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Prominent German rabbi resigns from leadership roles as report confirms allegations against him
BERLIN (JTA) – In a landmark step, investigators commissioned by Germany’s main Jewish organization have concluded that abuse of power and sexual harassment did occur at Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary — and some of it, they say, may have crossed the line into illegality.
The 44-page “executive summary” of an investigation initiated by the Central Council of Jews in Germany is the latest and most damning report about the leadership of Rabbi Walter Homolka since accusations against him broke into public view last May.
Issued Wednesday after tense public conflict between the council and Homolka’s attorneys, the report concludes that structural changes are required to set Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary, known as Abraham Geiger College, and other related Jewish institutions on the correct footing.
“A significant cause for the emergence of the problems identified by the investigators at the institutions under investigation is the personal misconduct of Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka in his function as a leader or person with great influence, which the investigators are convinced of,” the investigators wrote in their report.
Homolka announced Monday that he would withdraw from all functions in the seminary that he and a German-born American rabbi named Walter Jacob, founded in 1999. He also dropped out of the running on Tuesday for another term as chair of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.
A more comprehensive report including details about incidents in which investigators concluded that Homolka and his husband engaged in misconduct is due out in January, according to the Cologne-based law firm Gercke Wollschläger.
The preliminary report was welcomed in a joint statement by the Central Council, the German Interior Ministry and the Brandenburg State Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, which said they would “continue to fund the Abraham Geiger College to the same extent as before until the structural new beginning has been completed.”
It was also greeted with relief by the rabbinical student whose complaints kicked off the scandal.
“I think the report and the subsequent documents are a blessed development,” Itamar Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It seems to confirm many suspicions which I and others share. It does affirm that I did the right thing and [this] could be the beginning of a new chapter of liberal Judaism in Germany.”
The scandal that erupted publicly in May began after Cohen sought help from Jonathan Schorsch, a professor at the School of Jewish Theology, in dealing with unsolicited pornographic material allegedly received from Homolka’s husband, who was also an employee at the seminary. (Abraham Geiger College is part of the School of Jewish Theology, which itself is under the auspices of the University of Potsdam.)
A German newspaper’s report about the allegations and an apparent effort to obscure them opened the floodgates for criticism of Homolka from past and current students, employees and colleagues. Homolka took a leave of absence from the numerous leadership roles he held with liberal Jewish religious and educational institutions that he had helped found since the late 1990s.
The scandal has shaken the foundations of modern liberal Judaism in Germany, and the new report suggests that those foundations were weak because they rested largely on one individual.
Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of German Jews, said the report made it clear that Homolka could not continue in his previous roles.
Homolka has rejected the allegations against him throughout, and his attorneys told German news media Wednesday that they believed the entire investigation was politically motivated. They accused Schuster of wanting to see Homolka exit Germany’s liberal Jewish leadership and said the Central Council had failed to consider fully the statement Homolka had given to investigators.
Rabbi Walter Homolka. at left, with other leaders of Germany Jewry including Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, at far right, at an event in October 2019. (Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The report is the first to emerge from a third-party investigation into the allegations against Homolka. A separate investigation by the University of Potsdam, released in late October, found that some of the accusations regarding abuse of power to be justified, but did not find any criminally actionable behavior and thus confirmed Homolka’s ongoing employment there as professor. It did not investigate the sexual harassment accusations, as Homolka’s husband had left his job by then.
The new report did scrutinize those allegations. The investigators said they found 13 specific incidents involving allegations against Homolka’s husband. German libel law bars the publication of his name. Using what they called a “traffic light system,” the investigators classified nine of these incidents as “red” cases, in which 25 instances of misconduct could be identified. Two of these cases involved the “initial suspicion of a criminal offense,” they added.
Regarding allegations of abuse of power against Homolka himself, they found — after interviewing 73 individuals — a total of 45 concrete incidents, 14 of which they classified as “red,” involving a total of 23 instances of misconduct. A detailed account of those cases, including responses that Homolka delivered earlier this week, will be included in the final report in January, they said.
More broadly, they said, their interviews had illuminated a culture of misconduct in which unchecked, unlawful or arbitrary decisions could be made largely because of a consolidation of power under Homolka. He presided over an institution ruled by a “culture of fear,” the investigators found, leaving employees and students alike less likely to express criticism or concerns because of the possibility of reprisals.
