Final week Melanie Phillips wrote a thought-provoking article for the Jewish Information Syndicate on the pressing want for Jewish management in face of each assimilation and the collapse of Judaism from inside, which she describes as Jews turning in opposition to the Jewish folks of their anxiousness ‘to erase that uniqueness from their id and enroll as an alternative to the prevailing consensus’.
Her issues resonated with two of TCW’s Jewish writers, Karen Harradine and Donna Edmunds, who each reply in these pages at present. Right here’s what Karen has to say …
ANTI-SEMITISM is a virus that mutates; its most virulent up to date type is the demonisation of Israel, the world’s solely Jewish state and very important security web for diaspora Jewry.
In her latest article, Melanie Phillips reveals that Jewish management is failing to fight anti-Semitism. She cites the Jewish Management Undertaking’s motion checklist to encourage an environment friendly Jewish defence, its most important level to declare a State of Emergency for Jews within the diaspora, for good cause.
She rightly accuses Jewish management of resorting to a defensive quite than a proactive response to anti-Semitism. Many Jews are fearful of being referred to as ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’ in the event that they protest hatred in opposition to them.
Some even over-compensate by shilling for individuals who search the demise of Israel and promote jihad in opposition to Jews, like Black Lives Matter, an anti-Semitic, Marxist organisation.
The risk to Jewish survival comes not solely from exterior forces, but in addition from inside. Phillips appropriately criticises Reform and Conservative Judaism for his or her prioritisation of social justice actions over Jewish values. These trendy Jewish actions, together with the notoriously anti-Israel Reconstructionist Judaism, have led to a collapse within the diaspora’s assist for Israel.
Their rabbis assist progressive organisations, just like the notorious J-Avenue, which champions the Jew-haters within the Democratic Social gathering, and is partly liable for informing official US insurance policies in opposition to Israel for the reason that Barack Obama period. Organisations akin to J-Avenue betray the core ideas of Judaism and are nothing however a entrance for progressive id politics and the collective hysteria over Israel.
Progressive Rabbi Ellen Lippmann sits on each the J-Avenue rabbinical board and T’ruah, a non-governmental organisation which disparages Israel. A Reform congregation in New York, Temple Emanuel, spearheaded an assault on distinguished Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz after he took a stance in opposition to progressive organisations.
Reform, Conservative and progressive rabbis frequently demonise Israel of their synagogue sermons, and, as Phillips factors out, distort the true that means of Judaic ideas akin to ‘tikkun olam’ (therapeutic the world) by hijacking it to advertise anti-Semitism.
President Joe Biden’s absurd digital ‘Folks’s Seder’ in April encapsulated the insanity of Jews preferring progressive ideology to their very own religion. A bunch of Biden sycophants mangled the that means of Passover to advertise their social justice agendas, and on the similar time ignored Biden’s ongoing capitulation to Iran, a rustic ruled by a regime devoted to the annihilation of Jews. One of many audio system was Andrew Rehfeld, a Reform rabbi who defends those that need the destruction of Israel. No surprise American Judaism is in disaster.
British Jews are additionally endangered by not simply their very own perspective to Islamism and woke progressive politics, however by the Authorities’s too. Islamic fundamentalists frequently incite jihad in opposition to Jews on British streets, but this barely raises a murmur of protest within the comatose Homes of Parliament.
Unsuccessful Tory management contender Penny Mordaunt lately met with the Muslim Council of Britain, despite the fact that its deputy common secretary, Dr Daud Abdullah, signed a declaration calling for Muslims to participate in jihad in opposition to Israel.
However there may be one evident omission in Phillips’s wonderful piece. The worldwide response to Covid 19, a nasty flu virus with a low mortality charge, has been nothing wanting disastrous for the Jewish folks. At any time when there may be social engineering and the following destruction of economies, anti-Semitism all the time will increase, as seen in Nazi Germany and the USSR.
The authoritarian, anti-science lockdown and its twin evil, necessary vaccines – the gateway to digital slavery – are liable for socially engineering international locations right into a New Darkish Age, with a brand new feudal system to match.
It’s no coincidence that Britain is now experiencing its highest ranges of anti-Semitism because it locked down, much more so than when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Social gathering.
Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, just like the Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – liable for the pogroms within the Pale of Settlement and inflaming anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany – are having fun with a well-liked revival.
Phillips mentions the destruction of the Second Temple, with Jews ‘embracing hedonism and pagan decadence’. The up to date instance is the unhinged worship by Jews of ‘the science’, led by Covid Cultists and local weather change extremists, and a godless substitute of Judeo-Christian ideas. Their excessive clergymen – scientists and medical doctors – are extolled as gods; and what fallible gods they’re too.
Idolatry is forbidden in Judaism, but many Jews within the diaspora and Israel have ignored this vital Jewish precept and proven how eliminated they’re from their religion by paying each day homage to the Covid-19 vaccine and pharmaceutical firms. That so a lot of my fellow Jews cheered on the violation of the Nuremberg Code these previous two years reveals how ignorant they’re of Jewish historical past and ideas, as famous by Phillips.
Whereas manner too many have been led astray by the Covid Cult, many have additionally forgotten that different actual hazard to Jews, and Israel –Islamism. Together with many Western governments, the Israeli authorities’s keen however misconceived response to Covid-19 has dangerously weakened this as soon as resilient nation, healthwise and spiritually, and so too its skill to struggle the Islamist jihad in opposition to Jews.
The best tragedy of Israel’s embrace of the irrational Covid cult is its give up to its enemies on the United Nations and its subsidiary, the World Well being Organisation, each liable for damaging a number of international locations within the identify of Covid-19.
Dominated by a number of the world’s worst regimes, together with these new finest buddies, Iran and China, these corrupt behemoths have wielded a nasty flu virus as a way to wage struggle in opposition to the West, and the folks most foundational to Western values – the Jews.
Jews are the canary within the coalmine. That so many are actually so faraway from the essence of Judaism is an pressing warning of the accelerating mental and non secular vacuum the West is experiencing. The New Darkish Age is upon us all, led by a brand new secular barbarism. Sadly, Jewish management has succumbed to this too.
