MORE LIKE EUROPE? :

Fear over European Kosher bans : Trend of countries outlawing ritual slaughter in name of animal rights tied to 'a hatred for Jewish life,' says Israeli minister. (Adam Dickter, Jewish World Review)

When Holland imposed a ban recently on a type of kosher slaughter, international Jewish leaders worried about far more than the difficulty observant Dutch Jews might face in obtaining rabbinically certified steak or cholent meat.

Noting that such a ban was an early step of Hitler's Third Reich, some fear the action is part of a growing assault on Jewish life linked to the spread of anti-Semitism sweeping across Europe.

The production of kosher meat, known as shechita, has long been illegal in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. And in Switzerland, attempts to lift a century-old ban caused an anti-Semitic backlash earlier this year. [...]

Rabbi Melchior, the former chief rabbi of Norway, noted that during the initial debate in that country, where shechita has been banned since the 1930s, a parliamentarian noted that if Jews didn't like it, "let them go somewhere else."

"It's ominous," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the Kosher administrator for the Orthodox Union, the largest kosher-certifying organization in the world. "This kind of legislation in Europe has to be understood in the context of European history. A person would have to be extremely naive not to think that this is linked to anti-Semitism."

The more you think about it, the more you realize that being hated by the Europeans puts Americans in pretty good company. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2002 7:05 PM