Leo Trepp

Leo Trepp was born in Mainz on March 13, 1913, the first son (brother Gustav 1917) of the merchant Maier Trepp (1873-1941) and his wife Selma Zipora (1879-1942). His father came from an old-established family in Fulda, and his ancestors served the prince abbots residing there as court physicians since the 15th century. The family belongs to the neo-orthodox community, whose synagogue is located at the Flachsmarkt. With their example, the parents lay the foundations for Trepp's open-minded thinking. They lead a strictly religious and politically liberal life. Opera, theater and the fine arts are as much a part of it as regular church attendance. They live what Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of neo-orthodoxy called 'Torah in Derech Eretz' - Torah and close secular ties. Jews are supposed to be dedicated to environmental culture and politics according to Hirsch as conscious and religious Jews. They are to be good Jews and good Germans. Again and again, however, Jews have to experience that their country rejects their love. For example, Maier Trepp is disappointed at a young age that the military does not recognize his patriotism and denies him the officer's honor he has earned. When Leo Trepp turns six, his father begins to study Torah and Talmud with him and to take him to the opera and symphony. The boy easily masters the long school days, the daily Torah study and the strict daily routine.

Leo Trepp's mother comes from the Lower Franconian village of Oberlauringen. Every year the family spends their summer vacations there. At least since the fifteenth century, there had been Jews in Germany who settled in smaller towns and in villages. Mostly they had been expelled from towns, and some returned there when the sovereigns lifted the ban again. Especially in the Rhineland and in Franconia, however, stable communities developed over the centuries from scattered smaller groups, with all the facilities that a pious life required. Most Jews in the village work as cattle dealers or run small stores where, as with the kosher butcher or baker, the whole village buys. Others keep a few cows and geese of their own. Leo Trepp enjoys village life, the proximity to animals that is not available in the city, the berries and plums that he can put in his mouth right after picking them. Later he will tell of the coarse piety of the country Jews, which was based less on religious education than on folklore. So Maier Trepp has to step in when the teacher, who acts as the prayer leader, wants to go on vacation. Otherwise, there is no one who can read the Torah. Soon Leo Trepp also helps out and gains his first experience as a preacher in Oberlauringen.

But soon the anti-Semitism that is becoming more and more apparent causes him difficulties. In his class at the high school, he often feels like an outsider. When he graduates from high school at the age of seventeen, he himself no longer takes part in the graduation ceremony in 1930. He then enrolled in French and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt and began studying at the Higher Jewish Academy. This was the name given by Orthodox Jews to the Talmudic college founded by Samson Raphael Hirsch's son-in-law, Salomon Breuer. Like his father-in-law, Salomon Breuer was convinced that neo-Orthodox Jews had to separate themselves from all institutions in the community. For because they considered themselves to be Torah-observant, i.e. law-abiding, but the liberal Jews did not, they could not, from their point of view, attend any common institutions. This so-called Austrittsorthodoxie prevailed in Frankfurt, but otherwise in only a few places in Germany. Formative for German Jewish communal life was to become the model of the united congregation, which Leo Trepp knew from his childhood and would support throughout his life. In Mainz, worshippers from the neo-orthodox synagogue form a unified congregation together with members of the liberal synagogue on Hindenburgplatz (which has an organ) and share the cemetery and other facilities. Breuer himself was rabbi of the Israelitische Religionsgemeinschaft, Frankfurt's secessionist congregation. In 1907 his congregation moved to the Synagogue on Friedberger Anlage, which was the largest synagogue in the city with 2000 seats, and where Leo Trepp preached during his vacations while he was a student until 1935.

In 1932, Trepp transferred to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and attended lectures and seminars in philosophy with, among others, Nicolai Hartmann, who was considered an important representative of critical realism, and in Romanticism with Eduard Wechssler. But the appearance of an open academic climate is deceptive. Soon the first Jewish professors have to leave the university. Trepp, too, senses the aggressive anti-Semitism and tries to avoid attracting attention as much as possible. In the summer of 1934, however, it hits him. Without giving any reasons, a staff member throws him out of the university's reading room. In the meantime, Gustav Trepp can no longer stand the hatred of Jews at the Schlossgymnasium in Mainz. His father therefore sends him to the Jewish Teachers' Seminary in Würzburg and asks Leo to help his brother get into the current semester. As a result, Trepp decides to pursue a doctorate in Würzburg at the Julius Maximilian University. His doctoral advisor becomes Adalbert Hämel, a member of the SA, who promises Trepp to help him with all his might, and who really guides him safely through the doctorate. After the war, he is dismissed because of his alleged closeness to the National Socialists, after which former Jewish students stand up for him. Hämel is rehabilitated and appointed rector of the University of Erlangen in 1952. Leo Trepp remains on friendly terms with him, as well as with his second examiner, the psychologist and behavioral scientist Karl Marbe, who was a strict opponent of the regime, until both of their deaths.

