European Rabbis condemn anti-Semitic text in Ukraine

London - 15-Aug-05

The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) strongly condemns the signatories of a letter by leading Ukrainian personalities and politicians calling for the banning of Jewish organisations in the country.

In an open letter to President Viktor Yuschenko last week, members of the Ukrainian Conservative Party and several newspaper editors insulted Jewish leaders in the country including Ukraine's Chief Rabbi Ya’acov Dov Bleich, a senior member of the Standing Committee of the Conference of European Rabbis.

The authors of the letter also demanded that the seminal philosophical text known as the Tanya, written some two hundred years ago by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the saintly founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of Chassidic Judaism, be banned from Jewish schools and synagogues.

"Such a move strikes at the heart of the renaissance of Jewish life in the Ukraine following the dark days of Communism and the systematic destruction of one of the centres of European Jewish life by the Nazis during the Second World War," said CER Executive Director Rabbi Aba Dunner.

"This is almost a carbon copy of attempts by nationalist groups in Russia earlier this year to ban sacred Jewish texts and to proscribe Jewish organisations. It proves that we must remain ever vigilant where the scourge of anti-Semitism is an ever-present threat in the fledgling democracies of eastern Europe," Rabbi Dunner added.

Recognising the key role played by President Yuschenko in directing Ukraine towards respect for human rights and the rule of law, the CER calls on the president and the Ukrainian government to immediately initiate legal proceedings against the authors of this anti-Semitic letter.

The CER also calls upon the Ukrainian authorities to take action against the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (known in Ukraine by its acronym, MAUP), whose supporters and sponsors are prominent in the authorship of this open letter and who recently presented a self-styled “blacklist” of Jewish media and organizations who they accused of "racism, Judeo-Nazism and organized crime in Ukraine."

The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) federates Jewish religious leaders in over 40 European countries and includes all the continent's chief rabbis and senior rabbinical judges. The CER possesses consultative status as a recognised international non-governmental organization at the Council of Europe and within the institutions of the European Union.