THE first rabbis since the Second World War will be ordained in Germany next week in what is being described in German papers as a “miracle”.

The ordinations of the three rabbis are to take place on Thursday in Dresden. They are all graduates of the new Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Baroness Julia Neuberger is to preach at the ordinations and those assisting in the ceremony will include Rabbi Danny Rich, Chief Executive of Liberal Judaism in the UK, and Professor Mark Saperstein, the new principal of Leo Baeck College, in London, Britain’s seminary for the Reform and Liberal movements.

The ordinations represent a vital step towards healing the wounds caused by the Holocaust.

The seminary, inaugurated in 2000, is an attempt to meet the need of Germany’s 100,000 Jews for home-grown rabbis.

Jews in Germany numbered 600,000 before the Second World War. About half got out or survived in other ways. The rest were killed. Only 12,000 Jews remained in Germany. The last seminary was shut in 1942 and no rabbis have been ordained since.

Russian immigration in the 1990s has been largely responsible for the resurgence of Germany’s Jewry, but congregations have been struggling to find rabbis to serve them.

The 100 congregations in Germany are served by about 25 rabbis, most from abroad. Those synagogues without permanent rabbis survive through the services of laymen and women, by borrowing rabbis from neighbouring towns or importing them from abroad for high holy days.

The only German-born new ordinand next week is Daniel Alter, who is in his mid-forties. A former teacher, he will serve a congregation in Oldenburg.

Dr Tom Kucera, an immigrant from the Czech Republic, will serve a liberal congregation in Munich.

Malcolm Matitiani, 38, will be returning to his synagogue in Cape Town. The ordinations will cement the close relationship between English and Germany Jewry.

The students’ mentor has been William Wolff, of the Mecklenburg Vorpommern congregation, former rabbi of the Wimbledon and District synagogue, former political journalist and a former finalist in The Times Preacher of the Year Award. The Briton has been helping them to reconnect with the past of liberal Judaism in Germany, while preparing them for an inclusive Judaism that welcomes arrivals from the former Soviet Union.

In a recent sermon in Hanover, Rabbi Wolff described the ordinations as “an event that will write history for many generations to come”.

Baroness Neuberger, whose grandparents were among those who fled to London, is due to describe how, although she was born and brought up in London, she feels she is a “German Jew”. She is expected to say: “There can be no greater pleasure than to see this rebirth of Jewish life, this reaffirmation of Germany as home to one of the world’s significant Jewish communities. It cannot be like it was before. But we have here a college, born out of the Enlightenment, born out of the German reform movement, strongly affected by the scientific study of Judaism.”

Her planned speech, disclosed to The Times, continues: “Perhaps we will once again see that extraordinary German Jewish symbiosis. Perhaps once again, with these new rabbis, this rebirth, we will see talent spring forth and a capacity for cultural and intellectual endeavour to find a modus vivendi with a religious life that is not orthodox but is demanding.”

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