Columnists

Union heeding wake-up call

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:46:19 +0100

On the assumption that most of you are not devotees of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, or in full paid-up membership of one of its numerous conventicles, I need to bring you up to speed on developments within the Union and its affiliates that are without precedent. Not only do they offer a very public window into a world that has shunned all publicity hitherto, they constitute a landmark in the slow but hopefully steady progress of the Anglo-Charedi world towards some semblance of an emotional maturity sadly lacking hitherto.

Towards the end of last year a number of leading rabbis based in London put their names to a remarkable statement declaring that an unnamed rabbi was "not fit and proper to act in any rabbinic capacity". This being the Charedi world, addicted to nothing so much as gossip and innuendo, the name of the rabbi soon emerged, but what also emerged were very serious allegations against him of an explicitly sexual nature, relating to the way in which he had allegedly counselled women who came to him for guidance over their marital problems.

At first the UOHC seemed reluctant to act. This being the Charedi world an attempt was made to hush matters up by establishing a special Beis Din to hear the allegations, doubtless in the hope that this would head off any involvement by the police. But, this being the Charedi world, the attempt was clumsily executed and failed miserably. As the Union rabbinate must have known, this was always a police matter, and the police should have been involved as a first resort, not a last. Once they did become involved a number of arrests were made. These were accompanied by a very sensible public statement from the desk of the most senior police officer in the borough of Barnet (where the arrested men were being held), chief superintendent Adrian Usher, who reassured the Jewish community that those so detained were being treated "with fairness, dignity and respect".

On such matters the law will take its course. All those already charged or who might be will come before the courts, where their innocence or guilt will be established. Meanwhile the Union has taken some very welcome steps to put its own house in order. At the end of May, through its recently established "Committee for the preservation of purity in the camp" (my translation) it inserted an astounding notice in the Charedi press, drawing attention to the fact that "the behaviour of rabbonim in some counselling and marriage guidance workshops in our area is inappropriate and disrespectful towards their female patients and falls below expected standards of modesty". Some days later another UOHC announcement (behind which there must be lurk a collection of unsavoury stories as yet untold) condemned "the behaviour of staff in some tailoring and dressmaking workshops in our area" as "inappropriate and disrespectful towards their female customers and [which] falls below expected standards of modesty."

It's too easy to snort and snigger at such pronouncements. I imagine that those in charge must have thought long and hard about making them. What they tell us, on the record, is that the UOHC acknowledges wrongdoing of a sexual nature by some of its rabbis - and clearly, by its own admission, by the use of the plural "rabbonim," more than one rabbi was involved. They also suggest that such inappropriate behaviour extends beyond the very private arena of marital counselling into the somewhat less private milieux of dressmaking.

I have before used this column to draw attention to incidences of sexual impropriety in Charedi circles. But these recent public admissions are in no sense an occasion for smugness. The Union has at last commenced the journey that it knows it must undertake, as the Catholic Church has painfully done (or rather, been forced to do). But in permitting the rabbi at the centre of last year's allegations to officiate at a recent wedding in London the UOHC has also demonstrated that its grasp of the need to act appropriately and with integrity is still far from perfect.

And in agreeing to officiate in this way the rabbi concerned has merely given his detractors further ammunition to use against him.

Women's prayers answered

Miriam Shaviv — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:38:13 +0100

When you hear the same promises from leaders for years, or even decades, cynicism is inevitable. So I will forgive any readers who laugh when I predict there is going to be significant progress on one of the thorniest issues facing our community: the role of women in Orthodoxy. Still, my gut feeling is that, nearly 20 years after the report on Jewish women commissioned by Lord Sacks, something important is happening.

On Sunday, I was one of 100 people who attended what, at first glance, seemed like a regular Orthodox minyan in Golders Green. Men and women were separated by a thick, high mechitzah. The liturgy and tunes were familiar from any United Synagogue service. So were most of the participants.

But there were differences. The decorum was perfect; the singing unusually joyful and rousing. And parts of the service, such as Hallel and the reading of the Torah, were led by women.

This was the UK's first official "partnership minyan", an Orthodox service in which women conduct as much of the prayers as they are allowed to by halachah. While such services will never become mainstream, it was an important step. First, because expectations of female leadership in regular shuls will inevitably change as such sights become routine, particularly as members of at least two US synagogues are currently planning their own partnership minyanim.

