Jewish Academy opens in Frankfurt — Deutsche Welle

A Jewish Academy has opened in Frankfurt am Main, Germany — the first institution of its kind in the country. The project was created by the Central Council of Jews in Germany as a platform for education, public dialogue and countering hatred, Deutsche Welle reports.

Education and dialogue

At the opening ceremony on November 2, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that hatred must be countered through education. He called the academy an important milestone and evidence of the Jewish community's determination to consider Germany its home. At the same time, Schuster said that Jewish life in the country is under greater threat than at any time since the Shoah.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who also attended the opening, stressed the need to unequivocally reject antisemitism and counter it at the political level. He noted that the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of six million Jews, was also directed against the Jewish world of learning and knowledge.

The Lehrhaus tradition

The academy is located less than a 10-minute walk from Frankfurt's largest synagogue. The building combines elements of an early 20th-century German villa and a modern four-storey structure. The institution's directors, Sabena Donath and Doron Kiesel, see it as a bridge between the academic environment and a broad audience.

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The academy's program is to focus on the philosophy of religion, ethics and current discussions about contemporary Jewish life. It is also intended to reflect the diversity of Jewish life and forms of Judaism, with interfaith dialogue among the topics.

The institution considers itself a successor to the tradition of the Jewish Lehrhaus — a house of learning founded in Frankfurt in 1920 and associated with philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. The Nazis closed the Lehrhaus in 1938.

Costs and security

The academy project grew out of an initiative by former Central Council chairman Dieter Graumann, who proposed establishing an educational unit in 2012. Construction cost about €40 million: the Central Council of Jews in Germany funded approximately half the amount, while federal and state authorities provided the rest. Costs increased compared with estimates at the start of construction in 2021, including due to structural security measures.

Academy director Sabena Donath noted that guarding Jewish institutions, schools and synagogues has become a sad reality of everyday life.