The British Jewish community has a question that it needs to ask of itself and that question is do we want our communal organisations, whether religious ones, or those providing other services to the community, to be led or dominated by those of a Leftist mindset? It’s also a question that non-Jewish Britons, especially those from various Christian denominations need to ask. This is because much of what I have to say in this piece about the baleful influence of left wing politics, would apply to Christian denominations such as the Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics and others. But this article will concentrate on the problems with Leftism and Leftist influence in and on Britain’s Jewish community, firstly because I’m a Jew myself and also because I can see Leftism doing great damage to the community and to communal organisations.
For my non-Jewish readers it may help to explain that the British Jewish community is not monolithic. The community encompasses everyone from black-hatted and black-attired Haredi Jews, with their strict observance of as many of Judaism’s 613 Mitzvot or commandments as they can, right through to the most liberal of liberal Jews who see nothing wrong with chowing down on a bacon sandwich whilst watching the football in the pub on a Sabbath (Saturday). Heck, we’ve even got quite a few Jews who don’t believe in G-d and their connection to Judaism begins and ends with chicken soup.
For my part I’m a non-Orthodox Jew who considers himself aligned with neither of the main non-Orthodox movements of Reform and Liberal Judaism, although I subscribe to some tenets of these organisations, such as not having any division between male and female in terms of religious authority. In other words it really doesn’t bother me if the Rabbi is a woman, I’m more concerned with her level of learning and her ability to do the job rather than her sex. I also believe that it is the job of every Jew to examine each and every one of the 613 commandments to try to understand why each Mitzvah is there, why it is observed in the way it is, how does the commandment serve both G-d and humanity and how to observe each commandment in the light of later spiritual and scientific knowledge? For example: We no longer stone adulterers to death because a process of learning and growth has deemed such a practise completely unacceptable, both spiritually and morally. The conditions that existed that could have justified such a harsh punishment no longer exist and that is something for which we should all be thankful. This article is to a large extent going to be a personal observation of the problem of leftist influence on British Jewish communal entities and my fears of what this influence may bring.
So that people can understand that the Jewish community in Britain and its very unmonolithic structure, it’s fitting to pause here to tell a joke. The joke may help you understand the latter parts of this article.
A Jewish man was shipwrecked on a desert island. It’s not a bad island, it’s got all that is necessary for the man to survive. Unfortunately this island is well off the regular shipping lanes and the poor Jewish man is stuck on the island for ten years. However, one day the man’s prayers are answered and a ship sees the man’s house and his signal flag and the captain of the ship comes over to the island to investigate. When the captain saw what the Jewish man had constructed on the island he was astonished. There was a farm, water collection and irrigation equipment, a house and all manner of devices and constructions to make the island habitable. The man had also built not one but two synagogues, even though he was the only Jew on the island. The captain asked the shipwrecked man questions about his life and his achievements and in particular he asked: ‘Now there’s only you on this island, so why did you build two synagogues?’ ‘Well’, said the man, ‘one synagogue I use to pray in and the other synagogue is the one I wouldn’t be seen dead in.
Sadly at the moment there are quite a few non-Orthodox synagogues that I am now very reluctant to attend, due to those running them pushing left wing politics on their members and Rabbonim who treat dissenters to these politics as though they are some sort of heretic. For my own part I’m banned from voicing my opinions at least one synagogue, because I have spoken out against left- wingery and in particular I’ve been critical of Islam. I need to say at this point that it is the management classes who are doing this and I get a more favourable response for my views from more of the ordinary ‘Jews in the Pews’. It’s not my fellow worshippers and co-religionists who are opposed to me expressing conservative views in the main, (except in really Leftist synagogues) but those Rabbonim and management committee members in various places who have bought into some pretty dangerous and counter-factual Leftist narratives.
This silencing of dissent is to my mind a very un-Jewish activity, as Judaism has always had within it a culture of debate and discussion. The Talmud, for example, is a record of discussions with both majority and minority opinions presented and recorded. To my mind it is wrong for Jewish organisations to issue the equivalent of a secular ‘herem’ (excommunication) merely for challenging the views of Leftists. This silencing and exclusion is not just particular to my experience. There are other Jews in other synagogues I have heard about, who have challenged their leadership over issues such as the validity and wisdom of engaging in interfaith work with Muslim groups and have been marked down as ‘extremists’ or dismissed a a ‘vocal minority’ who won’t ‘get with the programme’. This has been done by those who in my view take their motivation from a mixture of leftist political ideology mixed with what I believe may be a misreading of Scripture or an interpretation of such Scripture that may be twisted to fit a political narrative.
