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Battle lines deepen in bruising fight for control of Germany’s liberal Jewish institutions
BERLIN (JTA) — The fight over control of Germany’s Reform rabbinical school has taken a new twist — one that appears poised to shatter longstanding institutions within liberal Judaism here, and reforge them into something new.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany announced Thursday that it is bringing in an outside expert to help redesign the country’s Reform and Conservative rabbinical schools, to end the influence of a controversial Reform rabbi who stepped aside as rector amid allegations against him this spring but who remains enmeshed in the schools’ operations.
Gerhard Robbers, a professor emeritus of law and religion at the University of Trier, will consult with students and staff as he drafts the proposal, according to the Central Council, an umbrella group for all organized Jewish communities in Germany.
Robbers’ appointment came as the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany this week announced its own interim director for Abraham Geiger College, in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to preserve control by Rabbi Walter Homolka over the seminary he founded in 1999.
The Central Council announced it could no longer work with the UPJ after the group’s move to install the new interim director, a striking fracture in an alliance that Homolka himself had pressed to create two decades ago.
At the same time, the UPJ could now splinter, with those who are loyal to Homolka facing off against those who believe change is needed.
“Some member communities are now considering leaving the UPJ and reorganizing under the Central Council. We feel we are not represented any more by the UPJ,” Rebecca Seidler, head of the liberal Jewish communities of Hanover and chair of the State Association of the Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Rebecca Seidler, chairwoman of the Liberal Jewish Community of Hanover, Germany, sits in the synagogue there, Sept. 8 2020. (Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images)
In a sign of how deeply the tensions are cutting within Germany’s small community of liberal Jews, Seidler and her mother have wound up on opposing sides of the divide. Rebecca Seidler is the daughter of Katarina Seidler, the attorney whom the UPJ named this week as new interim director of the seminary. Rebecca Seidler described the differences within her family as “very difficult.”
Sources tell JTA that there is talk of a new alliance of liberal, egalitarian communities under the Central Council’s aegis. Josef Schuster, the council’s president, confirmed as much on Thursday, telling JTA that his group is in talks with representatives from communities across Germany.
“Those that wish to step out of the UPJ will be supported intensively, and also we will support them in creating a worthy representation of liberal/progressive Judaism in Germany,“ Schuster said.
The latest developments mark a dramatic new phase in a saga that has been unfolding since May, when allegations of sexual harassment against Homolka’s husband and a possible coverup at the seminary hit the news. Ensuing investigations by the University of Potsdam, under whose auspices the rabbinical schools are organized, and by a law firm commissioned by the Central Council looked into a growing array of accusations of abuse of power by Homolka.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, 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)
Both investigations concluded that there was indeed abuse of power — a finding that Homolka has vigorously denied, and that the UPJ has contested.
In a post on its website, the UPJ had officially announced that an investigation it had commissioned had concluded that there was no proof of abuse of power.
Schuster of the Central Council — which represents some 100,000 Jews in Germany, of which the UPJ says 5,000 are members of its congregations, and is responsible for distributing government subsidies and so-called “religion tax” monies to local Jewish communities — told JTA that the post had convinced him that the “the UPJ is not to be taken seriously.”
“There are two studies that actually show abuse of power, but this is an organization that continues to cover up,” he said. The post was removed Thursday.
Schuster’s frustration deepened on Tuesday, when the UPJ and seminary installed Katarina Seidler as the interim director of Geiger College, two days after an election in which allies of Homolka assumed leadership of the organization. (Homolka had announced only that day that he would not run.) Just that morning, the Central Council had been speaking with Gabriele Thöne, still Geiger College’s interim director, about a “face-saving solution” that would involve her resignation and replacement by someone without ties to Homolka.
Katarina Seidler, then chair of the State Association of Jewish Communities in Lower Saxony, joined a session of the state parliament focused on antisemitism, Hanover, Germany, Oct. 23, 2019. (Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
“Anyone who thinks they can just carry on providing a rabbinical education with the old followers of Homolka, with him continuing in the background of the entity that he — and not the UPJ — founded, with all its entanglements and dependencies, has not taken seriously in any way the results of the independent investigations of the University of Potsdam and the law firm Gercke Wollschläger,” Schuster said in a statement Wednesday.
Schuster told JTA that Geiger College is set up in such a way that Homolka has retained authority despite saying that he had stepped aside.
