Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

An Award From Rabbis That’s Fit for a (Spanish) King

A group of European rabbis awarded Spain’s king a prize this week for his country’s efforts to bring Jewish life back to Spain.

The Conference of European Rabbis, an Orthodox group, presented the award to King Felipe VI in a ceremony at a royal palace outside of Madrid.

The award was in recognition of a Spanish law that will award Spanish citizenship to Sephardic Jews. Implementation of the law has been delayed by the country’s many-months-long failure to form a government, despite two rounds of elections. Spain’s government says that more than 4,000 Sephardic Jews have received Spanish citizenship under the new law.

This writer traveled to Spain in 2014 and reported on the conceptual problems with Spain’s citizenship offer.

The rabbis, apparently, do not share his concerns. “In an era where anti-Semitism is on the rise throughout Europe, Spain has taken extraordinary measures to make its Jews feel welcome,” said Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the CER. “Not only did the minister of justice acknowledge the expulsion of what he has called an ‘historic mistake’, he ensured that action was taken to rectify it.”

In his own address, the Spanish king said that Europe needs its Jews. “We need to be honest and respectful to both our common Judeo-Christian values and origins, and the more broader or universal sense of true human values we are trying to extend and defend world-wide,” he said.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.