The aftermath of the Second World War continues apace.

WPVI-TV: 1st Rabbis Ordained in Germany since WWII

DRESDEN, Germany - Germany's Jewish community has risen from the ashes of the Holocaust to become the fastest growing in the world, but for decades has relied on imported rabbis to lead its burgeoning and diverse congregation.

That changed Thursday with the ordination of the first rabbis since World War II in a ceremony celebrated as a milestone in the rebirth of Jewish life in Germany.

At the festive celebration in Dresden's rebuilt synagogue, Daniel Alter, Tomas Kucera and Malcolm Mattitiani were warmly received by some 250 people as spiritual leaders of a new generation of German Jews.

"We take great joy and pride at this occasion," said Rabbi Uri Regev, president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. "I think this occasion marks the historic shift that truly joins with the renewal of the Jewish community here."

Yet amid the hype surrounding their place in history - the first rabbis ordained in Germany since the Gestapo shut down the nation's only Jewish seminary in 1942 - the men wearing black robes with white prayer shawls draped around their shoulders did not lose sight of their true calling.

"For me, that I have become a rabbi is more important than whether I have done so in Germany, or am among the first since the Holocaust - although it sounds good and is an important step in history," said Kucera, a 35-year-old native of the Czech Republic who will lead a synagogue in Munich.

Mattitiani, a 38-year-old South African, plans to return home to become the rabbi of the liberal Temple of Israel congregation in Cape Town, while Alter, 47, a German father of two daughters, will settle with his family in the northwestern German community of Oldenburg.

Like Kucera, Alter said he was looking forward to getting out into his community and praised the seminary as a new chance for a revitalized religious dialogue in Germany.

"If everything really works, then it will bring about change in the Jewish community, but also in the non-Jewish community," he said.

Thursday's ordination comes as reunified Germany has made strides to replenish its Jewish community, which has grown even in the still-bitter aftermath of the Nazi genocide that killed some 6 million Jews, including 200,000 in Germany.

By the end of the war in 1945, just 10,000-15,000 Jews remained in Germany. It took 45 years for the number to double to 30,000 when East and West Germany reunited in 1990.

However, a government policy that has streamlined immigration of Jews from the former Soviet states has caused the community to swell to 105,000, a large increase but still decidedly a minority in a country of 82 million.