The Netherlands – rich in Jewish culture

In popular Jewish awareness, the thought of the Netherlands – and Holland in particular – conjures up Anne Frank, the 13-year-old Dutch Holocaust victim who quietly and over two years, while hiding from the Nazis with her family, wrote the world’s most read Holocaust diary.

JEWISH IDENTITY in the Netherlands is coloured largely by the ghoul of communal destruction, but it is a place replete with incredible beauty, fascinating history and the same kind of discursive problems as any other Jewish community in the contemporary Diaspora.

Once a part of the Spanish Empire, the area now known as the Netherlands became independent in 1581. This was achieved for primarily religious reasons – the practice of Protestant Christianity was expressly forbidden under Spanish rule – and religious tolerance became an important cornerstone of the newly-established country, making it especially attractive to Jews who were persecuted almost everywhere else.

The Spanish Jews, also known as Sephardim, expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition had practised Judaism in secret; the newly independent Dutch provinces provided an ideal opportunity for them to re-establish themselves openly.

Amsterdam became an important destination of choice, and a city to which Jews brought trading value, enhancing commercial relations and political role playing.

But the Jewish heritage of the Netherlands is not only Sephardic. Many Ashkenazi Jews were also attracted to the newly independent land, by the end of the 17th century. They were mostly displaced migrants escaping persecution in other parts of northern Europe.

Because most of them were poor, they were less welcome than the members of the Sephardic community.

Their arrival threatened the economic status of Amsterdam; many were turned away, others subsisted typically as hawkers.

The year 1795 brought the results of the French Revolution to Holland, including emancipation for the Jews. The National Convention, on September 2, 1796, proclaimed: “No Jew shall be excluded from rights or advantages… associated with citizenship in the Batavian Republic, and which he may desire to enjoy.”

Dutch Jews prospered during the 19th century.

By the turn of the century, there were 51 000 in Amsterdam; Jews represented two per cent of the population. As Amsterdam Jewry grew, its Jews mooted the city “Jerusalem of the West”.

Between 1830 and 1930, Jews in the Netherlands increased, according to Dutch census, by 250 per cent, peaking at 154 000 when the Nazis invaded in 1941. Four years later, some 35 000 were left.

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewry were eradicated by the Shoah, a large proportion of records survived, making Dutch Jewry’s history unusually well documented.

After the Second World War, the Jewish Dutch community underwent signifi cant changes: emigration; low birth rate; high rate of intermarriage.

Critics of contemporary Dutch Jewry, including prominent rabbis have condemned these elements as being more powerful to the decline of Dutch Jewry, as the Holocaust itself.

During the last few decades, Dutch Jewry has become increasingly internationalised. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews today does not have a Dutch background. The current Jewish population in Amsterdam is close to 35 000. It is largely a young community; a decade ago, it was estimated that 20 per cent was 65 years old or older.

Present-day Netherlands has over 150 synagogues, 50 of which are functional. The community caters for a broad palette of practices, from the Ashkenazi-affi liated Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap, to the Union of Liberal Synagogues and the Sephardic Portuguese Israelite Religious Community, all of which are Orthodox.

There are fi ve kosher hotels near shuls in Amsterdam.

In the city’s suburb of Buitenveldert, kosher food is widely available in kosher restaurants, bakeries, Jewish-Israeli shops, a pizzeria and supermarkets with kosher departments.

The 1978-founded Amstelland Hospital boasts a facility unique in Western Europe: Jewish patients are cared for according to Orthodox Jewish law in a purpose-built wing of the hospital; kosher food is the only type of food available there.

The Sinai Centre, Amersfoort is a Jewish psychiatric hospital, primarily for Holocaust survivors.

Nowadays, it also provides care for non-Jewish survivors of genocide.

Amsterdam has three Jewish schools, one of which is haredi in practice. The Chabad community in the country comprises 11 rabbis and serves about 2 500 Jews.

The fastest growing sector of Dutch Jewry is the Progressive movement. Introduced by German-Jewish refugees in the early 1930s, nowadays some 3 500 Jews in the Netherlands are linked to one of several Liberal Jewish synagogues throughout the country, which also includes the 1995-founded Beit Ha’Chidush.

