Julia Yael Alfandari, 38, has been working as the new anti-Semitism officer in the home of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (BKM) since February 1. The office, whose official title is “Commissioner for Combating Extremism and Anti-Semitism”, was set up by Monika Grütters. And, as one hears, mainly to accommodate their former press spokesman Hagen Philipp Wolf there.
A young woman who has been dealing with the subject of anti-Semitism for years now takes the place of a ministry official who needed a subsequent assignment. Alfandari is also a consultant for strategy and planning in the management area of the BKM. She is hierarchically higher than Wolf was before.
Alfandari is considered a recognized expert: she previously worked as a pedagogical director at the Anne Frank educational center in Frankfurt. She is of Jewish-Turkish origin and previously worked at the Berlin University of the Arts, at the Heinrich Böll Foundation and at UN Women. Together with her previous boss, Meron Mendel, Alfandari educated visitors to the Documenta about anti-Semitism at an information stand last summer and had shocking experiences, like she did in one Contribution to the SZ wrote. The Central Council of Jews in Germany declared on Thursday that Alfandari had been “perceived as a knowledgeable and eloquent voice” in recent years.
After the appointment there was criticism from Jewish associations
Before this statement, however, there was mainly criticism from the Jewish side. The association “Werteinitiative” claimed on Twitter that Roth was dissolving the anti-Semitism department in her house. When it was pointed out that this department never existed, the Values Initiative criticized the fact that the anti-Semitism commissioner would in future be assigned to the “Culture and Remembrance in a Democratic Immigration Society” department. “Thus, anti-Semitism becomes a primarily historical issue and modern forms of anti-Semitism are ignored.”
The Central Council of Jews, in turn, criticized: “It would have been appropriate if the Jewish community, as is usual in such cases, had been involved in these considerations.” Roth’s spokesman says that, of course, the intention was to speak to the Central Council, but then the conversion in the BKM was pushed through. Apparently they took their time with this conversation: A critical article in the Picture-Newspaper with quotes from the President of the Central Council, Josef Schuster, who was surprised by the restructuring, appeared on the day Alfandar moved to Berlin.
Because of this conflict, the actual message got out of sight a bit: Measured against the hierarchical level of the officers, combating anti-Semitism at the BKM now has more weight than before.