A fortnight ago, my 13-year-old daughter Isabel staged the biggest rebellion in her life: She celebrated her bat mitzvah. In receiving an aliyah and reading from the Torah like any of her male Jewish peers, Isabel put on a demonstration of equality that, at least in this proud father’s eyes, may help make Vienna’s small Jewish community a bit more tolerant and open.
What would be seen as a normal and joyful celebration in the United States and in many other countries is still an audacious act of defiance in Austria.
Here, like in most other Jewish communities in continental Europe, the pre-Holocaust tradition of large Reform communities has all but been lost. Liberal congregations are struggling on the margins of Jewish society and are shunned by traditional Jews, and most Orthodox bat mitzvah celebrations consist of some prayers and a big party, but certainly no Torah reading.
The allegiance of Austrian Jews to Orthodoxy does not reflect a special religiosity. Most Jews in Vienna, Frankfurt or Berlin do not keep kosher or observe Shabbat. Many only enter synagogue twice a year, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But on these occasions, they insist that rites and prayers have to be performed the way they were performed by their parents and grandparents — that is, with women sitting separately, usually off on a balcony.
Most affiliated Austrian and German Jews look with incomprehension and even disdain at the efforts of liberal Jews to introduce gender equality and other modern elements into their religious life. They are aware that most American Jews are members in non-Orthodox synagogues, but on their own turf, they see progressive Judaism as a form of sacrilege.
My daughter was not alone in her religious endeavor. When I was growing up among the 8,000 or so Jews who live in Vienna, my family attended the main Orthodox temple. But during my studies at Princeton University, I got to know and love Conservative services. My parents were active in Vienna’s small liberal congregation, Or Chadash, since its establishment in 1990.
Most of its other members are either temporary residents from the United States, local Jews with a gentile spouse who feel isolated in the Orthodox community, or converts who did not feel welcomed by any of the Orthodox rabbis and instead chose a liberal path. For my family and me, the chance to sit together at services and for every female member to be called up to the Torah has been the main attraction of that special congregation.
So when the time of Isabel’s bat mitzvah approached, we supported her fully and cheered her on when she decided to go through all the learning and preparing that an aliyah requires. When it was done, she self-confidently told the audience of roughly 250 — many of whom saw a female at the Torah for the first time in their lives: “We should change little in Judaism, only what obviously needs to be changed. And that men and women should be equal is obvious to me.”
Fortunately, Vienna’s liberal and mainstream Orthodox Jews have found a way to coexist, thanks in part to an open-minded chief rabbi and to a pragmatic president of the organized Jewish community. Or Chadash is financially independent, but the synagogue is situated in a building belonging to the organized Jewish community, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde.
There are no major conflicts, but there is also little interaction. And as the Kultusgemeinde continues to refuse to accept liberal conversions conducted by Or Chadash rabbis, a wedge between the two groups is growing.
In Germany, a conflict over state subsidies to Jewish institutions that broke out several years ago between the community’s official representative body, the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and the Union of Progressive Jews was quickly resolved. But as Jewish life all over Europe is moving in a more religious, and in some cases fundamentalist, direction, tolerance seems to be waning.
At Jewish functions, the separation of men and women is becoming increasingly common. The same Jewish leaders who warn against the rise of Islamic radicalism sometimes attack their fellow Jews with what can only be described as religious zeal because they dare to diverge from the Halacha.
In Austria and Germany today, the fastest growing congregations are those supported by Chabad. Ultra-Orthodox leaders here seem to prefer young Jews abandoning their religion completely rather than seeing them tamper with the teachings of our forefathers.
But as assimilation is spreading also in Europe, there is a growing need for places where Jews feel welcome even if they do not conform to the highest religious standards — because they have one non-Jewish parent, because they have a non-Jewish spouse, because they seek a conversion process that is free of hypocrisy of pledging an Orthodox life, or just because. The reality is, the Vienna community is so small that it cannot afford to lose a single member.
Perhaps after my daughter’s bat mitzvah, a few of our traditional friends will understand the merits of liberal Judaism and accept it as a legitimate form of worship. It would be the greatest bat mitzvah present — not just for my family, but for the community at large.
Eric Frey is managing editor of the Vienna daily Der Standard.
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My mother was born in Vienna before the war. She was one of the lucky ones, she made it out alive. My grandparents were not so lucky. While I never had a bat mitzvah, I made sure that my daughter had one, just as my son had a bar mitzvah. I hope my grandmother would have approved, and rejoiced in the abilities of Jewish women to particpate more fully in the services than she could. Mazel Tov Isabel from Alois and Edith Lanczi's oldest granddaughter.
