JC comment

God is more than a vote winner

Elizabeth Hunter — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:55:14 +0000

Sixty years have passed since Gandhi said: "those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is". Yet many of those most interested in politics still do not know. Much has changed since Alastair Campbell stated: "we don't do God" but politicians still don't "do God" very well.

The three main parties have patchy records in dealing with religious groups. Part of this comes from the misconception that all religious traditions should be treated as essentially the same thing. They emphasise the social utility of religion. What matters is that religious people have "values".

Mitzvah Day is the most recent example, taking the Prime Minister's Big Society award in 2011. Tony Blair said of Jewish Care that it "is not just Jewish values in action; it is actually the best of British values in action."

Praising "values" isn't quite the equivalent of a politician having a photo taken with a baby but it's safe territory - politicians can speak warmly of a faith community without the risk of being associated with contentious views.

"Values" are all well and good but the emphasis on them can become a way of papering over cracks between government and faith groups. The state does not fit the liberal dream of a neutral referee; over time, some views prevail. The social liberalism that reached its zenith under New Labour in many ways acted against the sense of community, solidarity and values that constitute religious traditions.

Whatever one thinks of equalities legislation, there is no doubt that religious communities fear it undermines the extent to which they can act in keeping with their "ethos".

It is an irony that, after 14 years under a party whose history is deeply enmeshed with religious traditions, some religious people are no longer sure that they are permitted to "be themselves" in public.

Ostensibly, the Liberal Democrats are the most openly secular party, due in part to the alliance between the Liberal Party and non-conformist Christian groups.

Yet this has changed over time, and there is a difference between, say, the desire to banish bishops from the House of Lords because one religious tradition shouldn't be privileged, and demanding their removal because religious voices are inherently illegitimate.

Some would argue that the Conservatives retain a more intuitive understanding of faith communities, because they see civil society more clearly.

Leaders like the Chief Rabbi have offered qualified support for the Big Society, emphasising that it already exists in churches, synagogues and mosques. But the Archbishop of Canterbury has refrained from giving it a full three cheers, and it's too early to see whether the warm rhetoric of the Big Society will result in warm relationships.

The future of the relationships between religious groups and the government remains to be seen. The social utility of people of faith will continue to be key for policy makers. Occasionally, politicians with a deeper understanding come along, but they are rare.

All the more reason, then, for politicians to be presented with the facts around important issues such as faith in schools, faith-based welfare provision, and religious freedom in a way that they can understand. Religious people are a significant force in society. It's key to help our leaders "do God" better.

The Auschwitz papers could reveal a hidden Shoah story

Martin Bright — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:54:01 +0000

Over the past three weeks the JC has been running a campaign to open the files held by the Ministry of Defence and the National Archives about British prisoners of war held at Auschwitz. To their credit, ministers have reacted quickly to pressure from MPs and offered to help in any way they can.

The campaign was sparked by the discovery that Yitzhak Persky, the father of Israeli President Shimon Peres, was held at Camp E715, as the British camp at Auschwitz was known.

But beyond this extraordinary tale of one man's survival, there is a broader story that needs to be told.

As many as 1,400 British prisoners arrived at Auschwitz towards the end of 1943 and hundreds were forced to work at the IG Farben chemical factory. Each one of these men was a witness to the Shoah. Their story has never fully been told, nor has the British government paid full tribute to the dignity and humanity these men demonstrated in helping the Jewish inmates in the camp next door.

In mid-1944, the POW camp was moved directly adjacent to the plant and was therefore in direct view of Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz). British prisoners therefore witnessed the routine brutality meted out to the Jewish slave labourers including those hanged from the gates of the camp as an example to others. At times the "kriegies", as the POWs were known, and the "stripies", as they called the Jewish prisoners, worked together, formed friendships and exchanged information. Thus it was that the British soldiers discovered the source of the sickly-sweet burning smell that hung over the camp.

Detailed research carried out into E715 by the American academic Joseph Robert White for the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies shows the British POWs in a genuinely positive light. Their response to incarceration was not to identify with their captors and turn a blind eye to the mistreatment of their fellow human beings, but to help where they could with clothing, food and information.

Over the 65 years since the camps were liberated there have been many attempts to tell the story of the British prisoners of war at Auschwitz. The latest of these, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, by former POW Denis Avey, has become a bestseller.

And yet, several important questions remain unanswered.

For instance, what role did Yitzhak Persky play in helping the head of the British camp, Sergeant-Major Charles Coward, facilitate the escape of Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz? What happened to the coded letters sent by Mr Coward to the War Office warning of the atrocities being carried out against the Jewish people? And is it possible that the British prisoners made contact with the Polish underground in the towns and villages surrounding the camp, even, as some accounts suggest, smuggling explosives and weapons into the camp?

The story of E715 has the capacity to transform our understanding of the Holocaust in this country. We are rightly proud of the stand Britain took against fascism. But we do not know how we would have fared under occupation. The dignity and humanity shown by the men of E715 at least suggests that we would not have simply rolled over. It should be given greater prominence in the national narrative.

Norbert Wollheim, a Jewish prisoner at Monowitz who famously sued IG Farben for compensation in the 1950s, said: "England can be very, very proud of these men... who really proved that even in Auschwitz... humanity could prevail." He recognised that the British POWs "extended the... hand of solidarity of man" to the inmates of Auschwitz III.

The Yitzhak Persky story also raises the issue of British Jewish POWs. German documents held by the Wiener Library show that in December 1943 there were 772 Jewish soldiers out of the 10,537 British prisoners held at the giant Stalag VIIIB at Teschen . What was life in captivity like for these men? Where are their testimonies? A previously unseen letter in the files demands an investigation into the shooting of Krauze and Eisenberg, two British Jewish prisoners of war.

Before it is too late, we should pay tribute to both these groups of men: the British POWs from E715 Auschwitz and Jewish servicemen who spent time in German POW camps. We have a duty to honour their courage and deepen our understanding of the unprecedented horrors they witnessed.

Why I am broadcasting this positive message

Benjamin Cohen — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:40:02 +0000

I wanted to use my public profile on TV and online to communicate a positive message to young Jewish people. That message is simple: it's okay to be Jewish and gay, you don't have to sacrifice one part of your identity to remain true to the other. In my experience, your family and true friends will respect you for being honest about who you are.

I have friends who spent a fortune trying therapies that they believed would turn them straight. Others who have gone through this process have harmed themselves after failing. And I was disappointed that young people are being told about these so-called "therapies" but not about organisations that can help them reconcile their faith and their sexuality in a positive, healthy way.

I also wanted to say how great my family are. My father, Richard, plays an active role in Jewish communal life, principally as a JFS governor, but also for gay rights, through PinkNews, the gay media company I founded.

I've been blown away by the support the video has received from public figures ranging from Sarah Brown (wife of Gordon) to Stephen Fry, and of course my colleague Jon Snow. The messages from young people of all faiths have shown me that there is definitely a need for positive gay public figures from faith backgrounds to say how proud they are of who they are - and to assure others that it gets better.

This banker baiting worries me

Daniel Finkelstein — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:33:54 +0000

Let me try something out on you. It may turn out you don't feel as I do. But I have a hunch that more of you will share my uneasiness than won't. It's about Fred Goodwin. In fact, it's about the whole banker thing.

We Jews may be more likely to perceive that the BBC is biased against Israel but, on common-or-garden political issues, we feel pretty much like our non-Jewish neighbours. So, most people reading this who aren't bankers, or the mothers of bankers, will be pretty cross with those at the top of the financial services industry. You will agree that too many risks were taken, that those taking them were not gambling with their own money and that they often didn't understand the products they had created.

You will probably concur that the consequences of this failure were disastrous but not primarily for those who were responsible. Some, like those at the top of Lehman Brothers, lost vast fortunes, but this was cushioned by the fact that they also retained vast fortunes. For most, this leads to one conclusion - there's something a bit off about the size and structure of banker's remuneration. And that's particularly true of RBS.

Or perhaps, like me, you think that, as a matter of economics, wages for top banking executives have become too high. In his terrific book, Pay Check, David Bolchover argues persuasively that businesses are paying more than the retention of able people really requires. Banker friends tell me that high wages are set by the market and that over-paying wouldn't survive competition.

I point out that the banks managed to misprice mortgages for years, so it is quite possible that now they are mispricing executives.

We Jews are like anyone else. So, explain why I felt so uncomfortable when it kicked off last week over bankers and their salaries? Why did I shudder when they took away Goodwin's knighthood? And why did at least some of you share these feelings?

It's this vague but tangible feeling that there is something vindictive about the country's mood that worries me. And it worries me as a Jew. Britain is a great place to live as a minority because it respects the rule of law and is a self-confident place that accommodates difference. After the past fortnight, I feel less confident about both these things.

What happened to Goodwin was a case of arbitrary justice. There were other bankers, indeed other people, who were just as culpable, but the political fuss had all been about him. Arraigned before the court of public opinion, he was found guilty. The punishment was public humiliation.

A similar thing happened to Stephen Hester. We can argue over the RBS board's decision but what took place was not calm deliberation, it was a frenzy. It left Hester feeling that he was at risk of becoming a pariah - as if seeking to persuade the board to pay you what was in your contract was a crime.

I've seen plenty of journalists write that conferring a knighthood upon Goodwin was as arbitrary as removing it, and that, anyway, he deserved it. But this misses the point. I'm worried about how it leaves the rest of us. Arbitrary acts of punishment are not at all the same as random acts of kindness.

As a British Jew, I have always felt protected because in Britain we do not tend to behave like this. We follow rules, we don't have a court of public opinion, we value liberty under the law. Is it being over-sensitive to shiver when you see headlines about international financiers and cartoons picturing bankers in top hats, grinding the faces of the poor? Does it remind you of something? Or just me?

First they came for Fred, and I…

A new dawn for the Federation

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:33:54 +0000

I was born into the bosom of the Federation of Synagogues, and have grown up under its beneficent eye. My maternal grand- and great-grandparents were among its founders (or at least the founders of shtibls that formed themselves into a federation more than a century ago). My parents were married under its auspices, as were my in-laws and as was I.

At the Clapton Federation synagogue, my father was Leader of the Opposition - opposing anything and everything proposed by the honorary officers on the grounds that anyone calling himself an honorary officer must have sold out to the establishment. Yet, in spite of this jaundiced approach, he was a loyal Federation member, and so am I - the relationship having been cemented when I was appointed to write its official history.

A great deal of blood has passed under the Federation's bridge since. And, at a special meeting of its ruling council last month, the Federation took a controversial decision that is likely to have profound consequences for its future.

It decided, in principle, to abandon the constitution by which it has governed itself for the past 60 years, and to adopt instead a more "streamlined" mode of governance, more in keeping (we were assured) with modern times.

At present, power within the Federation rests with the Council - a body of some 60 people elected by constituent synagogues. All Council members have the status of Federation trustees and no decision of any significance can be taken by the honorary officers without Council approval. This ostensibly ultra-democratic structure was put in place in the late 1940s, following the scandalous rule of Morry Davis, who held the Federation presidency from 1928 until his imprisonment (on a matter unconnected with the Federation) in 1944.

Under Davis, the Federation dispensed with Council elections and transformed the Federation presidency into an unelected dictatorship. The present constitution was designed to prevent a repeat of this state of affairs. But, as the arguably even more scandalous presidency of Morry Lederman, later demonstrated, a constitution is only as good as those tasked with its enforcement: Lederman was able to hold the honorary presidency from 1951 to 1989 while drawing a salary and - like Davis, with the aid of dishonest cronies and unctuous sycophants - milked the Federation of millions (I doubt that the exact sum will ever be known) that ended up in discreet private bank accounts.

Yet the fact remains that under both, and against the odds, the Federation survived, and even flourished, after a fashion. Indeed the Federation has Davis to thank for the purchase of land at Rainham on which its present cemetery is located, and under which gravel has been found, the extraction royalties of which have in recent times transformed the Federation's balance sheet. And it was under Lederman that the Federation established its highly successful kashrut division and its own independent Beth Din.

If the Charity Commission agrees, the Federation will soon have a constitution in which, save in defined circumstances, the honorary officers will be able to govern on a daily basis without the Council's approval. The Council will elect officers but will then retreat into the status of an advisory or consultative body. Significantly, it will enable women to become full Council members.

The Federation - as any regular reader of this column can confirm - has no greater critic than me. Its history is an object lesson in how an organisation can suffer from prolonged poor leadership and yet remain successful. Corrupt presidents. Indifferent management. Imprudent property transactions. Bungled funerals. The Federation can boast all these and more. Yet, set against this, it can sustain flourishing synagogues and an expanding membership (it has even sponsored its first synagogue in Manchester). It is an essential (if not always well-preserved or well-projected) voice of independent mainstream Orthodoxy in this country.

Alongside the constitutional changes now in train, the Federation is undertaking a strategic review, which in my view is the more urgent necessity. Throughout its history, the Federation has made a habit of allowing opportunities to pass it by. This habit must be broken.

Israel's front-line in the South Caucasus

Tim Judah — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:26:24 +0000

Aghdam is as far as you can go. Travel east, cross Turkey, pass the snow-capped twin peaks of Ararat, cross Armenia and finally you get to Nagorno-Karabakh. As the Soviet Union collapsed, this was the front-line in a brutal war pitting Armenians against Azerbaijanis, or Azeris. Thousands died and more than a million fled their homes. Today, Aghdam is an extraordinary place. Once a bustling Azeri town, it is now nothing but ruins for as far as the eye can see. But what the eye can't see is that this long-frozen front-line is also now part of the global struggle waged between Israel and its enemies.

When Armenian forces took Aghdam in 1993, they destroyed it. Scrap-metal merchants still root around for pipes and iron, while the silence is broken as a man on a horse whistles and yelps, driving his cattle across what was once a busy, provincial Soviet street.

Today, the sky is clear. Just clouds floating across this windswept empty quarter of the south Caucasus. Often it is not. Flying westwards, come Azerbaijan's Israeli drones. And flowing westwards, too, a few miles from here, as much as one third of Israel's oil. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, a Knesset committee has been debating the vexed issue of whether the fate of the Armenians in 1915 at the hands of the Ottomans constituted genocide.

All these elements, in what many see wrongly as a peripheral and forgettable part of the world, wedged between the Caspian and Black Seas, seem like random facts. They are not. They are all part of the geopolitical game being played by Israel, Turkey, Iran, Russia, the US and energy-hungry Europe.

Step back a moment. In the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire, until the triumphant reconquest of Bolshevik forces in 1920, the three south Caucasian countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia all declared themselves independent. They were to become Soviet republics but, as everywhere in the region, people and borders did not sit together well.

Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, had a predominantly Armenian population but was surrounded by Azeri populated regions. Stalin decreed that it should be an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan. Another large region, Nakichevan, which had a majority Azeri population, was to become an exclave of Azerbaijan, physically separated from the republic by Armenia and bordering Iran.

In the late 1980s, as the USSR began to crumble, Armenians and Azeris were drawn into conflict. With the Soviet collapse, Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war. Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence. A million people, more Azeris than Armenians, fled or were ethnically cleansed. The Armenians conquered a corridor to link Karabakh to Armenia. But not just that. In Soviet times, the region covered 4,400 square kilometres. When the guns fell silent, the Armenians controlled 12,000 square kilometres.

Talks on a settlement of the conflict have ground on ever since. But the geopolitics of the region have changed. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan emerged from the war, and from the Soviet collapse, shattered and poor. Turkey closed its border to Armenia. With its frontier to Azerbaijan also sealed, Armenia's only land routes out are via Iran and Georgia. Armenia remains poor and its population of about three million has dropped dramatically in the past 20 years, mostly thanks to emigration.

The situation could not be more different in Azerbaijan. Baku was famous more than a century ago for one of the world's first great oil booms. Now it is booming again. Oil has seen the country's GDP explode from $5.2 billion in 2000 to $51 billion in 2010. In 2005, oil began flowing along a major new pipeline from Baku, via Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to Ceyhan, on the southern coast of Turkey. According to Elmar Mammadyarov, the Azeri foreign minister, Israel buys 30 per cent of its oil from Azerbaijan, which it gets via the pipeline.

It is hardly surprising then that Israel regards Azerbaijan as a strategic ally. But the pipeline is extremely vulnerable. At one point, it runs a mere 12 miles from the front-line with Nagorno -Karabakh. In the event of a new conflict - possible, if not immediately probable - the Armenians would cut the pipeline with artillery and rocket oil platforms in the Caspian. But the Azeris want Karabakh back, or, at least to start with, the "occupied territories" (those parts held by the Armenians but, like Aghdam, outside the boundaries of the old autonomous region). Last year, the Azeris invested $3.2 billion in their military; more than Armenia's entire budget.

For Europe, the current strategic game is to gain access to gas from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, which can flow to the European Union via Azerbaijan, but avoid Russia. It has troops in Armenia and a radar station in Azerbaijan but it wants control of future pipelines because of the power and influence that they would give it.

Energy security for the West is important for the US, here as elsewhere, but there is another element at play. Azeris are Shi'ite Muslims, but 70 years of the Soviet experience have made them mostly secular. Meanwhile, the giant to the south is Shi'ite Iran, which the Azeris often accuse of meddling in their affairs.

Azerbaijan's record on human rights is poor. But it is a vital staging post for US and western forces en route to Afghanistan. Most countries remain coy about selling it arms, in no small measure because of Nagorno-Karabakh. Israel is not. Last year, for example, an Israeli-Azeri joint venture opened to produce drones. You don't have to look hard on YouTube to find a film of Ilham Aliev, the Azeri president, visiting the plant in March and pausing to sign a drone's wing.

B ut it is what you can't find that is important. Three years ago, the US Embassy in Baku wrote a cable on Azeri-Israel relations, which was then published by Wikileaks. There is no reason to believe that anything substantial has changed. The cable notes that President Aliev described relations as similar to an iceberg, in that "nine-tenths of it is below the surface".

The cable discussed a 2008 agreement about arms and equipment that Israel would sell to Azerbaijan. Relations, it said, are "discreet but close" and "each country finds it easy to identify with the other's geopolitical difficulties and both rank Iran as an existential threat." Azerbaijan fears Iranian Islamist influence but Iran fears Azerbaijan, too. Up to 30 million Iranians are ethnic Azeris. While many are well integrated into Iranian society, over the years there have been protests demanding greater cultural and language rights. If the existing low level of conflict between Iran, Israel, the US and perhaps others turns into a shooting war, it is hard to know whether Azeri secessionism might develop in Iran. In August, the Iranian armed forces chief warned President Aliev of a "dark fate" if he continued the relationship with Israel. There have also been accusations from Iran that Azerbaijan is attempting to foster ethnic conflict. A key area of co-operation with Israel is in intelligence. This, said the cable, is "extensive".

There are estimated to be some 30,000 former Azeri Jews in Israel and they act as a bridge between the two countries. Their leaders always say that there was no antisemitism in Azerbaijan, and that this is one reason for the close relations between the two countries. Yet Tom de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, says that it would be a mistake to believe that Azerbaijan's enthusiasm for close relations with Israel is more than an elite phenomenon. Most Azeris, he says, "generally buy into a Muslim consensus with regard to Israel and the Palestinians."

Enter Turkey. Until 1937, the Azeris, as a political nation, did not exist; they were simply Turks. In the new Soviet order, that changed. Since independence, relations with Turkey have been very close - most watch Turkish television and its influence is important. Yet, it sometimes seems as if, in relations between the two countries, Azerbaijan, whose population is nine times smaller than Turkey's, calls the shots. In 2008, a period of Turkish-Armenian rapprochement ended abruptly after Azerbaijan objected on the grounds that this should not happen before the Karabakh issue was resolved.

L ast October, Turkey agreed to a major deal not only to buy gas coming from Azerbaijan but also to transport it westwards. Just before that, however, the Turkish ambassador in Baku reminded the Azeris of how Turkey had listened to Azeri objections to its rapprochement with Armenia and now expected a payback in terms of relations with Israel. This was brushed off. Business between Israel and Azerbaijan is booming and an Azeri oil and gas company is prospecting in Israeli waters.

All this is monitored carefully in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Relations with Israel have been good, but for two nations which have shared such a tragic history, "we could have done a lot better", argues Salpi Ghazarian who runs Yerevan's Civilitas Foundation.

In the dark days of war with Azerbaijan, Iran supplied fuel to Armenia and now supplies it with gas. As Brenda Shaffer, of Haifa University, points out: "Iran talks about Islam and helps the Christian Armenians."

And if the interests of the state come before ideology then that is true for Israel, too. For fear of offending Turkey, the Knesset has never recognised that the fate of the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, in which up to 1.5 million people died, amounted to "genocide".

Now, in the wake of the collapse of its relations with Turkey, a Knesset committee very publicly discussed the matter in December. But, when it comes to a final decision on the matter, it is more than likely that Israel will weigh up whether this could affect relations with Azerbaijan, although Shaffer doubts it would, as they are, she notes, above all relations of "state interests".

One Armenian official said wryly that Armenia hoped that the Knesset discussion was not just "situational" given the state of Israel-Turkish relations. Still there are at least two other issues which prevent good relations becoming far better, quite apart from Israel selling weapons to Azerbaijan.

Armenia is concerned about the dwindling number of Armenians in Israel and especially property in the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem. Armenia also does not want to jeopardise the position of hundreds of thousands of Armenians across the Middle East. "We exercise great care of the physical protection of our people," says the official. Put simply, says Ghazarian, in view of the precarious position of Christians in the Arab world, Armenia does not want to give anyone a reason to make Armenians in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere insecure.

Meanwhile, for most people, the south Caucasus is out of sight, out of mind. But, as the 2008 Georgian war with Russia showed, it is also a volatile place. Nagorno-Karabakh is often described as a frozen conflict. It is today, but tomorrow it may not be. The region is, like Israel's own surroundings, a rough neighbourhood, but the links between the two are far deeper than most people know. In May, the Eurovision song contest will be held in Azerbaijan. Remember that when you hear the words: "Hello Baku, this is Jerusalem calling."

Drew, our Jewish wedding singer

Julie Burchill — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:23:06 +0000

So Drew Barrymore may be converting to Judaism. Perhaps when she marries art consultant Will Kopelman in a traditional Jewish ceremony later this year, Adam Sandler will be the best man and seafood will be noticeable by its absence at the bridal buffet.

What an absolute coup, if it were true, to bag a convert as delightful as Drew. And just when the Hollywood ranks could use boosting, after the train-wreck that is now the union of Mr and Mrs Smug - Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher - who appeared to use Kabbalah like it was some sort of work-out crossed with bubble bath; religion as ego-boosting feelgood snake-oil. One would have to have a heart of stone and a funnybone of polystyrene not to find their break-up - over something as banal as a brace of faceless blondes in a hot-tub - extremely amusing.

Old Hollywood was superior to modern Hollywood in so many ways - the suicides were stylish (why don't film stars kill themselves anymore? It's very spoilsport) - while the dialogue was sparkling and the heaving casting couches turned out great stars of both sexes, rather than today's respectable beds of Bel Air, which produce useless second-generation film-stars like Kate Hudson. But the best and biggest way Old Hollywood was better was that it was ruled by Jews.

The syndrome of the silver screen shiksa goddess converting in order to win the hand of the Jewish writer/director/producer is the stuff of legend. Even Marlene Dietrich, who never married one, was stripped of her German citizenship by the Nazi regime because "constant contact with Jews has rendered her entirely un-German" - surely the best ever compliment intended as a diss.

Marilyn Monroe, Carroll "Baby Doll" Baker, Carolyn "Morticia" Jones, Norma Shearer, May Britt, Eleanor Parker, Polly Bergen and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor. Just when one thought that Taylor and Richard Burton couldn't be be any more gorgeous a couple, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger's Furious Love, which chronicles their stormy union, carried a description of a quarrel they had over who was "more Jewish".

"Burton had referred to the Welsh as 'the Jews of Britain', a comment on their self-identity as the outsiders of the United Kingdom." (Ernest Jones, the biographer of Freud, first said this.) "You're not Jewish at all," he told Elizabeth in one of their very public fights, "If there's any Jew in this family, it's me."

There is a story that soon after her conversion, she sought out a senior crew member on her next film and cheekily said: "You're Jewish - I'm Jewish - we should go to the studio and tell them we can't work on Jewish holidays. That way everyone on the set gets extra days off." Apparently he affectionately replied: "Elizabeth, you're Jewish until the next pogrom."

But she was a devoted friend of Israel her whole life, raising money for the Jewish National Fund and even offering herself as a replacement hostage during the 1976 Entebbe skyjacking.

More recently, Isla Fisher studied for three years to marry Sacha Baron Cohen, taking the Hebrew name Ayala. But it is the story of Margot Stilley, incandescently beautiful star of the frisky film 4 Songs, whose story is the most intriguing. Drawn to Judaism even before her engagement to a Jew, she said: "I am not Jewish because I choose to be; I am Jewish because there is no other choice for me."

Interestingly, Miss Stilley rejected Islam, after reading the Koran "which I found too accepting of violence, constrained by time and place and too vague when it came to feminism". Never mind - they got Lauren Booth. Oh dear - Monroe, Taylor, Barrymore - versus Lauren Booth.

Biblical-epic fail. We win!

Keeping kosher is good for us

Cari Rosen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:22:19 +0000

When it comes to food fads, life can be terribly confusing. One minute the doctors are telling us that eating butter will blow our cholesterol sky high and we must avoid it like the plague. The next? Butter is hailed as a hero in a world of margarine scare stories.

Meat is good for us, meat is bad for us. We'll become mad cows. We need to eat more iron. Too many carrots will turn us orange, or help us see in the dark. Listeria from dodgy salad leaves will turn us green…bean sprouts are top sources of protein. Bean sprouts give us botulism. It seems that whatever we do, we just can't win.

In the last week or so yet another food-stuff story was splashed across the headlines. But this time, it was good news for a change. Fried food is not bad for your heart after all, it appears. It is true that your choice of oil is crucial - but get it right and you can sauté in sunflower, or sizzle in olive til the cows come home.

So "hurrah" cry generations of deep-fried Mars Bar lovers north of the border. "Huzzah", fish and chip lovers the length and breadth of Britain shout.

"Oy vey, the relief", those of us for whom Chanucah is a battle of weight-watching versus will power - with the score somehow ending up at eight nil in favour of the doughnuts, year after year after year.

So who has come up with these latest findings? Scientists studying the typical Spanish diet, in which the "healthy" oils are used in abundance, yet "no heightened risk of heart disease or premature death linked to food" could be found. And this can surely only be good news for those of us partial to a bit of festive feasting.

The latke? Dripping in grease perhaps, but didn't you know it's practically a health food?

The honey cake? Yup, chock full of healthy oil - I'm only forcing myself to eat two pieces of it in order to stay fit. Kneidlach, smeidlach… matzah meal, egg and sunflower margarine. Which is surely made from sunflower oil? I rest my case.

Of course the calorific catastrophe caused by this new discovery is something not to be ignored. But it's great to know that while we're piling on
the pounds, our hearts are still going to be happy
as Larry.

I'm wondering what breakthroughs we might read about next? We already know that chicken soup is good for the soul, a cure-all for everything from broken legs to broken hearts. So surely it can only be a matter of time before someone discovers that chopped liver is a superfood. That lokshen holds the key to longevity. Or that brisket is the cure for chicken pox.

I figure that if we wait long enough there's bound to be good news surrounding all of our traditional favourites. But perhaps there's no harm in pushing things along a bit. Anyone out there who fancies funding a study on shmaltz?

Must the chief be a Zionist?

