Posts Tagged ‘Chief Rabbi’
Who’s Afraid of the Holocaust? – or – What Are The Jews Frightened Of?
- What are the Jews afraid of?
- It’s a question a lot of people have asked after the Chief Rabbi’s extraordinary intervention in the general election campaign. Does he really think that there’s going to be another Holocaust in 21st century England? And the answer to that is: maybe he does.
- But isn’t that stretching credulity a bit far? Gas chambers on Salisbury plain are surely a ridiculously unthinkable notion? Yes, they are (although not more ridiculous or unthinkable than gas chambers in civilised 20th century Germany).
- But in one sense at least, the enduring lesson of the Holocaust is not the atrocities that were carried out against Jews and many other groups of people, as much as the conditions that permitted those atrocities to become thinkable and feasible.
- Germany was one of the most sophisticated and developed rule of law societies in the world in the early 20th century. Its Parliamentary and democratic traditions were refined and entrenched. And yet, in a matter of a couple of years, decades of democratic tradition in all three branches of the State – the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary – were blown aside as so much froth, and the rule of law was completely turned on its head.
- It is that which I and some other Jews fear more than any specific atrocity that might result, whether aimed at us or at any other specific section of society.
- The rule of law is fragile. And it is perhaps more fragile in those countries that take it for granted because they do not remember its absence, then it is in those countries that struggle with it daily and therefore appreciate its delicate nature.
- In the last few decades the United Kingdom has begun to habituate itself to taking liberties with the rule of law. This is not a party-political point. Governments of different complexions have allowed themselves to make constitutional changes without the kind of intense and lengthy consideration and scrutiny, long before the party-political cut-and-thrust of Parliamentary progress, that would once have been required to ensure that the likely implications of the changes were understood by all, and the necessary safeguards, balances and protections incorporated.
- And it isn’t only governments: the relationships between the Government, Parliament and the courts have come under unprecedented pressure in the last few months, and the authorities within each branch of the constitution have found themselves making or accepting enormously radical constitutional change without any kind of preparation, and sometimes without appearing to recognise the wider implications of action taken to secure a specific short-term result.
- It is this that is enough to give a sense of unease to those who fear the fragility of the rule of law.
- Whoever wins the general election needs to take to heart the message of the Holocaust as a wake-up call not in relation to the perpetration of atrocities, but in relation to the need to protect the rule of law. They need to reflect on the pace of change in the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution, and they need to consider how to slow it down, and how to ensure that our constitution develops, not through knee-jerk reactions for short-term gain, but as part of a consensual process bringing in as many different people as possible, to cherish and protect the core values of our rule of law society while ensuring that it is flexible enough to allow the political and societal pendulum to swing unimpeded backwards and forwards through the generations.
- That may require a written constitution; or the codification of parts of the constitution; or it may not. But it certainly requires thought. Thought about the future of the Union; about the role of referendums in allowing “ordinary” people to feel that they influence politics which therefore becomes relevant to them; about how to protect the judiciary from perceptions of political bias; and about many other aspects of what we have taken for granted for a dangerously long time.
- Constitutional reform is urgent in a number of ways: but it is so urgent that it must not be hurried. Nor must it be carried out in a way that serves, or appears to serve, any one side of any particular argument.
- Otherwise the constitution and the rule of law will become a political football, kicked back and forth between ever-widening gulfs separating self-serving and increasingly fanatical political opinions, from all parts of the political spectrum.
- And that’s what the Jews – and everybody else – should be afraid of.(Daniel Greenberg is a lawyer specialising in legislation, and a Director of the Constitution Reform Group.)
Another Rabbi goes to prison – no news there …
- The really depressing thing about the reports that former Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger is to plead guilty to corruption charges in a plea bargain is how completely un-shocking the reports are.
- I don’t suppose anybody is surprised that an Israeli Chief Rabbi was prepared to take bribes.
- How shocking is it that it’s no longer shocking?
