Irene Lancaster's Diary

A night to remember

The latest mutation in the Leeds University censorship saga can be accessed here

www.leeds.ac.uk/media/news/freedom.htm.

As for the BBC, it appears that their Radio 4 two-parter on the war against the North of Israel may be repeated at times when Jews are not enjoying the Seder

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/03_march/22/lebanon.shtml

but, what about today's Saturday afternoon Radio 4 play on Freud and Hitler

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/saturday_play.shtml

The Controller of Radio 4 is Mark Damazer, who is Jewish by the way.

Which brings me to the most recent crisis with Iran - not content in wanting our total and utter destruction and denying that the Holocaust ever happened, they have now turned to mistreating British women

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article1593734.ece

This article links the Iranian mistreatment of a female British seaman just doing her duty with attitudes of sections of the British Muslim community.

Which makes it all the more interesting to learn that Blackburn Cathedral has appointed a Muslim to promote dialogue. Very nice. But dialogue is already underway in that diocese, as described in one of the last blogs I posted before leaving this country for Israel

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/05/clitheroe_are_y.html

What a refreshing change to read the lovely article about Pesach by someone comparatively new to the rituals surrounding it

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article1592351.ece

And the Chief Rabbi on memory of slavery and freedom

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1593385.ece

Which brings me to the shul sermon this Shabbat. The rabbi said that the reason we have to talk about the exodus of Egypt during the day is that 'day' represents the times when things are going well. He more-or-less implied that 'good' is an illusion and it is incumbent on us to remember that we are enslaved to all sorts of desires for things that we really don't need. And that is the meaning of the Seder - to free ourselves from all of this.

And looking round the shul, it was notably pretty empty, with much of the congregation having already left to celebrate Pesach in Israel.

But I really look forward to enjoying the Seder with the shul rabbi and catching up with all of his news.

A very English evening

A very English evening.

We went out and had fish and chips at our local kosher eatery - packed just before Pesach. Actually fish and chips is partly an invention of the Jews and partly Irish. The fish (usually eaten cold) was prepared in advance by Portuguese Jews and fried - perfect for Shabbat when you couldn't cook. And the Irish bit was the chips, apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips

Then we came back and watched a DVD of The Queen, which the Israelis have been raving about and which neither of us had managed to get around to before.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436697/

Funnily enough, about two months ago I met a Christian Arab girl on a bus going from Jerusalem to Haifa. She told me she is studying English at the Hebrew University, but lives in a Druze village adjacent to Haifa. Please access this blurb, which I have just translated from Hebrew for the Haifa Tourist Board and which I see that they have put up on their site.

http://www.tour-haifa.co.il/eng/modules/article/view.article.php/c31/77/p8

Her ambition is to study for a PhD at Oxford (actually, quite a few Israeli Arabs want to do that, I find) and she said I looked just like Helen Mirren.

Feeling terribly flattered, I remonstrated and protested that perhaps she hadn't met many English women before and I was correct in my assumption.

But till yesterday I hadn't seen The Queen and although Helen Mirren came over as dignified and certainly regal, I had in mind quite a number of her earlier films, the subject matter of which was of a quite different nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Mirren

But to this young student, Helen Mirren is beauty personified and although I don't think I look anything like her, at least the real Queen can take comfort from the fact that although the film is near the bone in many ways, to at least one of her fans in a faraway land, she represents all that is best about England.

Whatever the intentions of the film-makers.

And then after that, we switched on Question Time and were amazed to see Lord Carey, who, in our view, stole the show.

http://www.glcarey.co.uk/

What a pity that there was nothing about Israel on the programme, because if one person could have dealt with that thorny subject in a humane and personable way, it would have been him.

Springtime for Hitler?

It's still spring-time, but the weather seems to be undergoing a cold spell. The right time, perhaps, to unveil a new government initiative on rooting out British anti-semitism.

Today's hard-hitting post from Ruth Gledhill details this initiative and the official Jewish response to it.   

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/03/government_clam.html

When I told friends in Israel about this new initiaitve, most of them were very pleased that at last anti-semitism in Britain was going to be tackled, especially in British universities, which have been very uncomfortable places for Jewish students and staff alike in the past 10 years or so - some would say for even longer.

However, it should not be forgotten that this government played its own part in fomenting the respectability of anti-semitism by their disgraceful poster campaign against Jewish members of the Conservative Party during the last election. Plus that simultaneous attack on a Jewish member of the Lib Dems placed by a former Home Office MInister in a newspaper aimed at a largely Muslim readership.

Anthony Julius talks about the 'discursive component' of anti-semitism in his short You-Tube interview with Ruth, which is worth listening to.

