c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the senior interreligious adviser of the American Jewish Committee.)

(UNDATED) November is a bitter time of memory for Jews, especially those with family roots in Germany and Austria.

During the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, the Nazi German government carried out in full public view the worst anti-Jewish attacks the world had seen since the murderous Middle Ages. During that November night 62 years ago, organized gangs of rampaging Nazi thugs burned hundreds of synagogues and Jewish community institutions throughout Germany and Austria.

More than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were firebombed and countless windows shattered into shards of broken glass. It was the huge amount of broken glass that provided the pogrom with its chilling German name: Kristallnacht.

On that horrific night nearly 100 Jews were murdered and about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and interned in concentration camps whose very names still evoke dread and terror: Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Kristallnacht was the overture to Adolf Hitler’s lethal program of genocide that killed 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.

But this November will be a notable exception to the lachrymose feeling of pain and loss that is so much a part of Jewish collective memory.

The reason for the change is the official opening this month of the Abraham Geiger College in Berlin. When the college opens its doors Nov. 12, it will be the first rabbinic seminary in central Europe since the Holocaust.

Today’s Jewish community in that part of Europe now numbers more than 200,000.

The driving inspirational force in the creation of the Abraham Geiger College is Walter Jacob of Pittsburgh, a distinguished Reform rabbi who was born in Augsburg, Germany, and escaped the Holocaust by coming to the United States as a youngster. Jacob, a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, is a prominent scholar whose works include editing the landmark volume “Christianity Through Jewish Eyes: The Quest for Common Ground.”

In an act of reverence for the past and hope for the future, Jacob sees the new college as the direct academic and spiritual descendant of the famous German-language rabbinical schools that were destroyed by the Nazis.

Geiger was a leading Reform rabbi and world-class scholar of the 19th century who in 1836 proposed the then-radical idea that Jewish studies should be a combination of sacred tradition and solid academic grounding.

In 1854 the Jewish Theological Seminary was founded in Breslau, and 18 years later Geiger established his famous Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the College for the Scientific Study of Judaism. The Nazis closed down the Hochschule in 1942 during World War II, but it will now reopen its doors to train rabbis for service among German-speaking Jews.

Sadly, the exciting opening of the Abraham Geiger College takes place against the ominous backdrop of increased anti-Jewish activity not only in Berlin, Germany’s capital city, but throughout the country. Naturally, German public authorities vigorously condemn such activity and many Germans actively oppose the specter of a reborn albeit small Nazi movement.

But the story of Jews in Germany has always been one of radiant light and intense darkness. Before the Holocaust, Germany provided extraordinary spiritual leaders for Reform, Conservative and modern Orthodox Judaism. It is no accident that these Jewish religious movements all had their origins in Germany.

At the same time, German Jews lived amid virulent anti-Semitism long before Hitler’s rise to political power in 1933. Frequently, they were legally barred from assuming leadership positions in government civil service, the military and the university. German Jews were often forbidden to engage in certain professions and occupations, even though their skills and talents were clearly evident.

Despite these severe handicaps, German-speaking Jews achieved world fame in medicine, law, music, art, literature, psychiatry, physical science and, most notably, religious studies. The Abraham Geiger College represents a unique living link with that splendid legacy.

But the college is intended to be more than a memorial to the past. Today there is a growing need for progressive rabbis in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Holland.

As a sign of the times, the college’s curriculum reflects the changing demography of Europe. The number of Russian Jews in Germany and other countries is increasing, and as a result of this immigration two years of conversational Russian will be encouraged in the rabbinic studies program, which will, of course, focus on the traditional disciplines of Hebrew, Bible, Talmud, Music, Homiletics, Education, Philosophy and History.

The new Abraham Geiger College is a living refutation of Hitler.

DEA END RUDIN