- Never mind – let’s just keep repeating the mantra Mi K’Amcho Yisroel and not worry about the real world …
- Sometimes it seems that almost every large Jewish religious institution around the world is beset by scandals of corruption and abuse.
- Perhaps that means that individual Jews need to become completely self-reliant for recognising and applying Jewish values in their own daily lives, and cannot expect to get much in the way of reliable guidance from anybody else.
- And perhaps that’s no bad thing …
The Chief Rabbi, the Pope and the Soul of Europe
1. According to the Jewish Chronicle, in the Chief Rabbi’s lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University he said: “When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we – Jews and Christians, side-by-side – must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe rediscover its soul.”
2. It strikes me that this is about as inappropriate a moment as one could find for it to be suggested that all that Europe needs to rediscover its soul is co-operation between the Catholic church and institutionalised Judaism.
3. Organised religion in general seems to be doing as much as any other force in today’s world to sow the seeds of dissension and violence. While the Catholic church has particularly acute present crises of conscience, all the major religions about which I know anything at all seem to be contributing more to the sum total of human misery than to the sum total of human happiness.
4. The Chief Rabbi is undoubtedly right that Europe – and not just Europe – is in moral crisis, and to describe that as needing to rediscover the soul is entirely apt. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages are desperately in need of moral direction and focus; and the lack of these is leaving a horrendous mark on the development of societies throughout the world.
5. But what these people need is not a new gang to belong to, or a new dogma to excuse intolerance and thuggery; rather they need help to rediscover the inherent appreciation of moral values that are the image of God in which we are all created. All religions worthy of the name – and many non-religious philosophies and approaches to life – are capable at a personal level of reigniting a human being’s spark of holiness; but organised religion, as distinct from personal religion, is as in need as anyone else of rediscovering its soul; and until it has healed itself it will not be ready to be part of the solution rather than an exacerbation of the problem.
The who is a Jew crisis – whose fault?
1. The British Jewish community is now in serious trouble, its right to have schools for Jews threatened on two sides. The High Court is about to decide whether JFS can apply its admissions criteria by reference to exclusively orthodox criteria of Jewish status. And the government has recently changed, and is currently in the process of a critical examination of the application of, the laws of selective admission as they relate to faith schools.
2. The surest way to resolve both crises is to determine whose fault they are.
3. In typical style the British Jewish community has already offered a number of possible public answers to that: the Chief Rabbi, the London Beth Din, the parents of the children challenging admissions.
4. In other words, everyone except the rank and file of the British Jewish community: but it is we who have brought this on our selves.
5. A reform leader went on the BBC Radio 4 this morning to explain that the JFS crisis is because orthodox rabbis do not recognise “all” decisions of the reform, so that “technically” the child is not Jewish.
6. An orthodox rabbi was asked to reply to that – so he said “Judaism is not a democracy – you have to abide by the rules.”
7. Which is the point. When judges or Ministers examine our community to see these selective rules in application, they will see that we enforce them strictly only against people on the outside looking in. Once a person is accepted as “technically” Jewish, they can eat what they like, do what they like, and nobody regards them as beyond the pale of the community. But the product of a reform conversion, who may observe more of the rules of kashrut than 90% of our community, who may pray to God more often than 95% of our community, is dismissed as unworthy to mix with our children because of being not Jewish.
8. This attitude is halachically sound, but spiritually bankrupt. While we as a community hold our own rules of religion in apparent contempt, why should we expect judges or Ministers to accord respect to any of them?
9. In the tochahah warnings, God warns that if we behave as if the world is without a ruler, He will allow the world to carry on as if it were. Here too, if we behave as though being Jewish is a matter of mere genetics, God will show us the emptiness and futility of that approach.
10. So the only real answer is, as always, nachpeso derochienu venoshuvo – to sort out our own communal behaviour. If we can live in a way which gives the impression that the rules of the Torah and the rabbis are worthy of respect, perhaps others outside the community will be encouraged to follow suit.
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