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As Britain Seeks a New Chief Rabbi, Extremists Rise

by Shmuley Boteach – Algemeiner

Two forms of religious extremism confronted me last week as I lectured in the United Kingdom and launched my new book at a press conference in Jerusalem.

The first was at Limmud where a full one percent of all Jews in Britain gathered for a Jewish studies conference that has by now become the most successful Anglo-Jewish export in recent history. Every Jewish group was represented, that is, with the exception of the orthodox Rabbinate who boycott the event because of the Reform and Conservative (Masorti) Rabbis present. This is in sharp contrast to Limmud New York where, for example, Yeshiva University – responsible for ordaining the vast majority of modern orthodox Rabbis in the United States – sends an official delegation.

The second and more insidious example of frightening religious intolerance hit me as I landed in Israel and discovered a country up in arms about a Haredi (poorly translated as ultra-orthodox) man who had spit on an orthodox eight-year-old girl for immodest dress and another Haredi man arrested for calling a female Jewish soldier a derogatory epithet for refusing to move to the back of a bus. On New Year’s eve Haredi activists donned holocaust prison garb with yellow ‘Jude’ stars in a vulgar attempt to allege Nazi-like persecution at the hands of Israeli society when in truth all they accomplished was to trivialize the gassing of six million Jews. The finishing touch was placing their own children in concentration camp garb before the world’s media which added the violation of innocence to the defamation of the Jewish state.

There is a common thread uniting these stories. Religious extremism festers when decent lay people are cowed into submission by fanatics whom they falsely believe to be more religious than them. But there is nothing holy about Rabbis refusing to teach 2500 young Jews who are pining for Jewish knowledge. More importantly, it is an abomination to faith for men to treat women abusively. A black coat will never redeem a dark heart and a long beard is poor compensation for a shriveled soul.

Their defenders pointed out that these heinous acts are perpetrated by only a small number of Haredim. True. But in the face of Islamic terror outrages, we in the West rightly demand that mainstream Islamic leaders condemn the extremists, lest their silence make them complicit in the violence. The Jewish community must be judged by the same standard and Rabbis of every stripe must condemn this abuse as sickening and contrary to the core of Judaism.

Other defenders maintained that while the behavior was deplorable secular women were also at fault by insensitively visiting religious neighborhoods immodestly attired and inflaming local sensibilities. Sorry. Judaism’s core value is freedom of choice and men calling themselves religious can choose to transcend even the most incendiary provocation. Violence in the name of God is never allowed, a point we have repeatedly made to some of our Muslim brothers who justify Palestinian suicide bombers with arguments that “Israeli humiliations” provoke the murders. The Jews suffered extermination at the hands of the Nazis. But that never led them to blow up nurseries and buses, and Haredim who feel provoked must register their protests respectfully and lawfully. The Talmud is clear: a religious man who humiliates a woman by calling her derogatory names in public has lost his place in eternity.

In the UK draconian standards have long governed what purports to be a modern orthodox community. Travel to any College campus where Chabad and other orthodox groups are active and you will see female students serving as presidents of Jewish student organizations and regularly delivering Torah speeches at prayers. Yet in Anglo-Jewry the question of whether a woman can serve as a mere officer of an orthodox Shul or deliver a Dvar Torah remains hotly contested.

There is something magical about England’s Jews. They proudly hold on to their Jewish identity, generously support an endless array of Jewish social welfare organizations, and have a higher percentage of children in Jewish education then we do in the United States. But there are now only 250,000 Jews in all the United Kingdom and the community can ill afford any kind of internal, civil strife, especially given the rapid rise of anti-Semitism in the UK where Israel is regularly lambasted as being more wicked than North Korea.

But British Jews are curiously submissive to their Rabbinic leadership, even when they feel in their gut that some of the rulings contravene basic Ahavas Yisrael and basic decency. The Baal Shem Tov extolled the virtue of ordinary Jews who were not Rabbis. Even non-scholars are aware of common courtesy and must pressure their spiritual leaders to work with non-orthodox colleagues to increase Jewish learning and defend the State of Israel.

At Limmud I was peppered by journalists asking whether I was a candidate for British Chief Rabbi and the strange speculation reached a fever pitch when The Jerusalem Post published a long feature on the conference’s third day exploring the possibility.

