From New Jersey to Germany: a rabbi's search for liberalism

Shaped by orthodox faith, one Jewish leader faces another form of extremism in Germany, reports Jessica Bateman in Dresden

- Jessica Bateman

In 2019, Akiva Weingarten took a job as a rabbi in Dresden, the east German city famous for its baroque architecture, its setting on the Elbe River and for being a stronghold of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

In this year's federal election, the AfD received more than 37% of the vote in the surrounding Saxony state.

Looking out over his new congregation for the first time, Weingarten had a dark realisation. “The average age was about 65,” he recalled. “I thought, 'If we don't do something to bring young people in, the Nazis will have won, 100 years later'”

In a move that finds echoes in the Netflix series Unorthodox, Weingarten decided to found a community supporting people leaving ultra-orthodox Judaism - a journey he had made himself 10 years earlier. Today, more than 200 people, both locals and visitors from around the world, regularly attend his liberal, open synagogue, where Jews and non-Jews are welcome for Shabbat and prayer. He hopes he can establish a thriving Jewish community in a region known as one of the least diverse in Germany.

After the Holocaust, only about 15,000 Jews remained in Germany and the population barely grew until the early 1990s, when the country saw an influx of thousands of Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union. Today, the Jewish population is approximately 200,000 and is mostly based in the more prosperous western regions or in major cities such as Berlin. Migration to the former East Germany has always been more limited, and many residents may never have met a Jewish person.