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Journalist Hadley Freeman wrote a rather silly piece on philosemites in the Guardian newspaper last weekend. Boiled down, it was another exemplar of the "check your privilege" left-wing school of thought, which posits that nobody should have an opinion on anything unless they have lived experience of that same thing. Men shouldn't weigh in on feminism; white people can't talk about racism; and now non-Jews can't talk about Jews, or even like Jews, or notice Jewish people and Jewish culture as a thing apart.
Freeman essentially argues that being philosemitic is anti-semitic, because it requires non-Jews to makes assumptions about Jews and this is therefore racist.
Yet of course, whenever we generalise about any group, that is what we are doing. When we say "women are too diffident" are we being sexist, or are we, obviously, making a general assumption? Jewish culture is distinct; as such, it is noticeable, and non-Jews, for good and ill, have always noticed it. Freeman compares me to Julie Burchill, whose run-ins with liberal woman rabbis certainly seem obnoxious. But my appreciation of Judaism, like that of Martin Amis, another target of Freeman's, is well-founded, and it does not encompass any derogation of particular Jews because I don't like their attitudes to Israel or brand of faith.
I recently had some contact with a liberal woman rabbi myself, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, a Korean-American Jew who is now the Chief Rabbi at New York's Central Synagogue. Angela was the Cantor at my Jewish wedding to Peter.
She felt she could not marry us herself as we were an interfaith couple and I was continuing actively to practice my Catholicism. But she sang the sheva brachot and found us a wonderful rabbi who would marry us.
I'm drawn to the culture of Judaism and its reverence for study
My wedding was very traditional. I wrote the ketubah myself, adapted from an Orthodox wording; I went seven times round Peter; I made him wear a kittel; and I had a plain gold band made which I still wear on the index finger of my right hand as my wedding ring, with my secular ring on the left hand. "Who planned this wedding?" asked my mother-in-law. "I've never seen so much
Yiddishkeit!"
Well, that would be me. I wanted to experience that sense of holiness and being united under the blessing of the God of Jacob. I have always felt this at Jewish services. My mission then was to unite myself with Peter and support him in his faith. Angela, to that end, gave me pre-wedding religious instruction, and it's fair to say she was a bit surprised at how much I knew. "So what do you know about Judaism?" she asked the first time we spoke. "Well, if you start with Torah and Tanakh as the core," I said, "and then move on to the Talmud and its commentaries, it's a very non-hierarchical faith and…" There was a long pause. "Have you done this before?" she asked.
The gift I gave her this week was something mentioned by the Booker winner Adam Foulds - A Little Book of Jewish Thought, issued by the Senior Jewish Chaplain to HM Forces to our Jewish troops in World War Two. It's a collection of little pieces of writing by and about Jews compiled by the chief rabbi in 1921. Hadley Freeman would, no doubt, be offended by its section "The Testimony of the Nations", in which Chief Rabbi Hertz presents to Jewish servicemen the praise of non-Jews for Jewish people, faith and culture.
That section includes quotes by Mark Twain, George Elliot, T.H. Huxley, Balfour, Tolstoy, and Lloyd George.
In 1921, Britain's Chief Rabbi did not disdain to put the good wishes and admiration of non-Jews amongst the writings of Jews to offer up to his community.
I didn't marry Peter because he was Jewish. My first husband wasn't. But it helped. Always theologically curious, I read my entire Bible as a girl, so that was a start. I noticed, growing up, that a massive amount of the businesspeople I admired happened to be Jewish. I started paying attention to the culture of Judaism - its reverence for education, in particular, and study.
I am very ambitious myself and met many driven and able people who were Jewish. As a Catholic - with our canon law and encyclicals and rituals - the debates that were part of my faith were also part of Judaism. Culturally, I felt there was a big similarity. "We're the two great guilt religions," as one Jewish boyfriend once said to me. Of course, he also said "shiksas are for practice" right before I dumped him, so I'm not trying to pretend every Jewish boy is a saint, no pun intended.
Judaism, and Jewish culture, also attracted me because of its differences to me. "But why are you a Democrat?" I wailed to Peter as a young woman. "You're successful!"
American Jews were relentlessly left-wing and I was a Tory. I'm more pro-Israel than Peter. To deny the legitimacy of non-Jews liking and admiring Jews is basically to deny the legitimacy of seeing anything we can argue is distinctly Jewish. And I'm confident that's wrong.
Lastly, Freeman and others on Twitter laughed because I hadn't heard of Theodore Herzl, founder of modern Zionism, and said (and still believe) that use of the word "Zionist" on Twitter is antisemitic.
I stand by that - it is. Whatever it used to mean, "Zionist" is now the universal antisemite's code for "Jews". "I hate the dirty Zionists," they will say, and look to get a pass.
No.As for Herzl, no I haven’t heard of him and I know basically nothing about Golda
Meir either. I don’t know much of the history of Israel and I am also weak on
the history of Sweden and can’t tell you much, frankly, about Chile either.
What has that to do with liking Jews and Judaism? Nothing; one's a culture that I find immensely appealing and a faith I think is beautiful, a faith I once considered converting to when I had doubts, now dissolved, about my own.
So Hadley, bubbah, wind your neck in. I wound up with a guy named Mensch. Somebody up there likes me back.