Journal 3 in 2003
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Toby Axelrod
European Jewish Women Gather in Berlin

She held the Kabbalat Shabbat prayer book in her hand, but Inna Astvatsatryan barely could read it through her tears. This was Astvatsatryan’s first visit to Berlin from Armenia, her first Bet Dbora conference for Jewish women, and at this moment her emotions rose to the surface. “Like most Soviet people, I didn’t believe in God,” Astvatsatryan, who chairs the women’s club of the Jewish Community of Armenia, later said. “But at that moment, I really believed in God, and that God saved me and saved my family.”

The power of the moment for Astvatsatryan underscores the isolation of many Jewish women in far-flung outposts. For many, this conference, held May 23-25 at the Museum of Prenzlauer Berg in former East Berlin, provided a rare chance to meet their counterparts from other countries, to talk, eat, pray and sing together.

In all, some 150 women came here from across Europe, Israel, the USA and the former Soviet Union for three days of workshops and lectures, under the theme of ”Power and Responsibility.” Speakers included communal and religious leaders, political activists, artists and writers.

The program focused on effective leadership, biblical role models, how to balance personal with communal needs, how to succeed in male-dominated domains, and how to avoid seeking power for its own sake. Among the more controversial subjects were the question of whether the Jewish community should be more active in helping refugees in Europe, and a closing discussion with Christian and Muslim women.

The conference “was a breakthrough on a political level,” said conference co-founder Elisa Klapheck, noting that Charlotte Knobloch, a vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Cynthia Kain, a vice president of the Berlin Jewish Community, had attended and spoken at the conference. “But it was also a breakthrough on a spiritual level,” she said. “What moved me were the people I got to know – new relationships, new networks,” said co-founder Lara Daemmig.

Bet Debora is the brainchild of these two Berliners, who already have a reputation as rabble-rousers for the cause of Jewish women here. In the early 1990s Klapheck, who grew up in West Berlin, helped spark an egalitarian minyan that today is under the official umbrella of the Berlin Jewish community. She also has published the annotated dissertation of the world’s first ordained female rabbi, Regina Jonas of Berlin, who was deported and killed by the Nazis in 1942. And recently, Daemmig, a former East Berliner – and Klapheck collaborated on a new edition of the prayers of Bertha Pappenheim, a pioneer in the pre-war Berlin Jewish community.

The two also have collaborated since 1999 on Bet Debora, which today is nearly a fixture of Jewish life in Berlin. To shake things up a bit, the next conference is planned for Budapest.

What keeps the fire burning is that European Jewry still has a long way to go when it comes to so-called women’s issues, they said. In Germany, there are very few women on the boards of Jewish communities. Of some 24 rabbis, two are women. There are fewer than a handful of congregations where women as well as men can read from the Torah.

In Berlin, where only two of seven synagogues has mixed seating and offers aliyas to women, the first Bet Debora conference, which focused on female rabbis, cantors and educators -- was part of a trend toward greater acceptance of diversity. The road has not been easy - not all members of the established Jewish community in Germany feel comfortable hosting Jewish feminists on their turf. But, as several speakers said at the opening event, Bet Debora appears to be here to stay.

“It has become a tradition,” said Charlotte Knobloch, a vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, addressing the conference. But complacency is dangerous, Alice Shalvi said later. “Four years ago, you were the outsiders,” Shalvi, founder of the Israel Women’s Network, said. “Beware of becoming establishment.”

Among the speakers were Gabriele Brenner, chair of the Jewish Community of Weiden; Deidre Berger, head of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office; Prof. Nira Yuval-Davis of London; Tatyana Eesik, chair of the Progressive Jewish Community of Tallin, Rita Kleiman, chair of the Jewish Community of Kishinev, and Svetlana Yakimenko of Moscow.

Services were led by Rabbi Bea Wyler of Oldenburg, Germany’s first female pulpit rabbi; and by singer Jalda Rebling and cantor Avitall Gerstetter of Berlin. Anne-Lisa Nathan sang several prayers during the opening session. And on the final evening, pianist Elzbieta Sternlicht performed works of Fanny Hensel, the brilliant composer who was forbidden by her father, Moses Mendelssohn, to become a professional musician. Instead, she published some of her works under the name of her famous brother, Felix.

For many, Hensel’s unstoppable creative power was the perfect symbol for their own struggles and hopes. “My dream is that one my grandchildren will be a rabbi - the girls, of course,” said Rabbi Eveline Goodman-Thau of Austria and Israel.

For Liliane Furman, who works for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Freibourg, Germany, a dream is that "good people" stay in Jewish communal work.

“It is not yet normal for women to wield power,” said Sandra Lustig of Berlin, who moderated two panels. “My dream is that more women will come to power to work for Jewish women’s causes,” she said.

“My dream is that I will be able to retire because there won’t be anything that needs me to do something about it,” Shalvi said.

Between workshops and podium discussions, women - and a handful of men - exchanged ideas, stories and e-mail addresses in the museum courtyard.“When I go back, I will do training to show people that power is really responsibility,” Yusifova Solmaz, a medical doctor and president of the Jewish Charity Center “Havva” in Azerbaijan, said.

Marine Solomonischvilli also plans to hold a seminar on the subject of woman and power when she returns to Tbilisi, Georgia. Her messages, she said, would be that Jews should work for peace, and “you should not hide the fact that you are Jewish. Be proud of it.”

Several women thanked the men in their lives for their support and help. Shalvi, whose husband, Moshe, currently is editing a new “Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia” on Jewish women, said she felt fortunate that she never had to encourage her husband to be a feminist. Solmaz of Azerbaijan said her husband, Juri, had married her knowing she was independent and educated - unusual for a woman from the traditional community of “Mountain Jews.” “My husband does not control me,” Solmaz said. “But my brother still doesn’ t accept that I travel. He lives in Frankfurt and he called me at the conference daily to see where I am.”

Solmaz said she was impressed that a German woman told a similar story. “I understood that women have some of the same problems in Europe that we have in Azerbaijan,” she said. And they have some of the same talents, said Sofa Grinberg, a tiny woman who heads five Jewish organizations in Azerbaijan, including one for women. “Jewish women with energy and brains can do really a lot for the Jewish community as a whole,” she said.

For Inna Astvatsatryan, the message of the conference became clear at the Kabbalat Shabbat service in the museum's top floor auditorium. As swallows swooped and dipped past the room's large windows, and the sun set over the Berlin rooftops, Astvatsatryan reflected about power, responsibility, and God.

God does not have all the power, she said. “I believe that every man or woman must be responsible for his or her actions,” she said. “But I can say that God gives us a direction.”

(Berlin, May 25)

Toby Axelrod - Germany correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Chronicle, lives in Berlin