Europe Erased Its Jews: Now It Wants to Erase Their State
Posted on 09/19/2025 @ 06:00 AM
Relics on display at the former Synagogue of Tomar (c. 1460), Portugal. Image by Jaime Silva.
By Mark Kravitz, CAJE’s Chair of the Board
The sun was setting over Lisbon’s Alfama district, painting the tiled houses in shades of pink and gold. I stood on a narrow cobblestone street, the kind that makes you wonder if the stones remember everything they’ve seen.
Somewhere below me, tourists clinked glasses of vinho verde and toasted another perfect day in Portugal. But I wasn’t thinking about wine or sunsets. I was thinking about Jews — my people — and how invisible we felt here. In a place where Jewish life once thrived, I couldn’t find more than a whisper.
The Guides Who Forgot the Jews
If you want to know a country, talk to its guides. Ours were smart, funny, and full of knowledge about Portugal’s explorers, kings, and cuisine. But when I asked about the Jews, the response was... silence.
One guide, cheerful and eager, told me every detail about the Age of Discovery. Vasco da Gama. Prince Henry the Navigator. But when I asked about the Portuguese Inquisition, she looked puzzled. “Oh,” she said, “I thought that was only in Spain.”
Another guide, when I mentioned Israel and the Middle East, gave me a warm smile and said, “Peace, peace, peace.” As if peace were a slogan, not a struggle. The subtext was clear: if only the Jews would stop being so difficult, everything would resolve itself.
And then there was the one who decided, mid-tour, to explain how Jewish circumcision is “barbaric” and “outdated.” Out of everything he could have asked about Jewish life — our history, our values, our survival — this was the hill he chose to die on.
These weren’t bad people. But they were people for whom the Jewish story simply didn’t exist. It wasn’t part of their country’s story. It wasn’t part of their lives.
Europe’s Long History of Erasing Jews
What I felt in Portugal is just a softer version of what Europe has done for centuries: erase its Jews.
It started with expulsions—
- England in 1290 under King Edward I
- France in 1306 and again in 1394
- Spain’s Alhambra Decree in 1492, which expelled Jews or forced them to convert.
Portugal followed suit in 1496, offering Jews refuge for all of four years before deciding it would rather have them baptized or exiled. Those who stayed practiced their Judaism in secret. The ones who didn’t, got out — if they could.
In Eastern Europe, erasure wasn’t subtle. Pogroms in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland wiped out thousands of Jewish lives, long before Hitler industrialized the process. By the time the Nazis finished their work, two-thirds of European Jewry was gone — six million murdered in camps, forests, ghettos. Entire towns with names we no longer remember.
And yet, after all that, Europe still seems confused as to why Jews need a state of their own.
Israel Exists Because of You, Europe
Let’s be clear: Israel didn’t happen in a vacuum. Europe made it necessary.
After centuries of being the world’s convenient scapegoat, the Jewish people came to one conclusion: no one else is going to protect us.
Israel is not a colonial project. It’s a survival project.
It’s what happens when a people realize that trusting the goodwill of European monarchs, popes, czars, and democratically elected “progressives” is a losing bet.
As Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook said: “The Jewish people did not return to history to seek comfort but to fulfill destiny.”
Israel exists because Europe taught us that kindness from others can be revoked with a signature.
Sephardi Jews fleeing from Belgrade to Zemun in 1862 (picryl.com)
The People You Know vs. The People You Erased
It’s no mystery why the Palestinian narrative resonates more deeply in Europe. Europeans know Palestinians — or at least, they know Muslims. There are 45 million Muslims living in Europe — about 6% of the population (with France and Sweden nearing 10%). They are neighbors, coworkers, classmates.
Jews, on the other hand, make up just 0.2% of Europe’s population. In Portugal, that number feels like a rounding error. You could live your whole life in Lisbon and never meet a practicing Jew.
It’s hard to side with a people who barely exist in your world. It’s even harder when your civilization spent centuries making sure you wouldn’t have to.
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warned: “When a people is absent, their story is often told by others — and not always truthfully.”
Europe’s New Moral Hypocrisy
It was bad enough when Europe tried to erase us on its own soil.
Now they have the chutzpah to side with those who want to erase the one place we built so we wouldn’t have to beg Europe for permission to live.
It’s like watching an arsonist lecture the fire department for using too much water.
You kicked us out, you burned our homes, you stood by when your neighbors rounded us up — and now you’re offended that we built a house where we want to live safely.
Was it not enough to erase us from Lisbon, Paris, Warsaw, Berlin? Must they now root for those who want to erase us from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv too?
If You Want to Understand Israel, Find Your Jews First
If Europe wants to have an honest conversation about Israel, it needs to start by finding its Jews.
Not in museums. Not in Holocaust memorials. In real life.
Talk to the people your ancestors expelled, converted, or ignored. Ask them why Israel isn’t just a political cause but a lifeline.
And you definitely can’t preach morality to them until you’ve listened to the stories you’ve chosen not to hear.
You erased us from your continent. You don’t get to erase us from our homeland too.
Mark Kravitz is Chair of the Center for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) in Miami. He also serves on the Executive Board of The Jewish Education Project, is a Board Member of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and a graduate of the Wexner Heritage Program. He is passionate about strengthening Jewish identity, supporting educators, and confronting antisemitism. Above all, he is a proud father.
