Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenberg, one of Germany’s most prominent and well-known rabbis, retires after 18 years of serving as Berlin Orthodox community’s Rabbi- according to the September magazine of the Jewish Community that was recently published. Rabbi Ehrenberg was one of the boldest voices in the public struggle which took place in Germany over the legality of circumcision.

Rabbi Ehrenberg’s name was in the news after he had called his congregants in a nationwide broadcast television show to have their children’s bris milah in shuls and not in hospitals, explaining that “bris milah is a basic law for us Jews. There is no Judaism without bris milah, and therefore — we will continue”. His statement literally expressed his opposition in public against the ruling of the Cologne Court defining circumcision illegal. Consequently he was officially charged for “disturbance of the public peace and other offenses”. Two months later the indictment was dropped.

Rabbi Ehrenberg was born in 1950 in Jerusalem after 7 generation in his family also born in the city. He married Nechama Ehrenberg, daughter of Rabbi Zvi Kahana z”l. In 1975 he was ordained as a rabbi, and soon after practiced as a teacher in the “Harei Yehuda” Yeshiva in Moshav Bet Meir near Jerusalem. From 1983 he was made rabbi of the “Mizrachi” congregation in Vienna, and 6 years later he was appointed as Munich’s chief Rabbi. In 1997 he became one of Berlin’s chief rabbis, serving as an Av bet-Din at place. He also became a member of the Standing Committee of the Conference of European Rabbis. In 2003, he established the Orthodox Rabbi-Conference of Germany (ORD), which goal is to facilitate the cooperation of German Rabbis for a continuous development of Jewish Orthodox life in Germany. He was the chairman of ORD till 2010. He also founded the “Shorashim” charity organization. During the last two decades he was also Berlin’s Jewish community Rabbi, seating at the Great Orthodox Synagogue in the Joachimstaler Strasse.

The Jewish community in Berlin was established 340 years ago in 1671. Since then it was consecutively active- save the Shoah intermission, during which the Germans annihilated the city’s Jews and bombarded the magnificent synagogue. In the years between the two World Wars the congregation split into half- where the Orthodox community, headed by Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer, broke and founded a separated congregation- “Adat Yisrael” which was extinct during the Holocaust. Today the Orthodox community totals to 11 thousands out of the 30 thousands of the Jews of Berlin.

The community’s monthly magazine “Juedisches Berlin” noted upon his retirement that “We are very grateful to Rabbi Ehrenberg, who saw his Rabbinical mission and his activities in the Joachimstaler Strasse Synagogue as a mitzvah. No worthy heir is yet to be found to replace him at the synagogue. We wish him all the best in the world, and hope that now he could be able to spend more time with his wife, their 5 children and 7 grandchildren”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)