This all reminds me of an e-mail correspondence I attempted with Paul Vallely of the Independent, who also writes for the Church Times, the Church of England paper read by most of the hierarchy of the Anglican Church. In an article written in 2005, Paul had gravely misrepresented the facts with regard to the handing over of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority when Sharon had been the Israeli PM.

But when I tried to engage with Vallely and was above all concerned at his use of very strong and emotive language, which could be regarded as inflammatory, he told me that I

'do not appear to understand the distinction between anti-Semitism, which I vehemently oppose, and criticism of the Israeli government's abuse of human rights, which in considerable measure I endorse'. 

He also said that I was making 'an elementary category mistake'.

Wow! Talk about condescending!

And yes, he refused to have any more to do with me and turned down an offer to meet in the Manchester where we both lived, even though that meeting would have been mediated by Canon Theologian, Dr. Andrew Shanks of Manchester's Cathedral, who admires Paul for some of the good things he does.

And why mention Paul now? Because, what do you think slipped through my door today, but the latest Spring edition of the University of Leeds Alumni Magazine, featuring Paul.

By the way, I never studied there, just taught students from Leeds, gave guest lectures and had other contacts. Don't think I want to renew those at the moment.

Because, in the light of the present Leeds University censorship row it was noteworthy that on page 29 of the present edition of their mag, they had a section entitled 'Interest from the media in the University's work'.

And, yes - you've guessed it - not a sausage about the world media's great interest in Leed University's decision that antisemitism is not an important enough subject to allow a German expert on the subject to give an academic account of this scourge. Sorry, I've actually got it wrong.

What is really appalling is that Leeds University thought that the subject of present-day anti-semitism was such a dangerous subject to bring up at their first-class university that they decided to ban the lecture and seminars and treated the German lecturer who had been invited to come over to Leeds as scum.

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/is_germany_now_.html

And to boot, then made a very insulting comparison with Ronit Ben Dor, the Israeli Embassy's Director of Public Affairs, who kindly rang me yesterday and asked how I was getting on in Haifa. This is the sort of racist rubbish she had to put up with.

http://mpacuk.org/content/view/3455/34/

But instead, on page 33 of the alumni mag, there was a whole array of VERY IMPORTANT media people who had once studied at Leeds, and amongst them was our Paul, looking totally different from his picture in the Church Times, which I still vet for the Jewish community out 'on the edge' (as my close vicar friend, Lisa, calls it), on Mount Carmel in Haifa.

And welcoming them was the Chancellor of Leeds University, a certain aptly-named Melvyn Bragg.

And what was very obvious from the pic was that many of the journalists were grossly overweight (must be all those free lunches) and predominantly male.

And even though one of them was the very slim Damien Whitworth of the Times, I do agree with Ruth Gledhill, that all things being considered, maybe it was a very good decision that she made at the time not to stay at Leeds University, because it didn't seem to be teaching her anything.

As for 'an elementary category mistake', maybe we Jews should never have been born.

Reflections on England in spring-time

Nothing like leaving a country to make people sit up and take note when you come back for a visit.

Not a complaint: this is just human nature.

Three and a half years ago, whilst participating in an educators conference at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem

http://www.yadvashem.org/,

I was asked to do something very difficult for me, as I am first and foremost a teacher and not a journalist.

I was asked to return to the UK and put my head above the parapet, suffer the attacks of the established UK Jewish community and speak out loud and clear about what we all perceived to be elements of anti-semitism in some sections of the media, churches (including Christian charities) and universities - much of it clothed in anti-Zionist rhetoric.

It was felt that given my background of teaching Biblical Hebrew and Jewish history, people might actually listen, especially as much of this teaching had been done with students, adult and younger, from the various Christian communities in the UK.

http://www.merseyworld.com/precinct/Apr96/prec13.html

So on returning to the UK, I tried my best - speaking to clergy, the BBC and others. The universities I felt to be beyond the pale and far too difficult for individuals to tackle. And now, thank goodness, Engage

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/home/

and others are doing a very professional job from the inside in exposing double standards and sheer malice. And the government has now also gone public on the real problem for Jews at British universities and told the Vice Chancellors to do something about it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1563917.ece

But I do think that strides are slowly been made vis-a-vis the Churches and the BBC.

Let's start with the Churches, and specifically the Church of England, which is the Church of this country (whether it eventually disestablishes or not).

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/

What I have found both in the Uk and in Israel is very little understanding of what the Church of England is actually about. No, it is not a watered-down version of the Catholic Church, as so many Israelis one meets seem to think. And no, it is interested in more than just the gay and female issues, important though these are.

