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In a twist, German rabbi at scandal’s center cedes rabbinical school ownership to Berlin Jews
(JTA) — In a shocking development, the embattled founder of Germany’s non-Orthodox rabbinical schools has relinquished his ownership stake in them to the Jewish Community of Berlin.
The 25,000 euro transaction means that Rabbi Walter Homolka is no longer in control of the Reform Abraham Geiger College and the Conservative Zacharias Frankel College at the University of Potsdam.
The sale achieves a result that the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the seminaries’ main funder, has been trying to reach openly since late last year, after two investigations confirmed that Homolka had abused his power at the seminaries.
The Jewish Community of Berlin had not publicly been part of the efforts to overhaul the schools launched after allegations against Homolka broke into public view last May. The allegations initially related to a sexual harassment scandal involving his husband, who was also his employee, but widened to implicate other aspects of Homolka’s leadership.
The group’s announcement late Wednesday of the purchase, executed the day before, initially alarmed some who have been advocating for changes at the seminaries, because the plan did not clearly rule out a role for Homolka. The Central Council of Jews in Germany issued a statement lambasting the fact that the deal “took place without consultation with the students, employees, or the donors” and said the new arrangement would not improve rabbinical education in Germany.
But in a hastily arranged meeting Thursday, Berlin Jewish Community President Gideon Joffe assured Josef Schuster, the council’s head, that Homolka would not be part of the seminaries going forward. The meeting left Schuster prepared to collaborate with Joffe’s group, a spokesperson for the council confirmed.
Now, the path is clear for the official Jewish community to seize authority over non-Orthodox rabbinical training in the country where Reform Judaism was born in the 19th century.
“This may not be the ideal situation, but it is a compromise that allows almost everyone to live with the results,” Cantor Itamar Cohen, the graduate whose complaint kicked off the scandal, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said he would fully embrace the offer “if it is accepted by Klal Israel, the majority of the Jewish community as encapsulated in the main representing bodies.”
Concerns about the surprise announcement largely reflected worries that Homolka could have structured the deal in a way that benefits him.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, then rector of the Abraham Geiger College, in the Liberal Jewish community’s synagogue in Hanover, Germany in December 2016. (Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Two separate investigations — one by the university and the other by lawyers commissioned by the Central Council — recently determined that Homolka had created an “atmosphere of fear” among students and staff in the very institutions he launched more than 20 years ago. The final report from the Central Council investigation is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Homolka has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
In the wake of those findings, there was an increasing appearance of desperation on the part of the old guard to hold on to control of the two seminaries. In December, days after the damning Central Council interim report was issued, the Union of Progressive Judaism in Germany — with a newly elected board friendly to Homolka — announced it had replaced the interim director of the Geiger College with its own appointee. The Central Council promptly nixed that plan, calling the Union of Progressive Judaism a puppet of Homolka and announcing its appointment of the scholar Gerhard Robbers to work on restructuring the two colleges.
Skeptics of the latest development said they were sure Homolka’s influence would emerge somewhere, for example in appointments to the reconstituted institutions.
“I don’t find this reassuring,” said Nick Hoermann, a current student at Frankel College. “It has been clear for a while now that Homolka’s only way to act in the future would be through back doors.”
But for now at least, the Central Council — which initially called the sale announcement “astonishing” — says it is ready to work with the Jewish Community of Berlin.
Though the official community’s move came as a surprise to many, Joffe and his team had been considering some kind of rescue maneuver since the scandal broke last May, Ilan Kiesling, a spokesperson for the community, said in an email to JTA. The concrete plan emerged only after the damning preliminary expert opinion came out in December.
Joffe approached Homolka directly at that point and convinced him “that a completely fresh start at [Abraham Geiger College] was indispensable – together with a complete renunciation of all his leadership positions. Rabbi Homolka agreed to this renunciation and transferred all shares of the non-profit limited company to the community,” Kiesling wrote.
The legally binding takeover took place this week, and did not cost the community anything beyond “the capital contribution of the limited company in the amount of 25,000 euros,” Kiesling said.
