"Husband" of "married" fat faggot German rabbi accused of sexual harassment

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The picture of this fat faggot rabbi will not be shown.  If you want to confirm that it is fat - and make yourself nauseous - you can see it's picture here:  https://www.jta.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/GettyImages-1041174300-2160x1200.jpg

Major figure in German Jewry ensnared in harassment scandal at liberal rabbinical school
https://www.jta.org/2022/05/09/global/major-figure-in-german-jewry-ensnared-in-harassment-scandal-at-liberal-rabbinical-school

The founding director of Germany's liberal rabbinical seminary is taking a leave of absence amid allegations of sexual harassment against his husband, the seminary's spokesperson, and criticism of his own leadership.

Rabbi Walter Homolka announced Friday that he would suspend his duties in the Jewish community and at the University of Potsdam, home to Abraham Geiger College, the liberal rabbinical seminary that he co-founded in 1999.

Homolka's announcement came in response to a report in Die Welt, a major German newspaper, that his husband, Hartmut Bomhoff, had allegedly sexually harassed at least one student by sending the student a sexually explicit video.

The alleged misconduct took place in 2019, and the student who received the video initially reported the incident to local police, according to the Die Welt report. Citing a press inquiry, the college informed staff and students about the allegations two months ago.

But it was not until Die Welt's report that the allegations — and the "climate of fear" that some said has characterized Homolka's leadership — broke into public view, throwing many of the institutions at the heart of the renaissance of liberal Judaism in Germany into turmoil.

Homolka is the rector of Abraham Geiger College, which trains liberal rabbis, as well as executive director of Zacharias Frankel College, the seminary associated with the Conservative movement of Judaism, and the School of Jewish Theology, all of which are also housed at the University of Potsdam, located just outside Berlin. He also chairs the board of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany, and serves on the boards of several Jewish educational institutions, scholarship foundations and rabbinic groups.

In those roles, Homolka controls or influences who is ordained as a non-Orthodox rabbi, the priorities of liberal Judaism in Germany and how the community's resources are spent. The Die Welt report says that many people declined to be quoted by name because they feared retaliation.

Among the charges made in the article by staff, former students and others with knowledge of the seminary are that Homolka and Bomhoff propositioned, harassed or had sex with at least 10 students; that Homolka has misrepresented how he was ordained as a rabbi; and that he lacks substantive Hebrew and Jewish literacy.

"In view of the accusations made in the press today, I would like to express my personal dismay," Homolka said in a statement sent to students, staff and media in Germany late Friday. "It hurts to have to read such things."

Describing himself as a pioneer for liberal Judaism in Germany, Homolka suggested that the accusations were politically motivated and said he was certain he had not acted inappropriately.

"All activists have opponents," he said. "I always strive to do the right thing in my work, and I am convinced that I have behaved correctly here as well."

Bomhoff and his attorneys did not return requests for comment made by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday. Bomhoff told Die Welt in late February that he had been accused of "distribution of pornography, not sexual harassment" and that he was "ashamed" of the incident, the newspaper reported.

The allegations against Homolka come amid a broad reckoning within the Jewish world about how Jewish institutions have handled sexual harassment and assault claims. Both the Conservative and Reform movements in the United States released reports in the last year based on third-party investigations into their own practices, including at their rabbinical schools.

The German rabbinical schools were not part of those investigations.

According to the Die Welt report, the student who received the explicit video first informed local prosecutors. After being told there was "no public interest" in prosecuting, the student contacted Jonathan Schorsch, an American scholar who is on the seminary's faculty. Schorsch brought the issue to the seminary, which launched an internal investigation, helmed by a rabbi and cantor in Homolka's employ, that ultimately recommended mediation.

On March 1, Abraham Geiger College's chancellor, Anne-Margarete Brenker, wrote to the school community to let members know that a journalist was looking into allegations about harassment by a school official of a student on Facebook. "The employee in question is Hartmut Bomhoff," she wrote in an email, noting that Bomhoff was Homolka's husband.

Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany's Central Council of Jews, said he was "shocked" by the Die Welt report and demanded quick clarification.

Other Jews in Germany said they were well acquainted with the dynamics and information in the story.

