Charlemagne Prize for European Rabbinical head, Jewish communities

The President of the European Rabbinical Conference, Pinchas Goldschmidt, is to receive the Charlemagne Prize 2024 which will also honour the Jewish communities in Europe, the International Charlemagne Prize's board said on Friday.

The award aims to send a message that Jewish life is a natural part of Europe and that there must be no place for anti-Semitism in Europe, the board of directors said.

The announcement comes amid a major increase in the number of anti-Semitic crimes in many European countries since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, unleashed by the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7 and Israel's response.

Goldschmidt has always advocated that people of different religious and cultural backgrounds should find their place in Europe, the board said.

After training as a rabbi, Goldschmidt, who was born in Zurich in 1963, first went to Israel and then to the Soviet Union to rebuild Jewish life there after the end of communism.

In 1993, he was elected Chief Rabbi of Moscow.

After the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he resisted the call 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 dialogue dates back to 2015 when he co-founded the European Muslim-Jewish Leadership Council (MJLC), including Jewish and Muslim dignitaries.

Goldschmidt has also provided important impetus for Jewish-Christian dialogue, the Charlemagne board said. He has been in direct dialogue with Pope Francis for years, most recently meeting him in November 2023 to discuss the war in the Middle East.

The International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen was established in 1950 to celebrate special services to European unity.

The award was founded by citizens of Aachen, following a suggestion by Kurt Pfeiffer, a businessman, shortly after the Second World War.

It is named after Emperor Charlemagne, whose Frankish empire extended over large parts of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages.

The award was first presented to the founder of the pan-European idea, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, in 1950.

It later gained wider fame with past recipients including then-Italian leader Alcide de Gasperi, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Sir Winston Churchill.

Last year, it was presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.