This is both an inspiring and a disturbing story. Mazel tov to the Frey family. Keep the faith!
Dear Eric, I found your account very moving and Isabel's attitude both enlightened and brave. I am amazed, but of course believe it, when you say that European jews lean more and more towards Orthodoxy. It is a sad proof that extremism does not recognize boundaries. I always feel that us Jews need to be intelligent, since only that has allowed us to survive in spite of everything. So I hope that young European jews are more like Isabel than the opposite. Regards Virginia Fineberg from Larchmont, NY, USA.
In 1990 - when I was still Press Attache at the Austrian Consulate General in New York - I happily joined the newly established Liberal Congregation of Vienna, Or Chadash. The year before, in 1989, I had converted to Judaism before a Beit Din of the Jewish Theological Seminary of the United States in New York and became a member of a Conservative Synagogue (The Pelham Jewish Center) under Rabbi Robert Harris, whose teachings and "infectious enthusiasm" I will never ever forget. In fact,on the occasion of a special competition between Orthodox Rabbis, he had - totally serious - been elected to the "Funniest Rabbi of New York"! In the course of the years I became a board member of Or Chadash and had the honour and pleasure to meet the Frey family an various occasions, an exemplary family of highest reputation in Vienna. Needless to say, how much pleasure and satisfaction it gave me to be able to participate in Isabel Frey's Bat Mitzvah on September 8, 2007 at the Vienna Urania. I had met Isabel's mother - now a prominent Austrian TV journalist herself - first many years ago when she visited Cairo as a Grammar School girl during my assignment as a Cultural Attache at the Austrian Embassy. This public demonstration of Jewish values presented by such a bright young lady in an egalitarian atmosphere in Vienna confirmed my own conviction and pride again, to be a member of the Liberal Jewish Community globally and of Or Chadash Vienna, Austria, locally. Eric Frey's article not only gives an expression of joy and satisfaction about his daughter's excellently performed Bat Mitzvah in a packed out auditorium of the Urania, a famous old building of cultural tradition, but also an accurate and authentic report about the situation of Liberal Jews in Vienna. My dream No. 1: Recognition of Conservative and Liberal Conversions & my dream No. 2: Acceptance of the "Egalitarian Principle" by Orthodox Rabbanut in Israel! Dagmar Baldwin (retired Austrian Diplomate with Jewish roots on grandmother's side in East-Slovakia) Helenenstr. 75/5/2 A-2500 Baden (near Vienna) Austria
"Many [Austrian Jews] enter synagogue twice a year, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But on these occasions, they insist that rites and prayers have to be performed the way they were performed by their parents and grandparents." Actually, they don't insist on anything. Someone who goes to a place twice a year doesn't have a lot of input into how they arrange the place. The European Jews I knew, including my father, went to synagogue once or twice a year on the high holidays and possibly Yom Kippur, mostly to see people they knew. (I was dragged along and I even learned to smoke cigarettes at such an event; the boys were sent outside, each in his best clothes and yarmulke, and we snuck cigarettes and talked about girls and soccer.) To me, that *was* Judaism, the tallits, the Torah in the cabinet, and the girls and women sitting in the gallery chatting it up and laughing (ever so often a synagogue official would ask people to keep it down to a dull roar.) On the main floor, men in suits got together in small groups or by twos - I always tried to guess who was the most venerable and important by the quality of the tallit. Some tallits were very fancy and elaborate and I imagined their wearers to be very religious, far more pious than someone in a light blue-and-white tallit the size of a towel. After the holidays I went back to my normal life and didn't think of Jews or Judaism in particular until the next synagogue trip. I think these things are more important in America. Here, people squabble endlessly over religion. It's obviously more important to them than to me and the people I knew. So what if the women were sitting in a separate area? We still discreetly craned our necks, and certainly they weren't considered second-class citizens. It was a complete scene: the rabbi ran the synagogue, everything was as expected and, at least twice a year, a good time was had by all. To me, that's Judaism.
The more Orthodox (especially the more ultra-Orthodox) a community has the more babies it will have and the less 'small' it will be and the more it will be able to 'lose a single member' While the egalitarians are bringing young women up to the bimah, the non-egalitarians are simply being futiful and multiplying. Its obvious which group will be larger tomorrow.
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