Does Jonathan Sacks really speak for "all Jews"?

After the former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks hit the headlines by comparing Jeremy Corbyn's criticism of a tiny bunch of extremely rude Zionist extremists who had been abusing the Palestinian ambassador in 2014 with Enoch Powell's notorious 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech, many people quite rightly asked what gave him the authority to make such a hyperbolic judgement, especially given that it was only last year that he was publicly praising an extreme-right, xenophobic, anti-Muslim, Enoch Powell-praising diatribe as "a good book".

As far as I'm concerned Sacks has every right to criticise Jeremy Corbyn (and anyone else for that matter) but he's left himself wide open to accusations of rank hypocrisy by promoting a book that praised Enoch Powell for his divisive xenophobic rhetoric one minute, then using the horrible spectre of Enoch Powell to launch a hyperbolic and politically partisan attack on the lifelong anti-racist campaigner Jeremy Corbyn the next.

The response of the Jewish Chronicle to people criticising Sacks' comments was an extraordinary defence headlined "the trashing of Jonathan Sacks is a trashing of all Jews".

Now if anyone else was making generalisations about "all Jews" they'd quite rightly be criticised for anti-Semitism given that there is definitely no all-encompassing belief system all Jews adhere to, but the fanatically right-wing Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard (who once said "the left,in any recognisable form, is now the enemy") and the author of the piece obviously see themselves as arbiters of what "all but a tiny minority of Jews" think.

Now I'm certainly not going to argue that Sacks is a completely bad person. He's clearly served the Orthodox Jewish community very well over the years otherwise he would never have risen so high, he's lectured in moral philosophy which is a subject I'd surely enjoy discussing with him despite our obvious political differences, and he's done quite a bit of Interfaith work too which I approve of.

However, many of his views are problematic to say the least.

• Is it correct to say that Sacks speaks for "all Jews" when it comes to his vehement opposition to gay rights? Or is it fair to argue that a significant proportion of British Jews support Britain's gradual move towards gay equality?

• Is it correct to say that Sacks speaks for "all Jews" when it comes to supporting the far-right, pro-settler Mizrachi Olami organisation that organises divisive Zionist marches through the occupied Palestinian settlement of Hebron? Or is it fair to argue that at least a significant proportion of British Jews oppose the illegal Israeli settlements and strongly disapprove of divisive Zionist marches where people chant "death to Arabs"?

• Is it correct to say that Sacks speaks for "all Jews" when it comes to his 2010 comments about secularism being to blame for "Europe dying" or his claim that atheists "lack family values"? Or is it fair to argue that a significant proportion of British Jews support western secularism, and another significant proportion of British Jews who self-identify as atheists would be outraged at the allegation that atheists are somehow inferior parents to religious people?

• Is it correct to say that Sacks speaks for "all Jews" when it comes to his public recommendation of an extreme-right, xenophobic, anti-Muslim Enoch Powell-praising diatribe as "a good book"? Or is it fair to argue that a significant proportion of British Jews strongly oppose the attempted gentrification of extreme-right, xenophobic, and bigoted ideas, and disagree with anyone who uses their public platform to recommend this kind of extremism as "good"?

• Is it correct to say that Sacks speaks for "all Jews" when it came to him helping to write a speech for the hard-right, homophobic, anti-abortion US Vice President Mike Pence? Or is it fair to say that an awful lot of Jewish people would be horrified that a senior British representative of the Jewish community would involve himself with such a divisive character?

I'm guessing that pretty much everyone reading this would agree that Sacks doesn't represent "all Jews" or even "all but a tiny minority of Jews" on at least one (if not all) of these issues ...

So how can it be correct to claim that he speaks for "all but a tiny minority of Jews" when it comes to his highly partisan attack on Jeremy Corbyn?

And how can it be correct to claim that people critiquing Jonathan Sacks' partisan hyperbole, pointing out his hypocrisy, or highlighting his other views are somehow guilty of attacking "all Jews"?

If any non-Jewish commentator was claiming the words of one Jewish person were representative of "all Jews", or deliberately othering and marginalising any Jewish people who choose to disagree with their personal view of what Jews should think as "a tiny minority", they'd quite rightly be castigated as anti-Semites. 

But somehow these kinds of warped generalisations are being passed off as fair commentary by the Jewish Chronicle!

