Features
Einstein’s Smile: A Tale of Two Pictures
By DAVID TOPPER In my previous story in the Jewish Post & News, “Einstein & Johanna: A True Tale of Tragic Comedy,’’ I began by saying that I first heard the name “Einstein” when I was around the age of 10.
So let me begin this story when Albert himself was about that same age, and he had his class photo taken on the steps of his school. This picture is one of the earliest pictures we have of him – and it’s one of my favourites. It shows his all-boys class of 52 students lined-up in five rows. Einstein is in the front row, the third from the right, and clearly one of the smallest in the group.
The unique and utterly fascinating thing about this picture is this simple fact: all the other boys are looking grimly at the camera, while little Albert is the only one with a smile on his face. Look closely: all 51 others, with hands at their sides, appear stern, anxious, intimidated, sulky, or scared; Einstein, with hands behind his back, has a cute, little, slightly impish smirk on his face – unquestionably, a look that any parent would love. Just compare the detailed picture of him with the boys to his immediate sides : the contrast, indeed, is at once stunning and amusing.
Right here, in this astounding image (a mere class photo) is the visual manifestation of the laid-back contrarian that he would become throughout his life. In this one picture, knowing what I know about him, his whole life almost flashes forward before me. So, here, I wish to share a piece of this story with you.
As reported by those who knew him, Einstein was modest and unpretentious, without an iota of conceit or arrogance, treating all people in the same manner, independently of class or rank. He spoke the same way to a president as to a janitor. He also had a hearty laugh, with a child-like twinkle in his eye. OK, all this may be a bit of an exaggeration (sounding more like Santa Claus), but variations of these traits are persistently repeated among those who knew him and reminisce about his personality. He really was a down-to-earth guy. For example, he refused to travel first-class. Even when sent first-class tickets, he sat in third-class, driving the fastidious ticket-takers crazy.
I have a second picture to talk about. But before that, I want to see what else there is about his life that I can read into his class picture. What do we know about his early life that might help us? Best to begin at birth.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in a small town (Ulm) on the Danube River in south-western Germany to unobservant Jewish parents. Although the town today boasts of his birth, he was still an infant when the family moved to Munich, where he spent his formative years. His mother, Pauline, had a deep commitment to music, and she tried to instill that affection in her young son by forcing violin lessons on him. A love of music eventually sunk into his psyche around his transition to the teenage years, and Albert carried that commitment throughout his life. He exhibited his love of music by packing his violin on trips. Serious music, to him, was confined to the works of the “classical” period of what is called classical music, especially that of Mozart and Haydn, although he would happily dip back into the Baroque and J. S. Bach.
His father, Hermann, was a businessman who could have made a lot of money at the time because he was in the electrical business (motors and dynamos, for example), which was to the late-19th century what computer high-tech paraphernalia was to the late-20th century. But, just as the “dot.com” boom and bust resulted in some winners and many losers, most who made the effort in the electrical business did not achieve success. Hermann’s business went bust.
Albert’s sister, Marie (called Maja), was born when he was age two, and she was his only sibling. Maja, in a short memoir written in the early-1920s, is a crucial source of information about her brother’s childhood; this is important because there are many myths circulating through the media and beyond about Einstein’s youth. Today, many special interest groups wish to embrace Einstein as the poster boy for their various causes. Nonetheless, Einstein was not a slow learner, a vegetarian, left-handed, nor any of a range of idiosyncrasies that you will find in special-group websites on the Internet testifying that Einstein was one-of-them. Although his parents tutored him for his first year of school, he also was not “home schooled,” for he continued through the German school system until the age of 15, when he dropped out before graduating in his final year. Yes, Einstein was a high-school dropout, but I must confess that I have not yet come across a website of “High-School Dropouts” claiming Einstein as one-of-them.
Contrary to another myth, Maja reports that her brother was not a slow learner but was “a precocious young man” who had a “remarkable power of concentration,” such that he could “lose himself…completely in a problem.” Later, for Einstein the scientist, this youthful behavior was clearly repeated – like a leitmotif, throughout his scientific life.
