British Jews Find Their Voice
What has changed is not so much the community, but the environment of British politics.
Sometimes, I don’t think I recognize British Jews anymore. For decades my community has been quiet and watchful, slow to place itself in the public eye. But last week, watching British Jews call out antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party I had to pinch myself. Were these really the Jews of Britain: publicly furious, outraged, venting their fear and disgust as they faced down what might well be Britain’s next government?
I was stunned, because growing up, I never sensed that pride, or fearlessness. Where had this newfound pugnacity come from?
It didn’t used to be like this. Nothing, it seemed to me, better summed up the British Jewry than the letters that the journalist Chaim Bermant said received, each time they
