Vienna - Dayan Menachem Gelley Elected Chairman of CER Standing Committee

Vienna - Dayan Menachem Gelley Elected Chairman of CER Standing Committee

From the Hamodia newspaper

The Conference of European Rabbis (CER) has elected Dayan Menachem Galley, Rosh Beis Din of the London Beth Din, as chairman of the Standing Committee, the supreme governing body of the CER.

The three-day Standing Committee meeting took place in Vienna last week and looked at many of the issues facing European Jewry. Worryingly, just the previous week, 49% of the Austrian public had voted for a far-right candidate to be president of the country.

During their visit, the Standing Committee met with leading government ministers. Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz at the Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs hosted breakfast at the Foreign Office, where Secretary Kurz expressed his intention to work with CER to support the Jewish community of Vienna.

The schedule also included a meeting with community leaders hosted by Agudas Israel of Vienna, where issues pertaining to the rise of anti-Semitism and the threat against Jewish practices such as shechitah and bris milah were discussed. There was also a visit to the Jewish Community Campus and amongst other events, a dinner hosted by the World Congress of Georgian Jews in honour of the inauguration of a new Viennese chapter.

The Standing Committee wound up their meeting with a tour of the medieval Vienna Synagogue and Holocaust Memorial site.

During a speech at the Standing Committee, Chief Rabbi Goldschmidt, President of the CER, said, "Europeans are deeply worried about their own security, the security of their children and their future economic prosperity.

"Europeans are worried about the secular democratic space, about their religious freedoms, about losing Europe to extremists. It is for these reasons that Europeans are increasingly giving their votes to far right party candidates, who promise to recreate both a sense of security and a renewed sense of national patriotism by closing the borders and by promising to rein in terrorists.

"We at CER will do everything possible to maintain and strengthen the Jewish communities of Europe. Jewish communities do not have the means to totally secure their institutions without the help of their governments, and governments have the responsibility and obligation to help their various communities. We will help smaller communities garner their resources to sustain Jewish life, even as their numbers dwindle and their resources become more scarce."