Schechter News | In the Media

Rabbi Gesa Shira Ederberg at her ordination ceremony. "I have a serious problem with the status of women in the Orthodox movement," she says.

By Dalia Shehori

Last Tuesday, Gesa Shira Ederberg was ordained as a rabbi by the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She will now return to Berlin, where she lives, to establish a Conservative Beit Midrash for the first time since the Holocaust.

During our conversation at the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, she wore a crocheted skullcap in shades of blue. She has a number of such scullcaps that she wears "only where it is accepted, because I don't want to be provocative."

She wears them when praying, studying, eating or when she is on duty or giving a lecture. In the street, she wears an embroidered Bukharan cap or a hat, or goes bare-headed.

Ederberg's personal story - a German-born convert to Judaism - is no less distinctive than the path she has decided to take. She was born 34 years ago in T?bingen, a small university town south of Stuttgart in southern Germany, to Protestant parents. Her father, born in 1940, teaches adults, and her mother, born in 1942, teaches German and French. Ederberg speaks English, French, Spanish and Russian as well as fluent Hebrew peppered with slang.

She visited Israel for the first time with her parents when she was 13. Her father was leading a group of German youth as part of his work at the time in a youth exchange organization. She has no special memories of that visit.

The second time she came was during her university studies. She had registered for Jewish studies, at first at the University of T?bingen and later at the Free University in Berlin. She also studied general history and physics, which she abandoned after two years. It is not that unusual, she says, for Germans to choose Jewish studies. About 60 percent of those taking Jewish studies are not Jewish. She chose this area in order to better understand what happened in Germany during the Second World War and continued to take an interest.

To broaden the scope of her studies, she arrived in Israel in 1990, just before the Gulf War, to study Hebrew at an ulpan [Hebrew language class]. She cannot exactly reconstruct the process of her decision to convert to Judaism but speaks of a process that lasted years.

"It was a long and complex journey. But in retrospect, it feels very natural. It also feels - how should I put it - like I have come home."

As if you were Jewish in a previous life?

"Yes. But I don't like the mystical language of reincarnation. I feel that I have come to where I belong. That I feel good here. That it feels just right."

During her ulpan studies, she continued to be concerned by theological questions. "How is it possible for Christianity to use the Old Testament - the Bible? After all, there it says `Israel' and the Church says `That's us?'"

She took courses in Protestant theology in order to gain a deeper understanding of these questions, but then found herself saying, "No way. With all of Germany's historical background, it is simply impossible to convert."

But what got you thinking about converting in the first place?

"How can you explain how you fall in love with someone? It cannot be explained. It just happens."

During her ulpan studies, she visited a synagogue. It fascinated her. She did not consider conversion then but felt that she was increasingly falling in love with "it." Two months later, she returned to Germany and chose the subject of her doctorate at the Free University - The Conservative Beit Midrash in Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland), founded in 1854, the first academic institute to ordain rabbis. "It was the first attempt to create modern rabbis who not only studied in the yeshiva but also studied philosophy and Jewish history in an academic manner," she says.

Compromising on Kashrut

After the Breslau seminary, the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) - the rabbinical seminary of the Conservative movement in New York - was established in 1886, which established the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem in 1984. Ederberg traveled there to prepare her doctorate, and studied at JTS for six months. She thought she would complete her Ph.D. in two years, but in fact never did.

Other matters took center stage on her agenda, such as a request from the Conservative movement to write a booklet - a collection of articles under the title "Understanding Judaism," which took up most of her time.

"And then conversion became more relevant," she says. "It wasn't a single moment, but rather many moments," she says of her decision to convert. "In synagogue, during prayer, I felt myself answering `amen' with all my heart. But the prayer says `He who has chosen us from all the nations,' so how could I really feel that for me, if I didn't not belong? That's when the stage that I couldn't convert began, because Judaism is not just a religion, it is a nation too as well as an experience that people go through together. That was a very long period."

She returned to Germany and continued to weigh the alternatives.

"One also has to think about how one's family and friends will accept it," she says, "and what I would do professionally and whether to remain in Germany or not." She discussed it with her parents and finally, eight years ago, converted to Judaism in New York. Her parents did not object - they only wanted what was best for her - but they did express some trepidation. They warned her that she would be making her life very complicated, that she would have trouble finding a husband. They asked her what would happen with all her friends, if she would observe Shabbat within a society that does not observe the Jewish commandments, if she would be willing to eat in their house.

The fears ultimately proved unfounded. She found a husband, Neil Ederberg, a German who converted to Judaism in a Conservative conversion, like herself. They had met during their studies at the university in Berlin, but the romantic connection was made only after she converted and returned to Germany from the United States. Four-and-a-half years ago, they married. She came to Israel to study at the Schechter Institute and he joined her. Two-and-half years ago, she gave birth to twins in Israel - David and Yehudit. ("We have an Israeli au pair in Berlin who comes twice a week to keep up the children's Hebrew," she says.) Her husband is about to complete his Master's degree in Jewish studies after "taking off in the past two years to care for the children," as she puts it, to help her complete her studies at the Schechter Institute. Before that, he worked as a guide in the old Jewish Museum in Berlin and as a translator.