“It is not just a feeling that he is in control,” Schuster said. “It is the case on a purely legal basis.“
As yet, there has been no formal response from Abraham Geiger College to the Central Council’s withering condemnation. But Irith Michelsohn, the UPJ’s newly elected chair, told JTA in an email Thursday that her group would “definitely try to find a basis for discussion” with the Central Council.
“Perhaps this is difficult at the moment, but we will see what the new secular year will bring,” she said.
The UPJ move apparently also caught the World Union of Progressive Judaism unawares. The same day, the group had expressed support for Thöne along with “deep sadness and sorrow” following “the recent reports about the misconduct, and the hurt to individuals and their communities.”
In an open letter, WUPJ Chair Carole Sterling and President Rabbi Sergio Bergman set out a list of priorities and said they appreciated the ongoing commitment of federal and regional German ministries and the Central Council “to continue to fund Geiger College while new structures and leadership are put in place.” They also pledged their own assistance.
Support from the Central Council for Geiger College is likely to continue, sources say.
Gabriella Thone, interim director of Abraham Geiger College, in Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue on the occasion of an ordination ceremony, Dec. 1, 2022. (Toby Axelrod)
All of the latest turmoil takes place days after the ordinations of four new rabbis and two cantors who studied at the Geiger College, which has become a symbol of the rebirth of Reform Judaism in the country of its founding. Held at the Rykestrasse Synagogue in former East Berlin, complete with organ music and a processional, the ceremony — which observers described as joyous — was likely the last before major changes to how the seminary operates.
Schuster said a new plan — with input from students, educators and rabbis, and in coordination with other major funders and the University of Potsdam — could be presented in the first quarter of 2023.
“Rabbinical training as a private business can no longer be an alternative in the future,” the statement concluded.
The announcement was welcomed by the International Masorti Movement, a partner and supporter of Zacharias Frankel College, the Conservative movement’s seminary, which like Geiger College is situated at the University of Potsdam. In a statement on Thursday, it called on all stakeholders “to listen to the voices of those who suffered from misconduct and to take the investigations of the University and of the law firm Gercke Wollschläger seriously, and work together for a new beginning, both regarding persons as well as structures.”
It is virtually assured that yet more slings and arrows will fly before all is said and done — and that Homolka continues to loom large in the organizations he built.
At the recent UPJ meeting where Homolka allies won election, “it became clear that there are two fronts in the UPJ,” Rebecca Seidler told JTA: “Those who support Homolka and want to separate from the Central Council, and those who are in favor of taking apart the existing structures, and who stand on the side of those affected.”
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The post Battle lines deepen in bruising fight for control of Germany’s liberal Jewish institutions appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Scarier Than the Holocaust’: Survivor of Nazi Camps, Oct. 7 Dies at 92
Daniel Louz speaks at Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the annual March of the Living, May 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Less than two weeks after lighting a Holocaust Remembrance Day torch and saying the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel was scarier than the Nazis’ genocide of European Jews, Daniel Louz, who escaped Nazi persecution as a child and survived the Hamas massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri eight decades later, has died at 92.
The nonagenarian lit a torch at the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, where the annual Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Rally has been held for decades. In an interview with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper before the ceremony, he spoke prophetically – and with humor – about his declining health.
“You see me happy and smiling in the photo, but my health is really not good,” he said. “Soon I will have to return my soul to the Creator, but I make an effort for the camera.”
Born in France, Louz was a child when Nazi Germany invaded in 1940. He and his family were held in three concentration camps in France, separated for years between different camps, with his mother and sister in one place and his father in another. The family survived, but most of his relatives, including 10 aunts and uncles and two cousins, did not.
Two years ago, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Louz visited Auschwitz-Birkenau with the annual March of the Living, where he also took part in a torch-lighting ceremony.
Louz immigrated to Israel in 1949. He first lived on Kibbutz Nirim in the Negev and later made his home at Kibbutz Be’eri.
“I began to breathe again,” Louz said of the move to Israel.
Louz described the events of Oct. 7, 2023, in Be’eri, one of the communities hit hardest during the Hamas-led attack. On Oct. 6, like many Be’eri residents, Louz marked the kibbutz’s anniversary. The next morning, Hamas terrorists stormed the community. Of the kibbutz’s roughly 1,200 residents, 101 were murdered and 30 were kidnapped. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and more than two years later, most of the community is still living elsewhere.
Louz was inside his home as the attack unfolded.
“We were already hostages in our own home, when Hamas terrorists entered the kibbutz,” he said.
“It was a deathly fear. It was even scarier than I remember as a child during that war,” he added.
