German Rabbinic School About To Close

Report:

Potsdam, Germany – The global financial firestorm unleashed by the meltdown in America’s risky mortgage business is starting to sweep through aspects of life which might have seemed immune to a shakeout in shares and the banking system.

But 15 months into the crisis with economic uncertainty growing and credit drying up, the effects of the financial market turmoil is beginning to impact dramatically on a range of activities, including even a new college for Rabbis in Germany.

"Without effective and rapid help we will have to close," said Walter Homolka, the rector of the Abraham Geiger College in the city of Potsdam, the historic capital of the German state of Brandenburg which surrounds Berlin.

After surviving the recent slump in the dollar, the college is now facing a collapse in donations from the US and Europe as a result of what is the world’s biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Based at the University of Potsdam, the college offers the first Rabbi teaching course mounted in Central Europe since the Holocaust.

Speaking in an interview with the Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa, Homolka said the college’s closure would represent a major loss to Germany and setback its drive to recreate a Jewish community in the nation more than 70 years after the Nazis conspired to wipe out Jewish life in the country.

The college, which held its first ordination in 2006, was evidence of the "renewal of Jewish life" in Germany, said Homolka.