When we think of an extremist in connection with a religious movement or spiritual path, we may think of an Islamic suicide bomber or a far out there Christian snake handler or a Hindu identiarian. We may even look at the Jewish Haredim, with their men in sober black clothes and modestly dressed women and think ‘extremist’. The word ‘extremist’ can be very flexible, dangerously so in some cases, but it’s political extremism using religion as a cover that concerns this piece.
Non-Orthodox or Progressive Judaism has existed in the United Kingdom for about 150 or so years. It’s been a home for Jews who respect the Torah – the Five Books of Moses and its commandments, but who also accept that the world changes and that Judaism is a living faith, that bends when confronted with the challenges of modernity, but does not break. The Progressive Jewish movements have been a haven for those for whom neither the perceived rigidity of Orthodoxy or the path of complete assimilation and abandonment of Judaism, is for them. It’s been the sort of Judaism that those who don’t mind seeing a woman reading Torah from the Bimah (pulpit) follow and it’s another expression, as is of course British Jewish Orthodoxy itself, of ‘minhag Anglia’ or the English way of being Jewish.
But something has gone seriously badly wrong with Progressive Judaism in recent years. Some parts of the movement, or more specifically the management and senior clergy of these movements, have been thoroughly infiltrated by the political Left, to the extent where these movements themselves are in danger and the actions of these religious Leftists are endangering the safety and security of British Jews as a whole.
The movements themselves are in danger, because being too closely identified with left wing thought and left wing causes, puts off the politically neutral or those opposed to Leftism. You end up with synagogue communities where the active membership is made up of hard core Leftists with the rest of the community staying away, or only staying attached to the shul because of the burial fund. There are also others, the merely twice a year visitors, who only turn up on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The result of such left alignment by our Rabbinical masters and mistresses, who are desperately trying to hammer the square peg of Leftism into the round hole marked ‘Torah’, is a moribund and authoritarian movement, which is the very opposite to what Reform and Liberal Judaism in the UK is meant to be.
We have Rabbis of the Left who are taking relatively minor parts of the Hebrew scriptures, such as Tikkun Olam from the Mishnah and building whole Leftist ideologies about ‘repairing the world’ and ‘social justice’ around them. This was not the meaning of the original texts, repairing the world was something for the Eternal One to undertake, not us. Of course we should behave responsibly and fairly towards others and defend and support the widow and the orphan, but this is a long way away from the sort of redistributive Leftism that is being dressed up as Tikkun Olam by too many Rabbonim.
We also have other left wing Rabbonim who are taking and twisting Biblical texts such as ‘do not oppress the stranger’, which is mentioned many times in the Torah and can refer to a broad variety of from treating converts to Judaism fairly to not unjustly prejudging someone who you do not know. These leftist Rabbonim have twisted this text in particular to make it fit their own temporal ideological bent and has been used by Jewish Leftists to mean prop open the nation’s borders to all and sundry. Whatever this passages original meaning, surely it cannot mean supporting open borders and the free movement into nations of those who would harm said nation. In my view it does not and the Leftist interpretation of this Biblical passage and it’s effect of flooding the country with dangerous violent migrants, runs counter to another Biblical exhortation, from the book of Jeremiah, for the Jew to ‘Keep the peace of the city‘ in which one finds themselves. Saying ‘welcome’ to a lot of dangerous thugs from cultures that want you and your neighbours dead doesn’t look much to me like ‘keeping the peace of the city’.
To return to the subject of Tikkun Olam well yes,of course Tikkun Olam has wider meanings, such as being concerned with matters of public policy, for example speaking up for those in distress through no fault of their own, but it certainly shouldn’t mean full on Leftism, red in tooth and claw, which is what seems to be the meaning espoused by leftist Rabbonim. Tikkun Olam, although it has many meanings, is being used as a vehicle for Leftist ideas, ideas that are going to fail and which will nor repair the world but instead do great and lasting damage to the world.
The results of such leftist ideological readings of texts, both major and minor, has been appalling. The elevation of the term ‘Tikkun Olam’ into a form of textual idol has seen Jewish movements making some highly dubious links with some equally dubious groups. It has seen Britain’s smallest Jewish movement, Liberal Judaism, and some of the Rabbonim within it, align itself very closely with some quite nasty Leftist and Islamic organisations and individuals such as Citizens UK and the Islamic hate preacher Shakeel Begg. Disgracefully, Liberal Judaism Rabbi Janet Darley has now fallen so far Left that she calls the Begg creature ‘friend’. I believe that they’ve done this in order to achieve, as they see it, some form of unity between disparate and sometimes antagonistic belief systems and peoples, but it is a naïve and ultimately destructive path. It is utter madness to treat as ‘friend’ those whose ‘holy’ book says ‘kill Jews’, especially when the followers of this path are killing Jews in the contemporary world, the here and now, and not just in other times and countries.
The effect of Leftist influence on Rabbonim and on the structure and policies of the non-Orthodox Progressive Jewish movements, namely Reform, Liberal and Masorti, has seen these religious groupings call, in the face of mounting evidence that it’s a bad idea, for more ‘refugees’. The entry of yet more Jew-hating Muslims posing as ‘refugees’ is a suicidal thing to call for and is ultimately going to bring a whole load of opprobrium from the non-Jewish public down on the Jewish community per se. These loud-mouthed middle class Lefty Rabbonim with their naïve attitudes towards those who are quite frankly invaders,will put all of us at the sharp end of public disapproval, no matter how vehemently opposed many of us ordinary ‘Jews in the Pews’ are to the ‘refugees welcome’ madness.