More importantly, unlike in the past, participants did not feel the need to wait for the approval of UK rabbis. Having studied and travelled overseas, and having access to the internet, they know that "partnership minyanim" are well established in Jerusalem and New York, and are backed by reputable halachic authorities there. Without that hold over them, local rabbis have no way to stop the phenomenon.

Later, I attended the inaugural UK Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (Jofa) conference. The 200 participants - who included some of our leading Orthodox educators and lay leaders and cannot be dismissed as marginal - spoke passionately about their commitment to Torah, mitzvot and Orthodoxy, and their determination to participate more fully in shul life, ensure that their daughters are given a more ambitious Jewish education, and share more equally ritual life in the home.

Here, again, is a grassroots organisation that is fully committed to halachah, but does not seek the imprimatur of British institutions or rabbis, who are notoriously slow-moving. While some did caution that it was necessary to work within existing frameworks, it was clear that as a group, these sisters (and quite a few brothers) are going to do it for themselves.

Neither the partnership minyan nor Jofa appeared in a vacuum. Over the past few months, I believe Orthodox women have been energised by the JLC's Commission on Jewish Leadership and by the US's sudden decision to allow women to chair shuls, which made it clear that some objections to women's leadership are cultural and political rather than halachic. Several women's megillah readings, which began in private homes, have now moved into synagogues, and there is more demand for women's Simchat Torah dances, Shavuot learning and more meaningful celebrations of batmitzvahs. US Women, who work indefatigably behind the scenes, have organised several well-attended seminars on women's issues.

Together, these add up to significant momentum. The community is ripe for change. For many rabbis and others, this is scary, and the temptation may be to fight new initiatives. This would be a shame, as there is room for both right and left on the spectrum of Orthodoxy and both sides should respect, not undermine, each other.

But it would also, ultimately, be a losing battle. Completely fed up with decades of obstruction, my sense is, these ladies are not for turning.

When the Israel boycott goes mainstream

Jonathan Freedland — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:56:56 +0100

Sometimes it takes just a single word. This particular word, used three times in a newspaper article, offered a glimpse of an unwelcome future - one in which Israel is seen all but universally as a pariah state.

It appeared in a Daily Express report on Stephen Hawking's decision to join the academic boycott of Israel. The article focused on what it called the "barrage of vile abuse" and "disgusting" jokes aimed at Hawking by defenders of Israel on social media, quoting the "sick user" who posted that "the antisemite Stephen Hawking can't even wipe his own a**," another who said "He should die already!" and a third who wrote that the physicist was "also crippled in the head".

Appalling as they are, none of those remarks includes the word that struck me. For the Express report referred to Hawking's decision to join the boycott of "the Israeli regime," which is why he was staying away from a conference hosted "by the regime's president," Shimon Peres.

Regime. That's the word reserved for Iran and North Korea. Yet here it was applied to Israel, not in a rant from George Galloway or a fiery polemic in the left press, but in the Express, a paper of the centre-right with little interest in foreign affairs.

As it happens, the word was changed in later versions of the online story (after what I'm told was a very angry phone call from the Israeli embassy to the reporter involved). But the memory of it lingers because it shows how things could end up - with Israel shunned and vilified, not just by activists and campaigners, but by the mainstream.

As I understand it, no anti-Israel animus drove that story; that's not really the Express' thing. The angle instead was appalling abuse directed at a British national treasure. If that abuse had come from opponents, rather than defenders, of Israel, the Express would have condemned it just as vehemently.

But the sad truth is Hawking was speaking out against Israel, not for it. And his status as a national treasure affects how that stance is perceived, making it instantly mainstream rather than fringe or radical. It's too early to tell if his decision will prove a tipping point for the boycott movement, but it could. As I never tire of pointing out, quoting scholar Ze'ev Mankowitz, people don't believe in ideas - they believe in people who believe in ideas. Many people around the world believe in and respect Hawking and will, as a result, now think that perhaps they, too, should boycott Israel.

Avowed opponents of the boycott - and I am one of them - should fear this shift, rendering anti-Israel sentiment less Palestine Solidarity Campaign and more Blue Peter Appeal, a view that is not controversial, or even that political, but apparently held by all right-thinking people. Once that kind of consensus settles, it can be impossible to shift.

