2006年VOA标准英语-Germany's Jewish Population on the Rise

By Lisa Bryant
Berlin
12 January 2006

Six decades after the Holocaust¹, Germany's Jewish population is soaring, thanks, largely, to a flood of new Jewish immigrants from former Communist countries. Indeed, in recent years Germany has boasted the world's fastest growing Jewish population. But the immigration boom is also fueling new tensions.

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By almost any benchmark, Boris Rosenthal is a German success story. Fifteen years after arriving here with his family and a few suitcases, the 48-year-old native Ukrainian juggles² a teaching job with a blossoming musical career. Today, he speaks proudly in his adopted language about his new life in Berlin.

Rosenthal says he is not a typical immigrant. Unlike many newcomers, he says he identifies with the German mentality³. When he came here, he says, he wanted to work immediately and be active in his new home.

There are other reasons why Rosenthal is a different kind of German immigrant. He is among an estimated 200,000 Jews from former Communist states who have flocked here in recent years. These new immigrants are known here simply as "Russian Jews" although they come from many different countries.

Concrete slabs⁴ of Germany's national Holocaust memorial sit in front of Reichstag dome⁵ in Berlin  
  
They took advantage of what has been a virtual open-door immigration policy by the German government, partly to atone⁶ for the Holocaust. And, says Julius Schoeps, a Jewish history professor at the University of Potsdam near Berlin, these immigrants are reviving Germany's once-minute postwar Jewish community.

"The future of this community was very bad. There was no future. The idea was to bring Jews from Russia to strengthen the Jewish community. It succeeded," he said.

Since 1990, the number of registered Jews in Germany has soared from 30,000 to nearly 106,000. That figure may double, some estimate, if those who are not formally part of the Jewish community, and therefore are not counted, are added in. In Berlin alone, there are at least seven synagogues, three Jewish schools and an array of Kosher stores and cafes. Jews here describe some latent antisemitism in Germany, but nothing very worrisome.

But the immigration boom is fueling tensions between more observant, second-and third-generation Jews and the new arrivals, who come here with a laundry list of needs and only a sketchy⁷ grasp of their religion. The newcomers guarantee a future for Judaism in Germany. But says Michael May, executive director of Berlin's Jewish community, it is unclear what kind of future that will be.

"I don't know where this community is going because I am coming from a German-Jewish background first of all because of my age, second because I have relatively⁸ elderly parents who were imbued⁹ with this German-Jewish culture and this is definitely disappearing," he said. "There are relatively few people who can continue with this tradition. And on the other hand, you have this new Russian-Jewish tradition which has come in of the 21st century, which will create its own culture...and we don't know where we'll stand in 10 or 20 years."

Such soul-searching coincides with tighter German guidelines requiring prospective¹⁰ immigrants to speak German and be under 45 years old. That is likely to reduce Jewish immigration to Germany. Jews here are divided over the new policy.

Rosenthal, the Ukrainian musician, believes the immigration boom is slowing anyway because of better conditions for Jews in former Soviet¹¹ countries, conditions that did not exist when he left the Ukraine in 1990. At a Berlin Jewish school, where he now teaches music, Rosenthal recounts his own story.

Back in his Ukrainian home town of Lemberg, Rosenthal did not know much about his Jewish roots, except that "Jew" was stamped on his former Soviet passport as his "nationality." And that he was sometimes the butt¹² of antisemitic jokes. He went to his first Hanukkah celebration at the end of the 1980s. Not long afterward¹³, he had a chance to emigrate.

As a newcomer in Berlin, Rosenthal's first job was digging graves at a Jewish cemetery¹⁴. But he slowly stitched back his former career as a singer and orchestra conductor. Later, he was offered his current job as a music teacher.

Other immigrants are not so lucky. Many are unemployed¹⁵. Germany's smaller, more established Jewish community is struggling to meet their needs. That has caused friction¹⁶ between the immigrants and those born in Germany, says Irene Runge, who heads Berlin's Jewish Cultural Association.

"The Russian Jews feel they're neglected, they're humiliated¹⁷. And the German Jews say they're so aggressive and they're only asking to get things, and they don't give anything," she said.

The German and Eastern European Jews also have different tastes in music, literature and fashion.

More importantly, perhaps, many immigrants like Boris Ladoniski are not particularly religious. At a cafe in Berlin, the 30-year-old Russian native talked about what it means for him to be Jewish.