As for the problem of eating at her parent's home, when she visits her parents in T?bingen, "There is simply no meat on the table - that makes things much easier. Where the dishes and silverware are concerned, I compromise," she says. She explains that to her, honoring one's parents takes precedence over the laws of kashrut, and, "In any case, there is enough room in the Halakha [Jewish law] to be lenient in matters of kashrut, where dishes are concerned."

She did not give up her given name after she converted, only adding the Hebrew name Shira.

Why?

"Because to me Shira - song and poetry - is the most appropriate way to express my happiness at being Jewish." She kept her German name Gesa and says with a smile that it appears in the Bible "the fleece - giza - of the sheep and of gold. "It is like a treasure. When I am called up to the Torah, I am called up as Gesa Shira."

Why did you choose the Conservative movement?

"First of all, I have a serious problem with the status of women in the Orthodox movement. Secondly, Conservative Judaism is for me the most authentic way for modern Judaism. It is a halakhic movement that develops with the needs of the times. This provides a great deal of strength and joy. One cannot remain with the Hasidic streimel of the 17th century Poland." The Reform movement did not represent an option for her either, "Because Judaism is not merely a faith - it is a way of life behind which are beliefs and views and philosophy. One cannot just give up Halakha and simply observe a few customs. That doesn't work for me."

In her view, the principal stream of German Jews before the Second World War was really the Conservative movement, although it was not called that; it was called traditional and sought to restore Judaism's former glory.

Germany needs Jews

Ederberg's greatest dream is to establish a beit midrash in Germany that would be a research center and publishing house for Jewish articles in German. Experts and anyone else interested would come to there to study for a year. The beit midrash would prepare students for rabbinical studies that would be carried on at JTS and the Schechter Institute. At a later stage, courses for teachers of Hebrew and Jewish studies would be given as well as complementary training for social workers in the Jewish communities of Germany.

"It is important to me that it develop in a natural and gradual fashion," she explains. In June, when she returned to Berlin after completing her studies at the Schechter Institute, she began to make her dream come true.

At present, the beit midrash is in the final registration stages as a nonprofit organization in Germany. The Ederbergs' apartment is located next to the main train station, near the offices of the Jewish community in Berlin. There is an office next to the apartment and another room in which all the activities - lectures and studies - take place. At the first stage, the beit midrash will open twice a month and discuss issues of Halakha. Ederberg herself has been ordained and is authorized to make halakhic decisions and reply to queries, but she hopes to "enable people to have direct and independent access to Judaism, to cause them to fall in love with their Judaism once again."

Later, she hopes to make use of the facilities, especially classrooms, of the Jewish community, which she says is "really pluralistic." Within six months, an apartment will be prepared to serve as the permanent beit midrash. The funding will come at this stage from the Conservative Movement in the United States, but Ederberg hopes that in the future she will receive funding from the umbrella organization of the Jewish communities in Germany, which receives an annual budget from the German government of three million euros.

Many Jews in Germany, says Ederberg, want to study Jewish law rather than Jewish philosophy. She has 30 students at present aged 6-16, whom she teaches Judaism. She also gives lectures and teaches boys and girls their haftarah readings in preparation for their bar or bat mitzvah. She hopes to train a staff of teachers to help her. In addition, she is also the head of a small congregation of 300 members in Southern Germany, all of whom, except for two families, are from the former Soviet Union.

She is happy to see the growth of the Jewish community of Germany, now 100,000 strong, of which about 30,000 are Jews from the former Soviet Union who arrived in the past decade. Not only does she not harshly judge these Jews for returning to the country that murdered millions of their brethren less than 60 years ago, but she even views it as a miracle because, she says, "Germany needs Jews."

The displays of anti-Semitism in Germany should not deter anyone, she says, first of all because anti-Semitism in Germany is far less intense than in France or other countries in Europe. She continues to make this claim notwithstanding the report submitted to the World Jewish Congress in October 2002 that showed that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany in April-June 2002 was the highest in Europe.

"I don't argue with facts, but perhaps we should examine what is defined in the report as `anti-Semitic,'" she says.

Would you recommend that Jews immigrate to Germany? To build their home there?

"Why not, I mean - yes, yes. There are problems, but what is happening in France frightens me far more."

In her view, it is important that there be Jews in Germany, "Because there is a tradition of German Jews that should be preserved. We need people to read Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Hermann Cohen in the original. Otherwise, something will get lost. We are alive and the Nazis are dead. German Jewry lives."