Those who resorted to such vile insults against Hawking were obviously wrong. But so, too, were those who, in more elegant language, cast Hawking as some congenital Israel-hater. The painful truth is that Hawking has a long track record as a friend of Israel; he had visited the country four times, given the red-carpet treatment when he went in 2006. But now he has had enough.

Rather than slamming him, those who wish the best for Israel should contemplate what Hawking's move means - that unless the country changes course, ending an occupation 46 years old this week, then Hawking's action will become the norm. The great physicist has allowed us a peek inside the black hole inhabited by the world's pariah nations. That glimpse alone should make us recoil.

The false dignity of departure

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:08:46 +0100

Last week, London's Barbican Centre staged the glitzy spectacle of the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, being interviewed by David Frost. According to one report, "successive speakers waxed lyrical" about Sacks's influence on them, the Jewish community, and British society at large. United Synagogue president Stephen Pack apparently declared that Lord Sacks had become "the moral compass of the country".

In answer to a question from Frost, Sacks declared that his greatest accomplishment had been presiding over a Jewish community that had "transformed itself," growing numerically for the first time since the end of the Second World War, revitalising its Orthodox shuls and tripling the number of children going to Jewish day schools."

He denied that he had "come out strongly" against same-sex marriage. But he avoided a question about what he would have done differently, preferring to concentrate instead on his numerous frightfully important visits to 10 Downing Street. As for the Hugo Gryn affair, he brushed that aside as "one of those moments of turbulence".

As a historian of British Jewry (I am currently updating a text on the subject that I first published some 20 years ago), I feel the need to plug one or two gaps in the Sacks legend that is now being created, and which was clearly being previewed at the event.

The first myth that I need to expose is that Sacks himself has had anything to do with the transformation of the community over which he has presided - the United Hebrew Congregations. The welcome numerical growth in the numbers of British Jews has had nothing to do either with him or with his community: it has happened within the Anglo-Charedi world, over which he most certainly does not preside - but which he unquestionably fears. Inasmuch as there has been a "revitalisation" of what one might term "centrist" Orthodox shuls, this can be traced to the enthusiasm and hard work of a relatively small number of individuals, working mostly outside the Orthodox establishment.

The Jewish day school movement is an undoubted success story - but Sacks has played no part in its fulfilment. For the record, the major catalyst in ensuring this success has been the Huntingdon Foundation, expertly directed by its founder, Benjamin Perl. Lord Sacks's one foray into the arena of spiritual renewal with Anglo-Jewry was "Jewish Continuity," an initiative that foundered spectacularly - not merely on account of strictly Orthodox objections to what the sectarians believed was unacceptable leniency toward the non-Orthodox, but also because of Lord Sacks's blatant inability to confront this bigotry.

As his term draws to a close and his admirers hasten to give him a hero's farewell, I need to remind them that Sacks came into office waving the banner of "inclusivism" (his phrase). In One People? he had argued that it fell to the Orthodox to be inclusivist rather than exclusivist, and that this meant, among other things, not speaking of other Jews "except in the language of love and respect". His infamous letter of January 1997 to the late Dayan Padwa, famously leaked to the JC, gave the lie to this pious platitude, for in it he spoke of Gryn in scathing and I would say spiteful language. In January 1995, following an outcry from the right over his recognition of Masorti marriages, he saw fit to publish an article in the Jewish Tribune condemning Masorti adherents for having "severed their links" with the faith of their ancestors. Yet a week later, in the JC, he had the chutzpah to stress his belief in an orthodoxy "uncompromising in its tolerance."

But Sacks did indeed "come out strongly" against same-sex marriage. Last July, in his official capacity, he stressed, on the record, that marriage was a sacred union between a man and a woman and that any redefinition would undermine it. Why does he seek to belittle now what he publicly affirmed then?

Finally, I need to remind us all that, in 2002, in order to placate the strictly Orthodox, he agreed to rewrite key passages in The Dignity of Difference, in which (like Chief Rabbi Hertz before him) he had argued that Judaism could learn from other religions.

In short, his tenure does not strike me as having been guided by any "moral" compass at all - but rather by the politically expedient dictates of the moment.

Chicken, Dickens and Death

Peter Rosengard — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:16:19 +0100

I've got a book coming out. My publisher is very busy - often the only time we talk is when he's walking home in rush hour. He's a power walker so he is always out of breath.

He rang me yesterday. "Peter? puff… puff…It's your… puff…publisher… puff puff."