The Church of England is now stronger in Africa, South America and Asia than in many parts of the United Kingdom and is based on what might be called a federal system. To an outsider like me, it appears to be like the rest of England, trying to be fair, working by give and take and aiming to assist the poor, the weak and the disadvantaged.

The problem however seems to be in definitions: who exactly are the poor and the weak nowadays? I certainly think that you can't always go by appearances and there is no doubt that my own community, the Jewish community has felt bewildered and concerned by the constant attacks on themselves, their schools, synagogues and cemeteries, which have only increased year by year in the last five or six years.

Hence the huge aliyah to Israel last year

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3341865,00.html

which the Minister of Immigrant Absorption specifically asked me about when he came to visit me in Haifa last year (so amazed was he that anyone from the West would actually move to the war zone).

However, in chats with a number of Anglicans over the last few days, both in Manchester and London, I gain the distinct impression that these perceptions are now being recognized and a concerted effort being made to take the dialogue further and to involve academics and others in Israel as well.

And that would be a very good thing, because Jewish-Christian dialogue in Israel seems to be streets ahead of what passes for dialogue here. And perhaps true dialogue for Jews and Christians can only be really possible if Jews cease feeling fear and resentment and start to act as the elder brother (and sister) that they undoubtedly are, even with a Church that at one time had Riah as her Bishop of Jerusalem - the Bishop who makes out that there are no links whatsoever between his Church, the Hebrew Bible or the Jewish people.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881889516&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

As for the BBC, the very good news is that Phil Pegum, who has made a number of excellent programmes of a religious and/or ethical nature, has now been chosen to produce Radio 4's flagship: The Moral Maze

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/moralmaze.shtml.

And Phil was certainly very helpful when producing the subsequently much-acclaimed 2005 Radio 4 series 'Faith to Faith' in which I featured  with a Buddhist. Mind you there were a few blips along the way, which I can laugh at now, but at the time seemed far from funny.

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/tsaddik_no_30_p.html

So coming back to England and having been here for about 10 days now, I think I can perceive a general change in atmosphere in many different areas. And if the Church of England and the BBC continue to take a lead in sensitivity, maybe the real concern about the way this part of Europe at least is going might be gently assuaged.

And of course the wonderful weather of the past few days has helped, with Regents Park

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regent's_Park

the Houses of Parliament

http://www.parliament.uk/

and the general buzz of London in spring-time, creating a splendid feeling of well-being and greatness, whilst the kindness of people in Manchester never fails to astonish.

Yes, I really do think that England can be a wonderful country again. But it has to avoid the evil of appeasement and to tackle the bullies, of which there are still many. And this is why those of us who have been critical and proactive should be heeded. Because most of us are, most of the time, speaking from knowledge of our subjects and not out of hatred or antagonism. We have been speaking out reluctantly, because we felt we had to. Because being quiet just hasn't helped and our more tactful efforts have just been ignored.

And I feel that the progress I have described above should be nurtured and built on for the greater good.

I wonder what others think about this.

BBC Manchester Interview on Haifa

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/

For interview about Haifa, Pesach and slavery, please access 'Mike Shaft' and go to about two thirds through the entire programme, which lasts three hours. I was on at 8.30 am.

Anti-semitism rules come in at British universities

I never thought that it would come to this:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1563917.ece

The anti-semitism which is rife in so many of Britain's universities is now to be tackled by the government. And British university vice-chancellors appear to have had quite a talking-to.

First on the list should be Leeds University, of course, with its recent flagrant censorship of Dr. Matthias Kuentzel's lecture series on the subject of anti-semitism and the Muslim world. 

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=923

But it shouldn't stop there. We know that self-censorship has been in operation for years now in all manner of universities (and schools for that matter). And that there is one and only one reason for this.

At a time when Iran is once more demonstrating its blatant disregard for any type of morality

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article1563877.ece

the dangers of appeasement should be one hundred per cent obvious to all of us.

Unfortunately not to the majority in the media, though, as this posting from Melanie Phillips demonstrates:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/

Universities should be in the forefront of combatting anti-semitism and not a forum which harbours or even encourages it.

There are different types of slavery. And one of the most potent types evident on campus today is the slavery of indifference; the slavery of 'see no evil, hear no evil'; and the slavery which will, if nothing is done, turn into what happened in German universities in the 1930s.

Thank goodness for the cross-party parliamentary debate on this issue and the foresight and guts of those who are putting the report's conclusions into practice.

http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2006/09/antisemitism-is-back-denis-macshane-mp.html

Maybe the Church of England would like to make a statement about this evil in our midst?

