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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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US Envoys in Israel to Discuss Future of Gaza
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff take part in a charter announcement for US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts, alongside the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in Israel on Saturday to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mainly to discuss Gaza, two people briefed on the matter said, as local authorities reported further violence in the enclave.
The US on Thursday announced plans for a “New Gaza” rebuilt from scratch, to include residential towers, data centers and seaside resorts.
The project forms part of President Donald Trump’s push to advance an October ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that has been shaken by repeated violations.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES REPORT MORE DEATHS
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli fire had killed three people, including two children, in two separate incidents in the northern Gaza Strip.
A statement from the Israeli military said that its troops operating in the northern Gaza Strip identified several militants “who crossed the Yellow Line, planted an explosive device in the area, and approached the troops, posing an immediate threat to them.”
Under the ceasefire accord, Israeli troops were to retreat to a yellow line marked on military maps that runs nearly the full length of Gaza.
A source in the Israeli military told Reuters that the military was aware of only one incident on Saturday and that those involved were not children.
A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed that the meeting was planned but did not provide further details.
Earlier this month, Washington announced that the plan had now moved into the second phase, under which Israel is expected to withdraw troops further from Gaza, and Hamas is due to yield control of the territory’s administration.
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Long before Trump’s second-hand Nobel, a laureate sought to curry favor with Nazis by regifting a prize
Donald Trump is not the first authoritarian to come into possession of a Nobel medal that wasn’t intended for him. In 1943, Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun sent his Nobel Prize for Literature to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a gesture meant to secure a private audience with Adolf Hitler.
Although Hamsun was infamous during World War II and its aftermath, most Americans likely know little about the author. It has taken Trump’s lust for the Nobel Peace Prize — something like Gollum’s slobbering obsession with the “precious” gold ring — to cast fresh light on the Norwegian novelist.
Hamsun occupies a place in history similar to Hitler’s filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl: a genuine artistic innovator who fell under the spell of der Führer and paid for it later in life.
Born to a poor rural family in 1859, Hamsun began writing in his teens. Over his long career he produced more than two dozen novels, along with poetry, short stories and nonfiction. His influence was enormous — Isaac Bashevis Singer once called him the father of modern literature, and his psychological style has often been compared to Franz Kafka’s.
Hamsun vaulted to fame at age 30 with the 1890 publication of the semiautobiographical novel Hunger. He won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature for Growth of the Soil, which the Nobel Committee said “aroused the liveliest interest in many countries and has found favorable reception with the most diverse groups of readers.” Those readers included fascists.
Hamsun was a passionate admirer of Germany and of the Nazis’ ideas about Teutonic purity. The admiration was mutual. German critics praised Growth of the Soil for its portrayal of a mystical connection between people and the land — a theme the Nazis eagerly embraced.
During Germany’s 1940–45 occupation of Norway, Hamsun supported the Nazi-installed government of Vidkun Quisling. His devotion to Hitler was so great that he parted with his 18-carat gold Nobel medal, sending it to Goebbels in hopes that it would earn him a personal meeting with the Führer.
It did. But the audience did not unfold as Hamsun hoped. Although he supported the occupation, he objected to some of its harsher measures, including executions. He hoped to persuade Hitler to soften the regime’s policies. The meeting — retold in a 2005 New Yorker article titled “In From the Cold” — took place June 26, 1943, at Hitler’s retreat in the Bavarian Alps. According to the article, as the two men took tea in Hitler’s study, the conversation turned tense when Hamsun urged Hitler to fire Josef Terboven, the Reich Commissioner for Norway. Hitler rebuffed him, saying, “The Reich Commissioner is a warrior; he’s only there for war-related duties.”
Hitler did not bother to say goodbye when Hamsun left and later snapped at his aides: “I don’t want to see that sort of person here anymore.”
