Abraham Geiger College’s president, Rabbi Walter Jacob of Pittsburgh, ordained the school’s second class of rabbis  in the morning of June 18 at the Rykestrasse Synagogue in the former East Berlin. Gábor Lengyel , Dr.  Roly Zylbersztein and Richard Newman will serve congregations in Hanover, Barcelona and Cape Town. In addition, Juval Porat became the first person since the Holocaust to be invested as cantor in Germany. Porat studied at Geiger even before its “Jewish Institute of Cantorial Arts” had been established in 2007 with the help of American friends, Jim and Steve Breslauer, and will serve Congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim in Los Angeles. Dr. Walter Jacob is the rabbi emeritus and senior scholar of Pittsburgh’s Rodef Shalom Congregation.

Some 600 guests attended the ceremony from all over the world, among them Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, two deputy presidents of German parliament, the minister of higher education Professor Johanna Wanka and bishops of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Hebrew Union College was represented by Rabbi Naamah Kelman, Dean of the Jerusalem campus, and Professor Leonard Kravitz of the New York campus. Leo Baeck College (London) sent vice-principal Rabbi Michael Shire.

Representing the World Union were Michael Grabiner, its senior vice chairman; Ruth Cohen, a former president and currently president of its European Region. and Leslie Bergman, its immediate past senior vice chairman.

In the evening  Hans Küng, one of Catholicism's  most prolific contemporary theologians  and president of the Global Ethic Foundation, received the  Abraham  Geiger  Award out of the hands of Norbert Lammert, president of Germany's parliament. In his acceptance address, Küng pointed out that he, as a reform theologian, shared Abraham Geiger’s belief that a historico-critical approach to tradition is indispensable for balancing continuity and change in religion.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of the College, Grabiner said: “over the past decade the Jewish population of Germany has grown faster than in any other European country. There are now close to 200000 Jews living in Gemany –mostly from the Former Soviet Union. The Abraham Geiger College has worked closely with the World Union, and our FSU operation, to coordinate rabbinic studies for students from the FSU ... The fact that Geiger does not charge any tuition fees for its rabbinic students is a major advantage and has assisted us in the training of a new generation of rabbis for service to the Jewish community in Germany and in the FSU... It is responding to the shortage of rabbis worldwide in our movement and is helping to train a new generation of rabbis who will serve a variety of Jewish communities... While we are celebrating today the 10th anniversary of the Abraham Geiger College, this coming May 24, 2010 will mark the 200th birthday of Rabbi Abraham Geiger.  We are reclaiming our Jewish roots, not only in post war Europe but in the very country which gave birth to the dynamism of Progressive Judaism.”
 
The President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, honored the Abraham Geiger College with her remarks: "It is particularly meaningful to me to be here for the occasion of this award and of the ordination ceremonies earlier today.  I am the daughter of a German Jewish refugee – my mother left Stuttgart at the age of nine in 1936.  Nearly 32 years ago, I had the good fortune to marry Dr. James Dreyfus, the great-grandson of Rabbi Leo Baeck.  So, although I myself am not a descendant of Rabbi Baeck, I have given birth to three of his great-great-grandchildren. You know that Leo Baeck was and is respected by Christian theologians as well as being revered by the Jewish community, and so it is a great honor to continue that tradition of dialogue... We applaud  Hans Küng's  involvement in interfaith dialogue, especially  his  conviction that humanity should develop a Global Ethic, a set of basic principles upon which all, regardless of their particular religious heritage, can agree, and by agreeing, improve the quality of life for all on this planet. .. This nation, within the memory of the living, tried to destroy Jews along with Jewish ideas.  But the remnant has survived, and even here, we witness the rebirth of Jewish culture and religion. " 
Abraham Geiger College, Germany’s first post-war Jewish seminary, was founded in 1999. In September 2006, its initial graduates became the first three rabbis to be ordained on German soil since the war. The college is supported by  Germany’s federal government, the state of Brandenburg, the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of all of Germany’s states, the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Leo Baeck Foundation.