Awraham Soetendorp is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in The Hague. Beside that, he is famous for being active in creating interfaith dialogue among other religions: christians, muslims, jews, doesn´t matter, as long as they have a mutual aim: peace.

In a long interview he was talking about the current situation of Jewish people in the Netherlands. There are about 30-40.000 of them in the country, and 2-3000 in The Hague and its surroundings. They have their own synagogues (the most important of them has been restored by Mr. Soetendorp) and cultural centres, meaning the Liberal Jewish Community which is a really active group to preserve their religion and culture.

Awraham Soetendorp thinks that it is impossible to reach peace without cooperation of different religious groups and cultures. `These times we desperately need each other´ - says the rabbi. In order to create a discussion he initiated several projects and programs, for example the Day of Respect which is for young people around all of the Netherlands, as Mr. Soetendorp believes that youth is the key to reach peace.
He was telling us an instructive and true story about two young students which can give an insight of the whole situation: we never know who has started fight and conflict between people or groups, but the question is always how we respond to it. If someone hurts us, how do we react?
The rabbi talks about current problems (not only about the Jewish community but also general issues in The Hague) and about changes he experienced in Dutch society.

If you are curious about his thoughts and interesting stories, don´t miss the whole interview with him at the end of Urbania! The short and first version of our conversation can be seen now.