Expert on German Ashkenaz customs to visit Bayswater

By Michael Orbach

Rabbi Binyamin Shlomo Hamburger, one of the world’s leading experts on German Ashkenazic customs will be speaking at the Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater on Jan. 16.

Rabbi Hamburger is the author of the five-volume set Shorashei Minhagei Ashkenaz, and the founder of Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz, the Institute for Ashkenazi Heritage, which he runs out of his home in Bnei Brak. Rabbi Hamburger is a self-taught expert of German customs who began investigating the traditions as a teenager. According to Rabbi Hamburger, though considered a minority inside the Jewish community, the Yecke segment, as they are commonly known (the term, Rabbi Hamburger explained, has at least eight different possible sources — one including the short jacket German Jews wore), have one of the most authentic records of traditions.

“The German [Jews] were the guardians of the heritage,” Rabbi Hamburger explained by phone, his accent colored by study in London. “They did not go through changes for two reasons: they stayed in the same country and didn’t emigrate. They have absorbed the characteristic of the German people of being very conservative: they’re preserving the old Ashkenazi traditions, all the way back to the Italian period which is from Churban Habayit [destruction of the Second Temple] until the first millennium.”

In Shorashei Minhagei Ashkenaz, Rabbi Hamburger explained a number of Jewish German customs like wrapping the Torah in a ‘wimpel,’ a piece of cloth 30 centimeters wide; and the pronunciation of the Hebrew vowel called the cholom with an “aw” sound instead of an “oh.” He also elaborated on what is arguably the best well-known (and envied) Yecke tradition: waiting three hours between meat and milk instead of the more common six hour wait.

The German Ashkenazi community was decimated by years of persecution.

“It went bit by bit, people were always seeking some refuge to find better existence,” said Rabbi Hamburger.

The Jewish presence in Germany, Rabbi Hamburger asserted, can be traced to the ninth century, as Rabbeni Elazar Harokeach, a student of Rabbi Yehuda HaChasid, has recorded.

A record exists of German Jews from as early as the 4th century but Rabbi Hamburger is unsure whether it is part of what later became known as the general Ashkenazi population. Legends exist of the German Jewish community’s emergence far earlier than that though Hamburger doesn’t give them much credit.

“Some go back to Bayit Sheni [the Second Temple], and Bayit Rishon [the First Temple]; some go back before we came to Eretz Yisroel,” he explained. “There is a tradition or belief that tells us of Bnei Binyamin who came to Germany before Israel, but this is not factual. There is a medieval legend telling us that people after the churban [the destruction of the First Temple] went to Worms and they did not want to leave Worms after the building of the Second Temple and Ezra cursed them to have suffering.”

Among the accomplishments of the German Jews, Rabbi Hamburger lists the beginnings of the yeshiva system and the founding of the first educational system for Jewish girls. Rashi is the most prominent sage to emerge from the German Ashkenazic period, Rabbi Hamburger said, though he lived in France, Rashi was trained in the German yeshiva system.

Rabbi Hamburger even offers an explanation for the characteristic Yecke trait of being early:

“Because they demand more of themselves, they’re not so lazy,” he said.

Questions or comments? Contact Michael Orbach at morbach@thejewishstar.com