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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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Is AIPAC a ‘monster’ that decides Congressional races? The data shows otherwise
At a rally for progressive candidates last week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called AIPAC “monsters.” The pro-Israel lobby, he told the crowd, uses “millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another.”
This is not an insulated idea. Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee, was proud to stress that he was a candidate AIPAC would never endorse starting with one of his very first online ads.
On the left — and, more quietly, the right — versions of the “monster” narrative are spreading, suggesting that AIPAC is an electoral force with bottomless pockets that decides who serves in Congress.
The truth is quite different. To find it, I pulled both primary and general election outcomes for every Congressional candidate that AIPAC’s traditional PAC backed in 2022 and 2024 — 788 candidates across the two cycles — from the Federal Electoral Commission. I ran the same exercise for 17 peer single-issue PACs, including the NRA and Planned Parenthood.
The data shows that while AIPAC has an impressive operation, its electoral results do not outperform those of any other major single-issue lobby. AIPAC itself cites a 95% win rate on endorsed candidates as evidence of its political muscle, but that high level of success is partially attributable to the fact that, according to my sample, some 86% percent of AIPAC’s endorsements go to sitting members of Congress. And incumbents win about 95% of general elections — regardless of who funds them.
What’s more remarkable than the number of elections AIPAC wins is how often it gets credit or blame — depending on your politics — for deciding races.
When former Rep. Cori Bush lost her 2024 primary against an AIPAC-backed challenger, AIPAC was widely cited as influencing the race — even though even though Bush spent much of 2024 fighting a federal investigation into her campaign-fund spending, and lost to Wesley Bell, a former St. Louis County prosecutor with the kind of district-wide name recognition no PAC can buy. That same year, Rep. Summer Lee, who had been at least as outspoken on Israel’s conduct in Gaza as Bush, beat AIPAC’s preferred candidate in the Pittsburgh primary by more than 20 points.
Somehow, the narrative that AIPAC rather than voters decides Congressional races wasn’t overturned by Lee’s win. It’s almost like people who want to believe that Jews control politics in the United States have a bias toward seeing instances that on the surface may appear to confirm that belief — and toward ignoring those that contest it.
When the group’s main PAC supported candidates who were not yet sitting members of Congress, their picks won about 91% of primaries. This sounds high, indeed, but other major lobbies do even better. For instance, lobbies including the NRA, Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood all boast success rates over the same period of more than 95%.
AIPAC is, in this context, indistinguishable in terms of its win rate than all other lobbies.
Perhaps an even more important test is tight races — primaries decided by 10 percentage points or fewer. Here, AIPAC wins about 79% of the time. This is comparable to the win rate of all other lobbies I saw, but not by far the largest. For instance, the NRA’s win rate in these tight races is 84%, the Sierra Club 88%, and Planned Parenthood 83%.
So it is true that AIPAC plays a real role in American politics. What gets missed amid the excess scrutiny on AIPAC: that role is, in effect, no different from that of any other lobby. In fact, AIPAC is in practice often slightly less effective than many of its peers.
That truth helps make clear how dangerous the disproportionate attention AIPAC receives from the media, and from candidates opposed to its priorities, can be. To single out a well-funded lobby with many Jewish members, and to cast it as the secret hand behind every contested race, isn’t just wrong on the data. It rhymes with the oldest antisemitic trope there is: that Jews quietly run the world.
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Feds open antisemitism investigation into National Education Association
(JTA) — The Trump administration is launching an antisemitism investigation into the National Education Association, the influential public school teachers union, over purported employment discrimination.
The probe is based on allegations that Jewish members of the NEA were harassed and “physically intimidated” during the organization’s 2025 annual convention, including a reported case of NEA members appearing to cheer at mention of the 2005 attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado.
The complaint, based on the accounts of several Jewish NEA members, also spotlighted recent controversies, such as materials from the union that labeled a map of the state of Israel as “Palestine” for Indigenous People’s Day and a handbook that failed to identify Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust. They further alleged that the union’s diversity hiring guidelines harmed its Jewish members.
The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a legal group that has brought several other such antisemitism cases to the Trump administration, filed the complaint that triggered the NEA investigation. The case is being handled through the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, whose authority to investigate employment discrimination also extends to union membership.
“We really appreciate the EEOC’s decision to open this investigation,” Marci Miller, director of legal investigations at the Brandeis Center, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In a statement to JTA, the NEA said, “We take concerns like this seriously and are reviewing the matter through our established processes.” The union added that it “does not tolerate antisemitism in any form and is committed to ensuring that all members and students, including Jewish members and students, can work and learn in a safe and welcoming environment.”
The NEA has previously said its map labeled “Palestine” “does not meet our standards,” and updated its Holocaust handbook in response to the pushback.
Jews in public school education have expressed concern about tensions over the last few years. In 2021, many Jewish groups rallied against NEA proposals to oppose Israel; the measures did not pass. At its 2025 convention, the NEA had voted to boycott the Anti-Defamation League, though its executive committee rejected the vote following pushback from Jewish groups.
The GOP-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce is also investigating the union over antisemitism, citing several of the same instances later outlined in the Brandeis Center complaint.
The EEOC’s NEA case is part of an expansion of the Trump administration’s antisemitism investigations beyond college and K-12 campuses. Last week the U.S. Health and Human Services Department opened its own probe into the American Psychological Association, also based on a Brandeis Center complaint.
In addition to alleged harassment of Jewish members at the convention, Miller said the center’s NEA complaint also involved diversity-based hiring practices at the union: “Jewish members in particular have been harmed by this policy because they have not been recognized as a racial or ethnic group worth counting for purposes of this policy.”
