Jewish community Frankfurt am Main

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The Jewish Community of Frankfurt am Main has been a public corporation since 1949 and, according to the Central Council, is a regional association of Jewish communities in Hesse .

Your community center is located in Frankfurt's Westend , it includes church services of different religious directions, two kindergartens, the larger one in the Westend and the smaller one, mixed-age and with a strong family-like group structure, for children from 18 months to five years in Frankfurt-Ostend, the Isaak Emil Lichtigfeld School in the Philanthropin , youth and elderly center, social services, a restaurant and a community newspaper . The Frankfurt Jewish community is one of the largest unitary Jewish communities in Germany with an institutionalized administrative organization without a clear religious orientation. The diversity of forms of Jewish life should be taken into account, and liberal and reformist groups should also be able to be integrated into community life.

The local council, which consists of 17 elected members, elects the five-person council. The members of the parish council and board determine the work and direction of the parish and represent it externally. The chairman of the board is Salomon Korn , the community's rabbi was Menachem Halevi Klein. Julien Chaim Soussan has been rabbi of the Kehillah since 2013 and in 2016 a second rabbi, Avichai Apel, was added.

At the end of 2015, the congregation had around 6,600 members.

history

The provisional new beginning

After the liberation of Frankfurt from National Socialism by the Allies , there were about 100 Jews who remained in Frankfurt , and 300 returned from the concentration camps . In May 1945, by order of the Frankfurt city administration, a small group of returnees from the Theresienstadt concentration camp was brought back to their hometown in buses. Among them were the re-founders of the Jewish community in Frankfurt after the war, the rabbi Leopold Neuhaus and the businessman Max Meyer . Leopold Neuhaus was the last rabbi in Frankfurt before the war and was in office until 1938. When the residents of the Jewish old people's home in Gagernstrasse in Frankfurt's Ostend were deported in February 1942 , he saw it as his duty to accompany them. Immediately after his return, he and Max Meyer opened a provisional care center for the surviving Jews at Friedrichstrasse 29. The first service took place eight days after returning from Theresienstadt in today's synagogue in Baumweg 5–7, where a Jewish kindergarten had been located before the Nazi seizure. Regular services were held there from November 1945. In the same month the “new” old people's home was set up at Gagernstrasse 36, and since Hanukkah at the beginning of December 1945 there has also been a service there. Religious instruction for children also began again in November 1945. A month earlier, Rabbi Neuhaus had started to publish a bulletin for the Jewish communities and care centers .

There was a DP camp in the westernmost Frankfurt district of Zeilsheim . Between 1945 and 1949, an average of 3,500 Jews, mostly from Poland, waited there for their entry permit. Above all, they wanted to go to Palestine or Israel , to the USA and other states overseas. Like them, many in the Jewish community in Frankfurt were waiting for the opportunity to emigrate in their early days. Between 1945 and 1950, around 200,000 Jewish refugees waited in DP camps throughout Germany to be able to continue their migration. The Jews in Zeilsheim were organized in the Committee of Liberated Jews in Frankfurt. After the formal recognition of the Jewish community as a public corporation, this committee was merged with the Jewish community on April 27, 1949. The two Frankfurt community organizations were thus merged.

Rabbi Leopold Neuhaus emigrated to the USA in 1946, his successor Wilhelm Weinberg left his Frankfurt congregation in 1951. In his farewell sermon he also mentioned the circumstances for his departure: “At the same time, however, it is our duty to say that even those of us who have believed or want to believe in a change in thought by the German people are gradually losing this belief. Because even the politically blind are gradually noticing that those figures are haunted again through the German lands who have worked for the smooth implementation of the brown order and the Nazi world conquest, this time camouflaging the face of Mars with an expression of hurt innocence, but tomorrow you will showing true face uncovered. "

