יו”ר איגוד הארגונים היהודיים באירופה: “תמיד יהיו תירוצים לאנטישמיות”

ערוץ 14
May 17, 2023

הועידה השנתית של איגוד הארגונים היהודיים באירופה (eja) נערכה השנה דווקא בפורטו, פורטוגל. יו״ר האיגוד, הרב מנחם מרגולין, מספק הסבר מעניין לבחירה הזו. ״פורטו נבחרה משתי סיבות: בזכות ההיסטוריה העתיקה והחשובה של הקהילות הספרדיות באירופה, ולאור העובדה שפורטו היא קהילה לדוגמא: קטנה, מורכבת מבודדים שהחליטו להתאגד ולהקים גוף לתפארת״.

הועידה התכנסה בצל זינוק נוסף במספר התקריות האנטישמיות ביבשת, כמעט בכל מדינה. בכינוס סיפקו דוברים מגרמניה, בריטניה, צרפת ועוד הצצה לעולם הקהילתי שלהם על כך המשתמע מכך:, דנו בדרכים להתמודד עם שנאת- היהודים וחתמו על הצהרה משותפת, הקוראת למנהיגי מדינות אירופה להתייחס לאנטישמיות כאל פשע שנאה ייחודי ויוצא דופן, על כך המשתמע מכך.

https://www.now14.co.il/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%B4%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%94/

Additional Articles

Chairman of EJA, Rabbi Margolin's Words on the Latest Poll on Antisemitism

Have you ever been stuck in a dire situation where someone wants to help you with a problem, but you know their approach isn’t going to work? And you don’t want to offend them by saying as much as their intentions are good?

In ordinary life, it’s a dilemma. But when it comes to the Millions of Jews living in Europe, the time for such niceties and politeness is now officially over.

On Tuesday, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and the European Commission published their second survey on discrimination and hate crime against Jews in the EU. The FRA’s director said the findings “make for a sobering read”.  That would be understatement.

With 28% of respondents indicating that they have been harassed at least once in the past year, with 79% of Jews who experienced anti-Semitic harassment in the past five years not reporting this to the police or another organisation, with 34% avoiding visiting Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe, with 38% considering emigrating because they did not feel safe as Jews in Europe, and with 70% considering that efforts by Member States to combat Antisemitism are not effective, this is not sobering. This is an unmitigated disaster.

The report, as brutal and stark as its findings are did not shock me in the slightest. It simply confirmed all the feedback, all the phone calls and all the reports that we at the Europaen Jewish Association had been getting, and made the red lines that we ratified at our conference in November all the more pertinent and pressing.

Before we get to the red lines, let us ask the most pressing question. Why is Europe failing so badly in making Jews feel secure? It does after all say all the right words, publishes reports and invests in people to fight the scourge of this oldest hatred. How can it be that 70% of Jews don’t believe it will make a difference?

The answer is wrapped up in the same word that entangles much of the good intentions of the EU institutions, and that word is competence.

Competence is basically which areas the EU can have a say (or interfere depending on your position). So, the EU can, if you are a Member State, tell you how many fish you can catch a year but not where your army should be deployed. It happens that human rights and freedom of religion, indeed the very subject of antisemitism itself is not an EU Competence. That means in essence that all the fine words, all the reports, and all of the various agencies looking at this in Brussels cannot compel, sanction or effectively reprimand any breaches. That, therefore,  makes human rights, freedom of religion and antisemitism voluntary instead of compulsory and open to interpretation or political manipulation.

That’s problem number one. For example, during the religious slaughter debate in Denmark, it was said that animal welfare takes precedence over Freedom of Religion. When it comes to circumcision, a similar argument over the right of the child to choose is being habitually made, in many countries. We can, and often do, get into public discourse of the minutiae of such debates, on scientific, health and any number of grounds, but this misses the central point. Is Freedom of Religion (and freedom to practise) a fundamental right or not? Everyone says so, so it must be right? Then why are we, as a Jewish Association engaged every year in efforts across the continent to defend Kosher slaughter and Brit Milah? It is increasingly apparent that there is nobody to police, much less defend, this vital part of the foundation on which the EU is built.  We as Jews are left with the Animal Farm scenario, where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

The other words that get us all tangled up are political and expediency. And this is problem number two, that of Anti-Zionism/Anti-Israelism. It is clear in a number of countries, and from the EU’s own statistics from the last few years, that there are massive spikes in anti-Semitism whenever Israel is involved in defensive actions, such as operations in Gaza, or efforts to break the navy blockade. The BDS movement, and their followers in the left wing stir up hate speech, draw false parallels with South Africa under apartheid and raise modern blood libels. Anti-Zionism is, make no mistake, the modern ‘acceptable’ face of anti-Semitism. Looking at the report, over 85% of respondents in Belgium and France feel that the arab-Israeli conflict affects their feelings of safety “a great deal”. Whether you support the Israeli government or not, whether you are secular or not, that Israel affects you as a Jew is undeniable.

