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Abstract
The following contribution deals with the conception of Jewish schools in Germany. With regard to the British debate about state funding for religious schools, current developments in the Jewish educational system in Germany will be presented. After this, the constitutional framework for the establishment of denominational schools in Germany will be analysed. The second and major part of the article deals, as a case study, with the Jewish High School in Berlin, which is the only Jewish secondary school in contemporary Germany. In an empirical qualitative approach, the desires and expectations of the pupils in their religious education take centre stage. Before moving to the empirical study, an overview of the history of the Jewish High School, its re‐establishment in 1993 and a profile of the pupils and the school will be provided, in order to understand the special character of this school. The conclusion in the last part raises the question of new directions emerging from a Jewish school which has pupils who are heterogeneous culturally, religiously and socially and which does not react with a strategy of cultural preservation, but with a policy of inter‐religious dialogue.
Notes
* Von‐der‐Tann Strasse 10, 20259 Hamburg, Germany. Email: Christine@mueller‐mail.com
1. The large Jewish communities in Germany maintain Jewish kindergartens and primary schools. At the moment, there are primary schools in Munich (since 1967), Frankfurt (since 1966), Berlin (since 1986), Düsseldorf (since 1993), Cologne (since 2002) and Hamburg (since 2002). There is only one Jewish secondary school which is in Berlin (since 1993) but there are plans for another secondary school in Frankfurt.
2. For the history and re‐establishment of the Jewish school in Hamburg, see Czudnochowski‐Pelz, Citation1993; Dohnke, Citation2002; Hartung, Citation2003; Kall, Citation2002; Knür, Citation2002; and Scholz, Citation2002.
3. There are 174 Jewish and non‐Jewish pupils in these grades. The questionnaire was distributed to 58 Jewish and 24 non‐Jewish pupils. They could choose between two versions of the questionnaire. One contained questions for Christian and/or non‐religious pupils, the other contained questions for Jewish pupils. This self‐understanding was kept for the analysis. The following contribution is restricted to the Jewish pupils. Twenty‐nine of the Jewish respondents were born in Germany or have been in the country for more than ten years. Twenty‐nine of the Jewish pupils were born in states of the former Soviet Union.
4. There were questions about: religious self‐understanding, involvement in community action, attitude towards religious reforms, towards the Torah, attitude towards some aspects of religious practice and basic tenets of faith. The questionnaire was designed in accordance with an instrument that has been developed at Bar‐Ilan University in Israel to measure religiosity of Jews in quantitative research (Ben‐Meir, Citation1979; Kedem, Citation1991).
5. There were two questions requiring written answers, but only the answers to the second question will be analysed in this article: (1) ‘What does religion mean to you in your daily life? Is it important or not? If not, why so? If yes, what is important for you? (Please feel free to indicate an example for a situation, in which religion does play a role in your daily life)’; (2) ‘What do you like/dislike in your religious education? If you were school principal, what would you change?’
6. The ‘rejection of proselytisation’ does not mean that they reject any education in Judaism in general. A Jewish concept of education can, of course, be influenced by other factors (e.g. the relationship to the state of Israel, the Holocaust, history and the Jewish people) and a Jewish education can and does have more aims than to educate children ‘in religion’. The fact that the pupils interviewed did not mention these aims is probably due to the fact that they were asked about the role of religion in their daily life and about their experiences in their religious education classes. The focus of this article is limited to religion but this does not mean that the pupils do not have other connections to Judaism than religion.
7. The fact that there are 21‐year‐old pupils in the sample is due to the German school system. The diploma from German secondary schools qualifying for university admission or matriculation (‘Abitur’, equivalent to the British A levels) requires 13 years of schooling. If a pupil does not fulfil the requirements to go on to the next grade, he or she might have to repeat a year. Furthermore, some of the pupils in the sample came to Germany during their teens. In some cases, they have had to repeat one or two years of schooling or they might have lost a year due to language difficulties.