Freiburger Kippa-Tag

©Jüdische Gemeinde Freiburg

Yesterday Freiburg's Jewish Community organized its first Day of the Kippah.

Irina Katz addressing the crowd assembled in front of the New Synagogue

Irina Katz, chairwoman of Freiburg's Jewish community, even claimed that it was the first Kippa-Tag in Baden-Württemberg.

Facing Freiburg's New Synagogue, the assembled people
listen to Felix Rottenberger and Irina Katz

We, the participants, protested against a resurgence of antisemitism in Germany. Antisemitism gets stronger in other European countries too. In France, thousands of Jews have already left the country for Israel.

Nip it in the bud! In Germany, people wearing the kippah in the street were verbally aggressed, spat at, and sometimes physically attacked. Walking from Freiburg's New Synagogue to the Square of the Old Synagogue, we wore the kippah as a symbol of tolerance against xenophobia and exclusion.

In front of the memorial of the Old Synagogue, Irina Katz is at the microphone; behind are
the orators, Mayor Martin Horn, and the City Counselors Simon Waldenspuhl and Monika Stein.

Antisemitism has developed into a complex conglomerate of old Christian sentiments against the Jews as formulated by the Church Fathers - later" modernized" by Martin Luther - mixed with the rejection of the Israeli settlement policy in Palestine.

In our faraway societies, sympathy for Israel's struggle for survival clashes with the rejection of the Palestinian population's treatment by the Jewish State. This dilemma frequently leads to a new form of antisemitism, nourished in Germany primarily by our fellow Islamic citizens.

At the Square of the Old Synagogue, a listening crowd

At the rally at the Square of the Old Synagogue, City Counselor Simon Waldenspuhl demanded that Freiburg cut its partnership with the Iranian city of Isfahan. While a murmur passed through the audience, Red Baron and another guy spontaneously shouted Nein.

Later I discussed this with the orator and accused him of hypocrisy. Although having comprehensively spoken against exclusion, he excluded the citizens of Isfahan. Freiburg has always understood its sisterships as a vehicle for making personal contacts and getting to know our partner cities' people but never as a political connection.

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