IN-DEPTH FEATURES
Torah in Berlin Today — The Yeshiva and the Community

An Overview of Berlin Today: The Future Depends on the Yeshiva

Berlin is located in the heart of the former East Germany. After World War II, when the city was divided into two, West Berlin was left like an island in the middle of East Germany. To travel there, one had to drive two hours through East Germany or go by plane. The atmosphere in West Berlin was very different from today. People felt a sort of bond because of its isolation from the mother country. Eventually, the famous wall separating the two parts of the city was built by the Communists to prevent East Berlin residents from fleeing into West Berlin, to take part in its thriving economy.

Then the wall came down and the two Germanys were united. Berlin became a united city, although some vestiges of the division can still be seen. The respective mentalities still diverge in some ways. West Berlin is much more modern, while East Berlin boasts more attractive architecture and the things of beauty remained in the east.

Eighty percent of the Jewish community of today in East Germany are immigrants from the former Soviet Union who came in the last two decades. Even the other twenty percent consists of Holocaust refugees, Jews from Poland and Hungary who settled in Germany after the war. Hundreds of thousands of Jews gathered in the refugee camps built in the Berlin and Munich areas after the war. Most of them left in the course of time, but a few remained and eventually settled here. The Jews succeeded in business and they were relatively well-off. But they always said they had their suitcases packed and ready.

The kehilloh dwindled until a joint decision was made by Heinz Galinsky, the head of the kehilloh at the time, and the German government: "If Germany wants Jews it must open its gates to immigrants from the communist bloc." Germany's conscience, plagued by its past, dictated the decision. This is also what currently stands behind the country's foreign policy: Germany assumes a decidedly pro- Israel, pro-Jewish policy, and tries to restrain its criticism more than other European countries.

In Berlin there are now about 13,000 Jews registered, and a similar number who are not registered, as community members. Those who do not register in the Jewish community are not recognized by the authorities.

The official community is supported by the German government and runs an Orthodox beis knesses. It also runs a Liberal (Reform/Conservative) synagogue. Approximately 150 people come on Shabbos to the Orthodox shul and 1,000 on Yom Kippur.

There is also a kosher restaurant, butcher shop and bakery. Cholov Yisroel from Strassbourg is available. There is a local shechitoh of meat, but poultry comes from Eretz Yisroel or Antwerp. In Munich and Frankfurt all meat is imported.

There are Jewish day schools for Jewish children, but the level of religiosity is very low. At the beis knesses, children come twice a week after regular school to learn the alef-beis, Torah and tefilloh.

The greatest news for Jewish Berlin is the yeshiva that was started there, Beis Medrash DeBerlin, by HaRav Yehoshua Spinner. Today 26 bochurim are learning at the yeshiva and a chareidi kehilloh is forming around it.

The kehilloh's future depends on the success of the yeshiva. Several bochurim have already married, and remained in the area.

The Berlin Yeshiva

It doesn't look like an international airport, but in fact it is one of the city's three active airports, the large number being a carryover from the time when Berlin was divided between the East and the West, with three separate authorities, originally, in the West. Planes arrive from Israel, land at the old "Soviet" airport which, according to the plans, is about to be renovated and modernized.

The drive into downtown passes through communist-era construction—long stretches of high-rise projects that reflect an eastern influence. Yet they appear well cared for, with vegetation all around and refurbished. The Spree River flows gently through the middle of the city. Not far away are the remains of the Berlin Wall, which has collapsed, even in the hearts of Berlin residents. Only the walls of the large Jewish community have not yet fallen.

After you pass the tall communications tower that serves as the symbol of Berlin, you enter the heart of the city. The old buildings, reconstructed according to the historical model, lend the city the look of bygone days. On fair days the streets teem with people, many of them whiling away their time in cafes. The tranquil neighborhood is also the art gallery district, numbering many artists among its mostly young, left-wing residents. The local population's political inclination is good for the Jews since it allows the extreme right — which is most antisemitic in Germany — no foothold.

In other parts of West Berlin there have been instances of hostility toward Jews, particularly because of the growing number of Arabs alongside right-wing Germans. The eastern portion of the city is free of antisemitic incidents.

As we draw near the yeshiva building it can be recognized unmistakably. The red brick building with a gate bearing a Mogen Dovid leaves no room for error. The structure stands out from the rest of the local landscape, for it rises above its surroundings—physically as well as spiritually.

Before the war a Jewish school stood here. Although all seems perfectly serene, armed policemen are stationed at the entrance. Security measures. Not far away was the former Jewish district, the Chassidic area with the shtiebelach and the meticulous German-Jewish area with its botei knesses. A few minutes' drive away is the Brandenburg Gate where soldiers marched through in goose- step, their boots sounding like the drums of war portending evil; yet here is a gateway to Hashem, through which young men seeking to return to our Father in Heaven pass.