Which makes the EU’s position on the matter all the more ridiculous. Anti-Semitism is a no-no, but criticism of Israel is free speech. This from the mouth of the EU’s High Representative herself. Where is the red line on this free speech? Does it stop at Jewish Nazi? Zionist child killer? Israeli Organ harvester? There isn’t a clear answer, allowing the Israel haters and the modern anti-Semites in the far left and BDS movement to act and talk with impunity.

Let us recap. On two of the biggest touch-paper issues affecting anti-Semitism across the continent – whether real or perceived – the EU is either incapable in the first instance, and unwilling for the sake of political expediency to act on the second. 

As I opened with, the time for niceties is over. Nobody is questioning the intentions of the European Institutions and European countries to tackle the problem, and we genuinely thank them for this commitment, but you can’t and wont tackle the oldest hatred leaving the competence question open ,nor by maintaining a two-faced approach to anti-Semitism where Israel is concerned. It really is the political equivalent of using a bucket to take the water out of a boat, without blocking the hole in the first place!

And that right there – those two gaping holes in the hull – are why the Jews interviewed by the survey – all 70% of us – don’t have any faith that efforts will be effective.

So, what can be done? The EJA sent every European political party “Jewish Red Lines” that were ratified by democratic vote by our members across Europe.  None of them are rocket science, but they can and would plug the holes.

Our members said that Political parties and their leadership must sign up to the full IHRA definition of Anti-semitism. That Every European Country must appoint a dedicated Special Representative to combat anti-Semitism where one already doesn’t exist. That all political parties pledge to exclude from government parties or politicians that espouse anti-Semitism as defined by the IHRA definition. That all political parties must pass, in accordance with their respective rules of procedure, binding resolutions that reject BDS activities as fundamentally anti-Semitic, and lastly that all political parties support in writing and in party documents their support for freedom of religion and freedom of practice at Member State level and EU level.

These red lines are the bare minimum that is needed to make a real difference. Europe’s principal leaders and parties were sent them, will be aware of them, and should adopt them immediately if they are serious about tackling anti-Semitism and gaining the trust of Jews who feel literally cast adrift from the very people who tell them they want to help.  If you really want to help us, the message is clear. Listen to us, adopt the red lines and let’s consign reports like this to the dustbin of history. Otherwise, expect a worse report next year. And the year after that too.