Simon Rocker — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:02:26 +0000

Today the JC carries an advertisement for the top job in British Jewry: the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Whether the post has been advertised before I don't know, although in 1965 the then selectors said "there should in no circumstances be any advertisement". But the United Synagogue, which makes up most of those congregations, was advised to do so this time. If it were to choose a foreign candidate but could not show it had done all in its power to attract local talent, the new chief could end up without a work permit.

The US recently published a job spec, detailing 15 responsibilities expected of Lord Sacks's successor. His multi-tasking duties will range from judicial (chairing sessions of the London Beth Din) to managerial (dealing with rabbis' "performance issues"). Naturally, he will be "a religious spokesman for Orthodox Judaism": note that it is "Orthodox" rather than "modern Orthodox" - a term the US briefly flirted with a few years ago - that would have put clear water between it and Charedi Orthodoxy.

The chief will be asked to "take a lead in matters concerning the expanding role of women" - i.e. find the halachic answer that would enable women to become US trustees and synagogue chairmen. He will also be "a spokesman on all matters affecting the Jewish community" and "a spiritual voice for the wider community". But there is one portfolio outside the traditional rabbinic remit: he is also expected to be "an advocate for Israel".

"Advocate" suggests a more political brief than simply being a standard-bearer for religious Zionism. Inevitably, a chief rabbi will feel drawn to comment on Israel. But this should come out of his sense of spiritual mission rather than an agenda thrust upon him.

Some hoped that Lord Sacks might have been a more visible advocate, especially given his access to national media. To be fair, he has intervened on occasions, most forcefully when the Church of England was considering divestment. He has written about Israel and released a CD saluting the 60th anniversary. No doubt he has used his high-level contacts with prime
ministers and others to put in a word. But since he got his fingers burnt with a Guardian interview 10 years ago, he has generally been circumspect with statements on Israel.

Lord Jakobovits was far more vocal - although not in a way that was always liked. It is easy to forget how far out on a limb he went to call for territorial compromise when others dreamt of Greater Israel. Jakobovits was installed a few weeks before the Six Day War, an event that propelled Israel to the top of his concerns. While his views later became anathema to the Zionist right, he was able to rise above his detractors because his criticism of Israel, just as his support for it, was seen to well from deep religious conviction.

There remains, I believe, a yearning among some for a commanding voice, a champion of Israel who could unite British Jewry behind it - a challenge that would probably test even Moses. For all the broad support for a two-state solution, the community is more divided on Israel than in the 1960s and 1970s.

If a chief rabbi wants to keep out of the crossfire, he can speak on Israel only where there is a measure of communal consensus. If he strikes out boldly to the left or the right, the high-profile nature of his office will magnify any controversy. And any chief will have to beware the thin ice of religious politics, which may constrain his freedom to act.

Two years ago, after the Methodists published a hostile report on Israel, the Board of Deputies produced a pamphlet that was intended to explain Zionism to the churches. It carried contributions from leading Masorti, Reform and Liberal rabbis, all of them joint presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews. In their different ways, each linked their identification with Israel with an understanding of Judaism.

Logically, the fourth, Orthodox contribution should have come from the chief rabbi - also a CCJ president. But it was not even from an Orthodox rabbi: the author was a layman. Since the booklet strayed into theological territory, it was felt too risky for a chief rabbi to consort in the same pages with non-Orthodox rabbis, even in defence of Zionism.

Republicans have their own take on Israel policy

Emanuele Ottolenghi — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:23:39 +0000

For once, Sheldon Adelson may have thrown his money at a lost cause.

As a man whose fortune is tied to the gambling industry, he bet on the wrong horse: he and his wife recently donated $5 million each to public interest organisations established to support Newt Gingrich in his bid to win the Republican nomination.

For despite the injection of funds in the Gingrich campaign, Mitt Romney's clear victory in the Florida primary this week has all but sealed the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Even if Gingrich chose to stay in the game, the outcome would not be altered - only postponed in official terms.

Adelson is one of America's wealthiest men and a committed funder of pro-Israel causes - his philanthropic commitments are largely responsible for endeavours such as the Birthright programme. To some, his considerable financial contributions may appear as an attempt to influence Gingrich's worldview on the Middle East.

It was not - and it matters little for Israel either way. Gingrich was a committed friend of Israel before Adelson put his money into his campaign and there is little evidence that such financial injection had anything to do with Gingrich describing the Palestinians as "an invented people" during a recent interview with a Jewish cable channel. The fact is, Gingrich is known to shoot from the hip, rhetorically speaking, and his comment, which caused a firestorm, is more a reflexion of his mercurial character and style than the improbable input from Adelson.

Besides, with the single exception of the non-electable Ron Paul, all Republican candidates are pro-Israel. Romney has no equivalent financial backer in the ranks of America's wealthiest Jews but is very pro-Israel - possibly a function of his upbringing as a Mormon. He has made it abundantly clear in repeated statements and answers from questions at debates. It is also obvious when one looks at the foreign policy team advising his campaign - their worldview will not cause the kind of tensions for US-Israel relations seen over the past three years.

Rick Santorum, a staunch Catholic conservative with little chance of winning, is similarly devoted to Israel and its security.

Israel has little to worry from the Republican nomination outcome, whoever wins. More importantly, campaign contributors are unlikely to shape foreign policy if their candidate wins. While their loyalty and generosity is often rewarded with ambassadorships, that is hardly going to make a dent on American aims in the MidEast.

Nations have enduring interests, and America's fundamental policy on Israel is not going to change regardless of who wins the November general elections.

I'm not prejudiced, some of my best friends are Mormon

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:59:28 +0000

The hottest ticket on Broadway at the moment is a biting musical comedy called The Book of Mormon. Created by the team behind South Park, it offers a satirical look at faith, humanitarian aid and ambition.

It's funny, risqué and shows no mercy when it comes to the more eccentric parts of Mormonism, the religious movement that began with a man having visions in the upstate New York of the 19th century.

But it's not just on Broadway that the Mormon story is under the spotlight. Tickets are considerably cheaper - unless you're a donor - for the spectacle of the Republican nomination race, where two Mormons had the temerity to throw in their hats and one seems now to be storming to victory.

In the coverage of Mitt Romney's second bid to take on Obama for a seat in the Oval Office, his religion comes up almost every time. So, too, does his corporate background, his inclination for paying only minimal tax, his tendency to flip-flop on key issues and his alarmingly Tea Party-unfriendly positions. But whereas those are all pertinent for an electorate choosing who to give the nuclear codes and keys to the public piggy bank to, his religion is of less relevance.

Despite the separation of church and state, the US is a country where organised religion is mostly revered; indeed a recent study found that atheists were distrusted as much as rapists. Compared to Britain, where a politician's prayer habits are of less interest than his biscuit choice, in America, you gotta have faith.

But you gotta have the right faith. It took until 1960 for the US to vote in its first Catholic, and another 40 years for a Jew to have the White House within his sights (Joe Lieberman, and even then as second-in-command). Nobody from outside the Judaeo-Christian religious framework has had a serious run yet.

But whereas when Kennedy ran, his Catholicism was considered a question mark by many voters, by the time of Lieberman's bid his faith was, by and large, off the table (and for the record, he's not only Jewish, he's pretty frum). As well it should have been.

It's frightening that, at a recent count, one in six Americans expressed doubts that they would vote for a Mormon. For some, it seems to be the religion's innate social conservatism - abstemious, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality - while for others it's the history of polygamy (outlawed a century ago) and the fact that the religion has its roots in a guy who was shown some tablets by an angel called Moroni.

Not being teetotal (give up coffee? Never) and generally swerving to the liberal side of the spectrum when it comes to a woman's right to choose and so forth, I can see why voters might want to challenge him on those points. But they are stances shared by a host of candidates from all manner of religious backgrounds and they should be attacked for being wrong, not for being the products of a particular faith.

As to the second point, for every angel, I raise you a man eaten by a whale, a leader conjuring up frogs and rivers of blood, or a deity giving two tablets to a bloke on a mountain. The Mormon canon might seem nonsensical but the Jewish one doesn't hold up too well either when it comes to the reality test. That's faith for you. Who is anyone to cast aspersions about someone else's crazy beliefs?

A person's faith will inevitably affect his outlook and, if he's a politician, his decisions. But so will his socio-economic background, whether he's a parent, where he comes from in the country and what he did in the workplace. Not all Mormons vote Republican. Religion is but one part in the sum, and it's not always a reliable guide as to what the answer will be.

There are plenty of reasons to be anti-Romney (as there were to oppose the rather lacklustre campaign of Jon Huntsman, who was something of a Rosh Hashanah Mormon and therefore seen as less of a threat).

That he belongs to a religion known mostly for cultish offshoots, Salt Lake City and funny underwear isn't one of them. To say otherwise is prejudice, plain and simple. Don't believe me. Substitute "Jew" for "Mormon" and just see how the apprehension about his faith makes you feel.

There aren't any Jews seriously in the running this year (although if I had a vote and it had to be Republican, perhaps I'd back the gay Jewish hopeful Fred Karger). But if there were, I would be shocked and appalled to see their religious beliefs come under so vicious a microscope.

School in need of history lesson

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:59:27 +0000

Parrs Wood High School is a "specialist technology college" in the south Manchester suburb of Didsbury. It is by all accounts a popular school, with a current roll of almost 2,000 pupils. Its Ofsted reports tell of a school that has had problems in the past (in 2007, it was placed under "special measures") and still faces challenges. But under its current head-teacher, Andrew Shakos, it seems to be making progress, successfully preparing many of its students for entry into higher education. Yet neither its local popularity nor its jazzy website, nor its well-crafted mission statement (committing it, I noticed with a smile, to providing "high quality information") should blind us to the fact that within its walls there looks a double-headed demon: hostility to Israel and contempt for Jews.

This is a serious charge to make against a school, especially one in the state sector. When a friend first made it, just over a week ago, I naturally demanded proof. My attention was therefore drawn to another website, through which one can access the first edition of The Parrs Word, published towards the end of last year. The Parrs Word is the student magazine, funded by the school and published with the head-teacher's approval. The first edition carried a feature entitled "Palestine & Israel: the simple guide". It is, in fact, a hotchpotch of spiteful half-truths and downright lies from beginning to end.

This anonymous contribution purports to present a timeline of events since 1948. "The problem started" - the author explains - "with Palestine being an Arab, Muslim state; however, over the years, more and more Jewish migrants have been settling there and creating their own state named 'Israel'."

There are so many untruths and misconceptions wrapped up in this one sentence that it's difficult to know where to begin sorting them out. Of course there was never an "Arab, Muslim state" called "Palestine". But, by setting the scene in this way, the author objectifies the Jews as outsiders, dwelling in a land which, by rights, is not really theirs to dwell.

The Israeli war of independence is described as a "clearing" operation by "Jewish forces" against Arabs. The 1967 war is portrayed as unadulterated Israeli aggression: there is, for example, no mention of Nasser's Red Sea blockade of Israel. Indeed the article contains not so much as one reference to Muslim hostility to Jews or to Arab violence against Jews. There is a puzzling allusion to the supposed "creation of the Gaza Strip barrier" in 2002 (the author seems to have confused Israel's withdrawal from Gaza with the construction of the West Bank security fence) but no mention of subsequent and continuing rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. And so on.

The author cynically alleges that the timeline presents "just facts, so you can make your own mind up". But what the feature amounts to, of course, is unbridled propaganda. Its publication, in an official student magazine, is nothing short of outrageous. Worse still, behind this outrage lies another.

Because, in 2009, Parrs Wood hosted a so-called "Day for Gaza" fundraising event for "Human Appeal International", a Manchester-based charity that, in the view of the US State Department, has links to terrorism. On February 18, a sex-segregated "women only" event is to be held there, organised by HAI.

There was an unfortunate delay (which itself merits investigation) in the marshalling of Jewish reaction to the goings-on at Parrs Wood. Be that as it may, head-teacher Shakos has now brought himself to confess that, "it was perhaps a mistake to allow such an over-simplification of a complex issue to be addressed by one of our junior contributors and we certainly apologise for any upset caused by its publication".

But I'm afraid however many apologies are now issued as the complaints roll in, the matter cannot be permitted to rest there.

I am, for example, led to wonder just what sort of racialised rubbish is taught in the name of history at this school. I am led to ask why this school permits itself (as it will again, this month) to be used for the dubious fund-raising objectives of HAI. Above all, I am led to wonder whether, in showing such poor judgment and leadership, Andrew Shakos is really fit to be the school's head-teacher.

Not just a problem for South Park

Nick Cohen — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:59:27 +0000

When I was researching You Can't Read This Book, my study of censorship, an old joke came back to me. "You can be a famous poisoner or a successful poisoner but you can't be both".

Successful censorship is hidden. A writer who concentrates on the famous cases misses the point. Censorship everyone knows about is not successful precisely because everyone knows. One can understand the suppression that matters only when one thinks about the books that are never written and the arguments that are never made.

Alarmingly, considering the virulence of its antisemitism, radical Islam is too hot to handle. Its ideology cannot be mocked as those of Christianity and Judaism have been since the Enlightenment. The stories about its prophet cannot be exposed as fables, as with Jesus and Moses. The reason is simple: writers are frightened, above all of violence.

No one wants to go through what Salman Rushdie went through. But the success of terror in intimidating is not the sole reason for the paralysis. With good cause, people are frightened of helping racists who do not oppose extremism out of any concern for gay or women's rights or the rights of free people to believe what they want, but because they hate Muslims because they are Muslims. Yet, by refusing to tackle religious fanaticism with the necessary rigour, western liberals betray Muslim and ex-Muslim liberals, who need help in their struggle against the bigots who would oppress them.

During the Danish cartoon crisis, South Park tried to show an innocuous image of Mohammed. "It's open season on Jesus," creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said. "We've had him say bad words… shoot a gun…kill people." Yet they could do nothing with Mohammed because Comedy Central was "afraid of getting blown up". Grayson Perry, who produces what Catholics would see as blasphemous images of the Virgin Mary, told journalists he had "not gone all-out attacking Islamism in my art… because I feel the real fear that someone will slit my throat".

Such is honesty is rare because candour destroys the great pose of reporters, artists and writers, who want the public to see them as "edgy" and fearless speakers "of truth to power" - as if they were dissidents in a dictatorship. Admission of fear would leave their courageous image in tatters.

Before my book was published, the publicists called me in. "Radio 4, Andrew Marr, the Today programme, Woman's Hour, they'll love this," they said. "The power of religion, big money and the state to silence legitimate debate… it's a BBC editor's dream."

"You haven't understood me," I told them. "Radio 4 can never admit that self-censorship exists." Sure enough, Andrew Marr and the rest of them told my publishers very firmly that they would not touch the book.

The Telegraph's Cristina Odone reported that when she suggested me to a BBC executive, he replied, "Are you kidding? A white, middle-class, middle-aged man?" A BBC documentary on censorship could, apparently, only be "delivered by Diane Abbott. Even better if she converts to Islam".

His joke revealed a dismal truth. We need to be braver; not just against religious militancy but in taking on the power of the City and oligarchs to use libel laws to cover economically disastrous blunders, and the power of employers to threaten whistleblowers who speak in the public interest with dismissal. The first step is the most essential. Before we can move forward, we must find the courage to admit we are afraid.

When the Shoah is stripped of its meaning, what then?

Abraham H Foxman — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:15:18 +0000

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting convened in a Berlin suburb by the Nazi SS henchman Reinhard Heydrich to coordinate the liquidation and eventual extermination of Europe's Jews.

It was at this meeting that the wheels were set in motion for the Holocaust. When the world finally learned that six million Jews and millions of others were systematically murdered at Auschwitz and at the nearly two dozen other camps spread across the continent, it was universally agreed that the kind of mass genocide that befell European Jewry could never be repeated, and that the lessons of the Holocaust should never be forgotten.

How bizarre it is to be in the 21st century, at a time when the memory of the Holocaust and the war is fading, and its chilling lexicon of "Nazis," "Gestapo," and "Hitler" is being expropriated by those who would exploit and cheapen the message of "never again" in the most callous ways, for their own personal or political gain.

Holocaust trivialisation is hardly a new issue. We've been speaking out about inappropriate analogies to Nazis, Hitler and the Holocaust for nearly 20 years as they have cropped up in political speech, advertising and popular culture.

But there is no doubt the problem is getting worse. Exhibit A is the Dubai gym that recently used a photo of Auschwitz in a promotion for membership. The 10 photos posted to the gym's Facebook page included the chilling image of the railroad leading to the gates of Birkenau with the slogan, "Kiss your calories goodbye". The message was as unambiguous as it was outrageous: If you want to lose pounds like the inmates of Auschwitz, join our gym.

A controversy ensued; the management relented, apologised and removed the image. While their apology was appropriate and necessary, the controversy raised larger questions. Who could have conceived of such an insensitive and offensive message? Who approved it? Why did it not raise any red flags beforehand?

It is clear that Holocaust trivialisation is becoming more commonplace throughout society and around the world. Yet no matter how many times we speak out, it seems to grow. People are not being sensitised.

There are many reasons for the proliferation of inappropriate Nazi comparisons. For one, as we move farther away from the events of the Second World War, memory fades, and the number of survivors and veterans who can bear witness are dwindling. For some, the problem is a lack of sensitivity. For others, they know full well what they are doing. They are being deliberately provocative, taking advantage of the diminished sensitivity. In the process of using these gross comparisons, they further the process of desensitising. When pro-Palestinian protestors compare Gaza to Auschwitz, or carry placards stating that the star of David equals a swastika, the message even crosses the line into antisemitism.

We saw this three years ago, at scores of demonstrations around the world against Operation Cast Lead, including when groups such as the British Muslim Initiative produced placards that read "STOP the Holocaust in Gaza". The Iranian regime, which has sponsored a Holocaust cartoon "contest" and whose president has made statements questioning whether the number of Jews killed has been exaggerated, hypocritically engages in similar comparisons while also denying the Holocaust. First Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insists that the Holocaust didn't happen, and then he criticises Israel for acting like Nazis.

As a survivor who was saved by my Polish-Catholic nanny, I am increasingly troubled by both the ignorance and mindset of a generation that appears to be so distant from a basic understanding of the Holocaust.

I wonder: What do we have to do to educate current and future generations of the perils of bigotry, racism, discrimination and antisemitism? And if we do not convey the importance of eliminating these ills from society, are we doomed to relive the horrors of another mass genocide?

It is time for those who abuse the memory of the Holocaust to understand that words do have consequences, and that inappropriate comparisons only serve to lessen the true impact and meaning of the lessons of the Shoah. Those lessons are profound and timeless.

When Jewry didn't meet Pally

Emanuele Ottolenghi — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:47:11 +0000

How dare Benjamin Netanyahu ask Anglo-Jewry's leaders not to meet Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas!

Abbas was in London last week, and wished to meet the local Jewish community - something which Downing Street encouraged. But Netanyahu's office got in the way and complained that, since Abbas was refusing to meet him, Abbas did not deserve the honour.

But Abbas had every reason to meet Anglo-Jewish leaders. Domestically, he lacks democratic accountability - he has postponed or cancelled elections since his term expired. His refusal to sit with Israel and negotiate is becoming a liability for him. But, as long as this intransigence is blamed on Israel and Abbas retains his moderate image, he can continue to postpone the moment of truth.

It has worked so far - and a meeting with Anglo-Jewry, especially if its outcome were an endorsement of Abbas' widely perceived moderation, would give his alibi a new lease of life - after all, Abbas is looking for additional allies who can put more pressure on Bibi while cheering his reasonableness.

Why take the risk of walking into this trap? Presumably, Anglo-Jewry's leaders are aware that Abbas - a man whose youthful sins include Holocaust denial as his PhD thesis - has already rejected far-reaching peace overtures former Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, made to him in September 2008.

They surely know that Abbas is behind the concerted campaign of delegitimisation that is being waged against Israel in international forums. Or that he is fully committed to the unilateral campaign for Palestinian statehood, whose goals include imposing a territorial solution in lieu of talks. They also must know that Abbas continues to peddle the self-defeating demand for a right of return of Palestinian refugees, which he grounds in a distorted version of history that he is ill-prepared to set aside, much less to question.

Armed with this, those who wished to attend would no doubt do so with their eyes wide-open and render a service to Israel. After all, if Her Majesty's Government, whose deputy Prime Minister thinks Israeli settlements are an act of vandalism, wished Anglo-Jewish leaders to see Abbas, it must be because it expected them to speak bluntly and say what no one else dares to say to the Palestinians these days.

Surely they would tell Abbas that the Palestinian cause has, with all the follies of its leaders, almost irreparably alienated even the most ardent Jewish supporters of peace. And that his stubborn refusal to meet Bibi has earned him nothing and helped no one.

They would tell Abbas that you cannot have and eat the cake - that, if you wish to negotiate, you should not at the same time attempt to drag your partners in front of the International Criminal Court. And, finally, that you cannot demand a retreat on settlements when no Palestinian leader has ever retreated on refugees. These messages, pronounced by the leaders of Anglo-Jewry and never before heard by Abbas, would no doubt have hit the mark. What could go wrong?

We don't know - and as always, we can smugly blame Israel's government for precluding the possibility that these and other tough questions be put in a straightforward manner to the Palestinian president, the man we are led to believe is the only antidote to Hamas. Then again, what if Anglo-Jewish leaders failed to confront the man who currently epitomises the failure of Palestinian nationalism to produce anything constructive for the sake of peace?

What if they had given him a hall pass and let him emerge from the meeting with another shining trophy and an everlasting tribute to his fake moderation?

A Kopul of sporting heroes

David Robson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:46:31 +0000

Very soon it will be the 50th yahrzeit of Rabbi Kopul Rosen. He was an awe-inspiring man, dead at 48. Unforgettable to pupils of Carmel College (the Jewish boarding school he founded), I'm sure he's remembered by almost everyone who met him. There will be many tributes but here is a story you will get only from me.

It starts with my greatest sporting moment but, like many people's, it had nothing at all to do with any sporting prowess of my own. I was playing for the school's football XI against the teachers. I was right-half, as it was called in those days. It wasn't easy playing for Carmel, especially when Kopul was watching. He liked football but he didn't always like what he saw and would boom out withering criticism from the touchline. I remember him coming on once at half-time and saying: "Ackerman, you're playing a very fair game. Half the time you're playing for our side, half the time you're playing for their side."

The teachers' centre-forward was Mr Bloch, more scholar than striker but, to his left, there was a gap. Where was the man I was supposed to be marking? Then I saw him, spotted him a hundred yards away. He was unmistakable. My God! It was Jackie Milburn, late of Newcastle United -wearing his England shirt. Jackie Milburn, the greatest-ever Geordie number 9,239 goals for the club, a hat-trick for England - with a hero status not even Shearer or Keegan could match.

Mr Bloch tapped the ball to him. Milburn pulled it back behind the half-way line with his right foot and struck it with his left. It hit the crossbar! It would be nice to say that I tackled him once or twice. I didn't, but I had played against him and once a week through that winter he came down to coach us.

Kopul and he were both great men. The scholar and the scorer. Lehavdil, you may say, but I do not. Jackie had a special aura about him. The statue near Newcastle's ground is tribute to his goodness as well as his goals. By the time Milburn arrived at Carmel, Kopul was already very ill. Clearly he admired the footballer. In an obscure biography that I have seen, Milburn recounts a visit to Kopul's study.

The rabbi invited the footballer to come and live at the school with his family, teach PE and become a housemaster. His son would be educated free. But, says Milburn, Kopul stressed that "I had to make a quick decision because he didn't have much time left." He describes the scene; the wood-panelled room, the massive desk and Kopul sitting in near-darkness behind it, a large, bearded, extraordinarily handsome man with a remarkable, sonorous voice.

"I am not religious," writes Milburn, "I don't believe in God but, if there was a god, that is what he would sound like." If you knew Kopul, especially if you were a small boy, you'd probably have agreed. And I don't think Kopul would have minded. Jackie Milburn didn't stay at Carmel. He became manager of Ipswich Town before returning to Newcastle. Kopul died and was buried in the school grounds. His grave could be seen from his study window.

I'm gay, but I want a Jewish life

Gemma Hersh — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:43:33 +0000

I swore I'd never tell anyone. Least of all my parents. The embarrassment. The awkwardness. The shame. I wondered if people would simply stop talking to me.

Five years on, my world hasn't come crashing down. My parents haven't disowned me. I haven't lost any friends. I'm one of the lucky ones.

At no point during my process of self discovery (or "coming out" as it is often termed) did I consider what being gay meant for my religious identity. Being religious, or at least sitting within the broad umbrella of modern Orthodoxy, wasn't an issue for me then; I had neither the head space nor the inclination to address what I wanted from religion and what it could offer me. And, crucially, I only knew of one other person who was my brand of Jewish and a lesbian.

But, over the past year, I've reached a point that many Jews brought up in the Orthodox world will identify with: my peers are mostly married with children, and are increasingly defining their place within the community in much the same way our parents did. I can't help but wonder where this leaves people like me, who want a place in the community they know and love, but can't be part of - because they are gay.

Our religion is intrinsically linked with ideas of family and community. But what are we teaching our children about families that are just like ours, but have one difference: parents of the same sex. What place is there in the modern Orthodox community for lesbians and gays?

The controversy surrounding the role of the JONAH site in JFS's Jewish studies curriculum reveals where the Orthodox community is with this. We think we should have a problem with it, but we aren't quite sure how far that goes. Do we say its wrong? If so, why? And what are the consequences of this, and do we support people who say they are gay?

These questions are not being answered. Worse, they aren't being addressed at all. It's easier for us to bury our heads in the sand than to tackle an issue that affects everyone.

What about the leading rabbinical authorities? Leviticus says: "Thou shalt not lie with a male as with a woman." The position on lesbians is unclear, although rabbinic interpretation suggests this is prohibited on the basis that we are told not to "do as they do in Egypt". Given the open-endedness of this statement and others, the halachic position is far from clear. But of course they'd never say this in public.

Halachah aside, what do our rabbis say about accommodating the gay community? A search of the Office of the Chief Rabbi website reveals nothing. A call to their office is met with unease; "Please email in the request?" Six months on, I'm still waiting for a reply.

We are left with cautious acceptance at most, but of the individual, not of relationships. Even that is a stretch for many who simply will not accept difference within their midst. So we don't talk about it - we send a message that it's just not the "done thing".

If you "choose" to be gay (many still see it as a choice), you will be forced to deny a large part of yourself. For those of us who are gay but have grown up in the community, the isolation is overwhelming. Some feel they must deny who they are to "fit in". Others turn their backs on religion altogether. Is this really the legacy we want to leave for our children, some of whom will be gay?

There are signs that the community is ready to move forward, the reaction to the JONAH story being a case in point. Last year, I asked Facebook friends about modern Orthodoxy and homosexuality. I was surprised by the positive response but not by the answers. There was no real idea of the halachic position, and an acceptance that being gay and frum would continue to be incompatible given the taboo way with which the subject is approached (stonewall silence, embarrassment, bordering on shame). Similarly, the entrenched notions of what Jewish family and community should be still represented a barrier.

What struck me most was the sadness and regret with which many respondents - the majority of whom identified as modern Orthodox - expressed this view, some even going as far as to say they felt there should be more discussion and leadership on this.

More discussion and more leadership. Sadly lacking now but let's hope not forever.

Ignorantly disgraceful use of 'apartheid'

Raymond Wacks — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:37:38 +0000

I am driving along a well-remembered highway in Randburg. It is 2005 - the last time I visited South Africa (where I was born and, as they say, bred). Randburg is an anonymous conurbation on the outskirts of Johannesburg. As a student, I had a holiday job here as a cashier in a supermarket.

But is this really Randburg? Formerly a whites-only area, I see only black faces. The supermarket has disappeared. The shopping mall is unrecognisable. I must have taken a wrong turn. Peering at the road sign, I am reassured. This is indeed Hendrik Verwoerd Drive.

