On behalf of her fellow Deputies, Deborah Cohen brings us up to date with important current developments at the Board:
‘This has been a year of profound challenge, enduring resilience, and purposeful action’ writes Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg in his Rosh Hashanah message (see Our Congregation, page 3). Indeed, the disturbing events of the last year have impacted on every constituent member organisation of the Board.
It is important to remember that the Board is one of the UK Jewish community’s oldest institutions,
established in 1760. Deputies are elected by its member organisations and today Progressive,
‘otherdox’ Judaism (to use the late Rabbi Mariner’s term) is a major stakeholder in the Board. It has led the Board to search for boundaries inside which the community can stay together and withstand the forces that are trying to pull us apart.
The Board has long supported a negotiated ‘two-state’ peace settlement. In what now seems prescient, the Board in February 2022, on the occasion of a visit to the UK by MK Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted in Hebrew that it ‘rejects the abominable views and the hateprovoking ideology of Bezalel Smotrich. We call on all members of the British Jewish community to show him the
door’. Smotrich is a key minister in the current Israeli government.
These are the broad parameters within which the Board leads: pro two-state and against Kahanism, of which Smotrich is the heir. The commitment to a two-state solution was reiterated at a special Board meeting on 29 July. The meeting was called because of deep concern about the lack of progress on the return of the remaining hostages and about the human suffering in Gaza. The shocking heckling and removal from the stage of the co-Chief Executive Rabbis of Progressive Judaism at the 10 August March for the Hostages has led to much soul-searching.
The Board continues to carry out vital work representing the Jewish Community with central government, councils and other public bodies, for example to ministers about Glastonbury, the BBC, and the NHS. And plans are now afoot to launch a Jewish Cultural Month next year to which I hope our Synagogue and its musical tradition will contribute. The parameters within which the Board works are broad but fragile. The Board needs the support of all of us to respect this if it is to be able to hold us together, in all our diversity of views, in these difficult times.
L’shana tova from Belsize Square’s Deputies Dilys Tausz, Peter Strauss and Deborah Cohen