.

But venues for more progressive worship must be created, they said.

Officials of the Berlin Jewish Community say such diversity was possible before the war, then there were nearly 170,000 Jews in the city, compared to some 10,000 now.

Kanal noted that the city’s Jewish community has more than doubled since 1989 because of the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union.

Because these Jews know little about Judaism, Kanal added, it is important to introduce them to Orthodox traditions.

He also criticized the American Reform movement.

“We don’t need to be taught from the United States,” he said. “You tried to make things more open, and more people are not coming to the synagogue.”

Kanal also said the attempts on the part of women to be elected to the synagogues’ boards of directors could have a devastating effect on the community.

If women are elected board members, “and tomorrow they are standing at the pulpit, then you will have 70 percent of the congregants leave,” he said.

Kanal said he had nothing against progressive groups – or even a homosexual and lesbian Jewish community – but that there must be people to support such movement and that those who do not want to participate should not be forced to do so.

“What is important is how women are treated in this community,” said Klapheck, a member of the women’s group.

She and others said that even though they support the Berlin community, they fear that if its postwar traditions are unable to adapt to changing needs of its members, there may be trouble.

“I have the fear that it is going in the direction of a split,” Klapcheck said, adding, “I would find this unfortunate.”