A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [187]
In 1988 a liberal synagogue, like those of the American Reform movement, was attempted in Antwerp, but it found few followers and soon died. Those who were not kosher or did not observe the Sabbath tried to keep it out of the sight of those who did. There were Jews in Antwerp who drove their cars on Saturday. But they would not drive down the Belgielei. It was believed that Jewish law made a distinction between nonobservance in private and flaunting in public.
“We've lost that golden middle way of my parents,” said Mechilem. “Everyone is getting either nonpracticing and modernized or Hasidic.” There was a consistent pattern. The survivor generation was clean-shaven and dressed normally but with a hat; the postwar generation wore vests and beards and their children were in full regalia. Sam Perl, an Orthodox Jew of the clean-shaven hat-wearing survivor generation, thought this impulse toward ever more exotic dress was driven by fear of assimilation. “They are afraid they will come reaching over the other side of the world and they will be lost. It's a weakness.” He blamed religious leaders for trying to keep the young traditional. “I tell you, the spiritual leaders think all this clothing and everything will keep them back. Keep them away from the street. But unfortunately, they are putting this into their heads as though it were a great principle, and it's not true. Judaism is not just this. If you have to count only on the clothing, it's very sad and very bad. If you don't have a way to live life—Jews are becoming more and more extreme. I think there will be a reaction against this,” he said.
BUT FAR MORE TROUBLING THINGS were looming on the gray Antwerp horizon. The VMO, Flemish Military Order, host to the extreme right at Diksmuide, had been banned in the early 1980s and renamed itself the Vlaams Blok, the Flemish Bloc. It played down the SS service records of some within its ranks, and it prudently avoided anti-Semitic rhetoric—unless of course you drank beer with its members at Diksmuide. Their public speeches, like those of the German Republicans, Dutch Centrum, and French National Front, concentrated on the “immigrant problem”—the claim that the quality of life in the nation was being eroded by the presence of Moroccans, Turks, and Arabs. This approach seemed to settle much better with the general population than attacking Jews, a polemic that was associated with Nazis and occupation. In the general election of November 1991 the Vlaams Blok won 25 percent of the vote in Antwerp. This was a shock in a city where they had won only 1.9 percent in the previous election four years earlier, and where there were few notable conflicts between the general population and the highly visible Jewish four percent. The strongest negative feeling commonly expressed about Jews was that they were dangerous to be around because they could be targets. A swimming instructor said that people shied away from the pool on Sundays when the Orthodox Jewish children were offered instruction, because they feared that someone might attack the pool.
Palestinian attacks seemed fresher in Antwerp memories than the Holocaust. The Jewish Community was spending considerable money on security operations against possible future incidents. But it did not expect those attacks to come from the extreme right. The Community was still focused on Arabs. On a few occasions North African juvenile delinquents had singled out Jews for physical attacks. But the Jews were disturbingly passive about the fact that a quarter of their city had voted for a racist right-wing party. When Mechilem Silberman said he did not feel entirely safe in Antwerp, he could not even name a reason why he felt that way. Sam Perl pointed out that Antwerp Jews had not had any problems with the extreme right. “They say that they have nothing against Jews. We are glad to hear it, but we don't trust them.” Aside from this sad lack of solidarity with other minority groups that were being attacked by the extreme right