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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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‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday posted what he described as his personal phone number and invited Israelis to contact him with their questions and problems.
It was an election-season stunt that drew such a flood of responses that the number’s WhatsApp account was blocked within minutes and those calling received a busy signal.
It also drew suspicions that it was a ploy to collect voter data.
In a video posted to social media, Netanyahu is seen with longtime adviser Topaz Luk, who asks the prime minister whether he can publish his phone number. Netanyahu initially reacts with disbelief, saying, “Topaz, have you gone crazy?” before agreeing.
“I want to hear from you. Your suggestions, your questions, your problems. I want to hear, so leave me a message,” Netanyahu said. He added that he could not promise to answer everyone but would respond to as many people as possible.
Hundreds of messages and calls arrived within minutes and the WhatsApp account associated with the number was blocked. Luk later posted on X that the account had been disabled because of the volume of calls and said Netanyahu’s team was working to restore it, directing people to Telegram in the meantime.
Kan political correspondent Michael Shemesh questioned whether the number belonged to Netanyahu at all and suggested on X that the exercise was “probably designed to harvest the phone numbers of potential voters.”
Other users pointed to another clue that the handset seen in the video was unlikely to be Netanyahu’s personal phone. One of the WhatsApp groups visible in Luk’s video was a synagogue updates group whose latest message appeared to back political rival Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who now heads the Beyachad party.
“Something tells me that Bibi isn’t signed up to the ‘Menachem’s House Main Shul Updates’ group,” one X user wrote, “especially not when the latest message there is ‘yalla, it’s time for Bennett.’”
The Likud spokesperson had not responded to a request for comment on the accusations by the time of publication.
It was not the first time Netanyahu handed out what he presented as his personal number during an election campaign. In August 2022, little more than two months before the vote that returned him to power, the then-opposition leader published another number and invited Israelis to video call him.
“Why should only some people have my phone number? Everyone should have it,” Netanyahu said at the time, joking that the move was a “dramatic, world-changing decision.” He told supporters who sent proof they had joined his Telegram channel that they would have a better chance of receiving a video call from him.
The response was similarly intense. Likud said Netanyahu received 9,420 calls within the first 30 minutes, while follow-up videos showed calls and messages flooding the phone.
Netanyahu’s rivals mocked the stunt. Then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman released a parody video saying Netanyahu “has not picked up the phone in 12 years,” while Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid dismissed it as a “fictional phone operated by Netanyahu’s aides.”
The episode comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign, with roughly 20% of voters remaining undecided, many of whom are disillusioned Likud voters, according to pollsters and researchers cited by Reuters.
A Channel 13 poll released earlier this month put Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 23 seats, ahead of Likud with 21, and Netanyahu’s current coalition projected to win just 49 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Eisenkot also led Netanyahu 47% to 34% when respondents were asked who was better suited to serve as prime minister.
The phone-number appeal is the latest in a series of efforts to put Netanyahu directly in front of voters, including a blitz of highly publicized appearances. Last week, the prime minister visited a restaurant in Hadera, a Likud stronghold, where owner Simo Shtivi said his arrival was “like hoisting the World Cup,” as diners lined up for photos and a chance to speak with him.
Netanyahu also made a surprise appearance with his wife Sara at a concert by Israeli pop star Eden Ben Zaken. A few days earlier, he filmed a campaign video at Jerusalem’s Malha Mall meeting shoppers, including children. The Central Elections Committee later ordered the video removed because election law bars the use of children in campaign propaganda.
Likud also rolled out billboards showing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah under the slogan, “They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ‘Have a problem, call the PM,’ says Netanyahu as he gives out his number in campaign video appeared first on The Forward.
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Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box
(JTA) — As pro-Palestinian progressives find some success at the 2026 ballot box, the long-gestating Israel divestment campaign is looking to capitalize in Rhode Island.
Voters in Providence, the state capital, will vote on a referendum this November saying the city should refrain from investing in “foreign countries conducting ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide.”
The language of the actual ballot petition does not mention Israel, nor any other country, by name. But the signature campaign was led by Providence for Palestine, a local activist coalition, and both its proponents and opponents have framed the measure as a referendum on Israel and the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
With the referendum’s ballot placement secured, Providence has become the largest American municipality ever to place divestment before the voting public.