Former Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd? In post-apartheid South Africa? Surely the architect of evil cannot still be celebrated 15 years after its demise. While many towns and public places have been accorded new (or pre-existing) African names, several roads have been reborn to conform to the new ideology. Nelson Mandela features prominently, of course, but there are also streets dedicated to the memory of Che Guevara, Joe Slovo and other revolutionary heroes.

Perhaps, I thought, policy had simply failed to catch up with principle. Nevertheless, it struck me as astonishing that Verwoerd should continue to be venerated. It was he who famously declared that his government's role was "the preservation of the white man and his state". Under his premiership, from 1958 until his assassination in 1966, apartheid was not only consolidated, but clothed in philosophical, cultural, and theological validation that drew on the seductive power of Afrikaner nationalism. He had, in fact, presided over the country's break with Britain and the establishment of a republic. And, under his steely, cerebral leadership, the African National Council was banned and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Apartheid, it is frequently forgotten - or conveniently overlooked - was not merely racial segregation. It was an elaborate, intricate project, sustained by a doctrinaire philosophy applied by an authoritarian regime buttressed by draconian legislation. It relied on an unaccountable security force with sweeping powers, a largely enthusiastic legislature and a mostly pliant judiciary. The legal system was the creation of a white minority; the political system disenfranchised every "non-white" person, and the law discriminated against non-whites in almost every facet of social and economic life: employment, land, housing, education, sex and freedom of movement.

Deaths in detention and torture were systemic. "He slipped in the shower" or "he jumped from the interrogation room window" were the stock explanations offered by the security branch. Surveillance, intimidation, and police brutality were routine. Apartheid South Africa was the model of a modern police state. The Broederbond, a secret, Calvinist, all-male society fostered Afrikaner interests. Jan Smuts described it as a "dangerous, cunning, political fascist organisation".

The neo-Nazi nature of this totalitarian order was one of its fundamental components. I remember the day that Verwoerd's successor, John Vorster, was elected. We university students greeted each other with mock Nazi salutes. He was detained in 1942 as a result of his membership of the pro-Nazi Ossewabrandwag, which supported Germany during the Second World War.

There was, of course, a small minority of whites, including Afrikaners, who opposed the injustice of apartheid. A conspicuous example was the lawyer, Bram Fischer. Despite his impeccable Afrikaner antecedents (his father was judge president of the Orange Free State; his grandfather, a member of the cabinet) he championed the rights of the oppressed, defending Mandela in the notorious Rivonia trial of 1963-4. Enduring considerable personal suffering and sacrifice, he went underground to wage war against the iniquity of apartheid.

In 1966, he was convicted of furthering the aims of communism - a catch-all charge, since communism was defined to include "bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change… by the promotion of disturbance or disorder" or "encouraging feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races… the consequences of which are calculated to further… disorder". The statute empowered the minister of justice to brand as a communist any person he decided fitted the description. Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment, during which he developed cancer. As a result of a fall, he fractured his neck and femur. He was partially paralysed and lost the ability to talk. Three months elapsed before the authorities permitted his transfer to hospital. He died soon thereafter. Ruthless inhumanity and petty vindictiveness were hallmarks of apartheid.

Nelson Mandela described him as "one of the bravest and staunchest friends of the freedom struggle that I have ever known … displaying a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself".

The generosity of definition of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950 was equalled by the Terrorism Act of 1967 which defined "terrorism" as including anything that might "endanger the maintenance of law and order". Life sentences in South Africa were exactly that. And the gallows were kept busy: between 1910 and 1989 more than 4,200 executions were carried out. About half of those met their end between 1978 and 1989 when the struggle against apartheid was at its peak.

The overwhelming majority of those put to death were black; many were political prisoners. At the end of July 1989, for example, a total of 283 prisoners were being held on death row at Pretoria Central Prison. Of these, 272 were black; 11 were white. In March 1988, 53 individuals were hanged for politically related crimes.

It hardly requires stating that injustice in our world is ubiquitous. But the abomination of apartheid was unique. The United Nations sought in 1973 to crystallise its essence by establishing it as a crime. According to the Apartheid Convention the offence consists of inhuman acts committed for the purpose of maintaining domination by one racial group over any other, and systematically oppressing them.

The authors, in pursuit of greater precision, provided a catalogue of the acts embraced by the crime, including murder, torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary arrest of members of a racial group, legislation that discriminates in the political, social, economic and cultural fields, separate residential areas for racial groups, the prohibition of interracial marriages, and the persecution of opponents of apartheid.

The text of the convention captures the quintessential elements of apartheid as applied in South Africa - even though it drains it of much of the system's malevolence and authoritarianism touched on above. And, despite the demise of apartheid in 1994, the offence lives on. Thus, in 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court included apartheid, along with a catalogue of other wrongs such as murder, extermination, enslavement, and torture, as a crime against humanity.

Lawyers - and other pedants - may therefore claim that, notwithstanding the terms of the Apartheid Convention, and its explicit description of the South African situation, apartheid may exist anywhere. This folly has, of course, given rise to the preposterous contention that Israel is an "apartheid state". The Jewish state is far from a paragon of virtue, but stigmatising it in this cavalier manner is itself a grotesque injustice - and an affront to those who endured the long years of torment and persecution in South Africa.

The subjectivity of suffering renders any attempt to calibrate injustice difficult. It is specious and misconceived, however, to describe Israel as implementing apartheid- even by the standards of international law.

Where are the "inhumane acts… of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination" by one race over another, as specified in the Rome Statute? Unlike blacks under apartheid, Israeli Arabs may vote, stand for election to parliament, be appointed to the judiciary. They have the freedom to attend any hospital, school, or university. They are not denied access to beaches, cinemas, theatres, libraries, sporting facilities. They may choose whom to love. And it is easier for an Arab citizen of Israel to buy an apartment in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem than in Beirut, Bahrain, Kuwait or Doha.

Even Richard Goldstone, the former South African judge who headed the censorious inquiry into Israel's Cast Lead operation in Gaza, recently conceded that in Israel, "there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute…"

In an article in the New York Times last October, he declared: "I know all too well the cruelty of South Africa's abhorrent apartheid system, under which human beings characterised as black had no rights to vote, hold political office, use 'white' toilets or beaches, marry whites, live in whites-only areas or even be there without a 'pass.' Blacks critically injured in car accidents were left to bleed to death if there was no 'black' ambulance to rush them to a 'black' hospital. 'White' hospitals were prohibited from saving their lives."

T he plight of those who live in Gaza and the West Bank is plainly different. Combating terrorism and maintaining security inevitably exact a high price. It cannot be denied that many Palestinians encounter hardship, privation and indignity. But where is the sympathy and compassion for those who live in squalid camps in various Arab countries?

In Lebanon, for example, some 300,000 Palestinian refugees live in dreadful social and economic conditions, many in overcrowded camps without essential utilities. In 2001, the Lebanese parliament enacted legislation prohibiting Palestinians from owning property. The law also restricts their ability to work in several areas. While a ban on Palestinians holding most clerical and technical positions was terminated - provided they obtained temporary work permits - more than 20 high-level professions are denied to Palestinians. In 2009, a mere 261 of more than 145,679 permits for non-Lebanese were issued to Palestinians. Moreover, Palestinians are not eligible for social security benefits. They are subject also to discrimination in respect of housing, property ownership, inheritance rights, and freedom of movement and residence.

Where is the expression of outrage at these measures? Why are Lebanon or Syria not "apartheid states"? Why is Israel singled out? Even in the case of Gaza and the West Bank it is mendacious and mischievous to describe Israeli policy as apartheid. Is the Israeli government really an "institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group?"

Whatever traction its advocates seek to gain from the South African archetype, the argument actually undermines the Palestinian cause. If there is injustice, let us call it by its name. Simplistic sloganeering is unhelpful. It is no less so than in the increasingly fashionable designation of "Holocaust" to instances of barbarity that, while plainly heinous, fall far short of the depravity of the Third Reich. There are, of course, all too many examples of egregious attempts at genocide around the world but they are usually confined to a single nation and spring from internecine tribal or religious divisions. The "final solution" - the wholesale extermination of the Jews (not merely of one country, but across all of Europe) - stands alone as a paradigm of inhumanity and iniquity. Let it be.

It is no answer to assert that these usages are merely metaphorical. Metaphor often enriches language. But it may also debase. The capricious abuse of "apartheid", as well as "massacre", "genocide", and "occupation," has become commonplace.

Factual and linguistic precision is more likely to generate solutions to intractable political problems. Reckless rhetoric may appeal to the demagogue; it has no place in the quest for peace and justice.

I have just discovered - thanks to Google maps - that Hendrik Verwoerd Drive has been renamed. It is now called Bram Fischer Drive.

Feeble reasons not to boycott

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:37:37 +0000

Earlier this month, the Board of Deputies declined to adopt a resolution urging "all those who oppose antisemitism to refrain from buying the Guardian or advertising in it". The proposal, tabled by Zionist Federation vice-president Jonathan Hoffman, had already been rejected by the Board's defence division but the division's own alternative motion (a wrecking tactic if you ask me), noting the paper's "continued biased and anti-Israel reporting", and deploring the lack of action by the Press Complaints Commission, was also rejected. So, apart from rejecting both propositions, the Board did precisely nothing.

But my concern today is not with the Guardian (for which I have written in the past), or with the concept of a free press - an argument that was, I gather, deployed by opponents of Hoffman's initiative. My concern is with the Board.

We can argue whether the Guardian really is an antisemitic newspaper and whether - if so - an Anglo-Jewish boycott of it would do any good. In the 1930s, there was a highly effective Jewish-led boycott of the pro-fascist Rothermere press. Lord Rothermere was a supporter of Oswald Mosley. Jewish companies were persuaded to withhold their advertising patronage from his newspapers. Rothermere soon came to heel, signalling that he had done so by ordering the papers to run articles praising the Jewish contribution to British life.

So the "boycott" was highly effective. But this took place three-quarters and more of a century ago, before the internet age. I rarely buy the Guardian, preferring for a variety of reasons (not primarily economic) to read it online. Much of its advertising is placed by international conglomerates which, however "Jewish" some of them might appear, would be unlikely, in today's economic climate, to forego exposure to make a political point.

But these are not my primary concerns. Even if it had led to nothing concrete - even if the editor, Alan Rusbridger, had stamped his feet and shaken his fists and declared that he was damned if he was going to capitulate to the Jews (or Zionists) and that he would rather the paper shut down than capitulate to a Jewish Zionist boycott (which I strongly suspect is what he would have done), there is no denying that the endorsement of Hoffman's motion would have sent a very powerful message. So, my primary concern is with the arguments deployed by those who opposed the motion, and who presumably lobbied to ensure that it was defeated and its message never sent.

There is, for example, the protestation of Jonathan Arkush, the Board's senior vice-president, who reportedly instructed the deputies that, although he himself found the Guardian to be "odious", he nonetheless believed that "a boycott would be counter-productive and would damage the Jewish community's reputation".

What did he mean by "counter-productive?" That the Guardian's circulation would increase? That more companies rather than fewer would rush to advertise in its pages? And what did he mean by "damage" to Anglo-Jewry's "reputation"? That instead of being thought of as a docile collection of trembling Israelites we would henceforth be viewed with a great deal more respect and even - who knows? - with a tinge, a smidgen, of anxious deference?

I am told that, within the Board's defence division, some arguments equally as foolish were also placed on the table: that the passage of Hoffman's motion might suggest that Jews control the media (we should be so lucky though, if this fear is genuinely held, then the Board really should condemn the closing down of Press TV, which Tehran is blaming on the Jews); that a substantive and perhaps heated debate on this would reveal that British Jews were not of one mind (when have we ever been so?); that the Board did not believe in boycotts (not even of Iranian oil?). But of all these arguments surely none was more brainless than the argument that the adoption of the motion would play into the hands of antisemites.

My friends, if the Board of Deputies of British Jews is going to allow antisemites to set the communal agenda - to tell us what we must and must not think and do - then we really are in serious trouble.

Israel's real Charedi revolution

Miriam Shaviv — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:37:37 +0000

Is Israel really in danger of being overrun by Charedi religious extremists?

It certainly feels like it. In recent weeks, Charedi activists have repeatedly excluded women from the public sphere, consigning them to the back of buses, forbidding them from walking on certain pavements, and even verbally harassing and spitting at young girls on their way to school for their allegedly immodest clothing.

Such is the climate of intimidation that, in the capital, secular ad agencies have stopped putting women on posters in order to avoid strictly Orthodox wrath.

But the hysteria - for such it is - must stop. Israel is not moving from democracy to theocracy and, despite the best attempts of their extremists, the Charedim are not going to force the rest of the population to submit to a misogynist future. In reality, the Charedi population is assimilating to the secular state, not the other way around.

Most of the incidents that have shaken Israel involve a very limited number of people. The gender-segregated pavements are confined to a few streets in Bet Shemesh, Bnei Brak and Jerusalem - which, despite its national significance, is increasingly regarded as Charedi or "foreign" territory by other Israelis. The schoolgirls are being harassed by a handful of men. This is not in any way to minimise the severity of these phenomena; they are despicable and must be stamped out. However, they pose no immediate threat to the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, mainstream Charedim are heading in a different direction. Even within the past five years, they have opened up significantly to the rest of Israeli society, with taboos such as IDF service and higher education softening considerably. Last year, out of 7,500 eligible Charedi youth, 2,360 enlisted or performed national service (up 284 per cent since 2008), while more than 2,000 men and women study in Charedi colleges, and thousands more complete other diplomas.

There are also more Charedim in the workplace than ever before, and wide exposure to the internet, with Charedi news sites thriving despite repeated rabbinic attempts to shut them down.

The irony is that it is this very positive process of integration that seems to be sparking the exclusion of women, as it terrifies the more conservative elements of the community. Faced with modernisation, they push towards isolation. They succeed partially because of the compliance of general society, which assumes that the most extreme views are the most authentic and representative; and also because the current Charedi leaders choose, actively or by staying silent, to reinforce this impression.

But, ultimately, the extremists cannot hope to reverse the slow but steady revolution. The most senior Charedi leaders are very old men (the top Ashkenazi rabbi, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who this month condemned serving in the IDF and studying secular topics, is 101). Soon, a generation that was born in the state of Israel and is more modern in its outlook will take their place.

Most importantly, integration is inevitable for economic reasons. Too many Charedim no longer want to live a life of poverty.

After the anger they have sparked, the extremists also face a secular backlash. It seems likely that journalist Yair Lapid, who has just announced his entry into politics, will campaign on a secularist manifesto, following the lead of his father Tommy, who won 15 seats for Shinui in 2003 on the same populist platform.

Should the secularists become pivotal to a coalition, they will hopefully resist the impulse to punish the Charedim and instead find constructive ways to encourage the masses who wish to study and work. That is what will really change Israel for the better, and is the real Charedi story today.

Ethical choices during desperate times

Kristen Monroe — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:17:31 +0000

We all have memories of events so important that we can identify exactly where we were when they happened, who was with us, what we wore, or where we sat. I remember the day my father told me about the Holocaust. We were in the car - a blue Chevrolet with plastic seat covers that cracked in the cold - driving to my weekly piano lesson. I can't recount exactly what he said, but my memory remains fresh with a sense of horror so overwhelming I could hardly breathe. And then he told me: "You must always remember that there are no depths to which man cannot sink, but there also are no heights to which we cannot soar."

I have often thought about that over the past 20 years, as I have conducted research on the Holocaust, trying to discover what made people respond so differently to the suffering of others. I realised the themes that emerged during the Holocaust resonate with other periods of genocide and other instances of ethnic cleansing, other acts of prejudice and discrimination, of group hatred, and animosity, just as they resonate with other instances of compassion, heroic altruism, and moral courage.

The psychological forces at work during the Holocaust can also be found in the psychology that underpins other political acts driven by identity, from prejudice and discrimination to sectarian hatred and violence on the one hand, to forgiveness and reconciliation on the other.

For my recent book, I looked at the psychological differences between those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, and the bystanders and perpetrators. Identity constrained choice for all of them. But the image people held of themselves in relation to others differed dramatically. Rescuers saw themselves as connected to others by bonds of a common humanity. Bystanders saw themselves as people who were alone, powerless to control their destiny, let alone help others.

Where bystanders saw strangers, rescuers saw other human beings. Significantly, the dehumanisation that accompanies genocide works through the reclassification of "the other", a process strikingly evident among ardent Nazi supporters. Remarkably, it was the Nazis who saw themselves as people under siege, who felt they needed to engage in pre-emptive strikes before they were overwhelmed by the so-called lesser beings, who they viewed as akin to cockroaches or vermin. (During the Rwandan genocide, those who engaged in the mass murder of others were called to action in a similar way - warned that "the cockroaches" were coming to overwhelm and infest their homes.)

Bystanders showed a stark sense of helplessness and moral insensitivity, a fact captured by Primo Levi's comment that, by "shutting his mouth, his eyes and his ears", the average German could build "the illusion of not knowing, hence not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his very door." I was surprised - amazed really - that only one bystander I interviewed expressed guilt or remorse for not having done anything to help. All the others claimed they did not know anyone who needed help. "I put my head in the sand, like an ostrich" I was told by a Dutchman who worked as a propagandist for the Nazis.

It is by now a sad truism that the phrase "never again" has not worked as intended. Too many other genocides and ethnic cleansings have occurred since the Holocaust. So what lessons do we need to focus on, in order to learn from the Holocaust, as we think about our responses to the suffering of others?

We all have an innate ethical framework that affects our moral choices, one that is closely related to our character and identity. To understand who will act to help others and who will stand by doing little or nothing - or even engage in the killing of innocent others - we need to understand the ethical frameworks people use to analyse and make choices. Perceptions of self in relation to others are especially important. Do I see myself as a good person who can help others or as someone who is weak? Am I someone put upon by others who needs to defend myself against external threats? What is my world-view? Do I care most about money or about the kind of person I am? What does it mean to me to be a human being?

"Beatrix", a Dutch bystander, explained that she was unable to help Jews because she had servants and could not hide anyone. Many rescuers, of course, worked with their servants to save Jews. But what struck me about Beatrix was her emphasis on how she had such a good life, with leisure time to play tennis and squash, because she had help at home. In her bystander mind, her good life was built on something that precluded her from helping Jews. This link gave Beatrix a particular ethical perspective, a way of seeing things that limited her moral imagination. She literally could not imagine how or what she could do to help others. Yet her cousin, "Tony" - a rescuer sentenced to death early in the war who lived in hiding for most of the Holocaust - managed to work to save hundreds of people. Despite his obviously vulnerable situation, Tony did not see himself as weak or helpless. "There is always something you can do," he told me.

How we see ourselves in relation to others both sets and delineates the choices we find available. Our identity is what moves us beyond general feelings of sympathy, sorrow, or even outrage, to a sense of moral imperative, a feeling that another's distress is directly relevant to us and thus requires intervention. Understanding the specifics of how a person's ethical framework develops as it does will help us understand why some people take positive action to help, when most of us ignore others' misery, thereby providing indirect or tacit support for the conditions that engendered such misfortune.

This can give us insight into the psychological forces driving responses to other genocides and to the forms of ethnic violence and prejudice that precede them. When set in the broader context of research on moral choice, it can shed light on one of the central themes in politics: how we treat others. Being aware of this in ourselves may help us as we, too, confront moral choices and attempt to learn from the Holocaust.

Historical understanding is essential

Rabbi Dr Jeffrey Cohen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:15:25 +0000

Last month, the House of Commons All-Party Group on History issued an alarming report showing that the subject was being increasingly neglected in comprehensive schools. In one Merseyside district, only four out of 2,000 18-year-olds passed the subject at A-level. Experts now speak of "the death of history" with rapidly falling numbers of pupils passing exams in it in deprived areas, and it becoming "virtually extinct" in many areas of the UK.

As Jews, our religious psyche is shaped by knowledge of our history, and our rituals and festivals are rooted in historical commemoration, so such indifference to the subject should be alien. Yet, to our shame, Jewish history is also widely neglected in our Hebrew classes, Jewish schools and yeshivot. Among the majority of right-wing Orthodox communities, approaching religious texts from an historical perspective is regarded as irrelevant, if not heretical. Such an attitude has gained greater currency among the United Synagogue rabbinate since the closure of Jews' College. With very few, notable exceptions, our rabbis are absent from any scholarly context.

Given that we are called upon to defend our historic right to Israel in the face of widespread revisionism and ignorance, coupled with the need to remind the world of the horrors of the Holocaust, any disinterest or lack of historical perspective among the gentile masses must also inevitably undermine our effectiveness in promoting the cause of "never again". The Torah also calls on us to be historically informed. "Remember the days of old; consider the epochs of many generations," it says in Deuteronomy, chapter 32. "Ask your father and he will tell you; your elders and they will relate it fully to you."

Some 20 years ago, I picked up my son's A-level history book. The section on the Second World War gave a clear and full account of the political events leading up to the war, and its military conduct, but allocated a mere page and a half to the Holocaust. The author, and the education authorities who selected the book, had blatantly deprived the maturing students from gaining an insight into the greatest atrocity in European history and the ability of racism to destabilise the world.

Is promoting understanding part of an historian's brief? Decidedly, it should be. At the heart of the study of history is diplomacy, the purpose of which is to find common ground and, above all, avoid conflict and war.

Hegel went further, defining political history as involving "the idea of the state as invested with a moral and spiritual force beyond the material interests of its subjects". Racism seeks to eradicate that moral and spiritual force, replacing it with social unrest, violence, subjugation, war and genocide. As the most extreme modern manifestation of racism, consideration of the experience of the victims of the Nazis should figure prominently and paradigmatically in every history syllabus.

Presenting a sanitised view of history is wholly unacceptable. The educationalist's brief must be to educate, not merely to impart facts; to stimulate the intellectual and emotional faculties so students can develop a mature approach to life and an informed, sensitive attitude when assessing social, political and moral issues.

The psychologist Erich Fromm distinguished between "having" and "being". The former simply possess the facts they have studied, enabling them to be recalled for an exam. The latter, on the other hand, enter into a "being" relationship with the facts, relating existentially to their implications, and becoming changed in character, outlook and behaviour, by their consideration.

How profound Edmund Burke's observation is that "those who don't know history are destined to repeat it". On a recent school trip to Auschwitz, as the Jewish students were standing in awed silence, a bus drove past. Its young Polish passengers started shouting antisemitic slogans. What a worrying manifestation of the dangers of not learning from history. It is a tragedy of our age that the popular desire to discard last year's fashion extends also to last year's, and last century's, history.

In the shadow of Wannsee

Shimon Samuels — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:47:05 +0000

The Holocaust is the most documented of genocides, yet the most covered up by its perpetrators and denied and distorted by its contemporary detractors.

All genocides have been couched in euphemism and their memory, after the fact, subject to political and mendacious assault. The victims are thus twice murdered, first physically and again as their name is erased from history – a phenomenon I have called “memoricide”.

Documents are a weapon in the battle for memory and in drawing its lessons. Thus in 1989 to 1991, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet Communism, the opening of the KGB, the STASI and other archives were a shock to established collective memory. An ineluctable wave towards transparency shattered the national myths of World War II combatants and neutrals alike: Austria (“the first victim of Hitler”), France (“resistance or collaboration”), Switzerland and Sweden (the meaning of “neutrality”).

The archives of the Holocaust - even audiovisual - have had limited effect in containing denial or sensitivity to resurgent antisemitism. The 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference provides a valuable opportunity to reengage the battle for memory, for – unlike any other genocide – it provides, in the Wannsee Protocol, a clear and horrifyingly dispassionate roadmap to mass murder. Albeit marked “Top Secret”, the 16th duplicate of 30 copies survived the war.

On 20 January 1942, fifteen Nazi officials, led by Heydrich and Eichmann, met in a lakeside mansion in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. Representatives of government ministries, the railways and the military mapped out the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. There they signed the Protocol, and effectively broadened the racial definition of the Jew in the widest sense, to include mixed marriages and their issue (“mischlinge”).
33 countries and jurisdictions were listed with a total target of “over 11 million”.

The list does not spare the neutrals: Ireland (4,000), Portugal (3,000), Spain (6,000), Sweden (8,000), Switzerland (18,000), Turkey (55,500).
No community is missed: from the USSR (5,000,000) to Albania (200).
Figures are up to date for 1942: Estonia (“Judenrein” – cleansed of Jews), Lithuania (34,000 i.e. a quarter million were already murdered).

Moreover, the six million victims – or eleven million intended victims – of Europe were only part of the plan. The ultimate objective was every Jew on the planet.

The Jews of North Africa then under Vichy France, and of Fascist Italy (Libya), were in line, as, indeed, deportations began from Tunisia. Had Rommel not been checked at El Alamein, the “Yishuv” of 560,000 Jews of British Mandatory Palestine would have been doomed.

At a House of Commons roundtable marking Wannsee – organized by the Henry Jackson Society and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – German historian, Matthias Kuentzel, showed a document on the Jews of Persia signed by Eichmann. Then occupied by Britain and the Soviet Union, Hitler planned an invasion to take the oil fields. Race theorists were debating whether Persians Jews were Aryans or Semites. The Eichmann document settled the question. They were placed under the dark penumbra of Wannsee.

Timothy Ryback, retained in the U.S. , was due to present a recently discovered 137 page report, “ Statistik, Presse und Organisationen des Judentums in den Vereinigten Staten
und Kanada” (Statistics, Media and Organizations of Jewry in the United States and Canada) compiled in 1944 by Heinz Kloss, marked on the cover, “Ex Libris Adolf Hitler”, “For Official Use Only” with an eagle clutching a swastika.

In the International Herald Tribune of 8 December, Ryback – author of “Hitler’s Private Library: The Books that Shaped his Life – calls the report “ a city-by-city, state-by-state guide to the location of America’s Jewish population… from Peabody and Brookline, Mass to Arkansas…” He continues, “In light of the Holocaust, it is a disquieting compendium”. We are checking into the volume’s authenticity before drawing further conclusions.

Born in the UK, even after the War, does not lessen my immense respect for the power of water. Thirty miles of Channel saved my family and the 330,000 British Jews on the list.

3000 miles of Atlantic is as much a safeguard today as those 30 miles. They provide no immunity.

The shadow of Wannsee’s reach was global and its contemporary implications terrifying. The Wannsee Protocol should be an early warning system to sensitize the ears of public opinion to impending danger.

Rise above the internet parapet

Marcus Dysch — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:24:25 +0000

My name is Marcus, and I'm a Twitter addict. I've been using the site for two-and-a-half years and, last week, sent my 18,000th tweet.

I average 20 tweets a day and interact with my 1,400 followers almost non-stop, at work and on holiday. You may think that makes me a bit of a sad case, but I've found the site to be a valuable tool. I've made contact with complete strangers to debate everything from the intricacies of the Middle East conflict to Hull City's promotion chances. It is usually entertaining, sometimes maddening, often trivial.

Yet as much as I have enjoyed joking with my favourite footballers and being directed to news from around the world, I have regularly seen examples of most offensive and vile abuse imaginable. Personally, I have received nothing worse than the odd expletive or playground insult but, for some, the experience is altogether more harrowing.

Writing this, I searched for the term "Jew" and immediately found someone posting their approval of Hitler's extermination efforts, another referring to "rich Jews", and one truly shocking tweet about brit milah which displayed sickening antisemitism.

Our recent story about Twitter's failure to act against a user who allegedly sent death threats and antisemitic abuse sadly came as no surprise. Presented with messages from someone threatening to "hunt down" and "beat to death" a stranger, the company said it did not have the "ability to investigate and assess" this. Look at the figures and the scale of the problem becomes clear.

