Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5344466.stm
On September 14, 2006 BBC News reported, "A group of rabbis has been ordained in Germany for the first time since World War II and the destruction by the Nazis of the country's Jewish seminaries. Three Jewish graduates from the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam were ordained in the eastern city of Dresden. More than 100,000 Jews live in Germany but there is a dearth of rabbis - there are only about 25 of them serving 100 congregations, a BBC reporter says. For years Germany has had to rely on rabbis imported from abroad. The ordination took place in Dresden's new synagogue which was rebuilt after the fall of the Berlin Wall... The Jewish community in Germany had some 600,000 registered members before the Holocaust and the war, the BBC's Tristana Moore in Berlin says. Thanks to an influx of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Germany has the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe, our correspondent says. Community leaders are hoping that the ordinations in Dresden will pave the way for more home-grown rabbis."