If not now, when?

Another very packed day. It was also freezing. More like late February than nearly June, and every time I put the washing out, it started to rain.

Today was the time for all the videos. Les went out and bought a DVD and I sorted the videos into those on Jewish history and those of family interest. There are more than thirty of the latter. The bat mitzvahs of the girls: Kalela on a TV quiz show, when she answered 'yoohoo' to the question about an American state, converging Ohio and Utah, no doubt. She won a big dictionary though and looked like a film star. Esther's bat mitzvah, where she was very embarrassing about Les and Kalela predicted the future, by saying that one day we would all interconnect by internet, which even I would master. The interview with Esther's brilliant art teacher about Esther's ability. Kalela's launch of the Tibetan-Jewish Youth Exchange Project. Esther as the wicked witch in the school play. Then Esther's charity fashion show, which was televised by BBC 1 and then Esther was interviewed by Lowry Turner from the Trafford Centre - and more frummers than I thought must watch TV, because they all said she was great - and I couldn't believe they watched an inane light entertainment show on a Friday morning.

Then the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony for Aung San Suu Kyi, featuring Les' beard and all the other Burmese-related videos. Then, to my surprise (as I had forgotten) the 2003 Jerusalem lectures at the Israel Centre: Les on Kabbalah and Consciousness and myself on ibn Ezra bringing Muslim science to Crusader Europe, and the Jerusalem Post had chosen my lecture as 'lecture of the week', which totally astounded me.

And also, our sad trip to Lithuania in 1997 or 8, with two of Les' surviving aunts from there, one now an American and one (now dead) the mother-in-law of Dan Meridor, who some tipped to be the next Israeli PM after Begin.

And that's where we met Harold Rhodes, a Pentagon specialist on Iran, who in exchange for our Shabbat meal of tuna and corn, brought with us in tins (challah care of Lubavitch in Vilna) sends me all the up-to-date e-mails every day, many of great import.

And then a cryptic message: the lecturers' union, NATFHE, had voted to boycott Israeli Jewish academics. Engage let me know straight away and then one of our excellent academics who isn't Jewish, but who is fighting the fight, and then the reaction to that. And then, throughout the afternoon, first Bar Ilan where I am on their International Advisory Board, then amazingly Haifa Technion (who had apparently been alerted to me by Haifa's mayor) and Haifa University all got in touch.

But none of the established British groups. Anglicans for Israel posted something on their webpage. And I encouraged everyone to work with Engage. You don't have to be left-wing to see that they are effective, passionate and committed.

From the tapes I went to all my files and this was a mammoth job. But I came across all sorts of quotes that are relevant today. For instance, Herzl said (and I don't remember using this quote in lectures) that 'at a time when an effort is being made to besmirch all of our co-religionists ... it seems to me that we have a duty to show our warm association in a special way. We are not legitimate children of France, we are only adopted children....' And how true that this seems now for Britain, as well as the France of over one hundred years ago.

And the person I will be staying with in Haifa wrote and said she didn't want to be rude, but that the members of NATFHE were nothing but 'a band of w----kers', in broad translation. And she is actually a scientist and founder of the 'come to Haifa' French blog, which has just seen the light of day.

And there are lots of sites on the boycott, which you can access here:

http://www.zionismontheweb.org/academic_boycott/

http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000081.html

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=443

http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&view_records=1&sb=4&so=descend&labstart_jump=1&mh=25&keyword=NATFHE >http://www.eisinc.com/release/storiesh/SCHOLR.005.htm

And I have been warned by a friend who knows about these things not to say that the vote was racist or antisemitic, as I could be laying myself open. So I am definitely not saying that: what I am saying is that the vote will give comfort to those who support racism and anti-semitism. And in my view, will make life for Jewish students, let alone academics, unbearable. And soon they will probably have to sign a waiver that they did not go on gap year to Israel and that they do not believe that Israel is the legitimate home of the Jewish people. And then where will it end?

The Archbishop of Canterbury made it clear, when he voted to divest from Caterpillar, that he was not in favour of boycotts. He says this quite a lot. I wonder if he will take a stand.

Time will tell. But on this May Day Bank Holiday, a union which is supposed to be striking for higher pay, and is extremely sorry for itself, appears to be taking it out on one of the smallest countries in the world, and discriminating against truth and fairness.

And this somewhat overshadowed the Pope's visit to Auschwitz, where he met 32 survivors (an interesting number), none of whom were Jewish, according to the Press. And he broke a taboo by speaking in German. As far as I am concerned, it is not the German language which is to blame for the Holocaust: if not for German, much Jewish scholarship would be inaccessible. I am glad I studied German and that my father particularly was keen on this. After all, I wouldn't be able to understand Yiddish if I didn't know German and where would that leave me in a place as ultra-Orthodox as Broughton Park, where many of the simchahs are conducted in Yiddish and there is even a revival of the language in some of the schools? Whereas, sadly, Hebrew is taboo. But I can't help noting the excuse made by the Polish defence minister on Radio 4 to the effect that if present-day Poland, whose Chief Rabbi was beaten up yesterday, is accused of antisemitism, which he of course denied, what about Ken Livingstone? What indeed? Another excellent article by Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times about George Galloway's view that it would be 'logical and explicable' to kill Tony Blair. 'Surely', Jasper asks, 'by this act, his position in the legislature loses legitimacy'. Yes and for many other acts as well. And tonight's omer reading is that of humility in leadership. A lesson there for NATFHE, I think.