European T'shuvah

We are now in the heart of T’shuvah season. This is the time of repentance, T’shuvah. But really, T’shuvah means “return”. With Gd’s help, and our own decisive will, we return to what’s right. Gd had a plan for the world, one that He tries to maintain. But we fallible humans stray from the plan, diverge from the path. This time of years we Jews seek to realign our lives to the natural path of growth and productivity that our Creator has in store for us.

History was made yesterday as the Jewish community of Germany returned to the path of Jewish productivity it was supposed to have before the Nazis came to power. Prior to the War, there were 500,000 Jews in Germany. Just before German unification, there were only 30,000. Prior to the War, hundreds of Rabbis were trained and ordained in Germany for service to their Jewish community. Since the War – ZERO. Until yesterday. In a Dresden synagogue built in 2001, poignantly placed adjacent to the site of a shul destroyed on Kristallnacht, three Reform Rabbis were ordained. Two of them will stay and minister to Germany’s Jews. The third will return to his native South Africa. As the Jewish population of Germany grows (it’s now over 100,000), more Rabbis will be trained to serve the unique needs of their community.

To me, there was something strangely beautiful about this ceremony yesterday. I believe it represents the power of T’shuvah on a national scale. I know there are plenty of cynics out there, but I for one appreciate the great lengths that the German people have gone to in T’shuvah for the Holocaust. The fact that their hate crime laws are far tougher than ours; the fact that more than 50 years after the fact, they are just now beginning to show some national pride (remember the World Cup), and the fact that this ordination was big news in Germany, all point to the power of Return, of T’shuvah to what is right, just and moral. I think that Germany can serve as a model for other European countries, especially France – because that country is yet to do the T’shuvah that will make it a safer place for Jews, minorities, and, indeed all its citizens.