The investigators said structural changes were needed if there was any hope of shifting the culture. “As long as institutions are in private hands or even in the hands of an individual, or at any rate within the essential sphere of influence of the person who, in the opinion of the investigators, practices and exemplifies misconduct himself, it is hardly conceivable that the causes of the deficits identified can be remedied,” their report says.
Cohen told JTA he wants to see “real change in the leadership” of all liberal Jewish institutions in Germany, and “an external compliance system set up.”
He said, “I hope to see the institutions Homolka founded take a life of their own, no strings attached.”
Anticipating the report, the Abraham Geiger College had announced its own restructuring plans on Monday, a day after ordaining four new rabbis and two cantors at a ceremony in Berlin.
In a statement, interim director Gabriele Thöne said a new foundation would become the provider of rabbinical training in Potsdam.
Gabriella Thoene, interim director of Abraham Geiger College, in Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue on the occasion of an ordination ceremony, Dec. 1, 2022. (Toby Axelrod)
Further, Thöne said the “door is open to Zacharias Frankel College” — the Conservative movement seminary also under the umbrella of the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam — “to join the new foundation on an equal basis while at the same time maintaining its independence.”
But in a scathing response issued Wednesday, the Conservative seminary said the Geiger College interim administration had not consulted them about the restructuring.
“A partnership between equal parties requires joint preparation, mutual trust, transparency and consensus. All this has been lacking so far, and continues to be lacking,” the statement said.
Signed by Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of Zacharias Frankel College and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles among others, the statement also said the preliminary report released Wednesday “confirmed the asymmetrical constellations of power in the two Potsdam rabbinical training colleges.”
Zacharias Frankel College “was in a state of dependency on the will of one person from the time it was founded in 2013. Our institution was deliberately pushed into invisibility and excluded from communication with funders in Germany,” the statement read in part.
“From the outset, the project of a Masorti rabbinical training in Potsdam was merely a makeshift means of being able to found the School of Jewish Theology [also in 2013] and give it the appearance of representing several denominations, and thus of being pluralistically positioned. Instead, however, the accumulation of power led to a monopolization of non-Orthodox Judaism in one person” – namely, Homolka.
For their part, the government and Jewish funding organizations said in their statement Wednesday that they were “committed to ensuring that there will continue to be both liberal and conservative rabbinical training in Potsdam in the future,” but that the proposals developed so far at the Abraham Geiger College do not meet the requirement of being “a clear cut from the previous structure and a comprehensive new beginning.”
The release of the Central Council-commissioned report was preceded by a volley of statements by lawyers for both parties.
On Monday, the council’s attorneys announced that their preliminary report would come out in two days. On Tuesday, Homolka’s attorneys issued a statement criticizing the impending “sudden” release of the report’s summary, suggesting it reeked of “prejudgment.”
The law firm representing Homolka — Behm Becker Geßner — noted that its client had received “a list of questions with serious accusations” from the council’s attorneys, and that he had responded in writing last Sunday. “Should the result not take into account the meaningful statement of our client, there would be a massive violation of personality rights,” warned the lawyers, who have successfully battled some critical press coverage of Homolka.
The Central Council criticized what it called Homolka’s delay tactics, saying its attorneys had asked Homolka in early September if he would respond to questions but had not gotten any response to questions sent Oct. 19 until late Sunday night, well after multiple previous deadlines. Still, the council confirmed, its investigators would take Homolka’s responses into account.
“This tactic is the main reason why the law firm will not be able to complete the final and detailed report of the investigation by the end of the year,” the Central Council said. “The courage of the numerous victims must not be sacrificed to Homolka’s delay tactics.”
Meanwhile, the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany is to meet next week in Berlin, after a three-month postponement. Board elections will be held for the position of chair, previously held by Homolka.
On Nov. 26, that group published a report from an investigation that it had commissioned, which concluded that there was no proof of abuse of power at Abraham Geiger College.
German rabbis who are part of the General Rabbinical Conference, Germany’s liberal rabbinical association, file into Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue for an ordination ceremony, Dec. 1, 2022. (Toby Axelrod)
On Wednesday, a critic within the body, the State Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony, said the Central Council’s commissioned report “supports us in our demand for the resignation of Walter Homolka from all his offices within the Jewish community, which we already made in May.”