Louz said he had not recovered from the trauma of the attack and expressed his hope for an end to war, adding that while he no longer believed he would live to see peace himself, he hoped his grandchildren would.
At Birkenau, Louz tied the memory of the Holocaust directly to the massacre in southern Israel.
“We, the survivors of the Holocaust, who established a home and a state – that constitute our great victory over the Nazis and antisemitism – light this torch in memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, and in memory of those murdered on Oct. 7,” he said, his voice shaking.
Approximately 2,500 Holocaust survivors were in areas directly affected by Oct 7, according to Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. Roughly 2,000 of these survivors were forced to evacuate their homes from the Gaza envelope and northern Israel due to the subsequent war.
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An Indiana town had no Jewish cemetery. When its mayor died, it built one
When Marcus Levy died in Aurora, Indiana, in September 1871, the city gathered.
Levy was 63 years old, a native of Prague, and the mayor of Aurora. After the upheavals of 1848, he left Europe and arrived in New York a stranger and without means before making his way west. He came to Aurora around 1855 and, over the years, served as city treasurer, county treasurer, school trustee, and then mayor at the time of his death.
He was unmarried and died a poor man after a failed business investment. At his funeral, one fraternal resolution noted the “entire absence of any one related to him by blood.” But he did not die unknown. He had, as The Israelite newspaper of Cincinnati put it, gained the respect of those around him through “his integrity, his talents, and his goodness of heart, both in his private and public life.”
His funeral was held in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the largest building in town. Rabbi Goldammer of Cincinnati had traveled roughly 40 miles to Aurora to officiate. When Levy’s death was announced, one local report noted, “the grief of his friends and the public at large was no less poignant.”
Aurora marked the death formally. The town council recorded its “unfeigned sorrow,” described Levy as “a competent, faithful, and honest public official,” ordered Council Hall draped in mourning for 30 days, and directed city officers to attend the funeral as a group.
At 1 p.m., according to an account of the day, the services began. The church was filled to capacity, and probably more than half of those who came could not get in. One account estimated the attendance at more than 4,000 people.
Then the procession formed.
A German band led. The Aurora lodge of Masons followed in full regalia. Then came the Odd Fellows lodges, also in regalia. Another band. The hearse. Ladies and gentlemen “of the Jewish faith” in carriages. Citizens on foot.
The procession moved under direction through the city to River View Cemetery. One account said it extended nearly three miles. Another called it the largest funeral procession Aurora had ever seen.
At the graveside, rites were performed. The Masons and Odd Fellows conducted their fraternal ceremonies. Afterward, Rabbi Goldammer read the Jewish funeral service.
‘The wind is favorable’
The burial itself had nearly taken place elsewhere.
Because Aurora’s Jewish population numbered just four families, local Jews had first agreed to send Levy’s remains to Cincinnati, where there was an established Jewish cemetery.
But Aurora resisted that plan. According to one report, the “impressive desire of the community” was to keep within the city “as a dear memory” the remains of the man they had respected for so many years. Another account stated Levy’s friends in the city, “irrespective of religious belief,” insisted that he should be buried where he had spent so much of his life.
And so he was.
Levy was interred in River View Cemetery, and Rabbi Goldammer consecrated the ground. Yet the work did not end with the funeral. Rabbi Isaac M. Wise later explained that the Jews of Aurora and neighboring Lawrenceburgh, “few in numbers,” attempted to purchase three adjoining lots so that Levy’s grave might become part of a Jewish burial ground.
A second effort followed: to place “an appropriate monument” above Levy’s grave.
To raise the money, local Jews turned outward. Wise wrote that Abram Epstein and Joseph Meyer of Aurora took the matter in hand and invited him to lecture in the city for the benefit of the monument fund. Wise had refused other outside engagements that winter, but he went to Aurora on Jan. 20, 1873.
The lecture was held in the Presbyterian church. Its pastor, the Rev. A.W. Freeman, with the unanimous consent of his congregation, offered the building for the occasion. Wise described it as “a very pleasant and spacious building.” Before the lecture, Freeman’s daughter played the organ, and four local vocalists, including “one of the most respected bankers of the place and his lady,” sang a quartet.
Though revival meetings were underway in two other churches that same evening, Wise said the church was well filled with “a highly intelligent class of people,” who listened patiently for an hour and a quarter as he lectured on episodes from Jewish history and the world’s progress since then.
Afterward, Freeman, who had introduced Wise, rose and proposed a vote of thanks, which was unanimously approved.
