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The community rabbinate is managed by Avichai Apel and Julian-Chaim Soussan

Frankfurt has two orthodox community rabbis with equal status. They work together as a team – and are the only rabbis in Germany to do so!

Rabbi Avichai Apel came to Frankfurt from Dortmund. A father of seven, he was born in Jerusalem in 1975. He studied at the Yeshiva in Kdumim Jerusalem and Efrat. After his national service in the Israeli army, he received his semikhah and went to Russia for three years as a shaliach (envoy) of the Jewish Agency. From 2014 to 2016 he was the rabbi of the Jewish Cultural Community of Greater Dortmund.

Rabbi Apel is on the Executive Board of the Orthodox Rabbi Conference Germany (ORD), a member of the Standing Committee of the Council of European Rabbis, a founder and Board Member of the Union of Zionist Rabbis in Europe, and a member of the Executive Board of the Chulia Fund.

Frankfurt’s orthodox rabbi, Rabbi Julian-Chaim Soussan, was born in 1968 in Schluchsee and grew up in Freiburg. He studied economics and Jewish studies at the Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg before devoting his attention exclusively to the latter at the Heidelberg University for Jewish Studies. As a student, he began a 10-year stint as a teacher of Jewish religion in Stuttgart. He then acquired a position teaching religious education in Düsseldorf. Encouraged by Paul Spiegel, the former president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, he completed his studies in Jerusalem and became a rabbi. He was ordained in May 2003, following in the footsteps of his father, Rabbi Benjamin David Soussan.

From 2003 to 2011 Soussan was the rabbi of the Jewish Community in Düsseldorf. He then moved on to Mainz, before being called to Frankfurt in August 2013. He is married and has two sons. Soussan is a rabbi in Frankfurt, a member of the Advisory Committee to the Executive Board of the Orthodox Rabbi Conference Germany (ORD) and often represents them in interreligious events in the public arena.

OUR COMMUNITY RABBIS

Frankfurt had its first official rabbi back in 1945

1945: Dr. Leopold Neuhaus establishes the Jewish Community in Frankfurt

1948 to 1951: Dr. Wilhelm Weinberg, also rabbi for the German state of Hesse

1952 to 1954: Zwi Harry Levy, also rabbi for the German state of Hesse

1954 to 1967: Dr. Isaak Emil Lichtigfeld, also rabbi for the German state of Hesse

1963 to 1983: Dr. Sigmund Szobel, later also chief rabbi of the Jewish Community

1987 to 1992: Ahron Daum

1994 to 2015: Menachem Halevi Klein

2013 to present: Julian-Chaim Soussan

2016 to present: Avichai Apel

contact

Rabbiner Avichai Apel & Rabbiner Julian-Chaim Soussan
Westendstraße 43
60325 Frankfurt am Main

 069 / 76 80 36-420 oder -400
 rabbinat@jg-ffm.de

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