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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.
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‘Marty Supreme’ and everything else Jewish at this year’s Academy Awards
At last year’s Academy Awards, Anora — a frenetic, somewhat ambiguously Jewish look at a Jewish enclave of New York, took home best picture, original screenplay, director and actress for its Jewish lead Mikey Madison. This year, we have a film that feels, in some ways, quite parallel, while cranking the Yiddishkeit to 11: Josh Safdie’s breathless picaresque Marty Supreme, set on the Lower East Side, is up for best picture and its star, Timothée Chalamet is a favorite for best actor.
There’s also Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s portrait of Jewish lyricist Lorenz Hart’s breakup with composer Richard Rodgers (Ethan Hawke is up for best actor). And One Battle After Another, a campy and absurdist satire about the infiltration of white supremacists in the U.S. government, is poised to have a massive night, with the blockbuster Sinners serving as its main competition.
That all goes to say that it’s another great year for Jewish stories at the Oscars, with some really compelling fodder for discussion about the place that Jews occupy today in arts and media. What stories are we telling and how are they received?
Here, as ever, the Forward culture team is here to break it all down for you, live as it unfolds. Of course, we cover Jewish movies all year. But at the Academy Awards, we get to see how the rest of the world feels about these movies. We will be updating this story with our thoughts throughout the ceremony.
Traditionally, as we begin these Oscars roundtables, we discuss what we’re all wearing and eating. What’ve we got?
Olivia: brown sweater and jeans; no food but aggressively chewing mint gum. I will later be drinking some of the seltzer I got from Brooklyn’s Seltzer Fest today.
Mira: I did a bunch of cooking for the week so I have vegetarian avgolemono soup and Alison Roman’s fennel salad. (I’m obsessed with this salad.) I am proudly wearing hard pants.
PJ: I am reheating some chicken from last night. Wearing a blue sweater with a little toggle and jeans. How many of Stellan Skarsgård’s large adult sons are here? In other l’dor v’dor news, Bill Pullman just mentioned how they filmed the Spaceballs sequel with his son Lewis.
Talya: I believe I’m wearing the exact same sweater I donned for this event last year — where’s my award for consistency? And, as always, sweatpants; I cannot comprehend suffering through this event in jeans.
Discussion of Israeli-Palestinian protests on the red carpet
Mira: Love a toggle. Speaking of outfits, anyone have thoughts on Odessa A’zion’s spangled red carpet set? She is one of the only people who styles herself on the red carpet, which I do respect.
Olivia: A’Zion’s outfit kind of looks like she forgot to tie whatever was supposed to be holding it up. I don’t think it looks bad, just like it’s falling down.
PJ: It wouldn’t look out of place hanging from the window of a VW van with shag carpet and some Tibetan prayer flags.
Mira: Of note, the past several years have seen protesters approaching people on their way into the ceremony, and a lot of pins on the red carpet taking a stance on the Israel-Hamas war, largely pro-Palestinian ones. We’re seeing less of that this year — though not none. Javier Bardem posted a photo of him wearing a pin reading “no to the war” in Spanish, along with another pin featuring Handala, a cartoon boy considered a symbol of Palestinians. The team of The Voice of Hind Rajab, nominated for best foreign film, are also wearing red pins with a white dove.
PJ: Those have replaced the red hand ArtistsforCeasefire pins, which some said recalled the bloody palms of Palestinians who killed IDF soldiers in 2000.
Olivia: A reporter for ABC in a pre-recorded segment asked executive producers and showrunners for the ceremony Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan if anything would get bleeped, such as mentions of Trump, Israel and Palestine. Recently, the BBC removed director Akinola Davies Jr’s call for a “Free Palestine” from their BAFTA stream. Kapoor asserted that the night’s production team supports free speech, but we’ll see what transpires over the course of the night.
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US Sends Additional Arms to Israel to Sustain Iran Operations
The first of two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors is launched during a successful intercept test. Photo: US Army.
i24 News – The United States has recently increased shipments of munitions to Israel to support ongoing Israeli air operations against Iran.
According to reports broadcast by the public radio network Kan Reshet Bet, several weapons deliveries have arrived in Israel in recent days as part of what officials describe as an ongoing airlift aimed at sustaining the pace of military strikes.
Since the start of the campaign, Israeli forces are believed to have dropped more than 11,000 bombs on targets across Iran.
The shipments come as reports emerge about a potential shortage of ballistic missile interceptors in Israel. US officials told the news outlet Semafor that Israel’s interceptor stockpiles have been heavily used during the conflict.
According to those sources, Washington had already been aware for months that supplies could become strained, though it remains unclear whether the United States would be willing to share its own interceptor reserves. Israeli officials have since rejected claims that such a shortage exists.
Unlike the Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range rockets and projectiles, ballistic missile interceptors serve as Israel’s primary defense against long-range missile threats. Fighter jets can also be used to attempt interceptions, though this method is considered a supplementary measure to missile defense systems.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has taken additional budgetary steps to support the war effort. During an overnight vote between Saturday and Sunday, ministers approved a roughly 1 billion shekel reduction across various ministry budgets to help finance classified military purchases linked to Operation “Roar of the Lion.”
The government had already approved a 3 percent cut in ministry budgets, a move expected to increase the defense budget by approximately 30 billion shekels as the conflict continues.
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Pope Leo Decries ‘Atrocious Violence’ in Iran War, Urges Ceasefire
Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace, at the Vatican, March 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Matteo Minnella
Pope Leo made an impassioned plea on Sunday for an immediate ceasefire in the expanding Iran war, lamenting “atrocious violence” that he said had killed thousands of non-combatants and caused suffering across the region.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its third week, the first US pope warned that violence would not bring the justice, stability and peace that the peoples of the region long for.
“For two weeks, the peoples of the Middle East have been suffering the atrocious violence of war,” the pope said at his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square.
“In the name of Christians in the Middle East and of all women and men of good will, I appeal to those responsible for this conflict: Cease fire!” Pope Leo said.
IDEA THAT WAR SOLVES PROBLEMS IS ‘ABSURD’
Leo added that the situation in Lebanon – ravaged by a war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah – was also a cause of “great concern.”
“I hope for paths of dialogue that can support the country’s authorities in implementing lasting solutions to the serious crisis currently underway, for the common good of all the Lebanese people,” the pope said.
During a visit to a Rome parish later, the pope said war could never resolve problems and hit out at people who invoke God to justify killings.
“Today many of our brothers and sisters in the world are suffering because of violent conflicts, caused by the absurd claim that problems and disagreements can be resolved through war, when instead we must engage in unceasing dialogue for peace,” he said during his homily.
“Some even go so far as to invoke the name of God to justify these choices of death, but God cannot be enlisted by darkness. Rather, He always comes to bring light, hope and peace to humanity.”