Jewish learning center dedicated in Berlin
Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg Center of Jewish learning is formally dedicated in German capital; will provide a symbolic focal point
The Jewish Telegraphic agency (JTA) reported that a joint project of several Berlin educational institutions, the center will provide a symbolic focal point at Berlin's Humboldt University for Jewish studies programs, in the region where the 18th and 19th century Jewish Enlightenment movement, or Haskala, took shape.
Under the new academic umbrella, students will continue taking courses at the four participating institutions: Humboldt University; the Technical University of Berlin; two programs of the University of Potsdam: the Abraham Geiger College, which trains Reform rabbis and cantors; and the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies.
Cooperation partners include the New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum Foundation, Touro College in Berlin, the Leo Baeck Summer University and the Walter de Gruyter publishing firm.
The center, which also will offer space for interfaith dialog, is the brainchild of Christina von Braun, director of the Seminar for Cultural Studies of the Humboldt University.
Its start-up funding of $8.5 million over five years comes from the German federal government and will support fellowships and professorships for visiting scholars from the United States, Israel, Great Britain, France and the former Soviet Union. It will endow two new academic chairs: one in Jewish biblical exegesis at the University of Potsdam, and another for Jewish music at the Weimar Academy of Music, in the former East German state of Thuringia.
In addition, JTA has learned that a new center for training Conservative rabbis and cantors is set to open in 2013 under the auspices of the Geiger College: The Zacharias Frankel European campus of the Los-Angeles based Ziegler Rabbinical School. It will be the first Conservative seminary on the European Continent, according to Jewish Theological Seminary graduate Rabbi Gesa Ederberg of the Berlin Jewish community.
This development underscores the growth in privately funded training programs for Jewish teachers and rabbis in Germany, particularly since the influx of nearly 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union since 1990.
