LA and Jerusalem rabbis step in as battle rages over who should run German rabbinical schools

BERLIN — The latest effort to craft a path to survival for Germany’s beleaguered rabbinical schools is underway — with help from thousands of miles away in California and Jerusalem.

An American Conservative rabbi and an Israeli Reform rabbi have been tapped to lead seminaries associated with the University of Potsdam.

The Los Angeles-based American Jewish University and its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies this week announced a “groundbreaking partnership” with the Central Council of Jews in Germany to promote “sustainable” Jewish clergy training at the University of Potsdam.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Ziegler’s dean, accepted the Central Council’s invitation as the founding leader of a new German seminary associated with the Masorti or Conservative movement.

“It’s absurd to have an American rabbi running the school,” Artson said he told the Central Council. “The only thing more absurd is not having a school.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Yehodaya Amir, professor emeritus at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, will oversee a liberal or Reform seminary being launched at the university.

The new leaders are stepping into a tumultuous situation.

The University of Potsdam has long been home to two rabbinical schools, the liberal/Reform seminary Abraham Geiger College and its Masorti/Conservative sibling, Zacharias Frankel College, founded in 1999 and 2013 respectively by Rabbi Walter Homolka.

But in late 2022, Homolka resigned from all positions in German Jewish institutions following allegations that he had abused his power and created an atmosphere of fear among students and staff. He eventually sold all his shares of Geiger and Frankel for 25,000 euros to the Jewish Community of Berlin, which intended to keep them going.

The organized Jewish community has since struggled to fund the schools, which previously had the Central Council and the German government as their main backers. In the wake of the Homolka scandal, the Central Council had declared it could no longer support the institutions as they stood. It announced plans to revamp rabbinical training so that no one figure would wield too much power.

This month, the council announced a new foundation to support two new schools — a liberal one named for Regina Jonas and a Masorti one named for Abraham Joshua Heschel, both pioneering rabbis in early 20th-century Germany with global and enduring significance. They are also launching a cantorial school under the name of the 19th-century composer of Jewish liturgical music Louis Lewandowski.

Now, the council has made official its chosen partners to operate the schools — and for both it looked outside Germany.

For the Masorti seminary, it turned to Artson, who also served as dean of the Frankel seminary after Homolka cold-called him to ask for his support — a request that he said had conferred a “sacred mission” upon him.

“I thought that this was an opportunity to step up and to help Europeans get the training they would want, to energize the Jewish community,” Artson told JR. “And that’s really what we’ve done.”

Artson said he anticipated a limited future for his involvement and that of his fellow Ziegler dean, Rabbi Cheryl Peretz.

“We see our role as stepping in and launching this important program, and then at some point getting out of the way so that Europeans can run it without us,” he said.

Current rabbinical and cantorial students were told last week — as eight new rabbis and cantors were ordained — that they will be invited to transfer seamlessly to the new seminaries.

As for what might change for them, Artson said his focus was on “bringing transparency and equal funding and stability” as well as building stronger ties to the global Masorti movement. “This will be a way of organizing a rabbinical school that’s answerable to the public and will be able to last,” he said.

Amir, the HUC professor of Jewish thought who is heading the liberal seminary, said he was heartened by the fact that the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the North American Reform movement’s rabbinical association, was prepared to certify the new program, meaning that its graduates would have the same status in the movement as Geiger’s.

“The fact that the CCAR is considering to grant us such a status by now, before we have even taken our first steps, is a solid and wonderful expression of trust,” Amir told JR.

Josef Schuster, chair of the Central Council, said support from the two movements augured “a good day for rabbinical and cantor training in Germany and a good day for the Jewish communities in our country.”

The appointments have elicited dissent. The World Union of Progressive Judaism and its European sister organization accused the Central Council of failing to involve them in their plans and of endangering “the unity of the Jewish community.”

And Berlin’s official Jewish community — which, as owner of the original seminaries, has the most to lose — lashed out over the selection of Artson in particular, noting that he has faced allegations of sexism at Ziegler.

Gideon Joffe, the community’s president, accused the Central Council of “conducting a public defamation campaign against the Abraham Geiger College.”

He added in a statement: “Even the appearance of an abuse of power, as is clearly evident in the allegations against Rabbi Artson, is unacceptable for the management of a rabbinical seminary,”

The investigations add to ongoing tumult at AJU and Zeigler, where Artson has worked since 1999. The school recently sold its campus in Los Angeles and slashed tuition in a bid to attract more students.

A third-party investigation of the sexism allegations commissioned by American Jewish University found no systemic misconduct, according to AJU, which did not release the full report. A second inquiry, by the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, is underway.

Artson would not comment on the ongoing investigation, except to say it “is wrapping up.” But he noted that the first investigation found “no systemic homophobia or sexism” at Ziegler. “And so I’m really focusing on building the future.”

The statement is “unworthy of them,” Artson said about the Berlin Jewish Community, known by its German nickname Gemeinde, meaning community. “But I understand that in the moment, they’re letting their emotions run things.”

He added, “I think that the Gemeinde does many valuable and important things, and we certainly want to be able to support them in those enterprises, too, just not in this particular instance.”

An irony of the new arrangement is that in seeking to distance rabbinical training as much as possible from Homolka, who chose the Gemeinde as his successor, the Central Council has selected a rabbi who long worked with him. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, Artson had expenses covered but took no salary while working with the Frankel seminary.

For his part, Artson said he remains inspired by Geiger and Frankel, figures who helped make Germany a powerhouse of Jewish innovation in the century prior to the Holocaust.

“I have in my office portraits of both Rabbi Geiger and Rabbi Frankel,” Artson said. “They remain founding figures, even if their names are no longer on the school.”

But the two new namesakes — Heschel, who narrowly escaped Germany in 1940, and Jonas, the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi, who was murdered at Auschwitz — are “also very special,” he said.