Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany

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Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany
(BJSD)
purpose Representation of Jewish students in Germany
Chair: Yevgeny Singer
Establishment date: 1968
Number of members: about 5000 (as of 2012)
Seat : Berlin
Website: www.bjsd.de

The Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany ( BJSD ) is an association of Jewish students and young people. The student association sees its task in representing the interests and concerns of its members in Jewish communities and other organizations. According to its own information, it has around 5000 members.

In December 2016, the Jewish Student Union Germany (JSUD) replaced the BJSD as the central political representation of Jewish students and young adults in Germany.

Fields of activity

The BJSD's fields of activity include the organization of seminars and political campaigns. Frequent focal points are the subject of Israel and the Middle East conflict, the relationship to Germany taking into account German history and current anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism, and the relationship to the Jewish religion.

Memberships

Jewish students in Germany between the ages of 18 and 35 are accepted as members. Membership in a Jewish community is not necessary. Joining a BJSD regional association is automatically followed by entry into the BJSD

structure

The delegates' conference is the highest decision-making body of the association. It consists of representatives of the national student associations according to their number of members.

The board is elected every year. It consists of a chairman, a deputy chairman and a finance officer. The board of directors is also entitled to appoint a managing director. According to its own information, the BJSD has ten member associations. In addition to the annual delegates' conference, meetings of the board of directors take place several times a year. This board of directors advises the BJSD and also functioned as a communication platform between the BJSD and its regional associations. In principle, all members are allowed to attend a delegates' conference or a board meeting.

history

Shortly after the end of the war, the first Jewish student associations were founded in Germany. This included the "Ichud ha-studentim ha-jehudim schel scheerit ha-plejta", in German the "Jewish Student Association of Survivors in Munich", which from 1946/47 helped its approx. 500 student members by helping them to find accommodation. The student association played a major role in the leisure activities of Jewish students. The Jewish students had hardly any contact with non-Jewish students. In addition, most of the students were orphans as a result of the National Socialist murder and no longer had families. Most of these student associations disbanded because of the birth failures during the Second World War and especially after the great wave of emigration in the early 1950s.

Towards the end of the 1950s, new Jewish student associations were formed nationwide. The "Association of Jewish Students in Bavaria", founded in 1959, is one of the first German-Jewish student associations. The Jewish Student Union Heidelberg (JSH) also existed since February 9, 1963. The emergence of new Jewish student structures indicates a new era of Jewish life in post-war Germany. The events of the Six Day War in Israel played an important role in the thinking of Jewish students from 1967 onwards. Israel's existence, and thus its own security in Germany, appeared to be threatened immediately. While Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Naser publicly called for the destruction of Israel, many of the Jewish students in Germany thought about how they could help Israel in this situation. In 1968 the Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany was finally founded in Schmitten (Hochtaunus) .

Relationship with Israel

Dealing with the Middle East conflict and imparting knowledge about Israeli politics and society played a central role for all BJSD executive boards. Cooperation with the embassy of the State of Israel was often sought . At so-called " Hasbarah " or leadership seminars, the Jewish students learned about the latest strategies of pro-Israeli public relations. Exemplary for such mostly unspectacular support were e.g. For example, the information stands organized nationwide on the shopping streets of major German cities for the Independence Day of the State of Israel. Nevertheless, the BJSD must not be misunderstood as the mouthpiece of the Israeli embassy, ​​there were always voices in the association who criticized the current government policy of Israel. As early as 1970 , a majority of the BJSD delegates at a conference of the World Union of Jewish Students ( WUJS ) campaigned for the Palestinian people's rights to freedom and independence to be included as part of the Zionist ideology. In particular through the influence of Dan Diner , the WUJS positioned itself on the extreme left of the Zionist spectrum.

Relationship to religion

At the beginning of its existence, the Jewish religion played a subordinate role in the activities of the association. It was not until the late 1970s that a new generation of Jewish students began to increasingly address religious content in the seminars. In order to bring religion closer to the members of the student union and to impart some of the basics of religion to them, the BJSD organized seminars for the first time in 1981 together with the orthodox Chabad- Lyubavitch movement, a 3-day seminar in London. Many students saw the cause of the bad position of the Jewish religion in the inability of the Central Council and the Jewish communities to convey relevant content to the next generation. Religious instruction, wrote the BJSD organ Cheschbon, shines in Germany with its catastrophic quality. It was further criticized that there was a lack of school books and that there was no serious draft of curricula for Jewish religious education. In addition to criticizing a failed policy, the Cheshbon also offered suggestions for alternative religious identities, according to an article by the then 34-year-old left-wing author Micha Brumlik . In the Cheshbon, he called on the young Jews to “get involved on the side of the undogmatic left”, but at the same time also to study “ Torah , Talmud , Tanakh and Halacha ”. Without this, according to Brumlik, he could not imagine Judaism.

The BJSD today

The fall of the Wall and the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union fundamentally changed Jewish life in Germany. The majority of the BJSD members and the board of directors are of Eastern European origin. Similar to the 1950s, the focus today is again on trying to give the members the feeling of being "at home" at the events, while many in the German majority society do not yet see themselves really integrated.

Publications

Emuna horizons

The discussion about Israel and Judaism Emuna was less of a publication by the BJSD itself, but it served as a forum for the BJSD activists at the time it was founded. Emuna was published by the German Coordination Council of the Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, the German-Israeli Society and the Federal Association of German-Israeli Study Groups . Nathan Peter Levinson, who was actively involved in the publication, made the participation of the students dependent on the nationwide association. In fact, the Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany appeared as a co-editor in the 1970 Emuna year.

Shalom

Shalom magazine wasn't really a BJSD production either. In 1964 it was founded as the “Jewish Youth Magazine for Germany”. The Berlin Jewish Community acted as the publisher. In February 1969, the magazine changed its name to Schalom / Shalom magazine for the Jewish youth of Europe / Magazine for the Jewish European Youth and appeared bilingual in German and English. In addition to the Jewish Community in Berlin, the Youth Section of the World Union of Progressive Judaism and, since 1970 at the latest, the Federal Association of Jewish Students in Germany (BJSD) are listed as supporters in the imprint. The last edition of the magazine Schalom / Shalom that can be found comes from the year 1970. According to its own information, the magazine appeared four times a year at irregular intervals.

Cheshbon

The magazine Cheschbon was founded in 1979 in Munich and was the first exclusive BJSD organ. In the seven issues up to its discontinuation in 1984, the magazine tried to provide a forum for Jewish students. In addition to provocative and critical articles on the situation within the Jewish community in Germany and Israel, the Cheshbon contains historical and religious treatises and reports on student activities in the regional associations. The often long articles tried to do justice to a high intellectual level. However, most of the authors were no longer students themselves. In addition to Micha Brumlik, Yizhak Ahren , Lea Fleischmann and Henryk M. Broder, Maxim Biller also published here , who published his first short story in the Cheschbon.

Najes

1985–1986 the magazine Najes followed . Published in Berlin and Düsseldorf, it made a less intellectual claim than the Cheschbon and instead relied on more frequent appearances and topicality. In terms of content, Najes concentrated almost exclusively on student topics, which mostly had to do with the activities of the BJSD. In contrast to the Cheshbon, the authors here were also exclusively students.

Previous board members (incomplete list)

literature

Web links