And there is dissent within the General Rabbinical Conference, Germany’s liberal rabbinical association, as well. About a dozen members issued a statement in November, breaking from the official, cautious tone, saying that “the abuse of power proven against Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka [in the university’s report of Oct. 26] is not compatible with the values of Jewish and general ethics.”
The association, known as ARK, issued a statement at the end of November stating that, despite differences of opinion in their ranks, they join the call for a structural and personal new beginning, as “a chance for the next phase of rabbinical training in Germany.”
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India’s Modi Visits Israel, Expresses Support for Jewish State as US-Iran Tensions Mount
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a welcome ceremony upon Modi’s arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a two-day visit that both countries have cast as a chance to deepen relations, as regional concerns mount over the risk of military conflict between the United States and Iran.
In an address to the Israeli parliament, Modi told lawmakers that India stood with Israel “with full conviction” as he shared his nation’s condolences over the October 2023 Hamas attack.
“Like you, we have a consistent and uncompromising policy of zero tolerance for terrorism, with no double standards,” he said.
Both Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also addressed the parliament, spoke of terrorist attacks that their nations had faced, with Netanyahu saying India and Israel both faced the challenge of confronting “radical Islam.”
Some opposition lawmakers briefly walked out of the special session, protesting at the speaker’s decision not to invite the head of the Supreme Court, but returned for Modi‘s remarks.
Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which the speaker belongs to, has had a confrontational relationship with the court.
Modi, a Hindu nationalist, became the first prime minister in India’s history to visit Israel in 2017, during which he and Netanyahu took a barefoot stroll on a beach in the northern port city of Haifa.
Both still in power nearly nine years later, the two leaders, who describe one another as friends, are expected to hold talks on artificial intelligence as well as defense at a time when Israel is seeking to increase its military exports.
An Israeli government official said Modi‘s visit would “pave the way for new partnerships and collaborations across many fields.” Bilateral ties were on the cusp of a significant upgrade, an Israeli foreign ministry official said.
US MILITARY BUILDUP NEAR IRAN
Modi is visiting as the United States deploys a vast naval force near Iran‘s coast ahead of possible strikes on the Islamic Republic, with the two countries at an impasse in talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. The Pentagon has also deployed an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, bound for Israel‘s coast.
A US attack on Iran could draw Iranian retaliation against Israel as well as US military facilities in Gulf Arab countries, where millions of Indians live and work and send home billions of dollars of remittances each year.
In his speech to lawmakers, Modi vaguely spoke about the challenges facing stability in the region, acknowledging that the landscape had become more challenging in recent years, but made no mention of the US military build-up, or of Iran.
He backed the US plan to end the war in Gaza, telling the parliament that it could lead to peace “for all people of the region, including by addressing the Palestinian issue.”
“The road to peace is not always easy. But India joins you and the world for dialogue, peace, and stability in this region,” Modi said.
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CIA Launches Fresh Social Media Push to Recruit Iranians as Trump Threatens Military Action
The seal of the Central Intelligence Agency is shown at the entrance of the CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, US, Sept. 24, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The US Central Intelligence Agency has posted on social media new Farsi-language instructions for Iranians wishing to securely contact the spy service.
The CIA recruitment effort comes amid a massive buildup of US military forces in the Middle East that President Donald Trump could order to attack Iran if talks with the US set for Thursday fail to reach a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Trump began laying out the case for a possible US operation in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the Islamic Republic, which he called the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, to have a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking a nuclear arsenal.
“They [Iran‘s leaders] want to start all over again, and are, at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,” he said, accusing Iran of restarting its nuclear program, working to build missiles that “soon” would be capable of reaching the United States, and of being responsible for roadside bombings that have killed US service members and civilians.
“The [Iranian] regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” the Republican president said about 90 minutes into his annual address to a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The CIA posted its Farsi-language message on Tuesday on its X, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and YouTube accounts.
The message is the latest in a series by the CIA aimed at enlisting sources in Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia.
The agency urged Iranians wishing to make contact to “take appropriate action” to protect themselves before doing so and avoid using work computers or their phones.