"I have witnessed too many people affected by this abuse (sexual and otherwise), and by the generally flawed system of power described in [the Die Welt] article," Rebecca Blady, an American rabbi who is the managing director of Hillel Deutschland, wrote on Facebook. "To any victims of the abuse described here: I see you. I believe you. I am here for you."

Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of Zacharias Frankel College as well as of the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies at American Jewish University in Los Angeles, said the allegations against Bomhoff and Homolka would be investigated fully.

The University of Potsdam began an investigation several weeks ago and expects a result by August, Die Welt reported.

"These are serious charges and ZFC takes them seriously," Artson told JTA by email. "We pledge full transparency and cooperation with any outside investigation by the university or the legal authorities. Dr. Homolka is on LOA immediately, pending the investigation's findings and conclusion. We are committed to the safety and well-being of our students and faculty and will continue to monitor this closely."

A firm response is essential for the future of Germany's liberal Jewish seminaries, Christoph Schulte, a professor at the Institute for Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Potsdam, told Die Welt.

"A rabbinical college that does not publicly clarify and sharply sanction sexual harassment of rabbinical students is completely discredited morally and religiously," Schulte said.

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Investigations and resignations pile up amid mounting scandal within German liberal Judaism
https://www.jta.org/2022/05/23/global/investigations-and-resignations-pile-up-amid-mounting-scandal-within-german-liberal-judaism

A law firm that investigated abuse charges within the Catholic church in Germany is now doing the same for the country's main Jewish organization, in the latest development of a mounting scandal that could topple Germany's liberal Jewish establishment.

The Gercke Wollschläger firm will examine "allegations of sexualized harassment and abuse of power" at Abraham Geiger College, the Central Council of Jews in Germany announced last week.

It is the second investigation related to allegations against Rabbi Walter Homolka, the seminary's founder and leader, and his husband that burst into public view May 6 in an explosive article in Die Welt, a German newspaper.

Earlier this year, the University of Potsdam, where the seminary is housed, tasked its equal opportunity commission with investigating whether Homolka's husband, the college's spokesperson, sent lewd messages to students and whether Homolka or others swept evidence of misconduct under the rug, essentially by investigating themselves, as the newspaper reported.

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After Die Welt's story ran, Homolka immediately took a leave of absence from the many Jewish organizations in which he plays a role, saying that he would step back until investigations are complete. That could be some time: The university says its inquiry should conclude by August, while the Central Council of Jews in Germany said the investigation it has now commissioned will not wrap up until early 2023.

"We need an unconditional, independent and complete investigation of the allegations, particularly for the sake of possible victims," Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in a statement announcing the move.

Further accounts have come to light in recent weeks. Multiple students told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about troubling experiences with Homolka or his husband; all have shared their stories with college staff and the university probe.

"We must protect those affected, while at the same time achieving the greatest possible transparency," Schuster added. "It is also important to prevent harm to the Jewish community."

But harm has already been done, say many people with knowledge of liberal Judaism in Germany.

Born in early 19th-century Germany, the liberal movement engendered Reform Judaism in the United States. After the Holocaust, the small population of survivors in Germany was mostly Orthodox, though a few liberal congregations cropped up, led mainly by U.S. and British military chaplains in the post-war occupied zones. In the 1990s, after the Cold War ended and East and West Germany were reunited, pockets of non-Orthodox observance bloomed.

Ordained in 1997 by — among others — the German-born American Rabbi Walter Jacob, Homolka became an early leader and, in 1999, founded Abraham Geiger College together with Jacob, who became its president. A cantorial school, a second seminary for Conservative rabbinical students and a host of other institutions followed. Homolka also played a crucial role in making sure that government funding for Jewish communities would flow to liberal institutions through the Central Council, German Jewry's main federation.

Now, the suspected coverup constitutes "the biggest scandal that has happened within the postwar Jewish community," said Susan Neiman, an American scholar who has studied contemporary Jewish life in Germany and for the last two decades has headed the Einstein Forum, a German think tank.

The allegations about possible sexual harassment by Homolka's husband at the college Homolka co-founded, she said, "are really only the tip of the iceberg."

Changes have already taken place at Geiger College and related institutions in response to the scandal.

