“Experts estimate between 20,000 to 30,000 Jews, including Americans and Israelis, live in the German capital. When American Rabbi Joshua Spinner moved to Berlin's trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood a decade ago, there were no other Jews to be seen. Now when the sun sets on a Friday night, dozens of Jewish men clad in traditional Shabbat garb with big black hats and dark long coats walk down the streets past hip coffee shops, chic boutiques and tiny art galleries to attend services at Rykestrasse synagogue. "When my wife and I arrived here in 2000, we were the only Jews around. There was nobody to invite for Shabbat dinner," the rabbi recalled over a cappuccino at kosher Cafe Rado, just down the street from the Jewish kindergarten……Most members are in their 20s and 30s and among more than 200,000 ex-Soviet Jews who were let into the country after the German government relaxed immigration laws for Jews following reunification in 1990. Genia Novominska was 10 years old when her family left Kiev, Ukraine, for Germany. "For my parents' generation Judaism did not exist," said Novominska, now 22 and one of 20 students at the Yeshurun community's midrasha, or institute of Jewish studies for women. "Under communism they would have gone to prison just for lighting the candles on Shabbat."…...…”

Who would have thunk it, some 65 years ago.
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