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| It’s Jewish new year, a time to eat and talk – and there’ll only be one topic at the table | It’s Jewish new year, a time to eat and talk – and there’ll only be one topic at the table |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Rosh Hashanah – new year for us Jews – begins tomorrow evening, so it feels like a natural moment to look at how this year has been, and how we would like next year to be. | Rosh Hashanah – new year for us Jews – begins tomorrow evening, so it feels like a natural moment to look at how this year has been, and how we would like next year to be. |
| Oy vey, the Jews! Haven’t we heard enough from them already? All their kvetching about the this and the that. Well, rest assured, no one has been more surprised by how much of a spotlight British Jews have had recently than British Jews themselves. After all, as people on social media are keen to tell me whenever I tweet about what I shall euphemistically refer to as Labour’s recent antisemitic unpleasantness, there are plenty of other important issues going on in the world right now. And there are! Trump; Brexit; Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s remake of A Star Is Born – truly, there is no shortage of global events on which I have opinions. But as I learned in Hebrew school many years ago (shout out to the West London Synagogue crew!), you can’t start a new year without coming to an understanding of the old. | Oy vey, the Jews! Haven’t we heard enough from them already? All their kvetching about the this and the that. Well, rest assured, no one has been more surprised by how much of a spotlight British Jews have had recently than British Jews themselves. After all, as people on social media are keen to tell me whenever I tweet about what I shall euphemistically refer to as Labour’s recent antisemitic unpleasantness, there are plenty of other important issues going on in the world right now. And there are! Trump; Brexit; Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s remake of A Star Is Born – truly, there is no shortage of global events on which I have opinions. But as I learned in Hebrew school many years ago (shout out to the West London Synagogue crew!), you can’t start a new year without coming to an understanding of the old. |
| Let’s talk first about Rosh Hashanah itself, explaining what it is to those who think that all Jews do is rage furiously about antisemitism. We also eat! I once brought a non-Jewish boyfriend to various family holiday dinners, and he asked plaintively, “Why do all of your holidays involve talking about the suffering of your ancestors?” I reassured this unchosen person I’d chosen that, having endured Yom Kippur, Hanukah and Passover, he would soon come to the promised land of Rosh Hashanah. On this day, instead of drinking salt water to remind us of our ancestors’ tears, as we do at Passover (do I know how to arrange a hot date or what?), we eat sweet food for a sweet year ahead: pomegranates, apples dipped in honey, glazed carrots. It’s not all bitter herbs. And as we eat, we talk, and this is what this Jew will talk about as she eats. | Let’s talk first about Rosh Hashanah itself, explaining what it is to those who think that all Jews do is rage furiously about antisemitism. We also eat! I once brought a non-Jewish boyfriend to various family holiday dinners, and he asked plaintively, “Why do all of your holidays involve talking about the suffering of your ancestors?” I reassured this unchosen person I’d chosen that, having endured Yom Kippur, Hanukah and Passover, he would soon come to the promised land of Rosh Hashanah. On this day, instead of drinking salt water to remind us of our ancestors’ tears, as we do at Passover (do I know how to arrange a hot date or what?), we eat sweet food for a sweet year ahead: pomegranates, apples dipped in honey, glazed carrots. It’s not all bitter herbs. And as we eat, we talk, and this is what this Jew will talk about as she eats. |
| When the UK’s former chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, recently described Corbyn’s 2013 comment that British Zionists “don’t understand English irony” as “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech” he was clearly talking nonsense. Boris Johnson probably says worse before breakfast, and I’m pretty sure Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of Section 28 happened after the Powell speech. | When the UK’s former chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, recently described Corbyn’s 2013 comment that British Zionists “don’t understand English irony” as “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech” he was clearly talking nonsense. Boris Johnson probably says worse before breakfast, and I’m pretty sure Margaret Thatcher’s introduction of Section 28 happened after the Powell speech. |
