Michael Leipziger (1937– )

I. Family Background
Michael H. Leipziger was born in 1937 in Beuthen, a town in the former province of Upper Silesia, which is today called Bytom (Poland). It was an industrial town dominated by neighboring coal mines and related industries. At the end of the nineteenth century Beuthen had six Christian churches (five Catholic and one Protestant) as well as one synagogue, which was built in a Moorish style in 1869. During the nineteenth century following emancipation, Jews became well integrated as citizens of urban society and participated in different political institutions, such as the city council. At the end of the nineteenth century Beuthen experienced an influx of Eastern-European Jews which led to a growing and diverse Jewish community. Leading rabbis, e.g. Dr. Max (Markus) Kopfstein (1856–1924, rabbi in Beuthen since 1889), had a tremendous influence on the Jewish community and the city. Like many Jews at the time, he, as well as the members of the Leipziger family, identified with the German nation, showed patriotism and served in the German Imperial Army during the First World War.

Based on the Versailles Treaty following the First World War, in 1921 a referendum decided on the future national affiliation of Beuthen. While the city ultimately remained part of the German Reich, it became a border town to the newly established district of East Upper Silesia, which became part of Poland. In 1933, the town had approximately 100,000 inhabitants, including 8,000 Catholics, 12,000 Protestants and 3,100 Jews.

The Leipziger family was well integrated into German society, its culture, and language; it represented the middle class, its patriotic ideas, traditions, and virtues. In retrospect, Leipziger emphasized his parents’ efforts to preserve German virtues, explaining the specific family identity in an interview with Christa Whitney for the Wexler Oral History Project in 2024. The family of his mother ran a plumbing and engineering business in Schwientochlowitz (Schwientochowice/Poland), while the family on his father’s side owned a shop selling metal utensils (Solinger Stahlwaren Gebrüder Leipziger). Their ancestors had lived in the province for centuries and were part of the German-Jewish culture of Silesia. Early in the twentieth century, the Leipziger family (Georg L. as a youngster) also joined Zionist movements in Beuthen, particularly the Jugendbund Blau-Weiß (jüdischer Wanderbund).

II. Emigration from Germany
By the 1920s, Leipziger’s uncle and his wife had left Silesia to join a left-wing colonization project in Brazil, which did not work out as planned. After they returned to Silesia, however, under the dramatically declining situation in Nazi Germany, they left for Brazil again. Following the rise to power of National Socialism Jews in Beuthen started to think about emigration even though many remained deeply connected to their German identity. Under the increasing pressure of the Nazi regime several Jewish organizations, such as the Centralverein der Juden in Deutschland organized lectures in the city, for example by the engineer Wilhelm Jacob who gave a talk on “Is Brazil the land of opportunities?” [Ist Brasilien das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten?]. In the Jewish community of Beuthen, where German and Eastern European Jewish identities coexisted, discussions about religious traditions and norms took place, raising questions of belonging and identity. However, many feared that emigration would lead to a loss of social status and to the destruction of their cultural belonging. In addition, the majority still remained loyal to their German-Jewish identity, which had evolved over centuries.

During the Nazi era, the life of the Leipziger family changed dramatically. Following the pogrom on November 9 and 10, 1938, the synagogue of Beuthen was burnt down and destroyed. Leipziger’s father together with other Jews of Beuthen, e.g. the rabbi Prof. Dr. Ludwig Golinski (1879–1942) and the assistant rabbi Dr. Aron Keller (1909–1998), were arrested and interned in Buchenwald concentration camp. Confronted with Nazism, its racial policies and measures of persecution and oppression, Leipziger’s mother tried to organize the family’s emigration from Nazi Germany. After obtaining a visa for Brazil, the Leipziger family prepared to leave and in early 1939, the family, including Leipziger’s father, mother, and sister (Eva), managed to escape arriving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in February 1939.

While in 1941 1.1106 Jews were still registered in Beuthen, 973 were deported in May/June 1942. The last rabbi of Beuthen, Herbert Bileski (1909–1945, rabbi in Beuthen since 1939) and his family were put on one of the deportation transports and were murdered in Auschwitz (June 13, 1942). According to a family report, the Torah scroll of the Jewish community was entrusted to the parting Leipzigers, who took it with them to safer shores.

III. Education and Academic Career
After his family’s flight to Brazil in 1939, Michael H. Leipziger grew up in Rio de Janeiro and absorbed Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language, though he continued to be closely connected to the German language, customs, and traditions through his family and religious culture. As a child, he quickly became part of Brazilian society but was at the same time quite aware of the specific situation of his family as Jewish refugees, which left the extended family scattered around the world as a result of Nazi persecution. Writing letters and sending packages to family members, e.g. to the sisters of his mother in Jerusalem (British Mandatory Palestine/later Israel), New York (USA) or Shanghai was part of the family’s daily experience and had a profound effect on Leipziger.

