The western city of Frankfurt was a very conscious choice of location for the new academy, which is the first of its kind in Germany. Frankfurt has traditionally been a hub of Jewish intellectual life, as well as being one of the most important centers of Jewish life in Germany today, alongside Berlin, Munich and Düsseldorf.
Less than a ten-minute walk from the city's biggest synagogue, the Jewish Academy is also within sight of the historic festival hall building on Frankfurt Trade Fair grounds where the Nazis herded Jewish men in 1938 and deported them to concentration camps.
It was also here that the Central Council of Jews in Germany was founded in 1950; Berlin serves as its headquarters today. Frankfurt is also home to the Central Welfare Board of Jews in Germany (ZWST) and a Jewish museum that opened in 1988.
But most significantly, Jewish thinkers have played a key role in Frankfurt's intellectual and academic history. The city's Jewish community contributed to the establishment of Goethe University in 1914.
Another important legacy is the Jewish Lehrhaus (house of study). Founded in 1920, it quickly gained prominence and is today associated with the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). It was closed by the Nazis in 1938. The new academy sees itself in the tradition of Rosenzweig's Lehrhaus.
A place of education and dialogue
Speaking at the opening ceremony (November 2), Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, stressed: "We must combat hatred with education, education and more education."
Schuster said the institute was a "milestone” that represented the "Jewish community's determination to call Germany home." At the same time, he emphasized: "Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than it has been since the crime against humanity that was the Shoah."
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also underlined the need to reject antisemitism "outright and without reservation." He added that it must also be combated politically.
The federal president said the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust had also targeted the Jewish world of learning and knowledge. He specifically honored Rosenzweig's legacy: "This place of knowledge and dialogue was a source of hope, something exciting and something new."
A bridge between tradition and modernity, as well as academia and the general public
The Jewish Academy combines traditional features of a 110-year-old turn-of-the-century German villa with a four-story modern structure, bringing together old and new, history and modernity.
"We see ourselves as a place where the past, present and future are all explored in equal measure," Sabena Donath, the institution's director, told DW.
Donath and her co-director, Doron Kiesel, view the academy as "a bridge between academia and the general public" and as "a home for scholars and a home for those who ask questions."
Donath said the aim was to put the focus on topics related to the philosophy of religion and ethics, as well as on topical debates concerning contemporary Jewish life.
The program aims to reflect the many facets of Jewish life and the diverse forms of Judaism.
Kiesel told DW: "We want to show how Jews live today and how heterogeneous Jewish life is. And that it is completely wrong to speak of 'the' Jews or 'the' Jewish way of thinking."
Ahead of the opening, the president of the Central Council of Jews also named interfaith dialogue as one of the institution's topics, and in an interview with the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Schuster expressed the hope that the academy would bring into the public sphere "Jewish themes besides the topic of antisemitism and Jewish persecution.”
But these issues will also be on the agenda. "We have,” said Kiesel, "a problem in this country that antisemitism is concealed behind numerous topics, but keeps on resurfacing, sometimes more evidently, sometime more subtly.”
The project grew out of an initiative from the former head of the Central Council Dieter Graumann, who encouraged the setting up of an educational department in 2012. Its work was shaped by the directors of the new institution.
Security measures push up price tab
A mezuzah — a small capsule containing verses from the Torah intended to serve as a reminder of God's commandments — is affixed to the entrance of the academy. Security measures are also an integral part of this new building.
"It is a bitter reality that Jewish institutions must be guarded," said Donath. The academy is being protected just as Jewish schools and synagogues must be protected. "For us, this is a sad reality of everyday life."
The construction costs of around €40 million ($45 million) — about half of which was covered by the Central Council of Jews and half by the federal and state governments — ended up being significantly higher than calculated at the groundbreaking in 2021, partly due to the structural security measures.
