In Europe's once-dark places, links between the faiths have come far.... but far enough?
By B.C. | THE HAGUE
IN THE Netherlands, a country where 75% of the pre-war Jewish population perished in the Holocaust, some inter-faith tensions have eased to a remarkable degree. Last night, for example, a meeting took place at a synagogue in Rotterdam (home town of the original Erasmus) which reflects that spirit of rapprochement.
The Dutch Catholic church now devotes one day a year to celebrating its reconciliation with Judaism, and commemorating Nostra Aetate, a landmark Vatican document that dismissed the idea of collective Jewish guilt which had fueled Christian anti-Semitism. This year's commemorative event was held in a Rotterdam synagogue, where Catholic and Jewish speakers took turns to make emollient statements, under the benign gaze of the city's Muslim mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb. Without indulging his penchant for scatological language, Mr Aboutaleb urged all religions to be open and self-critical, and repeated his familar view that people who did not accept liberal democracy should move elsewhere.
Getting to this point has been a hard journey, according to Avraham Soetendorp, a Hague-based rabbi and champion of inter-faith relations. In 1985, when Pope John Paul II visited the Netherlands, Jewish leaders politely declined to see him; they felt that such a meeting would be inappropriate as long as the holy see did not recognise Israel, or acknowledge, at a minimum, that the Catholic church could have done more to avert the Holocaust. A series of breakthroughs in Vatican-Jewish relations have removed those obstacles, and Rabbi Soetendorp says he hopes to meet Pope Francis with a delegation of Dutch Jews. (There's no guarantee they will agree on everything: the pope's view that free speech should be tempered with self-restraint is out of the step with the Dutch mood.)
Promising as that sounds, the Jews of the Netherlands have plenty of other concerns these days. A sense of insecurity has been growing not only because of recent events in Paris, but because of the anti-Semitic slogans that were heard last summer at demonstrations against Israeli actions in Gaza. Security at synagogues and Jewish schools has been stepped up. Nearly five years ago, the Dutch politician Frits Bolkestein made waves by saying that Jews had no future in the Netherlands, given the rise in Islamist extremism and anti-Semitism. In recent weeks and months, some Jews, including liberal-minded secular ones, have been wondering out loud whether he was right. Efforts at Muslim-Jewish cooperation (for example over traditional animal slaughter methods) have had some success, but have often foundered, usually over the Palestinian question.
Rabbi Soetendorp, who was born in 1943 when his family was leading a clandestine existence, says he is often asked these days whether he feels safe wearing a kippa in public. He knows some rabbis who avoid doing so. The response he gives (although it isn't a complete answer to the question) is: "I have been in hiding once, and I am not going to hide again."
