The
New York Times is reporting that the first rabbis have been ordained in Germany since 1942 when the Nazis destroyed Berlin's College of Jewish Studies.
The ordination service took place in Dresden's recently completed Synagogue:
Dresden's synagogue is the first built in the former East Germany. The three newly ordained rabbis are the first from the Abraham Geiger College, founded in 1999 and affiliated with the University of Potsdam in eastern Germany.
German Presdient Horst Köhler lauded the ordinations as an important moment in both Jewish and German history:
After the Holocaust, many people could never have imagined that Jewish life in Germany could blossom again. ... That is why the first ordination of rabbis in Germany is a very special event indeed.
For more information, see the Central Council of Jews in Germany (German and English).