So where did this Leftism come from?
Like any other community, the Jewish community has within it members who are attracted to Leftist ideas. I can see why this happens. If you are being treated like shit for generations, as Jews were at times treated in parts of Eastern Europe under the various old monarchies, then socialism looks like a good idea. During the latter part of the 19th century and in the early 20th century there were many who found that the rules and precepts of socialism were more relevant to their lives than the commandments of the Torah that traditional Jews believe were given by G-d to be interpreted by man. We can see now where this error has led and often it has led to mass graves and gulags.
Socialism for a number of Eastern European Jews must have looked like a shiny and vital lifebelt to a man drowning in a lake of faeces. Because of this surface attractiveness, people gave up Judaism for Socialism and by doing so gave up the ethics of Judaism that said ‘fear G-d’, ‘do not kill’, ‘do not covet’ and ‘act justly’. Some of these apostate Jews became the tools that tyrants like Stalin used to murder and oppress the citizens of the Soviet Union. Judaism does not have a concept of ‘hell’, that’s a Christian invention, but if there was, then it would probably be filled with those apostate Jews who chose to throw ethics out of the window and join Stalin and other Leftist killers in saying ‘the ends justify the means’. It is right and proper in my view that Jews recognise that, like all communities, we can produce wrong’uns and should feel some shame about the wrong’uns. I feel most strongly that those who in the early 20th century gave up thousands of years of Jewish ethics to become Bolsheviks and help to imprison Russia and much of Europe in a blood-soaked gaol, should be condemned. Socialism has been as much as a false Moshiach (Messiah) as Sabbatai Zevi was back in the 17th century. In that incident, that still reverberates in the Jewish communities today, a man claimed he was the Moshiach but was eventually shown to be a divisive fraud who bankrupted and split the Jewry of Europe. The online publication Jewish History dates the creation of Jewish reform movements to the trauma of the false Moshiach incident of Sabbatai Zevi. Just as Zevi gulled his followers into taking a ruinous path, so did those who in previous times and even today, either abandon Judaism for Leftism or try to create a Leftist/Jewish chimera.
It is ironic that the influence of socialism over Jewish organisations and communities was helped by the Jewish ethics of loving G-d, loving humanity and doing good works. The congruence between these ethics and precepts meant that there was a readily available audience that could be made to be accepting of the false Moshiach of Socialism. People who already believed in such things as we are all made in G-d’s image and it is better to do good than harm, could quite easily be sold the socialist snake oil of worldwide brotherly love and an equitable socialist future. Desire to see the sort of heavenly transformation as would be brought by the Moshiach, slotted neatly into the socialist narratives of a future time of plenty, freedom and justice. However, like all attempts to create utopia, Socialism really has been shown to be ‘the god that failed’ and it failed to the tune of nearly 100 million lives. I have little patience with socialists these days, including my few remaining socialist friends, who say things like ‘there’s always violence when revolutions transform society for the better’, because I know that when it comes to socialism it’s never only a ‘little’ violence, socialism always ends up in carnage.
The current situation
But away from the theology, personal experience and a glance at history and back to the baleful influence that the Left holds over British communal Jewish entities today. To do this it is probably a good idea to look at what are, to my mind, two of the most contentious problems with Leftist influence over Jewish organisations in Britain. These issues are those surrounding interfaith work with Islamic organisations and the open borders campaign.
On Interfaith work
The first of these, the issue of interfaith work with Islam, is to me a ‘no-brainer’. There should in my opinion, be very little interfaith work between Jewish and Muslim organisations. The ethics of both faiths are so radically and completely different that I cannot see how such supposed co-operation can work. Islamic scripture is replete with some of the most horrible Jew hatred imaginable and worse than that, none of this content can be challenged by Muslims in the same way that Christians were able to reinterpret or gloss over verses in their scripture that served as a theological foundation for Christian anti-Semitism. It’s a sobering fact to consider that the infamous ‘blood verse’ in the Christian Testament has virtually zero influence these days, yet the exhortation to commit genocide against Jews is still a live issue in Islamic doctrine.