BBC Interview on Haifa, Pesach and slavery

Just came back from an interview with Mike Shaft of BBC's Radio Manchester

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2006/03/31/bbc_radio_manchester_biog_mike_shaft_feature.shtml

It was his last day there, so the atmosphere was somewhat poignant.

I remember meeting him about a year and a half ago. It was the day after Simchat Torah and I hadn't yet heard the news that the Iranian leadership had announced loud and clear that it wanted our utter and total destruction. I felt that Mike had been quite hard on me then, but we both persevered and after a fair few interviews with him, I now regard him as a true friend.

The intern who took me down seemed over-awed at the fact that I was living in Haifa, and I realised that I was now a bit of a foreigner, like the Archbishop of the West Indies

http://titusonenine.classicalanglican.net/?cat=122

who was leaving the studio as I arrived. He had been talking about the effect of slavery on the communities in his own part of the world.

It is interesting that all the forms of slavery  undergone by the Jewish people have only made us more determined to do better and to succeeed despite the odds. And I do feel that this attitude wins out in the end.

However, this is not a view espoused by much of the world. And maybe this is why Israel is so misunderstood.

To his credit, Mike left me lots of leeway to depict Haifa in the way I really see it - as an oasis of co-existence

http://www.gemsinisrael.com/e_article000006319.htm

especially at the university which is under renewed threat of a ban by the British university union

http://boycottnews.haifa.ac.il/.

And it was Mike himself who made the point that among the victims of the summer war in the north had been quite a few Arab members of the Haifa community.

http://www.israelnewsagency.com/syrialebanoniranwarisraelhaifa48480716.html

I also tried to explain that Israel was a disparate country, with many political and religious views flourishing, some of them in the same synagogue, for instance. And that people on all sides of the political and religious spectrum could still be friends.

And just as well that I had bought the Jewish Chronicle

http://www.thejc.com/?gclid=CLm-veXGj4sCFQ4vlAodclIERQ

in order to read Melanie Phillips' take on the Leeds University censorship debacle

http://www.civitas.org.uk/blog/2007/03/seething_email_to_leeds_vc_is_worth_a_see_despite_being_worth_less_for_spelling.html

and

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=496

because Mike also asked about the meaning of slavery for Jews round Pesach

http://www.wujs.org.il/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=254&Itemid=232

and I was able to quote the suggestions of the Make Poverty History Jewish Coalition

http://www.ajwo.org/poverty.html

eating a larger portion of bitter herbs, including an additional, fourth matzah on the table and asking the question: How can we celebrate our freedom while others are still enslaved'?   

I did invite Mike to stay in touch, which I really do hope he will. And who knows, maybe he will visit Haifa one of these days, especially if his team were playing Maccabi!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabi_Haifa

Come to think of it, he never even asked me what I had thought of Saturday's match between Israel and England.

http://www.itv-football.co.uk/Story/0,14272,6110_2011617,00.html

Maybe just as well it was a draw!!

Good luck, Mike, in your new job, whatever it is.

Is Germany now the real Britain?

I can now reveal the name of the august media organ which contacted me exactly a week ago

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/the_new_antisem.html

regarding the flagrant behaviour of Leeds University in banning Nazism and Islamic antisemitism expert, Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, from speaking at said university on March 14th. Without any notice, I might add.

It was the Times Higher Educational Supplement and here is Matthias' article in response to the Leeds University authorities, which appears in today's edition.

http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2035922

And here is Matthias on the threat from Iran:

http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/europe-must-decide

The good news is that Oxford University has now issued an invitation to Matthias, which they promise will not be retracted. There has been huge mainstream media interest in the substance of the story. Everyone now knows beyond doubt that there is a link between Nazism as practised by Hitler and Muslim antisemitism.

Here is Melanie Phillips in Friday's Jewish Chronicle:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=496

As for me, there I was, minding my own business, packing for Pesach in Manchester, whilst gazing out across Haifa Bay to Syria and contemplating how safe our building actually is if the weapons being amassed are actually used in the near future, when the THES contacted me for assistance in tracking down Matthias.

Out of all this has come an invitation to meet the German Ambassador to Israel - and Matthias himself -on my return (I don't think there will be a similar invite from the British Embassy, in the wake of recent blogs regarding the alleged words of their former Defence Attache, do you?)

Which brings me to the hutzpadik, sad, but very pertinent question: could Britain now be the real Germany, and Germany the real Britain?

How do we teach Judaism to Christians

What hits you on first opening Colin Richmond's book on Revd James Parkes

http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/57/2/805

is the beautifully-written Foreword by Tony Kushner of Southampton University.

