You’re using a replaced browser. Update your browser to your experience.
Will blocking the pandemic cause Amsterdam to purge the sex and drugs of its ancient core and more of its Jewish cultural heritage?Some natives hope so, but not necessarily the Jewish community.
At most its European neighbors, the Netherlands closed its borders to the coronavirus with its schools, restaurants, museums and prominent tourist magnets: department stores of grass and legal prostitution.
As soon as the country reopened in mid-June, thousands of tourists from neighboring countries flocked to the compact city centre. As early as July, the hotel occupancy rate has increased from 10% to 50%. But for some locals, the post-closing closure was not attracting tourists who were waiting.
Image via Orit Arfa
“Keep Your Distance” panel in Amsterdam
“The confinement is wonderful because there were no more tourists – from one moment, from one day to the next – there is no tourism,” said Bernadette de Wit, a blogger and journalist who lives in the Red Light District, marked as such after the red light. guarding the windows of the brothels historically known as “De Wallen”. It has witnessed the increase in tourism in Amsterdam, reaching 19 million visitors a year in 2019. “So for the first time in 10 years, we were able to enjoy our neighborhood again. “
Residents said they first met their neighbors and left their houses lined with canals encountering masses of strangers, some stunned or drunk.
De Wit is a member of an NGO called “Stop the Madness” that is pressuring city officials to move the “Red Light District” to an “erotic center” on the outskirts. The NGO controlled the city’s removal of references to the Light District Network from the local signage so that what stands out are magnets for “civilized tourists”, adding the Jewish cultural quarter, a set of Jewish-themed museums funded by public and personal funds.
Sitting in a café along a canal, with the smell of grass crawling at the nearby marijuana smoking table, Witt noted that tourism has returned to prepandemic levels.
“Surturism, ” I call it, “Wit’s
Image via Orit Arfa
Amsterdam Spinoza Monument in the Jewish Quarter
Amsterdam
“We know by delight that, unfortunately, this quarter is used as an undeniable backdrop for its ‘fun party weekend’, and other people mistakenly believe that in Amsterdam ‘everything is allowed’,” said Marieken Penders, the organization’s foreign press. Officer,He proudly directed this journalist to the Jewish cultural district, which has noticed a 70% drop in ticket sales in recent months.
During amsterdam’s golden age, from the last sixteenth to the 17th century, when city leaders discovered the world’s first multinational known as the Dutch East India Company, Portugal’s former Marranes discovered a space along the canals of the historic Jewish quarter. They practiced their faith freely, which gave Amsterdam a reputation for being Europe’s most tolerant liberal city.
Its emblematic testimony is the majestic and Portuguese synagogue, central piece of the Jewish cultural district with the Jewish Historical Museum and a National Holocaust Museum in the process of renovation.
But according to Esther Voet, editor-in-chief of the Jewish weekly Nieuw Israel Weekblad, the city, in trying to discourage tourism, also helps keep visitors away from Jewish sites.
“Lately we’re dealing with a very left-wing town hall, and they’re looking anyway, whether there’s a crown blockade or not, the number of tourists here in Amsterdam,” he said in a phone interview. Higher parking rates make the city centre less livable for tourists and low-budget residents.
Voet lives a mile from the peaceful red light district near the Anne Frank space, a testament to the tragedy that affected others before World War II. About 80,000 Jews lived in Amsterdam before the Nazis were deported and killed. by about 80%. Kippa-clad Israeli tourists lining up for the space until closing, which is now full for the next few weeks, but that’s because all museums will have to meet coronavirus-based quotas.
“My community is very much with the Israelis and now I rarely hear the language,” Voet said.
Although, judging by a signage, not all Jews come for cultural heritage. Strip clubs and cafes promote it in Hebrew. “Seeds here” and “Live sex on stage” can be seen in biblical language.
Image via Orit Arfa
Damn it in front of the old church in the soft red light district
Prostitution in Amsterdam dates back to the 14th century, as does its oldest-status church, the Old Church, the patron saint church of sailors, which also frequented prostitutes.
The church, or appropriately, is located just across the street from the prostitution data center, but De Wit believes that today’s sex staff is a long way from the historic prostitutes in the port city who worked discreetly in closed brothels. made up of women from deficient countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America who disfide their underwear through windows unprotected even from children. Approximately 40% of European prostitutes fled during lockdown, however, the maximum return.
Amsterdam’s Jewish network is largely disconnected from the red light district debate, Voet said. Most moved south, far from the center, and the ruinous buildings of the Jewish Renaissance were demolished to make way for Amsterdam City Hall. , unlike state-funded museums, such as the Jewish cultural district, the lack of tourism is worrying.
“The Jewish network needs tourists, especially Jewish tourists,” Voet said. “For example, all companies (Jewish food corporations and restaurants) hate the fact that we don’t have tourists right now. “
In the culture of tolerance of the city, she thinks that the soft red light district is maintained given its classic position in Amsterdam and the tourists it attracts, “Johns” and Jews. What bothers you most about the existing tourist crop is that other people forget about the rules of social estating.
“If other people are going to live there because it’s a great domain and they start complaining about prostitutes, then live somewhere else,” Voet said.
De Wit, on the other hand, hoped that the pandemic would restore Amsterdam’s tourist scene, but the town hall, he said, down. In the meantime, he’ll do his part.
“If I walk around my neighborhood and see an Italian elderly couple with an e-book of excursions in hand and ask them questions about the Jewish Historical Museum or the Hermitage, I will gladly take them. I’m very service-oriented,” he says. But if hikers shape the type of hiking, overexcursionism, they ask me about the coffee department stores – ‘I need to smoke a joint’ – or ask for window prostitution, then I send them the address. “
We’ll send you an email every time we post some other J. J. post. Goldberg article.
This item has been shipped!