He added that the community “guarantees a complete and transparent new start” for the Geiger seminary. “There will no longer be an accumulation of offices” under one person, one of the habits for which Homolka has been criticized. There was no specific reference to the Frankel College, which until now has appointed its own academic leadership.
The community plans to establish an international advisory board and an external contact point for students to report any problems. Early on in the scandal, it emerged that Cohen’s complaint had been investigated internally, by parties beholden to Homolka.
Kiesling also told the JTA that the community had engaged a former community president, Rabbi Andreas Nachama, chair of Germany’s liberal rabbinical conference, known as ARK, to advise them from a rabbinical perspective. Nachama was ordained by the U.S.-based Alliance for Jewish Renewal movement and leads an egalitarian Reform congregation in Berlin.
In his statement Wednesday, Joffe said, “The top priority for us at the moment is to bring the Abraham Geiger College into calm waters and pave the way for the students to continue their education in a stable structure.”
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The post In a twist, German rabbi at scandal’s center cedes rabbinical school ownership to Berlin Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes
(JTA) — Over 300 Jewish leaders, including women’s rights advocates and rabbis, urged the United Nations on Tuesday to remove Reem Alsalem, the U.N. rapporteur on violence against women and girls, for denying that rape occurred during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The letter, which was addressed to U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres, came two weeks after Alsalem claimed in a post on X that “No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.”
In the letter, its signatories express their “horror and outrage” at Alsalem’s rhetoric, and cite two U.N. reports from March 2024 and July 2025 that concluded that there was “reasonable grounds” to believe that sexual violence had taken place during the attacks “in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape.”
The petition was organized by Amy Elman, a professor at Kalamazoo College who has authored books on antisemitism and state responses to sexual violence, and Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. It was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency soon after being sent to Guterres.
“The targeted sexual abuse of Israelis by Hamas and its supporters is one weapon in the arsenal of those seeking Israel’s obliteration,” Elman said in a statement. “It’s outrageous that deniers such as Reem Alsalem are aiding and abetting the sexual violence by claiming it never happened. These apologists should be ashamed of themselves.”
The letter’s signatories include Deborah Lipstadt, the former antisemitism envoy; Judith Rosenbaum, the head of the Jewish Women’s Archives; Rabbi Irving Greenberg, the former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Rabbi Deborah Waxman, the president of Reconstructing Judaism; and Hebrew College president Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld.
Dispute over whether sexual violence took place as Hamas murdered about 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 has solidified as a point of sustained interest for some of Israel’s staunchest critics who allege that Israel and its supporters are using claims of rape as propaganda. Even the United Nations, frequently maligned by Israel and its supporters over its record toward Israel, has drawn allegations of complicity in the propaganda campaign from pro-Palestinian voices — though the U.N. rapporteur on Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese, who has faced her own calls for dismissal from the Trump administration, has also publicly questioned the claims.
In addition to the U.N. reports, independent reporting and research by an Israeli nonprofit have validated claims of sexual violence on Oct. 7.
In the X exchange that spurred the new letter, Alsalem was arguing with another user about the Israeli government’s prosecution of soldiers accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee.
A day later, Alsalem posted a link to a Substack podcast from October where she criticized the credibility of the March 2024 U.N. report and said she had sought contact with the Israeli government to confirm its findings but had not received a response.
“The media, certain organizations and the world basically fell into the trap that Israel set up, which is to project that there was barbaric sexual violence being committed by these barbarian Palestinian men, and it was spun around and disseminated and very much used in order to then justify the genocide,” said Alsalem on the podcast.
Medoff said in a statement that Alsalem’s continued employment reflected inconsistent standards when it comes to Israel and antisemitism.
“If a UN official made such a remark concerning rape victims from any other ethnic or religious group, there would be an international uproar,” he said. “The same standard should apply to Israeli Jewish women who were sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists.”
The post Over 300 rabbis and Jewish leaders call for removal of UN official who denied Oct. 7 rapes appeared first on The Forward.
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Rome synagogue memorial for 2-year-old killed in 1982 Palestinian terror attack vandalized
(JTA) — A synagogue in Rome and a memorial for a 2-year-old boy killed in a 1982 attack by Palestinian terrorists on the city’s Great Synagogue were vandalized on Monday by unknown individuals.
