The European Jewish Association is proud and delighted to welcome another organisation to our growing roster of partners and communities.
We have just concluded and signed a memorandum of understanding with Nederlands Israëlitische Gemeente De Achterhoek.
We are sure that this cooperation will bring with it beautiful and important accomplishments. We look forward to working for the betterment of Dutch and European Jewry together.
“Is this the solution? Will the next advice be for me to cut off my beard? Or change my name?” asks Chief Rabbi Jacobs.
EU Jewish Association (EJA) Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin and Head of Governmental relations for the Rabbinical Centre of Europe Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs (Netherlands) today expressed their disappointment and alarm at comments made by Germany’s respected antisemitism co-ordinatior, Dr Felix Klein, where he said that he wouldn’t advise Jews to wear Kippot (skullcaps) in some parts of the country.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, the institution that officially represents Spanish Jews, elected David Obadía as its new president for the next four years, replacing Isaac Benzaquén.
Obadía’s first declarations after being elected focused on pointing out that the axes of his work will be “dialogue, coexistence, diversity and multiculturalism”.
The new president of the Jewish community in Spain is Spanish, son and grandson of Spaniards, and was born in Beer Sheva, Israel, in 1961. During his childhood and adolescence he lived in Melilla and, currently, in Torremolinos, where he has developed his life as a businessman in the real estate sector and also his political career.
In 2015 he entered politics through José Ortiz, former mayor of Torremolinos, who appointed him as his personal advisor. With the Ciudadanos party he held the positions in the Torremolinos Town Hall of Deputy Mayor, Councillor for Development, Urban Planning, Infrastructure, Commercial Activities, Public Roads and Heritage, and served as spokesman for his political group. However, in 2023 Ciudadanos nominated him as candidate for mayor of Torremolinos but he decided to retire from politics.
According to the FCJE, Obadía has extensive community experience that began in 1980 as a collaborator in the Yosef Obadía synagogue in Melilla, founded by his great-grandfather of the same name.
To date he has held various posts, including that of president of the Jewish community of Torremolinos for 8 years, of which he is currently honorary president; vice-president of the FCJE; head of the Spanish Jewish Youth; and current president of the Jewish community of Malaga and of the Association of Jewish communities of Andalusia. He has also received numerous awards for his extensive career in the service of Spanish Jewish life over the last 40 years.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office appeals against the minimum sentence for the ultra Pedro Varela and calls for the definitive closure of his neo-Nazi bookshop
Oriol Solé Altimira
7-9 minutes
The Barcelona public prosecutor’s office against hate crimes has appealed against the sentence that condemned the neo-Nazi Pedro Varela to a minimum sentence. As elDiario.es has learned, the prosecutor is asking the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to increase to eight years in prison the 18-month sentence imposed on the ultra in the first instance and, in particular, to order the definitive closure of the bookshop and publishing house owned by the neo-Nazi, which the Barcelona Court of Appeal rejected.
The sentence of the Barcelona High Court left an extensive investigation by the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Public Prosecutor’s Office in tatters by acquitting all the accused except Varela and sentencing the well-known neo-Nazi (who hours before the trial attended a Vox rally) to a sentence of only one and a half years in prison, compared to the 12 years demanded by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Born in Barcelona in 1957, in his youth Varela was one of the disciples of Leon Degrelle, a Belgian SS officer whom Franco gave asylum in Spain. In 1978, Varela became president of CEDADE, the largest organisation producing Nazi propaganda and a breeding ground for a large part of the Spanish extreme right until its dissolution in 1993. He has three convictions for spreading neo-Nazi ideology.
The case was the fourth trial against Pedro Varela and the legal tool to close down once and for all the Europa bookshop and the Ojeda publishing house, owned by this veteran of the neo-Nazi movement and converted into two of the epicentres of ultra propaganda in Barcelona: books such as ‘Mein Kampf’ were sold there and international supremacist or Ku Klux Klan leaders came to give lectures.
The Barcelona Court, however, rejected the definitive closure of Varela’s business, as well as the prohibition to publish books again, and decreed only the destruction of the copies of neo-Nazi books that had been seized in 2016, when the investigating judge in the case decreed the precautionary closure of the establishment.
The refusal to close the bookshop and the neo-Nazi publishing house for good was based on the fact that the court did not convict Varela of illicit association. The judges only punished the neo-Nazi with 18 months in prison for the crime of incitement to hatred for the publishing, sale and distribution of Nazi books by Varela, whom the court went so far as to highlight as having ‘rescued works openly and grossly discriminatory towards Jews’.
