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Germany excels at restoring synagogues destroyed by the Nazis. But can they foster new Jewish life?
I was in the pews when Munich reopened the Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue—the city’s only surviving prewar synagogue—last month. It is an exquisite restoration and a bevy of politicians showed up. Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, fighting back tears, promised to protect Jewish life; so did Bavaria’s Minister-President Markus Söder and Munich’s mayor Dieter Reiter. The celebrated pianist Igor Levit, who is Jewish, played Mendelssohn and Schubert and wiped away a tear of his own.
It was unmistakably a state occasion. The speeches were solemn, the security heavy and the messaging familiar: “Never again.” “We owe you this.” “Jewish life belongs here.“
Projects like saving the Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue politically legible: they are blueprints, permits, ribbon-cuttings and, a price tag you can print in a press release. They are also finite. What isn’t finite is the work of actually keeping Jewish life alive inside the walls the state has paid to refurbish.
The cost of renovating Jewish life in Germany is not cheap. The €14 million (roughly $16.5 million) project was paid for by the German government, the state of Bavaria and the city of Munich, with the non-profit association that led the rescue effort covering the remainder. It is admirable that so many actors came together to make this restoration possible. Yet recent history provides a few cautionary tales.
Particularly since the 1980s, numerous synagogues have been polished, though not necessarily brought back to life, with public funds. In Erfurt, Essen, Görlitz and Augsburg, architectural restoration has often stood in for restoring Jewish life.
Perhaps the strangest and most glaring example of this is Berlin’s Neue Synagoge, whose Moorish façade dazzles and gold dome glistens since 1995. However, the massive sanctuary—once the largest in Europe—was never rebuilt. Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue, lovingly restored between 2004-2007 is a notable exception; it is currently Germany’s largest functioning Jewish house of worship, but its small community is dwarfed by the enormity of its interior.
Unlike a city like Görlitz (which has roughly 30 Jews), it makes good sense to foster new synagogues in Munich and Berlin, the cities with the highest Jewish populations in Germany, according to the Central Council of Jews in Germany. With sufficient support (including, naturally, engagement from Munich’s Jewish Community, which owns the building), the new Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue could become a revitalized spiritual home for Munich Jewry.
Designed by the Bauhaus-trained architect Gustav Meyerstein, the 550-seat Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue originally opened in Munich on Sept. 5, 1931. It was vandalized in the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, patched up by survivors, and reopened in 1947 as Munich’s main synagogue—until the community moved in 2006 to Sankt Jakobs Platz, a nearby central square.
Its renovation is full of beautiful, resonant choices that display a painstaking attention to detail. The curtain for the ark that will house the Torah scrolls is woven from original fabrics by the Bauhaus textile master Gunta Stölzl—a gift from her grandson, Ariel Aloni, who flew in from New York to make the donation. The new stained-glass windows were fabricated by the Munich glassworks firm van Treeck, the same company that was contracted for the original windows back in 1931, according to Meyerstein’s designs.
Yet amid the talking points of German responsibility to safeguarding Jewish life, there was no credible plan presented for the building’s future.
Plenty of rabbis were present, yet none spoke. No prayers were recited. The evening was billed as a reopening, not a rededication of an active Jewish religious space. Rachel Salamander, a renowned German-Jewish literary scholar who spearheaded the shul’s rescue, made a point of saying that the Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue had been “restored as a house of worship—that is its primary purpose: to be a house of God.” But concrete details on when or how that might happen were not forthcoming.
When I asked around at the reception (where the food was provided by a non-kosher caterer), nobody could tell me who will be davening here regularly, what the prayer schedule is, or how the community intends to avoid turning this restored synagogue into yet another monument to Jewish life before the Holocaust.
A synagogue is not a “kulturelles Hotspot” (as Munich’s mayor bizarrely said he’d wished it would become) and Jewish life is not a series of German politicians wearing polyester-velvet kippot for the cameras. A flourishing shul is the outcome of operating budgets, clergy contracts and volunteer rosters. Jewish life means a space for prayer, study and conversation, and rabbis and scholars to facilitate it.
None of this is as telegenic as a chancellor’s tears. All of it costs money—the unglamorous kind that never ends. It is also bureaucratically irksome, and, in a country where antisemitic incidents nearly doubled in 2024, according to data compiled by the Federal Research and Information Point for Antisemitism, not without its challenges.
If the politicians who spoke so eloquently last month mean what they say about safeguarding Jewish life, they cannot stop at new pews, stained-glass and Bauhaus textiles. If “never again” is to be more than a rhetorical flourish, it has to be cashed out in regular prayer, in teaching, in the messy conviviality of a real congregation.
I have a selfish stake in all this: I live in the neighborhood. Sitting in the renewed sanctuary exactly a week before Rosh Hashanah, I imagined praying there; I imagined the awkward, happy collisions that define a living shul—the bar-mitzvah kiddush where the rugelach and schnaps runs out, the evenings when congregants in their holiday best cross paths with revelers in lederhosen and dirndls. (As Salamander pointed out, the Jewish High Holidays often coincide with Oktoberfest, as happened this year.)
If the Reichenbachstrasse Synagogue becomes a house of prayer again—regularly, reliably—then Merz’s tears will have meant something. If it doesn’t, then we have mounted yet another memorial to Jews where a shul ought to be.
The post Germany excels at restoring synagogues destroyed by the Nazis. But can they foster new Jewish life? appeared first on The Forward.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.