IN THIS  ISSUE: 

• GERMAN CHANCELLOR MEETS WITH PROGRESSIVE JEWISH LEADERS

• HUC-JIR / WORLD UNION “PESACH PROJECT” LARGEST EVER

• PLURALISTS URGE OLMERT TO STAND FAST ON CIVIL MARRIAGE

GERMAN CHANCELLOR MEETS WITH PROGRESSIVE JEWISH LEADERS

Newly elected German chancellor Angela Merkel recently received leaders of the World Union and the country's Progressive movement in her Berlin office, where she expressed hope that Jewish life, with its various traditions and streams, would continue to flourish in Germany.  Present at the April 4 meeting were the World Union's chairman, Steven M. Bauman, and its president, Rabbi Uri Regev; Rabbi Walter Homolka, executive director of Abraham Geiger College, Germany's first post-war Progressive rabbinic training institute; and Katarina Seidler, vice president of Germany's Union for Progressive Judaism (UPJ).

Yet the significance of the meeting lay just as much in the presence of Stephan J. Kramer, secretary-general of the Council of Jews in Germany, also known as the Zentralrat.  Just a short time ago, the Zentralrat had refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Progressive Judaism.  As it is the body entrusted with disbursing government funding for the country's Jewish institutions, this refusal severely hampered the re-emergence of Reform Judaism in the land of its birth.  Yet all this changed following persistent and strategic international efforts by the World Union and by Progressive leaders inside Germany, which recently paved the way for recognition and reconciliation.

“Perhaps nothing better represents this than the dramatic shift of attitudes toward Abraham Geiger College," says the World Union's Regev.  "On September 13 and 14, 2006, the seminary will ordain the first rabbis on German soil since 1942.  The Zentralrat has now turned around to proudly partner in sponsoring this program [and] participate in its funding, welcoming the ordainees to serve in Zentralrat communities.”

Bauman noted that Merkel was “especially interested to learn that the Progressive/ Reform movements are egalitarian, pluralistic …. and together with Conservative Judaism make up the overwhelming majority of Jews around the world.”  He cited the National Jewish Population Survey of the United Jewish Communities, which indicated that one-third of American Jews consider themselves Reform, 26 percent Conservative and 10 percent Orthodox.  Merkel welcomed the new relationship between the Zentralrat and the UPJ, and called the upcoming ordination at Geiger College “an important indication of the confidence in German society.”

The meeting with the German chancellor came days after top Progressive leaders met with the executive board of the Zentralrat, during which both groups expressed their endorsement of diversity and unity.  In February, the board had voted to officially recognize and accept two regional associations representing half of the UPJ's 20 congregations.

"These developments," says Regev, "serve as an example of how the World Union, advocating in collaboration with its national affiliates, can work to strengthen Reform Jewish life and obtain equal recognition in dozens of countries around the world.”

(left to right)

Rabbi Walter Homolka, Executive Director, Abraham Geiger College

Steven M. Bauman, Chairman, World Union for Progressive Judaism

Dr. Angela Merkel, Chancellor, Germany

Katarina Seidler, Vice President, Union for Progressive Judaism in Germany

Rabbi Uri Regev, President, World Union for Progressive Judaism

Stephan J. Kramer, Secretary General, Central Council of Jews in Germany

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HUC-JIR / WORLD UNION “PESACH PROJECT” LARGEST EVER

Some 7,500 people took part in Pesach seders conducted by the Progressive movement this year in the former Soviet Union.  While the movement’s hard-working resident rabbis - Nelly Shulman and Alexander Lyskovoy (Moscow); Michael Farbman (St. Petersburg); Alexander Dukhovny (Kiev); Michael Kapustin (Kharkov); and Gregory Abramovich (Minsk) – led Passover observance in the larger population centers, they were assisted in the periphery by students from the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.  The students traveled to the FSU as part of the “Pesach Project,” a joint effort by HUC-JIR and the World Union to augment the rabbis working in the FSU with future Reform rabbis, cantors and educators each Passover.  This year, the project’s third, was the largest ever, with 53 students paying their own way to travel to 43 Progressive communities in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.  They were joined by Danny Burkeman, a rabbinic student at London’s Leo Baeck College-Centre for Jewish Education who is spending the year at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem.  He marked Pesach in St. Petersburg and maintained a Web log to record his experiences: http://pesachinstpetersburg.blogspot.com.  (A touching sidebar to this year's Pesach Project is the experience of first-year rabbinic student Emily Dunn, who took time off to search for her roots in the small Ukrainian town of Talnoe – and ended up finding a living relative, Esfira Rabinovich.)  Also traveling to the FSU this year was Rabbi Gregory Kotlyar, who previously served in Moscow and is now based in Israel, where he is helping to translate the Plaut Commentary into Russian as part of an ongoing World Union project (see WUPJnews #191).  Kotlyar spent the holiday in Riga, Latvia, where he led a special Pesach seminar for 30 young people, including a seder at which they hosted 20 adults.  World Union FSU director Alex Kagan attributes much of the success of this year's Pesach Project and the high attendance at Pesach events to what he called "the professional and diligent work of the World Union's FSU staff."

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PLURALISTS URGE OLMERT TO STAND FAST ON CIVIL MARRIAGE

An alliance of organizations promoting religious pluralism in Israel called on prime minister-designate Ehud Olmert, who is working hard to establish a governing coalition, to avoid caving in to ultra-Orthodox demands that there be no civil marriage in Israel.  In a press conference held this week at Mercaz Shimshon-Beit Shmuel, the World Union's education and cultural center in Jerusalem, the alliance demanded that Olmert and Amir Peretz, leaders of the country's two largest parties, keep their election promises to find a solution for the close to 300,000 citizens who lack an official religious designation, and therefore cannot marry in Israel.  Most of these citizens are immigrants from the former Soviet Union.  Rabbi Gilad Kariv, representing Israel's Progressive movement, said if the religious parties get their way, it would "place the mark of Cain" on these Israelis.  Former Knesset member Naomi Chazan, who chairs HEMDAT (the Israeli Association for Freedom of Religion, Culture and Science), asked, "How can Israel call itself democratic if it does not honor one of the most basic human rights: the right to marry?"

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