Status: 02/24/2021 12:47 p.m.
This year the whole country will commemorate 1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany. Daniela Remus spoke to members of the Jewish community in Hamburg.
The festive year 1,700 years of Jewish life in Germany has been running throughout Germany since February 22nd. Around 1,000 events will take place this year to commemorate the shared German-Jewish history and also to learn more about contemporary Judaism. Hamburg looks back on over 400 years of rich common history.
Jewish community center in the Grindelviertel
In the middle of the Grindelviertel, a lively district of Hamburg around the university, is the community center of the Jewish community. It is located next to the former Bornplatz, where the largest synagogue in Northern Europe stood until it was destroyed in 1939. With a school, a kindergarten, a coffee house with Israeli food, a supermarket with kosher food and the ‘Jüdischer Salon’ event center on Grindel, Jewish life is coming back here in small steps, but still piece by piece.
Rabbi Bistritzky recalls the varied Jewish life
“The Grindelviertel was known as Little Jerusalem, there were several synagogues and Jewish shops here. I have a small pocket calendar at home that I got from my grandfather who lived here in Hamburg. And when I hold this calendar in my hand , then I have an idea of how crowded the Grindelhof, Grindelallee and slide were. All of these streets were filled with so much Jewish life, “says regional rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky, religious head of the community. Bistritzky has lived in Hamburg, his grandfather’s city, since 2003 and is proud of this development over the past few years. Because until 1933 the Grindelviertel was the center of Jewish life for the then 25,000 Jewish residents of Hamburg.
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