סוף מר: החופשה של תלמידים יהודים מצרפת הסתיימה באירוע אנטישמי

האנטישמיות באירופה: קבוצת תלמידי בית ספר יהודי־צרפתי, שבילתה את חופשת הקיץ במלון בעיירה הקטנה טרילז’ ליד ספליט שבקרואטיה, נדהמה אתמול (שלישי) לגלות מול בית המלון “נוף” מפתיע שנוסף בשעות הלילה – צלב קרס ענק בצבע אדום שצויר על ידי אלמונים על הכיכר ועל המדרכה.לאחר שהמידע הועבר לשגרירות ישראל על ידי איגוד הקהילות היהודיות באירופה, פנה האיגוד גם למשרדי ראש הממשלה, הנשיא ושרי החוץ והפנים הקרואטים. כל הגורמים הרשמיים גינו את האירוע והביעו גילויי זעזוע והתנצלות כלפי התלמידים. המשטרה הקרואטית פתחה בחקירה.רוברט זינגר, יו”ר המרכז לאימפקט יהודי ולשעבר מנכ”ל הקונגרס היהודי העולמי, מסר: “לא מתקבל על הדעת כי חברי הקהילה היהודית של צרפת שרצו לבלות את חופשת הקיץ בקרואטיה או לחלופין בכל מקום אחר בעולם ייאלצו לחיות בתחושת פחד ובחוסר ביטחון רק בגלל זהותם היהודית. המקרה הקשה הוא הוכחה לכך שהאנטישמיות באירופה עדיין בוערת. אני קורא לכלל מנהיגי מדינות אירופה לפעול למען הגנת הקהילות היהודיות, ועל ממשלת קרואטיה באופן מיידי לקבל את הגדרת האנטישמיות הבינלאומית IHRA ולפעול למיגור התופעה”.
ח״כ יום טוב כלפון, יו”ר ועדת המשנה לזכאי השבות וקשר עם התפוצות, על המפגן האנטישמי מול תלמידים בקרואטיה: ״לאנטישמיות אין חיסון- אבל ליהודים יש בית. למגפת האנטישמיות באירופה עוד לא נמצא חיסון. ‏האנטישמים רודפים את היהודים, גם ילדים בכל מקום ואפילו בחופשתם. אבל בשונה מהעבר ליהודים יש בית, מדינה חזקה עם צבא חזק, בה היהודים יכולים להגן על עצמם. ‏אני קורא לאחינו בתפוצות בואו לארץ, לטייל, לנפוש וגם לחיות. כאן הבית שלכם”.יו”ר איגוד הארגונים היהודים באירופה, הרב מנחם מרגולין, הצהיר: “הילדים התעוררו וראו צלב קרס אדום ענק, סמל הכאב והרצח ליהודים בכל מקום, שאומר בבירור – אתם לא רצויים כאן. זה הצלב הבוער, הלולאה סביב העץ ליהודים. החופשה הזאת עבור הילדים האלה תהיה עכשיו חופשה בלתי נשכחת, מהסיבות הלא נכונות. אף על פי שאני בטוח שדעותיהם של האחראים לציור צלב קרס ענקי אינן מייצגות את הרוב המכריע של הקרואטים, תקיפה זו מסמלת עדיין כאב עמוק ליהודים בכל מקום”.הרב מרגולין הוסיף: “המלחמה באנטישמיות באירופה עדיין בעיצומה. ההתקפה הזו היא תזכורת לכך שלעולם לא נוכל להרשות לעצמנו להיות שאננים ולאפשר לנגיף האנטישמיות להתפשט ללא בקרה”.

Europe: Synagogues sold for next to nothing

In Eastern Europe, historic synagogues are sold for the price of a used car.

On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.
Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holocaust, when three quarters of Slonim residents were Jewish. Virtually all were murdered by the Nazis.
Still, Reeves looked at the structure, which had fallen into disrepair after years of use as shops, and saw something she wanted to save.
On a visit to the city of Slonim in Belarus, Ilona Reeves fell in love with a 380-year-old dilapidated building that used to house one of the area’s largest and oldest synagogues.
Reeves, a 40-year-old author who lives in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, is a Christian, like virtually everyone who lives in the country. And the synagogue hadn’t been operational since before the Holocaust, when three quarters of Slonim residents were Jewish. Virtually all were murdered by the Nazis.
Still, Reeves looked at the structure, which had fallen into disrepair after years of use as shops, and saw something she wanted to save.

