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(JTA) — In a surprising improvement, the embattled founding father of Germany’s non-Orthodox rabbinical faculties has relinquished his possession stake in them to the Jewish Group of Berlin.
The 25,000 euro transaction signifies that Rabbi Walter Homolka is now not in command of the Reform Abraham Geiger School and the Conservative Zacharias Frankel School on the College of Potsdam.
The sale achieves a consequence that the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the seminaries’ predominant funder, has been attempting to achieve overtly since late final 12 months, after two investigations confirmed that Homolka had abused his energy on the seminaries.
The Jewish Group of Berlin had not publicly been a part of the efforts to overtake the faculties launched after allegations towards Homolka broke into public view final Could. The allegations initially associated to a sexual harassment scandal involving his husband, who was additionally his worker, however widened to implicate different points of Homolka’s management.
The group’s announcement late Wednesday of the acquisition, executed the day earlier than, initially alarmed some who’ve been advocating for modifications on the seminaries, as a result of the plan didn’t clearly rule out a job for Homolka. The Central Council of Jews in Germany issued an announcement lambasting the truth that the deal “happened with out session with the scholars, staff, or the donors” and stated the brand new association wouldn’t enhance rabbinical schooling in Germany.
However in a unexpectedly organized assembly Thursday, Berlin Jewish Group President Gideon Joffe assured Josef Schuster, the council’s head, that Homolka wouldn’t be a part of the seminaries going ahead. The assembly left Schuster ready to collaborate with Joffe’s group, a spokesperson for the council confirmed.
Now, the trail is evident for the official Jewish neighborhood to grab authority over non-Orthodox rabbinical coaching within the nation the place Reform Judaism was born within the nineteenth century.
“This might not be the perfect state of affairs, however it’s a compromise that permits nearly everybody to dwell with the outcomes,” Cantor Itamar Cohen, the graduate whose criticism kicked off the scandal, informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company. He stated he would totally embrace the provide “whether it is accepted by Klal Israel, nearly all of the Jewish neighborhood as encapsulated in the primary representing our bodies.”
Considerations concerning the shock announcement largely mirrored worries that Homolka might have structured the deal in a means that advantages him.
Rabbi Walter Homolka, then rector of the Abraham Geiger School, within the Liberal Jewish neighborhood’s synagogue in Hanover, Germany in December 2016. (Julian Stratenschulte/image alliance by way of Getty Photographs)
Two separate investigations — one by the college and the opposite by legal professionals commissioned by the Central Council — just lately decided that Homolka had created an “ambiance of worry” amongst college students and workers within the very establishments he launched greater than 20 years in the past. The ultimate report from the Central Council investigation is predicted to be launched within the coming weeks. Homolka has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
Within the wake of these findings, there was an growing look of desperation on the a part of the outdated guard to carry on to regulate of the 2 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 pleasant to Homolka — introduced it had changed the interim director of the Geiger School with its personal appointee. The Central Council promptly nixed that plan, calling the Union of Progressive Judaism a puppet of Homolka and asserting its appointment of the scholar Gerhard Robbers to work on restructuring the 2 faculties.
Skeptics of the newest improvement stated they had been certain Homolka’s affect would emerge someplace, for instance in appointments to the reconstituted establishments.
“I don’t discover this reassuring,” stated Nick Hoermann, a present scholar at Frankel School. “It has been clear for some time now that Homolka’s solely technique to act sooner or later can be via again doorways.”
However for now at the least, the Central Council — which initially referred to as the sale announcement “astonishing” — says it is able to work with the Jewish Group of Berlin.
Although the official neighborhood’s transfer got here as a shock to many, Joffe and his crew had been contemplating some sort of rescue maneuver because the scandal broke final Could, Ilan Kiesling, a spokesperson for the neighborhood, stated in an e mail to JTA. The concrete plan emerged solely after the damning preliminary skilled opinion got here out in December.
Joffe approached Homolka straight at that time and satisfied him “{that a} utterly recent begin at [Abraham Geiger College] was indispensable – along with an entire renunciation of all his management positions. Rabbi Homolka agreed to this renunciation and transferred all shares of the non-profit restricted firm to the neighborhood,” Kiesling wrote.
The legally binding takeover happened this week, and didn’t price the neighborhood something past “the capital contribution of the restricted firm within the quantity of 25,000 euros,” Kiesling stated.
He added that the neighborhood “ensures an entire and clear new begin” for the Geiger seminary. “There’ll now not be an accumulation of places of work” underneath one particular person, one of many habits for which Homolka has been criticized. There was no particular reference to the Frankel School, which till now has appointed its personal educational management.
The neighborhood plans to ascertain a world advisory board and an exterior contact level for college kids to report any issues. Early on within the scandal, it emerged that Cohen’s criticism had been investigated internally, by events beholden to Homolka.
Kiesling additionally informed the JTA that the neighborhood had engaged a former neighborhood president, Rabbi Andreas Nachama, chair of Germany’s liberal rabbinical convention, often known as ARK, to advise them from a rabbinical perspective. Nachama was ordained by the U.S.-based Alliance for Jewish Renewal motion and leads an egalitarian Reform congregation in Berlin.
In his assertion Wednesday, Joffe stated, “The highest precedence for us in the mean time is to carry the Abraham Geiger School into calm waters and pave the best way for the scholars to proceed their schooling in a secure construction.”
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