The Geiger seminary had been set up as a nonprofit owned by Homolka. On Friday, the seminary announced that complete ownership had been transferred to the Leo Baeck Foundation, a Potsdam-based group that previously owned a minority share. (Homolka had chaired the foundation's board until after the Die Welt article appeared.) Notably, there is still an overlap in leadership: The acting chair of the Leo Baeck Foundation is Anne-Margarete Brenker, who is also chancellor of the seminary.

The college also appointed an interim leader, a former finance secretary for the state of Berlin, Gabriele Thöne. She is charged with restructuring the seminary in response to the issues raised by the allegations, the school announced.

Privately, sources say they expect more changes, including personnel changes. Already, the executive director of the School of Jewish Theology, a division of the University of Potsdam, has stepped down.

Daniel Krochmalnik lamented in an email announcing his resignation last week that the mounting scandal was doing "public damage to the [college] and its director." He said he had urged people with criticism of Abraham Geiger College to air them only internally but was not successful in convincing them.

The School of Jewish Theology — together with the Geiger seminary and the Conservative seminary, Zacharias Frankel College — is part of the university's European Center for Jewish Learning; Homolka has played a role in all three.

"We have a glorious new building and a ruined public image," Daniel Krochmalnik said in his resignation letter, which did not mention the students who had reported abuse.

Meanwhile, leaders of many organizations that Homolka helped build — including some of the nearly 30 liberal Jewish communities across the country and in Austria — have publicly distanced themselves from him, and some have called for his resignation.

The Chawurah Gescher community in Freiburg called for Homolka's immediate resignation as chair of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany. Göttingen's liberal Jewish community — referring to "psychological injuries to the individuals affected" — said that "structural abuse of power" is "incompatible with liberal Judaism."

Hanover's liberal congregation said it was "appalled by the accusations" and demanded not just a leave of absence but "the resignation of Walter Homolka from all his positions," to "minimize the damage to liberal Judaism in Germany and ... out of solidarity with those affected."

Not all groups are calling for Homolka's resignation right now. "The presumption of innocence applies," noted the General Rabbinical Conference, a non-Orthodox professional association known as ARK, of which Homolka is a member. In a statement, the ARK board demanded a "speedy clarification" in light of "the great importance of the institutions brought into being by Rabbi Homolka for Jewish life in Germany."

The rabbinical association is among the groups that will cooperate with the Central Council investigation. According to the council's announcement, the Leo Baeck Foundation, the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany, Zacharias Frankel College and a scholarship program for gifted Jewish students known as ELES have also "expressly agreed" to cooperate.

They are among the many Jewish institutions with which Homolka has had a close involvement, holding both paid and unpaid positions. The newly appointed spokesperson for Geiger College told JTA in an email that they are "not allowed to comment on [salary questions] for reasons of data protection and labor law."

Homolka's hand can be seen virtually everywhere in the non-Orthodox Jewish landscape in Germany. And yet controversy also has accompanied Homolka, who said in his statement announcing his leave of absence, "All commitment also finds opponents who do not like what you achieve." His conversion to Judaism as a teenager and the fact that he is married to a man made him stand out from the conventional rabbi.

But more significantly, the concentration of so many roles in one person has raised eyebrows over the years. Until now, few have dared to criticize Homolka openly: Directly or indirectly, he has had the ability to influence hiring, firing, scholarships and careers.

"At last ... someone is taking this seriously," said Berlin-based Rabbi Walter Rothschild, who has lived and worked in Germany for more than two decades. He likened the reckoning happening now within liberal Judaism in Germany to the #MeToo movement, the wave of revelations about public figures accused of sexual harassment and abuse that began in 2017.

"Every liberal rabbi in Europe is damaged by this," said Rothschild. And "they also could have talked about it earlier. They were afraid — and now they are afraid of the consequences of being afraid."

The student who made the original complaint said he has no regrets and isn't worried about reprisals.

"I am not scared at all," he told JTA. "I have the truth on my side."

It was in 2019 that the student received a Facebook message from a Geiger employee, who he said offered to send pictures from his latest vacation with his husband.

"It was not framed as anything sexual," the student recalled. "So [when] he said, 'I am embarrassed about my size,' I thought he meant his weight." Instead, the video he received was sexually explicit.

"I said, 'This has to stop right now, this is inappropriate,'" recalled the student. "He apologized and stopped contacting me."