Rebuilding church life

In 1947 work began on converting the rooms in Baumweg into a synagogue, and it was inaugurated in autumn 1948. In September 1950, the West End synagogue was returned to its intended use. The two-year reconstruction was financed by the state of Hesse because the former municipal property had not yet been repaid. In these transition years there were several rabbis in Frankfurt. After Rabbi Neuhaus emigrated in 1946, there was a period without proper rabbinical support until Rabbi Wilhelm Weinberg took up office in June 1949. In the orthodox prayer room Röderbergweg 29, the former Jewish adult education center, Uri Bluth acted as rabbi from 1947 to 1951 , who had received his semicha in Krakow , had spent two years in Siberia and four years in Bukhara . Rabbi Leon Thorn was rabbi in Frankfurt from 1946 to 1948 and during this time editor of the journal Jeschurun. It is thanks to him that a Jewish people's kitchen, a Jewish afternoon school, the Samson-Raphael-Hirsch school , and the establishment of a charity fund are established.

The community center

With the construction of the community center at Savignystraße 66, the provisional character of the post-war Jewish community in Frankfurt came to an end. The older generation was no longer sitting on packed suitcases. Whoever builds a house wants to stay, and whoever wants to stay, hopes for security , said Salomon Korn in his opening speech on September 14, 1986. With this community center as an administrative building without a synagogue, a secular concept has been realized, the synagogue is no longer that Center of community life. Nevertheless, symbols of Judaism were chosen as design elements. A narrow stone replica of the Mosaic Tables of the Law next to the main entrance are criss-crossed with long and deep cracks, they are supposed to indicate the fragility in the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. Among them, a list with the names of the approximately 11,000 Frankfurt Jews deported to concentration camps by the National Socialists was laid in the cornerstone. Opposite the tablets of the law are three stylized seven-armed candlesticks above the main entrance as a sign of light as a symbol of a still uncertain hope for the future.

household

In the "Frankfurt Treaty" of 1990, the city of Frankfurt committed itself to support the Jewish community, whose budget has long been in deficit. Strengthening Jewish life is a political goal of the city of Frankfurt. The increase in this financial aid in 2007 to 2.4 million euros now takes into account your growth and increased expenditure. From 1989 to 2007 the number of members rose from around 4,500 to 7,100, with the immigration of Jews from the former communist states particularly contributing to the growth. This resulted in an increased effort for the integration of the immigrants. With the founding of the Philanthropin Middle School , whose number of students is growing rapidly, further financial expenses arose. In addition, the cost of security measures has risen sharply because the risk of attacks by right-wing extremists and Islamists is estimated to be higher.

On the basis of the state treaty signed by the State Association of Jewish Communities in Hesse and the State of Hesse on November 11, 1986, and on the basis of a cooperation agreement between the State Association of Jewish Communities in Hesse and the Jewish Community of Frankfurt, the latter receives 70% from the state contractual performance. The state of Hesse increased its donations to the regional association of Jewish communities in Hesse to 3.7 million euros from 2008, of which the Frankfurt municipality, as the largest municipality in the state, receives 70 percent of this because it performs central functions for the other municipalities.

Furthermore, on the basis of a special agreement dated November 10, 2000 between the State of Hesse, the City of Frankfurt and the Frankfurt Jewish Community, the State of Hesse pays a debt relief contribution of EUR 1,277,100 for the Frankfurt Jewish Community. Nevertheless, according to a country survey, Hessen is among the “bottom lights” with its performance.

See also

Web links

Commons : Judaism in Frankfurt am Main  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Central Council of Jews in Germany
  2. ↑ Membership statistics 2015 of the Jewish communities ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 2 (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / zwst.org
  3. ↑ Otto R. Romberg, Susanne Urban-Fahr (Ed.): Jews in Germany after 1945. Citizens or “fellow” citizens? Edition Tribüne, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-00-005169-4 , p. 138.
  4. ↑ Salomon Korn: Divided Memory Contributions to the “German-Jewish” present. Philo Verlags-Gesellschaft, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8257-0141-7 , p. 73.
  5. ↑ Salomon Korn: Divided Memory Contributions to the “German-Jewish” present. Philo Verlags-Gesellschaft, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8257-0141-7 , p. 63 f.
  6. ↑ starweb.hessen.de (PDF)