Celebrating 50 years of rabbinical service, Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs warned Sunday that antisemitism is causing many of his community’s members to contemplate moving to Israel. He added that Dutch authorities are committed to keeping Jews safe.
“I get questions about aliyah all the time these days, much more than before,” Jacobs told JNS on Sunday, following a ceremony in Arnhem that honored his 50 years of service. “It doesn’t mean people are moving, but it’s on their minds,” he said.
Jacobs, a Chabad rabbi whose parents survived the Holocaust in the Netherlands, was honored at a ceremony in a synagogue in Arnhem, a city that played a key role in the Allied offensive on Nazism.
“To those seeking a life without antisemitism in a Jewish environment, I often advise making aliyah,” he added. But despite rising antisemitism levels in the Netherlands, “Dutch Jews can still have a meaningful and relatively safe Jewish life here, because the authorities are providing security: They have our backs,” he added.
Still, “We are confronted with antisemitism daily—we can’t even say it’s ‘growing.’ Antisemitism has become commonplace. Dutch Jewry is worried,” Jacobs said in his speech in Arnhem.
Whereas some seek to belong to the Jewish community amid antisemitism, others “withdraw because of all the anti-Israel coverage and hide in the seemingly safe comfort of assimilation.”
Against this background, Jacobs shared his own dilemmas. “How should I respond? Should I call for leaving the Netherlands and advise moving to Israel? Or should I look away and assume it will all blow over, so as not to cause panic?”
His answer is to avoid blanket calls for emigration, and to tailor his advice to the needs of individuals who consult him on this matter.
Aliyah figures from the Netherlands have remained relatively low in recent years, with only a few dozen people making the move out the country’s estimated 30,000 people who self-identify as Jews. Last year, 70 Dutch Jews made aliyah, a 16% increase over the highest tally since 2018.
Many Dutch Jews were profoundly shocked by a series of antisemitic assaults, which some have called “pogroms,” perpetrated by dozens of Arab and Muslim men against Israelis and Jews who were in the Netherlands for a soccer match in November 2024.
Jacobs has nurtured interreligious dialog with churches and Christian groups in the Netherlands, including Christians for Israel. But he has also said that antisemitism was likely an irreversible part of Dutch society, including its many Muslim immigrants.
The Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, the Jewish community watchdog, documented 421 antisemitic incidents last year, a record tally that surpassed by 11% the previous all-time high, reported in 2023.
In 2014, Jacobs became the first European chief rabbi who said publicly that he would leave his country due to antisemitism, if not for his commitment to his community.
All but two of the seven children of Jacobs and his wife Blouma have left their native Netherlands, raising their own children in Israel and beyond. “Why should I want them to live in a country where antisemitism is thriving?” the rabbi asked a journalist in 2023.