It’s true that Albert detested the rigidity of the German way of teaching, but he still got good grades. Yet, he did not hide his feelings about the oppressive atmosphere of the classroom, so that one teacher went so far as to tell Albert’s parents that their son set a poor example for the other students by his overt hostility. This may cast some light on the special smile on his face in our photo, for it surely reveals the contrarian attitude on social mores that he displayed throughout his life. One obvious example: think of his lack of decorum in the grooming of his hair, which began in the 1930s.
An example of nonconformity of a different kind took place in his pre-teen years when he became extremely religious and admonished his anti-religious parents for not following the rules of Orthodox Judaism. This personal obsession lasted for a few years, to the consternation of Hermann and Pauline, only to disappear right before he would have been Bar Mitzvah. (It never happened.) In his very brief autobiography, written in 1947, he says that the reason for this quick change was his discovery of science and math, and for him the accompanying realization that the Bible was untrue. The result was an intellectual and emotional transformation. He viewed the religious outlook as subjective and solipsistic, whereas the scientific viewpoint was a route to objectivity and a liberation from what he called “the merely personal” – or subjectivity. He put it this way: “Beyond the self there is the vast world, which exists independently of human beings, and that stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.” This statement acted as a maxim for his scientific endeavours to the end of his life.
But this is not the full story of his transformation: he added a socio-political element that is rather startling and remarkable for someone around age 12 or 13. He said he came to realize that “youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies” and that therefore a “mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience.” These are profound and troubling views for someone at an age where most boys are more obsessed with sports and girls. Does this give us a hint at a deeper meaning of the smile in Photo 1? Maybe not, he was but 9 or 10 when the picture was taken. Nevertheless, it does give us a sense of continuity from here to the unconventional citizen we know later in life.
As we continue to pursue the question of the roots of his maverick ways, we find two episodes of interest at age 15 or 16. Both were triggered by the collapse of his father’s business, and the need for the family to move from Munich to the town of Pavia in northern Italy just south of Milan, where his father’s brother had a more successful business. Since Albert was in his last year of high school, he was placed in a boarding house in Munich while his parents and sister went on to Italy without him. Alone and feeling abandoned, he sank into a deep depression and had to leave school. But he had the wherewithal to obtain a letter from his math teacher saying that he completed that part of the curriculum. This was the first episode.
The other episode, however, might not have seemed very level-headed at the time. After crossing the German border, he applied to the government to renounce his German citizenship, making him a stateless person thereafter. Some scholars believe that in order to trigger such a desperate act, something almost elemental about German society had deeply troubled Einstein. We know he had major misgivings about the militaristic features of German society as expressed in the educational system. Or was it a reaction to his father’s loss of his livelihood, and the need to leave the country? His sister, Maja, however, had a simple answer: he was avoiding being drafted into the military.
Accordingly, as a high school dropout, Albert arrived at his parents’ residence in Italy, much to their surprise and surely their chagrin. We have no documentation about the inevitable confrontation between him and his parents, but we can be sure that there was a dispute around the question of what he was going to do with the rest of his life. We, of course, know the answer, in the long run. But even in the short run, there was some hope.
Let’s return to that letter in Albert’s pocket when he left Munich, and back up a few years to the non-Bar Mitzvah around age 12 or 13. The unperformed religious transformative rite was replaced by a different revelation – as mentioned, he developed a zeal for science and in particular the logical rigor of mathematical reasoning. Specifically, he was given a primer on geometry, and he devoured it – even trying to prove some theorems before he read the proofs in the book. The logical way that mathematical reasoning produced eternal proofs had a deep psychological impact on this young man, so much so that even when writing his autobiography around the age of 68, he referred to this early textbook as the “holy geometry book.” How revealing this metaphor is: especially when we realize that he was reading Euclid, instead of Torah, the original “holy” book. He went on to teach himself calculus and other higher mathematics, so that by the time he dropped out of school, he was well-grounded in the mathematics required for graduation and beyond. Hence, the letter in his pocket, mentioned above.
