European rabbis get Krav Maga training as antisemitism rises

“In today’s Europe, rabbis feel they are at risk every time they step outside,” said the group that organized the self-defense seminar.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Dozens of rabbis from countries across Europe spent hours Tuesday learning the rudimentary techniques of Krav Maga during a seminar in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in the face of rising antisemitism on the continent.

The lessons in the IDF’s primary hand-to-hand self-defense training system were “pretty basic, teaching community rabbis from across the continent the key moves, in the hope that they’ll follow up in their own communities,” Chabad Rabbi Akiva Komisar of Amsterdam told the Jewish News Service.

Amsterdam was the site where mobs of Muslims violently attacked dozens of Israeli soccer fans in November after a friendly match in the city between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local Ajax team.

“It was a shock for the entire community,” Komisar said. “We thought we were living in a nice, tolerant place, and suddenly, we found out that we’re living among people who can turn very violent.”

His Chabad House started offering a course in Krav Maga right after the rioting, in which several Israelis were injured and hundreds were terrified by young men screaming antisemitic and anti-Israel epithets as they chased people down the streets, with local police slow to react.

The seminar was arranged by the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE), a Chabad-centered organization with about 900 members that is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

The rabbis, dressed in their ubiquitous white dress shirts and black suit pants, faced off against their instructor and then each other, learning how to become aware of their surroundings and defend themselves in real-world situations so they can escape as quickly as possible.

“In today’s Europe, rabbis feel they are at risk every time they step outside,” said RCE Director Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg. “This training is a direct response to that reality.”

RCE Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin had arranged a self-defense seminar for last year’s RCE conference as well, considering the explosion of antisemitism in Europe especially following the Hamas-led invasion and massacre of 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

The 25-year-old organization’s usual focus is on supplying the practical religious needs and infrastructure for Jewish life on the continent, as well as lobbying governments that want to ban such basic religious practices as circumcision or ritual slaughter.

Now the group is also using its connections to encourage politicians to more forcefully protect their Jewish communities and actively fight against antisemitism.

Incidents ranging from online harassment to verbal and physical violence have skyrocketed to record numbers all over Europe as pro-Palestinian activists take out their hatred of Israel on Jewish residents of their hometowns and cities.