A week on Sunday, the 300 representatives who make up the Board of Deputies will meet on Zoom to discuss the big issues of our community, including antisemitism, Covid-19 and much more.
We will also be casting our minds back 260 years, almost to the day, to the very first meeting of our organisation on 19 November 1760. This was a very different affair. The original seven representatives, known as deputados in Portuguese, came together under the chairmanship of Benjamin Mendes da Costa – the first President of the Board.
We know that this first meeting was convened in order to resolve that a dutiful address should be presented to King George III to mark his accession and the death of King George II. This was in fact the raison d’etre of the new organisation and there was probably no plan for this new committee to develop into a representative organisation for the whole of the Jewish community.
However, the deputados clearly developed a taste for community representation and a second meeting was later announced.
Meanwhile, the Ashkenazi community (the Great Synagogue and the Hambro Synagogue) were not at all happy with this and set up their own rival ‘German Secret Committee for Public Affairs’.
Within months of the first baby steps of our nascent organisation, we already had communal wrangling.
We have not always ended up of the right side of history. Back in 1917, it is fair to say that there was some resistance to the idea of Zionism among the Board’s leadership. And in 1935, the Board of Deputies advised Jews to avoid confrontation at the Battle of Cable Street (although it later emerged that the organisation was actively infiltrating the British Union of Fascists).
However, over the centuries, Board of Deputies has protected the rights of Jews in this country to work, to live peacefully and to practise our religion. In other words to ensure that Jews can live freely and happily in the UK.
Some of our finest moments have come since I became involved as an honorary officer. The antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party tested our resolve and displayed the strength that our community has when it is threatened. We, along with other community organisations, were able to galvanise thousands into a demonstration outside Parliament, organise meetings with the Labour leadership and launch a campaign of unprecedented size and breadth throughout the media.
While the antisemitism crisis enabled us to work effectively and gain national recognition, it is only a fraction of our work. When we represent the Jews community we do so with a wide focus which our ancestors in 1760 could never have anticipated.
We are there to protect your religious freedoms to buy and eat kosher food, to have your sons circumcised, to ensure that your children can be educated in Jewish schools, and to inspect the Jewish education in those schools to make sure it is of a high standard. We seek to protect your employment rights, we raise awareness of the our religion in the wider community and we have tracked the pandemic in our community.
There are Jews in our country who feel we do not speak for them. Of course, it is impossible to represent everyone’s views but over the next 260 years I hope and expect the Board of Deputies will be there, democratically electing representative to listen and put into action what our community needs.
Marie van der Zyl is President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
