ABSTRACT
The Jewish community in Germany is now the third largest Jewish community in Western Europe. Owing to a massive influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union, the official community has doubled in the past six years. This startling development, coupled with the reunification of Germany and its emergence as not only a major economic but also a major political power, has thrown everything about the community into question. While the most basic issues of identity and integration (What does it mean to live as a Jewish citizen in the land of the Holocaust?) have never been absent from the post-war Jewish experience in Germany, they are surfacing today in an intensive way. While the community has long stopped thinking of itself as sitting on “packed bags,” it has not really dared to dream of itself as more than peripheral to the great centers of Jewish life. This self-appraisal appears to be changing as an increasing Jewish population in an increasingly “normal” and well-respected country inspires greater confidence in the community’s future.