Their voices issue forth in the pleasant tones of the beis medrash. Were it not for their accents and their distinctly Eastern European faces one might think he has passed through the gates of one of the yeshivas in Jerusalem. Until a short time ago the talmidim here didn't even know the Alef-beis. Today some of them delve into the depths of sugyos. A yeshiva founded al taharas hakodesh.

*

HaRav Yehoshua Spinner was born in the US and is a product of its yeshivas. For many years he was involved in outreach programs in the former Soviet Union. His decision to work in eastern Germany was a natural outgrowth of this period.

Large numbers of Russian-speaking Jews gathered in the city as the former Soviet Union began to crumble. The East German government decided to open its gates to them as refugees. Jews who had been raised under Communism were of course very far from Yiddishkeit and they could not be drawn back in "if there was nothing to draw them to," explains HaRav Spinner. "Clearly it was essential to set up a place of Torah. This was the first time in history such a large gathering of Jews had taken place without a place of Torah, and if the community's Judaism was not to become extinct this situation had to be changed."

After receiving the blessings of his rebbe, HaRav Dovid Feinstein, HaRav Spinner and his wife set out for Berlin. He already had three years' experience working in small, relatively remote locations in eastern Europe where he ran summer camps, other youth activities and programs to introduce Jews to Judaism.

Everywhere he spread dvar Hashem, sparks appeared. The embers came back to life despite the many years of Communist severance, and the flames of Yiddishkeit began to flicker. The thirst was clearly there. Some of the youths showed particularly keen interest. Eight of them wanted to learn within an organized framework, but no such opportunity was available.

"I decided to bring them together in Berlin to make it the foundation for the yeshiva," recounts HaRav Spinner.

How did you obtain a building in which to set up a yeshiva in Berlin? The idea of a yeshiva in a city so cut off seems farfetched, like building castles in Spain.

It was simply siyata deShmaya. Those who are familiar with the reality in Berlin know that nobody would have provided a building for a yeshiva. The story goes like this:

At first the building was actually handed over to someone who is not observant. He received a building from the Lauder Foundation in order to found an educational institution. The building was renovated, but after significant financial resources were invested in it, the plan did not get off the ground and the renovated building stood empty. The place was like a monument to failure and added little to the honor of the plan's initiators, that is, the kehilloh or the Lauder Foundation behind the educational enterprise.

I arrived in Berlin and declared that I could fill the building as early as Rosh Chodesh Elul. I received immediate consent. They were willing to agree to anything as long as the building wouldn't stand empty. Nobody looked too closely at the idea and its aim. The main thing was to move on past the empty building's disgraceful failure. Thus, through siyata deShmaya, we received the building.

How did the community respond to the fact of a traditional yeshiva in their midst?

At first the yeshiva caused a great uproar. The community was strongly opposed, but not simply because of the yeshiva's existence. To understand what motivated the opposition one must understand the background.

The members of most Diaspora kehillos are clearly defined. Either they are Jewish or not—or they lie and say they are.

But the Eastern Germany kehilloh adds another possibility: members who mistakenly think they are Jewish. Their mistake stems from a time when unsuitable conversions were performed by unauthorized individuals. The problem is that they feel like Jews in every way, and when they are told they are not truly Jewish according to halochoh, it crashes onto them out of the blue like a ton of bricks.

As soon as the yeshiva was opened, a young man who belonged to one of the community's leading families applied for admission. The family was very prominent in the kehilloh and had a strong Jewish identity. But when he applied to study at the yeshiva, it was discovered that his mother and grandmother had undergone Liberal conversions, meaning they were simply non-Jews.

Our refusal to admit the young man turned into a head-on confrontation and the kehilloh began to wage a war against the yeshiva. We made it clear that the young man would have to undergo a kosher conversion from scratch to join the Jewish people and only afterwards would he be allowed to study at the yeshiva. Although we are not involved in conversion and certainly do not want to turn into a conversion institute, under the circumstances we laid forth a nonnegotiable condition: a halachic conversion performed by rabbonim authorized by gedolei Yisroel or else he would not be admitted. The young man refused, along with his family and the kehilloh. The community was up in arms and the Jewish press came out against us with drawn sword.

So you got off to a bad start?

On the contrary. Although we faced difficulties from the start, we actually got off to a good start. Everyone realized we couldn't be broken and that a yeshiva is not a place for compromises.

