Jews in Switzerland Suffer Hardships from Schechita Prohibition

(By Our Zurich Correspondent)

Switzerland, a small country with its twenty-two cantons, its comparatively small population and small territory, has a small Jewish population. The Jews here number 21,000 and are scattered in the various communities as Zurich, Basle, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucern, etc.

The Jewish population in Switzerland was larger some six or seven years ago, when many war refugees and victims of the Bolshevik regime found a refuge there. Later, however, during the inflation period, these new-comers hastily departed for Germany and France, where they could live more cheaply.

As is true of other countries of Western Europe, the Jews in Switzerland are divided into various elements. You find here the so-called native or autoctonous Jews who trace their ancestry way back to the first Jewish settlers, hundreds of years ago in Basle, Berne, St. Galen, etc., or who originate from the ancient Jewish kehillahs such as Lengnau and Endingen. However, there are very few of these aristocrats. The majority of the Jewish population in Switzerland are immigrants, some from Alsace, some from Germany, some from Russia and some from Poland. Only fifty years ago, there were but 8,000 Jews in Switzerland, about one-third of the present number. But the immigrants, with the passage of two or three decades, have ceased to be foreigners. Having settled here permanently and becoming acclimated to the new land, they have begun themselves to look somewhat askance at Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe today. It is the old antagonism between the “Old” and the “New.” But the antagonism is not very keen. The East European Jews who arrived recently and have not yet become assimilated with the older Jewish population have their own kehillahs and other communal organizations in the larger cities. Wherever there happens to be a community of Sephardic Jews, they likewise have their own kehiilahs.

Socially Jewish life in Switzerland is not too versatile. While, of course, there are the customary philanthropic organizations, kultus-gemeinden and orthodox, religious organizations, nevertheless the tempo of Jewish life in this country is rather weak. This may be due to the small Jewish population or perhaps to the fact that the Jews are scattered in so many towns and cities. The Jews of Switzerland never distinguished themselves to any great extent in the cultural or political activities of the land, though they did play some part in it. Recently the well-known Swiss writer, C. A. Loosli, emphasized in his book “Die Schlimmen Juden” (The Bad Jews) the few deserts of the Jews in Swiss culture:

It could have been hoped that where the Jews form only half of one per cent of the total population, anti-Semitism would find no root, yet unfortunately it is here. Right after the War, strenuous efforts were made by foreign elements to transplant anti-Semitism into Switzerland. The influence was especially strong from Germany, where the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion was then the craze. Even the French part of Switzerland, where the influence of France was strongly felt, could not escape totally the onrush of the anti-Semitic wave and for the past two years the international Geneva has had to witness the publication of a weekly whose chief purpose is to attack Jews. Nevertheless we must avoid exaggeration in this respect. If anti-Semitism has succeeded in making its appearance here and there, it would be wrong to infer that it has made any appreciable impression on the Swiss population or on the leaders of Swiss culture. It should also be pointed out that today, when the universities of other countries in Eastern and Central Europe have become hotbeds for anti-Semitic activities on the part of the students the universities in Switzerland have remained free from this plague. Jewish students are welcomed in the Swiss educational institutions and only recently the body of Swiss students raised its voice publicly against the Roumanian anti-Jewish excesses.

The Jews of Switzerland, while thorough content in every other respect, have one grievance. Thirtyfive years ago Switzerland was the first and only country to prohibit the Schechita and this prohibition, which the Jews regard as an insult to their religion, is still in force today. In 1918 the Swiss government, considering the difficulty of importing at that time kosher meat from Germany and France, temporarily lifted the prohibition against Schechita but the law was enforced again in 1920. The Jews of Switzerland resent the clause in the National Constitution which prohibits them from slaughtering animals according to the Jewish religious laws, and they make use of every opportunity to voice their protest. But their complaints have been of no avail.

There is one other thing which may be regarded as an insult to the Jew, namely, a law adopted in the Canton of Zurich regarding the naturalization of Jews from Eastern Europe. This law requires that East European Jews who want to become naturalized in the Zurich Canton must establish a longer period of residence than other immigrants. This amounts to a legal discrimination between Western Jews and Eastern Jews, something that has never happened in Jewish history before. It is a dangerous precedent which the Jews in Switzerland are striving strenuously to have abolished as soon as possible.