On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I found myself in a Vienna restaurant with an Israeli friend.
We were not in Leopoldstadt, home to much of the city’s contemporary Jewish communal life, nor in one of the familiar places where Jewish visitors expect to find a recognizable communal presence.
This was a different Vienna: a lively, fashionable neighborhood, unmistakably progressive in its cultural instincts. Rainbow flags and signs of LGBTQ visibility appeared everywhere. Around us, conversations flowed easily between languages and professions.
At the next table sat an Austrian couple and their guest, a professor from a small university in the United States. He teaches Austrian studies and European history and is spending the academic year in Europe.
It was impossible not to overhear fragments of their conversation. They had wanted to reserve a table at a Jewish restaurant for Rosh Hashanah, but had failed to find a place. They spoke with mild disappointment, as one might about a fully booked concert or a restaurant that had suddenly become popular.
Then the conversation moved on. The American professor wondered aloud whether his students must be exceptionally wealthy.
The subject shifted to rents and property prices in Vienna. He was looking for an apartment, he explained, because he needed to escape US President Donald Trump’s America for a while.
There was no dramatic revelation or ideological declaration. Just three people having dinner on an autumn evening, discussing university life, real estate, and the political anxiety of an American visitor.
Yet I could not stop thinking about the brief opening exchange. No one at that table was Jewish. So far as I could tell, none had an immediate connection to the Jewish community.
Israel did not enter the conversation. Gaza did not enter it. Antisemitism did not enter it. They wanted to dine in a Jewish restaurant because it was Rosh Hashanah.
At that moment, Judaism was neither a provocation nor a political demand. It was simply part of the city around them.
For an Israeli, this can feel almost startling.
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Since October 7, Jewishness has too often entered public life with a question mark attached. Jews are asked to explain Israel, condemn its government, prove their political credentials, or account for events beyond their control. Across Europe, Jewish visibility has become more guarded.
None of this can be wished away. Europe is not free of antisemitism, and Austria has no right to forget the particular weight of its history. Vienna was once one of the greatest centers of European Jewish creativity.
It was also a city deeply implicated in the catastrophe that destroyed so much of that world. Commemoration matters, but neither memorials nor museums can by themselves guarantee a secure Jewish future.
Nor should one restaurant conversation be turned into evidence that everything is well. It would be absurd to derive a theory of European Jewish life from a failed dinner reservation. The point is smaller – and perhaps more revealing.
There are forms of belonging that become visible precisely because no one makes a ceremony of them. The Austrian couple and their American friend did not present themselves as allies. They did not make a statement about tolerance.
They did not speak in the language of remembrance, solidarity, or historical responsibility. They simply assumed that a Jewish restaurant on Rosh Hashanah belonged naturally among the possibilities offered by their city.
That assumption matters.
It suggests that Jewish life can be understood not only through the language of threat, trauma, and protection, important as all three are, but also through familiarity.
A Jewish holiday can be known without being exotic. Jewish food can be sought without becoming a spectacle.
Jewish presence can form part of the ordinary cultural map of a European capital, no more perplexing than a university seminar, an American election, or the search for an affordable apartment.
The word “ordinary” can sound inadequate after the history Jews have lived through in Europe. But perhaps it is among the most ambitious words available.
To be ordinary is not to be invisible, nor does it mean abandoning identity or forgetting the past. It means being able to appear in public without every appearance becoming a test.
A holiday can be noticed without becoming a debate; Jewish life need not always be reduced to a security problem, a moral accusation, or a political symbol.
There is something worth noticing, too, in the setting itself. The neighborhood was not marked by nostalgia for an imagined old Europe. It was contemporary, urban, and progressive. Its public language was one of pluralism, personal freedom, and sexual diversity.
But that evening, Judaism was not made contingent on Israel. It was not required to locate itself on one side or another of a political divide. No political examination was required. For a few unremarkable minutes, it existed on its own terms.
A table beside ours in Vienna offered no grand lesson and no reassuring slogan.
It offered something more fragile: a moment in which Rosh Hashanah was acknowledged without argument, Judaism was present without explanation, and Jewish life was woven into the ordinary fabric of a European evening.
That is not the whole story of Europe. But it is part of the Europe worth defending.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a professor of European studies and international relations in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.