By Rabbi Neil Janes
Who is the ‘regular’ Jew – your neighbour, friend, colleague and why are they feeling so anxious this week?
In this piece, you’ll meet a regular Jewish family and hear how they experience the world and why recent events are such a worry for them – and what we can all do about it.
I say to you as their rabbi, there can be no making peace in the world if it’s at the cost of Jews…and their history and deeply held core aspects of their identity.
Until that is accepted, there is a clear label for opposition to such a stance: anti-Jewish racism.
Meet the Smiths: an ordinary Jewish family in anxious times
Allow me to introduce you to the Smith family. They’re an imaginary family from middle England and they are Jewish.
They’re almost definitely members of a Progressive synagogue and certainly strongly identify with their Jewish identity.
They’ve lived in Britain all their lives and worked hard. They’ve raised their children, sent them to university, paid taxes. And when they go to synagogue, they want their synagogue to be liberal, tolerant, inclusive.
They love the fact that their rabbi is a woman and their community has a Pride Shabbat.
And when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians?
They’ve been lifelong donors to peace charities, organisations working in the field and whenever they visit Israel, they ensure that they visit Arab-Israeli coexistence projects and hear from Palestinians living in the West Bank.
They are as close as you can get to what you probably imagine is the good Jew…(though for some, they are not ‘good enough’ Jews because they haven’t disavowed Zionism and believe in Israel’s right to exist).
If you saw them walking down the street you probably wouldn’t even know they were Jewish… Except for the fact that they probably invited you to their children’s weddings, bat mitzvahs and maybe even a home Chanukah lighting.
A legacy of resilience and refuge
The Smiths ended up in the UK because half of the family were refugees from Nazi Europe.
Two-thirds of this side of the family was murdered and a third survived. Some came to the UK. Some had sought refuge in what was then British Mandate Palestine – there were no other places in the world that they could go.
The other side of their family were refugees from Egypt. Around the time of the Suez crisis the family had to leave Alexandria. A few of the family came to the UK.
The rest of the family, because they couldn’t get visas anywhere else, went to Israel. Of course, there were also the cousins who were already in Israel along with the dispersed family across practically every corner of the globe.
For centuries, no matter where their families were, they prayed in the direction of the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
Why am I spending so long introducing the Smiths to you?
Because this is the Jewish Household which makes up the majority of the approximately 250,000 Jews that live in the UK ( at least those that live outside of the main Jewish population centres).
They’re not famous, they’re not VIP’s, they’re not politicians, they don’t have podcasts or public social media profiles, they don’t work in the Jewish community, they’re not on the streets, they don’t fly flags.
They donate to Jewish charities. And they will be buried in a Jewish cemetery.
And there’s every chance that they live in a part of the UK where the Jewish community numbers just 0.3% of the population.
The closest they get to identity politics is that they wear a small Star of David necklace and have placed their mezuzah on the door outside of their house.
Although lately they’ve considered moving it inside.
And they regularly turn up to interfaith activities and help coordinate the Holocaust Memorial Day service in their local council chambers.
The shifting ground beneath their feet
Lately, though, the Smiths have become more and more anxious.
There’s regular graffiti in the villages and towns. Sometimes it’s just swastikas. But it’s also included calls for death to Jews or to ‘F*** Israel’.
They’ve heard from their friends that their grandchildren are being targeted in school in the playground and “I love Hamas” has been graffitied on to the desks.
But that’s not what’s making them anxious lately. That’s just since 7th October 2023.
Lately, the tone of political discourse has become coarser and more violent.
The Smiths admit they’re probably online too much and seeing the viciousness of debate, sometimes they go to bed feeling scared. And it’s not just in person and online discourse.
There have been recent murders of Jews and Israelis in other parts of the world and it always feels close to home. Violent acts of vandalism and abuse on the streets.
The campaigning is apparently to help the Palestinians and draw attention to the plight of Gazans. But for them it appears to be at the cost of their security as citizens of the UK.
They don’t feel that they can trust the national broadcaster, the BBC, because whilst the excuse of broadcasting violent chants for death seems to be ‘it was a mistake’, it feels too contrived.