The plaque dedicated to Stefano Gaj Taché, who was killed in the attack that also left 37 injured, is located on the Monteverde synagogue, also known as the Beth Michael Synagogue, in Rome.
The unknown vandals spray painted black on the memorial, and also wrote “Free Palestine” and “Monteverde anti-Zionist and anti-fascist” on the facade of the synagogue, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The vandalism was condemned by Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, who said in a post on Instagram that the incident came amid a “a climate of intimidation” where antisemitism has “become a tool of political protest.”
“We place our trust in the police and call for the government’s strong intervention to halt this spiral of hatred,” Fadlun continued.
The incident comes amid a recent series of antisemitic vandalism in Rome, an epicenter of pro-Palestinian activism that has continued to see large demonstrations even after the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In October, the words “Dirty Jews, may you all burn” were spray-painted on the shutters of a kosher bakery, and in June a sign at another local synagogue was defaced with the words “Sieg Heil” and ”Juden Raus.”
“This is an act that outrages the Jewish community and deeply wounds it, because the plaque is dedicated to a child murdered by Palestinian terrorism and because this is a meeting place where young people and children meet, where they pray and create a sense of community,” Fadlun told Corriere della Sera. “Attacking the synagogue in this way means disavowing and violating the right of Jews to be able to come together and lead a normal life.”
In a subsequent post on Instagram, Fadlun said Italian President Sergio Mattarella had spoken to him over the phone to express his “solidarity” in relation to the synagogue vandalism.
Antonio Tajani, the Italian minister of foreign affairs, also condemned the vandalism in a post on X, adding that he has called Fadlun as well.
The European Jewish Congress also condemned the vandalism in a post on X. “This is not ‘anti-Zionism.’ It is antisemitism: the targeting of Jewish memory, Jewish mourning and Jewish history,” the group said. “Stefano’s name is a symbol of one of Italy’s darkest terror attacks. His memory should be protected, not desecrated. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community of Italy and call on authorities to investigate this hate crime and ensure that such acts are treated with the seriousness they deserve.”
The post Rome synagogue memorial for 2-year-old killed in 1982 Palestinian terror attack vandalized appeared first on The Forward.
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Danny Wolf will see you now
When the Brooklyn Nets drafted Danny Wolf this summer out of the University of Michigan, scouts said they were getting a versatile big man who could get buckets, create for his teammates and rebound.
But the last few days of NBA action have shown the Jewish seven-footer picking up a surprising new habit: putting his opponents on posters.
After scuffling through the first two months of the season with a bum ankle, Wolf announced his arrival Saturday with a thundering jam on the Milwaukee Bucks’ Kyle Kuzma, for two of the forward’s career-best 22 points.
He claimed his next victim, in a 10-point, 7-rebound outing two days later, driving from the top of the arc before leaping off his left foot and dropping the hammer on the Charlotte Hornets’ Miles Bridges:
“That may get two howls!” Nets play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco cried.
Early returns have been limited since the Brooklyn Nets grabbed Israeli point guard Ben Saraf and Wolf with the 26th and 27th picks this summer. The learning curve for young floor generals is notoriously steep, and Saraf — who wears the number 77 to represent the Hebrew word mazal, meaning good fortune — has struggled to stay in the playing rotation.
But Wolf, an American-Israeli who was bar mitzvahed in Israel, is finding his footing — at least when he’s not taking off for a dunk. He dropped in five high-arcing three pointers against the Bucks, eliciting excited howls from Nets color commentator Sarah Kustok; before the Charlotte game, he apparently told teammates he was going to posterize somebody.
“I was kinda saying that as a joke,” he said, “but looking at it as an opportunity, and just trying to attack the rim, I did it, with rewards.”
“He manifested it,” said teammate Nic Claxton.
Let’s enjoy one more picture of Claxton and Wolf:
And here’s a Danny Wolf meme for good measure, courtesy of the Nets social media.
The post Danny Wolf will see you now appeared first on The Forward.