First Rabbis Since 1942 to be Ordained in Germany

BERLIN, Sept. 13 - More than 60 years after the Nazis shut down Germany's only rabbinical school, three Jewish men are poised to become the first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since World War II.

Political and religious leaders alike on Wednesday welcomed the step as an important one in the re-establishing of a strong Jewish community in postwar, reunified Germany. Yet some warned that while the importance of the ordinations were not to be overlooked, Germany's relationship to its more than 100,000 Jews was far from normal.

President Horst Koehler praised the accomplishments of Daniel Alter, Thomas Cucera and Malcolm Matitiani, who are to be formally ordained on Thursday in Dresden's new synagogue, which was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall - the first in the territory of the former East Germany.

"After the Holocaust, many people could never have imagined that Jewish life in Germany could blossom again," President Horst Koehler said. "That is why the first ordination of rabbis in Germany is a very special event indeed."

Germany's Jewish community has more than tripled since the country reunified in 1990 and the government set up a program to take in Jews from the former Soviet Union. More than 100,000 Jews now live in some 102 established communities throughout the country.

But for years the country has had to rely on rabbis imported from or trained in England, Israel and the United States, because Germany's last Jewish seminary, the Berlin-based Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, was shuttered by the Nazis in 1942.

In 1999, Abraham Geiger College - named for the liberal rabbi considered the founder of the Reform, or liberal Jewish movement - opened its doors in conjunction with the University of Potsdam in eastern Germany. It is a private, nonprofit institution that is sponsored by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the German government and the Leo Baeck Foundation.

Despite the excitement over the new rabbis, two of whom will remain in Germany, the college's director Walter Homolka said the ordination was only the beginning.

"We need many more rabbis," Homolka told reporters in Dresden on Wednesday.

Dieter Graumann, the vice president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, however, noted it would take a long time before the relationship between Germany and its Jews could be considered "normal."

"That will only be possible when we don't need to support this normalcy and when we don't have to talk about it anymore," Graumann said.

Still, Homolka insisted the ordinations send an important signal out to Germans "that we want to take up place in society."

On Wednesday, Alter, Cucera and Matitiani, natives of Germany, the Czech Republic and South Africa, respectively, marked the end of five years of studies at Abraham Geiger College. Alter and Cucera are to remain in Germany, taking up positions at temples in Oldenburg and Munich, respectively, while Matitiani will return to South Africa to a Jewish community in Cape Town.