“Use a new, disposable device, if possible” and “be aware of your surroundings and who may be able to see your screen or activity,” continued the message, adding that those who make contact, provide their locations, names, job titles and “access to information or skills of interest to our agency.”
Those individuals, said the message, should use a trusted Virtual Private Network “not headquartered in Russia, Iran, or China,” or the Tor Network, which encrypts data and hides the user’s IP address.
The CIA declined to comment. Iran’s delegation to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are scheduled to meet Iranian officials led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in Geneva on Thursday for a new round of negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Trump has threatened military action if the talks fail to reach an agreement, or if Tehran executes people arrested for participating in nationwide anti-government demonstrations in January.
Rights groups say thousands of people were killed in the government crackdown on the protests, the worst domestic unrest in Iran since the era of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
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UK Green Leader Backs Proposed ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Party Platform
A Green Party march in London. Photo: Alan Stanton/Flickr
The top official in the United Kingdom’s Green Party has come out in support of a “Zionism Is Racism” motion to be debated at the party’s March conference which could shift the leftist political organization’s official position to full-scale removal of Israel off the map, to be replaced with “a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Lubna Speitan, a British-Palestinian Green Party member who serves in the Greens for Palestine Steering Group and the Greenwich Palestine Alliance, on Tuesday announced she had submitted Motion A105, creatively titled “Zionism Is Racism,” for debate at the UK Green Party’s Spring Conference on March 28.
The measure has received the support of Green Party Leader Zack Polanski.
“I’ll wait to hear the debate, but absolutely, if the definition of Zionism is what is happening right now by the Israeli government, then yes, absolutely, that’s racist and I’ll vote for it,” he said on Times Radio.
However, Speitan’s proposal goes much further than condemning Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — as an allegedly racist ideology, a slander which the Soviet Union’s espionage agencies began promoting in the 1970s, most notably and successfully at the United Nations General Assembly with the passage of Resolution 3379 on Nov. 10, 1975. The infamous measure, which asserted that Zionism was “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” was ultimately overturned in 1991.
The Soviet Union’s effort to link Zionism to racism drew arguments from the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and argued that Judaism’s concept of “the chosen people” promoted racial superiority.
“This deliberate slur interpolated and distorted the real meaning of Judaism which explains the Jewish people are ‘chosen,’ or set apart, for special and burdensome religious and social obligations,” according to the American Jewish Committee.
Speitan’s measure calls for the Green Party to adopt Hamas’s position of eliminating Israel from the map, to replace the Jewish state with a Palestinian state.
The motion offers eight points, the third of which appears to call for either the mass expulsion or genocide of the Israeli people: “Following from Motion E05, which affirmed that Israel is an apartheid State committing genocide, and Motion E07 supporting reparations and accountability, the Green Party supports the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants.”
Speitan connects this call for “the right of the return” with announcing an end of a Jewish state. This longstanding Palestinian demand insists that potentially millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees should return to the land of Israel, a step that, according to many pro-Palestinian activists, would result in the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state.
The measure also advocates explicit support for terrorism against Israel, with point four stating that the Green Party would affirm “the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, including the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation, and acknowledges that the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate.”
This apparent advocacy of violence aligns with statements made last year by Speitan in support of terrorism against the Jewish state.
“The only way forward for the liberation of any people is going to be by force, what was taken by force must be returned by force and this comes with military intervention, and for me I support our right to the armed struggle. We must never deny that,” Speitan said in a September 2025 speech. “I will refuse to condemn the resistance of any repressed or occupied people because we have that right. Only we can claim self-defense, not the occupier.”
Speitan continued, “The moment we rise, we call for resistance, [they say] ‘you terrorist.’”
John Mann, the UK government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, labeled Speitan’s anti-Zionist proposal “support for terrorism and overt racism against Jews. There is no ambiguity. It’s from the extreme margins of politics.”
He went on to invoke former UK Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose time at the helm of the party was marked by a succession of scandals involving antisemitism, to show how extreme the Green Party has become.
“This is well beyond anything that happened during Labour under Jeremy Corbyn,” Mann declared. “This makes Corbyn look like a moderate. The crank element that even Corbyn was worried about has entered the Greens en masse.”
