Transatlantic tantrums
JVL Introduction
There is much food for thought in Joseph Finlay’s latest article in which he takes exception at (Jewish) writers who find American Jews proudly and openly Jewish while British Jews are “frightened, closed-off and part of a community in terminal decline”.
Just not true, he argues, explaining the different histories of Jewish communities here and there (or there and here).
“The key reason Jews could be public and proud in American life,” Finlay asserts, “was because they were (mostly) not conceived of as Black.”
It took longer for Jew in postwar Britain to be accepted, it being only from 2010 that “the British state took increasingly philosemitic positions and held up Jews as a model minority” for others to emulate, a process going hand in hand with treating British Muslims as potential extremists and terrorists.
The notion of British Jews leaving their Jewishness at home is long outdated, to the extent it was ever true: “British Jews take to the streets with alarming regularity, mostly to advocate for Israel or against antisemitism.”
RK
This article was originally published by Torat Albion on Fri 5 Dec 2025. Read the original here.
Transatlantic tantrums
It’s time to end the jingoistic jeremiads over which country is best for the Jews
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I recall Sammy Davis Jr saying that as he was a Black Jew he really had problems!!
“[W]e may well have more in common with Jews of a particular type abroad than the rest of the Jewish community in our country.”
I would suggest that some of us may well have more in common with some non-Jews in our country and abroad than with some Jews in our country and abroad.
I think that mobilising for universal causes – e.g. racialism, gender and class – would benefit us all more than concentrating on ethnocentric issues.
There is a fundamental problem with this article.
The boundary between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres is entirely different in Britain and the USA. In Britain matters of identity, particularly religion, are private and traditionally people do not speak about them except in limited and specific circumstances.
When Peter Beinart says about his experience as a Jew in America rather than Britain “I felt that I could bring my identity as a Jew into all aspects of my life. I could speak about it.” he is expressing an attitude which is quite alien to the British. Here Americans who bring their identity as Jews or, more commonly, Christians publicly into all aspects of their lives are regarded with incomprehension and mistrust. When Jewish Americans like Beinart experience negative reactions in Britain they tend to think that it is because they are seen as too Jewish. In fact, they are seen as too American.
British hostility to religion in politics is so strong that even politicians who are open about their religious beliefs deny being influenced by them in their political programmes. Policy positions which are quite manifestly religiously inspired (e.g. hostility to assisted dying) are always dressed up as something else.
When political movements are described as being faith-driven it is always done as a way of attacking them. Sometimes this involves mental contortions which are almost comical. British supporters of Israel, for example, persistently maintain that Palestinians resisting Israel are religiously motivated while Israelis are not, despite the evidence growing almost daily that the exact reverse is the truth.