See I set before you the blessing and the curse. These are the opening words of our Torah portion this Shabbat addressed to all of Israel. What blessing and what curse?
In Parashat Re’eh it’s the blessing of ‘obey God’s commandments’ or the curse of idolatory.
But today there is another blessing and curse which feels almost eternal. It almost seems you can’t have one without the other, and not long ago we thought we might be getting there. The blessing is of what it means to be a Jew – a relationship with God and eternal values, community, Jewish culture, our support for each other, the Jewish life cycle and festivals and so much more. The curse is the curse of anti-Semitism.
Rabbis are not, in my opinion, the best people to understand anti-Semitism. This may surprise you to hear. But consider this. We work in almost entirely Jewish work places where we never feel discriminated against as a Jew. We live in Jewish areas where few are ignorant of what Judaism is. We study in Rabbinical Colleges where a Jewish point of view pervades everything. We tend to dress Jewish and be well known to be Jewish so we don’t hear the comments of people who say prejudiced things about Jews when they don’t realise that there is someone Jewish in the room. In these and many other ways we Rabbis are not really at the front line of anti-Semitism.
I am often asked however about the effects and reality of anti-semitism affecting our community, myself, my family, our Synagogue community, Jews in London and Jews in the UK. The questions come whenever I am in interfaith settings, when I am in Israel or when I meet fellow Jews from abroad. I have to be careful not to answer only from my own experience because, as I say Rabbis are not the people who experience the reality of anti-Semitism. So until a few months ago I was very careful and non-alarmist in my answers to these questions.
I would of course quote the Community Security Trust statistics: CST recorded 3,528 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2024. This is a decrease of 18% from the 4,296 anti-Jewish hate incidents recorded by CST in 2023, which remains the record annual total ever reported, So far this year the CST recorded 1,521 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK from January to June 2025. However I would be careful about suggesting that Jews in Britain are living in a dangerous situation because I feel that that would be fear mongering.
Unfortunately in the past few weeks things are getting worse. And I am finding myself dealing with real anti-Semitism most weeks. Four weeks ago, our EHRS member Philip Simon had his Edinburgh Festival fringe show cancelled by the venue which was due to put it on due to the what the venue staff said was there fear for their safety. They felt that hosting a Jewish comedian and a show called Jew-o-rama would expose them to danger.
Philip’s own comment was: I am still processing the concept that in 2025 I can be cancelled just for being Jewish.
Philip did eventually find a bar that was willing to host his show, towards the end of the festival.
Rachel Creeger, also a Jewish comedian had her show cancelled for ostensibly the same reason. She eventually found another venue. Then something terrible happened nine days ago. Where the Big Tent venue had put the name of the show on their poster outside of the venue, one word was literally burned out from the words in the show title by anti-Semitic vandals. The show was called Ultimate Jewish Mother. They burned the word Jew out of the poster. The Big Tent venue was very supportive and replaced the poster, saying that they would do so every time it was vandalised – but of the course the trauma of having her identity literally burned away was in Rachel’s words, ‘visceral’.
Two weeks ago a young woman member of her community contacted me because of what had happened to her on a psychotherapy course at university. The students were studying how to support their prospective patients when they need help with trauma. They were asked by their tutor to share their own experiences, as is normal in psychotherapy training. It was a small group and should have been supportive. Our EHRS young woman shared how the trauma of the Shoah, and of learning about what had happened in Israel on October 7th 2023 was deeply etched into her.
The reaction of at least one other student was to say that Jewish trauma did not exist. That these feelings were irrelevant now that, her words, ‘Jews are now a people who oppress others’. This would be harmful enough but the tutor leading the session made no attempt to support the Jewish student being attacked like this. When our member pointed out to the teacher that their response had been wholly inadequate she then experienced a repeat of the anti-Semitism. My role was to point her to the support that the CST can offer in bringing this kind of incident to the attention of the University authorities, with the training that is then needed for that tutor, to protect their students from anti-Jewish racism.
This is of course not the first time that we clergy at EHRS have need to help our students at university. We take this duty very seriously and encourage students to contact us if they are feeling threatened by anti-Semitism. We know from what we have been told that we have helped. We will be holding an open evening for students on Thursday 4th September together with the local Progressive Jewish communities so our students can get ready for the blessings and hopefully very few curses they will find at college or university.
On September 7th in the afternoon, there is a planned March Against Antisemitism in Central London. Cards advertising it are outside the Synagogue. We cannot be certain about its content because it is being organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism who does not work with the mainstream Jewish bodies such as the Board of Deputies and the Jewish movements. But many will want to be there to show our solidarity as a Jewish community and how racism against Jews cannot be acceptable in our society – anti-Semites don’t care what kind of Jew you are.
Let me now turn for a moment to share with you what I will be doing tomorrow. I am concerned that I am setting myself up for an experience that could be very disturbing. It began with an invitation from the Methodist Church to Rabbi Debbie and me to attend the Greenbelt Festival. Since the early 1970’s on the August bank holiday weekend thousands of Christians of all denominations gather in the grounds of a manor house for music, worship, learning, discussion and more.
The theme of this year’s festival is ‘hope in the making’ and our invitation says to us Rabbis ‘we see you as fellow hope bearers so we would love to meet with you at the festival to talk more about how we resist together the hopelessness that seems to be paralysing our culture’. We would be Rabbis among other faith leaders invited. So far so good. I am going on our behalf, and on behalf of Progressive Judaism – all day Sunday near Kettering. Then I looked at the festival website.
The Greenbelt Festival website is full of useful information about the festival and its programme, how to get there etc – and very prominently, a section called Israel/Palestine Resources. This is the only mention I could find of any conflict in the world on the website. Perhaps needless to say there was no section for Ukraine/Russia resources, Sudan and Somalia resources, Syria/Druze resources , Taliban/Women’s Rights resources. It seems the only international political issue that matters to Christians attending Greenbelt is Israel and Palestine.
Of course I clicked through. I was deeply saddened by what I found. A large number of films, talks, charity appeals, letter writing campaigns and artistic resources about the pain of the Palestinians. There was absolutely nothing recognising the pain and trauma of the attack on Israel in October 2023 and the aftermath of rockets, missiles and more from Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran. There was nothing about the co-existence work of Arabs and Jews in Israel. Nothing about the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Nothing about the spectrum of opinion in Israel about the war and how it should stop. In Greenbelt’s understanding Jews not only don’t count, like the word Jew burned out of Rachel Creeger’s posters they have been pushed out of existence.
I am still going tomorrow to Greenbelt. I will be wearing my Kippah and my yellow ribbon badge for the hostages unacknowledged by the festival organisers. I am not changing my identity. But I a frankly not going with much hope.
This New Year I want to get out there into space where anti-Semitism can be challenged. I want to share wherever possible the blessings that Judaism brings and support our members who experience the curse of anti Semitism and use the voice of the synagogue to challenge anti-Semitism as unacceptable racism. I am proud of Jews who will not be cowed by anti-Semitism, at work, at university at school. EHRS and our Rabbis and Cantor should lend our strength to them.
