Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Kalman Ber is currently visiting Jewish communities in Germany to mark the Hanukkah festival, starting in Hamburg and going on to Bremen, Hanover, Munich and Berlin.
It is his first visit to Germany.
In Hamburg, Ber enquired about plans for the reconstruction of the Bornplatz Synagogue, a topic that will be raised in talks with Carola Veit, president of the city-state’s parliament, in the Hamburg City Hall.
After signing the guest book, Ber was to attend a session of the Hamburg parliament.
Inaugurated in 1908, the Bornplatz Synagogue was once the largest synagogue in northern Germany with place for 1,200 worshippers. It was set alight and destroyed in the Nazi pogroms of November 1938.
Its demolition was ordered a year later and was carried out at the expense of the Jewish community.
In 2019, the German government set aside €600,000 ($700,000) for a feasibility study on reconstructing the synagogue on its original site, and in September 2023, the city parliament transferred ownership to the Jewish community.
The winning design for the new building is to follow closely the design of the original. The German parliament has set aside more than €13 million for the reconstruction.
Israel’s Chief Rabbi Kalman Ber (C) visits Joseph-Carlebach-Platz, the site of the former Bornplatz Synagogue, with Hamburg’s State Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky during his first visit to Germany. Markus Scholz/dpa