Charlemagne Prize 2024 for Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt

Published: Friday, Jan 19th 2024, 13:00

The President of the European Rabbinical Conference, Pinchas Goldschmidt, will receive the Charlemagne Prize 2024. Together with him, the Jewish communities in Europe will be honored, the Board of Directors of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen announced on Friday in the western German city of Aachen.

The award is intended to send the message that Jewish life is a natural part of Europe and that there should be no place for anti-Semitism in Europe. Since the terrorist attack on Israel by the radical Islamic group Hamas on October 7, 2023, the number of anti-Semitic crimes has skyrocketed in many European countries.

According to the Charlemagne Prize Board of Directors, Goldschmidt had always advocated that people of the most diverse religious and cultural backgrounds should find their place in Europe. After training as a rabbi, Goldschmidt, who was born in Zurich in 1963, first went to Israel and then to the Soviet Union in order to revive Jewish life there after the end of communism.

In 1993, he was elected Chief Rabbi of Moscow. After the Russian attack on Ukraine, he resisted calls to support the war and left Moscow in March 2022. Goldschmidt has been President of the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) since 2011, which moved its headquarters from London to Munich last year. Goldschmidt's commitment to interfaith dialog has attracted particular attention.

The "International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen" has been awarded since 1950 for special services to European unification. The prize was founded by citizens of Aachen shortly after the Second World War. The award is named after Emperor Charlemagne (747/8-814), whose Frankish empire extended over large parts of Western and Central Europe in the early Middle Ages and whose main residence was in Aachen. Last year, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj was honored.

©Keystone/SDA

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