“We’re in this moment when the general public at large, and particularly Democratic voters, very much understand what’s going on in Gaza and Palestine as genocide, as apartheid, and want their leaders to take action on it,” Zack Kliger, a lead organizer of the ballot initiative and member of the Rhode Island chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Kliger described the current divestment campaign as having “definitely been led disproportionately by Jewish organizers.”
To determine which countries are “conducting” any of its list of human rights abuses, the referendum would rely on “resolutions” from various bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, International Court of Justice and “any” U.S. court ruling or U.N. body. Some, though not all, of those bodies have reached conclusions that would implicate Israel in the ballot language’s divestment campaign.
Both Israel and the Trump administration have strongly rejected all genocide accusations leveled against the country. “Apartheid” can be considered an independent crime under international law, while “ethnic cleansing” has no formal legal definition.
Divestment from Israel has seen some success on the municipal level since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has sunk the country’s popularity across the American electorate. Last year a non-binding divestment resolution in Somerville, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with less than half of Providence’s population, became the first such initiative to win at the ballot box. Over objections from Jewish groups, the city this summer began exploring the question of how to enact the measure into law.
Critics of divestment measures argue that they force local governments to put undue focus on international issues; could prompt division and backlash against local Jewish communities, and jeopardize public pension programs. The Providence campaign’s decision to avoid mentioning Israel in the ballot language sets it apart from similar initiatives, while also neutralizing claims, made against other resolutions, that such measures unfairly single out Israel.
Yet local Jewish groups say the risk to the community remains.
“All this will do [is] stoke more division in our community, and potentially make Jewish people here feel more unsafe,” Stephanie Hague, chief strategy officer of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, told JTA.
Hague noted that the ballot language, as written, prompts questions about the authority of the international bodies making judgments about what constitutes genocide, ethnic cleansing and other terms in in the initiative. She said that the Alliance would campaign against the ballot measure and, if it passes, explore legal options for putting up roadblocks to it.
A 2024 proposal to the city council urged Providence, whose approximately 15,000 Jews make up around 7% of the population, not to invest in Israel bonds. The measure failed to make it out of committee. Likewise, the board of Brown University, the Ivy League school located in Providence, voted on a divestment resolution as part of the demands of the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment movement in 2024. It failed.
Activists are more confident this time, citing the success in Somerville — where, unlike in Providence, Israel was mentioned by name as the target of the winning ballot measure. Also unlike Somerville, whose measure was non-binding, Providence’s initiative would mandate city action.
Supporters also note that Providence joined a 2006 divestment initiative against Sudan to protest ethnic cleansing in Darfur, a divestment campaign that was spearheaded by American Jewish groups.
“We’re really proud of the legacy of the American Jewish community and standing up on social issues,” Kliger, who grew up in the Conservative movement, attended a Jewish day school in Brooklyn and has family in Israel, told JTA.
Unlike in Pittsburgh, where a similar 2024 initiative was undone before the election following legal challenges to the signatures, the Providence activists were able to collect and verify more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The initiative’s supporters said they had identified around $2.5 million in city funds that would be affected by a divestment order. They cited American companies frequently targeted by pro-Palestinian activists, such as construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar and weapons firm Axon Enterprise.
The city council of Portland, Maine, also passed a divestment proposal in 2024, though that city’s mayor, after initially endorsing the plan, later said he regretted having done so because of the divisiveness it spurred.
Some progressive Jewish professionals in Providence say the initiative is in keeping with their values.
“I know there are others out there who think that this is a situation where one would need to choose between their Jewish principles and other principles. I don’t perceive it that way,” Lex Rofeberg, senior Jewish educator with the alternative Jewish engagement network Judaism Unbound, told JTA about his support for the ballot campaign.
Rofeberg, a Providence resident, said it would be wrong for non-Jews to conclude that “it is a Jewish value to support human rights violations.”
“For those who see a ballot initiative that does not name Israel at all, but simply says we should not invest our dollars in atrocities — for people who see that as somehow threatening to Judaism, why would they think that?” he asked.
Hague, the Jewish Alliance staffer opposing the initiative, sees just such a threat to Jewish interests. She acknowledged that it can be hard to communicate to non-Jews, who would understandably oppose genocide and apartheid, the ways in which her group sees the BDS movement as “a calling card for antisemitism.”
