Antwerp’s postwar Jewish community enjoyed a charmed shtetl existence. That lifestyle was buffeted by the collapse of the diamond industry, but now the city’s future is threatened by Belgium’s new shechitah ban, as well as Islamic terror
Photos: Eli Itkin
W
hat do you get if you place Boro Park next to Manhattan and add some European architectural flair, along with a threat to Jewish communal life?
Welcome to Antwerp, Belgium — a shtetl for the 21st century. It’s a place where you can practically walk out of shul right into the city’s main business district; where a rich, un-Americanized Yiddish is still spoken by all types of Jews; and where the bike rider you see is as likely to be a chassid as a hipster.
Antwerp may be a shtetl, but it’s one under threat. As in much of Western Europe, an armed police presence is the new normal after the Islamic attacks of the last few years. And parnassah isn’t what it used to be: The world-famous diamond bourse that once pumped wealth into the Jewish community has fallen on hard times. Diamond stores there are aplenty still, but the Klondike boom years are over, as Indians have muscled out Jews from their primacy in the world diamond trade. But a few months ago, a major blow fell as Belgium became the first Western country since the Nazi era to ban shechitah.
It was against that background that Antwerp played host to the Conference of European Rabbis’ biennial meet-up. Bringing together hundreds of rabbanim, dayanim, and community leaders from across Europe, the CER convention has an AIPAC-like quality, hosting speakers ranging from Rav Asher Weiss, both Israeli chief rabbis, and White House anti-Semitism czar Elan Carr inside the hall; and politics, media events, and deals outside of it.
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