“There is great unease in the Jewish community. Until now Jewish Germans have certainly been political, but not very keen to be heard and seen. That has now changed,” says Elio Adler, a dentist and co-initiator of an unusual initiative of Jewish citizens in the capital.
Antisemitic attacks on a Jewish pupil in Berlin are once again drawing attention to the disturbing increase in violent Jew-hatred, mainly from the Muslim side. “There is great unease in the Jewish community. Until now Jewish Germans have certainly been political, but not very keen to be heard and seen. That has now changed,” says Elio Adler, a dentist and co-initiator of an unusual initiative of Jewish citizens in the capital.
In eight points, the group “WerteInitiative” has put together a Jewish position paper for the 2017 federal election. It is shortly to be sent to the country’s largest parties – CDU/CSU, SPD, the Greens, the Left Party, FDP and AfD – with a request that they comment on it. The replies are to be published and to serve German Jews – but expressly also interested non-Jewish readers – as an aid in deciding how to vote in September.
According to Adler, the paper is intended to “send a signal to mainstream society that Jewish issues are also thoroughly general social issues which are relevant to living together in Germany”. For that reason it was signed not only by some 52 initiators but also by almost twice as many supporters, among them non-Jewish individuals.
The position paper combines an affirmation of the fundamental values on which the “free and democratic guiding culture” is said to rest with the raising of questions that, from a Jewish perspective, are essential to the endangered future of democracy in Germany. It calls, for instance, for more resolute action by the state against the danger emanating from political Islam.
“Organisations, associations and mosques that do not stand behind democracy and human rights without ifs or buts should be banned, closed down and, where appropriate, prosecuted,” it states. The state governed by the rule of law should be “capable of defending itself”, and “those who do not accept its guiding culture should be sanctioned or – where possible – expelled from the country”.
Criticism of a one-sided attitude towards Israel
That religions, too, are not to be granted zones exempt from the law must not, however, lead to “inappropriate levelling”. Jewish circumcision and kosher shechita, it says, are “constitutive components of the Jewish religion. Their conditions and circumstances are already sufficiently regulated.”
The paper also calls for a less one-sidedly critical attitude towards Israel. The fight against “classic” antisemitism is, admittedly, a matter of political consensus among democrats. “‘Criticism of Israel’ and ‘anti-Zionism’ shaped by double standards”, as well as the BDS boycott movement against the Jewish state, are “however the same hatred in different garb”, to which likewise no space may be given.
The unspoken antisemitism of the German left
Elio Adler stresses that the points assembled in the paper are the result of purely civil-society activity. They make no claim to systematic completeness, but resemble rather a collection of material. Nor have they been agreed with Jewish institutions such as the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (Central Council of Jews in Germany), even though the initiators expressly see themselves in no way in opposition to it.
According to Adler, they reflect what comes up again and again in discussions among Jewish Germans when they talk about the situation in the country. Citizens from a wide variety of backgrounds – from academics and entrepreneurs to tradespeople – took part in drafting it. In the process it emerged that Jewish concerns frequently coincide with fears that preoccupy society as a whole.
This finds expression, for example, where the paper states: “We wish to see Germany as part of a vital European Union.” Or where it declares: “We find the spreading of hatred towards those who think differently and towards minorities, as well as the contempt shown by some for the free and democratic form of our life together, intolerable.”
The paper, Adler says, is intended to be “not merely an aid to voting decisions for Jews and interested readers”. With an initiative such as this, Jewish Germans also set an example of “how one can be integrated into society without having given up one’s own identity”, says the 46-year-old. Judaism could serve as a model in this, since, as the position paper puts it, it has “no tendency to spread” and seeks “no change to the way society lives together”.
