30 Years of Chabad in Berlin: Synagogue Set to Triple in Size

The Chabad Jewish community in Berlin is marking its 30th anniversary this weekend with a street festival, live music, Jewish cuisine, and a formal ceremony at the Jewish Campus in Wilmersdorf. Among the highlights is the beginning of a new Torah scroll to be hand-written across Germany, and a virtual-reality preview of the planned expanded synagogue.

Current synagogue too small for a growing community

Chief Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, who arrived from New York three decades ago, explained to DW why expansion has become unavoidable. The existing synagogue seats 200, but ordinary weekends already fill every pew. On major family occasions such as weddings or birth celebrations, 300 to 400 people crowd inside, and as many as 1,000 attend during the High Holy Days.

Construction planned for 2028–2030

The community intends to rebuild and enlarge the Wilmersdorf site so it can hold up to 600 worshippers. Work is set to start in 2028 and be completed by 2030. Funding comes from the federal government, the Berlin Lotto Foundation, and private donors. Chabad is currently involved in a legal dispute over its exclusion from Berlin's state treaty with the main Jewish Community, meaning no public funds from that source are available yet.

An open campus at the heart of the city

Today the Chabad community numbers around 4,000 members and operates smaller synagogues in Alexanderplatz, Friedrichshain, and other Berlin districts. The Jewish Campus, which opened in 2023, encompasses a kindergarten and a school offering classes from first grade through the Abitur. Around 80 percent of staff members are not Jewish, and many enrolled children are not Jewish either — Teichtal describes them simply as Berlin kids. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he also opened Germany's only Jewish refugee shelter.

Bundestag President Julia Klöckner placed congratulatory billboards across the city — in Kreuzberg, along the Kurfürstendamm, and elsewhere — describing Jewish life as "part of the foundation on which this country stands." Weekly visits from school groups and university students have increased sharply, and Teichtal notes a growing number of classes with a high proportion of Muslim pupils. "Encounter breaks down prejudice and builds tolerance," he said. "The results far exceed our expectations."