“Standing outside the Great Synagogue of Slonim, I felt how small I am, we all are, in the face of such architectural monuments and traditions they represent,” she said.
With money that she’d freed up by selling her apartment in Minsk — partly to buy the synagogue — Reeves bought the synagogue in December for about $10,000 from the Slonim municipality on the promise that she restore it. She was the sole bidder.
The Slonim synagogue is just one of a number of similar structures to hit the market across Eastern Europe in recent years, and Reeves is among a small group of people who have committed to their upkeep.
“Buildings, including old buildings, that used to be synagogues appear on the market pretty regularly in Eastern Europe, and for relatively affordable prices,” said Michael Mail, founder of the UK-based Foundation for Jewish Heritage, which helps restore historic Jewish structures across Europe.
“But there’s often a catch, which is that restoration is complicated and costly,” Mail added.
Reeves knows that firsthand. She is now working on raising $2 million for the restoration project, which she hopes will take a decade but some professionals have told her might go on for 25 years.
The city of Vitebsk, located about 130 miles farther northeast of Minsk, recently offered essentially for free the hollowed remains of the Great Lubavitch Synagogue — where the family of the painter Marc Chagall used to pray — to anyone willing to restore it.
In 2016, a coffee shop called Synagoga Café opened in the old synagogue of Trnava, Slovakia. A non-Jewish contractor, Si­mon Ste­funko, bought the crumbling building some years earlier, renovated it according to the city’s strict preservation requirements and reopened it as an upscale hangout.
Financially, creating Synagoga Café didn’t make any sense, Stefunko said. The renovations cost millions of dollars that the coffee shop didn’t begin to mitigate even before it was shuttered last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. But he did it anyway “so something would remain from the Jewish community here,” Stefunko said. “I think it’s beautiful.”
The offloading of restoration costs represents the latest strategy for managing a glut of historical Jewish structures that have fallen into disrepair since most of Europe’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
Before the genocide, Europe had an estimated 17,000 synagogues. Only about 3,300 of the structures remain standing today. Among those, only 776, or 23%, are being used as synagogues, according to the Foundation for Jewish Heritage.
Most of the surviving synagogues are located in Eastern Europe, where most of the structures that remained standing were nationalized following World War II by communist authorities who were anti-religious and often anti-Semitic.
Decimated by the Holocaust and the wave of emigration that followed the fall of communism, Jewish communities in places like Slonim and Vitebsk had virtually disappeared, leaving their former institutions in government hands.
In Belarus, which has a dictatorship with no laws for restitution of confiscated Jewish property, many of these structures were listed for protection by local authorities that lack the resources to restore them.
Making structural changes to buildings that are listed for protection is difficult and often illegal, requiring special permission from the state or municipality. The protected status often brings down the market price of the buildings because developers have no way of turning a profit by purchasing them.
But many buildings that had housed historical synagogues in Eastern Europe are not listed, meaning once they are sold to private owners they can be altered and even demolished.
The former Great Synagogue in the small town of Ostrino, in western Belarus, is on sale in an auction where the minimum bid is about $40. The new owner will face some requirements to preserve it, but may use parts as a warehouse or residential unit.
And in 2019, a 19th-century building that once was a synagogue in the village of Porazava, near Slonim, was sold for $6,000 to be used as a warehouse.
Similar situations occur also in Western Europe. In 2018, a 200-year-old synagogue in the city of Deventer, in the eastern Netherlands, became a restaurant after its upkeep became unaffordable to the local community, which includes a handful Jews.
Local governments in Eastern Europe have given back many properties that communist regimes had confiscated from Christian and Jewish faith communities.
Christian communities have been able to reclaim, restore or trade up many of the structures returned to them, sometimes with funding from the Vatican and the Orthodox Church.
Similar movement has also happened with some properties given back to local Jews, though with far less deep pockets of support.
In 2002, the municipality of Babruisk in eastern Belarus handed back to the local Jewish community a former synagogue that had been used as an army warehouse and later a tailor shop. The building, the only one of the city’s 42 synagogues still standing, was restored and inaugurated as a synagogue thanks to the fundraising efforts of an energetic local rabbi, Shaul Hababo.
In Moldova, Rabbi Shimshon Izakson is hoping to pull off a similar transformation at the former Rabbi Yehuda Ţirilson yeshiva and synagogue compound — a massive complex in downtown Chisinau that is so dilapidated that only the external walls remain.
But other times, Jewish communities that inherited historic former synagogues stolen from them when they were much larger were not able or willing to preserve them to the satisfaction of their own members.
Earlier this month, a massive chunk of the roof of the 18th-century Great Synagogue of Brody in western Ukraine collapsed. Another part of the building, which is government-owned and listed as a monument for preservation, imploded in 2006. Severely damaged in World War II by German troops who tried to blow it up, what remains of the synagogue is held up by structural scaffolding. No Jews live today in Brody, which used to have thousands of Jewish residents.
The Jewish community of Satu Mare in northern Romania consists of about 100 members. Following restitution negotiations in the 1990s, it owns an impressive 129 cemeteries and four synagogues, which are falling into disrepair because the community cannot afford to maintain them.
“In truth, this building is a drain on our resources, as are the hundreds of graves we need to preserve and fence,” Paul Decsei, the community’s pointman for managing the assets, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2017 from inside the city’s main synagogue, the Decebal Street Synagogue, an imposing but crumbling 19th-century structure. “But on the other hand, we can’t walk away from any of it. It’s our heritage and we have a responsibility toward it.”
That has also been the case with the Chevra Tehilim prayer house in Krakow, Poland. In 2016, the community-owned structure, which features culturally significant decorations on its walls, was leased by the Jewish Community of Krakow and reopened as a trendy nightclub called Hevre, despite protests by some community members who said it ruined the structure.
Reeves, who bought the building in Slonim before she had even seen its interior, cited its beauty as her reason to go ahead and make the purchase. She envisions a cultural or community space where Judaism would have a prominent place.
As a practicing churchgoer who grew up during communism, Reeves’ decision was rooted in her religious sentiment.
“I’ve always had a dream to build a church. Even a small, wooden one,” Reeves, a mother of one son, told JTA. “With the Slonim synagogue project, it feels like I’m halfway there. Or perhaps I’ve already met the goal.”

