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In a twist, German rabbi at scandal’s center cedes rabbinical school ownership to Berlin Jews
(JTA) — In a shocking development, the embattled founder of Germany’s non-Orthodox rabbinical schools has relinquished his ownership stake in them to the Jewish Community of Berlin.
The 25,000 euro transaction means that Rabbi Walter Homolka is no longer in control of the Reform Abraham Geiger College and the Conservative Zacharias Frankel College at the University of Potsdam.
The sale achieves a result that the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the seminaries’ main funder, has been trying to reach openly since late last year, after two investigations confirmed that Homolka had abused his power at the seminaries.
The Jewish Community of Berlin had not publicly been part of the efforts to overhaul the schools launched after allegations against Homolka broke into public view last May. The allegations initially related to a sexual harassment scandal involving his husband, who was also his employee, but widened to implicate other aspects of Homolka’s leadership.
The group’s announcement late Wednesday of the purchase, executed the day before, initially alarmed some who have been advocating for changes at the seminaries, because the plan did not clearly rule out a role for Homolka. The Central Council of Jews in Germany issued a statement lambasting the fact that the deal “took place without consultation with the students, employees, or the donors” and said the new arrangement would not improve rabbinical education in Germany.
But in a hastily arranged meeting Thursday, Berlin Jewish Community President Gideon Joffe assured Josef Schuster, the council’s head, that Homolka would not be part of the seminaries going forward. The meeting left Schuster prepared to collaborate with Joffe’s group, a spokesperson for the council confirmed.
Now, the path is clear for the official Jewish community to seize authority over non-Orthodox rabbinical training in the country where Reform Judaism was born in the 19th century.
“This may not be the ideal situation, but it is a compromise that allows almost everyone to live with the results,” Cantor Itamar Cohen, the graduate whose complaint kicked off the scandal, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He said he would fully embrace the offer “if it is accepted by Klal Israel, the majority of the Jewish community as encapsulated in the main representing bodies.”
Concerns about the surprise announcement largely reflected worries that Homolka could have structured the deal in a way that benefits him.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, then rector of the Abraham Geiger College, in the Liberal Jewish community’s synagogue in Hanover, Germany in December 2016. (Julian Stratenschulte/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Two separate investigations — one by the university and the other by lawyers commissioned by the Central Council — recently determined that Homolka had created an “atmosphere of fear” among students and staff in the very institutions he launched more than 20 years ago. The final report from the Central Council investigation is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Homolka has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
In the wake of those findings, there was an increasing appearance of desperation on the part of the old guard to hold on to control of the two seminaries. In December, days after the damning Central Council interim report was issued, the Union of Progressive Judaism in Germany — with a newly elected board friendly to Homolka — announced it had replaced the interim director of the Geiger College with its own appointee. The Central Council promptly nixed that plan, calling the Union of Progressive Judaism a puppet of Homolka and announcing its appointment of the scholar Gerhard Robbers to work on restructuring the two colleges.
Skeptics of the latest development said they were sure Homolka’s influence would emerge somewhere, for example in appointments to the reconstituted institutions.
“I don’t find this reassuring,” said Nick Hoermann, a current student at Frankel College. “It has been clear for a while now that Homolka’s only way to act in the future would be through back doors.”
But for now at least, the Central Council — which initially called the sale announcement “astonishing” — says it is ready to work with the Jewish Community of Berlin.
Though the official community’s move came as a surprise to many, Joffe and his team had been considering some kind of rescue maneuver since the scandal broke last May, Ilan Kiesling, a spokesperson for the community, said in an email to JTA. The concrete plan emerged only after the damning preliminary expert opinion came out in December.
Joffe approached Homolka directly at that point and convinced him “that a completely fresh start at [Abraham Geiger College] was indispensable – together with a complete renunciation of all his leadership positions. Rabbi Homolka agreed to this renunciation and transferred all shares of the non-profit limited company to the community,” Kiesling wrote.