Twitter has around 40 million users, sending more than 200 million tweets per day. If just half of one per cent of all tweets were racist, threatening or criminal, the company would face one million investigations daily.

Thousands of tweeters could readily confirm that the level of abuse totals far more than that. The problem is such that the Crown Prosecution Service issued a "New Year warning" to social media users, highlighting the risk of prosecution, and ultimately jail, for those who racially abuse others online. If we add Facebook and YouTube and their combined one billion users to the mix, and then throw in the immeasurable "blogosphere", it becomes utterly impossible to challenge, scrutinise and police online hatred.

Unsurprisingly, Jews and Israel are regularly on the front line for the cyber-bullies. While the Community Security Trust forensically records the hundreds of antisemitic incidents against Jews in Britain every year, the scale of what is happening on the web makes it impossible for the organisation to fully monitor.

The CST has regularly called on social media groups to police their sites and prevent the spread of extremism and abuse. But the charity recognises that proscribing an organisation or censuring an individual has limited impact. It takes seconds to set up another fake email address, username or profile and get back to spreading hatred.

Our community must be vigilant. The internet has been a game-changer for opponents of Israel. The proliferation of blogs, informal news sites and tweeters poses a challenge to those who seek to defend it.

Consider the case of one anti-Israel activist who previously would have spoken only at the odd meeting attended by a small number of like-minded people, but who is now at the forefront of the Twitter assault, sending 40 tweets a day to thousands of followers around the globe. He writes blogs for newspapers, magazines and independent sites, and has built up a considerable cult following among supporters who might otherwise have never heard of him. All of this without even needing to leave the house.

There are, of course, many Israel advocates using the web to promote their work. Within British Jewry, however, there are too many who are prepared to speak quietly in support of Israel, yet are reluctant to raise their heads above the parapet. The internet and its associated problems will not go away. As new technologies are devised, the age-old threat of antisemitism will find new vehicles through which to seep into our daily lives. We cannot eliminate it, but we must be adequately prepared for the battle ahead.

Don't tour with your eyes shut

Tracy-Ann Oberman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:52:30 +0000

There is a wonderful talmudic story that goes something like this: a father and son go for a walk, get lost and find themselves in a terrible area where the sick and dying and impoverished languish on the streets. The son sees the poverty and suffering around them and, with tears in his eyes, says: "Father, why doesn't God do something?" The father looks at his son's earnest face and replies: "My child, He did do something. He sent you!"

Last December, we booked a family holiday to Gambia. I had mixed feelings about the trip. Putting aside the vaccinations, malaria tablets and industrial-sized, nuclear-strength mosquito repellent that took up all the suitcase space, I was also conscious that Europe has, over the years, had an unhappy relationship with the continent.

Gambia is the smallest country in mainland Africa, ruled first by the Portuguese and then the British. From the 17th century on, as many as three million slaves were taken from the region during the centuries-long transatlantic slave trade. The country has been divided up, colonised, a victim of inter-tribal and civil unrest.

Now, it's economy is dominated by fishing and tourism. An estimated third of the population live on under £2 a day.

Our hotel in the capital, Banjul, was a loveless enterprise, with an apparent business ethic that places profit at the expense of guests' safety and enjoyment and, more importantly, its country's image.

On the doorstep of the main hotels is poverty beyond imagining. And, by my observation, in our hotel the indigenous staff were paid and treated somewhat unkindly by the charmless management teams who wandered around like lords of the manor.

It was not a pleasant trip and, as I grew increasingly uncomfortable walking on the adjoining beach to see men, women and children face-down asleep in the sand with nowhere to go, it occurred to me this must have been what it was like to come to an 18th-century plantation.

Outraged, I let off steam to Mr O, complaining about the privileged class working at full profit, exploiting the land and workers and offering little to the wider community.

In this world of fair trade and corporate social responsibilty, a leaf must be taken from the good book of Dame Hilary Blume (a Jewish gal to be proud of) who has actively promoted the cause of an ethical hotel management.

Profit from Dame Hilary's southern Indian hotel goes back into the betterment of the Mysore locals. The children are given excellent schooling, the hotel workers taught meaningful and sustainable skills that they take back into the wider community.

This has to be the future of tourism. Travelling like the son in the talmudic story, arriving with generosity in your heart to want to make a change while hopefully having the beautiful holiday you deserve in the process.

Why not Chief Rabbi Boteach?

Louise Mensch — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:50:52 +0000

Let's start with the obvious. It is not for a gentile to "endorse" any candidate for the position of chief rabbi. Nor did I, in my letter to the JC which, last week, inspired a leader and an article. What I said was that I welcomed the possible addition of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to the list of candidates the community may consider for the post. That is something I stand by, and I was disappointed to see Rabbi Boteach's candidacy dismissed on the basis of his popularity in America.

I knew Shmuley long before he became famous. He had started the L'Chaim Society at Oxford University, and I asked if he would consider admitting me. He was welcoming, and talked to me for a long time, describing how a brick wrapped in rags and intending to be set alight had been thrown the previous night into the room where his baby was sleeping. That was my first intimation as a naive Christian girl that antisemitism remained a major problem - as it still is on many UK campuses in 2012.

Judaism is not a proselytising religion, and Shmuley never tried to convert me. But he did welcome me to Chabad and allowed me to attend its Thursday-night suppers and debates. I even spoke in one, arguing in favour of intermarriage (Shmuley was virulently against and I was unanimously defeated). Hearing him teach from Torah and Tanach was a beautiful experience that stayed with me. He is a serious theologian who has successfully promoted the idea that Jewish values, tradition and culture have much to offer and teach the non-Jewish world.

Why, then, should any gentile care about who is considered for the chief rabbinate? Eighteen months as an MP has taught me that any friend of Israel and our Jewish community must care. Lords Sacks and Jakobovits were both elevated to the House of Lords and, while there is common consent that the chief rabbi should take his place there, who will advocate for other Jewish leaders, beyond the United Synagogue, to have equality with Christian bishops?

Too often, the anti-Israel bias in the UK's media is so intense that Jewish correspondents tell me they feel like giving up; they are almost resigned to living with hostility from all sides. My comments in the JC and my Telegraph article on the Fogel massacres touched a nerve, not because others hadn't said the same but because the community felt that, finally, the lack of coverage had been noticed. The BBC denied to the select committee that any anti-Israeli bias existed.

The community needs a strong voice. The names of Rabbi Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa; Rabbi Michael Melchior of Israel, and Britain's own Rabbis Ephraim Mirvis and Harvey Belovski have been mentioned as candidates. Whoever is chosen, it will be good for the country if the decision on the chief rabbinate gives an opportunity to highlight the difficulties facing our Jewish community, from rising antisemitic attacks to the threats of academic boycotts.

It will be great to find a chief rabbi who will not remain silent against bias, and who will remind our nation of its long and glorious Jewish heritage - the Jewish Museum displays a 13th-century mikvah, excavated in the City of London 10 years ago.

I hope a vibrant contest for the chief rabbinate will focus the nation's attention on the contribution of the entire community, and I look forward to hearing Lord Sacks's successor making that case in parliament. Rabbi Boteach's entry into the contest would surely attract interest. For that reason alone, I hope he throws his hat into the ring.

You failed as David's keeper, Ed. Here's what Cain did next

Norman Lebrecht — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:39:35 +0000

It's difficult to feel sorry for Ed Milliband. Even Labour diehards cannot suppress a smirk as over-eager Ed slips on his own banana skins. When he rings Diane Abbott on live TV to berate her for a Twitter error, the smirk turns to a smile. And when, a day later, his own "Blackbuster" tweet gives racial offence, chuckles are heard all over Westminster.

His blue-sky thinker Lord Glasman announces that Ed has "no strategy, no narrative and little energy". And the leader pops up on a relaunch with phrases like "there is another point which speaks to my agenda about responsible capitalism".

It gets worse. This week, Mr Miliband performed a perfect Nureyev-like pirouette. Instead of fighting Tory cuts, Labour now agrees to a freeze on spending - including public wages - but will try to find a better way of allocating scarce resources. Within 24 hours, two of the biggest unions - the very unions whose support propelled Ed into office – were writing in the Guardian of their dismay at the u-turn and threatening to disaffiliate from the party. MPs spoke of "overwhelming disappointment" among party members, and it doesn't get much worse than that.

Hapless or hopeless, Ed Miliband can simply do no right - and I think we all know why.

You don't have to be a Bible scholar to grasp that stiffing your brother is wrong. Rabbis go into painful contortions to explain away Jacob's deception of Esau with a mess of pottage, and even Jeffrey Archer, slippery as sin, cannot quite exonerate Cain over Abel. Doing your brother out of his birthright is about as low as you can sink on the moral barometer. Doing him out of his life's dream is unconscionable.

The most devious efforts of Labour's spin doctors - and BBC4s unmissable Danish political drama "Borgen" rightly credits London as the world capital of the dark arts - will never erase the memory of that day at the 2010 Labour Party conference when Ed, with a grin, took from David all the older brother had ever wanted.

Raised by doctrinaire Jewish Marxists, the brothers were likely never told bible stories over Friday night dinner and probably think them unedifying. Yet, even unbelievers accept that there may be lessons to be learned from folk legend and Ed would do well to pay attention to the Cain story if he is to extricate himself from present agonies. There are bookies all over the UK offering odds on his demise and a pair of avid Balls, Mr and Mrs, anticipating his fall. Reading the papers over breakfast cannot be much fun. What Ed needs is a back-to-basic course in core texts.

The story of Cain has inspired few great poems and no grand operas. It's a narrative of sibling jealousy in which Cain, failing to please the Creator with a vegetarian offering, goes into a rage at the divine acceptance of Abel's meat dish. So he picks a fight in an empty field and kills innocent Abel. Asked by Heaven where the lad might be, he replies: "Am I my brother's keeper?'

That's about as far as nursery teachers read. But early commentaries reveal an extraordinary transformation in Cain after this. According to the Midrash, once Cain finally confesses to the killing he becomes a perfect penitent. He goes into exile with a mark on his brow, raises a family and builds a city. He names it after his son, Enoch, who "walks with God"and is of such noble character that several Christian churches include him in their calendar of saints. Enoch is a credit to his father, erasing his disgrace.

How did that come about? The 12th century scholar David Kimchi, one of the great influences on the English Bible, wrote that Cain was personally instructed by the Creator in the art of repentance. He becomes a symbol of hope to mankind that no sin it too great to be unforgiven.

The late Lubavitcher Rebbe reflected that Cain was the very model of the ba'al teshuvah, the person who wants to be reborn, fault-free. The road to repentance runs straight: he leaves home, gets married, does good deeds and finds fulfilment in his children's achievements.

Might that be Ed's salvation?

The trouble with Ed is that he lacks points of reference to life and legend. Politics has been his education from nursery school up and, apart from two terms teaching economics at Harvard, he has no concept of a world in which most people get up in the morning and go to bed at night without worrying, or knowing, who is prime minister. I suspect the reason ambulencemen are trained to put that question to trauma victims is to make sure they don't have a Miliband in the cab.

For want of a third dimension, Ed is struggling to escape from the worst kind of nightmare - one of his own making. There is, however, a simple solution. Ed Miliband will look much better to history and his bathroom mirror if he quits now as leader, quickly before he's sacked, enters political exile and applies his fine analytical skills to some higher social purpose.

Any half-qualified Hampstead shrink will assure him that life will be much happier once he has addressed his fratricidal error, apologised and made amends. If his repentance is sincere, he can still make a comeback ten years from now. And what's the alternative? If things continue as they are, there's not much hope for Ed. The truly radical, redemptive option for the Labour leader would be to adopt the life of Cain.

Charedi bus battle will motor on

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:39:34 +0000

So much has been spoken and written about the goings-on in Bet Shemesh, and more generally about their ramifications for the wider issue of the relationship between Israel's Charedim and the rest of Israeli society- and indeed between Charedim and the rest of the Jewish people - that you might think nothing more remains to be said. I believe, however, that there is more to say. But let me first put down a couple of markers.

The first is that I bear the Charedim no malice. If some of my Jewish brethren wish to dress in a distinctive way, good luck to them. If they wish to assert that their standard of kashrut is better than mine, I defend their right to so assert - though I do expect, in return, that they defend my right to denounce such an assertion as conceited and just plain wrong. If they wish to delude themselves that they are an elite (a word that I have often heard used), and are closer to God than I am, then I declare that they should be absolutely free to indulge in such delusions - just as I demand the freedom to publicly denounce such thinking.

The second marker that I need to put down is that although - very commendably -there have emanated from the Orthodox world a great number of condemnations of Charedi excesses in Bet Shemesh and elsewhere, none in my view approaches the eloquence of the censure delivered by the British-born rabbi of New York's Lincoln Square synagogue, Shaul Robinson. Take a tip from me. Go to the Lincoln Square website, click on "recent posts" and then on Rabbi Robinson's post of January 1 entitled: "The curse of violent extremism." On the subject of Charedi immoderation, and of the correct halachic response to it, there's simply nothing I've read that begins to match his measured, damning critique.

Nonetheless I don't think the last word has been spoken on these grave matters. Focussed as we all must have been on events in Israel, we owe it to ourselves to step back from the trees and take the measure of the forest - or rather the jungle, in which Jew denounces Jew and Jew attacks Jew, all in the name of the Almighty.

The fact is that some good may yet come of the disgraceful scenes enacted in Bet Shemesh, if for no other reason than that they have exposed the genuine fault-line that separates the protagonists. The Battle of Bet Shemesh was not between Charedim and the secular world, which Charedim have long ago written off and have not the slightest interest. The Battle was between Charedim and datim - other Orthodox Jews. To be sure, the trigger was real estate: who else (if anyone) is permitted to live in areas self-reserved for Charedi families? But the underlying cause was the war declared by charedim against any who dare pronounce themselves Orthodox but not of the charedi persuasion.

This war has been going on for a long time, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust the Charedi world can certainly claim to have significantly extended the territory (metaphorically and literally) under its control.

One facet of this aggrandisement is represented by the ArtScroll publishing phenomenon, through which Charedi rabbinic authorities have been able to overturn Orthodox interpretations of liturgy not to their liking, and to impose instead a deliberately over-stringent canon of Jewish law. There is no Orthodoxy but their Orthodoxy, they declare. Ultra-Orthodoxy is the only true Orthodoxy: the only genuine Jewish lifestyle is the Charedi lifestyle, and the only true expositors of this lifestyle are Charedi rabbinic expositors. Nothing else matters. Not the law of the land. Not the goyim. And certainly not other Jews, corrupted as they must be by the secular world and all that it promotes.

These are, in brief, the crude but central characteristics of the Charedi mind-set. Believe me, Bet Shemesh was just a minor skirmish. So the Charedi foot-soldiers got a little out of hand. The battalions will regroup. And remember that the Charedim have learnt how to play the political game, and maximise their influence through the votes they cast. Gender segregation on buses? So why not on trains? Enforcing a dress code in Bet Shemesh? So why not in Hackney? Or Hendon? Or Higher Broughton?

Why not indeed?

Good to talk? Useful, anyway

Jonathan Freedland — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:39:33 +0000

First, I should declare an interest. I am a friend and admirer of Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, leader of Britain's Masorti movement. But I also like and admire the JC's political editor, Martin Bright. So where to stand after Rabbi Wittenberg was branded by Bright a "useful idiot" for participating in an event also addressed by an official of the East London Mosque, an institution that has hosted speakers with vile views?

Bright's evidence cannot be brushed aside easily. The uncomplicated response would be to boycott the ELM and anyone connected even tenuously to it, denying them whatever legitimacy they gain from a Jewish presence.

But it's not so simple. For one, Wittenberg is not the only rabbi to have had dealings with the ELM. Just weeks ago, four rabbis - including the Orthodox Dayan Binstock - spoke at the mosque's community centre. Yet the JC has not denounced Binstock as a "useful idiot", nor has it railed against the Orthodox Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue, whose president tells me they have a "wonderful relationship" with the nextdoor ELM. In fact, I've separately learned the shul was delighted to accept a £5,000 contribution from the mosque towards a new roof - made with no publicity - and was touched when the mosque halted building work to ensure they could daven undisturbed on Yom Kippur. Are the Fieldgate Street congregants "useful idiots" too?

Odder still, it's not as if Wittenberg and his New North London shul have a formal tie with the ELM. What roused Bright's ire was that Wittenberg spoke at an event also addressed by an ELM representative. The event was organised by London Citizens, a coalition of some 200 organisations, including trade unions and faith groups that campaigns for, among other things, a living wage. Bright branded the rabbi a "useful idiot" not because Wittenberg had embraced some fire-breathing extremist, but because he works with a group, London Citizens, one of whose many affiliate organisations has invited speakers with noxious views.

In similar vein, last year the JC denounced the Pears Foundation for giving money to a group which had, unbeknownst to Pears, once invited to a reception a man who, unbeknownst to the group, had once known the 7/7 bombers. The target - Pears or Wittenberg - is attacked not for consorting with the devil, but for consorting with those linked to those who are linked to the devil.

Of course, Jewish leaders must be vigilant. Some hardcore Islamist reactionaries do seek validation by association with credible figures. The safest response would be to circle the wagons and meet no-one outside. That way we could be sure there were no unsavoury characters lurking in the shadows. We would talk only to ourselves.

Nonsense, comes the reply: there are plenty of Muslim moderates we could meet. Trouble is, most are rapidly deemed beyond the pale by our community's self-appointed gatekeepers. Mohammad Aziz of the ELM, for one, has impressed Jewish groups with his openness and - confirming that the ELM is no monolith – attended Limmud. But he has been monstered by the anti-Islamist Harry's Place blog as a dangerous radical. Are there more than a handful of Muslim leaders the watchdogs would deem acceptable? And would that handful be as unrepresentative of British Muslims as, say, Jewish radical anti-Zionists are of British Jews?

It's easy to have dialogue with those you agree with. Far harder to talk to those who disagree, forcing them to rethink the stereotypes they have of your community. That's what Rabbi Wittenberg does. It would be more comfortable for him to stay inside our cosy Jewish bubble but he dares venture outside. He should not be condemned for that. He should be praised.

Church's apathy on antisemitism

Nick Howard — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:38:46 +0000

In the past fortnight the police and the FA have convinced many that they are facing up to racism with the seriousness it deserves. Yet at the same time the Church of England has given the opposite impression.

In October Reverend Stephen Sizer posted a link on his Facebook page to an antisemitic site called "The Ugly Truth" which featured images of blood-sucking Jewish vampires and Nazi-style caricatures of Jewish men. Three months later, Rev Sizer took down the link.

The Diocese of Guildford claimed, on behalf of Bishop Christopher Hill - Rev Sizer's local bishop - that the reverend withdrew the link "when the nature of other articles on that site was drawn to his attention". The particular article that he'd recommended hadn't itself been antisemitic, so a potentially damaging "racist vicar" story became one of a "naïve vicar". But the bishop's statement was untrue.

I emailed Bishop Hill on November 16, expressing my concern, and pointing out that in 2010 a bishop was suspended for inappropriate use of Facebook (posting unpleasant remarks about the royal wedding). Bishop Hill replied that week, promising to speak to Rev Sizer "about his use of Facebook". But six weeks passed before the link was removed. It was only taken down then because the JC was looking into the story.

The Church comes out looking blithely unconcerned about racism. Perhaps Bishop Hill forgot to inform Rev Sizer that his Facebook page was a portal to a Jew-hating website, showing how little he cares about antisemitism. Perhaps he did inform Rev Sizer, but was ignored, in which case the reverend would be confirmed as an antisemite and the bishop would again show himself to be apathetic about racism.

Rev Sizer has a long track record of arguably antisemitic behaviour, so the Church could hardly have been encouraged to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's described IDF members as "Herod's soldiers operating in Bethlehem today" (King Herod ordered his troops to kill all the baby boys in and around Bethlehem, in the hope of murdering Christ). He's promoted boycotts of McDonalds, Coca-Cola, L'Oréal and Nestlé on the basis that they "channel their profits to the Zionist agenda". He has alleged Israeli complicity in 9/11, and argued that Israel's actions towards the Palestinians mean "the Holocaust has been perpetuated over the past 40 or 50 years". His associates include Palestinian activist Raed Salah; Zahra Mostafavi, the Ayatollah Khomeini's daughter; and Israel Shamir, who warns of "Jewish mind control on a world scale".

The MacPherson report into Stephen Lawrence's death defined institutional racism as "the collective failure of an organisation" regarding "colour, culture, or ethnic origin". The Diocese of Guildford has fallen foul of that.

It's worth noting the Church's utterly unethical handling of the media. To stifle a negative story, the Diocese of Guildford issued a deliberately misleading statement. Even if the bishop forgot to speak to Rev Sizer in November, he was certainly informed about the matter on December 27, when an article about it was posted on the blog "Harry's Place". Yet Sizer only removed the link a week later, under duress. Not only does this episode raise the question of why the Church wants to protect a man like Rev Sizer, it raises the issue of how the Diocese of Guildford can justify intentionally misleading the media.

One would hope that the Church would set a moral example to organisations like the Met and the FA. Sadly, it seems it's the other way round.

Charedi leaders must ﬁght to save soul of their community

Naftali Brawer — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:42:46 +0000

It is now several weeks since a Charedi man in Israel spat at an eight year old Orthodox girl because he deemed her dress immodest. In response to secular and mainstream criticism, a demonstration was held in Jerusalem where some Charedim wore yellow stars or mock concentration camp uniform, claiming they were being treated by secular Israelis as European Jews were by the Nazis. Many Orthodox Jews and rabbis have strongly condemned, these atrocious acts. Yet even those who, to their credit, have spoken out, have failed to grasp the enormity and scope of the problem.

Many condemnations conveniently marginalise the perpetrators as a lunatic fringe totally unrepresentative of the wider Charedi population. The sad truth is that they are a by-product of the contemporary Charedi community. Failure to recognise this is disingenuous and dangerous.

When Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzchak Rabin the religious Zionist community underwent a painful process of self-reflection. It was understood that while Amir acted on his own accord he could not be conveniently divorced from the society in which he was raised and that those who taught him that land was more important than human life must bear some responsibility. Similarly, in the wake of last summer's riots political leaders and thinkers began asking whether there might be something wrong with wider society.

The Charedi community is insular, highly regulated and extensively influenced by its rabbinical authorities. So how can it shirk responsibility? The zealots did not emerge in a vacuum. Each of these men has a rabbi whose word is law. Where were these rabbis when their adherents were forcing women onto the back of buses, spitting, and protesting in concentration camp garb?

In fact the ultra-Orthodox Eda Haredit communal association, which organised the demonstration, reportedly defended the behaviour of the protesters. An official said that the group had "no regret at all" for the use of Holocaust imagery. "During the Shoah they tried to eliminate us physically and now the Zionists and the media are trying to eliminate us spiritually," he said.

It does not take much courage to condemn grown men for spitting at a child, but it does to admit that such behaviour might reflect a deeper malaise. Sadly too few Orthodox rabbis and spokesmen have been willing or able to concede this.

What we are witnessing is a ripple effect. At the outermost fringe are those who spit at little girls. This group is by all accounts a small minority. Yet it is a ripple created by a swell of consecutive inner ripples that start with disregard for those who adhere to a different lifestyle, followed by intolerance, and then hatred. At the core lies a problematic contemporary Charedi ideology which, like a heavy stone cast into a pond, is the cause of these ripples. If Charedi rabbis and leaders were serious about dealing with the problem they would ask difficult questions about their ideology. Has it become too focused on the details of Judaism at the expense of its bigger picture, on what one believes rather than how one behaves, or on the man to God relationship over that of man to man?

Such critical self-examination is difficult. The Hebrew term for it is heshbon ha-nefesh - taking account of one's soul. At stake here is not the actions of several hundred zealots but the health, vitality and very soul of Charedi Judaism.

The sad thing is that Charedi Judaism was not always like this. Its great 20th century leaders - from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurbach - would have been appalled by what passes today as Charedi ideology. Non-Charedim did not always agree with their worldview, but it was impossible not to be inspired by their deep love and commitment to Torah and to humanity. They embodied the dictum that the Torah's "ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace". They added rich texture to Judaism. Their absence leaves a gaping hole.

Charedi leaders must move beyond strongly-worded condemnations of the symptoms and begin targeting the cause. They must try to recapture what was best about Charediyut while offloading its uglier current manifestations.

For this to happen Charedim need space, not to be faced with hysteria, accusation and name calling. No one is in the mood for critical self-reflection when they are being demonised. It is time to start putting things right. I hope that Charedi leaders succeed at this painful but crucial process not just for their own future but for the vitality they can contribute to the Jewish people.

L'Chaim! Time not to detox

Simon Round — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:34:38 +0000

January is traditionally the month when the nation attempts to clear its collective hangover and contemplates abstaining from drink for a little while.

This year, the government has got involved. It has launched an alcohol awareness campaign and is now advising that we all abstain from drinking for at least two days a week.

This obviously does not apply to me - after all, I have been aware of alcohol for some time. And being Jewish, I have never reached the point where I could maintain my drinking for more than five consecutive days. My Ashkenazi DNA dictates that, after four days of drinking, a glass or two of wine with dinner, my resolve collapses and I hit the Diet Coke.

That is not to say I don't try hard. At Freshers' Week at university, all those years ago, I realised that most people who hadn't attended a Jewish secondary school "went out for a pint" at the weekend. And I quickly woke up to the fact that this meant drinking more than "a pint". It also meant waking up the following morning feeling rather ill.

At first, I didn't take to the new lifestyle. I quite liked that buzz from the first drink, which I had only previously experienced during kiddush, but I wasn't so sure about the lying-flat-out-in-a-puddle-watching-the-sky-spinning-around-very-fast bit.

However, I realised that, for much of the population (including my new university friends), drinking large amounts of alcohol without falling over was equated with manliness rather than the risk of cirrhosis. So I persevered with the drinking. I put in punishing hours of training, often in my own time, until I was able to hold my own at the bar with friends and colleagues. I even started to enjoy it.

Of course, the party could not last. Inevitably, as I reached my 30s, the atavistic pull of coffee and cake had lured me back into the patisserie - I still partook in a little of the dark stuff every now and then but it tended to be a rich chocolate torte.

However, like other Jewish stereotypes, I was also neurotic about my health. And I began to pay attention to medical research that indicated that moderate drinkers enjoyed better heart health later in life than teetotallers and even had a higher life expectancy.

I modified my behaviour, forcing myself to make regular visits to the drinks cabinet. I also began to realise that the government should be putting out a separate message for the Jewish community. The rest of the country may be at risk of liver failure, type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease as the mass orgy of binge drinking continues but, equally, we Jews are risking our own health by not drinking enough.

So, as your unofficial and unelected health spokesman, I appeal to you to include at least two days of drinking into your weekly schedule. Women should aim to drink one to two units on these days, while men should aim for three to four. I realise that the social pressure to drink lattes may undermine your willpower but if you have the determination to succeed then you, too, will enjoy that intoxicating feeling of, er, being intoxicated.

Join us to lead the Jewish future

Maurice Helfgott and Ruth Green — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:29:46 +0000

Britain is not a revolutionary nation and neither is its Jewish community. But we are part of an innovative, dynamic society and, over the past 20 years, we have enjoyed great progress in many aspects of British Jewish life and communal infrastructure.

More change is on the way that will profoundly influence our community's development over the next decades. Britain is no longer a society where Jews are one of a few minority exceptions. In our open society, we are all free to choose our own path.

