Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap
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The Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap (Dutch Israelite Religious Community) (NIK) is the umbrella organisation for most Jewish communities in the Netherlands, and is Orthodox in nature. Chief rabbi of the NIK is rabbi Raphael Evers. On total, the NIK has some twenty rabbis actively working in thirty-six congegrations throughout the country, serving some 5,000 Jews.
[edit] History
The NIK was founded in 1814 under the reign of Willem I, although the first steps towards a central organisation of Jewish communities in the Netherlands (which was the initial purpose of the NIK) were already taken in 1808, under command of Napoleon. Both the Ashkenazi as well as the Sephardic communities were included. The newly-found umbrella organisation had a clear hierarchical design: the Jewish communities were governed on a local level by twelve so-called large "hoofdsynagogen" (lit.: head synagogues), which had the power over the medium-sized synagogues (communities), which themselves had power over the smallest synagogues (called "bijkerken", like small Jewish communities on the Dutch countryside). Of the twelve "hoofdsynagogen", two were located in Amsterdam (Ashkenazi and Sephardic), two in The Hague (Ashkenazi and Sephardic), and one each in Rotterdam, Amersfoort, Middelburg, Den Bosch, Nijmegen, Zwolle, Leeuwarden and Groningen (all Ashkenazi, at that time called "Hoogduits", lit. "High German"). Two years later, another two were included: one in Maastricht, and one in Brussels (at that time Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands).
This form of structuring the Jewish community in the Netherlands gave a lot of power to the (chief) rabbis, as they were given the power to govern the entire community. With the new constitution in 1848 however, things changed. In its first step to a fully secular state, the government decided towards a separation of Church and State. This banned rabbis from any administrative role whatsoever.
1871 saw new regulations for the organisation. The Sephardic communities left the NIK, gaining full independence within the Jewish community again like they had had in the centuries preceding the NIK. The NIK became thus fully Askhenazi.
The NIK saw its height in 1877, when it administered over some 176 Jewish communities throughout the Netherlands. The following decades however saw a steady decline, administrating 139 communities at the eve of World War II. The Holocaust destroyed most of the congregations, as some 100,000 on a total of 140,000 Dutch Jews were killed by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945.
[edit] Today
The NIK has some twenty rabbis, governing some thirty-six Jewish communities or some 5,000 Jews. This makes them the largest Jewish religious organisation in the Netherlands. The NIK follows the rules of Orthodox Judaism, meaning among other things a separation between men and women during religious services and only accepting members who are halakhically Jewish. Despite the fact that the NIK follows the rules of Orthodox Judaism, most members do not consider themselves to be Orthodox Jews.
Chief rabbi is rabbi Raphael Evers, who is also the face of the organisation in the media.
Along with the larger Jewish communities, the NIK is responsible for supervising whether the rules for kashrut are followed, as well as the mikvaot (ritual baths), the upkeep of some two-hundred Jewish cemeteries in the Netherlands (on a national total of two-hundred-and-fifty) and (Orthodox) conversions to Judaism by non-Jews.
