On Thursday 30 July 2015, I was informed that I had been banned from teaching at the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS).
Since October that year, following Chief Rabbi Mirvis’s warning against “inappropriate” speakers, my offers to teach in the educational programmes of Kinloss Synagogue, where I am a member and have taught previously, have been consistently rebuffed.
I was told by a senior figure at the LSJS that I was being banned for four reasons:
1. That in spite of the policy of the Chief Rabbi, who is the president of LSJS, I had engaged with 1,300 Jewish students at JCoSS and set up a programme for advanced Jewish studies there.
2. That in response to pronouncements by the Chief Rabbi and others, I had suggested we needed to think deeply and carefully about the ways we related to the Torah, and to be wary of advocating fundamentalist readings with dangerous political consequences.
3. That I had been involved in organising a partnership minyan, and had dared to dispute, in writing, the condemnation of such services by the US rabbinic council.
4. That, in an attempt to help heal wounds which had fractured our community for 55 years, I had agreed to work with the Friends of Louis Jacobs organisation to help develop their educational programme.
Let me state very clearly that I have absolutely no regrets about any of the above actions. Furthermore, I feel that it reflects very poorly on all concerned — the Chief Rabbi, the United Synagogue and LSJS — that these have been viewed as grounds for silencing an individual.
The objection to my involvement with the Friends of Louis Jacobs is particularly dismaying. Whilst I thought it was time to heal wounds and build bridges, others clearly felt that these rifts and divisions had become so final and absolute that they could now generate exclusion simply by association.
As people have since said to me, any mention at all of Louis Jacobs in the United Synagogue is absolutely unacceptable and automatically renders an individual ‘treyf’. (Explaining this to Louis Jacobs’ family has been a particularly difficult experience.)
Where does this leave me? On a personal level, I am finding it increasingly difficult to identify with the United Synagogue, and to attend Kinloss. I take my silencing as an exclusion. But I also feel that there is a bigger story here, which people need to know about. Put simply, the United Synagogue is moving to the right. It is becoming ever more accommodating to the fundamentalism of the hard right, of the Ultra Orthodox and Charedi world, and ever less receptive to its more liberal, tolerant and thoughtful membership.
All of the causes I stand for represent a Judaism that is open, tolerant and willing to engage with its own history. It stands for a conception of halacha that is dynamic and responsive, as any serious study of its development shows it to be.
And it is these values — a willingness to learn from others and history, the possibility of evolution — which the fundamentalist rejects.
The fundamentalist knows the answers, with a rigid certainty that is often mistaken for ‘strong faith’. Genuine faith is in fact the ability to face uncertainty with courage; rigid belief is simply a defensive reaction to anxiety, to the fear and disorientation brought on by a complex world. The literal translation of ‘charedi’ is ‘fearful’, and in this sense it is entirely apt.
In its approach to gender issues, it is not even the case that the United Synagogue is standing still, that it is simply preserving the traditions and practices that have always been.
As late as 1986 there was a mixed choir during services at Hampstead Synagogue. Going further back to an even more enlightened era, Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz’s Chumash (completed in 1936) shows an engagement and careful consideration of Biblical Scholarship way ahead of its time.
This embodied the “progressive conservatism” which he articulated as his religious philosophy. Following his lead, historical Bible scholarship was a regular part of the Rabbinic training at Jews College well into the 1950s. Such a curriculum could not even be entertained in the current inwardly focussed atmosphere.
Partnership minyanim actually provide a very gentle test case for contemporary halacha, raising one simple question: “Are we ready to have a sensible conversation about gender and halacha?”. It has become clear that the US Rabbinate are not.
The conversation is urgent because in the period when halacha was being formalised women were viewed as second class citizens. As an example, they are disqualified from being a witness, perhaps due to the Talmudic statement that they have ‘weak minds’ or ‘unstable judgment’ (Kiddushin 80b, Shabbat 31b).
It’s also striking that whilst we can’t have this conversation today, it was possible to have it 1000 years ago. When Rabbenu Gershom banned polygamy because he felt it demeaned women, he ended a tradition going back to the Patriarchs. One can only imagine how the anti-Partnership reactionaries would have responded.
Whilst I don’t believe that Chief Rabbi Mirvis bears full responsibility for this accelerated move to the right, I do feel that under his leadership the right wing in his Beth Din and rabbinate have felt emboldened and have pushed a harder agenda. Chief Rabbi Sacks may have frustrated people, but he made it clear, through his prolific and sophisticated exposition of Judaism, that thinking was welcome under his reign, that one did not respond to challenge with exclusion.
Rabbi Mirvis may not be a hardliner but nor has he had the conviction and confidence to rein in the hardline elements in his Beth Din and Rabbinate. There has been something of an intellectual and political power vacuum. And, perhaps in response to this, he has offered up as a sacrifice the kinds of causes that I and others believe in. There is a new spirit of demonisation at work, one which perhaps hasn’t been felt since the Jacobs affair.
But this isn’t simply repeating history. In 1961, no one was speaking about religious fundamentalism as a danger. If anything, religion was viewed as a spent force, with a limited lifespan. In today’s world, religious fundamentalism is a major global concern.
But can anything be done?
The United Synagogue membership need to carefully consider if they wish to support an institution which is gathering momentum in such an extreme and intolerant direction. With annual membership fees amounting to around £10.5 million, these constituents have the power to bring about change.
They can study for themselves and thus better challenge their rabbis. They could also withhold their membership fees while demanding an inquiry into where things are heading.
The proud historic legacy of Anglo Jewry is at stake.
Elie Jesner is a UKCP Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and educates and writes on a broad range of subjects. He is lecturing this Sunday, 20th November, on Fundamentalism and Jewish Education.