"Most Jews in Russia aren't religious, and I'm not terribly religious either," he said. "But it didn't mean they didn't feel Jewish. It was a different sense of Jewishness, which was based more on the history of the family, on culture, on the stories, the songs you heard."

An uncounted number of Jewish immigrants have not joined Germany's Jewish community. Some do not the meet the community's strict definition of a Jew, that is, converting or having a Jewish mother, rather than simply having one Jewish parent, which qualifies a person as Jewish under Germany's immigration law. But Ladoniski also says that many immigrants are simply not interested in joining.

"It's increasingly a problem for my generation, because many people do not see what should be the benefit in being a member of the community," he continued. "Especially if you're in your thirties, if you have a German education and you're integrated into German society."

But some experts say this new, less-religious generation of German Jews is not necessarily a bad thing. Faith, they say, is only part of a complex set of factors shaping the future of Judaism in Germany.

1 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

2 juggles   

v.歪曲( juggle的第三人称单数 )；耍弄；有效地组织；尽力同时应付（两个或两个以上的重要工作或活动）

参考例句：

• They brought back to my mind, in a flash, the three juggles. 他们顿时使我回想起那三个变戏法的。 来自辞典例句
• Our juggles are essentially built from relationships ─with our partners alz, coworkers and friends. 我们的事业和家庭实际上都是建立于各种关系之上的──与伴侣、孩子、同事和朋友的关系。 来自互联网

3 mentality   

n.心理，思想，脑力

参考例句：

• He has many years'experience of the criminal mentality.他研究犯罪心理有多年经验。
• Running a business requires a very different mentality from being a salaried employee.经营企业所要求具备的心态和上班族的心态截然不同。

4 slabs   

n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片

参考例句：

• The patio was made of stone slabs. 这天井是用石板铺砌而成的。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The slabs of standing stone point roughly toward the invisible notch. 这些矗立的石块，大致指向那个看不见的缺口。 来自辞典例句

5 dome   

n.圆屋顶，拱顶

参考例句：

• The dome was supported by white marble columns.圆顶由白色大理石柱支撑着。
• They formed the dome with the tree's branches.他们用树枝搭成圆屋顶。

6 atone   

v.赎罪，补偿

参考例句：

• He promised to atone for his crime.他承诺要赎自己的罪。
• Blood must atone for blood.血债要用血来还。

7 sketchy   

adj.写生的，写生风格的，概略的

参考例句：

• The material he supplied is too sketchy.他提供的材料过于简略。
• Details of what actually happened are still sketchy.对于已发生事实的详细情况知道的仍然有限。

8 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

9 imbued   

v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等）

参考例句：

• Her voice was imbued with an unusual seriousness. 她的声音里充满着一种不寻常的严肃语气。
• These cultivated individuals have been imbued with a sense of social purpose. 这些有教养的人满怀着社会责任感。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 prospective   

adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的

参考例句：

• The story should act as a warning to other prospective buyers.这篇报道应该对其他潜在的购买者起到警示作用。
• They have all these great activities for prospective freshmen.这会举办各种各样的活动来招待未来的新人。

11 Soviet   

adj.苏联的，苏维埃的；n.苏维埃

参考例句：

• Zhukov was a marshal of the former Soviet Union.朱可夫是前苏联的一位元帅。
• Germany began to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.德国在1941年开始进攻苏联。

12 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

13 afterward   

adv.后来；以后

参考例句：

• Let's go to the theatre first and eat afterward. 让我们先去看戏，然后吃饭。
• Afterward,the boy became a very famous artist.后来，这男孩成为一个很有名的艺术家。

14 cemetery   

n.坟墓，墓地，坟场

参考例句：

• He was buried in the cemetery.他被葬在公墓。
• His remains were interred in the cemetery.他的遗体葬在墓地。

15 unemployed   

adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的

参考例句：

• There are now over four million unemployed workers in this country.这个国家现有四百万失业人员。
• The unemployed hunger for jobs.失业者渴望得到工作。

16 friction   

n.摩擦，摩擦力

参考例句：

• When Joan returned to work,the friction between them increased.琼回来工作后，他们之间的摩擦加剧了。
• Friction acts on moving bodies and brings them to a stop.摩擦力作用于运动着的物体，并使其停止。

17 humiliated   

感到羞愧的

参考例句：

• Parents are humiliated if their children behave badly when guests are present. 子女在客人面前举止失当，父母也失体面。
• He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated. 他感到羞耻，丢尽了面子。