Candles depicting haredi Orthodox Jews are on sale in Poland. (Jewish.pl/Jan Gebert via JTA)
JTA Even among Jews in Poland, few are shocked at this point by the popular figurines of ultra-Orthodox Jews counting money that are sold in the country as good luck charms.
Yet even locals are pausing to take stock of the latest development on that controversial theme: scented candles that one retailer advertised as “giving a pleasant warm light during combustion.” Also, “The figure of the Jew is believed to be good for financial success.”
The Jewish candle phenomenon came to light earlier this month on a Facebook group called Życie Żydowskie, meaning “Jewish life.”
Arrow
There is a long history of such figurines being sold in Poland. While they are often billed as good-luck charms, many Jewish advocates and historians suggest they are deeply insensitive and dangerous, given the devastation the Holocaust wrought on the country’s Jews and the perpetuation of anti-Semitic sentiment currently coursing through the nation and much of Eastern Europe.
“The idea of burning a figure of a stereotypical Jew in a country where millions of Holocaust victims were burnt by the German Nazis is particularly disturbing,” Rafal Pankowski, Never Again’s executive director, told Jewish newspaper
The Algemeiner.
In 2017, a similar controversy surrounded the Polish parliament in Warsaw, whose own gift shop had sold Jewish figurines. And in 2019, a German-owned home improvement retailer, OBI, removed the sale of products featuring offensive Jewish stereotypes in 58 of its stores in Poland, as
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