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Jews in Germany

Stopping the Flood from the East

Germany has a startling revelation: more Jews have immigrated here in the past three years than to Israel. Most are coming from the lower socio-economic rungs of the former Soviet Union, are collecting welfare and are getting lost in the margins. Berlin is now, for the first time in more than a decade, considering limits on the influx.

By Scott Lamb

This year's statistical oddity: In 2004, more Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union immigrated to Germany than to Israel. Surprised? You shouldn't be. After all, the security situation in Israel is still precarious and the economy isn't exactly booming. Plus, it's the third year in a row that it's happened, and the numbers gap between the two is only growing.

But that may soon change. For over a decade, Germany has allowed unlimited Jewish immigration from ex-Soviet states -- the only non-German immigrant group allowed a free pass into the country. Now, however, the clause allowing the mass migration is under review -- and those Russian Jews wanting to come to Germany may soon find themselves on the outside looking in.

Coming just days after the ceremonial placement of the last stele in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, the news has touched a nerve in this history-sensitive country. The policy of open immigration here has always been a controversial one, even within the Jewish community, but sudden policy changes are looked upon warily. And the brusque way the current changes have been announced have been particularly frustrating for Jewish groups in Germany. Even those in Berlin's main Jewish organizations know only what has appeared in the newspapers.

"If one thinks about the way we were informed at the last minute about planning that has been going on for some time," said Charlotte Knobloch, vice president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, the Jewish community's official political representative. "I can't resist having a bitter aftertaste."

Her criticism was echoed by the Central Council's other VP, Solomon Korn, who called the proposed changes "highly questionable."

More restrictive rules

While not yet confirmed, the new rules will likely require that those applying for immigration visas have knowledge of German and be under 45, according to a report in the Berliner Zeitung. They must also have a certificate from a Jewish community where they come from and will no longer be eligible for social aid, the paper said.

A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry confirmed that its officials are discussing possible changes to the laws with the Jewish Central Council and the Union of Progressive Jews, the two main umbrella organizations for Judaism in Germany. In a well-applied bit of understatement, he called it a "very difficult and thorny issue." Paul Spiegel, President of the Central Council, responded that the new rules from the Interior Ministry are "ready for discussion in some areas, and in others fully unacceptable."

Judith Kessler, editor of the Jewish community's weekly magazine Juedische Berlin, says she's waiting to see what happens, but that the proposals don't strike her as shocking. "I didn't expect anything else. This was going to happen eventually," she said.

To get a sense of just how complicated Jewish immigration is in Germany, consider that the very definition of Jewishness varies greatly depending on who you ask. While the German government defines anyone with a Jewish father or mother to be a Jew, the Central Council of Jews adheres to the Halacha, a Jewish law that defines only those with Jewish mothers to be Jews. The formulation of the German law is in part the reason that reforms are being talked about.

Refugees: To be or not to be?

The current rules also define Jews coming from CIS states as "refugees," wording which has always angered Israel because the term refugee fails to acknowledge that all Jews have a homeland in Israel. Israeli politicians have long asked that the terminology be changed. They also are concerned about the immigration numbers, and don't understand why more Jews would head to the land of the Shoah than to the Jewish state.

The mass immigration began in 1990 when East Germany began allowing Jews from the Soviet Union free entry. The law was one of few that newly reunified Germany adopted when West and East came together in October 1991. Since then, about 70,000 Jews from former Soviet Bloc countries have emigrated to Germany, giving it the third-largest population of Eastern European Jews after Israel -- over a million Soviet Jews have moved there since the beginning of the 90s -- and the US.

In 2002, however, Germany's annual immigration numbers surpassed Israel's for the first time. 19,200 Jews from the east moved to Germany that year, as opposed to 18,000 who headed for Israel. While numbers aren't yet official, nearly 10,000 ex-Soviet immigrants have arrived this year in Germany bringing the country's total Jewish population up to over 100,000 as compared with a 1990 population of just 30,000.

At the same time, Jewish immigration to Israel from America and France this year has reached the highest level in decades.

The German government, not surprisingly, has done its best to sell the surging Jewish population as a major success. In 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder signed a ground-breaking agreement with the Central Council of Jews that granted Judaism the same legal status in Germany as the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, for the first time adding the religion to the state-run "church tax," or tithing system.

Most land on welfare rolls

It is a concept that looks great on paper, but the problems with it are many. The vast majority of the Jews coming from the former Soviet Union have difficulty finding jobs and often live on social welfare. In Berlin, an estimated 80 percent of the Jewish community -- the majority of them new arrivals from the East -- receives state help, the Berliner Zeitung reported. The Eastern Jews also frequently have very little connection to their Jewish heritage and only go to the Central Council to get help finding work and apartments, but not to join, critics have noted.

With such statistics, the motivation for changing the open-door policy is clear. So far though, it has been left to the German press to pry details and comments out of unwilling politicians. And with the story hitting German papers this week, Green party politician Volker Beck on Tuesday called for an open discussion of the issue in the Bundestag. "One can't only discuss such an important question behind closed doors among interior ministers," he said. "The decision must be transparent."

Kessler, meanwhile, isn't convinced that the proposed changes will actually happen. "It might be an attempt, a test, to see how people react." But she thinks that fully open immigration will inevitably become a thing of the past. "America closed long ago," she said, referring to the US decision to end open immigration for Eastern Bloc Jews in 1989. "As soon as (Germany's open door policy) was put into effect, I expected it to change."