An asset management firm in Russia removes an billboard featuring a depiction of an ultra-Orthodox Jew extending one hand and the words: “Goodbye rent!”
The boards that the Novoselye firm, which offers mortgage plans and housing packages, installed in St. Petersburg earlier this month have prompted dismay and allegations of anti-Semitism.
A billboard in St. Petersburg, Russia advertising the Novoselye housing firm featuring an ultra-Orthodox Jew, August 2019. (Cortesy of Jeps.ru via JTA)
“Definitely anti-Semitic: An exploitation of the theme that all Jews are usurers,” one critic of the billboard, Natalya Zonova, wrote on the page of the Choral Synagogue Jewish community of St. Petersburg on V Kontakte, the Russian version of Facebook. That community also called for the billboard’s removal.
Amid criticism, Novoselye agreed to remove the billboards if a majority of respondents to a poll it published on V Kontakte vote for its removal. But out of 967 voters, only 46 percent did so.
Still, the firm agrees to have the billboard removed so as not offend people who found it anti-Semitic.
— JTA
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