Albert’s father had plans for his son to be an engineer. This is no surprise, since he was in the electrical business, which he (correctly) believed was the wave of the future. In particular, he wanted his son to enroll in the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zürich, one of the best schools in Europe. As luck (fate?) would have it, a completed high school diploma was not necessarily required for enrollment in the Poly; instead, there were a series of rigorous exams administered by the Institute. It seems that the letter from the math teacher was a factor in placing him in the special category.
So, in the fall of 1895 he took the entrance exams – but flunked them. There was, however, a silver lining to this incident. He did so well on the science and math parts (no shock here) that the Institute’s director recommended that he spend a year doing some remedial studying. After all, he was applying to the Institute a year or two early for his age, since the regular age of admission was about 18 years old.
Einstein spent the next year at the Kanton Schule in the town of Aarau, just west of Zürich. The curriculum was based on the ideas of the great Swiss educator, J. H. Pestalozzi, who (among other things) emphasized using visual materials as well as written texts as educational tools, and especially stressed direct student-teacher interaction. For Einstein, it was a delightful and memorable year: he enjoyed learning in a formal setting for the first time in his life.
Indeed, it was sometime during that year of motivated learning that he came up with what would be his first great experiment in his head, what we call a “thought experiment.” This idea involved moving in space at the speed of light; essentially it was based on this question: What would the world look like if we rode on a beam of light? Perhaps the Pestalozzi emphasis on visualizing played a role here? Listen to the following remark about the school in Aarau that Einstein wrote 60 years later: “It made an unforgettable impression on me, thanks to its liberal spirit and the simple earnestness of the teachers who based themselves on no external authority.”
Ah ha, “no external authority”: such progressive and open-minded thinking was guaranteed to have an impact on Einstein who, as quoted, believed that “youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies” and that therefore a “mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience.” This Swiss Kanton Schule was obviously nothing like the German schooling he had previously experienced. No wonder he graduated in the fall of 1896 with good grades.
The year at Aarau proved fruitful. Einstein’s admittance to the Swiss Polytechnic was based on his grades at Aarau, and although his father wanted him to study to become an engineer, he enrolled in physics and mathematics – and we know where it went from there.
One more thing about the Aarau year. There is a class photo of that small graduating class of 10 students. It’s not reproduced here, for no one is smiling. They all look relaxed, but serious too as they ponder their future. Einstein may be a bit more relaxed than the others, and he may be staring off into space much further than his fellow students – but I hesitate in reading anything more into it. Nonetheless, I do know this: once, when reminiscing about that key year in his life, he said that, while the other students at Aarau filled their spare-time by swigging copious quantities of beer, he drank from a different trough – diligently reading The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant. And that surely was nothing to smile about. (Incidentally, Einstein was a teetotaller all his life.)
My key argument here is essentially about the role of pictures and what we can (or cannot) read into them. And this brings me to Photo 2 from 1931, over four decades later. Here Einstein, now the celebrity, is at a reception in the German Chancellery in Berlin. From the left they are: Max Planck (the famous physicist), Ramsay MacDonald (British Prime Minister), Einstein, Hermann Schmitz (on Einstein’s immediate left), and Hermann Dietrich (German Finance Minister).
I have no idea why these five men were seated together or what they were talking about. There are several extant pictures of this table-talk scene, which were taken by the pioneering photojournalist, Erich Salomon. I have chosen this one because it captures an animated Einstein speaking to the British Prime Minister. Notice the gesture with his cupped right-hand. It is a captivating image clearly displaying Einstein’s alert and smiling face, all in stark contrast to the serious, stern, and solemn visages of the other four. “Come on, guys – lighten up!” – I want to say with Einstein. Or, put differently: what’s there not to like about this Einstein fellow trying to cheer-up a much too formal table? Is it not clear why I am juxtaposing this 1931 picture with the smiling boy in school? And so, it seems that a story that began with a smile appears to end with a smile.
But not so fast.
The second picture is from 1931, and two years later Hitler will control the country. Serious looking Hermann Schmitz was from I.G. Farben, the chemical company that would become notorious for its role in developing Zyklon B used in the gas chambers in the Extermination Camps, and for this Herr Schmitz spent time in prison after World War II for Nazi war crimes.
