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:
“One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape ... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.”
—Marilyn French (b. 1929)
“Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.”
—Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
—A.J. (Arthur James)
“The tears I have cried over Germany have dried. I have washed my face.”
—Marlene Dietrich (1904–1992)