Germany Ordains Its First Rabbis Since 1942

DRESDEN, Germany — Germany will today ordain its first rabbis since World War II in what has been described as a “momentous” occasion for European Judaism.Thomas Kucera, Daniel Alter, and Malcolm Mattitiani will take their vows in Dresden’s main synagogue before a congregation of prominent Jews from around the world.The three men, who began their training at the Academy of Judaism in Potsdam five years ago, will become the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since 1942 when the Gestapo closed the last Jewish seminary.The only German-born candidate, Mr. Alter, 47, whose parents met in Nuremberg after surviving the horrors of the concentration camps, said: “This marks a happy end, but I would prefer to be one of hundreds of rabbis to have been ordained in Germany since the war, and that this weren’t such an historic day.”After his ordination, he will serve two communities in Oldenburg, while Mr. Kucera, a Czech immigrant, will take up a post in Munich. Mr. Mattitiani will return to his native Cape Town, South Africa.Germany had a population of 600,000 Jews before the war, about half of whom were murdered. About 12,000 remained in Germany. The population has been boosted since the 1990s by immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe, and today is around 105,000 and growing.But a dearth of rabbis plagues the 120 communities across Germany, only a fifth of whom have their own rabbi, mostly aged over 70. Many congregations fly rabbis in for the Sabbath every fortnight from Jerusalem, London, or even America.Today’s ceremony will be broadcast live on television, and the president and chancellor have sent congratulations to the men.Mr. Mattitiani, 35, whose relatives fled to South Africa from Lithuania in the 1930s and 1940s, described the ordinations as a “triumph over Hitler.”“It’s a chance for the Jewish community to continue with its renewal,” he said.But Mr. Alter, whose father’s family all died in the Holocaust, questioned whether Germany was mature enough to deal with a renaissance of Judaism, recalling attacks on Jews and Jewish sites in Germany over the past few years. He said he covered up when out on German streets.The rector at the Academy of Judaism, Walter Homolka, inaugurated in 2000, called the ordinations a “new beginning” that sent an “important political signal.” But he stressed that they were a “drop in the ocean” and did little to meet the huge demand for homegrown rabbis.The next new wave of students from Germany, Russia, and Ukraine are not due to be ordained until 2008.

Germany Ordains Its First Rabbis Since 1942

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