I spent eleven years of my life building Jewish student life in Oxford and six of my nine children were born in Britain. I am deeply attached to the country and the community. But the office of a Chief Rabbi which muzzles its occupant from reaching out to thousands of young Jews for fear of offending right-wing sensibilities cannot cater to anything but vanity and egotism. And while I am certainly not immune to those ills, I have never allowed myself to be silenced for any title and never will. A Chief Rabbi is not an Ambassador but a leader. The office must be expanded from its current focus on mesmerizing the BBC, thereby perpetuating a myth of Jewish subservience and the need for Jews to win non-Jewish approval, and focus instead on electrifying Jewish youth, before it can attract serious candidates.

The Jewish homo religiosus is not the submissive man of the spirit but rather Yisrael, the rebellious man of faith. And if we Jews are enjoined to emulate our patriarch Jacob who wrestled with an angel, then surely we must also respectfully challenge our spiritual leaders and reclaim our human voice.

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22 Comments

  • My piece about this piece

    Shmuely, I really, really use to like your articles, but now I am increasingly getting annoyed with you.

    Its seems that every article you write these days is about you, you, you.

    As a avid reader of Jonathan Sacks’s writings, I am also tired of you dumping on him the way you do, without a modicum of respect for his integrity, class and scholarship. You would do well for yourself if you emulated him more, and tore him down less.

    Everyone is off-mark besides you. How is that? It reminds of a folktale I heard long ago. Once there was a bird who complained to her Mommy bird that the nest smelled bad. The mommy bird insisted that the nest smelled perfectly ok, but the bird flew the coop in search of nicer smelling pastures. She flew to the north, the south, the east and the west. She flew high and low. But regardless of how far and she high she flew, the smell persisted. She finally flew back to the nest to Mommy bird, complaining that not only did the nest smell bad, the ENTIRE WORLD stunk!! To which Mommy bird suggested she removed the rotten worm from her beak. And lo and behold, not only did the nest smell good, the whole world did!

    Sometimes, that is all it takes. Try it.

  • yours truly

    I wonder why any frum Jew would protest your book release?!?!? hmmm, what the title again…? oh right, Kosher Yushka! protesting sheker is a good thing in mybook

  • Moishele

    It again seems that you are more prepared to battle rabbonim and pander to what the congregants want to hear instead of being prepared to “battle” da’as baale batim and pander to what rabbonim want to hear. When a rabbi and the da’as baale batim are one and the same it is not the fault of the balabos – it is a rabbi who lost his way.

  • Yossel

    I don’t know what Rabbi Sacks’ take is on the recent issue, but I do see these “hardei” guys as mishuggoyim. They have a warped sense of their membership in the world community representing the Jewish community, as do the Satmar and other chassishe groups that put up a wall around their world and beat up anyone who questions or happens to wander into their world.

    Europe and the shtetl are gone forever. The world is a lot smaller today than it was 70 years ago. It’s about time these people joined the world and worked to make it a better place with love and kindness, not hatred and intolerance.

  • no one special

    Another Shmuly moment. Nothing new including his family’s biography; really not news worthy. Why are you and the Algemeiner giving him so much space? OOPS!!!! I think I know……….

  • Fix

    I think one sentence needs to be slightly reworded:

    “And BECAUSE I am certainly not immune to those ills, I have never allowed myself to be silenced for any title and never will.”

  • Ani lo Boteach bo

    How dare Shmuley compare the steadfastness of the British rabbonim in refusing to lower themselves to participate in an event where Torah will be reduced to just one more item in a cafeteria of McJudaism dishes that includes borderline avoda zoro, to the acts of the meshuggeners in RBS?

    Shmuley, who does not represent Torah, is perfect for a clown show like Limmud. Torah does not belong there, along with renewal, offshoots of budhuism and who knows what else.

    NB: I know how to spell the avoida zoro that I call budhuism. Budhu is the Hindi/Gujrati word for idiot and I call the a“z by that name to avoid writing the name of a presently worshipped a”z (cf Hara Kishka).

  • Just as vulgar

    Shmuly draws a parallel between Rabbis not wanting to attend a reform conference with those Jews who donned holocaust garb. This comparison is vulgar.

