Second-generation Holocaust survivor and hospital chaplain Rabbi Leonard Lewy learned more about his family history – in Germany
The streets of Berlin, Germany, house a huge stone building. Its tall arched windows, golden plating, and massive domed towers are impressive, but that isn’t all that’s striking about it.
This building, a Jewish place of worship, the Neue Synagogue, largely survived World War II in the heart of Nazi Germany.
Decades later, in March 2026, Wisconsin’s Rabbi Leonard Lewy visited that building in Berlin, on a trip laden with meaning. Lewy is a hospital chaplain at Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Ozaukee and a congregant at Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid in Glendale.
Lewy visited Berlin to attend the installation of the Neue Synagogue’s Rabbi Gesa Ederberg as the first European president of the Conservative/Masorti Rabbinical Assembly, but that wasn’t his only reason for visiting. Lewy’s father, a Holocaust survivor, belonged to the Neue Synagogue before the war.
“Some Holocaust survivors like to talk at length about everything, and others will say almost nothing,” said Lewy. “My father was in that latter category.”
Lewy never had the opportunity to learn about his father’s past until a brief conversation six months before his passing, he said.
During that conversation, Lewy’s father, John, finally shared the names and birthplaces of his immediate family.
Before then, one of the only things Lewy knew about his father’s past was that he had been a part of the synagogue choir back in Germany.
“He would sing a little,” Lewy said. “I don’t know that I can repeat it, but it was a very German European Lewandowski-sounding melody… [Lewandowski] was actually the music director and cantor of that synagogue when it began in the mid-19th century.”
When Lewy attended a Shabbat service at the Neue synagogue, he recognized some of those melodies, he said.
“It may have been different than how [my father] remembered, but it didn’t matter for my presence in the building, and in that service that morning,” Lewy said. “There was enough.”
During the service, Lewy was called up for an aliyah.
“I was very moved, and again I felt very close to my family, just knowing that they would have liked the fact that I was there, and had taken an aliyah,” he said. “It felt somewhat surreal, and just really special. It’s hard to put it in words … I was just feeling a great deal of peace.”
During his aliyah, Rabbi Lewy looked out at the crowd, and there, he saw a Muslim woman sitting among the congregants, he said. After the service, Lewy approached her. She explained that she was a friend of Rabbi Gesa’s, the same Rabbi who was being installed as president of the Rabbinical Association, and that she likes to attend Shabbat services whenever she can to support her friend.
“I was touched by that,” Lewy said. “There was such a sense of the value of other people and the value of relationships, and not letting any ethnic or spiritual boundaries prevent that.”
Notable rabbi and philosopher Emil Fackenheim once said that Jews should observe a 614th commandment, to not grant Hitler a posthumous victory, Lewy said.
“I like to think that I embody that in my choice to become a rabbi, and then, to become a chaplain,” he said. “My chaplain’s skill is the ability to listen and to honor people. That is not what happened to my father’s family… So, [I’m] trying to redress what’s happened in the world, what one group of people can do to another, not recognizing God’s image. I try to do that with every person I meet, of whatever background, and it’s one of the things I admire about Rabbi Gesa.”
These small acts of recognizing humanity give Lewy hope, he said. In the invitation to Rabbi Gesa’s installation, she mentioned that it was taking place during Ramadan. She emphasized the importance of “providing for Muslim needs during perhaps one of the most significant achievements in her career,” Lewy said.
“I think the world needs more of that,” said Lewy. “I know it sounds a little silly, you know, what the world needs now is love, sweet love. But I mean, we really do.”
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