Again is insulted in Germany, a Rabbi in the street and spat upon. The European rabbis conference looks at “the religious Coexistence in Germany,” and the freedom of religion is threatened.
“This is something Terrible, what no one should experience.” The Berlin Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal is short of breath when he tells the scene. On the previous weekend, he reports to Deutsche Welle, he was abused by two men in Arabic, and spit on. The 47-Year-old returned in the company of one of his children from a synagogue worship home. “The Moment was just important to take my child in protection,” he says. Slowly, he repeated the sentence.
After the display of the Rabbi and the police investigation. The state protection determines. The perpetrators have not been determined, according to a police spokeswoman yet.
In Auschwitz died in the 63 members of his family
Never in the last 75 years, as many rabbis of the congregations were active in Germany as it is today.
Teichtal is the most famous face among the Jewish clergy in Berlin. He radiates a zest for life and piety alike. An Orthodox Jew who lived previously in Brooklyn, New York. The 1972-born Teichtal came in 1996 with his family to Berlin.
As he tells of the decision to send him to the Land of the Shoah, one can sense quickly what that meant for him. “My great-grandfather was murdered in Auschwitz, a total of 63 members of the Teichtal family died. But my grandpa has survived. So when it came that I should go to Germany, said: This is the right approach. Just there, where it was dark, we should build positive.”
For years, Rabbi inflamed Teichtal in December, a Jewish Hanukkah menorah at the Brandenburg gate. Here, with Federal President of Germany, Steinmeier 2018.
For a long time, the educational center of the Hasidic Lubavitch directs Teichtal in the district of Wilmersdorf. In June of last year, he celebrated with the German foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, the laying of the Foundation stone for a long-planned “Jewish Campus”. Since then, political prominence came again and again.
Again and again, attacks on rabbis
Hamburg’s land-Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky was attacked in June. And started then a campaign against anti-Semitism.
This year in Germany there were already several attacks on Jewish spiritual. At the beginning of April, the Cologne Rabbi Yeciel Brukner defendant in massive verbal attacks in the Public and not announced to go by Bus and train. In mid-June, were in Hamburg on the country, Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky and a Board member of his Church on the Central Townhall-market, Hamburg, attacked, insulted, spat upon. As now, an attack in broad daylight. And in all three incidents, the rabbis were recognized by their clothing clearly as Jews. Even simple Jews were attacked. Recently, a 25-year-old kippah-wearers at the weekend at the Potsdamer train station.
The European rabbis conference (CE) was shocked at the renewed attack on a Rabbi in Germany. He trusted that the security authorities decided to investigate the case tried, said CE Secretary General, the rabbis Gady Gronich, of the German wave. The attack in the presence of a child of Teichtal was shabby.
“Threat of religious freedom”
Many of the synagogues in Germany are guarded around the clock by the police.
Gronich not warned that the repeated attacks on rabbis in Germany meant not only a threat to and vilification of the individual clergyman or the Jewish community. “These incidents threaten the freedom of religion and the religious in Germany, and thus threaten a trait of the German society for its religious plurality is known,” he warned. Therefore, it must be the task of the society as a whole, to show the anti-Semitism, and solidarity with attacked rabbis. The CE Secretary-General also referred to the in the past few years, growing pluralism of Jewish life in the German capital. It is important that religious Jews could move about in Public with a yarmulke, without fear. For this, the state must provide.
Also Teichtal is hoping for a reaction of the society as a whole. “All the people in Germany should have the courage of his convictions, and to say that The want to get up and we will not accept! We will have no acceptance for Inakzeptanz and no tolerance for intolerance.”
But his appearance in Public, he does not want to change. Now, it was important, said Teichtal, that “from the Negative a Positive can be created.” Yes, he says, many people had come in recent years from Muslim countries to Germany, which had learned in their homeland only to hatred of Jews. The state would have to face with more education and the society with more encounter and dialogue.