World Jewish Congress

World Jewish Congress Representing Jewish Communities in 100 Countries Across Six Continents

The World Jewish Congress is the international organization that represents Jewish communities and organizations in 100 countries around the world.

The Helsinki Synagogue is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year! The Jewish community of Finland traces its origin...
09/03/2026

The Helsinki Synagogue is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year!

The Jewish community of Finland traces its origins to the 19th century, when Jewish soldiers who had served in the Russian imperial army, known as "Cantonists,” settled in Finland at the end of their service. The first Jewish prayer room, shared by Jewish soldiers and Tatars in the 1850s, was located on the island of Suomenlinna. After completing their military service, the Jewish soldiers rented prayer rooms in various parts of Helsinki. They then commissioned architect Jac. Ahrenberg to design a synagogue with room also for a school. It was inaugurated in 1906.

The Helsinki Synagogue is one of the few in Europe that both survived the Second World War and remains in continuous use.

120 years on, it is a place of prayer, celebration, and community life. WJC representatives were honored to join the celebrations this August.

The 2001 Durban Conference, which took place exactly 25 years ago this week, was intended to be a landmark even in the s...
09/03/2026

The 2001 Durban Conference, which took place exactly 25 years ago this week, was intended to be a landmark even in the struggle to eradicate all forms of racism. But it degenerated into a hallmark of antisemitism and anti-Israel hatred.

In 1997, the UN General Assembly initiated the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance. It met in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 8, 2001.

But what happened there?

⭕ Open incitement against Israel and Jews. Marches featured banners reading "Hi**er should have finished the job." Caricatures of Jews with fangs dripping blood were openly distributed. Jewish human rights activists, NGOs, and students were subjected to physical threats, intimidation, and isolation.

⭕ Citing the rampant antisemitism and breakdown of the conference's mission, the US and Israeli delegations walked out.

⭕ Meanwhile, the outcome document of the 2001 conference, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), is structurally flawed. It singles out Israel and purposefully distorts the geopolitical conflict into racial paradigms. It also ignores the well-documented cases of systemic racism, state-sponsored xenophobia, and discrimination against minorities occurring across the globe.

⭕ Tom Lantos, a Hungarian-born American politician and a Holocaust survivor, headed the US delegation at Durban: "Having experienced the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand, this was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the N**i period.”

The international community is gathering in New York City on September 28 to mark the 25th anniversary of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism.

But it is important to remember the historical reality:

The 2001 Durban Conference and the events around it were hijacked and transformed into venues for unprecedented displays of hatred against Israel and the Jewish people.

On September 3, 1944, the Frank family - Anne Frank, her father Otto, her mother Edith, and sister Margot - were deporte...
09/03/2026

On September 3, 1944, the Frank family - Anne Frank, her father Otto, her mother Edith, and sister Margot - were deported by the Germans from the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands to Auschwitz. They had been arrested several weeks earlier when their hiding place in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam was raided.

From Auschwitz, the two teenage sisters were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. They both died of typhus in 1945 just weeks before the camp was liberated. Of the four members of the Frank family, only Otto Frank survived the Holocaust.

This was 80 years ago - a family was murdered for being Jewish.

In the nearly three years since October 7, 2023, memorials dedicated to Anne Frank have been desecrated and vandalized by antisemites. We cannot repeat enough: The Middle East has no connection to the Holocaust, to the victims, and their memory.

What we need to do, is remember and share Anne Frank’s story and values, promoting tolerance of all peoples.

On August 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi chose the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem as the site for a su***de bombing. 16 civilians w...
09/02/2026

On August 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi chose the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem as the site for a su***de bombing. 16 civilians were killed in the terror attack. Tamimi pleaded guilty, but was released in 2011 in the Gilad Shalit deal. She is currently on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

On the 25th anniversary of the Sbarro bombing, WJC TecHRI tested five AI assistants in Arabic - Meta AI, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok - to determine how they characterize Ahlam Tamimi.

