Germany ordains its first female rabbi since the Holocaust

[Bucky]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11692934

Germany's new female rabbi sign of growing Jewish community

History is being made in Germany with the ordination of the first female rabbi since World War II. Alina Treiger came to Germany from Ukraine, as the BBC's Stephen Evans reports from Berlin.

Why would a Jew migrate to Germany? You would think the ghosts would be too powerful.

Not so, according to those who have made the trip and those who welcomed them.

They are migrating for the main reasons that people in peaceful times pack their bags and seek a new start in a new country: money and work.

And that means work for those who serve them when they arrive - like rabbis, the demand for whom has expanded with the increase in Germany's Jewish communities.

It has led to a bit of history: the ordination of the first female rabbi in Germany since the Nazis killed the previous one in the Holocaust.

Alina Treiger is to be ordained at a ceremony in Berlin attended by rabbis from around the world and by the President of Germany.

She is unassuming but assured, speaking quietly but firmly about her role and about its significance.

"It is very important to deal with mourning the dead", she told the BBC when asked about how the Holocaust haunts Jewish (and non-Jewish) Germany today.

(more here ==> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11692934 )

[DFW]

1. Jews in modern day Germany are not a new phenomenon

Back in the early 70s, when I was playing in folk music clubs in the West Berlin cabaret scene,
there were plenty of Israelis around, one even owned one of the clubs. They used to pal around
with a Persian guy I knew (way before 1979, don't forget), and his friends.

In the town where I hang my hat when I'm over here (which is a lot), my girls went to the local
elementary school. It was the local Gestapo HQ during the war, so after the war, when the town
made the building an elementary school, it was named after Anne Frank, and her life is part of
the curriculum the children (including my two girls) learn there.

As much as the Nazis tried to erase the Jewish presence here in Germany, and they came pretty close
to eradicating it, it is slowly rebounding, and creating a lot of interest even in the non-Jewish
community. Ironically, most of the vocal opposition to this resurgence (and it is tiny) is not,
as one might expect, from the huge Muslim presence here, but from areas of the "realexistierenden
Sozialismus (truly existing Socialism)" of the former East Germany, which denied the existence of
Nazis and former Nazis on its soil, and by ignoring them, allowed them to fester undisturbed. Catholic
and Orthodox immigrants from Poland, Ukraine and Russia provide anti-Jewish sentiment to a small
degree as well, a vestige of the days of the Soviet Empire, where it was the unofficial policy.
It is all the more gratifying, therefore, to hear that Germany's first postwar ordained female
Rabbi is from the Ukraine.

[Bucky]

2. Cool. I still thought we were all due for a feel good news story.

[DFW]

3. At this point, I think EVERYONE who doesn't live in California needs one!

Maybe NY, too, although losing John Hall hurt.