Rabbis ordained in Germany

BERLIN -- For the first time since the end of World War II, rabbis have been ordained in Germany. The three graduates of Potsdam's Abraham Geiger College were officially ordained in Dresden's New Synagogue on Sept. 14 under heavy security and with an audience of about 200, including German President Horst Koehler and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Newly ordained Rabbi David Alter of Germany, 47, will work in Oldenburg; Czech Rabbi Tomas Kucera, 35, will be assigned to a congregation in Munich; and Rabbi Malcolm Mattitani, 35, will head to Cape Town in his native South Africa.

The ceremony was emotional for the country that was home to the Holocaust. The graduates were from the first rabbinical school to open in Germany after the Holocaust, and the Dresden synagogue was the first to open in eastern Germany after the fall of communism.

Jewish leaders said there is still much work to do in Germany, where a neo-Nazi party won seats in a state election Sept. 17.

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