The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) strongly condemned
the signatories of a recent letter by leading Ukrainian
personalities and politicians calling for the banning of
Jewish organizations in the country.
In an open letter to President Viktor Yuschenko during the
first week of Av, members of the Ukrainian Conservative Party
and several newspaper editors made unfounded attacks on
Jewish leaders in the country including Ukraine's Chief Rabbi
Yaakov Dov Bleich, a 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
founder of the 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 Ukraine following the dark days of Communism
and the systematic destruction of one of the centers 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 organizations. It proves that we must
remain ever vigilant where the scourge of antisemitism is an
ever-present threat in the fledgling democracies of eastern
Europe," Rabbi Dunner added.
Recognizing 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 antisemitic 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 recognized
international non-governmental organization at the Council of
Europe and within the institutions of the European Union.