The explosion of mobile internet has increased access to people, information and organisations - opening new relationships and opportunities for all. The 2011 census will highlight radical changes in our community's demography, from the rapid growth of the Orthodox and Charedi community to the rise - from less than a quarter, a generation ago, to almost three quarters - in the proportion of children who experience some full-time Jewish schooling. As we approach the 64th anniversary of Israel's independence, we will have to tackle our community's evolving relationship with an evolving Israel, as well adapt our defences to ever changing forms of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

The New Leadership Network (NLN) has been quietly establishing itself as an informal network of 40 or so individuals who put significant personal energy into professional and lay (pro bono) leadership roles in many British Jewish activities and organisations.

As we get on with our own "communal day jobs", we thought it would be useful to consider: "What kind of Jewish community do we want to be part of and contribute towards building? Could we pursue our personal and organisational priorities collaboratively and perhaps with some broad consensus around common values?"

In extending our invitation to others, we also ask: To what extent should we act in ways that strengthen the whole community, versus efforts that forward the interests of our particular niche? How open are we? How confident versus how fearful? How much do we prioritise our core and how far do we reach out to the edges of our community?

Case by case, answers won't be black or white, but perhaps the shade of grey should be informed by a desire for British Jewry to be confident and proud; to invest heavily in ourselves; to take the risk of being open and outward-looking; to actively welcome those at the edges, to connect with one another; and to make choices with the interests of wider Jewish community and British society in mind. In short, to be Jewish together, a group of individuals forged in peoplehood - "Am Yisrael" - with shared values and a common purpose.

Our goal as the NLN is to benefit each other and, indirectly, our organisations and the community at large, by broadening relationships, helping each other, sharing resources, and learning about and debating issues and opportunities.

We are well aware that there are complexities in the relationship between Orthodox and Progressive Judaism, and that these inform much of how the community is organised and how individuals Jews identify themselves. We're not aiming to address these difficulties, seek reconciliation, or even promote religious plurality. Instead we take a pragmatic view that some things are irreconcilable, but nevertheless we can capitalise on our respective views, commitments and experiences, and use them for the greater good of the community.

In a number of discussion sessions to date, we identified four broad themes and articulated how our values might be reflected in each: Engaging the future generation in Jewish life; Redefining our place in the world; Deepening our network of caring and social justice; and getting the practicalities right.

While God is a subject often avoided in lay communal discourse, we believe that the British Jewish community is in essence a faith community. But whatever our own definitions of our community, we hope that everyone could still be able to be inspired and engaged by our common heritage, traditions and people-hood.

Being pragmatic, we aim to have a modest but material and positive, indirect influence on the overall path of the British Jewish community in the next 20 or so years.

We would like to invite everyone who contributes to significant Jewish organisations in meaningful senior leadership roles; trustees or executives, rabbis, head teachers or philanthropists. Please do join us.

Sex for family viewing

Julie Burchill — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:24:10 +0000

The Jewish people generally have such a talent and a liking for sex, and yet, from the desert to the Pale, have had to follow so many rules and regulations about when and how they could have it. So it was inevitable that, when they finally got to create their own secular empire, they might get a bit carried away.

In his great book, An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood, Neal Gabler traces the rise of the men from Eastern European immigrant families who wove a new reality from their dreams. Main Street USA and the cowboy were just two Hollywood icons, remodelled from something rather less appealing, by men eager to reward the country that had given them a chance not just to survive, but to thrive.

But it was in the realm of romance - that slow-motion, high-investment Rohypnol - that they truly dazzled. In 1922, the studios hired the Republican politician and Presbyterian elder, Will H Hayes, as a censor after too many risqué flicks and off-screen scandals had tarnished the Hollywood sign. Movies moved from starring underdressed slave girls in biblical silents to fast-moving, motor-mouthed married couples who slept in separate beds and, when daring to use one of these for spousal smooching, kept one foot on the floor.

If, in private, the casting-couch and the Reno divorce - just a short, private plane-ride away - continued to cater to the whims of the big men of the studios, for public consumption "repression was the mother of the metaphor," as the poet John Cooper Clarke once said.

From the mid-1920s to the end of the Second World War, a matchless selection of Jewish screenwriters and directors served up to Jewish studio heads the kind of casually dazzling dialogue which these days only features in re-runs of Frasier, film having long ago returned to the kiss-kiss-bang-bang mire of its speechless origins.

The dazzling repartee of Hollywood's Golden Age took place because people couldn't have sex on-screen; the banter was a hothouse hybrid of foreplay and swordplay.

When, in the 1960s, the old Jewish studio system crumbled and the new generation of film-makers ushered in an era which decreed that "actress" would once again be interchangeable with "stripper", the writing was on the wall for the verbal pyrotechnics that the Jews used to fill in for sex. And it was writing of the most basic and joyless kind.

Serious films about sex always make me laugh, and Shame - in which beautiful Michael Fassbender and beautiful Carey Mulligan have loads of sex with other beautiful people and it's all meant to be horrid - is no exception. Being told by the film industry - of which the sexual exploits of the toilers therein is legend - that lots of sex with different people is bad for you is like being told by a male doctor not to drink, or by a female doctor not to have an elective Caesarean. Hypocrite, heal thyself.

Today's Jewish writers and directors have generally given explicit cinema sex a body swerve. When they do engage with it - as Darren Aronofsky did, directing three Jewish stars (Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder and Mila Kunis) in his unintentionally hilarious examination of the perils of sexual repression and too-tight-tutus - Black Swan - the results can be embarrassing.

Save your blushes and the price of the popcorn, because the smartest, most Jewish dialogue can be heard on American TV imports these days. To misquote Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond, the Jews are still smart - it's the movies that got stupid.

Easily offended? You really should be

Jackie Mason — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:31:20 +0000

Why is antisemitism so popular and prevalent all over the world? Why does it continue, unchecked despite the horrors of 70 years ago? People who care about the fate of the Jews are always searching for subtle, indefinable reasons to explain the continuing intensity of anti-Jewish hostility and hatred. The answer is far from mysterious.

As a matter of fact, the truth is so obvious that you'd have to be brainless not to see it.

My honest view is that as Jews we do little if anything to fight back against such prejudice. It seems to me that everyone knows that whatever the crime committed against a Jew, the only price you'll pay will be that of the ride to the crime scene and back. Then, instead of blaming the criminals, Jews will get involved in an orgy of self-reproach and guilt. And after blaming themselves, they'll start blaming each other.

Somebody will be screaming: "It's your own fault. Why would you be walking in that neighbourhood at two in the morning?". The other one will argue: "Why would I think they would recognise that I am Jewish?" and another voice will yell: "At least you could've been smart enough to wear trainers."

Then somebody says: "Let's report this to the police," while somebody else is saying: "Are you crazy? What if they find out we reported it? Do you want to get us all killed? Right now they don't know who we are. Let's just get out of the neighbourhood".

It's because antisemites are aware that these are the typical reactions of Jews to any violence committed against them that they feel free to launch their attacks whenever they please. Is it any accident that in Britain and Europe you hear about a rising tide of anti-Jewish attacks, but you rarely hear about the same thing against Muslims? (I know that even right now, you the reader are trembling in fear of what I might write about the Muslims.) And the sad truth about Israel is that its very existence serves as either a cloak or a spur for such bigotry.

While I defend anyone's right to censure the Israeli government, the fact is that too often such criticism is either a coded means of attacking Jews or it has the unintended consequence of feeding and encouraging antisemitism.

Take the former MP for Birmingham Ladywood, Clare Short, who has attacked Israel as the main cause of violence in the world, when it is obvious that for her and her like the only real crime is that the country still exists - something she seems to consider an offense to human decency.

What right do Israelis have to try to live in peace with the Arabs and constantly thwart every attempt of the Palestinian suicide bombers to annihilate their whole population, she seemed to ask? Ms Short claims that the Jews in Israel practice an even more egregious form of apartheid than that which existed in South Africa. Why does she and others call it "apartheid", when every Arab has equal access in every school, to every job, every health-care service and every unemployment benefit? When Arab citizens even hold office in the Israeli parliament and in every other branch of the Israeli government?

Are these people so ignorant that they don't know that none of these opportunities would be granted to any Jew living in an Arab nation? Besides, how would a Jew be able to achieve any of these same opportunities in Arab countries when, in most cases, it wouldn't even be safe for them to live there?

When they attack Israel in such unbalanced, irrational and extreme terms, they simply give licence to thousands of antisemites to pedal the kind of bigotry and hatred from which Jews have suffered for so many hundreds of years.

But these people are likely aware, as are antisemites all over the world, that you suffer few consequences by attacking Jews, particularly if you do so under the cover of attacking Israel.

If people really thought that Jews could represent any kind of risk, they would cower before expressing such hostility, as I believe they now do with Muslims. When was the last time that an Englishman made a hateful speech against Muslims? Not that I'd approve of that. On the contrary - but it seems to me that people are so fearful of Muslims that there are afraid to even say "hello" without apologising. British and American people are now begging forgiveness from Muslims for things they don't even remember doing.

And don't get me started on George Galloway, who makes Clare Short look like Simon Wiesenthal. Mr Galloway is yet another person who attacks Israel while making nice with terrorists, dictators and some of the most vicious antisemites on the planet.

The point is this: when you criticise an Israeli administration, you express views (rightly or wrongly) about the policies of a particular party or group of politicians. When you attack Israel, you express hostility towards an entire population, a nation whose founding and continuing purpose is to provide sanctuary to one of the most oppressed peoples in the history of mankind.

Of course, if you don't think they should be given such sanctuary, then that's another matter - but bear in mind that you'll find yourself in the good company of a host of despots and tyrants.

Hostility to Israel is often used as a blanket prejudice, a blunt instrument with which to attack Jews in place of any reasoned criticism of the Israeli government, which - just like any other government - cannot be exempt from censure or disapproval.

However, such bigotry is far from new. Take one of my country's former presidents, Harry Truman, in the White House at the time of Israel's independence. Jews still wax lyrical about his love for the Jewish people. Whenever two Jews get together and mention Truman, out comes the story of his Jewish business partner, Eddie Jacobson. What they forget is that Truman actually found Jews distasteful and treated his partner with utter disdain. This is evidenced not least when Mr Jacobson pleaded with his former associate, by now the US President, to recognise the state of Israel. Truman's reaction does not bear repeating on the pages of a family newspaper.

As reprehensible, if not worse, was another recent president - Franklin D Roosevelt. At the height of Hitler's atrocities many Jews died needlessly because Roosevelt ignored their plight and, in some cases, even helped Hitler along by refusing to open up US borders, thus sending thousands back to their deaths in the camps.

Was this born out of antisemitism? Or plain indifference? In the end, is there any distinction?

And just the other day the US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, came awfully close to finding antisemitism excusable in some circumstances. Calling modern Muslim hatred of Jews a "different phenomenon" from other kinds of antisemitism, he declared: "It is a tension and perhaps hatred largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem."

And this coming from the son of a Holocaust survivor.

But of course, instead of firing him, President Obama remained mute. And as a result, whether by design or just by plain stupid omission, my president has given a quiet thumbs up the idea that it is "OK to dislike Israel".

Unfortunately, as America goes, so goes the world. But sadly, as the Haggadah says, "in every generation one rises up to destroy us".

Unlike Britain's Jewish community, which spends much of its time trying to blend into the background, many self-proclaimed Muslim leaders spend time demanding respect. We dare not paint the wrong cartoon, sing the wrong song, write the wrong book, look the wrong way, or even laugh without an explanation.

The Jewish people will never survive if we don't learn a great lesson from the power of the Muslim population.

If this world had the same fear of offending Jews as it has of offending Muslims, attacks on the Jews would never occur. Outside Israel, people never feel threatened when attacking a Jew, because he's a little guy with glasses carrying a briefcase who, in case of an attack, will pull out a fountain pen rather than a gun. He won't be ready to shoot the attacker; he'll be busy looking for a piece of paper to write his name down.

"The attacker" always knows that when his victim is a Jew, he won't get hit or hurt. The Jew won't fight. He'll cry, beg, scream or run. The attacker knows he can't lose life or limb because the victim can't fight; he's only preparing to sue.

As I said, this applies to the Jews outside of Israel. If we in the Diaspora continue to follow this pattern of traditional helplessness, instead of emulating the Israelis, who are ready to fight and survive at any price, we will continue to be hounded by antisemitism for the rest of our lives.

We must stand up and be counted, we must show how proud we are to identify with a people surrounded by nations who are committed to their destruction. Even if it infuriates the Claire Shorts, George Galloways and Howard Gutmans of the world.

It invariably takes more courage to stand up against prejudice that than to join in with it, but is it too much to ask that our leaders display such courage from time to time?

And by the way, in case you think that- despite everything I'm saying - the battle has been won and that we no longer need Israel to fulfil its historic purpose, take a look at what is happening in Hungary right now.

Respected public figures- newspaper editors and journalists, judges, political commentators, human rights campaigners (a number of them Jews) - are being removed in favour of members belonging to the ruling, extreme right-wing party. Only last week Istvan Marta, director of Hungary's National Theatre, was forced out by the government and told he would be replaced by an actor who recently campaigned for the right-wing extremist, antisemitic Jobbik Party and by a playwright who is a professed antisemite.

If that doesn't sound horribly familiar and frighten the hell out of you, it should.

But in spite of all that, consider this: if the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.

He has made a marvellous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.

He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind.

All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Good question. And no, those aren't my words. They were written in 1897, by another American, the great Mark Twain.

'Zionist' has become a dirty word

David Aaronovitch — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:31:20 +0000

The other day, on other pages, I took a blast at the more unlikely supporters of Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul. I wrote what was true, that Paul was part of an extreme isolationist and anti-government tendency on the US right, and one that had flirted extensively with folk possessing dodgy views on questions such as race.

Among the more hostile responses was a common theme. My criticism, I was advised, was motivated by Zionism. I was against him because he was against war on Iran, Muslims, Muslim countries, wars Israel wanted and that "Zionists" therefore sought to arrange.

These days, the Z word crops up in almost any collection of critiques of things I write about foreign policy, or even domestic questions. The word's meaning, as far as I can tell, is anyone with a Jewish connection who advocates a position that the critic imagines might be to Israel's benefit. It is always bad.

"Zionist" is used to mean, in effect, a Jewish racist who subordinates conscience to the interests of the second homeland.

This is not remotely what it meant even a very few years ago. Wikipedia still gives Zionism to be what I grew up believing it to be - "a political movement that, in its broadest sense has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people". Now, I was brought up in a secular, left-wing household, and didn't feel the need to have or maintain a Jewish homeland. I would never urge a fellow Briton to make aliyah. Consequently I am not a Zionist.

But I was not an anti-Zionist either. Why make a key part of your political stance an opposition to one particular expression of nationality? I am, after all, happy for Palestinians to have a country, too. Ditto Slovaks. Slovenians. Montenegrins. Canadians.

Reading the most recent book attributed to the late essayist, Tony Judt (in essence, a series of edited conversations), I was struck by what he said was his mother's attitude towards Zionism, that it was "just a showy form of Jewishness". That was essentially my reaction. Those who declared themselves anti-Zionists tended to be genuine Stalinists, some ultra-left lunatics, Arab nationalists and that was it. You would get a Workers Revolutionary Party member or fellow-traveller writing a play suggesting that Zionists had collaborated with Hitler, the production puffed in their Gaddafi-funded publications, but otherwise Zionists were as offensive as Catalans.

Judt's journey intrigues me, because in some ways it describes why the word Zionism went from analytical descriptor to term of abuse. Judt at 18 lived on a kibbutz (he continually stressed the sexual attractiveness of 1960s Zionist maidenhood). But after 1967 he discovered an Israel that wasn't sex and oranges - one with racists, nasty people, raisons d'etat and similar blemishes. Over time, he went from keen teen Zionist to advocate of the bi-national state - ie no Jewish state.

Of course the warty Israel was what any grown-up would have expected. In 1977 I met a perpetual Jewish adolescent in Tel Aviv who told me that I must know that "the Jewish heart is a good heart". I knew no such thing; not about Jews, not about anyone. Having no illusions, I had no disillusions. The fantasy farming socialist Israel had held no particular attraction, so there was no disappointing epiphany. When Judt discovered the inevitable reality of Israel, it seems he blamed the whole country and its people for his disappointment, to the extent that he could write screeds on the Middle East without any reference to other countries in the region.

The disappointment of the intellectuals helped transform the Z word from neutral to faintly demonic. One problem with this is the respectability it has lent conspiracist views, particularly among educated Muslims. In one way it's funny. The ability to believe both that Ed Miliband is a "Zionist Jew" and that, a few months later "Miliband Calls for Break-Up of Murdoch's Zionist Media Empire" suggests an imperviousness to the ludicrous. Such blog headlines, often linked to on Twitter, are worryingly common.

It's not just blogs. Andrew Gilligan counted 32 mentions of Zionism and Zionists compared with 30 for Transport for London in Ken Livingstone's autobiography. And I bet that the references weren't complimentary.

Unbalanced forms of balance

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:31:20 +0000

I have some sympathy with Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of Liberal Judaism, who has found himself at the receiving end of communal opprobrium following his decision to participate in a sixth-form study day at the Gryphon Church of England school, chaired by the Bishop of Sherborne, Graham Kings.

The event was focused on Israel and Palestine. But its objectivity and impartiality left much to be desired. Partly organised by the anti-Israeli Palestinian Christian movement entitled "Friends of Sabeel", aided by members of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, its spotlight was unashamedly on the privations allegedly inflicted upon Arabs by Jews in what was once part of Mandate Palestine.

The event was planned around last year's controversial Channel 4 series, The Promise, and the guest of honour was its writer, Peter Kosminsky. Now, for all the praise heaped upon it from a technical point of view, The Promise demonstrated how truth can be shamelessly obscured by the fog of dramatic licence. In that series, the truth - the whole truth - was brazenly sacrificed on the altar of pro-Arab and anti-Jewish half-truths. This work of fiction was condemned by the novelist Howard Jacobson, the historian David Cesarani (who rightly accused Kosminsky of "massive historical distortion") and by my fellow JC columnist Jonathan Freedland (who condemned Kosminsky for deliberately abusing Holocaust imagery in the pursuit of his highly questionable ends).

Other participants in the Sherborne event included Dr Hassan Qasrawi (described on the Salisbury diocesan website as "a Palestinian refugee") and Deborah Fink, a singer and leading Jewish anti-Zionist activist, whose multifarious accomplishments have included demonstrating against a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet in London in 2010 (because, she explained, the Quartet had "not once condemned discrimination or the repression of the Palestinians") and taking part in the deliberate disruption of a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms last year.

With participants such as these, and with the additional attraction of hearing what the organisers described as "the Palestinian Christian perspective" - not to mention the chance to question "human rights monitors" working on "a World Council of Churches project in Israeli-occupied Palestine", the overall thrust of the day could hardly have been in doubt. Rabbi Rich's presence, therefore, went a little way towards redressing the balance. He was right to have accepted the invitation to participate in the event. I would have done the same.

But, in accepting, I would have laid down some ground rules. Rabbi Rich is a patron of the Zionist Federation. But his brand of Zionism can hardly be considered mainstream. He is, for example, on record as denying that the so-called "one-state" solution (involving the dismantling of the Jewish state and the absorption of its citizens within a state with a Palestinian Muslim majority) is "by definition" antisemitic, whereas I would have thought it obvious that any denial of the right of Jewish self-determination must, by definition, be so.

Of course, he is entitled to his views. But it would have been to his credit had he insisted on a greater degree of balance among the speakers who addressed the 300 or so sixth-formers –- for example, insisted on the presence of a Jewish refugee expelled from an Arab country, or of some spokesperson for the Israeli government.

But let's not deal too harshly with the good rabbi. In accepting the invitation, he did indeed permit himself to be used - his presence lending a veneer of "balance" to an event that was grossly, deliberately, imbalanced. But in chastising Rabbi Rich we would do well not to forget that the event was hosted by and boasted the imprimatur of the Church of England, about whose anti-Zionist credentials there can surely no longer be the slightest doubt.

Singer who gave voice to a state

Norman Lebrecht — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:56:15 +0000

Mention her name to any Israeli man or woman over the age of 50 and watch the eyes mist over and a weird growling noise arise from the diaphragm. Yaffa Yarkoni, who died in Tel Aviv on New Year's Day at the age of 86, after a long decline from Alzheimer's, disease, was the nation's nearest equivalent to Vera Lynn.

At the first whiff of war, Yaffa would be whipped on to radio and television to put the public's ears and fears to rest with a repertory of 1948, back-to-wall nostalgia. "Just believe, a day will come," she sang. And they did. "Hen efshar - it's possible," was another of her upbeat exhortations.

She was not the only singing icon of the independence war. Shoshana Damari, a gritty Yemenite belter, had blazed the way with the song Kalaniot and other soldiers' favourites. But, over the years of on-off fighting between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Yarkoni won more hearts and minds with her corner-café style delivery, in a voice low enough to be baritonal yet somehow still maternal and consolatory. When she sang Bab-el-Wad with violin accompaniment, it was a communal kaddish for the poorly armed young men who died to keep the road open between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as the fledgling state struggled to survive.

She was herself a war widow, of previous vintage. Born near Tel Aviv in 1925 to parents of Russian Caucasian extraction, she got married at 18 to a lad in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, only to lose him the following year in one of the last battles in Italy.

From singing in her mother's cafe, she became a soloist in the infant Israeli Army's first singing ensemble (after a stint as a wireless operator), and then a star on record.

What she sang did not just raise morale at the front and distract the worriers at the rear, it actively defined the values that became part of Israel's national lore. The sounds of Yaffa Yarkoni conjured ideals of self-sacrifice, austerity and a "purity of arms" that was the founding principle of the Israel Defence Forces.

In 1956 and 1967, when trouble loomed, she was brought out before the cameras, hair still jet black, to sing another of her torch songs, Hayu zmanim - "those were the days".

They brought her back once more in 1973 but the world had moved on and the magic failed to work. For what Yaffa Yarkoni provided was more illusion than therapy, and the illusion wore thin when exposed to a conflict that was no longer critically existential.

Nor was the message in any sense innate. Her most popular song, Be'Arvot Hanegev, was a piece of political agitprop that could have been written by a Kremlin propagandist. In fact, it was. The tune is a Russian ballad by Leonid Shokhin, the words by Petr Mamaichuk. Composer and poet met in a Russian hospital ward in 1943.

Their original lyric, "At the edge of a forest, an old oak tree stands / Under that oak tree, a partisan lies", became in Rafael Klatchkin's Hebrew translation: "On the plains of Negev, dew falls where it lies / On the plains of Negev, there a brave man dies."

In the clinching verse, a grieving mother stands by the grave when another soldier steps up and cries "imma", offering to be her son. It is a classic Russian moment - a denial of human individuality in the service of the motherland - and it formed part of the new state's core cultural heritage.

Yaffa remarried after 1948, had three daughters and stayed out of politics most of her life until an outburst during the 2002 Palestinian intifada - "We are a nation who went through the Holocaust, how can we do such things to another nation?" - earned her the opprobrium of right-wing nationalists.

It hardly dented her iconic status, however, and her death was mourned this week with uniform solemnity. "She was the nation's nightingale," read a trite tribute from President Shimon Peres. She was, more significantly, the right voice at the right time - the hour of need. That voice is imprinted forever on Israel's history.

Clarkson, mangez votre coeur

Peter Rosengard — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:53:54 +0000

One morning in June 1990, I walked into a sports car showroom in Wandsworth,

"Hi, I'm Peter Rosengard."

"Like the car?" The owner asked. "There's a French car called a Rosengart."

"That's unbelievable!" I said. Naturally I had to have one. So what if it was one letter out. Rosengart, Rosengard, who cares? "I'll take it!" I said. "Where is it?"

"They stopped making them in 1952. Lucien Rosengart, one of the original designers of the Citroen, set up his own business in 1928. I hear of one for sale perhaps once or twice a year."

Six months later, he called me. "Mr Rosengard? I've found you your Rosengart! It's in a village two hours drive outside Lyons."

A very old man with no teeth and a battered blue beret answered the door. A young man appeared behind him: "My uncle doesn't speak English; he's asked me to translate." The old man poured us each a glass of rough red wine and slowly started to talk. He'd bought the Rosengart in 1936, when he was 19. When the Nazis invaded, he joined the Maquis. The Gestapo came to the village and took the wheels off his car.

My car fought the Nazis! It was a Jewish war hero!

"He loves the car," his nephew said, "but he says he wants it to go to a young man like you who can make it beautiful again." We walked over to a barn. It took the four of us to get the door open a few feet, and there it was --- a very, very rusty little old car. There were two ducks fast asleep on the half-eaten back seat. Cobwebs hung from the windscreen.

"Elle est tres belle, oui?" said the old man.

"Back in the kitchen. I asked his nephew the price. It was £1,000. From the window, we saw his uncle standing with his hands on the bonnet in a silent farewell.

The restorer said it would take six months and cost £2,000 to restore. Five years and £20,000 later, I was having breakfast at Claridge's when Roman, the commissionaire, came up to my table: "There's a car been delivered for you, sir. It's got your name on it."

Parked outside the main entrance, in front of the line of chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces, was a very small, highly polished, dark-blue car with two enormous gleaming headlights. My Rosengart! It looked like it had just left the showroom. On the bonnet grille, black metal letters spelt out the name, "Rosengart".

I jumped in and turned the key. Nothing happened. It took Roman and three young luggage porters to get it rolling down Bond Street. I stopped at the red lights on the corner with Grosvenor street. "Morning Mr Rosengard. What a lovely car! What is it?" Harry the newspaper seller called out.

I leant out of the window. "It's a Rosengard, of course." I accelerated off to a dizzy top speed of 15 mph.

I've still got it; we celebrated its 75th birthday last June. "Darling, you know the Rosengart will be yours one day," I said last week to my daughter Lily, aged 16.

"Thanks, Dad, that's lovely of you but, if you don't mind, I think I'd prefer a Fiat."

Belief without a faith to follow

Amol Rajan — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:52:04 +0000

To a much greater extent than is generally recognised, those of us who don't believe in God often long for the enduring consolations of faith. In my experience, this happens on two main types of occasion.

It happens, first, when confronting mortality, especially that of loved ones. And it also happens when attending religious rituals which illuminate three ideas beyond the scope of secular experience: communion - that is, communal piety - transcendence, and the idea of the sacred.

Many years ago, as a reporter on the Independent, I covered a story that caused me to attend Friday prayers at the East London Mosque. I presume readers of this publication are very familiar with ceremonies of mass observance but, despite my devotion to most sports, I am not, having been raised by Hindu parents who never stipulated a family holiday to the Kumbh Mela pilgrimage.

I was therefore dazzled by the sight of several hundred men, who were arranged in parallel lines, their feet pressed against one another to form a human chain and keep out dark spirits, descend en masse to the floor upon the imam's instruction.

Islam places great store in the umma, the community of believers, but is far from unique in its evocation of this communal piety. At midnight mass over Christmas, in St Mary's, the extraordinary, 13th-century parish church of the village of Great Brington in Northamptonshire, the Christian version was impressed upon me.

When members of the congregation kneeled to take communion, as the robed messengers in front of them invoked the blood of Christ, precisely the same instrument of community-building was on display.

And why might the irreligious yearn for it? Only because the strength of solidarity, of fellow-feeling born of humility before God's awesome power, is something secular folk find hard to replicate.

Sport, tribal allegiance, and political ideology (especially in its totalitarian form) are capable of generating their own forms of solidarity, of course. Yet perhaps they are more fragile, and less hallowed, than that which faith creates. Secular societies are in fact ruled by repressed religion, precisely because religion answers enduring human needs that secularism generally cannot.

One of those needs is for transcendence, the idea that distinguishes religious thinking from philosophy. Judaism excels at this, not least by appearing to convey meaning from beyond the skies. Faith, and the rituals it inspires, raises the believer if not to a different metaphysical realm, at least to the sense that such a realm is possible, or indeed exists.