Before I set out, my rabbonim stressed that I should be uncompromising. I knew I was going to open a yeshiva that fully met all of the conditions: kashrus without compromise, only genuinely Jewish students, learning without compromise. And this uproar lent us publicity and helped us to make clear to everyone that the new yeshiva that had been started in Berlin was a place without compromises!

And were there people seeking a place of truth without compromise?

Definitely. During the first year there were nine bochurim and that number has grown from year to year. By the second year there were 14. This past Elul, 26 bochurim started studying.

Has this tree already borne fruit?

Certainly. A few of the yeshiva alumni are now learning in the US, some at Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore and some at Ohr Somayach in Monsey. The Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Moshe Eismann, arrives from the US and spends about a week with us every month. He used to serve as the mashgiach in the Baltimore yeshiva and now he is a maggid shiur there. Since he was born in Frankfurt, German is his mother tongue and this is very useful to us.

Is yours a true yeshiva, with all that entails?

The yeshiva has three sedorim with a full yeshiva format. A true yeshiva al taharas hakodesh . . .

Inside the yeshiva we see things that are hard to grasp. A bochur comes in who doesn't even know the alef-beis and after a year's time he's already learning gemora with Rashi and Tosafos. This defies explanation. It is unclear how this happens. Siyata deShmaya — it can't be anything else.

Do you sense a change among the local Jews in their attitude towards the yeshiva?

It must be kept in mind that it's just a matter of time before we succeed in changing the local Jews' perspective on the concept of the ben yeshiva. We must change their whole conceptual world. And therefore, as the foundation stones are being laid, we are glad that the best and most talented boys are coming. That way nobody will be able to say that it is the losers who don't find a window of opportunity anywhere else who go to yeshiva.

Nobody can claim that those who failed in their high-school studies and cannot learn in an academic setting are the ones studying Torah in our yeshiva. Quite the contrary. In fact the yeshiva students are the best of the lot and their reputation is spreading far and wide. And when in Leipzig people see a certain young man with rare talent and an excellent student go to yeshiva, this changes the Jewish community's whole outlook on the concept of a yeshiva, despite their severance from Yiddishkeit.

Five years ago, the idea of a smart and successful boy going to yeshiva would have been simply inconceivable in Germany. Someone who wanted to go would have been dismissed with the wave of a hand.

Today all that has changed. Nobody shows disdain. They might say they're not interested or refuse you, but nobody can sneer at those who do go. On the contrary. If you understand the depth of the matter and know the people involved, this is a revolution.

Do you mean the beginning of a revolution?

It's a process. The yeshiva has alumni, some of whom have married and live nearby. When there are young families in the area, it generates a demand for educational institutions for their children. This is the way a bnei Torah kehilloh develops.

A separate kehilloh, an extension of HaRav Ezriel Hildesheimer's Adas Yisroel?

Perhaps I should set things straight. In Germany the word "kehilloh" defines organizational and political membership. A "kehilloh" is an official organization, authorized to act as a representative to the government authorities and as a recipient of public funds. HaRav Ezriel Hildesheimer's Kehillas Adas Yisroel was separate from the general community in those days for obvious reasons. All of the Torah Jews of Berlin were politically organized under this kehilloh in those days. Even today, officially this kehilloh still exists.

The official Adas Yisroel kehilloh today is run by the grandson of one of the founders. That kehilloh owns HaRav Ezriel's beis medrash and the cemetery where he lies buried. HaRav D. T. Hoffman and HaRav Avrohom Eliyohu Kaplan, HaRav Hildesheimer's successors as heads of the Beis Medrash LeRabbonim, are also buried there. However, on Shabbos morning, the minyan there is made up exclusively of Jews who do not keep Shabbos.

Today's Kehillas Adas Yisroel is therefore much different from the original kehilloh. Also, a legal dispute over ownership has developed between the heirs and grandchildren of the founders and the leaders of the kehilloh.

We have nothing to do with all this. We are completely detached from the concept of "kehilloh," which is essentially political.

We can say that before the war Adas Yisroel had two characteristics: it was a separate political entity from the general Jewish community and also Berlin's Torah Jews all gathered under its banner. Today, however, it has split into Adas Yisroel which does not have any Torah Jews, and the Torah Jews centered around the yeshiva, who are not a "kehilloh" in the German sense.

Adas Yisroel's material property is in the hands of the kehilloh that bears its name today, but the spirit of Adas Yisroel blows in our direction. But it must be stressed that we do not follow the educational methods of rescue applied by HaRav Hildesheimer and his successors in Germany, but we are a Litvak yeshiva in every sense: Torah and only Torah, with no admixture. We are learning lishmoh al taharas hakodesh.