Personally I think it’s damned foolish to think that you can make friends with people whose religious ideology has ‘killing Jews’ as a major part of its make up. Put it another way, if you were Jewish would you engage in friendly dialogue with those who had Mein Kampf as their guiding text? Of course you would not, you’d quite rightly see this sort of ideology as a threat and deal with it accordingly. You would certainly not parade the followers of said ideology in synagogues or interfaith meetings, telling those present that the person who treats Adolf’s book as scripture is really a peaceful teddy bear.
Unfortunately this is what is being done with Islam by too many of Britain’s Jewish organisations. If there are two lessons that should be taken from the Shoah, it is that unarmed Jews are more likely to be victims; and secondly it should be the case that when someone says that they are going to kill you and your family because you are Jewish, then it’s a damn good idea to take them seriously and fight back. It really pisses me off to see learned Rabbonim and others in communal authority, treating the blood-soaked and genocidal ideology of Islam as if it was a best friend. It isn’t, it is an ideology that has Jew-hatred at its heart and don’t you forget it.
Of course I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be personal contacts between individual Jews and Muslims, sometimes we may not know until we talk to someone, to what degree they follow the instructions of a long dead Arabian nonce and killer. We also may not know until we converse with someone whether they may be a Muslim or are pretending to be one, in order not to be murdered. In any event there are many people of Muslim background who are decent, not because of Islam but in spite of it. We should, if we are to be considered fair, to judge people as individuals where it is sensible to do so. But, we also need to realise that adherence to an ideology that places ‘kill Jews’ at its heart, should be something that makes Jews and others not jump into interfaith situations with such people with their eyes closed. Jewish communal organisations should be far more wary than they currently are with interfaith work with Muslims, due to the nature of Islam and its record of not exactly being a religion of peace.
Sensible people do their best to keep bad ideas from gaining traction and argue against them, and Islam, like other similar tyrannies, is a very very bad idea. To those who say that there is a lot in common between Islam and Judaism I would say ‘rubbish’. Islam’s ethics are often completely different from those of Judaism and to be quite frank, I believe that the only thing that Judaism and Islam has in common is an avoidance of bacon. If, or rather when, Britain’s Muslims turn violently on Britain’s Jews, as they turned in living memory on the Jews of the Middle East, it will become evident to British Jews that all their peacemaking overtures, appeasement and pandering to Islamic organisations will count for nothing. What is worse is that the left leaning leaders of our community, both the religious and secular leaders, will have led us to the point where Jews drop their guard against an ideology that has a long history of Jew hatred. Our leaders will bring about a situation where both Jewish and non-Jewish lives are endangered, merely to satisfy the feelings of a bunch of comfortable Leftists, that truly is throwing away one’s heritage for a mess of pottage.
On the ‘Refugees Welcome’ problem
The second major disaster that the Leftist and left-leaning leaders of Britain’s Jews are creating is a backlash by the general public against Jews, because of the involvement of the community in the ‘refugees welcome’ movement. Whilst I concede that in the early days of this crisis it is possible that some, both inside and outside the Jewish community, could have swallowed the falsity that there were masses of peaceful women and children from Syria who needed temporary shelter, this lie can no longer be sustained. It is now patently obvious to anyone who bothers to look that the reality is very different from this fantasy.
We are not seeing masses of decent women and children needing temporary accommodation whilst their countries are in turmoil. What we see are incredibly large numbers of Muslim males of military age and men from the thuggocracies of the Third World heading to Europe. These are the very people that civilised people and civilised nations need to keep at bay, in order for there to be peace for everyone, whether they be gentile or Jew.
To allow such people to enter Europe is completely against the spirit and the letter of Jewish scripture, most notably the passage from Jeremiah 29:7 which states that Jews should ‘keep the peace of the city in which they live.’ Agitating for the entry of these invaders from the Muslim world and from the violent cultures of the Third World is the very opposite of the idea of keeping the peace of the city. How can one achieve a peaceful city if you are allowing in those who will disturb that peace by way of rapes, jihad, welfare poncing and anti-social behaviour? The answer is that you cannot. Bringing in those who will bring nothing but horror and disaster is completely incompatible with the idea of creating a peaceful city or a peaceful land. I find it deeply shaming and worrying that despite much evidence to the contrary, those Jewish communal organisations that have been infiltrated by the Left, continue to push the lie that the ‘refugees’ are women and children, fleeing oppression rather than the truth,which is that they are mostly male invaders.
