A UK-based rabbi has revealed how he helped fashion designer John Galliano try to repair his relationship with the Jewish community.
Rabbi Barry Marcus, of the Central Synagogue in London, praised Galliano’s attempts at rehabilitation after a drunken antisemitic rant in a Paris bar in 2011.
Rabbi Marcus, leads school trips to Auschwitz, said it was unjust to call the designer an antisemite.
Galliano was filmed in telling two Jewish women: “I love Hitler. People like you would be dead today. Your… forefathers would be f*****g dead, f*****g gassed.”
He was sacked from his job at Christian Dior and subsequently found guilty of antisemitic and racist behaviour.
Rabbi Marcus was enlisted by the Anti- Defamation League (ADL) in New York to help the British-Italian designer who he now regards as a “friend”.
Rabbi Marcus said: “After his unfortunate outburst in a restaurant some years ago, he’d reached out to the Jewish community in Paris, but they took the moral high ground and shunned him.
“So after an approach was made to the ADL in New York, its director, Abe Foxman, introduced me to the proprietor of Condé Nast, Jonathan Newhouse, who brought John to me.”
In an interview published in the latest edition of the fashion magazine Fantastic Man, Rabbi Marcus explained how their unlikely friendship ended up with him attending the designer’s first collection for Maison Margiela in January.
He said: “I deliberated when John Galliano invited me. But with this being his first show – his re-entry into his passion – I thought, ‘If he wants me there, then who am I not to help maybe one of the greatest design talents to flourish again?’”
Many were dubious about the relationship, Rabbi Marcus said. “I know cynics say his motivation for seeing me was to restore his reputation.”
But the rabbi said he was optimistic about Galliano’s turn around and has even taken him to his shul, as part of a rehabilitation programme.
He said: “Galliano’s knowledge of Jews and Judaism was actually very limited.
“I’ve got Holocaust survivors in the synagogue, so taking John there was a risk. But, over time, we built up a relationship and I’m absolutely satisfied that to brand him as an antisemite would be an injustice.
“As a human being, as a Jew, as a rabbi, as a humanist, I’m almost duty-bound to open the door to somebody who wants to make amends.”
Rabbi Marcus worked in Israel and South Africa in the 1980s, where he opened a controversial multi-ethnic crisis centre and is well known for his diplomacy.
Despite being prepared for criticism about his involvement in the fashion designer’s rehabilitation, the rabbi said he has received a lot of “flak”.
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