Planck’s son, Erwin – who was also present at this formal affair but is not in this picture – was later executed by the Nazis as part of the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
And then there’s the photographer Erich Salomon (b.1886). He died in 1944 in Auschwitz, which was supplied with chemicals from I.G. Farben.
The result is that Photo 2 is deeply laden with painful meaning, and I can never again see this picture with that initial innocence I had the first time I smiled along with Einstein as he made a point to the British Prime Minister. Such is the nature of images and the interaction and interdependence of our eyes and minds. To use an analogy: pictures are as much read they are as seen. And so, knowing what we know about Photo 2, there is nothing
Features
Embracing your femininity in Cheshvan
By ELENA KNIGHT Rosh Chodesh Sameach! Though last month’s article (Embracing your femininity in Tishrei) had far more holidays, thus more material, the month of Cheshvan is not as empty as it appears. It may contain no holidays or mitzvot specific to the month, but I take issue with the idea that Cheshvan is “bitter”.
Some people refer to this month as MarCheshvan, Mar meaning bitter, but Mar can also refer to a drop of water; this month is the beginning of Israel’s rainy season! We began praying for rain with Shemini Atzeret last month, so by this time, G-d has usually heard Am Yisrael and started sending rain to the Holy Land. To connect this to womanhood, let’s revisit last month’s article, where I explained the connection of water to femininity.
In Tishrei, I spoke of the divine feminine, and how rain is associated with the womb of creation, fertility, and gentle, life-renewing power. In Cheshvan, however, I’d like to focus more on feminist reclamation of water metaphors; in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad , for example, when trying to protect herself from unwanted suitors, Penelope recalls her mother’s advice: “Behave like water… Don’t try to oppose them. When they try to grasp you, slip through their fingers. Flow around them.” We can take this literary advice and put it into practice in our lives this month. When in a position where we feel powerless, and in spaces where female assertion is unwelcome, we could do well to be like water. Nobody can hold water in the palms of their hands without losing control of it. Water is not easy to contain. Nor are we women.
Taking Mar of MarCheshvan to mean a drop of water, rather than bitterness, can be interpreted now as a call to action. This month can be the time when we refuse to be controlled, much like the prophetess Miriam. In Torah, Miriam’s connection with water is clear; in Exodus 15, she takes the Israelite women out from the community to sing a song of deliverance through the Red Sea. She is with her brother, our Patriarch, Moses, when he is sent down the Nile in a reed basket, and she is the one who ensures he is cared for at the Pharaoh’s palace in Exodus 4. In many Pesach seders, a cup of water is set out for Miriam, like the wine for Elijah, because she ensured that the Israelites had water while travelling through the wilderness during the Exodus journey.
Miriam is, clearly, a passionate leader, creating a specific space for Israelite women when they are so often overlooked in Torah stories. By establishing her place as a role model for the Israelites leading up to their freedom from Egypt, the Torah makes it clear that G-d accepts female leadership. This month, let us take a page from Miriam’s book, and lead when we are called to do so. Like I suggested in my last article, mentoring a young girl in your community may be the perfect way to lead.
Cheshvan is also said to be reserved for the time of Moshiach. To prepare for the Moshiach’s arrival, we can act in ways that will bring about Israel’s reformation, both in the land itself and in the diaspora. By supporting charities both in our home communities and in Israel, by acting with chesed, loving-kindness, even when we don’t really feel like it, and by studying–whether that be studying Torah, feminist theory, or any other subject that will improve the world–with fervent passion. By working on tikkun olam, repairing the world, as we have it now, we can bring about a better world for future generations. What better way to remove the bitter reputation of Cheshvan?
Features
CFTC Crypto Regulation Plans Put XRP and Solana in Focus as CLARITY Act Stalls
US crypto regulation is back in focus after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission opened a public consultation on October 5 on a potential framework for certain retail crypto transactions. With the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, the initiative raises questions about what the agency can achieve under existing law and why its plans matter for XRP and Solana.
For XRP and Solana, the development is particularly notable because US regulators have already identified both assets as examples of digital commodities. The emerging question is therefore not simply what happens to the CLARITY Act, but how far the CFTC can reshape the regulatory environment while the legislation remains stalled.
