Flashmob participants don kipot in Berlin
Published September 2, 2012
(JTA) — Young Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as local celebrities and politicians, donned yarmulkes and participated in a flashmob in the streets of Berlin.
The gathering on Saturday came in response to an attack in Berlin last week on a rabbi and his 6-year-old daughter. He was identifiable as Jewish because he was wearing a yarmulke.
More than 100 young people took to the streets in Berlin wearing the ritual skullcaps. The flashmob came after the Berliner Zeitung newspaper published a front page article and photo featuring famous Berlin residents wearing yarmulkes, under the headline “Berlin wears a yarmulke.”
Berlin’s interior minister, Frank Henkel, condemned what he called the “cowardly attack,” during Saturday night’s “Night of Religions” event at which the flashmob took place.
The evening was also a response to a decision by the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, a seminary which trains Reform rabbis, to advise its students not to wear yarmulkes in public.
Germany’s federal office for criminal investigation documented 436 anti-Semitic attacks across the country so far this year, according to Deutsche Welle. Most involved graffiti or verbal abuse.
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