It is in Britain’s Progressive Jewish movements that this lie that the invaders are genuine refugees
has not only gained the most traction but where this lie is promoted with a dangerous enthusiasm. Both the Reform and Liberal Jewish movements and to a slightly lesser extent the Masorti movement have been very active in promoting the untruth that not only are these invaders genuine refugees deserving of our help, but also that these invaders are the equivalent of the Jewish refugees who fled from the industrial murder carried out by the Hitler regime or the pogroms instituted under the old Russian Tsar. However for me the most scandalous lie that is being promoted by these movements is that the Muslim invaders posing as ‘refugees’ are the moral and practical analogue of the Kindertransport children who fled to Britain from Germany in the mid to late 1930’s.
This lie is not only the easiest to disprove by looking at the positive outcomes of the Kindertransport children and comparing it to the violence and mayhem that is coming from the Muslim ‘refugees’, it is also for me the most offensive of lies. There is little that is in common with either the behaviour or the background of the current crop of pretend ‘refugees’ with those who fled to places like Britain in the past. The vast majority of those who fled from Germany to Britain in the 1930’s came from backgrounds that respected law, that respected learning and respected the idea that you look after those who look after you and those who give you shelter.
The Kindertransport children have grown up and distinguished themselves in a multitude of different areas, such as business, medicine, the arts and the sciences. These individuals have been an asset for Britain, something that cannot be said of the often violent, welfare claiming, disruptive Muslim fake ‘refugees’ the import of whom, inexplicably the non-Orthodox Jewish movements in Britain are supporting. For the progressive Jewish movements of Britain, including some powerful Rabbinical families in these movements, to promote the lie that the invaders are the same as the Kindertransport children is an offensive lie of the most monstrous kind.
Both the Reform and Liberal movements in British Jewry are very much in hock to the political Left. Senior Rabbonim at Reform are backing this ‘refugees welcome’ campaign despite there now being ample evidence available to the public that the ‘refugees’ that they are backing are nothing like previous waves of genuine refugees that Britain has taken in. It is difficult for a reasonable person to look at the Muslim migrants that Reform are calling ‘refugees’ and say that they are the same or will make the same contribution to the society in which we all live as, say the Vietnamese Boat People or the Ugandan Hindus and Sikhs who fled to Britain in the 1970s. We can look at the culture of these previous refugees and see little conflict with their core moral values and our own. We can also observe that although these groups, as all groups do, have their bad apples, they have brought nothing like the problems to us that the followers of Islam have done.
Rabbonim at Reform are refusing to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to these fake ‘refugees’ even when it is revealed that there are problems. For example when the infamous Dubs Amendment, the change to the immigration acts that allowed ‘unaccompanied children’ to come from the Calais migrant camp, was removed, Reform Rabbonim didn’t quietly wonder why, they just attacked the Government. Despite it being plain that this Dubs Amendment was being abused by adult Muslim males in order to enter the UK, Reform Rabbonim still stuck by their ‘refugees welcome’ nonsense and called for the Dubs Amendment to be reinstated. In a statement put out by two Reform Rabbonim, Rabbi Paul Freedman and Rabbi Josh Levy, who co-chair this movement’s Rabbinical assembly, Reform Judaism were still pushing the by now widely mocked ‘child refugees’ line when it came to the Calais migrants. The revelation that there were few actual children eligible for the Dubs Amendment and the fact that this Amendment was being abused, seemed to completely pass these Rabbonim by. They claimed that when ‘Jews see refugees they see themselves and their families’. These Rabbonim do not seem to consider whether or not the Calais migrants, and other dodgy ‘refugee’ claimants, are real refugees or even whether they will cause problems in the UK, they just emote about Jewish history. They also claim to speak for all Jews which is completely wrong (see explanatory joke above). These Rabbonim disregard the fact that there are other Jews, such as myself and the increasing number of other Jews who seem to think more along my lines, who wish to help those displaced by the Syrian conflict but not by bringing the Syrians or any other Muslim ‘refugee’ and their dyed in the wool Jew hatred to the United Kingdom. Helping people should not be at the cost of destroying one’s country or culture. We would not, if we were at all sensible, naively invite an unwashed, booze and drug addled, mentally ill, violent tramp into our homes and give them the job of babysitter. Similarly nations should be wary of inviting across their borders those who will do damage, or who follow incompatible ideologies, such as those followed by the majority of Syrian ‘refugees’ who have come to the West.
