Elisa Klapheck

Elisa Klapheck (born December 10, 1962 in Düsseldorf ) is a liberal rabbi in Germany. She works in Frankfurt am Main and as a professor at the Center for Comparative Theology and Cultural Studies at the University of Paderborn .

Life

Elisa Klapheck is the daughter of a Jewish mother, who was born in Rotterdam , and of the artist Konrad Klapheck, who converted to Judaism late . Her mother's relatives were murdered in the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps . Klapheck grew up in Düsseldorf and in the Netherlands. She studied political science , law and Jewish studies in the cities of Nijmegen , Hamburg and Berlin. In 1998 she became press spokeswoman for the Jewish community in Berlin and editor in charge of the community magazine Jewish berlin . Until then she worked as a journalist and editor for newspapers such as the Berliner Tagesspiegel and the taz as well as for radio and television. One of her main topics was the opening up of Central and Eastern Europe. She wrote numerous reports on this.

engagement

Since the mid-1990s she has been involved in the Jewish renewal movement in Germany. She was one of the co-founders of the liberal Oranienburger Strasse synagogue in Berlin, where egalitarian services have been held since 1998. As a Jewish feminist, in May 1999, together with Lara Dämmig and Rachel Monika Herweg, she initiated “ Bet Debora ” - a historically first “conference of European rabbis, cantors and rabbinically learned Jews” in Berlin. This was followed by two more “Bet Debora” conferences in Berlin and then in other European cities.

Parallel to her professional activity, Klapheck trained as a rabbi for five years and received her S'micha (ordination) in January 2004 through the "Aleph Rabbinic Program" in the USA. In 2005 she moved to Amsterdam for four years, where she was the first female rabbi in Dutch-Jewish history to be employed by the “Beit Ha'Chidush” (House of Renewal) community. In 2009 she came back to Germany and since then has been the official rabbi of the “egalitarian minyan ” in the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main . She is also a member of the General Rabbinical Conference of Germany (ARK) and an associate member of the Rabbinic Board of "Liberal Judaism" in London.

Elisa Klapheck is one of four female rabbis who was portrayed by Hannah Heer in the 2010 documentary Kol Ishah: The Rabbi is a Woman .

In 2011 she was one of the co-founders of “Torat HaKalkala - Association for the Promotion of Applied Jewish Economic and Social Ethics” in Frankfurt.

Public statements

Klapheck is committed to a renewal of the Jewish tradition in dealing with today's socio-political issues. She regularly writes rabbinical and political commentaries for the “ Jüdische Allgemeine ” and various radio stations. Her autobiography So Am I Become Rabbi was published in 2005. She also wrote a description of the first female rabbi, Regina Jonas, and together with Lara Dämmig re- edited Bertha Pappenheim's prayers . In 2014 she published a monograph on the philosopher Margarete Susman under the title "Margarete Susman and her Jewish contribution to political philosophy".

Among other things, she wrote a critical opinion on the film documentary Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland in the taz Berlin.

Works

• Miss Rabbi Jonas. Can the woman hold the rabbinical office? Berlin 1999 ISBN 978-3-933471-17-8 (Engl. 2004, translated by Toby Axelrod)
• That's how I became a rabbi. Jewish challenges here and now , Freiburg 2005 ISBN 978-3-451-05577-5
• Bertha Pappenheim: Prayers, Prayer . Berlin 2005 ISBN 978-3-933471-41-3
• Margarete Susman and her Jewish contribution to political philosophy. Hentrich & Hentrich , Berlin 2014 ISBN 978-3-95565-036-0
• Machloket / pamphlets 1. Secular Judaism from a religious source . Edited with Ruth Calderon, Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2015 ISBN 978-3-95565-084-1
• How I became a rabbi . Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-451-33917-2 .
• Rabbi with religious and political awareness. The word "kadosch" should not only be understood ritually today, in Yalta. Positions on the Jewish present. Half-yearly publication , Ed. Micha Brumlik et al., H. 1, 2017. Neofelis Verlag ISSN  2510-3725 pp. 37-41
• Regina Jonas. The world's first female rabbi. 2nd, revised edition. Berlin / Leipzig: Hentrich & Hentrich 2019. ISBN 978-3-95565-362-0 (1st edition 2003).
• with Bruno Landthaler and Rosa Rappoport: Germany needs Jewish religious instruction . Berlin / Leipzig: Hentrich & Hentrich 2019. ISBN 978-3-95565-342-2 .

Press coverage

• Astrid Ludwig: In portrait: Not a woman of soft tones . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , January 27, 2010
• Philipp Gessler & Waltraud Schwab: "I am for a defensive Judaism." In: die tageszeitung, March 1, 2004 (interview)
• Rainer Hank : Rabbi Elisa Klapheck: "God is the first great believer in his creation" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 7, 2012 (interview)

Web links

• Website of Elisa Klapheck
• Literature by and about Elisa Klapheck in the catalog of the German National Library
• Rabbi Prof. Dr. Elisa Klapheck. Rabbi of the liberal egalitarian minyan synagogue in the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, professor of Jewish studies at the University of Paderborn. In: ark.de. General Rabbinical Conference Germany, accessed on May 25, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Don't let yourself be intimidated. Interview Ralf Lilienthal with E. Klapheck in the magazine a-tempo, Stuttgart, Verlag Freies Geistesleben & Urachhaus , issue 7, 2009, p. 1
2. ↑ Don't let yourself be intimidated. Interview Ralf Lilienthal with E. Klapheck in the magazine a-tempo, Stuttgart, Verlag Freies Geistesleben & Urachhaus , issue 7, 2009, p. 1, p. 3
3. ↑ Jewish Berlin. The "jewish berlin" is the community magazine of the Jewish community in Berlin. In: www.jg-berlin.org. Retrieved May 25, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Don't let yourself be intimidated. Interview Ralf Lilienthal with E. Klapheck in the magazine a-tempo, Stuttgart, Verlag Freies Geistesleben & Urachhaus , issue 7, 2009, p. 3
5. ^ Synagogue Oranienburger Strasse, Jewish Community in Berlin
6. ↑ Kol Ishah: The Rabbi is a Woman
7. ↑ http://www.hakalkala.de
8. ↑ Martina Thiele: Journalistic controversies about the Holocaust in film , LIT Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 117