Wise did not know how much money had been raised. He hoped only that the work would continue until the fund was sufficient to erect “a respectable monument” to Levy. He added that he would willingly serve again for that purpose.
A local writer had remarked that the event would be a curious spectacle, a Jewish rabbi speaking in a Christian church before a Christian audience. Wise rejected the novelty. There was nothing peculiar in it, he wrote, for one “to whom all men are equals whatever their creeds, languages, or places of nativity may be.” He added, “We worship one God and love one human family,” and told readers afterward, “We are steering in that direction, and the wind is favorable.”
In Aurora, a Jewish mayor died, and the town did not send him away.
They buried him and then worked to mark the ground.
The post An Indiana town had no Jewish cemetery. When its mayor died, it built one appeared first on The Forward.
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Mediators Still Seek to Bridge US, Iran Gaps Despite No Face-to-Face Talks
People walk past a billboard with a graphic design about the Strait of Hormuz on a building, amid a ceasefire between US and Iran, in Tehran, Iran, April 27, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Work has not halted to bridge gaps between the United States and Iran, sources from mediator Pakistan said, despite the absence of face-to-face diplomacy after President Donald Trump called off a trip by his envoys over the weekend.
Iranian sources disclosed Tehran’s latest proposal on Monday, which would set aside discussion of Iran‘s nuclear program until the war is ended and disputes over shipping from the Gulf are resolved. That is unlikely to satisfy Washington, which says nuclear issues must be dealt with from the outset.
Hopes of reviving peace efforts have receded since the US president scrapped a visit on Saturday by his envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, where Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi shuttled in and out twice over the weekend.
Araqchi also visited Oman over the weekend and went to Russia on Monday, where he met President Vladimir Putin and received words of support from a longstanding ally.
OIL PRICES RISE AGAIN
With the warring sides still seemingly far apart on issues including Iran‘s nuclear ambitions and access through the crucial Strait of Hormuz, oil prices resumed their upward march when trade reopened on Monday. Brent crude was up around 3.5% at around $108.8 a barrel by 1500 GMT.
“If they want to talk, they can come to us, or they can call us. You know, there is a telephone. We have nice, secure lines,” Trump told “The Sunday Briefing” on Fox News.
“They know what has to be in the agreement. It’s very simple: They cannot have a nuclear weapon; otherwise, there’s no reason to meet,” Trump said.
Araqchi expressed a different perspective, telling reporters in Russia that Trump requested negotiations because the US has not achieved any of its objectives.
ISLAMABAD REOPENS AFTER LOCKDOWN TO HOST TALKS
Senior Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the proposal carried by Araqchi to Islamabad over the weekend envisioned talks in stages, with the nuclear issue to be set aside at the start.
A first step would require ending the US-Israeli war on Iran and providing guarantees that Washington cannot start it up again. Then negotiators would resolve the US blockade and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran aims to reopen under its control.
Only then would talks look at other issues, including the longstanding dispute over Iran‘s nuclear program, with Iran still seeking some kind of US acknowledgment of its right to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes.
In a sign that no face-to-face meetings are planned any time soon, streets reopened in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, which had been locked down for a week in anticipation of talks that never took place. The luxury hotel that had been cleared out to serve as a venue was again taking reservations from the public.
Pakistani officials said negotiations were still taking place remotely, but there were no plans to convene a meeting in person until the sides were close enough to sign a memorandum.
SHIPPING SNARLED BY BOTH SIDES
Although a ceasefire has paused the US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Feb. 28, no agreement has been reached on terms to end a war that has killed thousands and driven up oil prices. Both sides could be settling in for a test of wills.
Iran has largely blocked all shipping apart from its own from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began. This month, the United States began blockading Iranian ships.
Six tankers loaded with Iranian oil have been forced back to Iran by the US blockade in recent days, ship-tracking data shows, underscoring the impact the war is having on traffic.
Between 125 and 140 ships usually crossed in and out of the strait daily before the war, but only seven have done so in the past day, according to Kpler ship-tracking data and satellite analysis from SynMax, and none of them were carrying oil bound for the global market.
With his approval ratings falling, Trump faces domestic pressure to end the unpopular war. Iran‘s leaders, though weakened militarily, have found leverage with their ability to stop shipping in the strait, which normally carries a fifth of global oil shipments.
However, experts have warned that the Iranian economy is on the verge of collapse, especially if the US blockade continues to slash Iran’s oil exports.