How to Destroy a Jewish Community

So, you don’t like traditional Jews, Jewish success and Israel? You don’t like packed synagogues and the Jewish community teaching people about the Holocaust. The State is at your mercy and you wish to destroy it all? Easy! Get someone to produce anonymous letters with false denunciations of corruption. Get some friendly journalists to publish these denunciations. Get your police to investigate that fictional corruption. Let them invade synagogues and the homes of leaders. Let them seize everything they find. You might be lucky and there’ll be something suspicious. But if nothing is found, don’t worry. Time is on your side. It will take years for the investigation to be completed. No one will bother you. The own Jewish world will be paralyzed. The words corruption and police cause people to freeze. 

You are the greatest; the world is at your feet. BUT have you really won? Or will you face Jewish resilience? You’re the corrupter of State, the corrupter of Civilization. These words are simultaneously frightening and hopeful. They demonstrate how easy it is to destroy a Jewish community, but also how a small organization can turn the tables and demand an investigation of the persecutors.

In March, the Jewish Community of Oporto urged Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to issue a public apology for what it described as a “Soviet-style” antisemitic campaign against it by government and law enforcement authorities.In a letter to de Sousa, which can be read in full here, Jewish Community of Oporto President Gabriel Senderowicz wrote, “On 11 March 2022, the Oporto Synagogue, the Jewish Museum, and the houses of community leaders were unlawfully invaded by a large number of police officers, based on anonymous denunciations by criminals.”