Jews4Labour and me
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Jews4Labour and me is a new blog – a sensible, reflective take on the rage that is swirling round us.
Only four posts on it so far, two of which are reproduced below: Why I support Labour and The Difficulties with Counting Jews
This article was originally published by Jews4Labour and me: My rambling thoughts on the Labour anti-Semitism debate. Read the original here.
Why I Support Labour /The Difficulties with Counting Jews
Loading article text…
Interesting stuff! There are of course a number of definitions of “being Jewish”, including:
1. having a Jewish mother 2. being a member of an orthodox synagogue 3. being a member of any sort of synagogue 4. having one Jewish grandparent of either gender 5. self-identifying as Jewish.
My personal view is that being Jewish is about three things: perm any two from three and you’re in! These are ethnicity, religion and culture – I qualify via the first and third.
Maybe we should try to establish a list of people who are prepared to be questioned about our views on various issues and send it to the polling/media organisations?
What do you think?
I do not think you need to perm any two of the three to “qualify” as Jewish and I am not sure ethnicity is the right term to use: I would prefer to say that a person is Jewish if they have Jewish antecedents or if they have converted into the religion, full stop. These “qualifications” were enough for a Jew (including converts to Christianity) to be subject to Nazi persecution. In a repeated radio programme this week, Jonathan Miller argued that he would not be a Jew were it not for antisemitism (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000cqhy at 24:35). I would make an additional qualification: if Israeli law allows you to “return” you are a Jew. That is the basis on which I signed the “Return” statement in 1988 (I think) renouncing this “privilege”. For our pains, many of the signatories were included on the S.H.I.T. list, which eventually was put onto the internet (now no longer there).