The next day I had an idea: "Peter, you're a life insurance salesman! If you can sell that, you can sell your book. The reader won't even have to die to get the benefit - and it's a lot funnier than death."

Which is why last Tuesday I was at a Covent Garden pizza restaurant about to go on at the trendy Hospital club before a packed house to compete in "Literary Death Match" - books and words instead of gloves and punches. There were going to be four authors competing.

OK - three authors and a life insurance salesman.

Earlier, I'd gone to pick up my Lily, my daughter, from the station. While I was waiting, I thought I'd practise by reading my piece to someone.

I looked around. Who looked like a Larry David fan?

"Excuse me." I said to the fair-haired young man in his 20s. "Have you heard of Curb your Enthusiasm?"

"I love LD," he said. "Hey… 'Palestinian chicken'!?"

"Great. I'm about to do a reading of a story from my book… about how I once bumped into Larry David at breakfast in New York - can I read it to you?"

" You met LD!!? " he said. "Hang on… are you entering Literary Death Match?"

"Yes! How did you know?

"I'm waiting for my brother - he's one of the authors!"

"What are the odds! What's his book about?"

"The Artful Dodger… but it starts six years after Oliver Twist ended," he said.

"Terrific!" I thought. "I'm against the new Dickens."

I was now eating pizza with Lily and Dani, my publicist. Dani's a sweet young north London Jewish guy - really a Daniel.

"Can we talk about what you're going to be reading in 10 minutes?" he said.

I read them a bit of the Larry David story, but kept getting the accents muddled. One minute LD had an English accent and I was the New Yorker.

"No Dad, you can't read that one," said Lily.

"I agree," the young Sicilian waiter said. "Too much dialogue; I think you need more narrative."

"OK Lily… why don't you and Roberto choose?"

Lily said "How about 'The night my ears melted'. It's really funny!" "Roberto… what do you say?" I asked.

"Yes it's funny." "Ok… we'll go with the ears."

"You're on in three," Dani said. "Ciao," Roberto said, adding: "Remember sir… please, no Larry… I love LD… but you're no Larry."

"Are you really a life insurance salesman?" one of the other authors asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I think they wanted to add a bit of glamour to the evening," I said.

Israel does not hold the key

David Aaronovitch — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 10:06:56 +0100

When Israel was founded out of Jewry's near-destruction, it was at once a liberation for Jews and a disaster for Palestinian Arabs. What happened in the subsequent years - who did what to who and when - is not the subject of this column, but we need to agree that something that was good for one people was bad for another.

By the time most of us under the age of 60 came to adulthood, the basics had been settled. Israel was there but it was evident that the Palestinians were not going to go away, to be absorbed, like the Volksdeutsch of central Europe, into another land.

Over time and, in particular, following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the first intifada, it became one of the deepest desires of many of us that there be justice for Palestinians, too, an end to occupation and the construction of a Palestinian state existing side-by-side with Israel. That, we thought (I still think) would make Israel more secure.

Given the centrality, in rhetoric at least, of the Palestinian issue in Arab and (to a much lesser extent) Muslim life, it seemed natural also to assume that such justice, if achieved, would "bring peace to the whole region".

The Arab countries could then drop their popular hostility to the West and we might get on with the business of encouraging democracy and friendship. That may be why the Israel-Palestinian embroglio was described as the "Middle East Peace Process".

This thinking partly led to Tony Blair arguing in 2002 and 2003 that action over Iraq should be accompanied by an attempt to get us back to Oslo. It was thinking resisted by some of those in Israel and elsewhere who did not want to see such momentum resumed - who wanted peace but only without any sacrifice.

The trouble is that, in this one matter, people like me were wrong and they were right. Looking at the Middle East now it is all too obvious that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not even in the top three of the biggest issues in the region.

To illustrate this, you only have to listen to what Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, had to say this week. He was appealing to Sunnis in Lebanon not to get nasty with his party of theocratic neo-fascists, just because it was pitting Lebanese Shi'ites in battle in Syria against Turkish and Qatari-backed Syrian rebels, who were mostly Sunni.

Though he used the usual arguments that Israel was behind the rebellion, it is doubtful that even he believes this, let alone those who he was arguing with. The Syrian civil war has - as those who urged early intervention always argued it would - burst its banks and is flooding its neighbours with blood.