  • Boteach BaHashem

    Reb Shmuel,
    With deep respect for your manifold accomplishments, I must say I found this article disingenuous and harmful. Let me begin by asking you to please not mix in the Baal Shem Tov into your own shitos. If you want to espouse a new shitah (or adopt MO or Conservative), that is one thing, and you have the freedom of speech in this country to do that (though I am not sure why an Orthodox website would publish it).
    But please have the honesty to state that this has nothing to do with the Baal Shem Tov or the Rebbeim and that you have chosen a new path. Never in 200 years of Chasidus has any Chasidic Rebbe suggested that because of the advantage of the simpleton we should ask him what is the halacha!! That would be a distortion of the Baal Shem Tov worthy of Buber and others, but you?! You know better.
    The question of interfaith and interdenominational dialogue is an old question and there are different opinions on the matter, though in general the Rebbe and R’ Moishe were more machmir than say Rabbi Soloveichik. I urge you to issue a retraction of this very misleading and unhelpful article.

  • BCH

    Rabbi Shmuley, I command you on your courageous act of refusing to accept the position of Britain’s Chief Rabbi, especially since no one has offered it to you…

    Moreover, since Rabbi Sacks is a true gentleman and a mekadesh shem shomaim borabim, it would indeed be a crying shame should someone like you ever sit on his chair!

    I would be tempted to respond to the purported topic of your article, had it not been been for the fact that this article was nothing more than yet another portion of self-serving drivel disguised as a “community-minded manifesto” you have been dishing out to your readers.

  • mottel

    Stupid headline – as Britain looks for new CR extremists on the rise – you think it refers to Britian but the extremists are not connected to the UK.

    By the way the chief rabbi/oraganised Beis Din system in the UK leads to much more clarity on issues such as kashrus, mihu yehudi, standards etc. than in America where every yukel can marry people, convert people etc.

  • Milhouse

    This is an old story. One of the reasons he was fired from his shlichus was that he defied the united stance that ALL Orthodox rabbis in the UK have agreed to, to boycott the heretical movements lemineihem (pun intended) and not to dignify their clergymen by appearing with them as equals. Boteach was poretz geder, and appropriately was bitten.

  • very

    wow, so much hate for a GREAT rep of Judaism in the modern world. its self evident here why shmuly had to write this article…

  • moishe daddy vechulu

    I too am surprised at all the hate neged r’shmuely – I don’t totally agree w/ ANY anti-sachs talk however subtle – but do agree that he is doing alot of things right.

    Hence so many detractors ;)

  • To No. 14

    Hate?

    What about the awful, awful things Rabbi Shmuely has been saying about one of the most distinguished Jews in public life today? He has attacked Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, one of the most brilliant and outstanding rabbis today.

    People in glass houses should not throw stones.

  • BCH

    to # 14:
    Why do you assume that people who find “Rabbi Shmuley’s” output to be odious “hate” him? I certainly have nothing against the man personally. I understand that he needs to make a living, I only lament that he chose rabbinate as his vocation.

  • sam

    Can I know why CH.info keeps on publishing articles by this secular desecrator of G-ds name? Thanks.

  • Sick Rick

    Actually, the UK is home to more Neturei Karta extremists than anywhere except Eretz Yisroel. However, only the most extreme among them would ever support the nonsense in EY. Those super-extremists live on the dole and tzedoko, so they hardly have a penny to send to their fellow self-appointed kanoim in E”Y.

  • Boteach lo Betach

    clearly boteach does not know halacha which states that a rav is prophibited from attending an event of kfira and cant sit at the same panel as apikorsim. i dont remember the mekor off hand, but see the magen avraham, and works of chofetz chaim. its pretty clear.

  • To Moshe Daddy Vechulu

    In this article, the criticism is subtle.

    Have you read the other one a few weeks back about Rabbi Sacks. Beyond a disgrace. Simply, beyond words.

    Sure, woven in to his writings are valid and true things which you may be in agreement with, but that does not justify his criticism of everything and everyone.

    It becomes too much when he starts going after a distinguished Jew, who is a walking kiddush Hashem for no reason other (it seems) than wanting his job. Its just plain disgusting.

    I used to be a huge Shmuely fan,but I have found that lately (besides the real beautiful one about his daughter’s chuppah) that he is becoming negative about everything and everyone.

    Maybe he needs a vacation, I don’t know.