Three men were ordained as rabbis in Germany on Thursday for the first time since the Holocaust in a ceremony described by German leaders as historic.
President Horst Koehler said the ordination was a milestone in post-war German history and Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hoped many more rabbis would be trained and ordained.
“After the Holocaust, many could never have imagined that Jewish life in Germany would ever thrive again,” Koehler wrote in a congratulatory statement.
“That is why the first ordination of rabbis to take place in Germany in 60 years is a very special occasion indeed,” he said.
The ordination took place at the New Synagogue in the eastern city of Dresden and was broadcast live on television.
'A moment of hope'
Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis throughout Europe during World War II. There are estimated to be at least 100,000 Jews in Germany, compared with 600,000 before World War II. Most fled or were killed, leaving only 12,000 in the country after the war.
The flood of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s led to a rebirth of the country’s Jewish community, but has highlighted the dearth of rabbis. There are only about 25 serving 100 congregations.
The three new rabbis -- Daniel Alter, Tomas Kucera and Malcom Mattitiani -- are the first graduating class of the seven-year-old Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, the first liberal rabbinical seminary to be established in continental Europe since the war.
Alter, who wept during the ceremony, is the only native German among the trio. Kucera is Czech and Mattitiani is from South Africa. Both Alter and Kucera will lead congregations in Germany, while Mattitiani will return to Cape Town.
“This is a moment of hope that these first rabbis to be ordained in Germany since 1942 will be followed by many more,” Merkel wrote in her congratulatory statement.
