On April 22, 2021, to acclaim from every sector of Britain’s Jewish community, the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) published its report on “Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community”. It was the result of a 10-month investigation that was, as the Board put it, “unparalleled in UK Jewish history” – an investigation into the experiences of Jews from ethnic minorities as well as Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews. The report made no less than 119 recommendations, which seemed to imply that there was much wrong with the situation inside British Jewry. Regardless of whether some or all of the recommendations are implemented, the mere fact of their publication has profound implications for UK’s Jewish community
In
launching its report, the Board explained that the death of George Floyd in the
US in May 2020 at the hands of the police had acted as a wake-up call in many
sectors of British life, as it had done all over the world. Community leaders across the nation
acknowledged that despite decades of positive action, racism and discrimination
remained embedded in British society.
The BoD recognized that this was equally true of the Jewish community. Expressions
of good intent in the media were not enough.
Positive action was needed.
“No community is immune
from the scourge of prejudice,” the Board wrote, “and ours is no exception.” As
society as a whole sought to express its solidarity with those in the States
and beyond seeking to remedy racial discrimination, the BoD’s attention was
drawn to “moving and concerning testimonies of black members of our own
community about their experiences.”
And so it launched its Commission
on Racial Inclusivity – an attempt to learn more about the experiences in the
UK of black Jews, Jews of color and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews. It charged the Commission to examine the
issues and recommend how Britain’s Jewish community could do better. As Chair, it
appointed the prominent journalist Stephen Bush.
Stephen Kupakwesu Bush, born
in 1990, is of mixed race which includes some Jewish heritage. One of his grandfathers was “the last
‘proper’ Jew in the family,” Bush once explained. He “married out” so, as Bush wrote, “none of
his children, let alone his grandchild, were Jewish, although we have retained
a token observation of the major festivals.”
Bush, educated at a
state comprehensive school in east London, won a place at Balliol College,
Oxford University, where he studied history.
On graduating in 2011 he worked for the magazine Progress, before
writing for the Daily Telegraph. He joined the prestigious
left-wing weekly journal New Statesman in 2015, and was appointed
political editor in 2018.
During the years that
Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour party, Bush came to realize and condemn
the failings of the party in general, and Corbyn in particular, in dealing with
the problem of overt antisemitism. In
October 2020 he wrote about the “number of times when, through a combination of
action or inaction [Corbyn] revealed himself to be beyond the pale”.
At the launch Bush said: “I hope my report will enhance communal life for black Jews, Jews of color and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews. Many of these recommendations, I believe, have a far wider applicability… A proactive attitude to inclusion will draw in many people of all backgrounds who have felt marginalized, left out or turned off from Jewish life… Giving as many people as possible a sense of belonging and a full ability to participate will nourish, strengthen and enrich the Jewish community further, for the benefit of all its members.”
Almost all the witnesses
who gave evidence to the Commission expressed a strong connection with Israel,
but some felt betrayed by a lack of communal support.
“My family would not be
alive today if it were not for the State of Israel,” one said. “I feel let down
when my rabbi welcomes an anti-Israel MP to my synagogue.”
“When I am in Israel,”
said another, “I see plenty of Jews like me. But the Israel I know is never
represented here in the United Kingdom... Israel is one of the most
multi-racial and tolerant democracies in the world, and more should be made of
this by the BoD.”
Sephardi, Mizrahi and
Yemenite Jews complained about the assumption in the community that the British
Jewish experience is solely an Ashkenazi one. As one witness put it: “The
Sephardi/Mizrahi story is left out of Jewish education in the UK. It’s very
Ashkenazicentric.”
Another testified: “I
went to Jewish school in my entire life, and I don’t think I ever learned about
my history, my story, my father, his story, or any similar stories. It…went
from the pogroms to the Holocaust, to the foundation of the State of Israel.” The 3000 year history of Jewish communities
who never left the Middle East was simply ignored.
Some called for better,
more open, more critical Israel advocacy to reflect their concerns.
“The community’s Israel
advocacy is something I find very difficult,” said one. “As somebody who has a
dual identity, I feel very Jewish and I feel very black. I’m Eritrean. I have
Eritrean family in Israel who are treated abominably…it is a very difficult
thing to deal with when there is Israel advocacy which is presented in a non-critical,
no-criticism way.”
Another complained of
the experience of travelling to Israel. “Getting
in and out as a Jew of color is terrible and can be traumatizing. In Israel I have no issues, but [on arrival] I am… viewed with a great deal of
suspicion. There needs to be advocacy about this on our behalf by British
Jewish leadership.”
Other witness statements
highlighted what the Report terms “stigmatisation of minorities-within-the-minority.” As one Mizrahi witness reflected, as
youngsters the only time they saw people who looked like them were in
depictions of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Moses was always European or
Ashkenazi; Pharoah distinctly Middle Eastern.
On the other hand several praised Simon Schama’s TV series and
accompanying book “The Story of the Jews” for providing a comprehensive
description of the diaspora’s history and diversity.
Unhappy experiences at
school featured in the evidence: “I was at one of the top Jewish schools in the
UK, and there were only a handful of us who were black in our year. I had a
huge racist experience with teachers and students. And my first experience of
being called the ‘N word’ was at my school.”
The 119 recommendations
in the Report attempt to cover these and a multitude of other issues raised by
the witnesses who provided testimony to the Commission. For example the Commission proposes that representative
bodies and organizations involved in rabbinic training should encourage
members of under-represented ethnic groups to put themselves forward for
communal roles.
It recommends that Jewish
schools should ensure that their secular curriculum engages with black
history, enslavement and the legacy of colonialism, and review their curriculum
through a process led by students, particularly those who define as black or of
color.
Jewish studies
departments should ensure that their teaching celebrates and engages with
the racial and cultural diversity of the Jewish community worldwide,
including the Mizrahi, Sephardi and Yemenite tradition.
Schools and youth
movements should improve training for teachers and youth leaders
on tackling racist incidents. Communal bodies and Jewish schools should
establish regular listening exercises that seek the concerns of their
members or students, and should ensure that complaints processes are
accessible, transparent, fair and robust.
A code of conduct should
be developed for discourse on social media, making clear that attempts to
delegitimize converts, calling people names such as ‘Kapo’, or using Yiddish
terms such as ‘Shvartzer’ in a racist way, are completely unacceptable.
One recommendation with
profound implications for all Jewish communities was that Batei Din should
improve their conversion processes, including a clearer process for complaints.
The report was acclaimed
by every sector of British Jewish life from the Chief Rabbi to the Movement for
Reform Judaism. The Israeli NGO Tzedek,
one of the fifty-plus organizations that are amalgamated under the aegis of
Olam, wrote: “We particularly welcome the recommendation that international
development should be an advocacy priority for our community, and we look
forward to playing our leading role in making this happen.”
Rabbi Jonathan
Wittenberg, senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism wrote: “One of the great beauties
of the Jewish people is that we have lived in all parts of the world and
absorbed the elements of culture and perspective from our international
experiences. We are a repository of humanity’s diversity, and we must embrace
that about ourselves.”
The Commission’s findings and recommendations have a relevance that extends far beyond the shores of the UK.
Published in the Jerusalem Report on-line:https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/britains-jewish-community-examines-its-record-on-race-and-discrimination-670629
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