The books and the talks and activities of the Europa bookshop were aimed at ‘the defence and praise of several of its authors, such as Adolf Hiter and Rudolf Hess’, the ruling added. However, the closure of the shops could only be a consequence of a conviction for unlawful association and not for incitement to hatred, the court reasoned.
In a pedagogical argument, prosecutor Marta Gloria López Catalá compared the case of Varela’s establishments and businesses to the seizure of drug trafficking boats. If the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court has endorsed the definitive seizure of vehicles used to transport narcotics, it should also proceed in the same way with the vehicles (in this case, the bookshop and the publishing house) through which Varela propagated the hate speech for which he has been convicted, the prosecutor reasons.
‘The spaces of the Europa bookshop and Ediciones Ojeda and its trademark registered in the register of patents are the instruments through which the criminal acts were committed’, recalls the prosecutor, who does see it as possible that their closure is a consequence of the conviction for incitement to hatred. For this reason, the appeal does not include a request for a conviction for unlawful association, but sees the closure as legally fitting in the only offence for which he was convicted in the first instance.
In addition to the closure of the premises, the Prosecutor’s Office requests in its appeal the closure of the websites of the bookshop and the publishing house, as well as its Facebook page and the money confiscated from Varela’s bank account, which the Barcelona Court of Appeal also saved from being definitively destroyed.
I am a tightrope walker
With fear of heights
You probably know those images of a tightrope walker who has strung a rope between two gigantic high-rise buildings In Manhattan and walks on the tightrope with a stick in his hands. One slip and the show is over! It is vital that the tightrope walker constantly concentrates, does not get distracted, keeps his goal in mind and is not afraid of heights. In this week’s Sidra as well as in the Pirkee Awoth – Proverbs of the Fathers that we will learn this Shabbat, I meet myself as the tightrope walker. And on the eighth day he must be circumcised on the foreskin of his body (Leviticus 12: 3). In the Halaga, Jewish law, it is stated that although the Brit Mila, the circumcision, can be performed during the whole eighth day, it is nevertheless better to fulfill this mitzvah early in the morning. Keeping a commandment or any good deed should not be delayed! We learn this lesson from patriarch Awraham. When he was ordered by G’d to sacrifice his son Yitzchak, he did not postpone thatorder, but he got up early to do what was required of him.
Knowing this, the question arises: Why didn’t Awraham circumcise himself in the morning, but delayed his Brit Mila until later that day? One of the answers I found was that Awraham didn’t just think about himself. He wanted others to hear what he was doing. He wanted the entire society to stop idolatry. He hoped that everyone would realize that there is only one G’d and that He demands of the men to be circumcised. He understood that if he fulfilled this mitzvah early in the morning, hardly anyone would notice. And so, for the sake of publicity, he decided to do it later that day. So that others would be inspired.
In the Proverbs of the Fathers (chapter 2:1) we read: What is the right way for man to choose? Any way that honors him who follows him and at the same time honors him by the people.
From this we see that Awraham’s position is a general rule. In everything we do we have to look at the context. What is the influence of my behavior on my environment? Judaism is not black or white. On the one hand you always have to walk the right way, but on the other hand, depending on the situation, you sometimes have to choose an alternative route to achieve the same goal.
So life is a continuous tightrope walk. If you only look up, you lose sight of the road you have to walk. If you only look down, you will be overwhelmed by the fear of the abyss. Especially in this difficult period in which we all find ourselves, it is vital
not to think black and white. It will be fine and I will ignore all the adapted rules that the Government and the physicians require from us, is a one- sided and therefore completely wrong position. It is like that tightrope walker who has no eye for reality and only tries to reach the other side with his head up. But also just looking into the depths, seeing everything
black, letting your thoughts be determined solely by screaming terrifying media reports, is a wrong position.
I feel like a tightrope walker. I make sure that I am not getting sick by alarming headlines on FB, newspapers, radio and TV. At the same time I have to consciously observe new rules and good advice. I must not shut myself off from reality. I also have to realize that I am constantly observed and that my unstable behavior can also instill fear or indifference in others.
Dear people. Do not take this column personally. I just wanted to show you how I am constantly balancing. I am a tightrope walker who refuses to look down due to fear of heights. But I also know that only my view upwards is not the Jewish and right way. I try to keep my balance. Do you do that too!
Binyomin Jacobs, Chief Rabbi