Since 1932, Trepp has continued his religious studies at the neo-orthodox Rabbinerseminar in Berlin, which Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer founded in 1873. The dual studies at the university and the seminary stress him out. Often he works through. And sometimes he discusses with fellow students until late at night. They talk about political conditions in Germany and about Zionism, which as religious Jews many of them reject. But Trepp becomes a convinced Zionist through these conversations, through literature and under the influence of his teacher, Rabbi Alexander Altmann. At the same time, he came to believe that orthodox and liberal Jews, even if their views differed greatly, nevertheless formed a community under God in which they had to stand up for each other. The seminary is a model for him in this. Some of his teachers are close friends with lecturers at the liberal College of the Science of Judaism. Once a week, professors and students from both institutions celebrate a service together. And the attitude of open Orthodoxy is also reflected in the unity congregation. The plan for services, for which the students are also assigned, is developed by the Berlin congregation leadership for both the Orthodox and the liberals. Leo Trepp preaches frequently in the Synagogues on Rykestraße and in Grunewald, but especially on Münchener and Passauer Straße. Even before he completes his training, he is offered the opportunity to oversee the two synagogues together with Alexander Altmann and to teach at the seminary at the same time.

Trepp, however, accepted the position of state rabbi in Oldenburg on the first of August 1936. The 15 congregations in the state, which was the first in the German Reich to elect a National Socialist government, have hardly any money left and can only keep their heads above water with the help of the Jewish State Association, which in turn is affiliated with the Reichsvertretung der Juden >Reichsvertretung der Juden. In addition to his normal rabbinical duties, Trepp, with the help of a social worker from the Landesverband, must primarily perform practical tasks: Community members want to emigrate and seek advice and financial support, others have lost their businesses and are starving. And time and again, Jews accused of racial defilement need him, including Jews who have been living in partnerships with non-Jews for years. But the children suffer the most, not understanding why their non-Jewish friends ostracize them. Trepp wants to bring them out of their isolation and, with the help of the Reichsvertretung, sets up a Jewish school. To his great surprise, an official of the state government also supports him to the best of his ability. The students learn not only mathematics and German, but, to prepare them for emigration, also English and Hebrew, as well as the history of Eretz Israel, as the Jews call British-occupied Palestine. Among the adult members of the community, the rabbi also tries to strengthen Jewish identity through education. The Jews should be able to face the regime, which will soon decide to kill them, with self-confidence and pride.

In April 1938, Leo Trepp marries Miriam de Haas, the daughter of his predecessor in office, Philipp de Haas, who died young. She soon urges him to help not only his parishioners emigrate. Trepp cannot decide to emigrate. He is German. Here he wants to be a rabbi and contribute to the development of Judaism. In his desk is the signed employment contract with the Synagogue Glockengasse in Cologne. In the summer of 1938, he and Miriam travel to Switzerland to ask for advice from the British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, who is vacationing in St. Moritz. He sends the young colleague back. "You are the captain of the ship. You must be the last to leave it." A few months later, after the pogrom on November 9 1938, Leo Trepp is deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp along with other Oldenburg men. The mob burned down all but one of the synagogues in his district, as well as the school. In the camp, the community members help each other. Trepp convinces the strictly Orthodox to eat the non-kosher soup to preserve their lives. Despite the humiliating and life-threatening treatment, he refuses to accept victimhood. If he must die, he wants to go to his death as a proud Jew who professes his faith. Three weeks later, Chief Rabbi Hertz sends visas for him and Miriam. Trepp is released on condition that he leave Germany within two weeks. Back in Oldenburg, he organizes the Children's Transport in his last days there.

After a year in London, Trepp emigrates to the United States. He takes over the rabbinate in the Orthodox synagogue in Greenfield in the state of Massachusetts. In the city, what he had often thought about as a student is realized: especially when it comes to helping the poor and standing up against injustice, Christians and Jews work together. He supports the Christian-Jewish dialogue with all his strength and makes sure that the service, which everyone celebrates together once a year, is held in the synagogue for the first time. But in religious terms he is dissatisfied. He encounters an Orthodoxy that, in his view, still looks like it did before the Enlightenment. The services are unaesthetic and boring. The Judaism of the congregation members has little to do with their daily lives. But just as little he can do with the liberals,  who take on social problems of society, but do not deal with Judaism in the sense of an obligatory religion. Trepp is looking for new ways and not only ties in with the neo-orthodoxy of his homeland, but also engages with a new movement, reconstructionism. Its founder, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, sees Judaism as a civilization whose core is religion, but which also incorporates elements such as land, language, art, music, and which is constantly evolving. Trepp is interested in the approach, even though he rejects many of the ideas. He becomes close friends with Kaplan. Over decades, they exchanged letters discussing religious and philosophical issues.