XRP and Solana price movements in focus
The XRP price and Solana price provide useful context for assessing market movements; comparing both assets over the same period helps distinguish their individual performance from broader changes across crypto markets.
XRP price movements and Solana price movements need to be assessed over a clearly defined period. An intraday range describes the distance between the session’s highest and lowest recorded prices; it does not establish which direction an asset will move next. A daily percentage change provides a different measure, comparing the latest price with a reference point.
Crypto market volatility can reflect changes in liquidity, interest rate expectations, network developments and broader risk appetite. The CFTC consultation adds regulatory context, but the announcement alone does not establish the cause of a particular price movement.
Why crypto regulation is shifting towards the CFTC
The Senate did not reach the 60-vote threshold required to advance the CLARITY Act in September. The result prevented the broader market-structure bill from moving ahead at that stage, but it did not end the push for clearer federal crypto rules.
The CFTC has now begun exploring another route. In its notice covering Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, the agency is seeking public input on a framework for certain retail crypto transactions and the platforms offering them.
The distinction matters. The CLARITY Act would have established a statutory framework passed by Congress. The CFTC initiative instead relies on powers the agency says it already has under the Commodity Exchange Act.
That means agency action can proceed while the legislation remains unresolved, although it cannot replicate every part of the congressional proposal.
What the proposed CFTC crypto rules could cover
The process centres on two concepts known as Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM. Regulation CTX concerns retail commodity transactions involving crypto assets, including transactions financed through margin, leverage or other forms of credit.
Regulation CAM would examine a specialised category of CFTC-registered market designed for those transactions. The aim is to create a federal regulatory option with requirements more closely tailored to crypto markets.
The framework could address areas such as market manipulation, customer assets, conflicts of interest and market conduct. The agency is also considering what information platforms should provide and how existing market safeguards can be adapted to crypto.
There is an important limit. The CFTC cannot require all spot crypto exchanges to enter that federal regime without action from Congress. Its chairman has described the proposal as an option for firms rather than a nationwide mandate.
That difference helps explain why the CLARITY Act still matters even as regulators move independently.
Why XRP and Solana matter in the regulatory debate
The CFTC consultation brings renewed attention to how the existing federal crypto asset taxonomy relates to XRP and Solana.
In his October 5 remarks, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig pointed to the joint federal crypto asset taxonomy, which identifies Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Stellar, Tezos and XRP among examples of digital commodities.
For XRP and Solana, that classification helps explain why a CFTC-led framework deserves attention. Both assets operate on widely used blockchain networks and have a presence across global crypto markets, so changes affecting how US platforms can offer crypto products could influence market access, liquidity and institutional participation.
It does not mean the new rules would determine their prices. Interest rates, network activity, broader risk appetite and asset-specific developments remain important. Regulation is one part of the market environment, not a standalone price signal.
How crypto wagers relate to market movements
Crypto wagers based on market movements involve a bet on a specified outcome over a defined period. The relevant details include the asset, the condition that must be met, the closing time and the price source used to determine the result. Those terms matter because an asset can move in different directions within the same day.
Short-term price direction is also the basis for crypto wagers on Moon, a crypto betting platform where outcomes are tied to market movements.
For crypto betting, the significance of volatility depends on the wager’s conditions, including whether settlement uses a closing price or an event occurring during the specified period. A rise earlier in the day does not establish the outcome of a later wager, and a regulatory announcement does not guarantee a winning bet. An unsuccessful wager can result in the loss of the amount staked.
The connection between crypto wagers and market news therefore depends on the specific outcome and timeframe. News about XRP or Solana can provide context, while the terms of each wager determine how its result is settled.
How agency action differs from the CLARITY Act
The distinction between legislation and regulation is central to what happens next.
Congress can create new statutory powers and requirements that regulators cannot establish on their own. The CLARITY Act sought to define a broader market structure, including the responsibilities of federal agencies and obligations for intermediaries operating in digital asset markets.
The CFTC is working within authority it says already exists. That allows it to address some transaction structures and market protections but leaves wider questions for lawmakers.
The agency itself has acknowledged that regulatory action cannot indefinitely replace legislation. For markets, that creates a two-track process: regulators can develop rules under current law while Congress decides whether to revisit a broader statutory framework.
