The Jewish community of Hamburg elected a new chief rabbi on Monday, after the position had been vacant for three years.

Rabbi Shlomo Bistritsky, who has been serving Hamburgs Jewish population for the last eight years, will be officially installed on December 1.



In 1933, Hamburg had a Jewish community of 20,000 members, but after about half perished and almost all the rest were dispersed during the Holocaust, the community was left with only 1,268 Jews in 1947, according to Chabad Lubavichs Yaacov Behrman. Nowadays, he said, Hamburg has a Jewish population of about 8,000.

Open gallery view Hamburg Chief Rabbi Shlomo Bistritsky. Credit: lubavitch.com

With his appointment as chief rabbi – only a week after the birth of his sixth child – Rabbi Bistritsky said the only real change ahead is in his title. I have been fulfilling this role for a number of years already, he told Haaretz. Of course with the title comes greater responsibility and much work, he added. On the one hand I am nervous about the greater responsibility but on the other hand I am filled with strength and happiness from the opportunity.

Rabbi Bistritskys appointment as Hamburgs chief rabbi comes at a pertinent time in his family history. It was at this exact time 73 years ago that his Hamburg-born grandfather fled Germany with his family to New York, via Rotterdam.

Rabbi Bistritsky grew up in Safed, where his father, the late Rabbi Levi Bistritsky, was chief rabbi. After he married Jerusalem-born Chani (nee Havlin), the two looked for a place for Rabbi Bistritsky to do his shlihut (emissary). He consulted Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch (the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement), who directed him back to Hamburg.

Moving to Hamburg seemed to be the most natural option, Rabbi Bistritsky told Haaretz. It had a double meaning.

Roy Naor, a member of the Board of Directors of the citys Jewish community described Mondays election as an historic moment for Hamburg after the city-state had gone three years without a chief rabbi. Today constitutes a new beginning for the Jews of this city, he told Chabad.