The unpleasant encounter did little to dampen Hamsun’s admiration for the Nazi leader. On May 7, 1945, a collaborationist newspaper published Hamsun’s obituary for Hitler, in which he wrote: “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations.”
After the war, thousands of Norwegian collaborators were arrested and put on trial — including Hamsun. By then he was 86, and his age, along with his stature as Norway’s most celebrated novelist, worked in his favor. While 40 collaborators were executed, including Quisling, Hamsun received a fine of 325,000 kroner, reduced from 575,000.
Hamsun died on Feb. 19, 1952, at age 92.
As for the Nobel medal he sent to Goebbels — it vanished. No one knows what became of it.
Which brings us to Donald Trump and his pre-owned Nobel.
Hitler had no shame in accepting lavish gifts from industrialists, world leaders, and others who arrived in Berlin seeking favor. But Hitler might well be impressed with Donald Trump’s collection during his second term — a glittering haul accumulated on trips to the Middle East and during visits to the White House by foreign dignitaries and sycophantic American business executives.
Size-wise, nothing comes close to the 747 provided by Qatar. And knowing the way to Trump’s heart, Benjamin Netanyahu personally presented him with a letter that the Israeli leader had sent nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. FIFA, the world soccer federation, went so far as to create its own peace prize for the American president.
Trump kept pressing his case that he deserved the Nobel prize, sometimes aided by foreign allies who publicly insisted that he, more than anyone else, merited the honor. But the Nobel Committee never budged.
A workaround presented itself in the person of María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who had been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in resisting Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship. Machado, desperate for Trump’s backing as Venezuela enters a volatile transition, made a calculation as stark as Hamsun’s in 1943. She handed Trump her Nobel medal in the hope that the gesture would secure her political survival.
Still smoldering over being snubbed by the Nobel Committee for a Peace Prize of his own, Trump lashed out in familiar ways — threatening to use military force to take control of Greenland and to slap heavy new tariffs on European allies. Those threats eventually fizzled after Europe dug in its heels, but the resentment never did.
It’s unlikely America’s Gollum will abandon the quest for his own golden “precious,” one with his name engraved on it. With the inauguration of Trump’s new “Board of Peace,” he may have convinced himself he’s found a fresh path to Oslo. The board — made up of foreign governments invited by Trump — is billed as a vehicle for resolving global conflicts. Permanent membership is offered to those that contribute more than $1 billion. As chairman, Trump would be in a position to steer the board however he wishes.
If the “Board of Peace” doesn’t help him finally secure a gold Nobel medallion, it may still serve another purpose: expanding his already considerable wealth.
Luxury condos on the Gaza waterfront, anyone?
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Oct. 7 spurred this secular private school in Manhattan to start holding an annual Shabbat gathering
(New York Jewish Week) — A new Jewish tradition has taken hold at a private, non-Jewish school in Manhattan.
On a recent Friday, about 240 students, parents and educators from the Town School, located on the Upper East Side, stayed late to eat matzah ball soup, recite blessings over challah and candles, and sing Hebrew songs.
It was the third time in as many years that the school had held a Shabbat celebration, and more than half of the students and parents in attendance weren’t Jewish.
“I think there is a real enthusiasm and excitement for families who are not Jewish to come into their first Shabbat or learn more about it again,” said Pierangelo Rossi, the Town School’s director of equity and community action.
Originally from Peru, Rossi is not Jewish. His first Shabbat experience ever was at the Town School in 2024, after Jewish parents organized a gathering in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
For years, the school had special “affinity groups” and spaces for students and parents of color, for “white anti-racist” students, and for queer students and their allies. The attack, and the surge of antisemitism that followed, spurred Jewish students and parents to work with the school to create their own.
While the Town School does not collect information about students’ religion, officials estimate that at least a quarter of the student body is Jewish.
“After Oct. 7, we knew — and it became clear to all of us — that our Jewish community was looking for that sense of affirmation in a way they hadn’t before,” said Head of School Doug Brophy.
