Controversy and Crisis: Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain 9781618110572

Citation preview

CONTROVERSY AND CRISIS Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain

Geoffrey Alderman

Judaism and Jewish Life Editorial board Geoffery Alderman (University of Buckingham, Great Britain) Hebert Basser (Queens University, Canada) Donatella Ester Di Cesare (Università “La Sapienza,” Italy) Roberta Rosenberg Farber (Yeshiva University, New York), Series Editor Associate Simcha Fishbane (Touro College, New York), Series Editor Meir Bar Ilan (Bar Ilan University, Israel) Andreas Nachama (Touro College, Berlin) Ira Robinson (Concordia University, Montreal) Nissan Rubin (Bar Ilan University, Israel) Susan Starr Sered (Suffolk University, Boston) Reeva Spector Simon (Yeshiva University, New York)

CONTROVERSY AND CRISIS Studies in the History of the Jews in Modern Britain

ACADEMIC STUDIES PRESS Boston 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alderman, Geoffrey. Controversy and crisis : studies in the history of the Jews in modern Britain / Geoffrey Alderman. p. cm. -- (Judaism and Jewish life) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-934843-22-2 1. Jews--Great Britain--History--20th century. 2. Jews--Great Britain--Politics and government--20th century. 3. Jews--Great Britain--Social life and customs. 4. Judaism--Great Britain--History-20th century. 5. Great Britain--Ethnic relations. I. Title. DS135.E5A5775 2008 941’.004924--dc22 2008026852

Copyright © 2008 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved Cover design by Batsheva Levinson Published by Academic Studies Press in 2008 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

For Marion Joan

Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii I

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

II

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some



Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

III

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception



of Jews in South Wales before 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

IV

The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales: A Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

V

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

VI

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

VII

The defence of shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘humane conditions’ regulations of 1990. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

VIII

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 – 1987. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

IX

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

X

Jews in the Economy of London (1850 – 1940) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

XI

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart. . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

XII

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion: Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

XIII

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

XIV

That Letter ……. Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management. . . . . . . . 337

XV

Kosher Sex and Leadership Lubrication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347

XVI

Cecil Roth: A Personal Appraisal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355



Guide to Further Reading. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364



Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

Preface At the beginning of 2008 I was approached by the Academic Studies Press, whose editors had, to my extreme surprise, concluded that a wider audience would actually be interested in having, in one volume, a selection of my essays addressing the general theme of the history of the Jews in modern Britain. Some of these essays had originally appeared in obscure scholarly journals and other collections, others still in publications now out of print. Could I choose fifteen or so that would illustrate my work, and reflect some of its major ideas and conclusions? I have decided to rise to this challenge. The essays which are now offered were written over the period of thirty or so years which mirror (as far as I can judge) the early and middle years of an academic career that I had not intended to be focussed on British Jewry at all. As a young doctoral graduate fresh from Oxford I saw myself as a teacher of modern British history, and in particular as a student of the interface between industrial conglomerates and the British political process. But the President of the Immortals (to borrow from Thomas Hardy) had other plans in mind. I became interested in the historical geography of voting in Britain, and was led (inexorably as it now seems) to consider the voting habits first of religious minorities in general and then of British Jews. I was certainly not the first researcher to survey Anglo-Jewish voting patterns, but I was the first professing and paid-up member of the Jewish communities in Britain to do so, and I rapidly became aware that the fact that I was engaged on this research (some conclusions of which are reproduced in essays viii and ix in this volume) was not at all to the liking of the plutocracy that financed and ordered the affairs of these communities, and claimed (therefore) the exclusive write to articulate its anxieties to the wider world. And so it was that I discovered the Basic Law that governs – and

viii

that has (as it turns out) always governed – this articulation: image is paramount. The duty of the historian is not to tell the truth, but to support the communal image. This Basic Law was formulated almost at the dawn of the Resettlement of Jews in England in the seventeenth century, but it was during the mid-nineteenth century, when the battles for Anglo-Jewish political emancipation were being fought (essays ii and xii) that the Law acquired definitive shape. And if history had and has to be rewritten in the process, so be it. On 12 January 1977 I read, before the Jewish Historical Society of England, a paper (essay iii) on the settlement and reception of Jews in South Wales, and in so doing told a story that culminated, in 1911, in extensive anti-Jewish riots – of such ferocity, indeed, that the police could not cope, and South Wales was virtually placed under military rule. My conclusions were damned to my face at the time, and they continue to attract reproach (essay iv). But my appetite for the destruction of myth had now been fully whetted. I discovered that the ‘Chief Rabbi’ of the United Kingdom was not the Chief Rabbi at all – or rather, that the fact that he was not (and had never been) the ‘Chief Rabbi’ had been privately acknowledged but at the same time carefully hidden from public view (essay v). In the 1980s I became involved in an ultimately successful campaign to protect the right of British Jews to consume meat and poultry slaughtered by methods of which they approved. But the ultimate success of this campaign involved the public exposure of the myth of the Chief Rabbinate and, into the bargain, the public repudiation of the claim that the Board of Deputies of British Jews was the sole ‘representative’ body of the Jews of the United Kingdom – which it has, in fact, never been (essays vi and vii). Matters reached a head when I responded to another invitation from the Jewish Historical Society of England, and announced that I would address the society on the career and significance of Morris Davis, one-time friend of the future Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee and a figure of central importance in the politics of London between the two world wars. I had already done extensive research on the relationship between London Jewry and ix

London government, and on the role of Jews in the modern economic history of the nation’s capital (essay x). But the Society baulked at the idea of my exposing to public view the true story of Davis, who was an utterly corrupt petty dictator, and although I insisted on reading the paper (essay xi) five years were to pass before the Society plucked up sufficient courage to extend a further invitation to me. Meanwhile, the University of London had honoured me by conferring on me the Personal Title of Professor, and I devoted my Inaugural Lecture to a consideration of the obsession with myth that characterized the Anglo-Jewish presence in Britain. When the lecture was published I took the opportunity to reproduce, as an appendix, an article on a matter of great communal concern that had been suppressed, at pageproof stage, by a communal journal (essay i). Some years later another journal was, however. courageous enough to publish my critique of the manner in which the British media (and in particular the BritishJewish media) had reported the text of an extraordinary letter written by ‘Chief Rabbi’ Jonathan Sacks to a rabbinical colleague, criticising in the most personal and vituperative terms the character of the then recently-deceased Auschwitz survivor, Hugo Gryn, a ‘Reform’ rabbi (essay xiv). The leaking to the press of a censored version of this letter caused a sensation. What, I wonder, would have been the national reaction had its full contents been made public at the time? That letter formed the opening theme of an article (essay xiii) published some five years ago, in which I surveyed the state of Britain’s Jewish communities at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Drawing attention to the demographic contraction of these communities as a whole, and to the relative expansion of the ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ peripheries at the expense of the broad centre, I focussed especially on the impact of the post-1945 Chassidic presence in the UK and, in particular, on the political importance of the UK Lubavitch movement (a theme also explored in essay xv), and I used this analysis to explain why Dr Sacks’ avowed policy of ‘inclusivism’ was bound to fail – as is indeed the case. The communal structures that attempt to shape the lives of Jews living in contemporary British society derive from the Victorian age. They x

are, in truth, quite unsuited to the needs of Britain’s highly pluralized and highly polarized present-day set of Jewish communities, many of which are scarcely on speaking terms with each other. The plutocracy funds – it is true - a world-class system of social care, and a network of faith schools that is second to none. But its leadership operates within an outmoded governance whose impact is now demonstrably counterproductive. Essay xvi has not been published before. It is an appreciation of the man who first fired my enthusiasm for British-Jewish history, and whose impact on me turned out to be much greater than I suspected when I first met him at Oxford in 1962. All the essays reproduced here are in the form in which they originally appeared, but in a few instances I have added words of explanation to assist readers who may be unfamiliar with particular contexts. On another page I record my thanks to one whose unfailing support has, at critical times, stiffened my resolve to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Geoffrey Alderman

xi

Acknowledgments All but one of the essays reproduced in this volume originally appeared elsewhere. I must therefore convey my thanks to the following publishing houses for permission to reproduce material the copyright of which is in their possession: The University of Wales Press for permission to reproduce ‘The AntiJewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales: A Response,’ which originally appeared in the Welsh History Review, volume 20 (2001). Taylor & Francis for permission to reproduce ‘The defence of shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘humane conditions’ regulations of 1990,’ which originally appeared in New Community [now the Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies: www.informaworld.com ], vol.21, no.1 (1995). The European Science Foundation and New York University Press for permission to reproduce ‘London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934,’ which originally appeared in Government, Ethnic Groups and Political Representation (ed. G. Alderman with J. Leslie & K. E. Pollman, 1993), one of a series of eight volumes representing the results of a European Science Foundation funded project, published by Dartmouth Publishing Company. Leuven University Press for permission to reproduce ‘Jews in the Economy of London (1850 – 1940),’ which originally appeared in E. Aerts & F. M. L. Thompson (eds), Ethnic Minority Groups and Economic Development 1850 – 1940 (Leuven, 1990) Princeton University Press for permission to reproduce ‘English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion: Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry,’ which originally appeared in P. Birnbaum & I. Katznelson (eds), Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton, New Jersey, 1995)

xii

Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc, for permission to reproduce ‘British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community,’ which originally appeared in L. Stein & S. Encel (eds), Continuity, Commitment, and Survival (Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 2003)

xiii

I ANGLO-JEWRY: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT

[Inaugural Professorial Lecture delivered at Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, University of London, 17 October 1989]

W

hat is special about an Inaugural Lecture? He or she upon whom this University has seen fit to confer the Title of Professor is invited to give such a Lecture partly, no doubt, to demonstrate his or her intellectual worth. In that sense, there can be few Inaugural Lecturers who have not trembled at the magnitude of the task they undertake and with good reason. Then again, the Inaugural Lecture is, typically, less an exercise in scholarship narrowly defined than a canvas painted broad-brush: the Inaugural Lecturer is supposed to survey the state of his or her art or craft, offering, perhaps, a critique of what has been achieved so far, and indicating the directions in which the activity might progress in the future. In this sense an Inaugural Lecture, unlike the conventional maiden speech, is permitted to be, within limits, controversial. The topic with which I hope to engage your attention this evening is not ‘the state of the art”, but rather “the state of the subject’. I propose to survey some aspects of the present condition of what has, for the better part of I 5 years, formed the subject-matter of my own research, the Anglo-Jewish community. I do so knowing full well that much of what I have to say will be unpalatable to many of my co-religionists: that I shall be cursed behind my back—as occasionally I have been cursed to my face merely for raising issues too sensitive or too large for the community to deal with. I nonetheless believe that I am right to raise them, and that by raising them I am serving the true interests of the Jews amongst whom I dwell. Anglo-Jewry is at present in a stale of disarray. To many on the outside this statement may come as something of a shock. Media coverage of Anglo-Jewish issues is monstrously superficial and based on multiple misapprehensions. To begin with, although we all speak of “the Anglo-Jewish community”, there is of course no such thing, but rather a series of communities some of which overlap to a greater or lesser extent. Religious divisions are, I think, greater now than they have ever been. Intra-communal religious bigotry is, in consequence, at an all-time high. I use the word “divisions” quite deliberately. Differences there have 2

Controversy and Crisis

always been. Almost one hundred and fifty years ago the orthodox Spanish & Portuguese (Sephardi) and German-speaking (Ashkenazi) congregations, then numbering no more than about 30,000 in all,1 were thrown into an unprecedented state of turmoil by the decision of a handful of leading families to establish a synagogue broadly on the lines of the German Reform movement, in which many of the prayers were said in the vernacular (that is, English) while the respect accorded to Rabbinic or Oral Law, as distinct from the Law as set down in the Old Testament, was to be much reduced. The adherents of the West London Synagogue of British Jews were solemnly denounced, they were forbidden to become members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and their activities were made the subject of an organised boycott. These events are well chronicled.2 Less attention has been given however to the speed with which the breach was healed. A formal condemnation of the seceders issued forth from the ecclesiastical authorities of the Ashkenazi and Sephardi congregations in August 1841. The West London Synagogue opened for business on 27 February 1842. But even as the secession took place, people of good will were to be found working to heal the breach. Within seven years the herem, or ban, had been rescinded. It is true that admission of Reformers to the Board of Deputies took much longer to effect, and was not achieved until 1886, the year after the death of Sir Moses Montefiore, to whose unedifying obstinacy the exclusion was, in large measure, due. But this symbolic though very necessary act— admission to the Board—merely set the seal on a process of mutual recognition that had been practically completed many years before. When, in 1892, the West London Synagogue celebrated its jubilee, all the principal orthodox congregations were represented. Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler himself declined to attend: yet a few years later we find him actually appealing to the Reformers for help in putting down V. D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England, 1850-1950 (London, 1954), 7. C. Roth, The Great Synagogue 1690-1 940 (London 1950), 255-6; A. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (London, 1951), ch. xv. 1 2

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

3

an even more radical movement, the ancestor of the Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues.3 As a matter of fact the Reform movement in the UK was remarkably conservative: its adherents were much more interested in decorum than in dogma, and might have been enticed back into mainstream Jewish orthodoxy, represented after 1870 by the United Synagogue (that is, respect in theory for laws and customs which are daily disobeyed in practice), had it not been for the social martyrdom to which they were subjected. Until the 1930s the Reform and Liberal movements remained small. Both, however, gained adherents as a result of the influx of refugees from Nazism, which also brought into this country many thousands of strictly orthodox Jews, who gravitated naturally to the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) founded in 1926. Much more recently, in 1985, an organisation modelling itself broadly upon the American Conservative Jewish movement, the Masorti Assembly of Synagogues, was established upon the foundations of the New London Synagogue, formed in 1964 by supporters of Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs, whom some orthodox elements within the United Synagogue had caused to be hounded out of his position as Lecturer in Jews’ College. In London alone, therefore, where about two-thirds of the 330,000 or so British Jews now live, there are no less than seven synagogal bodies: the United Synagogue and the Federation of Synagogues, which between them account for 66 per cent of London Jewry, the Sephardim (just over 3 per cent), the exclusive UOHC (just over 5 per cent) and the Reform, Liberal and Masorti movements (over 25 per cent).4 We should also note that these proportions have not been static. The proportion represented by the UOHC has more than doubled since 1970, while that represented by the Liberals and the Reformers has increased by more than a fifth. I am not concerned here with whether the increasing polarisation of O. . Philipson, The Reform Movement in Judaism (2nd edn,, New York, 1931), 305. S. Waterman & B. Kosmin, British Jewry in the Eighties (London. 1986), 31; these figures refer to the situation in 1983.

3 4

4

Controversy and Crisis

Anglo-Jewry—which these crude statistics reflect and which shows every sign of intensifying—is good or bad. I accept it as a fact of life, and I ask myself whether, and to what extent, our major communal organisations have adapted to take account of the changing balance of religious tendencies. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which specialises in failing to grasp nettles, has fudged this issue in exemplary fashion. It must have been obvious to any reasonably realistic observer that, sooner or later, the Progressive element on the Board would demand some status for its ecclesiastical authorities, who prior to 1972 had no role in the giving of advice and guidance to the Board in religious matters. The essential justice of this demand was recognised in October 1971 when, in an atmosphere of crisis and following the withdrawal of Progressive Deputies, the Board agreed to amend Clause 43 (now Clause 76) of its Constitution so as to give rights of consultation to the ecclesiastical authorities of groups of congregations not under the jurisdiction of either the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations or the spiritual head of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews. Immediately following the passage of this amendment, the UOHC walked out of the Board—and has never returned.5 I shall return later to the withdrawal of the UOHC and its implications. The point 1 wish to make here is that the amendment of the Board’s Constitution in 197 I, far from settling the issue, further exacerbated it. Rights of consultation were indeed given (or rather, confirmed, for such consultation apparently had been taking place informally throughout the period of office of the late Mr Michael Fidler, who became President of the Board of Deputies in 1967). But in order to appease orthodox feeling Mr Fidler had given a public assurance that the Board would “continue to be guided on religious matters” by the Chief Rabbi and the spiritual head of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews and “cannot act ... contrary to the guidance it receives from them.”6

5 6

A. Bornstein & B. Homa, Tell It In Gath (London, 1972), section II. Ibid., 45.

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

5

Now I ask the question: if the Board of Deputies of British Jews is always bound to adhere to the advice of its orthodox ecclesiastical authorities, what is the point of consulting other, mainly non-orthodox authorities? I am aware that this question can be answered. It might be said that where the advice given by the Board’s own ecclesiastical authorities and the authorities recognised by other groupings represented on the Board is significantly different, the Board could simply decline to act at all in relation to a matter before it. This was indeed the case some years ago, when the Board—or at least its ruling elements—declined to support a parliamentary initiative to amend the law of divorce (with the object of alleviating the hardships faced by many orthodox Jewish women whose husbands refused to grant them religious divorces) on the grounds that such amendment did not have the support of nonorthodox ecclesiastical authorities. This issue, which surfaced in 1984, dovetailed with another, namely the failure of the Board in 1983 to reply substantively to an invitation to give evidence to the Law Commission on questions of family law and illegitimacy, because the advice tendered by orthodox and non-orthodox ecclesiastical authorities pertaining to Artificial Insemination by Donor was— as might have been anticipated—radically different. The Board’s Executive Committee—acting in the name of the Board but without ever reporting the fact—replied to the Lord Chancellor’s Office that it had nothing further to add to previous submissions.7 Great indeed was the anger of some orthodox Deputies, and on 17 November 1984 they succeeded in imposing upon the Board a “Code of Practice,” which stipulates that the Board “shall follow” the guidance it receives from its orthodox ecclesiastical authorities, “support it in all ways possible and with all due speed.”. This Code did not amount to an amendment of the Board’s Constitution, and forms no part of it. It left the Progressive elements unhappier than ever.

7

6

S. Frosh, ‘Clause 74 And All That’, Hamesilah, vol.1, no.1 (Pesach 5745/1985),.25.

Controversy and Crisis

I sat through the debates of 1984, and I attended, as an observer, the related meetings of the Law, Parliamentary & General Purposes Committee. I can still vividly recall the amazement I felt upon reflecting that that wholly avoidable crisis might have been averted, certainly in relation to the matter of giving evidence to the Law Commission, through the simple expedient of telling the Lord Chancellor that, within Anglo-Jewry, more than one view was held. With matters of family law and Jewish identity, as with so much else, there are Jewish views but there is not a Jewish view. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis of 1971 this essential truth seems to have been grasped, for in January 1972, as part of its submission to a Law-Commission inquiry into the solemnisation of marriages, the Board stated the orthodox position on the requirements of a Jewish marriage, and then added that “in the case of some sections of the community there are minor variations in practice which do not affect the principles involved.”8 I personally would quarrel with the phrase ‘minor variations’: the variations between orthodox and progressive prerequisites for marriage are, in fact, very substantial and fundamental, as is generally recognised. But it was surely right, and honest, to have intimated that the orthodox view was not universally shared: indeed we know that Dr (now Lord) Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, himself had approved this rider.9 But this very limited and modest exercise in the realities of pluralism was immediately pounced upon by the hard-liners, and it was not repeated. In 1971-72 Dr Jakobovits, who had been in office but a few years, was anxious to placate the non-orthodox elements; in agreeing to give consultative status to their ecclesiastical authorities, he had indeed incurred the wrath of the ultra-orthodox. But a decade later, faced with an increasingly polarised set of communities of which he can, quite clearly, no longer be regarded as “the Chief Rabbi,” his attitude hardened considerably. During the 1984 controversy the Progressives had suggested that the Code of Practice be amended so 8 9

Bornstein & Homa, op, cit., 62. Ibid.

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

7

that, in any submission made by the Board to the government, or other body, with which the non-orthodox religious authorities disagreed, mention should be made of that fact. “The Board,” Sir Immanuel wrote to the President of the United Synagogue, “cannot be expected to be used as the official vehicle for the communications [sic] of minority views which violate the Halachic [that is, orthodox] imperatives of the majority.” “Can one imagine the credence that would be given to representations by the Board,” argued Mr Sidney Frosh, then a VicePresident of the United Synagogue, “which were accompanied with comments that there were those who disagreed with the views being proposed?” By 1984, therefore, Lord (then Sir lmmanuel) Jakobovits had come round to the view that the Progressives must expect —and must go on expecting—taxation without representation, while Mr Frosh, who is now President of the United Synagogue, took a stand on the right of a majority to smother the views of a minority. On this subject I can do no better than quote the words of Mr Jack Wolkind, CBE, the former Chief Executive of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and a communal worker of great stature within Anglo-Jewry. Commenting on the words of Mr Frosh which 1 have just quoted, Mr Wolkind declared: “The expression of a minority view does not weaken or denigrate a majority view ... What these expressions of minority opinion do, however, is to make clear that there is another view.” And Mr Wolkind went on to make the entirely sensible observation that “All public authorities, especially Government Departments, are very familiar with minority as well as majority views. They are regularly faced with them and understand the position very well.”10 The conflict between Orthodoxy and the Progressive movement in Anglo-Jewry is indeed a cancer which, if allowed to spread unchecked, threatens to overwhelm our contracting communities and which has already sapped far too great a proportion of communal energies. It has sometimes taken on aspects which hover between the tragic and the

10

8

J . Wolkind, London and its Jewish Community (London, 1985), 14.

Controversy and Crisis

farcical. For example, in 1986 the Rabbi of the Edgware Federation Synagogue refused to permit one of his congregants, Dr Michael Weitzman, to read from the Torah Scroll after it was discovered that Dr Weitzman (a member of the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department at University College London) had agreed to give a course of lectures at the New London Synagogue (now part of the Masorti movement).11 I on the other hand, was invited to write the official history of the Federation of Synagogues (of which the Edgware Synagogue in question is a constituent) in spite of the fact that I have been known to lecture at the Sternberg Centre for Judaism, which is run by the progressive movements. The conflict between Orthodoxy and the progressive movements in Britain is, moreover, primarily a political struggle, which mirrors in miniature the Mi Yehudi? [’Who is a Jew?’] controversy in Israel. That argument is not really about ‘Who is a Jew?’, but rather ‘Who is to decide who is a Jew?’ Likewise, the conflict between Orthodoxy and the progressive movements within British Jewry is much less about principles and dogma than about status and power. Between the principles of Orthodox Judaism and those of the progressives there can be no compromise, no meeting in a presumed middle-ground. Such a middle-ground does not exist. To state this is to articulate the obvious. But recognition of this fact does not, of course, exclude the possibilities of dialogue. On this subject Lord Jakobovits himself has blown hot and cold. In 1971-72 he bent over backwards to please the progressives. In 1985, in an interview in the Jewish Chronicle, he referred to polarisation within Anglo-Jewry as “a sad feature of Jewish life” and added: “I have often publicly to take a stand to try to strengthen the middle ground and build bridges of understanding.”12 But in 1984 he issued a private memorandum to his clergy warning them against modes of conduct “which could be construed as according legitimacy to non-traditional Judaism,” and in the same

11 12

Jewish Chronicle [hereafter JC ] 7 March 1986, 28. JC, 8 Feb. 1985, 18.

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

9

year he welcomed as Head of his Ecclesiastical Court Rabbi Chenoch Ehrentreu, who while in Manchester in 1982 had refused to meet the Pope because, in meeting and shaking hands with the Pope (to which apparently he had no objection) Rabbi Ehrentreu would have been part of a delegation that included a Reform Jew.13 In his home and in his official capacity Lord Jakobovits is said to meet leaders of the non-orthodox congregations—as he must if his claim to be ‘Chief Rabbi’ is to have any meaning. I am informed that what is known as “The Consultative Committee on Jewish-Non Jewish Relations,” of which the Convenor is Rabbi Tony Bayfield (a former Chairman of the Assembly of Rabbis of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain), and which includes Rabbi Sidney Brichto (Director of the Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues) holds its meetings at Lord Jakobovits’s private residence (85 Hamilton Terrace, London).14 But speaking to the Convention of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in Philadelphia at the end of 1988 Lord Jakobovits was reported to have declared that there was “no room for centrists” in the world of Jewish orthodoxy; on the subject of controversies between the orthodox and the non-orthodox he reportedly asserted that “What was needed today was not dialogue—if anything, there was too much talk—but a readiness to listen to each other, and to provide mutual reassurance” -whatever that might mean.15 I must confess that I am unable to detect any pattern to this behaviour: I personally would find it difficult to argue against the conclusion that such behaviour falls not too far short of applied hypocrisy. But I must warn my orthodox co-religionists against the view that they can go on indefinitely excluding the progressives from a share of power and authority. At the moment the progressives account for about a quarter of the Jews of Great Britain. If the trends of the recent past continue, by the year 2000 this proportion will have increased to 30 per cent, and by the close of the first decade of the next century the Reform, Liberal, JC, 4 June 1982. 1. Interview with Rabbi Brichto, 17 Feb. 1989. 15 JC, 9 Dec. 1988, 5. 13 14

10

Controversy and Crisis

Progressive and Masorti elements will comprise fully one-third of Anglo-Jewry. We can, I think, be reasonably certain that, at that stage, they will no longer be content with a second-class consultative status. Is it not wise to plan now for that eventuality? And if the answer given is only a qualified ‘yes’—or even just a ‘maybe’—ought we not to be thinking now, seriously, about removing religious and confessional matters from the purview of the Board of Deputies, leaving it to deal with purely secular issues, such as communal defence and general propaganda? Now the question of secularising the Board of Deputies is a most sensitive issue, not least because the ability and claim of the Board to act as spokesman for Anglo-Jewry on all matters relating to the work of government in the UK and the European Community has in the past been grounded in large measure in its role as intermediary between the religious authorities and the state. Many of these matters have a religious dimension—marriage and divorce, family law, slaughter of animals, Sunday trading, moral standards in broadcasting, education, religious and ethnic questions in the census, and so on. Take these away from the Board and its sphere of influence is, necessarily, much reduced. And it is precisely because the Board’s ecclesiastical authorities have the constitutional right to give guidance, by which (at least according to the Code of Practice) the Board is bound, that their own position is considerably enhanced. I must explain here that by ‘the Board’s ecclesiastical authorities’ I mean primarily the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations and the Haham, or spiritual head, of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews. The numerical inferiority of the Spanish & Portuguese communities, and the fact that there have been long periods when the office of Haham has remained vacant, have combined to facilitate the subordination of these communities in the counsels of Anglo-Jewry: the last Haham, Rabbi Dr Solomon Gaon, seems to have been in full agreement with whatever advice Dr Jakobovits gave to the Board of Deputies. In the course of time Dr Gaon resigned his position to become spiritual leader of the World Sephardi Federation in New York. The Spanish Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

11

& Portuguese communities in Britain could not agree on a successor (1984), and ecclesiastical power was in consequence—and with tragic results—split between the Moroccan-born Rabbi Pinchas Toledano and the Gibraltar-born and English public-school educated Rabbi Dr Abraham Levy. For the purposes of the Board of Deputies, Dr Levy is the designated ecclesiastical authority of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews. In fact, he has often been persistently and deliberately ignored. Only at the end of 1987, and after I had intervened, was his authority recognised by the Board in relation to proposed reform of the law relating to religious slaughter. There are signs that the inferiority complex from which the British Sephardim have suffered may be on the wane. In recent times their ranks have been enhanced by the immigration to these shores of families of considerable wealth from the Middle East particularly Iraq and Iran. In Anglo-Jewry wealth has a habit of commanding attention. Be that as it may, there can he no doubt that the internal feuding that has bedevilled the British Sephardim has played into the hands of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations—Lord Jakobovits—and into the hands of those within Anglo-Jewry who would like his office to he recognised as the supreme if not the sole religious authority of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and, therefore, of the whole of AngloJewry. The current President of the Board, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, has distinguished himself by his enthusiasm for upholding the authority of the office of Chief Rabbi, has defended the authority of this office in the correspondence columns of the Jewish Chronicle,16 and has turned a blind eye to repeated breaches of the Board’s constitution (in relation both to the rights of Dr Levy and to the consultative rights of other ecclesiastical heads) where its enforcement might have resulted in that authority being quite properly delimited and circumscribed. One can easily understand why. Just as the Chief Rabbinate needs the Board of Deputies, so the Board of Deputies—as it is presently constituted— needs a Chief Rabbinate. For the Chief Rabbinate is largely funded by 16

JC., 9 Dec. 1988, 28.

12

Controversy and Crisis

the United Synagogue; and the United Synagogue is a major source of revenue for the Board of Deputies. Concerning the office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations there is an enormous amount of popular misconception. Again and again I have read, even in the quality daily newspapers, that Lord Jakobovits is “Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.”17 The editor of the Jewish chronicle has gone further, claiming in a private letter that Lord Jakobovits is, “by statute,” the religious authority of the Board of Deputies.18 He is, in fact, none of these things. The development of the office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is a fascinating story, the telling of which is quite beyond the scope of this lecture.19 The “United Hebrew Congregations” is an umbrella term of strictly limited extent, and refers to those congregations who come together to elect a Chief Rabbi for themselves and who, naturally, pay for the upkeep of the office. The United Synagogue of London is by far the largest contributor to the funding of the post and it is perfectly understandable, therefore, that the United Synagogue should have the preponderating influence in the choice of its incumbent. At the beginning of 1989 the machinery for electing a new Chief Rabbi to succeed Lord Jakobovits was activated. Under the auspices of the United Synagogue, a Chief Rabbinate Conference was held on 15 January 1989, and agreed to establish a selection committee consisting of 36 persons, under the chairmanship of Mr Frosh and including 15 other representatives of the United Synagogue, 5 of the Federation of Synagogues, 12 from the provinces, one representing overseas communities, the Chairman of Jews’ College London (first Mr Stanley Kalms, and subsequently Mr David Pomson, both distinguished members of the United Synagogue) and the President of the National Council of Shechita Boards, Mr Salmond Levin (who is The Times, 13 Feb. 1989, 14. Geoffrey Paul to Dr Edward Koenigsberger (of Bournemouth), 25 Nov. 1988; I am grateful to Dr Koenigsberger for drawing to my attention to this letter. 19 On this subject see Roth. Great Synagogue, passim, and the same author’s essay ‘The Chief Rabbinate in England’ in I. Epstein, E. Levine & C. Roth (eds), Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr J.H. Hertz (London, 1942), 371-84. 17 18

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

13

himself a former President of the United Synagogue).20 I describe the constitution of this selection committee in detail in order to demonstrate a number of crucial points. The participation of the Federation of Synagogues in the deliberations of the committee is curious, because the Federation has its own ecclesiastical court, and has, on numerous occasions, made clear its objection to the fact that the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations may veto the decisions of his own ecclesiastical court. At its meeting on 18 May 1989 the Executive of the Federation resolved that though it had no objection to being consulted about the choice of a new Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, it would recognise neither his status nor his authority. I must then draw attention to those congregations not represented on the search committee at all. These include the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, the Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues, and the Masorti Assembly—in other words the entire Progressive spectrum on the left (as it were) and, on the right, the UOHC. For very obvious reasons the Spanish & Portuguese Jews, also, play no part in the election of ‘the Chief Rabbi’. These nonparticipating bodies comprise well over a third of the entire Jewish population of the UK—a proportion which will increase for the reasons discussed earlier. In fact, therefore, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is not the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, a growing percentage of the Jews in which do not recognise his jurisdiction. Nor is he the religious authority, “by statute,” of the Board of Deputies. The only statutory recognition of the office let alone of the authority—of “the Chief Rabbi” is to be found in the legislation governing the licensing of shochetim—Jewish slaughtermen. The Slaughterhouses Act of 1974 provides for the establishment of a Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim, of which body (consisting of ten rabbis in all) the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is the permanent chairman and the designated ecclesiastical authority of the Spanish & 20

JC, 20 Jan. 1989, 1.

14

Controversy and Crisis

Portuguese Jews is the permanent deputy-chairman. Interestingly, the idea that the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations should be the sole licensing authority for shochetim was stoutly and successfully resisted when what became the 1933 Slaughter of Animals Act was before Parliament. In 1928 Parliament had legislated for the Slaughter of Animals in Scotland: the Chief Rabbi was made the sole licensing authority for Jewish slaughtermen in that country. The Federation of Synagogues, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (as it was then called) and the Spanish & Portuguese congregations had no interest in the Scottish situation per se, but they were extremely angered that a precedent had been set by which “no Rabbi in Scotland should have the right to grant Kabolah [that is, a religious licence] to Shochetim except through the Chief Rabbinate of the United Synagogue.21 When Parliament turned its attention to England and Wales, a fierce campaign was launched against the extension of the Chief Rabbi’s authority. Rabbi Dr Moses Gaster, the brilliant and volcanic former Haham of the Sephardim, argued that “an audacious attempt” was being made “by taking advantage of the ignorance of Parliament of the true situation of the Jewish communities—to induce them to establish what would be tantamount [to] a Jewish state church by the sanction of a single Chief Rabbi under the authority of Parliament.”22 On 12 January 1930 a conference of rabbis convened by the Federation and the Union declared such a proposal to be “inimical to Judaism and contrary to Jewish law.” This resolution was supported by rabbinical leaders in every major provincial centre where Jews dwelt in large numbers, including Glasgow, Leeds. Sheffield, Hull, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sunderland, and by Rabbi Dr Herzog of

Gaster Papers, University College London: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations File: typescript memorandum by Dr V. Schonfeld (Rabbi of the Union), Dec. 1929. 22 Ibid: typescript memorandum by Dr Gaster, no date hut probably Dec. 1929. 21

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

15

Dublin (subsequently the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel).23 The argument was accepted by Parliament, and the Rabbinical Commission was set up.24 I must also point out that in relation to the certification of synagogue secretaries for marriage purposes (other than secretaries of synagogues belonging to the Reform and Liberal movements, in respect of which different rules apply), the law is that the marriage secretaries of such synagogues must be certified to the Registrar-General by the President of the Board of Deputies. It is the President who grants the certificate, not an ecclesiastical authority, and while it is true that the President will consult one of the Board’s ecclesiastical authorities, such as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, for advice and guidance, he is under no statutory compulsion so to do. The marriage laws in this country certainly confer no special authority on the ‘Chief Rabbi’, unless he personally becomes a marriage secretary! The essential tenuousness of the authority of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations—and the folly of the Board of Deputies in trying to maintain it—has been put in very sharp focus in recent years by the controversy which followed the report of the Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1985. Here, again. I can do no more than convey the barest outlines of a complicated intra-communal dispute which, significantly, has been deliberately under-reported by the Jewish Chronicle, on the grounds that such publicity “is of no help at all to Anglo-Jewry” and that the Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Mr Geoffrey Paul, has “reason to believe” that this view “is shared by eminent halachists [i.e., rabbinical authorities ] who are not members of the Chief Rabbi’s Bet Din [ecclesiastical court]”—but whom Mr Paul declines to name.25 It is, incidentally, a very sad reflection on the standards of the largest circulating Jewish newspaper in this country that its editorial policy can be swayed by the opinions of anonymous Ibid: typescript note of the resolution. The Scottish anomaly has never been rectified. I am informed by Mr M. Carr (interview, 17 Feb. I98) that in practice the Rabbinical Commission deals with Scottish applications too.

23 24

16

Controversy and Crisis

clerics, that it has consequently failed to inform its readers about a matter of fundamental importance to them, and that they have had to rely instead on three smaller papers (the now-defunct Jewish Herald, the Jewish Tribune and the Manchester Jewish Telegraph) or, alternatively, the Jewish Press of New York. In 1985 the Farm Animal Welfare Council produced a report on religious slaughter of animals; the Council’s religious slaughter working party made a series of recommendations designed to restrict the modus operandi of shechita and, in addition, recommended that the Jews be forced to stun animals prior to slaughter: this, like some of the other recommendations, would have been tantamount to prohibiting shechita altogether, as I suspect the Council must have realised.26 It was evident that a defence of shechita would have to be mounted, but the organisation of an appropriate defence mechanism posed enormous problems. I alluded earlier to the fact that, following the constitutional crisis of 1971, the UOHC had seceded from the Board of Deputies; moreover, it had discovered that it was possible to live and to go on living without Board membership; worse still, by 1985 the chairmanship of the Board’s Shechita Committee had fallen into the hands of a woman Mrs. Zina Cohen. A leading lay member of the UOHC. Councillor Jo Lobenstein of Hackney, did attend Shechita Committee meetings, but although this was kept secret from the Board it was clear that the ecclesiastical authorities of the Union were never going to co-operate with a committee chaired by a woman! So the Honorary Officers of the Board were faced with the stark reality that, whatever their public boasts to the contrary, the Board does not represent the whole of Anglo-Jewry and that, at least on the issue of shechita, its credentials cast in this form were not likely to be approved in Whitehall. At the same time, however, the paramountcy of the Chief Rabbinate had to be maintained. There could be no question of Lord G. Paul to M.D. Wosner (of London), 5 April 1988; 1 am grateful to Mr Wosner for drawing my attention to this letter. 26 Farm Animal Welfare Council, Report on the Welfare of Livestock when .slaughtered by Religious Methods (London, 1985), 24-27. 25

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

17

Jakobovits, as an ecclesiastical authority of the Board, becoming merely one member of a wider rabbinical forum, even if his position were that of primus inter pares. A new mechanism had therefore to be established, and a mighty curious one it was too. Lord Jakobovits became chairman of an ad hoc committee—the “Co-ordinating Group for the Defence of Shechita”—consisting of the Presidents of the Board of Deputies, the United Synagogue, the Federation of Synagogues, the National Council of Shechita Boards and of the Elders of the Spanish & Portuguese Congregation, together with Councillor Lobenstein of the Union.27 In other words, this was a lay body chaired by the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations; it had no mandate to confer ecclesiastical approval upon the negotiations which were then opened with the Ministry of Agriculture. On 9 July 1986 representatives of the Co-ordinating Group, led by Sir Immanuel Jakobovits (as he then was), met Michael Jopling (the then Minister of Agriculture) and his colleagues. According to Sir lmmanuel, Mr Jopling admitted that there was no scientific proof as to whether one method of animal slaughter was more humane than the other.28 Nonetheless, the pressures to which he was being subjected from the anti-shechita groups were strong; he urged that concessions be made because (as he subsequently wrote to Sir Immanuel) “I would like to be able to demonstrate that the Jewish Community is prepared to make generous moves towards re-assuring those who express concern about the welfare of religiously slaughtered animals.”29 The minutes of the Co-ordinating Group make clear that there was much unhappiness at the outcome of the meeting, particularly on the part of Councillor Lobenstein, who urged that approaches he made to the Prime Minister, other Cabinet Ministers and to the Chairman Dr L. Kopelowitz to Dr G. Alderman, 10. Dec. 1988. Minutes of the Meeting of the Chief Rabbi’s Co-ordinating Group for the Defence of Shechita, 16 July 1986, p.1. Mr Nathan Rubin, the secretary of this group, has informed me (interview on 24 Nov. 1987) that he took a note of Mr Jopling’s words as follows: “There does not appear to be conclusive scientific evidence to say whether one side [of the argument concerning the humanity of shechita ] is right or wrong.” 29 M. Jopling to Sir I. Jakobovits, 22 July 1986. 27 28

18

Controversy and Crisis

of the Conservative Party. Whether this was done I cannot say, but it appears that Councillor Lobenstein’s advice was not taken. At all events, in October 1987 the Ministry of Agriculture announced that, while shechita was not to be banned, a number of restrictions were to be placed upon its operation, most notably the manner in which the process of Jewish slaughter was to be carried out and the use of an upright pen based upon but (as it turned out) different in one crucial respect from that approved by rabbinical authorities in the United States of America. In a covering press statement Mr John MacGregor, Mr Jopling’s successor, praised “the Jewish authorities ... [for] ... their readiness to overcome the difficulties they found” in accepting the upright pen; Lord Jakobovits responded by welcoming the government’s proposals and pledging to “do all that we can to assist in the implementation of the recommendations now adopted.”30 In the months that followed a furore broke out, both within and beyond the orthodox communities in the United Kingdom, that has, I think, no parallel in modern times. During the first half of 1988 a series of complex discussions took place between eminent rabbis in Britain and colleagues in Israel (where, incidentally, upright shechita is not allowed). Some of the most distinguished rabbis in Israel expressed grave reservations about the settlement Lord Jakobovits had come to with the Ministry of Agriculture. American rabbis also became concerned; in September 1988 a committee of American rabbis made representations to the British Ambassador in Washington. The Jewish Herald in London reported that the London Shechita Authority and members of other relevant communal organisations were “astounded that the Chief Rabbi has sanctioned regulations which they believe will lead to unreasonable restrictions on shechita, and may even threaten its legal standing in this country”; referring to the Ministry’s proposals which had been endorsed by Lord Jakobovits, Mr Sidney Ormonde, Secretary of the London Shechita Authority, told the Jewish Herald that they were “highly ambiguous. I can’t believe Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Food Press Release 326/87, 29 Oct. 1987, 2; Jewish Tribune, 5 Nov. 1987, 1

30

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

19

that they are acceptable.”31 On 19 September 1988 the President of the UOHC, Rabbi E. Halpern, wrote to Mr MacGregor intimating that the Union had, after considering the details of the government’s proposals, and in the light of American evidence, decided that it could not accept the upright pen.32 By implication—though the Union was polite enough not to spell this out— the authority of Lord Jakobovits to negotiate on its behalf was therefore repudiated. Within a month Lord Jakobovits’s Co-ordinating Group had been suspended.33 One can, perhaps, forgive the Ministry of Agriculture at least to this extent. Given the twin popularly-held myths that Lord Jakobovits is the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and that the Board of Deputies represents the whole of Anglo-Jewry, officials at the Ministry naturally assumed that they would speak for all British Jews. And it must he said that once it became clear to the officials that this was not the case, a bold and entirely correct decision was taken, to confer a locus standi upon those who articulated views contrary to Lord Jakobovits and his allies, and to listen to what they had to say. During the course of 1988 meetings were held with the Campaign for the Protection of Shechita and with a group of rabbinical leaders led by Rabbi E. Schlesinger of London and Rabbi M. Schneebalg of Manchester; rights of consultation were also conferred upon Rabbi Y.Y. Lichtenstein, the ecclesiastical head of the Federation of Synagogues. What was the reaction of the Board and the Chief Rabbi to these developments? On 11 April 1988 Mr Shimon Cohen, then Executive Officer of the Office of the Chief Rabbi, wrote to the Jewish peer Lord Joseph (formerly Sir Keith Joseph, Education Secretary in Mrs. Thatcher’s government), who had become interested in the shechita controversy, belittling the efforts of Rabbi Schlesinger to obtain a separate meeting with Ministry of Agriculture officials, and giving the clear impression to Lord Joseph that no such separate meeting was Jewish Herald, 10 Dec. 1987, 1. I am grateful to Rabbi Halpern and to Mr I. Kohn, the Vice- President of the Union, for releasing to me the text of this letter. 33 I am grateful to Mr S.S. Levin for this information. 31 32

20

Controversy and Crisis

necessary.34 After the meeting (and other meetings) had taken place, Dr Kopelowitz claimed that the Chief Rabbi had been “humiliated” and that his status had been “impugned.”35And all that had happened was that a department of government had recognised the pluralism and diversity of the Jewish communities in this country. This story has still to run its full course. On 27 July 1989 an historic letter was written to the Minister of Agriculture by eight leading rabbis in the UK, led not by Lord Jakobovits but by Rabbi C. Padwa, the senior ecclesiastical authority of the UOHC, setting out the objections of the orthodox Anglo-Jewish community to draft slaughter regulations which had been published the previous month. I understand that the government has heeded the warnings sounded in this letter, and will be seen to have made very significant further concessions when the regulations are laid before Parliament. If British .shechita is saved thereby, it will be because of the action of these rabbis, supported by other independent Jewish organisations and by co-religionists in Israel and the USA. We have all heard the quip “Two Jews, three opinions.” So when I am told by Dr Kopelowitz that “there’s got to be a Jewish view at the end of the day; there can’t be two Jewish views or three Jewish views,” I know that I am dealing with someone who, for whatever reason, either does not or does not want to recognise this basic fact.36 There is at present no body in the United Kingdom that can honestly claim to have under its aegis the whole of British Jewry. The Board of Deputies could again become such a body, but it would need either to secularise itself (a step which would remove the threat of further internecine strife over quite irreconcilable religious differences) or to undertake to recognise the diversity of beliefs and opinions held by British Jews, and to represent that diversity publicly. And so I come to the final themes of my lecture: is Anglo-Jewry capable of S. Cohen to Lord Joseph, 11 April 1988 (reference SC/BK/44S); copy in my possession. 35 These are the words used by Dr Kopelowitz at a meeting of the Shechita Committee of the Board of Deputies, 17 Jan. 1989. 36 Interview with Dr Kopelowitz, 2 March 1998 34

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

21

conducting in open forum discussions on matters about which we all know that very differing views arc passionately held, and is it capable of dealing so effectively, and justly, with complaints emanating from within itself, that individual Jews will not feel the need to step outside existing communal structures to obtain a fair hearing? Before the era of emancipation in the last century, the Jews of Europe lived for the most part in self-governing communities: these communities organised their own finances, ran their own institutions, and dealt with the outside world through a series of tightly disciplined and universally recognised channels. This method of organisation was, in part, imposed from without, and its functioning was in truth a condition of Jewish survival. It could then fairly he argued that those Jews who undermined the structure were putting the very existence of the community at risk. This past is dead. Wherever Jews live today, and especially in the western democracies, their behaviour is bound to be shaped and influenced, at least to some extent, by the norms of society at large. Today, in Great Britain, we live in a remarkably open society, in which groups and individuals are free to voice their opinions, and in which the private citizen has access to a range of grievance-remedying machineries. But Anglo-Jewry continues to be, in the strictest sense of the phrase, an irresponsible society, by which I mean that we are still possessed of a set of communal structures that are, in effect, able to go about their work without having to account publicly—and often without having to account at all—for the policies they pursue and for the actions they take. Furthermore, the view still persists that those who challenge this situation, or who exercise their right of public dissent should be ostracised, cast out and condemned, as such people were when we all lived in ghettoes and were daily in literal fear of our lives. As William Frankel, the former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, put it in an article published in 1987, “there is an increasing tendency from our religious, secular and Zionist authorities to equate dissent with heresy”; he added ‘Our leadership as a whole, favours secrecy and conformity, discourages innovation and 22

Controversy and Crisis

is fearful of controversy.”37 Now, even if we assume that our communal structures always operate honestly and impartially (an assumption in which I myself would not wish to share), their mode of operation, behind closed doors, making up their rules of procedure as they go along, denying rights of representation which are regarded as fundamental in English law— these facets alone must give cause for concern. As a member of the Board of Deputies, I am sometimes asked to give assistance to Jews whose wish to trade on Sunday has been blocked by a panel established by Parliament, at the request of the Board, in 1979.38 No Jew who wishes to trade on a Sunday in what are known as “non-exempted” goods may do so without a certificate from this panel declaring that the panel is satisfied that the applicant has a conscientious objection on religious grounds to trading on the Jewish Sabbath. On the face of it, the establishment of the panel seems above reproach. Whatever the anomalies and absurdities of the Sunday trading laws, it is surely right that unscrupulous Jews should not be allowed to exploit them in order to gain advantages over non-Jewish traders who are supposed to comply with them. But when one investigates the way in which the panel goes about its work, operating in private on the basis of “guidelines” so secret that the Board itself has never been permitted to see (let alone approve) them, one begins to have doubts; and these doubts are increased when one comes across cases where the applicant has been treated in an insolent, humiliating and capricious manner and has been asked intimate questions, about his or her financial and family backgrounds, which can have little if any relevance to the religious lifestyle of the applicant, and which are really none of the panel’s business.39 W. Frankel, ‘Dissent is not Heresy’, Manna, No. 16 (Summer 1987), 6. On the establishment of the panel see generally G. Alderman, ‘Jews and Sunday Trading: The Use and Abuse of Delegated Legislation’, Public Administration, vol. 60 (1952), 99-104. 39 I deal with the experience of the panel in my article ‘Jews and Sunday Trading in Britain: The Private Control of Public Legislation’, Jewish Law Annual, viii (1990), 221-37. 37 38

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

23

As one applicant put it to me, the interview was “a somewhat humiliating experience” in which she was asked “a lot of personal questions”; “they hold the upper hand [she added] and I was made very aware of this.” Indeed, at a plenary session of the Board on 20 February 1983 I myself heard a panel member allege that applicants were being subjected to an “inquisition.” There is, astonishingly, no right of appeal against the panel’s decision: the eminent solicitors, barristers and Queen’s Counsel who were members of the Law, Parliamentary & General Purposes Committee of the Board of Deputies when the panel was inaugurated, seem not to have thought about building in a right of appeal; and the eminent Queen’s Counsel, solicitors and barristers who have been members of that Committee since 1979, though they have certainly discussed this question, do not seem especially agitated by it. Another example is provided by the Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim. Now here is a body not only established by Parliament, but in respect of which Parliament has laid down some procedural rules.40 It is also a body composed entirely of senior rabbis, well versed (one would have thought) in the requirements of fairness and impartiality, and whose secretary was, from 1948 to 1984, the Clerk to the Ecclesiastical Court of the Chief Rabbi. Yet in July 1987 the High Court, in an application for judicial review, found that the Commission had denied natural justice to a shochet whose application it had dealt with the previous January. This gentleman had been given (in the words of Mr Justice Kennedy) “no good reason” for the Commission’s decision in his case, which was quashed.41 I recall that there was a great deal of private criticism of the shochet’s decision to seek legal aid and to go to the secular courts. But what else was he to do? He most certainly could not have gone to the Chief Rabbi’s Ecclesiastical Court, because the Chief Rabbi and his colleagues who constitute that Court are also members of the Rabbinical Commission. He might, it is true, have asked the Rabbinical Commission to agree to Slaughterhouses Act 1974: Schedule I. R. v. Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim, Ex Parte Reverend Laurence Cohen, Judgment, p.!5.

40 41

24

Controversy and Crisis

submit his case to a special ad hoc ecclesiastical court; but by whom would the costs of establishing such a tribunal have been borne? Jews—but especially orthodox Jews who dare to challenge the established Anglo-Jewish authorities by appealing to secular courts and tribunals have habitually to run the gauntlet of communal disapprobation and censure. Consider, for example, the plight of the strictly orthodox rabbi whose daughter was refused admission to a strictly orthodox voluntary-aided primary school in north-west London on the grounds that there was no room for her, and who in the summer of 1988 decided to take advantage of the appeal mechanism provided by law in such cases. When this development came to the attention of the Principal of the school, also an orthodox rabbi, the Principal wrote (27 October 1988) to the parent complaining about “the choice of nochrim [that is, ‘heathens’] to decide an issue.” “Is it not shameful [the Principal asked] that you follow such a course of action?” I ask some different questions: is it not shameful that the parent had been waiting four years for the governors to activate the appeal procedure’? Is it not true that justice delayed is justice denied? Was not that parent entirely within his rights in causing that outrageous delay to be brought to the attention of the Department of Education & Science (DES)? And is it not doubly shameful that the governors of a Jewish school should accept taxpayers’ money but flout the concomitant obligations incurred thereby? I should add, incidentally, that the appeal tribunal was, after the intervention of the DES, convened and that the appeal was upheld: the girl was enrolled in the school. It is cases such as this which throw into sharp relief the practical application of the rabbinical maxims that one Jew should not bear a tale about another to the secular authorities, and that a Jew should not bring a fellow Jew before the secular courts without the permission of a Jewish ecclesiastical court.42 We should note that these maxims are not always adhered to by the Anglo-Jewish authorities themselves. I have in my own archives a copy of a letter sent by the Office of the Chief These maxims are set out in the Shulchan Aruch [Code of Jewish Law], Choshen Mishpat, chapters 388 & 26. 42

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

25

Rabbi to North Bedfordshire Borough Council on 24 November 1986, alleging that two named Jewish slaughtermen were working without the appropriate licences from the Rabbinical Commission: a classic instance of tale-bearing. In any case, the rabbinical maxims to which I refer do, in my judgment, presuppose that the Jewish authorities will be able and willing to deal expeditiously and competently with matters brought to their attention. My experience is that in the United Kingdom, alas, no such assumption can be made. Some three years ago, in my capacity as a member of the Board of Deputies, I brought to the attention of the Law, Parliamentary & General Purposes Committee well-founded allegations that some Jewish voluntary-aided schools were charging fees, contrary to the provisions of the 1944 Education Act. I received from the Board’s Executive Director the reply that “after consideration, it was agreed that it is unnecessary for the Board to take any action in this matter.”43 But if this takes your breath away—as it did mine—let me recall also that I read with utter astonishment a letter written on 6 February 1986 by Rabbi B. Berkovits (formerly of the University of Buckingham), the then Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of the Chief Rabbi, to a plaintiff, warning that, if a case were pursued before that Court, witnesses “might be compelled to give evidence against you which would not be to your credit.” This risk— that hostile evidence might be given—is run by every plaintiff who seeks redress at the Royal Courts of Justice, but I cannot imagine an official of’ those Courts writing to a plaintiff in such terms. It is no concern of a court officer to give gratuitous advice of this sort, which must surely undermine confidence in the impartiality of the process of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In January 1988 the Jewish Chronicle published an article by me in which I drew attention to some of the shortcomings of the various judicial and quasi-judicial processes operated by and within AngloJewry.44 The final paragraph ran as follows:

43 44

D. Massel to G. Alderman, 6 Feb. 1986. G. Alderman, ‘Why an Ombudsman would not work,’ JC, 22 Jan. 1988, 25.

26

Controversy and Crisis

Jews living in this country expect that standards of procedure within the community will be broadly comparable to those in society at large. If we ensure that this is so, many of the problems that lead to the public washing of our dirty linen will disappear. At the very next meeting of the Board of Deputies (21 February) the article was attacked by one of the leading elder statesmen of the Board, Mr F.M. Landau, a barrister, a former Chairman of the Law, Parliamentary & General Purposes Committee (1973-79), and an Elder of the United Synagogue. That the article was attacked I do not complain about. But in relation to its final paragraph, which I have just quoted, Mr Landau asserted that “if a non—Jew had written this, he would rightly have been described as an anti-Semite.”45 Now, even if a non-Jew had made such a statement, nobody with an ounce of integrity and common sense could possibly have regarded such a person, on such a basis, as anti-Semitic. Is Anglo-Jewry above criticism? Is it above criticism even from within its own ranks? Some years ago I played a very prominent part in a tragic—and also wholly avoidable—dispute involving a lecturer dismissed from his post at Jews’ College London. The case became the subject of international media attention. An anonymous writer in the Manchester-based Jewish Gazette protested that he or she was “not too interested in the rights and wrongs of the argument ... What does concern me is that yet again we, as a community, are washing our dirty linen in public.”46 Mark these words carefully. The writer was “not too interested” in the justice of the case, but was becoming terribly agitated over the damage it was allegedly inflicting upon the communal image. In Anglo-Jewry, the preservation of the image has, I am afraid, become in many quarters more important than the state of the reality. Those who draw attention to this reality can expect only brickbats for their pains. Minutes of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 21 Feb. 1988, 6; 1 am grateful to Mr Landau for having provided me with a copy of the full text of his speech. 46 Jewish Gazette, 29 March 1985. 45

Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

27

I fear that a spirit of intolerance has engulfed Anglo-Jewry. I believe that I have experienced it at first hand in meetings of communal bodies, and that I saw it go about its work with particular vigour at a meeting of the Board of Deputies on 17 January 1988 when the Chairman of the Board’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs. June Jacobs (for whom and for whose views I hold absolutely no brief), was subject to abuse and vilification merely because, in a private capacity, she had (in relation to the situation in Israel) exercised outside the confines of the community her undoubted right to freedom of expression.47 In the Spring of 1989 1 was accorded the privilege of having an article, previously accepted for publication in a Jewish communal magazine, suppressed at pageproof stage on the grounds of its alleged sensitivity.48 At about the same time the Jewish Historical Society of’ England complained about the title and subject-matter of a paper I had agreed to give (and which I will give, G-d willing, next summer) on the career of the late Councillor M.H. Davis, a politician, communal leader and crook of some note, who died in March 1985.49 I remember thinking then how fortunate I was to he able to look to my university environment for protection in my own work, and for the freedom which it affords me to research and write without restraint. I can only express the hope that as a Professor of this University and at this College I shall prove myself worthy, in however small a measure, of the immeasurable benefits which this Title bestows.

This episode is described in S. Brook, The Club (London, 1989), 365-6. See Appendix. 49 ‘M.H. Davis: The rise and fall of a communal upstart,’ delivered at the Society on 21 June 1990. 47 48

28

Controversy and Crisis

APPENDIX

ALBERT ROAD AN EVERYDAY STORY OF JEWISH FOLK [ NOTE: This article was offered to several Anglo-Jewish journals, all of which declined to publish it. It was accepted for publication in the spring 1989 issue of’ Hamaor [‘The Light’] the journal of the Federation of Synagogues, but was suppressed, at page-proof stage and on grounds of sensitivity, by the incoming President of the Federation, Mr Arnold Cohen, even though it had been approved, from the religious aspect. by Dayan Y.Y. Lichtenstein, the Head of the Federation’s Beth Din (Ecclesiastical Court). It is reproduced here as it would have appeared on pages 15 to 17 of that edition of Hamaor, save that I have made occasional amendments in phraseology to help nonJewish readers, and added occasional explanations in square brackets. Rabbi S.B. Lieberman commented on an earlier version of the article. I was refused interviews with Mr S. Kalms and Rabbi D J. Sacks. Sir Immanuel (now Lord) Jakobovits offered an “on the record” interview, but on conditions which I deemed it prudent not to accept. ] On Sunday 27 January 1985 a friend telephoned me to ask if I would interest myself in “a matter of importance to the Jewish world.” That evening he brought to my house a Chassid [pietistic Jew], Rabbi Simche Bunim Lieberman, whom I had never met before, but with whom I was to form an ever-deepening friendship in the coming months. From that fateful Sunday until late the following June there was not one period of twenty-four hours (not even on the Sabbath) when I was not dealing with some aspect or other of the Lieberman affair, or having to calm the fears of numerous acquaintances, or having to answer the charge that, by defending Rabbi Lieberman in the way that I chose to, I was bringing Anglo-Jewry into disrepute—the usual way, incidentally, in which the Establishment tries to character-assassinate those whose influence it cannot otherwise neutralise. I am glad that 1 became involved, primarily because (in co-operation 30

Controversy and Crisis

with others) I was able to secure a measure of justice for Rabbi Lieberman, but also because some perceptions that I had already formed about the Anglo-Jewish Establishment were confirmed at first hand, and sharpened into the bargain. Apart from Rabbi Lieberman and his wife and family I made very few friends as a result of the affair; but I certainly made a better class of enemy. Doors were opened to me which would otherwise have remained closed, and through which I shall probably never again be invited to pass. My home itself became (to coin a cliché) a Mecca, to which a variety of establishment figures repaired, to tell me, to my face, that Justice (that well-known and, I would have thought, fundamental Jewish concept) was all very well, but that the price I was asking was too high. I want to stress that we were not talking here about money; there was more than enough of that sloshing around. At one point in the affair I was contacted by a Jewish solicitor who had been instructed by an anonymous Jewish client to offer a very large sum of money to Rabbi Lieberman on condition that all legal claims, before either a secular or a religious court, were abandoned. This offer was perfectly genuine. Rabbi Lieberman—to his eternal credit—refused it. The Lieberman affair was not about money. It was about justice. And justice, as we know, must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. I often wonder whether it was, above all, our joint determination to see this through that led to the anonymous telephone calls and the abusive, unsigned letters. The Lieberman affair was, in its essentials, very simple. Jews’ College had moved into new, purpose-built premises in Albert Road, Hendon, and had acquired a new Principal, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, and a new Chairman of Council, Mr Stanley Kalms. Rabbi Lieberman had been on the staff of the College since 1971. A Talmudical scholar of international repute, he was the lecturer in Codes (the core element of the Semicha programme. leading to the award of the Rabbinical Diploma). Rabbi Lieberman was a jewel in the College’s crown, a hechsher [seal of approval], so to speak, whose mere presence was enough to attract to the College the yeshivaorientated (Gateshead types, if you like) who might otherwise have Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

31

avoided Jews’ College like the plague. He was also, it must be said, an ‘awkward customer’, as all Chassidim are, I suppose, entitled to be: a man who insisted on things being done in a particular way, and whose principles (we should remember that he had survived seven concentration camps) were beyond compromise. Jonathan Sacks and Simche Lieberman did not see eye to eye. “Tensions,” according to Sir Immanuel (now Lord) Jakobovits, became “unbearable.” Now I want to stress that I am not exonerating Rabbi Lieberman in this regard. We all know that it takes two to make a quarrel. If Jews’ College did indeed have grave cause for complaint against Rabbi Lieberman, the way forward (the way any sell-respecting university institution would have dealt with the matter) would have been by way of formal disciplinary inquiry, reporting through the Academic Board to the College Council, which alone (Bye-Law XXVII of the Jews’ College Constitution) has the power to dismiss a member of the teaching staff. Such an elementary step, giving Rabbi Lieberman the right to defend himself, was naturally not taken. On 2 November 1984 the Jewish Chronicle published a review by Rabbi Sacks of Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs’ book A Tree of Life. The review was badly received. Rabbi Lieberman tells me that he had warned Jonathan Sacks against writing it. Later that month Simche Lieberman wrote a two-page memorandum, in Hebrew, severely criticising the review; it was an erudite, closely reasoned analysis, a devastating attack from one of the Gedolai Torah [‘Great Ones of the Torah] of our age, a rebuke from a teacher to his former pupil. It was not published, nor even circulated, but merely shown to friends and colleagues. This critique appears to have brought matters to a head. But in order—apparently—not to have the real grounds for dismissal brought into the public domain, the Honorary Officers of the College took the fateful decision to dismiss Rabbi Lieberman on the grounds of redundancy. He was sent a cheque for £4,072-68p, representing his statutory redundancy entitlement. As a matter of fact the law of redundancy requires prior consultation with affected persons; there had been none in this case, so that even this stratagem had been bungled. In 32

Controversy and Crisis

the world of high-street chains I daresay redundancy is commonplace. “There’s a lot of it about if you read the papers” was what Mr Kalms told the Jewish Chronicle (1 February 1985). Later there was an even clumsier attempt to settle out of court. On Sunday 24 February I met Mr Kalms at his Stanmore home, and the following Thursday there was a further meeting between the two sides at the Highfields Gardens residence of Rabbi Chenoch Ehrentreu, the senior Dayan [judge] of the Ecclesiastical Court of the United Synagogue. Totally inadequate ‘ex gratia’ payments were offered (totally inadequate because they barely amounted to the equivalent of two years’ salary, whereas Rabbi Lieberman had nine years to go to retirement). Though we all shook hands at the end of the meeting it had not been a happy one. Voices had been raised on both sides. I had the effrontery to tell Mr Kalms that university standards would apply. Rabbi Lieberman subsequently wrote to me (5 March) that he had “felt heartbroken hearing the remarks of Mr S. Kalms stating that they can’t re-instate me as my image does not fit Jews College.” At the time I must confess that 1 had not paid much attention to this remark, which I assumed had been made in the heat of the moment. Only in the light of Mr Kalms’s crusade, launched towards the end of 1985, for what are termed ‘middle-of-the-road” orthodox rabbis, did I perceive its full significance. Although Rabbi Ehrentreu had put his house at our disposal for the meeting of 28 February, he himself had taken no part in our deliberations. This was just as well, for by then alarming intelligence had reached us from the USA and Israel concerning the part played in this affair by Sir Immanuel Jakobovits its, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations and President of Jews’ College. On 29 January Rabbi Shlomo Zilberstein, Principal of the Gerer Kolel [institute for advanced rabbinical studies] at Bnai Brak, had written to Sir Immanuel asking him to “stand and protest at this mistreatment of an outstanding man of learning.” Two days later the Rabbis of the Yeshivath Chidushei Harim, Tel Aviv, had written in terms a good deal blunter: “How [they asked Sir Immanuel] can those of Jews Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

33

College hope for anyone greater than him [Rabbi Lieberman] to be teaching there? ... The Torah World has received the news with pain and astonishment.” Sir Immanuel’s replies to these and other representations were breathtaking. To the Deans of the Yeshivath Chidushei Harim he wrote (25 February) that he had “acted throughout in constant consultation with Dayanim [judges] of the London Beth Din [ecclesiastical court]. To an American correspondent (Dr Tuvia Preschel of New York) he had (6 February) also mentioned consultation with Dayanim of his Beth Din and had, for good measure, berated Rabbi Lieberman for having “handed over the pursuit of his legal claims to a non-Jewish solicitor.” What of the wider rabbinical fraternity of the United Kingdom? Oh yes, they knew what was going on but (to the best of my knowledge) only three of them had the courage to publicly voice their disapproval: Rabbi M. Singer, of the Central Synagogue, Birmingham; Rabbi Dr S. Leperer of Jews’ College; and—above all—Rabbi Dr Irving Jacobs, Dean of the College, whose action in telling the press that the College Council had not sanctioned Rabbi Lieberman’s dismissal, stands out as an example of devotion to moral principle and academic integrity in a profession which (I am sorry to say) is taking on an increasingly sycophantic aspect. From the rabbinate of the United Synagogue there was—as I had been told there would be—a deafening silence. Fortunately we had friends elsewhere. The Beth Din of the Federation of Synagogues gave Rabbi Lieberman a formal Permission to register his case with the Industrial Tribunal, so as to preserve his rights in English Law. We should have liked to have brought the case itself before the Federation Beth Din, and some preliminary steps were taken in this direction. But I knew that the Anglo-Jewish Establishment would never allow such a hearing to take place, it being thought derogatory to the Chief Rabbinate of the United Hebrew Congregations to accept a summons to a rival ecclesiastical court. Two prominent lay members of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations then offered their services to establish a special Beth 34

Controversy and Crisis

Din to try the case, and I must say that these gentlemen expended a considerable amount of time—and money—in arranging for two Belgian rabbis and one from Stamford Hill to sit in London and try the matter. On 13 May I witnessed Rabbi Lieberman’s signature on the Deed of Submission (which I drafted). This special Ecclesiastical Court was due to begin its deliberations on Thursday 13 June: late the previous night we learned that the College had made an acceptable offer, which the press later reported to have been in the region of £45,000. Of course I am compressing into a few sentences a very hectic four months, and I necessarily omit much detail: the visits I received from citizens of St. John’s Wood: the mysterious “Mr Reece,” who telephoned me on the eve of the Passover festival to tell me that if I persisted with Rabbi Lieberman’s case my reputation would suffer; three long telephone conversations with Sir Immanuel (during the first of which, on 15 March, he denied that Rabbi Lieberman had been dismissed), and a visit to 85 Hamilton Terrace, Sir Immanuel’s official residence; the support I had from pupils and former pupils of Rabbi Lieberman, men of probity and honour, who gave very valuable assistance based on their own professional expertise; the long councils of war with Dr Lewis Glinert, of London University’s School of Oriental & African Studies, whose involvement in the affair predated mine, and whose moral courage deserves to be recorded; the support 1 had from university colleagues, especially in the University of London (Jews’ College is an institution having Recognised Teachers of the University, and Rabbi Lieberman’s dismissal was, therefore, brought before the University Senate); the two memorable occasions on which members of the Anglo-Jewish Establishment cursed me to my face; above all, the intervention of an admirer of Rabbi Lieberman (another former pupil), through whose good offices we were able to secure the services of a leading firm of City solicitors. In an anonymous article in the Jewish Gazette of 29 March 1985 some communal busybody declared that he or she was “not too interested in the rights and wrongs of the argument [over Rabbi Lieberman’s Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment

35

dismissal ] ... What does concern me is that yet again we, as a community, are washing our dirty linen in public.” Mark these words. The writer was “not too interested” in the justice of the case, but was getting terribly agitated over the damage it was allegedly inflicting upon the communal image. Actually, although I lay much of the blame for the affair upon Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, Mr Kalms and Rabbi Dr Sacks, I do recognise that these gentlemen were, in their turn, victims of the shabby gentility that reaches into almost every corner of AngloJewry, and which is the Anglo-Jewish Establishment’s stock-in-trade. So to all those who were prepared to sacrifice Rabbi Simche Lieberman on the altar of tribal reputation I have this message: Justice is always served in the end!

36

Controversy and Crisis

II ACADEMIC DUTY AND COMMUNAL OBLIGATION: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE WRITING OF ANGLO-JEWISH HISTORY

[Centre for Jewish Studies, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London: Occasional Paper No. 1, 1994]

I

n 1992 the world’s leading academic publishing house, Oxford University Press, published my book Modern British Jewry. The volume may be regarded in some sense as a sequel to another book, published by Oxford a half-century ago, and which may in turn be regarded as the first truly scholarly history of Anglo-Jewry. I refer, of course, to the late Dr. Cecil Roth’s History of the Jews in England, which first appeared in 1941 and which went into three editions. It is becoming fashionable now to dismiss this work. In an article which appeared in the journal Immigrants & Minorities, Professor David Katz, of Tel Aviv University, has pointed out that Roth’s writings in the field of Anglo- Jewish history were “full of mistakes, undocumented assertions, and numerous gaps.”1 So they were. It is the fate of all pioneers to have their mistakes uncovered by those who come after them, and to have their theories cast aside. But to say these things is to miss the point. Here I must make a personal confession. As I observe in my book, it was my great good fortune to have met Cecil and Irene Roth when I was a student at Oxford in the l960s, and to have enjoyed their hospitality and their friendship. For me, to sit at the feet of Cecil Roth was especially thrilling. On the occasion of my Barmitzvah, among the many presents I received was a copy of the 1949 edition of his History. My parents were not very happy with this present for it cost 15 shillings and was given to me by relatives who, my parents said, could easily have afforded a much larger sum. In fact, that book turned out to be the most valuable present I received. With all its errors of omission and commission, it taught me something about my roots as a member of Anglo-Jewry and it did so in a way which was easily comparable to that of the scholarly tomes on British history per se to which I was to be exposed as a sixth-former and undergraduate. Yes, Roth’s History was sanitized, apologetic, complacent; it stopped with Emancipation, in 1858, in part because Roth wished, for propaganda purposes, to

1 D.S. Katz, ‘The Marginalization of Early Modern Anglo-Jewish History, Immigrants & Minorities, 10 (1991), 61.

38

Controversy and Crisis

end on a note of triumph; he felt uncomfortable dealing with the era of the great immigration of Jews to Britain in the 1880s and 1890s, and with the anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain which this immigration triggered. As Professor Katz himself rightly observes, “Roth was a pioneer who worked very largely during the blackest era of Jewish history, when it seemed that the very last thing the Jews needed was avoidable criticism from within, supplying genuine arguments to even more genuine anti-Semites.”2 1941 was not a good year for the Jews. Roth, like so many other British Jews, did not know how to cope with the reality of the Holocaust. He adopted a then conventional explanation, that the sufferings of the Jews were a test. He was right to contrast these sufferings, ordered by Nazi Germany but carried out with the help of many other European nations, with the relative tranquillity of the Jews in Britain; here was a debt that had to be acknowledged and paid. Roth saw it as a solemn duty to pay it. But even in so doing, he wrought a sea-change in the researching and writing of British- Jewish history. History is the collective memory of a people and in large measure shapes their view of the present and of the future. That is why I devote some space, in my book, to the way in which Jews in Britain have approached and interpreted their past. The first history of Anglo-Jewry to be written by an Anglo-Jewish writer appeared in 1847, a slim pamphlet, published in Chambers Miscellany, the work of a woman of Marrano descent, Grace Aguilar (1816-47). “Jews,” she declared, “are still considered aliens and foreigners ... little known and less understood. Yet they are, in fact, Jews only in their religion—Englishmen in everything else.” “A Jewish murderer, adulterer, burglar, or even petty thief, she added coolly, ‘is actually unknown.” We may smile at the sweeping superficiality and patent dishonesty of such statements. There were plenty of Jewish criminals in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, and it is difficult to believe that Aguilar did not know about them. As I point out in my book, the incidence of criminality

2

Ibid.

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

39

among the Jewish poor obsessed the communal grandees at this time: the dramatic escape from police custody in 1827 of Ikey Solomons, on whom Dickens is thought by some to have modelled Fagin; the trial of Sol Litsenberg, indicted at Marlborough Street Police Court in 1830 for running a gang of 20 juvenile thieves in the vicinity of Leicester Square; the scandals which arose from cases of Jewish-run houses of easy virtue, condemned by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Hirschell in 1836. The Jewish ‘fence’, dealing in stolen property, was a feature of Petticoat Lane market throughout the mid-Victorian period, and its eradication was felt by many of the lay leaders of British Jewry (roughly two-thirds of whom lived in London) to be an essential pre-requisite of full political emancipation. Considerations of image obsessed the leadership then, just as considerations of image obsess the leadership now. Historians—indeed all those who wrote about Anglo-Jewry -were expected to play their part in maintaining the image intact. In 1993 the Jewish Historical Society celebrated its centenary. It is worth recalling that the notion of establishing a society devoted to Anglo-Jewish history was viewed with not a little misgiving, and that those who established it and who supported its establishment were at pains to justify its existence in terms of the good account it would give, to the Gentiles, of the Jewish people. In his inaugural address to the Society the distinguished journalist Lucien Wolf, its first president, went out of his way to give this assurance. Wolf wrote extensively on AngloJewish historical themes, concentrating especially upon the period of the Resettlement, and writing in the style of an earlier generation of Anglo-Jewish historians (principally Myer Davis and James Piciotto), whose work in the 1870s forms the bridge between Grace Aguilar and Lucien Wolf himself. Cecil Roth learnt his craft from Lucien Wolf, to whom he repeatedly referred, in adulatory terms, in what turned out be his last address to the Jewish Historical Society, in 1968. Cecil Roth felt the weight of this responsibility very heavily and very personally, and he was never able to escape from its impact. Nor, I think, was the Jewish Historical Society of England, to which I shall 40

Controversy and Crisis

return in due course. But Roth gave to the researching and writing of Jewish history in general, and of Anglo-Jewish history in particular, a scholastic basis which it had not had hitherto. As Professor Lloyd Gartner has observed, “Jewish history as a profession virtually did not exist during the 1920s,” when Roth made that fateful decision to turn from the history of Renaissance Italy to that of Italian Jewry and then of Anglo-Jewry.3 The researching and writing of Anglo-Jewish history had hitherto been the preserve of non- scholastic apologists like Grace Aguilar and Lady Magnus, gifted amateurs like Davis and Wolf, and ministers of religion who, as Roth himself observed, regarded Jewish history ‘almost as a branch of theology.”4 Roth, single-handedly, transformed Anglo-Jewish historiography into a scholarly activity worthy of pursuit at the highest university levels. British Jewry recognised his achievements, and marked them. The Readership in Post-Biblical Jewish Studies which he held at Oxford from 1939 to 1964 was created for him through a communal benefaction. But he had to sing—so to speak—for his supper. Approached by the then President of the Federation of Synagogues, the crook Morry Davis, to write the Federation’s jubilee history, in 1937, Roth was obliged to pen what can only be described as a pamphlet, so superficial and wanting in scholastic rigour that he was too ashamed to include it in a list of his own publications. It is, I think, quite well known that the centenary history of the Jewish Chronicle, which appeared in 1949, was written by Roth; but he would not permit his name to appear in the title-page. I should add that when I was approached by the Federation of Synagogues to write its centenary history, which appeared in 1987, and with Roth’s experience very much in mind, I insisted on the insertion into the contract of a compulsory binding arbitration clause, to be activated in case of any dispute about my typescript. I am very pleased to be able to say that the clause was never invoked. But I found its existence a great comfort, and its tight wording has been perused, L.P. Gartner, ‘Cecil Roth, Historian of Anglo-Jewry’, in D. Noy & I. Ben-Ami (eds), Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England (Jerusalem, 1971), 71. 4 Quoted in Ibid., 83. 3

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

41

enviously, by other historians who have been commissioned to write official histories of Anglo-Jewish institutions in recent years. I was a student of Cecil Roth, and I remain an admirer. But I am in no sense an imitator, less still a disciple. Disciples and imitators there certainly were. Foremost amongst these were Albert Hyamson and Vivan Lipman. Hyamson I never knew. His history of The Sephardim in England, which appeared in 1951 and which has recently been reprinted by the Spanish & Portuguese Congregation, was written very much in the Roth mould: apologetic, highly selective, uncritical. Hyamson’s history was meant to cover the two centuries 1492 to 1951; in fact precisely twenty pages, in a work of over 460, were devoted to the 20th century, and much was left unsaid into the bargain. The controversial reign of Moses Gaster as Haham—that is, supreme rabbinical authority—from 1887 to 1918—was totally unexplored; nothing was said, that is, about the man who was Theodor Herzl’s staunchest and earliest ally in Britain. Hyamson’s excuse for all these omissions – “The historian ought never to deal or attempt to deal with events of which he has a personal knowledge”- strikes me as lame indeed. But it was an excuse which Roth himself had proffered more than once to explain his own reluctance to deal with 20th century problems. The late Vivian Lipman, whose coffin Rabbi Binstock of the Golders Green United Synagogue and I carried into its last resting place at the Willesden cemetery in 1990, was a close friend and ally. Vivian was in fact a pupil of Roth, and a disciple in every sense of the word. As is well known, Vivian was a distinguished civil servant who rose to become Director of Ancient Monuments & Historic Buildings at the Department of the Environment. He was an expert on medieval Anglo-Jewry—in some respects more of an expert than his teacher. But he was also more establishment-minded than his teacher, willing to curry favour with the communal grandees even if this meant being economical with the truth. I do not think it is generally known that when the then Jewish Board of Guardians, founded in 1859, decided to commission a centenary history, Vivian was not their first choice. They 42

Controversy and Crisis

turned initially to a young Anglo-Jewish academic, an objective scholar in every sense of the word; this young man produced a chapter for the consideration of the grandees. They were horrified, for he had told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The commission was naturally taken from him and given to Vivian Lipman instead. And the work which Vivian published, in 1959, is distinguished chiefly by its meticulous attention to detail, its highly descriptive approach, and its signal failure to explore, let alone explain, the abominable treatment, by the Jewish Board of Guardians, of Jewish refugees to Britain in the 1880s and 1890s. Vivian’s last book, his History of the Jews in Britain since 1858, was published posthumously a few months after his death. The bulk of the work was devoted to the period 1858 to 1939; precisely fifteen pages are devoted to the period since the second World War. The treatment throughout is descriptive, uncritical, highly selective and outrageously partial. Let me give a few examples. When Russian persecution and economic hardship drove millions of Jews westwards in the 1880s and 1890s, the communal leadership did its best to prevent any but the most affluent of them from ever settling permanently in Britain. To this policy Vivian accorded just three inadequate sentences. In the 1930s a not entirely dissimilar policy was invoked to hinder the entry into Britain of refugees from Nazism. Vivian hinted darkly at this, but on the whole peddled the now discredited apologia of Norman Bentwich (They Found Refuge, 1956), whose defence of Otto Schiff, the man whom the Home Office trusted to select the ‘right’ type of German Jew to be permitted to enter Britain, has crumbled as archival material (of which Vivian was, I know, well aware) has become available for public inspection. Nor, except in terms of unashamed bias and lack of professionalism, is it possible to explain the complete absence, in Vivian Lipman’s book, of any allusion to the stratagems devised by the leadership of the United Synagogue in the inter-war period, to prevent Zionism becoming official United-Synagogue policy. It is, incidentally, worth remarking that the official historian of the United Synagogue, Professor Newman of the University of Leicester, was himself strangely silent on this Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

43

subject. It would be comforting to think that we have heard the last of the ‘Whig’ historians of Anglo-Jewry, whose writings have been characterised as apologetic, sanitized, triumphant, uncritical, even “cosy.”5 I fear not, for I have recently been asked to referee for a most reputable commercial publishing house a manuscript in which all these hallmarks appear in ample measure, as if the revolution of the past 30 years in Anglo-Jewish historiography had not taken place. I am proud to think that I played a part in that revolution, though I must add at once that I was not its prime mover. It cannot be without significance that the scholar who broke the mould of what had passed for AngloJewish historiography hitherto, Professor Lloyd Gartner, now of Tel Aviv University, was an American, a pupil of the great Salo Baron. Professor Gartner’s monograph The Jewish Immigrant in England first appeared in 1960. Gartner’s view of the immigrants in the period 1870 to 1914 was that, at bottom, they had much less in common with the non-Jewish manual working classes amongst whom they dwelt than with the Jewish bourgeoisie to whose status and lifestyle they aspired. It is a view that has come under serious challenge, notably from Dr. Joseph Buckman in relation to Leeds Jewry and from Professor William Fishman and Dr. David Feldman, whose use of Yiddish sources has set new standards for the study of the Anglo-Jewish proletariat. My view is that both sides of the argument are right. In the short term, the immigrants had to confront life as they found it. This meant that they had to meet and make friends with the British proletariat, of which, perforce, they became a part. But we must remember that many of the Jewish immigrants who came to this country in states of penury had, in fact, been members of a petty bourgeoisie in Russia, Poland and Romania. Their undoubted motivation for self-improvement derived in part from their ambition to recapture in Britain the status they had lost in eastern Europe. The average British trade- unionist saw his or her life as beginning and ending in a working-class milieu; this was 5

T. M. Endelman, ‘English Jewish History,’ Modern Judaism, 11 (1991), 92.

44

Controversy and Crisis

not a view or a vision shared by Anglo-Jewish trade-unionists. The major impact of the immigrants is to be found in the challenge which they mounted to the rule of the so-called Cousinhood, that small group of interrelated monied families which affected to rule Anglo-Jewry in the age of emancipation. It has become fashionable to contrast the process of emancipation in Britain with that on the European mainland, where Jewish communities often had to undergo a formal renunciation of their separate ethnic and often internally selfgoverning status; as individuals Jews were offered absolute equality before the law, that is, but only on condition that communal rights were severely delimited. On the face of it, no such demand was ever made of the Jews in Britain. In fact, I hope I have demonstrated we would be very wrong to conclude from the absence of a formal emancipation ‘contract’ that no concessions were extracted from British Jewry in return for the grant of civic rights. Emancipation, which Cecil Roth saw as the triumphant culmination of the Jewish existence in Britain, was bought at a very considerable cost, and no more so than in the religious sphere. For example, it was no coincidence that Reform Jews were to be found at the very forefront of the emancipation struggle, actually arguing, in a petition to Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, in 1845 that emancipation should be granted as a reward, so to speak, for reform of the synagogue service to make it somewhat less Jewish and more English in form. Another example is provided by the status, in English law, of a rabbinically sanctioned divorce. When the Matrimonial Causes Act was passed in 1857, it was assumed that the hitherto undisputed freedom of the Jews to dissolve marriages contracted under rabbinical auspices would continue; indeed, until 1866 the Registrar-General continued to register rabbinically sanctioned bills of divorcement. But then another argument was heard: if the Jews wanted equality before the law, so be it—in every sphere. So the supremacy of the civil divorce court over the Beth Din (the Jewish ecclesiastical court) was established. How much less intractable would have been the present difficulties over Jewish divorce had this form of ‘equality’ not been Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

45

imposed. The generation of the emancipation—those, that is, who supported emancipation and fought for it—wished for nothing better than to be accepted by the host society as Britons of the Jewish persuasion. The immigrants mounted a sustained challenge to this assimilatory view, by insisting upon the preservation of their separate ethnic identity and (worse still) by parading it for all to see. For some, this ethnic separatism took a religious form—the establishment of the Federation of Synagogues in 1887 and of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations in 1926; for others it took a political form—the formation of Jewish trade unions and of a uniquely Jewish species of socialism and Labourism; for still others it took a cultural form—the maintenance of a rich Yiddish culture, theatre and newspaper press; and for others it took a geopolitical form—the assertion of provincial autonomy and rebellion against the rule of the London grandees. All these discontents were exploited by the Zionists, who until the 1930s were really a very small band operating if not on the periphery of the Anglo- Jewish world then certainly at a remarkable distance from its centre. Our view of the Zionist dimension in Anglo-Jewish history has been transformed through the researches of Professor Stuart Cohen of Bar Ilan University and Dr. David Cesarani of the Wiener Library.6 The view of Anglo-Zionist history which held sway in the quarter-century or so after 1945 was heavily influence by that most determined enemy of historical truth: hindsight. Yes, Selig Brodetsky, the child prodigy and mathematical genius from Whitechapel, born in Russia, did become the first Zionist (and, incidentally, the first eastEuropean) President of the Board of Deputies in 1939; yes, through the stratagems of the arch-manipulator Lavy Bakstansky, the Zionists did ‘capture’ the Board four years later. But the Zionist triumph should not be backdated; it was a phenomenon of the 1930s, and of the late 1930s at that. And of course its triumph would have been unthinkable without the help of Nazism and of the Holocaust.

6

[Professor Cesarani now holds a Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London]

46

Controversy and Crisis

It is, I fear, but little understood now how very fashionable anti-Zionism was within British Jewry before 1939. The Zionist view was that the emancipation of the Jews in Europe had failed and was destined to fail because, at the end of the day, the Jews were simply not capable of assimilation within European societies. This was precisely the view of the Nazis. The established Jewish communities in Britain, obsessively anxious to maintain the image of British Jewry totally at one with its British environment, opposed both Zionism and Nazism for the same reason. So we encounter and enter upon one of the blackest phases of British-Jewish history, the reaction of British Jews to fascism at home and to Nazism abroad. As to the former, in respect of which our knowledge has been immeasurably transformed by Professor Colin Holmes, the world’s leading authority on anti-Jewish prejudice in Britain, by his pupil Dr. Tony Kushner, and by my pupil Dr Thomas Linehan, it is clear now that the community, certainly as represented by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was concerned less about protecting Jews from Gentiles than about protecting Gentiles from Jews. That is, the Board, in its communal defence policy, accepted and acted upon the view that Jews, by the behaviour, fostered and fomented anti-Semitism. It is a story, imperfectly understood hitherto, on which, in my book, I have much to say.7 As to the latter, I must pay tribute first of all to the work of Dr. Louise London, whose London University doctoral thesis I was privileged to examine, and also to the work of my own postgraduate student, Mrs. Paula Hill. I do believe that in the immediate post-war period, and aided particularly by the euphoria generated by the re-establishment of the Jewish State so soon after the catastrophe of the Holocaust, there developed within British Jewry a collective amnesia (the guilt of those who survived, perhaps) about the precise nature of its own reaction to news of the Final Solution and to the plight of its Jewish victims. All I wish to say here is that I hope I have not disappointed those many Jewish fugitives from Nazism who hoped they would find a welcome [Professor Kushner now holds a Chair at the University of Southampton; Dr Linehan is Lecturer at Brunel University, London.]

7

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

47

from their British co-religionists, whose hopes were brutally dashed, and who have been waiting for a half century and more for the truth to be told. I have stressed that the preservation of image has been the uttermost priority of the Anglo-Jewish leadership through the ages. In the final chapter of my book I attempt to show how very divided the Jewish communities of Britain have become since the disappearance of the self- discipline imposed by the Holocaust years. The last Chief Rabbi who could truly claim to speak as the religious head of the Jews in Britain was Dr. Hertz, who held the office from 1913 to 1946. Hertz had problems coping with the left, so to speak, the Reform and Liberal movements, and from the right, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations and the Gateshead community. But in the shadow of the Nazi menace the various factions tacitly agreed to sink their differences in an outward show of unity. Under his successor, Sir Israel Brodie, the fabric of religious unity so carefully constructed by the Adlers, father and son, during the 19th century began to fall apart, and during the tenure of office of his successor, Lord Jakobovits, the fabric was rent asunder. As I say on p.352 of my book, Jakobovits has bequeathed to Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks “an office less recognised throughout Jewish Britain than at any time since the Emancipation.” Even before Dr. Sacks’ election, the suzerainty of his office had been publicly repudiated by the Federation of Synagogues, the Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues and the Assembly of Conservative Synagogues; subsequently it was repudiated also by the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain; it had never been recognised by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations or by the Spanish & Portuguese Jews. My friend Professor Barry Kosmin, now Director of the North American Jewish Data Bank but then Director of the Research Unit of the Board of Deputies, calculated that in 1982 the communities and congregations which acknowledged the authority of Jakobovits amounted to only 62% of synagogue members in the UK as a whole, and to only 53% in London; the proportions over whom Dr. Sacks can claim authority are certainly smaller, and 48

Controversy and Crisis

will diminish still further as we reach the end of the millennium.8 In my book I try to explain how and why this has happened, but I also emphasise that it is a development parallel to and not unconnected with a similar loss of prestige, status and, ultimately, authority, suffered by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. In times gone by, the wealthy within British Jewry played their part and took their place in the circles of the Board of Deputies. That past is dead. There is now a more or less wholesale divorce between those who claim to speak as the representatives of British Jewry and those who control its purse strings. In addition, the Board is a victim of the religious polarisation of Anglo-Jewry: it cannot claim to speak on behalf of the secular Jews, nor on behalf of the Sectarian orthodox, represented by and through the Union, which walked out of the Board in 1971 and which has shown no sign of wanting to return. The Board has tried to paper over these fissures, but in so doing has been driven to ever more desperate remedies. The truth was—and is—bound to get out in the end. During the very bitter controversy between the Board and the Chief Rabbinate on the one hand, and a loose alliance of orthodox synagogal groupings, led by the Spanish & Portuguese Jews, the Union and the Federation on the other, over the protection of shechita (the Jewish humane method of slaughter of food animals) in the late 1980s, the claim of the Board to ‘represent’ British Jewry was effectively quashed. It is now nothing more than a gigantic bluff. In writing Modern British Jewry I have built on foundations dug by others, but the building is mine, and I am responsible for its faults and imperfections. With whatever shortcomings its detractors may find fault, it is my child, and I shall extend to it the full measure of my protection. Some of you may wonder why I speak in these terms. I choose my words carefully and I voice them with good reason. Any professional historian working in the field of British-Jewish history knows that he or she walks in a minefield, and that the assertion of too independent a judgment can bring down communal wrath in full [Dr Kosmin is now Research Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA]

8

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

49

measure. I do not think that the pressures we face are well understood even by our co-religionists, let alone by the world outside. I well recall how in the spring of 1989 my satisfaction in accepting an invitation from the Jewish Historical Society of England to deliver a paper to it was rudely interrupted when the then Programme Committee of the Society expressed its displeasure on learning that I proposed to talk on the career of Morry Davis, the aforementioned crook, one of the most important figures in Labour politics and political corruption in Stepney between the two World Wars. Their objection appears to have been not that I would say things about Davis that were untrue, or could not be supported by the evidence, but that what I would say would be only too true. I stood my ground, the Programme Committee backed off, and the paper was delivered—and printed—to almost everybody’s satisfaction. In the Inaugural Lecture which I was privileged to give following my elevation to a Personal Chair at Royal Holloway College in 1989 I drew attention to this incident, but omitted to cite another, far graver, which had occurred but a few months previously. I had wished, for some considerable period, to examine a particular archive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Because of its anti-Semitic nature I well understood the sensitivity of the Board on this matter, which I had raised, as a Deputy, on the floor of the Board. When, therefore, in October 1986, the then President of the Board, Dr. Lionel Kopelowitz, wrote offering me access to this archive, on conditions which included an undertaking that I would not divulge anything from this archive without the prior permission of the President, I readily assented to consult the archive on these terms. This agreement, as come to in October 1986, was never carried out. A series of bureaucratic and other obstacles was placed in the way of its implementation until, in May 1988, it was made clear to me by Dr. Kopelowitz that access to the archive would depend not merely upon my adhering to conditions to which I had already agreed, but also upon my agreeing to other, new conditions which had nothing remotely to do with the archive itself, but which pertained to my role and profile 50

Controversy and Crisis

in a quite different communal matter. In other words, my access to the archive was now dependent upon my keeping my mouth shut on a current matter then of great communal interest and importance. Was there ever, I wonder, such pressure put upon a professional historian working in the field of Anglo-Jewish history as was put upon me at that time? And could there, I wonder, be a more perfect example of the contempt in which British Jews—at least as represented by the Board—holds those who seek the truth of its history? Throughout all these—and other—trials and tribulations I was constantly assailed by members of Anglo-Jewry. I was told to be careful what I wrote and how I wrote it. I was enjoined to present Anglo-Jewry in a favourable light. I was told not to say anything that might be used as ammunition by anti-Semites. I replied, and I reply, as follows. If, as I sit in front of my word-processor, my constant intent is not to write anything that may be used by the detractors of the Jewish people, then the detractors have already, thereby, won a victory. That is not a victory I propose or have ever proposed to give them. I recall, and commend, some words penned by the greatest novelist and poet to write in the English language, Thomas Hardy. In the ‘Explanatory Note’ to the first edition of his great novel Tess of the D ‘Urbervilles, written in November 1891, Hardy felt it prudent to remind his audience of some words of St. Jerome. I repeat them now, and I have no qualms about doing so since I follow the maxim of the late Chief Rabbi Hertz, who enjoined his fellow Jews to accept the truth from whatever source it comes.9 The words of St. Jerome quoted by Hardy run thus: “If an offence come out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than that the truth be concealed.”10

J.H. Hertz (ed), The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (2nd edn, London, 1969), vii: from the preface to the first edn, 1936: “Accept the true [sic] from whatever source it come,’ is sound Rabbinic doctrine—even if it be from the pages of a devout Christian expositor or of an iconoclastic Bible scholar, Jewish or non-Jewish.” 10 T. Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Penguin edn, London, 1985), 35. 9

Academic Duty and Communal Obligation: Some Thoughts on the Writing of Anglo-Jewish History

51

III The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales before 1914

1

[Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxvi (1974-78), 62-70; read before the Society 12 January 1977]

I should like to express my appreciation of the advice given to rise by Dr Kenneth Morgan, Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford, in the preparation of this paper (presented to the Jewish Historical Society of England on 12 January 1977, and a short version of which was presented to the July1975 conference of the Society on ‘Provincial Jewry in Victorian Britain’), for the contents of which 1 alone am responsible.

1

W

riting the history of the recent past is always a dangerous exercise. Writing the history of the recent Jewish past can also be a depressing one. And no Jewish historian, attempting to trace any facet of recent Jewish history, can, I believe, do so merely on account of the past’s intrinsic value. We Jews live with our past; we cannot escape from it. We ought not to ignore its lessons, for we are burdened with its consequences. And those of us whose interests lie in the field of Anglo -Jewish history clearly have a special duty to write and explain that history, ‘warts and all.’ Too much of what, until fairly recently, had been written about the history of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom was family history, to the exclusion of communal developments. Too much communal history has been concerned with growth and achievement, not enough with difficulties and shortcomings. Too much has been concerned with London, to the exclusion of provincial Jewry. Too much has, paradoxically, been concerned narrowly with Jews, not enough with the gentiles among whom we find ourselves. The story which I shall endeavour to tell is offered as a small contribution towards remedying these imbalances. The Jewish communities which developed in South Wales in the second half of the nineteenth century based themselves upon the growth of the coal, iron, and tinplate industries of that region. They were as much products of industrial South Wales as the mining and metallurgical industries, and the difficulties which confronted them ought to be seen, in part at least, as a by—product of problems attendant upon rapid industrialisation. The history of these communities down to the First World War does, in fact, provide a graphic illustration of the role which Jewish communities traditionally play as scapegoats for economic ills and industrial unrest. Historically, the earliest Jewish community to develop in South Wales after the Readmission was that of Swansea; according to the Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, German Jews settled in Swansea in the 1730s, though there is evidence that they were Lithuanian Jews intending

54

Controversy and Crisis

to go to America.2 In 1740 David Michael, a founder member of the community, built a wooden synagogue behind his house in Wind Street, near the docks; it could hold about forty people. This structure served until 1789, when a new building, also of wood, was erected on The Strand nearby. This was replaced in 1818 by a larger structure, with a capacity of sixty to seventy, in Waterloo Street, and this in turn gave way, in 1859, to the Goat Street Synagogue, the one which German bombs destroyed in 1940.3 When the Goat Street Synagogue was opened, Swansea Jewry could not have numbered more than about fifty souls.4 Within the next 40 years, the size of the community increased sixfold.5 By far the greater part of this increase derived from immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe. And just as, in London, the immigrants shunned the cold formalism of the cathedral—like synagogues already established there, so in Swansea they founded their own Beth Hamedrash, in Prince of Wales Road, in 1906. Indeed, until the end of the Second World War, Swansea Jewry was divided into two religious groupings. And though, as the years wore on, the difference became more apparent than real, in the beginning it had a definite meaning. Goat Street was the spiritual home of the Jewish ‘establishment’; Prince of Wales Road was the abode of the immigrants, Yiddish-speaking, poor (at least to begin with), but probably more Orthodox. The established Jews, though without doubt the descendants of pedlars, were themselves by now shopkeepers and tradesmen; the newcomers tramped the valleys of west Glamorgan, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, learning the language of the native Welsh, doing business with the rapidly developing mining communities, and very occasionally (as at Ammanford) deciding to live among them. Often they did not establish separate synagogues but met for prayer in a C. Roth, ed., The Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (London, 1959), 1884; S. Wilson, “The Romantic Story of LIanelly’s Jews’. Llanelly Star, 16 October 1965, 4. 3 Rosalie C. Lewis, ‘Swansea Jewish Community: A Study in Growth and Development’ (unpublished thesis, 1967, in the possession of thee Swansea Hebrew Congregation). 4 C. Roth, The Rise of Provincial Jewry (London, 1950, .1l0-111. 5 Jewish Year Book, 1896, 89. 2

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

55

room provided by one of their number. The Port Talbot community was organised at the turn of the century by Raphael Levi, a Lithuanian immigrant, at Aberavon, but a synagogue was not erected till after the First World War.6 At Ammanford a synagogue was never built. Of these very small communities in south-central and south-west Wales, to which Swansea ranked as a large Jewish centre, almost no trace (except descendants) now survives. The one exception is Llanelli. There is no record of Jews in Llanelli before the 1880s. The nucleus of the community was provided by Isaac Benjamin Jeffreys, who arrived in 1887, and his two brothers, Lewis and Morris; they were all glaziers. Later arrivals were credit drapers and pawnbrokers; the first pawnbroker’s shop in Llanelli was opened by a Jew in 1897. Religious services were held in the house of Harris Rubinstein, for the synagogue in Queen Victoria Road was not opened until 1909.7 By any standards the community was minute: 70 Jews, according to the Jewish Year Book of 1914, in a gentile population of over 25,000. Jews were attracted to Swansea, Llanelli, and Ammanford because the growth of the mining and metal industries in the second half of the nineteenth century had created new entrepreneurial opportunities in a rapidly expanding population. The same is true of west Monmouth and east Glamorgan. Jewish pedlars and tradesmen were naturally attracted to the Welsh mining centres. The Merthyr Tydfil community was founded in 1848; the Aberdare community dates from at least the 1860s, and that at Pontypridd can be traced back to 1867.8 The developing industrial areas situated in the Western Valleys of Monmouthshire formed a particular area of Jewish settlement. A synagogue was not

I. Factor. ‘The Jewish Communities of South Wales: Port Talbot’, Cajex (Magazine of the Cardiff Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women), xi (December 1961), 65. 7 Wilson, loc. Cit; H. M. Jaffa, ‘The Jewish Communities of South Wales: Llanelly,’ Cajex, ix (December 1959),71. 8 Roth. Rise of Provincial Jewry, .24-25, 104; Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, 1884; H. E. Samuel, ‘A Short History of the Aberdare Jewish Community,’ Cajex, ix (June 1959), 88. 6

56

Controversy and Crisis

opened at Newport till 1869, but the community there was then already ten years old.9 Similarly, the synagogue at Tredegar was founded in 1870 to serve a community which had been established several years before.10 Russian refugees who went to South Wales at first attached themselves to these already-established communities, but soon spread outwards to Abertillery, Bargoed, Ebbw Vale, Rhymney. and the surrounding localities as far north as Brynmawr in Breconshire. For these Jews of Monmouthshire and east Glamorgan, Cardiff fulfilled a role similar to that of Swansea in relation to their coreligionists in the west. Although there are instances of Jews having lived in Cardiff in the eighteenth century, a community was not established there until the 1840s: the land for the Jewish cemetery in Cardiff was presented by the Marquis of Bute in 1841. A permanent synagogue was soon established in a room in Trinity Street, near the market; then it was moved to larger premises in Bute Street. In 1858 a synagogue was opened in East Terrace to serve a community then numbering perhaps 150 persons. At the same time the community acquired its first Minister, Nathan Jacobs. The Cardiff Jewish community, as it developed during the Victorian period, was a business one par excellence: watchmakers, jewellers, slopsellers, tailors, pawnbrokers, and general dealers.11 It was prosperous, tightly knit, and exclusive. Discipline of members, as revealed in the congregation minute books, was rigorous. In August 1880 it was decided that a policeman should he present at East Terrace during the forthcoming High Holydays “to prevent non-subscribers entering the Synagogue.”12 Discontent with the high-handed, overbearing attitude of the anglicised communal leaders eventually led to open revolt. One source of trouble was arrears of payments of subscriptions and seatrentals; another was criticism of the spiritual leadership. In 1878 the Ibid., .26 -27. Jewish Year Book, 1910, 212; H. H. Roskin, ‘The Tredegar Community’, Cajex, viii (June 1955), 65. 11 M. Dennis, ‘The History of the Cardiff Jewish Community’, Cajex, I (April 1951), 28-30; (July 1951), 26-30. 12 Ibid., xv (March 1965), 40. 9

10

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

57

Minister, the Rev. I. Lewis, had been given six months’ notice to quit “unless he conducts the service with more devotion”; in 1883 Mr. M. Lewis was appointed shochet and mohel at £70 per annum, and two years later the Rev. J. J. Landau was appointed Minister and teacher at £l00 per annum.13 These appointments did not, however, meet with universal approval. A group of ‘seceders’ had established their own chevra in Edward Place some time between 1889 and 1890, and had enticed to their side a shochet, the Rev. J. B. Rittenberg. The Delegate Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hermann Adler, was prevailed upon to withdraw his endorsement of Rittenberg’s shechita and to tell the seceders that animals slaughtered by him were trefa. But, reinforced by the adherence of recently arrived immigrants, the seceders were not to be put off so lightly. Ins March 1889 they made a formal approach to Adler to appoint for them a chazan and shochet. The Delegate Chief Rabbi interviewed representatives from both sides, but was unwilling to press the seceders to withdraw. “Your decision,” Mr. I. Samuel, of East Terrace, wrote to him, “can have but this effect, that instead of Cardiff having as now one good Congregation with an English minister and teacher, a school open and free to all poor children, it must revert to its former state of affairs, when a foreign Schochet will be the Jewish representative and the rising generation will be deprived of Jewish education.”14 But Adler would not apply further pressure. The Edward Place synagogue came into being, and in 1897 acquired its own marriage secretary.15 Although the breach between the two Cardiff communities was now complete, the East Terrace synagogue remained the more prestigious of the two; it was the synagogue of Cardiff’s Jewish establishment. When Colonel A. E. W. Goldsmid came to Cardiff in 1894 as Colonel-inCommand, 41st Regimental District, he naturally joined East Terrace.

Ibid., xvi (September 1966), 16-17. Ibid., xix (September 1969), 14,16; the reference to the education of the children is a little obscure, but may reflect the fact that the seceders intended to instruct through the medium of Yiddish. 15 Ibid., xx (December 1970). 27. 13 14

58

Controversy and Crisis

and was the prime mover in the project to build a new synagogue its Cathedral Road, opened by F. W. Mocatta and consecrated by the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hermann Adler, on 11 May 1897.16 Goldsmid’s presence in the Welsh capital gave Cardiff Jewry some national prominence. The founder of the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, he had become a devoted Zionist, was a founder of the English Zionist Federation, and took part in the El Arish expedition of 1903. When Herzl visited Cardiff, it was primarily to interview Colonel Goldsmid. He died, like Herzl, in 1904.17 By the turn of the century, Cardiff was the undisputed capital of South Wales Jewry. It had a Jewish population of around 1,500, two synagogues (and for a time, between 1901 and 1904, an immigrantinspired Beth Hamedrash as well), a Board of Shechita, and, in 1905, a Jewish Naturalisation and Political Association. It also boasted a Board of Guardians, founded in 1900, which in that year alone relieved 230 cases, one-third of whom were alleged to be “professional beggars.” The Board soon ran into financial difficulties and by 1904 had been wound up.18 At the other end of the social scale, well-to-do Cardiff Jews were making the familiar moves west and east to newer residential areas, to Grangetown, Riverside. City Road, and Newport Road. Louis Samuel, who died in 1906, provided the city with its first Jewish JP., and Lionel Fine, born in Rhymney in 1865, was appointed a JP. in 1904. The community, at least as far as its leadership was concerned, appears to have been as integrated as any section of Anglo-Jewry at that time. Around Cardiff, meanwhile, to the north and west, a dozen or more Jewish communities had established themselves. Foremost among these were Merthyr, with a Literary and Social Society, a Naturalisation Society, and a branch of the Chovevei Zion. and Newport, which had

Ibid., ii (March l952), 27. C. Bermant, Troubled Eden (London, 1969), 65; W. Laqueur, A History of Zionism (London, l972), 157. 18 Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Parliamentary Papers, 1903, ix (Cd. 1742), 596; M. Dennis, loc. Cit., ii (July 1952), 66. 16 17

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

59

its own Board of Guardians.19 At the turn of the century the Rev. Mr. Michaelson, Minister at Newport, was paying weekly visits to Tredegar and Brynmawr.20 But each of these latter communities had its own shochet, who presumably officiated at services in the synagogues which each possessed.21 Other Jewish centres in east Glamorgan and west Monmouth did not (with the exception of Aberdare) possess an exclusive shochet, but all had synagogues (usually converted houses or rooms) with a cheder attached. Fed by periodic influxes of refugees from Eastern Europe (who were invariably more observant22), South Wales Jewry spread itself into every major town and many minor villages and hamlets. Yomim Noraim services were held at Barry Dock for the first time in l904.23 The synagogue at Ebbw Vale was not formally opened till 1911, when its congregation numbered about eighty persons. In numerical terms all these communities were minute. In 1914 the 135 Jews of Brynmawr represented 2.6% of the town’s population. Tredegar Jewry, 160-strong, amounted to approximately three- quarters of one per cent of Tredegar’s inhabitants; at Abertillery there were 100 Jews, less than half of one per cent of the population, with Merthyr’s 300 Jews representing roughly the same proportion; while at Newport there were 250 Jews, just over a third of one per cent of the inhabitants. Swansea’s 1,100 Jews amounted to just over one per cent of Swansea’s population. Even the largest number of Jews in South Wales, the

Jewish Year Book; I. D. Jacobs, ‘Merthyr Tydfil Synagogues’, Cajex, xix (December 1969), 70. 20 Ibid., ix (June 1959), 27. 21 H. H. Roskin, ‘The Jewish Communities of South Wales. I. The Tredegar Community,’ ibid., viii (June 1958), 65—6; II. ‘The Brynmawr Community,’ ibid. (September 1958), 61-63. 22 In April 1976 Mr. Fred Hopkins, born in Tredegar in 1906 and a miner for 50 years, was kind enough to record for me, on cassette, his reminiscences of Tredegar Jewry; he recalled that those Jews who had been born in Britain “were not particularly liked by those who had been born outside of Britain, as the British-born Jews were not considered to be devout enough in the Jewish faith ... It was, so I am informed, not unusual for one section so be ignored [by] or to ignore the other when they met in the street.” 23 Dennis, loc. cit., ii (July 1952), 65. 19

60

Controversy and Crisis

2,000-strong Cardiff community, composed only slightly more than one per cent of Cardiff’s total population. The Jewish populations of the newer areas of settlement in Glamorgan and Monmouth were too small even for the Jewish Year Book to bother to mention separately. It is very doubtful whether, on the eve of the First World War, South Wales Jewry amounted to 5,000 souls; the total may well have been nearer 4,500. That such small, well-ordered communities could have become the objects of anti-Semitic outbursts which, if they were not as longlasting as chose suffered by London Jewry at the time, were certainly more violent seems at first glance difficult to believe, Yet between the ‘Jew Bill’ riots of 1753 and the fascist-inspired outbreaks of the 1930s, the attacks upon South Wales Jewry in 1911 stand out as the only example of organised mass anti-Semitic violence in Great Britain since the Readmission. I have examined in detail elsewhere these antiJewish riots, which took place in August 1911 in the Western Valleys of Monmouth.24 Here, at the risk of repeating some of my findings, I wish to place these riots in a somewhat broader context. Victorian Jewry in South Wales was a mercantile community which established itself and grew as a result of the expansion of trade and industry there. But this industrial revolution, which seemed to offer so many opportunities for Jewish trading talents, contained within itself the seeds of subsequent misfortune. The explosive growth of the coalfields in industrial South Wales in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had attracted to Glamorgan and Monmouthshire thousands of migrants, at first from neighbouring Welsh counties, but later from South-West England and from even further afield.25 Of the total population enumerated in Glamorgan and Monmouthshire in the census of 1911, 35% and 37% respectively were returned as having been born outside the county in which they resided: over 20% in both counties had been born outside Wales. At first the native Welsh were

G. Alderman. ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales,’ Welsh History Review, vi (1972), 190- 200.

24

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

61

able to absorb the newcomers. But the process of assimilation was unable to keep pact with the continuing influx of migrants.26 There was a ‘head-on collision’ between different cultural identities.27 When this confrontation was reinforced by strong ethnic and/or religious differences, open conflict was difficult to avoid. In the case of the Jews, moreover, the process of assimilation was retarded by the continual flow of Yiddish-speaking foreign-born Jews, commercially ambitious but essentially inward-looking. To the native Welsh the Jews, however few in number, however well established, however fluent in the Welsh language (as many of them were), remained foreigners and interlopers, “a small and separate class, convenient for attack.”28 The Jews in South Wales, unlike the Irish, did not work longer hours, take lower wages, or accept inferior living standards, to the detriment of Welsh miners and factory workers. Although Cecil Roth argued that the riots of 1911 were directed against “Polish Jewish miners,” I have been unable to find a single instance of a “Polish Jewish” miner in my examination of this episode.29 Indeed, in every instance I have come across of Jews working in the coalmines in South Wales before the Great War, the facts, on investigation, reveal that the Jews concerned were merely taking on unskilled duties, such as looking after pit ponies or working as night-shift labourers, in order to earn enough money to set themselves up in business or help survive a period of financial

B. Thomas. ‘The Migration of Labour into the Glamorganshire Coalfield (1861 -1911),’ Economica, x (1930), 275—294. 26 Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest. Parliamentary Papers, 1917-1918, xv (Cd. 8668), 15. 27 P. N. Jones, ‘Some Aspects of Immigration into the Glamorgan Coalfield between 1881 and 1911,’ Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 1969 (part I), 92-93; B. D. Lewis. The Rhondda Valleys (London, 1959). 236-237. 28 Jewish Chronicle, 8 Sept. 1911, 12, quoting .Westminster Gazette. The London Committee (Board) of Deputies of British Jews, in its Report for 1911,52, stated its opinion that “the attack was premeditated, and that the Jews were chosen as the victims … with the idea that, as many of them were foreigners, . they would he an easy prey and would not find many sympathisers.” 29 C. Roth, ‘The Anglo-Jewish Community in the context of World Jewry’, in J.Gould and S. Esh, eds, Jewish Life in Modern Britain (London, 1964), 99. 25

62

Controversy and Crisis

stringency. They were not colliers—hewers of coal.30 So it was with other industrial occupations. On 31 August and 1 and 2 September 1903 there was an attack on what the Jewish Year Book for 1903 (p. 427) described as Jewish miners at Dowlais, a couple of miles from Merthyr. A large number of these unfortunates decided in consequence to migrate to Canada. But the attack (perpetrated by the Irish) was not against Jewish ‘miners’, but against Jewish labourers, of whom there were about 200, working in the ironworks of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds Ltd. Reading between the lines of the warning issued by the Rev. Mr. Raffalovich, the minister at Merthyr, it is clear that the Dowlais Jews did not regard themselves as members of the working classes; they had merely been prepared to undertake any sort of work to make ends meet until something more congenial came their way.31 Indeed, though it is impossible to say for certain that, before 1914, no Jew in South Wales was a coalminer, or a blastfurnaceman, or a tinplate-worker, it is equally impossible to deny that very few Jews living there in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods belonged to the classic Marxist proletariat. They were poor, often very poor, but poverty alone was not sufficient to bind them to the working-class populations in whose midst they lived. And when, in the summer of 1911, the eleven-month- old Cambrian Combine strike collapsed, to be followed by the first-ever national railway strike, with its own consequent effect upon the collieries and blastfurnaces, the mining communities of the Western Valleys erupted into an orgy of violence in which the Jews were the prime and generally the sole targets. There has been a tendency among some writers to minimise the extent Mr. Hopkins (see note 22 above) informs me that during his career he knew of no instance of a Jew working as a collier, and only two instances of Jewish colliery workers: both were night-shift labourers; one had apparently ‘married out’, the other took to colliery work to earn money to pay a fine. 31 Jewish Chronicle, 4 Sept. 1903, 25; 11 Sept., 15; 18 Sept., 26; South Wales Daily News, 3 Sept, 6; 4 Sept., 5. The motive for the attack is obscure. The Welsh newspaper stressed that the Jews earned the same rate of pay as other workmen, about 2s. 8d. per day. As well as Russian Jews there were also Russian Catholics employed as the works, but the Irish do not appear to have discriminated between the two groups. Perhaps, therefore, this is case of pure xenophobia. 30

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

63

of these disorders. Michael Wallach asserts that “the anti-Jewish element was marginal, an optional extra,” and that “in any case, the riot did not spread to neighbouring Jewish communities.”32 The late Abraham Weiner stated that “the series of riots was not due to any real deep-seated or widespread anti-Semitism ... there had never been any trouble in this region before.”33 In fact, the anti-Jewish element was central to the riots; anti-Semitism in South Wales was widespread and had a long history; and the area of rioting was extensive, beginning in Tredegar but spreading to Ebbw Vale and Rhymney, and then down the valleys to Cwm, Waunllwyd, Abertyswyg, and to Brynmawr, Bargoed, Gilfach, and Senghenydd.. The disturbances left behind a trail of destruction and disruption the financial cost alone of which was estimated at over £16,000.34 The initial reaction of prominent members of Anglo-Jewry, and the Jewish press, was to stress that the riots, far from being anti-Semitic, were the product of spontaneous outbursts by hooligans in search of plunder.35 As the Liberal Daily News reported one unidentified Jewish Liberal M.P. as saying: It is not a religious movement . . . We do not associate this outbreak with any hostile spirit against Jews as Jews.36 Stuart Samuel, Liberal M.P. for Whitechapel, concluded that his coreligionists in Monmouthshire had become “the outlet of the lust of criminals and the vulgar.” The Jewish Liberal Unionist MP Sir Edward Sassoon explained the disturbances as “only transient manifestations of sordid motives,” while Alfred de Rothschild thought “that the whole object of the affair was thieving and robbery.”37 Jewish spokesmen, in

M. Wallach, ‘How ‘greeners’ came to the Valley,’ Jewish Chronicle Colour Magazine, 28 Nov. 1975, 29. 33 A. M. Weiner, ‘Tredegar Riots,’ Cajex, xxvi (April 1976), 22. 34 The Tines, 31 Aug. 1911, 6; 12 Oct., 12. £l6, 000 is equivalent to about £192,000 in present-day (1976) values. 35 Standard, 24 Aug. l91l, 7. 36 Daily News, 28 Aug. 191l, 2. 37 Jewish Chronicle, 1 Sept. 1911, 10-11 32

64

Controversy and Crisis

fact, though expressing natural indignation at what had taken place, and organising relief for the victims, were quick to play down the ‘Jewish’ aspect of the affair, and to assert “that the newspapers ... had exaggerated the significance of the attacks.”38 The Jewish World instructed its readers thus: Rioting and looting would have taken place, Jews or no Jews. There happened to be unoffending Jews as well as unscrupulous hooligans, and the fact that Jews have been the victims must not ... lead us into the error of unduly magnifying the Jewish aspect of what has occurred.39 This view of events was holstered by early attempts to identify the rioters. Such descriptions as “young hooligans,” “gangs of hooligans,” and “roughs” were used by Welsh newspapers and picked up nationally.40 The London dailies enlarged on this theme, and quite correctly pointed out that non-Jewish property had not entirely escaped the attentions of the ‘mob’ either.41 At the same time explanations of the riots in terms of the national railway strike were quickly discounted.42 Nor, it was said, was the affair connected with the Cambrian Combine strike; the trouble, The Times declared, was “superficial rather than malignant.”43 Yet the coincidence of the riots with the railway strike, which itself came just as the Cambrian dispute was reaching its climax, is too great to be dismissed so lightly. For although the Western Valleys were not immediately implicated in this affair, no pit in South Wales remained unaffected by the Cambrian strike and the arrival of the military. For some months the blastfurnaces at Ebbw Vale were closed Daily Chronicle, 28 Aug. 1911. 3: interview with “a leading orthodox Jew” in London; Jewish Chronicle, 3 Nov., 17. 39. Jewish World, 1 Sept. 1911, p.7. 39 Jewish World, 1 Sept. 1911, 7. 40 New Tredegar, Bargoed and Caerphilly Journal, 24 Aug. 1911, 1; South Wales Argus, 21 Aug., 4; Jewish World, 25 Aug., 5. 41 Daily Chronicle, 23 Aug. 1911, 1; Standard, 23 Aug.. 7; Monmouth Guardian, 25 Aug., 1. 42 South Wales Argus, 22 Aug. 1911. 2; Daily Chronicle, 24 Aug., 1 43 The Times, 24 Aug. 1911, 4. 38

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

65

down, throwing thousands of ironworkers out of employment. A direct result of the railway strike was that coal wagons became difficult to obtain; in consequence work was stopped at some Monmouthshire collieries, while at others miners were put on short time.44 Tension built up in these areas throughout the summer. In June 1911 the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain withdrew its financial support of the Cambrian strikers, who were forced to return to work in August on terms they could have agreed to months before. The bitterness of the miners was deep. Although the Executive of the South Wales Miners’ Federation decided to end the dispute on 14 August, some pits remained on strike throughout the autumn.45 The national railway strike began on 17 August; it was settled in London on Saturday 19 August, but not before two men had been shot dead by soldiers during fierce rioting at Llanelli that afternoon. The week-long attacks on the Jews of the Western Valleys began the same evening.46 The material effects of these events on the mining communities of the Western Valleys are difficult to assess. The Daily News, in trying to explain the anti- Jewish riots, spoke of “men in hastily developed colliery districts [living] . . . under such unrelieved conditions of bestial housing, heavy toil, and sordid social life as prevail in the mining valleys of South Wales.”47 Certainly there was a widespread feeling of economic insecurity in the Monmouthshire mining towns, a feeling heightened. in Tredegar at least, by a serious housing shortage. At Ebbw Vale rents which had not formerly been objected to were suddenly felt to be oppressive.48 It seems certain, moreover, that on the eve of the riots the suspicion grew that local shopkeepers would take or had already taken advantage of the railway strike to raise food

D. Evans, Labour Strife in the South Wales Coalfield 1910-1911 (Cardiff, 1911) 25; South Wales Argus, 21 Aug. 1911, 6; Brecon County Times, 1 Sept., 7 45 Evans, op. cit., 190, 242-3; Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes (London, 1920), 144-5; R. P. Arnot, South Wales Miners: A History of the South Wales Miners’ Federation 1898-1914 (London, 1967), 232-268. 46 Alderman, loc. cit., 192. 47 Daily News, 24 Aug. 1911, .4 48 Jewish Chronicle, 8 Sept. 1911. 12, quoting the views of “a local labour leader.” 44

66

Controversy and Crisis

prices. Since some Jews in the affected areas owned houses, and since many more were tradesmen, the majority of whom, like their nonJewish counterparts, gave credit, an economic explanation for the riots was quickly suggested.49 There is certainly some evidence to support such an economic interpretation. When the riots began at Tredegar “frequent and angry references could be overheard in the crowd respecting the alleged rent-grabbing propensities of a certain Jew, and it was alleged that this was the main point which incited the mob.”50 Soon allegations of rack-renting were made against all Jews who owned property in the riot areas.51 These charges were taken seriously by the Jewish authorities and newspapers. But investigators who were sent to identify the miscreants found the allegations to be generally baseless.52 It is possible that at Tredegar one Jew was charging an exorbitant rent for an insanitary property; curiously, however, he suffered nothing in the riots.53 Similarly, statements that Jewish shopkeepers had been unnecessarily harsh in dealing with debtors proved, on exanimation, to boil down to a few instances “far out-numbered by those of nominal Christians indulging in like conduct.”54 Nor did allegations that Jewish shopkeepers had engaged in profiteering turn out to be any more substantial.55 Yet, though they lacked real substance, stories of financial skulduggery on the part of Jews were widely believed in the riot areas. It is in this sense that the riots can be explained to some extent along economic lines. As has so often happened, the Jews became scapegoats for economic distress. A correspondent of the London Evening News accused “the inhabitants of Tredegar—l mean the classes who ought to have known better—of a lack of tolerance, of fostering a spirit of Ibid,25 Aug. 1911, 5 South Wales Argus, 21 Aug, 1911, 6. 51 The Times, 23 Aug. 1911,.6; Daily News. 25 August,.5; Jewish World, 25 Aug., 5. 52 Daily Chronicle. 25 Aug. 1911. 1 53 Jewish World, 25 Aug. 1911, 5; Jewish Chronicle, 8 Sept,.12, quoting the views of the Westminster Gazette’s special correspondent. 54 South Wales Argus, 25 Aug. 1911, 2. 55 Manchester Guardian, 24 Aug. 1911, 12; Jewish Chronicle, 8 Sept.. 12. 49 50

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

67

envy, which is really the germ that produces the scandal.”56 The riots were, in fact, attended with a fair amount of ‘rich-Jew anti-Semitism’ such as had for some years been preached by some British Socialists.57 And there is evidence that local Independent Labour Party agitators in Tredegar had been at work on the day the riots began.58 But since poor Jews suffered alongside well-to-do Jews it is clear that an economic interpretation in partial only. Jews at all levels of prosperity fled from the riot areas in substantial numbers to Aberdare, Merthyr, Newport, and Cardiff.59 They were, or at least felt themselves to be, under general attack. Had this attack been the work only of hooligans, the arrival of the military and the efforts of the local police might have been expected to dispel at once any temporary feelings of unease. But did not happen. In the first place, the rioters were not hooligans. Secondly. the riots had not been as spontaneous as they appeared to be to outside observers. There is very little evidence about the identity of individual rioters. But the reports of court proceedings suggest that they were largely composed of men and women from the ‘respectable’ working classes. Addressing the Tredegar magistrates on 5 September 1911, the prosecuting solicitor observed: The people charged [46 in all] were not hooligans. They were people who were generally considered respectable, the majority being colliers in regular employment and the wives of colliers.60 Quoted in Jewish Chronicle, I Sept. 1911, 10. J. A. Garrard, The English and Immigration 1880-1910 (London 1971), pp.189196; Jewish Chronicle, 15 Sept. 1911, 14; Jewish World, 25 August, 12, quoting South Wales Daily News. See also the letter from Keir Hardie to Rabbi Berendt Salomon, of Manchester, printed in the Manchester Guardian, 28 Aug., 5. 58 Mr. Hopkins (see above, note 22) recalls that a workmate, a member of the I.L.P., told him that the ILP in Tredegar intended to hold a meeting on 19 August 1911 to protest against the (possibly illegal) action of a Jewish landlord in converting houses into two flats each, and thus obtaining double rent for the same property, a practice which had caused much local resentment. The police refused to allow the meeting to be held, and this caused further bitterness. 59 South Wales Argus, 23 Aug. 1911, 3; Daily Telegraph, 24 Aug., 7; 26 Aug., 9. 60 The Times, 6 Sept. 1911, 8. 56 57

68

Controversy and Crisis

Rioters prosecuted at other centres were also described as colliers.61 This evidence is confirmed by the report of the general manager of thee Tredegar Iron & Coal Company to the Liberal MP Sir Arthur Markham, a director of the company, in which the culprits were described as “respectable people to all appearances” and “respectable working men.”62 Some further indication of the social status of those found guilty may also be gained from the fact that their conviction was followed by local protests which, it is reasonable to assume, would not have been made had those sentenced been mere hooligans, for whom there were certainly no apologists.63 Local feeling against Jews continued to run high, so much so that the Executive of the Tredegar Hebrew Congregation felt it prudent to curtail the Rosh Hashonah services which took place at the synagogue there on 23 and 24 September.64 At the same time Christian ministers determined to hold “humiliation services” to press home to their own congregations the gravity of the situation.65 Evidence that the riots were premeditated did not come to light until newspaper correspondents began probing the background to the disorders. A Times correspondent at Tredegar reported on 22 August that “open threats have been made for the past month or more against the Jews.”66 Some Welsh newspapers spoke of the attacks as “apparently organised,” and it was this feature especially which led to comparisons with pogroms in Russia.67 The Jewish minister at Cardiff, the Rev. Harris Jerevitch, went further, and declared: There is no doubt that the attacks were planned. Some of the Jewish inhabitants were informed a day or two Jewish World, 8 Sept. 1911, .9 (Hengoed Police Court); The Times, 19 Oct., 10 (Glamorgan Quarter Sessions). 62 Commons Debates, 5th series, xxix, 2364: speech by Markham. 22 Aug. 1911 63 Jewish Chronicle, 15 Sept. 1911. 14; The Times, 13 Sept.. p.6; 16 Oct., 4. 64 Jewish World, 22 Sept. 1911, l3; 6 Oct., 20. 65 Jewish Chronicle, 29 Sept. 1911, 21. 66 The Times, 23 Aug. 1911, 6. See also Daily Telegraph, 24 Aug., 7; Daily Chronicle, 24 Aug., 1.; Standard, 23 Aug., 7. 67 South Wales Argus, 21 Aug. 1911, 6; 22 Aug. 2 Brecon County Times, 25 Aug., 3; The Times, 5 Sept., 8. 61

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

69

before the outrages that people intended to wreck and loot their shops.68 It is indeed difficult to avoid the conclusion that, though relations between the leaders of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the Western Valleys were at all times cordial, among the general population Jews were regarded with animosity. Though some nonJewish property had been damaged in the riots, there was really no disguising the fact that Jews were the prime target of the attacks. At Tredegar only Jewish shops were attacked.69 At Ebbw Vale “the cry of the mob was . . . one long denunciation of Jews.”70 In view of this evidence, pointing to hostility to Jews as Jews, as a distinct group apart from the general population, it seems better to view the unrest caused by the industrial troubles in South Wales in August 1911 as merely the trigger which unleashed a strong antipathy to the Jewish communities in certain areas there. Likewise, the instances of richJew anti-Semitism were a symptom of the antipathy, not a cause of it. And it is clear that “the general feeling of contempt for things alien, especially the Jewish alien” was a root cause of tile troubles.71 This contempt for things alien was part of the price paid for the growth of industrial South Wales. Yet if it was the misfortune of the Jews to have come into South Wales at a time of social upheaval. and to have received its backlash, they were still more unfortunate to have entered a land seething with religious bigotry. Here the Welsh Baptists were well to the fore. The abduction and conversion of Esther Lyons, in 1868, which created such a storm of indignation in Jewish circles, and which was compared with the Daily Telegraph, 26 Aug. 1911, 9. A victim of the Tredegar riots confirmed this to a Daily Telegraph reporter: ibid., , 29Aug., 11. 69 The Jewish Chronicle’s “Special Commissioner” in Tredegar came across one bootshop displaying notices offering £50 reward if it could be proved that the shop was owned by Jews; the manager “disclaimed anti-Jewish feeling, but said that the notice was a precautionary measure.” “I’ve got to protect my property” he said shrewdly”: Jewish Chronicle 1 Sept. 1911, 9. 70 Daily News, 21 Aug. 1911, 1. There were threats that the synagogue at Ebbw Vale, not yet formally opened, would be burnt: South Wales Argus, 23 Aug., 3. 71 Jewish Chronicle, 1 Sept. 1911, 10, quoting the London Evening News. 68

70

Controversy and Crisis

Mortara ease, was carried out by a Cardiff Baptist minister, Nathaniel Thomas, and his wife; the subsequent legal proceedings revealed that Esther Lyons had not been their first Jewish victim.72 There is no evidence to suggest that the Welsh Revival of 1904 was itself philo- or anti-Semitic; but it is known that some converted Jews were brought to Llanelli to preach as part of the revivalist effort there,73 and it may not have been pure coincidence that attempts were being made at Llanelli at about she same time to ban shechita without prior stunning.74 A year before, at Pontypridd, the Jewish community had been the victim of a particularly ugly disturbance involving the notorious blood libel, spread, curiously, at Rosh Hashonah rather than Pesach .75 In 1904 Pontypridd was the scene of an “incident” involving Jewish voters, and the Cardiff community took the precaution of forming a Jewish Vigilance Society.76 When the riots of 1911 broke out at Tredegar, they began with a mob of 200 attacking Jewish shops anti singing “several favourite Welsh hymn tunes.”77And when the Monmouthshire Welsh Baptist Association, meeting at Blackwood, near Bargoed, on 6 September 1911, was asked to pass a resolution expressing sympathy with the Jews, several ministers and others took exception to the motion; one delegate argued that “Resolutions did more harm than good. and they encouraged the Jews. There were about 100 Jews at Tredegar now, and if they had many more resolutions they would have 500 there.”78 The resolution was not passed. R. Woolfe, ‘The abduction of Esther Lyons,’ Cajex, ii (July 1952), 14-23. The abduction wok place in March 1868. when Esther Lyons was 18. Nathaniel Thomas and his wife were put on trial in Cardiff in July 1869, and found guilty of enticement. Barnett Lyons, Lather’s father, was awarded £50 damages, but his daughter was never returned to him, being instead spirited away to a Christian institution in Germany. 73 South Wales Daily News, 24 Nov. 1904, 6. 74 Ibid., 23 Sept. 1904. 4; shechita was a subject of national debate and that time, following the Liverpool shechita case (February 1904) and the hostile report produced by an Admiralty committee five months later: see B. Homa, A Fortress in AngloJewry (London, 1953), .61-64. 75 Jewish Chronicle, 25 Sept. 1903. 28; 2 Oct.. 15, 17 76 Dennis, Cajex, ii (July 1952), 66, 77 Jewish World, 25 Aug. 1911,.9; Jewish Chronicle, 25 Aug,.8. 78 Ibid., 8 Sept. 1911, 11; the meeting was briefly reported in the London Times, 7 Sept., 6. 72

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

71

It would be interesting to know what picture of the Jews was being painted by Baptist ministers in South Wales in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; at all events, is cannot have been a uniformly favourable one. The Revival, certainly, turned many Welshmen’s minds towards social problems. In this respect it had a long-term effect which can he seen at work during the Cambrian stoppage of 1910-1911 and which may well have contributed towards the concern with bad housing which was a marked feature of the 1911 riots. That the Jews of the Western Valleys were the victims of religiously inspired as well as economically motivated mobs is beyond doubt. They returned to the Valleys in due course, but the memories of 1911 sank deep, and at the end of the Great War many of them, prompted no doubt by the contraction of the pawnbroking business, moved permanently to Cardiff, where, incidentally, they appear to have had a noteworthy revivifying effect upon Orthodox religious observance there.79 I am painfully aware that the picture I have painted of South Wales Jewry in the Victorian and Edwardian periods is a sombre one. It is in the nature of Jewish history that its darker periods are more faithfully arid more fully recorded than its happier moments. In the context of Anglo-Jewry as a whole, the Jewish communities of South Wales were too small at that time to have made a marked impact or to have created a decisive image. In the context of South Wales the newspapers of the period mentioned them only when their sufferings merited columnspace; Tredegar was more newsworthy than Kishinev. Were it not for the events of 1911, the history of Jews in South Wales before 1914 would be dominated by Cardiff, as that of Anglo-Jewry as a whole is dominated by London. As it is, the records tell us precious little about the daily lives of these Jewish people, their hopes and fears, their family circumstances, their economic and social status. It is easier to ask these questions than to answer them. Why, for instance, were the western communities—in Llanelli, Swansea and its environs—apparently unaffected in 1911? Why were Cardiff and 79

Dennis, Cajex, ii (October 1952). 42

72

Controversy and Crisis

Newport untouched? Had relations with the gentile communities in these areas been of a different, more amicable order, or did antiSemitic rabble-rousers find it easier to do their work in small, isolated towns and villages than in the larger urban centres? And what was it about life in South Wales which managed to sustain communities which must have been among the most Orthodox of the Victorian era, and which have produced a half-dozen or more rabbis and ministers of religion? Was it simply that the Jews who settled in South Wales were staunchly Orthodox anyway? Or was it also, as I suspect, that the normal pressures of social and religious conformity in a small community were, in this case, reinforced by unspoken fears? Although Swansea, Cardiff, arid Newport Jewry were well established before the 1880s, the Jewish communities of South Wales owed their growth and development largely to immigrants arriving in the last two decades of Victoria’s reign. It seems likely that these people saw in the religious fanaticism of some Welsh nonconformists echoes of Russian Christianity at its worst. Theodor Herzl wrote in 1895: I believe that I understand Anti-Semitism, which is really a highly complex movement ... I believe that I can see what elements there are in it of vulgar sport, of common trade jealousy, of inherited prejudice, of religious intolerance, and also of pretended selfdefence.80 The history of the settlement and reception of Jews in South Wales before 1914 is indeed another instance of the truth of this verdict.

80

T. Herzl, The Jewish State (5th edn., trans. S. D’Avigdor, London, 1967), 15.

The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales Before 1914

73

IV THE ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS OF AUGUST 1911 IN SOUTH WALES: A RESPONSE

[Welsh History Review, vol. 20 (2001), 565-71]

I

n the Welsh History Review of December 1997, Professor W. D. Rubinstein re-examined the historiography of the anti-Jewish riots which broke out in the western valleys of Monmouthshire in August 1911.1 Many of his remarks addressed and sought to refute findings and conclusions presented by myself, initially in the Welsh History Review of 1972 and later in a paper read to the Jewish Historical Society of England.2 Professor Rubinstein’s avowed purpose was to question a number of assumptions which, according to him, have permeated not only my writings on this subject, but also the writings of a number of other scholars, some of whom have followed (if they have not always agreed completely with) what I have written. His arguments may be summarized thus:3 • Philo-Semitism was “virtually ubiquitous in Edwardian Wales”; • The 1911 riots were neither planned in advance nor premeditated; newspaper claims of premeditation are “palpably false”; • “The anti-Jewish component of these riots has been consistently exaggerated”; • “The great majority of Welsh people demonstrably reacted to these riots with horror”; • Far from it being the case that the leaders of Anglo-Jewry in London “and their periodicals” were anxious to minimize “the extent or nature of anti-Semitism in these riots”, the anti-Semitic element “was exaggerated by both the leaders of Anglo-Jewry in London and by the general press, in part to create a press sensation.” I wish, briefly, to address these arguments, using historical evidence W. D. Rubinstein, ‘The Anti Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales: A Re- examination’, Welsh History Review, vol.18 (1997), 667—99. 2 G. Alderman, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol.6 (1972), 190—200; ‘The Jew as Scapegoat? The Settlement and Reception of Jews in South Wales before 1914’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxvi (1974—8), 62—70. 3 Rubinstein, loc.cit. 1

76

Controversy and Crisis

which is already in the public domain and which will be very familiar to students of the period and of these events. Professor Rubinstein seeks, in part, to bolster his argument concerning the strength of philo-Semitism in Edwardian Wales by referring to the reverence accorded “the Old Testament Hebrews” in Welsh culture. This is certainly not an argument I would wish to deny, or have ever denied. But he needs to take care in his selection of evidence. David Lloyd George was philo-Semitic only when it suited him. Some twenty months before the riots, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George had publicly criticized Lord Rothschild (a leader of the Tory opposition in the House of Lords to the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’) by likening him to Pharaoh, who had oppressed Jews by forcing them to make bricks without straw.4 This remark, quite uncalled for, was all the more deeply offensive to Jews as it followed an equally disgraceful insult hurled at Rothschild—the acknowledged lay leader of AngloJewry -the previous day, when Lloyd George had referred to opponents of his budget as “those Philistines, who are not all uncircumcised.”5 I have never denied the reality of Welsh condemnations of the pogroms against, and persecutions of, Jews in Russia, Nazi Germany and elsewhere. However, I really am at a loss to determine the relevance of these condemnations to what happened in the western valleys in 1911. Professor Rubinstein refers to the undoubted anti-Semitism of Saunders Lewis and “early” Plaid Cymru. I could just as easily draw attention to a statement made by the then president of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans, in 1976, referring to the alleged absence of support from Welsh Jews for “the national aspirations of the Welsh people.”6 This statement, in which Gwynfor Evans seemed to imply that Welsh Jews were not quite “Welsh people,” might well be construed as antiJewish in tone if not in content. Professor Rubinstein sees the riots of 1911 in purely socio-economic terms, and denies that they had any non-economic or religious origins. The Times, 18 December 1909, 8. Ibid.., 17 December 1909, 6. 6 Jewish Chronicle, 27 August 1976, 6. 4 5

The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales: A Response

77

I cite reports by two Jewish newspapers to the effect that when the riots began, at Tredegar, the rioters were singing several Welsh hymn tunes. Because no other newspaper mentioned hymn-singing, Professor Rubinstein concludes that the newspaper reports to which I referred were “almost certainly false.” The logic of this reasoning entirely escapes me. He also seeks to undermine my interpretation of the significance of three earlier incidents, an alleged ‘blood libel’ at Pontypridd in 1903, an incident involving Jewish voters, also at Pontypridd in the same year, and the presence of Jewish converts to Christianity during the Welsh Revival of 1904. Professor Rubinstein is entitled to dismiss these events as of no anti-Jewish significance if that is what he wishes to do. I stand by my interpretations. I note that Professor Rubinstein does not challenge—or even mention—my reference to the attempt at Llanelli, in 1904, to prohibit shechita -the Jewish religious method of animal slaughter.7 Had this move succeeded, it would have deprived the Jewish community of Llanelli of its meat and poultry. What interpretation does Professor Rubinstein put on this stratagem, other than sheer prejudice against the Jewish religion and those who practised it? Professor Rubinstein spends a great deal of effort re-examining the 1868 case involving the abduction and conversion of a young Jewess, Esther Lyons, carried out by a Cardiff Baptist minister, Nathaniel Thomas, and his wife. We can all agree that Esther Lyons was at odds with her family. The facts were, however, that, whilst a minor, she was sheltered by the Thomases, her whereabouts were kept from her parents, she was spirited away from Cardiff, and baptized. The Thomases did indeed win their appeal against the judgement of the Cardiff Assize Court, but largely on technical grounds, and only by a majority verdict in the Queen’s Bench. What the legal proceedings revealed was that Mrs Thomas was (in the words of Professor Ursula Henriques) the leader of a “strange knot of fanatical women . . . who did

7 South Wales Daily News, 23 September 1904, 4, cited in my Transactions paper, 74.

78

Controversy and Crisis

not hesitate to employ deception for the purpose of making converts.”8 Some nonconformist newspapers took care to distance themselves from the Thomases and their activities. But the annual conference of the Welsh Baptists, in August 1868, declared the Revd Thomas to be “an exemplary Christian.”9 Professor Rubinstein refers to the “alleged fact” that a meeting of the Monmouthshire Welsh Baptist Association near Bargoed on 6 September 1911 dropped a proposed motion supporting the local Jewish population “in their distress,” following the riots the previous month. I am surprised that Professor Rubinstein does not refer to the original sources for this “alleged fact,” namely the Jewish Chronicle of 8 September 1911, at page 11, and The Times of 7 September, at page 6. But since he does not comment upon or even challenge this “alleged fact,” I assume that he accepts the truth of what actually happened. There were, to be sure, many local expressions of sympathy with the Jews, but when the Monmouthshire Welsh Baptist Association, meeting at Blackwood, near Bargoed, on 6 September, was asked to pass a resolution expressing sympathy with the Jews, several ministers of religion and others took exception to the motion; one delegate argued that “Resolutions did more harm than good, and they encouraged the Jews. There were about 100 Jews at Tredegar now, and if they had many more resolutions they would have 500 there.” The resolution was indeed allowed to drop. Professor Rubinstein also questions my view that the 1911 riots were attended with a fair amount of ‘rich Jew anti-Semitism,’ and charges that none of the evidence I produce supports my case. I beg to differ. The fact that the rioters targeted Jewish shopkeepers and landlords, rather than plutocrats of the Rothschild variety, does not mean that, so far as the rioters were concerned, the objects of their hatred were not— in their eyes -wealthy Jews. And I should add that in his examination U. R. Q. Henriques, ‘Lyons versus Thomas: The Jewish Abduction Case, 1867—8’, in U. R. Q. Henriques (ed.), The Jews of South Wales: Historical Studies (Cardiff, 1993), 143. 9 The Freeman, 28 August 1868, p. 658, quoted in Henriques, ‘Lyons versus Thomas’, 145. 8

The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales: A Response

79

of the riots, based on Home Office papers which were unavailable to me in the 1970s, Professor Colin Holmes has unearthed much contemporary data (mainly police reports) supporting my view that a key factor which triggered the riots was hatred of an admittedly small number of Jewish capitalists in south Wales.10 I turn now to Professor Rubinstein’s assertions that the 1911 riots were neither planned in advance nor premeditated, that newspaper claims of premeditation are “palpably false” and that “the anti-Jewish component of these riots has been consistently exaggerated.” There is in fact a wealth of evidence to support the view that the attacks on Jews that began at Tredegar were planned and premeditated. I presented some of this evidence in my 1972 article, and I wish only to refer here to the opinion of the Jewish minister at Cardiff, that there was “no doubt that the attacks were planned.” Some Jews were informed in advance that the attacks were to take place. A police communication to the Home Office (21 August 1911), quoted by Professor Holmes, spoke of the existence of “some pre-arranged plan,” and the view of a local Jewish capitalist, in a statement to the police also quoted by Professor Holmes, adds further substance—if any were needed—to this inescapable conclusion. Even Professor Rubinstein concurs that in the initial phase of the riots Jewish property was the exclusive or almost exclusive target of the rioters. We can all admit that, subsequently, non-Jewish property was also attacked. It is in the nature of riots that sooner or later the perpetrators and their imitators conveniently forget their original purpose, and embark on general rampage and looting. It may well be the case that, as Professor Rubinstein states, “more non-Jewish tradesmen had suffered in the latter phases of the rioting than had Jews.”11 It remains true that the riots were anti-Jewish in their origin and intention. As I C. Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911: Anti-Jewish Disturbances in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, vol. 11 (1982), 214—25. Professor Holmes quotes from a report to the Home Office by the chief constable of Monmouth (25 October 1911): “ill feeling has long existed against the Jews settled in the colliery districts in this County.” 11 Rubinstein, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales’, 688. 10

80

Controversy and Crisis

said in my 1972 article, at Tredegar only Jewish shops were attacked, while at Ebbw Vale “the cry of the mob was . . . one long denunciation of Jews.”12 The view of the presiding magistrate at Tredegar, quoted by Professor Holmes, was that “The first disturbances were no doubt antiJewish,” and the chief constable of Monmouth, in his letter to the Home Office to which I have already referred, gave it as his opinion that there was “a determination expressed by the inhabitants [of Tredegar] to get rid of them”—meaning the Jews.13 Professor Rubinstein reproduces the sombre cartoon in the Western Mail of 28 August 1911, in which ‘Dame Wales’ apologizes to a shopkeeper. Since Professor Rubinstein himself notes this shopkeeper is a recognizably Jewish shopkeeper, he might have added that in the background we can detect Jewish names on the wrecked jewellery and pawnbroking businesses. Professor Rubinstein asserts that “the riots were condemned without exception by all opinion-leaders throughout the area.”14 The proceedings of the West Monmouthshire Welsh Baptist Association contradict this statement. But I think it is worth drawing attention also (as I did in my 1972 article) to the meetings that were held to protest at the sentences handed down to the rioters, and to the probably related fact that the majority of the rioters brought before the courts were miners and their wives. Professor Holmes presents evidence, again from the Home Office files, that “men of the Breconshire special reserve army were among the rioters.”15 I cannot agree with Professor Rubinstein, therefore, that the antiSemitic element present in the riots “was exaggerated by both the leaders of Anglo-Jewry in London and by the general press, in part to create a press sensation.” On the contrary, the weight of evidence suggests that the anti-Semitic element was reported bluntly and impartially. Professor Rubinstein refers to the fact that “The 1911 rioting has been termed a “pogrom” and a “semi-pogrom” by Dr Daily News, 21 August 1911, 1. Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911’, 217, 219. 14 Rubinstein, ‘The Anti Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales’, 695; the emphasis is mine. 15 Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911’, 222. 12 13

The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales: A Response

81

Henriques, thus likening it to the murderous anti-Jewish attacks in Czarist Russia.”16 I refer simply to the fact that some contemporary commentators likened the 1911 riots to a pogrom. The reasons for this were that the riots were premeditated and—more importantly—that they were apparently organized, suppositions that are amply supported in the archival material now available to us. Professor Rubinstein suggests that comparisons with Russian pogroms made by the Jewish World arose out of its “circulation war” with its rival, the Jewish Chronicle. This is, of course, pure supposition. In fact, however, the most telling comparison with a pogrom was made, in private, by the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, in a Home Office internal minute dated 29 August 1911, in which he referred to “the ‘Pogrom’ districts,” meaning the areas of rioting in Tredegar and elsewhere. This minute was quoted in my 1972 article but is not mentioned by Professor Rubinstein. Professor Rubinstein argues that looting was reported in a number of locations “where no Jews lived.”17 His list of five such locations includes Cwm, where we know that Jewish business premises were located, and Abertysswg, where there is evidence that Jews worked as coal miners.18 Professor Rubinstein cannot argue that “no Jews lived” in the other locations. The most he can say with credibility is that there is no surviving evidence of Jews having lived there. My impression (for what it is worth) is that Jews were by 1911 spread throughout the western valleys, and lived, perforce, in a great many localities without the benefit of a Jewish communal infrastructure. In summary, Professor Rubinstein’s reappraisal seems to me to be based on a careful selection of evidence to fit a case. The full sweep of the historical records simply does not support the arguments he seeks to deploy. Rubinstein, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales’, 668. The phrase used by Professor Henriques in her 1993 article is actually “near-pogrom”: U. R. Q. Henriques, ‘The Jewish Community of Cardiff, 1813—1914’, in Henriques, The Jews of South Wales,. 40. 17 Rubinstein, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales’, 687. 18 A. Glaser and U. R. Q. Henriques, ‘The Valley Communities’, in Henriques, The Jews of South Wales, 46, 51. 16

82

Controversy and Crisis

V The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

[European Judaism, vol. 13, No. 2 (Autumn 1990), 45 – 58]

T

he election of a new Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is a rare event. There have been only five such elections this century—1 as many, or as few, that is, as there have been accessions to the throne—and only seven since that of Nathan Marcus Adler, the commencement of whose term of office, in 1845, might be said to have inaugurated the Chief Rabbinate more or less in the form in which we have grown accustomed to know it. The office is unique, of course, but more importantly, it is surrounded by a great deal of misplaced awe, mystery and reverence, both on the part of the majority of British Jews and certainly on the part of most of the non-Jews in whose midst we dwell. The office, and its status, are also the subject of a great deal of misunderstanding. The shorthand term—“Chief Rabbi”—which we all use is very often intended to convey the impression that whoever holds this office is, somehow, the ecclesiastical representative of the whole of British Jewry, a sort of Jewish equivalent of the archbishop of Canterbury. Certainly in my dealings with government departments, I have found this to be the case, and have had to spend a considerable amount of time disabusing civil servants of this view. But then I have to remind myself that non-Jewish civil servants can hardly be blamed for their misapprehension. The lay leadership of British Jewry has rarely taken the trouble to explain the true nature of the office, and has instead taken refuge in the deliberate perpetuation of a deliberate myth. Again and again I have read, even in the quality daily newspapers, that Lord Jakobovits is “Chief Rabbi of Great Britain.” 2 The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Mr Geoffrey Paul, has gone further, claiming in a private letter that Lord Jakobovits is, ‘“by statute’, the religious authority of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.”3 In an article published in The Times, Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has declared that the Chief Rabbi I include the election of Rabbi Dr Herzog (1965) who was unable to take up office owing to ill-health, as well as that of Rabbi Dr Sacks in 1990. 2 The Times, 13 Feb. 1989, 14. 3 Geoffrey Paul to Dr Edward Koenigsberger (of Bournemouth), 25 Nov. 1988: I am grateful to Dr Koenigsberger for drawing my attention to this letter. 1

84

Controversy and Crisis

is “generally recognised both outside the Jewish community, and within it, as the public religious representative of the totality of British Jewry.”4 The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is, in fact, none of these things. The origins of this peculiar office lie embedded in the history of the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, Aldgate, the oldest and largest of the Ashkenazi synagogues in the City of London. The evolutionary process by which the Rabbi of the Great Synagogue became the “Chief Rabbi” was by no means inevitable. The position of British Jewry visà-vis the state differed fundamentally from that which regulated the legal status of Jewish communities in mainland Europe. There were in eighteenth-century Britain no “Court Jews” or “Landesrabbinat”, the members of which might, under the official auspices of the government, pose as the authorised spokesmen of the community. Nor were there any yeshivot whose rabbinical heads might have emerged as natural communal leaders.5 The Spanish and Portuguese Jews had established for themselves the office of Haham—in effect a presiding communal rabbi—but his writ could hardly run beyond London since there was not, until the very end of the nineteenth century, any Sephardi community of significant size in any provincial centre. At the same time the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi communities of the provinces were in the main far too small to maintain and finance the apparatus of separate rabbinates; nor did they possess sufficient status to represent themselves, in the eyes of international Jewry, as autonomous kehillot—that is, totally self-governing congregations, as were commonplace in central and eastern Europe—even if they had wanted to. For rabbinical scholarship and leadership the provincial communities naturally looked, therefore, to the Ashkenazi synagogues in London, to which many of the wealthier members of provincial Jewry were in any case in the habit of attaching themselves, if for no other reasons The Times, 10 March 1990, 14. N. Cohen, “Non-Religious Factors in ‘The Emergence of the Chief Rabbinate,’ Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. xxi (1962-7), 304.—309.

4 5

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

85

than to secure burial and other privileges. During the eighteenth century there was no one undisputed Ashkenazi “Chief Rabbi” in London. Aaron Hart, Rabbi of the Great Synagogue 1704-56, was recognised by the Portsmouth community as the authority to whom all questions of ritual (including authorisation of marriages and licensing of shochetim) had to be submitted.6 His successor, Hart Lyon, was recognised as their spiritual leader by both the Hambro’ and the New synagogues, the two other major Ashkenazi congregations in the capital. There was a moment, towards the end of the century, when the title of “Rabbi of London and the Provinces” (by which Hart Lyon’s successor, David Tevele Schiff, styled himself) was in serious dispute. Meshullam Zalman, who was then Rabbi of the New and the Hambro’, contested it, and claimed the support of a majority of the Portsmouth community; but the challenge was never successfully pressed home, and in 1780 Zalman left London an embittered man.7 David Schiff was in practice “Chief Rabbi”, and the authority of his successor at Duke’s Place, Solomon Hirschell (Hart Lyon’s son), was never in doubt. It is true that Hirschell’s “Caution” (in effect, a herem, or ban) against the establishment and prayer-book of the West London Reform Synagogue, which was ordered to be read in all synagogues on 22 January 1842, was repudiated in Liverpool and Manchester, and by the Western Synagogue in London.8 As acts of rebellion, however, these were irritating but hardly of major significance, and they possessed no larger symbolism. Hirschell, Rabbi of the Great Synagogue from 1802 until his death in 1842, was known as “Chief Rabbi of the German and Polish Jews in England”. His authority was supported by the Hambro’ and the New, and was recognised in colonial outposts as distant as New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.9 Moreover, it received very

C. Roth. “The Portsmouth Community and its Historical Background”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society, xiii (1932-5), 169. 7 C. Roth, “The Chief Rabbinate in England”. in I. Epstein. E. Levine and C. Roth (eds), Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr J.H. Hertz (London, 1942), 374-6. 8 H. A. Simons, Forty Years a Chief Rabbi: The Life and Times of Solomon Hirschell (London, 1980), 96-8. 6

86

Controversy and Crisis

considerable if indirect (and unintended) legal force at home after the passage of the Marriage Registration Act of 1836. That measure recognised the London Committee (or Board) of Deputies of British Jews as the sole body competent to certify Jewish places of worship for the purpose of marriage registration. Under the leadership of Moses Montefiore (whose presidency, with gaps, spanned the period 1835-74), the Board did not in practice give such certification without authorisation from one of its two ecclesiastical authorities—either the Haham or the “Chief Rabbi”. This meant, in short, that Hirschell could exercise a very substantial measure of veto over the recognition (and, therefore, establishment) of all new Ashkenazi congregations in the British Empire.10 It was under the aegis of Hirschell’s successor, Nathan Marcus Adler, that the office of “Chief Rabbi” took on substance as well as form. Born in Hanover in 1803 (and therefore a subject of the Elector, who happened also to be King George III of the United Kingdom), Adler came from a distinguished rabbinical family; his father, Mordecai, has been described as “the unofficial head of the Hanoverian Jews.”11 In 1829 Nathan Marcus had been appointed Landesrabbiner of Oldenburg from which, later the same year, he accepted a call to become the first official Chief Rabbi of Hanover. His election—by an overwhelming majority—as Chief Rabbi in London came 15 years later: he held the position until his death in 1890. Nathan Adler was, in contrast to his predecessors at Duke’s Place, a rabbinical scholar of international repute, most famous for his work Netina la-Ger, a commentary on the Targum Onkelos. He came to Britain with the concept and practice of an official Chief Rabbinate very much fixed in his mind. As Chief Rabbi in Britain and the Empire he could claim an allegiance which those who had preceded him at Roth, “The Chief Rabbinate in England,” 378-9. A. Newman, “The Chief Rabbinate and the Provinces, 1840-1914”, in J. Sacks (ed), Tradition and Transition: Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovits (London, 1986), 218. 11 H. D. Schmidt, “Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler (1803-1890): Jewish Educator from Manchester”, Leo Baeck Yearbook, 7 (1962), p. 290. 9

10

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

87

the Great Synagogue could not, for his was the first election in which provincial communities (21 in all) participated as well as the major London Ashkenazi congregations.12 Shortly after his induction he initiated a survey into the state of all the congregations under his authority throughout the Empire; what was revealed was a series of Jewish communities in which observance of orthodox practice was lax, synagogue attendance poor, and educational facilities woefully deficient.13 This state of affairs seems to have reinforced Adler’s own personal inclination: that the orthodox structure in Britain was much too weak to permit the growth of self-governing communities, as existed on the continent, and that what was needed was strong centralisation of religious institutions, under his aegis.14 In 1847 Adler promulgated his Laws and Regulations for all the Synagogues in the United Kingdom. The powers to which he laid claim— to be able to superintend religious observances in the synagogues, and even to sanction the building of new synagogues and the formation of new congregations—appeared extravagant. But he was able, in very substantial measure, to enforce them through a variety of devices: his position in relation to the Board of Deputies, and the consequent recognition he was able to secure from the provincial communities, whose religious functionaries had, in practice. to be licensed by him; his custom of pastoral visitations; his ceaseless campaigning for more Jewish day- schools and for the funds with which to build them; and by dint of his own personal charisma. At bottom, Nathan Adler was “Chief Rabbi” because that was how he was treated by the non- Jewish world—by government departments, by Parliament, and by the general press.

12

For a full list of the participating communities see A. Newman. “The Chief Rabbinate”, in A. Newman (ed), Provincial Jewry in Victorian Britain (London. 1975). 13 Chief Rabbinate Archives, MS. 104: “Statistical Accounts of all the Congregations in the British Empire 5606/1845”. The replies to Dr Adler’s questionnaire have been transcribed by Rabbi Bernard Susser and are printed in A. Newman (ed), Provincial Jewry). 14 B. Williams, The Making of Manchester Jewry 1740—1875 (Manchester, 1976), 129 and 193.

88

Controversy and Crisis

Within British Jewry his authority was only seriously challenged once, by Rabbi Dr Schiller-Szinessy, an accomplished if unstable scholar from Hungary who was in 1850, with Adler’s approval, appointed rabbi at the Haliwell Street congregation in Manchester.15 Schiller-Szinessy had wider ambitions, to set himself up as an independent rabbi on the European model, but in order to do this he had to rely increasingly on the support of Reform Jews. Traditionalists among Manchester Jewry became alarmed, and their anxiety was increased when the Hungarian rabbi announced his intention, first in Manchester and then in Hull, to determine upon his own authority whether marriages might or might not be performed, without reference to the Chief Rabbi in London.16 The authorisation and recognition of marriages lies at the root of Jewish identity; a marriage that is not recognised by orthodox communities internationally can have the most severe repercussions, both for the partners involved, for their offspring, and for the congregation that permitted it to take place. Reformers were and are prepared to incur such opprobrium. Those in charge of the affairs of Manchester Jewry at this time were not. Schiller-Szinessy resigned—he was in effect sacked—and, because he had nowhere else to go, became Rabbi to the small Reform congregation established in Manchester soon afterwards. Thus, at the price of seeing this Reform community come into being, Adler successfully defended the authority of his office. He had also, incidentally, established beyond question the primacy of the Ashkenazi rabbinate over that of the Sephardim. Adler, and the Ashkenazi grandees in London, shared an even wider ambition, to have his position as the unquestioned religious head of the Jews of the British Empire recognised in statute law. To do this it was first necessary to abolish the office of Haham in the form in which it was then regarded, and such a suggestion was indeed made, in effect, in 1858, when it was proposed Williams, Manchester Jewry, pp. 186—187. See generally R. Loewe, “Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, 1820-1890”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxi (1962—7), 148—189. 16 Williams. Manchester Jewry, 241—244. 15

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

89

that one “Chief Rabbi” might be appointed to serve as spiritual leader for both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities in Britain.’ 17 The Spanish and Portuguese Jews had been without a Haham since 1828. Whether they would ever have agreed to the proposition now put to them is highly doubtful; the appointment of Benjamin Artom as Haham in 1866 put an end to such speculations. Nonetheless, the discussions that surrounded the establishment, by Act of Parliament in 1870, of the United Synagogue—the statutory merger of the Great, the Hambro’ and the New—had as one of their objectives the legislative underpinning of Adler’s authority. There is a tradition that the initiative that resulted in the formal union of the City synagogues came from Adler himself, who is said to have urged such a union during the course of a conversation with the wardens of the Great, whom he had invited to breakfast in his Succah on 24 September 1866.18 It is clear, in fact, that such an idea had been in the air for some considerable time, and had acquired greater credibility through the highly successful establishment, by the City congregations, of the Jewish Board of Guardians some seven years previously. But it is equally clear that Adler was preoccupied with the possibility of fragmentation of the London Jewry over which he claimed to exercise supreme ecclesiastical authority (as new communities established themselves beyond the City boundaries), and that his breakfast meeting imparted a sense of urgency and of mission where little had existed before. The United Synagogue scheme, as originally drafted, had spoken of “the Chief Rabbi”, under whose authority and control all religious matters were to fall. There was then in power a Liberal administration whose success at the general election of 1868 had rested in part on a heavy Nonconformist vote and which had, in 1869, disestablished the Anglican Church in Ireland. The government was certainly not minded to consent to the legislative A. Hyamson. The Sephardim of England: A History of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Community, 1492— 1951 (London. 1951), 306—307. 18 C. Roth. The Great Synagogue 1690-1940 (London, 1950),. 286. 17

90

Controversy and Crisis

underpinning of Chief Rabbi Adler’s jurisdiction in the way proposed: the clause had to be modified.19 Nathan Adler did not therefore become, by the authority of statute law, “the Chief Rabbi”, a British equivalent, so to speak, of a continental landesrabbiner. But he did become, under the scheme scheduled to the Act, “a Chief Rabbi”, and the Deed of Foundation and Trust, executed by the officers of the United Synagogue in January 1871, gave him wide powers of rabbinical authority. As far as the Ashkenazim of the British Empire were concerned, he was “the Chief Rabbi”, and the non-Jewish world treated him as such. The authority and majesty of this office, as fashioned by Nathan Marcus Adler, was developed and matured by his son, Hermann, who, having acted as “Delegate” Chief Rabbi from 1880, succeeded his father in 1891, holding the post until his own death in 1911. Though born in Hanover, Hermann felt himself to be totally English; his manners and mores, his ability to mix easily with the English aristocracy, endeared him to the Anglo-Jewish gentry. In urging his claims upon the communal conference summoned to appoint a new Chief Rabbi, Benjamin Cohen referred to him as “the head of our Church.” Adler himself referred more than once to the community over which he presided as “our communion.”20 His sermons were models of elegant Victorian prose. He adopted Anglican clerical garb (complete with gaiters) and styled himself “The Very Reverend”, the form of address used of Deans of the Church of England.21 Under Adler (Chaim Bermant writes) the United Synagogue “seemed to be the Jewish branch of the Anglican establishment.” 22 King Edward VII referred to him as “my Chief Rabbi.” Hermann was the first Chief Rabbi to intervene in matters of party politics, supporting the war which the Conservative government Public Record Office, HO 45/8418: Lionel Louis Cohen to Home Office, 22 May 1870; see also Jewish Chronicle. 15 July 1870, 5. 20 I. Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry: The Anglo- Jewish Experience (Oxford, 1986), 16. 21 He adopted this title at the suggestion of his friend the Bishop of Bath and Wells: R. P. Lehman. “Hermann Adler—a bibliography of his published works”, in D. Nov and I. Ben-Ami (eds), Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England (Jerusalem. 1975), 101. 22 C. Bermant. The Cousinhood (London, 1971), 370. 19

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

91

of the Third Marquess of Salisbury waged against the Boers in South Africa, while denouncing the activities of socialists and trade-unionists in East London.23 He was also the first Chief Rabbi to be honoured by the Crown, being appointed a Companion of the Royal Victorian Order. Though a supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine, and a subscriber to the Chovevi Zion movement in England, he was an avowed opponent of Herzlian Zionism, and indeed of the very notion that the Jews possessed or could possess a separate national identity.24 To those who had campaigned for the civil equality of the Jews in Britain in the mid- nineteenth century Chief Rabbi Dr Hermann Adler was (in short) what Emancipation had been all about. In fact, in terms of international Talmudic scholarship he was a distinct mediocrity whose prestige and authority owed everything to the office he held and nothing to his own native ability. It was precisely because his claim to be a halachic authority was so flimsily grounded in fact that he determined to erect around it fences that would be unassailable on other grounds, and this determination was made all the firmer by the many challenges to that authority that came from the Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe who flooded into Britain between 1882 and 1905. Hermann Adler was “Chief Rabbi”, but until 1899, and following his father’s ruling, he would neither grant the rabbinical diploma to any other minister of religion within Anglo-Jewry, nor allow the title of Rabbi to be used by those (like Simeon Singer and Dr Hermann Gollancz) who had gained such diplomas abroad.25 His refusal to address as Rabbi those eminent Talmudic scholars whom the refugees from Tsarist persecution brought with them was a calculated insult which was repaid in kind. By Hermann Adler’s death these refugees constituted a majority of British Jewry. They brought their orthodox G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford. 1983), 43-44, 62; P. Melnikoff, “The siege of Duke’s Place”. Jewish Chronicle, 12 March 1971, 25. 24 Alderman, Jewish Community, 91: Central Zionist Archives. Jerusalem. Archives of the Chovevi Zion Association in England: A21138: Hermann Adler to E. d’Avigdor. 12 Sept. 1891. 25 G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues 1887— 1987 (London. 1987), 10: S. Sharot, ‘Religious change in native orthodoxy in London. 1870—1914: rabbinate and clergy,’ .Jewish Journal of Sociology xv (1973), 181. 23

92

Controversy and Crisis

identity with them; they did not need Hermann Adler’s imprimatur to confer legitimacy upon it. Moreover, they found the very idea of a “Chief Rabbi” astonishing, since in Russia and Poland every community had its own rabbi, whose duty it was to supervise the various activities necessary to the community’s wellbeing, such as shechita and the authorisation of marriages and divorces. It was true that Hermann Adler worked within the framework of a Beth Din; but there was only one member of it— Dayan Ya’acov Reinowitz —in whom the immigrants had full confidence and, in any case, Adler had made it abundantly clear, in accepting the position of Chief Rabbi in his own right, that he would not feel himself bound even to consult the Beth Din, let alone to be bound by its rulings.26 Noting that the United Synagogue’s Deed of Foundation and Trust gave exclusive responsibility for its religious administration to “the Chief Rabbi”, the United Synagogue’s Executive Committee explained to the Synagogue Council that the Dayanim “are called upon to act in a consultative capacity only.”27 The period of Hermann Adler’s tenure of the office of Chief Rabbi therefore presented two contrasting themes. On the one hand, the prestige and status of the office beyond the confines of the AngloJewish community soared to unprecedented heights. On the other, the authority and legitimacy of that office within British Jewry was subject to unprecedented challenge. The kulturkampf between immigrant orthodoxy and the Judaism of Hermann Adler reached a crisis point in 1891-92. Having failed to persuade Adler to institute a much more rigorous supervision of butchers licensed by the Board of Shechita in London, members of the Machzike Hadath community established a shechita facility of their own. By himself Adler would have been powerless to put down this rebellion. His writ did not run in the East End, and the wealth and influence of the lay leadership of the United Alderman, Federation, 11; A. Newman, The United Synagogue 1870—1970 (London. 1977), 94. 27 Archives of the United Synagogue. Council Minute Book 1880-91, vol. 1, . part 2: Report of the Executive Committee, 3 Feb. 1891, as adopted by the Council, 17 Feb. 26

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

93

Synagogue would not have been of much help either. Adler was rescued by Samuel Montagu, the banker, orthodox Jew and Liberal MP for Whitechapel, who had been instrumental in persuading the immigrant chevrot to unite in a Federation of Synagogues established in 1887.28 Montagu’s orthodox sympathies were with the immigrants. But he was a strong believer also in social control; he was not a schismatic; and he was president of the Shechita Board. In February 1905 the Machzike Hadath synagogue, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, was formally admitted to the Federation as part of a package deal by which its adherents were permitted to maintain a separate shechita within the overall jurisdiction of the Board of Shechita and of Chief Rabbi Adler. and as a result of which the Synagogue obtained from Montagu and Lord Rothschild a much-needed loan of £1000.29 In his later years Hermann Adler became more belligerent in his attitude towards those “foreign” rabbis who challenged his authority, and bolder in his public denunciation of them. Disputes over shechita reached the civil courts in Liverpool in 1904, Manchester in 1907 and London in 1911; in each case what was at issue was the right of immigrant groups to establish, and have recognised as kosher, shechita arrangements not sanctioned by the Chief Rabbi. In the Liverpool and Manchester cases the authority of the Chief Rabbi was recognised by the secular courts. But in London the jury could not agree, with the result that the exclusive jurisdiction claimed by Adler was put into doubt; the London Board of Shechita refrained henceforth from referring to shechita authorised by independent rabbis as trefa.30 Certainly the authority of the state could no longer be invoked against separate shechita arrangements, but in relation to marriage authorisation circumstances presented themselves of which Adler took On this episode see L.P. Gartner. The Jewish Immigrant in England. 1870-1914 (London. 1960), 209-214. 23 G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford. 1983), 43-44, 62; P. Melnikoff, “The siege of Duke’s Place”. Jewish Chronicle, 12 March 1971, 25. 29 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 25—26. chives of the Chovevi Zion Association in England: A21138: Hermann Adler to E. d’Avigdor. 12 Sept. 1891. 30 Sharot, ‘Religious change . . . rabbinate and clergy,’ 173. 28

94

Controversy and Crisis

full and enthusiastic advantage. The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 had instituted civil divorce; henceforth a civil Divorce Court could dissolve a Jewish marriage. Nathan Marcus Adler tried unsuccessfully to have Jewish marriages exempted from such dissolution. The precise status, in English law, of a divorce authorised by a rabbi remained thereafter in some doubt. Legal opinion obtained by the Deputies argued that the autonomy of the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities was unaffected by the 1857 legislation. For a time this was also the view of the state. But in 1866 the Registrar-General announced that he would no longer register rabbinic divorces; the implication was clearly that the civil authorities had ceased to regard them as sufficient.31 Henceforth a get [instrument of Jewish divorce] could only be authorised after a civil divorce had been obtained, a state of affairs that was given judicial force in a case decided before the English courts in 1908.32 Hermann Adler could have argued for legislation to reverse this decision, and, indeed, for the restoration of the rabbinical autonomy enjoyed prior to 1866, which his father had supported. Neither he nor the President of the Board of Deputies, David Lindo Alexander, had any intention of so doing; instead they took the opportunity to denounce “foreign” rabbis before the Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes in December 1910, accusing them of encouraging religious divorces while couples remained civilly married, and of thus fostering bigamy and bastardy as defined by the law of the land.33 Only Haham Dr Moses Gaster stood out against the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies on this issue. Gaster urged that “no rabbi should be declared guilty of doing wrong when in the first place they do that which is commanded by the law of God.”34 Nathan Adler would have agreed with him: Hermann was content to apply the coup de grace to Parliamentary Papers 1912—13, xv, Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, Minutes of Evidence (Cd 6481), qq. 41,482 and 41,514. 32 G.R. Bartholomew, ‘Application of Jewish Law in England,’ University of Malaya Law Review, iii (July 1961), 104. 33 Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, Minutes of Evidence, qq. 41,362 – 41,507. 34 University College London: Gaster Papers. bound Vol. 18: Gaster to C.H.L. Emanuel (Secretary to the Board of Deputies), 17 January 1911. 31

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

95

the religious freedom his father held so dear. As I have argued elsewhere, Samuel Montagu did much to bolster Adler’s faltering authority; in donating a sum of money to enable the Federation to employ its own Minister, for example, Montagu stipulated that in religious matters the man appointed was to be “under the jurisdiction of Dr Adler”; he also made it clear that the successful applicant would not fulfil the office of Dayan — a development that would certainly have challenged Adler’s position.35 This accommodating spirit was not reciprocated. On the occasion of Hermann Adler’s formal election as Chief Rabbi the Federation had been allotted two votes, as against the United Synagogue’s 218, a circumstance that led Montagu to enter a vigorous protest.36 This under-representation was justified on the grounds that, as with the election of Nathan Marcus Adler, the number of votes allowed to each participating congregation would be proportional to the amount contributed to the Chief Rabbi’s salary. This formula suited the wealthy families that controlled the United Synagogue, but by November 1911, when arrangements for electing Adler’s successor were under discussion, and with Samuel Montagu also dead, it was no longer acceptable. The Federation argued for the allocation of delegates to be in proportion to synagogue membership. The leaders of the United Synagogue stood firm in their resolve that financial considerations alone should prevail. The Federation, which by then was the largest synagogal body in Britain, was offered 28 votes, as against the 340 or so controlled by the United Synagogue and its constituents. This offer was refused. So it was that the election of Chief Rabbi Dr J.H. Hertz (16 February 1913) took place without the participation of the Federation, which shortly afterwards declared that it would refuse any longer to contribute to the Chief Rabbi’s fund.37 I shall return later to the process by which the Federation withdrew entirely from its former recognition of the authority and jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbi. When Dr Hertz took up the office of what was Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 28. Ibid,, 29. 37 Ibid,, 45. 35 36

96

Controversy and Crisis

then still termed “Chief Rabbi of the British Empire,” the authority of that office was breathtaking in its scope and as comprehensive and as universally acknowledged as either of the Adlers could ever have wished it to be. Hertz himself added a new dimension to this authority, for he was a committed Zionist, and played a full part, more especially within the Mizrachi movement, in the realisation of Zionist aspirations, even when this threatened to bring him into dispute with the lay leadership of the United Synagogue.38 Yet it was during Hertz’s tenure of office that the suzerainty of the Chief Rabbinate came under serious and sustained attack, in the course of which the weakness of the claim of one man, and of one office, to be able to embody and represent within himself and itself all the varieties of Judaism then to be found in Britain—let alone the Empire—was fatally exposed. The attack was mounted largely from within the orthodox community; but it was sustained, in part, as a reaction to Hertz’s desire to reach an accommodation with certain non-orthodox groups, so that his recognition by these groups as the spiritual head of British Jewry might continue unimpaired. Signs of revolt had been evident during the closing months of Hermann Adler’s life. Ministerial criticism of his autocratic methods had become more outspoken. At the Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers in 1911, Rabbi Samuel Daiches of Sunderland declared that the Chief Rabbinate had “crippled the community, [and] destroyed the sense of responsibility in congregation and minister alike.”39 During the interregnum that followed Adler’s death the Jewish Review, endorsing Daiches’ critique, observed in 1912 that Anglo-Jewry had been able to function without a Chief Rabbi: “The need for a Chief Rabbi [it added] is not urgent.”40 And at the Chief Rabbinate Conference in 1912 a deputation of immigrant rabbis demanded that “The Chief

P. Goodman, Zionism in England (London, 1929), 44-45; Bermant, Cousinhood, 370—374; A. Newman, Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, C.H. (London, 1973), 10.

38

39 40

Quoted in A. Newman, “The Chief Rabbinate and the provinces,” 224. Ibid.

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

97

Rabbi should not be allowed to interfere with the provincial Rabbi in questions appertaining to Shulchan Aruch especially with regard to affairs of Shechita.”41 I have already referred to the manner in which the marriage laws, whilst not themselves referring to the office of Chief Rabbi, were nonetheless used to sustain his authority. The Machzike Hadath had been prevailed upon to recognise this authority in relation to shechita and also in matters relating to the solemnisation of marriages But a section of its adherents, who constituted the North London Beth Hamedrash, refused to be bound even by the shechita agreement of 1905. In 1909 this community acquired its first Rav, the Hungarian Rabbi Dr Victor Schonfeld, and some years later a new synagogue, the Adath Yisroel, near Highbury; such were the origins of what became the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. In 1913 the synagogue applied to the Board of Deputies for certification to enable a marriage secretary to be appointed. The application was referred to Hertz, who declined to approve it because the synagogue would not recognise his authority and, more especially, because its Rav insisted on his right to sanction divorces and arrange chalitza ceremonies without reference to any higher authority. In 1919, and under threat of legal proceedings, Hertz repented as part of an historic agreement by which the Adath agreed to provide his office with details of every marriage, divorce and chalitza authorised by it, but only after the ceremony had been conducted.42 This small but most significant restriction upon the assumed authority of the Chief Rabbi was enlarged very considerably with the passage of the Slaughter of Animals Act in 1933. By then, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations (as it was then called) had already been in existence for seven years; the Federation of Synagogues, under its controversial president Councillor M.H. Davis, was playing a leading part in communal affairs, while the former Haham, Dr Gaster, used the freedom of his retirement to interfere even more forcefully in

41 42

Ibid., 223. B. Homa. Orthodoxy in Anglo-Jewry 1880—1940 (London. 1969), 24-28.

98

Controversy and Crisis

communal affairs. In 1928 Parliament had legislated for the slaughter of animals in Scotland; the Chief Rabbi was made the sole licensing authority for shochetim in that kingdom. The Federation, the Union and the Spanish and Portuguese congregation had no interest in the Scottish situation per se, but they were extremely angered that a precedent had been set by which (in the words of Rabbi Dr V. Schonfeld) “no Rabbi in Scotland should have the right to grant Kaboloh [i.e. a religious licence] to Shochetim except through the Chief Rabbinate of the United Synagogue.”43 When Parliament turned its attention to England and Wales, a fierce campaign was launched against the extension of the Chief Rabbi’s authority.44 Rabbi Dr Gaster argued that “an audacious attempt” was being made “by taking advantage of the ignorance of Parliament of the true situation of the Jewish communities—to induce them to establish what would be tantamount [to] a Jewish state church by the sanction of a single Chief Rabbi under the authority of Parliament.”45 This fear, that a state of affairs which the United Synagogue had failed to bring about in 1870 would now indeed come to pass, was shared by many rabbis throughout the United Kingdom. On 12 January 1930 a conference of rabbis convened by the Federation and the Union declared the proposal to endow the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire with the statutory power to act as the sole licensing authority for shochetim in England and Wales to be “inimical to Judaism and contrary to Jewish law.” This resolution was supported by rabbinical leaders in every major provincial centre where Jews dwelt in large numbers, including Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sunderland, and by Rabbi Dr Herzog of Dublin.46 These protests were endorsed by eminent continental rabbis, such as Rabbi J. Fuerst of Vienna, Rabbi M. Rottenberg of Belgium, and by the Union of University College London: Gaster Papers. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations file: typescript memo, by Dr V. Schonfeld. Dec. 1929. 44 Homa, Orthodoxy, 28—29; Alderman, Federation of Synagogue, 50. 45 University College London: Gaster Papers. Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations file: typescript memo. by Gaster. undated but probably Dec. 1929. 46 Ibid. : typescript note of the resolution 43

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

99

Rabbis of Poland.47 Hertz launched a vicious counter-attack, aimed especially at “the socalled Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.”48 But his claim to be the sole licensing authority for shochetim in England and Wales was not accepted by Parliament. Under the Act of 1933 shochetim in England and Wales were (and still are) licensed by a Rabbinical Commission, of which the Chief Rabbi is the ex officio chairman, the designated rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews the ex officio deputy-chairman, and which contains also three rabbis appointed by the Beth Din of the United Synagogue, two by the Federation of Synagogues, one by the Union, and two by the President of the Board of Deputies to represent provincial communities.49 Leaving aside the Scottish anomaly, the provisions relating to the Rabbinical Commission, now incorporated within the 1974 Slaughterhouses Act, constitute the only statutory recognition of the existence— let alone of the authority— of “the Chief Rabbi.” For it has to be realised that even in relation to the certification of synagogue secretaries for marriage purposes (other than secretaries of synagogues belonging to the Reform and Liberal movements, in respect of which different rules apply50), the law is that the marriage secretaries of such synagogues must be certified to the Registrar-General by the President of the Board of Deputies. It is the President who grants the certificate, not an ecclesiastical authority, and while it is true that the President will, under the provisions of the Board’s Constitution, ask such an authority for a ruling, he is under no statutory compulsion so to do.

“Statements by the leading Rabbinical authorities of the world in regard to the proposal to confine the right to license Shochetim to the ‘Chief Rabbi”. (Copy in my possession.). 48 “Observations on the Memorandum by the so-called “Union of Orthodox Congregations”. signed by J.H. Hertz. 6 July 1931. p. 1. (Copy in my possession.). 49 The Scottish anomaly has never been rectified. I have been informed by Mr M. Carr (secretary to the Rabbinical Commission, interviewed 17 Feb. 1989) that in practice the Rabbinical Commission deals with Scottish applications too. 50 The certification of marriage secretaries within the Reform and Liberal movements is governed by separate legislation, the Marriage Act of 1949 and the Marriages (Secretaries of Synagogues) Act of 1959. 47

100

Controversy and Crisis

The marriage laws in this country certainly confer no special authority upon “the Chief Rabbi”, unless he personally becomes a marriage secretary! It must also be remembered that, so far as the 1974 Slaughterhouses Act is concerned, the authority of “the Chief Rabbi” is limited to chairing meetings of the Rabbinical Commission. and he is described as merely “the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.”51 The phrase “the United Hebrew Congregations” is very significant. It appears to have been inserted into the official title of the Chief Rabbi in the early 1950s, and it refers, of course, to the collectivity of Jewish communities, calling themselves “the United Hebrew Congregations”, whose representatives meet together to elect a Chief Rabbi to preside over them, and who naturally pay for the upkeep of the office. In this body the United Synagogue of London predominates. The notion that the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue, who is, additionally, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, is also, somehow, the Chief Rabbi of all the Jewish communities of the United Kingdom, is now no longer tenable. The process by which this state of affairs has come to pass encompasses much of the communal history of the Jewish communities of Great Britain over the past fifty or so years. British Jewry has always been obsessed by the contemplation of its public image. It has liked to appear united (more especially when it has been very disunited) and it has an aversion to washing its dirty linen in public, preferring sometimes not to wash the linen at all. The existence of a “Chief Rabbi” has served a most useful purpose in convincing the outside world that British Jewry is a happy monolith, and that diversity exists only within an overarching identity of interests. I want to admit that such motives are entirely legitimate, even honourable, but only if there really is an overarching identity of interests. I want to suggest that the extent to which such an identity exists is now so limited, and vague, that it is in fact a 51

Slaughterhouses Act. 1974. Schedule 1.

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

101

waste of communal energies to try and force the religious pluralism which the Jewish communities of Britain now exhibit into a mould fashioned with reference to the concept of a Chief Rabbinate. I want to suggest, further, that to make such an attempt is not merely wasteful, but counterproductive into the bargain. To insist, through sustaining the notion of a Chief Rabbinate, that unity—and more particularly religious unity— is alive and well, is perfectly in order only so long as that unity is a tangible reality. When it is not, those who sustain such a notion are defending an empty folly. What is more, they are bound to be found out. Chief Rabbi Hertz’s authority suffered a serious blow with the passage of the 1933 Slaughter of Animals Act. His attempts to bolster the fiction that he was ecclesiastical head of all the Jews of the UK led him, in 1934,to attend the opening of the West London Reform Synagogue’s extension, the Stern Hall, and to declare that the Liberal Jewish Synagogue was a body of persons professing the Jewish religion, so that it might be certified by the President of the Board of Deputies for marriage purposes. These actions outraged the more orthodox sections of British Jewry; the almost simultaneous certification of the Gateshead Hebrew Congregation did not pacify them.52 The influx of refugees from Nazi persecution swelled the ranks of the practising orthodox, and in particular of the union; by the beginning of 1944, the Union, under the leadership of Victor Schonfeld’s son, Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, felt strong enough to go public in its desire for some independence from the Board of Deputies, while within a very few years the Liberals were to begin flexing their muscles on the issue of their own status within the Board53. The constitutional crisis of 1970—71, which resulted in the granting of a very minimal Homa, Orthodoxy,. 33—35; Newman, Hertz, 16-17: in 1939 Hertz gave similar recognition to a Liberal community in Liverpool. 53 Jabotinsky Institute, Tel Aviv: Papers of Abraham Abrahams. 2F. file 5/5: Jewish Telegraphic Agency report of annual general meeting of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, February 1944. Yivo Institute for Jewish Research. New York: David Mowshowitch Collection, folder 153: typescript note of a meeting between representatives of the Board of Deputies and the Spanish and Portuguese, Liberal and West London synagogues. and the Anglo-Jewish Association. 2 April 1951. 52

102

Controversy and Crisis

consultative status given to non-orthodox ecclesiastical authorities, was thus already in the making in the late 1930s and early 1940s.54 Throughout this period, and, indeed, for many years afterwards, the Federation of Synagogues, then in decline, indulged in an act of selfinduced schizophrenia of which (I think), within British Jewry, only an animal at once as simple and as complex as the Federation could have been so successfully capable. Although the Federation had played no part in Hertz’s election, it would be quite wrong to conclude that it had, thereby, ceased to recognise the authority of his office. For marriage purposes it continued to do so. Federation marriages continued to be sanctioned by the Chief Rabbi’s Office until the establishment, by the Federation, of its own Beth Din in 1966.55 However, the Federation had, on grounds both of its wish for proportional representation and of the subordinate status of the United Synagogue’s Beth Din, declined to take part in the election of Joseph Hertz’s successor (Rabbi Dr Israel Brodie) in 1947-48. Mr Abba Bornstein, of the Machzike Hadath, put this latter point very succinctly when he told the Federations General Council (1 March 1948) that “A Rav in his own town might decide on halachic matters but where there was a Beth Din the Rav was obliged to consult them. Jewish life knows of no papal infallibility.”56 In 1965, in the context of a much wider discussion involving, inter alia, a merging of the Federation’s Rabbinate within the United Synagogue’s Beth Din, the Federation agreed to participate in the election of Dr Brodie’s successor; Mr Morris Lederman, the President of the Federation, was a member of the delegation that went to Israel to invite Dr Jacob Herzog to accept the position. Dr Herzog’s illness, and inability to accept the offer, led to the abrogation of the agreement by the United Synagogue; when Rabbi Dr Immanuel Jakobovits was elected Chief Rabbi, in 1966, it was without Federation participation.57 On this crisis see A. Bornstein and B. Homa, Tell It In Gath (London. 1972). Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 107. 56 Quoted in ibid, 71. 57 Ibid, 105—107. 54 55

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

103

It is, however, a curious feature of the relationship between the Federation and the Chief Rabbinate that, although not recognising the authority of the office in private, the Federation has until very recently been reluctant to give expression to this repudiation in public. On 25 January 1967, in what was termed a “document of understanding”, agreed in New York between Rabbi Dr Jakobovits and the Federation’s Rav Rashi, Rabbi Dr E.W. Kirzner, the Chief Rabbi was recognised as the “spokesman and authority” of the Ashkenazi community of AngloJewry.58 It is fair to say that this recognition was honoured by the Federation as much in the breach as in the observance. Nonetheless, the faint-heartedness of the Federation in respect of any public disavowal of the status and authority of the office of Chief Rabbi was evident throughout the 1970s—and no more so than at the time of the 1970-71 crisis, during which Mr Lederman proved himself to be Rabbi Dr Jakobovits’s staunchest ally, defending the authority of the Chief Rabbi even if this meant (as it did) putting to one side the claims of the Beth Din of the Federation, or of its Principal Rabbi, to be an Ecclesiastical Authority of the Board.59 The crisis of 1970-71 was important for the concept and status of a Chief Rabbinate in several respects. Firstly, the status of the Board of Deputies and of the Chief Rabbinate are (and have historically been) very closely linked. The claim of the Board of Deputies to act as spokesman for British Jewry on all matters relating to the work of government in the UK has in the past been grounded in large measure in its role as intermediary between the religious authorities and the state. Take this role away, and the Board’s sphere of influence must, of necessity, be much reduced. The Board could discharge its duties within a pluralist framework, acknowledging and representing the diversity of religious views within British Jewry. It could. But as a matter of historical fact it has not done so, preferring instead to peddle the fiction that British Jewry is united in religious matters and in everything else. This view has been most eloquently articulated to me 58 59

Ibid,. 110. Ibid, 111.

104

Controversy and Crisis

by Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, the present President of the Board. “There’s got to be a Jewish view at the end of the day (he told me]; there can’t be two Jewish views or three Jewish views.”60 Now, if there really is only one “Jewish view”, it would be strange indeed if the holder of the office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations were not entitled to define it, and if the Board of Deputies were not entitled to articulate it. But of course there is not, and never has been, any such thing as “a Jewish view.” There are, however, Jewish views, and the fact that in London alone there are now four quite independent orthodox rabbinates (those of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, the United Synagogue, the Federation of Synagogues and the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations) and no less than seven separate synagogal bodies (the four just mentioned, plus the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, and the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues) must convince any reasonable observer that this is indeed the case. What the Jewish communities of the UK need is a network of communal structures that will reflect, in an equitable manner, the full range of diversities as well as such common interests as undoubtedly exist. To those of us who have studied—and indeed been a part of— the very dramatic process by which, in 1989, the claim of Rabbi Lord Jakobovits to be able to act as sole spokesman even for orthodox Jewry on the question of shechita was repudiated (first by the Union, and then by Federation, the Spanish and Portuguese community, and leading provincial rabbis) it must be patently obvious that a Chief Rabbinate is no longer a safe pathway along which members of the practising orthodox communities can with any degree of certainty address the

60

Interview with Dr Kopelowitz, 2 March 1988.

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

105

government.61 Nor has Lord Jakobovits enhanced the prestige of the office of Chief Rabbi through his attempts to face both ways on the issue of religious pluralism with British Jewry. In 1984 he issued a private memorandum to his clergy warning them against modes of conduct “which could be construed as according legitimacy to non-traditional Judaism”, and in the same year he welcomed as Head of his Beth Din Rabbi Chenoch Ehrentreu, who while in Manchester in 1982 had refused to meet the Pope because, in meeting and shaking hands with the Pope (to which apparently he had no objection) Rabbi Ehrentreu would have been part of a delegation that included a Reform Jew.62 Yet we know that in his official capacity Lord Jakobovits recognises and meets leaders of non-orthodox congregations—as he must if his claim to be “Chief Rabbi” is to have any meaning. I am informed that what is known as “The Consultative Committee on Jewish-Non Jewish Relations”, of which the Convenor has been Rabbi Tony Bayfield (a former Chairman of the Assembly of Rabbis of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain), and which has included Rabbi Sidney Brichto (the Executive Vice-President of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues) has held its meetings at Lord Jakobovits’s private residence.63 We in the practising orthodox community are puzzled—some of us are also outraged. it is fair to say—by this behaviour: it hardly accords with a policy of denying legitimacy to non-traditional Judaism. In making these points I do not wish to engage in a personal argument. Rather, I take the opportunity to emphasise the sheer impossibility and 61 Rabbi E. Halpern (President. Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations) to Rt Hon. J. MacGregor, (Minister of Agriculture. London). 19 Sept. 1988 (1 am grateful to Rabbi Halpern and Mr E. Kohn [vice-president of the Union] for releasing to me the text of this letter). Dayan C. Padwa and others to Rt Hon. J. S. Gummer (Minister of Agriculture). 27 July 1989: this letter was signed by seven other leading rabbis in the UK, including the head of the Beth Din of the Federation of Synagogues and the spiritual leaders of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews and of the Jewish communities of Manchester and Gateshead. 62 Jewish Chronicle, 4 June 1982. 1. 63 Interview with Rabbi Brichto.,17 Feb. 1989.

106

Controversy and Crisis

absurdity of the Chief Rabbinate of the United Hebrew Congregations being any longer regarded as a kind of top-tier office representative of British Jewry in its ecclesiastical or even spiritual mode. The vessel, quite simply, will no longer hold the variety of liquids it is supposed to contain, and the liquids themselves can now, under certain conditions. form a very volatile mixture. To those of us whose affiliation is with bodies that do not or no longer recognise the status and authority of the office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations. our duty is clear. Our repudiation of this authority and status must be clearly and very publicly articulated. At its meeting on 18 May 1989 the Executive of the Federation of Synagogues resolved that though it had no objection to being consulted about the choice of a new Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, his writ would not run within the Federation: the five places reserved for the Federation within the search committee established some months previously to find a successor to Rabbi Lord Jakobovits were therefore vacated. No places had, I think, ever been set aside for the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, the Masorti Assembly or the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues. In all, these nonparticipating bodies comprise well over a third of the entire Jewish population of the United Kingdom—a proportion which seems likely to increase as the overall Jewish population of the UK declines.64 The decision of the Federation Executive not to participate in the appointment of a successor to Lord Jakobovits was not publicised at the time, though it was certainly not taken in secret.65 But the announcement by the Union of Liberal and Progressive synagogues, in mid-December, that the next Chief Rabbi would have no authority over them, and would not be entitled to speak on their behalf, was a front-page story in The Times— a reflection of the comparative ignorance of the non-Jewish world about such matters, since, as Mrs S. Waterman and B. Kosmin. British Jewry in the Eighties (London. 1986), 31. The decision was made known by mc to the Jewish Chronicle almost as soon as it had been taken: it was not reported until the issue of 15 Sept. 1989, 1. 64 65

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

107

Rosita Rosenberg. the ULPS’s director, reportedly remarked. “We were stating the obvious. We do not elect the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogues.”66 Some weeks later Dr Louis Jacobs, Rabbi of the Masorti’s founding synagogue, the New London, was reported as having endorsed, on behalf of the Masorti movement, the stand taken by the ULPS. “The Chief Rabbi”, he told the Jewish Chronicle, “represents only those communities which elect him.”67 Following the ULPS’s announcement, Dr Kopelowitz lost no time in springing to the defence of the Chief Rabbi, though whether in respect merely of the person. or of the office, or both, is unclear — perhaps deliberately so. Dr Kopelowitz has distinguished himself by his enthusiasm for upholding the authority of the office, and has indeed defended this authority in the columns of the Jewish Chronicle and The Times.68 Stung by the ULPS announcement, he took it upon himself to condemn it, and to assert publicly that “The Chief Rabbi is recognised, both within and without the Jewish community. as the public religious representative of the whole of the British Jewish community’, adding, according to The Times, that the traditional role of the Chief Rabbi had “worked to the benefit of the entire community.”69 This extraordinary statement omitted to mention that, in relation to proposed changes in the statutory regulations governing shechita, the Ministry of Agriculture had taken a very different view and had, in 1987, decided that it was precisely because the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations was obviously not “the public religious representative of the whole of the British Jewish community” that the views of other rabbis must also be heard. After these meetings had taken place, Dr Kopelowitz told the Board of Deputies’ Shechita Committee that the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations had been “humiliated” and that his status had been “impugned.”70 And all that The Times, 16 Dec. 1989, 1; Jewish Chronicle. 22 Dec. 1989, 40. Jewish Chronicle, 26 Jan. 1990, 21. 68 Jewish Chronicle, 9 Dec. 1988, 28: The Times, 10 March 1990, 14. 69 Jewish Chronicle, 22 Dec. 1989, 40: The Times. 18 Dec. 1989, 2. 70 These were the words used by Dr Kopelowitz at the meeting of the Shechita Committee which I attended on 17 Jan. 1989. 66 67

108

Controversy and Crisis

had happened was that a department of government had recognised the pluralism and diversity of the Jewish communities in this country. As someone, therefore, who has devoted a great deal of time over the past three years to defending shechita, to trying to persuade the Board of Deputies. and in particular its President, to take seriously the rights of consultation accorded by the Board’s constitution to my ecclesiastical authority, and as someone who has had, also, the privilege of hearing Dr Kopelowitz’s views at length. face to face, on these and other matters, I have to say that I found his riposte to the ULPS in the worst possible taste. But I was not surprised by it. In October 1971, in an atmosphere of crisis following the withdrawal of Progressive Deputies, the Board of Deputies agreed to amend Clause 43 (now Clause 76) of its constitution so as to give rights of consultation to the ecclesiastical authorities of those groups of congregations not under the jurisdiction of either the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations or the spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Immediately following the passage of this amendment, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations walked out of the Board: the Union has never returned and has not, I think, regretted its decision.71 It has certainly found no difficulty in representing its views to the government, and in making its voice heard in Whitehall. At the time of these events, and in order to appease orthodox feeling, the then President of the Board, the late Mr Michael Fidler, gave a public assurance that the Board would “continue to be guided on religious matters” by the Chief Rabbi and the spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews. and “cannot act ... contrary to the guidance it receives from them.”72 These sentiments were given a more concrete form in 1984, when the Board adopted a “Code of Practice”, binding it to follow the guidance of these ecclesiastical authorities. “support it in all ways possible and with all due speed.”73 Bornstein and Homa, Tell It In Gath. section II. Ibid, 45. 73 Board of Deputies of British Jews: Constitution … and Standing Orders (London, 1988), 17. 71 72

The British Chief Rabbinate: a Most Peculiar Practice

109

If the Board of Deputies is always bound to adhere to the advice of its two ecclesiastical authorities— who happen to be orthodox— what is the point of consulting other, mainly but not exclusively non-orthodox, authorities? This issue was deliberately fudged in 1971 and again in 1984, but I do not think it can be fudged much longer. British Jewry is contracting, but it is also, simultaneously, outgrowing the norms it has inherited from a more elitist and centripetal age. What is needed is a much looser structure, in which the top table is longer so that more people can be seated at it. The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations will have his place, of course, but he will be merely one among several. Unless this happens, I have to say that many more of us will surely be driven to abandoning the structure altogether, and to erecting alternatives to it.

110

Controversy and Crisis

VI Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

[in G. Alderman & C. Holmes (eds), Outsiders and Outcasts: Essays in Honour of William J. Fishman (Duckworth, London, 1993), 12‑31. ]

T

he imposition of communal authority, and the maintenance of communal discipline, have been among the most difficult acts of political skill, and of lay and ecclesiastical leadership, in the Jewries of the Diaspora. Paradoxically, these tasks have been fulfilled more easily in autocracies than in liberal states. In central and eastern Europe, certainly until the mid-nineteenth century, the subordinate status of professing Jews, and of Jewish institutions, offered some compensations: because the interface between Jews and the state was highly regulated, the state was often willing to permit, within strictly defined limits, a remarkable degree of internal autonomy, with the result that communal institutions and ecclesiastical hierarchies were implicitly and even explicitly endowed with considerable powers of internal control.1 But a central feature of emancipation was that, because as individuals Jews were admitted to full rights of citizenship, as communities Jewries might at best be ignored and at worst be regarded with suspicion and even hostility. For lay leaderships and rabbinical hierarchies alike, the sentiments expressed by Clermont-Tonnère – “To the Jews as individuals, everything. To the Jews as a nation, nothing!”— contained a chilling message.2 Emancipation threatened not only an opening of the floodgates that had hitherto protected dogmas and traditions from the depredations of alien cultural values; it threatened also to dismantle the structures through which Jewish ecclesiastical power had been exercised hitherto, replacing state-sponsored authority by a potentially lethal form of individual voluntarism. New ways had to be found, therefore, to preserve this authority intact. In the United Kingdom, the struggle for emancipation created—and was also in some measure derived from—profound intra-communal tensions. These conflicts coincided in point of time with the emergence of the rabbinate attached to the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, See, for example, E. Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (Oxford, 1989). 2 H.M. Sachar, Diaspora (New York, 1985), 90. 1

112

Controversy and Crisis

Aldgate as the undisputed ‘Chief Rabbinate’ of Great Britain—and hence of the British Empire.3 During the eighteenth century this status had been in dispute; but by the time of Rabbi Solomon Hirschell’s ministry at Aldgate (1802-1842) it was beyond contention, and it was consolidated and extended in unprecedented fashion by his successor Nathan Marcus Adler, Chief Rabbi from 1845 until his death in 1890. As I have shown elsewhere, this authority was very considerably enhanced by certain provisions of the Registration Act of 1836.4 This statute recognised the President of the London Committee (or Board) of Deputies of British Jews as the sole authority competent to certify, to the Registrar General, Jewish places of worship for the purpose of marriage registration; in practice, such certification was not given without the assent of one of the Board’s two ecclesiastical authorities— either the “Chief Rabbi” of the German and Polish (i.e. Ashkenazi) Jews in England, or the Haham, or spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese community. By comparison with the Ashkenazi Jews, the Spanish and Portuguese, or Sephardic community, was minute; moreover, there were—and remained—very few Sephardic Jews living outside London. In reality, therefore, the effect of the 1836 legislation, insofar as it touched upon the affairs of British Jews, was to give to the Ashkenazi ‘Chief Rabbi’ considerable influence— amounting almost to a veto—over the establishment of new congregations of Jews throughout the land. A Jewish place of worship was not compelled to be registered for marriage purposes under the Act. But if it chose not to adopt that procedure, it was obliged either to seek alternative legislation (as the Reform and Liberal movements were to do) or to reconcile itself, and those who intended to be married within it, to much more cumbersome procedures. All who have written on these matters are agreed that the 1836 legislation formed one of the strongest foundations for the consolidation and G. Alderman, The British Chief Rabbinate: A Most Peculiar Practice’, European Judaism, 45 (Autumn 1990), 45-58.. 4 Ibid., 47. 3

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

113

extension of the complementary jurisdictions of the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies as British Jewry expanded during the second half of the nineteenth century. However, much less attention has been paid to the role of Shechita in this process, and in the subsequent successful attacks upon the assumed authority of both institutions in the twentieth. Shechita is the Jewish humane method of slaughtering poultry and cattle. Such slaughtering is a religious act, deriving from the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy xii, 21) and the Talmud (an entire Tractate of which is devoted to this subject). The observant Jew is restricted not merely as to the animals whose flesh may be eaten, but to the manner in which such animals are slaughtered, to the parts of animals, so slaughtered, which may be consumed, and to the examination of those parts for signs of uncleanliness (ritual and hygienic). In modern abattoirs the various stages of pre-examination, slaughter, and post-slaughter operations are performed by a number of specially- trained operatives; but in smaller communities the shochet [plural shochetim]—slaughterer—must be competent in all these tasks, and in practice the training of a shochet, which can take several years, embraces every stage of the process. A community places absolute trust in a shochet, about whom there must be no ‘rumour’. At the end of his training, the shochet will receive a written licence—or kabbalah—from a rabbi; the status accorded to the kabbalah will depend in part on the reputation of the rabbi who granted it, and it can, in any case, be revoked (not necessarily by the same rabbi) for misconduct. Jewish communities have thus always taken great care in the appointment of those who slaughter meat and poultry for them, for their own status in the eyes of their sister-communities will in part depend upon it. One of the landmarks in the recognition of the rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, as the premier Ashkenazi rabbi in Britain was, without question, the fact that provincial communities (such as Portsmouth during the rabbinate of Aaron Hart, 1704-56)

114

Controversy and Crisis

looked to him to approve and license shochetim for them.5 Nathan Adler was to have no qualms in requiring communities to dismiss shochetim of whose conduct he did not approve; these dismissals were invariably carried out.6 But historically shechita has had a financial as well as a purely religious dimension, for the fees imposed by communities in respect of all poultry and cattle slaughtered under their auspices—and hence carrying, literally, their seals of approval—have been used as a time-honoured means of raising revenue, a form of taxation. The earliest rules, or Ascamot, of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation of the Cromwellian Resettlement provided for an ‘imposta’ of one farthing per pound on all meat purchased from butchers licensed by it. A similar practice was instituted by the Ashkenazi congregations that developed in London in the course of the eighteenth century.7 On two grounds therefore—religious authority and communal finance—it was imperative that shechita be centrally controlled and regulated, at least in the capital. Shochetim could not be permitted to enter Britain from abroad and practise their craft in open competition with each other, so circumventing local control, neither, for the same combination of reasons, could properly slaughtered meat and poultry be permitted to be sold other than by butchers licensed for this purpose, nor could one community be permitted to export poultry and meat to be sold to the members of another, without the permission of the authorities of the receiving community.8 In the 1790s the leaders of the three major Ashkenazi synagogues in London—the Great, the Hambro’ and the New—took steps to bring

C. Roth, ‘The Portsmouth Community and its Historical Background’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xiii (1932-5), 169. 6 R. Apple, ‘United Synagogue: Religious Founders and Leaders’, in S.S. Levin (ed.), A Century of Anglo-Jewish Life 1870-1970 (London) 197O], 14. Examples of the action taken by Nathan Adler in respect of shochetim of doubtful character may be found in the Copy Book of his outgoing letters, preserved in his papers in the Jew‑ ish Theological Seminary, New York, Arch. 3-6, at page 6 (Sheffield, 1849) and 15 (Manchester, n.d.). I am grateful to the Archivist of the Jewish Theological Seminary for permission to consult this document. 7 A.M. Hyamson, The London Board for Shechita 1804-1954 (London, 1954), 7. 8 Such permission would invariably involve some financial payment. 5

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

115

order and discipline into the slaughter and sale of kosher meat and poultry in the capital, by forming a special ‘Board of Shechita’ to supervise the entire process, from slaughter to retail sale; in 1804 the Sephardi authorities agreed to join. Thus, in April 1804, was born the Board for Administering the Affairs of Shechita, generally known as the London Board of Shechita. The Board was administered by officials from the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue, and from the three major Ashkenazi congregations, and itself employed the shochetim and other religious functionaries, all of whom had to be licensed by the Ashkenazi ‘Chief Rabbi’ or the Sephardi Haham. Similarly licensed butchers paid fees to the Board in respect of animals killed for them. The Board’s profits were distributed between the four participating synagogues.9 At its foundation, and for some considerable period thereafter, it is certain that there were some London congregations that operated, for their members, shechita facilities outside the ambit of the Shechita Board, and therefore—apparently—beyond its jurisdiction; one such was the independently-minded Western Synagogue (founded 1761), which was not admitted to membership of the Shechita Board until 1900.10 This state of affairs underlines the fact that, in contrast with the situation which pertained from 1836 in relation to marriages, whereby the authority of the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi was (albeit indirectly) derived from statute law, that relating to the regulation of shechita depended in large measure upon the voluntary compliance of those communities, both in London and the provinces, that consented to place themselves under his jurisdiction. It was illegal neither to practise shechita without the Chief Rabbi’s authority, nor to sell meat and poultry, purporting to be kosher, without his approval. However, the cumulative impact of a number of actions for libel, arising invariably from the sale by butchers of meat derived from carcasses 9

Hyamson, London Board, 11-12; AM. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England (Lon‑ don, 1951), 225; J. Mills, The British Jews (London, 1853), 64; C. Roth, The Great Synagogue 1 690-1940 (London, 1950), 222-5. 10 Hyamson, London Board, 22, 64.

116

Controversy and Crisis

slaughtered by shochetim not licensed by the Shechita Board or the Chief Rabbi, more or less redressed the balance. The English courts consistently upheld the right of the Chief Rabbi to authorise such licences, and (perhaps more importantly) to denounce as trefah (i.e. unfit for consumption because not kosher) the carcasses slaughtered by shochetim whom he had not licensed— irrespective of any licences these shochetim may have obtained, quite legitimately, abroad.11 In 1868 the courts decided that Nathan Marcus Adler was fully within his rights in issuing a warning to the Jewish public that meat sold by a Dutch Jew in south London was not kosher, because the shochet involved had not been licensed by him, and in spite of the fact that this shochet held a certificate of competency from the Chief Rabbi of Emden.12 This was a remarkable decision. Henceforth, communities, congregations or individuals which established and operated shechita facilities in Britain without the approval of the Chief Rabbi in London ran grave risks. For while their activities were not in themselves contrary to the law of the land, the law had recognised and upheld the right of the Chief Rabbi to denounce these activities, and to issue ecclesiastical prohibitions in respect of them. The fact that English judicial opinion was apparently willing to endow the office of Chief Rabbi with such authority and status could not have failed to give comfort to those whose ambition it was to persuade the state that the office should be invested with formal, statutory powers, on the model of a continental landesrabbiner.13 Two years later an attempt was made to do just that. For, as is well known, the scheme to amalgamate, by Act of Parliament, the New, Hambro’ and Great Synagogues into one United Synagogue, embodied also, as first drafted, a reference to “the Chief Rabbi,” under whose authority and control all the religious affairs of the new body were to fall. The Liberal government then in power was not minded to 11

Ibid., 8-9. Schott v. Adler: Jewish Chronicle [hereafter JC], 18 Dec. 1868; 25 Dec. 1868. 13 Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 46-7; Adler had himself been Landesrabbiner of Oldenburg. 12

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

117

consent to the legislative underpinning of Chief Rabbi Adler’s authority in this way: the clause had to be modified.14 Nonetheless, the reference, in the scheme scheduled to what became the United Synagogue Act of 1870, to “a Chief Rabbi,” coupled with his position as (in effect) the senior ecclesiastical authority of the Board of Deputies, and his judicially recognised privileges in relation to shechita, gave Nathan Marcus Adler a position very closely approximating to that of his continental counterparts. It was a position jealously guarded by the lay leaderships of the United Synagogue and of the Board of Deputies; for they saw in it, inter alia, a means of exercising control over the Jewish immigrants and refugees who, even now, were beginning to arrive in London from the Tsar’s Empire. After 1881 that trickle of new arrivals became a flood. But when the immigrants in London turned their backs upon the United Synagogue, and formed themselves instead into a Federation of Synagogues, the Federation was refused admission to the London Shechita Board; its members had, perforce, to purchase their meat and poultry from outlets licensed by a Chief Rabbi whose authority they might otherwise have ignored, and—thus—to pay fees to a Shechita Board in the operation of which they—and the rabbis they brought with them from the Pale of Settlement—had absolutely no say.15 Shechita was bound, therefore, to become a major battleground in the struggle between the religious immigrants and the irreligious oligarchs for influence in the affairs of London Jewry, and for the hegemony of its institutional structure; and as the immigrants settled also in major provincial cities, this clash of wills was bound to assume national dimensions. The entrenched nature of the contest was undoubtedly compounded and intensified by the fact that although Nathan Adler had been a respected rabbinical authority of international repute, his son and successor Hermann (who became Chief Rabbi in 1891 but who had acted as “Delegate Chief Rabbi” 14

Public Record Office, HO 45/8418: Lionel Louis Cohen to Home Office, 22 May 1870; and see JC, 15 July 1870. 15 G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues, 1887-1 987 (London, 1987), 19.

118

Controversy and Crisis

during Nathan’s virtual retirement in the 1880s) was an object of ridicule and contempt among the immigrants, on account both of his right-wing political views and of his religious latitudinarianism. Religiously observant immigrants could not bring themselves to identify with Hermann’s autocratic style, or with his Anglican clerical garb, or with his relative leniency in the matter of reform of the synagogue service, or with his extreme reluctance to recognise the religious status of the many eminent rabbinic authorities who ministered to immigrant congregations.16 The Kulturkampf between immigrant orthodoxy and the Judaism of Hermann Adler reached a point of crisis in 1891-2. The Chevra Machzike Hadath (Society of the Upholders of the Religion), an alliance of two rigidly orthodox communities in north and east London, invited Avraham Aba Werner, an outstanding rabbinical scholar who was then rabbi in Helsinki, to become their spiritual head. Werner accepted the invitation in the late summer of 1891, shortly after Hermann Adler had been confirmed as Chief Rabbi in his own right. The two events were almost certainly not coincidental. Grave misgivings about Adler’s lack of scruple in permitting the sale of kidney suet and of unporged hindquarter meat, and in turning a blind eye to other infringements of orthodox practice regarding the preparation and sale of kosher meat and poultry, had led the Machzike Hadath to appoint Werner as its rabbi, and then led him to authorise the establishment of an entirely independent shechita operation.17 This move threatened the financial viability of the London Shechita Board (whose fees for the killing of poultry were higher than those of the Machzike Hadath), but of far greater concern to Adler, and to the lay leadership of Anglo-Jewry, was the challenge that had been thrown down to Adler’s competence as a rabbi and to his claim to be ‘Chief Rabbi’, and to be entitled to exercise the authority which it was assumed—even, apparently, by the secular courts—went with 16

Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 48-9 B, Homa, A Fortress in Anglo-Jewry (London, 1953), 29-31. 18 Hyamson, London Board, 45-8. 17

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

119

that office.18 Each side declared the shechita of the other to be trefah, and appealed to eminent continental rabbis for support.19 Adler’s condemnation of the rebel shechita went unheeded. The Machzike Hadath evolved into a distinct and independent community on the eastern European model, authorising its own marriages and divorces and making its own arrangements for the supply of kosher food. Worse still, its fame spread; in 1902, under its influence, a separate shechita was established in Liverpool, supervised by Rabbi Gershon Ravinson.20 The denunciation of this shechita by the Liverpool Shechita Board (which operated under Adler’s authority) led to a much-publicised libel action; Adler’s competence was upheld but the Liverpool Board, which had alleged bribery, had damages awarded against it.21 The remaining years of Adler’s life (he died in 1911) were dogged by disputes of a similar kind, which reached the civil courts again in Manchester in 1907 and in London in 1911. In each case what was at issue was the right of immigrant groups to establish, and have recognised as kosher, slaughtering arrangements not sanctioned by the Chief Rabbi. The Manchester result followed that of Liverpool in recognising the Chief Rabbi’s authority. But in London the jury could not agree, with the result that the exclusive jurisdiction claimed by Adler was put in doubt; the London Board of Shechita refrained henceforth from referring to meat and poultry authorised by rabbis other than the Chief Rabbi as, ipso facto, trefah.22 This victory for the rebels was not complete.23 Moreover, it had to be seen in two other contexts. The first was that the early years of the twentieth century witnessed an upsurge in anti-shechita agitation, and

Homa, Fortress, 50-1. Ibid., 62. 21 JC, 26 Feb. 1904; 4 March 1904. 22 S. Sharot, ‘Religious Change in Native Orthodoxy, 1870-1914; Rabbinate and Cler‑ gy’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, xv (1973), 173; Hyamson, London Board, 62-3; JC, l2July 1907; 19 July 1907; 10 Feb.1911; 17 Feb.1911. 23 In a retrial; the plaintiff, a butcher named Marcus Hirsch, chose not to appear, so that judgment was given for the defendant, Simon Myers, ‘Investigating Officer’ of the London Shechita Board; JC, 28 July 1911. 19 20

120

Controversy and Crisis

though these campaigns were aimed initially at the method of casting cattle for Jewish slaughter rather than at the method of slaughter itself, there was much pressure upon the Jewish parties to close ranks.24 Some resolution of the conflict between Adler and the Machzike Hadath became urgent following the publicity surrounding the Liverpool libel case and, later the same year, the publication of a report by a Committee of the Board of Admiralty highly critical of the Jewish method of slaughter.25 Financial pressures upon the Machzike Hadath had also become very acute. The institutions of the Machzike Hadath community remained in being, but under the terms of a settlement negotiated through the good offices of Sir Samuel Montagu, the President of the Federation of Synagogues (which had been admitted to membership of the London Shechita Board along with the Western Synagogue), the Machzike Hadath recognised the overall authority of the Chief Rabbi “provided that he acts in accordance with the Shulchan Oruch [Code of Jewish Law].” In particular, Rabbi Werner renounced his right to authorise marriages and divorces, and though the separate shechita remained in being, its administration passed henceforth into the hands of the London Board.26 Cattle were then cast upon their backs manually, with the aid of ropes. The agita‑ tion against this procedure eventually resulted in the adoption of a pen, the so-called Weinberg Pen (named after its inventor, Harris Weinberg) in which the animal was rotated over 180 degrees for shechita. Weinberg devised the concept of a rotating pen in 1908; a design was approved by the RSPCA in 1927, but its adoption was slow in, coming about, in part because of the unwillingness of the London Shechi‑ ta Board to pay for its installation and use. As late as February 1929 the Board of Deputies publicly defended casting by ropes. The Chief Rabbi approved the pen in April 1930, and its adoption in abattoirs used by the London Shechita Board came in 1933. The use of the Weinberg Pen for shechita became mandatory in 1950, and remained so until 1990, when, after protracted negotiations, it was outlawed in favour of an upright pen based on American practice. The story of the Weinberg Pen, and of the shabby treatment of Weinberg by the Jewish authorities, may be followed in the Archives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews [hereafter BDJ, especially the minute books of. the Board’s Shechita Committee (class C16) and the correspond‑ ence files in classes E3/59 & 119; see also Hyamson, London Board, 51-2, and Wein‑ berg’s obituary, written by Professor Simon Winter of Haifa, in JC, 27 April 1979. 25 Report of the Committee Appointed by the Admiralty to consider the Humane Slaughtering of Animals, British Parliamentary Papers xxiv (1904), 10-11: shechita was recommended to be outlawed until ‘some method of pre-stunning is devised’ 26 JC, 24 Feb. 1905; Homa, Fortress, 65-7; Alderman, Federation, 26. 24

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

121

Three years later Adler and his supporters secured an even greater victory, though its significance went largely unnoticed at the time. The publication of the Admiralty Report, with its unanimous recommendation that pre-slaughter stunning be enforced via local authority bye-laws, triggered much public discussion of this issue. In April 1907 John Burns, the Liberal President of the Local Government Board, indicated in the House of Commons that his department would take steps to bring the Admiralty’s recommendations to the attention of local authorities, which were, and have remained, primarily responsible for the supervision of slaughterhouse practices.27 On 20 March 1908 Burns’s department issued to local authorities a circular giving details of a bye-law pertaining to the humane slaughter of animals, which it had recently confirmed for the Corporation of Liverpool, and which it now offered as a model for general adoption. The bye-law (known subsequently as 9B) contained a special proviso permitting the Jewish method of slaughter, in the following terms: Provided that this requirement [stunning] shall not be deemed to apply to any member of the Jewish faith, duly licensed by the Chief Rabbi as a slaughterer, when engaged in the slaughtering of cattle intended for the food of Jews according to the Jewish method of slaughtering, if no unnecessary suffering is inflicted.28 Two features of this model bye-law deserve comment. The first is the employment of the phrase “the Chief Rabbi,” and especially of the use of the definite article. That which a Liberal government had refused to concede in 1870 in an Act of Parliament another Liberal administration was now prepared to grant through the instrument of municipal regulation. The second is that only those shochetim licensed by the Chief Rabbi were to be exempt from the requirement Parliamentary Debates, clxii (15 April 1907), cols 606-7. Archives of the Chief Rabbinate [hereafter CR1, Adler House, London (now trans‑ ferred to the Greater London Record Office), Shechita Files 2 & 3 (Printed Material): Local Government Board Circular, 20 March 1908, ‘The Humane Slaughtering of Animals’; see also BD, Papers of Charles Emanuel (Secretary to the Board), B 2/17.

27 28

122

Controversy and Crisis

to stun; shochetim not so licensed now ran the risk of prosecution if they attempted to slaughter by the Jewish method, in which there can be no pre- or post-cut stunning. So it was that through shechita the British state gave formal recognition to the existence of a supreme ecclesiastical authority for its Jewish citizens, and was prepared, for the first time, to underwrite that authority in legal terms. Why was this bye-law issued in this form? No records of the Local Government Board have survived which might provide the answer to this question, and there are no clues in the archives of the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies, the London Shechita Board or the surviving papers of John Burns, now in the British Library. The Municipal Journal did not give attention to the bye-law, while the Jewish Chronicle’s report sheds no light on its precise origins.29 We can merely speculate that the Local Government Board, having, determined that the Jews should be given an exemption from the requirement to stun, determined also that Jewish slaughterers would have to be licensed by an authority in whom they felt they could have confidence, and that there was no authority possessing, in their eyes, greater status than Hermann Adler, who was known to be close to King Edward VII. It is also worth bearing in mind that the activities of ‘foreign’ rabbis, more especially in granting religious divorces without reference to the requirements of English law, were already causing difficulties. These activities were in due course denounced by Hermann Adler before a Royal Commission in 191030 . In short, Adler was a man in whom, and in whose office, departments of government in Whitehall felt they could trust. In 1922 the Ministry of Health made it clear that it would refuse to sanction bye-laws relating to slaughter of animals that did not include the Jewish exemption, in the form approved in 1908.31 In London the matter was slightly more complicated, in that the sensitivities of the Spanish and Portuguese community had to be accommodated. A JC, 27 March 1908. Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 50. 31 BD, C16: Shechita Committee Minutes, 25 Jan. 1922. 29 30

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

123

bye-law approved in 1914 in respect of the public slaughterhouses at Caledonian Road, Islington, stipulated that a shochet had to be licensed both by the Chief Rabbi and by the London Shechita Board, of which the Haham was also, of course, an ecclesiastical authority.32 Meanwhile, the model bye-law of 1908 began to be adopted as a matter of routine; by 1931 some 390 local authorities had embraced it.33 In this way the purely religious authority of the Chief Rabbi in relation to shechita came to be underpinned by local enactment. As a consequence, there was little public comment when, in 1928, Parliament legislated for the slaughter of animals in Scotland, and stipulated that the sole licensing authority for shochetim in that kingdom was to be “the Chief Rabbi,” even though this was the first occasion upon which an Act of Parliament had recognised and employed that term.34 However, within the Jewish communities, the gradual extension of the authority of the Chief Rabbi had come to be a matter of bitter dispute. Opposition arose from four distinct quarters. The Federation of Synagogues, whose cradle was the East End heartland of London and of British Jewry at that time, was in the inter-war period the largest synagogal body in the UK.35 Yet, although now a member of the London Board of Shechita, participating in its financial and administrative affairs, the Federation’s rabbinical authorities had absolutely no say in the Board’s ecclesiastical side. The Federation had participated, under protest, in Hermann Adler’s election as Chief Rabbi, but had withdrawn from the election of his successor, Dr J.H. Hertz, in 1913; thus even the fiction that the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi represented Federation interests in the appointment of shochetim could no longer be maintained.36 In 1912 the Federation CR, Shechita Files 2 & 3 (Printed Material): ‘Bye-Laws for the Government of the Metropolitan Cattle Market and Public Slaughterhouses, Islington (1914). 33 Ibid., Shechita files 2 & 3 (1928-33): President of the Board of Deputies to the Minister of Health, 6 July 1931. 34 Slaughter of Animals (Scotland) Act, 1928, section 8. 35 The statistical evidence for this statement may be found in G. Alder‑ man, ‘M.H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxxi (1988-90), 255-6. 36 Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 51. 32

124

Controversy and Crisis

had appointed a ‘Chief Minister’ of its own, Rabbi Dr Meir Zvi Jung, by whom a Va’ad HaRabbonim—a Council of Rabbis—had been formed; after Jung’s death, in 1921, the leadership of the Council fell to two learned, pugnacious, and independently-minded Federation rabbis, Pinchas Ya’akov Gerber, who had given evidence against the Chief Rabbi during the shechita libel action of 1911, and Zvi Hirsch Ferber, the Council’s diligent secretary.37 The Federation’s Council of Rabbis gave Gerber and Ferber a considerable platform from which they could defend the rights of independent rabbis to exercise their time-honoured jurisdictions without reference to a ‘Chief Rabbi’, the concept of which was unknown in the eastern European communities from which they and their congregants originated. In 1923 they appear to have used this platform to excellent effect. The London County Council (LCC) proposed and made a bye-law enforcing the mechanical stunning of sheep and cattle before slaughter. As approved by the LCC, the byelaw contained a Jewish exemption which followed word for word the model bye-law of 1908. But following an outcry from ‘foreign rabbis’, orchestrated by Gerber and Ferber, the Ministry of Health intervened, and indicated that it would approve the bye-law only if the terms of the Jewish exemption were altered.38 And so they were. The LCC made its bye-law on 6 March 1923. Exactly nine months later the Minister of Health announced that, notwithstanding the view of the LCC, he would permit a Jewish slaughterer working within the jurisdiction of the County of London to be exempted from the requirement to stun, provided the slaughterer was “a person certified by the President for On Gerber and Ferber see Alderman, Federation, 25 & 47. Gerber had licensed the butcher, Hirsch, who had brought the 1911 action. In a letter to W.C. Johnson, member of the London County Council for Whitechapel, Gerber boasted that because of his role in the 1911 case, the courts had “recognised” him as an independent rabbinical authority; there is a copy of the letter, undated but circa 1923, in the CR, Hertz Papers, General Correspondence Files P-S. In 1908 Gerber had clashed with the Chief Rabbi and the United Synagogue over his authorisation of divorces: see C. Bermant, Troubled Eden (London, 1969), 184-5. 38 CR, box-file S, file 1: Secretary of the Board of Deputies to Chief Rabbi Hertz, 30 Jan. 1924. 37

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

125

the time being of the London Committee of the Deputies of the British Jews as holding a licence from the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities.”39 The phraseology was deliberately ambiguous. For the first time, the Board of Deputies had been given a role in the licensing of shochetim, but by virtue of the Board’s constitution, its President was bound to follow the guidance either of the Chief Rabbi or of the Haham. Thus it could be argued that the role of the Chief Rabbi was preserved—albeit indirectly—and would operate in exactly the same way as it did in relation to the certification of places of worship for the purposes of marriage registration. But the reference to “the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities” rather than to (say) “the ecclesiastical authorities of the London Committee of the Deputies of the British Jews” left open the possibility that the President could, so far as the law was concerned, rely on a licence to slaughter granted by some person other than the Chief Rabbi.40 This deliberate imprecision may have been designed merely to placate or deceive.41 It may equally have been designed to calm the sensitivities of the Spanish and Portuguese community, though it is noteworthy in this connection that the precedent set by the Islington bye-law of 1914 was not followed; indeed, the action of the Ministry of Health excluded the London Shechita Board henceforth from any role in the licensing of shochetim in the capital. The Federation’s Council of Rabbis read the signs in a very different way. The willingness of a department of government to strike out a reference to ‘the Chief Rabbi’ gave heart to the Council of Rabbis, which, along with other Jewish protagonists, had been simultaneously fighting a battle in the House of Commons, where a private member’s bill to enforce mechanical stunning, introduced by Sir Arthur Shirley A printed copy of the bye-law, before and after amendment by the Ministry of Health, is in ibid., Hertz Papers, General Correspondence, File P-S. 40 BD, E3/8: exchange of letters between Rabbi V. Schonfeld and H.S.Q. Henriques (President of the Board of Deputies), 10 & 15 Jan. 1924. 41 There is some evidence that the LCC had acquiesced in the alteration of the bye-law simply on these grounds: BD, E3/8: ‘Memorandum of interview [of Board of Depu‑ ties] with Major Isidore Salmon and the Clerk to the Health Committee of the LCC’, 1 July 1924. 39

126

Controversy and Crisis

Benn, had been blocked, but only after Harry Gosling, the MP for Whitechapel had been prevailed upon to introduce an amendment providing for Jewish exemption. Gosling’s amendment on 1 May 1923 had originally followed very closely the 1908 bye-law; later (10 May) it sought to substitute “the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities” for the Chief Rabbi as the licensing authority for shochetim, and later still it substituted the President of the Board of Deputies, but without any reference to ecclesiastical authorities of any description.42 These various emendations had been made as a result of furious arguments within the Board of Deputies, and beyond it, in which the Federation rabbis were joined by powerful allies. Most vocal of these was Dr Moses Gaster, who had retired as Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in 1918, and who now used the freedom of his retirement to launch against the concept of one, supreme, Ashkenazic Chief Rabbinate a series of attacks in which the full weight of his considerable intellect and volcanic personality was brought to bear. Gaster was a veteran campaigner against the presumption that the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi alone should be able to license shochetim. In 1911 he had protested to the Shechita Committee of the Board of Deputies when an exemption clause proposed by the Board to be inserted into a Slaughter of Animals Bill introduced by George Greenwood had mentioned only the Chief Rabbi and the President of the Board of Deputies.43 “Licences to a Jewish shochet [Gaster thundered] should be granted either by the local Jewish ecclesiastical authority—I mean thereby the duly qualified Rabbi of the community—or failing him the Chief Rabbis [sic].”44 On that occasion opposition had also come from an Association of Provincial Shochetim, who wanted “a central authority” to license shochetim (thus putting an end to the activities of foreign shochetim CR, Hertz Papers, General Correspondence Files P-S: printed and typescript ver‑ sions of Gosling’s amendment; BD, C16, Shechita Committee Minutes, 22 Feb., 2 May, 13 June and 9 Oct. 1923. 43 BD, C16: Shechita Committee Minutes, 3 & 9 July and 27 Sept. 1911. 44 Gaster Papers, University College London, Bound Volumes, No. 20: Gaster to Sec‑ retary of the Board of Deputies, 6 Aug. 1911. 42

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

127

touting their services).45 More significantly, in the course of a campaign that was deliberately public, deliberately flamboyant and deliberately vituperative, Gaster had succeeded in arousing the rabbinical leaderships (mostly of immigrant origin) of provincial communities, more especially those of Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh.46 Gaster had recently (December 1910) clashed with Hermann Adler and the President of the Board of Deputies over the right of rabbis independently to authorise religious divorces.47 Now, in the interregnum that followed Adler’s death the following July, the Haham capitalised upon an evident provincial backlash against the powers which the office of Chief Rabbi had managed to accrete to itself. It is worth recalling that during 1912 voices were heard questioning whether a new Chief Rabbi was needed, and that at the Chief Rabbinate Conference that year a deputation of immigrant rabbis had demanded that “The Chief Rabbi should not be allowed to interfere with the provincial Rabbi in questions pertaining to Shulchan Aruch especially with regard to affairs of Shechita.”48 In 1911 Gaster played a brilliant game; the Board of Deputies was forced into a position where it had to concede that shochetim licensed by ecclesiastical authorities other than the Chief Rabbi or the Haham might indeed be permitted to slaughter.49 In reading the correspondence (much of which Gaster appears to have leaked to the Jewish press), we can sense Gaster’s disappointment when it became clear that Greenwood’s bill would fail, and we can almost hear the Board’s sigh of relief. Now, twelve years later, Gaster saw an opportunity to replay the contest, but with the odds having moved considerably in his favour. In the communal discussions prompted by the 1923 Bill, provincial BD, E3/55: Shechita Committee correspondence, 1911. The progress of this lobby may be followed in the correspondence for August to December 1911 preserved in vol. 20 of the bound volumes of the Gaster Papers at University College London. 47 Ibid., vol. 18: Gaster to Secretary, Board of Deputies, 17 Jan. 1911 48 Quoted in A. Newman, ‘The Chief Rabbinate and the Provinces’, in J. Sacks (ed.), Tradition and Transition: Essays presented to Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovits (London, 1986), 223. 45 46

128

Controversy and Crisis

rabbis were not slow in demanding some independent role for themselves in the licensing of shochetim. Rabbi Dr Samuel Daiches of Sunderland, who had led the provincial onslaught against the concept of a Chief Rabbinate in 1911, demanded, as Gaster had done, that the English law should recognise, as competent to slaughter, any shochet licensed by the rabbi of “a recognised Jewish community.” 50 This view was naturally endorsed by the rabbis of the Federation of Synagogues. But now a new ally appeared. When the Machzike Hadath had agreed, in 1905, to give up its independent shechita operation, and place itself under the jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbinate, a section of its adherents, based in north London, refused to be bound by the agreement. In 1909 this community acquired as its spiritual leader the Hungarian Rabbi Dr Victor Schonfeld, to whom, in due course, some other independently-minded orthodox congregations looked as their ecclesiastical head. Such were the origins of what became, in 1926, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations.51 Victor Schonfeld was a man of strong character, unbending principles and considerable political acumen. In 1919 he and his congregants had used the threat of legal proceedings to force the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies to certify his synagogue for marriage purposes, even though he and his congregants refused in return to recognise Hertz’s ecclesiastical suzerainty.52 In 1923 Schonfeld supported the efforts of Gaster and the provincial and Federation rabbis to break Hertz’s virtual monopoly of the licensing of shochetim.53 Schonfeld’s motives were mixed. He had already formed the view that the agreement of the Machzike Hadath to place its shechita under the authority of the Chief Rabbi had been a religious disaster. In 1917, JC, 27 Oct. 1911; and see Greenwood to Gaster, 28 Oct., and Gaster to Emanuel, 31 Oct., in Gaster Papers, University College London, bound vol. 20. 50 BD, E3/55: ‘Shechita’ memorandum, undated but circa July 1923. 51 Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 51. J. Carlebach, ‘The Impact of German Jews on Anglo-Jewry — Orthodoxy, 1850-1950’, in W.E. Mosse et al. (eds), Second Chance: Two Centuries of German Jews in the United Kingdom (Tübingen, 1991), 417-18. 52 B. Homa, Orthodoxy in Anglo-Jewry 1880-1914 (London, 1969), 24-8. 53 BD, E3/55: ‘Shechita’ memorandum, undated but circa July 1923. 49

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

129

supported by Rabbi Jung of the Federation and Rabbi l. A. Kook of the Machzike Hadath, he had approached the United Synagogue and the London Board of Shechita with a suggestion that “a part of the London Shechita should be placed under the ritual supervision” of a “Rabbi’s Conference” which these three had formed together with other independent rabbis in London’s East End.54 The suggestion was of course rebutted, but the fact that it had been made was of great significance. Schonfeld nurtured a further ambition, to establish his own shechita operation, which he himself might supervise without reference to any other ecclesiastical authority.55 Obviously he could not do this so long as the licensing of shochetim remained a monopoly of the Chief Rabbi. The replacement of this monopoly by an arrangement involving all the leading rabbinical authorities in the land therefore appealed to Schonfeld on grounds both of principle and of self-interest. Following the failure of Sir Arthur Benn’s Bill in 1923, Hirsch Ferber had warned Jacob Lissack, the President of the London Shechita Board, that there would have to be a fundamental re-organisation of arrangements for the licensing of shochetim; he now proposed a “Special Rabbinic Kashrut Council,” a body representative of all rabbis in the United Kingdom, which would have “unrestricted control over all matters of shechita.”56 Lissack initially refused to countenance any such proposal. But events surrounding the passage of the Scottish Slaughter of Animals Bill, in 1928, caused the Shechita Board, and Chief Rabbi Hertz, to reconsider the matter. The relationship which Chief Rabbi Hertz enjoyed with the Union of Schonfeld to United Synagogue and London Board of Shechita (typescript draft with manuscript amendments) 1 Nov. 1917. The ‘Rabbi’s Conference’ or ‘Council’ was distinct from the Federation’s Council of Rabbis, though the two bodies had over‑ lapping memberships. This draft is one of a number of papers emanating from the hand of Victor Schonfeld, written at various dates in 1917 and 1918, which were given to me in February 1992 by Rabbi Dr I. Jacobs, the Principal of Jews’ College London, to whom they had been passed by a colleague in New York, where they had been found in the offices of a Manhattan synagogue. 55 CR, Hertz Papers, Box-File ‘S’, file 1: J.M. Lissack (President, London Board of Shechita) to Hertz, 3 May 1925, enclosing letter from Machzike Hadath. 56 Ibid., General Correspondence File P-S: Ferber to Lissack, 20 Feb. 1924. 54

130

Controversy and Crisis

Orthodox Hebrew Congregations was one of love and hate. He regarded it—rightly—as a threat to the status and authority of his office. But he admired and perhaps even envied its unyielding orthodoxy, the more so as circumstances required him to enter into dialogues with those of the Reform and Liberal Jewish persuasions, upon whom the Union turned its back. In due course, aided, no doubt, by the marriage of his daughter, Judith, to Victor Schonfeld’s son, Solomon, Hertz became reconciled to the Union. But this reconciliation was a decade away. What seems to have rankled with Hertz was the abject refusal of the Union to show him any deference as the de facto supreme religious head of the Jews in Britain. Thus, in the years immediately following its establishment, Hertz did his best to de-legitimise the Union, and to belittle it. When the Scottish Bill was before Parliament, the Board of Deputies evinced anxiety lest a public squabble should develop over the Bill’s intention to promote the authority of the Chief Rabbi, as the proposed licensing authority for shochetim in Scotland, over that of independent rabbis. In truth, however, the Board, though concerned about the public washing of the community’s dirty linen, was much more preoccupied with the progress which independent rabbis generally had made in attempting to regain the powers they had lost as a result of the model bye-law of 1908, and with the corrosive effect these attempts were bound to have upon the claim of the Board to be the sole representative body of British Jewry. For example, in January 1928 the Board’s Shechita Committee noted that Pinchas Gerber had interceded with the Corporation of Glasgow to prevent its local bye-laws confirming the Chief Rabbi’s monopoly of licensing, and the following month it became clear that independent rabbis were having some success in persuading the Corporation of Manchester to amend its bye-laws so as to preserve their licensing rights.57 57 BD, C16: Shechita Committee Minutes, 10 Jan. 1928; E3/60: Ministry of Health to Board of Deputies, 22 Feb. 1928. In Manchester the status quo was preserved only after the intervention of the Board: Anglo-Jewish Archives (now at the University of Southampton), Bernard Homa Papers, AJ/65/97: Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congre‑ gations to Minister of Health, 10 July 1931.

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

131

None of these initiatives had been the subject of prior discussion with the Board of Deputies. Accordingly, the President of the Board, Osmond d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, apparently without the prior knowledge or consent of Chief Rabbi Hertz, negotiated with Victor Schonfeld, and in July 1928 the two entered into a written agreement: the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations would desist from the opposition it had sustained hitherto to the Chief Rabbi being named as the sole Jewish licensing authority in the Scottish Bill then under Parliamentary consideration, but in return he, the President, “would use his best endeavours” to secure “an agreed formula”—presumably giving licensing rights to independent rabbis—when, as expected, a Bill covering England and Wales came before Parliament.58 In agreeing thus, we must presume that d’Avigdor-Goldsmid was an honourable man. Could he have supposed that either Dr Hertz or the United Synagogue (from which the major portion of the funds of the Board of Deputies were derived) would have been willing to compromise the authority of the Chief Rabbinate in the way the Union, the Federation of Synagogues, the provincial rabbinates and the hyperactive Dr Gaster now proposed? In December 1929, in a document which was widely circulated, Schonfeld’s Union argued that shochetim in England and Wales should be licensed by any rabbi certified by the Board of Deputies as being the rabbi of a congregation represented at the Board.59 Gaster warned that were the Chief Rabbi alone to receive statutory authority to license shochetim in England and Wales, “a Jewish state church” would have been established thereby.60 On 12 January 1930 a conference of rabbis convened by the Union and the Federation of Synagogues declared any proposal to endow the Chief Rabbi alone with the statutory power to license shochetim in England and Wales to be “inimical to Judaism and contrary to Jewish law.” This resolution was supported by rabbinical leaders in every 58

BD, C16: Shechita Committee Minutes, 11 Feb. 1930. Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 52. 60 Gaster Papers, University College London, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congrega‑ tions file: typescript memo by Gaster, undated but probably Dec. 1929. 59

132

Controversy and Crisis

major provincial centre where Jews dwelt in large numbers, including Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, Hull, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sunderland, and by Rabbi Herzog in Dublin.61 Their protests were endorsed by eminent continental rabbis.62 Scarcely less serious was the fact that this campaign, which included the lobbying of Members of Parliament, was deliberately conducted in an open manner, so that Hertz’s defence of his own monopoly threatened to become a public scandal.63 Hertz’s capitulation was slow and faltering. In May 1930 he signified his willingness to share the licensing process with a committee consisting of a provincial rabbi, a rabbi from the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, and one from the Federation of Synagogues, but only on condition that he retain a final and authoritative veto on any proposal to grant a licence to slaughter.64 By October he had been forced to agree to the enlargement of this body so that provincial and Federation representation was doubled, and balanced by three members of the United Synagogue’s Beth Din; the Chief Rabbi would chair the licensing body, but have no veto.65 By the end of November, though with an evident ill-will, he had consented to the inclusion of a representative from Schonfeld’s Union.66 Such was the conception of a “Rabbinical Commission” to be responsible for the licensing of Shochetim in England and Wales. Hertz regretted almost at once his agreement to its institution. In July 1931 we find him, supported by the Board of Deputies, manoeuvring with the government in an effort to retain his sole discretion, as set

Ibid., typescript note of the resolution. ‘Statements by the leading Rabbinical authorities of the world in regard to the proposal to confine the right to license Shochetim to the “Chief Rabbi”.’ (Copy in author’s possession.) 63 JC, 17 Jan. 1930; 24 Jan. 1930; 14 Feb. 1930; 21 Feb. 1930. 64 CR, Hertz Papers, Shechita Files 2 & 3: Hertz to Robert Waley Cohen (Vice-Presi‑ dent of the United Synagogue), 25 May 1930. 65 BD, C16: Shechita Committee Minutes, 9 Oct. 1930; JC, 7 Nov. 1930. 66 JC, 21 Nov. 1930; CR, Hertz Papers, Shechita Files 2 & 3: Waley Cohen to d’AvigdorGoldsmid, 30 May 1930; d’Avigdor-Goldsmid to Waley Cohen, 11 July 1930. 61 62

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

133

out in the model bye-law of 1908.67 In 1932 there was an attempt by the United Synagogue to sabotage the agreement to institute the Commission.68 But against the background of mounting public concern over the casting of cattle, and of the welfare of animals generally at the time of slaughter (private members’ Bills on this subject were before Parliament in 1929, 1930 and 1932), the notion of a centralised licensing body for Jewish slaughterers came to occupy an important place in the arguments used to defend shechita from parliamentary attack.69 A Bill to regulate the Slaughter of Animals in England and Wales received the Royal Assent on 28 July 1933. It swept away the powers hitherto exercised by the Chief Rabbi alone, and instead vested the authority to license Jewish slaughterers in a “Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim,” the constitution of which was set out in a schedule to the Act, and which is now repeated in Schedule 1 of the Slaughterhouses Act of 1974. The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations is the Chairman of the Commission ex officio, and the designated Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews is the ex officio deputy-chairman; three rabbis are appointed to the Commission by the Beth Din of the United Synagogue, two by the Federation of Synagogues, one by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, and two by the President of the Board of Deputies to represent provincial communities. The Scottish anomaly remains; but it appears that in practice the Rabbinical Commission deals with



Ibid.: ‘Observations [by Hertz) on the Memorandum submitted [to the government] by the so-called “Union of Orthodox Congregations”’, 6 July 1931. In a letter, of the same date, ibid., written to the Minister of Health by d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Hertz’s position was supported, but the President of the Board of Deputies added that “The Board would, however, (though with some reluctance) be prepared to accept a Rab‑ binical Commission.” 68 Ibid., Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations to Chief Rabbi, 28 Nov. 1932; and see JC, 25 March 1932: letter from the Secretary of the Union. 69 C, 18 March 1932. 67

134

Controversy and Crisis

Scottish applications too.70 The passage of the 1933 Slaughter of Animals Act constituted a distinct watershed in the development of the Chief Rabbinate. However, the radical nature of what had been accomplished was masked at the time by the pressures working for communal unity that were generated by the acceleration of anti-Jewish prejudice nationally and internationally. In fact, deep fissures were appearing between the various sections of British Jewry, more especially as the orthodox right and the nonorthodox left each grew and discovered a new self-confidence.71 The state, which had remained neutral for most of the nineteenth century, but which had appeared to favour what might be termed the centralisers in the early twentieth, now contented itself with holding the ring between competing British-Jewish groups. This process was not uniform, and it is the case that what was true of shechita was not necessarily true of other matters that arose in the relationship between the British government and its citizens of the Jewish persuasion. In 1936, on the issue of Jewish exemption from the Sunday trading laws, Parliament granted the Board of Deputies the unique privilege of operating a ‘privatised’ statutory tribunal to determine whether Jewish traders were indeed guilty of infringing the strict requirements necessary for such exemption; in 1979 this privilege was extended into a general ‘policing’ role in relation to the Sunday trading provisions.72

Interview with Mr M. Carr (Secretary to the Commission), 17 Feb. 1989. The agree‑ ment to institute the Commission came too late to be incorporated in a Bill then going through the Parliament of Northern Ireland, so that what became the Slaughter of Animals (Northern Ireland) Act of 1932 designates (section 6) either the Chief Rabbi alone or “some person or body of persons appointed by him in that behalf” as the licensing authority for shochetim in that province: Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture to the author, 11 June 1991. It is worth noting that a Bill passed in 1935 by the Parliament of the Irish Free State prescribed either “the Chief Rabbi of the Irish Free State” or “in his absence ... the Board of Shechita of the Jewish Community of Dublin” as the licensing authority for Jewish slaughterers: see BD, E3/49 & E2187. 71 Alderman, ‘British Chief Rabbinate’, 53. 72 See generally G. Alderman, ‘Jews and Sunday Trading in Britain: The Private Con‑ trol of Public Legislation’, Jewish Law Annual, 8(1989), 221-37. 70

Power, Authority and Status in British Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita

135

Nonetheless, in its underwriting of the power, authority and status of the Chief Rabbinate, the step taken in 1933 has never been retraced. When, following a report from its Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1985, the government signalled its intention to overhaul the entire regulation of slaughtering arrangements in British abattoirs, it was careful to consult very widely within the Jewish communities in Great Britain, well beyond the circle of the Chief Rabbi and even of the Board of Deputies.73 While it would be churlish, and downright inaccurate, to conclude that in relation to religious slaughter the state does not regard the Chief Rabbi as a major interested party, it would be accurate to say that he is looked upon, in his role as a Jewish ecclesiastical authority, as nothing more than a first among equals.74 [I wish to place on record the invaluable help of Dr Sharman Kadish, my Research Assistant 1989-92, in locating and copying much of the archival material upon which this essay is based.]

These matters are addressed in G. Alderman, Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Egham, 1990), 18-24, and G. Alderman, ‘Risking the Jewish Vote too?’, The Times, 23 April 1990. 74 Since the passage into law of the 1990 Slaughter of Animals (Humane Conditions) Regulations, the Ministry of Agriculture, following the practice it adopted during the negotiations that preceded the making of those Regulations, has routinely sent con‑ sultative documents to a wide range of Jewish ecclesiastical and other bodies in the UK. 73

136

Controversy and Crisis

VII The defence of shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘humane conditions’ regulations of 1990

[New Community 21(1) [January 1995]: 79—93]

I

n the summer of 1990 Parliament approved two sets of regulations1 which have had a profound effect on the conditions under which shechita, the Jewish method of slaughter of food animals, is practised in Britain.2 The approval brought to a climax a struggle of five or more years’ duration between the supporters of shechita and their opponents, a loose alliance of animal welfare groups led by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) but including also Compassion in World Farming, the Humane Slaughter Association and the Animal Liberation Front.3 Under the Humane Conditions Regulations shechita is still permitted, but under controls more stringent than ever before. The larger ambition of the anti-shechita groups thus appears to have been frustrated—for the moment—and to that extent the Regulations may be regarded as a victory for Anglo-Jewry. At the same time the anti-shechita groups have been able to persuade the government to restrict, in an unprecedented way, the practice of shechita in Britain, and to make that practice more expensive than hitherto, thus bolstering their efforts to price shechita out of existence if they cannot have it banned outright: frustrated in their larger ambition, they did not come away from the struggle empty-handed. It is not the purpose of this article to trace the history either of shechita

The Slaughter of Animals (Humane Conditions) Regulations (S.1. 1990/1242) and the Slaughter of Poultry (Humane Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations (S.I. 1990/1243). These will be referred to throughout this article as the Humane Conditions Regulations. 2 From 1982 to 1991 I was a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, representing a constituent of the Federation of Synagogues; from 1988 to 1991 I was also a member of the Board’s Shechita Committee, and kept comprehensive records of its proceedings. In 1985 1 became also the Political Adviser to the Campaign for the Protection of Shechita, attending its meetings with the Ministry of Agriculture. In these various capacities 1 collected a substantial amount of material relating to the events with which this article deals, and where no other source is stated in the notes it should be assumed that the materials cited, either originals or photocopies, are in my possession. 3 It needs to be stressed that the opposition of these groups to shechita—indeed to religious slaughter in general—is but part of a much broader campaign focused on the welfare of animals prior to and at the time of slaughter; see, for example, the special supplement ‘Pasture to the Plate’ published in The Observer of 10 July 1994 in association with the RSPCA. 1

138

Controversy and Crisis

in Britain or of the opposition to it.4 The basis of current legislation is the 1967 Slaughter of Poultry Act and the 1974 Slaughterhouses Act. The 1974 Act preserves intact the legislative framework and compromise enshrined in the Slaughter of Animals Act of 1933; by that measure shechita, though not defined as humane, can nonetheless be practised, because it is specifically exempted from the requirement that animals be stunned before slaughter; however, this exemption exists only so long as the act of slaughter is carried out by a slaughterer – shochet ­– licensed by a Rabbinical Commission, the constitution of which (arrived at after heated debate within Anglo-Jewry) was set out as a schedule to the 1933 Act, and is repeated in the Act of 1974.5 The Rabbinical Commission is chaired by the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations; its other nine members comprise three rabbis appointed by the Beth Din (Ecclesiastical Court) of the United Synagogue, two by the Federation of Synagogues, two by the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to represent provincial communities, and one by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations; a nominee of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation is the Commission’s vice-chairman ex-officio. The sole statutory duty of the Commission is to license shochetim; inevitably, however, it can if it wishes play a major part in the formulation of policy relating to the defence of shechita, and in this connection it is worth stressing that the representatives (generally dayanim—judges) of the United Synagogue are in a minority, that the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, the representative body of sectarian-orthodox Jews, is almost certainly under-represented, and that the ‘Chief Rabbi’ is merely the Commission’s chairman. See S. Poulter, English Law and Ethnic Minority Customs (London, 1986), 278-82; T Kushner, ‘Stunning Intolerance: A Century of Opposition to Religious Slaughter,’ Jewish Quarterly, Spring 1989, 16-20; G. Alderman, ‘Power, Status and Authority in Anglo-Jewry: The Chief Rabbinate and Shechita,’ in G. Alderman & C. Holmes (eds), Outsiders and Outcasts: Essays in Honour of William J, Fishman (London, 1993), 12-31-; B. Klug, ‘Overkill: The Polemics Against Ritual Slaughter,’ Jewish Quarterly, Summer 1989, 38-42. 5 The Jewish religious objection to pre-slaughter stunning is explained in Poulter, op. cit., 278-9. 4

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

139

In another capacity, however, the Chief Rabbi’s influence over shechita policy is much more pervasive, because he is one of the two Ecclesiastical Authorities of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claims to have the authority to represent Anglo-Jewry in its relations with Whitehall. The Board has two such Ecclesiastical Authorities, the other being the spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation. But the numerical inferiority of the Sephardic communities in Britain has in the past meant that their spiritual leader has been very much the junior partner in this arrangement. Until 1994 the Board of Deputies had a Shechita Committee, composed of Deputies elected to it by the full Board, plus the Board’s Honorary Officers.6 Following a controversial constitutional reform in 1971, the Board, in the formulation of policy on religious matters, must consult the ecclesiastical authorities of those congregations not recognising the authority either of the Chief Rabbi or of the spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation. Such authorities would include those of the non-orthodox Jews, as well as that of the Federation of Synagogues, but not that of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, which seceded from the Board following the 1971 reform. However, it is equally true that by virtue of its constitution (currently clause 76), and of a ‘Code of Practice’ annexed to the constitution in 1984, the Board, and its Shechita Committee, must (to quote clause 3 of the Code) ‘follow the guidance of the Ecclesiastical Authorities and support it in all ways possible and with all due speed.’7 Until the events surrounding the passage of the Humane Conditions Regulations, these arrangements, certainly in relation to shechita, worked well. The spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews deferred to the status of the Ashkenazi ‘Chief Rabbi,’ whose judgment was trusted by the miscellany of independent orthodox communities In 1994 the Shechita Committee of the Board was disbanded, and replaced by a subcommittee of the Law, Parliamentary and General Purposes Committee. 7 Alderman, ‘Power, Status and Authority,’ 374-5. 6

140

Controversy and Crisis

in Britain, principally the Federation of Synagogues and the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, which had historically shown little if any anxiety about the status of their own ecclesiastical authorities in relation to the Board of Deputies. The Board itself, working through its Shechita Committee, took its cue from the Chief Rabbi, the exofficio chairman of the Rabbinical Commission. If it became necessary to enter into an official dialogue with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), the President of the Board, the Board’s Secretary General, the chairman and vice-chairman of the Shechita Committee would of course all be involved, but they would all defer to the Chief Rabbi, whose role in any such dialogue would be pivotal. In the late 1980s these neat arrangements were torn asunder. The hitherto unquestioned authority of the Board of Deputies and of the Chief Rabbi to speak for Anglo-Jewry in relation to the defence and preservation of shechita was repudiated by very significant and substantial sections of orthodoxy, who established their own lines of communication with the MAFF. The Ministry, in turn, signalled (at least implicitly) that it no longer accepted the claim of the Chief Rabbinate to represent AngloJewish orthodoxy. The matter entered the public domain, nationally and internationally. The impartiality of the Jewish Chronicle, AngloJewry’s leading newspaper, was called into question as its editor was accused of deliberately under-reporting events and of attempting to conceal the truth from his readers.8 The dissenting sections of AngloJewish orthodoxy enlisted the support of sympathetic brethren in the USA; during the presidential election year of 1988 Congressmen were lobbied on this issue, and the British Ambassador in Washington found This sub-plot is not examined in this article, but is revealed in correspondence with the then editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Mr Geoffrey Paul, kindly supplied by Mr M. Wosner, of London. Mr Wosner drew the attention of Mr Paul to the fact that more information was being made available to readers of an American newspaper, the Jewish Press (specifically, in an article carried by that paper in its issue of 18 March 1988: 2), than was being made available to readers of the Jewish Chronicle by Mr Paul. Mr Paul replied (5 April 1988) that he was ‘satisfied that the kind of publicity given to this matter in the “Jewish Press” is of no help at all to Anglo-Jewry’. On 15 April Mr Paul added that he was “satisfied that the mobilisation of public opinion which you demand would be counter-productive.”

8

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

141

himself drawn into the fray.9 The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, became involved at a constituency level. At the end of the affair a compromise was brokered, and the 1990 regulations were made. But the status of the Chief Rabbinate (as of the Board of Deputies) was much diminished by all these events, which made their own contribution towards the re-ordering of the Anglo-Jewish ecclesiastical hierarchy.10 The alienation of independent orthodoxy from the Board of Deputies was also deepened as a result. The affair itself threw new light on the fault lines that had fractured the religious topography of Anglo-Jewry since the Second World War, as the Anglo-Jewish community (more accurately, communities) have continued to experience growing religious plurality. The very structures which (it had been said) had served the defence needs of Anglo-Jewry so well in the past were now seen to be a source of divisiveness.11 In this context, the affair also has a wider importance and significance. In recent years British Muslims have looked to the organisational structure of Anglo-Jewry as a role-model, and have cast envious eyes upon the Board of Deputies, which they have tended to regard as a near-perfect mechanism for religious minority representation in the British state.12 In so doing, however, they have overlooked the fact that in its quest for At a meeting with independent orthodox leaders at the MAFF on 27 October 1988 the Parliamentary Secretary, Donald Thompson, MP, referred to a communication he had received from the Ambassador. 10 This theme, again, is beyond the scope of this article. Arrangements for shechita in London were thrown into turmoil in 1988 by the establishment, by the United Synagogue (of which the Chief Rabbi is the ecclesiastical authority) of its own shechita operation. For a time this threatened the viability of the London Board for Shechita (established 1804) but the venture proved a financial disaster. In 1993, when the United Synagogue rejoined the London Board, the Chief Rabbi (now Dr Sacks) was forced to concede parity of status with the ecclesiastical authorities of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews and the Federation of Synagogues. 11 These themes are developed in G. Alderman, Anglo-Jewry: A Suitable Case For Treatment (Egham, 1990), especially pp.19—24. 12 See generally the discussion by R. Kaye, ‘The Politics of the Religious Slaughter of Animals: Strategies for Ethno-Religious Political Action,’ new community 19 (2) [1993], 244—5. An editorial in Manna, the journal of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism (No. 44, summer 1994: 1), in defence of the existence of the Board, pointed out that ‘Not so long ago representatives of the Muslim community consulted leaders of the Jewish community about the way to set up a representative body’. 9

142

Controversy and Crisis

the greatest possible consensus the Board is, nowadays, simply unable any longer to act as the mouthpiece of a religiously diverse set of Anglo-Jewish groups. There can be no better proof of this than through an examination of the position of the Board during the negotiations which resulted in the Humane Conditions Regulations. Between 1955 and 1984 no less than six private members’ bills were presented to Parliament, by MPs and peers of various political persuasions, with the object of restricting, to a greater or lesser extent, the practice of religious slaughter.13 None was accorded a second reading and two (1968 and 1984) were even denied the customary first reading. Roger Chariton and Ronald Kaye believe that Jewish success in securing these outcomes was the result of ‘three interlocking but identifiable political advantages which may be termed; communal unity and coherence, organisational resources, and strategic placement of communal personnel.’14 Kaye has subsequently admitted that events surrounding the passage of the 1990 Humane Conditions Regulations suggest that ‘there has been a decline in effectiveness in all three areas’, but he nonetheless waxes lyrical on the subject of the Jewish political experience, claiming that what he describes as the Jewish community’s ‘chosen strategy of communal political restraints, combined with highly skilful political tactics’ constitute ‘a model of shrewd conservation of political resources’, and have enabled the community to achieve ‘influence far beyond its size.’15 It is beyond contention that the political strategies of the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies have, in the past, made their contribution to the defeat of anti-shechita proposals. But the major reason for such outcomes has lain elsewhere. Shechita is a political issue, but it is not a party-political issue. It relates to fundamentals of religious freedom, with which Parliament is loath, nowadays, to R. Charlton & R. Kaye, ‘Defending the Religious Slaughter of Animals: A Study in Ethnic Issue-Management’, Politics 5, (April 1985), 22-28. 14 R. Charlton & R. Kaye, ‘Defending and Promoting Ethnic Political Interests: Some Implications drawn from the case of Religious Slaughter’, paper presented to the Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Aberdeen, 7-9 April 1987, 21; Kaye, ‘Politics of Religious Slaughter. 15 Kaye, ‘Politics of Religious Slaughter,’ 248. 13

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

143

interfere. Most MPs are not bothered about shechita one way or the other, but the outlawing of shechita, directly or by way of oppressive restriction (such as compulsory prior- or post-slaughter stunning), has struck them as politically unwise. They have taken the view eloquently expressed by Viscount Hailsham during the debate in the House of Lords on a bill introduced by Lord Somers (withdrawn without being put to a vote on second reading), that “If this House gave this Bill a Second Reading, the orthodox Jewish community would believe—and would sincerely believe—that it was an attack on Judaism as such.”16 In 1985 the rules of the game, so heavily stacked, hitherto, in AngloJewry’s favour, changed dramatically. In July 1979, in deference to the demands of the animal welfare lobby, the newly-elected Conservative government established a Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC); no Jew (or Moslem) was a member of the Council, but a minister of the Church of England was put in charge of its “Religious Slaughter Working Group.”17 In 1985 the Council produced a report on religious slaughter, the outcome of the working group’s deliberations.18 This report called for those legislative provisions which permit slaughter of animals (including poultry) without stunning to be repealed within three years; rotary casting pens for the shechita of cattle (adopted by the Jewish authorities at the behest of the RSPCA in the 1930s19) were to be outlawed, in favour of upright pens, within two years; on unstunned animals the FAWC report recommended that a ‘single reciprocal cut’ be mandatory; Jewish slaughtermen were to be licensed by a body other than (and in addition to) the Rabbinical Commission; and all

Lords’ Debates, 5th series, ccxlv, 3 December 1962, col. 62. Religious slaughter had been the object of increasing attention from the animal welfare lobby in Britain in the 1970s, more especially in the context of the growth of Britain’s Islamic population; seer. Charlton & R. Kaye, ‘Human Rights versus Animal Rights: The Contemporary Religious Slaughter Controversy,’ Contemporary Affairs Briefing 2 (18), April 1987. 18 Farm Animal Welfare Council, Report on the Welfare of Livestock when slaughtered by Religious Methods (London, 1985). 19 Alderman, ‘Power, Status and Authority,’ 19, note 24. 16 17

144

Controversy and Crisis

religiously-slaughtered meat offered for sale was to be so labelled.20 Two features of the report deserve special comment. The first is that, as the FAWC must have known, there was not the slightest prospect of its exhortation in favour of pre-slaughter stunning being accepted by orthodox Jewry: this recommendation therefore amounted to the prohibition of shechita, which was a political non-starter. It was, perhaps, for this reason that the FAWC made its other proposals, relating to the licensing of slaughtermen, the use of an upright pen, and the single reciprocal cut: for if animals are indeed stunned before slaughter, of what importance (from the point of view of animal welfare) is the position in which they are subsequently placed for the purposes of throat-cutting? It seems clear that the FAWC made the recommendation as to stunning in the full realisation that it stood practically no chance of becoming law. Therefore, the Council proceeded to make other recommendations partly, no doubt, in the belief that these were genuinely in the interests of animal welfare, but partly also in the hope that, through their imposition, shechita would become much more expensive, and might be priced out of existence. The second feature is somewhat technical, but no less important in a political sense. The view taken by the FAWC of what actually constituted shechita was based on the belief that shechita requires the severance of both jugular veins and both carotid arteries, and that one of the major purposes of shechita was to obtain the maximum outflow of blood. This is not so. Shechita requires the partial severance of the trachea and the oesophagus; severance of the jugulars and/or of the carotids

This list of recommendations is by no means exhaustive. The list I give is chosen with particular reference to the impact of the FAWC report on Anglo-Jewry; the report itself also addressed Muslim and Sikh slaughter practices.

20

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

145

is a requirement neither for poultry nor for cattle.21 Furthermore, although, following the act of shechita, there is bound to be a great outflow of blood, the removal of blood from shechita-slaughtered meat and poultry is effected in other ways, mainly by salting of the carcass. The justification for shechita is not that it is ‘humane’, but that it is Divinely ordained, like brit milah (circumcision, also carried out without anaesthetic).22 However, since much of the scientific criticism of shechita has rested on the alleged delay in complete loss of consciousness following the cutting of the throat (or, more correctly, of the trachea and oesophagus), much of the Anglo-Jewish effort in combating these criticisms has focused less on the matter of religious faith, and the freedom to practise it, than on the alleged swiftness with which complete loss of blood supply to the brain of an animal is effected through the act of shechita which, it is argued, stuns and slaughters in a single operation, mainly because, incidentally, the carotids are severed.23 In its report (paragraph 35) the FAWC rightly indicated that in judging the “humaneness” of shechita it had relied on the descriptions and justifications supplied by those, such as the Board of Deputies, who had traditionally defended the practice. It had observed shechita, measured its observations against the yardsticks supplied to it by the Jewish authorities, and—not surprisingly—found serious deficiencies. Whether any effort should be made by the shochet to sever the jugulars and/or carotids has historically been a matter of much rabbinical dispute, and relates in part to the larger question whether the maximum outflow of blood should necessarily be obtained as a result of the act of shechita. I base my interpretation on advice given to me by Dayan Y.Y. Lichtenstein, head of the ecclesiastical court of the Federation of Synagogues (telephone conversation, 12 April 1994). There can, however, be no doubt that an animal which has had neither the jugulars nor the carotids severed as a result of shechita would nonetheless be kosher, provided the trachea and oesophagus had been cut in the prescribed manner. 22 The scientific arguments as to the humaneness of shechita have raged back and forth. Writing in the Sunday Times Magazine, 12 November 1989, 52, Brian Jackman rightly concluded: “even if it could be proved on empirical grounds that shechita was less humane than pre-stunning (something which science has so far failed to do) there remains the insurmountable hurdle of religious faith.” 23 B. Homa , Shechita (London, 1967), 5; see also the speech of Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, Lords’ Debates, 5th series, ccxlv, 3 December 1962, cols 43—44. 21

146

Controversy and Crisis

The fact that these observations were based upon false assumptions was not the fault of the FAWC, but of the Jewish authorities. The very serious consequences of this state of affairs soon became clear. The situation which faced Anglo-Jewry was no longer that of an idiosyncratic backbench MP acting on behalf of a pressure group: a government ‘quango’ had made a report, and expected it to be acted upon. The Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbi embarked upon a policy of appeasement and of low-profile: Anglo-Jewry would attempt to assist the government in presenting a package which would preserve the essentials of shechita, but would expect the government, in return, to see to it that shechita could continue in a practical sense. This package would not be the subject of public debate, but its negotiation would be the responsibility of a small circle of individuals working under the aegis of the Chief Rabbinate. Accordingly, on 14 November 1985, over the signature of the Chief Rabbi, claiming to represent the views of “the entire Jewish community of the United Kingdom,” a response was published to the FAWC report: stunning was ruled out, but the notion of a “single reciprocal cut” was accepted “in principle,” and there was more than a hint that an upright restraining pen might be adopted.24 Why was this response sent by the Chief Rabbi, and not by the Board of Deputies? The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations was not in membership of the Board, whilst the ecclesiastical authority of the Federation of Synagogues had an inferior status so far as the Board’s constitution was concerned. Had the locus of the Board been invoked, the Board would have been obliged to have consulted nonorthodox ecclesiastical authorities, but would have been precluded from representing the views of the Union. Under the chairmanship of the Chief Rabbi a “Co-ordinating Group for the Defence of Shechita” had been formed, of which the lay leaders of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, the United Synagogue, the Federation of Comments by the Jewish Community on the Farm Animal Welfare Council ‘Report on the Welfare of Livestock when slaughtered by Religious Methods’, November 1985, 20.

24

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

147

Synagogues and the Union were members, together with the President of the Board of Deputies, and of the umbrella National Council of Shechita Boards.25 At the time the formation of this Co-ordinating Group no doubt seemed sensible, in view of the Board’s own representational shortcomings and embarrassments. But it removed discussion of communal strategy from a public arena into a very private one, and since the Co-ordinating Group was in no sense an ecclesiastical body its claim to a representative nature was seriously flawed in this respect too.26 The concessions offered by the Chief Rabbi appear not to have satisfied the government, which faced the prospect of a confrontation with the FAWC, whose major recommendation on shechita (the imposition of “effective stunning”) it was poised to reject. On 9 July 1986 a meeting took place at the MAFF attended by the Minister, Michael Jopling, the Chief Rabbi, and Dr Lionel Kopelowitz, the President of the Board of Deputies. Jopling referred to—and subsequently provided Jakobovits with a copy of—a Ministry survey of shechita in poultry slaughter.27He claimed that because a Ministry veterinary surgeon had found that 70 per cent of poultry heads examined had had their carotids incompletely severed, 70 per cent of the birds surveyed “had been incorrectly slaughtered.” Jopling apparently admitted that “there was no scientific proof that one method of slaughter was more humane than the other.”28 But he made it clear that he was under pressure and that he “would like to be able to demonstrate that the Jewish community is prepared to make generous moves towards

Dr L. Kopelowitz (President of the Board of Deputies) to the author, 10 December 1985. The National Council (established 1950) co-ordinates the activities of local shechita boards. 26 It should be noted that the Co-ordinating Group contained no representative—lay or ecclesiastical—of the non-orthodox synagogal bodies within Anglo-Jewry, the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain and the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues. 27 Jopling to Jakobovits. 22 July 1986. 28 According to Mr N. Rubin, secretary of the Chief Rabbi’s Co-ordinating Group, who was present at this meeting, Jopling said: ‘There does not appear to be conclusive scientific evidence to say whether one side is right or wrong’: telephone conversation with the author, 24 November 1987. 25

148

Controversy and Crisis

re-assuring those who express concern about the welfare of religiously slaughtered animals”; such reassurance, he hinted, might be given by post-cut stunning, “stricter detailed legislation,” reduction of the quantities of shechita-slaughtered meat that found its way onto the general market, as well as the introduction of an upright restraining pen for cattle.29 The inference that most of the poultry in the survey to which Jopling referred had been incorrectly slaughtered was totally without justification; the likelihood is that every bird examined had been slaughtered in strict conformity with the requirements of shechita.30 But to have admitted this would have entailed a denial of one of the major premises upon which shechita had been defended hitherto. Instead, in a measured response, Jakobovits assured the Minister that “all your requests will be most carefully explored.”31 In reporting back to his Co-ordinating Group Jakobovits did not conceal the gravity of the situation. He does appear to have ruled out any proactive counter-strategy. Councillor H.J. Lobenstein, Conservative leader on Hackney Borough Council, suggested an appeal to the Prime Minister, or to the Chairman of the Conservative Party; “the Group felt that action of this nature must be left in the hands of the Chief Rabbi.”32 Instead, negotiations were carried on in private throughout 1986-87. On 29 October 1987, in a statement in the House of Commons, the government announced its rejection of two of the FAWC’s 17 recommendations, namely that religious slaughter without stunning be phased out, and that religiously-slaughtered meat that found its way

Minutes of Co-ordinating Group, 16 July 1986; Jopling to Jakobovits, 22 July 1986. 30 ‘Until the results of the survey were discussed with Jewish authorities we had understood that Shechita required the severance of all the carotids’: MAFF to the author, 16 February 1988. 31 Jakobovits to Jopling, 30 July 1986. 32 Minutes of a meeting of the Chief Rabbi’s Co-ordinating Group, 16 July 1986. 29

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

149

onto the general market be so labelled.33 But the other recommendations were to be acted upon: the act of shechita was normally to be restricted to “a single uninterrupted cut with not more than one backwards and forward stroke and which simultaneously and instantaneously severs both carotid arteries and both jugular veins”; slaughtermen carrying out religious slaughter were to be licensed and trained by bodies other than (and in addition to) the Rabbinical Commission; and the rotary pen previously approved by the RSPCA was to be replaced by an upright pen.34 The Chief Rabbi responded by welcoming the proposed changes and pledging to “do all we can to assist in the implementation of the recommendations now adopted.” He added that he regarded the decision to permit shechita to continue as “a vindication of our assertion that the Jewish method of slaughter is at least as humane as any other yet devised.” Yet he pledged to “do all within our ability to restrict the slaughter of animals to a minimum compatible with the requirement of the Jewish community.”35 In the months that followed a furore broke out, both within and beyond the orthodox Jewish communities in the United Kingdom, that has no parallel in modem times. Within the confines of this article only a brief summary of the major developments can be provided. It is necessary to explain and understand why the government’s announcement, and its acceptance by Jakobovits, caused such consternation. To In making the labelling recommendation the FAWC had gone beyond its remit, which was to consider the welfare of animals prior to and at the time of slaughter, not the fate of the carcasses. The labelling recommendation can only be interpreted as an act of spite, reflecting the fact that the FAWC had been hostile to religious slaughter ab initio. 34 Farm Animal Welfare Council Report on Religious Slaughter Response by the Agriculture Departments to Recommendations, October 1987. 35 Manchester Jewish Telegraph, 6 November 1987: 1. The anger to which this pledge gave rise within Anglo-Jewry can hardly be overstated, for it smacked of appeasement and flew in the face of an earlier ruling in this regard; in 1923, in response to a demand from the Duchess of Hamilton (President of the Animal Defence Society), the then Chief Rabbi, Dr J.H. Hertz, refused categorically to agree to measures designed to limit the supply of shechita slaughtered meat to Jewish consumers: “I certainly [ he wrote] could not be a party to withholding the privilege of eating the best and healthiest meat from any of His Majesty’s subjects”: The Times, 12 May 1923: 8. 33

150

Controversy and Crisis

begin with, the detailed, legal definition of the shechita cut was felt to be “an interference with a time honoured and respected religious act.”36 Shochetim were of the view that, in any case, shechita could not be carried out within the confines of the wording proposed by the government in its October 1987 statement.37 Secondly, the proposal to require shochetim to be licensed by a secular body was, in like manner, viewed as an unacceptable limitation of rabbinical sovereignty in these matters. Thirdly, the imposition of an upright restraining pen was resisted. Some rabbinical authorities were opposed to shechita me’umedet [standing shechita] doctrinally, arguing that an animal must be “cast” before shechita.38 Others, noting that highly respected American rabbis permitted upright shechita in the USA, pointed out that its introduction there had been part of an agreement whereby the American Congress had declared shechita to be a humane method of slaughter.39 If such a declaration were made by the British legislature, the price of agreeing to upright slaughter might be worth paying. But to this essentially pragmatic argument they added another. The so-called Cincinnati Pen used for shechita in the USA lifted the animal completely off the ground prior to slaughter, a feature considered essential both on religious and on safety grounds; it became clear that the pen envisaged by the MAFF would not embody this feature.40

Minutes of a “Rabbinical Meeting” held in London on 14 February 1989. This meeting, of independent orthodox rabbis, was one of several held in connection with the shechita controversy. Its very loose configuration is referred to in this article. 37 Jewish Herald, 10 December 1987: 1 38 S. B. Lieberman, Sefer Bishvili HaShechita (Bnei Brak, 1990), 13—56; shechita me’umedet is prohibited in Israel. On 19 September 1988 Rabbi E. Halpern, President of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, wrote to the MAFF to the effect that shechita performed in an upright pen was unacceptable. 39 In 1958 the American Congress had passed the Livestock—Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, in which “slaughtering in accordance with the ritual requirements of the Jewish faith” had been declared humane. 40 Beth Din of Crown Heights, New York, to Campaign for the Protection of Shechita, 14 August 1989; M.J. Griffiths (Meat Hygiene Division, MAFF) to N. Kesselman (National Co-ordinator, CP’S), 28 April 1989. 36

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

151

Beyond the details of these objections, however, certain overriding considerations also had an impact, adding a personal dimension which it would be misguided to ignore. Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi who had gone out of his way to support the values and policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and whose elevation to the peerage was to be announced in the 1988 New Year’s Honours List, was felt in some quarters to be too close to the government of the day to be relied upon to defend shechita without fear or favour.41 To say this is not to make a personal judgment, merely to reflect a state of mind widespread within the orthodox communities in Britain in the late 1980s. The government—Mrs Thatcher’s government—had not condemned shechita as inhumane; indeed, the MAFF had admitted, at least in private, that there was no evidence that it was any the less humane than other approved slaughter methods. Nonetheless, it was to be regulated in the future in ways unprecedented in the UK, and an American-type pen imposed (at some considerable financial cost); but even though shechita might be carried out in Britain as in the USA, the British legislature was not to be asked to declare the humanity of shechita as the American legislature had done. Anglo-Jewry was being asked to make a number of fundamental sacrifices merely to enjoy in the future what it had enjoyed in the past—kosher meat and poultry. And, as if to add insult to injury, the Chief Rabbi had agreed, publicly, to do all that he could to restrict the output of shechita-slaughtered meat and poultry. If shechita was indeed at least as humane as any other method of slaughter, why should its practice be specially restricted? Was there not an imputation here that Anglo-Jewry had something to hide, and had not the Chief Rabbi, aided and abetted by the Board of Deputies, been a party to a shabby deal, designed to save the government’s face at a certain cost, pecuniary and political, to be borne by the AngloJewish public?

On Jakobovits’ support for the politics and policies of Margaret Thatcher, see C. Bermant, Lord Jakobovits (London, 1990), 3-4 and Alderman, ‘Power, Status and Authority,’ 348—9.

41

152

Controversy and Crisis

Important sections of Anglo-Jewish orthodox opinion felt that the answer to both these questions had to be in the affirmative. Of the miscellany of groups and groupings that emerged over the next two years, four deserve special mention. The first was what should be thought of as a London grouping of orthodox communities which had never, historically, recognised the authority of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations. These communities existed under two umbrella bodies, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations and the Federation of Synagogues. The Union represents sectarian or ‘ultra’ orthodoxy. The Federation had co-operated with the Chief Rabbinate in the past, but in 1988 acquired a new ecclesiastical head in the person of Rabbi Yisroel Yaakov Lichtenstein, a graduate of the State University of New York, whose contacts with the world of sectarian orthodoxy, both in Britain and in the USA and Israel, were very strong; in particular, Rabbi Lichtenstein played a leading part in an ad hoc committee of rabbis which met in London from time to time to co-ordinate opposition to the policy of the MAFF as set out in its 1987 announcement. Other leading members of this committee included Dayan M. Schneebalg of Manchester and Rabbi E. Schlesinger, of London; Rabbi Schlesinger’s contacts within the Conservative Party were to have an important bearing on the eventual outcome of negotiations with the MAFF. Secondly there was a grouping of Manchester congregations. Manchester Jewry has historically been jealous of its independence from London, and of its right to order its affairs separately from the Jews of the capital.42 In the context of the shechita controversy, the Manchester Shechita Board demonstrated a capacity for autonomous thinking and for public frankness over the issues at stake.43 The Manchester Beth Din co-operated with sectarian orthodox communities in Manchester, led by Rabbi Schneebalg, in opposing the settlement agreed by Chief Rabbi Jakobovits, to the extent of urging Manchester Jews to sign a petition to the MAFF protesting against draft regulations based upon 42 43

S. Brook, The Club (London, 1989), 270. Manchester Jewish Telegraph, 28 October 1988. 1.

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

153

its October 1987 announcement.44 Thirdly there was the London-based Campaign for the Protection of Shechita (CPS), formed by an orthodox Jewish solicitor and barrister, Neville Kesselman, and his brother Henry, who brought a vast experience of the kosher meat trade. The CPS operated as a small core of individuals engaged in propaganda, co-ordination and negotiation. It was the CPS which first alerted independent orthodox communities to the shortcomings of the October 1987 announcement, and which brought them together to act in concert.45 It was the CPS which publicly challenged the Chief Rabbi to defend the settlement he had made with the MAFF on behalf of Anglo-Jewry.46 Most important of all was the success of the CPS in persuading senior civil servants in the Meat Hygiene Division of the MAFF that the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies could not be relied upon to speak for the whole of Anglo-Jewry, and that the MAFF ought to talk directly to those independent groups who were repudiating the Chief Rabbi’s presumed mandate. Fourthly there was a small pressure group, the Central British Council for Shechita, the brainchild of Rabbi S.B. Lieberman, a Talmudic scholar of international renown whose dismissal from Jews’ College, in 1985, had become a cause celèbre.47 Rabbi Lieberman was responsible for galvanising orthodox rabbinical opinion, more especially in the USA and Israel, against the settlement Jakobovits had initially reached with the MAFF. This international dimension is beyond the scope of the present article; but its ferocious extent needs to be kept in mind when assessing the strength of the pressures which the dissidents were able to bring.48 The first face-to-face meeting between the MAFF and the CPS took place on 11 February 1988.49 Contacts were increasingly frequent thereafter, Ibid., 18, 21 July 1989: 19. Ibid., 4 November 1988: 1. 46 Ibid., 6 November 1987: 12; Jewish Tribune 26 November 1987: 4. 47 Alderman, Anglo-Jewry, 34-41. 48 See generally Lieberman, op. cit. 49 Jewish Tribune, 18 February 1988: 1. 44 45

154

Controversy and Crisis

either with the CPS itself or with the CPS and other independent groups. On 12 June 1989 officials of the MAFF journeyed to the headquarters of the CPS for a meeting under ‘Chatham House rules’. It was the CPS which, in the summer of 1988, despatched an emissary to the USA, to call on the support of American rabbis and to invoke the sophisticated political machinery at their disposal. And it was the CPS, and its rabbinical allies, which galvanised rabbinical authorities in the USA and Israel to speak out against Lord Jakobovits. As a result, the presumed authority of the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies to speak for the whole of British Jewry was comprehensively rejected by the MAFF, to the extent that by the summer of 1990 the MAFF was routinely including the CPS, Manchester Jewry, the Federation of Synagogues, the Union, and other independent orthodox groups on its circulation lists. These lists also mentioned, separately, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation, whose spiritual leaders, Rabbis A. Levy and P. Toledano, had been careful to distance themselves from the Chief Rabbi.50 Space does not permit a blow-by-blow account of the negotiations between the various Jewish interests and the MAFF which proceeded between February 1988 and June 1990. But some features of these negotiations are worthy of mention. The first was that, at a very early stage, and in a quite deliberate fashion, shechita was put on the agenda of the Conservative government at the highest levels. At the time of the 1987 General Election, and in response to an initiative from the CPS, Mrs. Thatcher appeared to indicate that her government had no intention of implementing policies designed to ban shechita.51 This meant—as the opponents of shechita well understood—that the government must have ruled out the imposition of any form of stunning. A subsidiary issue here concerned the obligation placed upon the Board, by its constitution, of treating the Chief Rabbi and the spiritual head of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews (for this purpose Rabbi Dr Levy) as equals. It is clear from correspondence in my possession that this obligation had been honoured more in the breach than in the fulfilment, a factor which I believe bolstered Rabbi Levy in his determination to play an independent role. 51 G. Alderman, ‘London Jews and the 1987 General Election,’ Jewish Quarterly 34 (3) [1987], 16; Jewish Tribune, 11 June 1987: 1 50

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

155

But if shechita was indeed to continue, it could only do so in a manner acceptable to the whole of orthodox Jewry. If the MAFF attempted to impose a settlement unacceptable to these groups, Mrs. Thatcher ran the risk of a Jewish campaign against her. Through Rabbi Zvi Telsner, of the Finchley (Federation) Synagogue, pressure was maintained on the Prime Minister, at a constituency level, as negotiations got under way.52 And what of the Board of Deputies? Its President, Dr Kopelowitz, was obliged to enter into a dialogue with the independent groups, and its Shechita Committee adopted a somewhat novel, proactive posture, as it became clear that Federation, Manchester and Spanish and Portuguese deputies on it were not prepared to see its policy dictated by the Chief Rabbinate.53 On 19 July 1989 the Office of the Chief Rabbi issued a press statement to the effect that a letter had been sent to the MAFF referring to “some anxiety that the wording of some of the [draft] Regulations may be misinterpreted.” The letter itself, which was not made public, referred to disquiet over the description of the shechita cut (“several uninterrupted cuts,” it admitted, “are indispensable for large cattle”) and to the view that an animal in an upright restraining pen used for shechita “must be lifted from the ground.”54 On 27 July the MAFF received a quite separate letter, over the signatures of the some of the principal orthodox rabbis in the UK, making the following points: 1) The number of uninterrupted strokes must be left to the qualified slaughter- man (Shochet). 2) It [must] be clear that no pressure be required to speed the act of slaughter.

M. Thatcher to Rabbi Z. Telsner, 23 June 1988; Telsner to Thatcher, 25 July 1988. Two other leading members of the Conservative Party, Viscount Whitelaw and Lord Joseph, were also lobbied, through the good offices of Rabbi Schlesinger: John MacGregor (Minister of Agriculture) to Viscount Whitelaw, 18 April1988 Shimon Cohen (Executive Officer, Office of the Chief Rabbi) to Lord Joseph. 11 April 1988. 53 CPS to Kopelowitz, 8 June 1990: towards the end of 1988 the Chief Rabbi’s Coordinating Group had been, suspended: Alderman, ‘Anglo-Jewry,’ 23. 54 Lord Jakobovits to John MacGregor, 18 July 1989. 52

156

Controversy and Crisis

3) The restraining Pen must be approved by both yourself and appropriate Rabbinical Authorities. 4) A special clause be included that Shechitah is permitted and this be according to Jewish Law under the appropriate Rabbinical Authority.55 Belatedly, on 2 August 1989, Dr Kopelowitz wrote to the MAFF endorsing both letters. On 14 June 1990 draft Regulations relating to the slaughter of animals and of poultry were laid before Parliament. Regulation 22 of the regulations relating to animals proscribed the use of a rotating or casting pen for shechita after 5 July 1992; shechita must now be carried out in an upright restraining pen approved by the government. However, by letter dated 20 June 1990 the Meat Hygiene Division of the MAFF indicated that, in spite of earlier misgivings, it was now prepared to approve a pen in which animals are “raised clear of the ground for a few seconds, immediately prior to slaughter.”56 By virtue of Regulation 25 a shochet must sever both the carotids and the jugulars; but he may do so “by rapid, uninterrupted movements” of the knife. The poultry regulations also refer to “rapid, uninterrupted movements,” and enjoin the shochet to sever the carotid arteries. By letter to the CPS dated 6 August 1990 the Meat Hygiene Division confirmed that “the regulations do not prevent severance of the trachea or oesophagus and guidance on this point has been issued to Local Authorities to avoid any misunderstanding”; this reassurance was subsequently written into a Code of Practice which came into effect at the beginning of 1993.57 Regulation 26 of the animal regulations stipulates that shechita shall be carried out by a person who has satisfied the Rabbinical Commission “of his ability to slaughter animals with the infliction of as little pain and suffering as possible.” Under licensing regulations The letter was signed by Rabbi H.B. Padwa, the Principal Rabbinical Authority of the Union, and endorsed by Rabbi J.H. Dunner (of the Union), Rabbis Levy and Toledano of the Spanish and Portuguese community, Rabbi Lichtenstein of the Federation, Rabbi Rakow of Gateshead and Rabbi Krausz, the Senior Dayan of the Manchester Beth Din. 56 M.J. Griffiths (Meat Hygiene Division, MAFF) to the author, 20 June 1990. 55

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

157

made separately in respect of slaughter of poultry in England and Wales and in Scotland, in 1991, shechita of poultry may be carried out by a person so authorised by the Rabbinical Commission or by the Chief Rabbi in Scotland; the words “with the infliction of as little pain and suffering as possible” do not appear.58 Four years have now passed since Parliament made the Humane Conditions Regulations. The opposition of the CPS and of the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Federation of Synagogues and of Manchester, continued without respite until the very last moment before parliamentary approval of the regulations was signified.59 The inability of the Board of Deputies to exercise any semblance of control over independent orthodoxy was now palpable; at a charged meeting of the Board’s Shechita Committee on 21 June 1990 Dr Kopelowitz, referring to a statement made by Dayan Lichtenstein two days previously, declared: “I beg all those who have any influence in these matters to throw this out, and for once to understand that the President of the Board is the master of the house”—an unprecedented denunciation which led to a rift between the Board and the Federation. And at a meeting of the Rabbinical Commission held on 11 July “it was unanimously agreed that the new Regulations will not impede the traditional practice of Shechita provided that strict Rabbinical control is maintained as hitherto.”60 Had those who opposed the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies perchance over-reacted? Shechita continues in defiance of the FAWC and the animal welfare lobby, whose members made no secret of their

Welfare of Red Meat Animals at Slaughter Code of Practice (MAFF, August 1992), para. 81. 58 Slaughter of Poultry (Licences and Specified Qualifications) Regulations (SI. 1991/1676), section 5. 59 Dayan Y.Y. Lichtenstein to J. Gummer (Minister of Agriculture), 28 June 1990; Manchester Beth Din to Gummer, 29 June 1990; Manchester Machzikei Hadass to Gummer, 9 July 1990. 60 Minutes of the Shechita Committee of the Board of Deputies, 25 July1990; my emphasis. I understand that the resolution of the Rabbinical Commission went on to say “If there is interference we shall declare shechita forbidden,” and that this reservation and warning was communicated to the government. 57

158

Controversy and Crisis

anger at the compromise to which the MAFF had agreed.61 Yet the principles (so far as they related to shechita), embodied in the Humane Conditions Regulations eventually approved by Parliament were not those to which either the Chief Rabbi or the Board of Deputies had signified their initial consent: the concessions made had come as a result of pressure from the so-called dissidents within Anglo-Jewry. Their unhappiness with the Regulations as approved stemmed from the overriding fact that statutory regulation of shechita is now tighter than ever before; religious freedom has been infracted in the process. The shochet must sever the carotids and/or jugulars as required by the state, not by the halacha; if he fails to do this, he risks incurring severe criminal penalties—perhaps imprisonment.62 Upright pens, each costing around £ 25,000, have had to be installed in shechita slaughterhouses, thus increasing the price of kosher meat. Shechita of cattle is now carried out exactly as in the USA. Yet not only is shechita not regarded, legally, as a humane method of slaughter, as in the USA: the Humane Conditions Regulations explicitly stigmatise shechita as causing “pain and suffering.” The strategies hitherto used by Anglo-Jewry in the defence of shechita, and identified by Charlton and Kaye in relation to the period before 1985, turned out to be seriously deficient in the context of the unprecedented challenge posed by the FAWC report published that year. In particular, it was not political restraint or the strategic placement of communal personnel that obtained the concessions eventually embodied in the Humane Conditions Regulations, but a quite different set of strategies invoked by Jews whose outlook was much more belligerent even if their resources were far fewer.63 The status of the Chief Rabbinate was Daily Telegraph, 14 June 1990, 7. In the course of writing this article I have had reported to me (April 1994) an incident at an abattoir in the Home Counties, in which a shochet was reprimanded by a veterinary officer for allegedly failing to sever the carotids of poultry, even though the shechita was, from a religious point of view, perfectly in order. 63 A Shechita Defence Fund, upon which the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies could apparently call, was never made available to the dissident groups. As at 31 December 1991 the Fund was in credit to the value of over £115,000 (accounts supplied by the National Council of Shechita Boards). 61 62

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

159

much damaged, certainly within Anglo-Jewry if not beyond it, while independent orthodox groupings demonstrated their contempt for the Board of Deputies by ignoring it. The decision of the Federation of Synagogues, in the summer of 1994, no longer to send representatives to Board meetings, stemmed, in part, from its treatment at the hands of the Board during the shechita negotiations.64 These conclusions and outcomes also have a wider significance, extending far beyond the concerns of Anglo-Jewry and the minutiae of the ongoing controversy about the freedom to practise religious slaughter. Leaders of religious and ethnic minorities which have arrived in Britain much more recently than the Jews have frequently drawn attention, or had their attention drawn, to the organisational structure of Anglo-Jewry which, it is argued, provides for comprehensive, efficient and effective representation vis-à-vis the British state. The recent history of shechita suggests that the reality is otherwise. Where a minority is monolithic in terms of its beliefs and value systems, where its members can agree on certain fundamentals of its faith and on certain political priorities, a structure resembling that of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbinate may indeed work well. But where a minority can boast no such internal cohesiveness, or where (as in the case of Anglo-Jewry) pluralisation and polarisation have taken root, such a structure will not work, and may indeed itself be a cause of further intra-communal tensions. It is clear, as the shechita controversy showed, that through a process of rapid pluralisation Anglo-Jewry has now outgrown the ecclesiastical and representational structures, erected in the 19th century, which had served it so well in the past. Anglo-Jewish responses to the Humane Conditions Regulations also reflected a growing tension between two views of the preferred public profile of the Jews in Britain, one subdued and reactive, the other celebratory and proactive. A poignant 1 base this statement on numerous conversations with ecclesiastical and lay officers of the Federation. The decision of the Federation to withdraw from the Board was reported in the Jewish Chronicle, 3 June 1994, 1, where its president, Arnold Cohen, is quoted as saying: “I do not feel it [the Board] is representative of the community.” 64

160

Controversy and Crisis

epitaph to this story illustrates this particular theme. The Shechita Committee of the Board of Deputies was not used to functioning as a proper decision-making body, but had customarily been summoned merely to hear what others had decided in relation to matters within its remit. However, during the negotiations with the MAFF the Committee determined to issue a new booklet explaining and defending shechita. The text was approved by the Committee on 1 May 1990, and included the following paragraph: Committed Christians may care to consider that at the Last Supper, Jesus and the disciples ate the Passover—undoubtedly (as for hundreds of years previously) the Paschal Lamb as slaughtered by the Shechita Method. Mysteriously, this sentence was omitted from the pamphlet when published the folling November.65

In a letter to the author dated 5 December 1990 Mr David Massel, the Board’s Executive Director, explained: “So far as the “paschal lamb” reference is concerned, comments were expressed to the Chairman [of the Shechita Committee, Mrs Z. Cohen] and myself from various [unnamed] quarters and it was decided that, all in all, it would be prudent to omit it.”

65

The Defence of Shechita: Anglo-Jewry and the ‘Humane Conditions’ Regulations of 1990

161

VIII JEWISH POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND VOTING PATTERNS IN ENGLAND 1945 -1987

[in R. Wistrich (ed), Terms of Survival: The Jewish World Since 1945 (London, 1995), 249 – 68.]

P

olitical attitudes and allegiances are the outcome of a complex dynamic, the precise nature of which is the subject of intense academic dispute. The influence of the home environment, and of parental example, have been identified as important in the process of political socialization in the United Kingdom. Peer groups and geographical location also play a part, as does exposure to the media. Above all, there is the impact of socioeconomic class. Until the 1970s class was reckoned to be the single most important predictor of political attitudes in Great Britain. “Class is the basis of British politics [the author of a standard textbook wrote]; all else is embellishment and detail.”1 “The most significant division in electoral loyalties [another author explained] is that the well-to-do … predominantly vote Conservative, while those of a lower social status and a lower income group tend to vote Labour.”2 These assertions, though undoubtedly sweeping and oversimplified, embodied a basic truth. And while the extent of this truth is questioned even in relation to the 1950s and 1960s, there is also general agreement that, through a variety of sociological and economic changes which the country has undergone, the bases of political identity and voting habits have become much more varied and complex over the past fifteen or so years. The class structure of Britain, in particular, has experienced a fairly massive realignment, as the old Victorian heavy industries (labour-intensive and dependent upon a reservoir of unskilled manual workers) have contracted and decayed; in their place have come new technologies demanding a skilled and educated workforce, and prompting new methods of marketing and selling. On the evidence of the 1987 general election Britain is indeed ‘two nations’: prosperity has come to those willing and able to move with the times.3 Class has not disappeared as a prime factor in the shaping of political attitudes in Britain; rather, a new class structure has emerged, more P. J. C. Pulzer, Political Representation and Elections in Britain (3rd edn, London, 1975), 102. 2 R. M. Punnett, British Government and Politics (3rd edn, London, 1976), 70. 3 See generally G. Alderman, Britain: A One-Party State? (London, 1989), ch. 1. 1

164

Controversy and Crisis

complex than before and more subtle in its relationship to the act of voting. This development, added to a number of political factors (such as the re-emergence of ‘issue’ voting), has materially assisted in the growth of ‘third parties’ (such as the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales and the Liberal, Social-Democratic and Green parties in England). Above all, it has dealt a heavy blow to the Labour Party in the form in which it has existed hitherto. The Labour Part was established in 1900 as the political arm of the trade union movement; it served— quite deliberately and unashamedly—the interests of the manual working classes and, in the course of time, it adopted the rhetoric and (to a limited extent) the dogmas of socialism. The general election of 1945 which swept Labour into power represented a genuine expression of the popularity of ‘Labourism’. More than forty-five years later the constituency which Labour addressed no longer exists; the class it was created to serve has disappeared; the collectivist policies its Constitution proclaims resulted in electoral catastrophe. In considering the development of Anglo-Jewish political attitudes it is necessary to bear these trends and these considerations in mind because the political partisanship of English Jews in modern times (and certainly since 1945) has reflected in large measure the alignments of the greater socioeconomic and occupational groups of which the Jews have formed but a small part.4 None the less, two other interactive considerations have impinged upon the political attitudes of Anglo-Jewry. First, Anglo-Jewry has been affected inevitably by the comportment of political parties and of individual politicians towards matters of Jewish interest and concern. Second, and consequentially, Jewish political behaviour has been modified by the reaction to this comportment at specific times. To put the matter bluntly, there have been occasions on and circumstances in which a ‘Jewish vote’ has manifested itself, sometimes in marked contrast to secular trends. It was to be seen I use the term ‘English Jews’ throughout this paper. In 1918, of the 300,000 or so Jews in the UK, over 95 per cent lived in England; in 1985 the proportion was about the same (out of 330,000). 4

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

165

at work at the general ejection of 1906, when it was orchestrated to good effect against a Conservative Party widely perceived (because of the passage of the Aliens Act by Balfour’s government the previous year) to be anti-Jewish.5 It was at work again during the Whitechapel by-election of 1930, this time against the Labour government whose White Paper on Palestine had evoked the most hostile reactions on the part of the Jewish masses of East London.6 It survived the Second World War intact, and there are politicians today who know that they cannot afford to ignore it. Anglo-Jewry has always been an urban community. When peace came to Europe in 1945 this community consisted of not more than 450,000 persons.7 Roughly two-thirds lived, as roughly two-thirds have always lived, in London and its immediately surrounding areas; by 1985 (when the total estimated Jewish population of the UK had fallen to 330,000) the proportion living in Greater London and the ‘Home Counties’ was about 67 per cent, or roughly 219,000.8 But in the intervening forty years a great change had come about in the specific location of the London population. Before 1939 the bulk of London Jewry lived in the ‘East End’, a deprived area of poor housing and chronic overcrowding into which the refugees from tsarist persecution had poured in the quarter-century following the assassination of Alexander II. The political orientation of East End Jewry was decidedly left-wing. Jews were active in Labour politics. Many Jews and Jewish trade unionists were among the founders (in 1918) of the Stepney Central Labour Party the secretary of which was the formidable Oscar Tobin, a Rumanian Jew who played a key role in the political education of Clement Attlee. Attlee’s biographer has rightly described Tobin as “the East End’s most influential political ‘boss’” at that period.9 Within a

G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford, 1983), 75-6. Ibid, 112-13; J. Gorny, The British Labour Movement and Zionism 1917—1948 (London, 1983), 91-6. 7 H. Neustatter, ‘Demographic and other statistical aspects of Anglo-Jewish population, 1960-65’, in M. Freedman (ed.), A Minority in Britain (London, 1955), 76. 8 S. Waterman and B. Kosmin, British Jewry in the Eighties (London, 1986), 21. 5 6

166

Controversy and Crisis

few years the mantle had devolved upon M. H. (‘Morry’) Davis, who combined the Labour leadership on Stepney Borough Council with the presidency of the Federation of Synagogues, then the largest synagogal body in Britain. I have dealt elsewhere with Davis’s extraordinary political and communal careers, both of which came to an abrupt halt when he was sent to prison at the end of 1944.10 Here I wish only to remark upon some aspects of the significance of his tenure of power. His combination of intense Zionism, socialist fervour and cynical (not to say rebellious) attitude towards the ruling elites of Anglo-Jewry reflected views widely held by working-class Jews and the Jewish petty-bourgeoisie. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s defection from the Labour Parry in 1931 helped the party overcome the negative image it had acquired through the Passfield White Paper. The party stood by the Balfour Declaration (however that might be interpreted), was robust in its denunciation of the appeasement of Nazi Germany (in spite of its opposition to rearmament) and was steadfast in its support of working-class aspirations. All these factors made it acceptable in the eyes of the Anglo-Jewish proletariat and it was a party towards which Jews with political ambition naturally gravitated.11 Of the twenty-eight Jews elected to Parliament in 1945—a record—no less than twenty-six took the Labour whip. Of the remaining two one was Daniel Lipson, a rebel Conservative who, in a celebrated incident in 1937 had run successfully against the official Conservative candidate in Cheltenham, where Lipson’s Jewishness had caused him to be passed over by the local party.12 The other was the Communist Phil Piratin, who had snatched the much-depopulated

K. Harris, Attlee (London, 1982), 42. G. Alderman, London Jewry & London Politics, 1889—1986 (London, 1989), 83—9; G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues 1887—1987 (London, 1987), 55-7, 64-8. 11 See, for example, the views of the veteran Manchester Jewish politician Sir Sidney Hamburger, quoted in S. Brook, The Club: The Jews of Modern Britain (London, 1989), 271. 12 Alderman, Jewish Community, 120. 9

10

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

167

Stepney seat from Labour to become (as it turned out) Britain’s last Communist MP. I have calculated that about half Piratin’s vote was Jewish.13 His victory was a potent reminder of the intensity of the Jewish infatuation with communist politics in East London in the 1930s and 1940s, and it was followed by others At the Stepney Borough Council elections of 1946 the party won ten seats, all in heavily Jewish wards and seven of them by Jewish candidates. In the same year Jack Gaster, son of the late Rabbi Dr Moses Gaster (Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews) was elected as one of the two Communist councillors on the London County Council for the Mile End division.14 As late as 1957 every one of the four Communists elected to Stepney Council was a Jew.15 But the love-affair between Jews and Communism in East London was based upon a combination of circumstances that could not outlive the era of its birth. Alone of the political parties in the capital, the Communists had taken the menace of the British Union of Fascists seriously from the start; for this reason even Jewish capitalists (admittedly modest capitalists) had supported them financially.16 Communists were very prominent in organizing tenants facing eviction from rack-renting landlords; and they took a stand against, and benefited from, the iniquities of the Davis regime in Stepney.17 The reputation of the Labour Party in East London suffered as a result of the misdeeds of Davis and his associates, and the Communists reaped a rich and predictable harvest. However, with the end of AngloSoviet cooperation against the Nazis, and the onset of the Cold War, the relationship rapidly deteriorated. Whatever sentimental attachment Jews might have harboured towards Communism was killed off by news of Soviet anti-Semitism (under Stalin), proof of Soviet antiZionism (in 1956 and 1967), and disenchantment with the realities

Ibid., 118, Alderman, London Jewry, 98. 15 Jewish Chronicle (hereafter JC), 11 January 1957, 9. 16 Alderman, Jewish Community, 117. 17 Alderman, London Jewry, 95, 97. 13 14

168

Controversy and Crisis

of East European totalitarianism.18 There could be no question of replanting the seeds of Jewish Communism in the London suburbs to which Jews were moving in large numbers in the immediate post-war period. Daniel Lipson’s presence in Parliament from 1937 to 1950 was a potent reminder of the strength of anti-Jewish prejudice then to be found in the Conservative Party. Official Conservative MPs who were Jewish did not reappear at Westminster until 1955, when Sir Henry D’Avigdor Goldsmid was returned for Walsall South; the following year he was joined by Sir Keith (later Lord) Joseph, elected for Leeds NorthEast. Sir Henry and Sir Keith had both been educated at Harrow and Oxford; neither was remotely typical of Anglo-Jewry. In due course Sir Keith was to play a central part in alerting his party colleagues to the advantages to be gained from harnessing the power of the Jewish vote for the Conservative cause. But in the 1950s the hostility with which sections of the party regarded Jews was still strong, and had indeed been rejuvenated in the aftermath of the Holocaust by the popular antiSemitism that had accompanied the last and most bloody years of the Palestine Mandate. It is worth recalling that those who led the Conservative Party at the time of Suez (1956) were not friends of Israel, and that the mood of the party as a whole, if it was anti-Egyptian, was certainly not proIsraeli.19 It must also be emphasized that although anti-Semitism was rampant in some Conservative associations in rural areas, it was by no means confined to the countryside. In post-1945 Britain the most blatant example came from Finchley, in north-west London. Briefly, at the London borough council elections of 1957 Liberals alleged that the Finchley Golf Club, “officered by prominent Conservatives,” was implementing a policy of excluding Jews from membership.20The Ibid, 146 L. D. Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis (London, 1964), 176-8. 20 B. Donoghue, ‘Finchley’, in D. E. Butler and A. King, The British General Election of 1964 (London, 1965), 241-53; JC, 3 May 1957, 10. See also Board of Deputies of British Jews, Minutes of the Metropolitan Area committee of the Defence Committee: C6/1/2/5, 10 July 1957. 18 19

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

169

allegations turned out to be true, and they were followed, three years later, by revelations of Jewish quotas operated by other golf clubs, in such prominently Jewish areas as Hendon and Stanmore.21 These events were subsequently held to have been responsible for a swing of Jewish voters away from the Conservative Party and towards the Liberals. There is some statistical support for this view, and it is also the case that Liberals did well in Jewish wards.22 In 1956 there was not one Liberal member of Finchley Council; by the time of the 1959 general election there were seven (all elected at the expense of the Conservatives), and at the 1962 local polls the Liberals advanced still further. It must be added at once that these Liberal victories were essentially the result of protest votes, and that they owed something to the national Liberal revival at this time. Nonetheless, their relationship to Jewish sensitivities could not be ignored. When the young Mrs Thatcher was first elected at Finchley, in 1959, she quickly embarked on a pro-Jewish policy from which—in broad terms—she rarely deviated. At the general election of 1945 only eight of the thirty-four Jewish Labour candidates had failed to secure election, whereas all five official Jewish Conservatives and all sixteen Jewish Liberals had been defeated; indeed, the 1945 election was the first since Emancipation at which no Jewish Liberals were returned. The evidence of the fate of parliamentary candidates, therefore, points to a very strong attachment on the part of Anglo-Jewry to the Labour Party. But the situation in reality was not nearly straightforward as this parliamentary analysis might suggest. The vast majority of constituencies where Jews were to be found in large numbers (the two seats at Bethnal Green, the three in Hackney, two of the three in Stepney, the Stoke Newington seat, Hendon North, the two seats at Ilford, Central and North-East Leeds, North Salford, South Tottenham, the two Walthamstow seats, the two at Wembley, the two at Willesden, and Glasgow Gorbals) had indeed all returned Labour MPs. This did not of course mean that all or nearly 21 22

Hendon Times, 1 April 1960, 6. Donoghue, ‘Finchley’, 250-2.

170

Controversy and Crisis

all Jews had voted Labour. Evidence relating to the make-up of Anglo-Jewish political preferences at the time is largely qualitative. In 1947 the research unit of the Jewish Fellowship conducted a wide-raging survey of 40,000 Jews; 22.5 per cent of respondents identified themselves as Conservative supporters, 33.1 per cent as Liberals, 32.9 per cent as Labour supporters or ‘socialists’, and 2.3 per cent as Communists.23 These percentages, as indications of any overall pattern, must be treated with a great deal of scepticism, because the number of respondents who answered the question dealing with party preferences amounted to less than 8 per cent of those to whom the questionnaire was sent. What is important, however, is that even in 1947 Jews were fully prepared to identify themselves as Conservative supporters. In 1964 a much more reliable survey was carried out by Dr Bernard (now Lord) Donoghue in the Finchley constituency In a random sample of 130 electors, two-fifths voted Conservative and only one-fifth Labour; in 1959 the ratio had been three Conservatives to one Liberal and one Labour.24 The survival and careful nurturing of a tradition of Jewish support for the Conservative Party was to pay handsome dividends in the outer-suburban areas of the large conurbations, Jewish migration to which (already under way before 1939) was to become a key feature of communal settlement after 1945. In London this tradition had remained intact during the inter-war period; to the Toryism of the established Jewish gentry was added, at this time, the Toryism of the Jewish nouveaux riches.25 Even in an area as strongly working-class as Hackney had become by the 1950s, Jews could be found standing as Conservatives; five Jews stood in the Conservative interest in the Hackney Borough Council elections of 1953.26 In the following year a Jew secured election as a Conservative in the Cricklewood ward of Willesden, then an area of expanding Jewish settlement in north-west JC, 2 September 1949, 9.21 Hendon Times, 1 April 1960, 6. Donoghue, ‘Finchley’, 251. 25 Alderman, London Jewry, 107-8. 26 JC, 1 May 1953, 25; 25 May, 11. Out of a total of fifty-one Jews elected to London borough councils in 1953, no less than twelve were Conservatives. 23 24

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

171

London. In 1930 and again in 1946 Herman Courlander was elected Mayor at Richmond-upon-Thames, J. L. Freeman became Mayor of Hendon in 1950 and Emil Grant served as Mayor of Finchley in 1952-3.27 All were Conservatives. It is also worth observing that at the 1945 general election there were a few constituencies, already heavily populated with Jews, which were held by the Conservatives: Hendon South, Finchley, Leeds North and Middleton & Prestwich (north Manchester). Significantly, these were all marginal seats situated in outer suburbs. During the 1950s and 1960s two quite separate but complementary processes eroded the foundations of the inter-war alliance between Anglo-Jewry and the Left. One was political, grounded in developing Labour attitudes towards Zionism and the State of Israel; the other was sociological and demographic. In driving a wedge between the Jews and Labour the second process was far more important than the first, the broad outlines of which are well known. In November 1945, barely four months after an election victory that was celebrated widely in Jewish circles, the Labour government announced its intention to uphold the terms of the 1939 White Paper on Palestine. So began the last and most unhappy phase of the British Mandate— unhappy not merely for the Yishuv but for an Anglo-Jewish community now seen to be at odds with an elected government, and which suffered in consequence from renewed fascist activity against Jews and Jewish property. The resulting sense of shock was compounded by the evident helplessness of the Jewish Labour MPs, few of whom were willing to step out of line and publicly oppose government policy. In April 1946 only six Jewish Labour MPs, “‘after desperate ‘lobbying’ by the Poale Zion,” could be persuaded to venture the slightest parliamentary opposition to Ernest Bevin’s Palestine policy.28 The blowing-up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 lost Zionism many friends in the British Labour movement; a number of MPs whose JC, 15 November 1946, 15; 24 March 1950, 6; 21 March 1952, 7; Richmond Herald, 14 November 1931 10; 3 November 1934, 6; 16 November 1946, 4. 28 JC, 26 April 1946, 5. 27

172

Controversy and Crisis

approach to the Palestine problem had previously been regarded as ‘even-handed’ now openly supported Bevin’s policy. Significantly, a proposal to outlaw anti-Semitism was rejected by the Labour Party Conference in 1946; a similar proposal in the House of Commons in 1948 failed to get past its first reading.29 Israel was recognized de facto by the Labour government in February 1949, and de jure in March 1950—but only after a general election (February 1950) in which the Labour Party had seen its majority slashed from 146 to just five seats. Some Jewish Labour supporters hoped that, with Bevin’s death (1951) and the State of Israel already a fact of life, relations between the Labour Party and British Jews could be restored to something like their former level. But the Suez crisis of 1956 thwarted efforts at reconciliation, the more so because Labour was then out of office, and so could not plead the burdens of government in defence of its attitude towards Israel. Within Anglo.-Jewry (and judging by the many communal gatherings held in October and November 1956) there was general unanimity that Israel had been justified in attacking Egypt in order to bring to an end years of terrorist incursions across the Gaza Strip; the Israeli conquest of Sinai was a further source of pride and, if this had been facilitated to some extent by Anglo-French intervention, so much the better. The seventeen Jewish Labour MPs returned in the 1955 election were therefore expected to support Israel’s position. This expectation was natural but most naive. All seventeen obeyed the three-line whip and voted against the government on November 1956, and all but one (Emanuel Shinwell, then in Australia) behaved similarly a week later.30 On 30 October, in an unexpected division that had not carried a three-line whip, seven Jewish Labour MPs had abstained; of these only Shinwell and Harold Lever (who sat for the Jewish constituency of Manchester Cheetham) made it clear that their abstentions had been deliberate.

29 30

A. Sharf, The British Press and Jews under Nazi Rule (London, 1964), 203. JC, 9 November 1956, 8; Epstein, op. cit., 188—9.

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

173

The standard response of Jewish Labour MPs to criticism from the community was to state that in Parliament they represented their constituents, not their fellow Jews. This was constitutionally correct, but was widely regarded within the community as nothing more than an excuse. The failure the Poale Zion activist and MP for East Willesden, Maurice Orbach, to even accidentally abstain, caused deep resentment, and was certainly a factor in his defeat there at the 1959 general election.31 The failure of Barnett Janner (in 1956 President both of the Board of Deputies and of the Zionist Federation) to abstain gave rise to a communal furore. But of more fundamental significance for the future relationship between Jews and Labour was the attitude of the new Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell’s previous record had been that of a friend to Israel. At the time of Suez, however, he had likened the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, to a policeman who had determined “to go in and help the burglar [i.e. Israel] shoot the householder [Egypt].”32 This comparison was not easily nor quickly forgiven, and it had certainly not been forgotten by the time of the Six Day War (1967), when the Labour government of Harold Wilson (again, regarded hitherto as a good friend of Israel) went to great lengths to distance itself from Israeli policy It is, I think, generally recognized that the Six Day War marked an ominous turning- point in the history of left-wing anti-Semitism in Britain.33 With the capture of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, till then the underdog of the Middle East, could henceforth be regarded as an imperialist, colonial power, ruling by force of arms over a downtrodden Palestinian Arab population. This aspect of Israeli policy can of course be criticized without questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish State or the justice of its reestablishment; many Jewish citizens of Israel have done so over the years. However, elements of the left in Britain (as elsewhere in Western Alderman, Jewish Community, 133, 139-41. This remark, made in the House of Commons on 3 November 1956, is quoted in Epstein, op. cit., 192. 33 On the origins and development of left-wing anti-Semitism in Britain see S. Cohen, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic (Leeds, 1984). 31 32

174

Controversy and Crisis

Europe) used the events of 1967 as an excuse to attack the very fact of Israel’s existence and, by scarcely-concealed implication, the entire basis of the movement for Jewish self-determination—that is, Zionism. The force of this attack was made all the greater by the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations (10 November 1975) equating Zionism with racism (more recently rescinded). Those who supported the Zionist cause could henceforth be branded as racists, and racism could be portrayed as part of a new ‘world Jewish conspiracy’ that was already alleged to embrace capitalism and imperialism.34 However vigorously left-wing anti-Zionists denied that their motives were in any way anti-Semitic, the reaction of Anglo-Jewry was one of justifiable scepticism and disbelief. Following Labour’s defeat at the 1979 general election, the ‘hard’—or ‘outside’—left began to make very significant inroads into the machinery of Labour policy-making at all levels. In September 1979 Councillor Arthur Super, a former Jewish mayor of Hackney, leaked news of a motion passed in secret by the Hackney North & Stoke Newington Labour Party the previous July, declaring its opposition to the very existence of the State of Israel.35 Super blamed the affair on a “small, but virulent, anti-Semitic element”; but a year later this element was evidently still very much in control, condemning the “Zionist State of Israel” and (as before) urging recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization.36 The Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in 1982 whipped the anti-Zionism of the left to fever-pitch. In May 1982 the Labour Parry’s National Executive Committee, which had already endorsed Palestinian selfdetermination and urged participation of the PLO in peace talks, passed a motion criticizing Israeli policies on the West Bank and the bombing of the Lebanon. Anti-Zionist motions had, by then, become standard items on the agenda-papers of many Constituency Labour Parties.37 The Manifesto prepared by the Labour Party for the 1983 general election proclaimed the right of Israel to exist within “secure internationally Ibid, 38-49. JC, 25 September 1979, 6; Hackney Gazette (25 September 1979, 6. 36 JC, 23 November 1979, 22; 11 July 1980, 22. 34 35

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

175

recognized borders,” but at the same time urged the establishment of a Palestinian state.38 Labour lost that election in disastrous fashion. But in London the party, dominated by the hard left, had won control of the Greater London Council in 1981, and, under the leadership of Ken Livingstone, embarked upon a five-year period of intense anti-Zionist activity that brought it and the Jewish community of London to a state of conflict unprecedented in British or Anglo-Jewish history.39 These developments (of which I have of necessity given only the barest outline) were of course of the profoundest significance for the relationship between Jews and Labour politics. But—by themselves— they would not necessarily have caused an irreparable rupture, and they would not—by themselves—have driven Jews into the arms of any other party. During the White Paper crisis of 1930 there had been a state of virtual warfare between London Jewry and the Labour government; but the crisis passed.40 In the years immediately following the 1967 war it was the Young Liberals who carried the banner of antiZionism with most enthusiasm.41 Both Zionism and unadulterated antiSemitism were to be observed at work in the Conservative Party at this time. Left-wing politics certainly pushed Jews into seeking political camps other than those of Labour in which to dwell. What pulled them towards the Conservatives was a quite different set of circumstances. In the quarter-century that followed the 1945 general election AngloJewry relocated itself geographically and socio-economically. The many provincial Jewish communities of Victorian England fast contracted as Anglo-Jewry became concentrated in a limited number of urban centres. Within these centres, and pre-eminently within the Greater London area, the Jews moved out of the original quasi-ghetto areas of settlement (often badly war-damaged) into the suburbs where, as we have already noted, a significant Jewish presence had already established itself JC, 7 May 1982, 10; 28 August, 6. The New Hope for Britain (London, 1983), 38. 39 See generally Alderman, London Jewry, ch. 5. 40 D. Cesarani, ‘Zionism in England, 1917-1939,’ University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1986), ch. 2. 41 Alderman, London Jewry, 117. 37 38

176

Controversy and Crisis

before 1939. Thus by the mid-1970s London’s East End, which at one time accounted for two-thirds of London Jewry, contained less than a quarter, while the outer London area accounted for over 70 per cent. More specifically, five outer London boroughs (Barnet, Brent and Harrow in the west and Enfield and Redbridge in the north-east) came to contain over half the Jewish population of London (see Table 1). The pattern was repeated, albeit on a lesser scale, in other cities. In Leeds Jews have moved out of the Leylands and Chapeltown into the newer suburban districts of Moortown and Alwoodley, and even further afield—just as in London they are moving beyond the county boundary into areas of south Hertfordshire and south-west Essex.42 In Greater Manchester (the second ‘Jewish’ city in the UK, accommodating about 10 per cent of Jewry) and its surrounding districts the bulk of the community is now to be found in the northern and north-western suburbs, such as Crumpsall, Cheetham Hill and Prestwich.43 In moving out, from the city centres to the suburbs, the Jews also moved upwards, from the ranks of the working classes and the petty bourgeoisie into a more comfortable middle-class existence. Selfperception is as important in this regard as any objective measurement of social-class composition. In his study of the Jewish community of Edgware (now part of the London Borough of Barnet) Professor Ernest Krausz showed that although Edgware Jewry in the early 1960s was thoroughly working class in origin (53 per cent of his sample having been born in London’s East End) over 80 per cent regarded themselves as belonging to the middle class, while only just over 8 per cent said they belonged to the working class.44 From the point of view of occupation, moreover, Jewish men in Edgware were to be found predominantly in the professional, managerial, skilled and selfOn Leeds see E. Krausz, Leeds Jewry (Cambridge, 1964), 24-5.. Alderman, Jewish Community, 136. 44 E. Krausz, ‘A sociological field study of Jewish suburban life in Edgware 1962—63 with special reference to minority identification,’ University of London Ph.D. thesis 1965, 93 and 103. A few years later a similar pattern of response was found among Jewish Hackney: J. W. Carrier, ‘Working class Jews in present-day London: a sociological study,’ University of London M.Phil. thesis, 1969, 346. 42 43

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

177

employed groups—the exact opposite of the picture for the general population of the district.45 The trends illuminated by Professor Krausz have been confirmed by both aggregate analysis and other surveys carried out since his work was completed. Estimates prepared by Professor S. Prais and Mrs M. Schmool of the social-class structure of Anglo-Jewry in 1961 emphasized the tendency for British Jews to be found among the higher social classes (see Table 2). Their work suggested that in the early 1960s over 40 per cent of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes, whereas these categories accounted for less than 20 per cent of the general population. A survey of Sheffield Jewry (south Yorkshire) carried out in 1974, demonstrated that over half the male sample fell within the categories of employers, managers, professional and middle- ranking non-manual workers, compared with less than one-fifth in the city of Sheffield as a whole.46 The survey of Jews in Hackney, inner-north London (1974-5) put about a third of the economically active Jewish sample in these categories; in the general working population of the borough as a whole only 12 per cent were within these groups.47 The analysis of Redbridge Jewry (north-east London), carried out in the winter of 1977-8, showed that no less than 70 per cent of the Jews there belonged to the professional, managerial and skilled non-manual occupational classes; for all economically active males in the borough the proportion was about 50 per cent.48 In Greater London as a whole it seems that that Jews in the 1970s were roughly twice as numerous as non-Jews in these socio-economic groups. It is also worth noting the heavy representation of Jews in selfemployed occupations: 55 per cent of Edgware Jewish males were found to be se1f-emploved, 44 per cent in Sheffield, 34 per cent in Redbridge and 21 per cent in Hackney. In Great Britain as a whole the 1971 Census placed less than 8 per cent of the economically active Krausz, ‘A sociological field study,’ 67. B. A. Kosmin, M. Bauer and N. Grizzard, Steel City Jews (London, 1976), 22. 47 B. A. Kosmin and N. Grizzard, Jews in an Inner London Borough (London) [1975] 27. 48 Waterman and Kosmin, op. cit., p. 45; Alderman, Jewish Community, 158. 45 46

178

Controversy and Crisis

population in this category.49 The demonstrable upward social mobility of British Jews has undoubtedly played a central role in their movement away from Labour and toward Conservative politics. The class structure of AngloJewry— and especially of suburban Anglo-Jewry —marked it out as a group that would be particularly receptive to Conservative ideologies as these were redeveloped first under Edward Heath (1965—75) and then under Margaret Thatcher who succeeded him as Conservative leader. We must bear in mind in this connection that in 1970 about 64 per cent of the ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘Cl’ occupational groups (embracing professional, administrative, managerial and non-manual occupations) over the country as a whole voted Conservative, and that although this proportion fell somewhat over the five subsequent general elections, it has not since then dropped below 50 per cent; whereas the percentage of the combined A, B and C1 categories supporting Labour has contracted fairly steadily from 25 per cent in 1970 to just 18 per cent in 1987.50 One particular aspect of British electoral sociology in the 1980s has been the relationship between voting behaviour and housing tenure. At the general elections of 1983 and 1987 about half of all owneroccupiers (that is, people who had bought or were buying their homes, as opposed to those who lived in rented accommodation) voted Conservative; only about a quarter of owner-occupiers voted Labour, and about the same proportion supported the Social-Democratic/ Liberal ‘Alliance’. We know that in Redbridge at the end of the 1970s over 90 per cent of Jews were owner-occupiers, and that in those parts of Barnet, Brent and Harrow where Jews reside in large numbers the proportion of owner-occupiers is not less than a half and often much higher.51 Waterman and Kosmin, op. cit., 44; B. A. Kosmin and C. Levy, The Work and Employment of Suburban Jews [Redbridge] (London, 1981), 19. 50 Alderman, One-Party State?, 8. 51 B. A. Kosmin, C. Levy and P. Wigodsky, The Social Demography of Redbridge Jewry (London, 1979), 25; R. Waller, Almanac of British Politics (3rd edn, Beckenham, 1987), 40—2, 46, 70. 49

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

179

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Anglo-Jewish political attitudes and loyalties, which were substantially Liberal for much of the nineteenth century and substantially Labour in the mid-twentieth, are now substantially Conservative in orientation. That this is so can be demonstrated by reference to both quantitative and qualitative data. During the general election of February 1974 I began collecting data relating to the voting preferences of Jews in selected London parliamentary constituencies. The series is summarized in Table 3.52 In respect of the Hendon North, Ilford North and Finchley results, and for comparative purposes, I have inserted, in parentheses, the proportions of the combined A, B and Cl categories found (by national opinion surveys) to have supported the political parties at each election.53 It will be readily apparent that the broad trend of Jewish electoral behaviour in north-east London (Ilford) and the north-west of the capital (Hendon and Finchley) has been in line with that of the top social classes; usually, indeed, the Jews have proved somewhat more Conservatively inclined, which is what one would expect. At Finchley in 1983 the Jewish result, which showed an abnormal degree of support for Labour, probably reflected a short-term antipathy on the part of Jewish voters directed against aspects of Mrs Thatcher’s foreign policy—specifically, British support for PLO participation in a Middle East peace settlement. In the Hackney North result for 1979, the percentages in parentheses refer to the national pattern of the C2, D and E categories—that is, skilled and unskilled manual workers, casual workers and state pensioners. Again, the remarkable similarity between the Jewish pattern and that of these lower social classes needs no further emphasis, and reflects the social-class composition of Hackney Jewry—an ageing community drawing its political inspiration from memories of the vibrant leftwing Jewish tradition with which the area was once saturated. The methodology of the Hackney, Hendon & Ilford surveys is explained Alderman, Jewish Community, 202—5; the methodology of the Finchley surveys follows that employed at Ilford. 53 The full data may be found in Alderman, One-Party State?, and D. Butler a D. Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (London, 1980), 343. 52

180

Controversy and Crisis

One aspect of Jewish political sociology not touched upon in these surveys is the relationship (if any) of partisanship to degree of religiosity. It is tempting to suppose that the more ‘right-wing’ a British Jew is in religious terms, the more likely he or she is to be a Conservative supporter. The Conservative Party has a long history of support for denominational schools, and its emphasis on the centrality of religious commitment (Christian or otherwise) in the moral and ethical underpinning the state is (it is argued) likely to enhance its attraction for the right-wing orthodox. It is certainly true, as I have shown elsewhere, that Hackney’s ‘ultraorthodox’ community is strongly identified with Conservative politics. In 1978 Josef Lobenstein won, in a heavily ultra-orthodox ward, the only seat on an otherwise entirely Labour-controlled Hackney Borough Council; councillor Lobenstein, a leading member of British Agudas Israel and of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, is now President of the North London Adass Yisroel Synagogue (the founding synagogue of the Union) and Conservative leader on the Hackney Council.54 The other centre of ultra-orthodoxy in London is situated in Hendon and adjacent Golders Green. In a survey of a small number of members of the Hendon Adass Yisroel Synagogue (also a constituent of the Union), carried out in 1976, Dr Sabine Roitman found that 70 per cent of her respondents identified themselves as Conservative supporters.55 But what one does not know is whether these pieces of evidence reflect a true correlation between religious and political commitment, or whether they are simply reflections of other criteria, such as socio--economic group or even housing tenure. It is worth pointing out that aspects of Chassidism—especially its teachings concerning the duties owed by those who happen to possess wealth— incline more to a socialist than to a liberal political philosophy.56 It is also certain that strictly orthodox Jews are to be found supporting and Alderman, Jewish Community, 159-60. S. Roitman, ‘Les juifs anglais de 1966 à 1976 — pratiques, mentalités, comportements, ’ Ph. D thesis, Université des Sciences Humaines, Strasburg, 1978, 220. 56 A. L. Patkin, The Origins of the Russo-Jewish Labour Movement (Melbourne, 1947), 17. 54 55

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

181

even being members of the Labour Party. In 1982, in what is believed to be the first occasion on which a rabbi has gained election to a local authority in Britain, Rabbi Avraham Pinter topped the poll—for Labour—in Hackney’s Northfield Ward. It is also possible that such well-known local Jewish celebrities as Lobenstein and Pinter polled a personal vote, or that they polled a specifically Jewish (and perhaps Yiddish-speaking) vote. In England local election contests are held in multi-member divisions known as wards; in Hackney there is unmistakable evidence of Jews performing much better than non-Jews belonging to the same party and contesting the same wards.57 Being Jewish, and particularly being an orthodox Jew in an orthodox Jewish area, gives a candidate a distinct and perhaps decisive advantage, at least at local election level, where Jewish electors are concerned. In relation to parliamentary elections the evidence is less clear. On the one hand there are plenty of instances of well-known Jews being defeated in Jewish areas: Barnett Janner (then Liberal) at Whitechapel in 1930, for instance, and Dr Bernard Homa (Labour) at Hendon South in 1951 and 1955. On the other, there is very strong circumstantial evidence that Janner’s excellent performance in 1930 (he cut Labour’s majority from 9,180 to just 1,099, on a swing of over 18 per cent against Labour) was due largely if not entirely to the operation of a Jewish vote.58 More recently, the success of the late Mrs Milly Miller (Labour) in snatching the Ilford North seat from the Conservatives at the general election of October 1974 by a mere 778 votes, was ascribed by both Labour and Conservative Parry workers to her ability to capitalize upon her local popularity with her fellow Jews at a time when the Conservatives were still being heavily criticized for the embargo on arms shipments to Israel imposed during the Yom Kippur.59 The Conservative government of Edward Heath suffered in a number of Jewish constituencies as a result of its 1973 arms embargo. But Alderman, Jewish Community, 206. Ibid., 112-13. 59 Ibid., 147. 57 58

182

Controversy and Crisis

local Conservative MPs and candidates who criticized or condemned the embargo reaped an advantage thereby. The most dramatic instance of this was at Hendon North at the election of February 1974, where the sitting MP, John Gorst, who had voted against the embargo and had secured the support of tie Reverend Saul Amias (the outspoken and extrovert minister of the Edgware United Synagogue) as a result, secured a movement of Jewish voters to him that substantially offset the anti-Conservative swing in Greater London as a whole.60 At the election of October 1974, in which Reverend Amias spoke in support of Gorst from the pulpit on the Sabbath before polling, the number of Jewish electors declaring a definite intention of voting for Gorst actually rose (see Table 3) and (at a time of growing unpopularity for the Conservative Party nationally) he suffered not merely the lowest anti-Conservative swing in any of the constituencies in the Borough at Barnet, but an adverse swing less than half that registered by the Conservatives in the entire Greater London area.61 Mrs Thatcher won the Conservative leadership contest in 1975 and entered upon her record-breaking tenure of the premiership in 1979. It is not my intention here to explore in any detail Mrs Thatcher’s own relationship to the Jewish people, for whom I believe her respect is quite genuine. At the same time this respect dovetailed most conveniently with other of her preoccupations, more particularly her overriding concern to promote entrepreneurship, self-help and a spirit of independence among the entire citizenry of the United Kingdom; British Jewry is often held up as a prime example of these characteristics at work, materially assisting in overcoming prejudice and adversity. Finchley is the only constituency Mrs Thatcher ever represented in the House of Commons and, as we have seen, she entered upon this inheritance at a time of acute local tensions between the Jews and sections of the Finchley Conservative hierarchy; it was therefore in her interest to foster good relations with Jews, both locally and nationally. The influence of Sir Keith Joseph upon her economic thinking was 60 61

Ibid., 144-5. Ibid., 145.

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

183

enormous. Nor do I believe that her promotion of so many Jews to ministerial and Cabinet positions was entirely fortuitous.62 In the early 1980s, when Lord Carrington was in charge of the Foreign Office, the relationship of the Conservative government with AngloJewry underwent a period of strain, following Carrington’s statement (March 1980) that the PLO was not a ‘terrorist organization’. There were a number well-attended protest meetings in synagogues in northwest London; in letters to the local newspaper (the Hendon Times) and to Rabbi B. J. Gelles of the Finchley United Synagogue, the Prime Minister carefully distanced herself from the policy of her Foreign Secretary.63 Nonetheless, Finchley was not then considered the safest of Conservative-held seats and the Jewish vote could not be relied upon. So soundings were taken with a view to moving the Prime Minister to safer territory.64 These events took place before the Falklands conflict (1982), which dramatically changed the fortunes of the Conservative administration which (fortuitously from the point of view of relations with AngloJewry) resulted in Lord Carrington’s resignation. After 1983 Mrs Thatcher arguably pursued a foreign policy more pro-Jewish than that of any prime minister since Lloyd George. It is true that her government concluded an arms deal with Saudi Arabia, and called upon Israel to negotiate the PLO. But the Prime Minister and the party she led went out of their way to support Soviet Jewry. The Foreign Office ended its complicity in the Arab boycott (through the certification of signatures on boycott documents), and the then Prime Minister visited Israel, taking the trouble to distance herself from some of the more extreme pro-PLO utterances of her ministers.65 She also showed sensitivity to other Jewish concerns, such as shechita (the Jewish method of

Alderman, One-Party State?, 118, 135 Alderman, Jewish Community, 170-1. 64 Ibid.; I. Bradley, ‘A Finchley problem for Mrs Thatcher’, The Times ( October 1981), 14. A proposal was mooted to move the Prime Minister the adjacent Hendon South constituency. 65 Jewish Herald, 20 January 1989) 1; JC, 20 January 1989, 10. 62 63

184

Controversy and Crisis

slaughtering food animals).66 The peerage which she bestowed at the beginning of 1988 upon Immanuel Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue, has a significance the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. Lord Jakobovits’s admiration for Mrs Thatcher, and for the encouragement of wealth creation and acquisition, are well known.67 As early as 1977 he had condemned the welfare state for undermining individual responsibility and encouraging a “get something for nothing” attitude.68 In particular, he faithfully reflected a feeling of antipathy towards the aspirations of Britain’s black communities that is undoubtedly widespread within Anglo-Jewry. Most British Jews resent the ‘race-relations industry’, and many object to being termed an ‘ethnic minority’; they realize that the 1976 Race Relations Act can protect them (and are occasionally grateful for it), but nevertheless they feel uncomfortable in its presence. During the 1970s many Jews blamed the blacks for the resurgence of racist politics and for the rise of the National Front.69 Sir Keith Joseph’s plea to the Jews of Ilford North, during the 1978 by-election there, to support Mrs Thatcher’s policy of tight immigration control, was condemned by the Jewish Chronicle, but caught the communal mood exactly. The Tories won back Ilford North on a swing of 6.9 per cent, but among Jewish voters the swing to the Conservatives was no less than 11.2 per cent.70 Sir Keith’s intervention was itself a landmark: for the first time in over half a century, a leading Conservative politician had appealed to Jewish voters to support the party on a major issue, and had met with resounding success. Since then the growing anxieties of the AngloJewish community surrounding the quality of urban life have served On this issue see G. Alderman, ‘London Jewry and the 1987 general election,’ Jewish Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3 (1987), 16 . 67 See, for example, his interview with Waiter Schwarz in the Guardian, 29 December 1988, 20. 68 Jewish Tribune, 17 June 1977, 4. 69 Alderman, London Jewry, 118-24. 70 Alderman, Jewish Community, 148-9. 66

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

185

only to strengthen its support for Thatcherite values. During the 1980s Mrs Thatcher found herself under increasing attack from within the Established Church of England on fundamental questions of social policy, especially in relation to inner-city areas. Her most consistent theological support came from within the circle of orthodox Jewry. In a pamphlet published by the right wing Social Affairs Unit in 1985 Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, the Principal of Jews’ College, London, contrived to offer thinly-veiled support from the Old Testament for major elements of Conservative domestic legislation; Rabbi Sacks’s selected texts (the political commentator Hugo Young argued) served to confer “ethical legitimacy on a series of economic policies that Christian churchmen have denounced.”71 Nowhere were such denunciations more eloquently expressed than in the pages of the report (Faith in the City) of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas. It was Immanuel Jakobovits who came to Mrs Thatcher’s rescue, exhorting the disadvantaged not to insist upon public help (“self-reliant efforts and perseverance eventually pay off”), and criticizing them for wishing to change the character of British society into “a new multi-ethnic form.”72 These views were themselves controversial, and did not represent the opinions of all orthodox Jews, or even of all orthodox Jewish clergy. But they did accurately mirror a feeling widespread within an Anglo-Jewish community that was rapidly turning its back on the welfare state and its face against collectivism. Some features of the general election of June 1987 reflected these developments. Reverend Amias once again signed the nomination papers of John Gorst at Hendon North, while Cecil Parkinson (a self-confessed adulterer, later promoted back into the Cabinet) received the endorsement of Alan P1ancey Rabbi at Elstree & Borehamwood (since elected chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue). Martin Savitt, a former vice-president of the Board of Deputies and at that time a vice-chairman of the British Zionist Federation, assisted the campaign 71 72

J. Sacks, Wealth and Poverty (London, 1985); Guardian, 27 May 1986, 23. Sir I. Jakobovits, ‘From doom to hope’, JC, 24 January 1986, 26-8.

186

Controversy and Crisis

of the Conservative Harriet Crawley (whom The Times of 3 June 1987 described as “pregnant and unmarried”) against former GLC leader Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate at Brent East. The Livingstone candidature was always controversial, and his election to Parliament, on a much reduced Labour vote, entirely predictable. Mr Savitt is, however, entitled to claim a little credit for the narrowness of Livingstone’s victory. Sixty-three Jewish candidates stood at the 1987 election: twenty-five for the Conservatives, fifteen for Labour, twenty-one for the Alliance and two independents. Of these there were returned sixteen Conservative and seven Labour MPs. The number of Jewish Labour MPs reached its peak (thirty-eight) in 1966; the Jewish Labour contingent at Westminster in 1987 was smaller than at any time since 1935. The Jewish Conservative total returned n 1987 was smaller by one than in 1983, but was still the second-largest ever, and the pattern established in 1983, of the political balance among Jewish MPs lying with the Conservative Party, was maintained and indeed strengthened. As I have stressed in relation to 1945, we must be wary of drawing too many conclusions from the success or failure of Jewish parliamentary candidates. None the less, the fact that a third of all Jewish candidates in 1987 stood for the Alliance, that over a third were Conservatives, and that, while the number of Jewish Labour candidates declined (there were twenty in 1983), the number of Jewish Conservative candidates (eighteen in 1983) increased, does, I think, tell us something about the changing political balance within Anglo-Jewry as a whole. The strength of the picture increases, and its definition is sharpened, when considered in conjunction with the Jewish voting pattern in Finchley. Compared with 1983, the Prime Minister increased her share of the total poll in 1987 by just 2.8 per cent; but her share of the Jewish poll (see Table 3) increased by nearly three times that amount. At Finchley there was in fact a (conventional) swing from the Conservatives to Labour of 1 per cent. Mrs Thatcher clearly owed some of the increase in her own share of the vote to her Jewish supporters: the Jewish vote there swung heavily (5.0 per cent) against the trend. Of course—as the Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

187

Finchley statistics themselves indicate— there are still Jews who vote Labour, and the centre parties (the merged Social & Liberal Democrats and the rump SDP) can expect some Jewish support. Equally clearly, however, the very strong rapport that existed between Anglo-Jewry and Labour a half-century ago is no longer to be found. When the bulk of Anglo-Jewry lived in areas of deprivation in the inner cities, this relationship was bound to be strong, and it was made stronger still by the anti-Jewish prejudice then to be found in large measure within the Conservative Party. It matters little that this prejudice has not entirely disappeared. The Labour Party no longer serves what are regarded as Jewish interests. I have in mind not merely the anti-Israeli foreign policy of the Greater London Council under Labour control from 1981 to its abolition in 1986, or the enthusiasm expressed in certain quarters for Louis Farrakhan, or even the opposition of the Labour-controlled Inner London Education Authority to the granting of voluntary-aided status (i.e. financial support) to Jewish schools. From a purely socio-economic point of view the Labour Party and the Anglo-Jewish community now inhabit worlds which barely touch each other. A writer in The Times of 10 October 1987 described Mrs Thatcher’s social policy as “the Jewish ethos of practical charity.” I did not hear any communal protest at this turn of phrase, and I suspect that many Jews regarded it as a mark of honour, a sign of social and political assimilation and also of acceptance by the ruling Conservative Party.

188

Controversy and Crisis

Table 1 The pattern of Jewish settlement in London, 1974

Anglo-Jewry London Jewry (GLC area) Outer London Barnet Brent Enfield Harrow Redbridge Inner London (LCC area)

408,311 259,100 184,200 58,100 20,400 11,000 18,000 29,300 74,900

Source: Adapted from B. A. Kosmin and N. Grizzard, Geographical Distribution Estimates of Ethnically Jewish Population of the UK 1974 (Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1975).

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

189

Table 2 Estimated social-class distribution of the live Jewish population, 1961 Population Distributions (%)

Social Class

Jews

I. Professional II Intermediate III Skilled IV Partly Skilled V Unskilled Other

10 34 36 10 --- 8

General 4 15 49 19 8 5

Source—S. J. Prais and M. Schmool, ‘The social-class structure of Anglo-Jewry, 1961, Jewish Journal of Sociology, xvii (1975), 11.

190

Controversy and Crisis

Table 3 Jewish Political Preferences in London, 1974-87 Conservative (ABCI)

Labour (ABCI)

Liberal/ALL (ABCI)

Hendon North (February 1974) (N = 150)

59% (53%)

16% (24%)

25% (23%)

Hendon North (October 1974) (N = 174)

68% (51%)

22% (24%)

10% (25%)

Ilford North (1979) (N = 143)

61% (59%)

35% (22%)

4% (16%)

Finchley (1983) (N = 120)

52% (55%)

24% (17%)

24% (28%)

Finchley (1987) (N = 205)

60% (54%)

22% (18%)

18% (26%)

(C2DE)

(C2DE)

(C2DE)

36% (35%)

49% (50%)

13% (14%)

Hackney North (1979) (N=130)

Note: Hendon North, Ilford North and Finchley percentages are based on those who stated an intention to vote; Hackney North percentages are based on those who actually voted.

Jewish Political Attitudes and Voting Patterns in England 1945 -1987

191

IX



London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -19341

[in G. Alderman (ed), Governments, Ethnic Groups and Political Representation (European Science Foundation and Dartmouth Publishing, Aldershot, 1993), 3‑30. ]



1 The research upon which this paper is based was made possible by generous grants from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Marc Fitch Fund and the Wolf‑ son Foundation. The author also wishes to acknowledge the invaluable help provided by his Research Assistant, Dr Robert Fitzgerald.

I

t is a remarkable fact that although the entry of Jews into the municipal politics of England, and specifically of London, preceded their entry into national political life, the involvement of Jews in English municipal politics has hitherto largely escaped scholarly attention. This omission is all the more astonishing when one considers that the majority of British Jews have always lived in London, and that the epic struggle of the banker Lionel de Rothschild for the right to be elected to and to sit in parliament as a professing Jew took place within the parliamentary constituency of the City of London.2 Rothschild’s eventual success, in 1858, brought about what is generally referred to as Jewish ‘emancipation’ in Britain. The right of professing Jews to be elected to the governing bodies of municipalities had been conceded in 1845, following an equally spirited campaign by Sir David Salomons. This campaign, again, centred upon the City of London, and in 1855 Salomons became the City’s first Jewish Lord Mayor.3 Each of these victories turned out to be an anticlimax. In the parliamentary context the opportunities offered by the appearance of a growing number of Jewish members of parliament to further Jewish aspirations were not exploited. The argument for Jewish emancipation in Britain had been won (so it was said) on the basis that British Jews differed from British non-Jews only by reason of their religious beliefs. Those Jews fortunate enough to be elected to parliament were ‘Englishmen of the Jewish persuasion’— that is, they were members of parliament who happened to be Jews rather than Jewish members of parliament.4 Their duty was to represent the interests of their constituents, not of their coreligionists. Had emancipation been offered in Britain on the basis of some form of distinct representation for the Jewish community, this would have been fiercely resisted. True equality could only come from identical treatment, not from some special arrangement that would have institutionalised the legal separation of Anglo-Jewry from the rest of G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford, 1983), 22-30. Ibid. 22. 4 Ibid, 35. 2 3

194

Controversy and Crisis

society. In the immediate post-emancipation period, therefore, the lay leaders of Anglo-Jewry neither expected nor asked for any special consideration from parliament or local government. This attitude was reinforced by the social structure of the community at this time. Prior to the 1880s Anglo-Jewry did not possess a manual working class of any significant size or political influence. By this time there were about 60 000 Jews in Britain, of whom roughly threequarters lived in London.5 The community was, then, a comparatively affluent one, consisting of bankers, stockbrokers, craftsmen and shopkeepers. There was a Jewish pauper class, but it was not allowed to become a charge on the public purse. Partly in order to avoid any accusation that Jews were a burden on the state and partly in order to avoid the very harsh conditions under which poor relief was given by the local Boards of Guardians, the Jewish poor were regarded as the exclusive responsibility of Anglo-Jewry. In 1859 the leading Ashkenazi synagogues in London (followers of the German and Polish ritual) established a Jewish Board of Guardians of their own specifically for this purpose.6 The well-to-do Jews of the City and West End of London neither needed nor wanted the assistance of local government in the ordering of communal affairs; the poor Jews of London’s East End were content to rely on their more affluent coreligionists. Jewish interest in the working of the many local vestries and district boards which, together with the Metropolitan Board of Works, ran the affairs of London (outside the limits of the City) after 1855 was bound, therefore, to be peripheral. In addition, however, some of these bodies—particularly in areas of Jewish settlement—were prone to anti-Jewish prejudice. The East London Observer of 29 March 1884, reporting on the choice of candidates for the posts of Overseers of the poor for the vestry of St George’s in the East, quoted one vestryman as observing that “there were men on the Vestry capable and willing to hold office. Why did 5 6

I. Jacobs, Studies in Jewish Statistics (London, 1891), 11—13. See generally V. D. Lipman, A Century of Social Service, 1859 – 1959: The Jewish

Board of Guardians (London, 1959).

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

195

they not elect them instead of a Jew?” Jews did seek membership of the London vestries and were successful in vestry elections, but no Jewish vestryman adopted a Jewish profile. Jewish involvement with the Metropolitan Board of Works was also minimal.7 During the 1860s and 1870s there was much public debate concerning the state of London government and its reform. Broadly speaking, although there was general agreement that London needed a unified administration and the removal of the many separate and often conflicting jurisdictions, there was no agreement as to the method by which this unified administration was to be brought into existence. In 1884 a Bill was introduced by Gladstone’s Liberal government to absorb (but not preserve) the City of London within a new Londonwide authority. The measure was bitterly opposed by the Corporation of the City of London (prominent among which was the Jewish stockbroker Benjamin Cohen) and was never passed. But in 1888, as part of a sweeping reform of county government generally, Lord Salisbury’s Conservative administration announced that, while the city was to be left intact, London itself, within the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works, was to be elevated to the status of a county. Elections for the first London County Council took place on 17 January 1889 and its 118 elected members met for the first time on 31 January. What did London Jewry make of these events? The last ten years of the Board of Works had coincided with a fundamental change in the size and social and political composition of the capital’s Jewish community. In the Pale of Settlement in Russia and Poland the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 had resulted in a series of pogroms against the Jews that lasted until 1906. In the mid nineteenth century there had been a constant trickle of Jewish refugees coming to Britain from eastern Europe: this trickle now became a flood. Between 1881 and 1914 about 150 000 Jews settled in the British Isles.8 Most found their way to London. Merely from a demographic viewpoint this amounted It is possible that one member of the Board of Works, William Nathan (Limehouse, 1872—80), was a Jew. 8 L. Kochan, ‘Jews on the Move’, The Listener, 27 May 1971, p. 677. 7

196

Controversy and Crisis

to a revolution. Between 1851 and 1881 London’s Jewish population had grown from about 20,000 to 45,000— a rate of about 4 per cent per annum.9 Between 1881 and 1900, however, London’s Jewish population expanded to approximately 135, 000— an annual growth rate of 10 per cent. Of these, it was estimated in 1899 that roughly 120,000 were living in the East End, the area to the immediate east and north east of the City of London and including the boroughs of Stepney, Bethnal Green and Shoreditch.10 The existing Jewish community of London was swamped by the newcomers. As a result the political and party-political centres of gravity of the existing community were violently disturbed. To begin with, the immigrant presence strained the resources of the Jewish Board of Guardians beyond all expectations. In its formative years the Board had had to cater for the needs of between 5,000 and 10,000 Jewish poor, some of whom required only occasional relief. As long as immigration remained within reasonable bounds the Board could hope that its efforts would eventually lift most of the Jewish poor beyond the level at which they would still require help. In short, prior to 1881 the Board of Guardians, reflecting the views of the Anglo-Jewish grandees who financed it, viewed the problem of London’s Jewish poor as finite. But the mass immigrations that began in the 1880s “rendered all these calculations abortive.”11 The size of the community of Jewish poor to be found in the capital after 1881 was beyond the resources of the Board to deal with by itself. Those who led Anglo-Jewry had, perforce, to look to the organs of local government for help. The legislation that authorised the setting up of the London County Council was hardly noticed in the Jewish press. Jewish interest in London politics was, however, stimulated that year (1888) by two other developments. The first was the establishment, by both Houses of Parliament, of inquiries into the problems attendant upon the V. D. Lipman, ‘The Structure of London Jewry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’, in H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz & I. Finestein, (eds), Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie, (London, 1967), 255. 10 S. Fyne, ‘London’s Jewish Population’, Jewish Chronicle, 14 October 1955, 34. 11 Lipman, Board of Guardians, 75. 9

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

197

influx of Jewish pauper refugees into the country.12 We should note in this connection that this influx had occurred at a time of economic depression and serious unemployment. In east London it aggravated an already severe housing shortage. The alien population of Stepney increased from 15,898 in 1881 to 54,310 by 1901, but during the same period the number of inhabited dwellings in the area fell from 35,300 to 31,500.13 The Jewish influx could not be held responsible for the manner in which slum dwellings were built, and since the Jews themselves largely occupied these insanitary properties they could hardly be accused of forcing the already resident population to live in inferior accommodation. Nonetheless, the very unwelcome publicity that was now being generated forced the Anglo-Jewish leadership to take action. In 1885 a number of the wealthiest British Jews, led by Nathan Mayer Rothschild (later first Lord Rothschild), Lionel Cohen (brother to Benjamin and President of the Board of Guardians), and the banker Samuel Montagu (who in December became Liberal Member of Parliament for Whitechapel, in the heart of the Jewish East End), took the initiative in forming the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company. The company bought from the Board of Works a site in the East End that had been notorious for the brothels, disease and criminality rampant in slums which had been compulsorily demolished, and built the first of a series of ‘model’ tenement blocks (the famous Charlotte de Rothschild Dwellings) which, within the space of a few years, were to transform the locality of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders into one of poor but respectable Jewish inhabitants.14 Another important effect of the Jewish immigration in forcing AngloJewry to pay more attention to the government of London was in the field of education. At the time of the passage, by Gladstone’s government, of the 1870 Education Act, the provision of a specifically Jewish full-time education in London was dominated by the Jews’ The reports of these inquiries are summarised in Lipman, Social History, 135-7. Ibid. 104. 14 J. White, Rothschild Buildings (London, 1980), 11-20... 12 13

198

Controversy and Crisis

Free School in Spitalfields. By 1880 the Jews’ Free School had no less than 1,600 boys on its roll and 1,000 girls. There were also a number of smaller Jewish schools in the capital. In all, including the Jews’ Free School, these establishments could provide a schooling for only some 5,600 children.15 Once the immigration began, there was no prospect that London Jewry itself would be able to build the many additional schools that were now demanded. The gap in provision was made good by the ‘state’ schools set up following the passage of the 1870 Act. In brief, this system replaced the former arrangement (by which central government had made grants of money for school buildings) with a system of school boards. The London School Board, whose 55 members were elected by male and female ratepayer suffrage, was empowered to levy a rate and to use the proceeds thereof to build and maintain schools catering for children between the ages of 5 and 13 wherever, in its view, there seemed to be a need not provided by voluntary bodies. In the East End this deficiency was self-evident. By 1894 there were about 16,000 Jewish children in London, of whom just over half attended Board schools. By 1901 the proportion of Jewish children in the capital attending Board schools was over 60 per cent.16 In practice, Board schools with very large Jewish proportions on their books were run as ‘Jewish’ schools, observing the Jewish Sabbath and holy days. In these localities the Jewish community naturally wished to play a much more active part in the running of such schools. This, in turn, implied some Jewish involvement in the London School Board itself. However, the London School Board had only three Jewish members during its entire existence (1870-1904), and of these only one (H.H. Raphael, later a Liberal member of parliament) was elected, the remaining two (C. G. Montefiore and Sir Philip Magnus) being coopted to represent Tower Hamlets, a district which included much of the Jewish East End. The major concern of the Jewish community in the educational sphere at this time was to advance the principle that the funding of all denominational schools should be out of local taxation. 15 16

L. P. Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914 (London, 1960), 224. Ibid. 227-8.

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

199

This principle was a highly contentious national political issue. It was supported by adherents of the Church of England and of the Roman Catholic Church but not by the Nonconformists and their many friends in the Liberal party. Not surprisingly, therefore, we find Anglo-Jewish leaders (including the then chief rabbi, Dr. Hermann Adler) supporting the election of Anglican Conservative party supporters to the London School Board, and even of Catholics. The furthering of the cause of school funding ‘on the rates’ was obviously more important than the election of a token Jewish representative.17 In the specific context of the politics of the London School Board there were other reasons why Jewry should have supported the ConservativeAnglican connection. The 1870 Education Act had been framed, in part, to meet the wishes of extreme radical and Liberal Nonconformists who had campaigned and who continued to campaign for a nationwide system of free, compulsory secular education. The School Boards were at liberty to decide for themselves whether or not religious instruction should be given in schools under their control (subject to the right of parental withdrawal). Moreover, although the Act did not itself institute a system of free education, School Boards were empowered to pay the fees of children of poor parents irrespective of whether those children attended Board or voluntary denominational schools. These provisions suited the needs of London Jewry very well, but they did not meet with the approval of Liberal Nonconformists who objected to paying a local education rate to support schools in which doubtful or—worse still—non-Christian religious instruction might be given.18 In Birmingham, under the influence of militant Nonconformity, the School Board refused to activate Section 25 of the 1870 Act, which authorised but did not compel the payment of school fees out of the education rate. The London School Board, though dominated for most of its existence by the ‘Progressives’ (a loose alliance of Liberal Nonconformist businessmen and clerics, temperance reformers, trade

17

Jewish Chronicle (hereafter JC), 30 October 1891, 7—8; 20 November, 4—5.

200

Controversy and Crisis

unionists and out-and-out secularists) never went this far.19 But there was always a risk that it might do so and that, perhaps under Liberal or Progressive control, religious instruction might be banished altogether from the curriculum of Board schools.20 There was, therefore, every incentive for London Jewish rate- payers to support the (Anglican-Conservative) ‘Moderates’ in School Board elections. In 1885 the Moderates gained control of the Board and maintained this dominance until 1897. Although the Progressives had control of the Board during its last seven years (1897-1904) this victory was pre-empted by the passage of the Voluntary Schools Act—also in 1897—by Lord Salisbury’s government. The effect of this legislation was to increase state financial support of such schools. The seven Jewish schools in London at once formed themselves into a Jewish Voluntary Schools Association in order to be able to take advantage of this largesse.21 By the beginning of the twentieth century the Jewish schools of London were totally dependent upon state aid. This circumstance, and the fact that the Conservative party was known to favour state support for religious education, was to have important consequences for the relationship between London Jewry and the party-political system of the capital. The Progressive-Moderate dichotomy that had developed in the politics of the London School Board was important too for the history of party relationships on the London County Council. The Progressives were deeply suspicious of the power and influence of the Conservative-dominated City of London. When, in 1899, Lord Salisbury’s government replaced the remaining vestries and district boards with 28 London boroughs, Progressives regarded the reform S. J. Curtis & M. E. A. Boultwood, An Introductory History of English Education since 1800 (4th edn, London, 1966), p. 163. 19 P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London 1885 – 1914 (London, 1967), 96. 20 To make matters worse, the trade union lobby within the Progressive camp was, by the mid-1880s, pressing strongly for the Board to adopt a policy of enforcing trade union rates of pay on its contractors. This policy was implemented in 1888: ibid. 99. 21 C. Hershon, ‘The Evolution of Jewish Elementary Education in England with spe‑ cial reference to Liverpool’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield. 1973, 114-5. 18

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

201

as proof of the determination of the Conservative party and of its Moderate counterparts to contain London County Council within a subordinate status, using the City and the boroughs as countervailing powers and alternative sources of authority. The matter was not simply one of civic dignity. The Progressives espoused a policy of municipal socialism and campaigned for London County Council control of London’s markets and of its gas and electricity undertakings, and for municipal operation of tramway and steamboat services. Progressives also wanted London County Council to have much greater power to deal with the housing situation of the metropolis, especially the power to build houses outside the Council’s own boundaries, and they argued that all private contractors who did work for the Council should observe minimum conditions of work and rates of pay for their employees. The ethos of the Progressive alliance was, in short, that collective municipal action was basically a good thing and, not surprisingly, many socialists were happy to march under the Progressive banner.22 Moderates, ever mindful of the burden that such policies would place upon property owners and ratepayers, opposed collectivism but ironically supported the use of local authority money for educational purposes provided these were linked to the pursuit of religious goals. To the established London Jewish community, Moderate policies were infinitely preferable. But the attitude of the immigrant newcomers was bound to be very different. Between 1889 and 1907 London County Council was controlled by the Progressives. What part was played by London Jewry in these victories? There are a number of ways of measuring such involvement. We may use aggregate data based upon election statistics, concentrating especially upon those constituencies which are known to have contained significant numbers of Jewish electors. The difficulties here are numerous. To begin with, there were of course no such things as separate electoral rolls for ethnic groups. Furthermore, aliens were legally debarred from voting, although some undoubtedly found their

22

Thompson, op. cit., 119

202

Controversy and Crisis

way on to the electoral register. In 1914 there were only a handful of non-Jewish names on the parliamentary register for Rothschild Buildings.23 The refugee Jewish immigrants spoke Yiddish. But we know that Yiddish newspapers circulating in the East End before the First World War devoted some space to London County Council elections. The Idisher Ekspres (“Yiddish Express”), in particular, thought it worthwhile to exhort its readers to vote for Progressive candidates— and at a time when few immigrant Jews could afford the £5 naturalisation fee.24 Even in parliamentary elections the precise number of Jewish electors in the East End cannot be exactly calculated. According to the 1901 Census, aliens accounted for 31.8 per cent of Whitechapel’s population, and in 1900 its registered parliamentary electorate (5,004) formed only 6.4 per cent of its total inhabitants.25 The electorate for London County Council elections was larger than for parliamentary elections at this time, mainly because women (provided they satisfied the necessary property qualifications) could vote in the former but not (until 1918) the latter. In 1895 it is likely that Jews formed about 28 per cent of the total county council electorate of Whitechapel. By 1900, when the total number of county council voters in Whitechapel had fallen by 6.3 per cent, the Jewish proportion must certainly have grown, perhaps to as much as a third of the whole. Whitechapel and the neighbouring division of St George’s contained the largest numbers of Jews and Jewish electors to be found in pre-1914 London, with smaller but growing communities in Stepney, Mile End, Limehouse and parts of Bethnal Green and Hackney. Between and including the London County Council elections of 1889 and 1904 most of these areas returned Progressive councillors on most

White, op. cit., 271. The East London Observer (hereafter ELO), 26 August 1905, 7, carried a report that the Conservative agent at Mile End had objected to the pres‑ ence on the electoral register of unnaturalized aliens. 24 See, for example, Idisher Ekspres, 20 February 1907, 4. 25 H. Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections, 1885-1910, (London, 1967), 42, 44. 23

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

203

occasions.26 But this must not be taken as an indication that the Jewish county council electorates of east London were Progressively inclined. Low turnouts were—and were to remain—a central feature of London municipal politics. Moreover, the evidence of parliamentary elections is that, with the important exception of Whitechapel, Jewish electors in East End constituencies largely voted Conservative in this period.27 An examination of the political credentials of those Jews who were elected to London County Council at this time provides some supporting evidence. The Jewish community of London was consistently overrepresented on London County Council during its Progressive phase. Jews formed a fraction of 1 per cent of the population of the London County Council area but provided almost 4 per cent of the councillors. This overrepresentation, which mirrored that to be found in the Westminster parliament, was almost certainly a function of Jewish overrepresentation in those socio-economic groups from which councillors—and members of parliament—were drawn. Moreover, over the period as a whole the Jewish presence on London County Council was fairly evenly balanced between the Progressive and Moderate wings; only in 1889 was there a serious imbalance. In its Progressive phase the major point of contact between London Jewry and the London County Council was on the housing issue. Indeed, it was the Jewish community that spurred the council to action, at least as far as the East End was concerned. Under the impetus of David Schloss, Honorary Secretary of the Sanitary Committee of the Jewish Board of Guardians, a sustained campaign was undertaken, aimed initially at the Whitechapel District Board of Works and later Whitechapel returned two Progressive councillors at every London County Council election between 1889 and 1913 except 1895 and 1904 (in 1895 one Moderate was returned, and in 1904 one Jewish Independent); St George’s failed to return at least one Progressive only in 1895; Mile End was Progressive at every election except 1895 and 1907; Limehouse returned two Moderates only in 1907 and 1910; the two Bethnal Green seats were Progressive throughout this period. Hackney South only failed to return two Progressives in 1913, and Hackney Central only in 1889, 1907 and 1913; Hackney North alone showed some consistent Moderate loyalty. 27 ELO, 6Ju1y1895, 5, 20; 22September l900, 3;JC, l2 October l900, 7. The special position of Whitechapel is discussed in Alderman, Jewish Community, 44—5. 26

204

Controversy and Crisis

at London County Council itself. The annual reports of the Guardians are replete with instances of pressure to persuade the authorities to act against slum properties and insanitary conditions.28 Within a short time of the establishment of London County Council the Guardians had, indeed, managed to forge a close relationship with it in the most sensitive fields of public health and housing. In the 1890s the Jewish authorities took up particular areas of wider concern with the London County Council. The first concerned the evils of the sweated labour system. The passage of the 1891 Public Health (London) Act gave the London County Council some powers to deal with conditions and overcrowding in workshops. The Council’s Public Health and Housing Committee looked to David Schloss to provide information on the basis of which action could be taken.29 Schloss’s reports were, in turn, used as evidence for the need to appoint additional Sanitary Inspectors.30 By 1895, and largely through the pressure generated by Jewish interests, many of the forbidding interconnecting courts and alleyways whose condition had so exercised the minds of East London social workers had disappeared. However, these interests were, of course, private ones, making use of private capital. Legislation passed in 1890 had given local authorities the power not merely to acquire new sites for the purpose of erecting working-class dwellings but also to carry out all the work involved “at the sole cost of the Council”—that is, such charges would not necessarily be recouped from the rent of the dwellings so erected but might be borne, in whole or in part, by local ratepayers. Benjamin Cohen, predictably, attacked this policy as a restriction upon private enterprise.31 The Liberal Samuel Montagu, however, took a very different view. Montagu had already reached the conclusion that one way of combating the anti-Semitic movements that were already Jewish Board of Guardians, Annual Report, 1889, 22; 1890, 75. Greater London Record Office (hereafter GLRO), Minutes of the Public Health and Housing Committee: General Subcommittee meeting, 4 November 1892; and see Jewish Board of Guardians, Annual Report, 1892, 83; 1893, 81. 30 GLRO, Minutes of the Public Health and Housing Committee, 4 February 1895. 31 The Times, 7 December 1898, 12. 28 29

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

205

evident in the East End was to disperse the Jewish refugees to outer London and, if possible, away from the capital altogether. In 1902 he approached London County Council with a most generous offer of £10,000 with which to build a special housing complex for Whitechapel residents, “without distinction of race or creed,” on its White Hart Lane estate, Tottenham, to the north of the London County Council area.32 This scheme—a block of 122 houses known as Tower Gardens- was completed in 1907. It constituted the last major housing programme carried out by the council before the First World War. The Moderate victory of 1907 brought the larger White Hart Lane project, and the Progressive policy of building council houses, to an abrupt end. In other respects, too, the policies followed by the Progressive regime were of benefit to the Jewish masses in the East End. In the matter of the general enforcement of a minimum wage London County Council was prepared to lend a sympathetic ear to the garment workers of east London in their campaigns.33 As far as its own contractors were concerned the council was in a position to act decisively. In 1897, following suggestions made by a deputation from the International Tailors’, Machinists’ and Pressers’ Union (formed by the Jewish Social Democrat Lewis Lyons in 1890), the council agreed to take steps to ensure “that the full amount of wages reached the actual workers and were not intercepted by middlemen under a system of subletting.”34 Under the influence of trade union and other sympathetic councillors the council approved a schedule of minimum prices to be paid by its contractors for the making up of garments. Scarcely less important was the support given to the Jewish community by the council under Progressive control in helping to refute allegations made by anti-Jewish political elements. In 1901 the council’s Public Health Department was able to contradict claims that the Jewish presence in certain East End areas constituted a health hazard. In GLRO, London County Council Minutes, 28 July 1903; IC, 27 November 1903, 12. 33 J. A. Schmiechen, Sweated Industries and Sweated Labour: The London Clothing Trades, 1860—1914 (Beckenham, 1984), 163. 34 JC, 14 April 1897, 16. 32

206

Controversy and Crisis

February 1903 the Housing Department acted to disprove a statement made by the Conservative Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green South West, Samuel Forde-Ridley, that its new Boundary Street estate was “already nearly half full of aliens.” In fact, of 1,044 tenements only 27 per cent were occupied by Jews and aliens, and there was found to be only one case of infringement of the council’s overcrowding regulations.35 The need for the Jewish community to be able to cite irrefutable statistical evidence of this sort was of particular importance at this time because of the rise of political anti-Semitism in the East End and at Westminster. In East London the parliamentary election of October 1900 had been marked by the return to parliament of a group of Conservatives who had made the issue of restriction of ‘alien’—that is, Jewish—immigration the central feature of their campaigns. In May 1901 the British Brothers’ League was established under the leadership of Major Evans-Gordon, Member of Parliament for Stepney. It was a highly vocal pressure group whose efforts were rewarded with the establishment of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1902 and the passage of the 1905 Aliens Act, the first statutory restriction on immigration in modern British history. The anti-alienists did not ignore the organs of municipal government in their campaign. In February 1895 the Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Howard Vincent advised his party leader, Lord Salisbury, that by espousing a policy of restriction of immigration he would be helping the Moderates win control of the London County Council.36 This stratagem undoubtedly had some merit in it, because five Moderate gains in the London County Council elections of March 1895 (two at Mile End, two at St George’s and one at Whitechapel) almost gave them control of the council. At the time of the election of the first borough council at Stepney (1900) the Moderates included in GLRO, Presented Papers of the Public Health and Housing Committee, 1901—2, No. 61 (Bundle 65); 1903—4, No. 63 (Bundle 1); Hansard (Commons), 4th ser. cxviii, 18 February 1903, col. 197. 36 B. Gainer, The Alien Invasion (London, 1972), 279 n. 59. 35

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

207

their manifesto the opinion that “steps should be taken without further delay to restrict the constant influx of pauper aliens into this country, and more particularly into the already overcrowded districts in the East End of London.”37 The Moderates won control of Stepney, and over London as a whole gained control of 20 of the 28 borough councils. Had this Moderate success extended to the London County Council itself in 1901, parliamentary action might have been taken sooner and with greater effect than turned out to be the case with the 1905 Act. The aliens ‘problem’ was, after all, largely a London problem, and a demand from London’s own local government for action would have carried great weight. Perhaps for this reason the Jewish Chronicle instructed its readers on the importance of the forthcoming contest for the control of the council’s affairs.38 In St George’s and Stepney the Progressives lost seats (one in each division) and there was some loss of support (but not of seats) in Limehouse. But these results were very much against the East End trend. In Whitechapel the Progressive share of the poll increased from 51 to 64.2 per cent, and an increase of over 18 per cent in the Progressive vote at Hackney North led to the capture of the remaining Moderate seat there. In London as a whole the Progressives had a massive majority of 54 seats—their largest ever. On 15 October 1900 the Moderate opposition on London County Council introduced an anti-alien motion but it was opposed by (among others) the Jewish Moderate Alfred Cohen (Benjamin’s brother) and the Jewish Progressive Bertram Straus, and was easily thrown out.39 The wider aim of the British Brothers’ League, the securing of a quick cessation of immigration, was thwarted. The appointment of a Royal Commission defused the issue and the 1905 legislation, restricted as it was to ‘undesirables’ and giving as it did a right of appeal to an immigration board, never had the impact that the restrictionists desired. In any case, by 1905 the pre-1914 Jewish immigration to Britain had passed its peak. The number of immigrants dropped sharply, from over ELO, 27 October 1900, 8. JC, 1 March 1901, 18. 39 The Times, 16 October 1901, 8; JC 25 October 1901, 16. 37 38

208

Controversy and Crisis

11,000 in 1906 to under 4,000 in 1911. The bulk of the new arrivals were admitted without inspection.40 In terms of electoral politics, however, the Progressives proved unable to capitalise upon the Jewish support to which they felt they had become entitled. To understand why this was, and to try to form some estimate of the part played by the Jews of London in the Progressive defeat of 1907, we need to examine the Jewish reaction to the great educational reforms which A.J. Balfour’s Conservative government enacted in 1902 and 1903. As we do so, we need to bear in mind that we are dealing not with one homogeneous Jewish community but with several subsets: a wealthy elite that was already largely Conservative; a Jewish middle class that was increasingly becoming so (and which was, even now, moving away from the City and the East End to Hampstead, Hackney, Willesden and West Kensington, and even to Tottenham and Golders Green, beyond the London County Council area);41 and a Jewish working class that could generally be relied upon to support Liberal and socialist politics (if they had the vote and exercised it) but which could easily be deflected by ‘Jewish’ issues. The lead given to this proletariat by Jewish members of the Liberal intelligentsia was, therefore, unreliable. The Progressive platform, pre-eminently on the housing question, was bound to be attractive to the immigrant Jews, but once they began to be able to afford better housing and, therefore, to be liable for the personal payment of rates (typically included in their rents), perspectives changed. The housing question itself had, by the early years of the twentieth century, become more complicated as a result of the anti-alien agitation. Even those who supported the building of council houses on the rates wondered whether it was right to allow foreign-born Jews to occupy them. The growing importance of the trade unions to the Progressive alliance could only heighten radical sensitivities in this regard, and the ‘rich Jew’ anti-Semitism of the Alderman, Jewish Community, 77. Lipman, Social History, 157—60; A. Newman, The United Synagogue 1870-1970 (London, 1970), 59-65.

40 41

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

209

left that surfaced during the Boer War (1899-1902) was bound to intensify such misgivings. By the time of the 1903 elections to Stepney Borough Council we read of the local Liberal and Radical Association rejecting two would-be candidates simply because they were Jews.42 The magnificent Progressive victory of 1901 came just too soon for the anti-alien campaign to register its full impact. By the time of the London County Council elections of 1904 this campaign had reached national proportions. At the same time the Progressives had succeeded in rousing the Jewish community to a frenzy of hostility. As with the politics of the London School Board a generation earlier, the twin issues of voluntary schools and religious teaching in state schools provided the casus belli. In 1902 the Conservative government had, by its Education Act, brought the School Board system outside London to an end, and in 1903 this reform was extended to the capital. Local authorities (generally county councils) became responsible henceforth for the provision of elementary, secondary and technical education. The Acts of 1902-3 established the principle of local authority involvement in education and must be considered one of the foundations of the present-day British educational system. At the time, however, their passage was highly controversial, not so much on account of the demise of the directly elected School Boards as because of the power given to local authorities to assume some control over the voluntary (now known as the ‘non-provided’) schools. In future, such non-provided schools were enabled to receive direct, general support from the local rates, on condition that they consented to a minority of their managers being nominated by the local authorities. Local authorities, in such cases, assumed managerial and financial responsibility for the secular instruction that was given. Nonconformist fury at the application of the principle of the use of monies derived from local rates to support denominational religious schools knew no bounds; there were ‘passive resisters’ who refused 42

IC, 30 October 1903, 20.

210

Controversy and Crisis

to pay rates on this basis, and Liberal politicians promised that the Acts of 1902-3 would be repealed. But the Jewish reaction was quite different. Jewish spokesmen conceded at once that the community was bound to benefit from the proposal that the administration of the eight Jewish voluntary schools in London be shared with London County Council. The considerable expenditure thus saved could be diverted to improve standards of Hebrew and religious instruction.43 There was, therefore, broad support for the 1903 legislation to which Benjamin Cohen, on behalf of the community, gave a generous welcome in the House of Commons.44 The relationship of London Jewry with the London School Board in its last, Progressive, phase had been good. The success of the 1903 legislation was bound to depend upon the manner in which the Progressives in charge of London County Council approached their new responsibilities. In spite of the hope expressed by the Progressive leadership that the transfer of educational responsibilities to the county council would not lead to the intrusion of religious questions into the forthcoming county council elections, the London County Council contest of March 1904 was very heavily impregnated with the smoke and fire of the Nonconformist crusade against Balfour’s enactments.45 The Liberal party in parliament and the Progressive alliance in London were both committed to the repeal of the Conservative legislation. Such a policy was bound to bring the London Jewish community and the Progressives into conflict. In Whitechapel this was to have a dramatic result. Jewish Progressives there refused either to endorse or to be a part of Progressive opposition to the 1903 London Education Act. A champion of the Jewish view was found in the person of Henry Herman Gordon (1873-1939), a son of the Reverend A.E. Gordon, cantor of the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, Aldgate. Henry Gordon, a wellknown East End communal worker, had been a Progressive member of the first Stepney Borough Council, and was in the forefront of the Ibid., 1 May, 1903, 20. Hansard (Commons), 4th ser. cxxii, 26 May 1903, cols 1845—7. 45 The Times, 22 December 1903, 10; ELO, 23 January, 1904, 5. 43 44

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

211

fight against anti-alienism there. He was to become one of the most respected Progressive members of London County Council on which, as a member for Whitechapel and its successor (1919), Whitechapel and St George’s, he sat without a break from 1904 to 1922. But in 1904 Gordon was a rebel. With the support of a galaxy of Jewish religious and lay leaders, led by Lord Rothschild and two dayanim (judges) of the chief rabbi’s Ecclesiastical Court, and with the support also of the local Catholic clergy, he stood as an Independent candidate. His platform had as its central plank the sanctity of the 1903 Education Act, which had freed the Jewish and Catholic communities from much of the financial burden of running their local voluntary schools.46 Squeezed on the one side by Gordon and his clerical aides and on the other by local Conservatives, the Progressives brought in to campaign for them first Stuart Samuel, the local member of parliament and nephew of Samuel Montagu, and then Henrietta (‘Nettie’) Adler, the elder daughter of the chief rabbi. In this way Nettie Adler duly began her long and distinguished association with the London County Council, on to the Education Committee of which she was co-opted in 1905. But in 1904 her imprimatur upon the Progressive nominations did not impress. Armed, according to one local newspaper, with “the great bulk of the Jewish and the whole of the Roman Catholic vote,” Gordon’s position was unassailable.47 He topped the poll, obtaining 290 votes more than his nearest Progressive rival. At Stepney, where the Moderates already held one seat, they came within three votes of capturing the other, and at St George’s only 255 votes separated the bottom Progressive from the most popular Moderate candidate. These results, and those in Bow and Bromley and Hackney North, where Moderates also did well, were undoubtedly due in part to the immigration question, which was already becoming a housing question. But the impact of the education controversy and the Jewish desertions from the Progressives IC, 4 March 1904, 3, 6; East London Advertiser (hereafter ELA), 20 February 1904, 8, and 5 March, 8; ELO, 6 February, 1904, 5. 47 ELA, 12 March 1904, 8. 46

212

Controversy and Crisis

on its account were undeniable. The East London Observer gave the Progressives a grim warning that if they did not acquiesce in the giving of rate aid to the voluntary schools they would be “forever blackened.”48 This proved a true prophecy. Nationally, in its opposition to the Education Acts of 1902 and 1903 the Liberal party believed it was backing a winner. But the Liberal revival that culminated in its electoral triumph of January 1906 was grounded only in the popularity of its opposition to tariff reform. In London the dogmatic obstinacy of the Liberal government in trying to overturn the legislation of 1902-3 (by Bills introduced in 1906 and 1908, neither of which ever became law) reaped a predictable harvest. The victory of the Moderates (now called Municipal Reformers) in the London County Council elections of 1907 had many causes. The most important was the growing indebtedness of the council—in part a result of the assumption of educational responsibilities a few years previously. The Municipal Reformers also played the anti-alien card. In the four Hackney Central and Hackney North seats this led to Progressive defeats after particularly crude anti-Jewish campaigns.49 But the prospect of the replacement of the Progressives by the Municipal Reformers as the effective education authority for London also played a part. In Whitechapel the Progressives made their peace with Gordon, but on his terms as far as the education controversy was concerned.50 At St George’s the Jew Percy Simmons won a seat for the Municipal Reform party at the end of a contest in which education and the intervention of two independent Roman Catholic candidates were the major features. The Municipal Reform victory breathed new life into the Jewish opposition to the Liberal insistence that the educational reforms of 1902-3 must be undone. “The strong professions of sympathy of the victorious party for the voluntary schools,” the editor of the Jewish ELO, 19 March 1904, 5. Hackney and Kingsland Gazette (hereafter HG), 16 February 1907, 3; 18 Febru‑ ary, 3; 20 February,. 3; 25 February, 4; 1 March, 3; Idisher Ekspres, 22 February 1907, 4. 50 ELA, 2 March 1907, 5. 48 49

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

213

Chronicle told his readers, “should ease any Jewish anxiety that may exist under this head.”51 On 15 March 1907 he calculated that if the full cost of religious instruction in the Jewish non-provided schools in London were thrown back on to the community, a sum in the region of £1727 per annum would have to be found.52 When, in 1908, the Liberal party once more attempted to legislate on the education question Jewish defenders of rate aid found that for the first time their views matched those who controlled the county council.53 Elected on a platform of financial retrenchment, the Municipal Reformers lost no time in reversing Progressive spending policies. But the larger promise made in 1907, to ease the rate burden, could not be kept. Initially this was because of the council’s increasing educational obligations and the schemes of slum clearance that had, by common consent, to be undertaken. Later, under the provisions of the 1929 Local Government Act, the duties and responsibilities of the old Poor Law authorities in the capital were transferred to the London County Council, thus imposing new financial obligations. The Municipal Reformers were unable to prevent rate rises, but they responded to the national financial crisis of 1931 by a policy of severe economy that clearly went beyond what was required to meet the immediate situation. In the spring of 1931 the Municipal Reformers had been returned to office with 83 seats out of 124. But in 1934 the Labour party made gains in sufficient number to give them a majority of 14 seats. The rule of the Municipal Reform party at County Hall came to an end. The distinguishing characteristic of London politics between the two world wars was the demise of the Progressive party and its replacement by the Labour party as the only credible radical alternative to the Conservatives. In the early 1920s the Progressives were still a force to be reckoned with in London politics. Before 1914 there had never been more than three Labour party members JC, 8 March 1907, 8. Ibid., 15 March 1907, 10. 53 The Times, 8 April 1908, 12; 27 November, 11; IC, 27 November 1908, 16. 51 52

214

Controversy and Crisis

of London County Council. In 1919 15 were elected, and after 1925 there were over 30 councillors taking the Labour party whip. In 1925 the Progressive total had fallen to six; thereafter the London Liberal Federation determined to run candidates as ‘Liberals’, hoping, perhaps, to capitalise upon the apparent revival of Liberal fortunes nationally now that Lloyd George was in control. The hope was never fulfilled. By 1928 London politics had been recast very firmly in a twin Labour-Conservative mould. The 1931 London County Council elections witnessed only one Liberal gain. By 1934, the year of the Labour party take-over of London County Council, London Liberalism was more or less dead. Not a single Liberal was returned as a London county councillor. These events were bound to have a dramatic impact on the relationship between the London County Council and London Jewry. But the changing nature of this relationship was both a cause and an effect. During the First World War there was an electoral truce in London politics, as nationally. In 1916, following the formation of the Coalition government under Lloyd George, a similar arrangement had been entered into in the London County Council. The Progressives hoped that this could be continued after the end of hostilities and that both they and the Municipal Reformers could face the London electorate (now increased to over 1.6 million by virtue of the provisions of the 1918 Representation of the People Act) with an agreed programme. Initially the Municipal Reformers appeared favourable to this idea, but the arrangement fell through following an unsuccessful approach by the Progressives to the London Labour party to join in a grand postwar coalition.54 One of the most revolutionary effects of the 1918 Act was that receipt of poor relief ceased to be a voting disqualification. This, added to the substantial widening of the qualifications for the franchise generally, brought into being in London (as elsewhere) a poorer electorate much more favourably inclined to the Labour party viewpoint. Therefore, G. Gibbon & R. W. Bell, History of the London County Council, 1889—1939 (Lon‑ don, 1939), 109—10.

54

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

215

although there was to be no post-war coalition to govern London, the pressures upon both the Progressives and the Municipal Reformers to come to arrangements that would prevent the Labour party gaining seats were strong. In two areas of especial interest to the Jewish community this resulted in unopposed returns which had the effect of prolonging, for a few more years, the presence on London County Council of prominent Jewish Progressives. It was agreed that of the three Hackney divisions the Progressives would be given South Hackney, the Municipal Reformers North Hackney, while Central Hackney returned unopposed one Reformer and one Progressive — Nettie Adler.55 At Whitechapel a similar arrangement resulted in the return, also unopposed, of Henry Gordon. In 1918 the Whitechapel and St George’s divisions had been amalgamated, creating a constituency which, both for parliamentary and local government purposes, was probably more thickly populated with Jewish voters than any other in the country at this time. Gordon’s ascendancy over this Jewish electorate was by now considerable. But in 1922, when the former arrangement with the Municipal Reformers was no longer in force, he did not stand. Although the Reformers put up a Jewish candidate of their own—Woolf Joel—his appeal was neither that of Gordon nor that of a young Jewish Labour party activist, Morris Harold Davis (1894-1988). Davis’s running mate, C.J. Kelly, came top of the poll and Davis himself came only 87 votes short of winning the other seat. In 1925 both the Progressives and the Reformers ran Jewish candidates. Adolph Ludlow, Honorary Secretary to the English Zionist Federation and a prominent local Conservative, came bottom of the poll. Ida Samuel did better for the Progressives but still obtained less than half the 4187 votes that Davis accumulated, thus inaugurating his own London County Council career as well as the long Labour party tenure of the Whitechapel stronghold.56

HG, 19 February, 1919, 3. On Davis, President of the Federation of Synagogues from 1928 to 1944, see G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues 1887-1987 (London, 1987), chaps 3 and 4.

55 56

216

Controversy and Crisis

Henry Gordon withdrew, it would seem, from an electoral situation that was becoming ever more problematic so far as Progressive/Liberal candidatures were concerned. Nettie Adler fought almost to the bitter end. The failure of other Jewish candidates to do well in Whitechapel points to the growing popularity of Labourism as a creed that, in such an area, was to carry all before it. In Central Hackney it was not the policies of the socialist left that were to prove insuperable but the politics of the anti-Semitic right. To understand how this came about we must briefly trace Nettie Adler’s relationship with her Hackney constituency from the date of her first election, in 1910. In the years immediately preceding the First World War Hackney was undergoing a fundamental change in its social structure. Just beyond the traditional East End, it was rapidly losing its middle-class image as working-class families, taking advantage of improved public transport, escaped from Stepney and Whitechapel to better-quality rented accommodation that was now within reasonable commuting distance of their workplace. By the early years of the twentieth century Hackney South, bordering on to Bethnal Green and Shoreditch, had become largely working class in composition and by 1910 the working classes also predominated in the Central division.57 Hackney Central only ceased electing Conservative members of parliament in 1906. It was fast becoming an area of Jewish settlement. Dalston, at the centre of the division, had had an established Jewish community since the mid 1880s and, although the Hackney Synagogue (also located in the Central division) dated from 1897, the community that it served had begun to form more than a decade earlier. In the London County Council elections of March 1910 it became possible for the first time (following legislation passed in 1908) for women to be elected to the council without fear of legal challenge. At Hackney Central Nettie Adler was adopted as a Progressive candidate. Her interest in education and in the role of women in education, and her

57

Daily Telegraph, 29 December, 1909, 12.

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

217

support for a school building programme, were well known. She made no secret of her Jewish identity, even to the extent of letting it be known that because of her observance of the Jewish Sabbath she would not campaign on the Saturday of the poll.58 During this contest anti-Semitism was little in evidence. Nettie and her running mate scored comfortable victories and she and Susan Lawrence (a Municipal Reformer) became the first women to sit as of right on the London County Council. There Nettie immersed herself in the general work of the Education and Asylum Committees, but she was also supportive of Jewish interests (for example, in relation to arrangements in London County Council schools for religious observance).59 By the time of the 1913 county council elections her continued presence on London County Council was regarded, from the point of view of London Jewry, as indispensable.60 In spite of the fact that ill health interrupted her campaign and that her running mate lost his seat and came bottom of the poll, Nettie retained hers by just nine votes.61 With the virtual cessation of Jewish immigration and the gradual dispersal of Jews from the East End, the anti-Semitism that had been such a feature of Conservative/Municipal Reform politics at the very beginning of the century might have been contained, and perhaps even diluted, particularly as the very fact of Jewish settlement in Hackney was a sign of upward social mobility, and hence of entry into the ranks of the middle classes as Nettie herself documented.62 By 1929, when the Jewish population of the County of London was put at about 183,000, only some 46 per cent were still living in the East End

HG, 7 March 1910, 5. GLRO, London County Council Minutes, 4-5 and 11—12 April 1911: Report of the Education Committee. 60 JC, 5 March 1913, 4. 61 HG, 7 March 1913, 5. 62 V. D. Lipman, ‘The Booth and New London Surveys as Source Material for East London Jewry (1880—1930)’ in Newman, A. (ed.), The Jewish East End, 1840— 1939 ( London, 1981, 46-7; Nettie contributed the chapter on the Jews to the New London Survey. 58 59

218

Controversy and Crisis

boroughs.63 During the period covered by Nettie Adler’s membership of London County Council, therefore, the centre of gravity of London Jewry began to move away from the East End and was ceasing to be located exclusively within the manual working classes. These factors alone ought to have created within London Jewry fertile ground upon which Conservative ideas might have grown. But they did not. During the First World War the Municipal Reform majority at County Hall was attracted by the popularity of policies aimed against the foreign born Jewish population of the capital. The ultra- patriotism and extreme anti-German feeling that swept through the country once war had been declared easily lent itself to exploitation by anti-Semites. Rich Jews of German origin became the targets of press campaigns. Jews from Russia and Poland were called upon to volunteer for the British army. When it became clear that the proportion of unnaturalized Jews volunteering was small, and in the aftermath of the introduction of conscription for British subjects, the British and Russian governments signed a Military Service Agreement in July 1917, one consequence of which was that males of Russian nationality who refused to be conscripted into the British forces were made liable to deportation. At the end of September 1917 the deportations actually began. During the war the Anglo-Jewish leadership indulged itself in a public orgy of chauvinism. But within the Jewish East End a rather different attitude prevailed. However just Britain’s quarrel with Germany might have seemed, this was not perceived as a Jewish quarrel. Jews who had fled from tsarist Russia and Poland could hardly be expected to volunteer to preserve a regime they heartily detested. To fight against conscription and deportation, and to preserve the right of asylum in Britain, a Foreign Jews Protection Committee was established by a miscellany of Jewish socialist groups, trade unions and friendly

Lipman , Social History, 169; H. L. Trachtenberg, H.L. ‘Estimate of the Jewish Population of London in 1929’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, xcvi, (1933) 96. 63

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

219

societies.64 Its activities aroused bitter local hostility.65 On 23 January 1917 a meeting at Bethnal Green Town Hall passed a series of resolutions drawing attention to the inequity of aliens being permitted to earn good wages while English conscripts were dying for their country, and in the spring, to match the efforts of the Foreign Jews Protection Committee, a Foreign Jews Deportation Committee was set in motion and members of parliament were lobbied.66 It was against this background that the Conservatives at County Hall felt justified in undertaking a number of policy initiatives aimed— in fact if not in name—at the community of foreign Jews in London. On 22 December 1914 London County Council approved a proposal from its Education Committee that no further entry of alien children be permitted into the ‘central’ schools which had been established in 1911 to give a four-year commercial and technical training to pupils specially selected at the age of 11.67 In April 1916 this policy was extended to the eligibility of alien children for all London County Council scholarships and other awards.68 Meanwhile, in 1915 the council had approved a recommendation from its Stores and Contracts Committee that contracts be no longer awarded to firms controlled by ‘enemy aliens’.69 Until October 1917 these regulations affected significant numbers but not the vast majority of London’s Jews. Unnaturalized Jews born in eastern Europe were, for the most part, aliens but not enemy aliens. But with the news of Lenin’s seizure of power in Russia and the subsequent withdrawal of Russia from the allied war effort, attitudes to Russian Jewish immigrants hardened in two respects. The Russian peace with Germany in March 1918 was regarded as a betrayal of the allied cause. More seriously, the advent of

J. Bush , Behind The Lines: East London Labour, 1914—1919 ( London, 1984), 176-81. 65 ELO, 5 August 1916, 4. 66 Ibid., 3 March 1917, p. 4; C. Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939 (London, 1979), 135. 67 GLRO, London County Council Minutes, 22 December 1914, 1024, 1028. 68 Ibid., 4 April 1916, 306. 69 Ibid., 26 January 1915, 105; 27 April, 677. 64

220

Controversy and Crisis

a Bolshevik government committed, apparently, to the notion of world revolution put all Russian immigrants in Britain under suspicion. In April 1919 the extreme Conservative Morning Post attacked the Russian Jewish community en bloc as emissaries of Bolshevism— a line of argument that had been in evidence during the general election the previous November.70 Although, therefore, once the war had ended no Jew could be classified as an enemy alien, there was much popular and media pressure tending to brand Jews— or at any rate those Jews not born in Britain or who had not bothered to become naturalised—as potential traitors, unreliable and untrustworthy. The Conservative majority at County Hall felt that it had to respond to and indeed to be seen to be part of this campaign, in which Jews of Russian or Russo-Polish birth were to be the chief targets. This response was threefold. On 3 March 1918 London County Council resolved that in order to be eligible for council scholarships candidates would in future have to be British when applying for the award and to have been born, or to have fathers who were born, in Britain or the dominions.71 On 15 April 1919, a week after the appearance of the Morning Post’s allegation that Russian Jews were purveyors of Bolshevism, Major E.H. Coumbe, just elected as a Municipal Reform councillor for Stoke Newington (Hackney) and previously a councillor for Mile End, took the first step towards committing London County Council to a policy of not employing aliens. There was clearly some initial reluctance within the council’s General Purposes Committee to the adoption of such a draconian edict,72 but by the summer of 1920 some of the more squeamish had been won over. The council resolved on 6 July that henceforth, except in the case of teachers of foreign languages, no persons other than natural-born British subjects would be taken into the employ of the council.73

JC, 24 January 1919, 5; Morning Post, 8 April 1919, 6. GLRO, London County Council Minutes, 19 March 1918.. 72 GLRO, LCC/MIN/6273: Minutes of the General Purposes Committee, 19 May, 13 and 20 October and 3 November 1919. 73 Ibid., 28 June 1920. 70 71

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

221

Three years later the philosophy embodied in this employment policy was taken a stage further. The council was and continued to be obliged to rehouse those displaced by slum clearance. But under the provisions of a housing regulation approved in 1923 preference in the general allocation of accommodation on the council’s housing estates was to be given in future to British citizens.74 In Nettie Adler’s view this restriction was one factor pushing Jews seeking better housing in the interwar period to look beyond the London County Council boundary, specifically to the north east and north west of the administrative county.75 At the 1925 London County Council elections the Municipal Reformers sought to strengthen this policy by holding out the promise that in future no council housing or tenements would be let to aliens at all, even if they happened to be ratepayers.76 Within Anglo-Jewry those in power at County Hall were now widely regarded as anti-Semitic. Nettie Adler’s own deep and publicly expressed sense of outrage at the scholarships policy made her a heroine in the eyes of Anglo-Jewry but politically, in Central Hackney, did her much damage. In 1925 the former arrangement between Progressives and Municipal Reformers under which she had shared the representation of the division with one of the leading Municipal Reformers, Ray, came to an end. Ray was by this time the Vice-Chairman of the London County Council Education Committee, “whose policy [the Hackney Gazette declared] he had helped to shape.”77 Though offered a continuation of the 1922 arrangement, Nettie could not bring herself to share a platform with one whose policies she had come to detest. In a campaign filled with the rhetoric of class warfare, she was beaten into fifth place behind the Municipal Reformers and two Labour party contestants. This was not quite the end of Nettie’s political career. In 1928 she again

Holmes, op.cit., 205, 302. H. Adler, ‘Jewish Life & Labour in East London’, in H. L. Smith (ed.), The New Survey of London Life and Labour, vol. 6 (London., 1934), 272—3. 76 JC, 20 March 1925, 19. 77 HG, 9 February 1925, 2. 74 75

222

Controversy and Crisis

stood for the Progressives. The anti-Semitism of some Conservatives proved their undoing, apparently by triggering substantial abstentions among potential Jewish supporters of the Municipal Reform programme.78 Although Ray again topped the poll his running mate (Lord Cranbrook) was beaten into second place by Nettie, who thus entered upon a final three-year period as a London county councillor. In 1931 the Municipal Reformers made certain that their campaign was above reproach. The Labour party chose as one of its candidates Dr Bernard Homa, grandson of a famous East End rabbi and already well known himself in the area. Nettie did not quite come bottom of the poll but the margin of her defeat was roughly a third greater than in 1925; sensing, perhaps, that the credibility of Liberalism in London politics had been ground down between the forces of Conservatism and Labourism, she decided not to stand again. The Liberals of Central Hackney concluded in 1934 that without her “it would not be worth while putting up a fight.”79 In a straight contest with the Reformers, Bernard Homa and his ‘socialist’ fellow candidate won a comfortable victory. Of the five Progressives returned to County Hall in 1928, three were Jewish. Eleanor Nathan was the wife of Harry (later Lord) Nathan, elected as Liberal Member of Parliament for North East Bethnal Green in 1929 and 1931. Eleanor sat for the same constituency on London County Council from 1928 to 1934. She was a well-known communal worker and an expert in housing and juvenile delinquency; her husband was a prominent Zionist. But we cannot say of her that she made any special effort to defend Jewish interests in the London County Council as Nettie Adler had done. The Nathan hegemony in Bethnal Green was indeed a remarkable one, based on the impact of two forceful personalities and (it must be said) on a popular revolt against a corrupt borough council run by an uneasy alliance of Labourites and Communists. But it was sealed, in 1934, when Eleanor lost her London

78 79

Ibid., 9 March 1928, 5. Ibid., 9 February 1934, 5.

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

223

County Council seat to the Labour party. Later that year, reading the omens presented both by this result and by the Labour party’s capture of the county council, husband and wife both defected to the Labour party. In March 1937 Eleanor was returned to London County Council as a Labour member for Wandsworth Central (just a month before Harry became Labour Member of Parliament for the same division) and it was as a Labour member of London County Council (1937-49) that she became, in 1947, its first woman Chairman. The last surviving example of the Jewish attachment to Progressivism was provided by Percy Harris, who sat for the neighbouring South West division of Bethnal Green from 1907 to 1934 and again from 1946 to 1949, and then for the amalgamated Bethnal Green seat from 1949 until just before his death in 1952. Harris was an ambitious politician who used his success in local government as a springboard to a distinguished parliamentary career. From 1940 he was Deputy Leader of the parliamentary Liberal party. But he never used his position either to promote Jewish causes or to defend Jewish interests. When he died the Jewish Chronicle paid him a fulsome tribute but recorded that his funeral service was held at St Nicholas’ Church, Chiswick.80 Throughout the 1920s, therefore, while London Jewry was confronted by a suspicious and at times downright hostile Municipal Reform administration at County Hall, the Progressive party could offer it little more than sympathy. Of the three areas of concern— scholarships, employment and housing— the Reformers were only persuaded (in 1928) to make a minor modification as regards the first.81 That they did so at all was due to the efforts of the Labour party and, in particular, of one of the first Jewish Labour members of the LCC, Morris Davis. I have traced elsewhere the early history of socialism and trade unionism among the immigrant Jews in London at the end of the

JC, 4 July 1952, 25. In the summer of 1928, after a long campaign by Morris Davis, London County Council agreed that each scholarship case would be dealt with on its merits; by then, through the passage of time, very few children were any longer affected by the earlier policy.

80 81

224

Controversy and Crisis

nineteenth century.82 Membership of Jewish socialist organisations in the pre-1914 period remained very small. In 1907 the Marxist Jacob Lestchinsky had observed that the total number of Jewish socialists in London amounted to no more than about 200, in a community of some 130 000 persons.83 It was during the Great War that the mass of East End Jewry was won over to the Labour cause. The Municipal Reformers were and (more importantly) were believed to be antiJewish. Because of the electoral arrangements operated at CountyCouncil level, and because of their failure to protest more vigorously against these policies, the Progressives, too, were tainted by them. Labour, by contrast, was absolutely untouched by the ignominy that such measures bestowed. The War Emergency Workers National Committee, set up by the Labour party shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, actively interested itself in cases of anti-Jewish discrimination by East End poor-relief committees.84 Jewish resistance to enforced conscription in the Tsar’s army aroused some sympathy, especially from the Labour movement’s pacifist wing.85 Jewish trade unionists became office-holders in non-Jewish unions and, in this way, came to be selected for municipal elections. Before 1914 there is only one recorded instance of a Jew standing for election to a London Borough Council in the Labour interest, namely the candidature of Lewis Lyons at Stepney in 1912. But in June 1918 Jews played a crucial role in the establishment of the Stepney Central Labour Party; the party had a Jewish Secretary, the formidable Oscar Tobin, Romanian by birth and the local organiser of the National Union of Shop Assistants. It was to Tobin’s chemist’s shop in Harford Street, Mile End, that the young Major Clement Attlee repaired on his discharge from the army, to learn the politics of the East End and, as it turned out, to take the first steps in his own political career. The Alderman, Jewish Community, 47—65.5. J. Lestchinsky, Der Idisher Arbayter (in London) [Yiddish: ‘The Jewish Worker (in London)’] (Vilna, 1907), 31-2. 84 J. Bush, ‘East London Jews and the First World War’, London Journal, 6 (1980), 149. 85 Ibid., 105. 82 83

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

225

formation of the Stepney Labour party, and the entry into that body of the Limehouse Irish, were achievements in themselves, making Tobin ‘the East End’s most influential political “boss”’ at that time.86 They were also important milestones in the realisation of Tobin’s greater ambition, Labour control of Stepney Borough Council. In November 1919, never having held a single seat on Stepney Council, Labour swept to power, winning 43 seats out of 60; Attlee became the Borough’s first Labour Mayor. Additionally, after 1918 two special factors operated to bring the Labour party and Jewry together in east London. The first was the Labour party’s support for Zionism.87 The second was the great franchise reform of 1918, which gave the parliamentary vote to many Jewish immigrants for the first time. At the parliamentary level there can be little doubt that a new Jewish electorate, substantially Labour in its outlook, was ushered into existence.88 At local government level the situation was more complex, mainly because the exclusion from the right to vote in local elections of those who occupied furnished rooms was bound to act as a bar against many Jewish couples exercising the municipal franchise. Nonetheless, qualitative evidence suggests that by the early 1920s a substantial portion of the east London Jewish vote was being cast in favour of the Labour party, to which Poale Zion (Workers of Zion), the Jewish Socialist Zionist party formed at the beginning of the century, became formally affiliated in 1920.89 By 1919 Jewish Labour party candidates were commonplace at municipal level in London; ten of the 43 seats won by the party at Stepney were held by Jews. In November 1922 Whitechapel, the premier Jewish parliamentary constituency, returned for the first time a (Roman Catholic) Labour member of parliament.90 The previous K. Harris, Attlee (London, 1982), 42. G. Alderman, ‘The Political Impact of Zionism in the East End of London before 1940’, London Journal, 9 (1983), 35—8; and see Alderman, Jewish Community, 105-6. 88 Ibid., 89. 89 JC, 17 November 1920, 25. 90 ELO, 25 November 1922, 2. 86 87

226

Controversy and Crisis

March the same division had returned a Labour candidate at the top of the county council poll. We have already noted how Morris Davis (co-opted on to Stepney Borough Council as an Alderman in 1920) failed by only 87 votes to capture the other London County Council Whitechapel seat in the Labour party’s interest. As a result of the December 1923 parliamentary poll the East End constituencies, with the solitary exception of South West Bethnal Green, were “now solid for Labour, and so far as most people can see are likely to remain so.”91 Fifteen months later the first Jewish Labour party candidates (Davis at Whitechapel, Isaac Lyons at Limehouse, Lewis Silkin at South East Southwark and George Strauss at North Lambeth) were returned to County Hall. By 1932 the Labour party contingent comprised half the total number of Jews on London County Council and in 1934 10 of the 14 Jews there were Labour party representatives (the remainder were Municipal Reformers). It was with these Labour councillors that the responsibility for defending Jewish interests in London now came to reside.

91

Ibid.,, 15 December 1923, 2.

London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 -1934

227

Appendix Jews elected to the London County Council, 1889—1934

Progressives/ Liberals

Moderates/ Municipal Reformers/ Conservatives

Labour

Total

1889

5

2

0

7

1892 1895 1898 1901 1904 1907 1910 1919 1922 1925 1928 1931 1934

2 2 2 2 2 2 5 3 2 1 3 3 0

1 3 1 2 2 6 7b 6d 7 6 6 6 6

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 5 5f 10

3 5 3 4 5a 8 12 c 9e 9 11 14 14 g 16

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

228

includes one Independent 8 from 1911 13 from 1911 7 from 1921 10 from 1921 6 from 1932 15 from 1932

Controversy and Crisis

X JEWS IN THE ECONOMY OF LONDON (1850-1940)

[in E. Aerts & F.M.L. Thompson (eds), Ethnic Minority Groups and Economic Development (1850‑1940) (Leuven University Press, 1990), 56‑67.]

A

nglo-Jewry has always been an urban-dwelling community. Since the Resettlement of the mid-l7th century not less than half the Jews of Britain have lived in London; by the mid-19th century, when it is estimated that the total number of Jews in Britain was about 35,000, between 18,000 and 20,000 were to be found in the capital. There was a modest expansion in the size of Anglo-Jewry during the following 30 years, but the great influx of Jews from eastern Europe (principally Russia and Russian Poland) after 1881 wrought a demographic revolution. By 1918 the size of Anglo-Jewry had reached perhaps as many as 300,000; roughly two-thirds of these lived in the London area—that is, the administrative area of the London County Council. Immigration of Jews to Britain declined substantially after 1906, but during the inter-war period there were significant new migrations, principally from Poland in the 1920s and from Nazi Germany and other countries which came under Nazi domination (such as Austria and Czechoslovakia) in the 1930s. By 1940 Anglo-Jewry numbered about 350,000 souls; of these perhaps 225,000 lived in London. Each of these migrations had its own special features, which necessarily impinged upon the economic profile of the community as a whole. We need to bear in mind, however, that the decision of the majority of British Jews to live in London was not primarily an economic one. The Jews of the Resettlement chose to make their homes in the capital basically for reasons of security and religious convenience. Jews were not compelled to live in any particular locality, but it was prudent for them to congregate in London since the protection of the state—should it be needed—could be given more easily there than in the provinces. So first the Sephardi (i.e. Spanish and Portuguese) and later the Ashkenazi (i.e. German-speaking) communities settled in London—and, specifically, in the 17th and early 18th centuries, in the City of London—where they built their synagogues and centres of communal life. Religious Jews had of necessity to live within walking distance of a synagogue on the Sabbath; many of those who were less scrupulous in their religious observances nonetheless wished, for purely social reasons, to dwell amongst their brethren.

230

Controversy and Crisis

By 1850 London Jewry had spread outwards from the original settlements within the square mile of the City of London, in two major directions: to the east (the “East End”), where (together with the City) the bulk of London Jewry was to be found throughout the period under review; and to the west (the “West End”), where about 5,000 Jews had settled. Economic considerations had much to do with these migrations from the City of London itself, but in order to understand the force with which these considerations came to be applied it is necessary to grasp the essential characteristics of London Jewry from a social and class point of view. As V.D. Lipman has observed, Anglo-Jewry in 1850 resembled a pyramid but one whose base was much broader and flatter at the bottom relative to its midriff.1 Contemporary estimates agree that well over half the Jews of London belonged to the “lower class”. But few of these could be termed members of a proletariat in the Marxist sense. The earliest recorded instance of industrial organization by Jewish workers in Britain is that of the cigar-makers in London (1858); this activity was almost entirely in the hands of Dutch Jews in the East End, and we know from the observations of Henry Mayhew that Jews also formed the bulk of the itinerant cigar-vendors who sold the products made by their co-religionists.2 However, by the mid-19th century the popular image of the Jew as a hawker and pedlar was no longer grounded in fact. Jews were moving rapidly into craft skills, such as cap and slipper making, watch, shoe and umbrella manufacturing, glazing and the renovation of clothes.3 The movement of London Jews out of street-selling had a number of causes. At the lowest levels there is no doubt that the Jews were displaced by the Irish. Jewish pedlars relied much on the trade generated by turnpikes, the tolls of which were leased by the City of London to

1

V. D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England 1850-1950 (London, 1954),

27. 2 H. Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England (London, 1982), 123. 3 M.A. Shepherd, ‘Popular Attitudes to Jews in France and England, 1750- 1840,’ DPhil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1983, 241.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

231

Jews, such as Lewis Levy; in the 1820s and 1830s campaigns by antiSemites and by road-improvers, coupled with the growth of railway competition, had led to the collapse of toll income and the abolition of many toll-gates, and this in turn deprived Jewish street-pedlars of their best markets.4 Additionally, Jewish pedlars in London were subject to a great deal of abuse and even physical attack. Their association with the criminal fraternity was, in any case, a communal embarrassment. By mid-century the efforts of the community to persuade male Jewish youth to take up artisan callings were bearing fruit, especially through the exertions of bodies such as the Jews’ Free School, Spitalfields. The Jewish Chronicle of 13 June 1851 reported that the Jews’ Hospital at Mile End was apprenticing boys to craft trades such as tailoring, shoe and boot making, upholstering, cabinet making and the manufacture of jewellery. Factors quite distinct from those deriving from social and economic considerations also made a fundamental impact upon the pattern of Jewish economic life at this time. Until 1832 a professing Jew could not become a freeman of the City of London. This effectively prevented Jews from engaging in retail trade within the City; this legal impediment undoubtedly accounted for the establishment of centres of communal life just beyond the City boundaries. Again, case law dating from 1812 set out the rule that although hawkers (i.e. itinerant salesmen) needed licenses, stallholders (i.e. those operating from fixed premises) did not. Hence the Jewish preference for fixed markets, and for the manufacture and wholesale trade. By 1850 Jews were largely engaged in the making and wholesale selling of items which they had peddled at street level a couple of generations before. The orange and nut markets in Duke’s Place, Aldgate (site of the premier Ashkenazi place of worship, the “Great Synagogue”) were said to be an exclusive preserve of Jewish merchants, who lived in the comfortably-furnished houses around the square. Jewish predominance in the trade in second-hand clothes—

4

Ibid., 246-7

232

Controversy and Crisis

centred on “Rag Fair” and “Petticoat Lane”—had a special origin. In the 1840s the rise of a workshop industry catering for a mass market in clothing threatened the livelihoods of clothes pedlars, who obtained their supplies from markets that were going into rapid decline. But some enterprising Jewish dealers opened covered clothes-exchanges; these literally saved “Petticoat Lane” from extinction, and at the same time rescued the trade from the public opprobrium which the leaders of Anglo-Jewry found so dangerous. Nonetheless, even if it had not disappeared, the trade in second-hand clothes was in severe contraction. Whilst the involvement of Jews with the ready- made clothing industry in London is generally associated with the period of mass immigration after 1881, it needs to be borne in mind that the foundations were laid, in East London, many decades before. In a pamphlet published in 1860 the firm of E. Moses & Son claimed to have been “the first House in London ... that established the system of New Clothing Ready Made.”5 Whatever the truth of this assertion, it is clear that although non-Jews outnumbered Jews in the manufacture of “readymades” at this time, the Jewish firms were the best known (not always for the best of reasons), were renowned for their use of forceful advertising techniques as well as of sweated labour, and were or had by the mid-century become the biggest undertakings in this new industry. It is also worth noting that the majority of Jewish manufacturers had risen from the ranks of “slop- sellers”—that is, dealers in the clothes at the lowest end of the market. The ambition of Jews to move from the position of employee to that of employer has frequently been remarked upon. In the clothing industry the line that divided master from servant was often an extremely thin one. But the development of a Jewish bourgeoisie was built in large measure upon an intense desire for upward social mobility, modified and assisted by factors special both to London and to Jewry. London was not a centre of the industrial revolution; yet, as well as being a great port and a financial centre and money market of world

5

Pollins, Economic History, 100.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

233

renown, it also boasted a very substantial manufacturing sector. Jewish involvement in the Victorian “heavy” or “smokestack” industries was relatively limited; even in the field of textiles (principally cotton), Jewish interest was in broking rather than in manufacturing; as with the Rothschilds, money made in this way was frequently diverted into finance and merchant banking, from which greater profits could be earned and less responsibility and trouble incurred. In 1883 the statistician Joseph Jacobs published a study of the social and economic structure of Anglo-Jewry. Of the 46,000 or so Jews then in London, he estimated that no less than 36,000—over three quarters—were professional people, merchants, shopkeepers and petty traders; he also calculated that 14.6 % of the Jews of London were in the upper or upper-middle classes (with family incomes of £1,000 or more per annum) and another 42.2 % he placed within the middle-classes (with family incomes from £200 to £1,000). Over half London Jewry was now located within the middle-classes; in 1850 the proportion had been about a third. Moreover, we know from Jacobs’ painstaking examination of commercial directories and other records that within these middle-classes the greatest single occupational group was to be found within the financial sector—pre-eminently the Stock Exchange—followed by general merchants (over half the dealers in military stores were Jews) and certain manufacturing sectors (cigars, pipes, slippers and boots, furniture, furs, jewellery and watches, and diamonds). Jews still accounted for only 6 % of London’s tailors and only 5 % of London Jewry was engaged in the professions—banisters and solicitors, surgeons, dentists and architects. The appearance of Jews among the professional classes reflects the advances made in the era of emancipation, but the breakdown offered by Jacobs mirrors also the uneven nature of that emancipation process. In general, entry into the professions had been made possible through the repeal of the Test & Corporation Acts in 1828; the first Jewish barrister had been admitted in 1833. Entry into the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge was, in practice, closed to Jews until the 1870s; but the self-regulating London medical schools, the Inns of 234

Controversy and Crisis

Court (also located in London) and the non-denominational University of London (1836) were bound to attract a Jewish clientele, drawn from the small but expanding circle of families who could afford to pay for the tuition. By 1880 the wealthier sections of London Jewry had firmly relocated themselves west of the City of London, but were also moving northwest (into St. John’s Wood) and north (into the fashionable middleclass neighbourhoods of Islington and Canonbury). It was from these well-to-do areas that what Lipman has called “the characteristically Anglo-Jewish middle class” ran the affairs both of London and of Anglo-Jewry—even if only a minority of them were regular synagogueattenders.6 The wealth upon which these families supported themselves was derived (in ascending order of importance) from the retail trades, commerce and finance. Throughout the 19th century Jews formed but a very small part of the retailing sector (just 4 % according to Pollins, accounting for perhaps 1,500 retail outlets in all); only jewellery, food and clothes can accurately be termed “Jewish” trades at this time.7 However, Jacobs claimed to have identified over 600 Jewish merchants in London, both general and specialist, and although Jewish members of the Stock Exchange amounted to only about 5 % (138), the part played by Jews in the development of the capital as a world financial centre was outstanding in one area, namely merchant banking. The contribution of Jewish capitalists to the development of London as an international financial centre had been greatly accelerated by the needs of the British government during the Napoleonic Wars. Both Jewish and non-Jewish firms took advantage of the unprecedented demands for the raising of loans and for the transfer of funds to subsidize Britain’s continental allies and to pay her aimed forces. London supplanted Amsterdam as the world’s largest money market. The end of hostilities did nothing to diminish the need for the payment of indemnities and to finance post-war reconstruction. 6 7

Lipman, Social History, 78. Pollins, Economic History, 106.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

235

By 1830 the firm headed by Nathan Mayer Rothschild had emerged as the principal banker to European governments wishing to raise capital in London. Other Jews engaged in the issue of foreign securities included Herbert Wagg (whose firm was established around 1800), R. Raphael (a refiner of gold and silver in London since the late 18th century), Isaac Lyon Goldsmid (a founder of the University of London), and, from the 1850s, Samuel Montagu (founder, in 1887, of the Federation of Synagogues and, from 1885 to 1900, Liberal MP for the “Jewish” constituency of Whitechapel before being ennobled as Lord Swaythling). During the second half of the century Jewish involvement in international banking activities centred on London both broadened and deepened, encompassing not only Anglo-Jews such as David Salomons (the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London) and Hermann Stern (whose interests spread to the financing of railway building and similar enterprises) but also foreign Jewish houses, such as the Sassoons from Bombay in 1858, the Speyer Brothers from Frankfurt via America in 1861 and the Lazard Brothers from Paris in 1877. By the 1870s families such as the Sassoons and the Rothschilds moved easily within the highest echelons of London society; they formed an Anglo-Jewish aristocracy, interlocked by ties of marriage and by mutual recognition of communal as well as national obligations; handin-hand with the expanding Jewish middle classes, they erected and maintained a set of communal institutions that not merely made London Jewry self-sufficient but which were designed, in part, to function as a mechanism of social control. Chief among these was the Jewish Board of Guardians, formed in 1859 by the major Ashkenazi congregations in London to deal with what was then regarded as a finite problem of Jewish pauperism in the metropolis. By 1880—again according to Joseph Jacobs—the number of Jewish paupers in London stood at around 10,000—less than a quarter of the total Jewish presence in London, whereas in 1850 the proportion was nearer a half or more. So long as Jewish immigration was maintained within reasonable bounds, the schemes of cash and medical relief, loans and 236

Controversy and Crisis

apprenticeships could—it was hoped—eventually lift most of the Jewish poor beyond the level at which they would need to call upon the services of the Board; only the hopeless cases would remain, and they could be passed on to the statutory Poor Law Guardians.8 The mass immigrations that began in the 1880s, however, “rendered all these calculations abortive.”9 In 1880 the number of applications for relief processed by the Board was less than 2,500; by 1894 this number had more than doubled, and, measured over the entire period 1881-1914, the number increased by between 100 and 200 per cent. The size of the community of Jewish poor to be found in London during this time was—quite simply—beyond the resources of the Board of Guardians to deal with by itself, and the leaders of London Jewry had, perforce, to look to the organs of local government in the capital (such as the Poor Law Guardians and the London County Council established in 1889) for assistance. Between 1881 and 1914 about 150,000 Jews from eastern Europe settled in the British Isles. Most found their way to London. Merely from a demographic point of view this immigration amounted to a revolution. Between 1851 and 1881 London’s Jewish population had grown at the rate of about 4 % per annum. But between 1881 and 1900 this population expanded to approximately 135,000—an annual rate of growth of 10 %; of these it was estimated in 1899 that roughly 120,000 were living in the East End. Jewish immigrants settled in London for a variety of reasons. For some, it was the nearest town to where the ships that brought them to England had docked. Others had friends or relations already living there. Most knew that in London was to be found a relatively large and affluent community with a ready- made religious infrastructure. For many, moreover, the prospect of employment in the furniture and boot and shoe industries, and especially the tailoring trades, was a powerful additional attraction. Feldman has calculated that in the last decade of the 19th century between 11 % and 13 % of the immigrants in East London were boot, 8 9

G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British politics (Oxford, 1983), 13. V.D. Lipman, A Century of Social Service 1 859-1 959 (London, 1959), 75.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

237

shoe and slipper makers, about 15 % were employed in trading and commercial occupations, while between 5 % and 9 % were cabinet makers; the rest—44 % to 45 %—occupied themselves in the tailoring trades; very few indeed were employed as tobacco workers.10 It is noteworthy that it was only in the tailoring sector that women were employed in large numbers; indeed, the proportion of women (59 % in 1891) exceeded the proportion of men (42 %) so employed. It is also noteworthy that the percentage of immigrant Jews employed as wage-earners (71 %) was some 30 % higher than the proportion of Jews so occupied in the Russian Empire in the 1890s.11 There seems little doubt that the experience of emigration resulted in a much higher degree of proletarianization; in striving for upward social mobility and economic betterment, therefore, the immigrants may well have been engaged in the task of recapturing a status and an independence that they knew had once belonged to them, or at least to their parents. How are we to account for the pattern of immigrant employment? Many of the trades in which Jewish immigrants were occupied existed in East London before they arrived. Many other trades were, in practice barred to them, partly on account of their lack of an English education (e.g. clerical work), partly through the requirements of Sabbath observance (for instance, work on the railways or in the docks), and partly because entry into many craft trades (for instance, boilermaking and building) required approval from trade unions that frequently exhibited unashamed anti-Jewish bias. The Jewish immigrants were naturally attracted to trades which were easy to learn and in which Jews were already engaged, but they also gravitated towards activities which could be carried out in small units (typically, a makeshift workshop in the backroom of a house), where women as well as men could be employed, and which (unlike large factories) were relatively free from the interference of government inspectors. The Jews, according to Charles Booth’s survey of London, “work and D.M. Feldman, ‘Immigrants and Workers, Englishmen and Jews: Jewish immigration to the East End of London, 1880-1906,’ Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985, 57. 11 Ibid., 61. 10

238

Controversy and Crisis

meet their fate almost independent of the great stream of London life surging round them.”12 In general, the immigrants did not compete with already-established industries, into most of which entry would have been difficult. Thus, we do not find Jews entering the manufacture of silk hats, in respect of which there was a strong trade union and a well-organized apprenticeship system. The demand for silk hats was, in any case, falling away, whereas the market for velvet and velveteen caps was a growing one. In the tailoring trade, Jews did not compete with the high-class manufacturers of bespoke men’s coats, located in the West End. Instead, they set up workshops to manufacture ladies’ jackets and mantles, which had hitherto been imported from Germany; according to Lipman, “the ladies’ jacket and mantle trade was virtually introduced into England by the immigrants,” whose products Germany itself was soon importing.13 In the boot and shoe trade there was some competition with lower-paid non-Jewish workers, but in cabinetmaking Jewish craftsmen seemed to have concentrated on products— such as cheap, mass-produced bedroom suites—for which a market was just developing. The precise impact of the Jewish immigrant workforce upon the economy of London is still a matter of keen dispute amongst academics. In the tailoring trades the key to Jewish success lay in the methodical sub-division of labour, the most highly skilled did not waste time performing tasks which the less skilled could carry out perfectly adequately. Jews did not introduce “sweating” into the country. The typical “sweater” was the small master, himself living uncomfortably close to the poverty line, whose employees worked long hours and in poor conditions for low wages. These conditions pertained throughout Britain, and in industries with which Jews had no connection whatever. Nonetheless, it was the misfortune of the Jewish immigrants who arrived in the 1880s and 1890s to have come to Britain at a time of economic 12 13

Pollins, Economic History, 145. Lipman, Social History, 114.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

239

depression, and at a period of unprecedented public interest in social conditions. The immigrant presence focussed public attention upon aspects of working- class life that had gone under-reported hitherto, and that presence, cynically exploited by politicians, was itself blamed for the evils complained of. The truth is complex. The charges made against the Jews included the accusations that they worked for longer hours and in poorer conditions than non- Jews, whom they therefore forced out of employment; and that their heavy concentration in certain areas, and their willingness to pay higher rents, pushed non-Jews out of their homes and created over-crowding. In London’s East End a housing shortage existed prior to the immigration, the main effect of which was to make a bad situation worse. The widely- held belief that Jews had lower standards of hygiene and little regard for public health was without foundation.14 However, it is undeniable that the economic activities of Jewish immigrants had some radical effects upon the domestic market. On the one hand, there was a very substantial fall in the retail price of a variety of clothing items.15 On the other—and partly as an inevitable consequence—some unemployment among native workers was undoubtedly attributable to the immigrant presence; this was particularly the case among master tailors and workers in the boot and shoe industries. The difficulties involved in organizing the Jews into trade unions added to the friction that such unemployment caused. In the wake of these charges, true and false, an agitation arose to restrict the immigration of “aliens” (a euphemism for Jews); this agitation was opposed by some sections of the Anglo-Jewish leadership, but the overall communal response was one of the acquiescence, and even of welcome. The campaign resulted in the passage of the Aliens Act in 1905. Thereafter, the number of Jewish immigrants to Britain fell but, as I have argued elsewhere, by 1906 immigration from Russia and Poland had probably passed its peak; the major impact of the Act G. Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986 (London, 1989), 35; L.P. Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England 1870-1914 (Detroit, 1960), 159. 15 Feldman, ‘Immigrants and Workers,’ 84. 14

240

Controversy and Crisis

was psychological, deterring immigrants from coming to Britain, into which entry might now be refused, and encouraging them to make directly for the United States of America.16 Meanwhile, prompted by the Anglo-Jewish leadership as well as by their own ambition, the more established sections of London Jewry moved out of East London as the immigrants moved in. It was during the era of immigration that the foundations were laid of the suburban communities that flourished in the period 1918-1940, and many of which flourish still. Some, such as Hackney, Tottenham (both North London) and East and West Ham (East London) were largely workingclass. Most, however, such as Hammersmith and West Kensington (West London) and Hampstead, Brondesbury, Willesden, Cricklewood and Golders Green (North-West London) were solidly middle-class in composition—business and professional people, financiers and not-so-small shopkeepers. These suburban Jewries, assisted by the spread of cheap public transport in the inter-war years, and by very substantial private house-building programmes were well on the way to becoming, by 1940, the new epicentres of Jewish communal life in the capital—a process of relocation which was completed by the devastation of East London as a result of enemy action during World War II. It is important however, not to predate the decline of Jewish East London. Many of the nouveaux riches who moved to the suburbs still maintained their businesses and their factories in the East End; and even in 1950 the Jewish communities in the boroughs of Stepney, Poplar and Bethnal Green numbered perhaps as many as 30,000, with an additional 100,000 or so in the adjacent North London (but still inner-London) boroughs of Hackney, Islington and Stoke Newington. While finance and overseas trade remained the major preoccupations of the wealthiest sections of the community, in the period of immigration “most Jewish industrial enterprises were on a small scale”17 The involvement of the Jewish East End in the tobacco industry declined in the face of competition from large firms such as Wills of Bristol. In 16 17

Alderman, Jewish Community, 77-8. Pollins, Economic History, 171.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

241

the clothing industry manufacturers began also to interest themselves in the retail side of the trade, and there was some expansion into production industries (such as electrical equipment) by GermanJewish immigrants; by its very nature, however, much of this activity took place outside London. Within the metropolis Jewish businessmen expanded in three broad directions. The first was in the manufacture and sale of food products (bread, cakes, dairy products), epitomized in the teashops (of which there were 200 by 1914) of J. Lyons & Co. The second was in publishing partly to serve the needs of the Jewish community but soon catering for national and indeed world markets; notable in this category was the fine art and greetings-card firm of Raphael Tuck, the LevyLawson family that owned the Daily Telegraph, and Rachel Beer (née Sassoon), proprietor of the Sunday Times between 1893 and 1904. The third was in the distributive trades, especially chemist shops, publichouses, restaurants, jewellery, clothing, grocery and furniture stores, to which perhaps the ownership of cinemas and the development of mail-order companies ought to be added—though these were by no means primarily London-orientated activities. In the inter-war period the aggressive marketing techniques of Jewish shopkeepers—the subtle use of advertising, “cut-price” offers, and the inducement of “loss-leaders”—caused much friction, and was reckoned by some (both beyond and within Anglo-Jewry) to have triggered popular anti-Semitism on the streets of London.18 Jewish involvement in the traditional occupations of clothing and furnituremaking was still substantial. But there was also a very significant move into self-employed occupations—such as commercial travelling and taxi-driving—that offered social status as well as independence and relative security of employment. Moreover, the sons and daughters of the immigrant generation, taking advantage of expanded opportunities in state education, tended increasingly to take “white-collar” jobs— clerical and secretarial work, lower and middle-grade posts in the civil Alderman, London Jewry, 94; S. Aris, The Jews in Business (London, 1970), 150-1.

18

242

Controversy and Crisis

service and local government. With the influx of German refugees of middle-class and professional status in the 1930s, the foundations were being laid for the post-war bourgeoisification of the London Jewish community.

Jews in the Economy of London (1850-1940)

243

XI M. H. Davis: the rise and fall of a communal upstart

[Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxxi (1988‑90), 249‑68; read before the Society 21 June 1990]

I

n this paper I propose to survey some aspects of the career of Morris Harold Davis, one of the most colourful and, at the same time, enigmatic communal leaders who walked the Anglo-Jewish stage in the period between the two World Wars. Davis pursued two careers simultaneously. He was President of the Federation of Synagogues from 1928 to 1944; his presidency of that body therefore spanned the period when the Federation reached the height of its ascendancy in Anglo-Jewish affairs during the first century of its existence, but also when it began its long decline. Davis was in some measure responsible both for that ascendancy and, in some measure, for the decline. At virtually the same time he became the leading figure in the Stepney Labour Party, was Mayor of Stepney in 1930-31, Labour Leader of Stepney Borough Council from 1935 to 1944, and one of the first Labour members of the London County Council (LCC). Davis was, to some extent, responsible for the pre-eminence of Labour in that most Jewish part of London. In the course of time he became responsible, to some extent, for the Stepney Labour Party’s decline in public and in Jewish esteem. A history of the life and times of M. H. Davis thus illuminates and is a central feature of the history of East End Jewry, of Anglo-Jewry, of East End Labour politics, as well as of London politics, of the English Zionist movement and indeed of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Controversy followed him like a shadow. In researching his past I have met people who have refused to talk to me about him and who, indeed, have suggested to me that his career ought not to be researched at all. I am, however, most grateful to Mr Michael Goldman, Dr Bernard Homa, Mr Morris Lederman, Mr Abraham Olivestone and Mr Thomas Reif (one of Davis’s executors, who befriended him in the closing years of his life), and to the late Dr Stanley Chazen and the late Mr J. L. Cymerman, for sparing the time to share their memories of Morry Davis with me. I also want to acknowledge my gratitude to former Councillor Jerry Long, who agreed most readily to be interviewed by me (6 July 1989) in spite of serious ill health. Naturally, the opinions and judgements which follow are, unless indicated to the contrary, 246

Controversy and Crisis

exclusively my own. Let us, therefore, begin at the beginning. Morris Aaron, later known as Morris Harold, or simply ‘Morry’ Davis, was born at 47 Langdale Street, in the registration district and parliamentary constituency of St George’s-in- the-East, adjoining Whitechapel, on 7 November 1894, a son of Joseph Davis and his wife Bertha. Langdale Street lay off Cannon Street Road, between the Commercial Road and Cable Street. By 1918, as the electoral registers indicate, the family had moved to 139 Leman Street, in the heart of the Jewish East End. But I think it significant that Davis spent his earliest years in Langdale Street, practically on the border that separated the Jewish quarter of East London from the Irish. In the 1930s, relations between the Jewish and Irish communities generally became very strained; but in the late 1890s and the early years of the present century, they were very good, cemented by common problems of living in an area of great deprivation and by common interests—in obtaining and retaining, for example, state aid for denominational schools.1 We can, I think, reasonably surmise that Davis met many Irish people in his youth, and that he made friends among them during his schooldays, which were spent at Raine’s School, Rutland Street LCC School, and Myrdle Street Central School.2 Certainly he moved easily in the world of the East End Irish Catholics, and his entrée into this world must surely have been made easier by the fact of his father’s occupation. On Morry Davis’s birth certificate his father, Joseph, is described as a ‘wholesale boot maker.’ Joseph had been born in Minsk in 1868, had married abroad and settled in London at the age of twenty-one, becoming naturalized in 1896.3 Joseph was a staunchly orthodox Jew, a founder of the Cannon Street Road synagogue (which became affiliated to the Federation of Synagogues) and of the Christian G. Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics 1889-1986 (London 1989) 48-9. East London Observer (hereafter ELO) 15 Nov. 1930, 4. 3 Joseph Davis’s naturalization file is in the Public Record Office, HO 144/387/B 20364. I infer that Joseph had been married abroad from the fact that no record of any marriage authorization exists in the archives of the Chief Rabbinate of the United Hebrew Congregations in London. 1 2

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

247

Street Talmud Torah, and very active in the Jewish friendly society movement in London.4 In 1917 Joseph had moved from boot-and-shoe manufacturing to becoming the licensee of the ‘Brown Bear’ public house, situated at 139 Leman Street. On leaving school Morry had been apprenticed in the ladies’ tailoring trade. I can find no record of his having performed any military service during the Great War, but it is certain that he subsequently joined his father’s apparently lucrative foray into the world of public houses, having become, in 1921, manager of the ‘Brown Bear’ run by his father.5 The licence of the ‘Brown Bear’ was relinquished (to another Jew) in 1926. But that same year Morry himself became the licensee of the ‘Bell Tavern’, 116 St George Street, Shadwell. This establishment was closed by decision of the Tower Hamlets Licensing Division in 1929.6 Thereafter Davis devoted himself entirely to communal and political life, describing himself at his trial in 1944 as a ‘social worker’ and living, I am told, on his own wealth and on that of his parents.7 Morry revered his father, whose funeral, at the Edmonton cemetery of the Federation of Synagogues in 1940, was a great municipal and communal occasion. The cortege included no less than two dayanim (Abramsky and Lazarus) as well as the Mayor and Town Clerk of Stepney; Stepney Council itself rose in silent tribute. His mother, Bertha, he worshipped. During his year as Mayor of Stepney Bertha became the Mayoress; when she died in 1954, Davis seems to have overlooked arranging for an inscription to her memory to be placed on the double tombstone.8 Davis himself never married. According to Mr Reif he was ‘a bit of a ladies’ man’ and could, on occasion, be a East London Advertiser (hereafter ELA) 30 March 1940, 1. ELA 29 Oct. 1921, 5; 28 Oct. 1922, .3. 6 See Post Office London Directory and ELA 12 March 1927,.8; 19 March, 4. 7 When he appeared before the Hendon Magistrates in 1944 the court was told that he had a private income; his assets at death (1985) totalled £157,368 before tax: Jewish Chronicle (hereafter JC) 20 Oct. 1944, 18; 21 Nov. 1986, 28 8 A memorial inscription to his mother was added after his death, and I supplied Mr Reif with details of his mother’s Hebrew name: interviews with Mr Reif, 23 Oct. 1986 and 14 Nov. 1989. 4 5

248

Controversy and Crisis

heavy drinker. One might interpret these facts as evidence of a certain emotional immaturity on Davis’s part. Morry Davis was loudmouthed, precocious and intolerant. To those to whom he took a dislike he could be—and was—merciless. ‘Once you’d had a quarrel with him,’ Jerry Long has told me, ‘that was that.’ To those he befriended he could be charitable to excess. He spoke English and Yiddish fluently and with some stylistic accomplishment. He was possessed of a great deal of craft and cunning; he could certainly be regarded as clever, and even as intelligent. Above all else, next to his mother, he loved power, and from his mid-twenties he devoted his considerable talents to its pursuit in each of the worlds he inhabited: municipal politics in London and communal politics in the Federation of Synagogues. In June 1918, East End politics entered a new phase with the formation of the Stepney Central Labour Party, which brought together Jewish and non-Jewish socialists and trade-unionists.9 The creation and early functioning of the Party owed much to its Jewish secretary, the formidable Oscar Tobin, Romanian by birth, a chemist by training, and local organizer of the National Union of Shop Assistants.10 It was to Tobin’s chemist’s shop in Harford Street, Mile End, that the young Major Clement Attlee had repaired on his discharge from the Army, there to learn the politics of the East End and, as it turned out, to take the first steps in his own political career. Tobin had made a detailed study of the demography and topography of political power in Stepney, and had reached a simple conclusion: a party which had, and which retained, the support of both the Jews and the Irish was bound to win control of the Borough Council. The alliance between the Jews and the Irish Catholics had been strengthened in the period 1916-22 by the shared hostility of both communities in East London to the use made of the Defence of the ELO 1 June 1918, 3. On Tobin see ELA 28 Jan. 1922, 3 and E. R. Smith, ‘Jews and Politics in the East End of London, 1918-1939,’ in D. Cesarani (ed.) The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Oxford 1990) 151. 9

10

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

249

Realm Act to deport Jews and, in the wake of the Easter 1916 Irish uprising, to imprison Irishmen without trial.11 The formation of the Stepney Central Labour Party, and the entry into that body of the Limehouse Irish, were therefore achievements of the first importance, making Tobin (in the words of Attlee’s biographer) ‘the East End’s most influential political “boss” at that time.12 They were also important milestones in the realization of Tobin’s greater ambition, Labour control of Stepney Borough Council. In November 1919, never having held a single seat on the Stepney Council, Labour swept to power, winning 43 seats out of 60; Attlee became the borough’s first Labour Mayor. Morry Davis saw himself as the heir to the inheritance Oscar Tobin had fashioned, and he went about claiming it with a focused determination. He met and made friends with Clement Attlee, and although he had been defeated, by a mere 17 votes, in the Whitechapel South ward of Stepney in 1919, it was Attlee who suggested his election nonetheless as an Alderman just two years later.13 As a member of the Stepney Labour Party Davis quickly offered himself as Oscar Tobin’s protégé, voting for Tobin’s election as the first Jewish Mayor of Stepney in November 1921 and becoming a Vice-President of the Stepney Labour Party the following summer.14 Tobin tried unsuccessfully to have Davis appointed immediately to a range of council committees; the move was premature and had to be abandoned.15 Some months later his career was itself almost terminated when he attempted to repair a sodawater machine in the basement of the ‘Brown Bear’; the contraption exploded in his face, and he sustained serious head injuries which put him out of action for several months.16 At the municipal elections of November 1922 Davis again stood at Whitechapel South, and was again defeated. But in June 1924 he ELO May 1920, 5; on the Jewish deportations, which began at the end of Sept. 1917, see Alderman , London Jewry, 61. 12 K. Harris, Attlee (London 1982) 42. 13 ELA, 29 Oct. 1921, 5. 14 ELA 12 Nov. 1921, 5; 24 June 1922, 6; see also Smith, ‘Jews and Politics,’ 154. 15 ELA, 28 Nov. 1921, 5. 16 ELA, l7June 1922, 8. 11

250

Controversy and Crisis

was returned at a by-election that occurred in the North ward of St George’s- in-the-East. His rise in the committee structure of Stepney Council was thereafter rapid and unremitting. Within six months he had been elected to membership of the Finance, Parliamentary & General Purposes, Staff and Education committees, becoming Chairman of the Education Committee in 1926; in December 1926 he gained election to the Valuation Committee, and the following January he became Vice-Chairman and in 1928 Chairman of the Finance Committee; in 1927 he had also become Chairman of the Markets Committee, and in 1928 the chairmanship of the Valuation Committee also fell to him.17 The chairmanship of these committees would alone have made Davis a most powerful figure in Stepney politics. They appear, for instance, to have given him some influence over the rating of business properties, more especially as a result of the passage of the Rating & Valuation (Apportionment) Act in 1928, and they certainly gave him a unique role in the allocation of licences for market stallholders; Davis achieved the status of folk hero when, in spite of a parliamentary stipulation that a gap of 4 feet should separate each stall, he succeeded in reducing the gap in Stepney to 2½ feet, thus allowing up to 250 more stalls— but also, of course, increasing the patronage at the Markets Committee’s disposal.18 In 1922 Davis had failed, by only eighty-seven votes, to win the second Whitechapel & St George’s seat for Labour on the London County Council; in 1925, faced with a split opposition—the (Liberal) Progressives and the (Conservative) Municipal Reformers having failed to renew an earlier pact—he had little difficulty in winning the division, and in thus inaugurating his career on the LCC, in which he also soon immersed himself in committee work. He had, meanwhile, been cultivating with equal deliberation the friendship of the leaders of Stepney’s Irish-Catholic community: in the early 1920s Alderman Jack Sullivan and, later on, Sullivan’s own protégé, Councillor Jeremiah ELA, 3 Jan. 1925, 6; 11 Jan., 3; 15 Jan. 1927, 3; 28 July 1928, 8; 24 Nov., 3; 26 Oct. 1929, .2. 12 K. Harris, Attlee (London 1982) 42. 18 ELA, 15 Nov. 1930, 4. 17

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

251

(‘Jerry’) Long. In 1922 Sullivan unsuccessfully nominated Davis as mayor. Davis nominated Sullivan as mayor in 1926.19 It was Sullivan who made the successful nomination of Davis in 1930, and it was Davis who proposed Jerry Long as mayor in 1937. For Davis the support of the schoolteacher Jerry Long was crucial. Jerry’s mother, the ambitious Hannah, had made her entire family (three Sons and four daughters) members of the Labour Party, and was herself elected to the Stepney Council in 1929, a year after Jerry’s own election.20 Jerry Long had been born in London in 1905, but his parents came from Cork (also the birthplace of J. J. Cahill, Mayor of Stepney in 1922-3), and it is clear that the Cork origins, devout Catholicism and impressive record of communal service of the Long family paid political dividends in the East End borough. Morry Davis’s cultivation of Jerry Long was not, therefore, misplaced. As we shall see, the need to preserve the support of the Stepney Irish was to lead Davis, in due course, down some very strange political pathways. But in the late 1920s this danger was simply not apparent. Davis and Long shared a remarkable similarity of political outlook: they were moderate socialists, not revolutionary firebrands.21 They also became good friends. By 1939 one opponent could refer in truth to the “DavisLong axis” that ran Stepney politics.22 When Davis became Council Leader in Stepney in 1935, the ambitions entertained by Oscar Tobin for Labour control of the borough appeared to have been fulfilled. But Davis’s achievements differed in one crucial respect from the vision of his political mentor. Oscar Tobin’s influence on East End Jewry had been grounded ELO, 11 Nov. 1922, 3; 13 Nov. 1926,.3. Interviews with Mrs Rose Long, 16 June and 6 July 1989; details of Hannah Long’s career are to be found in the Cork Evening Echo of 15 Nov. 1979, 10, and I am grate‑ ful to Mrs Long for drawing my attention to this item.14 ELA 12 Nov. 1921, 5; 24 June 1922, 6; see also Smith, ‘Jews and Politics,’ 154. 21 A. J. Kushner, ‘British antisemitism in the Second World War,’ PhD thesis, Univer‑ sity of Sheffield 1986, 279; Smith, ‘Jews and Politics,’ 160. 22 ELO, 1 April 1939, 6. In his speech accepting the Mayoralty in 1937, Long con‑ fessed that he owed “a good deal of my political education to two people, Councillor Davis and ex-Councillor Jack Sullivan”: ELA, 13 Nov. l937, l. 19 20

252

Controversy and Crisis

almost exclusively within the socialist and trade-union movements. But Morry Davis had by 1930 also become the leader of what was then the largest synagogal organization in the capital and in the British Isles. Within a few years he could claim, indeed, to be a figure—even if only a minor figure—on the world Jewish stage. Morry Davis rose to the head of the Federation of Synagogues as a result of the revolt against the presidency of Louis Montagu, the second Lord Swaythling, who had succeeded his father, Samuel Montagu, as President on Samuel’s death in 1911. Louis Montagu lacked his father’s devout orthodoxy but made up for it by displaying an extreme anti-Bolshevism and a virulent anti-Zionism; after 1919 he was tolerated within the Federation mainly out of respect for his father’s name and memory.23 Inquiries into the financial misdeeds of the Federation’s secretary, Joseph Blank, brought matters to a head. In a series of meetings of the Federation’s Board of Delegates during 1925 Louis Montagu took it on himself to defend Blank, and thus sealed his own fate. It is in the minutes of these meetings that we first encounter Morry Davis in a Federation setting, and they remind us that Davis’s conquest of the presidency of the Federation symbolized the victory of the immigrant classes over the Anglo-Jewish gentry in a manner much more tangible than, say, the ousting of David Lindo Alexander as President of the Board of Deputies and his replacement by Sir Stuart Samuel had done in 1917. Davis’s victory was in truth nothing less than the triumph of a popular local figure over a remote moneyed aristocrat. Davis had been born into the bosom of the Federation, so to speak, and it is likely that he would have sought a communal career within and through its structure whatever the pretext. He was a strong supporter of the Zionist cause, becoming in time a Vice-President of the Jewish National Fund in England. Louis Montagu was a foundermember of the anti-Zionist League of British Jews, and one of the ten signatories of the mischievously worded and infamous letter which 23

G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues 1887-1987 (London 1987) 43-4, 53.

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

253

appeared in the anti-Semitic Morning Post of 23 April 1919. The letter carried the clear implication that unpatriotic and indeed revolutionary sympathies were held by significant number of Jews living in Britain; it accused the Jewish Chronicle and its sister paper, the Jewish World, of promoting the Bolshevik cause.24 The ultimate targets of the letter were, of course, the immigrant Jewish masses and their offspring, whose very visible presence in East London and other British cities, and whose left-wing and nationalistic tendencies so embarrassed important sections of the Anglo- Jewish ruling classes. Davis later claimed that his determination to enter the arena of Federation politics had been triggered by Montagu’s action in signing this letter.25 There is no reason to doubt this claim. It was in and through Morry Davis that the embittered Yiddishspeaking membership of the Federation’s affiliated congregations found the voice to articulate their mounting anger with the English lord who ruled over them. Davis proved equal to the task. At a meeting attended by no fewer than 172 members of the Board of Delegates on 13 May 1925 (just a few weeks after his election to the LCC), Davis expressed the mood of no confidence in Louis Montagu’s leadership, and gave public utterance to the suspicions concerning Joseph Blank, who was dismissed. It was Davis who obtained the largest number of votes in the election of a three-man sub- committee charged with finding a new secretary.26 And at the fateful Board meeting of 25 November 1925, the last which Louis Montagu attended, it was Davis who moved and carried a portentous resolution: ‘That despite any rule or minute to the contrary . . . at any meeting of the Federation, where any delegate desires to address the meeting in Yiddish, such permission be granted.’ Samuel Montagu, the Federation’s founder, had wanted the Federation to act, inter alia, as an instrument of anglicization; he had accordingly forbidden any See generally S. Kadish, ‘The Letter of the “Ten”: Bolsheviks and British Jews’, in J. Frankel (ed.) Studies in Contemporary Jewry IV (Jerusalem 1988) 96- 112. 25 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 56. 26 Federation of Synagogues (hereafter FS) Minute Book No.3. 24

254

Controversy and Crisis

discussion of Zionism at its meetings, and had banned the use of Yiddish. The passage of Davis’s resolution was thus of the deepest significance, as well as being tactically brilliant. Louis Montagu acknowledged he could not understand Yiddish; his presidency thus came to an inglorious end.27 During 1926 Davis acted as chairman of Federation meetings, and, as a newly-elected Treasurer of the Federation’s Burial Society, was instrumental (January 1926) in the voting of funds for Zionist causes— the Keren Hayesod and the Keren Kayemet. The Federation thus became, to the delight of Zionist fundraisers, the first significant non-Zionist organization in Anglo-Jewry to contribute to the redemption of the National Homeland. In February similar resolutions were approved by the Board of Delegates, and grants of increasing magnitude were made to the Keren Kayemet and the Keren Hayesod regularly thereafter.28 From 1926 Davis fulfilled, in effect, all the functions of Federation President. But he was not formally elected to that office until 20 March 1928, and then only by 79 votes to 51, at a meeting attended by over 200 delegates.29 It is pertinent to ask why the delay arose, and why the margin of his victory was so small. Some Federation members hoped to entice back Louis Montagu; when it became clear that this was hopeless, others argued that some person of eminence unconnected with the recent tumults might be induced to accept the presidential office. Davis’s talents were admired, but his ambition was feared, and the proposal to concentrate in him the offices of Federation President and Burial Society Treasurer had many opponents.30 There is much merit in the argument that Davis became President by default. By the mid-1920s Federation synagogues had on their books no fewer than 12,565 families, representing something in excess of 50,000 souls; in 1930 male membership of the United Synagogue Ibid. See also D. Cesarani, ‘The Transformation of Communal Authority in AngloJewry, 1914-1940’, in D. Cesarani (ed.) Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry, 123. 28 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 57. 29 FS, Minute Book No. 3; it was at this meeting that Davis became a member of the Board of Deputies. 30 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 57. 27

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

255

totalled only 8310.31 The Federation was thus the largest synagogal body in the country at this time. But its public standing had suffered grievously during the last years of the Louis Montagu regime. We need to remind ourselves that 1926 was the year of foundation of what became the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, and that it is arguable that this body might never have grown and flourished, and become what the Federation claimed to be—the home of Torahtrue orthodoxy in London—had the Federation itself been in better shape. Davis was supported by the Zionists and had become a very visible local celebrity. The wounds which the Federation had inflicted on itself in the early 1920s needed to be healed; Morry Davis alone seemed capable of healing them. The reality turned out to be a personal tragedy, a communal scandal and an institutional nightmare. Early on in his presidency Davis set in motion a comprehensive revision of the Federation’s constitution. The old Board of Delegates was to be replaced by a General Council, but the new Executive Committee was to be much smaller than the old. Formerly the president of every affiliated synagogue had been an ex-officio member of the Executive; henceforth the Executive was to consist merely of sixteen elected members plus the President, Vice-President and the two Federation Treasurers. The quorum for meetings of the new Executive was to be seven, and the President, or in his absence the Vice-President, or in their absence either of the two Treasurers, was to “have power to take action in case of emergency when it may be impracticable to convene the General Council or the Executive Committee.”32 Wiser counsels might have blocked the adoption of a scheme of governance that quite clearly made possible the rule of an oligarchy, or even of one man. Voices were indeed raised against the hasty implementation of the new scheme.33 But in 1934 Davis carried all A. Newman, The United Synagogue 1870-1970 (London 1977) 216. Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 41, 58. 33 FS, Minute Book No. 3: special meeting of the Presidents and the Executive, 15 Aug. 1934. 31 32

256

Controversy and Crisis

before him, pleading correctly that the income-tax authorities required the adoption of new rules before they could consider the question of charitable status. This status was soon granted, and a refund of over £900 obtained.34 In fact, Davis had already dispensed with the machinery of representative government which had been sanctioned by the constitutional revision. In 1928 a new Board of Delegates had been elected. Thereafter elections should have taken place every two years. This did not happen. At first the omission seems to have been passed over in silence. Later the excuse was cheekily offered that the holding of new elections would interfere with the promulgation of the revised constitution. Later still, Davis explained that it was only right and proper that those who had been responsible for the purchase of the Rainham cemetery, the site of which was acquired in 1936, should be in office when it was consecrated (20 February 1938).35 In fact, throughout the entire duration of the Davis presidency (some 16½ years), there was not a single election, either for honorary officers or for the General Council. How was this remarkable feat achieved? To attribute it to apathy is to turn a blind eye to Davis’s political skills. Morry Davis pointed the Federation in directions in which its membership had wanted for some time to go. The 1934 constitution committed the Federation “to further the upbuilding of Eretz Yisroel” and “to use influence and exertion .... whenever intervention may be desirable, in favour of Jewish Communities throughout the world.”36 Under Davis’s aegis the Federation, freed at last from the restraint of the Swaythling family, became totally committed to the Zionist cause, and generally adopted a much higher profile in the councils of Anglo-Jewry. An early indication of Davis’s determination in this respect was his success in 1929 in doubling Federation representation on the London Board for Shechita; two years later a second vice-presidency of that

Ibid. General Council, 24 Sept. 1935. Ibid. Meeting of Presidents, 14 May 1939. 36 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 58. 34 35

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

257

Board was created for Davis to fill.37 Under Davis’s leadership the Federation put considerable sums of money at the disposal of the Jewish National Fund, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and other Jewish endeavours in Palestine.38 Nor was Davis afraid of thrusting the Federation into the political arena in defence of Jewish national interests. A series of resolutions condemning the policy of the British administration in Palestine was forwarded to the Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald, on 12 September 1929. On 9 January 1936, again at Davis’s prompting, the General Council resolved to deplore the establishment in Palestine of a Legislative Council which, at that time, would have relegated the Jews of the Yishuv “to the status of a minority.”39 Considerable financial contributions were also made to the relief of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. As is well known, the Board of Deputies persistently rejected calls for an official economic boycott of Germany by Anglo-Jewry.40 Davis, however, saw to it that the Federation played a leading part in the formation of the “Jewish Representative Council for the Boycott of German Goods and Services,” which was inaugurated in November 1933 and of which he himself became Chairman.41 It is also noteworthy that the Federation, unlike the Board of Deputies at this time, did not hold aloof from the World Jewish Congress. FS, Minute Book No. 3: meeting of Board of Delegates, 8 April 1929; A. M. Hyam‑ son, The London Board for Shechita 1804-1954 (London 1954) 72. 38 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 60-1. 39 FS, Minute Book No. 3: meeting of General Council, 9 Jan. 1936. 40 The Ha’avarah (the transfer agreement between the Jewish Agency and the Nazi government of Germany) conflicted with the principle of a boycott, to which German Jewry was opposed. See D. Cesarani, ‘Zionism in England 1917-1939,’ DPhil thesis, University of Oxford 1986, 354, and American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (hereafter AJA), Felix Warburg Papers, 293/1: Minutes of meeting of the Joint Foreign Com‑ mittee of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, 28 June 1933. 41 G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford 1983) 121; FS, Minute Book No. 3: Special Board Meeting, 9 July 1933. See also the correspondence between Davis and Chief Rabbi Dr J. H. Hertz, 23-5 Sept. 1935, in the Hertz Papers, Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, General Correspond‑ ence, Misc. D. folder, files D-G; Hertz urged that “the boycott must go on”, but de‑ clined “officially and openly” to join it. 37

258

Controversy and Crisis

Under Davis the Federation’s many charitable disbursements in the non-Zionist sphere included the support of Jewish communities abroad, more especially in Poland. Commencing in 1931, an annual grant was made to the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies in support of lectures on the Talmud. Grants were even made to entirely non-Jewish causes. In 1934 the sum of £105 was donated to the relief of victims of the Gresford colliery disaster. This was, in fact, the second act of charity which, at Davis’s prompting, the Federation had made in the direction of the coal-mining communities in the inter-war period. In 1929, in response to his personal appeal, eight Federation synagogues had donated small sums to relieve economic distress among British miners.42 The backcloth to all these initiatives was provided by the growth of the Federation itself. In 1927 Davis had put his weight behind a proposal that loans made by the Federation to its affiliated synagogues should in future be free of interest; “the profit the Federation will make,” Davis observed, “will be in Yiddishkeit.”43 In his 1937 history, the late Dr Cecil Roth observed that the Federation was “now no longer a predominantly East End organization.”44 This was an exaggeration, but the thought that prompted it—that affiliated synagogues were then to be found in all parts of London—was certainly true. Congregations admitted to the Federation in the Davis era included Central Hackney (1927); Clapton, Stamford Hill Beth Hamedrash and Walthamstow (1928); Fulham and Kensington (1929); Gladstone Park and Neasden, and Leytonstone (1932); Willesden (1933); Bermondsey (1935); Forest Gate (1937); and Springfield (Upper Clapton, 1938). Indeed, by the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the Federation could boast congregations from Tottenham in north London to Bermondsey in the south, and from Shepherds Bush and Notting Hill in the west to Forest Gate in what were then the outlying eastern suburbs. And it was Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 60, FS, Minute Book No. 3: balance sheet for 1929-30. 43 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 59. 44 C. Roth, The Federation of Synagogues 1912-1 937 (London 1937) 30. 42

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

259

as a result of the greatly increased membership which this expansion brought that Davis took in hand the purchase of a new cemetery, at Rainham, Essex. The Federation was, in short, a far more extensive organization at the end of Davis’s presidency than it had been at the end of Louis Montagu’s, and its place in world and in Anglo-Jewish circles was far grander. Davis’s advice and support were sought by Dr Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations; by the former Haham, Dr Moses Gaster; by Dr Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress; and by Dr Chaim Weizmann.45 Davis had also become a prominent member of the Board of Deputies, willing to put his considerable political influence at the disposal of the Board, more particularly in relation to London County Council matters. Between 1907 and 1934 the LCC was controlled by the Municipal Reformers, who had taken advantage of the anti-Jewish and anti-alien mood during and immediately after the Great War to push through a series of measures which affected London and especially East London Jewry profoundly. In 1918 the LCC resolved that in order to be eligible for Council scholarships, children would henceforth have to be British when applying for the award, and to have been born, or have fathers who were born, in Britain or the Dominions.46 In 1920 the Council adopted a recommendation that, except in the case of teachers of foreign languages or where it was resolved otherwise, no persons other than British subjects be taken into the employ of the LCC.47 Three years later the philosophy embodied in these measures was taken a stage further. Under the provisions of a housing regulation approved in June 1923, preference in the general allocation of accommodation on the Council’s housing estates (other than accommodation in respect of displacement through slum clearance) was to be given in future to British citizens.48 This regulation, originally intended (so it was Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 61. Greater London Record Office (hereafter GLRO), LCC Minutes, 19 March 1918. 47 Ibid. 6 July 1920. 48 Archives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (hereafter BD) C13/9. 45 46

260

Controversy and Crisis

said) to be of a merely temporary nature, soon acquired a permanent place on housing application forms. Its effect, in the words of a Board of Deputies’ memorandum, was to exclude alien applicants “entirely from consideration for any tenancy in the Council’s dwellings.”49 The tone of the Board’s response to these measures was set by Sir Isadore Salmon, Conservative MP for Harrow from 1925 until his death in 1941, a member of the LCC from 1907 to 1925, and a Treasurer of the United Synagogue from 1925 to 1934, when he became a Vice-President.50 Salmon’s view was that, given the temper of the times, it was both foolish and counterproductive for the Board to make a nuisance of itself by campaigning against LCC policy, more especially in the matter of scholarships.51 This was not a view which Morry Davis shared. Within a few weeks of his election to the LCC in 1925, Davis entered into a correspondence with the Board of Deputies on the scholarships question.52 As a member of the Board, and using as examples some of the most blatant cases of hardship and injustice in which the policy had resulted, he began a campaign to swing official Anglo-Jewish opinion into a less docile frame of mind.53 Although Davis and his allies (prominent among whom were Nettie Adler, Percy Harris and Lewis Silkin) were then in a minority at County Hall, at the Board of Deputies they were in a position to carry all before them.54 Their persistence threatened the position of the Board’s leadership, and it is certain that towards the end of 1926 contact was made by this leadership with the London Municipal Society, which coordinated the efforts of the Municipal Reform Party Ibid, Memorandum undated but circa January 1933. On Salmon, see The Times 17 Sept. 1941, 7; JC 19 Sept. 1941, 8. 51 BD, A19: Minutes of Meeting of the Board, 15 March 1925; JC 20 March 1925, 9, 19. 52 BD, E3/42 (I): Davis to Board, 5 April 1925. 53 BD, A3/2: Minutes of Meeting, 21 March 1926: Joint Report of the Education and Law and Parliamentary Committees. 54 Nettie Adler was the unmarried daughter of the late Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, and Progressive member of the LCC for Central Hackney; Percy Harris was both Lib‑ eral MP and Progressive LCC member for South-West Bethnal Green; Lewis Silkin was elected to the LCC as Labour member for South-East Southwark in 1925, and was a close associate of Herbert Morrison. 49 50

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

261

in London, with the aim of defusing a situation fraught with danger not so much for London Conservatism as for the ability of anti-socialist and non- and anti-Zionist forces to continue to dominate the Board’s proceedings.55 The result was a double victory of sorts. In July 1928 the LCC agreed to deal with each scholarship case on its merits; the following December it announced that it would employ naturalized as well as natural-born British subjects.56 As I have argued elsewhere, to some extent this policy change in the field of employment was the result of secular pressures quite outside the control of Anglo-Jewry.57 Nonetheless, it would be churlish, and downright unjust, to deny Davis the tribute due to him in making certain that these matters were never off the communal agenda. But it is also significant that these modest victories were secured before Labour gained control of the LCC in 1934. The truth was that the anti-alien and anti-Jewish policies inaugurated by the Municipal Reformers in the fields of employment, education and housing enjoyed widespread popularity. The scholarship restrictions were enforced by the Labourcontrolled LCC in relation to entry into Central schools, and remained Council policy even after the Second World War.58 The housing policy was also left intact. As chairman of the LCC’s Housing & Public Health Committee Lewis Silkin brushed protests aside, while Davis said not a

BD, E3/42 (I): Percy Cohen to E.M. Rich (LCC Education Department), 12 Dec. 1926. 56 GLRO, LCC Minutes, 17 July 1928; LCC/MIN/3467: Minutes of the General Pur‑ poses Sub-Committee of the Education Committee, 30 Jan. 1928; ELO 8 Dec. 1928, 6; see also the correspondence in BD, E3/94, Nov-Dec. 1928. 57 Alderman, London Jewry, 88. In modifying its employment policy, the LCC had done no more than fall into line with the policy of central government in relation to the civil service. 58 ELO 21 July 1934, 5; BD, B4/LO2 contains correspondence between the Board, Dayan Gollop, Lady Spielman, Sir Isadore Salmon and the LCC (Sept. 1938-Jan. 1939) relating to the continued refusal of the County Council to admit alien children to its Central schools. On the general continuation of the scholarship restrictions after 1945 see GLRO, ED/HFE/3/2: Report by Education Officer, 11 April 1956. Elaine Smith’s assertion , ‘Jews and Politics,’ 154, that Davis and the Board were successful in having the scholarship restrictions removed in 1928 seems, in view of this evidence, very wide of the mark. 55

262

Controversy and Crisis

word in public, having already in 1933 (but in the privacy of the Board of Deputies’ Law & Parliamentary Committee) advised against taking any further action in this matter.59 In the mid-1930s Morry Davis was at the height of his communal and political power. A man in his position— in his unique combination of positions—might have been expected to have risen further, perhaps to a Vice-Presidency of the Board of Deputies, or even to a seat in Parliament.60 These further prizes eluded him. By 1936 his careers both as a Jewish leader and as a Labour politician had become controversial, and they were overshadowed by controversies of increasing severity and bitterness with the further passage of years. We have already noted his unconstitutional behaviour at the Federation of Synagogues. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, and the Cable Street climax to the rise of violent anti-Jewish fascism in East London in October 1936 led to further, and in my view fatal complications for him, and marked the watershed in his public life. On the whole, East End Jewry adopted a position sympathetic to the Spanish Republicans, whom the Irish viewed as anti-Catholic. Alienated by the anti-religious strain of Communist politics, and encouraged by the anti-Jewish tone prevalent in certain sections of the Catholic press, some Irish elements in East London tended to sympathize with the broad aims of fascism.61 Irish support for General Franco acted, therefore, as a powerful solvent of the Jewish-Irish dialogue that had characterized East End politics hitherto. The neutrality of the Irish Free State during the Second World War further strengthened the Jewish view that the Irish had no desire to fight international fascism, and the wartime anti-Communism of the Catholic priesthood in the East

ELO 23 March 1935, 5; 22 June, 4; BD, C13/1/11: Minutes of Law and Parliamen‑ tary Committee, 14 Feb. 1933. 60 At the time of his election as Mayor of Stepney Davis was not only Vice-President of the Jewish National Fund in England, but also a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. There had been some talk of his being adopted as Labour candidate to fight the Whitechapel by-election of Nov-Dec. 1930, but this possibility never materialized: ELO 15 Nov. 1930, 6. 61 C. Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1 939 (London 1979) 212. 59

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

263

End drove the wedge between the Irish and the Jews deeper still.62 These developments inevitably affected the stability of the political machinery Morry Davis had constructed, since his position as Labour Leader in Stepney depended on maintaining the support of his Irish colleagues. The need to preserve this support led him to adopt some strange and controversial postures. Davis took very little active part in combating the fascist menace in Stepney in 1936. In July he had spoken at an anti-fascist gathering at Victoria Park, Hackney, and after the ‘battle’ of Cable Street had written an indignant letter to the Home Secretary.63 In February 1937 he and three other Jewish councillors voted to permit the British Union of Fascists to hold a meeting in Limehouse Town Hall64. During the tense atmosphere of 1936 one of the most forthright champions of Jewish rights locally had been the then mayor, Helena Roberts. Councillor Roberts was Jewish by birth but Christian by conversion; in proportion as she sought to obtain a more even-handed approach by the police, so Davis seems to have taken umbrage against her—to the extent, in July 1938, of using a procedural device to prevent her proposing a committee of inquiry into allegations of police brutality against antifascists.65 That same year Davis attempted to block the appointment of his fellow Stepney Labour councillor Henry Solomons as the first secretary of the London Area Council of the Board of Deputies’ Defence Committee, on the grounds that Solomons, a man of emphatic left-wing tendencies, harboured Soviet sympathies.66 By then, readers of the local press were becoming used to allegations of inefficiency and corruption in the affairs of the Stepney Council. At the end of 1936 these concerned the work of the Stepney Public Cleansing Committee.67 In 1938 there was a political storm at the Town Hall arising from charges of incompetence in relation to the provision Kushner, ‘British anti-Semitism,’ 242. JC, l7 July1936, 32; 30 Oct., 17. 64 ELA, 27 Feb. 1937, 1. 65 ELO 2 July 1938, 1, 7; JC 8 July 1938, 40. 66 BD, C6/3/16/5 and 10. 67 ELA 1 Dec. 1936, 5. 62 63

264

Controversy and Crisis

of air-raid shelters, for which Davis, as official “Air Raid Precautions Controller,” was responsible.68 Not only were the allegations well founded; they were accompanied by strong rumours of bribery.69 Davis had also become an embarrassment at the LCC. Dr Bernard Homa, grandson of the famous Rabbi A. Werner of the Machzike Hadath Synagogue in Brick Lane (affiliated to the Federation), and since 1934 a Labour member of the LCC for Central Hackney, has recalled being asked by Herbert Morrison, Labour’s political boss at County Hall, to intervene after Davis had demanded money from the owners of an East End public house as the price for attending to some LCC matter for them.70 In October 1940 Morrison, then Minister of Home Security in Churchill’s wartime coalition government, bowed to local pressure by stripping Davis of his Civil Defence role and appointing in his stead a Controller directly responsible to central government.71 The Stepney Labour Party was split on pro-and anti-Davis lines.72 It was to his Irish friends in the Stepney Council Chamber that Davis had to turn for support in dealing with his Jewish critics, such as the well-known activist “Tubby” Rosen.73 These events reacted, of course, on Davis’s leadership of the Federation of Synagogues. He had used his powers under the constitution of 1934 with a cynical and comprehensive disregard of the most fundamental tenets of democratic practice. Mild criticism of the failure to hold proper elections was voiced at a General Council on 30 June 1938.74 In 1939 the criticism became more intense. One member of the General Council likened Davis’s conduct to “Hitler business,” while another, the future President Jack Goldberg, “begged him to fix a date” for

ELA 22 Oct. 1938, 8; 13 May 1939, 1. K. Brill (ed.) John Groser: East London Priest (Oxford 1971) 151-3. 70 Interview with Dr. Homa, 15 Sept. 1987 71 ELA 2 Dec. 1940, 1; Tower Hamlets Central Library, Minutes of Stepney Borough Council, pp. 1998-9: Extraordinary Meeting, 9 Nov. 1940. 72 ELA 26 Nov. 1938, 1; for early signs of the split see ELA 12 Dec. 1936, 5; 19 Dec., 2; 2 Jan. 1937, 4. 73 ELA 6 Jan. 1940, 5. 74 FS, Minute Book No.3. 64 ELA, 27 Feb. 1937, 1. 68 69

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

265

the election of a new General Council.75 An organized opposition was formed, in which Dr Homa played a leading role, and what Davis termed “unofficial meetings” were held. On 14 May 1939 Davis summoned a meeting of presidents of Federation synagogues, before whom he repeated an earlier pledge that elections for a new General Council would be held that year.76 He and his supporters cleverly turned the meeting into a trial of the “Constitutional Group,” who were accused of putting their own interests above that of the Federation, and of giving ammunition to the enemies of the Federation, among which the Jewish Chronicle, which had carried reports of the opposition to the Davis regime, was accorded a high place of priority. The presidents appeared satisfied with Davis’s excuses; one of them was even persuaded to make a public recantation of his former critical views.77 Members of the General Council were not so easily satisfied. Dr Homa and his friends were able to insist on a meeting of the Council, held on 13 June 1939 and attended by some 209 delegates. In a powerful speech Dr Homa declared that “the constitution of the Federation had been violated. Notices of Motion had never appeared on the Agenda; two requisitions [for a General Council] have been ignored … There is too much intimidation abroad;” furthermore, Dr Homa “protested against the non-attendance of the Hon. Officers to a summons from the Beth Din.”78 But at the end of a heated and angry debate, the Constitutional Group was defeated by 99 votes to 78. How is this defeat to be explained? In part, I think, it was because there was a great deal of genuine support for Davis’s exertions on behalf of the Federation and of Jewry at large. We must remember that there was no obvious and undisputed alternative to Davis as President at this time, since Dr Homa was not universally admired in Federation circles, and in fact never succeeded in Ibid. General Council, 2 March 1939. Ibid, Meeting of Presidents, 14 May 1939. 77 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 66. 78 FS, Minute Book No. 3: Special Meeting of the General Council, 13 June 1939. 75 76

266

Controversy and Crisis

gaining election as its President.79 But the reference in Dr Homa’s speech of 13 June 1939 to “intimidation” must also be slotted into the equation. Referring to the support for the World Jewish Congress which the Federation gave at the Board of Deputies, the Board’s President, Neville Laski, explained to his American friend Felix Warburg in 1936 that Federation Deputies “have to vote as their master, the President [i.e. Davis], dictates for a variety of reasons.”80 In particular, members of the Federation’s General Council who were minded to oppose Davis knew that he was accustomed to threaten increases in the rateable values of business premises in the borough; in this way many of his opponents were, it seems, cowed into silence.81 Though he had survived the vote of 13 June 1939, Davis could sense that his position in the Federation was no longer totally secure and, once war had broken out, he moved swiftly, using the hostilities as an excuse to postpone new elections and later, on 10 November 1940, persuading the General Council to hand over to the Executive total control of the Federation’s affairs.82 The following month a meeting of synagogue presidents with the Executive agreed that “all vacancies on the Executive be filled by the Executive,” because, it was alleged, of “the inadvisability of calling delegates’ meetings at the present time.” In the immediate context of the war and the Battle of Britain these extraordinary steps might have been justified for a very limited period. In fact the General Council met several times during the war: for example on 9 May 1943, to discuss the forthcoming triennial elections to the Board of Deputies, which the Zionists, supported by Davis, were determined to ‘pack’, and again on 9 September 1943, when no less than 171 delegates managed to assemble to discuss a dispute with the United Synagogue over claims for war damage to synagogues. But the Council was never permitted to discuss new elections. Morry Davis, in Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 70. AJA, Felix Warburg Papers, 328/11: Laski to Warburg, 26 May 1936. 81 I base this statement on interviews (conducted in Nov. and Dec. 1985) with Mr A. B. Olivestone and the late Mr J. L. Cymerman, lifelong activists in the Federation and early opponents of the Davis regime. 82 FS, Minute Book No. 3: General Council, 10 Nov. 1940. 79 80

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

267

short, used the excuse of war to extinguish the representative nature of the Federation of Synagogues, and to turn it instead into an instrument of his own will. By the early years of the war the smell of bribery, corruption and intimidation that had come to surround the activities of Morry Davis was very strong indeed. In conversation with me on 29 August 1985 the late Dr Stanley Chazen, who knew Davis well in the 1930s, referred to him as “a crook”; to the late Mr Joseph Cymerman (interviewed on 8 December 1985) he was an “absolute dictator.” It is the view of Jerry Long that Davis was, by the outbreak of the Second World War, under police investigation: “I think they were after him [Mr Long told me on 6 July 1989] because there was some fraud going on in the Borough Council.” If so, no charges were ever brought. That Davis had substantial reserves of communal and political strength was not in doubt. He took steps to make Federation money available to subsidize the provision of kosher food for evacuees, and to enable Talmud Torahs to reopen during the war.83 He saw to it that the Federation made the British Government an interest-free war loan of £5000. At the Board of Deputies he continued to make himself useful in a variety of ways as a member of the LCC: in dealing with problems arising from the establishment of a Christian missionary school in Hackney, for example, and in attending to the dietary requirements of Jewish children attending evacuated LCC schools.84 His hold on the Stepney Labour Party was still strong. It was Davis himself who moved a resolution at an Extraordinary Meeting of the Stepney Borough Council in November 1943 condemning Herbert Morrison’s decision to release Oswald Mosley from detention.85 And Davis managed to have himself re-elected as Labour Leader on the Borough Council even as he awaited trial at the Old Bailey during the second

Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 68. BD, E2/54: S. Brotman (Secretary, Board of Deputies) to Davis, 20 Feb. and 20 March 1940. 85 Tower Hamlets Central Library, Minutes of Stepney Borough Council, p.2756, 24 Nov. 1943; ELA 26 Nov. 1943, 1. 83 84

268

Controversy and Crisis

half of 1944.86 On 16 August 1944 Davis, then living at 30 Rostrevor Avenue, Stamford Hill, was involved in a bizarre incident at Hendon undergroundrailway station. He tried to avoid prosecution for alleged non-payment of a railway fare by inciting an employee of Stepney Borough Council to issue him with a false National Identity Card.87 Davis had in fact paid his fare, but had mislaid his ticket, and appears to have panicked in consequence. Something of his true nature had, perhaps, come to the very public surface at last. Neither his position as Labour Leader on Stepney Council, nor evidence as to his good character from Henry Berry, Vice- Chairman of the LCC, and from Walter Edwards, the Labour MP for Stepney, could save him from a 6-months’ prison sentence (24 November 1944). The Davis era had come to an abrupt but not inappropriate end. How is one to evaluate his legacy? The man himself was full of contradictions: a socialist who brushed aside democratic principles; an orthodox Jew who paid no attention to a summons from a Beth Din; a communal leader who applied the resources of the Federation to many worthy and altruistic purposes, but who at the same time seemed to have little regard for the Federation’s public image, and still less for its internal sensitivities; a Labour politician whose leadership brought obloquy on the Party in Stepney, and whose political activities acquired the dimensions of a scandal. Two consequences of Davis’s career stand out. His presidency of the Federation brought it to unprecedented heights in Anglo-Jewry, but plunged it also to new depths, making the task of post-war reconstruction, which would have been considerable in any case, infinitely more difficult. His leadership of the Labour Party in Stepney repelled many non-Jews and Jews alike and was, in my view, partly responsible for the strength of Communist politics in East London just before, during and immediately after the Second World War. In particular, his removal through imprisonment resulted in severe damage 86 87

ELO 1 Dec.1944, 1-2. Ibid; IC 20 Oct. 1944, 8; 1 Dec. 1944, 9; The Times 25 Nov. 1944, .2.

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

269

to the image of Labour in East London; it took several years for the Stepney Labour Party to recover from this episode, and while it was doing so the Communist Party was able to reap a predictable harvest in terms of seats both on the Stepney Council and on the LCC.88 It is as well to remember, however, that Davis was surrounded by admirers and not a few sycophants. Although within the Federation grave misgivings were voiced, as we have seen, neither the man, Morry Davis, nor the methods to which he resorted were ever publicly condemned by the communal organizations of Anglo-Jewry. The Jewish Chronicle campaigned against him, but overreached itself in 1937 and admitted its error in a subsequent libel action.89 It is astonishing to recall that in the early 1950s Davis was brazen enough to attempt to regain office in the Federation, and that although this ambition was doomed to failure, he managed to be re-elected to the General Council and to find other Council members willing to support his candidature as President in 1955.90 Davis was a paradox — a series of paradoxes. Did these, perhaps, betray a tormented soul, and can we, in tracing the extraordinary final years of his public career, detect signs of the mental instability that some say afflicted him in later life? I know that Mr Reif, his executor, does not agree that Davis suffered in this way.91 I keep an open mind. Morry Davis was just fifty years old when he began his gaol sentence. In his later years he became a recluse, plagued by illness and loneliness. He was a regular worshipper at the Stamford Hill Beth Hamedrash, where a few members of the congregation took it on themselves to befriend and care for him.92 He died in a private nursing home in Golders Green, on 15 March 1985, in his ninetieth year, and is buried next to his parents at Edmonton. On his tombstone the word ‘Councillor’ is mis-spelt. Alderman, ‘London Jewry,’ 98. The Times 5 Feb. 1938, 4. 90 FS, General Council Minute Book, 1945-63; his candidature was of course unsuc‑ cessful. 91 Interview with Mr Reif, 23 Oct. 1986. 92 See the compassionate obituary of him in the JC 12 April 1985, 18, written by Mr Michael Goldman, the then Secretary of the Federation of Synagogues. 88 89

270

Controversy and Crisis



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For permitting access to archival material in their possession, I am grateful to American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (Ohio USA), the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, the Federation of Synagogues, the Greater London Record Office, the Public Record Office (Kew) and Tower Hamlets Central Library. I must also record my thanks to Dr Robert Fitzgerald and Dr Sharman Kadish, who as my Research Assistants have been of invaluable help in the gathering of material on which this paper is based.

M. H. Davis: The Rise and Fall of a Communal Upstart

271

XII ENGLISH JEWS OR JEWS OF THE ENGLISH PERSUASI0N? REFLECTIONS ON THE EMANCIPATION OF ANGLO-JEWRY

[in Pierre Birnbaum & Ira Katznelson (eds), Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States & Citizenship (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1995), pp. 128 – 156]

S

tudents of Jewish emancipation in Britain must focus their attention at several different levels more or less simultaneously if they wish to obtain a reasonably accurate measure of the interplay of forces that acted upon the object of study. They must also exercise extreme vigilance in relation to the definition of terms.” Emancipation” is usually taken to mean the setting free from legal, social, political, or intellectual disabilities. In some of these senses the emancipation of British Jewry can be traced with comparative ease: for example, the release from legal constraints or the granting of full political equality. Social and intellectual (not to mention economic) emancipation are much less tangible concepts and there is, in any case, much less agreement about what these terms actually mean. An example will illustrate the kind of difficulty involved. Strictly speaking, professing Jews were prohibited from voting in British parliamentary elections until 1835 (for males aged twenty-one and over who could fulfill the necessary property and residence qualifications). But this did not mean that until 1835 no professing Jews could—in practice—exercise the right to vote. Before that date the returning officers who supervised constituency election arrangements had the right to demand the swearing of a Christian oath by all intending voters, but this was not a right they were obliged to exercise, and it is clear that in particular localities election officials deliberately chose not to discriminate against Jews in this way. In May 1830 Sir Robert Wilson told the House of Commons that Jews habitually voted in parliamentary elections in Southwark (south London) because no one bothered to insist that they take the Christian oath.1 In December 1832 Rabbi Asher Ansell of Liverpool was clearly able to vote in the general election without hindrance.2 These instances tell us something also about the nature of the British state, in its relations with its Jewish inhabitants, during the late eighteenth

The Mirror of Parliament, vol.2, col. 1781 (17 May 1830). Liverpool Poll Book of 1832 in the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

1 2

274

Controversy and Crisis

and early nineteenth centuries. Social and economic emancipation preceded by a half--century and more the granting of full civic equality; the former, indeed, was a precondition of the latter. In contrast to the situation to be found in the major countries of western Europe, AngloJewish emancipation did not proceed from the top downward, by some great single act of emancipation emanating from the highest levels of the state and imposed upon society as a whole. Rather, it grew, as a process, out of a mosaic of changing social, economic, and religious circumstances over which the Anglo-Jewish community as a whole had relatively little control. The Anglo—Jewish community of the Cromwellian Resettlement did indeed inhabit a ghetto, but one that had no physical dimension and was partly of its own making. The granting of entry to the House of Commons (1858) was merely the culmination of a movement the origins of which may be traced back certainly until the second half of the eighteenth century, and which was accelerated by the onset of that period of rapid economic growth known as the Industrial Revolution. In particular, the growth of religious toleration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was bound to affect the status of British Jewry, elements of which (such as the Goldsmid brothers and the English Rothschilds) had by then acquired for themselves important places in the financial and commercial life of the nation. The Jews (of whom there were about thirty-five thousand living in Britain in the 1850s, with about twenty thousand in London) had much in common with other, larger, ‘dissenting’ minorities, such as the Unitarians and the Quakers, whose members were also conspicuous in banking, finance, brokering, and underwriting. Legally the Jews were, as they felt themselves and declared themselves to be, merely a section of nonconformist society.3 During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the belief that heresy (the holding of religious views at variance with those of the established Protestant Church of England) was tantamount to treason I. Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry: The Anglo-Jewish Experience (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, 1986), 8.

3

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

275

was finally laid to rest. In 1828 and 1829 most dissenting groups in Britain were admitted to full political equality. These groups, however, were all Christian. Henceforth the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a Christian realm, even if it was no longer a Protestant one. Jews, especially if they were born in the United Kingdom, already enjoyed a wide measure of toleration and legal protection. Lord Chancellor Brougham put the matter thus in 1833: “His Majesty’s subjects professing the Jewish religion were born to all the rights, immunities and privileges of His Majesty’s other subjects, excepting so far as positive enactments of law deprived them of those rights, immunities and privileges.”4 Doubts as to whether Jews could legally dwell in England had been resolved by the end of the seventeenth century. The right of foreignborn Jews to become naturalized was conferred (incidentally) by Act of Parliament in 1825. By the end of the 1840s there were no legal restraints upon the right of Jews to worship freely, to own land, and to seek the protection of the courts of law for themselves and their property; indeed, in 1818 the right of a synagogue to take proceedings to recover dues owed to it was recognised.5 The ability of professing Jews to vote in parliamentary elections was, as noted, made explicit in 1835 though it had in practice been exercised much earlier.6 In general, entry of Jews into the major professions (especially the law) from which Jews had been barred hitherto had been effected through the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828); the first Jewish barrister, Francis Goldsmid, was called to the Bar in 1833.7 The right of Jews to engage in retail trade within the square mile of the City of London had been conceded in 1830 (though it had almost certainly been exercised before then). The right to hold any and every municipal office was granted by Act of Parliament in 1845—but there are Quoted in M. C. N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain (London, 1982), 44. 5 C. Roth, A History of the Jews in England (2nd edn., Oxford, 1949), 246. 6 T. M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England (Philadelphia, 1979), 113. 7 See generally P. S. Lachs, ‘A Study of a Professional Elite: Anglo-Jewish Barristers in the Nineteenth Century,’ Jewish Social Studies 44 (1982), 125-34 4

276

Controversy and Crisis

numerous examples of Jewish involvement in local government prior to the passage of that legislation.8 The Registration Act of 1836 had given statutory recognition to the London Committee (subsequently known as the Board) of Deputies of British Jews. Originally the records of the Board had been kept in Portuguese; from the 1770s they were kept in English, and it is also noteworthy that sermons in English were introduced into the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in 1892, by which time they had ceased to be unusual in Ashkenazi congregations. Thus by the mid-nineteenth century, through an incremental process, the legal equality of Jewish with non-Jewish citizens of the United Kingdom was substantially complete. There were as yet no professing Jews in the House of Lords (then a totally hereditary body), and any professing Jew brave enough to secure election to the House of Commons was legally precluded from taking his seat by virtue of the requirement to swear a Christian oath. But this disability was not one about which the Jewish community itself was particularly agitated. To begin with, the acknowledged lay and religions leaders of the community were much more concerned with the maintenance of traditional (i.e., orthodox) Jewish values and practices than with entry into Parliament. Moses Montefiore, who became president of the Board of Deputies in 1835 (and who was to remain president, almost without a break, until 1874), confided to his diary in 1837 his resolve “not to give up the smallest particle of our religious forms and privileges to obtain civil rights.”9 The recognition of the Board of Deputies as the competent authority to certify Jewish places of worship for marriage purposes was valuable, of course. But two years earlier Parliament had, as part of a general enactment, curtailed the total autonomy the community had enjoyed—uniquely—hitherto to marry within degrees of kinship permitted by rabbinical authority. In like manner, religious G. Alderman, Modern British Jewry (Oxford, 1992), 53 Quoted in L. P. Gartner, ‘Emancipation, Social Change and Communal Reconstruction in Anglo-Jewry, 1789-1881,’ Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 54 (1987), 90. 8 9

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

277

autonomy in matters of divorce was irrevocably compromised by the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which gave the civil Courts, for the first time, the power to dissolve a religiously sanctioned marriage. Equal treatment had thus been obtained, but at a price considered by many to be too high. Two issues were involved. The first concerned, obviously, the religious freedoms of the community, which (it was argued) were being eroded in the name of equality before the law.10 Second, and no less important, this equality threatened to disturb the structure of power within a community that had been until then almost entirely self- governing. We need to remember that in the 1840s the communal structure of Anglo-Jewry was far from settled. Until Montefiore’s elevation to its presidency, the Board of the Deputies—in effect, at that time, merely a committee of representatives of the four largest London congregations (three Ashkenazi and one Sephardi)—had met very infrequently. Montefiore, by nature an autocrat, was concerned that the board should become the sole medium of communication between the community and the government, and be acknowledged as such on both sides. This necessitated a more formal structure (including a written constitution) and a widening of its membership, to include provincial congregations. The very small Jewish communities of Scotland (principally Glasgow), Wales (principally Cardiff), and Ireland (principally Dublin) were, in every sense or the word, peripheral: the great provincial Jewries of Victorian England (Manchester alone excepted) did not develop and flex their muscles until the 1880s. This is not to say that challenges to the hegemony of London were until then nonexistent; rather, provincia1 leaders lacked the numerical support and the communal status to overcome the predominance of the large London congregations. By 1858 there were fifty-eight deputies, of whom only twenty-six In 1911 Lord Rothschild defended Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler’s recommendation to a Royal Commission on Divorce, that “foreign rabbis” who authorized “irregular divorces” (i.e., divorces conforming to rabbinic precept but not recognized by the state) should be rendered liable to prosecution. Rothschild argued that emancipation implied, on the part of Anglo-Jewry, a renunciation of “imperium in imperio:.” Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 2.

10

278

Controversy and Crisis

represented six London synagogues; but six of the provincial deputies also lived in London and, in practice, those who dominated communal affairs in the capital dominated also the affairs of the board.11 Montefiore shared the view then prevailing among the communal grandees that the well-being and reputation of the community necessitated a continued measure of intracommunal discipline, which might also be put to use to defend traditional Orthodoxy against the depredations of the Reform movement. The 1836 Registration Act gave the Board, in the person of its president, a mighty weapon to use against Reform congregations trying to establish themselves in Britain; the first, the West London Synagogue, opened its doors in 1842. Montefiore refused to grant the necessary certificate for marriage registration purposes to this congregation, and he refused to admit to membership of the board any adherent of the Reform persuasion. In 1853, when four provincial congregations elected Reformers as their deputies, Montefiore used his casting vote to keep them out; in 1856 a special Act of Parliament had to be passed to provide the West London Synagogue with a marriage secretary of its own. From 1845 Montefiore had a staunch ally in Nathan Marcus Adler, elected that year as (Ashkenazi) Chief Rabbi following Solomon Hirschell. Adler, who came from Hanover, could claim an allegiance that his predecessors could not, for his was the first election in which provincial communities as well as London congregations had participated. It was during his tenure as Chief Rabbi (1845—1890) that the office developed along the broad path it was to follow for the next hundred years. He used the power to certify congregations to the Board of Deputies (so permitting them to be represented there and to obtain marriage registration) in order to reinforce his authority over provincial congregations, and to

A. Newman, The Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1760 – 1985 (London, 1987), 17 12 See generally I. Finestein, ‘The Anglo-Jewish Revolt of 1853,’ Jewish Quarterly (Autumn/Winter 1978-79), 103-13; the first Reform deputies were not admitted to the board until 1886. 11

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

279

prevent Reformers from becoming deputies.12 He laid down the form of worship for “all the Synagogues in the British Empire” (1847) and conducted pastoral visitations of his provincial communities. He claimed and exercised the power to license all synagogue officials and shochtim (ritual slaughterers of meat).13 In short, Nathan Adler believed that the Orthodox structure in Britain was too weak to permit the growth of self- governing communities—as existed in Germany, Poland and Russia—and that what was needed was strong centralization under his aegis. The approach of Montefiore, Adler, and their allies to questions of communal organization and power was bound to inform and colour their attitude also toward political emancipation. The founders of the West London Synagogue, and in particular the Mocattas and the Goldsmids, were among the most energetic workers for emancipation, which at one level was argued simply in terms of taxation and representation: Jews who paid their local and national taxes were entitled to exercise the concomitant rights of representation. Such rights were also being denied to Reformers (in respect of marriage registration and seats on the Board of Deputies) and—it should be noted—to newer immigrants within the Orthodox fold who found that the synagogues they joined were controlled (apparently in perpetuity) by a class of well-to-do “free” members whom it appeared impossible to unseat. The “rotten borough constitution” of the Great Synagogue, London, was denounced by the scholar immigrant S. M. Drach, who pointed out that “whilst its leading members are publicly striving for the extension of … civil and religious liberty . . . they themselves keep up the old restrictive and select vestry system.”14 David Salomons, the leading emancipationist (also the first Ashkenazi President of the Board of Deputies [1838—40] and the first professing

G. Alderman, ‘Power, Status and Authority in British Jewry: the Chief Rabbinate and Shechita,’ in G. Alderman & C. Holmes (eds). Outsiders and Outcasts: Essays in Honour of William J. Fishman (London, 1993), 14-16. 14 Jewish Chronicle [hereafter JC], 1 November 1845, 15. 13

280

Controversy and Crisis

Jew to sit, literally, in the House of Commons [1851]), though not a Reformer himself, nonetheless found himself at odds with the Orthodox establishment because he viewed the Orthodox-Reform rift within Anglo-Jewry as a hindrance to the removal of civil disabilities. Salomons argued that the Jews could not demand equality with the Gentiles while denying it to their fellow Jews who happened to be Reformers; he did not regard the Reform controversy as being by any means the most pressing problem facing the community; and he resented Nathan Adler’s attempts to assert the Chief Rabbi’s authority in this matter and in others, such as education.15 So it was that the quest for political emancipation became bound up, inextricably, with the Reform controversy, with the sporadic secessions from the major London congregations incited by the cloying oligarchic modes of governance to be found within them, with the growing authority of the Ashkenazi chief rabbinate, and with the claim of the Board of Deputies to speak—and to speak without challenge—for the whole of British Jewry. For as long as no professing Jew could gain admission to Parliament, perhaps to articulate there “Jewish” opinions at variance with those of the lay and religious leaderships outside, the authority of those leaderships could he maintained reasonably intact. Conversely, once the claim for civil equality had been met, the very act of its having been granted would be used within the community (so it was said) to bring about drastic alternations in the structure of communal power and in the exercise of communal authority. To these arguments two others were added. The first was a fundamentalist one, derived from the thesis that although Jews could dwell among other nations, they were not permitted to sink their identities within those of the nations among whom they dwelled: the Jew was not an Englishman and, if he tried to become one, his Jewish identity—and destiny—would be lost.16 This viewpoint was admittedly extreme. But it was espoused by a number of religious authorities, on the severely practical ground that political emancipation might lead to assimilation 15 16

G. Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics (Oxford, 1983), 16. Salbstein, Emancipation of the Jews, 78-84.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

281

and complete loss of religious identity. Such spokesmen publicly repudiated the quest for political equality and did not shrink from identifying themselves with Christian opponents of emancipation in this regard.17 Nathan Adler, it must be said, was not of this view. But he had no enthusiasm for the emancipation campaign. Moses Montefiore viewed emancipation as a desirable objective, but not one that had to be given the highest communal priority. Moreover, he was (inevitably) highly critical of the attempts of the leading emancipationists to bypass the Board of Deputies in their dealings with the government on this issue. Partly in consequence, the board did not stir itself in regard to emancipation until the very final stages of the struggle. In this matter, as in so many others, the attitude evinced by the board was entirely reactive: in general, it did not desire a close relationship with the British state and was generally suspicious of the motives of those who sought a Jewish presence in the Westminster legislature. Here a second argument came into play. For it could not be denied that most Jews neither desired the right of election to Parliament for themselves nor thought it important for the community as a whole that efforts should be expended in pursuit of such a privilege. To comprehend the full force of this viewpoint we must bear in mind that only the wealthiest elements of British society could contemplate a political career. Election contests cost money; members of Parliament were unpaid. Given the highly decentralised nature of the British state in the mid-nineteenth century, the role of Parliament could hardly be said to be critical to the everyday life of the nation: what practical advantages, therefore, could possibly accrue to British Jewry from the presence in the House of Commons of a handful of identifying Jews? The right of entry into the professions had a general application. The ability to deliberate upon the affairs of local authorities was undoubtedly I. Finestein, ‘Anglo-Jewish Opinion during the Struggle for Emancipation (1828 – 1858), Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 20 (1959-61), 116-7; see also U. R. Q. Henriques, Religious Toleration in England 1787 – 1833 (London, 1961), 182-3.

17

282

Controversy and Crisis

beneficial, especially in areas of high Jewish concentration, such as London. The right to vote might be said to open a necessary dialogue between Parliament and Jewry—though it is worth noting that there was never a Jewish “campaign” on this particular issue. But the right of election to the House of Commons did indeed strike many Jews as utterly peripheral to the real interests of the community, more particularly in view of the fact that not even the most strident Jewish protagonists in the struggle for entry into Parliament harboured any intention of creating a Jewish “lobby” at Westminster Thus in 1830 the entrepreneur Lewis Levy (the renowned farmer of turnpike tolls) petitioned the Commons in favour of a declaratory law on the right of Jews to own land, but insisted that he desired neither the franchise nor the right of election to Parliament, adding that his Jewish acquaintances were of a similar opinion.18 Researching in the 1850s, Henry Mayhew, the chronicler of London life, had this to say about the attitude of the Jewish “man in the street” to the question of Jewish political emancipation: I was told by a Hebrew gentleman (a professional man) that so little did the Jews care for “Jewish emancipation,” that he questioned if one man in ten, activated solely by his own feelings, would trouble himself to walk the length of the street in which he lived to secure Baron [Lionel de] Rothschild’s admission into the House of Commons … When such is the feeling of the wealthier Jews, no one can wonder that I found among the Jew streetsellers and old-clothes men with whom I talked on the subject … a perfect indifference to, and nearly as perfect an ignorance of, politics.19 The quest for Jewish political emancipation was not one in which British Jewry, as a collective, took part. Rather, it was undertaken by a Mirror of Parliament, 29 April 1830, 1423. H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1861-2; reprint London, 1967), 2: 126-7.

18 19

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

283

few leading members of the community, acting partly out of personal or communal ambition as well as out of pure idealism and principle. After Lionel de Rothschild’s victory, the number of Jewish members of the House of Commons rose quickly, to six MPs by 1865. But this was, in large measure, simply a function of Jewish over-representation in the social groups from which the political classes were drawn. During his entire parliamentary career (1858—74) Rothschild never once made a speech on the floor of the House of Commons; indeed, few of these early Jewish re MPs (Salomons and Sir John Simon are important exceptions) could he relied upon to put their parliamentary positions at the service of the Jewish community. Of course, the saga of Lionel de Rothschild’s attempt to gain admission to the Commons as an MP for the City of London (for which he was elected five times between 1847 and 1857) acquired epic proportions; it was a saga in which the city’s Jewish electorate played a central part. But the overriding factor here (as in other constituencies, such as Greenwich, which returned Salomons in a by-election in 1851) was the favourable attitude of the Liberal party, anxious to win Jewish voters to its side, to bring about a further disengagement between Church and State through an alteration in the Christian character of Parliament, and to exploit whatever issues came to hand in another campaign, aimed at the subordination of the unelected, hereditary House of Lords to the elected House of Commons. Once Rothschild had been elected, his right to take his seat as a professing Jew became nothing less than a struggle to convince their Lordships that they had no business meddling in the affairs of the Lower House. In these two respects (Lords versus Commons and State versus Church), Jewish emancipation occupied a small but nonetheless exotic corner of two much more elaborate mosaics. The legislation of 1858, which gave the Commons and Rothschild their victories, did not quite mark the end of the battle for emancipation in its legal and political phases. Strictly speaking, the right of professing Jews to enter either House of Parliament was not definitively conferred until the passage of the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866. The right of 284

Controversy and Crisis

election to fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge did not come about until 1871, the same year in which (by virtue of the Promissory Oaths Act) Jews acquired the right to hold almost all offices of state, and in which the first appointment of a Jew (the Liberal MP Sir George Jessel) as a Minister of the Crown (Solicitor-General) was made. In 1885 Queen Victoria was prevailed upon to confer on Lionel de Rothschild’s son, Nathan, the peerage she had declined to give to Moses Montefiore20. On 16 June 1887 Heinrich Graetz, the leading Jewish historian of his time, visited the Anglo—Jewish Exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall and heaped praise upon the Anglo-Jewish achievement. “I have no wish to pay you mere compliments,” he confessed. “I desire only to establish the fact that a new birth, full of bright hope, has again come to despised and powerless Israel.”21 In the epilogue to his History of the Jews in England (1949), the late Dr. Cecil Roth waxed lyrical upon these achievements, regarding them not merely as the culmination of the process of emancipation, but as the incontrovertible proof that it had come about. Before considering the condition of British Jewry in the subsequent period, I should like to introduce into the equation certain terms and factors omitted from Roth’s conventional evaluation. In 1917, during the stormy debates between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in Britain that surrounded the efforts of the former to obtain the Balfour Declaration, and of the latter to thwart its promulgation, leading anti-Zionists argued that the battle for Jewish emancipation, sixty or so years before, had been fought and won on the ground that an English Jew was different from an English Christian merely and only by virtue of his religion; admit the Zionist claim to Jewish nationhood (so the argument went) and you admitted, too, that the Gentiles had been deceived at the time emancipation had been granted.22

V. D. Lipman, ‘The Age of Emancipation, 1815-1880,’ in V. D. Lipman (ed), Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History (Cambridge, 1961) 82; JC, 6 April 1883, 9, had described Jessel’s life as “a justification for the Emancipation.” 21 Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 5. 22 H. Sacher, Jewish Emancipation: The Contract Myth (London, 1917). 20

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

285

Organized Jewish opposition to Zionism was small, but it was led and articulated by a highly influential group that included D. L. Alexander (president of the Board of Deputies, 1903—17), C. G. Montefiore (president of the Anglo-Jewish Association), the second Lord Swaythling (Louis Montagu, president of the Federation of Synagogues), and the Unionist MPs Lionel de Rothschild and Sir Philip Magnus. These notables were but a couple of generations (at most) removed from that of the emancipation, and it is clear that the “Contract” argument—that the Jews of England had given up any claims to nationhood in return for civil equality -had a powerful impact upon them. A pseudonymous article on Zionism that appeared in the Fortnightly Review in November 1916 stressed the existence of this bargain and pointed to T. B. Macaulay’s famous essay advocating Jewish emancipation that had appeared in the Edinburgh Review of January 1831 as proof of its contention. Macaulay had relegated the Jewish attachment to restorationism to the level of “a pious dogma”23 and, in trying to prove that the English Jew could he regarded as a sound patriot, had asked rhetorically: “Does the expectation of being restored to the country of his forefathers make [the Jew] insensible to the fluctuations of the stock exchange? Does he, in arranging his private affairs, ever take into account the chances of migrating to Palestine?” At the time these sentiments had attracted from the community considerable praise, even adulation. But with the passage of years they acquired a more sinister aspect. When, in July 1897, Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler (Nathan’s son) denounced the forthcoming First Zionist Congress as an “egregious blunder” and condemned the idea of a Jewish state as being “contrary to Jewish principles,” he was demonstrating in a remarkable way, that the forebodings of religious fundamentalists as to the consequences of emancipation had had substance, after all. Hermann Adler insisted that the Jews had ceased to be a nation once the I. Finestein, ‘Some Modern Themes in the Emancipation Debate in Early Victorian England,’ in J. Sacks (ed), Tradition and Transition (London, 1986), 142. 24 Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 7. 23

286

Controversy and Crisis

Second Temple had been destroyed. This sentiment was not far removed from the insistence of Claude Montefiore, the founder of Liberal Judaism, that Judaism was a ‘denationalised” creed.24 There can belittle doubt that, without the mass immigration of eastern European Jews to Britain in and after the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the bulk of Anglo-Jewry would willingly have paid the ransom (in terms of withdrawal of support from the Zionist movement) that had been agreed during the period of emancipation. But the implications of Macaulay’s arguments went much further than this and had an impact more immediate still. Macaulay had put forward in favour of emancipation contentions that were clearly ambiguous; he emphasized and exaggerated Jewish financial power and expressed the hope that this might he used for the good of British society: “Jews are not now excluded from political power. They possess it; and as long as they are allowed to accumulate property, they must possess it. . . . What power in civilised society is so great as that of the creditor over the debtor?” Opponents of Jewish emancipation claimed that “it would be impious to let a Jew sit in Parliament. But a Jew [Macaulay pointed out] may make money, and money may make members of Parliament. … The scrawl of a Jew on the back of a piece of paper may be worth more than the royal word of three kings . . . but, that he should put Right Honourable before his name, would be the most frightful of national calamities.”25 As Bryan Cheyette has pointed out, the widespread acceptance of these sentiments scarred the Anglo-Jewish consciousness.26 The immediate post-emancipation generations felt that they were on trial, that they had to prove, and to continue to prove, that they were worthy of the

G. T. Bettany (ed), Essays Historical and Literary from the “Edinburgh Review” by Lord Macaulay (2nd edn, London, n.d.), 171-2. Macaulay’s private (and therefore authentic) view of Jews was far from adulatory: see his letter to his sister , Hannah (8 June 1831) quoted in A. Gilam, The Emancipation of the Jews in England 1830-1860 (New York, 1982), 68-9. 26 B. Cheyette, ‘From Apology To Revolt: Benjamin Farjeon, Amy Levy and the PostEmancipation Anglo-Jewish Novel, 1880-1900,’ Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 29 (1982-86), 255. 25

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

287

rights and freedoms Anglo-Christian society had extended to them, and that they must somehow conform to what they felt were Gentile expectations of acceptable Jewish behaviour. Inevitably, therefore, post-emancipation Anglo- Jewry was “dominated by considerations of public image.”27 In the cultural sphere this preoccupation—almost obsession—had a stultifying and dehumanizing influence. Jewish writers were expected to produce material that would project images designed to counterbalance those drawn by anti-Semites.28 Samuel Gordon’s Sons of the Covenant (1900) was praised because its idealized portrait of recently arrived Jewish immigrants to London’s East End, wishing for nothing better than to marry into the assimilated Jewish gentry of the West End, represented “all that is best and most typical in Jewish life and thought.”29 Benjamin Farjeon’s literary output (especially The Pride of Race, also published in 1900) extolled the virtues of the “English Jewish gentleman” and idealized them: “the spirit of the English-born Jew, whose parents are also Englishborn,” Farjeon explained, should be contrasted with the outlook of the “foreign Jew who, of late years, has overflooded the East End Ghetto.” 30 It is difficult to find in these works much that corresponded to the reality of Anglo-Jewish existence at the end of the nineteenth century. For a true account of the unashamed nepotism and deep, irreverent materialism of the Jewish middle classes in London at this time we must turn to Reuben Sachs, written by Amy Levy and published in 1888. The novel was condemned by the Jewish Chronicle and castigated by Rabbi Edward Calisch in his survey of The Jew in English Literature that appeared in 1909.31 But its brilliance, conceptually and stylistically, cannot be denied. Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 6. JC, 28 May 1892, 9. 29 Ibid., 25 January 1901, 17. 30 Ibid., 8 February 1901, 8. 31 Ibid., 2 August 1889, 12; 13 September, 6; 6 December, 16; E. Calisch, The Jew in English Literature as Subject and as Author (Richmond, Virginia, 1909), 159. 27 28

288

Controversy and Crisis

“Much neglected” and “ignored” by Anglo-Jewry,32 the tragic Amy Levy (who died by her own hand, in 1889, at the age of twenty-seven) was nonetheless a major influence on Israel Zangwill, whose Children of the Ghetto, the first realistic literary portrait of Jewish immigrant life in the East End, appeared in 1892. “She was accused,” Zangwill recalled in 1901, “of course, of fouling her own nest; whereas what she had really done was to point out that the nest was fouled and must be cleaned out.”33 When, in response to Zangwill’s strictures, Samuel Gordon published Each Man His Own (1904), its jarring descriptions of West End Jewry evoked communal outrage; such an approach, one correspondent told the Jewish Chronicle, was bound to do “incalculable mischief to the community and to Jewry in general.”34 The perceived need to project images of “good” citizenship had a predictable effect, too, upon the public policies of the communal leadership in the post-emancipation era. In no sphere was this more apparent than in relation to social problems, especially those pertaining to the condition of the Jewish poor. Jewish pauperism was a source of concern to communal leaders less on account of the inequality of wealth it reflected, or of the sickness and distress in which it resulted, than because of the dangers it posed to the safety and standing of the community as a whole. At one end of the Anglo-Jewish social scale were Jews of wealth and substance, the objects (without doubt) of much popular envy and some popular derision, whose ever-closer contacts with the British ruling classes seemed nonetheless to be not merely a vindication of emancipation but a guarantee (so to speak) that hard-won victories would not be reversed. But at the other was an underclass of Jewish pedlars and old-clothes dealers, some of whom, as receivers of stolen property, moved easily within the criminal fraternities of the city slums. The existence of a Jewish pauper class caused deep communal anxiety, 32 B. Z. Lask, ‘Amy Levy,’ Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 11 (1924-7), 168. 33 JC, 25 January 1901, 19. 34 Ibid., 29 January 1904, 8; the correspondent called on Gordon to withdraw the book from publication.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

289

made worse by the relative ease with which foreign Jews could gain entry into Britain. On the eve of the Russian pogroms, when the total number of Jews living in Britain had reached perhaps sixty thousand, the statistician Joseph Jacobs estimated that in London alone there were over ten thousand Jewish paupers—slightly more than one-fifth of the total Jewish population of the capital.35 Every effort was made to ensure that these unfortunates (no matter whether British-born or alien) did not enter the workhouses established under the provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, or otherwise obtain or even seek maintenance and relief from the secular authorities. This policy culminated in March 1859, in the establishment by the leading Ashkenazi synagogues in London of the Jewish Board of Guardians.36 The foundation and early work of the Board of Guardians can be viewed from two perspectives. On the one hand, it was undeniable that entry into the statutory workhouses, grim enough for the Victorian poor in general, was certain to be grimmer still for the Jewish poor, because of the splitting up of families and the near impossibility of observing the dietary laws, the Sabbath, and other Holy Days; the “outdoor relief” afforded by the Jewish Guardians was infinitely preferable. On the other hand, the very existence of the Board gave tangible expression to the view that the Jewish poor must not become a burden on the state. Jewish ratepayers were, like all ratepayers, assessed by the Poor Law Guardians for the maintenance of workhouses and other forms of relief to which all paupers might have access; they were then assessed again, through synagogue contributions, to provide for the work of the Jewish Guardians. That this was an exercise in freedom cannot he doubted. But did it not also serve to mark the Jew still as a person apart, actually erecting the walls of a new ghetto when the old ones had so recently been pulled down? Interestingly, it does not seem to have occurred to the Jewish J. Jacobs, Studies in Jewish Statistics (London, 1891), 11-13. V. D. Lipman, A Century of Jewish Social Service, 18959-1959: The Jewish Board of Guardians (London, 1959), 1.

35 36

290

Controversy and Crisis

leadership that an alternative method of helping to relieve Jewish poverty might have been found through supplementing and supporting the work of the secular authorities in Jewish areas. Instead, a completely separate apparatus was brought into operation. In its first twenty years or so these questions (if asked at all) did not seem to matter very much. So long as immigration remained at relatively modest levels, the schemes of cash and medical relief, loans and apprenticeships operated by the Jewish Board of Guardians could—it was hoped—eventually lift most of the Jewish poor beyond the level at which they would need to call upon its services. The problems of the Jewish poor were (in short) regarded as finite, and the Anglo-Jewish gentry looked forward to a time, not far distant, when these problems would for all intents and purposes disappear. There was all the more reason, therefore, for generosity and open-mindedness. The mass immigration that began in the 1880s “rendered all these calculations abortive.”37 Between 1881 amid 1914 about 150,000 Jews from eastern Europe settled in the British Isles; most found their way to London. Merely from a demographic viewpoint this amounted to a revolution. Between 1851 and 1881 London’s Jewish population had grown at an annual rate of about 4 percent. But between 1881 and 1900 London’s Jewish population expanded to approximately 135,000 (an annual rate of growth of 10 percent); of these it was estimated in 1899 that roughly 120,000 were living in the East End.38 A London Jewry that had been dominated, numerically, by the lower-middle classes had now become largely working class in composition. The Jewish character of London’s East End was magnified a thousandfold, and the Jewish presence in London—and in a specific area of London— was emphasized as a result. The same type of trends, on a reduced scale, characterized the Jewries of the major provincial cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds. Anglo-Jewry also became identified in the popular mind with certain occupations—the garment Ibid., 75. S. Fyne, ‘London’s Jewish Population,’ JC, 14 October 1955, 34; see also S. Waterman & B. Kosmin, British Jewry in the Eighties (London, 1986), 6.

37 38

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

291

trade, furniture making, and leather work— and even though Jews constituted a minority of all those who worked in these occupations, the perceived occupational idiosyncrasies and spatial locations of these Jews made them easy targets for those of a xenophobic and antiSemitic inclination. Only then did the inherent bankruptcy of mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish social policy become evident. The working-class immigrant presence strained beyond all expectations the resources of the middle-class Jewish Board of Guardians. In 1880 the number of applications for relief processed by the board was less than 2,500; by 1894 this number had more than doubled. Measured over the entire period of 1881—1914, the number increased by an annual rate of up to 200 percent.39 Those who controlled the affairs of the Guardians knew that they could not themselves cope with this influx. In addition, there were grave doubts as to the wisdom of encouraging the growth of an Anglo-Jewish proletariat. Yet the Guardians were too imbued with the prevailing ethos of “emancipation” to contemplate turning to the statutory authorities for help. So it was that the Board of Guardians advertised in the Jewish press in eastern Europe, making it known that Jews who sought to escape persecution by coming to Britain would face many hardships and would not obtain relief during the first six months of residence—when (of course) they needed it most. Those refugees who did reach Britain were encouraged to continue their journeys to America or South Africa, and some were even persuaded to return whence they had come. In 1885, in the heart of Jewish East London, matters reached a head when F. D. Mocatta, a vice-president of the Board of Guardians, and Lionel Alexander, the board’s honorary secretary, prevailed upon the authorities in Whitechapel to close down a “Home for the Outcast Poor” that had been established by a local folk hero, the pious baker Simon Cohen. Cohen (a refugee himself from Poland) had had the audacity to set up a hostel for Jewish immigrants. Mocatta and Alexander declared it to be “unhealthy,” adding with

39

Lipman, Century of Social Service, 81.

292

Controversy and Crisis

remarkable candour that “such a harbour of refuge must tend to invite helpless Foreigners to this country, and therefore was not a desirable institution to exist.”40 An ugly confrontation between the newer Jewish immigrants and the sons of the emancipation was only averted through the farsightedness of a group of more sympathetic grandees, led by the banker, Liberal politician. and Orthodox Jew Samuel Montagu (later first Lord Swaythling), who agreed that Cohen’s home should close, but who arranged for a new and more formalized establishment, the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, to be opened later in the year. This shelter served two meals a day, gave no financial assistance, and did not allow anyone to remain under its roof for longer than two weeks. Even so, the Board of Guardians refused for fifteen years to become reconciled to it, demanding (inter alia) that it should only admit adult males and that these who did not find work after leaving the shelter should be referred to the Guardians for repatriation.41 Thus emancipation, to those who had lived through it and who regarded themselves as its guardians and heirs, meant, above all, the fostering and preservation of the image of an assimilated and acculturated community, as indistinguishable from that of the host society as it was possible for the Jews to possess in Christian Britain. David Salomons’s opposition to Nathan Adler’s scheme to establish a college that would both train an Anglo-Jewish clergy and act as a high school to educate, to university-entrance standard, an Anglo-Jewish middle-class elite sprang from a deep-seated belief that such an institution must act as a barrier to social equality. Jews’ College opened its doors in 1855, but the school that formed part of the original plan failed to attract a clientele of sufficient size and was closed in 1879.42 It was true that there existed a miscellany of Jewish voluntary schools,

G. Alderman, The Federation of Synagogues, 1887-1987 (London, 1987), 8. Ibid., 9. 42 Gartner, Emancipation, Social Change and Reconstruction,,” 102; Salbstein, Emancipation of the Jews, 121. 40 41

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

293

both in London and in the major provincial centres.43 It had been necessary to establish these due to the total absence of any system of state schools prior to1870, a gap filled by a variety of Christian institutions. The Jews’ Free School (JFS), Spitalfields, London, was by far the largest of the Jewish schools, but its avowed purpose was as far removed from educating an Anglo-Jewish elite as could be imagined. The raison d’être of the JFS, founded in 1817 and sustained largely by Rothschild money, had originally been to provide merely a religious education for the children of poor Jews in order (it was said) to help combat the activities of Christian missionaries but also to counteract the attractions of criminal life.44 By 1870 the JFS had no less than 1,600 boys on its roll and one thousand girls, taught by a staff of seventy, including student teachers; presiding over them all was the redoubtable Moses Angel, headmaster for fifty-one years. Even before the great immigration Angel had made no secret of his belief that the school’s overriding purpose must be to anglicize the children entrusted to its care. “Their parents,” Angel told the newly established London School Board in 1871, “were the refuse population of the worst parts of Europe”; “until they [the children] had been Anglicized or humanized it was difficult to tell what was their moral condition … [They] knew neither English nor any intelligible language.”45 Yiddish was thus defined as “unintelligible”! Once in the JFS, immigrant youngsters and the children of immigrant parents were weaned away from Yiddish as quickly as possible; their Yiddish-based cultural background and lifestyle were derided. “They enter the school Russians and Poles,” a Board of Trade Report noted with evident satisfaction in 1894, “and emerge from it almost indistinguishable from English children.”46 An editorial in the Jewish Chronicle in 1888 supporting an appeal for funds in aid of the JFS made the following They are listed in V. D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England, 1850 – 1950 (London, 1954), 45-6. 44 G. Alderman, London Jewry and London Politics, 1889 – 1986 (London, 1989), 16 45 Quoted in L. P. Gartner, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914 (Detroit, 1980), 223. 46 Quoted in Lipman, Social History, 147. 43

294

Controversy and Crisis

observations: The perplexing problem growing out of the presence in our midst of a large number of foreign poor can only be resolved by Education. To raise the parents in the social and intellectual scale is a task in which at best only partial success can be hoped. The children offer a much more promising field of effort. … They, at least, may be taught and helped to practise self- reliance and self-restraint; they may be made into good and industrious citizens and a source of positive strength to the body politic … The work is clearly educational; and the Free School does the bulk of it. Of the three thousand children within its walls the great majority enter it practically foreigners; they leave it potential Englishmen and women, prepared to take their part in the struggle of life in the spirit of English citizens.47 The reaction of the established community to the refugees from tsarist persecution and economic discrimination proved to be the ultimate test of the true meaning of emancipation. Leaving aside entirely the questions of restorationism and nationality, had Jews been emancipated in order to contribute to the development of society “in the spirit of English citizens” (to use the Jewish Chronicle’s significant phrase), or to provide a specifically Jewish dimension to the society of which they were now declared to be fully a part? The Jewish Chronicle in September 1888 had no doubt that “multiculturalism” (as it would now be called) was thoroughly reprehensible: If Jews will persist in appropriating whole streets to themselves in the same district, if they will conscientiously persevere in the seemingly harmless practice of congregating in a body at prominent points in a great public thoroughfare like Whitechapel or Commercial Road, drawing to their peculiarities of

47

JC, 20 April 1888, 9.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

295

dress, of language and of manner, the attention which they might otherwise escape, can there be any wonder that the vulgar prejudices of which they are the objects should be kept alive and strengthened?48 Accordingly, once the immigrant flow had begun to reach British shores, a veritable battery of devices (of which the JFS was but one) was brought into play with the object of anglicizing the newcomers as quickly as possible. These ranged from the provision of English language classes for adults to the establishment and fostering of a network of clubs and societies catering for both adults and young people. In these, not only was the learning of English encouraged, but the new arrivals were introduced to the panoply of English cultural and leisure pursuits, such as swimming, soccer, and cricket. Typical of these organizations were the Jewish Working Men’s Club (1872), the Jewish Girls’ Club (1886), the West Central Jewish Club (1895), and the Brady Boys’ Club (1896). The Jewish Lads’ Brigade, founded in 1895 by Colonel A. L. W. Goldsmid, was “substantially modelled” on the Church Lads’ Brigade, in whose quasi-militaristic and religiously patriotic spirit it unashamedly followed.49 We should also note that in the mid-1880s “it became established communal policy, with the firm approval of Hermann Adler, to regard Jewish day-schools [generally] as appropriate only for the areas of the foreign poor. . . The declared aim of the new policy was the prevention of narrow-mindedness and the stimulation of mutual understanding between different sections of English society.”50 By far the most ambitious instrument of anglicization was the Federation of Synagogues, founded in 1887 by Samuel Montagu as a means of bringing structural order and communal discipline into the multitude of chevrot (independent synagogue fraternities) that the immigrants were then establishing in East London. I have elsewhere examined in detail the miscellany of motives that caused Montagu Ibid., 28 September 1888, 9. C. Bermant, Troubled Eden: An Anatomy of British Jewry (London, 1969), 88-9. 50 Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 15. 48 49

296

Controversy and Crisis

(by then the Member of Parliament for Whitechapel) to take this step.51 Montagu was a strict Sabbath-observant Jew, and he clearly felt himself, spiritually, closer to the immigrants than to many of his assimilated and irreligious relatives and business associates within the “cousinhood’ that comprised the Anglo-Jewish ruling classes. It is clear, however, that he shared the establishment’s view that the immigrant presence constituted a threat to the entire Jewish community. The immigration from the Pale of Settlement created a vibrant and remarkably self-confident Jewish proletariat in the East End and in some other urban concentrations, such as Manchester and Leeds. This proletariat was the target of a great deal of malicious and frankly mischievous anti-Jewish propaganda; the fact that the proletariat offered itself as a breeding ground for the propagation of socialism, anarchism, and Zionism merely compounded the dangers that accrued thereby. The allegations that the Jewish immigrants deprived their English-born neighbours of work, by accepting lower wages and tolerating a generally inferior standard of life, were largely without foundation. The immigrant Jews were as much the victims of cutthroat competition as anyone else but— pre-eminently in the garment trades—they actually created new employment opportunities. Yet however ill-informed and malevolently motivated, the hue and cry directed against the Jewish immigrants frightened the Anglo-Jewish leadership into taking countermeasures. Montagu, as one of the few members of this leadership who could be considered persona grata in immigrant eyes, willingly rook up this burden. In 1886 he established a nonsocialist Jewish Tailors’ Machinists’ Society, which repudiated the use of the strike weapon. In 1887 he and F. D. Mocatta attempted (unsuccessfully) to suppress the Jewish socialist newspaper Arbeter Fraint ( “Workers’ Friend”). Montagu feared socialism not so much in a religious sense, but because of the bad name he felt would attach to Anglo-Jewry through the favourable reception of socialist ideas within the immigrant community. The Jewish Chronicle (of which Montagu was part-owner) 51

Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, chapter 1.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

297

had for some time been stressing the necessity of anglicizing “the foreign contingent,” which it saw as “the great task before the London Jewish community.”52 The chevrot, the newspaper had declared at the beginning of 1880, “originate partially in the aversion felt by our foreign poor to the religious manners and customs of English Jews … the sooner immigrants to our shores learn to reconcile themselves to their new conditions of living, the better for themselves. Whatever tends to perpetuate the isolation of this element in the community must be dangerous to its welfare.”53 A week later the paper was even more strident in its tone: “To form ‘wheels within wheels,’ or little communities within a great one, is to weaken the general body. They have no right, if permanent residents, to isolate themselves from their English coreligionists. . . They should hasten to assimilate themselves, completely, within the community amongst whom they dwell.” 54 That this assimilation could not take place in the short term was patently obvious. The staunchly Orthodox immigrants who conversed in Yiddish, who shunned the cold formalism and cathedral-like structures of the United Synagogue (into which the major Ashkenazi congregations in London had formed themselves by Act of Parliament in 1870), and who regarded with great suspicion the Orthodoxy of the United Synagogue’s chief rabbinate, nonetheless now constituted the majority in Anglo- and London Jewry. The authority and status of the established community, Montagu argued, could best he preserved and (he frankly admitted) the less desirable features of chevrot life (such as the proliferation of very small, makeshift, and unsafe places of worship) best be controlled by providing the chevrot with a communal framework of their own that would leave them a reasonable amount of autonomy in religious affairs, but would at the same time bring them within the ambit of the already existing communal infrastructure. The Federation of Synagogues was, to be sure, a separate body, quite distinct from the United Synagogue and in some respects a rival to it. JC, 11 February 1887, 11. Ibid., 30 January 1880, 4. 54 Ibid., 6 February 1880, 9. 52 53

298

Controversy and Crisis

But its wheels were oiled by Montagu’s money, its titular president was none other than Lord Rothschild (the president of the United Synagogue), and its rabbis and members had to acknowledge the ultimate jurisdiction of Dr. Hermann Adler, whose very office (“Chief Rabbi”) was a concept quite unknown to the Jewries of Russia and Poland. So it was that emancipation, deflected by successive waves of immigration between 1882 and 1906, turned to introspection, to an obsession with communal organization and power and, ultimately, to a grotesque inversion of the concept Kol Yisroel Chaverim—”All Israel Are Brothers.” There is no need to repeat here the oft-recounted story of Anglo-Jewish responses to the “anti-alien” agitation that resulted in the passage of the Aliens Act in 1905. As eventually passed into law the legislation was certainly less draconian than had been intended by those who had campaigned for it. In any case, by 1905 pre- 1914 Jewish immigration to Britain had passed its peak. The number of immigrants dropped sharply, from over eleven thousand in 1906 to under four thousand in I911; the main impact of the 1905 legislation was undoubtedly psychological.55 What is relevant to the present discussion is that the Act of 1905 was supported by a number of Jewish MPs, including Harry Samuel (the Member for Limehouse), Louis Sinclair (Romford) and the then-president of the Board of Guardians, Benjamin Cohen (Islington); that at the 1900 General Election two of the most notorious political anti-Semites (Major Evans-Gordon at Stepney and David Hope Kyd at Whitechapel) had been able to boast the official support of Lord Rothschild; and that even Chief Rabbi Adler refused to condemn the legislation as it made its way through Parliament.56 The chickens that hatched on the morrow of the emancipation victory had indeed come home to roost. Advocates of Jewish entry to Parliament had pledged that they harboured no desire to create a 55 56

Alderman, Jewish Community, 77. Ibid., 78; Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 5.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

299

Jewish lobby, and they had promised that Jewish MPs would conform to a strictly Burkeian concept of representation. When Parliament assembled after the General Election of 1859 (at which three Jewish MPs had been returned) the Jewish Chronicle protested. “We are interested in it as citizens, not as Jews.”57 And in 1872 (the number of Jewish MPs having meanwhile doubled), the English-born patent agent and poet Michael Henry, who had been installed as editor of the Chronicle following its purchase by Samuel Montagu, his brotherin-law Lionel Louis Cohen (a founder of the Board of Guardians and of the United Synagogue), and their friend Lionel Van Oven, had reassured his Gentile readers: “The House Commons may have its Roman Catholic party, its Presbyterian party, its Evangelical party; but if of the six hundred and fifty-six gentlemen who compose the House of Commons, one third were members of the Jewish community, there would be no such section as a Jewish party.”58 Even so able an advocate of Jewish causes as Bertram Straus, who as Liberal MP for Mile End (adjacent to Whitechapel) from 1906 to 1910, might be regarded as the leading Jewish spokesman in the House of Commons at that time, rejected the idea of any formal organization of Jewish MPs, “as the Jewish members must remember that they represented their constituents and not their co-religionists..”59 The community had recoiled from organizing the Jewish vote, even though both major political parties had, without embarrassment or hesitation, made specific appeals to Jewish voters. Now, in 1904-5, when Jewish support in Parliament was urgently needed, it was nowhere to be found. Even David L. Alexander, the president of the Board of Deputies, was moved in December 1905 to condemnation: “I have for some time past felt ... that this Board on many occasions does not receive that cooperation and assistance from some of the Jewish members of Parliament, which it has a right to expect … and, further, JC, 27 January 1860, 5. Ibid., 9 August 1872, 262; the total number of MPs in the Commons at that time was actually 658. 59 Ibid., 23 November 1906, 17. 57 58

300

Controversy and Crisis

that its efforts to procure the adoption of provisions and amendments, safeguarding Jewish interests are not infrequently hampered—if not rendered altogether abortive—by the want of unanimity amongst the Jewish members of Parliament.”60 Outright opposition to the 1905 Act had indeed been left to a group of radical Liberals (none of whom were Jewish) and to the immigrants themselves. For it was not at the Board of Deputies that the principle of the legislation was condemned, but at the Jewish Working Men’s Club and by the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion organization in Whitechapel.61 The elder statesmen of the board conceded that the community might campaign for the act to be modified; they would not countenance an agitation for its repeal. Under Leopold Greenberg, a Liberal and a Zionist who became editor of the Jewish Chronicle in January I907, just such an agitation (ultimately unsuccessful, it is true) was begun. Greenberg made no secret of his belief that an orchestrated Jewish vote should he used to protect Jewish interests.62 “The political emancipation of the Jews is reduced to a sham,” he argued, “when its representative body feels that because an Act specifically affects Jews, Jews must put up with it.”63 It was indeed in the ghettos created by the immigrant generations that the assimilationist view of emancipation met its greatest and, in fact, its only credible challenge. That these immigrants were different from the Gentiles among whom they dwelled was obvious, but that these differences extended beyond mere religious beliefs and practices to embrace an entire spectrum of customs and lifestyles (that we would nowadays classify under the label of “ethnicity”) seemed to the ghetto dwellers a source of pride rather than of embarrassment. A culture—and a newspaper press—flourished behind a linguistic barrier that marked the Jews out as a people apart. This, however, did not prevent immigrant participation in national life. The major Yiddish Ibid., 8 December 1905, 11. Ibid., 19 May 1905, 7; 26 May, 16-17. 62 IIbid., 17 July 2008, 8. 63 Ibid., 17 January 1908, 7. 60 61

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

301

newspapers, such as the Arbeter Fraint and the ldisher Ekspres, carried news of domestic affairs and of politics as well as of events in eastern Europe. The immigrants sought to participate in the life of their adopted country in a way (they hoped) that would enable them to preserve their distinctiveness rather than to smother it. The major avenue for such involvement, and one which did not depend upon the granting of British nationality, was that provided by working- class movements, especially trade unions. There were never separate branches of the Conservative and Liberal parties; occasional attempts to establish such outlets locally were invariably shortlived and much frowned upon by communal leaders.64 But within the international fraternity of labour different criteria prevailed. In I884 a Society of Jewish Socialists was established, and it in turn founded an International Workers’ Educational Club, with premises at Number 40 Berner Street, in London’s East End. We know that the Berner Street Club, as it was popularly called, was visited by some of the leading British socialists of the day, including William Morris and H. M. Hyndman, the founder of the (Marxist) Social-Democratic Federation.65 Similar clubs were in due course set up in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Hull, and Glasgow. These clubs stimulated contacts between Jewish workers and British socialists, from which sprang Jewish branches of Hyndman’s Federation and, in September 1905, a League of Jewish SocialDemocratic groups.66 In Leeds, prominent members of Morris’s Socialist League involved themselves in Jewish labour problems in the city with a surprising result, for in February 1890 the Jewish tailors amalgamated with the non-Jewish gas workers to fight for shorter hours.67 The Leeds’ Jewish Tailors’ Machinists’ and Pressers’ Union (established 1895) was regularly represented at the Trades Union

Ibid., 10 September 1909, 14. E. Silberner, ‘British Socialism and the Jews,’ Historica Judaica, 14 (1952), 38. 66 JC, 13 October 1905, 28. 67 J. Buckman, “The Economic and Social History of Alien Immigration to Leeds, 1880 – 1914,” (PhD dissertation, University of Strathclyde, 1968), 282, 291-2. 64 65

302

Controversy and Crisis

Congress and became an early affiliate of the Labour Representation Committee, the forerunner of the Labour party.68 In London a similar if less dramatic coming together of Jewish and English workers can be observed. A strike organized in the summer of 1890 by Lewis Lyons, the English-born leader of the East End garment workers, received financial support from the London dockers and the London Society of Compositors.69 Lyons was a member of the Executive Committee of the London Trades Council, a body representing all trade unions in the metropolis; in 1891 the Council established its own political party, the Labour Representation League, in order to contest School Board and London County Council elections. In I912 Lyons stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Stepney Borough Council; in 1914 the Executive Committee of the newly formed London Labour party included the Jewish Bundist Joe Fineberg arid Dr. Marion Phillips, who in 1929 became the first Jewess to be elected to Parliament.70 In this way elements of London’s Jewish proletariat were drawn firmly into the world of Labour politics, a coalescence of interests that was bolstered by the spread of the Poale Zion movement in England. In February 1904 this movement in London opened permanent headquarters in Whitechapel Road; British Poale Zion was formally constituted at a meeting in Liverpool on 25 December l906.71 The full impact of this working-class alliance was not to be felt until after the First World War, with the formal adhesion of Poale Zion to the Labour party (1920) and the entry, into both the House of Commons and the major local authorities, of substantial numbers of Jewish candidates elected on the Labour ticket. By the late I920s the Labour party was regarded as the major political vehicle for the articulation of Jewish interests and concerns; it was primarily through Labour that the Ibid., 322; C. Holmes, ‘The Leeds Jewish Tailors’ Strikes of 1885 and 1888,’ Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 45 (1973), 165. 69 Gartner, Jewish Immigrant, 124 70 East London Observer, 9 November 1912, 2; Alderman, London Jewry, 76. 71 JC, 26 February 1904, 30; S. Levenberg, The Jews and Palestine: A Study in Labour Zionism (London, 1945), 126-7. 68

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

303

political integration of the immigrant generations came about in and after the First World War. A further aspect of emancipation as seen through immigrant eyes was the willingness to use Jewish voting strength as a means of effecting an input into public affairs. As we have seen, one of the central tenets of emancipation had been the assurance that Jews would conduct their political behaviour as “Englishmen.” The understandably close relationship between Anglo-Jewry and the Liberal party. based upon Liberal support for emancipation, came to be regarded as a liability thereafter. The argument was that Jews could only claim to be fully integrated into British society if they supported—and were seen to support—both of its great political coalitions; otherwise., as the young Lionel Louis Cohen had pointed out in 1865, Anglo Jewry might obtain for itself a bad name as a selfish and “separatist” collection of citizens.72 Cohen joined the Conservative party partly on broad grounds of policy and class interest, but partly also on grounds of communal welfare, for he spent the best years of his life fighting (as he put it) “the domination so long exercised by the so-called Liberal party over the Jews, and the monopoly of the Jewish vote which they have exercised and even yet claim to enjoy.”73 By the late 1880s, through a combination of political calculation and generational change, the Jewish middle classes finally cut the umbilical cord that had tied them to Liberalism hitherto. It was a conscious and deliberate act and was seen by them as a necessary demonstration of political maturity and (no less important) of social integration and acceptance.74 The Jews, the Jewish Chronicle proclaimed in 1885, “are too powerfully dominated by the desire to see that party controlling affairs which each considers the more calculated to perform the task successfully, to allow mere considerations of racial pride or interest to influence them.”75 JC, 11 August 1865, 5. Ibid., 1 July 1887, quoting a letter dated 8 February 1874. 74 Ibid., 30 March 1894, 7: letter from Jewish Liberal MP H. S. Leon. See generally Alderman, Jewish Community, 35-42. 75 JC, 13 March 1885, 11. 72 73

304

Controversy and Crisis

This was not a view shared by the immigrants and their offspring. From the mid-1890s we can cite a number of instances in which Jewish electorates created largely by the more recent immigrant arrivals chose to behave in idiosyncratic ways. In 1895 the Jewish Conservative Morris Abrahams, well-known in the East End as the highly successful manager of the Pavilion Theatre and as an accomplished social worker, won for the “Moderates” (i.e., Conservatives) their only victory in the Whitechapel division of the London County Council, in a result strongly reflective of the operation of a Jewish “personal” vote. Two years later a County Council by-election occurred in the same division. To fight this seat in the “Progressive” (Liberal) interest, the local MP, Samuel Montagu, imported Harry Lawson, the Christian grandson of Joseph Levy, founder of the Daily Telegraph. The record of the Progressivecontrolled London County Council in slum clearance was the major theme of the contest, which Lawson won handsomely.76 In 1904, as a result of a combined Jewish-Catholic revolt against Liberal opposition to the Conservative policy of making ratepayers’ money available to finance denominational schools, Henry Herman Gordon, son of the cantor of the Great Synagogue, won a London County Council seat from the Progressives by standing as an lndependent. Gordon boasted the support of Lord Rothschild and Rabbis Moses Hyamson and Susman Cohen, two dayanim (judges) of the chief rabbi’s Ecclesiastical Court. Armed, according to one local newspaper, with “the great bulk of the Jewish and the whole of the Roman Catholic vote,” Gordon’s position was indeed unassailable.77 Examples relating to parliamentary elections are admittedly harder to come by. But we are surely justified in pointing to the Conservative defeats at Leeds Central and Manchester North-West in the General Election of January 1906 as evidence of the willingness of Jewish electors to go out of their way to punish a candidate pledged (as Gerald Balfour was in the Leeds constituency’) to the maintenance

76 77

Alderman, London Jewry, 30-32. East London Advertiser, 12 March 1904, 8.

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

305

of the Aliens Act, and to reward a candidate (Winston Churchill in Manchester North-West) whose opposition to the legislation was very well known.78 Churchill foolishly promised that an incoming Liberal government would either repeal or amend the 1905 Act. In fact the Liberal government had no intention of sweeping away or modifying what it knew to be a generally and genuinely popular measure. In April 1908, following his elevation to the Cabinet, Churchill was obliged to resign his seat and fight a by-election. There was a Jewish revolt against him, due to both his failure to fulfill his pledges as to the Aliens legislation and Liberal opposition to ratepayers’ funding of Jewish schools, and he lost the seat. The realization that many Jewish voters had cast their votes—or had simply but deliberately abstained—so as to secure the defeat of a Cabinet minister came as a shock to the community. But when the shock had subsided more robust sentiments prevailed. Preaching at the Birmingham Synagogue the Reverend G. J. Emanuel expressed his approval of what the Jews of Manchester had done.79 An unnamed correspondent told the readers of the Jewish Chronicle, “Jews are expected in act as no other section of the population ever dreams of acting … the Jew will always vote as an Englishman, but, if he is true to his Judaism, he will vote as an Englishman who is a Jew. We Jews do not know our own power; the sooner we realise it and exert it in the interests of our political freedom the better it will be.”80 In the years immediately preceding the First World War, therefore, two views of Jewish emancipation enjoyed an uneasy coexistence. According to one, emancipation meant—and demanded—a submerging of Jewish identity within the host community. I use the word ‘submerging” deliberately, for I am far from suggesting that according to this view Jews had to yield up their separateness in its entirety: we are not dealing here with a conversionist view of Jewish assimilation. This view did imply, however, that the characteristics Alderman, Jewish Community, 75-6. JC, 15 May 1908, 13. 80 Ibid., 1 May 108, 15. 78 79

306

Controversy and Crisis

that marked out the Jews as a distinct and distinctive people had to he kept to a minimum, and that emancipation would permit full freedom to Britain’s Jews only so long as they played out their roles within this framework. Jewish voters were voters who happened to be Jews. Jewish MPs were MPs who happened to profess Judaism. Jewish writers would describe a deserving and grateful community, while the Jewish poor and underprivileged would be looked after at no expense to the state and – again at no expense to the state—would be relocated away from the large city centres, in small, discreetly positioned provincial locations.81 We might add that a situation was almost reached in which AngloJewish clergymen were clergymen who happened to be Jewish. Under Hermann Adler, “delegate” chief rabbi from 1880 and chief rabbi in his own right from 1891 until his death in 1911, the community acquired a religious leader who, though born in Hanover, felt himself to be totally English. In urging his claims upon the communal conference summoned to appoint a new chief rabbi, Benjamin Cohen referred to Adler as “the head of our Church.” Adler himself referred more than once to the community over which he presided as “our communion.”82’ His sermons were models of elegant Victorian prose. He adopted Anglican clerical garb (complete with gaiters) and styled himself “The Very Reverend,” the form of address used of deans of the Church of England.83 He was “chief” rabbi, but until 1901 he would neither grant the rabbinical diploma to any other minister of religion within AngloJewry, nor permit the title of rabbi to be used by those who had gained such diplomas abroad. Instead, Jews’ College produced a succession of “reverends,” complete with white clerical collars, who could minister and preach within their congregations but who were in no sense recognized as competent to give rulings on religious matters. On attempts to disperse East End Jewry, see Gartner, Jewish Immigrant, 149. Finestein, Post-Emancipation Jewry, 16. 83 Adler adopted this title “at the suggestion of his friend the Bishop of Bath and Wells”: R. P. Lehmann, ‘Hermann Adler: A Bibliography of His Published Works,’ in D. Noy & I Ben-Ami (eds), Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England (Jerusalem, 1975), 101. 81 82

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

307

Under Hermann Adler, Chaim Bermant writes, the United Synagogue “seemed to be the Jewish branch of the Anglican establishment.”84 King Edward VII referred to him as “my Chief Rabbi.” This, according to the Anglo-Jewish gentry, was what emancipation was all about: acceptance by the Gentiles. But to the immigrants of the 1880s and 1890s Hermann Adler was an object of hatred and derision. Adler’s petulant refusal to address as “rabbi” those eminent talmudic scholars whom the refugees from eastern Europe brought with them was a calculated insult, which was repaid in kind. The immigrants refused to adhere to the religious institutions that operated under Adler’s aegis, questioned his certification of kosher food and ritually slaughtered meat, and established their own synagogues (both in London and the provinces) in preference to those that operated under his authority. The manners and lifestyle no less than the language and politics of the newcomers emphasized and reinforced their determination to seek an accommodation with British society that differed fundamentally from that of the established community; for theirs would be a coexistence based upon the mutual recognition of differences rather than of similarities. Whether the tensions (both within and beyond AngloJewry) to which this determination was bound to give rise could have been overcome, to produce in the 1920s, perhaps, a multicultural interface that was recognised and respected by all, is impossible to say. At all events, a convergence of factors during the First World War frustrated whatever longer-term purposes either the Anglo-Jewish middle classes or the immigrant-Jewish working classes might have had in mind. Here these factors can only be mentioned in the barest outline. One was anti-Semitism. Racial, religious, economic, and xenophobic prejudice against Jews had been whipped to an unprecedented frenzy during the “aliens” agitation at the beginning of the century, was kept alive through agitation against ritual slaughter of meat, and was to be seen at work in a particularly violent form in South Wales in 1911, 84

C. Bermant, The Cousinhood (London, 1971), 370

308

Controversy and Crisis

when “rich Jew” and “poor Jew” anti-Semitism were combined in a terrifying manner through the instrumentality of the manual working classes.85 During World War I qualitative evidence suggests that the general level of anti-Jewish prejudice in British society rose sharply, more especially after the Bolshevik Revolution.86 At precisely the same time, however, the Zionist movement achieved a momentous breakthrough—the Balfour Declaration—and the labour and trade-union movements gained respectability through participation in government. It was now much more difficult for the Anglo-Jewish establishment to argue that it was un-English to be a socialist, or that it was unpatriotic to be a Zionist. These concessions were often made grudgingly, and only after fierce intracommunal struggles. David Lindo Alexander’s anti-Zionism cost him the presidency of the Board of Deputies (1917), while Louis Montagu’s anti-Bolshevism, added to his anti-Zionism, cost him the presidency of the Federation of Synagogues (1925).87 Within a decade of the overthrow of tsarism, elements of the Jewish refugees who had fled from Russia to seek refuge in Great Britain had either taken control of the major Anglo-Jewish communal institutions or were in a position to do so whenever they chose. But they too had made or were making accommodations with the society into which an increasing number of them had lived from birth. Anxious to escape as quickly as possible from the poverty and squalor in which they had grown up, they embarked upon a voyage of upward social mobility, into the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie and even of the professional

G. Alderman, ‘The Anti-Jewish Riots of 1911 in South Wales,’ Welsh History Review 6 (1972), 190-200; C. Holmes, ‘The Tredegar Riots of 1911: Anti-Jewish Disturbances in South Wales,’ Ibid.., 11 (1982), 214-25. 86 C. Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939 (London, 1979), chap.10; D. Cesarani, ‘Anti-Alienism in England after the First World War, Immigrants and Minorities 6 (1987), 5-29. See also generally S. Kadish, “Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain and the Russian Revolution,” D. Phil. dissertation , University of Oxford, 1986. 87 Alderman, Federation of Synagogues, 51-5; S. A. Cohen, English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895-1920 (Princeton, 1982), chaps. 7, 8. 85

English Jews or Jews of the English Persuasion? Reflections on the Emancipation of Anglo-Jewry

309

classes, and of outward physical mobility, away from the inner-city slums. The immigrants spawned their own establishment, more leftwing, certainly, than that of the pre-1914 period, but just as anxious to prove its worth in the eyes of the Gentiles. Religious observance became diluted in the process. Both in the East End and West End of London these movements resulted in the emergence of a younger generation of Jews who belonged— and who felt themselves to belong—neither to the Yiddishbased, synagogue-going existence of their parents nor to the culture and lifestyle of a Gentile society in which anti-Jewish prejudice was becoming evermore fashionable. The Reverend Israel Brodie (the future chief rabbi) observed, prior to his departure for Australia in 1923, that in the East End “betting, boxing and gambling” had replaced synagogue attendance, while in 1931 Maurice Pearlzweig, minister of the Liberal Synagogue, noted the problem of intermarriage at all levels of Anglo-Jewish society.88 It was this society that suffered—almost without protest—the antiJewish policies of the London County Council in the spheres of education, employment, and housing,89 which acquiesced—almost without protest – in the anti-Jewish prejudice inherent in the Slaughterhouses Act of 1933 and the Sunday Trading Act of 1936, and which –entirely without protest—accepted and operated the restrictions upon Jewish immigration to Britain from Nazi Germany.90 British society had assimilated its Jewish newcomers in a manner of which the emancipationists of the mid-nineteenth century would have been exceedingly proud.

JC, 13 March 1923, 10; 27 February 1931, 14. Alderman, London Jewry, 63-8. 90 G. Alderman, ‘Anglo-Jewry and Jewish Refugees,’ AJR Information (June 1987), 3. 88 89

310

Controversy and Crisis

XIII BRITISH JEWRY: THE DISINTEGRATION OF A COMMUNITY [in S. Encel & L. Stein (eds), Continuity, Commitment and Survival: Jewish Communities in the Diaspora (Praeger Publishers, Westport, USA, 2003, 49 – 65]

O

n 14 March 1997 the Jewish Chronicle, the most widely read Jewish newspaper in Britain, was published in a unique format. Its front page, and many of its inside pages, were devoted to one story: the leaking to it of the text of a remarkable letter, written on 20 January by ‘Chief Rabbi’ Dr Jonathan Sacks to the late Rabbi Chenoch Padwa, one of the spiritual leaders of Britain’s ultra-orthodox Jews. Earlier in the year Sacks had made it clear that he intended to speak at a meeting to be held in February to commemorate the life and work of the recently deceased Rabbi Hugo Gryn, an Auschwitz survivor, a leading Reform rabbi and a well known media personality. Padwa, and the Jews he represented, were astonished that the ‘Chief Rabbi’, ecclesiastical head of the nominally orthodox United Synagogue, could even think of attending such an event. Sacks expressed, in Hebrew, his profound distaste for what he was about to do and his private antipathy to Hugo Gryn and his religious faith. But he explained that it was necessary for him to attend the memorial meeting because, otherwise, Reform Jews might cease to defer to him, and elect their own ‘Chief Rabbi’. Should this happen (Sacks argued), the non-Jews, and the government, might draw the conclusion that Anglo-Jewry was no longer united, and might defer to a non-orthodox ‘Chief Rabbi’, whose status might come to equal his own. The very public furore that followed the Jewish Chronicle’s publication of the letter can scarcely be described. Sacks was publicly reviled as a hypocrite and denounced on radio and television as such. Never had the reputation of a British ‘Chief Rabbi’, and of the office he held, sunk so low.1 The entire episode threw into stark relief some of the most critical fault lines that had developed with British Jewry over the previous thirty years. Indeed, had those fault lines not been present, the episode would never have occurred. When Sacks’ predecessor,

Had the Jewish Chronicle published the letter in full, Sacks’ reputation might have sunk even lower. In fact, the Chronicle omitted, in its translation, some key passages, including Sacks’ reference to Gryn as ‘oto ho’ish’—‘that man’—the phrase used in the Talmud to refer to Jesus of Nazareth. See G. Alderman, ‘That Letter’, Judaism Today (Winter 1997-98), 40-43.

1

312

Controversy and Crisis

Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, had taken up office, in 1966, the formal organisations representing non-orthodoxy and ultra-orthodoxy were to be located only at the peripheries of the Anglo-Jewish community. There was then, indeed, still just about a realistic sense in which one could talk meaningfully of one Anglo-Jewish community—a body of Jews and Jewesses, numbering perhaps around 410,000 in all, who felt an underlying sense of unity and who shared certain values—preeminently Zionism—in common. Thirty years later the quite separate communities which comprised British Jewry numbered no more than around 300,000. Zionism had become a source of intra-communal conflict rather than of unity. Religious fragmentation was the order of the day. As the twenty-first century dawned, it had become clear that Anglo-Jewry had come apart. Its very survival, certainly in the longterm, is now in doubt. A multiplicity of factors has been at work in bringing about this state of affairs. One is the startling demographic contraction of British Jewry, at one time denied by the leadership but now universally accepted. The Anglo-Jewish death rate has remained high whilst fertility rates have fallen. During the 1960s an average of 5,100 Jewish children was born in Britain each year. By the early 1980s the average of births was less than 3,500, whilst the number of deaths was around 4,700; in 1988 the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by 954. The explanation for this adverse trend does not lie in any catastrophic decline in the ability of British Jews to produce offspring, but rather in the deliberate limitation of family size—even within the ultra-orthodox sectors—in the interests of economic security and improvement. This is, in turn, an outcome of the seemingly relentless upward social mobility of Jews in Britain. The vast majority of British Jews are third- or fourth-generation descendants of working-class migrants from eastern Europe, many of whom regarded their sojourn in Britain as temporary, a breathing space on the way to their ultimate goal, the United States of America. A genuine Anglo-Jewish working class has survived into the 21st century, but it is exceedingly small by comparison with the situation that obtained at the end of the Second World War. British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

313

Survey evidence suggests that by the early 1960s over 40 per cent of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes (that is, displaying professional and managerial employment and selfemployment patterns); by the late 1970s this proportion had risen to over two-thirds. British Jewry, in short, has taken full advantage of the opportunities offered by the post-war expansion of secondary, post-11, schooling, typically leading to a university education. British Jewry is now thoroughly bourgeois in composition, and is to be found living predominantly in the middle-class suburban areas of north London, north and south Manchester, and (in much smaller numbers) in discrete suburban areas of Glasgow and Leeds as well as in the south-of-England coastal resorts of Bournemouth (Dorset), Brighton (Sussex), and Southend (Essex). The collective wealth of British Jews is beyond contention. In 1983 the average annual contribution made by individual Jews to communal organisations worked out at £144, compared with only £28 as the average contribution within the general population of the United Kingdom. It has been calculated that in that year the total Jewish household income in Britain amounted to £1.8 millions, or £5,450 per capita, as against a per capita household income of about £4,200 for the entire population of the UK. British Jewry, at the end of the 20th century, was, on this basis, around 30 per cent wealthier than the general British population.2 But this wealth is not well-managed, and is in any case insufficient to counter the problems brought about by demographic contraction. One inevitable consequence of the failure of British Jewry to reproduce itself has been the development of a serious imbalance between the young and the elderly. During the 1970s and 1980s it became clear that the economically active Jewish population of the UK (aged, that is, between 20 and 64) was encountering ever greater difficulties in supporting the growing number of Jews aged over 65. Another consequence has A. A. Kessler, ‘Fund-Raising and Finance in the British Jewish Community, 1983’, in U. O. Schmelz & S. DellaPergola (eds), Papers in Jewish Demography (Jerusalem, 1989), 398-401.

2

314

Controversy and Crisis

been the decline in the number of synagogue marriages. These reached a peak in the 1940s, when they averaged around 2,876 per annum. By the late 1980s they had declined drastically: in 1989 the average was only 1,057. However, this decline is in fact much greater than we might expect given the contraction of the community as a whole. It is clear that a number of other factors have been at work, including civil marriage, non-marriage, out-marriage, and apostasy. The net result of demographic contraction, combined with the creeping secularisation experienced by British Jews as a whole, is an increasing religious polarisation. In this sense, we are no longer justified in talking of one ‘Anglo-Jewry’; rather, we should talk of several ‘Anglo-Jewries’, some of which are no longer on speaking terms with each other. Put another way, as the Jewish communities of the UK have contracted in size, they have become pluralized and polarised. How has this come about? Before the Second World War, ‘progressive’ and ‘ultra-orthodox’ Jewries in the UK did exist, but only at the peripheries of a set of communities which exhibited a remarkable centripetalism. The West London Reform Synagogue had been founded as long ago as 1842. But the adherents of Reform Judaism in the UK never constituted more than a small band of well-to-do families who were, for the most part, more than happy to defer to the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbinate (actually the Chief Rabbinate of the nominally orthodox United Synagogue, established in London in 1870) without bothering very much about theological niceties. Liberal Judaism, dating from the early 20th century, constituted a much more serious challenge to Anglo-Jewish orthodoxy, amounting as it did to a wholesale rejection of orthodox values. But it was kept in check by the grim realities of Jewish life in Britain in the first half of the century, dominated as that life was by the spectre of a resurgent anti-Semitism at home and a murderous Nazism abroad. Dr Joseph Hertz, Chief Rabbi 1913-46, was the last holder of that office who could claim, in whatever sense, to represent and command the loyalty of the totality of British Jewry. He recognised, for the purposes British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

315

of marriage registration, both the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, and the ultra-orthodox community of Gateshead (north-east England). He exploited the emergency of the Second World War to make certain that the religious right and the religious left behaved civilly towards each other; he insisted, for example, that Jewish military chaplains be drawn from the left and the right, as well as the centre. Under his successors, Sir Israel Brodie (1948—65) and Immanuel Lord Jakobovits (1966—90), this consensus broke down in comprehensive fashion. During Hertz’s lifetime the Liberal Jewish movement, while still small, had not remained a socially exclusive clique, as the Reform movement had done. It grew, and acquired patrons of stature, such as Sir Louis Gluckstein and Sir Basil Henriques. Stressing as it did the purely moral imperatives of the Judaism it professed, and eschewing any territorial or nationalistic dimensions to its faith, it also became a refuge for anti-Zionists. More than that, as Reform Judaism stagnated, moving closer in its ritual and in its ethos to United-Synagogue Judaism, Liberal Judaism ‘captured the imagination and support of those within Anglo-Jewry who were searching for something “modern” in terms of religious observance’.3 New Liberal synagogues were established in London and the provinces. With the onset of Nazism, both the Liberal and Reform movements in the UK benefited from the influx of non-orthodox rabbinical scholars, chief amongst whom was the charismatic Leo Baeck. In 1942 the Reform congregations of Britain formed themselves into the Associated British Synagogues—subsequently the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain (RSGB). Two years later the Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues (ULPS) was set up. In 1956 the RSGB set up its own theological seminary—Leo Baeck College; in 1964 the ULPS agreed to become a partner in the College, which has thus established itself as the very vibrant symbol of the religious separatism of the UK’s nonA. J. Kershen. ‘1840-1990: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Progressive Judaism’, in A.J. Kershen (ed), 150 Years of Progressive Judaism in Britain (London, 1990), 14.

3

316

Controversy and Crisis

orthodox Jewries. As orthodoxy was swept by the tide of non-observance and secularism that characterised inter-war and post-war British Jewry, its remaining adherents became bolder and more outspoken in defence of their faith. The Chief Rabbinate of Hertz’s predecessor, Dr Hermann Adler, had been punctuated by bitter, public disputes involving small but influential groups of ultra-orthodox Jews in London and elsewhere. These schisms were contained largely through the efforts of the lay leadership of Anglo-Jewry, which used its considerable financial muscle to quell rebellions and (literally) buy tranquillity. But the establishment, in Gateshead, in 1929, of a Yeshiva effectively under the patronage of Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan of Radin (Poland) marked an ominous turning point. Hertz accepted the reality of Gateshead, but was never reconciled to it. Gateshead, for its part, simply refused to recognise his authority. Three years earlier a group of ultra-orthodox communities in north London had banded themselves together to form the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC). Now, a London-Gateshead axis came into existence. It posed an awesome threat to Hertz’s status not only in the eyes of the Jews but also in the eyes of the Gentiles. Hertz only managed to contain the situation by a number of fortunate coincidences. In 1935 he welcomed onto his Rabbinical Court Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, a Talmudic genius and a victim of Stalinist persecution. In 1940 Hertz’s daughter, Judith, married Dr Solomon Schonfeld, the presiding Rabbi of the UOHC. Schonfeld’s magnificent efforts to rescue Holocaust victims required, and received, the imprimatur of his father-in-law. In return, the UOHC muted its protests against Hertz’s alleged appeasement of the progressives. This delicate garment fell apart—as it was bound to—with Hertz’s death. Supported by refugee businessmen who were permitted to operate in the depressed north-east of England, and with its associated schools, teacher-training and postgraduate facilities, Gateshead became the largest orthodox yeshiva complex in post-war Europe. In London and Manchester, meanwhile, orthodox Jewish refugee families of British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

317

great wealth gravitated toward the UOHC and considerably expanded its sphere of influence. In 1956 another turning point was reached. The failure, that year, of the Hungarian uprising against Communist rule resulted in the immigration to Britain of adherents of a variety of pietistic (and, some would say, excessively narrow-minded and antiintellectual) Chassidic sects. Chassidim were not unknown in pre-war Anglo-Jewry, but they were few in numbers and (partly through their own choice) highly marginalised. In 1953 Dr. Redcliffe Salaman felt confident enough to assert that `the Chassidim ... play little part in Anglo-Jewry, nor would they seem likely to do so’.4 When Chaim Bermant published Troubled Eden in 1969, he paid no attention to the Lubavitch movement, already then the UK’s largest Chassidic sect; indeed, ultra-orthodoxy in general merited only one chapter, in which the world of Chassidism was located as an exotic if eccentric one, living on the margin of Anglo-Jewish existence. But a profound change in the status of the Chassidim within AngloJewry was soon to take place. Most of the Chassidic sects which settled in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s naturally attached themselves to the UOHC, which alone could provide shechita and burial facilities of the standard they required. While Solomon Schonfeld lived, the older groups of German origin, combining strict orthodoxy with a respect for western culture, continued to control the UOHC’s destinies. But within a few years of his death, in 1984, we can detect a profound change in the balance of power within the UOHC. Stephen Brook’s dissection of Anglo-Jewry, The Club, which appeared in 1989, devoted three chapters to `ultra-orthodoxy’, one of them exclusively to Lubavitch. The opinions of Lubavitch rabbis are to be found scattered throughout the book, holding forth on such subjects as the role of women and the interface between Jewry and politics. Who, at the time of Sir Israel Brodie’s retirement (1965), would have predicted

R. N.Salaman, Whither Lucien Wolf’s Anglo-Jewish Community? (London, 1954), 9—10.

4

318

Controversy and Crisis

that Lubavitch Chassidim would have found employment within the United Synagogue, or that `Lubes’ would have featured, as they now clearly must, among the opinion-formers of British Jewry?5 But the 1960s and 1970s were also years of growth for the nonorthodox. In 1970, in London, the Reform and Progressive elements accounted for 20.6 per cent of male synagogue members; by 1983 the proportion had increased to 25.4 per cent. The so-called `right-wing orthodox’ increased as a proportion of London Jewry from 2.6 per cent to 5.3 per cent over the same period. The `central orthodox’—mainly the United Synagogue and the Federation of Synagogues—declined from 72.3 to 66.0 per cent, and the Sephardim from 4.5 per cent to 3.3. Although these figures refer to the position in London, they are within a few percentage points of the situation within British Jewry as a whole in 1983: Reformers and Progressives around 22 per cent, `right-wing orthodox’ about 4.5 per cent, Sephardim just under 3 per cent and `central orthodox’ 70.5 per cent. The communities and congregations which recognised the authority of Rabbi Dr Jakobovits thus amounted, in the 1980s, to only 62 per cent of synagogue members in the United Kingdom as a whole, and to only 53 per cent in London. When his successor, Dr Sacks, was elected to office, the non-participating bodies6 amounted to well over a third of the entire Jewish population Great Britain. But there was another difference. With the election of Jonathan Henry Sacks as ‘Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth’, the office itself underwent a fundamental and probably irreversible transformation. Dr Sacks comes from a traditional but hardly sectarian London family. He read philosophy at Cambridge and obtained his PhD, in philosophy, from the University of London. As with many of Perhaps the most dramatic if untypical example is that of the American-born Lubavitch Chassid Rabbi Shmuli Boteach, winner (in the year 2000) of the London Times’ ‘Preacher of the Year’ competition, whose stormy career within Anglo-Jewry is traced in G. Alderman, ‘Kosher Sex and Leadership Lubrication’, Judaism Today, Winter 1998-99, 4-7. 6 The Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation, the UOHC, the Federation of Synagogues, the RSGB, the ULPS, and the Masorti Assembly. 5

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

319

his generation, his encounter with the world of Torah orthodoxy came as a by-product of the mood of imminent redemption which swept over world Jewry during the Six-Day War (1967). He studied Rabbinics at Jews’ College, London, where he later taught and of which he became Principal in 1984. Dr Sacks is an accomplished academic philosopher. But academic credentials carry no weight whatever in the world of ‘Torah Orthodoxy’. As far as that world—the world of the Chassidim, their fellow-travellers, and the dark-suited ‘black hats’ of the UOHC—is concerned, Dr Sacks’ religious credentials have always been open to question. Dr. Sacks (unlike his predecessor, Lord Jakobovits) was not born within the world of ‘Torah orthodoxy’. He entered from the outside a world which is notoriously suspicious of outsiders and, to make matters worse, his loudly proclaimed policy of ‘inclusivism’, of entering into dialogue with Jews of every persuasion, served merely to deepen these suspicions. Faced with the need to bolster his claim to ‘represent’ the entirety of British Jewry, Dr Sacks has evolved a theology designed to serve this end. In a brilliantly written exposition, One People?, published in 1993, he presented a thoughtful analysis of the Jewish condition in the late 20th century. ‘Not since the first and second centuries … [he wrote] have Jews been less united’.7 The present state of disunity, he argued, has three components: the tensions that exist between Israel and the Diaspora; the increasingly vulgar confrontations between secular and religious Jews; and the deepening divisions resulting from what he rightly described as the ‘fault‑line’ separating Orthodoxy and a variety of liberal, non‑orthodox Judaisms. Dr. Sacks’ major preoccupation, both in his book and in his public ministry, has been with the third of the fault‑lines, that between Orthodoxy and non-orthodox forms of Judaism. In the book he exposed and explained, with remarkable clarity, the pre- and post-Holocaust routes by which Jewry in general and Anglo-Jewry in particular had 7

J. Sacks, One People? Tradition, Modernity and Jewish Unity (London, 1993), vii.

320

Controversy and Crisis

arrived at a point, in the 1990s, at which religious schism seemed destined to split ‘the Jewish people’ into separate peoples, at war with each other.8 Dr. Sacks rejects the view that the duty of Orthodoxy is to confine itself within a spiritual ghetto, while the forces of division do irreversible damage. Nor, whilst acknowledging the value of outreach programmes does he suppose that such work can be of more than peripheral importance. He accepts the argument that there is no prospect of a return to halacha, in the foreseeable future, by the overwhelming majority of those who have abandoned it. That being so, he argues, it behoves the Orthodox world to be inclusivist rather than exclusivist. And in the final chapter of his book he explains what this means in practice: not to speak of other Jews ‘except in the language of love and respect’; to seek ‘a nuanced understanding of secular and liberal Jews’; to see to it that the halacha is applied ‘to its widest possible constituency’—meaning that rulings are given with an eye to leniency wherever possible; perhaps most controversially, to attach ‘positive significance to the fact that liberal [i.e. non-orthodox] Judaisms have played their part in keeping alive for many Jews the values of Jewish identity, faith, and practice.’9 One People? has become the prospectus for Dr Sacks’ incumbency of the Chief Rabbinate. Its message dovetails perfectly with that arising from an investigation carried out, at the behest of the United Synagogue, by Sir Stanley Kalms. In October 1991 the honorary officers of the United Synagogue invited Stanley Kalms, a leading communal philanthropist and chairman of a large electrical retail chain, to head a review ‘to investigate all aspects of the United Synagogue’, including its membership profile, its organisational structure, its financial situation and the role of its rabbinate.10 Kalms was able to demonstrate, through unimpeachable research, the precise nature of the serious divide which had opened up between the religious leadership Ibid., 186. J. Sacks, One People?, 217, 220, 222. 10 A Time for Change (London, 1992), 8. 8 9

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

321

of the United Synagogue and the bulk of its membership: What would happen [Kalms asked] if the United Synagogue and the Judaism it represents did not exist? Our research suggests that something like 10% of its members ... would join synagogues to the right of the United Synagogue. The remaining 90% ... would either join the Masorti, Reform or Liberal movements or would not join a synagogue at all.11 What preoccupied Stanley Kalms was the retention, by the United Synagogue, of its share of British—in practice London—Jewry. To retain this share Kalms needed a marketing strategy, and he claimed to have found it in the resurrected concept of the minhag Anglia, ‘a celebration of the twofold blessing of being Jewish and British’, out of which, indeed, the United Synagogue had itself been born in 1870. Although the minhag Anglia embraced pomp and ceremony which it was agreed was not what the 1990s required, it had also been characterised by a fusion of tradition with moderation—‘the challenge and the tension of living with at least one foot in the modern, secular, western world’, and, above all, it had been driven much less by ideology than by mission.12 This mission was none other than inclusivism, the doctrine of Stanley Kalms’ protégé Jonathan Sacks. In the decade following the publication of the Kalms Report Dr Sacks has preoccupied himself with the achievement of this mission: to put inclusivism into practice. He has failed, mainly because he has attempted, at the same time, to retain the loyalty – or, at least, the respect – not merely of the 10 per cent of strictly orthodox United Synagogue members, but also of the sectarian orthodox who did not number themselves amongst its members, but whose deference he has felt he needed in order to assert and bolster the credibility and the majesty of his office. The battle has been fought on several fronts: the role of women within the United Synagogue; the treatment of nonorthodox Jewish movements within and by orthodoxy; the universalist 11 12

A Time for Change, 86. Ibid., 37.

322

Controversy and Crisis

outlook of ‘Jewish Continuity’, Dr Sacks’ financial engine designed to drive the spiritual renewal of Anglo-Jewry. These battles have culminated in two very public confrontations, in 1995 and 1997, each triggered by what the sectarians believed was an unacceptable leniency towards the non-orthodox. The first concerned Dr Sacks’ attitude towards the Masorti movement, which experienced considerable growth in the early 1990s. Whereas the Reform and Liberal synagogues had never claimed to be orthodox, Masorti did and does, even though its religious leaders are ambivalent as to whether the Torah is indeed ‘min hashamayim’ – from heaven. In 1994 it emerged that Dr Sacks, as an ecclesiastical authority of the Board of Deputies, had previously signalled his intention to certify Masorti congregations as ‘congregations of persons professing the Jewish religion’, for the purpose of their obtaining government recognition of their marriage secretaries. He had so certified the St Alban’s Masorti synagogue (11 January 1994), but had omitted certain qualifying sentences added by his predecessor, Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, when certifying the New Highgate and North London Synagogue (now the New North London Masorti congregation) in September 1981. Because of this certification, Masorti claimed that its orthodoxy had the Chief Rabbinical imprimatur. The sectarians pursued Dr Sacks relentlessly on this issue, and in January 1995 he attempted to calm their fears by declaring, in a much publicized article in the Jewish Tribune, that in his view adherents of Masorti had severed their links with the faith of their ancestors.13 Exactly a week later, in the Jewish Chronicle, though continuing to speak in harsh terms of Masorti, he stressed his belief in an Orthodoxy ‘uncompromising in its tolerance, its compassion, its warmth, intellectual openness and challenge to spiritual growth’.14 Later that year Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs, the spiritual head of Masorti, revealed that prior to Yom Kippur, he had been

J [ewish] T [ribune], 12 Jan. 1995, 5. So why had he consented to certify Masorti congregations? 14 J [ewish] C [hronicle], 20 Jan. 1995, 24-5. 13

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

323

telephoned by Dr Sacks who, apparently, asked his forgiveness.15 The death of Reform Rabbi Hugo Gryn, in 1996 provided the second major casus belli. At the end of the Gryn affair, Dr Sacks had succeeded only in uniting the sectarian and progressive wings of Anglo-Jewry against him. Nor has Dr Sacks fared much better in his efforts to encourage the spiritual renewal of Anglo-Jewry through educational initiatives. The problem of the alienated Jews, and of how they might be persuaded, cajoled, lured, enticed or even bribed to identify more formally with Anglo-Jewry, preoccupied almost all sections of British Jewry in the 1990s. In 1991 the Jewish Educational Development Trust (of which the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi was the spiritual head), asked a widely respected businessman and philanthropist, Fred Worms, to chair a study of the provision of Jewish education for those aged 18 and under, the objective being to identify a strategy for Jewish educational renewal. In keeping with ‘inclusivism’, Fred Worms’ committee included persons drawn from both the modern orthodox and Reform wings of Anglo-Jewry. Published in September 1992, the Worms Report concluded that the fundamental cause of the shortcomings of Jewish education was the system’s fragmentation. There were some encouraging findings, notably in relation to nursery education. But Worms and his colleagues reported that Jewish children were withdrawing from Jewish education during the crucial years of adolescence. Seventy per cent of Jewish children between the ages of 6 and 13 received some Jewish education, but the participation level fell to 30 per cent after the age of Bar/Batmitzvah, and to a mere 10 per cent in the final year of secondary school. Fred Worms’ major recommendation was for the establishment of ‘a representative, umbrella body for Jewish education’, to target strategically important initiatives and to establish networks of lay leaders and professional staff ‘to formulate specific proposals’, and raise funds ‘for Anglo-Jewish education in the widest sense’.16 Dr 15 16

JC, 13 Oct. 1995, 1. Securing our Future, 48.

324

Controversy and Crisis

Sacks responded to this challenge by laying the foundations for the most ambitious educational project ever undertaken by Anglo-Jewry, ‘Jewish Continuity’, established in September 1993. With trustees drawn from the ‘good and great’ of Anglo-Jewry, Jewish Continuity was launched amid a flurry of media coverage. In 1994, in what appeared to be a major coup, the Joint Israel Appeal (JIA) agreed on a partnership under which it agreed to fund-raise for both bodies, thus promising an income for Continuity predicted to rise to £5 millions in 1997.17 Two years later Continuity was dead. Its failure was the result of a number of structural weaknesses: lack of a discrete strategy; lack of accountability; apparent total lack of quality monitoring or evaluation mechanisms; obsession with its own image; seeming inability to build on the best practice to be found amongst already existing institutions.18 But overshadowing all these sins of omission and commission was the impact upon the good intentions of Continuity and its staff of the religious chasms within Anglo-Jewry. The Worms Report had spoken in terms of a national body which would represent and cater for all sections of Anglo-Jewry: it would, in other words, be inclusivist. At the outset, Continuity announced that although all organisations within Anglo-Jewry were eligible for funding, it would not support activities which involved participants breaking the laws of the Sabbath (in the orthodox sense) and kashrut (again, in the orthodox sense). This modus operandi was designed to allay the fears both of the sectarians and of the practising orthodox within the United Synagogue. In fact, it outraged sections of the non-orthodox communities, and to allay their fear a fateful decision was taken, in May 1994, to establish, within Continuity, a Jewish Community Allocations Board, chaired by Professor Leslie Wagner (then Vice-Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University), but with members drawn from across the religious spectrum. The Allocations Board’s finances came from Jewish Change in Continuity: Report of the Review into Jewish Continuity (London, 1996), 4, 63. 18 JC, 28 April 1995, 28-9. 17

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

325

Continuity but it made its decisions independently. Its purpose was to show that proposals from Jewish organisations, whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, would be treated fairly and objectively. They were. In the first round of applications, in 1994, few projects were submitted from the progressives, so that there appeared to be a bias towards orthodox submissions. But the following year more progressive applications were received, and so more were funded. These included a number of Reform, Liberal and Progressive synagogues, and Leo Baeck College. From the orthodox wings of Anglo-Jewry there was uproar. Jewish Continuity’s partnership with the JIA made the effects of these religious conflicts yet more damaging. Many who donated money to the JIA were non-orthodox or simply not religiously committed; they were unwilling to see their money going to a body whose funds were not accessible by the whole community. In his contentious article in the Jewish Tribune, in which he attacked Masorti, Dr Sacks had also proclaimed that Continuity programmes would be based ‘solely on Torah’. This declaration inevitably alienated non-orthodox Jews and had a harmful effect on Continuity’s fund-raising efforts; one observer commented that the JIA’s ability to raise money for Continuity ‘dried up almost overnight’. The amount of money Continuity received from the JIA in 1995 was substantially less than had been expected and Continuity’s future operations were naturally hampered by this shortfall in funds. In October 1995, faced with mounting problems, Continuity’s Trustees invited Professor Wagner to chair a review its activities. His report, Change in Continuity, recommended major changes in its administration, organisation, function and role. As a solution to the pitfalls produced by the issue of religious division, it suggested a reduced role for the Chief Rabbi and proposed that Continuity should operate as a cross-community body. Jewish Continuity was relaunched. Dr Sacks withdrew from active involvement in the organisation. In June 1996, inevitably given the weight of hostility to it, Jewish Continuity was killed off. Formally, it was merely to be merged with the JIA, to 326

Controversy and Crisis

create a new combined organisation – the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA) —in 1997. In reality, religious dissension and cash problems had frustrated the original intention that Continuity would give Jewish education a priority within Anglo-Jewry. Much of the optimism and enthusiasm which had accompanied Continuity’s formation had been lost. The fate of Jewish Continuity proved to be the most spectacular example of Dr Sacks’ inability to reconcile his own inclusivist agenda with the exclusivist agendas of his orthodox opponents. But in the longer term it may turn out to be less significant than his failure to meet the aspirations of women members of the United Synagogue. The establishment of the Liberal Jewish movement in the UK might be viewed, from one perspective, as a practical expression of the early Jewish feminist movement in the UK. Women rabbis have served in progressive synagogues since the 1970s; in progressive synagogues women are not segregated from the men, and can be ‘called’ to the reading of the Torah portion on Sabbaths and festivals. By the end of the 1980s opportunities existed, within progressive communities, for women to participate fully in all activities of a religious nature. But within Anglo-Orthodoxy this was not the case. The halacha accords many privileges to women, and imposes many religious obligations upon them, chief amongst which are the duties to marry and produce children. In the orthodox home the Jewish housewife reigns supreme. In the synagogue she is literally superfluous, usually relegated to the gallery and, in sectarian orthodox houses of worship, more or less hidden behind a thick curtain, or even relegated to a separate room. Within the world of sectarian orthodoxy this subordinate status has never seemed in the least degree incongruous. But in the world of centrist orthodoxy, as exemplified by the United Synagogue, the matter became contentious. Girls brought up within this centrist orthodoxy had taken full advantage of the educational opportunities open to women in British society after 1945. They obtained university education, and pursued professional careers whilst rearing children and maintaining orthodox homes. Jewish women whose career achievements had British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

327

secured for them a status in wider society became resentful of their subordinate position within Anglo-Jewry. For some, younger women, this resentment resulted in defections to the progressive movement. But this solution, fraught with the obvious risk of future difficulties for their offspring in terms of Jewish identity, did not appeal to the majority. During the 1990s feminist ideas entered the mainstream of British Jewry. These ideas were informed in part by the work of an American and Israeli Jewish feminist movement which operated squarely within the halacha.19 An example of this was the creation of Rosh Chodesh groups. Rosh Chodesh is the monthly celebration of the new moon but it had once also been a special holiday for Jewish women, who could wear new clothes and cease work. at this time. The women who established the modern Rosh Chodesh groups wanted to combine a Jewish tradition with modern women’s search for spirituality. Their aim was to do this by reclaiming Rosh Chodesh as a special Jewish women’s holiday. This was a seminal development in the interaction between feminism and Judaism. By the mid-1990s there were approximately 40 Rosh Chodesh groups in the UK; some were orthodox or progressive while others were non-affiliated. The Rosh Chodesh initiative, and others, such as the ‘Half-Empty Bookcase’ conferences organised in and after 1992 by women rabbis from the Reform and Liberal movements, resulted in June 1993 in the establishment of the Jewish Women’s Network (modelled on the Israel Women’s Network), which aimed to involve women from across the religious spectrum. However, many of its members came from United Synagogue backgrounds, and it was within the United Synagogue that some of the most intense campaigns were to be fought in the name of Jewish feminism.20 Dr Sacks has not turned a blind eye to the phenomenon of Jewish feminism. In 1991 he asked Mrs Rosalind Preston, then the first Thus, although women may not ordinarily lead orthodox prayer services, or read from the Torah scroll, they may do so in an exclusively female prayer group. 20 J. Goodkin & J. Citron, Women in the Jewish Community: Review & Recommendations (London, 1994), 112. 19

328

Controversy and Crisis

woman Vice-President of the Board of Deputies, who had recently completed a term of office as President of the National Council of Women, to co-ordinate a far-reaching inquiry into the role of women in the Anglo-Jewish community. The Preston Report, published in July 1994, represents the fruits of the most exhaustive investigation ever undertaken into the feelings of Anglo-Jewish women about their spiritual needs and religious status. It contained over 100 recommendations. Whilst some were non-controversial, others were bound to be rejected by the more orthodox communities. They were, however, accepted by the United Synagogue. In 1993 Dr Sacks sanctioned the first women-only Sabbath service though he also ruled that women could not be permitted to read from the Torah scroll. The following year he allowed women to be elected to the Council of the United Synagogue and to the boards of management of its constituent synagogues. These precedents were not followed by the Federation of Synagogues or (of course) the sectarians. The most sensitive matters dealt with in the Preston Report concerned marital breakdown, and its impact on the lives of orthodox Jewish women.. According to the halacha, only a husband can grant his wife a get (bill of divorcement), and such a grant must be made (and accepted) willingly, free of duress. But since the halacha permits polygamy, it is possible for a man, divorced from one wife in the civil court, to remarry religiously without granting his first wife a get; or he may simply remarry in a civil marriage ceremony, or even live with his mistress; children resulting from such a union will normally be recognised, by the halacha as fully Jewish, since yichud – intercourse – is regarded as a valid form of marriage. However, his first wife enjoys no such freedoms, unless he has granted her a get. If she remarries (and she will certainly not be able to remarry in an orthodox ceremony), children of the remarriage will be classed as mamzerim – bastards – and they and their descendants will be subject to very severe religious penalties. It is a matter of common knowledge within Anglo-Jewry that some husbands abuse the status given to them by the halacha, by demanding substantial monetary payments as a condition for the granting of a British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

329

get. Some husbands, perhaps out of spite, refuse altogether to grant a get following a civil dissolution. Their wives become, thereby, agunot (singular aguna: ‘a chained woman’), unable to remarry in a way that would be recognised by any orthodox community. For the progressive wings of Anglo-Jewry, the plight of the aguna has been eased through the simple expedient of dispensing with the halacha. The Preston Report, noting that the United Synagogue’s Beth Din had no less than 200 unresolved cases on its files, proposed a series of radical measures to deal with this problem within the halacha: communal sanctions against recalcitrant husbands (for instance, withholding of religious privileges); the promotion of legislation restricting the granting of a Decree Absolute of Divorce until all impediments to remarriage have been removed; and, most radical of all, that the assent of both bride and groom to a Pre-Nuptial Agreement (PNA) be required in respect of all marriages solemnised in synagogues under the authority of the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi.21 Some progress has been made on some of these matters, but the progress has been painfully slow and manifestly incomplete. In March 1996, through the good offices of Lord Jakobovits, an amendment was inserted into what became the Family Law Act empowering a civil court to require a divorcing Jewish couple to declare that they had taken the necessary action to have their religious marriage dissolved, as a condition precedent to the granting of a civil divorce. Since, by virtue of the constitution of the Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue in effect certifies most orthodox synagogues (even those within the UOHC) for the purpose of state recognition of their marriage secretaries, it would have been a simple matter for him to have required all synagogues in the UK which had placed themselves under his jurisdiction for marriage purposes to have adopted the PNA. In October 1993 Dr Sacks announced that he intended to do just that, but he was at once faced with a revolt from the sectarians, and backed The PNA binds both parties to the marriage to accept the decision of a named Beth Din, as to whether a get should be given and/or received, in the event of marital breakdown.

21

330

Controversy and Crisis

down. There followed a lengthy delay, brought to an abrupt end by an unprecedented series of public demonstrations by agunot and their supporters, outside the offices of the United Synagogue and the Board of Deputies in central London, at the offices of the Beth Din in Manchester, and during the consecration, by Dr Sacks, of a new synagogue in Northwood (north-west London).22 Publicity is never welcome to the Anglo-Jewish establishment; efforts were indeed made to prevent the Northwood vigil from going ahead. For the moment it seemed that the vigils had had an effect. In December 1995 Dr Sacks announced that he had secured the agreement of five orthodox ecclesiastical courts (those of Leeds, Manchester, the United Synagogue, the Federation of Synagogues and the Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Congregation) to a revised PNA, which was ‘launched’ on 1 April 1996. Meanwhile, the United Synagogue announced a series of religious sanctions designed to impress upon a recalcitrant divorcing husband the force of communal disapprobation in the event of his refusing to give a get. At first sight these initiatives appear ground-breaking. So they were, but their impact should not be over-estimated. The PNA which Dr Sacks eventually sanctioned in 1996 has had a slow take-up outside London, and is not mandatory.23 Many couples marrying under the auspices of the United Synagogue are reported to have refused to sign it. The 1996 legislation is welcome; but while the civil courts may take advantage of it, they need not do so. The list of sanctions introduced by the United Synagogue looks formidable.24 But, as Mrs Preston has herself emphasised, ‘if a recalcitrant spouse has no position in religious life, then such sanctions are of little value’.25 And it is worth pointing to the widespread belief that none of these reforms would have come about without the publicity generated by the agunot. As for the agunot The Times, 23 Oct. 1995, 6; Hampstead & Highgate Express, 27 Oct. 1995, 6; Shalom, 15 Nov. 1995, 7; JC, 24 Nov. 1995, 60. 23 Judge Myrella Cohen, ‘After the “Preston Report” ’, Jewish Year Book (London, 1997), lxix. 24 There is a summary in M. Cohen, ‘After the “Preston Report” ‘, lxix-lxx. 25 JC, 12 Dec. 1997, 27. 22

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

331

themselves, little has been done to ease their plight. The ‘gathering of world-wide halachic authorities’, which Mrs Preston ‘respectfully’ asked Dr Sacks and his colleagues to convene, in order to tackle the status of the aguna at its halachic source, has not taken place. Given the low esteem in which Dr Sacks is now held, it is difficult to see how it ever could.26 Part of the problem derives ultimately from the polarised religious divisions which are now the most distinguishing hallmark of AngloJewry. In Israel, the religious courts have been granted very extensive powers by the state to compel a divorcing husband to grant a get – for instance, withdrawal of passports, driving licences and banking facilities. It would be possible for the state to similarly empower Jewish ecclesiastical courts in the UK, or for the position of these courts in English law to revert to the situation pre-1857, when they alone could dissolve a marriage carried out under synagogal auspices. But Dr Sacks’ communal position is too weak to permit him, now, to seriously propose such initiatives, which in any case would require the consent of all religious wings of Anglo-Jewry. British Jewry stands now more disorganised and more divided than ever before. Its demographic decline continues in a seemingly irreversible fashion. Its size is now generally accepted to be no more than about 300,000. Projections computed by the American Jewish Committee suggest that this figure will contract to 240,000 by the year 2020, and to just 140,000 by 2080.27 The number of synagogue marriages continues to fall. Religious polarisation now affects almost every communal initiative. To the public vigils by agunot, to attempts to bring together Jews from different religious persuasion28we should add the bitter public attacks on each other by supporters and opponents of the eruv, a symbolic boundary planned to be erected in the London borough of Barnet. Within this boundary, orthodox Jews would be Goodkin & Citron, Women in the Jewish Community, 13. Jewish Press, 15 Sept. 2000, 128. 28 In 1995 the Beth Din of the United Synagogue urged orthodox rabbis to cease attending the annual non-denominational Limmud (‘Study’) conferences, on the grounds that Reform, Liberal and Masorti clergy would be taking part. 26 27

332

Controversy and Crisis

able to carry and push perambulators and wheel-chairs on the Sabbath. Supported by the borough council and the United Synagogue, the plan has met with intense opposition both from the non-orthodox and from the sectarians, the former on the grounds that it is an attempt to foist a religious device upon those who do not want it, the latter on the grounds that it is an attempt to foist a religious device upon those who can do without it. Approved by the government in September 1994, the eruv has still not been built. These instances are symptomatic of a much deeper malaise, stemming, perhaps, from a complete breakdown of communal identity. Synagogue membership has collapsed as a self-ascribed indicator of Jewish identity in the UK. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s a majority of British Jews have remained affiliated to a synagogal body. But in their analysis of the largest and most representative sample survey of British Jews ever undertaken, Professor Stephen Miller (Dean of Social Sciences at City University, London), Mrs Marlena Schmool (Director of the Community Research Unit of the Board of Deputies) and Antony Lerman (Executive Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research) concluded that over one third of British Jews chose not to formally associate with any synagogal body, and that in all the synagogal groupings, with the exception of the Chassidic groups, those abandoning synagogue membership altogether outnumbered those defecting to other synagogues. Thus, although some non-orthodox synagogal groupings have claimed that their diluted orthodoxy acts as a barrier against the undermining of Jewish identity, ‘many Jews appear to be leapfrogging the religious institutions which claim to act as bulwarks against erosion’. Furthermore, a cumulative generational pattern seems to be emerging. Where the parents professed Orthodoxy, 27 per cent of their children chose not to join synagogues; but where the parents were Reform or Liberal, the proportion of non-members amongst their children was 56 per cent and 59 per cent respectively. Of those Jews and Jewesses whose parents were members of synagogues, 31 per cent were not members themselves, while another 15 per cent moved to a more British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

333

progressive synagogue: ‘ “Leavers” and “changers” are younger, more likely to have been at university, and less likely to give to Jewish charities’.29 And even in respect of Jews and Jewesses who do join synagogues, their motives are likely, nowadays, to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.30 Only 52 per cent of respondents told the Kalms inquiry that they felt the Jewish people had a special relationship with God, while less than half indicated a belief in the intervention of God in human history; over half felt that, in any case, belief in God was not central to ‘being a good Jew’. A mere 56 per cent declared that the Torah was ‘the actual (or inspired) word of God’.31 In modern times, belief in God has never been an essential prerequisite of Jewishness. Synagogue membership is and always has been an optional extra. But the broad message of recent survey evidence is, unmistakably, that for most British Jews, ritual practice and religious observance are a means of affirming their ethnic identity as Jews, rather than an expression of purely religious faith. With the exception of the deeply devout, ethnic identity is much stronger within AngloJewry than religious commitment, and it is the former, not the latter, which appears to motivate religious observance. Judaism once united the Jews of Britain; now it divides them. Zionism once united the Jews of Britain, and indeed, provided them with an alternative ethnic identity; now it divides them too. During the 1990s there was increasing concern within the Anglo-Jewish communities about the nature of Israeli society, its religious polarisation and its ever more volatile political dynamic. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (4 November 1995), and the smell of corruption which was a hallmark of Israeli politics at this time, took their toll in

S. Miller, M Schmool & A. Lerman, Social and political attitudes of British Jews (London, 1996), 3, 14-15. 30 This was a major conclusion of the Kalms Report: A Time for Change, 242-3, 246-7. The pre-eminent reason for joining a United synagogue seems to be access to the rites of passage, especially marriage and burial. 31 Ibid., 242. 29

334

Controversy and Crisis

terms of support for the Jewish state.32 In 1993 the JIA ceased to be one of the top twenty Jewish charities in terms of income: the funds it received fell to just over £12 millions in 1994, and in 1996 Jewish Care, now British Jewry’s premier welfare body, replaced the JIA as the most successful Jewish fund-raising organisation in the UK.33 A substantial proportion of British Jews do, however, claim to feel secure in British society, and no longer think of themselves as living in exile.34 It may be, therefore, that by the end of the present century much of what we now regard as modern British Jewry will disappear, concealing itself behind a cloak of secular ethnicity while retaining picturesque memories of its Jewish origins. There may still be recognisably British Jews, a strange and largely suburbandwelling remnant, small in numbers though hopefully still rich in the distinctively Jewish contribution they can bring to British society.

A survey of British Jews carried out by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in 1995 found that only 43 per cent of the sample felt a strong attachment to Israel, and suggested that ‘if current trends prevail, attachment to Zionism and the Jewish state could become the concern of only a minority with a mostly Traditional or Orthodox religious outlook’: B. Kosmin, A. Lerman & J. Goldberg, The attachment of British Jews to Israel (London, 1997). 33 JC, 10 Sept. 1993, 12; 26 Nov., 13; 4 July 1997, 9; in 1996 Jewish Care raised funds exceeding £13.3 millions, compared with £10.7 millions raised by the JIA. 34 Miller, Schmool & Lerman, Social and political attitudes of British Jews, 3. 32

British Jewry: The Disintegration of a Community

335

XIV That Letter …… Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management

[Judaism Today, No 8 (Winter 1997/98), 40-43]

O

n Friday 14 March 1997 the Jewish Chronicle appeared in a unique format. Most of its front page and many of its inside pages were devoted to news of the leaking, to the Chronicle, of the text of a letter written in Hebrew by the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, to the Av Beis Din of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, Dayan Chanoch Padwa. The remainder of the front page carried the opening paragraphs of a long leading article by the JC’s editor, Ned Temko, justifying publication of a translation of the letter. In that letter, as is well known, Dr Sacks had spoken in harsh terms about the late Hugo Gryn, whom he was to eulogise subsequently at a memorial meeting held at the London headquarters of the TUC on Thursday 20 February. Hugo Gryn, he told Dayan Padwa, had been a destroyer of the Jewish faith, and he confessed to the aged Dayan how much pain it was going to cause him to praise such a person. ‘The JC felt’, it was explained, ‘that it had a duty to place the letter in the communal domain’. And so it was offered to the world, merely omitting ‘three passages of a personal nature which are not central to its meaning’. The letter, headed ‘Not for Publication’ and dated 12 Shevat 5757 (20 January 1997), amounted to a justification by Dr Sacks of his decision, notwithstanding his own personal feelings, to take part in the memorial meeting. Hugo Gryn’s death, the previous August, led to a series of unseemly public rows involving the institution of the Chief Rabbinate and its present incumbent Dr Sacks had not been present at Rabbi Gryn’s funeral, nor at the subsequent memorial service. In his letter to Rabbi Padwa, he made it clear that these absences had been quite deliberate: Great pressure was exerted upon me to participate in the funeral and in the memorial service for their ‘rabbi’, Hugo Gryn. This I did not do, and I was not affected by the hue and cry, for to have attended would have been to confer legitimacy upon Reform religious ceremonies, and upon his perverse work 338

Controversy and Crisis

within the Reform movement, and this would have been an insult to the Torah. As if to emphasise his personal disaffection for Hugo Gryn and his Reform religious faith, Dr Sacks, elsewhere in the letter, referred to him as ‘Mr Hugo Gryn’, and as oso ho’ish, ‘that man’ – the phrase, based on Talmudic sources, originally used to refer pejoratively to apostates and undesirables generally – and to Jesus of Nazareth specifically in medieval times. Indeed it was only used in a positive sense when the name of the person was included – ‘that he should be remembered for good.’ These passages were not in the included translation in published by the JC. It may be that some points were not understood in this specific context – that they were unclear and thereby ignored. Whilst some were simply quotations of biblical text, it is clear that others, far from being merely ‘of a personal nature,’ ‘not central’ to the meaning of the letter, were in fact of pivotal significance. The most important of these related to the six conditions which Dr Sacks assured Dayan Padwa he had insisted on as the price for his attendance at the memorial meeting. The JC’s translation faithfully reproduced the first five of these, but the sixth (that at the meeting he would only speak about Rabbi Gryn’s activities in interfaith relationships, and that in his speech he would make it explicit that he was recognising neither the Reform movement nor Rabbi Gryn’s activities in relation to that movement) remained partially unpublished. Significantly, two prominent reports of Dr Sacks’s speech (The Times 21 February and the JC 28 February), do not carry any explicit reference to Dr Sacks’s opposition to Reform Judaism. Moreover, the speech, delivered in the presence of Rabbi Gryn’s family, appears to have been a paean of praise for the man and his religious faith which survived the horrors of Auschwitz. It is true that at one point in the speech Jonathan Sacks apparently referred to ‘painful and intense’ religious differences between himself and the deceased. But that reference was made almost en passant, and in the context of a glowing tribute to their work together ‘for the sake of our common humanity which precedes That Letter …… Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management

339

our religious differences.’ This hardly amounts to the public expression of opposition to Reform Judaism that Dr Sacks assured Dayan Padwa he would publicly utter. Although the expurgated translation of the letter was published on 14 March, the JC had been in possession of the Hebrew text for several weeks. The existence of the four page letter had first been made publicly known in a statement issued by the Rabbinate of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations on 23 January 1997. This referred to ‘an exchange of private correspondence’, and called upon the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi not to participate in an act of public homage to a man ‘who publicly flouted and caused others to flout commandments of our Holy Torah.’ On Erev Rosh Chodesh Shevat 5757 (8 January) Dayan Padwa, writing in the name of the Union Rabbinate, had appealed to Rabbi Sacks not to participate in the planned eulogy of Rabbi Gryn. The Dayan made it clear that he and his colleagues understood the pressures on Dr Sacks to attend the planned memorial meeting, but urged him to resist these forces, and not participate ‘in any form of gathering … whose aim is to honour those who uproot the religion’: We write these lines, to the esteemed Rabbi (Dr Sacks), in a private manner, without any publicity. Furthermore, we hope that there will be no need to make this matter the subject of public protest and we beg the esteemed rabbi to let us know his decision as soon as possible, and at the very latest within two weeks. Here was a scarcely veiled threat, that the Union just might indulge in a public protest—perhaps outside TUC headquarters—should Dr Sacks attend. Dr Sacks took his time to reply, but he did so, within the 14 days specified, and at great length. His four page response, flattering, patronising and at the same time scathing both of Reform Judaism as a movement and of Hugo Gryn as a person, was designed to assure Dayan Padwa that his heart was in the right place, but that realpolitik demanded his attendance at the 340

Controversy and Crisis

memorial meeting: otherwise the Reform movement might institute its own Chief Rabbinate, and demand from the British monarchy and government a parity of status with orthodoxy. Such ‘a calamity’ would, Dr Sacks argued, lead inexorably to a diminution in the status of the orthodox Chief Rabbinate—and hence of orthodoxy—in the eyes of the state. By attending the memorial meeting, by praising Hugo Gryn only for his interfaith work, and by seizing the opportunity to publicly affirm his own opposition to the Reform movement, Dr Sacks would be doing orthodoxy a favour. ‘From this will emerge a great victory for the honour of the Torah, in the public domain’. because the Reformers, who had ‘only been waiting for the excuse and the opportunity’ to demand separate recognition by the state, would be denied the victory they sought.’ Dayan Padwa and his colleagues were clearly not impressed by such rhetoric. For some considerable time, in private and in public, they had been pressing Dr Sacks to make it clear that his much-publicised policy of ‘inclusivism’ did not include the non-orthodox world, and to signal his rejection of any form of dialogue with non-orthodox communities. At the beginning of 1995 they thought they had finally won their point, for he agreed to publish an article in the Jewish Tribune (12 January 1995) attacking the Masorti movement, and making it explicit that so far as he was concerned ‘Neither marriages nor conversions performed under non-orthodox auspices are valid in Jewish law.’ The euphoria with which this article was greeted in Gateshead. Golders Green and Stamford Hill was short lived. For the very next week, in the JC, Dr Sacks published an astonishing self-repudiation of his piece in the Tribune. What is less well-known is the extent of the anger within the ‘Torah orthodox’ world when it emerged that Dr Sacks, as an ecclesiastical authority of the Board of Deputies, had long before signalled his intention to certify Masorti congregations as ‘congregations of persons professing the Jewish religion’, for the purpose of their obtaining government recognition of their marriage secretaries. He had so certified the St Alban’s Masorti synagogue (11 January 1994), but had omitted certain qualifying sentences added by That Letter …… Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management

341

his predecessor, then Sir Immanuel Jakobovits, when certifying the New Highgate and North London Synagogue (now the New North London Masorti congregation) in September 1981. By January 1997, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations placed little trust in Dr Sacks. He professed one set of beliefs, but seemed to practise something quite different. The Union Rabbinate was at the end of its tether. Its public statement of 23 January condemned Dr Sacks’s decision to attend the memorial meeting for Rabbi Gryn, a decision it publicly branded as a chillul hashem—a profanation of the Divine Name. Yet even at this stage, some within the Union were prepared to give Dr Sacks the benefit of the doubt: after all, he had assured the Union Rabbinate, in writing, that he would use his presence at the meeting to demonstrate his opposition to the Reform movement. Only after the meeting, at which he had delivered a speech very different from that which he had led the Union Rabbinate to expect, was the decision taken to leak his four page letter. Although written to Dayan Padwa, the letter was in fact a response to one that the Dayan had written on behalf of the entire Union Rabbinate. Contrary to the impression given by Dr Sacks in his response published in the JC on 14 March, it was in no sense ‘sent to the Dayan for his eyes only’, a personal letter from one rabbi to another. The identity of the person who faxed the letter to the JC is known to this writer—and beyond. It was leaked, from within the world of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, quite simply to teach Dr Sacks a lesson he would never forget. The JC received its copy of the letter in early February 1997. By then, copies were circulating within the ecclesiastical and lay leaderships of Anglo-Jewry, and had even been sent abroad. I myself received a copy by fax. The JC decided to run the story but also determined to tell Dr Sacks what it was going to do and to offer him a right to reply. His response was to instruct his solicitor to obtain a holding injunction against the JC and its editor, thus preventing them from publishing the letter. The injunction was duly granted, but like other such injunctions (for instance, that obtained by the Attorney-General 342

Controversy and Crisis

against Times Newspapers in 1991, preventing publication of excerpts from Spycatcher) it had precisely the opposite effect to that intended. The quality national press sniffed the odour of a scandal. On 4 March Guardian diarist Matthew Norman announced that Dr Sacks had obtained the injunction and even hinted, vaguely, at what the letter might contain. It was, clearly, merely a matter of time before some newspaper, probably in the USA or Israel, published the text in full and unexpurgated. An agreement, it appears, was reached and the holding injunction was left to wither away. Dr Sacks was permitted a right of reply, alongside a now partial translation of the letter. The translation itself was prefaced with a statement by Dr Sacks pointing out that the letter had been written in ‘rabbinic Hebrew, a language which uses hyperbole rather than understatement’; this alibi which was to loom ever larger as the inevitable public row gathered its inevitable momentum. Not since ‘the Jacobs affair’ of the early 1960s had there been so much attention shown by the British media to the inner workings of British Jewry. Yet the non-Jewish world did not, for the most part, understand or even know about the theological controversies between Orthodoxy and Reform. When these fundamental differences were explained, the non- Jewish world sided in the main with Hugo Gryn and with Jonathan Sacks—against the religious ‘fundamentalists’ of Gateshead. Golders Green and Stamford Hill. The Times, in its report and leading article of 18 January, affected to reinterpret the halakhah by bring biblical text to bear in urging Dr Sacks to attend the Gryn memorial meeting. Ruth Gledhill, the ‘Religion Correspondent’ of the Times, even quoted Ned Temko as giving his imprimatur to Dr Sacks’s decision to attend the meeting. So the publication of Dr Sacks’s letter to Dayan Padwa came as a profound shock. No one in the media appeared to question the JC’s decision to omit certain passages in the letter, or inquired as to what these omissions might contain. The JC’s rendition was accepted as definitive. Although, in the short time, publication of the letter inflicted great damage on the reputation of Dr Sacks, the manner in which the contents of the That Letter …… Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management

343

letter were revealed to the world actually amounted to an exercise in damage limitation. What, for instance, would the reaction of rankand-file members of the Council of Christians and Jews, co-hosts with the Board of Deputies of the memorial meeting, have been, had they known about the invoking of oso ho’ish – a possible reference, deliberate or otherwise, to Jesus of Nazareth. In the short term, too, the publication of the letter, albeit in censored form, may have had an impact on one aspect of the May General Election. On 6 March Dr Sacks published The Politics of Hope, extracts from which had already appeared in the Times. Dr Sacks is undoubtedly an admirer of Tony Blair (see Dr Sack’s article in the Times 4 October 1997). The Politics of Hope was widely held to have been written in support of Mr Blair whose views on the family and the community coincided with those of Dr Sacks. If there were any plans by Labour’s spin doctors to exploit the image of Dr Sacks, these were quickly shelved once the JC had decided to publish the letter. What of the long term? Clearly, the reputation of Dr Sacks vis-à-vis the non-Jewish world has been badly damaged despite attempts by many including the Times to stitch up the wound. The world of ‘Torah orthodoxy’ , far from being assured by Dr Sacks’s private views on Hugo Gryn and Reform Judaism, feels totally betrayed. The Reform movement did, of course, evince horror and outrage in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the letter. Since then it has reviewed the situation. Rabbi Sacks needs rescuing and the Reform movement will help to repair the damage—but only at a huge price. The full cost may only become clear over a period of time and rumours abound of constructive dialogues behind closed doors. Those within the world of ‘Torah orthodoxy’ who hoped that Dr Sacks would resign were clearly mistaken. In the immediate aftermath of the publication of the letter, that possibility could not be dismissed. But within the United Synagogue the feeling seems to have prevailed that however misguided their Chief Rabbi had been in writing the letter, this act could not be allowed to undermine the legitimacy of his office. His supporters privately held their heads and wrung their 344

Controversy and Crisis

hands, but publicly they supported him and shook their fists, trying to deflect national debate by focussing on the perfidy of the leaker. For some, exposing the identity of the leaker became the stock response to awkward questions. For others, it was a case of blaming the medium for the message. Finally there is the use of ‘rabbinic Hebrew’ to explain the harshness of the English translation. In fact, the letter was written in moden Hebrew with occasional Talmudic quotations and flourishes, often in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. The only sense in which it can be claimed that the letter was written in ‘rabbinic Hebrew’ is that, though written in perfectly ordinary Hebrew, the writer happened to be a rabbi.

That Letter …… Rabbinical Politics and Jewish Management

345

XV KOSHER SEX AND LEADERSHIP LUBRICATION

[Judaism Today, Winter 1998/9, 4 -7]

L

ast May Rabbi Shmuley Boteach announced that he was to ‘withdraw’ from officiating at the Willesden United Synagogue following what the Jewish Chronicle described as a ‘rabbinical furore’ over the publication of his book Kosher Sex.1 The events surrounding this announcement, and its aftermath, encapsulate some of the most profound issues bedevilling Torah-orthodoxy in Britain in the 1990s. But the lessons to be drawn from this affair affect the whole of the Anglo-Jewish religious and irreligious spectrums. I have never met Rabbi Boteach, or spoken to him. An American Lubavitch-trained Hasid, with an evident flair for (some would say obsession with) self-publicity, he burst upon the Anglo-Jewish scene a decade ago when he launched the L’Chaim Society in Oxford. Oxford University already had, and has, a flourishing Jewish society, of which I happen to be a life member. As Rabbi Dr Harry Rabinowicz reminds us in his volume A World Apart: The Story of the Hasidim in Britain,2 Rabbi Boteach was able to attract veritable glitterati to his establishment (including Mikhail Gorbachev, Christian Barnard and Henry Kissinger) and he saw to it that L’Chaim was most generously funded. These funds, and this evident ability to gain access to the good and great, might have been put at the disposal of the already existing Jewish society, which now had to compete, so to speak, for its share of Jewish interest in the city and the nation. Rabbi Boteach might have co-operated with the Jewish society. But he chose not to. Meanwhile, he began to earn a name for himself as a media personality. In September 1994 he invited the then prime minister of Israel, the late Yitzhak Rabin, to address his society. The Lubavitch movement, on the orders of its spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, had always opposed any territorial compromise between Israel and its Arab neighbours and regarded Rabin as persona non grata. Schneerson’s death a few months before Rabbi Boteach’s invitation to Rabin had no doubt heightened Lubavitch sensitivity on this issue. Rabbi Feivish Vogel, director of the Lubavitch Foundation 1 2

S. Boteach, Kosher Sex (London 1998). H. Rabinowicz, A World Apart: The Story of Chasidism (London, 1997).

348

Controversy and Crisis

in Britain, voiced strong displeasure at the invitation. Rabbi Boteach, according to Dr Rabinowicz, “was suspended and later resigned.” But far from damaging Rabbi Boteach’s image, or the work he was doing, this rare public display of Hasidic spitefulness and intolerance seems to have given his work a new lease of life. In due course, L’Chaim was relocated in London. Otherwise, it was business as usual, with, apparently, no shortage of financial sponsors. Indeed, I suspect that from Rabbi Boteach’s point of view, his exit from Lubavitch, and from Oxford, were blessings in disguise. In London he has operated on a world stage. By his writings (especially his Jewish Guide to Adultery) and his many radio and TV appearances, he has brought a Jewish dimension to bear on a host of issues of national and international importance. He has engaged in dialogue with nonorthodox movements. He has addressed rabbinical candidates at Leo Baeck College. And he has not been afraid to attack, publicly, both the religious and lay establishments of Anglo-Jewry. These deeds in themselves would have sufficed to make Rabbi Boteach a marked man so far as sectarians or the ultra-orthodox are concerned. Worse still, however, is the fact that all that he has done and written has been grounded in a thoroughly Orthodox perspective. Or has it? I have heard it alleged that Kosher Sex advocates views not in accordance with Halakhah. In a statement despatched by the United Synagogue’s Rabbinical Council to its Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Boteach was accused of having expressed in the media opinions “not in accordance” with orthodox Jewish law. Indeed, the Council’s chairman, Rabbi Yisroel Fine, was quoted by the Jewish Chronicle (15 May 1998) as critical of the book on the grounds that while some of the views expressed in it “are authentic and sound from a rabbinic point of view, some are not.” Kosher Sex is misleadingly titled. It reads like a secular guide to sex, but with fascinating Jewish perspectives thrown in. It deals with masturbation (“not kosher”) and oral sex, which Maimonides may have permitted and which is probably not contrary to Halakhah. It condemns adultery and one-night-stands without equivocation. Kosher Sex and Leadership Lubrication

349

It has some very poignant things to say about pornography. But its basic message—and one of the major reasons why, in my view, it has inccurred the displeasure of the sectarians—is that sex is not just for procreation, but is the cement in a good Jewish marriage. Acceptance of this premise leads Rabbi Boteach to some other conclusions which the sectarians were bound not to like. For example: Parents, and not children, must always come first in marriage. Children should not be allowed to invade the private spaces of spouses as a couple . . . When children invade their parents’ bedroom at night as a matter of habit, their bedroom ceases to be a lovechamber, becoming a family sitting room instead (p. 190). What Rabbi Boteach advocates is lust within marriage. This is entirely in accordance with Halakhah and, indeed, he is able to quote some rather saucy passages from the Talmud and other rabbinic literature in support of his view. The subjects he deals with are all dealt with in the Torah and/or the Talmud, and they are entirely proper subjects for rabbinical commentary. Elkan Levy, president of the United Synagogue, is quoted by the Jewish Chronicle (22 May 1998) as declaring that “rabbis should leave sex therapy to sex therapists.” This opinion can be based only on ignorance of the historical role which rabbis have assumed as personal counsellors on sexual matters, as material in the Cairo Genizah makes clear. It may well be that United Synagogue rabbis are not very competent in fulfilling this function, and that buried within their criticism of Rabbi Boteach is more than a whiff of sour grapes. But there are dimensions to the hounding of Rabbi Boteach which go well beyond the spiritual parochialism of the United Synagogue and the personal and professional deficiencies of its rabbis. It is a sad fact of Jewish life in Britain that many adherents of orthodoxy experience great difficulty in coming to terms with their own sexuality. Homosexuality and lesbianism are pushed under the carpet. Adolescents attending sectarian orthodox schools are rarely taught anything about the human 350

Controversy and Crisis

reproductive process, lest they interest themselves in contraceptive techniques. An inevitable effect of such an upbringing is that it leads to an unhealthy repression of the sexual drive, which can all too easily explode after marriage—especially after a failed marriage. We should not be surprised that some of the worst cases of sexual abuse of children within Anglo-Jewry in recent years have come from within the orthodox world. One of Rabbi Boteach’s ‘crimes’ is to have talked publicly about matters on which orthodox Jews, especially the sectarians, feel distinctly uncomfortable. Another ‘crime’ is undoubtedly the manner in which he chose to make known his views. I have not the slightest doubt that, had he written his book in flourishing rabbinic Hebrew, using coded rather than explicit language, and distributed it to a few senior colleagues in a discreet leather binding, he would still be preaching at Willesden. Instead, he chose to write a paperback, heavily advertised and, indeed, serialized in the British national press. Certainly, [said Rabbi Fine] the manner in which they [Rabbi Boteach’s views] are expressed, the way they have been presented to the public and serialised in the tabloids is inappropriate for an Orthodox rabbi (Jewish Chronicle, 15 May 1998). Why? In what way is this ‘inappropriate’? In its issue of 5 June the Jewish Chronicle carried an article by Daniel Greenberg criticising Rabbi Boteach not for what he had said, but for the manner in which he had said it: The subject of sex is important. But it is a matter which requires to be addressed in a respectful and serious manner, in an atmosphere of kedushah [holiness] rather than of sensationalism. I can assure those who have not read Kosher Sex that there is nothing sensational or vulgar about it. Nor, I think, was its presentation in the media sensational. I suspect that behind the charge of sensationalism lies a certain anger that Rabbi Boteach should have exposed to public view—and in the non-Jewish press—matters which many in the Kosher Sex and Leadership Lubrication

351

orthodox world would rather not have exposed to public view at all. Lust within marriage is, in fact, the Torah- orthodox approach to sex, and the literature regarded as holy by the Torah-orthodox world is replete with sexual allusion and innuendo. I never cease to be amused at the lengths some rabbis go to explain the Shir Ha’Shirim (the “Song of Songs”, read on Passover) as an allegory on the love of the Jews for God. Consider chapter five, verses 4-5: My [male] friend put his hand around the hole [in the door] to open it and I trembled. I opened it for him and my hands smelled of myrrh [from his perfume]. Of which I believe the real meaning is: My friend put his hand through my opening and my innermost parts reacted to him. I opened myself for my lover; my hands dripped with fluid. What is this, if not soft porn of the type to be found nowadays at any railway or airport bookstall? And if it is, it in no way detracts from its divine inspiration. Rabbi Boteach is reported to be angry and shocked at the treatment he has received following the publication of Kosher Sex. I would advise him to study the tale, recounted by Dr Rabinowicz, of another Hasidic rabbi who came to grief after a confrontation with the AngloJewish establishment. In his history of the Hasidim in Britain, Dr Rabinowicz reminds us of the sad fate of Rabbi Joseph Shapotshnick (1882-1937), son of the Belziszer Rebbe of Kishinev. Shapotshnick pursued a conventional career as a Hasidic rabbi himself, claiming miraculous powers to cure all manner of ailments. Arriving in London a few months before the outbreak of the Great War, he lost no time in challenging the authority of the United Synagogue’s Chief Rabbi (Dr Hertz) and Beth Din. Matters came to a head when he claimed to be able to extricate agunot (married women denied a religious divorce by their husbands) through the re-interpretation of the Halakhah and when he established his own board of Shechita. Every weapon in the formidable armoury of the establishment was brought to bear against him—legal action, public ridicule, bribery. He became a pawn in the 352

Controversy and Crisis

hands of the unscrupulous, and died a bitter man. The founder of Hasidism was Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700-60), a native of Podolia. Hasidism filled the void left by the massacre of Jews by Cossacks led by Bogdan Chmielnicki in the seventeenth century and by the apostasy of Shabbetai Zevi (1626-76), the false messiah who embraced Islam. Hasidism was born of rebellion. It was the refuge of poor Jews, weighed down by the strictures of rabbinic legalism and unable to afford a seminary education. Its founder stressed, in the words of British-Jewish historian Cecil Roth, that “piety was superior to scholarship, and that it was the prerogative of any man, however ignorant and however poor, to attain communion with his God.” Hasidim are passionate about life, and they are characterized by an infectious enthusiasm for the Judaism they profess and practise. They believe that all wealth is held, temporarily, on trust from the Almighty. There is about them a distinctly socialist air. Unfortunately,Hasidim are also prey to a number of beliefs and practices which, even by the most liberal standards of Torah-orthodoxy, must be regarded as heretical. For instance, their belief in the power of amulets and charms amounts to avodab zorab (idol worship). Such heresies are most comprehensively reflected in the Lubavitch brand of Hasidism. During his lifetime Rabbi Schneerson was widely regarded by his adherents as the Messiah, a claim he himself did nothing to refute. There are still ‘Lubes’ who believe he will rise from the grave to redeem mankind. Meanwhile, Hasidim quarrel viciously among themselves, each sect believing that it alone guards the true beacon of Torah-orthodoxy. The influence of Hasidim on British Jewry has been, and remains, considerable. Hasidim, who only a generation ago could be regarded as nothing more than an exotic periphery to the Anglo-Jewish world, now exercise an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. The story of the entryism of the Lubavitchers into the United Synagogue makes fascinating reading. From their redoubts in Stoke Newington, Golders Green, Gateshead and Manchester, they call the shots—that is to say, they seek to define the benchmarks of Torah-orthodoxy, by Kosher Sex and Leadership Lubrication

353

which we are all, it seems, to be judged. Jonathan Sacks dances to their tune, as his attitude to the Masorti movement and to the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn makes abundantly clear. How has this come about? Dr Rabinowicz has wasted a valuable opportunity to answer this question. His book is infuriating. He clearly knows a great deal about the Hasidic movement in general and British Hasidim in particular. But he has avoided the important questions, presenting us instead with superficial narrative and description, not all of it relevant to his subject matter. At best, his book can be described as a largely uncritical, non- analytic work of reference, in which, incidentally, he seems to fail to distinguish, or to distinguish sufficiently, between true Hasidim and the mere ultra-orthodox. A map or two would not have been out of place either. A World Apart contains a forward by Dr Sacks, whose personal religious odyssey, as is well known, was influenced by Lubavitch. In his chapter on the Hasidim of Ger, Dr Rabinowicz quite rightly mentions the most famous Gerer Hasid in Britain, Rabbi Simcha Bunem Lieberman, now resident in Sefat, Israel, who in 1985 was dismissed from his post as senior lecturer in Talmud at Jews’ College, of which Dr Sacks was then the principal. The controversy almost reached the proportions of an international incident. I have written an account of it (in an appendix to my Inaugural Professorial Lecture at London University, published in 1989), but, strange to say, Dr Rabinowicz is silent on the matter. I wonder why.

354

Controversy and Crisis

XVI Cecil roth: a personal appraisal

[Delivered at the “Cecil Roth in Context” Symposium, University of Southampton, 12 April 2005]

I

n October 1962 I made the leap of a lifetime. The previous February I had won an Exhibition to read the Final Honour School of Modern History at the University of Oxford. And on (as I recall) a dank, rather forlorn day the following October I journeyed from Hackney—no, from ‘Jewish’ Hackney (which is not quite the same thing)—to Lincoln College, Oxford, and to a city where I knew hardly anyone—there was one former Old Grocer (i.e. old boy of the former Grocers’ Company’s School, Hackney Downs) in residence at St. Edmund Hall. But that was not quite true. There was one Oxford resident whom I did know, at least by reputation and through his writings if not by name, and who had made that same journey, from Hackney to Oxford, some forty-five years previously. And my excitement as I travelled to Oxford that October day in 1962 was in fact a double excitement. For I knew that I was at last going to meet, face to face, one of my boyhood heroes: Dr Cecil Roth. I first learned the name of Cecil Roth at the time of my Barmitzvah, in January 1957. I was born into and grew up in an extremely cash-limited orthodox Jewish household in Jewish Hackney. A wealthy relative, from whom my parents expected a substantial Barmitzvah present, had sent me a somewhat battered second edition of Roth’s History of the Jews in England, which Oxford University Press had published in 1949. My parents were furious. But I, who had already determined at that tender age to spend my life as a historian, was enchanted. I read the book from cover to cover the day (and night) I received it. Its impact on my life has been incalculable. It was without doubt the best Barmitzvah present I received. What was it that thrilled and enchanted me about that book? Here was academic history, rooted in the sources, not the charming but essentially meaningless semi-fictional anecdote that had served as an apology for Anglo-Jewish history hitherto. It matters not (it seems to me) that many of Roth’s conclusions have been overturned, partially or completely, by subsequent practitioners of the historical sciences. That is a risk (fate would perhaps be a better word) that all academics run. 356

Controversy and Crisis

Roth had gone to the sources, and had reached evidence-based conclusions, ones (moreover) that were not rooted in the mentality of persecution and victim-hood that had characterised so much of what had passed for Anglo-Jewish history hitherto. He became one of my schoolboy heroes, along with A. J. P. Taylor (an admirer of Roth, by the way), his Oxford near-contemporary with whom I was also to strike up a lifelong relationship, first as teacher and later as friend. But I am running ahead of myself. In 1996 I read before the Jewish Historical Society of England a paper entitled ‘The Young Cecil Roth, 1899-1924’.1 I do not wish to retell here the story that I then told, but certain events in Roth’s early life do deserve repeating. Roth was born in Dalston (Hackney) in 1899. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish household suffused with the love of learning. He was sent to the City of London School (to which many of the betteroff Anglo-Jewish parents of that period sent their sons). His love of learning was rudely interrupted by war service (1917-19), in which he was probably a victim of German poison-gas attacks. In my JHSE paper I speculated that this may have accounted for his curious voice, which was high-pitched at one moment and very deep at the next. What I did not say in that paper was that such attacks are known to have resulted in sterility, and what I did not speculate in that paper was that this might have been the reason why Roth and his wife Irene never had children. At all events I never heard Roth talk at all about his war service, and we can be sure that the colourfully adventurous account given by Irene in her memoir of him is highly fictionalised. In 1919 Roth left the mud of Flanders for the spires of Oxford. At Merton College he was at last in his element. Not only was he taught by some of the most brilliant historical minds of the age. His five years at Oxford coincided with a revolution—of which he was an early product—in academic thinking about what history was and about how it should be taught. 1

Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, xxxiv (1994-1996), 1-16.

Cecil Roth: a Personal Appraisal

357

The pacemaker in this revolution was the great Cromwellian historian Charles Harding Firth, who had in 1904 become Regius Professor of Modern History. Firth believed that the Honour School of Modern History should in some sense prepare candidates to undertake historical research and—even more controversially—that the Oxford History School should be research-active as well as teaching-active. Here I can do no better than quote from Mark Nixon’s entry (2002) on Firth in the on-line Literary Encyclopedia: [Firth’s] inaugural lecture, published that year [1904] as A Plea for the Historical Teaching of History, is a classic statement of the research-oriented view of history, and demonstrates the philosophy that lay behind his dedication to the introduction of systematic methodology in Britain’s universities. He wrote the regulations for Oxford’s B.Litt in 1895 and D.Phil in 1917, and spent the rest of his life pressing for the introduction of a compulsory research methods element to the history degree programme.2 Roth came under Firth’s influence, and after registering for the B.Litt (following his brilliant First in the Honour School) switched to the then new-fangled D. Phil, emerging with this degree in 1924. But of course the doctorate that Roth obtained was not in Anglo-Jewish history, which was then only a hobby. Roth’s first love was Italian Renaissance history, and his doctoral thesis (subsequently published) was on the last years of the Florentine Republic. We need to remember that for the next decade or so Roth tried desperately to obtain a university post as a teacher of Italian Renaissance history. The fact was that the world of Italian studies in British universities was then controlled by a small clique of Anglo-Italian scholars, and that this clique was rife with anti-Jewish prejudice. We know that Roth was rejected for posts at Manchester University and Bedford College in the University of London. Whilst Roth was producing a stream of original research in Anglo-Jewish history it was only with reluctance, www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1536 2008]

2

358

[accessed 16 March

Controversy and Crisis

in the early 1930s (according to Irene in conversation with me), that he accepted that if he was to have a future as an academic, it was actually going to have to be in this field. In some ways these years in the wilderness, 1924—1939, are the most interesting of Roth’s life, and the most difficult to piece together. He had to earn a living. He became a journalist. He bought and sold antiquities. He lectured for money. He wrote ‘potboilers’—popular biographies of the Rothschilds, Disraeli and so on—many of them published by the Jewish Publication Society of America and intended for the American-Jewish audience. In 1937 he allowed himself to be persuaded to accept a commission to write a highly sanitised jubilee history of the Federation of Synagogues—a work (scarcely more than a pamphlet) of which he was so ashamed that he never included it in his own bibliography. Roth knew that this output could not be classed as serious history. But the money he earned thereby enabled him to research and write the serious output by which he wished to be judged and for which we should now remember him. Meanwhile (1928) Roth had found a wife—or, more accurately, a wife had been found for him. His marriage to Irene was a shidduch. Irene (by her own frequent admission) knew nothing about Yiddishkeit. “Cecil taught me everything, ” she confessed to me at our last meeting, in her New York apartment. When I first went to visit the Roths in Oxford, at one of the so-called ‘bunfights’ [in effect great buffets] that Cecil and Irene ran in their home for all Jewish students there at the beginning of each University year, it was Irene who answered the door—a tall elegant woman with gold bangles along both arms and around her neck. For a moment I wondered if I had knocked at the right house. I had. So began a lifelong relationship with the Roths, who almost acted as surrogate parents to me and I suspect to a great many other Jewish students. In marrying Irene Roth married money. He had none but she—or rather her parents—had some, which made all the difference. But the marriage brought worries of another kind. Irene suffered from Cecil Roth: a Personal Appraisal

359

deep psychological problems. It was rumoured that she was a nymphomaniac. It was certainly true that she was a kleptomaniac. There were several ‘incidents’ at Oxford, and later in Jerusalem where the couple settled on his retirement from Oxford in 1964. In every case the shop concerned was prevailed upon not to press charges provided the stolen goods were returned. The stress that this imposed on Roth can only be imagined. In 1939 Roth returned to Oxford as Bearsted Reader in Post-Biblical Jewish history. The idea seems to have come originally from Chief Rabbi Hertz. By then Roth was doing a great deal of work behind the scenes, writing material used by the Board of Deputies and other bodies engaged in Jewish defence. Hertz persuaded the Bearsted family to put up the money, but had a great deal of difficulty persuading Oxford to accept it—or rather, in persuading Oxford that not only should the university accept the endowment, but that they should acquiesce in having the benefactor (rather than a conventional search committee) name the academic beneficiary. Fortunately Hertz found an ally in Herbert Danby, an Anglican priest who was then Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University and whose ground-breaking translation of the Mishnah, published in 1933, is still very much in use. Danby was a pronounced philosemite. It was he who smoothed the way for Roth to be confirmed as Bearsted Reader. But Oxford never forgot and never quite forgave. Roth was attached to his old College, Merton, but Merton declined to elect him to a Fellowship and was careful to never change its mind. In these cursory remarks it would be impertinent of me to pass judgement on Roth’s golden age—his twenty-five years as Bearsted Reader. His output was prolific. His influence on several generations of young Jewish historians—myself included—was very profound, in that it introduced us to the academic study of Jewish history and fired our enthusiasm for taking the subject further. I do however want to say a little about two aspects of Roth’s output. The first relates to its optimism about the Jewish future. Roth has been criticised for paying too little attention to the endemic nature of anti360

Controversy and Crisis

Jewish prejudice in Europe. And it is certainly true that his History of the Jews in England (which Oxford first published in 1941) virtually stopped with the granting of political emancipation in 1858. This was not because Roth was unaware of—say—the anti-Jewish agitations in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of course he was. He had lived through them and with them. But he was an optimist. His History of the Jews in England stopped in 1858 because he wanted to end on a triumphant and optimistic note. You might say that he was the last of the Whig historians. Roth has also been criticised for the superficial way in which he referenced his sources. His footnoting was ‘light.’ But we must remember that many other historians of his generation were similarly light-touch in their use of what we would now regard as essential scholarly apparatus. Read—if you doubt what I say—the works of that other great latter-day Whig historian George Macaulay Trevelyan. In 1964 Roth retired from Oxford to live in Jerusalem. A special chair had been established for him at Bar—Ilan University. Within a few weeks of his arrival he found himself the victim of a spiteful campaign by religious fundamentalists, who accused him of having in his writings denied the doctrine of Torah min Hashamayim—that the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) had been given and written entirely by the Almighty. Roth had always eschewed controversy, and instead of fighting his corner (as many of his disciples would have liked) he resigned the post, concentrating instead on being editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Judaica. He died and was buried in Jerusalem in 1970. He was given a State Funeral. May I add a personal postscript? Irene did not like Jerusalem. She preferred the bright lights of New York, where she spent her remaining years in an apartment overlooking Central Park. She wrote a personal reminiscence of her husband ­—Historian Without Tears—but she knew that it was not the scholarly biography that he deserved. From New York she made contact with me, and begged me to write this work. She even arranged a research grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Cecil Roth: a Personal Appraisal

361

But I knew that there were things that would have to be said about Cecil, and about her, that I could not say in Irene’s lifetime. My researches on Cecil’s early life formed the subject of my Jewish Historical Society paper. I then left the world of Cecil Roth to concentrate on other things. It is only some years after Irene’s passing that I have felt able to return to this world once more.

362

Controversy and Crisis

Guide to Further Reading The bulk of the essays reproduced in this volume date from the 1980s and 1990s. Those who wish to engage in further study of the topics with which they deal can do so by accessing the materials cited in the footnotes. My purpose here is to guide the interested reader in the quest for further reading materials, especially those written and published over the last decade. The second edition of my monograph Modern British Jewry (Oxford, 1998) took the broad outlines of the history of the Jews in the United Kingdom down to the early years of the Chief Rabbinate of Sir Jonathan Sacks. But since its publication there has appeared a number of important parallel narratives of British-Jewish history. Chief amongst these (in my opinion, and in order of importance) are Professor Todd Endelman’s monumental The Jews of Britain: 1656 -2000 (London, 2002), Professor David Vital’s A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789 – 1939 (Oxford, 1999), Professor W. D. Rubinstein’s History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain (London, 1996) and Professor E. C. Black’s The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1920 (Oxford, 1988). Discrete topics in the field have also benefited from scholarly treatment. I particularly commend Dr Lara V. Marks, Model Mothers: Jewish mothers and maternity provision in East London 1870 – 1939 (Oxford, 1994), Gerry Black’s JFS: A History of the Jews’ Free School, London, since 1732 (London, 1998), John Cooper’s Pride versus Prejudice: Jewish Doctors and Lawyers in England, 1890-1990 (London, 2003) and the late Dr Harry Defries’ study of Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900 – 1950 (London, 2001). Bill Williams’ biographical study of Sir Sidney Hamburger and Manchester Jewry (London 1999) is a model of its kind, as is Dr Sharman Kadish’s ‘A Good Jew and a Good Englishman: The Jewish Lads’ & Girls’ Brigade 1895 – 1995 (London, 1995). Harold Shukman deals with an important but neglected episode in War or Revolution: Russian Jews and Conscription in Britain 1917 (London, 2006). This 364

Controversy and Crisis

issue is also examined in G. Alderman, ‘Anglo-Jewry and Military Conscription during the Great War,’ in R. R. Farber & S. Fishbane (eds), Jewish Studies in Violence (Lanham, Maryland, 2007), 33-42. The interface between British Jews and British society more generally is addressed in Tony Kushner (ed), The Jewish Heritage in British History (London, 1992) and, brilliantly, by Dr David Feldman in his monograph Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture 1840 -1914 (Newhaven, 1994). Of all the personalities that played their part in the history of modern British Jewry none has been the subject of greater attention than Benjamin Disraeli. Those interested in learning more about this great statesman should begin by consulting Disraeli’s Jewishness (London, 2002), a collection of essays edited by Professors Todd Endelman and Tony Kushner and then tackle Professor Sidney Weintraub’s Disraeli (London, 1993). The New Dictionary of National Biography, published by Oxford University Press in 2004, contains authoritative entries on many of the leading Anglo-Jewish personalities of the modern age, with extra material available online. Dr Louise London’s doctoral thesis on the reception and settlement in Britain of refugees from Nazi Germany has now been published as Whitehall and the Jews, 1933 – 1948: British immigration policy, Jewish refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 2000). It should be read together with Professor Bernard Wasserstein’s Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939 – 1945 (2nd edn, London 1999), Dr Pamela Shatzkes’ Holocaust And Rescue: Impotent Or Indifferent? AngloJewry 1938-1945 (London, 2002), and Dr Paula Hill’s “Anglo-Jewry and the refugee children, 1938 – 45” (University of London PhD thesis, 2002). A number of other very important university theses that bear upon the history of the Jews in modern Britain remain as yet unpublished. Of particular significance are Ms Sivan Jennifer Orev’s “Protestant Jews or Catholic Jews: An Historical & Sociological Profile of the Jewish Community of Belfast (Queen’s University of Belfast MPhil

365

thesis, 1999); Dr Z. Yaakov Wise’s study of “The Rise of independent orthodoxy in Anglo-Jewry: the history of the Machzikei Hadass communities, Manchester” (University of Manchester PhD thesis, 2006) and Dr Jennifer A. Cousineau’s “Making the northwest London eruv, 1988 - 2003: The construction, representation and experience of a Sabbath space” (University of California, Berkeley, PhD thesis, 2006). The reaction of British Jewry to Zionism is examined in Stephan Wendehorst’s “British Jewry, Zionism and the Jewish state, 1936 – 56” (University of Oxford DPhil thesis, 1997). The trials and tribulations experienced by orthodox Judaism in the UK are dissected with great sensitivity in Miri J Freud-Kandel, Orthodox Judaism in Britain since 1913: An Ideology Forsaken (London, 2006). The late Chaim Bermant’s authorised (though nonetheless critical) biography of Lord Jakobovits (London, 1990) must now be read alongside Mr Meir Persoff’s Faith Against Reason: Religious Reform and the British Chief Rabbinate 1840 – 1990 (London, 2008), which benefits from full access to the Jakobovits’ papers. There is still no satisfactory history of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, though one is promised, in 2010, to coincide with the 250th anniversary of its establishment. But an episode reflecting the typicality of its penchant for mismanaging the affairs of British Jewry is address is G. Alderman & C. Holmes, ‘The Burton Book’ (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 18, part 1 (January 2008) , pp. 1-13.

366

Controversy and Crisis

INDEX A Abrahams, M., 305 Abramsky, Y., 317 Adler, Hermann, 3, 128, 200, 299, 307-8, 317 as Chief Rabbi 91-97 and Cardiff Jewry 58-9 and Jewish divorce 95 and shechita 118-20, 123 and Zionism 286 Adler, Henrietta (‘Nettie’), 212, 217-7, 223, 261 Adler, Nathan Marcus, 87-8, 90-91, 113-4, 279-80, 293 and Jewish divorce 95 and shechita 116 Agudas Yisroel, 181 Aguilar, Grace, 39-41 Agunot, 329-31 Alexander, D. L., 95, 253, 285, 300, 309 Alexander, Lionel, 292 Alien Immigration, Royal Commission on (1902), 207 Aliens Act (1905), 207, 299-301, 306 Amias, Saul, 183, 186 Ammanford, 56 Angel, Moses, 294 Anglo-Jewish Exhibition (1887), 285 Animal Liberation Front, 138 Ansell, Asher, 274 Artificial Insemination by Donor, 6 Attlee, Clement, 166, 225-6, 249-50 B Baal Shem Tov, I., 353 Baeck, Leo, 316 Bakstansky, Lavy, 46 Balfour Declaration, 167, 285 Balfour, Gerald, 305 Barnard, C., 348 Barnet, 177-9 368

Baron, Salo W., 44 Barry Dock, 60 Bayfield, Tony 10, 106 Beer, R., 242 Benn, Sir A. S., 126, 130 Bentwich, Norman, 43 Berkovits, B., 26 Bermant, Chaim, 91, 318 Berry, H., 269 Bevin, E., 172-3 Binstock, Ivan, 42 Blair, Tony, 344 Board of Deputies of British Jews, 3, 11-12, 87, 113 Clause 43 controversy, 5-8, 102-4, 109-110 and shechita, 126, 140, chapter vii passim and Zionism, 47 false claim to‘represent’ British Jewry, 49 under Moses Montefiore, 277-9 Boer War, 91-2, 210 Bolshevism, 221 Booth, C., 238-9 Bornstein, Abba, 103 Boteach, S, chapter xv passim Brady Boys’ Club, 296 Brichto, Sydney, 10, 106 British Brothers’ League, 207-8 Brodetsky, Selig, 46 Brodie, Israel, 103, 310, 318 Brook, S., 318 Brougham, Lord Chancellor, 276 Buckman, Joseph, 44 Burns, John, 122 C Cable Street, 263-4 Cahill, J. J., 252 Calisch, E., 288 Cambridge, University of, 234 Campaign for the Protection of Shechita, 20, 154-5

Cardiff Jewry, 57-59, 61 Carrington, Lord, 184 Central British Council for Shechita, 154 Cesarani, David, 46 Charlotte de Rothschild Dwellings, 198 Charlton, Roger, 143 Chassidim, 318, 353 Chazen, S., 268 Cheltenham, 167 Cheyette, B., 287 Chovevei Zion, 92 Churchill, Winston, 82, 305-6 Cincinnati Pen, 151 Cohen, Alfred, 208 Cohen, Arnold, 30 Cohen, Benjamin, 91, 196, 198, 208, 299, 307 Cohen, Lionel, 198 Cohen, Lionel L., 304 Cohen, Zina, 18 Cohen, Shimon, 20 Cohen, Simon, 292-3 Cohen, Stuart, 46 Cohen, Susman, 305 Combe, E. H., 221 Communist party and Jews, 167-8 Compassion in World Farming, 138 Consultative Committee on Jewish-Non Jewish Relations, 10, 106 Co-ordinating Group for the Defence of Shechita, 18, 147 Council of Christians & Jews, 344 Cranbrook, Lord, 223 Crawley, H., 186-7 Cricklewood, 171 Cymerman, Joseph, 268 D d’Avigdor Goldsmid, Sir Henry, 169 d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, O.,132 Daiches, Samuel, 97, 129 Danby, H., 360

Davis, M. H., 28, 98, 167, 216, 227, and chapter xi passim Davis, Myer, 40-41 Dickens, Charles, 40 Divorce, 6, 45 Divorce & Matrimonial Causes, Royal Commission on (1910), 95 Donoghue, B., 171 E Ebbw Vale, 60, 70 Eden, A., 174 Education Act (1870), 198, 200 Education Acts (1902 & 1903), 209-13 Edward VII, King 91, 123,308 Edwards, W., 269 Ehrentreu, Chenoch, 10, 33, 106 Emanuel, J. G., 306 Encyclopedia Judaica, 361 Esther Lyons, abduction of, 70-71, 74-5 Evans, Gwynfor, 77 Evans-Gordon, W. E., 207, 299 F Fagin, 40 Farjeon, B., 288 Farm Animal Welfare Council, 16-17, 136, 144-5 Federation of Synagogues, 4, 9, 46, chapter xi passim foundation of, 296 and Chief Rabbinate, 14, 48, 97, 103-4, 107 Beth Din, 103 and shechita, 124-5, 153 Feldman, David, 44 Feminism, 326-9 Ferber, Z. H., 125, 130 Fidler, Michael, 5, 109 Final Solution, 48 Finchley, 169-70, 172, 187-8 Fine, Y., 349, 351 Fineberg, J., 303 Firth, C. H., 358 Fishman, W., 44 Forde-Ridley, S., 207 369

Foreign Jews Deportation Committee, 220 Foreign Jews Protection Committee, 219-20 Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Co., 198 Frankel, William, 22 Freeman, J. L., 172 Frosh, Sydney, 9 Fuerst, J., 99 G Gaitskell, H., 174 Gaon, Solomon, 11 Gartner, Lloyd, 44 Gaster, Jack, 168 Gaster, Moses,15, 42, 260 and Jewish divorce, 95 and shechita, 99, 127-8, 132 Gateshead, 48, 102, 316-7 Gelles, B. J.,184 George, David Lloyd, 77, 215 Gerber, P. Y., 125, 131 Gledhill, Ruth, 343 Glinert, Lewis, 35 Gluckstein, Louis, 316 Goldberg, Jack, 265 Goldman, N., 260 Goldsmid, A. E. W., 58-9, 296 Goldsmid, Francis, 276 Goldsmid, Isaac L., 236 Gollancz, Hermann, 92 Gorbachev, M., 348 Gordon, A. E., 211 Gordon, H. H., 211-12; 216-7, 305 Gordon, S., 288-9 Gorst, John, 183, 186 Gosling, Harry, 126-7 Graetz, Heinrich, 285 Grant, E., 172 Great Synagogue, 85, 87, 112-14, 211, 232 Greenberg, L., 301 Greenwood, G., 127 Gryn, Hugo, 312, 324, 354, chapter xiv, passim

370

H Hackney, 171, 175, 178, 180-2 Hailsham, Viscount, 144 Halpern, E., 20 Hambro’ Synagogue, 115 Hardy, Thomas, 51 Harris, P., 224, 261 Harrow, 179 Hart, Aaron, 86, 114 Health, Ministry of, 123, 125 Heath, E., 179 Hendon, 170, 172, 183 Henriques, U., 81 Henriques, Basil, 316 Henry, M., 300 Hertz, Joseph J, 48, 260, 315-7 as Chief Rabbi, 97-100 and Cecil Roth, 360 and Reform Judaism, 102 and the UOHC, 130-2 Herzl, Theodor, 42, 59, 73 Herzog, Isaac, 15-16, 99, 133 Herzog, J, 103 Hill, P., 47 Hirschell, Solomon, 40, 86, 113 Holmes, Colin, 47, 80-1 Homa, Bernard, 182, 223, 265-7 Humane Slaughter Association, 138 Hyamson, Albert, 42 Hyamson, Moses, 305 Hyndman, H. M., 302 I Ilford North, 182, 185 Independent Labour Party, 68 International Workers’ Educational Club, 302 Irish Free State, 263 Israel, re-establishment of, 173 J Jack The Ripper, 198 Jacobs, J., 236, 290 Jacobs, Louis, 4, 32, 108, 323, 343 Jacobs, I., 34 Jacobs, June, 28

Jakobovits. Immanuel, 12, 21, 30, 48, 84, 103-6, 185, 312-3, 320, 330 and Jewish marriage, 7 and Lieberman affair 33-6 and Masorti movement 323 and Reform Judaism 10-11 and shechita 19, 20, chapter vii passim Janner, Barnett, 174, 182 Jerevitch, Harris, 69 Jerome, Saint, 51 Jessel, George, 285 Jesus of Nazareth, 161, 344 Jew Bill riots (1753), 61 Jewish Board of Guardians, 90, 195, 197, 237, 290-2 Jewish Continuity, 322-7 Jewish Educational Development Trust, 324 Jewish Gazette, 27, 35 Jewish Girls’ Club, 296 Jewish Herald, 19 Jewish Historical Society of England, 40 and M. H. Davis, 50 Jewish Lads’ Brigade, 296 Jewish marriage, 7 Jewish Municipal Relief Act (1845), 276 Jewish Tailors’ Machinists’ Society, 297 Jewish vote, the, 166, 171 Jewish Working Men’s Club, 296, 301 Jews’ College, 4, 30-6, 293, 320 Jews’ Free School, 198-9, 232, 294 Joel, W., 216 Jopling, Michael, 18-19, 148 Joseph, Keith, 20, 169, 185 Jung, M. Z., 124 K Kagan, Y. M., 317 Kalms, Stanley, 13, 30, 33, 36,

321-2 Katz, David, 38-9 Kaye, Ronald, 143 Kelly, C. J., 216 Kesselman brothers, 154 Kirzner, E. W., 104 Kissinger, H, 348 Kopelowitz, Lionel, 11, 21, 84, 105 and Geoffrey Alderman 50 and shechita 156-8 defends Chief Rabbinate 108 Kosmin, Barry, 48 Krausz, E., 177-8 Kushner, Tony, 47 Kyd, D. H., 299 L L’Chaim Society, 348 Landau, F. M., 27 Laski, Neville, 267 Lawrence, Susan, 218 Lawson, H., 305 Lazard Brothers, 236 League of British Jews, 253 Lederman, Morris, 103 Leeds Jewish Tailor’ Machinists’ & Pressers’ Union, 302 Leeds, Jews in, 177 Leperer, S., 34 Lerman, A., 333 Lestchinsky, J., 225 Lever, H., 173 Levin, Salmond S., 13 Levy, Amy, 288-9 Levy, Elkan, 350 Levy, J., 305 Levy, Lewis, 232, 283 Levy, Abraham, 11, 155 Levy-Lawson family, 242 Liberal Jewish Synagogue, 102, 310, 315-6 Lichtenstein, Y. Y., 20, 30, 153, 158 Lieberman, rabbi S. B. 30-6, 154, 354 Linehan, T., 47 371

Lipman, Vivian, 42-43, 231 Lipson, Daniel, 167, 169 Lissack, J., 130 Litsenberg, Sol, 40 Liverpool, 122, 274 Liverpool Shechita Board, 120 Livingstone, Ken, 187 Llanelli,56, 66, 71, 78 Lobenstein, H. J.,17-18, 149, 181 Local Government Act (1929), 214 London Board of Shechita, origins of, 116 London County Council, 196, 237 anti-Jewish policies of, 220-2; 260-3 London Jewry, size of, 166, 197, 234 London School Board, 199-201 London Shechita Authority, 19 London, City of, 194 London, Louise, 47 London, University of, 235-6 Long, Jerry, 246, 251, 268 Lubavitch movement,318-9, chapter xv passim Lyon, Hart, 86 Lyons, J. & Co., 242 Lyons, Lewis, 206, 225, 303 M Macaulay, T. B., 286-7 MacDonald, J. R., 167, 258 MacGregor, John, 19 Machzike Hadath community, 93-4, 98, 119-21 Magnus, Lady, 41 Magnus, Phillip, 199, 286 Manchester Jewry, 89, 177, 153 Markham, Arthur, 69 Masorti movement, 4, 323, 341-2 Matrimonial Causes Act (1857), 45, 94-5, 278 Mayhew, Henry, 231, 283 Merthyr Tydfil, 56, 59, 63

372

Metropolitan Board of Works, 195-6 Military Service Agreement (1917), 219 Miller, Mrs M., 182 Miller, S., 333 Minhag Anglia, 322 Ministry of Agriculture, 141 Mizrachi movement, 97 Mocatta, F. D., 292, 297 Monmouthshire Welsh Baptist Association, 71, 79, 81 Montagu, Louis, 253-5, 286, 309 Montagu, Samuel, 94, 96, 121, 198, 205-6, 212, 236, 253, 293, 300, 305 and Board of Deputies 87 establishes Federation of Synagogues 296-7 Montefiore, Moses, 3, 87, 277, 285 Montefiore, C. G., 199, 285-6 Morris, W., 302 Morrison, Herbert, 265, 268 Moses, E. & Son, 233 N Nathan H., 223-4 Nathan, E., 223-4 National Council of Shechita Boards, 13 National Front, 185 New London Synagogue, 10 New Synagogue, 115 Newman, A., 43 Newport, 59 Nixon, Mark, 358 North London Beth Hamedrash, 98 O Orbach, M., 174 Ormonde, Sidney, 19 Oxford, University of, 234

P Padwa, Chenoch, 21, 312, chapter xiv passim Parkinson, Cecil, 186 Parliamentary Oaths Act (1866), 284 Paul, Geoffrey, 16, 84 Pearlzweig, M., 310 Phillips, M., 303 Piciotto, James, 40-1 Pinter, Avraham, 182 Piratin, Phil, 167-8 Plaid Cymru, 77 Plancey, Alan, 186 Poale Zion, 174, 226, 301-3 Pomson, David, 13 Pontypridd, 71, 78 Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, 293 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834), 290 Port Talbot, 56 Portsmouth, 114 Prais, S., 178 Pre-Nuptial Agreement, 330-1 Preschel, Tuvia, 34 Preston, R., 328-9; 331 Promissory Oaths Act (1871), 284 Public Health (London) Act (1891), 205 R Rabbinical Commission for the Licensing of Shochetim, 14, 24, 101, 133, 139 Rabin, Y., 348 Rabinowicz, H., chapter xv passim Race Relations Act (1976), 185 Raphael, R., 236 Raphael. H. H., 199 Ravinson, Gershon, 120 Ray, W., 222-3 Redbridge, 178-9 Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, 10, 48, 316 Registration Act (1836), 87, 113, 277-9

Reinowitz, Ya’acov, 93 Representation of the People Act (1918), 215, 226 Richmond-upon-Thames, 172 Roberts, H., 264 Rosen, ‘Tubby,’ 265 Roth, Cecil, 38-45, 259, 285, 353, chapter xvi passim Roth, Irene, 359 Rothschild, Alfred de, 64 Rothschild, Lionel de, 194, 283-5 Rothschild, Lionel de (2nd Baron), 286 Rothschild, N. M., 236 Rothschild, N. M. (1st Baron), 77, 94, 198, 212, 285 Rottenberg, M., 99 Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 138 Rubinstein, W. D., chapter xiv passim S Sacks, J. H., 30, 36, 186, 312 election as ‘Chief Rabbi,’ 48, 107, 319 and Chassidism, 354 and Hugo Gryn affair, chapter xiv passim and ‘inclusivism,’ 320-1 and Jewish divorce, 326-31 and Masorti movement, 323, 341-2 Salaman, R., 318 Salmon, I., 261 Salomons, David,194, 236, 280-81, 284, 293 Samuel, H., 299 Samuel, Ida, 216 Samuel, Stuart, 64, 212 Sassoon, Edward, 64 Savitt, Martin, 186-7 Schiff, David T., 86 Schiller-Szinessy, S. M., 89 Schlesinger, E., 20, 153 Schloss, David, 204-5 Schmool, M., 178, 333 373

Schneebalg, M., 20, 153 Schneerson, M. M., 348 Schonfeld, Solomon,102, 317 Schonfeld, Victor, 98-99, 129-30 Scotland, 99, 124, 130 Shabbetai Zvi,353 Shapotshnick, J., 352 Shechita, 16-19, 20, 26, 94, 121-2, chapters vi & vii passim definition of, 145-6 Sheffield, 178 Shinwell, E., 173 Silkin, L., 227 Simmons, P., 213 Simon, John, 284 Sinclair, L., 299 Singer, M., 34 Singer, Simeon, 92 Six-Day War, 174 Slaughter of Animals Act (1933), 15, 98, 100-2, 134, 139, 310 Slaughter of Animals (Northern Ireland) Act (1934), 135 Slaughter of Poultry Act (1967), 139 Slaughterhouses Act (1974) 14, 100-1, 139 Solomons, ‘Ikey,’ 40 Solomons, H., 264 Somers, Lord, 144 Song of Songs, 352 Spanish & Portuguese Jews Congregation, 11 Spanish Civil War, 263 Speyer Brothers. 236 St George’s-in-the-East, 203 Stanmore, 170 Stepney 167-8 Stepney Central Labour Party, 166, 225-6, 250 Straus, B., 208-9, 300 Strauss, G., 227 Suez Crisis, 169, 174 Suez crisis 174 Sullivan, Jack, 251-2 Sunday trading, 23-4, 135 Sunday Trading Act (1936), 310 Super, A., 175 374

Swansea, 54-6 Sweating, 239 T Taylor, A. J.P., 357 Telsner, Z., 156 Test & Corporation Acts, 276 Thatcher, Margaret, 20, 170, 179, 183-8 and shechita 142, 152, 155-6 Thomas, Nathaniel, 71, 74-5 Tobin, Oscar, 166, 225, 249-50 Toledano, Pinchas, 11, 155 Tredegar, 57 Trevelyan, G. M., 361 Tuck, R., 242 U Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues, 4, 48, 316 and Chief Rabbinate, 108 Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, 4-6, 46, 48, 98, 129, 129, 181, 317 and Gryn affair, 340 and shechita, 153 United Nations Organization, 175 United Synagogue, 4, 298 Beth Din, 93 United Synagogue Act (1870), 90, 117 V Van Oven, L., 300 Vincent, H., 207 Vogel, F., 348 Voluntary Schools Act (1897), 201 W Wagg, H., 236 Wagner, L., 325-6 Warburg, F., 267 Weinberg, Harris, 121 Weitzman, Michael, 9

Weizmann, Chaim, 260 Welsh Revival of 1904, 71-2 Werner, A. A., 119, 265 West Central Jewish Club, 296 West London Synagogue of British Jews,3, 279, 315 Western Synagogue, 116 Whig historians, 361 White Paper on Palestine (1930), 166-7 Whitechapel, 182, 203 Whitechapel District Board of Works, 204 Wilson, Harold, 174 Wilson, Sir R., 274 Wolf, Lucien, 40-1 Wolkind, Jack, 8 World Sephardi Federation, 11 Worms, Fred, 324 Y Young, H., 186 Z Zalman, Meshullam, 86 Zangwill, I., 289 Zilberstein, S., 33

375