Community, conversation: Berlin opens new Jewish cultural center

When Berlin Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal first talked about his dream of building Germany’s biggest Jewish educational and cultural complex since the Holocaust, most people who heard about the plan were skeptical.

But five years after the groundbreaking, Mr. Teichtal, a Berlin rabbi and head of the local Chabad community, beams as he steps onto the seventh-floor balcony of the new curved, blue-tiled building overlooking the campus amphitheater, garden, playground, and a plot still covered with containers and construction material that will eventually become a sports field.

“We’re changing the narrative about Jews in Germany,” Mr. Teichtal told The Associated Press earlier this week.

“Too often people only think about the Holocaust and antisemitism when it comes to Jews in Germany,” the rabbi said. “Our Jewish campus is about the future, it’s about joy, about studying and living together.”

The Pears Jewish Campus, in the German capital’s Wilmersdorf neighborhood, officially opens on Sunday. The Chabad community’s 550 kindergarten, elementary, and high school students who are currently spread out in different buildings across the city will all move to the campus when the new school year begins at the end of August.

In addition to the schools, the campus also will feature a movie theater and a music studio, a library, a kosher deli, and a huge indoor basketball court and gym that can be turned into a lecture hall for up to 600 people or a reception hall for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

There’s a kitchen for the school cafeteria and another huge one to cater receptions, which includes a bakery to make pastries or to prepare challah for Shabbat.

Jessica Kalmanovich, a mother of two children who attend Chabad’s elementary school and kindergarten in different neighborhoods of the city, said her family can’t wait for the campus to open.

“Every morning, when we drive by the campus, my son asks me, ‘When is my kindergarten in the blue building finally ready for me to start going there?’” she said.

Ms. Kalmanovich, who was born in Kazakhstan and came to Germany as an infant, called the new campus “a milestone” for Jews in Berlin.

“Our children will get a good Jewish education there, we will be in the center of the city, and we will no longer have problems finding kosher food,” she said. “We will be very visible as Jews in Berlin but at the same time feel protected.”

Unlike many other Jewish institutions in Germany that are hidden behind walls for fear of possible antisemitic attacks, the new campus has a glass fence around it. It is connected to the synagogue and community center that have been operated for many years by Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement.

“We didn’t want this to feel like a ghetto,” said Mr. Teichtal. “We want this to be a happy place, an open house.”

When Mr. Teichtal, who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, was asked to go to Germany 27 years ago to revive Jewish life there, he had mixed feelings. His great-grandfather was murdered in the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp and more than 60 other relatives also perished in the Holocaust.

But together with his wife Leah, he set out to “bring light to the darkness.”

Berlin was home to Germany’s biggest Jewish community before the Holocaust. In 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, around 160,500 Jews lived in Berlin. By the end of World War II in 1945, their numbers had diminished to about 7,000 – through emigration and extermination.

Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, in which 6 million European Jews were killed by the Nazis and their henchmen, Berlin’s Jewish community is still a far cry from the past. But it’s vibrant and alive again – with an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Jews – and Rabbi Teichtal has played a major role in creating this bustling community.

In addition to the descendants of the surviving German Jews, many Jews who now live in Berlin emigrated from the former Soviet Union after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Young Israelis and American Jews came in droves over the past 15 years, fascinated by the city’s laissez-faire vibe, buzzing nightlife, and low cost of living.

In a recent development, several thousand Ukrainian Jews settled in Berlin after Russia attacked their home country last year, among them several hundred refugees and orphans who found shelter at the Chabad community.

The new Jewish campus, over 86,000 square feet, cost $43.7 million that was paid for by the federal and state governments, private companies, foundations, and donations. It’s designed to cater not only to Jews but also members of other religions, Mr. Teichtal says.

“This place is about creating dialogue, about overcoming prejudice and ignorance,” the rabbi said. He paused, then added that his work in Berlin is not yet done with the opening of the Jewish campus.

“I have many other plans,” he said with a smile, gazing across the campus. “The synagogue has to be enlarged and there’s a need for a nursing home – with the help of God, we will make it all come true.”

This story was reported by The Associated Press.