November 30, 2019

BERLIN (JTA) — A Jewish mother in Germany is taking her son out of a public high school because of frequent anti-Semitic comments in the classroom.

Though her son was not personally targeted by the comments, the atmosphere at the school in the city of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, led Alina R. to make the move.

She told the German news media that teachers and administrators had failed to react to the anti-Semitic comments thrown casually around the classroom. Comments such as “It’s as hot and humid as Auschwitz in here” or “you Jew” are common, she said, noting that her son’s Jewish identity is not public.

The 16-year-old will transfer to a private school where, Alina R. said, such problems are less common since the private school takes greater care to call out and punish such behavior.

According to German news reports, Alina R. had encouraged her son to speak with a teacher about the problem and the teacher did not take any action.

Meanwhile, the Federal Ministry of Justice will increase the punishment for crimes with anti-Semitic motivation.

Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht announced her planned amendment to the law on Thursday, saying that she was “ashamed of the fact that Jews in Germany no longer feel safe, that even many think about leaving the country.” She expects the parliament to pass the change by the end of the year.

Josef Schuster, head of the the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called it an “important step.”

“Anti-Semitic motivations must be considered separately and as aggravating circumstances in the sentencing,” he said.

Schuster had argued for the inclusion of “anti-Semitism” in the list of motivations drawing a harsher punishment. The list currently includes racist and xenophobic motivations, among others.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — An early ledger that documents eyewitness accounts of the deaths of Jews in Nazi camps is being auctioned in Jerusalem next week.

The document was compiled at the end of World War II by a rabbinical court at Bergen-Belsen as proof that Holocaust victims’ spouses were dead. That allowed the survivors to remarry under Jewish law.

It lists deaths that occurred at the Auschwitz, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen Nazi camps.

The ledger, which is over 100 pages long, will go on sale at the Kedem auction house at an opening price of $4,000.

The list was kept in a German technical notebook. Each page includes a testimony signed by witnesses and a signed marriage permit for a remarriage, and is signed by known rabbis of the day.

The testimonies include information on selections for the gas chambers, the liquidation of ghettos and death marches, gas chambers, and the crematoria and shootings.

(JTA) — Drake may be singing the blues with the shutdown of his short-lived Toronto restaurant, which is $50,000 in arrears on unpaid rent.

The famed Canadian-Jewish rapper opened the glitzy restaurant and sports bar Pick 6ix in 2017. Last week, its Instagram account said the restaurant had closed until further notice due to flooding, the news site Eater reported. But the Toronto Star reported that the notice of lease termination was put up at the restaurant before the news of the flooding.

The restaurant’s voicemail informs callers that it will reopen in early 2020. Drake, whose net worth is estimated at $150 million, closed down a restaurant, Frings, last year.

Pick 6ix received mixed reviews, with the Toronto Star food critic Amy Pataki calling some of its dishes, including a $29 Spaghetti Bolognese dish served with a lobster tail “disastrous.”

Another food critic, for the Globe and Mail, described seeing Drake “quietly watching the Raptors game with a female companion and a burger in the VIP room surrounded by his security detail. Just a regular Tuesday night.”

(JTA) — Two local governments in Belgium have pulled out of a trade delegation to Israel, citing alleged violations of international law and lack of progress in the peace process.

The foreign trade secretary of the government of the Brussels region, Pascal Smet, announced the move Thursday, the RTBF broadcaster reported. The move is a major victory for proponents of attempts to boycott Israel, who have had few breakthroughs in their attempts to shape Belgian-Israeli relations.

Elio Di Rupo, prime minister of the Belgian state of Wallonia and a former prime minister of the kingdom of Belgium, pulled out of the delegation last week. The mission, which is set to take place Dec. 8-11, will include businesspeople and representatives of commercial enterprises from across Belgium.

“The lack of progress in the peace process, the lack of progress on the ground and the violation by Israel of major elements of the Geneva Convention are prompting us to hold back on official cooperation,” Di Rupo said.

Joel Rubinfeld, a former leader of Belgian Jewry and president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, said the move was discriminatory in light of Belgium’s trade relations with nations accused of major human rights violations, including Iran and China.

It is also “absurd,” he wrote, and “will hurt Wallonia and Brussels far more than it will Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and which has more Nasdaq-listed firms than in the entire European Union put together.”

(JTA) — A Norwegian mayor asked a church to replace its traditional Star of David Christmas decoration due to complaints that it’s too associated with Israel and Jews.

Strand Mayor Irene Heng Lauvsnes asked the Klippen Pentecostal church, which lights a large Star of David neon decoration in a municipal park where it holds a Christmas celebration, to replace the symbol with a “traditional Christmas star,” the Strandbuen newspaper reported Wednesday.

The unnamed critics said the church “designed [the decoration] as a Star of David, a national symbol both for the Jews and for the State of Israel” and “therefore does not fit in the public space” in Strand.

The church is considering the request as it does “not want to provoke in any way,” its representative told Strandbuen.

The use of the Star of David in Christmas decorations is common throughout Northern Europe.

The municipality’s intervention provoked anger, including by the editor in chief of the Dagen daily, Vebjorn Selbekk.

“Municipal Christmas bureaucrats obviously do not want a Jewish or Israeli mark on their Christmas. Then we almost have to remind them of some key facts about why we celebrate Christmas at all,” Selbekk wrote in a column titled “merry Jew-free Christmas,” adding “That holiday is marked by the fact that a Jewish boy was born to a Jewish mother in a Jewish stable in a Jewish city in a Jewish country.”

The park must remain “neutral,” especially in light of the controversy, Lauvsnes told Aftenbladet.