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September 15, 2006
3 Rabbis Ordained as Judaism Re-emerges in Germany
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/mark_landler/index.html?inline=nyt-per>MARK
LANDLER
DRESDEN,
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/germany/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Germany,
Sept. 14 Germany took a richly symbolic step in
its long journey of historical reconciliation on
Thursday as three men became the first rabbis
ordained in this country since the Holocaust.
In a ceremony that blended bright hope for the
future with a solemn homage to the past, the
three a German, a Czech, and a South African
stood before a senior rabbi in Dresdens starkly
modern synagogue, as he told them they had been
singled out, just as Moses had chosen Joshua, in Scripture.
All of Germany celebrates with us today, and all
of Europe as well, said Rabbi Walter Jacob, the
president of a rabbinical seminary in Potsdam,
near Berlin, where the three men studied. Each
wore a black robe and white prayer shawl and
stood as Rabbi Jacob laid hands on his shoulders.
Today, we have made a new beginning, Rabbi
Jacob said to the 250 in the congregation, many
of them from the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/unitedstates/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>United
States and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/israel/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Israel.
The head of the Central Council of Muslims in
Germany, Ayyub Axel Köhler, was also present.
German television broadcast the hourlong ceremony
live from Dresdens New Synagogue, a strikingly
modern structure built in 2001. It is near the
site of the Semper Synagogue, which the Nazis
burned down in November 1938 during the
Kristallnacht pogrom, auguring the violence to come.
Germanys Jewish population, which stood at
500,000 before the war and the mass killings at
the hands of the Nazis, is modest but growing,
thanks to an influx of Russian Jews since the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. More than
100,000 Jews live here now, compared to 30,000 at
the time of German reunification.
But Germany has a dire shortage of rabbis, not
having ordained any since the Nazi regime shut
down the rabbinical seminary in Berlin in 1942.
Only 30 rabbis are active here, all from abroad.
After the ceremony, Rabbi Uri Regev, the
president of the World Union for Progressive
Judaism, said: You could feel the winds of
history hovering over your head. For the first
time since the horrific events that destroyed the
Jewish community, you could see a renewal of that community.
German leaders hailed the ordinations as a
milestone in the rebirth of Jewish life here a
day of recognition and joy, in the words of
Chancellor Angela Merkel. After five years of
studying in relative anonymity, the newly
ordained German, Daniel Alter, 47, said the
lavish domestic and international attention this
week left him almost dazed. I woke up to the
fact that I was in a storm, he said.
Dresden itself speaks to the possibility of
Germanys rebirth. An Allied bombing raid in
February 1945 reduced the citys elegant old
quarter to ashes leaving it for years as a
bleak testament to the horrors of war.
Heinz-Joachim Aris, a local Jewish leader, said
he survived the Holocaust only because three days
before he was to be deported to a concentration
camp, the bombing raid and subsequent fires threw
Dresden into chaos, allowing him and other Jews to escape into the ruins.
On this morning, however, sunlight danced off the
waters of the Elbe River, the citys meticulously
restored buildings, and the Star of David hanging
above the synagogues entrance. Rescued from the
old synagogue, the star seemed an apt symbol for
a day that linked past and present.
Rabbi Alter will serve a population in the
northern German city of Oldenburg, which is
heavily Russian. The newly ordained Czech rabbi,
Tomas Kucera, 35, also plans to stay in Germany,
serving in Munich. The third rabbi Malcolm
Matitiani will return home to
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/southafrica/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>South
Africa.
Rabbi Kucera, a native of Prague, said his
knowledge of Russian might help him expand a
Jewish community that is at the moment more
American than Russian in flavor. We have great
potential to attract Russian Jews, he said.
Many of them dont even know about our community.
All three are Progressive Jews, members of the
equivalent of the Reform movement in the United
States. The Orthodox Jewish movement, which
claims a larger following in Germany than the
Progressive movement, is also training rabbis in
Berlin. It plans to ordain four rabbis there in six months.
For Germany, the ordination was the latest in a
year of evolution in Germanys handling of its dark legacy of war and genocide.
One contributory even was serving as host to the
World Cup soccer tournament, where the German
hosts waved flags for the first time in decades
without guilt. Another was Pope Benedict XVIs
visit this week to his Bavarian homeland, where
he was greeted with unabashed pride, rather than
the usual aversion to anything that might smack of nationalism.
Im often asked if this represents a
normalization of German-Jewish relations, Rabbi
Alter said in an interview. I really dont know;
time will tell. But relations will improve if we
keep the spirit of the World Cup, and if we dont
allow dark, right-wing forces to reappear in Germany.
During the ceremony, Rabbi Jacob recalled that
when his family fled the Nazis in 1939 he was 9
then it broke a family tradition of rabbis in
Germany that stretched back 15 generations. I
thought I would be the 16th, he said. Instead, he made his home in Pittsburgh.
Rabbi Jacob maintained his ties to Germany,
however, and six years ago, he and a friend,
Rabbi Walter Homolka of Germany, helped establish
a liberal rabbinical seminary as an institute of the University of Potsdam.
The seminary is named after Abraham Geiger, a
19th-century German-Jewish theologian who founded
the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin
which was closed by the Nazis. The Geiger
seminary currently has 10 students enrolled in a five-year rabbinical course.
Even those who do not stay in Germany, like Rabbi
Matitiani, play a role in reconciliation,
according to Rabbi Regev. Germany sees it as an
opportunity to send people out into the world
with a message that this is a new Germany, he said.
Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author
and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL)
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