Posted on 09/14/2006 11:13:01 AM PDT by Republicain
A group of rabbis has been ordained in Germany for the first time since World War II and the destruction by the Nazis of the country's Jewish seminaries. Three Jewish graduates from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam were ordained in the eastern city of Dresden.
More than 100,000 Jews live in Germany but there is a dearth of rabbis - there are only about 25 of them serving 100 congregations, a BBC reporter says.
For years Germany has had to rely on rabbis imported from abroad.
The ordination took place in Dresden's new synagogue which was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Daniel Alter of Germany was the first of the three men to be confirmed as rabbi.
He was soon joined by Tomas Kucera of the Czech Republic and South Africa's Malcolm Matitiani.
Mr Matitiani has been studying in Germany for the last five years.
After his ordination he is planning to go back to his synagogue in Cape Town.
He said he hoped the ordinations would help reintroduce Judaism to Europe and revive Jewish life.
"It's a triumph of the good in humanity over the evil of [the Nazi] period," he said.
Growing Jewish population
The last seminary, the Berlin-based College of Jewish Studies, was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942.
The Jewish community in Germany had some 600,000 registered members before the Holocaust and the war, the BBC's Tristana Moore in Berlin says.
Thanks to an influx of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Germany has the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe, our correspondent says.
Community leaders are hoping that the ordinations in Dresden will pave the way for more home-grown rabbis.
Imported Rabbis? Are they better than the domestic variety?........
Not if "Made in China", I presume.
....Funny, you don't look Jewish........(old Joke)......
...it's because my parents were so poor they couldn't afford a sharp knife...(a not-quite-as-old joke).
They get in through Germany's porous southern border. They show up to pick fruit and become rabbis.
Oh, Then they're just doing the bris that Germans won't do?......
Very, very good. Were those the words of German President Busch?
So, what's makes you so special you think you need sharp?
Germans, always kvetching about somting!.........
ping
..........oi, vay....!! why three rabbis....?
there is an old Jewish expression....
"you have two rabbis, you get three opinions....!"
wonder how many opinions you get with three rabbis..??
considering the results of Herr Hitler's
"final solution" to the Jewish "problems"
in Germany at that time, I'm surprised that anybody
would even want to be ordained a Rabbi in Germany
in this day and age.....
in any event,...."L'Chaim.....!!"* and congratulations
to them all....!!
*"To life....!!"
Jews have been doing that in Europe since, like, 1945, and in the former Soviet Union since 1990.
Where's this guy been hiding and what's he been doing?
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The presense of a fair number of Jews there demonstrates that Hitler's "Final Solution" was a failure, that the current German government and prime minister have been moving away from the heinous policies of the past, and that fears about a return of a reunified Germany to its antisemitic roots (prevalent especially in Jewish circles c. 1990) have been disspelled.
On the other hand, one would have to think that Jews living in Germany today must find it awkward and eery to know that they are daily among perpetrators of the Holocaust and their linear descendants.
Since the very youngest Germans who were of legal age during the Nazi era are now in their 80's there are very few of these possible perps left. As for descendants, holding them responsible would be to hold them attainted, and bills of attainder are properly unconstitutional. The concept of racial guilt is an abomination which has been a source of genocide through history.
Still, must be freaky...I sometimes imagine how it might be as a Jewish kid in Germany, living a normal childhood, going through Kindergarten, and when I turn 12 or something, SURPRISE!
It's a shame it took sixty years...
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