— Faculty at a Catholic high school in Belgium said they were proud of a senior teacher who won an award and a cash prize at Iran’s controversial cartoon contest about the Holocaust. Luc Descheemaeker, who this summer retired from the Sint-Jozefs Institute high school in the city of Torhout, 60 miles west of Antwerp, accepted…
A Belgian Muslim official in charge of promoting tolerance apologized for his vitriol against Israel, which he said was a modern Nazi Germany and “an identical twin” of the Islamic State terrorist group. Youssef Kobo, the adviser on diversity for the minister in charge of equal opportunity in the regional government of Brussels, said he…
— Belgium has turned down a request for financial assistance from the daughters of an Israeli couple killed in an attack a year ago on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. Shira and Ayelet Riva were 15 and 17 at the time of the attack in May 2015. Mira and Emmanuel Riva were on vacation and…
Citing resistance by Muslims to a compromise on ritual slaughter of animals, a Belgian cabinet minister called for a blanket ban on the custom, a policy that would affect observant Jews and Muslims. Ben Weyts, animal welfare minister in the government of the Flemish Region — one of three entities that make up the federal kingdom of…
Belgium’s defense ministry denied reports that some soldiers had guarded synagogues in Brussels without ammunition in their rifles. The denial last week by the press department of Belgium’s Ministry of Defense was in reaction to a claim that a senior Brussels rabbi, Menachem Hadad of the Shomre Hadas haredi Orthodox community, made on March 24…
One of the more obscure words I know in Flemish is besnijden. As in, my son is besnijden. Circumcised. I’m an American Jew living in Belgium, in the Flemish-speaking north, and sometimes I feel the need to give the heads-up to his caretakers that he is, well, a little different from the other kids. Last…
It was the end of the summer of 1994 when my family and I left Israel for the Zaventem airport in Brussels. Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister. Murmurs of peace still permeated the air, muddled with the tumult and rise of terror: Muslims praying at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron had been murdered…
Belgian Jews have gotten used to fearing for their safety. Every morning when parents drop off their children at Jewish schools across the country, they are greeted by heavily armed soldiers, stationed to protect the students. And Jews know not to be too open about their faith, avoiding wearing kippahs or Stars of David on…
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