IN THIS  ISSUE:   

• EUROPEAN REGION BIENNIAL HELD IN HANNOVER 

• WORLD UNION DELEGATION TAKES PART IN HIGH-LEVEL TALKS IN BERLIN

• IMPJ WRAPPING UP 3RD ANNUAL RIDING4REFORM BIKE RIDE TODAY IN JERUSALEM

• FIRST-EVER JERUSALEM SEMINAR FOR FSU PROGRESSIVE EDUCATORS

• RSY/NETZER BRINGS PURIMSHPIEL FEST TO BRITAIN

EUROPEAN REGION BIENNIAL HELD IN HANNOVER

Some 200 Progressive Jewish leaders attended the biennial conference of the World Union’s European Region, held in Hannover, Germany, March 16-19.  The theme was "Building Progressive Jewish Communities in the 21st Century."  The keynote speaker was Professor Julian Schoeps, director of the University of Potsdam’s Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies.  “Holding the biennial in Germany,” says Rabbi Joel Oseran, World Union vice president for international development, “was a way of highlighting the impressive development of the German movement.”  The conference also included panel discussions, workshops and plenary sessions, as well as study and Shabbat prayer.  The German branch of Netzer Olami, the international Progressive Zionist youth movement, led the Havdallah service at the end of Shabbat.  The Liberal Jewish community of Hannover was the host congregation.  In a special ceremony, Rabbi Michael Zedek and a delegation from Chicago’s Congregation Emanuel presented the Hannover congregation with a Torah scroll honoring German-born Rabbi Herman Schaalman, Congregation Emanuel’s rabbi emeritus (see photo) and a participant in the conference.  Schaalman was one of a number of German rabbis rescued from the Holocaust and brought to the US by Hebrew Union College.  Participants in a rabbinic kallah prior to the conference took part in study sessions and discussed a number of issues, including proposed rabbinic standards for the World Union.  Also prior to the conference, the World Union held a meeting of its International Assembly (formerly known as the Governing Body), at which reports were presented by senior leaders and staff.

Rabbi Herman Schaalman (with Torah)

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WORLD UNION DELEGATION TAKES PART IN HIGH-LEVEL TALKS IN BERLIN

Following the European Region biennial, a World Union delegation traveled to Berlin to meet with leaders of the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat), which is the roof body for the country's Jewish community, and with top government ministers.  The delegation included the World Union's chairman, Steve Bauman, its senior vice chairman, Leslie F. Bergman, and its president, Rabbi Uri Regev, as well as Rabbi Walter Homolka, director of Abraham Geiger College, continental Europe's first post-war Progressive rabbinic seminary, and Dr. Jan Muehlstein, chairman of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany (UPJ).  The Zentralrat leaders who met with the delegation included the vice president, Solomon Korn, the 2nd vice president, Charlotte Knobloth, presidium member Dieter Graumann, and the general secretary, Stephan J. Kramer.  After a long battle for recognition led by the World Union, the Zentralrat is now sharing government funding with the UPJ.  Some of the initial funds will go to Abraham Geiger College, which is to ordain its first three rabbis this coming September.  According to Geiger director Homolka, Pieter Graumann will be the Zentralrat's representative on the board of the Leo Baeck Foundation, which was recently established to help procure funding for the college (see WUPJnews #202).

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IMPJ WRAPPING UP 3RD ANNUAL RIDING4REFORM BIKE RIDE TODAY IN JERUSALEM

As this issue of WUPJnews heads into cyberspace, 38 cyclists are making their way back up the steep, winding road that leads to Jerusalem, completing five days of two-wheeled fund-raising for the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism.  The circular, 300-mile route took the riders south to the Beit Shemesh/Beit Guvrin area, northwest to Greater Tel Aviv, northeast along the Yarkon River to Rosh Ha'ayin, northwest to Ra'anana and Netanya, and south to Modi'in, from where they are now making their way back to the holy city via Mevasseret Zion.  (Some of the cyclists have been blogging during the ride – go to http://riding4reform.blogspot.com/.)  The participants include numerous riders from abroad.  One of the Israeli riders is a blind cyclist who organizes bike tours for the vision-impaired.  Other local participants include members of movement affiliates, including Netzer Olami and the Young Adult Leadership Forum, as well as students from the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.  Each cyclist raised a minimum of $2,000 in pledges for an anticipated sum of $100,000.  (One Canadian rider brought in the equivalent of almost $19,000.)  The money will go to support IMPJ education and community programs.  Other riders joined in for part of the route on Tuesday, which was Israel’s Election Day, meaning time off from work and school.  These riders included participants from the Carmel year program at Haifa’s Leo Baeck Education Center (see WUPJnews #185).  Several Reform and Progressive congregations outside Israel organized mini-bike-ride fund-raisers of their own to coincide with the Israeli event, and will forward the proceeds.  Says IMPJ executive director Iri Kassel, “We’re starting to feel that Riding4Reform has achieved its goal, not only in raising funds, but in mobilizing and building a network of friends around the world.”  Plans are already underway for the fourth annual bike ride, which will coincide with the World Union's 33rd International Convention in March, 2007.

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FIRST-EVER JERUSALEM SEMINAR FOR FSU PROGRESSIVE EDUCATORS

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in coordination with the World Union, this week held the first of what is hoped will become an annual Jerusalem seminar for Progressive educators from the former Soviet Union.  Attending the seminar were Olga Marcus, Irina Belaskaya and Alyona Pisnaya, who coordinate the World Union's formal education programs in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, respectively, and Natasha Verezbovsky of Moscow, who has been involved in developing these programs.  Funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation, the five-day gathering was designed to provide enrichment, as well as a setting conducive to formulating a vision for Progressive Jewish education in the FSU.  A number of sessions were led by Dr. Lisa Grant, HUC-JIR associate professor of Jewish education.  There were also workshops and working discussions, as well as visits to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and archive, Jerusalem’s Old City, and nearby Congregation Kol Haneshama for Kabbalat Shabbat.  The gathering was similar in style to a Jerusalem seminar conducted by HUC-JIR and the World Union in January for members of the recently-established Rabbinic Council of the Former Soviet Union, which it is hoped will also be held yearly (see WUPJnews #197).

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RSY/NETZER BRINGS PURIMSHPIEL FEST TO BRITAIN

Three Netzer Olami chapters affiliated with Britain’s Movement for Reform Judaism came together recently at Manchester’s Menorah Synagogue to participate in a Purimshpiel competition featuring adaptations of the Purim story.  The event was conceived and organized by Tara Becker, the youth worker at Menorah, who first saw a “Purimspiel-off” while working with the Progressive community in Minsk.  (The annual competition in the former Soviet Union, which is sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee, is a highly prestigious affair; last year it was won by Netzer/Riga, with Netzer/Minsk having also made it into the finals - see WUPJnews #143.)  Taking part in the Manchester Purimshpiel competition, attended by an audience of some 150 holiday celebrants, were the RSY/Netzer chapters from Menorah Synagogue, Sinai Synagogue (Leeds) and Maidenhead Synagogue.  The panel of judges unanimously declared Maidenhead’s entry, a modern-day take on the Persian classic, the winner.  The Saturday evening event also included a joke competition and a fund-raising raffle for a day school.

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