In first-ever review, UN racism panel presses Palestinians on anti-Semitism

In a rare plea, the PA delegation asks for “slack” from the UN committee. Several of the UN experts pressed the PA on its failure to implement anti-discrimination policies, requesting proof that textbook materials had been reviewed for anti-Semitic material, and asking for explanations for Palestinian officials’ documented incitement to terrorism.

The United Nations’ anti-racism committee began a mandatory two-day review on Tuesday of the policies and practices of the Palestinian Authority, whose delegation responded by criticizing experts of the 18-member panel for asking about anti-Semitic incitement based on evidence provided by the international human rights group UN Watch, whose 32-page shadow report on Palestinian discrimination was labeled by the Palestinian Authority as “propaganda.”
Prior to their questioning of the PA, members of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination were addressed by UN Watch legal adviser Dina Rovner in a meeting with non-governmental organizations, as well as in a private briefing. Rovner highlighted the gross and systematic anti-Semitism by the PA and Hamas, as documented in a written submission by UN Watch.
It also called attention to the failure of the Palestinian delegation – headed by Ammar Hijazi, deputy foreign minister for multilateral affairs – to acknowledge any of this in its submissions to the world body.
“Our shadow report and presentations today exposed how the PA’s submissions to the committee completely ignored racist and discriminatory Palestinian practices, and how they tried to evade responsibility by shifting the focus of the review onto Israel,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.
Notably, groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which lobbied for the Palestinians to be recognized as a state for the purpose of signing human-rights treaties saying that this would hold them to account, did not make a submission or statement for this first-ever review of the Palestinians by the UN’s anti-racism committee.
Out of the nearly 40 Palestinian human-rights groups that appeared in the same UN building when Israel was reviewed earlier this year, only one, Al-Haq, attended the Palestinian Authority’s review. This raised questions as to whether their primary focus is on improving Palestinian human rights said Neuer.
UN Watch’s detailed submission revealed that the PA and Hamas routinely violate international commitments to combating racism, through laws, policies, and statements aimed at denying any Jewish rights in Israel or the Palestinian-controlled territories.
By contrast, in its own report, the PA sought to minimize its obligations as a party to the anti-racism convention by failing to address the problem of racism in Palestinian law and society and, as the UN experts realized, instead repeatedly tried to blame Israel.
“The PA exploits the reporting process of the anti-racism committee as yet another UN vehicle to attack Israel. This is a waste of the committee’s time and resources, as Israel is subject to its own review later this year,” said Neuer.
In nearly two hours of presenting before the committee, the PA blamed Israel for its problems related to discrimination, devoting only a few minutes to its own policies and practices.
The Palestinian delegates told the committee of their life “under Israel’s racist occupation” and “the presence of apartheid,” contrasted with the PA’s alleged “commitment to work towards harmonizing legislation with the UN conventions.”
In a rare plea, the PA delegation asked for “slack” from the committee for its first-ever review. Several of the UN experts pressed the PA on its failure to implement anti-discrimination policies, requesting proof that textbook materials had been reviewed for anti-Semitic material, and asking for explanations for Palestinian officials’ documented incitement to terrorism.
The UN panel’s review of the Palestinians continued through Wednesday morning.
“We trust that the committee will continue its work to hold the PA and Hamas accountable for their flagrant violations of the UN’s convention against racism and the principles of international human rights law,” said Neuer.
The article was taken from JNS and was published on Israel Hayom

Additional Communities
United Kingdom
Ukraine
Turkey
Schweiz
Switzerland
Spain
Slovakia
Serbia
Russia
Romania
Portugal
When you click on "Donate" you will be redirected to a secure donation page