After the student reported the alleged incident to the police, Geiger College set up an internal investigative committee whose three members were on the staff. They offered the student mediation and counseling, but — said the student — no consequences for the alleged harasser.

Brenker, Geiger's chancellor, identified the alleged harasser in a March 1 email to students and staff by name as Homolka's husband. She said she was sharing the information because of a press inquiry to the school. In a later, public statement, she said the employee had been terminated from all positions.

David Gessner, an attorney at the Berlin law firm Behm Becker Gessner, which is representing the employee, told JTA that "sexual harassment... was never the subject of the criminal investigation, which, incidentally, has been discontinued." He was responding to a JTA query about what both the Central Council and Brenker, in her internal email, had referred to as "sexualized harassment."

The student told JTA that the college's handling of his allegations infuriated him.

"My policy after this committee was, 'This is not my secret, it is someone else's...  and I don't keep secrets,'" the student told JTA. "I told everyone who would listen."

That brought him into contact with Jonathan Schorsch, an American professor on the faculty of the School of Jewish Theology, who said he had heard allegations about harassment of various kinds for some time. "The more I heard, the more disturbed I got," he told JTA.

A second student told JTA that the employee had invited him in a text message to share a hotel bed on a trip he had organized, and insisted the invitation wasn't about sex. But, the student told JTA, "How could he send a message like that if he is in such a position?"

A third student told JTA that he had been afraid to tell Homolka he was thinking of transferring to the Leo Baeck College liberal seminary in London, to be close to his partner. "I was afraid of reprisals," he wrote.

"When he found out that I was considering [this move], he [Homolka] found my Skype profile and started calling me in the middle of the night." The student has since been interviewed by the investigative commission at the University of Potsdam.

Alarmed by what he was hearing from students, Schorsch raised concerns about the school's handling of the student's allegations during a faculty meeting in December 2021. Brenker subsequently provided more details about the internal investigation, he said — adding that what he learned only strengthened his resolve to speak out.

"All three people on that commission directly and completely owe their jobs to Walter Homolka," said Schorsch. One of them, JTA has confirmed, had been terminated by the director of another organization for having sexual relations with female students.

"I was in a position to do something because I had tenure and everyone else was terrified," said Schorsch, who compiled a report for the university's equal opportunity commissioner and encouraged others to come forward.

Schorsch's report triggered the first investigation, by the University of Potsdam. Now others are getting underway.

An attorney whose partner was a Frankel rabbinical student has collected allegations on her own, sharing reports from roughly 10 people with the state ministry responsible for overseeing education.

"People shared screenshots and also text messages and pictures," the attorney, Nathalia Schomerus, told JTA.

One graduate of the Geiger seminary contacted by JTA said neither he nor one other student with whom he had spoken had heard of any sexual harassment or felt an atmosphere of fear at the college. In an email, the graduate, who is now working as a congregational rabbi in Europe, said he was "curious how the results of the investigation will be different from my experience."

With the revelations still fresh, it remains to be seen how the scandal might affect liberal Judaism in Germany and beyond, among international liberal organizations that have linked with those in Germany. But the stakes are high, according to Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University who has been following recent scandals in U.S. Jewish establishments.

"News of betrayal after betrayal on the part of rogue Jewish leaders will make it hard for great Jewish leaders to win the support and respect they need in order to succeed," Sarna said.

The current scandal must not be allowed to completely blot out Homolka's accomplishments, said Armin Langer, who was expelled from Geiger College in 2016 after he criticized the Central Council of Jews in Germany, a funder of the school, over the group's stance on Muslim refugees. Both he and the school said at the time that he had been expelled for failing to adhere to the school's media rules, which require that students ask permission before speaking with the press.

"Homolka did an important job in making the Central Council recognize liberal communities, building up the reform rabbinical seminary and all his lobby work for liberal Judaism," said Langer, who was ordained Sunday by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia.

"I want to acknowledge that, but it will probably be time for him to retire and let a new generation of progressive rabbis or Jewish leaders take on the roles — the many different roles — he had in the past decades."

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Prominent German rabbi exits leadership roles as report confirms allegations against him
https://www.jta.org/2022/12/07/global/prominent-german-rabbi-resigns-from-leadership-roles-as-report-confirms-allegations-against-him

In a landmark step, investigators commissioned by Germany's main Jewish organization have concluded that abuse of power and sexual harassment did occur at Germany's liberal rabbinical seminary — and some of it, they say, may have crossed the line into illegality.