That makes the latest CFTC action more than a reaction to the failed Senate vote. It is also an indication of how US crypto policy could develop if Congress remains unable to reach agreement.
What US crypto regulation could mean for Canadian markets
The proposed CFTC framework would apply in the United States, not Canada. Its potential relevance for Canadian markets comes through cross-border capital flows, global liquidity and the role US platforms and institutions play in price discovery.
Canada also has established investment products linked directly to both assets. The Toronto Stock Exchange listed several Solana ETFs in April 2025, including the 3iQ Solana Staking ETF, giving Canadian investors regulated market exposure to SOL.
XRP followed with Canadian-listed products in June 2025, including the 3iQ XRP ETF.
That means regulatory developments affecting XRP and Solana in the United States can have relevance even when Canadian rules themselves do not change. Shifts in institutional participation, exchange access or global liquidity can still be reflected in assets and funds available in Canada.
Currency remains another consideration. Crypto assets are commonly quoted globally in US dollars, while Canadian investors may measure performance in Canadian dollars. Exchange-rate movements can therefore strengthen or reduce the local effect of a move in the underlying asset.
What comes next for the CFTC consultation and CLARITY Act
The CFTC consultation is now underway. The agency is seeking written comments on the Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM framework before deciding how subsequent rulemaking should proceed.
Congress could also return to the CLARITY Act or another version of market-structure legislation. The Senate result stopped the bill from advancing at that point, rather than resolving the broader regulatory debate.
For XRP and Solana, the most important signal is therefore no longer a single Senate vote. Attention has moved to whether the CFTC can turn its proposals into workable federal rules, how crypto platforms respond and whether lawmakers eventually establish a broader framework.
Features
An Overview of Antisemitism in Western Europe
By HENRY SREBRNIK The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights survey of 2024 found that 96 per cent of Jewish respondents had encountered antisemitism online or offline in the 12 months before the survey, and that 76 per cent avoided wearing or displaying items that would make them recognizable as Jewish in public.
Antisemitism in Austria remained at alarmingly high levels last year, reaching its highest point since records began. The Antisemitism Reporting Center of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG), the official body tracking antisemitic incidents against Austria’s Jewish community, released its annual report in April documenting 1,532 cases in 2025.
Last November, protesters rallied in Vienna against an event dedicated to Franz Dinghofer, an Austrian politician who was a self-confessed antisemite and a Nazi party member. They were protesting an event called the Dinghofer Symposium that they say is antisemitic. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) members countered that they remember Dinghofer as a statesman in the period between World War I and World War II.
In Belgium, Jewish communities are described as tight-knit but insecure, and constantly aware that their citizenship and prosperity don’t guarantee their acceptance or safety. Too often, writes Brandeis University historian Flora Cassen, who grew up in the country, “governments and the media treat attacks on their Jewish communities as a front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not as an attack on their own citizens.” In March, there was a car burning in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp. As well, a synagogue in Liège was damaged by an explosion in what the country’s interior minister called “an antisemitic act.”
In France, antisemitic violence has intensified while the experience of protection has weakened. Jewish students face harassment framed and justified as political expression. Synagogues operate behind security. Wearing a kippah can require calculation. These are no longer marginal experiences; they have become familiar features of Jewish life in places that once felt self-evidently safe. Since 2000, between 80,000 and 100,000 Jews have fled France — more than 20 per cent of the community.
More troubling still is the ideological shift. Antisemitism is increasingly reframed as political critique, social protest, or resistance to power. Jews are often excluded from the moral category of vulnerable minorities. The very frameworks designed to protect them can struggle to recognise them as victims.
A staggering number of antisemitic incidents has now become normal in France — 1,320 in 2025 is nearly double the already extreme 851 in 2014. But what’s more interesting is the shift in social permission to openly hate Jews.
The far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) Party in France has been accused by academics and ministers of antisemitism after their de facto leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and party members marched with Islamist-linked NGOs during Gaza protests. The LFI’s popularity has been on the rise in polling ahead of next year’s presidential election, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. Ninety-two per cent of French Jews believe that the LFI contributes to antisemitism in France.
