Bread, wine and business ethics: portrait of Frankfurt's female rabbi

By Max-Morten Borgmann Dec 2, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Frankfurt - Elisa Klapheck is one of four women rabbis in Germany. She leads a liberal-minded Jewish community in Frankfurt where men and women pray together -- as well as discuss issues at great length.

Klapheck tries to provoke a little at the beginning of every discussion. It's done with the aim of energising debate and generating controversy. 'I think envy can also be a good characteristic,' she says and casts a defiant glance around. 'It's as if it's asking me the question: What have I done wrong that I have failed to achieve what I want?'

She is sitting in a meeting room at the Westen synagogue. The 47-year-old has wedged her spectacles into her grey hair, her silver necklace contrasts with her black blouse and trousers. Germany has over 100 Jewish communities but Klapheck is one of just four women rabbis in the country.

Gathered around her at a table are about 20 people who belong to the 'Egalitarian Minyan,' the Liberal grouping in Frankfurt's Jewish community. In contrast to Orthodox Judaism, both women and men pray here together. After prayer comes study of the Talmud, the second most important text for Jews after the Hebrew Bible, and then follows a discussion on current topics. There are similar groups in other German cities but the Frankfurt group is especially large and active.

Many of the group's members put that down to Elisa Klapheck's activism. She has been the community's rabbi for one-and-a-half years and has focused her ministry on 'renewing religious content.' She does not want to be a rabbi of the old school. Her aim is to have closer contacts with the other members of the community.

Klapheck has set herself the task of encouraging more debate over issues affecting society but always in connection with Jewish traditions. 'We cannot allow ourselves to be fossilized by old points of view,' she says. 'The traditional forms of worship appeal to only a small proportion of Jewish society.'

The topic of discussion on this day is 'Jews and Money.' She developed the idea for the series of debates in cooperation with members of her community who are finance professionals. They specifically chose the discussion's title with a view to playing with stereotypes about Jews.

The focus in this session is on envy, morals and ethics in the world of finance and how the Talmud deals with them. Klapheck is not delivering the lecture herself but is here to listen and join in the discussion. Today's speaker is the Jewish banker Joachim Goldstein.

After a religious service there is a communal meal of bread, Israeli wine, fruit and cake. Goldstein speaks about the 'evil instinct' in people and argues that the Talmud does not demonise it. In the Talmud, he says, envy is not a mortal sin but an incentive without which humanity would never have advanced.

Goldstein says it is illusionary to want to stop people from being greedy. However, there must be rules for dealing with it -- just as those very same rules were missing in the world of finance before the global economic crisis hit. The discussion lasts almost two hours and in attendance are a software developer, an artist, a trainee teacher and an anti-globalisation activist who says he does not believe in the Messiah.

When Klapheck began reading the Hebrew Bible with friends in the 1980s she was not a religious person but she was curious. It was not until 2004 that she was ordained a rabbi in the US. Today, Klapheck links God and classical religious themes mainly with society, identity and change. 'A religion is only good when it can adapt to changes in a positive manner,' she says.

That's something Klapheck is working on as well as the dialogue between Judaism and non-Jewish society. Klapheck says she still has a lot to achieve but she doesn't give the impression of lacking motivation.

Read more about Lifestyle