This sacred realm offers hope of realising that ultimate human ambition: eternal life. Even if we do not wish this for ourselves - for example, when we are old and frail - anyone who has grieved will know how natural it is to wish it for others.

Affection, or at least sympathy for these three ideas - communion, transcendence, the sacred - distinguish the atheist from the anti-theist. The latter thinks God's existence a kind of tyranny; the former recognises its improbability, but wonders what benefits might be accrued from a kind of benign celestial dictatorship.

The late, great Christopher Hitchens and noble comrades of his, such as Richard Dawkins, would dismiss such a phrase as oxymoronic; and of course it is the very nature of faith to accept oxymorons. But I am tempered in my solidarity with those men by a lust for the reassurances, and thrills, of religious experience, knowing them to be ultimately out of reach.

Religion, in Philip Larkin's unimprovable phrase, is indeed "that vast moth-eaten musical brocade / Created to pretend we never die". Yet even we sceptics have been known sometimes to pretend.

Pollard and Bright's Islamist fear betrays our community's values

Keith Kahn-Harris — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:08:04 +0000

It is part of the job of the Jewish Chronicle to raise difficult questions. One such troubling question is how far London Citizens, a broad-based coalition of religious and community groups within which some supporters of Islamist extremism are involved, is unwittingly providing a way for fundamentalist groups to gain respectability. At one level then, Martin Bright's denunciation in these pages of New North London Synagogue (and in particular its Rabbi, Jonathan Wittenberg) for cooperating with London Citizens, appears to be nothing more than Anglo-Jewry's principle newspaper doing its duty.

However, while in theory Martin Bright and the JC have done nothing more than their job, in practice the controversy over London Citizens has exposed a disturbing trend in the paper's relationship to the British Jewish community.

The London Citizen's controversy is revealing of the chasm between two kinds of politics. New North London Synagogue and other Jews involved in London Citizens are exponents of a 'politics of engagement' that prizes dialogue, cooperation and community above all. The JC under Stephen Pollard and Martin Bright is an exponent of a 'politics of exclusion' that prioritises principle and ideology and seeks to marginalise anyone that crosses certain 'red lines'.

Both politics have their place and both have their weaknesses. To some extent Martin Bright has highlighted a certain naivety in those in the Jewish community who advocate a politics of engagement. But I would argue that this whole controversy has ultimately been much more revealing of the blindness that an excessive commitment to a politics of exclusion can produce.

Martin Bright is a highly experienced journalist whose contacts in the political sphere are second to none and a principled opponent of fundamentalist extremism of unimpeachable integrity. But his knowledge of the politics of the Jewish community is limited and – more disturbing – he does not appear to be aware of his limitations. It is clear that he does not have proper contacts at New North London Synagogue or even a desire to understand where those within the shul are coming from when they advocate involvement in London Citizens. Synagogues and communities are not the same as political parties and it takes time to understand how they work. The fact that Bright is not Jewish is irrelevant – like a good policeman a journalist has to take the time to understand his 'beat'.

Bright's limited understanding of the community has been encouraged by the turn that the JC has made under Stephen Pollard's editorship. The front pages are dominated by Israel, antisemitism and Islamism – important issues but not the only ones that impinge on British Jews. With some honourable exceptions (such as the recent expose of inhumane child burial practices and the current series on Anglo-Jewry in 2012) news of other Jewish communal issues is all too often relegated to short features and the community pages. I am not convinced that Stephen Pollard is that interested in much of what goes on in the Jewish community. I have yet to see him tweet about bread and butter community issues, rather than national politics. His presence at Limmud and other communal events is sporadic.

This apparent lack of concern for Jewish community is also embodied in the JC's tolerance for uncivil and abusive language. Martin Bright's use of the term 'useful idiot' to describe Rabbi Wittenberg is symptomatic of an editorial regime that does little to encourage more measured language.

In short, the JC's current politics of exclusion appears to be based on a lack of concern for Jewish community. A narrow range of ideological issues and a desire for controversy have been foregrounded with little or no regard as to what the consequences will be. For sure today's JC is always lively – Stephen Pollard is a gifted controversialist and his willingness to publish this piece is certainly a point in his favour– but it is often destructive entertainment.

This lack of concern for Jewish community is the reason that the JC's concerns about London Citizens have faced such resistance. Martin Bright has raised a vitally important issue that needs to be discussed, but the way he has raised it has been self-defeating. Ultimately, a more communally-rooted JC would be a much better platform from which to ensure that legitimate concerns are heard and acted on.

Acting as cover for extremism is the real problem

Martin Bright — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:06:34 +0000

As news stories go, it's about as straightforward as they come. A group of community activists keen to recruit in the Jewish community turns out to have a trustee who has made a public statement celebrating antisemitic terrorists who murder Jews. What's more, one of the founder institutions of the organisations is a mosque which regularly hosts antisemitic hate preachers from the Middle East and South Asia.

And yet, for exposing the links between London Citizens, the "community organisers" best known for their campaign on the living wage, and the Islamic extreme right, the Jewish Chronicle is accused of carrying out a "Jihad against the Jews". The title of a hastily arranged meeting at this year's Limmud would have been deeply offensive if it hadn't been so infantile.

I realise that my description of Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg as a "useful idiot" in these pages has caused anger and upset among his congregation at New North London synagogue and his supporters in the wider community. My words were carefully chosen and I stand by them. The Rabbi himself defends his decision to share a platform with Mohammed Abdul Bari of East London Mosque at the end of a London Citizens parade last month. This is a mosque which recently advertised a discussion with Sheihk Saad al-Beraik, a Saudi cleric who has called for the enslavement of Jewish women by the Palestinians.

He also told the Jewish Chronicle last week that he has not challenged London Citizens about its deputy chair of trustees, Junaid Ahmed, who spoke during Operation Cast Lead in praise of Hamas leaders.

This seems like a strange abdication of responsibility. Rabbi Wittenberg would surely never take the same approach with a senior member of the British National Party. Apparently he doesn't "seek to confront people with a record of difficult views", but would confront abhorrent views if he encountered them directly.

The message to those who want Rabbi Wittenberg to act as cover for extremism is simply not to tell him to his face that they hate Jews.

I do not accept Keith Kahn-Harris's false dichotomy between the "politics of engagement" and the "politics of exclusion". Engagement for the sake of engagement is pointless and intellectually lazy. In order to engage, it is essential to know with whom you are engaging. Rabbi Wittenberg and those within the Jewish community who feel it is a good idea to make common cause with London Citizens and East London Mosque have stubbornly refused to do the most basic due diligence. The mosque has always been heavily influenced by the Jamaat-i-Islami, the South Asian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the "politics of exclusion" this party has few rivals, promoting hatred against Hindus, women and other Muslims who do not follow its austere vision of Islam. At present, several prominent members of the party face trial for war crimes associated with the Bangladeshi war of independence in 1971 (Jamaat backed Pakistan in the struggle). One of these men, Delwar Hossein Sayeedi, found himself at the centre of a storm in 2006 when he was invited to speak at East London Mosque. When members of the Bangladeshi community argued that Sayeedi should never have been issued with a visa, Mohammed Adul Bari leapt to his defence.

Have Rabbi Wittenberg and his supporters ever raised concerns about war crimes in Bangladesh or East London Mosque's relationship with Jamaat-i-Islami's politics of hate? I somehow doubt it.

I am told I would take a different approach if I had better contacts within New North London Synagogue. Mr Kahn-Harris might want to ask himself who it was that raised questions about London Citizens if not concerned members of that congregation.

I would be happy to develop the relationship further, but have not been invited by anyone within the Masorti movement to share the intelligence I and others have about their unsavoury partners.

To those who argue that engagement with the Islamic extreme right helps bridge divisions between our communities, I ask the following question: where is the evidence that Rabbi Wittenberg's involvement with London Citizens has stopped a single antisemitic hate preacher coming to East London Mosque?

Riots reveal cracks in society

Melanie Phillips — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:43:16 +0000

When it comes to shooting itself in the foot and other essential bits, Israel undoubtedly takes the all-time prize.

For the past few weeks, Israel has been convulsed by how women are treated by fanatics in the strictly Orthodox community. Women are being segregated on buses serving Charedi neighbourhoods. At an IDF base, women soldiers were barred from a public singing ceremony; at another, religious male soldiers walked out to avoid hearing women sing.

These concerns became uproar after a "modern orthodox" eight year-old, Na'ama Margolis, told a TV interviewer she was terrified of walking to school in Bet Shemesh after being spat on and cursed because her demure attire was considered not modest enough. Appallingly, pupils have been running this gauntlet of hatred by neighbouring Charedim since it opened months ago.

Journalists and police who descended on Bet Shemesh were subsequently pelted with rocks and eggs by Charedi rioters. Suddenly, the deep resentment among secular folk towards all religious people boiled over in a national explosion of rage. Although the abuse was blamed on a few hundred fanatics from one particular sect, all of the strictly Orthodox were cast as deranged bigots.

For intolerance is by no means confined to these communities. Many secular Israelis not only demonise Charedim but also subject the modern Orthodox, who work, pay taxes, fight and die for their country with exemplary courage, to similar disdain.

These events played into the hands of the Israel-bashers. Ludicrously, Hillary Clinton even suggested that Israel, the one Middle East country where women have full equality, was in danger of becoming another Iran.

Still, to dismiss these events as the acts of a few marginal extremists simply won't wash. To bully young girls for "immodesty" is vile, but it is the tip of an iceberg. The Charedi leaders and rabbis could stop this public intimidation. They choose not to do so.

Moreover extremism is spreading, with the "price-tag" attacks on mosques and army outposts. The result is that the entire Orthodox world has been besmirched. The essence of the problem is not just the chronic absence of Orthodox leadership. It is also a systematic failure of politics and law enforcement. Israeli society largely shrugs off abuses in Charedi neighbourhoods - such as signs instructing women to keep to one side of the street - as if they belong to a different country. They have been allowed to become a law unto themselves.

Now there is pressure for change, which has led to the complaint that the rights of the Charedim are being stifled. This was expressed in the repellent demonstration in Jerusalem last week, where Charedim sported yellow stars of David and claimed that the public and media were treating them as the Nazis treated the Jews. Such a comparison illustrates the depth of moral, intellectual and religious degradation within the strictly Orthodox world.

If society is not to disintegrate into warring tribes, there must be must be one law for all. Any benefits received by Charedim must be linked to duties they perform to the state. But Israel exempts them from this civic bargain, giving them benefits regardless of their failure to pay taxes or serve in the army (although that is changing). With their numbers rising exponentially, it is small wonder they cause so much resentment. But that is down to a systemic failure by the state itself.

They are not held to account because of the disproportionate power they wield through Israel's lunatic political system. The risk of Israeli society fracturing around the toleration of the intolerable will only be averted if this is reformed and the Charedim lose their power to hold society to ransom.

Decades apart, lives cut short by hate offer same lessons

Gillian Walnes — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:43:16 +0000

In January 1997, I had the privilege, as executive director of the Anne Frank Trust, of introducing Doreen Lawrence to Tony Blair, just a few months before the landslide that would sweep a Labour Government to power. At that time, the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence was a four-year-old unsolved crime case, one that was hardly mentioned in the press and had long moved on from being discussed over dinner tables.

The occasion of the meeting between Blair and Lawrence was the launch of a new Anne Frank travelling exhibition, called A History for Today, at Southwark Cathedral. As owners of the new exhibition, we had chosen to include a panel about Stephen, to show that hatred could destroy another talented teenager's life, not in 1940s Holland, but just a few years earlier right here on the streets of London.

In the days before we knew how to scan and email photos, Doreen Lawrence had most generously entrusted us with a collection of precious-beyond-words, original photographs of Stephen as a baby, toddler, child and teenager. We photographed his schools certificates, the t-shirt he wore when he ran a marathon, and his sketches of buildings (like Anne Frank's ambition to be a published writer, Stephen already knew he wanted to be an architect). The panels showed the senseless cruelty of a life of promise that was cut short.

The morning at Southwark Cathedral was poignant and memorable, and proved to be significant for our country. I was told a few years later by Lord Boateng, then Home Office minister, that Blair had been so impressed and moved by Doreen's description of Stephen's life and death that he vowed then and there that, should he become prime minister, he would commission a proper inquiry into the handling of Stephen's murder. He also vowed on that morning to introduce a UK-wide commemoration day to remember the enormity of the Holocaust. And so we saw the birth of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Holocaust Memorial Day.

It is, of course, sad that it has taken so long for the conviction of murderers Gary Dobson and David Norris to come. But advances in science march on, and in the same way that those of us who have lost loved ones to cancer come to face the knowledge that, had they lived longer, their disease may have been successfully treated, the Lawrence family will understand that forensics have come on enormously to allow cold cases to be reopened.

The Macpherson inquiry, its recommendations and changes show how far we have come in this country since the early 1990s. There is still prejudice suffered by those who are visibly different, whether they are of black skin or wear Chasidic dress, or whether they are Jewish students on campus described in derogatory terms as "Zionists". But, while never comparing the two events, we are proud to have highlighted the links between a Jewish child victim of the Holocaust and contemporary murderous hatred. The reflective comments made by children at our exhibitions can attest to the power of making those connections and raising awareness of the senseless killing of a schoolboy.

As we cheer around the country at the news of justice having at last been done, I recall two poignant instances. Doreen was at Durham Cathedral, and was quietly contemplating one of Stephen's photographs featured in the exhibition. It was a typical school photo; Stephen grinning widely at the camera, with a wide gap between his front teeth.

As I put my hand on her shoulder Doreen looked at me and said: "Do you know, I told him off about that photo when he brought it home from school. I told him he shouldn't have smiled with such a big gap." How that loving mother must have regretted those words.

A couple of years later, I was with Neville Lawrence, Stephen's heartbroken father, appearing on Esther Rantzen's talk show to discuss fathers of murdered children, such as he and Otto Frank, who chose to educate other young people to continue their children's legacy.

Neville told me that Stephen had actually been one-eighth Jewish as Neville's own grandmother had been a white German Jewess who had emigrated to Jamaica.

Bigotry is bonkers. We are all connected. And, like Neville, like Doreen, and quite possibly even like the parents of murderers, we all have the same concerns and hopes for our children.

How not to choose our leaders

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:43:16 +0000

I've said it before. I'll say it again. The Jewish communities of the UK are run by some of the best brains in the land: captains of industry; giants of commerce; leading lights of the learned professions; men and women who are at the tops of their respective trees. But when it comes to running the affairs of British Jewry this experience and wisdom disappears, to be replaced by (at best) cack-handedness of a high order or (at worst) plain unadulterated foolishness of the rarest vintage.

Take the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation, whose leadership (the women and men of the ruling Mahamad) could not have made a more perfect mess of the appointment of a spiritual head if they had set out with the express intention of creating one and then wantonly wallowing in it.

The current spiritual leader is Rabbi Dr Abraham Levy, son of an illustrious Gibraltarian family and much esteemed (though not - to be frank - universally so) amongst the venerable S and P families, some of whom can trace their own descent to the Iberian Jewish refugees permitted to dwell here by Oliver Cromwell. Levy is not only a consummate religious leader. He is also a shrewd businessman and a most successful fundraiser. But the highly successful Naima preparatory school which he created in west London is not formally part of the S and P's "cathedral" synagogue at Lauderdale Road, nor is his prestigious semicha programme. Levy will reach his contractual retirement age as spiritual leader, but not as head of the school or the semicha programme, in two-to-three years. Until then he is the S and P's sitting tenant: immoveable, well beyond the Mahamad's control. Nor should we forget that Lauderdale Road has its own synagogal head, Rabbi Israel Elia - another hard-working and widely-respected sitting-tenant.

Was it wise, therefore, for the Mahamad to have sought to appoint a successor to Levy - and, moreover, to have sought for this Rabbi David Bassous, around whom controversy appears to swirl like a whirlpool? A sizeable section of the paid-up S and P membership evidently thought not. In the recent electoral process Bassous attracted not quite the requisite two-thirds of valid votes. A prudent Mahamad would have withdrawn his nomination. Instead his supporters are trying to steam-roller him through, which will do no good and which will surely arouse only further enmity from the Levy camp.

Let's turn to the United Synagogue - or, more correctly, to the United Hebrew Congregations, who are about to start the process of choosing Lord Sacks' successor. You'll be relieved to know that I am not going to weary you with a list of the probables and possibles. I want instead to highlight some little-noticed features of the appointment process. The relevant procedural document speaks of "consultative sessions", after which a working group will "sift" the applications and interview applicants and a consulting group "will endorse" the working group's recommendation. Somewhere in this labyrinth sits the representative group - effectively the Chief Rabbinate Council. And a public-relations programme "will run alongside the entire process to keep the community and the media informed".

But if you thought that these intertwined groups - to say nothing of the PR programme designed to keep us all informed - mean that the process will be an open one you couldn't be more wrong. All members of the groups are being obliged to sign confidentiality agreements. So the entire proceedings will be conducted behind firmly closed doors, surely a recipe for rumour-mongering and mischief-making. And there is a rather large fly in this particular ointment. The United Hebrew Congregations also have a sitting tenant - Lord Sacks, who from the vantage point of his seat in the House of Lord is certainly not going to go away even though he may have contractually retired. I note with bemusement that the "preferred candidate" will be obliged to meet Lord Sacks, and that Lord Sacks' views will be relayed back to the working group. So the incumbent will play a part and have a say in the appointment of his successor.

This is never a good idea in any business. Here it seems to me very ill-advised indeed.

Meet the community's £50 million benefactor

Michael Freedland — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:17:55 +0000

If there was such a thing as a Jewish honours list, then the philanthropist Clive Marks would deserve a life peerage to go with the OBE he already holds. Yet, while other financial wizards in the community have become household names, Marks remains almost unknown.

The fact is, that in dozens of ways - that amount to a total of £50 million - he has been one of the great benefactors of British Jewry. And not just of British Jews either. There is the help he gave to set up Jewish schools in Latin America. The London College of Music flourishes today because of his aid. And the fact that Cambodians can make a phone call to anywhere in the outside world is entirely due to him.

But the previously unsung hero, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year, has recently had a few voices singing about him, after all. The Chief Rabbi led tributes to him at the London School of Jewish Studies, the former Jews' College, which he virtually saved from extinction.

All this was done through the Ashdown Trust, of which he has been the administrator, and which he is finally winding up after 34 years in business. "We ran out of money," he explains, but he is not unhappy about that. "I'm a great believer in spending money, not holding on to it. Let the next generation set up their own trusts."

Marks was born in London, the son of a businessman in the clothing trade. "My father taught me business ethics," he says, something he remembered when he founded the Jewish Association for Business Ethics. His grandfather, Samuel Bernei, who was an executive of Columbia Pictures in Britain - "he brought Rudolph Valentino to this country" - had had the same belief.

Marks's work for the London School of Jewish Studies - he still likes to call it Jews College - represents his favourite "baby". And that is probably only right for the man who is its president. He wants the community establishment to take the school - whose mission is to teach adults Jewish knowledge - more seriously. "The United Synagogue tried to sabotage it," he maintains. "That almost broke my heart."

He himself does not claim to be more than "traditional" but then adds: "I won't mind being called 'frum'. I go to shul on Shabbes and I like to read the Torah and the Rashi commentaries. I've always been the same - it is not a sudden conversion. I don't belong on the left and I don't belong on the right."

Even so, his fund has helped the Reform movement in Britain, although he is a devoted member of Hampstead Synagogue. He loves the sound of a good chazan but is critical of many of Britain's rabbis, whom he says "do not convey enough about the nature of belief" from the pulpit.

Marks's own education was at Wellington, a public school that, during the war, was based in Somerset. It was there that he experienced his first examples of antisemitism. "I punched a much bigger boy who called me a dirty Jew". As a result, he trained to be a boxer, which he took up seriously at his next school, Charterhouse.

His schooling instilled an idea of Britishness that is as much a part of his make-up as his Jewish heritage. It was enhanced when he spent his national service in the RAF. He decided to try for air crew, which was aiming a little high, both philosophically and practically. He was told that he had to be tall (he is 5ft 3 inches) and had to have perfect eyesight (he wore glasses).

But while his request was being considered and summarily turned down, he managed to sneak a glance at the note which the interviewing officer had made. "It said: 'Aircraftsman Marks is a Jew and knows all the answers'. It gave me a certain courage to go forward in my life," he says.

From the Air Force, he became a chartered accountant. His most notable client was the property magnate, Arnold Silverstone, who was to become Lord Ashdown. He worked with him on his most important project - redeveloping the south end of London's Victoria Street. Before he died, Lord Ashdown directed Marks to establish a trust that would promote good causes, mostly for Anglo-Jewish projects.

Ashdown, he remembers fondly, told him: "We are Jews. We have to bring our code of honesty and integrity into business."

The trust really got going in 1977 and the number of causes it helped multiplied incredibly. It supported ORT in its various projects, notably travelling on its behalf to Argentina, Peru and Uruguay, not just to set up Jewish schools, which was its principal aim, but also to provide food and shelter for poor Indian families.

The trust took under its wing the Yakar Education Centre in Hendon and Tel Aviv. Today, it also supports the London Jewish Cultural Centre, an institution Marks thinks is "wonderful".

He is nothing if not thoroughly international in his approach. When he heard, through Chabad, of the devastating effect on Jewish children of the Chernobyl nuclear leak, he immediately set to work. As a result, hundreds of children from the area were treated, and many of them brought to Israel.

He established the UJIA-Ashdown Fellowship, which helps students to spend their gap years studying in Israel and the United States. But Russia remains high on his list, which is why he has funded a Jewish school in Sverdlosk.

He and his wife Adrienne, who has always advised him on which ideas would work and which would not, travelled to Laos and Cambodia. The trust provided seed money for prostheses and false limbs to be issued to people mutilated by anti-personnel mines still lying in the killing fields.

"We had heard that, among the mad things Pol Pot did, was cut off communication with the outside world. With our help, they now have internet connections and satellite phones, which means people there can phone anywhere in the world," he says.

None of this should give the impression that Marks is simply a do-gooder. Or taking sole credit for the trust's work. He acknowledges the fact that his fellow trustees, his brother-in-law Richard Stone and their cousin Jonathan Silver, have played an immense part. But Marks is the man who really made it all work.

He is also undoubtedly a man of passions, none more so than his love of music, exemplified by his efforts to get the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on to a financially stable footing. Through him, the trust has poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the London College of Music and, more recently, its parent body, the new University of West London. "This is not a Clive Marks ego trip," he emphasises. "Music is one of the most important parts of my life."

He has organised and, of course, financed, via ORT, a website that is an extensive study of music during the Holocaust. It is said to be the most valuable of its kind, with 300 articles and a bibliography of 200 entries. The website lists events, people and the camps where they wrote and played their last notes. Marks says: "People have scant knowledge of the Holocaust. Many, however, do have an interest in music. We aim to reach them through this interest."

So, after almost 35 years at the helm, Marks can look back at the trust's work with some satisfaction.

"I should be very pleased to think that we have enabled things to be done that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And, just as important, to be able to act quickly."

Political theories and Jewish realities

Colin Shindler — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:15:22 +0000

What would have been the reaction of the British left if Adolf Hitler had been victorious in 1940 and successfully conquered the United Kingdom?

Clement Attlee and the Labour Party leadership would have undoubtedly fought on the beaches and the landing grounds. Its members would have joined the resistance or fled to Canada to establish a government-in-exile. They would never have surrendered. But what would have been the approach of the Communist Party of Great Britain?

How would British communists have coped with the albatross of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Nazis and the Soviets around their necks? Would they have adopted the French model when the Nazis marched into Paris - and merely distributed leaflets? Was armed resistance forbidden in 1940?

Would British communists - as did their Czech counterparts - have regarded the German invasion forces as simply fellow-workers in uniform, with whom their British counterparts should fraternise?

One common rationale for the Nazi-Soviet pact was that Stalin was buying time to build up his forces in the event of an inevitable German invasion. Others have suggested that Stalin was waiting for the antagonists to exhaust themselves so that the Red Army could march into Western Europe - and "liberate" the working masses.

What would have happened if the Nazis had eventually come for the Jews in Britain in 1940? Was their fate ultimately inconsequential in the greater scheme of things? Was their sacrifice in the short term a sad necessity so that the Soviet Union might live? Would British communists have remained inactive out of a rigid loyalty to the USSR and therefore supported Stalin's pact with Hitler? On the other hand, would the anti-fascist inclinations of both Stalinists and Trotskyists have propelled them to do something to save Jews?

A few days after the invasion of Poland, Stalin decreed that there should be no opposition to Nazism and local communists should argue in favour of peace and abandoning the conflict. Stalin depicted the war as one between rival imperialisms, along the model of the First World War. Indeed, Molotov argued that the war between Britain and France against Nazi Germany was "a sort of holy war like those waged during the Middle Ages". Many on the far left retained traumatic memories of the slaughter in the trenches and the senseless loss of life - and were determined that it should never happen again. Soviet appeals for peace therefore resonated with them.

Stalin was quick to accord diplomatic recognition to Slovakia, which had aligned itself with Germany. The Czech ambassador was asked to leave Moscow. When Belgium, Yugoslavia, Norway and Greece were conquered, Stalin withdrew diplomatic recognition and their ambassadors similarly were forced to leave the USSR. Stalin also recognized the pro-Nazi regime of Prime Minister Rashid Ali in Iraq.

Following the German invasion of Norway, the Labour paper Arbeiderbladet and the liberal Dagbladet did not resume publication, but the communist Arbeideren did. When Italy entered the war and invaded Greece, British communists asked the Greeks to seek peace with the invader. During the Battle of Britain in 1940, the Soviet press was saturated by anti-British commentary.

Another agreement was signed between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany whereby the former would supply grain, fuel and raw materials to the latter in order to circumvent the British blockade.

In Belgium, the Communist Party launched the slogan, "Neither London nor Berlin" and campaigned instead for higher pay for the mobilised conscripts. The future leader of East Germany, Walter Ulbricht, wrote in February 1940 that "this war policy [of the Allies] is the more criminal because. . . [Britain] is the most reactionary force in the world".

Stalin even provided a port for the German navy near Murmansk. The German vessel, Komet, sailed through Arctic waters, north of the USSR, and was aided by Soviet icebreakers - it went on to attack Allied shipping.

While Stalin congratulated Hitler on entering Paris in May 1940, he was also surprised at the rapid collapse of France. He therefore moved very quickly to realise the gains of the pact, occupying the Baltic states, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. All the elites - as in Poland - were deported and replaced by Russians. The ongoing arrests and passage to the Gulag included members of Jewish and Zionist organisations, which were regarded as subversive, anti-Soviet elements.

For British Jews who were Communist Party members or just sympathisers, the Nazi-Soviet pact and the invasion of Poland meant a terrible choice. Should they adhere to the cause of world revolution and relegate their Jewishness to a lower, less important, rung? Should they place their trust in Stalin and the Soviet Union? By closing off retaliation on the Eastern front, were they implicitly aiding Hitler in subduing Poland and thereby placing its three million Jews in mortal danger? Suppose Hitler, once he had disposed of Poland, then turned his attention to Western Europe. Were they therefore encouraging the Nazi war machine and thereby positioning their own families in its path, putting their friends in danger? Where were the boundaries of self-sacrifice?

Some interpreted the struggle against "our own imperialism" as sabotaging the war effort. Churchill had spoken of dealing with fifth columnists "with a heavy hand". The British communists therefore set up a Workers' Music Association as a front in case it was banned. They collected classified information from
supporters and sympathisers about weapons and
military operations. In France, a powder factory at Sorques, an arms manufacturer at Bourges and an aeroplane motor plant at Boulogne were also sabotaged during the phoney war.