Mélenchon took advantage of nationwide student protests in early October. To advance his political prospects, his strategy appears to be to capitalize on the discontent currently roiling the country. Mélenchon has also accused authorities of repression with a racist undertone, since many of the protesters are Muslim. No surprise, then, that Palestinian flags have appeared at the protests.
Although Mélenchon was known in the 1990s as a hardcore secularist, by 2020 he had allied himself with Houria Bouteldja, co-founder of the “decolonial” (anti-West) Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR). Under Bouteldja’s influence, Mélenchon began to utter questionable remarks on the Jews. The way Mélenchon uses the idea of uniting against one enemy by speaking of Israel “is similar to the way Hitler used to speak about the Jews,” according to Israeli Ambassador to France Joshua Zarka. So it’s no surprise that French president Emmanuel Macron, getting more and more unpopular, recognized a Palestinian state in 2025.
Germany has cracked down on speech and demonstrations that assert support for Palestinians and accuse Israel of atrocities, part of a national policy toward antisemitism, defined over decades in the shadow of the Holocaust and sharpened recently under the helm of Felix Klein, the first federal commissioner for combating antisemitism. Many Jews say they feel safer under such bans. The Central Council of Jews in Germany recommended Klein for his appointment as antisemitism czar. Some human rights groups have objected, however, saying the bans limit free speech and criminalize legitimate expressions of support for the Palestinian cause.
Disputes over Israel recently erupted at the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial, as both Israel’s critics and its defenders claim the Holocaust for their terrain. The anti-Zionist group Kufiyas in Buchenwald announced a demonstration there on April 11, the anniversary of its liberation, in protest against a German court’s decision that the site could refuse entry to visitors who wear a Palestinian keffiyeh. The court said that wearing a keffiyeh to send a political message “would endanger the sense of security of many Jews, especially at this site.” The Buchenwald protest was condemned by the European Jewish Congress, and Klein said it marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
In an election held Sept. 20 in Berlin, the left-wing Die Linke came in first, winning 25.7 per cent, more than doubling its 2023 share. Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, described antisemitism within Die Linke as systemic. Philipp Peyman Engel, editor in chief of the Jüdische Allgemeine, the newspaper of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wrote that party was “riddled with people who hate Jews and Israel.”
Italy in April announced that it was declining to renew a longstanding defence agreement with Israel, a sharp reversal for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. Opposition parties had put pressure on the government for over a year to suspend the renewal. Marco Grimaldi, an opposition lawmaker, said the decision was “a victory” for those who had protested Israel’s military offensive in Gaza over the last three years.
On Oct. 3, 2025, there was a nationwide general strike, which the labour union leaders officially called “to support the residents of Gaza and a humanitarian aid mission.” While mass anti-Israel rallies gripped other parts of Europe, Italy’s were the most numerous.
Recent Italian demonstrations of “solidarity” with Palestine saw protesters carry Palestinian flags, flags of Italian labour unions, and red flags with hammers and sickles. Some of the banners had the words, in Italian, “yesterday partisans, today anti-Zionists and anti-Fascists,” and declared support for “Palestinian resistance.”
Dutch Jews have long been used to seeing security and armed police in front of their schools, synagogues and gatherings. Since a school and a synagogue were attacked over two days in March, an unsettling feeling has spread among Jews in the Netherlands. Assailants struck Jewish buildings — a religious school in Amsterdam, where most Dutch Jews live, and a synagogue in Rotterdam. Mayor Femke Halsema of Amsterdam called the blast at the school a “targeted attack against the Jewish community.”
Before the Holocaust, the Netherlands had a robust Jewish population. The Nazis deported 75 per cent of Dutch Jews to death camps, the highest such rate in Nazi-occupied western European nations. Today, the Jewish population of the Netherlands is estimated at about 35,000 people, just 0.2 per cent of the country’s 18 million residents.
“I am mostly angry,” declared Menno ten Brink, a rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Community in Amsterdam. The explosions have had a big impact on Dutch Jews and the wider society, added Eddo Verdoner, the Dutch national coordinator for combating antisemitism. Antisemitism has been increasing over the last decade or so, he said, with an “exponential increase” since October 2023.
