‘Zelensky doesn’t hide it, he is Jewish’

On Monday evening, eight parties debate in the synagogue of the Liberal Jewish Community in Amsterdam. GroenLinks, PvdA, SP and D66, who governed the city together for four years, sit opposite VVD, JA21, CDA, ChristenUnie. The municipal elections are in two weeks’ time and Hans Weijel, the chairman of the synagogue board, had his doubts in the morning: should they really start talking about municipal politics now that the war in Ukraine was going on?

Then you may think he means lampposts, or nuisance caused by garbage. But the debate, organized by the Liberal, Orthodox and Portuguese Jewish congregations, is about fear for almost two hours. The ChristenUnie party leader heard at a Jewish school from a boy that he pulls his hood over his yarmulke on the street. His VVD colleague heard that Jewish children in Amsterdam cannot take a bicycle exam, they are not safe on the street.

Next to me, Wil de Brave (78), former swimming teacher in Sportfondsenbad-Oost, moves restlessly back and forth. She writes questions on a note. She gives that to Weijel, and he gives it to the debate leader. In 2018, I hear later, the public had so heatedly participated in the Jewish election debate that this is now only possible via a note.

Ruben Koekoek, number 15 on the D66 list and a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, is also in the row of the city council. The other parties sent their party leader or number two, from D66 Koekoek was allowed to go. He starts about councilors, also a PvdA member, who took part in a demonstration where anti-Semitic slogans were shouted. The others react annoyed, according to them the man had not been aware of any harm. Koekoek insists: had the PvdA learned anything from it? He gets no answer.

Koekoek is chairman of the Jewish Humanitarian Fund, which also supports Jews in Ukraine. And if Jewish Ukrainians flee to the Netherlands, the fund will help them get kosher food and find a synagogue. From Cuckoo I hear that Volodymyr Zelensky is the only Jewish president in the world outside of Israel. What does he think of Israel’s failure to condemn the invasion? “Every country must condemn it.”

Synagogue chairman Hans Weijel says he couldn’t believe it at first when Ukraine got a Jewish president. “If I could tell my father that, he’s been dead eight years, he’d say, ‘Damn, man.’ In Ukraine, the Jews were already persecuted before the Germans marched in.” Hans Weijel also says: “And Zelensky doesn’t hide it, does he, that he is Jewish.”

As the Amsterdam boy does with his hood. With her questions, Wil de Brave, who was in Camp Westerbork as a child, tried to point out that fear to the politicians in the synagogue. She does not follow the news about Ukraine. “It makes me so sad.”