Some local, anti-colonial movements believed that their moment had come since their imperial overlords, Britain and France, were on the ropes. On the basis of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," feelers were extended to Berlin. There had been, for example, several overtures by Sean Russell, the chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army even before the outbreak of war.

Plan Kathleen had envisaged an IRA uprising of 30,000 people, joined by a German invasion force of 50,000, to take Northern Ireland. This was superseded by Hitler's plan to invade Northern Ireland at the same time as the invasion of England in Operation Sealion. Northern Ireland, the Nazis argued, would provide a firm base for the Luftwaffe to bomb targets in the north of England.

Likewise, "the prophet outcast", Leon Trotsky, and many of his supporters similarly regarded the Second World War as a repeat of the Great War when workers died in their millions in the muddy fields of Flanders. The rival imperialists of 1940, it was argued, were no better than their forebears a quarter-of-a-century earlier. There was little to choose between the Axis and the Allies, between Hitler and Churchill. Why die for the cause of capitalism?

Unlike the Stalinists, Trotskyists were not weighed down by the burden of state responsibilities. Their deep belief in ideological purity demanded an adherence to theory.

If the reality of 1940 did not match the theory, then the reality had to be changed through making the masses aware. The conflict had to be brought to an end by workers overthrowing the regimes that had sent them to fight their brothers.

Even in Palestine, there was a small group of Jewish Trotskyists, including the future founder of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain, which condemned the conflict and campaigned to halt the mobilisation of the Jews of Palestine and their enlistment in the British war effort.

The British, like the Nazis, it was claimed, similarly oppressed a hundred million people in their colonies. The British only fought for the interests of "several thousand very wealthy families in the City of London". Jewish immigrants, whether from "Vienna or Berlin, Brno or Budapest" were asked to oppose mobilisation and to establish a united front "for jobs, free meal tickets, free housing, free medical assistance".

Stalinists in support of the Soviet Union, Trotskyists as exponents of revolutionary theory, colonial nationalists as ardent advocates of liberation movements, even revolutionary Marxists in Mandatory Palestine - they all had their own political interests. They consisted of philosemites, antisemites and the indifferent. The fate of the Jews was not at the top of their agenda.

In parallel, argued the Allies, the Jews would be saved, but only once the Nazis had been vanquished. The quicker the victory, the better for the Jewish people. Yet no British aircraft bombed the railway lines leading to Auschwitz.

Neither did the Red Air Force, when it was within striking distance. To be sure, there were bold declarations and dire warnings delivered to the Nazis by the Allies, but the exterminations continued and gathered pace. Some resigned themselves to the impending Jewish catastrophe. Others were indifferent to it. Communist and capitalist, Stalinist and Trotskyist, the oppressor and the oppressed - not all, but many - accepted the abandonment of the Jews.

Despite the great victory over Nazism, the revelations of the death camps in the spring of 1945, profoundly shocked the surviving Jewish community of Great Britain. It turned to Zionism with an abiding determination. The revelations of Belsen and Dachau convinced a majority of Jews that the European far left had failed them. This did not mean an automatic turn to the right, but British Jews made a distinction between a Jewish left and a non-Jewish left. It meant auto-emancipation and not emancipation by others.

Marxism, Communism, Trotskyism - socialism and social democracy - had always exhibited a magnetic attraction for Jews. Perhaps at the root of this was a desire to repair and perfect the world, consciously and subconsciously in accordance with both Judaic teachings and Jewish experience. A desire to imitate the prophets who rebelled rather than the kings who ruled.

While the tradition of Jewish involvement in the European left was a long and honourable one, it was Jewish suffering that disproportionately greased the wheels of revolution. A communist redemption did not liberate the Jews from their historic ills. Such a dream perished in the permafrost of the Soviet Gulag.

British Jews absorbed the hard lesson that absolute obedience to an ideology was lethal and understood it as obsolete. While many remained idealists without illusions, there was a great reticence to believe in the construction of utopia without guarantees. This has been glossed over by all too many on the far left trying to bend the Jewish reality to fit political theory. For many Jews, "the occult power of political messianism" had lost its potency.

This mindset finds its reflection in an identification with the state of Israel by the overwhelming majority of British Jews even though they may have a low opinion of successive governments and recycled politicians. The great Marxist historian, Isaac Deutscher, exalted the non-Jewish Jew in his writings. Perhaps it is the non non-Jewish majority that better understands the political reality - a reality based on real events rather than ingenious theory.

Jewish American titan from the ghetto

Christopher Hitchens — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:24:32 +0000

Look first upon this picture, and on this… the two photographs of Saul Bellow that adorn the initial covers of the Library of America edition of his collected works.

In the first, we see a somewhat rakish fellow, sharply dressed and evidently fizzing with moxie, who meets the world with a cool and level gaze that belies the slight impression of a pool shark or racetrack con artist.

In the second, and in profile, we get a survey of a sage in a more reflective pose; but this is a sage who still might utter a well-chosen wisecrack out of the side of his mouth.

The antique history of the shtetl and the ghetto is inscribed in both studies of the man, but some considerable physical and mental distance has evidently been travelled in each case.

At Bellow's memorial meeting, held in the Young Men's Hebrew Association at Lexington Avenue and 92nd Street in 2005, the main speakers were Ian Mc
Ewan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Martin Amis, William Kennedy and James Wood.

Had it not been for an especially vapid speech by some forgettable rabbi, the platform would have been exclusively composed of non-Jews, many of them non-American.

How had Bellow managed to exert such an effect on writers almost half his age, from another tradition and another continent? Putting this question to the speakers later on, I received two particularly memorable responses. Ian McEwan related his impression that Bellow, alone among American writers of his generation, had seemed to assimilate the whole European classical inheritance. And Martin Amis vividly remembered something Bellow had once said to him, which is that, if you are born in the ghetto, the very conditions compel you to look skywards, and thus to hunger for the universal.

In The Victim, the Jewish son of an anti-gentile and ghetto-mentality storekeeper is being given a hard time by an insecure and alcoholic WASP. "I'm a fine one to be talking about tradition, you must be saying," admits the latter:

"But still I was born into it. And try to imagine how New York affects me. Isn't it preposterous? It's really as if the children of Caliban were running everything. You go down in the subway and Caliban gives you two nickels for your dime. You go home and he has a candy store in the street where you were born. The old breeds are out. The streets are named after them. But what are they themselves? Just remnants.

"I see how it is; you're actually an aristocrat," said Leventhal.

"It may not strike you as it struck me," said Allbee. "But I go into the library once in while, to look around, and last week I saw a book about Thoreau and Emerson by a man named Lipschitz…"

"What of it?"

"A name like that?" Allbee said this with great earnestness. "After all, it seems to me that people of such background simply couldn't understand…"

Remember that when Bellow was growing up, Lionel Trilling could be sacked from a teaching post at Columbia on the grounds that a Jew could not really appreciate English literature.

Recall also the exquisite pain with which Henry James, in The American Scene in 1907, had registered "the whole hard glitter of Israel" on New York's Lower East Side, and especially the way in which Yiddish-speaking authors operated the "torture-rooms of the living idiom."

Bellow in his time was to translate Isaac Bashevis Singer into English (and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock into Yiddish), but it mattered to him that the ghetto be transcended and that he, too, could sing America.

The various means of this assertion included pyrotechnic versatility with English, a ferocious assimilation of learning, and an emphasis on the man of action as well as the man of reflection.

When I think of Bellow, I think not just of a man whose genius for the vernacular could seem to restate American philosophy as if run through a Damon Runyon synthesiser, but of the author who came up with such graphic expressions for vulgarity and thuggery and stupidity - the debased currency of those too brutalised to have retained the capacity for wonder. In The Adventures of Augie March, "A goon's rodeo" is Augie's description of a saturnalia of the mindless. "Moral buggery" is the crisp summary of New York values in Dangling Man.

Yet Bellow by no means dismisses the Hemingway style. Several of his heroes and protagonists rise above the sickly and the merely bookish. They tackle lions and, in the case of Augie March, a truly fearsome eagle. They mix it up with revolutionaries and bandits and hard-core criminals.

Erich Fromm once gave a course at the New School on "the struggle against pointlessness", and one wonders whether Bellow heard of, or took, this class.

Pervasive in his work is a sense of the awful trap posed by aimlessness and its cousins, impotence and the death wish. In Dangling Man, the narrator hears of a college friend's death in the war and diagnoses it as an indirect act of will:

I always suspected of him that he had in some fashion discovered there were some ways in which to be human was to be unutterably dismal, and that all his life was given over to avoiding those ways.

Whereas, in The Adventures of Augie March, the hero signs up for the same combat and, reflecting on what it does for his sex life, asks, "What use was war without also love?" Yiddishism or no Yiddishism, this must count as one of the most affirmative and masculine sentences ever set down.

Against pointlessness and futility, Bellow strove to counterpoise what Augie calls "the universal eligibility to be noble" - the battle to overcome not just ghetto conditions but ghetto psychoses. Such yearning ambition, as Bellow knew, can be a torment to those who are not innately noble to begin with.

Perhaps the best illustration of nobility that Bellow offers is Augie March's brief glimpse of Trotsky in Mexico, from which he receives a strong impression of "deepwater greatness" and an ability to steer by the brightest stars.

Bellow himself had arrived in Mexico in 1940, just too late to see Trotsky, who had been murdered by a hireling assassin the morning they were meant to meet. Like the eponymous hero of Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, Trotsky was a man upon whom life had "decided to use strong measures."

The founder of the Red Army was also the author of Literature and Revolution and a co-author of Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art. In his own person he united the Jew, the cosmopolitan, the man of ideas and the man of action. And the speed with which Bellow learned from the experience of Trotsky's murder is a theme in several of his fictions.

Bellow's life as a public intellectual is sometimes held to have followed a familiar arc or trajectory: that from quasi-Trotskyist to full-blown "neo-con", and of course it is true that the earlier novels contain portraits of members of the Partisan Review group, from Delmore Schwartz to Dwight Macdonald, whereas the final novel, Ravelstein, features an affectionate portrayal of Allan Bloom (whose Closing of the American Mind Bellow had helped make into a best-seller), and even of Paul Wolfowitz during the intra-Washington struggle over the Gulf War, in 1991.

Of the single occasion when I met Bellow properly, Martin Amis has given a brilliantly scandalised account in his memoir, Experience.

Actually, the evening wasn't as rough as all that. An amused Bellow recalled having been denied a job at Time magazine by no less a person than Whittaker Chambers and wondered aloud what his writing life would have been like if he had secured that safe billet at Time.

So all was going fairly smoothly, except that on the reading table, like a revolver in a Chekhov play, there lay a loaded copy of Commentary. It soon became apparent that Bellow really had moved to the right, without losing his taste for talmudic and trotskisant dialectic, and that in his mind there was a strong connection between the decay of American cities and campuses, and wider questions of ideological promiscuity.

I do not think I am wrong in guessing that he regarded the battle in the Middle East as something of an allegory of the distraught state of black-white (and black-Jewish) relations in his beloved Chicago. Anyone who has read his non-fiction work, To Jerusalem and Back, will be compelled to notice that the Arab inhabitants of the holy city are as nearly invisible and alien as their equivalents in Oran in Camus's La Peste. At any event, we ended up having a strong disagreement about the Palestinians in general, and the work of Edward Said in particular. I have several times devoutly wished that we could have had this discussion again.

The thread in the labyrinth of Bellow's politics has undoubtedly something to do with the "ghetto" also, and with a certain awkward possessiveness about the employment of that same pejorative.

In a revealing moment in Ravelstein, the hero objects to the commonplace use of the term as customarily applied to black American life:

"Ghetto nothing!" Ravelstein said. "Ghetto Jews had highly developed feelings, civilized nerves - thousands of years of training. They had communities and laws. 'Ghetto' is an ignorant newspaper term. It's not a ghetto that they come from, it's a noisy pointless, nihilistic turmoil."

So, perhaps paradoxically, Bellow echoes a defensive and even admiring attitude to the very place from which he wished to escape. This is almost conservatism defined. In The Dean's December, black crime and big-city corruption have become hard to distinguish in Bellow's mind; he was later to manifest alarm and disgust when a black demagogue in Chicago accused Jewish doctors of spreading the AIDS virus.

I don't want to make any insinuation here, but it's clear that Bellow had concluded that one of the fondest hopes of the democratic left - that of a black-Jewish alliance - had become a thing of the past.

However, he never quite succumbed to the affectless cynicism that he always despised. His famously provocative 1988 question, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" - asked in the context of a defence of Bloom, seemed to many people to contradict the generosity of what he had offered about Africa in Henderson, and evidently must have struck Bellow in the same light, since six years later he wrote a much-less-noticed essay in praise of the novel of Zululand, Chaka, by Thomas Mofolo.

Life and politics might have had souring results, and so might personal experience, but to the end, he put his money on the life-affirming and on the will to live, and he could never quite abandon his faith in that crucial eligibility to be noble.

The Jews who can distinguish antisemitism from anti-Israel

Anthony Cooper — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:50:30 +0000

If for every two Jews there are three opinions, it is hardly surprising that there is a distinct lack of unanimous support for any policy from any Israeli government.

But while most British Jews prefer to leave public criticism to Israel's many willing opponents, some feel the need to state their disagreements loudly: the 'as a Jew' crowd.

Their apparent willingness to lend support to the complete delegitimisation of the Jewish state leaves the rest of us unsure how to respond. It is tempting simply to label them 'self-hating Jews'. However, the truth is never so straightforward.

In many, perhaps most, cases the motivation publicly to denounce Israel is in fact the desire to fight antisemitism. As the Community Security Trust has observed, the number of antisemitic attacks in the UK is directly related to tensions and actions in the Middle East. Some believe that the support Israel receives from Britain's mainstream Jewish organisations is a cause of antisemitism and the only way to fight that is to create Jewish anti-Israel organisations.

The founding declaration of Independent Jewish Voices, for example, placedthe fight against antisemitism at the heart of the organisation. Likewise, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) state that they "extend support to Palestinians trapped in the spiral of violence and repression" because they "believe that such actions are important in countering antisemitism".

Unfortunately, these campaigns are naive and counter-productive. Racists do not tend to be entirely rational people. The egg-throwing thug is unlikely to weigh up the probability that the man walking home from synagogue might disapprove of settlements.

Nor is the desecrater of cemeteries going to check first that his victims haven't signed their names to an anti-Israel letter in the Guardian.

More likely is the attitude shown in a comment allegedly left by a member of the Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). He wrote on a website that "not all adherents to the Torah are enemies of humanity", because Neturei Karta are not. By opposing every action by Israel, the impression is given that anyone not joining the public denunciations is fully supportive of all these policies.

Far from destroying the impression of Jewish support for Israeli actions, their opposition reinforces it. And all this is aside from the impact of delegitimisation on our fellow Jews in Israel.

Nevertheless, very few anti-Israel Jews are self-hating. We should recognise this and make sure to keep them within the big tent against antisemitism rather than making them pariahs. They may be opponents of Israel but they can be our allies in the struggle against antisemitism.

An example are the Jews of the PSC. The PSC is a leading force in delegitimisation, using trade unions to advance its call to boycott all things related to Israel, from food produce to musicians and university academics. Its public meetings are often attended by Labour MPs. Last June it was responsible for inviting the banned Sheikh Raed Salah to speak at one such meeting to be held in the Houses of Parliament. Many believe the organisation is incapable of distinguishing between criticism of Israeli actions and antisemitism.

However, during the last 12 months there has been something of a mini-purge of the organisation. Some previously important members have been forced to resign because of their antisemitism. Those effectively expelled from the PSC include a former national chair, the chair of one branch, the secretary of another and the webmaster of a third.

Behind all these resignations appear to be rank and file Jewish members with support from a Jewish member of the executive committee. While the PSC itself may be unable to work out what antisemitism looks like, its Jewish members certainly can.

We have enough enemies already. We shouldn't be looking to create more. So long as anti-Israel Jews retain their sensitivity to antisemitism we can be sure that they are neither self-hating nor hate us. They remain allies in our struggle against antisemitism and in some ways are capable of achieving results in it that the rest of us cannot.

We should thank them for that. If we don't make enemies of them, we may find that we have more friends than we thought.

May the coming year be one of reconciliation and greater unity in our small community. We will all be better off for it.

Between a shul and a hard place

Julie Burchill — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:27 +0000

My December 24 horoscope, as foretold by Claire Petulengro in the Brighton Argus, read as follows: "Make sure you're mixing with the right crowds this Christmas Eve or you are going to end up getting yourself a reputation. Could it be that you're looking to get a reaction? It would appear so."

Ha, a bit late to start worrying about that now, I smirked to myself as I fastened my snood around my hair with my Zionist
Federation pin and nipped out to celebrate the lighting of the menorah in Palmeira Square, Hove.

As I walked with my Jewish best friend, my Jewish goddaughter and my half-Jewish son towards the modest menorah, the huge, opulent Christmas tree on the other side of the square seemed to mock my very un-Jewishness. "Come on, darlin' - get over here and get drunk!" it seemed to twinkle evilly. "It's not really you, is it - standing about stone cold sober, singing songs in a language you don't understand, with a bunch of people so respectable they literally couldn't get arrested if they tried…"

As metaphors go, the place where I live would get laughed out of town if I stuck it in a novel. I live between a synagogue and a church, in more ways than one. I left my church when a 10-year-old child - not just a random passer-by, but a regular attendant - identified the cross as "a space rocket" and everyone laughed.

I left my synagogue when the liberal rabbi's insistence that all religions were equally worthy of respect began to sound increasingly hollow in the face of the increasing intolerance and bigotry of Islamism.

And now I exist in suspension between the two faiths. It doesn't bother me too much; I get to have a lie-in on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. But it does interest me, especially at this time of year.

Unlike many gentiles who are attracted to Judaism, it isn't the "culture" I like. I detest bagels and Woody Allen. I loathe "Jewish humour". I don't think family is the most important thing in life. For me, it was always about two things; Israel, and Judaism, the religion. (Conversely - or perversely - all my Israeli friends are non-believers.)

The sheer ridiculousness of the notion that God would have a child struck me as being laughable when I was very young, and as a rebellious teenager the twee nature of the Nativity seemed to sum up the ability of gentile culture to suck the fun, awe and glory out of everything. Later, I would come to see the tragedy and drama of the Jesus scenario - but I still don't buy the basic premise.

"Why are you doing this - siding with the Jews all the time?" Charles Saatchi asked me once. "Do you need to go looking for trouble?" I suppose the point is that I consider the Jews to be the cleverest people in the world - 22 per cent of Nobel Prize-winners from only 0.2 per cent of the population - so how would they be wrong on something as important as religion?

Jews do not seek to convert, unlike Christianity and Islam, both of which will take all comers no matter how violent or half-witted; the jails are full of Born Again Christians and Muslims, and of course there is the dreadful example of the cretinous Lauren Booth, who announced her conversion last year. I find this preference for quality over quantity reassuring.

I still can't read my Torah, and I got burned by my menorah. The sober, wholesome families gathered in Palmeira Square were far from being my natural constituency. But maybe that's the point. Whatever; I'm going to be sticking around. L'hitraot!

Young blood flows well in UK

Joel Braunold — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:26 +0000

As a community, we are often very down on ourselves. There is nothing we like more than complaining over Friday-night dinner about how various parts of the UK Jewish communal structures are outdated, failing, awful or irrelevant. The United States, in contrast, is viewed as a Jewish communal mecca full of vibrancy, life and opportunity.

Having now moved to the US, I can confirm that there are parts of the communal scene where the grass is indeed greener. You really can find an organisation to fit your every whim and want. From pluralist mikvaot to four different groups dealing with the Jewish response to global warming, the millions of Jews across the Atlantic are well served.

Yet for all its size and wealth the US Jewish community - or any other Jewish community for that matter - cannot compete with British Jewry when it comes to youth movements. We have managed to create and sustain groups that continually produce the top leaders, thinkers and doers in the Jewish world. We have done so in a way that caters to every sector; for every Jew, there is a youth movement to suit him or her.

Youth movements are the jewels in the crown of the UK Jewish community. The vast majority of our Jewish leaders are graduates of one of these groups. Their educational legacies can be seen both in the informal educational departments of the various Jewish schools and in Limmud, the community's global Jewish export.

So how does allowing your kids to sleep in a rainy field somewhere in the British countryside for a few weeks a year produce this result? The first thing to highlight is the peer leadership structure; these movements are run, by young people, for young people.

From the age of 17, with no pay, members volunteer to give up their holidays to run camps for children. Parents trust 20-year-olds to be in charge of their kids abroad and to provide them with a fun and safe time. This level of responsibility and practical experience brings about exceptional leadership skills.

Former youth leaders often wonder how to market the skills that they have learnt in youth movements when applying for jobs. My advice? Focus on how you have learnt to work in teams and manage your peers, how you have learnt budgeting and logistics, creative problem solving and communication skills.

You have learnt to create brand loyalty, demonstrated responsibility and become familiar with crisis management in tense situations. You have a clear understanding of who you are and what you believe and have helped others discover this in themselves. You have led, and have taught others to lead.

The self-knowledge and understanding, the ability to spot ones own strengths and weaknesses, put our youth movement graduates ahead of their university peers.

When British students arrive in Israel for gap-year programmes, they tend to have a far more mature sense of self than their American compatriots. The leadership exercises I performed when I was a 17-year-old in Bnei Akiva are the same ones I am learning from my professors today as a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Our youth movements rival any elite school in terms of preparation for real skills in the workplace.

Where we have fallen down as a community is in finding the next step for our youth leaders. The vital transition from loyalty to one's youth group to loyalty to the wider community needs real leadership positions to be earmarked for young professionals. The Jewish Volunteering Network's current drive for more young trustees is a great start to answer this challenge.

With the global economic situation still gloomy, the community needs to choose its priorities. There can be no better investment then our youth movements. That means graduates of these, and parents of graduates donating to these movements. It means giving again even if you have given before.

Sometimes, as well as complaining about how bad the community is, we need to recognise how fabulous it is, too.

When background is a barrier

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:26 +0000

I have just finished updating my history of Hackney Downs school, first published 40 years ago. Founded by the Grocers' Company in 1876 it was, in its heyday, one of the finest boys' secondary schools in the land. In 1995, dubbed by the tabloids as the "worst" school in England, it was shut down. I am an "Old Grocer" and the history that I have rewritten tells the story of the school from its triumphal opening to its ignoble closure.

Hackney Downs was a secular school. But its catchment area came to include a very large Jewish population, which provided the school with the academic reservoir from which it drew generations of boys for whom the school was the springboard for highly successful careers. The families were financially poor. But their economic and social aspirations knew no bounds.

The ethnic minorities that followed the Jews into Hackney a half-century ago were generally lacking in this vital aspirational drive. This truth is central to the history I have written - it is a stark and undeniable fact that formed the backdrop to the sad story of the school's demise. But it is also central to the wider debate about participation in further and higher education (HE).

Last week's educational press carried reports based on university admissions statistics for 2010-11. These show - apparently - that the number of "black" students admitted to Oxbridge has fallen and that the proportion of "non-white" students admitted to Oxford has also dropped (slightly) to 12.2 per cent. I say "apparently" because none of these statistics differentiates Jewish students. My gut feeling is that if the agencies were to track Jewish applicants as a separate category, we would find that a much higher proportion of "non-white" youngsters had entered higher education last year. And if, as some media insist, four out of five Oxbridge students are "white", then this actually reflects an under-representation, since (as of the last census) well over 90 per cent of the UK's population classifies itself as "white". But it suits neither the media nor the government to tell the story this way. The tale they want to tell is that universities in general and Oxbridge in particular discriminate against "non-whites", and that - therefore - something must be done about it.

But what? Last summer the government published draconian proposals for the future regulation of higher education in England. Prominent amongst these is the intention to make every taxpayer-funded university sign a legally binding agreement with the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), whose mission it is "to promote and safeguard fair access to higher education for lower income and other under-represented groups".

From next year, if the government has its way, OFFA will have sweeping powers to fine any HE institution whose "fair access" arrangements do not meet with its approval. This could well include compelling institutions to lower their academic standards (in terms of entry requirements) to support some new Downing-Street-mandated social-engineering objective aimed at increasing HE participation. Put bluntly, OFFA is likely to require universities to discriminate in favour of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and (therefore) against others. Indeed the government's social mobility "czar", Alan Milburn, warned recently that considering a pupil's social background in admissions should become the norm, and that institutions in receipt of public funds must be compelled to view "social mobility" as part of their responsibilities.

Such a policy must, in my judgment, discriminate against Jewish students. There is evidence from the USA that "positive discrimination" in favour of black and Hispanic students has impacted adversely upon Jewish students, who tend to have higher entry qualifications and who are more highly motivated. If, in future, admissions procedures are to be "contextualised", Jewish students must, I fear, lose out.

What I should like to know is this: what are our esteemed representative bodies – not least the UJS - doing to counter this threat?

Fireworks? I'd prefer honey cake

Cari Rosen — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:26 +0000

I hate New Year's Eve. There, I've said it.

Call me a party pooper, an old fogey, whatever you like. But there's nothing guaranteed to get me more "bah humbug" than a chorus of Auld Lang Syne. Oh, and that awful telly round-up of fireworks exploding in London, Sydney, some small Fijian island and various other random locations in time zones that are slightly ahead of our own but that surely have little or no relevance whatsoever at that time of night.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as keen as the next person on a knees-up when the mood takes me. But enforced gaiety based on nothing more than the midnight move from December to January is really not my thing.

Personally, I like a New Year celebration to involve honey cake, new fruit, a roast dinner and an early night. Indeed Rosh Hashanah could not suit me better. But staying up until midnight just to hear Big Ben chime, clink glasses and wish happy new year to a few chums who would clearly also rather be in bed seems increasingly pointless.

When I think back to New Years' Eves past I have to concede that this is nothing new. I cannot blame my advancing years for turning me into the Grinch who hated Hogmanay. And even in my wildest youth (actually "wild" may be stretching it a bit… or quite a lot") I was always mostly looking forward to the bit where everyone called it a night and I could go to bed.

In order to give my perspective on New Year celebrations some sort of scientific gravitas, I have conducted a straw poll of a carefully chosen selection of people representative of a cross section of modern British society. (Or possibly those that I've run into over the last couple of days.)

"Wild parties and lots of booze. Brilliant," enthuses the university student, instantly transporting me back to heinous gatherings where I would have to pick my way through piles of vomit simply to make my escape.

"The perfect chance for us to get together with friends," says a neighbour - something I have no truck with whatsoever. Unless we can we do that and still be in wrapped up warm in bed with a hot water bottle by 11pm.

"A chance to stay up really late," say the pre-teens excitedly, oblivious to the ensuing over-tired irascibility that will blight their parents long into the early days of January.

"Do we have to go out?" groans my husband, proving once again why we are so well-suited.

I count it as good fortune that we are acquainted with enough like-minded people to be able to celebrate this year in exactly the way we'd choose. Large group of adults and under-fives. Dinner at four in the afternoon. Partying till seven. Bed at any time you like after that.

So, if it's all the same to you, I'll be raising my cup of cocoa to you all at some time before the clock hits double figures and wishing everyone a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2012 from underneath my duvet.

Hitchens got it wrong on Israel

Daniel Finkelstein — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:26 +0000

It doesn't seem all that long ago that, at a Jewish Book Week event, I met Christopher Hitchens. We parted with him saying that we should get to know each other better. But we never did. He went home to the United States and before we could meet up, he fell ill. I will always regret it. Friends of mine, who knew him well, attest that he was great company. Still, at least I have his books, and they are great company too.

