Joel Berger

Jozsef György "Joel" Berger (born on September 7, 1937 in Budapest ) is a retired state rabbi. D. of the Wurttemberg Rabbinate and lecturer at the University of Tübingen.

Life

Berger's ancestors were grain traders and originally came from Upper Silesia to Transylvania . When Transylvania became Romanian after the First World War , his father Eugen bought Hungarian citizenship, moved to Budapest and married. The father was a member of the "Autonomous Orthodox Israelite Congregation" and ran a specialty shop for hat accessories. His mother Aurelie spoke German very well and was employed by the management of the Daimler-Benz branch in Budapest.

Growing up in Budapest, Joel Berger learned in his childhood how anti-Jewish laws were passed by Hungary in the 1930s and then witnessed the persecution and genocide of the Jews during the Nazi era. After the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, he lived with his mother, his aunt and other people in the "International Ghetto " set up there on the initiative of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg until the Red Army marched in on January 16, 1944 . The father first had to do labor service, was later deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , later to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , but survived. The mother was released, and an attempt to emigrate to Spain with protective passports failed. Around 40 members of the Berger family were killed in the war.

After the end of the war, Joel Berger did an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic and from 1955 studied law, history and education in Debreczin (according to other information in Szeged ). Due to an alleged participation in the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which he denied himself, he was imprisoned for a while. After his release, however, he was able to move to the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest in 1957 , and at the same time study history, pedagogy and folklore at the University of Debrecen . After obtaining the orthodox rabbi diploma in 1963 , he was initially employed by various Hungarian publishers. Four times, Joel Berger tried in vain to illegally leave what is now the Eastern Bloc for Israel without a passport.

In 1968, like his parents, he emigrated from what was then the Eastern Bloc state to the West. He subsequently worked as a rabbi in Regensburg, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Gothenburg (Sweden), from 1974 in Bremen and finally in the late 1970s in Stuttgart. In 1970 he married Noemi, who came from a rabbi family; he has two children with her. In the 1970s he took part in a hunger strike in the Düsseldorf synagogue to persuade the then government of the Soviet Union to allow Russian Jews to leave the country. From 1981 until his retirement in 2002, Berger was a regional rabbi for Württemberg, with his office in Stuttgart . His successor as state rabbi is Netanel Wurmser . Berger was also spokesman for the Rabbinical Conference in Germany for a time.

Since the winter semester 1986/87 Berger at the University of Tuebingen a teaching position at the Ludwig-Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies . There he researches the history of Judaism and anti-Semitism , the material and forms of Jewish narratives, including their references to Christian traditions, as well as the cultural history of the Jewish people . Since his retirement in 2002 he has held a research assignment at the House of History in Baden-Württemberg . He can be heard regularly on the SWR program "Impulse".

From 1974 to 2003 he was a member of the broadcasting councils of Radio Bremen , Süddeutschem Rundfunk and Südwestrundfunk (SWR).

Berger is a member of the court of arbitration at the Central Council of Jews in Germany and was editor of the UDIM magazine of the Rabbinical Conference . He is committed to the cooperation of the three monotheistic world religions , u. a. through his collaboration in the Christian-Islamic working group Marl in the project “Abraham's Festival”.

He speaks Hungarian, German, Russian, English, Swedish, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Honors

On May 4, 1998, the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Tübingen awarded him the title of honorary doctor (Dr. rer. Soc. Hc) for his services “to science in three ways: as an explorer of Jewish folk culture, especially popular storytelling and reading material, as an academic teacher who has been teaching Jewish cultural heritage regularly for twelve years at the Ludwig Uhland Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies, and finally as a representative of Judaism, who knows how to bring Jewish culture to the public. "

In 2001 he was honored with the Baden-Württemberg Medal of Merit .

In 2016 he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

2017 Citizen's Medal of the State Capital Stuttgart

literature

• House of History Baden-Württemberg (ed.): With Rabbi Joel Berger through the Jewish year . Patmos Verlag, Ostfildern 2013, ISBN 978-3-8436-0360-7
• Joel Berger, Heidi-Barbara Kloos, György Dalos (Vorr.): "The man with the hat": Stories of my life . Klöpfer & Meyer Verlag, Tübingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-86351-054-1
• https://www.winter-verlag.de/de/detail/978-3-8253-6969-9/Berger_Gesetz_Ritus_Brauch/ Literature by and about Joel Berger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Photo by Joel Berger
• Jörg Vins: The man with the hat: Rabbi Berger turns 70 , interview manuscript of the broadcast of September 2, 2007 in the SWR 2 series “Faith”; RTF format
• Orthodox Judaism in Germany. In: day after day. deutschlandfunk.de, July 17, 2018, accessed on July 17, 2018 (R. Berger on Prof. Homolka and liberal Judaism, converts and much more). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Berichte/Bekanntgabe-Ordensverleihung/1604-Verleihungen.html
2. ↑ Jörg Vins: The man with a hat: Rabbi Berger turns 70 , interview manuscript of the broadcast of September 2, 2007 in the SWR 2 series "Faith"
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 30, 2007 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. , Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 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.  
4. ↑ Press release of the University of Tübingen, April 29, 1998 Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 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.