- Title: GERMANY: Jewish community shocked after attack on rabbi in Berlin
- Date: 30th August 2012
- Summary: NEWSPAPER HEADLINES REPORTING ABOUT ATTACK ON RABBI
- Embargoed: 14th September 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Germany
- Country: Germany
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Politics,Religion,Religion
- Reuters ID: LVA6IPPPUYVBNPNVAJCL8FKT2TK
- Story Text: Jewish community in Berlin is shocked by attack on rabbi as he was walking through neighbourhood with his young daughter.
One of the first rabbis ordained in Germany since the Holocaust has been beaten up on a Berlin street, prompting a seminary to advise its students not to wear skullcaps in public.
Daniel Alter, 53, was attacked in front of his young daughter after collecting her from a piano lesson on Tuesday (August 28) after a young man asked him "Are you a Jew?", said Berlin police.
A group of four young men hit him in the face repeatedly, shouted religious insults and threatened to kill his daughter. The rabbi needed hospital treatment to his face.
German media reported that the attackers "probably had an Arab background". The country's Central Council of Muslims condemned the attack.
Alter told Bild daily he was shocked at the shameless way his attackers had assaulted him in front of his daughter.
Germany's Central Council of Jews condemned the attack, saying it showed violent anti-Semitism had again become a serious social problem.
Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit said the incident was "an attack on the peaceful co-existence of all people in the capital".
The president of the Jewish community in Berlin, Gideon Joffe, told Reuters TV, the community was shocked by the incident.
"We are shocked by this incident. About this perfidy to attack a father in the company of his six-year-old daughter. How inhuman can you be? I think, if young people are able to do something like this to someone, they don't recognise their victim as a human being, They deny their victim the personhood," said Joffe.
Germany's official Jewish population has grown more than 10-fold in the last 20 years, largely thanks to an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union, but anti-Semitic attacks are common place and policemen guard synagogues round the clock.
"Community members confirm a rise of antisemitism on the Muslim side. Muslim youth are being agitated through Arabic speaking media, through the media coverage of the conflict in the Middle East and they develop an urge to act out aggressions against Jewish people who live here," said Joffe.
Alter was made a rabbi in Dresden in 2006. He and two others were the first to be ordained in Germany since 1942, when the College of Jewish Studies in Berlin was destroyed by the Nazi Gestapo secret police.
His father survived Auschwitz concentration camp.
In an interview with Reuters in 2007, Alter said he was worried about anti-Semitism and wore a baseball hat over his skullcap because he was worried about being identified as a Jew.
At the time of the attack, however, his skullcap was not concealed.
The Central Council of Muslims said Muslims were shocked by such incidents.
"At this time, Jews and Muslims must stand together and make clear: violence of any colour has no place with us," said the Council's chairman Aiman Mazyek in a statement.
The American Jewish Committee called on Germany's parliament to act on a report on anti-Semitism which included recommendations on ways to combat anti-Semitism.
The report also said that anti-Semitism was entrenched in German society, manifesting itself in hate crime as well as in abusive language used by ordinary people.
"German lawmakers should not delay any longer adopting a comprehensive plan to combat anti-Semitism," said Deidre Berger, the AJC's Berlin director. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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