Norway TV Jokes About ‘No Jews’ Clause
A comedy sketch on Norway’s public broadcasting television satirized the banning of Jews by the county’s first constitution.
The sketch broadcast Sunday on NRK, the Norwegian government-owned radio and television public broadcasting company, was part of celebrations to mark the constitution’s 200th year.
The clause banning Jews from entering Norway was part of the original constitution in 1814 and was lifted in 1851.
“It is shocking and embarrassing to create humor from this clause, which shut the Jews out of our country,” said Dagrun Eriksen, deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Party, according to TheLocal.no. “The Jewish clause is part of our dark history. As a nation we must take responsibility for this and not make flippant skits out of it.”
Charlo Halvorsen, entertainment editor for NRK, told TheLocal that the sketch was meant to ridicule the founding fathers who wrote the Jewish clause, not Jews.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO