Jews no longer feel safe in the UK

Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster on why she and other Jews in the UK are wondering if they have any future in the country.

Abraham was the first person in recorded history to link idolatry with hostility to hospitality. The previous Shabbat reading Lech Lecha (Genesis 12-17), ‘Go for yourself’, is a response to idolatry.

The upcoming reading is Vayera (Genesis 18-22) in which Abram’s extraordinary hospitality to three strangers is contrasted with the aversion to hospitality experienced in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The nation has just commemorated the dead of WW1. We would not have won this war without the scientific inventions of Dr Chaim Weizmann, who in 1904 was invited to develop the organic chemistry department at Manchester University.

And yet, Manchester University has this week stood idly by while Weizmann’s bust was decapitated with impunity. The whole thing was recorded for posterity.

Having been the first person to be invited to teach the new subject of Jewish history at that university some 25 years ago, it is my view that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was largely due to Weizmann’s war efforts on behalf of his adopted home, the UK. Later Weizmann was to become Israel’s first president.

That great pundit, Isaiah Berlin, knew everyone from President Kennedy to the Queen to Shostakovitch, to Ben Gurion to all the great professors, businessmen, prime ministers, presidents and poets in the world. In his view Weizmann was the greatest person he had ever met, even greater than Churchill, who he also knew quite well.

When you allow beheadings of statues, worse will surely follow. We have seen this in Israel and Gaza with Hamas and we have now witnessed pogroms in Amsterdam.

As in Russia from 1880-1910, these pogroms are always orchestrated from above. This is what happened in the Netherlands a couple of days ago.

As usual the BBC blamed ‘the Jews’. The Dutch King however blamed the Dutch people. After all, three quarters of all Dutch Jews were murdered in his country during WW2, statistically more than in Germany itself.

To us the Netherlands conjures up tulips, clogs, canals, drugs, avid assistance in dying and Van der Valk.

In addition the Netherlands is the home of Spinoza, Rembrandt, William of Orange (the Protestant leader who became our king) and Menasseh ben Israel, the Jewish immigrant who persuaded Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews back to England, which he did in 1656.

Oh, and Anne Frank of course. Mustn’t forget her!

But make no mistake. What we have witnessed in the last few days and weeks is a concerted effort to rid Europe, including the UK, of the very last living Jews remaining here, as well as to wipe out the very last vestiges of Jewish life and culture in this continent. We already witnessed this in Malmo during the European Song Contest. And then the call to boycott Israeli publications.

Idolatry is not just about literally worshipping idols as such. It’s also a failure to read the signs of the times. Abram saw this very clearly. Which is why he left his home, land and culture and set off for pastures new, pastures in which hospitality and openness would be paramount.

Abram and his wife Sarai attracted many adherents to their vision of the one G-d. Unlike other later religions, they did not do this through coercion, but through personal example.

In those days many pagans rallied to their cause. Tragically, today, the majority of people are too blinkered to read the signs of the times.

So they continue to disregard expert Jewish counsel and persist in advocating increasing teaching about dead Jews, as well as the wantonly insane destruction of beloved parks and green spaces to construct museums and memorials, again to dead Jews, thus repeating the follies of the Tower of Babel, chillingly depicted in the story of Noah, which we read at at the beginning of November.

But the killing of living and vibrant Jewish ideals, as embodied by geniuses such as Dr Chaim Weizmann of Manchester, first President of Israel, as well as slaughtering the cultural genius of the Jewish State of Israel, embodied in Torah learning, science, arts, crafts, sports and positive outreach to the contemporary world, is akin to murdering the world itself.

Not for nothing is November 11, the day after Remembrance Day, also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the day in 1938 when Hitler knew beyond all doubt that he could get away with it, so he did.

There is no doubt that we in Europe, including the UK, are now back in the late 1930s, when the state police and law officers colluded with the Hitlerian state to turn a blind eye to physical attacks on Jews and their supporters. After all, Hitler had been elected and might is always right, isn’t it?

But, for the record, Jews no longer feel safe in this country. The universities, parts of the Church, political parties, civil society and much of the media are stacked up against us.

So maybe it is time, as in the era of Abram, faced as we are by the idolatry of antisemitic wokeness, to simply pack up once again and leave.

To many that seems like the only option that remains to the Jews of Europe, including those of us still residing in the UK.

Photo: Getty/iStock