Germany - Israel Relations: How Jewish life developed in Germany after the Holocaust

With more than 200,000 people and counting, Germany's Jewish community is the only one in Europe with a rapidly increasing population — a surprising reality given the near-complete extermination of Jews within Germany during the Holocaust.

Today's growing numbers are even more remarkable given that in 1945 most of the world's Jews considered the idea of rebuilding their ruined communities — on the very soil where Hitler plotted and carried out a genocide — to be unthinkable.

Read more at: How Jewish life developed in Germany after the Holocaust | Germany| News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 21.02.2021

The Netherlands: Protestant church's declaration of guilt towards the Jews is a historic step

The Dutch Protestant Church is to admit that it helped to ‘sow the seeds’ of anti-Semitism and failed to protect the country’s Jewish population before, during and after the Second World War.

On Sunday, November 8, René de Reuver, the church’s official scribe, will read out a ‘declaration of guilt’ in the Rav Aron Schuster Synagogue in Amsterdam as part of the commemoration of Kristallnacht, the ‘night of broken glass’ in 1938 seen as the moment when the Nazis’ oppression of the Jews tipped over into outright persecution.

Read more at: Protestant church's declaration of guilt towards the Jews is a historic step - DutchNews.nl

Faith: How personal manifestations of Faith can become a source of conflict.

It is always amazing to see how large numbers of people from different religions always feel the need to show, by some outward manifestation, to which religion they belong.

Jews wear the Kippah. Christians often use the Cross around their neck as an ornament, and many Muslim women wear the Burka.

In a sense one can safely say that these public manifestations of Faith have nothing to do with the definition of Faith and as a matter of fact can often  become a source of  conflict.

The definition of Faith is really quite clear: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Or as it is also said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you”.

Maybe something to think about when we talk about Peace on Earth?

EU- Digest

Gaza - Israel: Jews March in New York Rally Against Israel War in Gaza – by Hody Nemes

Holding signs emblazoned with slogans like “Boycott Israeli Apartheid” and “New York Jews Say: Not in Our Name,” hundreds of protesters marched through lower Manhattan on Thursday demanding an end to American support for Israel’s operation in Gaza.

The event was one of many held in the U.S. and around the world as part of a “national day of action” against Israel’s Gaza campaign. Two Jewish groups, Jewish Voices for Peace and Jews Say No!, were among the march’s organizers, and numerous Jews came to protest Israel’s military campaign.

“I’m here because of the massacre that has recently happened, but also because of the ongoing occupation,” said Anna Jacobs, who was pushing her toddler in a stroller.

Standing nearby, Jews Say No! activist Dorothy Zellner lamented that outsiders assume the Jewish community uniformly supports Israel. “This is heartbreaking. Everyone thinks Israel represents us and speaks for us,” she said.

“I think there’s a myth that the Jewish community supports the Israeli attack on Gaza,” she added, and asserted that there are “hundreds of thousands” of Jews in the U.S. that oppose the Israeli occupation.

Most of the Jewish protesters interviewed opposed Israeli policies long before the current campaign. But they view the current hostilities as deplorable, or even criminal.

Read more: Jews March in New York Rally Against Israel War in Gaza – Forward.com

Spain: 500 years after the Inquisition, Spain wants its Jews back.

Spain is considering a new change to its citizenship laws that would allow the descendants of Jews expelled from the country during the Spanish Inquisition to obtain citizenship:

Until now the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain during the 15th century – known as Sephardic Jews – could claim Spanish citizenship only after living in the country for two years, and then only if they renounced their previous nationality.

The new bill, which is still to be approved by the Spanish parliament, will allow the estimated 3.5m Sephardic Jews who are alive today to claim Spanish nationality without having to give up their current passport.[…]

While the biggest community of Sephardic Jews lives in Israel, other communities also exist in Latin America, Turkey, the US and other parts of Europe. The proposed offer of Spanish citizenship would also apply to them.

 Read more: 500 years after the Inquisition, Spain wants its Jews back.

The Netherlands: The "Ten Boom Family Home Museum" in Haarlem - by RM

When tourists visit Amsterdam among one of the favorite spots to visit is the Anne Frank Museum.  

Another similar museum but far less visited than the Anne Frank museum is the Ten Boom family home museum in Haarlem. It was used as a refuge for fugitive Jews and resistance fighters hunted by the Nazis.

 In 1944 the Nazis arrested this courageous Christian family and all 5 were sent to prison (death) camps. Only Corrie ten Boom survived the Ravensbruck concentration camp near Berlin after the war had ended

In the early 1970's Corrie's book "THE HIDING PLACE" became a best seller and an award winning motion picture. Corrie died on her 91st birthday, April 15, 1983. 

In the Jewish tradition to die on your birthday is a special privilege. Personally I was most touched by what Corrie ten Boom wrote about fear and worry while in the concentration camp, "worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength".

The "Ten Boom Family Home Museum" certainly is a place to visit when in Holland.

Click here for additional information about the Ten Boom Family Museum  

EU-Digest

Second world war: Netherlands fined for Holocaust survivors treatment

The City of Amsterdam fined hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors for failing to pay taxes while they were in hiding or in concentration camps.

The affair was exposed in an article in Het Parool, a local daily, on March 30. Many of the houses in question were confiscated and used by members of the NSB Dutch Nazi party while the Jewish owners were in hiding or in camps.

The city went after survivors as late as 1947, the report said. Other Dutch municipalities waived such debts, Het Parool reported. The following year the city agreed to reimburse half of what it charged to some Jews who were taxed in absentia. The city’s archives contain 342 requests for reimbursement, Het Parool reported.

