About us
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Rector Rabbi Professor Dr. Walter Homolka |
The Cantorial School was founded at the instigation of Rabbi Professor Dr. Walter Homolka with financial support from the Breslauer-Soref Foundation California and the Soref-Breslauer Texas Foundation and opened in autumn 2008. The German Federal Parliament agreed on its funding.
This is a significant event in the history of European cantorial education. While Rabbincal Studies at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Higher Institute for Jewish Studies, have laid a solid academic basis since its foundation in 1872, education for Jewish cantors ought to remain behind modern demands for a long time. Well into the 20th century no educational institution had specialized on it and despite all efforts, a much debated reform on a cantorial education could not be carried out.
Only in 1936, during the time of National Socialism, the Jewish Private Music School Hollaender (actually a conservatoire) founded a “Beth Chasanim” – a Cantorial School. There, for the first time, students received systematic lessons not only in liturgical synagogue singing but also in several music-theoretical lessons as well as in Jewish history and tradition. “Beth Chasanim” existed until 1939; later most of their teachers and students became victims of the Shoa.
Therefore, the Abraham Geiger College Cantorial School is not only an answer to the actual needs of German and European Jewish Communities, but - although interrupted by the Shoa - the result of a long historic development. Our work is a sign of the resurgence of Jewish Life in Germany.