The madness of Leftist thought that has infected the upper echelons and the clergy of too many non-Orthodox Jewish movements is doing great damage to both to those Jewish movements and also to the image of Judaism in the United Kingdom. I’ve seen some astounding idiocies of late, such as the false comparison by Citizens UK and Liberal Judaism (who now seem to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Citizens UK) of the bearded Muslim thugs posing as ‘child refugees’ to those genuine, peaceful and in many cases ultimately high achieving children rescued by the Kindertransport. That was a monstrous dishonesty and a perversion of the historical record.
But for me the moment the senior clergy and management of Britain’s non-Orthodox Jewish movements jumped the shark, was shown by the naïve and stupid actions of Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner. Rabbi Janner-Klausner, who is the senior Rabbi of the UK Reform Judaism movement, decided that following the Manchester Islamic attack, her rabbinical skills should be put to some practical use on the spot. However, Rabbi Janner-Klausner used her training and her talents, not to try to comfort the relatives of the dead, whether Jewish or not, or even by visiting the injured in hospital; instead she decided to visit and support the Manchester Central Mosque. I was utterly and piss-boilingly disgusted by this bit of empty but dangerous virtue-signalling. The news that she had visited this mosque and whined on about ‘Islamophobia’ and was calling for ‘solidarity’ with the followers of an ideology that had murdered our children, angered me greatly. Rabbi Janner-Klausner got a lot of flak on social media for her naivety and to be frank, it was bloody justified. I dread to think how the sight of Rabbi Janner-Klausner simpering at the Manchester Imam whilst paying no attention to the victims of Islam, played with non-Jews. There must be many people out there, people who don’t know much about Judaism, who may have looked at Rabbi Janner-Klausner’s act of foolishness and decided that all of us Jews think like that, even though this is not the case.
These are dangerous ways for our Rabbinate to behave. Calling Islamic extremists ‘friend’ and showing support for the very ideology that has murdered British children, runs the risk of stirring up hatred against Jews. I don’t want to be seen as an enabler of Islamic savagery but a small number of loud mouth Rabbonim and those whose spiritual path is more Marx than Moses are behaving as such and it must stop and stop damn soon.
I’ve come to the conclusion that non-Orthodox Judaism, or rather the management and senior clergy of the non-Orthodox Jewish movements, has an extremism problem and it’s a problem of Leftist extremism. This extremism must be tackled and Leftist ideology and Leftist Rabbonim should be purged from the pulpits where they are currently doing so much damage, both to their own religious movements and the public image of Judaism as a religious path.
Neither Rabbi Darley nor Rabbi Janner-Klausner speak for me, or to the other Jews who are becoming increasingly exasperated by leftist policies and campaigns that are done in our name, but without our approval or consent. I am no Rabbi and neither am I someone who has been through the Yeshiva (religious college) system, but I know when something is morally and politically wrong. It’s plain to me that what these Leftist Rabbonim are doing really does look like something that is seriously morally and politically wrong and we have a duty to tackle that wrong if it is our power to do so.
I’m not sure how this problem could be effectively tackled, although individual congregations rebelling against their central bodies, may be one way to go, along with rightists and realists standing for management committees. Another option may be for those non-Orthodox Jews who are cheesed off with what is happening and the damage that Leftists are doing to Judaism, to abandon these movements and start their own. This some would say would be a very Jewish way of solving this problem, by forming a community of refuseniks of this Leftism posing as Judaism. It may be a better option than a long slog fighting leftist Rabbonim and their supporters in synagogue management committees.
It may be a more positive way of dealing with this problem than being constantly subjected, as an objector to Leftism, to accusations of heresy or being put under speaking or writing bans, as several people I know personally are labouring under in non-Orthodox Jewish communities. Better a clean break and a new more sensible movement that isn’t tainted by the sort of Leftist ideological claptrap, than constantly being sidelined and seeing our movements making nice with those who want us dead merely for being Jews. This is how Masorti Judaism started, with the followers of Rabbi Louis Jacobs staying with him when he was accused of heresy. You don’t need a fancy building or an expensively educated left wing Rabbi like Janner-Klausner to have a Jewish community or a new movement, all you need is at least ten adult Jews, which is a minyan or quorum of Jews. Knowledge of the Eternal One and adherence to the commandments, including doing good works, obedience to the law of the King both spiritual and temporal, along with prayer, is what makes a Jew, not the ability to spout ignorant leftist claptrap about ‘social justice’ or whatever is trendy among the secular leftists this week.
But whatever method is chosen by people to tackle this problem of Leftist politics in non Orthodox Jewish movements, it must be tackled. It can’t be allowed to fester any longer, because if that happens then the image and status of Jews in Britain, which has hitherto been better than some places in the world, will be forever tarnished.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/tikkun-olam-repairing-the-world/
https://www.algemeiner.com/2013/06/07/the-fallacy-delusion-and-myth-of-tikkun-olam/
