A European View: Jews in Europe - new challenges and opportunities

Imagine the scene 20 years ago, if 1800 Jews had gathered in the most prestigious official buildings in Kiev, at the annual All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress.

It would have been unimaginable then, even more so during the rule of the Soviets or when Ukraine fell under the Nazi jackboot.

Yet, just last month, in Kiev, there were 1,800 Jewish delegates representing all shades of opinion, from all parts of one of Europe's largest and fastest growing countries. Foreign Jewish leaders also attended this year, including an EJCJ delegation.

In many ways Ukraine is a microcosm of an unbelievable renaissance of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Individual Jews, unshackled from Communist economic strictures, have grown wealthy since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now many are pouring money back into their communities. Added to sums from international Jewish agencies, this input is reviving Jewish populations that until recently were written
off as doomed.

Jewish education is flourishing in areas where there was simply none before. Kosher facilities are increasing, too, to serve Ukraine's 250 separate Jewish centers. Sixty years after 1.4 million Ukrainian Jews were murdered during the Shoah, the community numbers at least 350,000, maybe 500,000, and is growing in strength.

There has also been a sea of change in relations between Jews and national politicians. One delegate at Kiev, a former head of the national table tennis team during the Communist years, recalled how he was a hero at home, but forbidden to tour abroad for fear of defecting. Once he ambled past a synagogue on a Jewish holiday, and was contacted the next day by some "comrade" warning him that he had been spotted and could face charges. Today, communal leaders just pick up the phone whenever there is an act of vandalism, and the police are there in minutes.

Nor is the conference an isolated occurrence. Last month leading national politicians gathered to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the infamous Nazi massacre at Babi Yar. For the first time Ukrainian researchers joined colleagues from Israel, the USA and France at a symposium at the Sorbonne, Paris, dedicated to unearthing the truth about the Shoah in Ukraine. President Viktor Yushchenko was photographed last December wearing a kippa and lighting Hanukkah candles.

Robert Singer, Israel's Ukrainian-born consul in New York, recently called this "the best period of relations between the state of Israel and Ukraine". And what is true of Ukraine applies equally, if not more so, to other former eastern bloc countries.

Unfortunately, not everything is beautiful. This same month there have been four separate attacks on rabbis in Ukraine. And Yushchenko approved the first-ever march in Kiev by veterans of World War II nationalist partisans, many of whom fought alongside Nazis.

Added to this are rumors of a new Cold War that is pitting an increasingly aggressive Russia against the buffer states of the old Warsaw Pact. Most of the latter are looking westwards and have joined the EU. Some even hope to enter NATO. Ukraine itself remains dangerously split between a pro-EU western zone and a pro-Russian east, as indicated by October's election results. Meanwhile Vladimir Putin seems determined to stop smaller nations from escaping the familiar Russian bear-hug.

Moscow's recent actions - planes buzzing over Georgia, gunfire in Estonia, and gas pipeline squabbles with Ukraine - all suggest a new hard line. And while Putin is scheduled to step down as Russia's president, seasoned Kremlin watchers predict that he will merely return with enhanced powers - possibly as Russia's next prime minister.

Maybe talk of future turmoil is alarmist - but if true, are the Jews of eastern Europe reaching the end of what has been a good period in their communal and individual lives?

I don't believe so. Putin himself has lost no opportunity to keep close contact with Jewish leaders. He has condemned what he calls a resurgence of fascism in the Baltic states, and continuing xenophobia and anti-Semitism at home. While Jew-hatred sadly lingers on in certain corners, the difference is that these days east European governments are generally alert to the danger, and tend to act on it at least to some degree.

Jewish communal leaders, for their part, know how to cut through the red tape of the past. They celebrate their Jewishness openly, without fear of persecution. There is a clear challenge for Western European Jewry to embrace our brothers and sisters in the east. A few hundreds of thousands of Jews migrated westward (mainly to Germany); and others from the west are going back to the east. We have so much to learn from each other, and to teach each other.

In fact, maybe some of the new Jewish confidence in communities in Eastern Europe is now positively affecting the West. On 18 September, to quote just one instance, Jewish youth in Paris, Kiev and Warsaw launched a simultaneous campaign against anti-Semitism by pitching education tents in city centers. This exercise, backed by the Council of Europe, was a great success, with Christians and Muslims streaming in to learn more about living Jewish culture.

For Jews Europe is not a segmented continent. Rather it is a single entity that stretches from London to Moscow and beyond. Jews are making their contribution, individually and communally, with increasing confidence and openness.

But there is much work to do. We live as minorities amongst other minorities and whilst we may feel reasonably secure in our host countries, generally happy there, positive, usually patriotic, there are many other minorities who do not. If we are to be "a light unto others" we have a duty to involve ourselves more in our larger societies, to reach out to those who feel less welcome than we do in our societies and to strive to understand their issues.

As the Chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, constantly invokes, we have a duty to try and understand and help our fellow man. We're different, but it doesn't mean we don't understand. This was never more true than in the complicated world that is today's Europe. ECJC will increasingly be setting the example in this area over the coming years.