Jewish Education and the Yiddish Language in Germany

Jewish texts on display at a synagogue. DPA photo

Jewish studies at schools and colleges in Germany

Today, Jewish studies are not just relegated to history classes. The study of Jewish culture in all of its facets is an important discipline at many German universities, some of which have established internationally competitive research centers.
Just last year, the Berlin campus of the Jewish-American Touro College opened its doors to its first year of business students, many of whom are from the United States and Eastern Europe. The College seeks to educate the country’s next generation of managerial talent while providing the framework for scholarly study of Judaism. The school makes its home in a former Bauhaus construction, the “Haus am Rupenhorn” in Charlottenburg, which was given to the university by the city of Berlin’s Senate in exchange for renovation of the site. With a starting instructor/student ratio of 9 to 20, the college hopes that it will offer an alternative to mass education in Germany while enriching the country’s growing Jewish population.

An important center for contemporary Jewish scholarship can be found at the University of Potsdam’s School for Jewish Studies, while other German universities, such as the University of Trier, have Yiddish language programs integrated into their German language departments.

Links:

School of Jewish Studies, University of Potsdam

First Jewish-American University opens in Berlin, from Germany.info

Jewish Schools

Jewish schools were once a major part of the German educational system. Recognized by the state, they educated both Jewish and non-Jewish pupils with curriculums similar to other state schools until the teaching of Jews was banned by the Nazis in 1942. By the mid-18th century, the Northern German city of Hamburg alone had 39 Jewish schools.
Education continues to be a pillar of the Jewish faith. While Jewish schools are not as prevalent as they once were in Germany, there are now six schools, five primary and one secondary, run by Jewish communities in Berlin, Cologne, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich. Most of these were established after the immigration wave that began in the early 1990’s. Berlin is the only city that has a Jewish secondary school. Just as they were before the war, the schools have a broad curriculum base with a focus on academic subjects and have compulsory Hebrew and Religion courses. About 40% of the children at these schools are not Jews. Almost half of the pupils are from outside of Germany.

Yiddish – a brief introduction to its ties with German

Spoken primarily by Eastern and Central European Jews since the Middle Ages, Yiddish is a hybrid language that combines elements from German, Hebrew, and Slavic languages. In fact, German comprises as much as 85 percent of the Yiddish language, making it understandable for many German-speakers after a brief period of acclimation. It originated in the Rhineland region of Germany and was spoken by as much as 75 percent of the world’s Jews – or 11 million people – in the decades before the Holocaust. Today, Yiddish is spoken by about 4 million Jews, located primarily in the Western Hemisphere; however, since the fall of communism, pockets of Jews who speak Yiddish are being discovered in Eastern Europe.

Yiddish did not merely absorb the German language – it also contributed some of the most colorful words to the German dialects spoken today. Words such as “Moos” (slang for “money”) and Kaff (“the middle of nowhere”), “Knast” (German for “jail,” Yiddish for “punishment”), “Meschugge” (“bonkers”), and to have a “Macke” (German for “crazy”) are just a few examples of the remnants of Yiddish in German dialects.

Yiddish at the Jewish Culture Days 2003

The 17th annual Jewish Culture Days in Berlin last year brought the Yiddish language into the foreground of cultural life through a variety of programs featuring literature, music, theater, and readings. In a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, Elvira Groezinger, a consultant for the Jewish Culture Days, spoke about the influence of Klezmer – a secular Jewish music – on the interest in Yiddish in Germany."More than any other city in Europe, Berlin is the center of the Klezmer music renaissance," Groezinger said, noting that this year's festival features a long night of Klezmer music. "But Yiddish's spectrum is much wider than that. I am very interested in how the public sees new insights into the Jewish culture," she said. Groezinger is the head of the Jewish Studies department at the University of Potsdam, the first of its kind in Germany to offer interdisciplinary study of Jewish culture. The Yiddish language is an integral part of that program. "For me — as well as for many people much older than me — the Yiddish language was something of a cultural homeland," Groezinger said. Many young Jews growing up in Germany agree with her, making the language a viable means for them to connect with their heritage – even for those who grew up in families that do not speak Yiddish.

Yiddish at the 17th annual Jewish Culture Days in Berlin

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