Who Gets to Speak for British Jews?
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Jo Sutton-Klein explores the issue at stake with the Chief Rabbi affair: who gets to speak on our behalf.
Only those Jews whose Jewishness is acceptable to the Jewish establishment are valid members of the Jewish community. It is, she explains, a construct used by the Jewish establishment to maintain its authority.
In reality, “when the chief rabbi or the Board of Deputies claim to be speaking on behalf of the Jewish community, they’re being dishonest; they speak for a Jewish community not the Jewish community…”
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Thu 28 Nov 2019. Read the original here.
Who Gets to Speak for British Jews? How the Myth of ‘the Jewish Community’ Marginalises Dissent
The UK’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, caused yet another headache for Labour this week when he accused Jeremy Corbyn of allowing “a poison sanctioned from the top” to take root in the party. Although he didn’t explicitly tell people not to vote Labour, it was easy to read between the lines when Rabbi Mirvis mused, “what will happen to Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour party forms the next government?”
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Equating alternative voices in Jewry to ‘homophobes’ says all you need to know about Pollard, who is simply a Tory shill.
It would be interesting to know where the statistic about only 56% of Jewsih households being members of synagogues because, as Jo points out, you need to know how the survey this information comes from has defined a Jew. I suspect that, along with many similar “facts” about Jews in Britain, it overestimates our religiosity, Zionism and hostility to Corbyn and the Labour Party. This is because surveys would have a lot of trouble finding those of us who are Jewish by ancestry only, particularly if we have surnames not “traditionally considered to be Jewish”.
On another matter, is it the really case that all British Jewish denominations are Zionist (or indeed, part of the BoD). I thought that not all Haredi Jews in Britain were Zionist and that some of their Rabbis had supported Corbyn?
A fair proportion, possibly a majority, of the Charedi Jewish community in the area I live, Stamford Hill in north London, are not Zionist.
The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, based in Stamford Hill, has been supportive of Jeremy Corbyn. A small number of Charedim have joined the Labour Party in my branch and have been very supportive of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.
Ephraim Mirvis cannot possibly claim to speak on behalf of Jewish groups such as Neturei Karta and True Torah Jews.
Criticism must also be made of political parties in Britain.
They treat all religionists as “useful idiots” for the purpose of gaining votes from their communities.
Labour should adopt a strictly secularist approach.
That would be better all round for all communities.
State-funded schools must be run on a wholly secular basis.
If religions want children mind-washed with religion then let them and the parents pay for it separately.
Mirvis was responding to a “Report by Professor Alan Johnson” into 130 “unresolved” cases of anti Semitism in the Labour Party – which include people denying anti-Semitism and any number of utterly bogus allegations. Johnson was formerly a Socialist Organiser hack & Professor at Edge Hill University (where?) but is now “Senior Research Fellow” at BICOM – a pro-Israel lobby group set up & funded by a billionaire arms dealer who made his pile selling artillery to the Israeli Army.