Rabbi with a cause – it’s just not mine
JVL Introduction
Chief Rabb Ephraim Mirvis was at the Aipac conference last week, proudly claiming: “On the matter of antisemitism we have always acted as one.”
Only it is untrue in so many ways, as David Rosenberg shows e.g.when the Board of Deputies failed conspicuously to oppose Moseley’s rising fascist movement in Britain.
Mirvis was unfazed about speaking at a conference which hosted two representatives of the antisemitic Orban government in Hungary.
He kept his main message to last when he called on Aipac to “use your influence fearlessly for the sake of Jews and Judaism and Medinat Yisrael (the State of Israel).”
This article was originally published by Rebel Notes on Thu 5 Mar 2020. Read the original here.
Rabbi with a cause – it’s just not mine
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Jonathan Cook (Mondoweiss Dec 2 2019) writes that Mirvis called on his followers to ‘dance with our – IDF, not British – brave soldiers in Hebron’ who were enforcing the domination of abusive Israeli settlers over the Palestinian inhabitants (abuse including throwing excrement over the Palestinians – and led the March of the Flags/Yom Yerusalayim ‘death to Arabs’ March in 2017 – an annual pogrom. Graham Durham (amongst others?) has been suspended for calling this man a Tory.
One does not have to support the unappetising and reactionary views of Trevor Phillips (a constituent and hitherto a fellow CLP member of Keir Starmer, as well as a heavy duty Establishment notable) to wonder whether this arbitrary and secret inquisition can last much longer. Even worse would be the increasingly fashionable nostrum of an ‘independent’ and of course unaccountable bunch of notables, especially if it uses the same ‘Star Chamber’ methods as now serve to persecute many party members and to terrorise many more. In the interim, all NEC proceedings must be open to the membership, including voting records.
It is disgusting that the BoD failed to oppose Mosely’s fascists. How can they claim to speak for the Jewish people?
Thank you for this informative and thoughtful assessment of Rabbi Mirvis’ public actions. This is the man whose Rosh Hashana Message (dated September 2019 / Tishrei 5780) included the following: “Over the High Holy Day period … we will admit to the sins of … disrespect, hard-heartedness and insincerity; of deception, tale-bearing and baseless hatred. … In these times, when decency is no longer the norm and humility is mistaken for weakness …” He had the chutzpah to write and distribute this message while encouraging and directly participating in “deception, tale-bearing and baseless hatred” against one of the major parties and its leader.
Here’s a recent Facebook post by Robert Cohen:
While the current British Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis has been in Washington DC this week addressing the AIPAC conference, championing the IHRA definition of antisemitism and talking up his role in defeating Jeremy Corbyn, I’ve been reading a memoir by one of his predecessors, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, published in 1984 and now out of print.
Rabbi Jakobovits was the Chief Rabbi between 1967-1991 before Jonathan Sacks took over. Jakobovits was undoubtedly a firm Zionist and close to Margaret Thatcher, but he was also a regular public critic of the religious nationalists in Israel as well as the claims of secular Zionism.
In July 1982 at the height of the controversy over Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, when Jews in the UK were deeply divided on the morality of the action and global criticism of Israel was high, Jakobovits wrote this in the Jewish Chronicle:
“By charging people with anti-Semitism, you help to breed anti-Semitism. You give aid and comfort to the real anti-Semites and their movements, and you alienate true friends.”
Later in the same article, Jakobovits cautioned the Jewish community that it was “neither wise nor true to label every anti-Zionist, an anti-Semite”, and that such an attribution could only be self-fulfilling by breeding anti-Semites. He went on:
“Anti-Zionism is certainly a cause of anti-Semitism. But the reverse is much more questionable, and often plainly untenable as a fact.”
Hard to imagine either the Ephraim Mirvis or Jonathan Sacks ever bringing this level of nuance or criticism to their comments on Israel and antisemitism today. How times change and how the space for acceptable criticism in public life has shrunk.
The Board of Deputies also opposed people mobilizing against NF marches in the 1970s.
And Mirvis welcomed the election of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party. This looked like an intervention into politics to me.
… all of which would be of passing interest if the central administration of the Labour Party wasn’t engaged in silencing reasonable criticism of people like Mirvis.
Mirvis is a big fan of questioning the loyalty of Black Minority Britons by applying the Tebbit-test to them. On the other hand along with the IHRA definition suggests it is anti-semitic to scrutinize those who give their allegiance to Israel’s foreign Apartheid state – presumably even if like the Al Jazeera example they’re caught on film accepting money from that government.
See – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12189152/Minorities-must-pass-the-Norman-Tebbit-test-Chief-Rabbi.html
And – https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/mirvis-pass-tebbit-test-1.61394