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 HUC-JIR Students to Travel to Germany; Will Learn About the Status of German Jewery and Participate in "Germany Close Up" Sixteen HUC-JIR students will spend 12 days in June in Berlin and Dresden as part of the German government's outreach program to American Jewish students and young professionals. Students from all three stateside campuses, including rabbinical, cantorial, education, and communal service students, will participate. The program is sponsored by the Federal Republic of Germany. "We want to show American students and young professionals modern Germany and Jewish life in the new Germany," said Lars Gerrit Leymann, Consul for Culture, Press, and Legal Affairs from the German Consulate General's Office in Los Angeles, who spent an afternoon with HUC-JIR/LA students preparing them for the trip. Established in October 2007, "Germany Close Up" provides Jewish Americans with the opportunity to visit sites of historical events, partake in aspects of contemporary Jewish life in Germany, and meet with Germans of all backgrounds. HUC-JIR students will interact with leading local experts on German Jewry, visit a concentration camp and the Wannsee Villa (site of the Wannsee Conference), and take a guided tour of the Jewish Museum Berlin, in addition to a tour of the Bundestag, the German National Parliament building. Rebecca Reice, who is completing her second year of rabbinical school at HUC-JIR/LA, says, "In the years leading up to and during World War II, Germany was the epicenter of the destruction of my family and my people. Today's Germany, lead by Chancellor Angela Merkel with a rapidly growing Jewish population, is not the same Germany. I believe that I am ready to meet modern Germany." Founded in 1875, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is the nation's oldest institution of higher Jewish education and the academic, spiritual, and professional leadership development center of Reform Judaism. HUC-JIR educates men and women for service to American and world Jewry as rabbis, cantors, educators, and communal service professionals, and offers graduate and post-graduate programs to scholars of all faiths. With centers of learning in Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and New York, HUC-JIR's scholarly resources comprise renowned library and museum collections, the American Jewish Archives, biblical archaeology excavations, research institutes and centers, and academic publications. HUC-JIR invites the community to an array of cultural and educational programs which illuminate Jewish history, identity, and contemporary creativity and which foster interfaith and multiethnic understanding. Visit us at www.huc.edu |
