Executive Board

Chairman: Rabbi Prof. Walter Homolka PhD PhD DHL

Formerly Chief Rabbi for the Federal Land of Lower Saxony, Dr. Homolka has been Rector of the Abraham Geiger College since 2002. Parallel to this function, he holds the Professorial Chair in Modern Jewish Philosophy (Focus on Denominations and Inter-Religious Dialogue) at the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam, and is also the School’s Executive Director. In addition, he serves as Executive Director of Zacharias Frankel College, Board Chairman of the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund, and Trustee of the Schwarz-Schütte Foundation in Potsdam.

Rabbi Homolka is Vice President of the European Union for Progressive Judaism (EUPJ) and an advisor to the Solomon B. Freehof Institute for Progressive Halakhah in Pittsburgh/Tel Aviv.

He is also a member of the following bodies: the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the Rabbinic Conference of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues of Great Britain (ULPS), the New York Board of Rabbis, and the General Rabbinical Conference of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. He actively participates in the Jewish-Christian Roundtable organized by the Central Committee of German Catholics.

Dr. Homolka has published numerous books dealing with Jewish law, the intellectual history and contemporary state of Liberal Judaism, as well as Jewish Liturgy. He has co-published a revised edition of The Hebrew Bible (Die Israelitische Bibel), a seminal reference work by the famous rabbi and philosopher Ludwig Philippson (together with Prof. Hanna Liss and Prof. Rüdiger Liwak), and is also the co-author of Jewish and Israeli Law – An Introduction (together with Prof. Shimon Shetreet).

Executive Director: Dr. Anne-Margarete Brenker

Dr. Brenker obtained her doctoral degree in 1999 at the University of Hamburg with a thesis entitled Enlightenment as an Objective Necessity: Realpolitik in Breslau in the Late 18th Century. After working in various coordination, organization, and public relations functions for a number of institutes and publishers, she joined the Abraham Geiger College in September of 2001.

Director of Development: Jo Frank

Jo Frank grew up in Southend-on-Sea (UK), Kiel and Heidelberg. He studied Holocaust Communication at the Touro College Berlin. In 2005, he established the independent publishing house Verlagshaus Berlin with Andrea Schmidt and Dominik Ziller. In 2009, he established the international Zeitkunst Festival with the pianist Caspar Frantz and the cellist Julian Arp. From 2009–2013 Jo Frank worked as the Office Manager at the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund (ELES), before becoming ELES’ Managing Director in 2014. Since 2014, Frank is the Managing Director of DialoguePerspectives. Religions and World Views in Dialogue, and interim Managing Director of Hillel Germany. Since 2016, Frank is responsible for the Jewish artists program DAGESH. KunstLAB ELES.

Jo Frank’s latest publications are SNACKS (2017), 0 (2018) and „Weil ich hier leben will … Jüdische Stimmen zur Zukunft Deutschlands und Europas“ with Walter Homolka & Jonas Fegert (ed.) (2018).