Covering the Blood with Lifegiving Earth

Berlin was the wellspring of the cursed Enlightenment Movement which wreaked destruction in Kerem Beis Yisroel. It was from here that the evil went forth, Rachmono litzlan. The Meshech Chochmoh writes about this in Parshas Bechukosai: "And the Israelite will totally forget his origins, thinking himself a flourishing citizen. He will abandon the study of his religion for the study of tongues not his own, studying the problems and not the solutions. He will think Berlin is Jerusalem . . . Then a tempestuous wind will come along and uproot him from the trunk . . . [Then] he will become aroused with a feeling of holiness and his sons will gather courage and his young men will do valorous deeds in Hashem's Torah, studying the Torah within the borders where it will have already been forgotten, thereby he will persist and even become stronger."

HaRav Spinner, are we witnessing the realization of this description? In Berlin, from which both the spiritual evil [of the Enlightenment] and the physical evil [of the Holocaust] went forth, could a revolutionary message of Hashiveinu Hashem venoshuvoh also go forth?

A while ago a fundraising dinner was held in Berlin for a well-known tzedokoh organization. The event was held at a restaurant located above the Reichstag [the house of parliament that served the Third Reich]. A lookout point was built there and all of Berlin can be seen through the glass. The restaurant was kashered lemehadrin in honor of the event and I was invited as a guest.

This was hard to digest: sitting over the Reichstag at a Jewish event in a place that had been kashered lemehadrin. This is hard to grasp.

Europe was drenched with Jewish blood, especially Germany, where not only the soil but even the spirit was blood-soaked. Berlin stood in the center and the blood pooled in the city, because from here the wellspring went forth. The Reichstag was the wellspring itself, the source from which the rivers' evil went forth. And now Jews were gathered here to engage in tzedokoh!

It's hard to say: is there a feeling of victory or horror?

The end of the Yoreh De'ah section of the Shulchan Oruch discusses kisui hadam, the obligation to cover the blood of a slaughtered animal or fowl. The very presence of Jews on German soil, metaphorically speaking, is an act of covering spilled blood—the blood of our brethren crying out from the earth. Al pi din, blood cannot be covered with lifeless dirt, but only dirt that contains the power of life, soil that can nourish growth.

If one wants to cover over the blood, this can be done only with the soil of the land by planting a new Jewish tree and nurturing Torah here, a place of bnei yeshiva, of a kehilloh that lives according to the tradition handed down to us, thereby restoring German Jewry to its former pedestal.

Yet this is still a very small gleam of light in the heart of a vast country.

A bit of light dispels a lot of darkness and the power of light can reach faraway places. It must also be kept in mind that "Yisroel areivim zeh lozeh," and when a Jew does what is incumbent upon him "here" it has an effect "there." We are definitely seeing the buds of a transformation.

The yeshiva's impact is far-reaching. The light it casts which brings them back on track reaches far and wide. There are a few boys at the yeshiva from Leipzig [100 miles away]. Their parents are people of standing in the kehilloh in the city where they live, but in keeping with the German custom they are members of the Liberal temple.

When the boys went back home, of course they refused to set foot in there. As a result of pressure by their parents, a battle began in the kehilloh to transform the place into an Orthodox synagogue so the yeshiva boys could daven there, too. The change did indeed take place and they are restoring Yiddishkeit to its pedestal!

Now they daven there every Shabbos, not just once a month as previously. And all this is because of these boys who worked on their learning far from home, in the Berlin yeshiva. This is a first step, and we still have a long way before us — in more ways than one.

The city of Leipzig is but one example. In Hamburg, changes are taking place as well. One of the yeshiva alumni lives there and is involved in fabulous outreach work. He sent a group of students to spend a Shabbos at the yeshiva and they were very inspired. As a result, demand was created out in the field to start a place of Torah in Hamburg as well. Now we are opening a Night Beis Medrash in Hamburg as well. No talks, no debates, no persuasion, just Torah learning. Just to come and learn — and its light brings them back.

HaRav Pinchos Padwa of Zurich will come to deliver a shiur there once a month and other talmidei chachomim have expressed a willingness to join the marbitzei Torah in Hamburg. Thus a place of Torah began there, as well, in the zchus of the sparks emerging from here.

But our eyes are looking toward the future. We don't have time to rest on our laurels. There is a lot more work to be done. Through siyata deShmaya, the yeshiva will grow and the surrounding kehilloh will develop into a Torah setting. Be'eizer Hashem the great light will spread to all of Germany's cities. I hope Berlin will be the place that wipes clean from the slate of history the imprint of the "enlightened" Berlin of yesteryear.