The Union progressiver Juden in Deutschland (UPJ) ("Union of Progressive Jews in Germany") is a registered association, founded in 1997, that represents liberal Jewish organisations. It is headed by Sonja Guentner and has around 3,000 members.
The publication work of the union began in 1997 with Seder ha-Tefillot, the Jewish prayer book by Jonathan Magonet in cooperation with Walter Homolka, from the Hebrew by Annette M. Böckler. In 1998 a Passover Haggadah was published. From 1999 to 2004 Annette M. Böckler translated W. Gunther Plaut's commentary on the Torah into German.
The Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland ("Central Council of Jews in Germany") rejected the association and insisted on a single representative voice for Jewish organisations. In particular this concerned the contract with the government, signed with the Zentralrat on 27 January 2003, and its associated aid money.
In April 2004 open hostility broke out between the Zentralrat's president Paul Spiegel and then chairman of the UPJ, Jan Mühlstein. Mühlstein called for financial equality between the liberal Jewish organisations regarding the distribution of 3 million Euros of state money annually, set by a contract with the government. On 20 November 2005 two Jewish State Associations with numerous congregations of the Union were absorbed into the Zentralrat, after the status of a corporate body of public rights was conferred to them.
Famous quotes containing the words union of, union, progressive, jews and/or germany:
“The union of hands and hearts.”
—Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667)
“Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union which have prevented them from resisting the State?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The self ... might be regarded as a sort of citadel of the mind, fortified without and containing selected treasures within, while love is an undivided share in the rest of the universe. In a healthy mind each contributes to the growth of the other: what we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of ourself. On the other hand, it is only on the basis of a substantial self that a person is capable of progressive sympathy or love.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
—Bible: New Testament, Galatians 2:15-16.
“It took six weeks of debate in the Senate to get the Arms Embargo Law repealed—and we face other delays during the present session because most of the Members of the Congress are thinking in terms of next Autumn’s election. However, that is one of the prices that we who live in democracies have to pay. It is, however, worth paying, if all of us can avoid the type of government under which the unfortunate population of Germany and Russia must exist.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)