Three rabbis are to be ordained in the eastern German city of Dresden in the first such ceremony in the country since World War II. They studied at the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam outside Berlin which was founded in 1999 with the aim of strengthening the Jewish religion in Germany after the ravages of the Holocaust.
The college is the only institution in Germany that trains rabbis.
The three rabbis are planning to take up positions at synagogues in Munich in southern Germany, in Oldenburg in the northwest of the country and in Cape Town in South Africa, the college said on Wednesday.
The historical moment has been welcomed by the Central Council of Jews in Germany as a "return to normality".
"We need many more rabbis, 30, 40 times as many as we have," the deputy president of the council, Dieter Graumann, said on Wednesday.
Some 600,000 Jews lived in Germany before the Holocaust.
Today the country's Jewish community counts about 110,000 members, the vast majority of whom emigrated from the former Soviet bloc after its collapse and the reunification of Germany.
