Tourists and local spectators who attended the famous Mardi Gras carnival in Aalst, 19 miles northwest of Brussels, Belgium, were shocked to see a float featuring grotesque Chassidic Jews surrounded by sacks of money, parading through the town.
Seeing as the Aalst carnival is included in UNESCO’s list of intangible world heritage, this news upset a lot of people. Kan, Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation, called it “The Parade of Anti-Semitism.” Yeshiva World preferred, “Belgium Hate Parade” (all in caps – we spared you that part). JTA went with “Belgian carnival float features puppets of grinning Jews, a rat and money bags,” which is not so much a headline as the whole story.
The thing is, if you go to the Aalst carnival 2019 video on YouTube, you’ll have to work hard to find this offensive segment, since it lasts only a few minutes within a video that lasts seven and three quarter hours and includes an amazing assortment of grotesque puppets, some of which are offensive to blacks, others insult characters about whom you really have to be Belgian to be offended.
Here’s the link to Carnavalsstoet 2019, but brace yourself, some of the images may offend many other of your sensibilities.
The city of Aalst, Belgium, is famous for its Mardi Gras carnival, celebrated every year on Fat Tuesday, before Ash Wednesday, which opens the Lent period. A Prince o the Carnival is elected, who “rules” the city for three days. A big parade crosses the city on Sunday, with about numerous groups of costumed volunteers and parade floats. The carnival is known for its amazingly creative – and often offensive – floats, which are filled with references to history, culture, religion, and politics cartoon figures.
Now, we wouldn’t have had to bother you with the above short lecture on Catholic traditions and offensive Belgians if not for the 2019 Mardi Gras, which is generally related to the pagan joy at the end of winter and the very Christian month or so leading up to Good Friday and, how can we forget, that story about how the Jewish Sanhedrin tried that aggressive young carpenter from Nazareth. It couldn’t have happened, since the trial that led to Passion story – celebrated with all the anti-Semitic trimmings across Europe – supposedly took place on Passover night (the Last Supper was the Seder) and Sanhedrin never sat in trial on yontef.
So the joke’s on the goyim.