Jewish Community
The Jewish community of Antwerp consists of around 15,000 Jews; the majority of residents identifying themselves as Jewish belong to traditional or Orthodox communities, although levels of practice vary. The Haredi, or ultra-orthodox Jews, tend to live, concentrated, in the city center in an area close to the Antwerp Central railway station. This area is also sometimes known as "Jewish Antwerp" (Dutch: Joods Antwerpen). Its main attraction is its close proximity to the diamond bourse, where in earlier days a large part of the community worked. It is also where the Jewish schools, kosher food outlets, and general Jewish amenities are located.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Jews In Antwerp
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or community:
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Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
Don: It’s what?
Pawnbroker: It’s Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday.
Don: It is? So what about Kelly’s and Gallagher’s?
Pawnbroker: They’re closed, too. We’ve got an agreement. They keep closed on Yom Kippur and we don’t open on St. Patrick’s.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure—the web—of society needed reform, not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)