Brophy, who has led the Town School since 2018, understood how they felt. He is also vice president of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side.
Affinity groups have emerged as a hot-button issue in the debate over DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion. While their proponents say the groups give minority and marginalized populations desperately needed spaces of their own, critics of DEI say the groups can reinforce divisions and inappropriately inject progressive ideologies into schools and other institutions.
Jewish “anti-woke” advocates have particularly criticized the affinity group framework for too often forcing Jewish students into a binary framework about race and privilege that does not recognize the complexity of Jewish identity.
At the same time, tensions amid the aftermath of Oct. 7 roiled some New York City private schools. The head of one elite private school stepped down last summer after members of the school community clashed over identity, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Gaza war.
At the Town School, officials and parents say, those tensions have been absent. Instead, the entire school community has embraced the Shabbat celebrations alongside the other special events held to honor students’ traditions, such as a lion parade on the school’s block to mark Lunar New Year and a Persian New Year observance led by parents.
“Whether it’s coming from a vulnerability or a difference, it’s [about] wanting to be part of something bigger than yourself, and not just our Jewish families and colleagues feeling a sense of identity, but everyone else developing a greater sense of empathy,” Brophy said.
The Town School is not the only non-Jewish private school in the city to hold Shabbat celebrations in recent years: Riverdale Country Day School in the Bronx says 700 people attended its November 2024 gathering. But it has committed to annual gatherings, which are growing in attendance.
That first Shabbat in 2024 was led by Rabbi Bradley Solmsen from the Conservative Park Avenue Synagogue; in 2025, by Rabbi Rena Rifkin from Stephen Wise; and this year, by Ana Turkienicz, an educator from the Upper West Side’s Rodeph Sholom School and the Pelham Jewish Center.
“For me, it was really a very different context where you have non-Jews that are interested in learning about what is it that Jews do and are open,” Turkienicz said. “And it was beautiful.”
To create an educational plan that was still engaging for children of all ages, she narrowed the focus of the event to two words: “Shabbat” and “shalom,” meaning “Sabbath” and “peace.”
“I need to use vocabulary, and I need to work with the room only, with those with concepts that are universal,” Turkienicz added. “And there is a lot. There’s a lot in ‘Shabbat’ and ‘shalom’ that are universal.”
She taught the guests the songs “Bim Bam” and “Salaam” — the latter being the Arabic word for “shalom” — and recited the blessings over the candles and challah, and the younger children decorated placemats, while the older children hung out with their classmates.
14-year-old Daniel Rybak stuck around near the school after his last class of the day got out so he could attend the after-school Shabbat service for his second time.
Rybak, whose mother is Catholic and whose father is Jewish, has attended the Town School for nine years.
“Just talking about the greater world at this point, with all the troubles in the Levant, with Israel and Gaza, as well as just the general sense, I suppose, that things are getting a little more violent around the world — it’s just a nice thing that brings people back to that sense of, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re family, we’re OK, we’re getting through this,’” Rybak said. “It just shows that even throughout all that that’s happened everywhere, there’s still pockets of community and of real hope.”
This year, the Shabbat gathering took on added meaning for some attendees as some of New York’s Jews feel increasingly alienated or afraid following the election of Zohran Mamdani, a longtime and staunch critic of Israel, to the mayor’s office.
“The whole time I was thinking: 20 blocks north from here, there is a new mayor that we don’t know what [he’s] going to be for the Jewish community in New York,” Turkienicz said. “Twenty blocks south of his mansion, we have a private, non-Jewish school doing a Kabbalat Shabbat.”
Katy Williamson, a Jewish parent who helped organize the last two Town School Shabbats and attended this year’s, said she was “really blown away by the sense of community” and surprised by how many people attended.
“I read the news. Obviously, we live in New York City. I’m very aware of what’s going on outside of this, just in the world right now,” she said. “There was just this really warm feeling. … So many people from the school community joined and wanted to be a part of it.”
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