But the war in Syria, now grinding through its 80th thousand in deaths, depends in no way on the old "Middle East Peace Process". Nor does the renewed insurgency in Iraq, which killed up to 500 last week. Nor does the threat posed by the Iranian atomic programme - as violently opposed by the Gulf states as by Israel - and nor does the difficult, precarious and essential business of creating a modern state out of crisis-ridden Egypt. Nor even does whatever happens in the huge, lawless margins of Mali, Libya, Chad and Algeria.

So if you were John Kerry, and you had to make a list for President Obama of the crisis points in the world and the order in which they had to be dealt, where would Israel come in your order of priorities? Would it even appear? Or is it the case now that the need for peace is far more about the peoples of Israel and the occupied territories than it is about the sensitivities of the rest of the world?

Capitulation of the Deputies

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 27 May 2013 09:24:49 +0100

'What goes around comes around" - so they say. I began writing this column 11 years ago. My debut appeared in the issue of March 1 2002. The topic I had chosen for my inaugural essay was the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The subject-matter had been triggered by a silly contretemps involving the Board, its then president (former headteacher Jo Wagerman) and the Chief Rabbi, whose attempt to involve himself in a Holocaust Memorial Day event in Manchester had annoyed her. This was because it seemed he had - through an innocent oversight, no doubt - omitted to seek permission.

This story had reached the press through the leak of an internal Board memo. That leak had been accompanied by another, involving a protest from Mrs Wagerman to the Home Office, which had thoughtlessly declined to front Home Secretary David Blunkett as the principal government "guest" at an HMD gathering.

I dismissed these incidents as side-shows that were unimportant compared with the actual needs and concerns of British Jewry at the time. Of the Board itself, as it functioned at that period, I wrote that I could not think "of an organisation more irrelevant to the contemporary well-being of British Jews".

I was reminded of that on reading, on the front page of last week's JC, about the extraordinarily convoluted condemnation of the Board by its former vice-president, Jerry Lewis.

The Board, Lewis wrote, is "in chaos." He denounced Board president Vivian Wineman and his team for "presiding over the rapid disintegration". He also blamed Wineman's predecessor, Henry Grunwald for "two strategic errors" - namely, hiving off shechita defence to Shechita UK, and creating the London Jewish Forum to confront Ken Livingstone.

Lewis concluded by saying that although, as vice-president he had felt himself unable to support the Jewish Leadership Council (which, he might have added, arose from another Grunwald initiative), he now proposed to throw in his lot with it, because it had stepped up to the plate and was "taking urgent measures to plug the numerous lacunae" created by the Board's present and recent leadership.

Nowhere in Lewis's article was there any mention of the undeniable fact that the Board does not, as presently constituted, represent anything approaching the totality of British Jewry. Lewis needs to remind himself that the Charedim, the fastest growing section of British Jewry, with their very high birth-rate, are not part of the Board (or, indeed, of the JLC) and do not wish to be.

Shechita UK was created partly in order to address that "lacuna". Grunwald was right to sponsor its birth, a decision vindicated by the excellent work it continues to do.

As for the London Jewish Forum, let's be frank: this is a peripheral piece of theatre that played no part whatsoever in the gratifying defeat of Mr Livingstone in last year's mayoral contest.

But the JLC is a quite different creature. It has money. Therefore it exercises power. And that - surely - is why Lewis has now done a U-turn and is calling upon us all to support it.

I have on more than one occasion devoted this column to the JLC, and to the communal ambitions of its leading light, Mick Davis. The JLC originated a decade ago as an attempt by Henry Grunwald to engage with the moneyed classes. The initiative was entirely honourable. Even I supported it, to a point.

The fact is, however, that under the weak leadership of Vivian Wineman, the JLC has been permitted to usurp the Board. As I wrote in 2011, Davis is intent upon imposing upon British Jewry a "New Order", in which, by design or circumstance, the JLC will appropriate the functions of the Board.

I believe the current plan, for the Board to share with the JLC its staff and resources, has no other purpose. Lewis hopes this will happen "as soon as possible," so that "a new democratic structure for the combined organisation" can emerge.

If Lewis seriously believes that Davis and his wealthy cronies are actually interested in democratic structures, then he is a bigger fool than I ever imagined could be the case.

Report is too little, too late

Melanie Phillips — Sun, 26 May 2013 09:17:25 +0100

The reported "killing" of Mohammed al Dura in a hail of Israeli bullets was nothing of the kind and was instead a modern-day blood libel. So said the state of Israel this week.