Leipziger grew up in Leblon, a neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, which was not a typical Jewish neighborhood at that time. His family joined German-Jewish circles in the Brazilian metropolis and the Associação Religiosa Israelita (ARI), which was founded in 1942 and led by Rabbi Heinrich Lemle, formerly a rabbi in Frankfurt am Main. The liberal rabbi Lemle was born in Germany and educated at the Jüdisch-Theologisches-Seminar in Breslau as well as at the universities of Breslau and Berlin. He received a PhD from the University of Würzburg (1932) and worked as a youth rabbi in Mannheim (1933) and later in Frankfurt am Main (1934–1938). During the pogrom of November 8, 1938, Lemle was removed to Buchenwald concentration camp, just like Leipziger’s father. In December 1938, Lemle was forced to flee Germany via the United Kingdom and arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1940 – one year after Leipziger’s arrival there.

In Brazil, Lemle, who had become well acquainted with different Jewish groups and their religious and social identities, lobbied for Jewish unity and established a strong communal youth program which also effected Leipziger. His sensitive work with different communities inspired Leipziger and led to his decision to become a rabbi and communal worker bringing together the different Jewish groups, such as German and Eastern-European Jews, but also Ashkenazim and Sephardim. From a religious point of view, Leipziger was influenced by liberal Jewish traditions, which Lemle had brought to South America and were the founding principles of ARI in Rio de Janeiro.

At home, the Leipzigers continued to speak German which especially affected his mother, whose proficiency in Portuguese remained average. Despite these difficulties, the parents were convinced of the importance of education and knowledge and therefore were eager to send their children to good schools; first to public and later to private ones.

After graduation, Leipziger became interested in higher education and different youth movements and their ideas. He got to know the movements Dror or Ha’Bonim, which were not specifically part of the Jewish community ARI, but quite active in Rio de Janeiro. Both youth movements were strongly connected to Socialist ideas und lobbied for the establishment of kibbutzim in Israel. Inspired by these ideas, Leipziger went as a representative of a non-political synagogue youth group to Israel where he joined a year-long training program at the Institute Ma’chon le Madrichei be huz’ la’Aretz in Jerusalem (Israel) in the mid 1950s. There, he decided to join the religious Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva and lived in a religious kibbutz (Kibbutz Shluhot). This religious movement was founded in 1929, propagated the ideal of “Tora we’Awoda” (Torah/Religion and Work) and lobbied for the foundation of a Jewish state and a strong religious Jewish identity linking the Jewish diaspora and Zion. While he got to know Liberal Judaism in Rio de Janeiro, but also at the short-lived, reform-oriented Institut International des Études Hébraïques in Paris (France), he shifted to a more conservative-orthodox understanding of Judaism during and after his stay in Israel.

IV. As a Student from Brazil to the USA
After growing up in Brazil (and spending 1954–1955 in Israel) Leipziger enrolled simultaneously at Columbia University and the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York City (USA) in 1958. In 1889 the JTS in New York City was founded and became a leading academic institution for conservative Judaism. Under the presidency of Louis Finkelstein (1940–1972) the JTS made significant efforts to engage with the public in the United States, supported new youth programs, and established new leadership training fellowships to educate the young. Leipziger, who graduated from JTS in 1964 and received a PhD from Boston University in 1978, was inspired by the strong emphasis on communal and religious services and academic studies, an ethos which reconnected him to the ideas which Heinrich Lemle had also advocated and taught in the Jewish community in Rio de Janeiro.

V. Employment and Public and Political Activities in the USA, Brazil, and Europe
In 1964, Leipziger decided to return to Brazil as an ordained rabbi. He was strongly influenced by the academic training which was central at JTS and so took several ideas of American Judaism with him to South America.

During his education he had already worked as an assistant rabbi at the Congregeção Israelita Paulista (CIP) in São Paulo under the leadership of Dr. Fritz Pinkuss between 1964 and 1971. Pinkuss had fled to Brazil in 1936 and co-founded the CIP together with other German-Jewish refugees in order to build a safe haven – ideas which also played a role several years later in the foundation of ARI in Rio de Janeiro, supported by Heinrich Lemle.¹ Pinkus established a congregation, which was designed as a “Einheitsgemeinde” [unified community] and offered liberal, but also conservative and orthodox Jewish families a spiritual home.

Leipziger was inspired by these ideas and continued to work for religious unity and transgenerational solidarity – ideals which had accompanied him throughout his life. In a Jewish elderly home in São Paulo, he offered communal services and began to preserve histories and sources of Jewish life. Here, he also became a collector of Judaica and rare Jewish books, including Yiddish books, which represented the rich heritage of Jewish history across the world. He returned to the USA and finished his PhD in 1978, went back to Brazil and became the first rabbi of Brasília respectively of the Associação Cultural Israelita de Brasília (ACIB) between 1980 and 1983.