And they saw the hordes of concert goers, at a festival, not only supporting the chant for death of Israelis, but also calling for a ‘Free Palestine’ which is deniable but seems to be clearly a shorthand for ‘Free from the river to the sea’ and destruction of Israel.
It looked to them like something from a far-right rally or the 1930s.
Fear: they know what this means
They know what this means. And they know what it means because they’re no longer allowed to discuss, display or give voice to their support for Zionism.
They know what it means because their nephews and nieces have all served in the IDF and now apparently they deserve to die.
Cousins’ homes have been destroyed from the missile barrages from the Islamic Republic of Iran and this has been celebrated by throngs of people.
They know what it means because they go to their synagogue and hear prayers for peace, for Palestinians and Israelis, and they see no equivalent anywhere else – just for freeing Palestine and certainly barely a call for a release of hostages.
Members of their community have got relatives and friends who have been murdered or were taken hostage.
Where they are praying for peace and are desperate to change the humanitarian situation in Gaza and end the horror of innocent deaths, it feels like everywhere else is calling for destruction.
They know what it means because in living memory their families were made unwelcome in the countries in which they found themselves.
And the small number of Jews that ended up in Britain have always thought that this would be their forever home. Even though they were separated from other family members whose forever home is the State of Israel.
They know what it means because they see online that Israeli (Jewish) influence is constantly the centre of conspiracy theories of global power.
They know what it means because their local MP refuses to speak out on the question of Jewish and Israeli lives in as public and regular way as they regularly speak out about Gaza and Palestinians.
They’re told it’s because of the size of their mailbox.
They know what it means because the synagogue activities require a password and a security guard and no publicity.
They know what it means because the local peace and justice group which obsesses about either the rights of Palestinians or the environment has nothing to say when chants for death are heard on their television screens.
And there is no outrage from the councillors who are never shy about how they want the world to live in peace.
They know what it means because it’s no longer good enough for them to have been a good Jew. They now must be either a closet Jew or change their opinions.
They know what it means because their grandchild’s university can run a course about ‘Religion and War’ in 2024 with several lectures about Islam and Gaza but without any mention of Jews, Hamas and anti-Judaism.
And the same university had to cut short a meeting because of fears for safety of Jews in the room due to protestors.
They know what it means because it seems no matter how much their rabbi is involved in local interfaith social cohesion projects their local MP and council seems to be disinterested in tackling deep rooted anti-Judaism.
And they know what it means because apparently the cost of Jewish community security in this country and their concerns about the calls for violence which were broadcast on the national broadcaster are dismissed as irrelevant in the face of the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
And I say to you as their rabbi, there can be no making peace in the world if it’s at the cost of Jews, like the Smith family, and their history and deeply held core aspects of their identity.
Until that is accepted, there is a clear label for opposition to such a stance: anti-Jewish racism.
My Rabbinate changed: a call to action
My rabbinate changed in 2023.
I realised that I had to work harder and in a more focused way on the need for social cohesion here in the UK with the Jewish voice actively engaged in the wider conversation. Even when I hear and see problematic material sometimes shared by other faith community leaders.
My task was to build bridges with sincere and serious friends across all faiths and none in the hope that we could jointly diminish the radicalised voices and amplify the voice of hope.
I needed to pray harder for peace which seemed beyond all our reaches and pledged my support for people involved directly in the hard work of building a better more peaceful world for Israelis and Palestinians and all life on this planet.
And I needed to redouble my efforts to protect my community and ensure that they could continue to celebrate every aspect of their identity, including a connection to the land and State of Israel, with every political hue of member who comes to our services. Including when that means calling out uncomfortable truths on their behalf.
The unacceptable price of “peace”
But…let me be clear: if there can only be peace without Jews and their ideas, there is a name for that. Anti-Jewish Racism.
The Smiths know it. I know it. And it’s about time the rest of the world said they knew it and called it out too.
But sadly the Smiths don’t have much confidence in that happening and sadly, neither do I.
Credits
This blog was written by Rabbi Neil Janes and was first published on 01/07/2025.
This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.