I’m mightily disappointed with how Reform Judaism have behaved over this whole ‘refugees welcome’ campaign. They backed it using emotive appeals and in some cases readings of scripture that invite challenge to their interpretation. That they have continued to pursue this policy when not only are their migrant pets being seen as problematical, but there has been righteous public anger about the import of these migrants, is monumentally stupid and short sighted.
If things are bad at Reform Judaism with regard Left wing entryism and Leftist influence, then the situation at Liberal Judaism is far worse. Liberal Judaism, the smallest, but very loudest of the British Jewish communal movements, seems to look more and more like the Socialist Workers Party at prayer every day. However in Liberal Judaism there is the added problem of a very close association with some seriously questionable groups. Liberal Judaism (LJ), or rather its senior management, has decided that they will cleave closely to the anti-British, pro-Islam, pro-mass migration and pro-fake ‘refugee’ Citizens UK organisation. This blog has written extensively on the issue of Citizens UK and they are not an organisation that I consider has either my best interests at heart, nor are they concerned with the genuine common good of the UK, despite their sloganising on this issue and their glad-handing of members of the Establishment. The link between LJ and Citizens UK is now so close that LJ’s senior religious and social action management teams look more like subsidiaries of the Citizens UK organisation, rather than groups that operate in their own right. LJ has been bought and paid for by Citizens UK and it shows.
There have been two incidents, one recent and one not so recent, that have highlighted the left wing political mess that Liberal Judaism have got themselves in. The first happened a couple of years back when the former Rabbi of South London Liberal Synagogue, Rabbi Janet Darley, decided to appear on a platform at a ‘refugees welcome’ event with the known and proven Islamic extremist Shakeel Begg. This was a serious embarrassment for LJ and by extension made the whole Jewish community look as if it was afflicted by a bad case of appalling judgement. The likes of Begg should be kept at arms length by all decent people, sadly this was advice that Rabbi Darley refused to listen to.
The second, more recent incident that shows up the sickness that is afflicting Britain’s progressive Jewish movements is the ‘Kaddish for Hamas’ scandal. In this incident a number of young Jews of the Left went to Parliament Square and read out the Kaddish, the Jewish memorial prayer that is normally read to remember a parent or a child or some other close relative. This was in my view a disgusting misuse of the Kaddish prayer and I speak as someone of relatively liberal religious belief who believes that Jews have the right to adapt prayers for new situations. Although
the ‘Kaddish for Hamas’ incident did not operate under the umbrella of the Reform and Liberal youth groups nor was it sanctioned by them or supported by the leaders of their movements, it has made some people wonder where this sort of attitude that created the ‘Kaddish for Hamas’ incident came from? Are our children being filled with socialism and self-defeating pacifism in Britain’s progressive Jewish youth groups? It is certainly something that would justify further investigation. On the subject of the ‘Kaddish for Hamas’ incident, it needs to be said that this abomination of an abuse of the Kaddish prayer was criticised by normal Jews such as a guy who barracked the progressive idiots for saying Kaddish for Hamas.
Although the vast majority of the problems of Leftist domination are to be found in the Reform and Liberal Jewish movements, some of this Leftist influence is creeping into more mainstream and cross-communal organisations to an alarming degree. We should not be seeing organisations that are supposed to represent or serve all Jews, such as the Board of Deputies or the Community Security Trust, flogging Leftist policies such as dubious ‘interfaith’ activities or clamping down on the rights of their supporters and volunteers to criticise Islam or the Arabs for example. Unfortunately this is what we are starting to see. The new Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl, an ‘equalities’ lawyer, has spoken against those Board members who are hostile to Islam. It was apparently Ms Van der Zyl who was instrumental in banning a member of the Board of Deputies for six years for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim comments and opinions. Ms Van der Zyl’s actions show that on the issue of criticism of Islam she is fundamentally opposed to the concept of free speech. The Community Security Trust has also spent money that should have been spent on securing synagogues from assault and attack, on advising mosques on security. This in particular should enrage British Jews especially as British Jews face increasing violence from members of the same Muslim community to which the CST seem to be pandering.
