Dr. Josef Schuster was elected president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany on 30 November 2014. He has been the chairman of the Jewish community of Würzburg and Lower Franconia since 1998. He has been a member of the steering committee of the Central Council of Jews since 1999 and was its vice-president from 2010 to 2014. Dr. Schuster has also chaired the state association of Jewish communities in Bavaria (Landesverband der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinden in Bayern) as its president since 2002. Dr. Schuster was born in Haifa/Israel on 20.03.1954. In 1956 his parents returned to his paternal homeland of Lower Franconia with him. His father, David Schuster, was the president of the Jewish community of Würzburg for many years. Josef Schuster studied medicine in Würzburg, specialising in internal medicine. He set up his own doctor’s practice in Würzburg in 1988, which he ran until 2020. He is married and has two grown-up children.
