Free Republic

Arutz Sheva spoke with Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER), at a gathering of its Standing Committee in Geneva, Switzerland. How more challenging and scary has being a Jew in Europe become? "It's very challenging, as an individual and as a community." You're referring to fears of anti-Semitism? "Yes. We witnessed an attack on Yom Kippur in eastern Germany, not ISIS - Neo-Nazis. In the last years, no Jews were killed by neo-Nazis in Europe. It's a whole new phenomenon." "We have problems today from the left and the right and the center. This is...

Germany’s main Jewish leader, who in 2010 became the first person born after the Holocaust to take the job, says he’s stepping down. Dieter Graumann said Friday he won’t seek a second term leading the Central Council of Jews in a vote Nov. 30. […] Graumann was among leading critics of a 2012 German court ruling that male infant circumcision amounts to bodily harm. Parliament later approved legislation explicitly permitting the practice. …

A motion to ban the circumcision of males younger than 18, unless for medical purposes, has been presented to the Swedish parliament. Two members of the right-wing, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party brought the motion forward on Tuesday. Their party, which holds only 20 of the 349 seats in parliament, argues it is the next step after Sweden’s ban on female genital mutilation. …

A German court has forbidden a woman from having her six-year-old son circumcised because of a risk of psychological damage. The decision comes a year after a similar ruling sparked an international outcry. In July 2012, a court in Cologne said religious circumcision of male infants was tantamount to grievous bodily harm, a criminal act subject to prosecution—prompting furor around the world. In response, German lawmakers were forced to clarify that circumcision was legal. But now a court in Hamm in North Rhine-Westphalia has said a woman was unfit to decide whether doctors performed the religious rite on her six-year-old...