Germany – New Synagogue Opens In History-Rich City of Mainz

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    Torah rolls were ceremonially carried into the synagogue to inaugurate it.Mainz, Germany – The Jewish community in Mainz, the German city that was a centre of European Judaism for centuries, opened a new synagogue Friday on the site of a predecessor building, which was ransacked by the Nazis in 1938.

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    The futuristic building, which features spiky, jutting roofs, is to serve a community of 1,000.

    Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called it a “self-confident signal for the return of German Jewry” and recalled the special place Mainz holds in Jewish history.

    The world’s Ashkenazi Jews have their cultural roots in medieval Jewish communities that had been located along the Rhine river in Germany. The main centres of learning were the three cities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz.

    German President Christian Wulff was among the 500 guests as Torah rolls were ceremonially carried into the synagogue to inaugurate it. The building was designed by Manuel Herz, who trained under Daniel Libeskind, the architect of Berlin’s Jewish Museum.
    German President (seen in photo) Christian Wulff was among the 500 guests
    The opening also marked the 98th anniversary of the inauguration of the old Mainz synagogue, which was desecrated in November 1938 during a nationwide night of violence in Nazi Germany and later torn down.

    After the Second World War, the remnants of the Jewish community worshipped in a hall that was not visible from the street. Pillars from the old building that were discovered during site excavations have been placed in the complex to commemorate the old building.

    Wulff, who called the new synagogue “a symbol of the trust in our nation,” had appealed earlier in an interview with a Mainz newspaper, the Allgemeine Zeitung, for Germans to closely study the history of the Holocaust.

    “This barbarism fills us with utter shock. We have a special responsibility for the future arising out of us Germans’ past,” he told the newspaper.

    President Christian Wulff (third from right) and Charlotte Knobloch, chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, were among the guests of honor at the opening.


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    2 Comments
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    Matzoslocal101
    Matzoslocal101
    13 years ago

    In the Likutim in MaHaril it says in his time there was a matzaivah in Magantzia of a shifcha charufa dating back to the time of the second temple. That means Jews have been in Mainz for 2000 years.

    cbdds
    cbdds
    13 years ago

    Anybody that understands the Tefila Unesana Tokef should know it happened in Mainz.