BERLIN — For most Germans, Monday marked the return of Berlin as the nation’s capital, when the renovated parliament building, the Reichstag, opened its doors.
The parliament celebrated the event by holding a session in the rehabilitated building — a gleaming, glass-domed symbol of democracy spun from the wreckage of Nazism.
But for the nation’s Jews, Monday held additional significance: The Central Council of Jews in Germany officially dedicated its new headquarters in Berlin.
And in another part of the city, work began on a new school for Jewish teachers sponsored by the New York-based Ronald S. Lauder Foundation.
The confluence of events, coupled with memories of war-torn Berlin more than a half century ago, is leading Jewish leaders to envision a bright future in the new capital.
As a mezuzah was nailed to the front door of the building housing the new offices of the Central Council, Ignatz Bubis, the group’s president, joined Rabbi Joel Berger, the national rabbi of Germany, in chanting prayers of thanks.
Later, speaking to invited guests and reporters inside the building, Bubis said the move was a “logical consequence” of the reunification of Germany and the move of the government from Bonn to Berlin. Still, he called it a coincidence that the Reichstag opened on the same day.
German President Roman Herzog said the new Jewish office “opens a new chapter in the postwar history of German Jewry.” And Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen praised the move as a “sign that the Jewish community is blooming and thriving.”
Also moving into the building, known as the Leo Baeck House, are the Allgemeine Juedische Wochenzeitung, Germany’s Jewish newspaper, and the European Jewish Congress, of which Bubis also is president. It marked the first time that the EJC opened an office in Germany.
The building formerly housed the College for the Science of Judaism, shut down by the Nazis in 1942. The school boasted such illustrious teachers as Baeck and Martin Buber, and such students as Solomon Schechter and Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Also on Monday, renovations began in former East Berlin on the one-time Talmud Torah of the Rykestrasse Synagogue, which will house the new school for Jewish educators founded by the Lauder Foundation.
Berlin’s Jewish community is now growing by leaps and bounds.
The trendy bagel shops, Israeli restaurants and klezmer concerts are only the outward trappings.
The real story is in the numbers: The German Jewish population has tripled to as many as 100,000 since Germany’s reunification in 1990, mainly due to the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
Berlin has the nation’s largest Jewish community, estimated at as many as 20,000.
Before 1933, Germany had some 500,000 Jews. About 175,000 of them lived in Berlin.
Though the current community is a small fraction of what it was, Berlin today has seven active synagogues, a Lubavitch representative and a new egalitarian congregation.