VI. The Intellectual Legacy of the Refugee Rabbis
From 2000 to 2007, when Leipziger became Rabbi in Bern (Switzerland), he continued this work as a rabbinical scholar and book collector. Together with other scholars, he was keen to locate and preserve the remains of the library of the Jüdisch-Theologisches Seminar in Breslau, which had been transferred to Switzerland in an attempt to save these books from destruction by the Nazis. Although the books of this library, which symbolized the long tradition of German-Jewish academic learning, had been scattered between Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and other places, Leipizger, together with other scholars, was able to locate and register them in the Swiss catalogue of rare books (Central Library of Zurich). Today the collection is stored in the library of the Jewish community of Zurich.²

Committed to the preservation of this Jewish cultural heritage, with a particular focus on literary treasures and Yiddish books, Leipziger was convinced that the preservation of such records was essential to record and visualize the richness of Jewish history and culture in Europe and South America. He also wanted to build bridges between the different Jewish groups and identities that had developed over the centuries and to raise awareness of this lost but unique European Jewish culture in Europe. This included the history of Eastern European Jewish groups and movements, such as the Allgemeiner Jüdischer Arbeiterbund (Bund), a secular and socialist oriented Jewish working-class movement, as well as other religious and social ideas that originated in Central and Eastern Europe. Books continued to be a central interest of his, and he also became involved in several projects to preserve Yiddish cultural heritage, such as the through the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project.³

His education in Brazil, Israel, and the USA had a strong influence on him and his understanding of preserving Jewish history and culture. As a rabbinical scholar he highlighted Jewish traditions and values which had originated in Germany and were transplanted by Heinrich Lemle and Fritz Pinkuss to the Brazilian context and supported their survival in the refugee community. Leipziger was dedicated to Jewish scholarship in the tradition of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. He also fostered Jewish unity and solidarity among the different religious and ethnic Jewish groups, including Aschkenazimand Sephardim, but also Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, while he actively reached out to the larger community to enhance strong Jewish/Non-Jewish relations to prevent stereotypes and antisemitism, and strengthen the social interaction of the Jewish community.

VII. Confront Their Own History and Returns to Germany
Rabbi Michael H. Leipziger returned to Germany in 1999, where he began working as a rabbi for the Weiden Jewish community. In 2000 to 2007 he served as a rabbi in Bern (Switzerland), but returned to Germany to teach at the university of Potsdam and the Abraham Geiger College (2008–2014). Founded in 1999, the Abraham Geiger College played a significant role in Rabbi Leipziger’s efforts to engage with Germany. During his tenure there, he realized how strongly German and German-Jewish ideas and traditions had influenced him and his family, and how they had impacted his religious understanding of Judaism. He believed that the Holocaust had brought an end to the unique attempt by German Jews to develop a distinctive form of Judaism. This could not be transplanted or reproduced elsewhere, but instead had to be transformed and reshaped.

While in Europe, he rediscovered its rich Jewish history and learned about his family history, including the Leipziger, Neuländer, and Zweig families. However, he avoided visiting other concentration camps and sites of mass murder due to the emotional and psychological challenges they posed. Not only did he work as a rabbi and scholar but he was also active in community services, particularly with Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Weiden/Oberpfalz. He experienced the changes in the German and Jewish communities shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He concluded that it would take a long time to bring about change, as the total disruption of Jewish communal life during the Nazi regime had severe and long-lasting consequences, and that healing would take generations.

VIII. A Transnational Career
Rabbi Michael H. Leipziger had a carrer which took him to three very different continents: in South America he worked as a rabbi in Brasilia and São Paulo, in North America he worked in Leominster and Newton in Massachussets, and in Europe he worked in Weiden (Germany), Bern (Switzerland), and Berlin (Germany). In these three worlds he remained a community rabbi and only occasionally worked as a academic professor. The great variety of communal and cultural experiences had a strong impact on him as well as the long-lasting influences of the Holocaust. While these experiences led to feelings of restlessness and homelessness, he acknowledged that they had encouraged him to embrace drastic changes. After retiring, he returned to Brazil (2015), where he has lived ever since (as of 2025), while his two children and their grandchildren continued to live in the USA. He volunteered at the Sinagoga do Bras in São Paulo and continued to “work” In retrospect, he stated: “All in all, it has been a rewarding Jewish life.”

Yvonne Domhardt, Zsolt Keller, Guido Kleinberger, Michael Leipziger: Die Breslauer Seminarbibliothek in der Bibliothek der Israelitischen Cultusgemeinde Zürich. In Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände der Schweiz, volume 3, edited by Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Zürich: Olms-Weidmann, 2011.

“Rabbi Michael Leipziger in conversation with Christa Whitney” by Christa Whitney, Wexler Oral History Project. Published 26 June 2018. Accessed July 19, 2024, https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001058/michael-leipziger-2018.
Radio broadcast in the “Perspektiven” series of SRF Kultur with Professor Leipziger. Accessed July 19, 2024, https://www.srf.ch/audio/perspektiven/solange-man-lebt-kann-man-nicht-sterben-eine-begegnung-mit?uuid=fcec2a6c-9361-4ae5-93ee-0f5d2bc82025.