The EEOC has tackled antisemitism cases against other institutions, but its role in such investigations is controversial. The agency’s chair, Andrea Lucas, is currently demanding that the University of Pennsylvania turn over a list of Jews affiliated with the university as part of the commission’s antisemitism investigation into the Ivy League school. Several Jewish groups, as well as the university itself, have argued that such a demand will make Jews less safe.
Some Jewish groups have alleged that the administration has used antisemitism allegations as a pretext to undermine institutions it considers ideologically unfriendly.
One of Lucas’s defenders in the Jewish community is Kenneth Marcus, the Brandeis Center’s founder. Lucas herself is not Jewish but recently defended her legal strategy to Jewish leaders at a campus antisemitism conference.
Asked about this, Miller said the Brandeis Center was providing “dozens” of Jewish witnesses to the EEOC for consensual interviews.
“There’s no demand for anybody else,” she said. “We have plenty of information.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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New York primary tests Mamdani’s pull and Israel as a campaign issue
New York City Democratic voters are going to the polls today in congressional primaries that are doubling as a referendum on U.S.-Israel relations, as candidates allied with Mayor Zohran Mamdani test whether his brand of democratic socialism and criticism of hardline pro-Israel money in politics will translate into broader electoral success.
Mamdani has endorsed Columbia Gaza war encampment leader Darializa Avila-Chevalier and former City Comptroller Brad Lander in challenging sitting members of Congress, and Assemblymember Claire Valdez for an open seat.
All have campaigned using the terms “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and Mamdani himself has singled out Israel and its champions as adversaries.
At a Brooklyn campaign rally last week, Mamdani compared the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to “monsters” who “move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal — to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another.”
The statement drew widespread condemnation from Jewish leaders, including some of Mamdani’s supporters. And it comes as Democratic infighting over Israel nationally has intensified, with candidates across the political spectrum increasingly treating support from AIPAC as politically toxic.
All three of the Mamdani-endorsed congressional candidates have made Israel or AIPAC a central part of their campaigns, though each in different ways. AIPAC backs candidates aligned with continued U.S. support for Israel military aid and has spent upwards of $38 million nationally this election cycle, a Politico analysis found — though exact AIPAC contributions are difficult to track due to its use of shell PACs and tactic of funneling money directly to campaigns.
In the 10th Congressional District in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn, Lander is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman, zeroing in on Goldman’s support for U.S. military aid to Israel and his past ties to AIPAC. Lander opted not to take part in New York City’s annual Israel Parade, while Goldman used his participation to appeal to Jewish voters.
Earlier this month, Israel and Gaza consumed roughly 15 minutes of a one-hour debate between the candidates. Goldman expressed a desire to move on, arguing that “Israel is not the most important issue in this district,” while Lander countered that Gaza represents “one of the significant moral and humanity challenges of our time.”
Goldman has defended his support for Israel as consistent with his values. He told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in February that there is “an undercurrent of antisemitism in the degree to which AIPAC seems to be vilified.”
The heat boiled over on Sunday when a Brooklyn coffee bar chain, Poetica Coffee, declared on social media after Goldman and his young daughter stopped by that it would have turned Goldman away from the cafe had staff known who he was, posting to Instagram that they don’t serve “genocide enablers.”
Next to a picture of Goldman taken outside the shop after he had ordered a coffee, and another image showing $9.82 refunded, the post added: “Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice? Or are you still having a hard time telling the difference?” (The account has since been disabled.)
Lander, who identifies as a liberal Zionist, had acknowledged the potential for anti-Israel passions in the race to get out of hand — telling an interviewer that criticizing AIPAC makes him “queasy” given “the antisemitic tropes at play,” but that he feels an obligation to call out its funding nonetheless as he promises to curtail U.S. military aid to Israel.
Goldman has not commented on the incident, other than to reply on Instagram: “The barista could not have been nicer to my 7-yr-old daughter and me.” Lander criticized the coffee shop’s response, telling the Forward, “There are plenty of ways to lobby elected officials and express outrage at the votes they’ve taken without turning coffee shops into places people don’t feel welcome.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Avila Chevalier attended a rally held in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023 widely condemned for condoning Hamas’ violence. She has said she attended in anticipation of an Israeli military response, citing “a pattern in which whenever there is an incident, the state of Israel engages in a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.”
And she told the New York Editorial Board last week that Zionism “is an ideology that is looking to create a political system where one group of people has more standing before the law than another group of people.”
She faces AIPAC-backed incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in NY-13, which covers Upper Manhattan and portions of the Bronx.
“To know that my opponent takes AIPAC money is something that, for a lot of people, is just disqualifying. It is [about] Palestine at the heart of it, but it’s also what it says about someone’s inability to stand up against something that is so blatantly horrific, someone who refuses to name a genocide,” Avila Chevalier told the Nation. “Can you trust someone who won’t even say that word to fight for you on the most basic of issues?”
Addressing AIPAC’s support for him in a primary debate, Espaillat said “no one dictates or tells me how to vote, my constituents do that.”
Meanwhile, in NY-7, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens, Valdez has sought to make Israel and AIPAC a campaign issue in a race where AIPAC is not involved and the candidates have broad agreement on Gaza.
Valdez faces Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, whom she has critiqued for not using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions until after he announced his candidacy. She also accused Reynoso of benefiting from secretive pro-Israel money, despite no evidence that AIPAC has supported his campaign.
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