She outlined what she saw as her group’s mission: “We have to do so much education in a short period of time, and helping people understand the Jewish community’s relationship to Israel, and then understanding this initiative’s relationship to the BDS movement and how those things are connected, and the real fear and isolation many Jewish Americans are already feeling, particularly after Oct. 7.”
The political environment, though, may be unfriendly to such efforts. Following broader national trends, the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, set for Sept. 9, is also pivoting to a large degree around Israel.
Incumbent Mayor Brett Smiley, who converted to Judaism and held a bar mitzvah while in office, is a vocal Israel supporter who opposes the ballot initiative. His progressive challenger, state Rep. David Morales, has backed the ballot initiative.
So too have some local elected officials with Jewish heritage. “For any community that we are identified with, and for the sake of our soul and our humanity, we have to be able to say, ‘This is not OK,’” Rachel Miller, city council president, told JTA.
Miller, who has a Jewish father and Catholic mother, said she considers herself “culturally” Jewish and objected to the idea that there is a single Jewish voice on the issue. She believes, she said, in “disconnecting the actions of a state against a group of people from my personal Jewish heritage, from my personal Jewish identity.”
Even if passed, it’s possible the ballot initiative could run afoul of a statewide ban on working with government contractors who openly boycott Israel — a so-called “anti-BDS law,” one of many such measures enacted in a range of states.
Those laws themselves have been debated for years. This fall a ballot initiative in Oak Park, Illinois, a liberal Chicago suburb, will ask voters to register a formal objection to that state’s anti-boycott law. The initiative, which is opposed by local Jewish groups, survived a legal challenge on Monday.
Hague acknowledged current Jewish divisions on Israel, and the difficult political climate for pro-Israel Jewish groups. Facing down a ballot initiative like this, she said, takes work.
“I think we know public opinion is not supportive of Israel right now. I think it’s not an issue that people understand implicitly when they just read a ballot question,” she said. “So yes, of course, there’s reason for concern, and I think no matter what happens at the ballot, I still think it’s an important moment.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Providence voters to put Israel boycott movement to major test at the ballot box appeared first on The Forward.
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Dutch broadcaster pulls out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation
(JTA) — The Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has pulled out of the next Eurovision Song Contest, saying that Israel’s participation undermined the event’s neutrality.
Avrotros announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from the world’s largest music event next year because it “can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict.”
Eurovision included 35 countries in 2026, all of them in Europe except for Israel and Australia. Avrotros said the contest’s independence was compromised by divisions surrounding “the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and the ongoing restrictions on press freedom.”
Avrotros’ withdrawal does not necessarily mean that the Netherlands won’t be part of the 2027 competition in Burgas, Bulgaria. Public-service broadcasters serve as the technical sponsors of competing artists, and Avrotros said it returned responsibility for Dutch participation in Eurovision to the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep, or NPO, the coordinating body for public broadcasters in the Netherlands. NPO could hand it off to a different broadcaster.
The Netherlands was absent from Eurovision in 2026, when Avrotros pulled out for the first time over Israel’s participation and NPO ruled out identifying another broadcaster.
Eurovision has become a focal point in European backlash against Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Netherlands was joined last year by boycotts from Spain, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia, a bloc representing Israel’s strongest critics in Europe. The competition was viewed by 131 million people, down 35 million from the previous year.
The 2026 event in Vienna also saw thousands of protesters, while over 1,000 artists signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision. Boycotters have accused the European Broadcasting Union, which owns the contest, of a double standard for allowing Israel to remain while banning Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Swiss singer Nemo, who won in 2024, returned their trophy last year in protest against Israel’s inclusion.
Earlier this month, Eurovision organizers announced new rules that bar countries involved in armed conflict from hosting the competition. But the changes did not sufficiently prove that Eurovision would remain “independent and neutral,” according to Avrotros.
“It is undeniable that international conflicts are increasingly affecting the Contest, undermining its neutral character,” Avrotros Director-General Taco Zimmerman said in a statement. “The Eurovision Song Contest has therefore become a platform for division.”
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, said in a statement that organizers “regret” Avrotros’ decision but will continue to coordinate with NPO about opportunities for another broadcaster to take its place.
“We very much hope that audiences and artists in the Netherlands can continue to be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest,” said Green.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dutch broadcaster pulls out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation appeared first on The Forward.
