Jews across Europe face a major battle to stop the ban of both circumcision and imports of kosher meat, community leaders have warned.
Speaking in Budapest at the European Jewish Association (EJA) annual conference, rabbis and politicians said religious freedom was increasingly under threat. EJA chair Rabbi Menachem Margolin said Jews had been protecting their religious traditions “for many years”.
He said: “Too many states acted or are acting to ban ritual slaughter. The ban on ritual slaughter is very problematic. First it was restrictions then a ban and later they will ban exports of kosher meat and even ban imports.”
Belgian Holocaust survivor and former restaurant owner Regine Suchowolski-Sluszny told the JC that the ban imposed by two out of three of her nation’s regional authorities on kosher slaughter was making Jewish life harder. Frozen kosher food could be imported for the time being from Poland, she added, but its quality was worse.
