Shalom from Belgium

In 1933 Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany by President Hindenburg. From this point forward life for the Jewish people in Germany began to be more and more difficult. By the time World War II came to a close in 1945 approximately 6 million Jews had died. But what happened to the practitioners of said religion after the war?

Currently, France is the European nation with the highest Jewish population with 483,500 Jewish citizens (or 3.6% of the global Jewish population). This is severely lower than say the population of the United States with 39.3% of the global Jewish population. This is not a particularly surprising fact considering the devastation which the religion faced only about 70 years ago, however it came to me as quite a surprise when I found myself no longer surrounded by this genre of religious practitioners.

An incident occurred in March of this year when an armed gunman entered a Jewish school and France and open fired, killing three students (Arye, 6, and Gabriel, 3; and Miriam Monsonego, 8, the daughter of the school principal) and 30-year old Hebrew teacher Jonathan Sandler. It was the worst anti-Semitic incident in France since August 1982, when six people were killed in a grenade attack and shooting soon after at the Goldenberg restaurant in a Jewish neighborhood on Rue des Rosiers in central Paris. Racial discrimination was a major topic of discussion in the recent presidential election in France, as incidents such as these continue to emerge with greater frequency.

"This act is horrific and cannot remain unpunished," said Sarkozy

Meanwhile, I have recently had the opportunity to travel to Spain. There were many towns that we visited that had a huge Jewish contribution at a point in time where the country was being constructed. Once one of the most flourishing Jewish communities of the world in 1492 under the orders of the Catholic Monarchs King Ferdinand and Isabella their options became convert to Catholicism or die. Needless to say, many of them renounced their faith at this point in time and the influence became little more than an under current of the culture. In the town of Toledo, a synagogue still stands, despite the  harsh religious persecutions, which were held against the Jews by the Visigoths. A town which changed from the hands of the Muslims to the Jews to the Christians is now a place where the three can find peace together. However, today the synagogue serves as an educational center and no longer a place of regular services. It was certainly one of the more beautiful building I saw on this trip.

One of the most impressionable things that I never quite realized before this trip is the magnitude of  persecution practitioners of this religion have faced over the years. It is very impressive that there are still so many people that remain devout to something that is not easy to remain faithful too. It is something that I hope to continue investigating this year.