What kept it?

The al Dura travesty is a scandal that has been simmering for the past 13 years. It is hard to overstate the significance of the footage, broadcast on the station France 2 in September 2000 by reporter Charles Enderlin. It purported to show 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura clinging to his father under a sustained barrage of Israeli fire during a demonstration at the Netzarim Junction. The child was shown slumping to the ground - whereupon Enderlin declared that he was dead.

Mohammed al-Dura became the poster child of the last decade's terrorist war. The image of him clinging to his father was the recruiting sergeant for countless acts of murder, and the further delegitimisation of Israel.

The definitive evidence that this "killing" was, however, a faked performance out of the "Pallywood" terrorist repertory has been available for years. Yet Israel remained silent.

Now an Israel government committee has found that France 2 had edited the raw footage and thereby excluded a part at the end in which the boy - declared dead by Enderlin moments earlier - is clearly seen alive and moving. Quelle surprise!

Back in 2007, I myself saw this missing footage in a French court that had demanded it be produced. France 2 had brought a libel suit against French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty for saying the station had broadcast a faked killing. It's a case which is, incidentally, still trudging its way through the French appeals system.

I was in a packed courtroom which saw the child move after Enderlin said he was dead. With one or two exceptions, the world's media has studiously ignored this startling evidence. And Israel, too, remained silent.

Years earlier, Nahum Shahaf, a physicist in Israel's defence establishment, had concluded that al-Dura had not been killed at all at Netzarim and the whole thing was a theatrical set-up. Yet Israel remained silent.

Nor is this the full extent of Israel's incompetence over this affair.

Originally, the IDF actually accepted responsibility for the boy's death. After an internal inquiry, it claimed instead that father and son had probably been hit by Palestinian gunfire. But anyone looking at the broadcast footage could see that neither father nor son was wounded in any way. Did no one in the IDF or foreign ministry ask why there was no visible wound on a boy who had allegedly just been killed by snipers, no blood anywhere?

The fact is that at no stage did Israel want to get to the truth. After its gross incompetence in taking responsibility for a killing that never happened, it looked the other way as the facts emerged. The result is that this tale has been suppurating poison for 13 years. France 2 has never been called to account. Untold numbers of Israelis have been murdered as a result of this footage. And Israel has been libelled as a nation of child-killers.

So why did it stay silent until now? The foreign ministry seemed to believe it was all just water under the bridge and no good would come of stirring it up again. This "heads down" attitude is sometimes called "ghetto mentality". What the scandal surely tells is that you can take the people out of the ghetto, but you cannot always take the ghetto out of the people.

And now, 13 years too late, Israel has published the results of a government inquiry, which the rest of the world won't believe. Why now? Why produce this without the all-important independent element to guarantee its credibility? Why do so without even putting on the web for all to see the critical unbroadcast footage showing the child moving?

Why is the Israel government so monumentally incompetent?

When hypocrisy met vanity

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:20:37 +0100

Coincidence is a funny thing. Take last Wednesday. I had reserved that morning to prepare a lecture on the intellectual origins of Nazism. I intended asking why so many apparently sane academics saw fit to endorse Nazism, and indeed promote it. I proposed examining several German men of science and letters, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the physicists and Nobel Laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.

It was Stark who, in 1907, asked the comparatively obscure Albert Einstein to write an essay on the principle of relativity. The essay launched Einstein on to the world stage. But, much later, as proponents of "German Physics," Stark and Lenard denounced Einstein and became fanatical flag-carriers for the Nazi state.

Well, there I was, busily researching these individuals, when I received a call asking me to comment on the startling news that Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned theoretical physicist, had reportedly acceded to requests from Palestinian-Arab academics and rejected an invitation from Israeli President Shimon Peres to attend the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.

After some confusion, stemming from a highly misleading statement from Cambridge University suggesting that Hawking's decision had been prompted merely by the state of his health, it became clear that the underlying motive was indeed political.

The previous Friday, Hawking had told the conference organisers: "I accepted… with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster."

On hearing this, I reminded the reporter of the words of my late father: "You can't teach common sense at a university."

I observed that the attributes of scholarly brilliance and political idiocy were not, alas, mutually exclusive and recalled that several renowned physicists had espoused Nazism.

