One elderly man, Henk van Jaarsveld, looked up at the menorah with tears in his eyes. A self-described Messianic Jew, he showed off his Hebrew skills by reading the holiday greeting in Dutch and Hebrew that Christians for Israel had attached to the menorah’s base.
Next year, Christians for Israel says it wants to place the menorah in front of the European Parliament in Brussels to protest legislative proposals that seek to restrict Jewish rights such as circumcising male infants.
“On Hanukkah, the Jewish people remember their rebellion against the Greeks because the Greeks limited the Jews’ freedom of worship,” said Roger van Oordt, director of Christians for Israel’s Dutch branch. “We want to place this menorah there as a warning against repeating that history.”
This article was written for JTA by Cnaan Liphshiz.
