Fired Forger Fights For Fraudulent...pension

Germany's Jewish community is up in arms over the dismissal of the Hamburg community rabbi at the beginning of the month.

Dov-Levy Barsilay was fired after community leaders allegedly discovered that his ordination certificate was not valid.

Barsilay, 60, accused the community leaders of trying to deprive him of his retirement pension, which he was about to negotiate before being dismissed.

"We had to act on the evidence to prevent damage to the community. The diploma Barsilay presented was clearly fraudulent," said community president Ruben Herzberg.

Barsilay denied the accusation and told the media he was considering taking legal action against the community leadership.

Barsilay was appointed community rabbi in Hamburg in 1993. At the time, he presented an ordination certificate that had been issued in 1986 by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. The local media reported that his ordination certificate had been issued by the Netanya rabbinate. But a clerk in the office of Netanya Chief Rabbi David Haim Chelouche yesterday confirmed that the rabbi had sent a letter, in response to a query from Hamburg, saying that the people who signed the ordination had not been authorized to do so.

"It looks like a conspiracy against him," said Andreas Wankum, who served as chair of the Hamburg Jewish community until last summer. "The community's new leadership is extreme left and wants to reshape the community. Barsilay's dismissal is part of that."

Wankum, a businessman and member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, said "members of the Jewish community are shocked by the way the dismissal was done, on Sabbath eve. The Jews in Germany are in a very delicate situation, this kind of conduct does not improve their status."

A few community members have published a letter denouncing the dismissal.

Barsilay, who is in Israel now, believes the main reason for dismissing him was to prevent paying him retirement pension. "In two weeks time I would be eligible for early pension," he said. "They had to find something to pin on me to justify firing me."

"The new management wanted me to give them classified material about one of the members [of the community leadership], and I couldn't do that," he said.

He said he would take legal measures against his dismissal and that in addition to the ordination issued in Netanya he had another rabbinical ordination.

Herzberg would not respond to questions from Haaretz. He told the German media that the only reason for Barsilay's firing was his invalid ordination certificate. The Chief Rabbinate in Israel said it was "not familiar with the affair."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1021404.html