German Jewish Refugee Rabbis and the American Synagogue

This paper explores the experience of German refugee rabbis across the religious spectrum and their encounter with the world of the American synagogue, its organizational structures and patterns, and the voluntary nature of American Judaism. Based on extensive data I have collected in a digital Humanities database and archival materials in Germany and the United States, I will evaluate the migration and resettlement of various refugee rabbis and evaluate the impact of their émigré status on their careers and professional lives in the United States. In this way, I hope to delineate and explain how such figures adapted to and helped shape the American synagogue (in contradistinction to the traditional European kehillah-style communal structure) and the rabbinic profession, including their newfound political and business roles as American rabbis as well as the difficulties and challenges they encountered with respect to the religious movements of American Judaism.

In sum, this paper will highlight the profile of German-American refugee rabbis as a specific migrant group, particularly the characteristics and variables that distinguished them from American-trained rabbis. It will emphasize the refugee rabbis’ dedication to Jewish scholarship, innovations in liturgical practice, including efforts to create worship opportunities designed to appeal to families, and involvement with religious youth and summer camp activities. It will also explore the relationship these individuals carved out in the post-Holocaust era with their former communities in Europe, thus highlighting the rabbis’ transnational role as interlocutors and educators attuned to world Jewry’s and Germany’s sensitive encounter with a mutual past.