When one considers how inherently hostile the ideology of Islam is towards Jews, it looks like utter madness to spend communally raised money on protecting Islamic entities and to try to suppress counter Islam speech in the Jewish community. It should worry British Jews to see two major communal organisations starting to align themselves with key Leftist ideas such as building links with Islamic groups and forbidding criticism of Islam.
So how do we get out of this situation?
I will not lie to the readers of this piece. It’s going to be difficult to prise the Left from their positions of power in the community and this is especially the case when it comes to religious paths such as Liberal and Reform which have been heavily influenced for years by leftists. The left have had decades to put their sympathisers in place and these sympathisers have then gone on to hire like minded people to work in their organisations. It’s going to be a ground up struggle to make Reform less Leftist and in particular to make Liberal Judaism truly liberal again and encompass a variety of views not just a Leftist ones.
Part of the key to turning things around and bringing more intellectual diversity into our communal organisations is rooted in how we got here in the first place. Revolutions are won by those who turn up for them and the Left put a lot of effort into getting their people elected to communal positions from whence they could exert influence. Over many years Britain’s Jews have in my view taken less of an interest in how communal organisations are run and structured and in who is running them. This, in my view, was a mistake as it allowed those who were more ideological in mindset to have less opposition to their policies than they may have had if they were countered.
We Jews who are sceptical about the Leftism that is being pushed in our synagogues and among those who run our communal organisations, should be stepping up to the plate and challenging them. This doesn’t mean that we have to get into huge slanging matches after services, but it does mean that we have to volunteer for the positions that the Left has begun to see as an entitlement. You may not think you are contributing much to the fight against Leftism by being the Secretary of a small Jewish community or sitting on some communal committee, but a position occupied by a Jewish sceptic or political conservative is one less position to be occupied by a Leftist. What has happened to the Jewish community in Britain and the rise of Leftist influence within communal organisations, whilst their opponents slept, is a stark illustration of the statement by Pericles that ‘you may not be interested in politics but politics is interested in you’.
If we cannot take back the organisations in our community that have been infiltrated and in some cases taken over by the Left, then they will continue to pump out Leftist ideas and give the wrong impression that all of us Jews feel the same way. This is so obviously not the case. We cannot just sit on our backsides and not concern ourselves about the way our community is being governed, even though this is often the path of least resistance, we have to make the attempt to oppose the Left wherever it is found. We also need to consider taking another, very Jewish, route out of the mire that Leftist influence has brought and that is to think about setting up organisations to represent the interests of sceptical and right wing Jews especially when our interests and the interests of the wider Jewish and non-Jewish communities clash with those of the Leftist Establishment. We might just have to set up our own synagogues or minyanim, ones where the Left ‘wouldn’t be seen dead in’ in order to worship G-d without some Leftist haranging us from the bimah about ‘social justice’.
Whatever route we take to curtail the activities of the political Left in our communal bodies, we have to do something. We cannot afford to leave the Left unchallenged for much longer or they will gain more power. We need and deserve better communal leadership than we are getting and we will not get such leadership unless we stand up, speak up and act as leaders ourselves in order to bring people away from the path of Leftism and onto a path that is more sensible and indeed in a lot of cases more righteous. We should turn away from the destruction that Leftists have brought onto Britain’s Jewish communities and instead build something better. I believe that it an absolute imperative that we turf out the followers of the false deity of Marx and replace this with the followers of the G-d of Abraham. If we do not do this, then when the brown stuff hits the fan at great velocity over the issue of Islam and migration, then all Britain’s Jews will end up being blamed by the majority population for the sins of the small coterie of Jewish Leftists. If you don’t wish to see this happen, then we all need to play our parts in cleansing our synagogues and communal organisations of the increasingly influential and dangerous Leftists who are leading the community and its organisations to destruction.
