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Europe’s Jews are divided on Trump

Eastern Europe, Russia hopeful while Britain worries

By Adam Taylor, The Washington Post
Published: November 23, 2016, 1:32pm

The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has provoked a “mixed reaction” among European Jews, said Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and the current president of the Conference of European Rabbis, the primary Orthodox rabbinical alliance in Europe.

“I think that, in general, European Jews look at the United States and the elections in the United States not so much as what happens to the United States but how those changes will affect Europe, and how those changes will affect the lives of the Jews in Europe,” Goldschmidt said in a phone call. “On the other hand, I’d say Israel is much more central to European Jews than to American Jews.”

Goldschmidt’s comments came during a wave of debates about what a Trump presidency means for the world’s Jewish community. While Trump has a close relationship with his Orthodox son-in-law and has spoken in strong pro-Israel terms, his campaign has frequently been linked with anti-Semitic fringes.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former editor of the anti-establishment website Breitbart News who left for Trump’s campaign and will soon become a chief White House strategist, has been accused of making anti-Semitic comments. Perhaps more alarmingly, members of the alt-right community have praised Trump with messages clearly inflected with neo-Nazi rhetoric.

“Hail Trump!” Richard Spencer, a prominent member of that movement, said during a recent event to celebrate the election.

Goldschmidt, who was born in Zurich and became chief rabbi of Moscow in 1993, said there was a clear difference between Jews in Western Europe and Britain, who seemed worried about Trump, and those in Eastern Europe and Russia, who were more hopeful. The split was somewhat similar to one seen in the United States, he said. “I think most of the Jews in the United States had voted for Clinton, and there were two distinctive groups who voted for Trump, the Orthodox Jews and the Russian-speaking Jews,” he said.

There have been rising reports of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe over the past few years, with thousands of Jews choosing to leave their homes and move to Israel. He said that the memories of the 20th century are still defining for Jews in Europe, in contrast to Americans.

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