Relations between Israel and Norway have plummeted to historic lows, with Oslo becoming one of the Palestinians’ staunchest supporters in Europe. Norway became the first European country to announce that it would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant following the International Criminal Court’s issuance of warrants against them, and it then joined South Africa in its International Court of Justice case against Israel.
“I find it shameful that we have one of the most anti-Israel governments in Europe,” MP Himanshu Gulati, chairman of the Israel Allies Caucus in the Norwegian Parliament, has remarked. Not surprisingly, the Norwegian government has recognized. a Palestinian state.
In May, Norway’s higher education minister indicated that she did not intend to punish a university professor who praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacres in Israel because he had “the same freedom of expression as everyone else.” Sigrun Aasland was referring to Bassam Hussein, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), who on April 21, during a lecture before the Socialist Forum in Trondheim, said that the Oct. 7 massacres were “the most beautiful thing that has happened in our century.”
Norway’s Foreign Ministry put out a bill this fall before its parliament that would send Norwegian citizens and companies to prison for buying from, selling to, building for or investing in businesses owned by Jews who live in the West Bank. Negligent violators get six months.
In Portugal anti-Israel sentiment punctuates the actions of the political press. The most significant antisemitic events that occurred in recent years included demonstrations for better housing that targeted local Jews whose personal names were published in newspapers, bomb threats against the country’s largest synagogue and the Holocaust museum, which was called a “brothel that teaches the lie of the 6 million,” and hate messages written on the facades of Jewish homes to identify “Zionist pigs.”
Following October 7, 2023, antisemitic and antizionist incidents surfaced more visibly in public spaces and academic institutions. High-profile incidents include verbal electoral harassment against Jewish community figures like writer Esther Mucznik, acts of vandalism directed at the Lisbon Synagogue, and hostile propaganda targeting Jewish and Israeli students at the University of Coimbra
The far-left Sumar Party in Spain is part of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s ruling coalition. Their support has been strongest in areas with high Muslim populations, with party members attending demonstrations with Muslim Brotherhood-adjacent groups and Gaza protests organized by Islamist-leaning networks. Members also pushed for Spain to recognize a Palestinian state, which it did in 2024, while also referring to Israel as an “apartheid state.”
The political left spread a narrative across social media asserting that the recent migrant invasion by Moroccans of Spain’s Ceuta enclave is part of a vast American-Israeli conspiracy to destroy the country. Spain’s Transportation Minister supported the theory on social media while Gabriel Rufian, a spokesperson from the Spanish Congress, asserted that the U.S. and Israel were flooding Europe with migrants to “blackmail” the country.
In Sweden, debates about antisemitism loomed large throughout the recent election season, despite the country’s small population of Jews, who number about 20,000 in a country of more than 10 million people. Politicians on all sides repeatedly sought to position themselves as the best defenders against antisemitism.
Aron Verständig, who chairs the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, said that while he appreciated gestures of solidarity with the Jewish community, he worried that politicians hurling accusations of antisemitism against each other could reduce Jews to a weapon of political debate. “Of course, it’s good that our situation is discussed and people are interested in what happens to the Jews here in Sweden — but on the other hand, there’s a risk that we are becoming a tool.”
Simona Mohamsson, Sweden’s minister for education and integration, who is of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, wore a Star of David during a televised debate. A member of the center-right Liberals, she wore the symbol “for the children who do not dare to in today’s Sweden.” She criticized members of the Left Party for “flirting with extremists.”
Since 2023, the war in the Middle East has been a defining trigger for antisemitic incidents in Switzerland. For the Jewish community, this has been a constant strain for more than three years.
Pro-Palestine activists are very active at Swiss universities. There have been anti-Israel demonstrations, some of which were associated with calls for violence and antisemitic slogans. The one in Bern in October 2025 stands out in particular because there was a massive outbreak of violence. In the larger cities of Switzerland, offensive graffiti relating to the conflict in the Middle East is omnipresent.
Here and there we see small improvements on the continent, but not enough to turn things around. The ancestral Jewish knowledge that safety can collapse with terrifying speed, even in civilised societies, begins to return.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