After pastoring congregations in the South, Berkeley and Boston, where he studied for two years at Harvard University on the side, Trepp has been a professor of intellectual history and philosophy at Napa College near San Francisco since 1951. Financially independent, he now builds new communities on the side. In Napa, in Eureka further north, and in Santa Rosa, he helps Jews learn and establish new communities. His services are similar in rite to Neo-Orthodoxy, but women and men are completely equal. He also begins working as a Jewish chaplain at the country's largest veterans home in Yountville, near Napa, whose synagogue will bear his name. In his scarce free time, he writes essays and books. His very first work for the English-speaking market, "A History of the Jewish Experience," which Leo Trepp wrote in 1962 - still under a different title - became a success. Other titles followed, including classics such as "Judaism, Development and Life." As early as 1943, Mordecai Kaplan engaged him as an editorial member for the magazine 'The Reconstructionist', which in those years was considered the national magazine for Jewish intellectuals and experts who wanted to discuss central, often ideological questions of Jewish life. Since 1956, Trepp has brought a group of his students to Europe every two years. The Americans are to learn about its culture. Germany is also on his program.

In 1954, Leo Trepp returns to Germany for the first time. He visits the grave of his father, who died of a heart condition in 1941. Except for his brother, whom he managed to get out of the country, and a cousin who fled to what was then Palestine, all family members have been murdered. Trepp walks through the city of his birth, where much is still destroyed. He ponders the new beginning that must now exist. Germans, he thinks, need to get to know Judaism better in order to overcome their old anti-Semitism and not develop a new one. He wants to help with this. He does not allow hatred to arise in him. "Hate destroys utterly, and love heals utterly," he writes in a 1973 essay for the American magazine Sh'ma. He chooses love. Again and again he returns and meets politicians and church representatives, many of whom ask him for advice. He never tires of emphasizing that if they are serious about their desire to learn from the past, they must now actively "fight against all forms of anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination," as he puts it. Even though there are hardly any Jews left, anti-Semitism is still alive. In 1969, Trepp's book "The Jews" is published in Germany. He is now frequently invited to give lectures. In 1971 he teaches in Hamburg, and in 1979, at his suggestion, the university holds the first conference between Jews, Christians and Muslims. In his view, only conversations between the denominations can lead to understanding for each other and to better coexistence.

In 1992, a new Jewish community was founded in Oldenburg, which Leo Trepp accompanied from the beginning. It is thanks to him that there is "a conservative-liberal Judaism" there, says founding member Michael Daxner. Trepp had grown up in Mainz in a community where Judaism was the standard of all activity, and where the religion's value system reached into every facet of private and social life. He would represent this form of Judaism throughout his life. He never felt that he belonged to any one direction after the Shoah. Important for him are God and the mitzvot and the ethical values that result from them for life. In the tradition of the rabbis, he sees Judaism in a constant state of evolution that is also oriented to the culture of the environment. He pleads for the complete equality of women, also in religious services. In Oldenburg, the first female rabbi after the Shoah was inaugurated in 1995. In addition, he advocates Jewish plurality, as it existed in the pre-war period in the unitary congregations in Germany. Jews should be able to pray under one large roof in a way that corresponds to their individual situation. After Trepp's death, the Oldenburg Jewish Community establishes the Leo Trepp Lehrhaus, which offers teaching and cultural events, often in cooperation with other academic institutions. In 2013, the street on which the synagogue and community center are located is renamed Leo Trepp Street. 

As early as the late 1970s, Trepp was urging German universities to introduce Jewish studies. Not only does he think that the ethics of Judaism still have something to say to people, but he sees it as the task of every community to constantly question and improve itself and its values. If German culture was not prepared to do this for centuries, perhaps the time has now come for it to learn from Jewish culture, and vice versa. In 1983, the University of Mainz appointed Trepp as a visiting professor and made him an honorary professor in 1988. He becomes a member of the Protestant faculty. But it is not only students who come to his lectures and seminars. The diversity of his audience is important to Trepp. As with his books, he is not only concerned with imparting academic knowledge to Germans - he also hopes that knowledge will help "correct the distorted image of the Jew." But in his last years he learns that anti-Semitism always finds new ways. In private encounters, Germans let him know that there must be an end to the culture of remembrance for whose existence they blame the Jews. He replies that it will have serious consequences not only for the Jews but also for the Germans if they lose their awareness of responsibility. A people oblivious to history is weak, he says. Moreover, more and more interlocutors not only criticize the politicians of the State of Israel, but question the very idea of Zionism and thus the pursuit of Jewish self-determination, and they apply a standard they do not use with other countries. "Why?" asks Leo Trepp. In the last two years of his life, he focused on teaching about the millennia-old connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. A few weeks after his last lecture, and after planning the summer term for the following year, Leo Trepp dies in San Francisco on September 2, 2010.