The documents about this taxation were discovered by Charlotte van den Berg, a 23-year-old university student. She said she found them bundled with an elastic band in the archive section of one of the city’s departments while conducting research on Jewish home owners.

About 75 percent of Holland’s pre-World War II Jewish population of 140,000 was murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, a Hague-based watchdog on anti-Semitism which is known locally by its acronym CIDI.

Read more: Amsterdam fined, taxed Holocaust survivors in hiding | The Times of Israel

Cinema: Dutch film "Only Decent People" tests Jewish, black taboos - by Cnaan Liphshiz

The dreamy expression of a child at a chocolate factory slowly spreads across Geza Weisz’s handsome face as he watches the quivering breasts and buttocks of young black women dancing around him at an Amsterdam nightclub.

The scene appears in “Only Decent People,” a dark and provocative Dutch-language film that examines the fraught relations between the country’s Jews and other minorities and stars Weisz, a Jewish Amsterdammer and a major movie star in Holland.

Based on a 2009 best-selling novel by the Dutch Jewish author Robert Vuijsje, the film was the second-most popular in Holland last year, drawing 350,000 viewers in more than 100 theaters — a substantial number in a nation of 16 million.

But its stereotypical depictions of Moroccans, Jews and black Surinamese have drawn intense criticism in a country where the lessons of colonialism and the Holocaust have instituted a strict standard of political correctness — a standard that some say only a Jewish artist could breach.

“If ‘Only Decent People’ were written by someone who was not Jewish or Surinamese, it would’ve have been seen as pure racism,” said Bart Wallet, a non-Jewish historian and expert on Dutch Jewry. “It is met with greater understanding because Robert Vuijsje is a Jewish man who has a Dutch Afro-Surinamese partner.”

In the film, Weisz plays a rebellious and dark-complexioned David Samuels, the son of affluent Jewish intellectuals who endures discrimination because he looks like a Moroccan. Estranged from both the Jewish community and the wider Dutch society on account of his looks, David embarks on a quest for black lovers that leads him to witness not only violence and promiscuity among Holland’s black underclass, but also the racist attitudes of his Jewish friends.

The film traffics freely in racial stereotypes: Blacks are lazy and greedy; whites are unhygienic; Jews are slave traders; Moroccans are violent. Such sentiments, combined with the film’s depiction of group sex and borderline rape, helped make “Only Decent People” a commercial success, but they also brought latent prejudices to the fore — bolstering the claims of critics who have argued that the film fosters rather than critiques Dutch racism.

Read more: Dutch film tests Jewish, black taboos | The Times of Israel

US Presidential Elections: US Jews allied with Democrats for decades are now coveted by Republicans

The Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reports: "The decades-long allegiance of Jewish voters to the Democratic Party is under unprecedented stress, threatened by a combination of changing demographics and the concerted Republican effort to depict President Barack Obama as unfriendly to Israel.Nowhere are the stakes higher than South Florida, home to 490,000 Jews who make up a voting bloc powerful enough to influence national elections. Though a small percentage of the overall population, Jews vote at a higher rate than virtually every other slice of the electorate.

More than three-quarters of Jewish voters went for Obama in 2008. If Republicans are even moderately successful in eroding that support and Democrats can't stanch the leakage, it could help push the state's 29 electoral votes – more than 10 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency – away from Obama and into the Republican column this year.

Seeking to inoculate the president from Republican attacks, the Democratic Party distributed an Internet video last week that included a clip of Netanyahu praising Obama's commitment to Israel's security, a key concern for many American Jews in light of Iran's ongoing nuclear program.

In Florida and beyond, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, has been visiting Jewish communities, penning articles in Jewish publications and taking to Twitter to diffuse Republican claims that the president, as the Republican catchphrase goes, has "thrown Israel under the bus." As chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, the 45-year-old Jewish South Floridian is one of Obama's top emissaries to the Jewish community.

The Pew Research Center reported that 65 percent of American Jews identified themselves as Democrats or said they leaned toward the Democratic Party in 2011. Republicans got 29 percent."

EU-Digest

Netherlands parliament rules against ritual animal slaughter

The Netherlands' parliament has passed a bill banning any slaughter of livestock without stunning, removing an exemption that has long allowed orthodox Dutch Jews and Muslims to butcher animals according to their centuries-old dietary rules.

However, the bill must still pass the senate and the government says it may be unenforceable in its current form.

The threat of a ban led to outcry from Jewish and Muslim groups who say it infringes their right to freedom of religion. They argue ritual slaughter – done by swiftly cutting animals' throats with a razor-sharp knife – is no worse than stunning.

For more: Netherlands parliament rules against ritual animal slaughter | World news | The Guardian

Ynetnews: International symposium to focus on Spain's Jews - Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews

For the complete report from Ynetnews click on this link

The historic link between Spain and its Jews has been a study of contrasts. Renowned as both the historic birthplace of Sephardic culture, Spain was also the site of dark moments in Jewish history. The American Sephardi Federation/Sephardic House(ASF/SH)) will examine this historic link between Spain and the Jewish people in a Symposium entitled "The Jews of Spain: Past and Present" which will take place December 5 - 7, 2009 at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

Senior Spanish Government officials will be coming to New York to join eminent scholars from the United States, Canada and Israel in addressing both the triumphs and travails of the Sephardic Jewish legacy in Spain. ASF is organizing this international initiative with the invaluable assistance of the Consulate General of Spain in New York.