Speaking to Britain’s Daily Mail, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel labeled the motion “one of the most hateful and racist documents I’ve ever read.”
“It calls for the destruction of Israel and seeks to justify terrorism against Israel,” Haskel added, referring to the proposal. “Its intent is to justify the destruction of the Jewish homeland and deny the right of Jews to a national home. The double standards are extraordinary as they demand a national home for Palestinians but not Jews.”
Haskel added, “I completely condemn this horrific document and hope the people of the UK see the Greens for what they are – a racist and hateful political party.”
The group Jewish Greens has urged voting against Speitan’s proposal.
“This is not your run-of-the-mill motion opposing Israel’s actions (something that Jewish Greens would have no problem with), but something much more problematic that is likely to make Jews feel unwelcome in the Green Party,” the group stated. “We urge Green Party members to listen to their Jewish comrades within the party, and consider whether this motion is appropriate for the type of party they want to be in.”
The statement urged for a broader understanding of Zionism, explaining that “calling all forms or interpretations of Zionism ‘racism’ is painting a very diverse group of people with a very broad brush and in effect, it accepts the most extreme right-wing version of Zionism (aka – Kahanism) peddled by the far right as definitive. This is like accepting the EDL’s definition of Englishness. Or like banning all forms of USA nationalism based on the horrendous crimes of the Trump administration.”
Reflecting on the degree with which the party had shifted in recent years, Mann called Speitan’s measure “about as far away as from Green politics of the past as is possible. Greens used to be about stopping fossil fuels and nuclear power and building wind farms. Now hate is bringing members surging into the Green party.”
On Oct. 19, 2025, the Green Party of England and Wales announced that “membership has surged past the Conservative Party, making the Greens the third largest party in the UK. From this position, and with Labour’s clear shift to the right, it’s clear that the Greens are now the Party of choice to counter Reform and their brand of divisive politics.”
The party stated that “membership now stands at over 126,000. This latest milestone marks an 80 percent increase since Zack Polanski was elected Leader of the party last month. The Greens now have more than double the reported members of the Liberal Democrats.”
Polanski said then that British politics “is changing and support for old-style parties built on privilege and power is shrinking. Increasing numbers of people are walking away from the politics of austerity, inequality and division and choosing a new kind of politics that offers a bold, hopeful vision of prosperity, equality and unity. Our membership boom reflects growing public frustration with the political status quo and a hunger for genuine alternatives.”
According to the UK’s Jewish News, Polanski has faced mounting pressure to support the latest anti-Zionist motion from a new group of hardline anti-Israel activists within the party. “Supporting the motion would effectively mean declaring his own mother and other members of his Jewish family — staunch supporters of Israel who have criticized pro-Palestine marches — as racists,” the outlet noted.
A YouGov poll of UK party preferences conducted Feb. 9-10, 2025, placed the Greens as the fifth most popular party in the country coming in at 9 percent support compared to the Liberal Democrats (14 percent), Conservatives (21 percent), Labour (25 percent), and Reform UK (26 percent). A total of 21 percent of Britons polled said they would consider voting for a Green candidate with higher levels of support among those 18-24 (36 percent) and 25-49 (27 percent).
In Britain’s House of Commons, Green politicians currently occupy four seats compared to 404 controlled by Labour, 116 to the Conservatives, 72 to Liberal Democrats, 13 independents, 9 members of the Scottish National Party, and 8 members of Reform UK. Pollsters in the UK have found considerable crossover between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens with 51 percent of the members in each party supporting a merger with the other.
The Jewish Greens explained the practical implications of what adoption of the “Zionism Is Racism” position would entail for the party, noting that any member supporting Zionism could then potentially be expelled, a position which the Democratic Socialists of America (a group with 78,000 members) explicitly adopted last year.
“Most Jewish institutions in the UK have some sort of connection to Zionism. Some closer, some less so. The motion proposers – in a response to a question from Jewish Greens – have made it clear that they will expect the motion to proscribe Zionists,” the Jewish Greens stated. “This gives the party the option to expel almost any Jew involved in organized communal life or who has ever been, including our party leader. Meaning that most Jews in the party – whether they define themselves as Zionists or not – are one grudge away from being dragged through the disciplinary process on spurious charges of ‘Zionism.’”