This past year, worldwide outrage followed the events at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market in Paris. As #JeSuisCharlie flooded the twitter-sphere, the supermarket attack brought European anti-Semitism into sharp focus. It is a critical time to look at the challenges facing world Jewry. Is anti-Semitism on the rise? What can be done about it? And, perhaps most hauntingly, are the Jews of Europe still safe? Image: A member of the French Jewish community holds a sign reading in French 'I am Jewish from France' during rally after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Jerusalem on January 11, 2015. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty)
Alan Solomont is the former United States Ambassador to Spain and Andora (2009-2013) and a lifelong social and political activist. He is currently the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. His Jewish community involvement includes serving on the boards of the Israel Policy Forum, the New Israel Fund, Jewish Fund for Justice, J Street and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.
Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust (1993) and The Eichmann Trial (2011), currently teaches Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Lipstadt has served as a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 2000, a British court ruled in her favor in a highly publicized libel trial justifying her characterization of David Irving as a Holocaust denier.
Diego Ornique, Europe Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is a recognized expert in community development, managing social welfare operations in central Europe and the Balkans, and creating frameworks for outreach to unaffiliated Jewish young adults.
Andras Borgula, born in Hungary, a veteran of the Israeli army and graduate of the University of Tel Aviv, founder and director of the GOLEM (Hungarian Jewish) Theatre in Budapest, chair of Limmud Hungary and host of his own radio show.