Leipzig: Unusual Place as Hub for Orthodoxy?

Pasha Segal and Anya Chernyak on their wedding day on Oct. 25. The pair is one of a handful of young observant couples in Leipzig.

Leipzig, Germany
At age 12, Pasha Segal arrived in Braunschweig, Germany, from Ukraine, knowing he was Jewish but lacking any further understanding of what that meant.

At 19, he underwent ritual circumcision at a facility in Belgium designed for Jews like him.

And last week, at 23 and still rosy-cheeked, Segal married Anya Chernyak, 22, in a ceremony that is believed to be the first wedding of an Orthodox Jewish couple in Leipzig since World War II.

The newlyweds are one of only a handful of observant couples in the city, but both they and the rabbis involved in building the Leipzig community are confident that their marriage will be an inspiration for others.

"It shows that Jewish life goes on -- that you can be religious and Jewish here in Leipzig," said Rabbi Dovid Chandalov, director of the Leipzig Tora Zentrum, where the couple met.

Chandalov predicted that the wedding would spur other Russian-speaking immigrants in the city to seek out Jewish nuptials.

Across Germany, the arrival of approximately 90,000 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 20 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain has brought both challenges and opportunities for Jewish life here.

Leipzig has become not only a growing community -- like scores of others, its Jewish population exploded from nearly nothing in 1989 to well over 1,000 today -- but an Orthodox Jewish hub, funneling students from around the region to institutions of Jewish learning in Berlin and beyond. In this eastern German city of more than 500,000, it has had the effect of exporting Leipzig's most active Jews to other communities throughout the country.

Just this year, the ToraZentrum sent two boys to Berlin's Yeshivat Beit Zion, about a fifth of whose students hail from Leipzig, and three girls to its sister school for women, the Midrasha, according to Chandalov. All three institutions are supported by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation.

'Off the Charts'
The number of young Leipzig Jews interested in Judaism, as a proportion of the total Jewish population, "is off the charts compared to anywhere else in the country," said Rabbi Joshua Spinner, the foundation's vice president and director of its Germany operation, known as Lauder Yeshurun.

Spinner said that the German authorities erred in spreading Russian Jews across the country when they began arriving in droves after the fall of communism. As a result, many communities are too small to support viable Jewish life.

"We can't put kindergartens, schools and yeshivas in every community in this country," said Spinner. "The only viable outreach model for those dispersed populations of Jews in Germany is to think regionally."

A similar effort to turn Hamburg into a major Jewish center was attempted, but foundered. Spinner's best explanation for Leipzig's success is the one offered by his Chasidic friends, who believe that it stems from the merit of Rabbi Sholom Yosef, the scion of a Chasidic dynasty who died here while passing through town, and whose grave remains a pilgrimage site.

Leipzig's ToraZentrum draws participants from as far as a two-hour train ride away. Its target population is more or less exclusively Russian-speaking immigrants who typically lack even the most rudimentary Jewish education. Some didn't learn of their religious roots until they were old enough to ask.

Between 30 and 40 students now participate in the center's Jewish-studies program held on Tuesdays, earning a monthly stipend of about $100 that students and administrators admit amounts to a thinly veiled bribe.

"It's local, it's homegrown, it's grass-roots," said Spinner. "It's all the things we in these Jewish organizations always claim to believe in, and very unconvincingly actually step back and allow to take place."

Chaim Karpushkin, 20, a native of Latvia, studied at the ToraZentrum for two years because of the money offered. The product of a secular family, Karpushkin was skeptical about becoming religious until a rabbi from Berlin came to Leipzig and took him to a performance by the New York rock band Gogol Bordello, which plays East European-style "Gypsy music."

Demonstrating that one could be both observant and appreciative of modern music, Karpushkin said that "the breaking point came at a punk-rock concert." Now he has taken off half a year to study at Beit Zion in Berlin before starting university studies.

Stories like these abound.

"It's very important," Segal, the groom, said of the significance of an Orthodox couple marrying in the city. "The community tried to get more religious, but they don't know what is a Jewish wedding."