I also pointed out that the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter had openly supported the Serbian murderer Slobodan Miloševic. And that Hawking himself, while clearly determined to boycott Israel, had in 2007 seen fit to grace Iran with his presence - despite Iran's comprehensive abuse of basic human rights - and had also visited China, a brutal totalitarian state in which the suppression and torture of political dissidents are (especially in Tibet) everyday occurrences.

I observed that in boycotting the event Hawking was denying himself the platform he had apparently sought - to denounce Israeli policy (which of course he is entitled to do).

But I then had some less than generous words for those who had extended the invitation to him in the first place.

The Presidential Conference is not an academic event. Over three days, a gathering of some 5,000 celebrities - including Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Albert of Monaco and Barbra Streisand - will meet in solemn conclave to debate "Facing Tomorrow" - and will "engage the central issues that will influence the face of our future: geopolitics, economics, society, environment, culture, new media, and more".

The idea that any concrete good can come from such an assembly is fatuous nonsense. The first such conference took place in 2008. The conferences stem from an initiative of Peres and - to be blunt -their purpose is simply to enhance the international image of Peres. They have no other rationale.

Of course, if Hawking were not such a hypocrite he would - in the interests of the boycott he clearly supports - forego all the technology, originating in Israel, that enables him to cope and function in spite of the motor neurone disease from which he has suffered for the past half-century.

But if Shimon Peres were not so conceited he would never have summoned the "Presidential Conference" in the first place.

Truman show’s real star

Daniel Finkelstein — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:18:31 +0100

As ome of my best friends are Jews. It is a boast so thin and irrelevant that it has become an in-joke. So it was a surprise to discover, when reading the other day, that one of the most important and positive events in the modern history of the Jewish people took place because someone's best friend was Jewish. And I thought it was a story worth telling.

It is, after all, Israel's 65th birthday and birthdays are a moment for reminiscence. When Harry S Truman (the S stood for nothing, by the way, his middle name was just S) returned from the First World War, he didn't want to go back home to the farm where he had done back-breaking work from his youth into his 30s. He had seen some of the world now, and he wanted something better.

So he had the idea of going into business. He knew how, too. He had met a Jew. And with his Missouri rural upbringing, he thought if he knew a Jew he was half-made. So he hooked up with his army buddy, Eddie Jacobson, and set up a shirt and haberdashery store in downtown Kansas City.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, given how things turned out for him) Truman's confidence was misplaced. "Truman & Jacobson" did well at first but after the first year it began to struggle and eventually the company collapsed, leaving both men with considerable debts. Harry Truman, with the patronage of "Big Boss" Prendergast, went into politics partly because it promised a steady income with which he could pay off his creditors.

Not much more than 20 years later, after a series of extraordinary political events, the failed shirt salesman became the most unlikely president of the century. And to him, rather than Franklin Roosevelt, fell the incredibly difficult decisions thrown up by the Second World War. What to do about the Russians and their advance through Eastern and Central Europe, what to do about the atom bomb and then the H-bomb, what to do about Korea, what to do about the collapsing economies of Western Europe?

And what to do about the Jews. "Everyone else," Harry Truman used to say to his aides, "everyone else who's been dragged from his country has someplace to go back to. But the Jews have no place to go."

After the war, it fell to Truman to decide what to do when the British could no longer afford their mandate. Should the country be partitioned, with a Jewish state created? Should America recognise a new state of Israel? Two big things led him to think it should. The first was that he had natural human sympathy for the Jews and their plight. The second was that the domestic politics of the Jewish vote in the presidential election of 1948 said he should support them.

But two things said he should lean the other way. The state department was opposed, meaning that the man Truman admired the most, the man he credited with winning the war, General Marshall was opposed. The second, oddly, was that Jewish lobbying had driven the president to distraction. He was more than fed up with it.

There was, however, one other factor. One of his best friends was Jewish. Truman had decided that he would stick close to his diplomats. Chaim Weizmann came to lobby and Truman wouldn't even see him. But then Eddie Jacobson asked to see his old business partner. He begged just one favour.

Truman had an idol, said Jacobson, and it was former President Andrew Jackson. Well he, Jacobson had an ally and it was Chaim Weizmann. Would his old friend, for old time's sake, spare just a few minutes for his idol? Truman felt he had to agree.

And it was in his meeting with Weizmann that Truman committed himself. America would support partition.

So the next time someone says that one of their best friends is Jewish, be polite about it. You never know when it might come in handy.