The Prime Minister of Montenegro, Igor Luksic, on Thursday signed an agreement with local Jewish community leaders to recognize the Jewish community as an official minority in the country.
The agreement was signed during an official ceremony with a delegation of the Montenegro Jewish community headed by its President, Yasha Alfandri, and Chief Rabbi Yoel Kaplan.
The recognition follows a meeting last year of a delegation from the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) and Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger with Prime Minister Luksic during which he promised he would move ahead with the issue of official recognition.
“We are glad to hear he kept his promise,” Rabbi Aryeh Goldberg, Deputy Director of the RCE said.
“This historic agreement was signed quickly and efficiently thank to the visit of Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger to our country a few months ago,” Luksic said. “There is no doubt that this is an historic day and an important milestone for the future of Montenegro Jewry.”
As part of his work to strengthen Jewish life in the Balkan region, Rabbi Joel Kaplan sent a group of Yeshiva students to Montenegro in order to celebrate the first official Pesach Seder last year. This was considered the start of the revival of Jewish life in Montenegro.
Rabbi Goldberg noted that “there is a thirst for being part of a wider Jewish community, not just in their own country, but being connected to the European Jewish community.”
But the agreement also concerns issues of property and education.
Yasha Alfandri thanked the Montenegro government and noted that the country is one of the few places in Europe where the Holocaust did not reach.
Before the signing of the agreement, Montenegro had three officially recognized religions; Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam.
Around 1,000 Jews live today in Montenegro.
The Rabbinical Centre of Europe assists European rabbis and Jewish communities throughout Europe.