Poland has largest gathering of rabbis since Holocaust
Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Dozens of rabbis from across Europe have gathered in Warsaw for the largest meeting of Jewish religious leaders in Poland since the community was virtually wiped out during World War II.

This year’s Conference of European Rabbis will focus on a range of issues affecting European and global Jewry, including attempts in Europe to ban the Jewish method of religious slaughter of animals.

But, the rabbis will also discuss the problem of validating the Jewish identity of people who have not practiced Judaism in two or three generations.

This has become an issue in countries like Poland, where many people with Jewish ancestry were so traumatized by the Holocaust and postwar anti-Semitism that they lived secular or Christian lives for decades and are only now again embracing a Jewish life.

Over the last 30 years, the Jewish population in Poland has grown from just a few thousand to over 20,000, the conference said.

Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich called the three-day gathering of about 150 rabbis "a real testament to the revival of Jewish life in Poland."

The meeting began Monday, when several of the representatives met with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski. On Wednesday, the rabbis are to meet with Polish "righteous gentiles" Christians who risked their lives to save Jews during the war.

The meeting comes after Dutch parliament passed a bill banning the slaughter of livestock without stunning it first, removing an exemption that has allowed Jews and Muslims to butcher animals according to their centuries-old dietary rules. The bill must still pass the Senate.

It would be the second country after New Zealand to do so in recent years, joining Switzerland, and the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, whose bans are mostly traceable to pre-World War II anti-Semitism........

The Conference of European Rabbis takes place every two years.