Liberal rabbi did not speak for all Liberal Jews

I am a Liberal Jew and proud to be one. However, I need to voice my disappointment at the reaction of Rabbi Alexandra Wright of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue (August 31) to the statement made by former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks about Jeremy Corbyn’s antisemitism.

Calling the comments of Rabbi Sacks, “irresponsible and dangerous”, is not, I feel sure, what the vast majority of Liberal Jews think. If it is just her personal opinion she should say so.

I belong to Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue — the second largest Liberal synagogue in the UK. I would be horrified if our rabbis and congregation shared Rabbi Wright’s views.

My opinion, and I think that of most Progressive Jews, are expressed well by Reform Rabbi Jonathan Romain — that Jeremy Corbyn is guilty of a “one-sided standpoint and personal prejudice” — and by senior Reform Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who said that “Corbyn is a liability and to have him as a world leader would be a farce”.

I hope that most Liberal rabbis agree with the Reform rabbis.

Peter Phillips

Loudwater, Herts.

 

I am indebted to Rabbi Wright for telling us that Jews are not the only people being harassed and vilified in the world. Most people were aware of that. More seriously, we might ask her how Jews should respond to Corbynism.

Although turning the other cheek is a Christian virtue, it has historically not been practised by them but has been too often by Jews.

Presumably, we should smile cheerfully while the leader of one of our great parties has been shown again and again to share platforms with terrorists who want to kill Israelis in particular and Jews in general. Of course we are told this was in the name of peace. Who could doubt it?

As it happens, the same issue describes the failure of the C.V. in pre-war Germany to counter Nazi antisemitism. Being frightfully nice was not a great success.

M Schachter

London NW6

 

I may be in a minority among your readership in being appalled by Lord Sacks’s recent outburst in the New Statesman, doing his worst in the orchestrated slander campaign that targets Jeremy Corbyn regardless of the facts.

While Lord Sacks kept within theological issues, the harm this headstrong and imprudent man could do was generally limited just to that sphere; but now, with this defamatory assault on Mr Corbyn, culminating in his ludicrous comparison with Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, I can only conclude that he has thrown all intellectual and ethical probity to the four corners and plunged into the gutter.

Such a malicious attack on the good character of Mr Corbyn, someone who has so staunchly fought against racism and prejudice all his political life, from an ex-Chief Rabbi no less, may produce an adverse reaction against Jews in circles that otherwise would be neutral or favourable.

I yield to no one in combating antisemitism in any form it adopts. I have never voted for Labour, much less Mr Corbyn, nor do I politically support him.

Rather, I speak as a proud British Jew, outraged at a disgraceful smear campaign against a decent (albeit imperfect, like all of us) man.

Cyril Salter

London N6

Another approach needed

Reading through last week’s JC, with its strong (but correct) emphasis on the increase in antisemitism, it struck me that many of the Jewish organisations involved in countering this serious threat were taking a very similar approach.

It’s an approach that is legally led, dispassionate and often quite formal (demanding apologies, encouraging adoption of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, taking legal action where necessary etc).

This applies both in the case of our larger representative institutions, such as the Board of Deputies, as well as smaller, feistier organisations such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism.

In the same issue, the marvellous article by David Aberbach (How the German Jews failed to combat pre-Shoah hatred, JC, August 31) provides an essential lesson on the limitations of such an approach.

While the pre-war German Jewish community succeeded in scoring legal points and attempted to counter antisemitism with facts, it failed to influence the attitudes of the wider population at an emotive, “gut-feel”level.

This, I believe, is the same challenge that the Jewish community of the UK must address today.

At present, our organisations have been focused on getting the Labour Party to adopt the IHRA’s definition in full and in challenging people who deny the Holocaust or espouse antisemitism, through legal means or through publicity.

Where we see little action is in trying to persuade the wider British population — at an emotional, instinctive or idealistic level — of the contribution of the Jewish community to the UK and to the wider world.

If we were to do this, antisemitic views on the left and right would be much more contained to a handful of extremists, who would be despised and condemned by the general population.

It is a shame that we have to justify our existence and value to the UK but at the same time, we cannot afford to be complacent.

While the past 25 years have seen an increase in Holocaust education and an awareness of where that leads, it is often taught as history: something that happened a long time ago, and in places far away.

The hard left accepts the Holocaust (indeed, they often weaponise it against Israel and its supporters), but they don’t understand the UK Jewish community or our sensitivities — and that is something we have to tackle if we are to roll-back antisemitism in this country.

Prof Sanjoy Mukherjee-Richardson

London NW3

David Aberbach reminded me of the story about my cousin Edith Lehmann’s marriage to Franz Steinhardt in the Liberal Synagogue in Nuremberg in 1921.

She and her husband belonged to the small minority of German Jews who were Zionists even before the rise of Hitler.

In her memoirs, Edith recounts that the rabbi was heard to utter criticism of their Zionism.

When I see present day criticism of Israel by the liberal establishment, I wonder if so much has changed. The late Sidney Brichto was of course a welcome exception.

Anthony Portner

Surrey KT16

What kind of Zionism?

Zionism and Judaism cannot now be simply rendered synonymous “by prominent voices in the community” (Letter, David Chesler, August 31). Unqualified, such an expedient appropriation borders on the historically vexatious. What kind of Zionism and Judaism is being referred to?

There is the spiritual Zionism of Ahad Ha’am, the religious Zionism of rabbinic Judaism and the secular political Zionism of Herzl. 

But most important was the overwhelming rabbinic (and assimilatory) anti- Zionism of the latter in the 19th and early 20th century.

Realising Herzl’s Zionism — the only kind fit for purpose in our age — was a very uphill struggle against what was then mainstream Judaism.

An earlier powerful Jewish state, or even presence, in a then far less populated Ottoman Palestine would have contributed, and thereby accelerated, British success in the desert war against Rommel and no doubt in other fields of action. How many more Jews would have been saved from the Shoah then?

Historically painful as it is to remember as a community, the majority of diaspora Jews, so ironically as it turned out, actively hindered the development of a mainly secular Jewish state, solely desired for their own protection and well-being. 

That has to remain the most devastating own-goal in our history. 

Although we now know for certain that antisemitism cannot be eradicated, like the chronic disease it is in the body of humanity, it can be controlled.

And this is why the robustly intolerant response now being generated to any further antisemitic resurgence is so profoundly encouraging.

But there remains a question for each of us, rarely made explicit: if Israel and Britain were on the brink of a future Middle Eastern war with each other (not inconceivable considering Britain’s past history of wavering allegiances and the looming present possibility of a future anti-Zionist government} how would we respond?  With loyalty or veracity?

Dr Stanley Jacobs

London SW18