Independent, but not very Jewish (Jewish Chronicle)

I don’t sign newspaper petitions any more - but a girl does like to be asked, and I felt a twinge of preposterous disappointment when the ads came out for Independent Jewish Voices and I wasn’t there, listed among the signatories. After all, organiser Brian Klug couldn’t have known that I’d refuse, albeit graciously. I’m as famous as Uri Fruchtman, aren’t I, Brian? I bloody hope so.

And also given that I agree with almost every word of the founding statement, with its weight on human rights for all in the Middle East, Palestinian statehood, the need to combat anti-Semitism and racism. More, I’ve always liked Brian Klug and absolutely concur with his criticism of the way critics of Israel can be labelled “self-hating” by some of the more rabid Likudnik elements at over-heated meetings and in the Jewish press. Self-hating can’t be an analytical term, since only a shrink is really qualified - somewhere around Year Three of deep couch work - to make a diagnosis like that. So it must be an abusive one; there are some nasty-mouthed people out there.

So what’s not to like? The first problem is that though the sentiments of the declaration are unimpeachable in their generality, one might wonder (were one a signatory) what they would be said to mean in practice. Sure, you would want an end to the occupation, but if you signed up, would you be signed up for a Palestinian state based, more or less, on the 2001 Clinton perameters? Fine, put me down. But would you also find yourself completely condemning Israel for the way it responded to the attack by Hezbollah last July, without any effort to understand the dilemma the Israeli government faced? Take me off again. And then I’d have to set up Jews with Different Voices and when that split, Even More Independent Jewish Voices.

The second difficulty is more fundamental. IJV says that it has mainly signed itself into existence to argue that - over Israel in particular - the “broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population” of Britain is not represented by the Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi and others who “claim authority” to speak for the Jewish community. In fact IJV wants to reject the “standard concept” of a single Jewish community that, “presents a common face to the outside world via its ambassadors“.

It is certainly an irritation when commentators and soi-disant leaders suggest a uniformity that doesn’t exist. Take, for example, the over-use of the notion of a “Muslim community” composed of 1.6 million people, originally from all over the globe, and supposedly to be given voice by the Muslim Council of Britain. I imagine the same may be said for Hindus and, to a lesser extent, Sikhs. Yet we are, however, generally content that Rowan Williams speaks for the Church of England and the world’s Anglicans, or that Cormac Murphy O’Connor represents Britain’s Catholics.

I look at IJV’s signatory list and realise that I have met many of the people on it. A lot of them seem to live round my way. I know many of them, and like many of the ones I know. And quite a few of them, well, I didn’t know they were Jewish. I’ve been reading some of their stuff for years and not once have I twigged.

Lord knows I am not in a position to get all normative about this. There are all kinds of Jewish experience, including mine - which is very tenuous - and yours, which might not be. But what stands out is that the signatories for the most part are the sort of people who could never be said to be represented by rabbis, Chief or otherwise. Many of them - like me - are not really part of a Jewish community at all. They are several other things before they are Jews. And yet here they are, coming over all Jewish, for the sole purpose of saying that no-one can be said to represent them as Jews.

This is one reason why their protestation about the suppression of dissenting voices seems a little absurd. Who in the wide world - other than Abu Hamza - ever thought that Harold Pinter did agree with the Chief Rabbi on anything? The notion that, say, Professor Jacqueline Rose is intimidated from speaking out by the press releases of the Board of Deputies is similarly hard to envisage.

So I think the IJV proposition may be something else. Which is that the kind of folk who play the hatikvah at bar-mitzvahs, more likely in my experience to be observant Jews - Jews who make their Jewishness a central part of their existences, and do indeed tend to be far more pro-Israel, emotionally and religiously, than I might like - ought not to be represented as “the Jewish community” because it makes things uncomfortable for the rest of us. So, on this, the Board of Deputies probably does represent what might be said to be the Jewish community; a community which isn’t mainly composed of book writers, newspaper columnists, playwrights, academics who already have almost limitless access to the page and screen. And it feels to me as though what IJV is really saying that this representation should stop, and, on balance, I think that must be wrong.

Comments

[Jew everyman]

Dear David,

Why would they come to you? You take great pains to emphazise all the time that you have an English mother and that your father, a Jew but not really, was not observant. If your father were black, your mother's nationality would not matter.Yet, you always have to explain your Jewishness away because of your last name.

The people on this "movement" are suicidal Kapos, helping and abetting the Green Nazis, so they they don't have to be embarrassed by their Jewish blood. Why don't they march to the Anglicans and get it over with?

[Frank Schnittger]

Does it/should it matter whether you self identify as Jewish when you pronounce on matters Israeli/Palestinian? Is your viewpoint any more valid if you speak as a Jew or a goy?

I am often called a Nazi when I pronounce on matters Israeli/Palestinian because my name is of German origin. Are we not merely giving in to cheap ad hominem gibes if we let this deter us?

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is perhaps the most dangerous flashpoint threatening world peace today, and therefore concerns all of us, whatever our background.

Equally relations between various ethnic minorities and the majority culture in Britain is a matter which should concern us all.

Why is it so important to some people that they try to discredit us for who we are - rather than listen to what we say at face value? Is it not they who have a racist mindset when they seek to discredit us because of our origins?

Why not set up Independent Goyish Voices and be done with it. Do we not bleed?

[David]

It seems that there are at least two “competing” establishments: the established establishment and the dissenting establishment; but only one admits to being an establishment.

From what I’ve read over at the rather sad and dispiriting CiF site (I mean, it is if you take a look through the comments), the second group don’t appear to be especially free or critical thinkers, but rather, conformist dissidents; dissidents who dissent in a manner acceptable to others in their group—which, however, they don’t perceive as a group. “A thousand flowers, but two dominant flowerbeds.” Here’s what Erich Fried says:

In his circles
they take a good view of it
when you do
what people don’t take a good view of

So of these things
people don’t take a good view of
he only does those
they take a good view of in his circles

[Yet Another David]

I followed the link from the Independent Jewish Voices website. I am sorry “The Times” edited "The Jewish Chronicle" article. As a Jew, my reaction was the same as David Aaronovitch:

"I look at IJV's signatory list and realise that I have met many of the people on it. A lot of them seem to live round my way. I know many of them, and like many of the ones I know. And quite a few of them, well, I didn’t know they were Jewish. I have been reading some of their stuff for years and not once have I twigged.”

[william]

“I’m as famous as Uri Fruchtman, aren’t I, Brian?
I bloody hope so.”

Do you really?

Why?

[Sceptical Observer]

And again this magic value of word "Jew" in "Jews against Israel/Jews/Anything-looking-like-Jewish". It is treated like word "Shmuck" in "Shmucks against stupidity". How exactly is it surprising to discover that Jews have wide range of opinions on anything. Unless one is complete is a member of "Shmucks against Jews".

[Joy Springreen]

....and the attempted debate between the IJV and Melanie Philips on Newsnight that Paxo hosted was a non-starter....for 10.
Lame debate, in fact he put the buzzer in early and went off to read the papers.

[yidl mitn fidl]

>>But what stands out is that the signatories for the most part are the sort of people who could never be said to be represented by rabbis, Chief or otherwise.<<

I am not quite sure why you think being "represented by rabbis" is a necessary qualification for being Jewish.

But you will note that some of the IJV signatories - Rabbi Dr David Goldberg, Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah and, Rabbi Sheila Shulman, Rabbi Howard Cooper - are themselves rabbis.

Even with your peculiar definition of Jewishness, they should count as Jewish enough, surely...