| But some reactions on the left to the rabbi’s comment underlined why others have been reaching for hyperbole. Instead of addressing why so many Jews have expressed fears about Corbyn and his long history of associating with antisemites, Labour’s most vocal supporters gleefully pointed out – with a palpable sense of relief, jazz hands-ing away the original subject – Sacks’s right-wing background. To them, this apparently makes him suspect in a way that Corbyn’s background does not. These people insist they are on the frontline of the war against antisemitism, while simultaneously arguing that just because something hangs out with a lot of ducks, and even occasionally talks like a duck, it’s a water buffalo. | But some reactions on the left to the rabbi’s comment underlined why others have been reaching for hyperbole. Instead of addressing why so many Jews have expressed fears about Corbyn and his long history of associating with antisemites, Labour’s most vocal supporters gleefully pointed out – with a palpable sense of relief, jazz hands-ing away the original subject – Sacks’s right-wing background. To them, this apparently makes him suspect in a way that Corbyn’s background does not. These people insist they are on the frontline of the war against antisemitism, while simultaneously arguing that just because something hangs out with a lot of ducks, and even occasionally talks like a duck, it’s a water buffalo. |
| Can’t speak Flemish? Hate Nutella? There’ll be no room for you in remainiac Britain | Hadley Freeman | Can’t speak Flemish? Hate Nutella? There’ll be no room for you in remainiac Britain | Hadley Freeman |
| What I would like in the new year, from both sides, is more honesty. Jews can admit that they are hypersensitive to hints of antisemitism. Many of us grew up in homes filled with photographs of relatives who were killed just because they were Jewish: there is a reason so many of our holidays focus on the suffering of our ancestors. Hyperbole is unhelpful but it is understandable, and when those on the left fail to get that, it is like those on the right raging against “immigrants” without any reference to what they’re immigrating from. | What I would like in the new year, from both sides, is more honesty. Jews can admit that they are hypersensitive to hints of antisemitism. Many of us grew up in homes filled with photographs of relatives who were killed just because they were Jewish: there is a reason so many of our holidays focus on the suffering of our ancestors. Hyperbole is unhelpful but it is understandable, and when those on the left fail to get that, it is like those on the right raging against “immigrants” without any reference to what they’re immigrating from. |
| At the same time, instead of pretending that Corbyn is a bipartisan broker of peace, his supporters should accept that he long ago chose a side, and a tactic. “Siding with the Palestinian struggle is not antisemitic,” Ahmad Samih Khalidi wrote in this paper last month, and indeed it is not. But just as Corbyn believed that supporting Irish independence meant allying with the IRA, so he believes that supporting the Palestinians means mixing with Holocaust deniers and antisemites. | At the same time, instead of pretending that Corbyn is a bipartisan broker of peace, his supporters should accept that he long ago chose a side, and a tactic. “Siding with the Palestinian struggle is not antisemitic,” Ahmad Samih Khalidi wrote in this paper last month, and indeed it is not. But just as Corbyn believed that supporting Irish independence meant allying with the IRA, so he believes that supporting the Palestinians means mixing with Holocaust deniers and antisemites. |
| I understand the desperate desire for a Labour government. I was on an NHS psychiatric ward in the dying days of John Major’s government. I had friends who died because they couldn’t get readmitted when they became sick again, because there wasn’t a bed available. Believe me, I know the pain caused by Tory policies. If his supporters think it’s worth turning a blind eye to Corbyn’s history for the sake of getting him into 10 Downing Street, they should be honest about that. But you can’t claim to care about social justice if you defend a politician who insists he knows more about prejudice than those who suffer from it. | I understand the desperate desire for a Labour government. I was on an NHS psychiatric ward in the dying days of John Major’s government. I had friends who died because they couldn’t get readmitted when they became sick again, because there wasn’t a bed available. Believe me, I know the pain caused by Tory policies. If his supporters think it’s worth turning a blind eye to Corbyn’s history for the sake of getting him into 10 Downing Street, they should be honest about that. But you can’t claim to care about social justice if you defend a politician who insists he knows more about prejudice than those who suffer from it. |
| But, like I said, Rosh Hashanah is a sweet time, not a bitter one. As I dip my apple slice in honey, I will think about the days when Jews were not spending their meal times fretting about antisemitism going mainstream in Britain, and when Labour seemed a truly anti-racist party, as opposed to one dominated by a clutch of hypocrites and gaslighting snakes, and I will smile because I know that time will comeagain. More pomegranates, less salt water. Shanah tovah. | But, like I said, Rosh Hashanah is a sweet time, not a bitter one. As I dip my apple slice in honey, I will think about the days when Jews were not spending their meal times fretting about antisemitism going mainstream in Britain, and when Labour seemed a truly anti-racist party, as opposed to one dominated by a clutch of hypocrites and gaslighting snakes, and I will smile because I know that time will comeagain. More pomegranates, less salt water. Shanah tovah. |
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