👉 Find the full post on the TecHRI blog 🔗 https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wjc-institute-for-technology-and-human-rights #25-years-after-sbarro-ai-models-call-the-terrorist-ahlam-tamimi-a-hero-and-freed-captive

There is northing normal about this. This is a roundup of just a few of the antisemitic incidents which made the news in...
09/02/2026

There is northing normal about this. This is a roundup of just a few of the antisemitic incidents which made the news in the last few days.

▪️A Jewish family travelling from Seattle to Israel on Alaska Airlines discovered an antisemitic note was placed inside their checked baggage, reading ‘F**k Israel.’

▪️In Kefalonia, Greece, a popular lookout spot was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading 'Kill All Jews.'

▪️A speaker at an anti-Israel rally in Toronto, who is a lecturer at academic institutions, said that Zionists and Jews engage in ‘black magic’ and ‘have r***d and killed and ate children.’

▪️At a resort in the French Alps which is popular with Orthodox Jews, a shopkeeper was seen on video telling an Orthodox man that ‘there are too many of you’ and that it ‘got on people’s nerves.’

▪️In Basel, Switzerland, police blocked an unauthorized rally, which had the slogan 'Death to Zionism,' coinciding with the 129th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress.

Last night in Berlin, we presented a book in memory of Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli embassy staff member murdered outsid...
09/02/2026

Last night in Berlin, we presented a book in memory of Yaron Lischinsky, an Israeli embassy staff member murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC last year, alongside his partner, Sarah Milgrim. Yaron was a German-born Israeli citizen, and we were honored to be joined by his father and brother last night to remember him.

We are proud to cooperate on this book, which features a collection of photographs of Yaron’s life, together with Israel in Deutschland and Ambassador Ron Prosor - רון פרושאור, and AJC - American Jewish Committee.

Yaron’s memory will continue to be a blessing and an inspiration for many.

Photos © WJC/Nicolai Froundjian

Israeli biochemist Ada Yonath has passed away at the age of 87. She was the first Israeli woman ever to receive a Nobel ...
09/01/2026

Israeli biochemist Ada Yonath has passed away at the age of 87. She was the first Israeli woman ever to receive a Nobel prize. May her memory be a blessing and inspiration.


She won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009, alongside two colleagues, for their
research into the structure and function of cellular particles called ribosomes. Yonath was born in 1939 in Jerusalem, then part of British Mandate Palestine. She grew up in a poor family, but they supported her quest for learning.

Yonath went on to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then at the Weizmann Institute of Science, as well as at MIT. She established the first biological crystallography laboratory in Israel, and worked to shed light on one of the major questions concerning living cells: The process of protein biosynthesis. The project which began in the 1970s culminated in the year 2000, with her successful mapping, together with other researchers, of the structure of ribosomes. Their research has been important in the production of antibiotics.

“I can compare this journey to climbing Mt. Everest, only to discover that a higher Everest stood in front of us,” she said of her research.

09/01/2026

87 years ago, the Second World War began with N**i Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

It led to the murder of millions of people, the Holocaust, the death chambers, and a redrawing of international borders and the world order. It was a day that forever changed Jewish and European history.

Know the facts about the Holocaust at www.AboutHolocaust.org

08/31/2026

During the last school year, 4 in 10 Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus.

But that does not tell the whole despicable story. Jewish children of all ages — in elementary, middle, and high schools — are facing equally terrifying acts of
Jew hatred.

In 2026, the crisis in our schools has already reached unacceptable heights.

In California, parents of Jewish children were forced to file a lawsuit after their children experienced severe antisemitic harassment, bullying, and physical attacks in public schools.

In Florida, a federal civil rights complaint was filed after a Jewish student faced years of relentless harassment, including classmates performing N**i salutes during class presentations while teachers stood by.

In Boulder, Colorado, a federal civil rights complaint was filed against a middle school for years of antisemitic slurs, N**i salutes, Holocaust mockery, death threats, and physical assaults targeting Jewish kid.

It is entirely unimaginable that our youngest children are being exposed to virulent Jew hatred in the classroom. It must end.

The Helsinki Synagogue is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. Mazal tov to the Helsinki Jewish Congregation whi...
08/31/2026

The Helsinki Synagogue is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. Mazal tov to the Helsinki Jewish Congregation which has kept its flame burning brightly for twelve decades. May this beautiful synagogue stand for 120 more years.

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