It was at this event that I learned what Hitch, as he was known, found out late in life, that he was of Jewish descent. He discussed his pride at the discovery with his friend Martin Amis, who has a Jewish wife and children. When Hitch died, his brother Peter wondered aloud how two brothers from a modest background, with no learning and few books to sustain them, should have developed as they did. How could they have both emerged very different from each other, but two of the great arguers, readers and essayists of their time?

It does raise the possibility - doesn't it - that Jewish character traits of bookishness, argumentativeness and intellectual spirit are genetic. That explanation is controversial, but it is at least as convincing as anything either brother might be able to offer.

I think that Hitch intuited this and that it partly explained the pleasure in his discovery of his ancestry. But I think he also enjoyed finding out about his Jewish background because he loved a scrap. And he didn't doubt that Jews were in a scrap. He saw the need to fight antisemitism and was very clear sighted about its extent and its origins. He was a valuable leader of those on the left who despaired at the tolerance to antisemitic ideas shown by their comrades. And we will miss him now he has gone.

But he was no supporter of Israel. He thought it a historical error. He claimed that he would not have been in favour of it even if there were no Palestinians there. In his opinion the best protection for Jews is to secularise the societies that they live in. While sharing some of his pessimism about Israel's prospects, I think he was wrong about the need for the state.

Let's start with a very practical reason. Israel is necessary because you can't protect Jews by throwing collected works of journalism at our enemies. Even when they are full of clever epithets. The state was created and recognised because for many Jews in the 20th century there was, simply, nowhere else to go. There may be other places where Jews can, theoretically, be safe, but they haven't always thrown open their doors to welcome us. Israel was made necessary precisely because the security of Jews cannot rely entirely on world opinion to see off those who would do violence to us.

In one of his recent essays on Israel, Hitch concluded by suggesting that moving to the US might be the best way of protecting Jews. Or perhaps becoming the US - his wording is (I suspect deliberately) a little unclear. But while this works as polemic, it isn't as impressive when treated as serious advice.

But there is more to it than that. Hitch was an atheist and thought it wrong to base a way of living on what he regarded as ancient superstition. There are two responses to this. The first is that his is one opinion, but most Jews have quite another. We seek the right to worship in peace and security, but we seek more. There has to be one place in the world - just one - where Jewish symbols and religious practice are public institutions. Every other kind of state exists, after all.

The other response is that few humans, even atheists, are immune from the need for a community they can belong to. For much of his life Hitch was a Trotskyist and, since I can't think he found the ideas of great practical value, I can only conclude that he must have found the community of Trotskyists comforting. I suspect the doctrinal debates provided him with the sort of company and sustenance others get from religion.

I'd love to know what he would make of such a theory. He had such a wonderful way with an argument. What a tragedy that his voice is now silent.

Farewell to 2011, a year of farewells

Gerald Jacobs — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:26:24 +0000

It's that time again, the candle-maker's moment, when rival faiths strike festive lights to ward off winter. When an assemblage of "old" dates in the diary gives way to a fresh "new year". A secular, inverted Yom Kippur, a stocktaking accompanied by feasting instead of fasting, replenishing rather than repentance.

On this occasion, though, for me it carries some weight. Two holes were blown into my life at opposite ends of 2011 when two men - one a decade senior to me, the other a generation older - handed in their life membership.

I hadn't known John Gross, who died in January, for more than a few years, though I had of course known of him - who could not, in my business? He was one of the great judges of literature and culture of our age, an exemplar of an endangered species: the "man of letters". And the fact that we became close friends in a relatively short time is principally a reflection of John's character. For just about any friend of his would feel a closeness, emanating from the sheer good humour of a man whose astonishing erudition was of a rare, inclusive kind.

John Gross wore his learning lighter than anybody I have met. You could come away from an engaging dinner with him knowing much more than you ever did about some author or actress, poet, politician, editor, or even waiter. And John would make you feel that you had somehow contributed equally to the conversation.

Unfailingly entertaining, witty and full of gossip, he was completely without malice. Nor did I ever see a trace of resentment when lesser lights than he bathed in brighter beams of limelight.

Attendant to - and attended by - art and knowledge to the end, he told his doctors a little of the history of their own hospital where he lay dying and where almost the last words he heard were those of his daughter Susanna reading a Shakespeare sonnet to him. Perceptive, kind and wise, John Gross has left a sadly empty place at the restaurant tables where we once dined.

A still more significant loss occurred last month, with the death of my father, Harry Jacobs. By contrast with John Gross, who seemed to have read almost every published book of worth (and the odd worthless one), the extent of my father's lifetime book-reading could be calculated on one hand with a couple of fingers to spare. His interests lay in pictures rather than words, interests that he successfully put to professional use but not before he'd exhausted a procession of other occupations after leaving school at 14. Then, in the early 1960s, he tried his hand at photography, beginning by knocking on doors in south London.

A good camera was then a luxury. My father would offer young mothers low-cost portraits of their children but, having returned with the developed photos, he'd typically receive a thanks-but-no-thanks response. However, his sales technique owed much to King Solomon. He would face the mum's rebuff with a shrug, hold up her darling's photo and go to tear it in half. This almost invariably prompted a quick change of heart. On such emotive foundations did he build a business that saw him become the unofficial photographer to the growing West Indian community of Brixton. His legendary studio felt at times as if bathed in Caribbean sunshine.

Eventually, Harry Jacobs became a snapper to be reckoned with. A solo exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery in Covent Garden was followed by a rash of media attention, a place in various archives and events such as Black History Month and, most notably, the inclusion of his work in the Tate Gallery's major How We Are show in 2007, with a couple of his images gracing the brochure. He spent his last few months in residential care, often cantankerous and confused but, memorably, pleasant and content in our final family visits to him.

Neither John Gross nor Harry Jacobs had much time for rabbis or synagogues but both fitted firmly on the spectrum of Jewishness. Both grew up in London's East End, one a doctor's son, the other the child of a cobbler. One embodied the spirit of learning, the other that of imaginative graft. And now the year that saw their departure is itself departing.

Sometimes these turning points are useful. Happy new year.

Uplifted by a message of hope

Marc Saperstein — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:21:00 +0000

There has been some debate in recent weeks about the rights and wrongs of Lord Sacks's assertion that he felt "uplifted" by the sound of Christmas carols at this time of year. I can't see what all the fuss is about.

I confess that I find myself feeling uplifted by the soaring architecture and the radiant stained glass windows of the great Gothic cathedrals. I am deeply moved by the music of Bach's St Matthew Passion and the Requiems of Mozart, Verdi and Fauré; by Michelangelo's Pietà and by paintings of the annunciation and the crucifixion; or by the religious poems of John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Is it fundamentally wrong when a committed Jew, even a rabbi, responds in this way to the artistic creations inspired by a religion different from our own, expressing elements of a faith that we cannot accept? Is it "heretical" or "blasphemous" - as Professor Geoffrey Alderman suggested in his recent column - to recognise elements of beauty in some of the religious expressions of our neighbors, while continuing to reject many of their distinctive beliefs? Is it disloyal to admit that our "plenty of good Jewish tunes" cannot compete aesthetically with the music of the Christmas carols?

To be sure, much is unappealing about being in an environment pervaded by the Christmas holiday: the extravagant inebriation of many office parties, the commercialism, the kitsch. These are elements that religious Christians, as well as Jews, Muslims, and secularists, may find distasteful.

But it does not necessarily follow that the Christmas story itself can have no positive message for non-Christians. Let us examine it from a Jewish perspective. The birth narrative in the gospel of Matthew has deep poignance in its Jewish context.

The circumstances presented are so potentially unpromising that it is difficult to imagine anyone fabricating them. A young Jewish woman, betrothed but not yet married, discovers that she is pregnant, though the man to whom she is betrothed has never slept with her. In traditional Jewish society, the meaning of these facts would be clear: the woman must have been guilty of adultery. Jewish law would require that her fiancé divorce her, and the gospel states that Joseph began this process discretely, in accordance with the law. The child would have been illegitimate, mamzer, to be shunned by all.

The gospel narrative takes this potential disaster and gives it a spin that not only neutralises the negative but makes it into an asset. Joseph is assured from heaven, by way of a dream, that his bethrothed is not guilty of adultery; the infant has no human father, her pregnancy is the result of a miraculous divine intrusion into our world.

The belief that this child is the incarnation of God, that he combines humanity and divinity in a unique manner, that he is one person of a triune God, goes far beyond what most Jews can comprehend, let alone accept. The boundary lines between what is ours and what is not ours are clear.

Yet the underlying theme is one of universal resonance: that even in the most miserable of circumstances - a nation dominated by a hostile imperial power, by a tyrannical King Herod who will soon unleash a massacre of infants because of his own insecurity, a couple who are outcasts reduced to bringing a child into the world among animals in a manger - that even when the world is dark and life seems totally bleak, the divine can become manifest to humanity, and hope for redemption can be kindled.

That is a message that Jews and other non-Christians may indeed find to be uplifting without betraying their own religious convictions. To shut ourselves off completely from an appreciation of the religious doctrines, architecture, art, music and literature of Christian culture is not an approach to Judaism that we should encourage.

Professor Alderman said that Christianity "has brought nothing but torment to the Jewish people". It's a claim that strikes me as astonishing, coming from a professional historian, and precariously close to a violation of the commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

Could Mel Gibson give Gilad a Hollywood homecoming?

Jennifer Lipman — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:38:48 +0000

Several months ago, various Jewish groups got rather exercised that Mel Gibson was planning to make a film about the Maccabees. The Chanucah story, in the hands of an actor we wouldn't even trust to look after our chocolate money or dreidel winnings? Disastrous.

Mel's movie is still in the development stage, so it's not clear yet whether it will be The Passion II, or a mea culpa set to music with action stunts. But when the news broke, my reaction was: "about time".

Not being in the market to convert, we don't tend to shout about the Hollywood side of Judaism; the triumph of the underdog, "cue the violins" parts. Outside of our first few years of Cheder, when we colour in pictures of Noah's Ark and giggle at Adam and Eve's fig-leaves, we focus on Judaism as a "how to", a code for conduct rather than an exact report on what happened.

It makes sense because, for many of us, the tales of the Tanach require a whopping great suspension of disbelief. Yet there's something about Chanucah that makes the sceptic in me melt.

Of all the incredible - and unbelievable - stories in the Jewish canon, the one about the maverick warrior who successfully led a revolt against the villainous Greek conquerors has to be among the best. It's got everything: family loyalty, victory against-the-odds, drama and intrigue. And there's the oil, lasting for eight nights. It's a miracle that you'd scoff at if it was the ending of a Disney film, and yet, it doesn't half make you proud.

Chanucah is a time for celebrating miracles and this week saw the tail end of one. On Sunday 550 Palestinian prisoners were released from jail early; the final stage of October's deal to bring back Gilad Shalit. Last year, when we lit candles, it was unthinkable that Gilad would be with his family for the next Chanucah. We continued to pray and petition but it had been five years and he was a captive of a merciless terrorist group.

Gilad had been gone for longer than we had been Facebook users and since before the iPad was a glimmer in its creator's eyes. He was last seen when Tony Blair led Britain and Barack Obama was just an unknown freshman senator from Illinois. Heartbreaking as it was, we spoke of him in the same breath as Ron Arad - missing and with almost no news since Gilad was a baby - or Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, brought home in body-bags after being taken by Hizbollah. So when we saw him, now 25, take his first steps to freedom, it was like a miracle unfolding before our eyes.

For Israel, 2011 has been a time for tragedy. Tamar Fogel spends Chanucah without her parents and three of her siblings, after they were murdered in one of the most brutal attacks in Israeli memory. The peace process is faltering, if there at all, while the looming US election means the momentum for progress is slow. Iran remains a threat. Israel is as divided as ever; the rash of abominable Price Tag attacks are a mark of shame and the battle between religious and secular shows no sign of subsiding. Last week, Hamas celebrated its 24th birthday; the icing on its cake was a promise of more struggle against the Zionists.

But there have been miracles, too; perhaps not ones that involve oil lasting longer than it should (no reprieve on those heating bills just yet) but times when the unimaginable happened.

For the disenfranchised in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, it has been a year when tyranny was turned on its head. The Arab Spring may yet turn into a desolate winter, but it is proof that things can change in the Middle East, that the stalemate of decades does not have to be go on for ever. And it has reminded the world that Arab countries have problems that cannot be blamed on Israel.

Last summer brought no second clash on a flotilla. Despite the Palestine Papers, despite the uncertainty of the UN bid, despite the first bus bomb in Jerusalem for seven years, despite rocket fire, this was a year without a war in Israel. For once, Israel's biggest news stories weren't about conflict but about a build up of tents in Tel Aviv and a spat over the price of cottage cheese.

Judge Richard Goldstone admitted he got it wrong on Gaza. Israel showed that political power was not a bar to justice when former president Moshe Katzav was jailed. An Israeli chemist won a Nobel Prize for a theory his academic peers disparaged for decades.

Miracles? Tiny ones, admittedly. But as we light candles and celebrate the exploits of the Maccabees, let's recall that for five years, we hoped against the odds that Gilad would be home for Chanucah. Sometimes, Israel gets the Hollywood ending. And who knows, this time next year Mel Gibson might be working on a film about him.

Lowering of higher education

Geoffrey Alderman — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:38:45 +0000

Last month, Israel's Council for Higher Education (CHE) endorsed the findings of an independent study that it had commissioned to evaluate the quality of departments of political science at eight of Israel's institutions of higher education. Overall, the study had much to say that was approving and complimentary. But what really hit the headlines was a devastating set of judgments concerning the Department of Political Science at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheva. Let me first summarise these for you:

● The recruitment of academic staff and their advancement in the Department of Political Science are sometimes influenced by political rather than purely academic considerations.

● Lecturers are perceived to be expressing personal political opinions alongside professional scholarly judgments.

● There is a consensus among students that the courses offered by the department are politically biased.

● The department was "weak in its core discipline of political science in terms of the number of faculty, curriculum and research.'

To remedy these defects, the committee made a number of recommendations, focused largely on the hiring of more faculty and the reform of the department's programmes of study. If these changes are not implemented, a majority of committee members concluded that, as a last resort, Ben-Gurion University should consider closing the department.

These are harsh words, and their publication has caused a furore beyond as well as within the Israeli academic community. During a recent Knesset debate there were calls for financial sanctions to be imposed upon Ben-Gurion University if it did not deal expeditiously with the issues raised. Nor has the situation been helped by an astounding statement from a dissenting member of the CHE's committee, Professor Galia Golan, who said the call for a balance of views in the classroom "runs counter to the principle of academic freedom." It doesn't. An academic has a duty to present all sides of a debate to his students, and acts unprofessionally if he abuses the power of the instructor by presenting one opinion to the exclusion or virtual exclusion of all others.

The background to the committee's call for balance both in the classrooms of BGU's Department of Political Science and in the hiring of its faculty is to be found in the activities of some members of its present faculty - pre-eminently Dr Neve Gordon, unashamedly promotes BDS - the boycott of Israel, its delegitimation and the imposition of sanctions upon it.

On March 28, on the initiative of Ben-Gurion's president, Dr Rivka Carmi, I was privileged to deliver a public lecture at the university entitled "Intellectual Freedom and Academic Obligation".I drew a distinction between academic freedom and academic licence (the view that an academic should be free to say more or less anything on more or less any subject). And I indicated that engaging in any act likely to give comfort to the enemy in time of war must fall within a commonsense definition of treason. I also pointed out that the BDS movement is itself at odds with the very concept of academic freedom, since it seeks to make the espousal of a particular set of political biases the price for entry into academic dialogue.

What I did not reveal was that earlier in the day I had privately met a group of BGU students, and had heard from them of the political agenda that they believed had been injected into the teaching offered by the Department of Political Science. Unfortunately I had no way of investigating their allegations. But the CHE's committee of inquiry has investigated the allegations and found them proven. Sadly, there are shrill voices at BGU denigrating and denouncing the committee's findings. I recommend Dr Carmi and her team to study the findings of Lord Woolf's recent inquiry into the goings-on at the London School of Economics which has accepted its findings without reservation.

All humans have human rights

Nick Cohen — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:38:45 +0000

The Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour's Nation Estate is not as worthless as most agitprop. She does not scream at the audience but imagines the tiny homeland on offer to the Palestinians as a claustrophobic, concrete, tower-block. Her people are crammed inside, but you never see them. The only figure in view, a woman, I assume is Sansour.

We see her sitting next to the lifts in the high-rise's lobby. On the wall beside her a sign reads, "Floor 3 – Jerusalem, Floor 4 – Ramallah, Floor 5 – Bethlehem" and so on. Other photographs show the woman walking round grim, bare rooms with cracked, concrete floors. From the windows, the viewer captures a glimpse of the brilliant gold on the Dome of the Rock . It glitters from another, better world.

Agitprop fails as art because the audience cannot understand it on its own terms. Partisans must instruct the viewers beforehand on the correct response. If they don't understand or accept the argument, they won't understand or accept the work.

I suppose you could not fully appreciate Sansour unless you knew about the consequences of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in advance. It is redeemed in my eyes because even if you knew nothing, you would still find the contrast between the gold and the grey, the free space and the confined rooms, disturbing

Far worse works win arts prizes all the time. Sansour's work, however, cannot win the Lacoste Elysée Prize. The fashion chain's cultural commissars removed her from the prize shortlist. She alleges they found her work to be too "pro-Palestinian," and then asked her to cover-up their censorship by pretending that she had quit of her own accord. Index on Censorship has seen emails proving that Lacoste first accepted her then dropped her.

Modern antisemitism in its western form is becoming "the racism of the anti-racists" to use Pascal Bruckner's marvellous phrase. Whereas Jew haters once claimed that there was a conspiracy to control everything from the banks to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the interests of advancing Jewish power, today they claim that a conspiracy controls American foreign policy in the interests of advancing Israeli power to crush Palestinians.

In my political neighbourhood, the cause of the Palestinians as not just one cause among many but the only cause.

At a recent left-wing meeting I attended, a speaker announced that women "don't only care about men and babies - we care about serious causes, we care about Palestine". I know I should have spoken out, but I was too flabbergasted to tell her how ridiculous she sounded. No one else in the room thought her ridiculous at all.

Whenever one challenges left-wingers about their acceptance of notions of Jewish power they would once have condemned as fascistic, or ask them why they magnify the crimes of Israel and ignore mass murderers, they wave the bloody shirt of Palestinian suffering. It is both a justification and a taunt.

I urge to you to resist the temptation to snarl and walk away.

Just because the "international community" ignores far worse suffering than the Palestinians endure, does not make Palestinian suffering right. Just because antisemites exploit a cause for their own malign ends, does not mean that cause is worthless.

Abandon a universal view of human rights and you end up in the same cesspit as your own opponents, who allow the tiny state of Israel to block their view of all the evils of the world. Mutatis mutandis, you will also mimic the Israeli settlers who believe they have the right to the West Bank because God gave them the special power to override the human rights of its inhabitants.

The organisers of a supposedly respectable art prize ought to have the confidence to say that one deals with political opponents not by banning them but by arguing with them.

Stormy weather ahead for Hizbollah

Benedetta Berti — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:51:55 +0000

To some observers in the West, the process of massive social and political unrest initiated by the so-called "Arab Spring" spells trouble: specifically, they see the rise of Islamist political parties across the Middle East - from Tunisia to Egypt - as a worrisome trend. In this context, it is assumed that the current shift in the region's political arena and the rise of political Islam will benefit the "resistance camp" in general and groups like Hamas and Hizbollah more specifically.

However, this type of analysis might well be overly simplistic, both minimising the differences between the local political processes and downplaying the singularity of the actors involved in the anti-Israeli "resistance axis."

In this sense, instead of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach, scholars and decision-makers alike would be better advised to take a step back and adopt a more focused, case-by-case approach when assessing the overall impact of the ongoing social and political changes in the Arab world.

Take Hizbollah. Since the initial outbreak of the protests in late 2010, the Lebanese-Shi'ite military and political organisation has been trying its best to shield itself from the process that has been redefining the balance of power and reshuffling the political cards in the region, focusing instead on consolidation and continuity. Similarly, Hizbollah has been trying very hard to convey the message that the ongoing political unrest has strengthened, rather than weakened it. However - despite Hizbollah's repeated reassurances to the contrary - it seems that the actual level of popular and political support for Hizbollah is not as solid as Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah's group would like us to believe.

An initial look at Hizbollah's strategic and security environment seems to confirm the notion that the group has not been shaken by the Arab Spring. Firstly - backed by its unshakable strategic partnership with Iran - Hizbollah remains the most sophisticated and powerful, non-state armed group in the Middle East.

Secondly, in addition to its military might, the organisation has spent the past few months repositioning itself at the centre of the Lebanese political arena, obtaining both the rise of a friendly government under Prime Minister Najib Mikati as well as the de facto marginalisation of its main political opponents, the "pro-Western", anti-Syrian, March 14 movement led by Saad Hariri.

What's more, as well as preserving its position of relative strength and slowly but surely increasing its direct control over Lebanese political life, Hizbollah has also been able to use the Arab Spring in its favour. It has done so by adopting a dual strategy of simultaneous selective endorsement of the revolutions and outright rejection of any political development that could threaten its political allies.

In this context, Hizbollah has been enthusiastically praising the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain, while relying on the Arab Spring "to promote its military and political agenda by making an explicit connection between the social protests and its political aspirations. At the same time, the group has been highly critical of the demonstrations in Syria, betting on the survival of its long-time political partner and ally, President Bashar al-Assad.

Finally, Hizbollah has been able to withstand the blow delivered by the United Nation's Special Tribunal for Lebanon's issuance of indictments against four Hizbollah members, now formally accused of participating in the assassination of the then Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. Thanks to an intensive domestic campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the tribunal, Nasrallah's group has managed to convince the backbone of its constituency - the Lebanese Shi'ite community - of their innocence, preserving their loyalty and support.

However, when taking a closer look at Hizbollah's current predicament, it appears obvious that the group's standing is not as solid as it may appear, and that its current success in dodging the bullets may well prove ephemeral.

From a political and ideological perspective, Hizbollah and its political discourse have not been a prominent feature in the Arab Spring. The protests failed to explicitly include the Arab-Israeli conflict among the list of main grievances, focusing instead on local economic, social and political demands. In addition, the contrast between the ethos of the protest movements - centred on rights and freedoms - and that of Hizbollah, paying lip-service to the importance of establishing a free society while strongly supporting political repression in Syria, is stark.

In this context, Nasrallah's continuing support for the Assad regime has been widely criticised, both within Lebanon as well as regionally. To use one example, in Syria, the anti-Assad forces have openly demonstrated against Hizbollah, burning the organisation's flags, and calling for Nasrallah to stop interfering in Syrian domestic politics. Likewise, political commentators and pundits - especially in Lebanon and within the Gulf - have publicly denounced Hizbollah's support for the Assad regime, accusing the group of applying a "double-standard," and of hypocrisy.

Hizbollah has strongly rejected such accusations, stating that Syria is substantially different from the other regimes hit by the Arab Spring, both due to its role in opposing US-Israeli interests in the region and the "effective" reforms adopted by Assad to redress existing grievances, as well as because of the "extensive" backing of the government. As such, Nasrallah adds, the Assad regime is infinitely more legitimate than the other authoritarian regimes in the region, and the continuing demonstrations are more a consequence of Assad's unwillingness to "bow" to US-Israeli interests than the result of concrete and unaddressed social and political grievances.

Hizbollah's defence has failed to placate the critics of the organisation, domestically as well as regionally. With time, this may translate into a progressive decline of the group's appeal within the Arab world. Put simply by the pro-March 14 newspaper Now Lebanon: "Any ally of a dictator is an enemy of the Arab street."

Moreover, Hizbollah's bet on the stability of the Assad regime may also backfire, as the ongoing escalation in the brutality of the regime has left Assad increasingly more isolated, both at home and abroad. Further, the brutal repression of the Syrian civilian population has not deflated the protests.

In other words: the regime is still very much hanging by a thread and it may very well collapse. In turn, if this were to happen, Hizbollah would lose a core political ally in the region, since Syria has been historically crucial in backing Hizbollah within Lebanon, as well as in serving as the connecting link between Hizbollah and Iran (for example, by allowing and facilitating the transfer of weapons). With Assad gone, Hizbollah could lose both political backing as well as logistical and operational assistance. This is especially true since Hizbollah may have a hard time building good relations with the same Syrian opposition forces that it earlier accused of being on the American and Israeli payroll. A regime change in Syria might also complicate Hizbollah's position within Lebanon by strengthening the March 14 forces and providing a powerful second-wind to the "Cedar Revolution" of spring 2005.

But, aside from these very real regional concerns, the most serious challenge that Hizbollah now faces is domestic, and it is largely a product of the organisation's own hubris in dealing with its political allies. In recent weeks, Hizbollah has in fact taken a series of positions that may lead the group to lose support from its own political allies, while risking further alienating the non-Shi'ite Lebanese.

In this context, Hizbollah should be particularly concerned by the rising tensions between the party and Lebanese PM Mikati, who is a Sunni Muslim. In the past few weeks, the prime minister and Hizbollah took radically different approaches with respect to the issue of renewing the funding for the UN Special Tribunal.
On the one hand, Nasrallah openly stated that Hizbollah would not allow the cabinet to approve Lebanon's funding of the tribunal and ridiculed Mikati's pledges to the international community to continue complying with all of Lebanon's international obligations.

On the other hand, Mikati maintained that funding the tribunal was absolutely crucial, hinting that he would not budge on the issue.

This put the prime minister in a very difficult situation: either to concede to Hizbollah's dictates - losing both credibility in front of the international community as well as the support of his own community - or to resign and send Lebanon into yet another political crisis. In the end, the crisis was (temporarily) averted as Mikati found a way to obtain financing for the tribunal without submitting the proposal to a vote in the cabinet, thus saving face and avoiding a political crisis.

However, the situation remains tense between the prime minister and Nasrallah's organisation, especially as Hizbollah's behaviour has been problematic not just with respect to the tribunal, but also regarding its continuous support for the Syrian regime.

While Mikati has been quietly attempting to downplay Lebanon's support for Syria in front of the international community (for example by abstaining in the UNSC vote on the European draft resolution condemning events in Syria), Hizbollah is making no mystery of its support for the Syrian regime.

The cooling of relations between Mikati and Hizbollah represents a crucial political development, one that could lead to a collapse of the Hizbollah-friendly government.

In this context, while the prime minister continues to differ with the Lebanese-Shi'ite group over Lebanon's international standing and its commitment to its pre-existing obligations, other voices from within Hizbollah's political coalition have started to sound more ambiguous regarding their commitment to the current government.

One such voice is that of the ever-fickle Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who - while waiting to see how things turn out in Syria - has decided to remain in the Hizbollah-led coalition, while emphasising his personal differences with Nasrallah's organisation, including on the tribunal funding and on the relationship with Syria.

In parallel, Hizbollah's uncompromising attitude with respect to both the tribunal and Syria have also exacerbated the existing differences with the March 14 coalition and their political supporters, indicating that the level of popular dissatisfaction with Hizbollah is growing within Lebanon.

In this context, taking into consideration both the possibility of the Party of God losing its current political backing within Lebanon, as well as the threat represented by the potential fall of the Assad regime, it is fair to state that Hizbollah is now facing one of the most serious challenges since its foundation in the early 1980s.

Could the end of Assad be the inevitable prelude to the demise of Hizbollah? Hardly, given the sophistication and magnitude of the group's military apparatus and its solid partnership both with the Lebanese-Shiite community and with Iran.

However, regime change in Syria would spell trouble for Nasrallah's organisation, especially now that the group finds itself in a position of internal weakness and regional ambiguity. In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Arab Spring has not resulted in a rise in the level of power or popular support and legitimacy for the Lebanese-Shiite organisation.