The 44-page "executive summary" of an investigation initiated by the Central Council of Jews in Germany is the latest and most damning report about the leadership of Rabbi Walter Homolka since accusations against him broke into public view last May.

Issued Wednesday after tense public conflict between the council and Homolka's attorneys, the report concludes that structural changes are required to set Germany's liberal rabbinical seminary, known as Abraham Geiger College, and other related Jewish institutions on the correct footing.

"A significant cause for the emergence of the problems identified by the investigators at the institutions under investigation is the personal misconduct of Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka in his function as a leader or person with great influence, which the investigators are convinced of," the investigators wrote in their report.

Homolka announced Monday that he would withdraw from all functions in the seminary that he and a German-born American rabbi named Walter Jacob, founded in 1999. He also dropped out of the running on Tuesday for another term as chair of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.

A more comprehensive report including details about incidents in which investigators concluded that Homolka and his husband engaged in misconduct is due out in January, according to the Cologne-based law firm Gercke Wollschläger.

The preliminary report was welcomed in a joint statement by the Central Council, the German Interior Ministry and the Brandenburg State Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, which said they would "continue to fund the Abraham Geiger College to the same extent as before until the structural new beginning has been completed."

It was also greeted with relief by the former cantorial student whose complaints kicked off the scandal.

"I think the report and the subsequent documents are a blessed development," Itamar Cohen, now a cantor, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "It seems to confirm many suspicions which I and others share. It does affirm that I did the right thing and [this] could be the beginning of a new chapter of liberal Judaism in Germany."

The scandal that erupted publicly in May began after Cohen sought help from Jonathan Schorsch, a professor at the School of Jewish Theology, in dealing with unsolicited pornographic material allegedly received from Homolka's husband, who was also an employee at the seminary. (Abraham Geiger College is part of the School of Jewish Theology, which itself is under the auspices of the University of Potsdam.)

A German newspaper's report about the allegations and an apparent effort to obscure them opened the floodgates for criticism of Homolka from past and current students, employees and colleagues. Homolka took a leave of absence from the numerous leadership roles he held with liberal Jewish religious and educational institutions that he had helped found since the late 1990s.

The scandal has shaken the foundations of modern liberal Judaism in Germany, and the new report suggests that those foundations were weak because they rested largely on one individual.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of German Jews, said the report made it clear that Homolka could not continue in his previous roles.

Homolka has rejected the allegations against him throughout, and his attorneys told German news media Wednesday that they believed the entire investigation was politically motivated. They accused Schuster of wanting to see Homolka exit Germany's liberal Jewish leadership and said the Central Council had failed to consider fully the statement Homolka had given to investigators.

The report is the first to emerge from a third-party investigation into the allegations against Homolka. A separate investigation by the University of Potsdam, released in late October, found that some of the accusations regarding abuse of power to be justified, but did not find any criminally actionable behavior and thus confirmed Homolka's ongoing employment there as professor. It did not investigate the sexual harassment accusations, as Homolka's husband had left his job by then.

The new report did scrutinize those allegations. The investigators said they found 13 specific incidents involving allegations against Homolka's husband. German libel law bars the publication of his name. Using what they called a "traffic light system," the investigators classified nine of these incidents as "red" cases, in which 25 instances of misconduct could be identified. Two of these cases involved the "initial suspicion of a criminal offense," they added.

Regarding allegations of abuse of power against Homolka himself, they found — after interviewing 73 individuals — a total of 45 concrete incidents, 14 of which they classified as "red," involving a total of 23 instances of misconduct. A detailed account of those cases, including responses that Homolka delivered earlier this week, will be included in the final report in January, they said.

More broadly, they said, their interviews had illuminated a culture of misconduct in which unchecked, unlawful or arbitrary decisions could be made largely because of a consolidation of power under Homolka. He presided over an institution ruled by a "culture of fear," the investigators found, leaving employees and students alike less likely to express criticism or concerns because of the possibility of reprisals.

