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Comments (1)A Jewish former banker was elected the vice president of Costa Rica.
Luis Lieberman will become vice president after Costa Rican voters on Sunday elected Laura Chinchilla as the Central American country’s first female president by a wide margin.
Lieberman’s parents immigrated to Costa Rica from Poland before World War II. He is the grandson of a mohel.
Lieberman told Ynet that his being Jewish did not affect his candidacy. He said Jews are very active in Costa Rican politics. Jews have served in previous governments.
Approximately 3,000 Jews live in Costa Rica.
Britain Logs Record Number of Anti-Semitic Incidents
Israel’s Gaza operation last winter spurred a record number of anti-Semitic attacks in Britain during the past year.
The organization recording anti-Semitic incidents, the Community Security Trust, reported an increase in incidents of 55 percent from the previous year. The 924 incidents were the most since records have been kept, according to reports.
The main rise in attacks was recorded in January and February, during and after Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip. According to the CST annual report, the 628 incidents in the first six months of 2009 were more than in any entire previous year. There were 296 incidents from July to December.
“These record figures show that anti-Semitism is an increasingly significant problem for British Jews,” CST spokesman Mark Gardner said. “The trend must be reversed, and we call upon decent people to speak out against anti-Semitism in all its forms.”
Prime Minister Gordon Brown did, saying that “Anti-Semitism is one of the most ancient of hatreds—and yet it constantly adapts to modern times, requiring ever greater vigilance from all of us who are determined to stand up for tolerance and for the truth. Whether online, on campus or on the streets, there is absolutely no place for racism or discrimination of any sort, and the Community Security Trust has my wholehearted support in its work with the police and the Jewish community.”
Twenty-three percent of the incidents in 2009, or 212, included some form of reference to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In January, 158 of the 288 incidents made reference to Gaza.
Some 124 violent assaults occurred last year, 41 percent more than the 88 from 2008. However, violent assaults fell to 13 percent of the total, from a high of 21 percent in 2007.
Michael Gove, the Conservative Party spokesman and a member of the shadow cabinet, said that “Britain’s Jewish citizens face a real and growing danger. The dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the last year proves that the oldest of prejudices has been given a new lease of life. Everyone in public life—politicians, media figures, academics and community leaders—has to recognize that this growth in anti-Semitism is a stain on our society.”
German Jewry’s Top Leader to Step Down
Germany’s top Jewish leader plans to step down to make way for a new generation of leaders.
Charlotte Knobloch, elected head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in 2006, announced she would not run for re-election in November, according to a statement released Sunday. Previous chairs have died in office.
Knobloch, 77, the longtime leader of the Jewish community in Bavaria and Munich, is likely to be the last council president to have lived through the Holocaust. She was hidden as a child by a non-Jewish family in Bavaria.
Knobloch told the German broadcaster Deutsch-Welle that she wanted to “consciously bring about a generational change in the leadership of the organization.”
On Sunday, the council announced it has “full and unlimited trust” in Knobloch and wants her to serve out her term. But she has come in for criticism from insiders and pundits as being too focused on the past.
The acerbic German-Jewish writer Henryk Broder has referred to her as “Tante Charly” and even toyed with the notion of running for office.
While there is speculation that the next chair could be current Vice President Dieter Graumann, some say it is time for a new immigrant to rise through the ranks. Of the estimated 200,000 Jews in Germany today, about 80 percent emigrated from the former Soviet Union since 1990. About half are affiliated with Jewish communities.
Postwar Jewish leaders “have accomplished a lot, and we are grateful and honor them,” wrote Russian-born attorney Grigory Lagodinsky, 28, deputy president of Kassel’s Jewish community, in a guest editorial in the Welt Online. “But they are not ready to accept representatives of the immigrant majority as their equals.”