Here he cites the former Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, who has stated quite accurately the following:

It is still the case that the radical reappraisal that is required of Christianity's approach to Judaism is not reflected in the main curriculum of biblical studeis, in Church history and systematic theology. Most ordinands, in most denominations, still go through their training with the old stereotypes about the Pharisees, Jewish legalism and with Judaism simply presented as a foil to Christianity'.

These words were written in 2003.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/SociologyofReligion/?view=usa&ci=9780199263134

And how right they are. And yet, when I started contributing to clergy training in the late 70s in Manchester, the attitude was totally different. The college asked me, a Jew, to take on the teaching of Biblical Hebrew because they wanted that contact and that type of ecumenical relationship.

A year or two later, Chester College put on a series for teachers of RE, prefacing this series with the statement that the New Testament was anti-semitic and would be banned today.

When my turn came to talk about the teaching of Judaism in the general school curriculum, I had nothing to say. The teachers (none of whom were Jewish) knew at least as much as I did.

So, what has changed? I think it is guilt, driven by a type of pseudo-liberalism which deserves to be psycho-analysed.

The British feel guilty at their colonial past, so they care far more about people of 'colour'. They forget about their colonisation of the Jews during the British Mandate period in Israel. Plus, Israelis just do not confirm to their idea of a once subject people now running their own place. 

And all this tends to make people forget the real injustice: which is Christianity's dire relationship with Jews and Judaism over 2000 years. 

As was pointed out quite brilliantly in last night's Radio 4 Moral Maze, however,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/moralmaze.shtml,

is the secret of survival and happiness for any group is not to dwell on the past, but to forge ahead into a new future, with memory being given its rightful place at ceremonies like the Passover Seder coming up in less than two weeks.

But the Churches, especially those in the West, and especially in Britain, appear to many to be pandering to victimhood - forgetting that the true victim of Christianity has been Judaism - even though many (though not all) adherents of Judaism are white and (perish the thought) espouse life and happiness.

And even all those American Jews who are so despised by a sizeable chunk of the Church were at one time Russians and Poles, and before that Sefardim, whose ancestors had been kicked out of Spain and wandered the world, a bit like here.

And where I live in Haifa, another experiment is underway, with the huge one third population of Russians, many of whom are not halachically Jewish at all, but who are being helped and assisted by all sorts of agencies, both religious and secular.

So, back to the teaching of Judaism: it doesn't have to be prejudiced and it doesn't have to be inaccurate. And not so long ago, about twenty years or so, it wasn't. The excuse that is usually offered now, (i.e. that there are plenty of other minorities here) just does not hold water. Unless being an Anglican priest is to stop being a vocation and turn into glorified social work, ordinand training should emphasise and glory in the fact of the close bond which exists between Judaism and Christianity, not least through the person of Jesus.

And where the clergy take a lead, maybe the Church media will follow: by which I mean the Church Press, the BBC and others. And we will have no more of those dire 'Jesus against the Jews' type of articles, personal views and broadcasts.

And then the dreadful CST statistic of the last half of 2006 being the worst for violence against British Jews ever will slowly subside - hopefully.

And no doubt I shall post more blogs of this type as ideas in this fascinating book just grab the attention.

Do feel free to post your own thoughts on this question.

On meeting old friends

Having first met up with all my old friends in the Jewish community and being inundated with invitations for Pesach, including the Seder, it was then the turn of the Anglicans who do so much for good relations with the Jewish community here.

First there was Revd Steve Williams, generally regarded as one of the best broadcasters of his generation and who was put on his priestly path partially by a talk I gave on (guess what) 'The Holocaust and anti-Semitism' at Durham University in 1987

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/06/tsaddik_no_4_re.html.

No doubt if I had tried to give this talk today, Leeds University would have banned it or found some excuse to censor me, but that was twenty years ago.

And then, Dr. Andrew Shanks, Canon Theologian of Manchester Cathedral

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/tsaddik_no_16_c.html

currently co-writing a book on Gillian Rose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Rose.

We had a good old chat about the differences between Herman Cohen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Cohen

and Franz Rosenzweig,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Rosenzweig

two German Jewish philosophers I had written about myself.

http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=9780415060431&parent_id=3228&pc=/shopping_cart/categories/categories_products.asp?parent_id%3D3228%26so%3D1

We also discussed the differences between Israel and the UK, and how Judaism is interpreted differently in a country where it is the majority religion.

And now down to the book that Steve has lent me about The Reverend James Parkes (1896-1981), on the same day that the Chief Rabbi of Haifa is officiating at a dinner to celebrate another book about the same James Parkes, one of the great philo-semitic clergyment of his age.

http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/57/2/805

and

http://www.pierre-van-paassen.com/index.php?section=17