Alina Treiger
צילום: AFP
Woman rabbi to be ordained in Germany
Alina Treiger, born in Ukraine and trained in Germany, will be country's second female rabbi
The first female rabbi to be trained in Germany since the Holocaust is set to be ordained.
Thirty-one-year-old Alina Treiger was born in Ukraine and came to Germany in 2002 after studying music in Moscow. Once ordained, she will oversee Jewish communities in Lower Saxony in eastern Germany.
Treiger told Germany's ZDF television before her ordination Thursday that she recognizes the Holocaust is part of German Jews' past, but hopes Jews can identify with the positive experiences they have today.
In an interview with the BBC she said, "It is very important to deal with mourning the dead, but it's also important to step towards the future and not be blinded by negative historical experience."
Treiger added that she sees herself as the successor of the only other female rabbi in Germany's history. "Her name was Regina Jonas. She grew up in Berlin and studied in Germany and she was forgotten for a long time," she said. "She was murdered in Auschwitz."
Today around 200,000 Jews live in Germany, more than half of whom came after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
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