Last month, I ended my column with the words “here I am”, as in: here I am, a non-Jew, or barely-Jew, in the Jewish Chronicle. My editor got back to me very quickly, asking if I was deliberately echoing the word “Hineni”.
“You wot?” I replied. (I paraphrase.)
She replied at some length: that it is a very serious way of saying “here I am”, the proper response to a tap on the shoulder from God. “In modern, secular parlance,” she went on, “it denotes a person’s absolute readiness to take on a difficult task, no questions asked, to take full responsibility for one’s actions, to stand up and be counted.”
I didn’t know this, although it’s faintly possible that I might have heard of the concept and absorbed it osmotically, but I don’t see how or when I could have: I am pretty confident that I am more ignorant of Jewish ritual and custom than every single contributor to, and reader of, this publication.
However, here I am: with an absolute readiness to take on a difficult task, no questions asked, etc. (although the Jewish tradition of enquiry and argument makes me wonder about that “no questions”, but never mind): to add my voice, which is the only service I can think of that might do any good.
I do not have a fetish for lost or difficult causes, but I know right from wrong, or like to think I do; I even recently visited a member of the current government to see what I could do to stop this country falling into the hands of either the party that hates Jews, or the party that hates Muslims. (I’m so old I remember when the Green Party’s main campaign platform was the environment.)
Where I am, literally, is Brighton, which, along with its spiritual hipster twin, Bristol, is ground zero for the people who go around shouting “from the river to etc.” in either partial or full knowledge of what that slogan means. I’m kind of used to it by now; and besides, there is usually a counter-demonstration going along beside it; and in London, where I’m really from, the demonstrations are larger, louder, and uglier. Usually. There was one at Brighton station some months ago which froze my blood: the hatred came off it in waves, like steam, if steam can freeze the blood.
Lately, Brighton made the news because a group of anti-Zionists (I roll my eyes) had started knocking on doors asking the residents behind them if they would be so kind as to join the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement to stop buying any goods produced in Israel.
Leaving aside the question of whether this means tearing out the innards of one’s phone or laptop, or foregoing a scan by MRI should the need arise, I can’t think offhand of any Israeli products I do buy. I can’t even remember the last time I had an avocado, let alone where it came from.
My door has yet to be knocked on, but I have done a thought experiment about what I would say if it was. I have heard that the leading question is often “are you in favour of genocide?”, a hard question to say “yes” to. Saying “I know where you’re heading with this, and no, I am not in favour of genocide, and what’s happening to the people of Gaza is terrible, but not That Word” wouldn’t cut much ice. I would probably just shut the door quietly on them, shaking my head, although that could lead to repercussions, some unpleasantness through the letterbox, perhaps.
My best friend in Brighton, Ben, who is even less Jewish than me, was once sitting in a pub garden on a hot day, wearing a Krav Maga t-shirt with, underneath it, a tiny Star of David and IDF logo in Hebrew. A young woman came up to him.
“I find your t-shirt really offensive,” she said to him.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll take it off.” So he did. And underneath it was an elaborate and rather beautiful tattoo of another Star of David, about ten times larger than the one on his clothing. The woman left the pub. The reason he had this tattoo was because he was the best man at his own best friend’s wedding, who is himself Jewish.
I’m not going to be getting any tattoos done in a hurry; in this matter I am fully in accord with religious proscription. But that’s mostly because I don’t like pointy things. However, and alas, pointing at things, or rather people, which was once considered rude, seems to be the order of the day, and you don’t need me to tell you what people mean or intend when they point at Jews and call them “Zionists”. And I won’t be getting a Krav Maga t-shirt either; I’m rubbish in a fight.
I’ll just keep writing. Hineni.
To get more from opinion, click here to sign up for our free Editor's Picks newsletter.