The legally binding takeover took place this week, and did not cost the community anything beyond “the capital contribution of the limited company in the amount of 25,000 euros,” Kiesling said.
He added that the community “guarantees a complete and transparent new start” for the Geiger seminary. “There will no longer be an accumulation of offices” under one person, one of the habits for which Homolka has been criticized. There was no specific reference to the Frankel College, which until now has appointed its own academic leadership.
The community plans to establish an international advisory board and an external contact point for students to report any problems. Early on in the scandal, it emerged that Cohen’s complaint had been investigated internally, by parties beholden to Homolka.
Kiesling also told the JTA that the community had engaged a former community president, Rabbi Andreas Nachama, chair of Germany’s liberal rabbinical conference, known as ARK, to advise them from a rabbinical perspective. Nachama was ordained by the U.S.-based Alliance for Jewish Renewal movement and leads an egalitarian Reform congregation in Berlin.
In his statement Wednesday, Joffe said, “The top priority for us at the moment is to bring the Abraham Geiger College into calm waters and pave the way for the students to continue their education in a stable structure.”
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The post In a twist, German rabbi at scandal’s center cedes rabbinical school ownership to Berlin Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Invites Israel’s Netanyahu to White House, Prime Minister’s Office Says
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump has invited Israel‘s Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in the “near future,” the prime minister’s office said on Monday, shortly after Trump said Israel should maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria.
A visit to the White House would mark the Israeli prime minister’s fifth since Trump returned to office in January. The two leaders have publicly projected a close relationship, though US and Israeli sources have said Trump has at times expressed frustration with Netanyahu.
The prime minister’s office said Netanyahu and Trump discussed disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza. Trump in September announced a plan to end the Gaza war and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place since October.
TRUMP PUSHES ISRAEL-SYRIA DIALOGUE
Trump earlier said in a statement that it was very important that Israel maintained a “strong and true dialogue” with neighboring Syria, and that “nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous state.”
“Syria and Israel will have a long and prosperous relationship together,” said Trump, whose administration is trying to broker a non-aggression pact between the two states.
Syria does not formally recognize Israel, which following the fall of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.
The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria and later annexes by Israel, was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Trump has backed Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, while Israel voiced hostility over his past links to Islamist militancy and has lobbied Washington to keep Syria weak.
An Israeli raid in southern Syria on Friday killed 13 Syrians, Syrian state media reported. The Israeli military said it had targeted a Lebanese Islamist terror group there.
The call with Trump also came a day after Netanyahu asked Israel‘s president for a pardon in his long-running corruption trial. Trump has publicly voiced support for pardoning Netanyahu and sent a letter last month urging President Isaac Herzog to consider it.
The prime minister’s readout of the call made no mention of the pardon. Israeli opposition politicians have come out against the request and called on Netanyahu to instead resign.
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Iran’s Water Crisis Deepens as Experts Say Extreme Drought Is Worst in At Least 40 Years
People shop water storage tanks following a drought crisis in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran’s water crisis has continued to deteriorate, with the country experiencing a severe drought which has prompted calls to evacuate the capital of Tehran, whose metropolitan area is home to approximately 15 million people.
From Sept. 23 to Nov. 28, Iran averaged 3.9 millimeters of rain, a staggering drop of 88.3 percent compared to the longterm average of 33.5 millimeters, according to Iran’s meteorology authorities.
“Nature is now imposing hard limits,” Amir AghaKouchak, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN. “For decades, policies have encouraged the expansion of irrigated agriculture in arid regions,” he explained, echoing others who have identified many years of economic, agricultural, and policy decisions which have drained the desert nation’s aquifers.
AghaKouchak described the current drought as the worst for at least 40 years.