The investigators said structural changes were needed if there was any hope of shifting the culture. "As long as institutions are in private hands or even in the hands of an individual, or at any rate within the essential sphere of influence of the person who, in the opinion of the investigators, practices and exemplifies misconduct himself, it is hardly conceivable that the causes of the deficits identified can be remedied," their report says.

Cohen told JTA he wants to see "real change in the leadership" of all liberal Jewish institutions in Germany, and "an external compliance system set up."

He said, "I hope to see the institutions Homolka founded take a life of their own, no strings attached."

Anticipating the report, the Abraham Geiger College had announced its own restructuring plans on Monday, a day after ordaining four new rabbis and two cantors at a ceremony in Berlin.

In a statement, interim director Gabriele Thöne said a new foundation would become the provider of rabbinical training in Potsdam.

Further, Thöne said the "door is open to Zacharias Frankel College" — the Conservative movement seminary also under the umbrella of the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam —  "to join the new foundation on an equal basis while at the same time maintaining its independence."

But in a scathing response issued Wednesday, the Conservative seminary said the Geiger College interim administration had not consulted them about the restructuring.

"A partnership between equal parties requires joint preparation, mutual trust, transparency and consensus. All this has been lacking so far, and continues to be lacking," the statement said.

Signed by Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of Zacharias Frankel College and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles among others, the statement also said the preliminary report released Wednesday "confirmed the asymmetrical constellations of power in the two Potsdam rabbinical training colleges."

Zacharias Frankel College  "was in a state of dependency on the will of one person from the time it was founded in 2013. Our institution was deliberately pushed into invisibility and excluded from communication with funders in Germany," the statement read in part.

"From the outset, the project of a Masorti rabbinical training in Potsdam was merely a makeshift means of being able to found the School of Jewish Theology [also in 2013] and give it the appearance of representing several denominations, and thus of being pluralistically positioned. Instead, however, the accumulation of power led to a monopolization of non-Orthodox Judaism in one person" – namely, Homolka.

For their part, the government and Jewish funding organizations said in their statement Wednesday that they were "committed to ensuring that there will continue to be both liberal and conservative rabbinical training in Potsdam in the future," but that the proposals developed so far at the Abraham Geiger College do not meet the requirement of being "a clear cut from the previous structure and a comprehensive new beginning."

The release of the Central Council-commissioned report was preceded by a volley of statements by lawyers for both parties.

On Monday, the council's attorneys announced that their preliminary report would come out in two days. On Tuesday, Homolka's attorneys issued a statement criticizing the impending "sudden" release of the report's summary, suggesting it reeked of "prejudgment."

The law firm representing Homolka — Behm Becker Geßner — noted that its client had received "a list of questions with serious accusations" from the council's attorneys, and that he had responded in writing last Sunday. "Should the result not take into account the meaningful statement of our client, there would be a massive violation of personality rights," warned the lawyers, who have successfully battled some critical press coverage of Homolka.

The Central Council criticized what it called Homolka's delay tactics, saying its attorneys had asked Homolka in early September if he would respond to questions but had not gotten any response to questions sent Oct. 19 until late Sunday night, well after multiple previous deadlines. Still, the council confirmed, its investigators would take Homolka's responses into account.

"This tactic is the main reason why the law firm will not be able to complete the final and detailed report of the investigation by the end of the year," the Central Council said. "The courage of the numerous victims must not be sacrificed to Homolka's delay tactics."

Meanwhile, the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany is to meet next week in Berlin, after a three-month postponement. Board elections will be held for the position of chair, previously held by Homolka.

On Nov. 26, that group published a report from an investigation that it had commissioned, which concluded that there was no proof of abuse of power at Abraham Geiger College.

On Wednesday, a critic within the body, the State Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony, said the Central Council's commissioned report "supports us in our demand for the resignation of Walter Homolka from all his offices within the Jewish community, which we already made in May."

And there is dissent within the General Rabbinical Conference, Germany's liberal rabbinical association, as well. About a dozen members issued a statement in November, breaking from the official, cautious tone, saying that "the abuse of power proven against Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka [in the university's report of Oct. 26] is not compatible with the values of Jewish and general ethics."

The association, known as ARK, issued a statement at the end of November stating that, despite differences of opinion in their ranks, they join the call for a structural and personal new beginning, as "a chance for the next phase of rabbinical training in Germany."