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What value can be found in religious contemplation?

I find a lot of theological writing to be tortured, laborious, inaccessible and uninspiring, a real chore to wade through and a thoroughly unrewarding investment of my time. Other examples I find lucid, powerful and thought provoking. In this article I'm going to consider what value can be found in religious contemplation.

Avoiding absolutism

I'm of the opinion that much of value can be taken from things that have stemmed from religion and religious contemplation. I don't necessarily have to agree with something for me to see some inherent value in it, or for it to have at least impacted and informed my worldview.

To give a rather crude example of how good can be found in religion, many years ago I did repair work on a number of Church of England churches. I've never been Church of England and I have deep reservations about the entanglement between the CofE and the UK political system. As a child I attended a number of state funded Church of England schools and grew to deeply resent the religious indoctrination I was subjected to from a very young age. The idea of an official state religion with special privileges in the political establishment and in society at large concerns me deeply, especially as I have studied the terrible persecutions of heterodox religious groups and individual thinkers enforced by the Church of England-UK state nexus in the past.

However my deep revulsion at this anachronistic Church of England status as an Official State Religion with special social and political privileges could never be enough to destroy the beauty and wonder of repairing an ancient building in the English summer, the tranquility of the Churchyard, the wind in the yew trees, the centuries of dedicated craftsmanship invested in the building and the profound sense of shared community history.

For all of the bad that has been perpetrated by man against man in the name of religion, good has sprung of it too. Beautiful religious architecture is one example and thought-provoking religious philosophy is another.

To deny that there is that of both good and bad in vast entire aspect of human endeavour is to take a militant absolutist stance.

Swami Vivekananda

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or mental discipline, or philosophy - by one, or more, or all of these - and be free.  

This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details."

In my view this Swami Vivekananda quote contains great truths born of religious contemplation.

I sincerely believe that you don't have to be of a religious persuasion to see the truth in what Swami Vivekananda was saying, although I can understand how stuff like the concept of "divinity" could be offputting to those of irreligious sentiments. However I don't consider the replacement of the overtly religious concept of  "divinity" with the philosophical concept of "transcendence" or the more psychological concept of "self-fulfilment" to be unacceptable debasements the essential meaning of the first paragraph.

Transcendence

"Any person can achieve transcendence. The goal is to achieve self-fulfilment through self-discipline and active engagement with the world. Freedom can be found through constructive activity, contemplation or both."

To rephrase and slightly simplify the first paragraph in this manner does not eradicate the essential meaning, but it frees it from the kind of overtly religious undertones that many find offputting. Could anyone now disagree with this statement?

Dogma

The second paragraph is particularly close to my own beliefs about the fundamental distinction between spirituality and dogma.

It is possible to believe in God(s) without believing in organised religious dogma, just as it is possible to for people to devote their lives to practicing organised religious dogma without ever really contemplating the existence and nature of the God(s) that their religious order is actually dedicated to. The two things are separate, but linked by centuries of association.

A declaration of the primacy of individual enlightenment over religious dogma resonates strongly with my libertarian and anarchist sympathies. Of course we should be free to develop our own personal worldviews, whether we believe in God(s) or not. Thus if religion is to exist then it should exist to encourage and support people in their own self-enlightenment, not to enforce an ideological orthodoxy through indoctrination and the punishment of transgressions.

Conclusion

Of course people are still free to contest that nothing good has ever stemmed from religion and sneer at the use of words like "divinity" if they want to see the world like that. However such a stance betrays naive absolutist thinking. To witness attempts to occupy some kind of intellectual high ground by decrying anything that has ever stemmed from religion is to witness a bold scrabble towards an imaginary plateau of rational enlightenment, the like of which will forever remain unobtainable to those who close their perceptions through simplistic absolute judgements about incredibly complex issues.

However you define your goal in life (enlightenment, transcendence, self-fulfilment, divinity ...) there are many paths to achieve it, however one of the most impassable obstacles on any path is closed-mindedness.

Like I said in the intro, I find an awful lot of theological writing to be turgid, unrewarding and often deeply hypocritical or contradictory stuff, but amongst all the dross there are still many gems to be found. Concepts that are concisely expressed and thought provoking to those with the openness of mind to contemplate the meaning of things without necessarily accepting them at face value.

To conclude I'll leave you with another Swami Vivekananda quote:

"To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly."

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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