Beth Shalom (Munich)

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Beth Shalom ( Hebrew בֵּית שָׁלוֹם "House of Peace", full name "Liberal Jewish Community Munich Beth Shalom eV") is the liberal Jewish community in Munich . It was founded in 1995 and now has almost 600 members (as of 2020). The chairman is Anna Grube.

history

With the withdrawal of the US troops in 1992, their liberal Jewish services ended, in which German, but above all English-speaking liberal Jewish residents of Munich who had no connection with the US army, had also participated. Several parents founded an initially informal group that organized a Sunday school for their children's religious instruction. From 1994 there were regular religious lessons and a liberal Kabbalat-Shabbat worship service once a month on Friday evening, shortly after sunset. In September 1994, Rabbi Allen Podet from the USA was a guest and celebrated the big holidays for the first time with the Munich liberal youth .

In 1995 the Liberal Jewish Community Munich Beth Shalom e. V. took place and accepted into the World Union for progressive Judaism . For the first time since 1996, the community had a (part-time) employee who gave religious instruction. In the same year the congregation received its own Torah scroll (Sefer Torah), which the Rodef Shalom congregation from Pittsburgh provides on permanent loan. In September 1996, Gastrabbi Moshe Zemer from Tel Aviv held the holiday services in Munich and the Augsburg-born Rabbi Walter Jacob from Pittsburgh became the honorary chief rabbi of Beth Shalom. Since that year, the community has been able to use the premises of the Catholic Integrated Community in Munich's Ludwigsvorstadt .

In 1997 the first Bat Mitzvah took place at Beth Shalom, the community was given its own burial ground in the forest cemetery and Walter Homolka became the community's first permanent rabbi, although he moved to Hamburg in 1998. The first chuppah (Jewish wedding) took place in 1999 and in 2003 Beth Shalom rented its own rooms in the Isarvorstadt for the first time . Until 2005, Walter Rothschild looked after the community as a rabbi. Since 2004, Beth Shalom has had a Torah curtain and another Torah scroll. In 2005 Tom Kučera took over the position of rabbi at Beth Shalom , still in his last year of study at the Abraham Geiger College . In 2006, together with two fellow students, he became the first liberal rabbi to be trained in Germany since the Shoah and continues to lead the community to this day.

Libeskind design for the new synagogue in Lehel

In 2008, the architect Daniel Libeskind declared that he would create designs for a liberal synagogue in Munich and presented them again in 2011. The question of financing and specific use is open, but at least the city of Munich reserved a piece of land in Lehel for this purpose.

In 2011 another Torah scroll was made available to the congregation by a friendly New York congregation and Beth Shalom was able to move to larger rooms in Mittersendling , in which around 200 people can gather.

Beth Shalom has had a cantor since 2014. In the same year there was a joint event for the first time with the Orthodox community Ohel Jakob in the synagogue on Munich's Sankt-Jakobs-Platz.

On the tenth anniversary of Tom Kučera's service, members and supporters of the congregation commissioned a Torah scroll of their own, which was written by Sofer Bernard Benarroch in London and brought to the congregation on September 24, 2017.

In 2020, the city of Munich responded positively to an application for a preliminary decision for the new synagogue building. Construction is not expected to start until 2022 at the earliest. In addition to the synagogue and other community rooms, a kindergarten and several apartments with a total of around 1500 square meters of living space are to be built on the property. A foundation was set up to finance the project, which is looking for donors.

Church life

Beth Shalom holds regular services in the liturgical languages ​​Hebrew and German, some also in English. Women and men have equal rights in every respect, so both are called to the Alijah laTorah , the reading from the Torah. Beth Shalom gives state-approved religious education and offers educational events for adults. The Jewish faith and the commandments are conveyed in the spirit of liberal Judaism. Beth Schalom manages a small part of the forest cemetery as the New Jewish Cemetery .

The chief rabbi is Walter Jacob in Pittsburgh, the community rabbi is Tom Kučera, and cantor Nikola David. In 2019, the psychologist Anna Grube took over the chairmanship from the physicist Jan Mühlstein , who held it for a total of twelve years.

Memberships and partnerships

The community is a member of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany and also of the World Union for Progressive Judaism . It is associated with the British Movement for Reform Judaism and with the Israeli Movement for Reformed and Progressive Judaism - התנועה הרפורמית - יהדות מתקדמת בישראל. Your partner church in Israel is the Congregation Darchei Noam in Ramat HaSharon .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Süddeutsche Zeitung: An Unfulfilled Dream , November 8, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c Süddeutsche Zeitung: The Dream of the Libeskind Synagogue , August 17, 2020
  3. ↑ Unless otherwise indicated, the representation of history on Beth Shalom is based: Municipal Chronicle (accessed on 14 June 2019)
  4. ^ Jüdische Allgemeine: Ten Years in Munich , October 9, 2017
  5. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung: New Synagogue: Start of construction 2022 , July 14, 2020
  6. ↑ Beth Shalom: What We Stand For (accessed June 14, 2019)
  7. ↑ Beth Shalom: About Us (accessed June 14, 2019)

Coordinates: 48 ° 6 ′ 11.3 ″  N , 11 ° 32 ′ 16.1 ″  E