Opinion
Ignore Jewdas at the community's peril, says defeated UJS Presidential candidate
Jewdas activist Joanna Phillips denies that the election results show young British Jews are strongly pro-Zionist
December 16, 2018 10:54
1 min read
Jewdas activist Joanna Phillips denies that the election results show young British Jews are strongly pro-Zionist
December 16, 2018 10:54Only 9 per cent of students voted for an anti-Zionist candidate, namely myself, in the recent UJS election. One response to this figure is to take the tired line, as Daniel Sugarman recently has, that non-Zionist Jews are an irrelevant minority in our community.
The problem is, reliable academic data shows that’s not true. A JPR survey put the number of Zionists at just 72 per cent, and a more recent Yachad survey found 31 per cent of British Jews are non-Zionist. What should we make of this discrepancy?
If we’re talking minorities of around 10 per cent, that’s approximately how many of the 8,500 Jewish students vote in the UJS elections. Assuming the 979 voters are those most involved in mainstream Jewish student life, my conclusions from the data is that most Jewish student spaces have failed to be welcoming places to non-Zionist students.
Sadly, in three years, it appears this has not changed. During my visits to 15 different cities over the campaigning period, I met with many of the 83 students who voted for me- and they’re probably not who you think they are. They are Jewish Society Presidents and committee members, Orthodox minyan makers, Jewish educators, Friday Night Dinner hosters. Many of them shared they are wary of expressing their true opinions around Zionism, for fear of backlash in their communities.
If you think non-Zionists only exist in the fringes of our community, it’s probably because the ones in your own community are scared to come forward, or have been pushed out by walls of intolerance. Even if truly only 9 per cent of Jewish students are non-Zionist, this is a greater proportion than the number of Liberal (8 per cent), Israeli passport holders (six per cent), Masorti (three per cent), Sephardi (3 per cent), lesbian, gay or bisexual (two per cent), Mizrahi (0.03 per cent) or Scottish (0.02 per cent) Jewish people in the UK. Statistically, there’s one of us in every minyan.
Judaism is a religion that embraces challenging questions, rather than acquiescing to the tyranny of the majority. If we want our community to survive, we must seek to understand rather than ignore each other. Many Zionist students told me they were grateful for my campaign and the opportunity to hear a viewpoint often underrepresented in our community.
While I may not have won a significant share of the vote, I believe I have made a significant impact in forwarding the conversation about how our community can welcome every Jewish student. I hope in the future we will see far better representation of non-Zionist views at UJS events, as part of a union that celebrates rather than just tolerates its political diversity. As we read in the Psalms, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.”