A new Liberal synagogue was recently built, neighbouring the old one, in order to accommodate community overfl ow.

There are eight youth movements in the Netherlands today, engaging youth from a full ideological range: from Netzer to Bne Akiwa Holland to Gan Israel Holland, which is affi liated with Chabad, to CIJO and Haboniem-Drora which have political focuses, not forgetting independent movements like Moos; Ijar, a Jewish student organisation, and Next Step, the youth organisation of Een Ander Joods Geluid Jews are represented in Dutch media on television and the radio. In addition to several bi-monthly Jewish magazines, in the Netherlands, there are two Jewish weekly newspapers, the Nieuw Israëlitisch Weekblad, with 6 000 subscribers and the Joods Journaal, founded in 1997, which has the Israeli Palestinian confl ict as its primary focus.

And so we observe an attrition in Dutch Jewry, which historian and columnist Jaap Meijer (1912 – 1993) anticipated. He argued shortly after the Holocaust “there was little to preserve; unless the survivors fi rmed up, little that could be preserved”.

In a blog on Dutch Jewry, entitled “At the Back of the Hill”, Meijer’s opinions are supported by an anonymous California-based blogger, with roots in the Netherlands. “It is not anti-Semitism that threatens Dutch Jewry, it is a combination of factors. Integration on the one hand, emigration on the other. Today’s Dutch Jew is not a provincial ‘plattelands Jood’, but an urban, trans-national type, capable of functioning as well in New York, Tel Aviv, or Paris.

The modern Dutch Jew is Dutch by accident, rather than intent.”

by ROBYN SASSEN (from SA Jewish Report, Vol 15 N.19, 27MAY/03JUN)

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Thumbnail knowledge on the Netherlands

Facts about the Netherlands:

• The Netherlands covers just cover 41 000 square kilometres.

• According to its most recent census, the Netherlands is the most densely populated

country in Europe, with a population of 16,5 million.

• While the government and parliament are based at The Hague, the capital is Amsterdam.

• According to the most recent census, the majority of people living in the Netherlands do not subscribe to an organised religion. Close to 30 per cent is associated with the Roman Catholic Church.

• With the North Sea to the West, the Netherlands is neighboured by Germany in the east and Belgium in the south.

• Because much of the Netherlands is actually below sea level – dikes were built in 1602 to address this problem pragmatically – its landscape is characterised by river deltas, sea walls and dunes.

• The highest terrain in the Netherlands, rising to the foot of the Ardennes mountains, is at 322,7m above sea level.

• A founding member of the European Union, the OECD and the World Trade Organisation, the Netherlands’ economy is the 16th largest in the world.

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Ten essential tips when visiting the Netherlands

When you go to the Netherlands:

• You need a Schengen visa to visit the Netherlands. The Dutch Embassy is in Pretoria: (012) 425-4500 and the Consulate General is based in Cape Town: (021) 421-5660; a Schengen visa currently costs R577.

• There are no special medical precautions to be taken for travel to the Netherlands, but the Dutch National Health service does not cover visitors to the country.

• Characterised by cool winters and mild summers, climate in the Netherlands is generally uniform, thanks to its fl at terrain and low elevation, as well as predominately damp, although it’s frequently punctuated with extreme changes even during the summer season. Changes in the waters of the North Sea are apt to affect weather in the whole country. The coolest months of the year are January and February; July and August are the warmest.

• Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands; close to 90 per cent of people in the country are fl uent in English as well.

• The euro is currency in the Netherlands: at the time of going to press, one euro will cost you R9,87.

• There is no limit on the amount of money one can bring in to the Netherlands, though it is advised that you bring travellers’ cheques in euros, as this will save on the cost of changing currencies.

• Traffi c in the Netherlands is on the right hand side of the road.

• Electricity in the Netherlands is 230 volts. Two types of plugs are used: two fl at-pronged-style plugs and two fl at-pronged style plugs with earth connectors on the sides.

• You can drink tap water in the Netherlands.

• The Netherlands is situated in the Central European Time zone, which is the same as the time zone in South Africa; the Netherlands does, however, apply daylight saving at the end of March, which is shifted back to CET at the end of October.

Source: South African JewishReport

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