BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's most prominent and controversial Jewish leader has dropped out of sight in the midst of a drugs possession investigation, triggering a media spectacle that has shaken the country's small Jewish community.

Michel Friedman, a jet-setting lawyer famous for fancy suits and celebrity girlfriends, is the vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and hosts a television show on which he grills politicians as though they are on trial.

Friedman, renowned for the program which brought him as many enemies as fans, abruptly abandoned his show, left the country and declined comment after Berlin prosecutors recently said they were launching an investigation that included police raids of his home and offices.

Small amounts of cocaine were found.

Friedman, 48, is believed to be in Italy, according to German media reports. Other accounts say he fled to France.

"He's not available," said a spokeswoman at his law office in Frankfurt. "I can't say where he is or when he will be back."

The scandal surrounding Friedman, who made a living as what Stern magazine described as chief prosecutor against Germany, has been especially upsetting for the country's Jewish community, almost annihilated by Nazi Germany's Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews perished.

Friedman's parents were saved from the Auschwitz death camp by Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist made famous by the film "Schindler's List."

Commentators, politicians and Jewish leaders have expressed fears that the media frenzy may fan anti-Semitism. It also appears to have broken a tacit taboo on criticizing Jews in a country still agonizing over the Holocaust and relations with Jews.

Juergen Moellemann, a former economics minister who recently died in a parachute jump police are treating as a suicide, had attacked Friedman's "arrogant manner" saying it stirred anti-Semitism. Moellemann was vilified in his party, the liberal Free Democrats, for his attack.

There are about 100,000 Jews in Germany now, most of whom keep a low profile.

JEWISH COMMUNITY

"After the first wave of hysteria subsides, I think Mr Friedman is going to have some explaining to do," said Rafael Seligmann, a leading Jewish author in an interview last week with German Radio. "At some point he is going to have to talk."

"We are not trembling in fear over this issue -- it's a matter for Mr Friedman and the state prosecutors and not a problem for the Jewish community," Seligmann added. "But it is naturally having an impact. If the charges are true the question is: Is this the right man to lead the community?"

Seligmann said many Jews believe Friedman had disqualified himself to be their leader while others are less bothered -- prosecutors suspect him only of drugs possession, a minor crime, and not dealing, which would be more serious.

Some, such as film maker Artur Brauner, have accused Berlin prosecutors of going after Friedman because he is Jewish.

"Friedman is someone who has polarized people," Seligmann said. "He set high standards as someone who is infallible and we have to see if he lives up to the standards. I have my doubts."

Most of the public attention has focused on the irony of a television host who made even the most powerful German political leaders squirm for their failings now landing in the spotlight because of his own foibles. But his position as a voice for Jews in Germany has never been far from the surface.

INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK

Friedman has asked the Hessiche Rundfunk public television network that broadcasts his provocative show "Watch out! Friedman!" to cancel his next four programs and relieve him from his duties until the accusations are resolved, the network said.

Stern magazine, Germany's top-selling weekly, said Friedman is someone "who has stood as a symbol for the victims" and described him as a fallen moralist. It said being Jewish had long made him invulnerable to attacks.

"No one really dared to attack him, the admonishing Jew in the land of the assailants," Stern wrote. "But now the man who was inviolable is no longer beyond reproach. He attacked from the cover of a Schindler Jew. That cover is now gone."

But Michael Naumann, editor of Die Zeit newspaper and a former culture minister in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, criticized prosecutors for leaking details of the investigation and accused the media of double standards.

"It's pure hypocrisy," Naumann said, pointing out that Friedman's tough questioning of his television guests never went into private issues.

"People didn't go to his talk show because he was Jewish. People didn't lose debates to him because he was Jewish. There is certainly an element of anti-Semitism to this."