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New synagogue in Dresden plans to operate outside of Germany’s Jewish mainstream
(JTA) — A new synagogue billing itself as a neo-Hasidic congregation has opened in the former East German city of Dresden, without the backing of Germany’s main Jewish communal umbrella organization.
The Jewish Community Dresden, or JKD, was founded two years ago by Akiva Weingarten, who received his first ordination in the Satmar Hasidic sect in upstate New York but broke away from his roots and ended up studying at Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary, the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam.
Weingarten’s Synagogue Neustadt is housed in a refurbished, mid-19th century train station main hall. According to Weingarten, the egalitarian congregation has some 200 members, with just enough seating if all showed up at once, and is officially open to Jews and their non-Jewish partners – something that sets it apart from most synagogues in Germany.
The JKD is also not operating under the umbrella of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and that is by design, Weingarten said.
“We don’t need anyone’s authorization to be Jewish or to have our own community, and we don’t accept the Central Council as any authority about how Jewish life should look,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Rabbi Zsolt Balla of Leipzig, head rabbi in the Central Council’s association in the state of Saxony, where Dresden is located, did not embrace Weingarten’s message. He said Weingarten had his chance to make his mark in Dresden already, having served as a community rabbi for two years, but his contract was not renewed. Now, Balla said, he “claims to help people who are leaving the so-called ultra-Orthodox world, but he does not have the training and the funds and the capacity to handle these things.”
The Synagogue Neustadt is housed in a former train station hall. (Richard.print/Wikimedia Commons)
The Central Council was founded in 1950 as an administrative body to hold together the small Jewish population in post-war Germany. Today, it coordinates 105 communities with about 93,000 members, many of them Jews with roots in the former Soviet Union. An estimated 100,000 more people identify as Jews in Germany but either don’t want to join or don’t meet the Jewish legal (halachic) requirements: having a Jewish mother or having undergone a traditional conversion.
Virtually all German synagogues are under the Council’s umbrella — including another in Dresden, the so-called “New Synagogue,” dedicated in 2001 on the site of the city’s destroyed “Old Synagogue.” But a handful of congregations in Germany are independent, rejecting or not meeting some of the conditions for membership and thus not receiving federal funding channeled through the Central Council.
“Some real change is desperately needed to have Jewish life in Germany in the coming years,” said
Weingarten, whose independent synagogue is supported by private donations, membership fees and funds from the city. The building that houses it also classrooms, a kitchen, offices and the dorms of a yeshiva he started. He calls Besht Yeshiva Dresden the “first liberal-Hasidic yeshiva in the world.”
Dresden Mayor Dirk Hilbert and other local and state officials attended the synagogue’s official dedication on Sept. 3.
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The post New synagogue in Dresden plans to operate outside of Germany’s Jewish mainstream appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions
ILLUSTRATIVE: The Iranian flag waves in front of the IAEA headquarters before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
Iran’s currency fell on Saturday to a new all-time low against the US dollar after the country’s supreme leader rejected talks with the United States and President Donald Trump moved to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.
The rial plunged to 892,500 to the dollar on the unofficial market on Saturday, compared with 869,500 rials on Friday, according to the foreign exchange website alanchand.com. The bazar360.com website said the dollar was sold for 883,100 rials. Asr-e-no website reported the dollar trading at 891,000 rials.
Facing an official inflation rate of about 35%, Iranians seeking safe havens for their savings have been buying dollars, other hard currencies, gold or cryptocurrencies, suggesting further headwinds for the rial.
The dollar has been gaining against the rial since trading around 690,000 rials at the time of Trump’s re-election in November amid concerns that Trump would re-impose his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran with tougher sanctions and empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 and re-imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Iran that had been relaxed. The deal had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, a process that can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Iran’s rial has lost more than 90% of its value since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018.
The post Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media
Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun walks after being elected as the country’s president at the parliament building in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
i24 News – A photo showing US President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy donning a ring embellished with the Star of David to a meeting with Lebanon’s leader triggered outrage in Arabic social and broadcast media.
As Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, shook hands with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, her Star of David ring was visible in the frame, sparking accusations such as her being “more Zionist than her predecessors.”
Her direct superior, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, is likewise Jewish-American, as is his predecessor Amos Hochstein, who was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Ortagus is the first senior Trump admin official to visit Lebanon amid the fragile ceasefire agreed by Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite jihadists of Hezbollah.
The post US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing
Supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir at a pro-Hamas rally in London. Photo: Reuters/Martin Pope
i24 News – Anti-Israeli activists in Britain applied for a permit to stage a demonstration through London on the morning of October 7, 2023, as Gazan jihadists were rampaging through southern Israel and slaughtering civilians, the Daily Telegraph reported.
At 12:50 PM, as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a rally the following week.
Reports and videos of the Hamas-led onslaught began appearing on social media, and Israeli and then international broadcast media, several hours earlier.
“The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest,” a police spokesman was quoted by the Telegraph as saying. “The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”
The group’s spokesperson defended the move, telling the Telegraph it was “clear” as early as Saturday noon that “the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 percent of them children – were at severe risk.”
The post UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.