Iran’s state-run ISNA news site reported that the country had not seen rain in November’s last week and that the four provinces experiencing the worst conditions were Bushehr, South Khorasan, Qom, and Yazd. ISNA also named Tehran Province as a region with low rain, citing a 97.4 percent drop. Factors named as impacting the drought included drying wetlands, decreases in humidity, fewer clouds, failure to update infrastructure, expansion of agriculture into dry regions, growth in the oil industry, building too many dams, and “intensified land subsidence.”
Iran has reached a state of “water bankruptcy,” according to Kaveh Madani, who served as deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment. He is currently director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
Mohsen Mesgaran, an associate professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, told CNN that “an estimated 30 percent of treated drinking water is lost through old, leaky distribution systems, and there’s very little water recycling.”
Ali Bitollahi, head of the Earthquake Engineering and Risk Department at the Road, Housing, and Urban Development Research Center, labeled the drought “very serious” and called it the “driest autumn in the country.”
Reuters reported that 10 percent of the dams in the country had run dry.
Mohsen Ardakani, the director general of the Tehran Provincial Water and Sanitation Authority, said last month that the main reservoirs supplying the capital city were at 11 percent capacity, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.
The Latyan Dam outside Tehran is reportedly around 9 percent full, while the Amir Kabir Dam is around 8 percent of its capacity.
Mashhad, Iran’s second largest metropolitan area with 3 million people, had reached 3 percent of its water capacity, according to Hossein Esmailian, head of the city’s water and wastewater utility company.
The Mehr News Agency reported that wheat production in the country dropped 30 percent due to the previous year’s drought.
The government has explored using cloud seeding to provoke rain but has seen limited results.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has stated that water rationing will begin this month if rain does not return. On Nov. 6, he said that “even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They [citizens] have to evacuate Tehran.”
About two weeks later, Pezeshkian said that the country “has no choice” but to relocate its capital, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” he said during a televised national address, asserting that the deepening crisis has “rendered the city uninhabitable.”
However, Mesgaran noted that “most households simply can’t afford such a move,” asking, “Where would people even go?”
Amid the water crisis, the Iranian regime has spent significant resources on bolstering its military and nuclear programs, spending an estimated billions of dollars on support for its terrorist proxies abroad.
According to the US Treasury Department, for example, Iran has provided more than $100 million per month to Hezbollah so far this year alone, with $1 billion representing only a portion of Tehran’s overall support for the Lebanese terrorist group.
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Northwestern University Agrees to $75 Million Settlement With Trump Admin Over Antisemitism Complaints
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: Vincent Alban via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million and abolish a controversial agreement it reached with a pro-Hamas student group in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations of antisemitism and reverse discrimination.
“Today’s settlement marks another victory in the Trump administration’s fight to ensure that American educational institutions protect Jewish students and put merit first,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Friday. “Institutions that accept federal funds are obligated to follow civil rights law — we are grateful to Northwestern for negotiating this historic deal.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern struggled to correct an impression that it had coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment, in which they illegally occupied the Deering Meadow section of campus.
Part of the deal, infamously known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement,” to end the encampment stipulated establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement, noting that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
On Friday, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN), whose activism contributed to the federal government’s sanctioning the university, said it “welcomes the fact that the Resolution Agreement nullifies the discriminatory Deering Meadow Agreement, a document that represented one of the lowest points in Northwestern’s history.”
It added, “That agreement granted preferential treatment based on national origin, empowered groups involved in harassment, bypassed required governance safeguards, and signaled an institutional surrender rather than leadership. Its elimination is an essential step toward reinstating civil rights compliance and restoring the university’s credibility.”
Northwestern previously touted its progress on addressing the campus antisemitism crisis in April, saying that it had addressed alleged failures highlighted by lawmakers and Jewish civil rights activists.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.
“Over the past two years, Northwestern has implemented numerous measures to strengthen our campus environment: new training requirements, expanded reporting systems and greater support for Jewish students. All of those measures predated this agreement,” the university said on Friday. “Incidents have significantly declined as a result. As part of the agreement, we will continue strengthening those measures, including a new campus climate survey for Jewish students.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.