Towards a Non-Statist British-Jewish Denomination

I’m back to this. A topic which I previously and mischievously claimed was of interest only to about seven people, which turned out to interest quite a few more. A topic that is utterly specific to the British Jewish community. I refer of course to the proposed merger of Liberal and Reform Judaism to form a new ‘Progressive Judaism’ body, which is due to be voted on by synagogues in May. Below I try to transcend managerial debates and the binary of acceptance/rejection of the proposal, and to look at underlying questions of how Judaism relates to the state.

A few Rabbis have published sermons on the subject, one in opposition and one in critical support. But generally the organisers of the merger are hoping that it will go through without too much debate. After all what could anyone possibly object to? It simply cuts costs of two organisations that are broadly the same and whose differences nobody can really remember. It will cut down on duplication and backroom staff. Truly a management consultant’s dream. The other thing the co-CEOs talk about a lot is how the merger will give Progressive Jews more influence over national debates and allow us to be heard and seen more often. What this actually means is that they get to meet senior politicians and members of the royal family every other week and get to appear on daytime TV with disarming regularity. They are thoroughly content with this state of affairs and wish it to continue indefinitely. When pictured in synagogues they appear serious, earnest, even slightly pained. When they are pictured with politicians or the King on the other hand, they look consistently delighted.

There’s plenty on the technical details of how the new movement will look, particularly in terms of finance and voting arrangements. The TLDR is that shuls get a baseline of one vote each plus an extra one for every 400 additional members. This means that between them the big communities, like Alyth, EHRS and the Ark will be able to hold sway if they choose to vote the same way on things. There will be a council of members, a gesture towards democracy, but this will presumably be populated by the chairs of the communities rather than rank and file members. There’s a lack of genuine direct democracy – there is no mechanism whereby individuals would be members of the movement – as they are in Trade Unions or in political parties – only synagogues as institutional members.

So much for the technical details. On the substantive issues of where the movement is going to stand religiously and politically, what have we heard? Gornisht mit gornisht. It’ll all be worked out later, after the merger has been agreed, apparently. They couldn’t possibly work it all out now. As a result, communities are being asked to sign a blank cheque; to vote for the merger without knowing where it’s going to stand on the most important issues. Perhaps this would have been acceptable a few years ago – the practical arguments might have been treated on their merits. But Jewish politics is now so heightened and the stakes so high – literally an era in which Israel is perpetrating genocide and diaspora supporters have said little in condemnation – that much more is now required.

Of course, we know where the new movement is going to stand on these things. The co-chairs been modelling it in their actions and public statements over the past couple of years. The key word is mainstream. They will continue to seek to be part of the mainstream of British-Jewish communal life, rather than on its radical fringe. They will take positions in accordance with the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council. They will not rock the boat. They will continue to share every Board of Deputies statement no matter how facile, go on ‘anti-antisemitism’ marches run by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, steer clear of those run by the PSC and urge the UK government to continue to sell arms to Israel. They will issue milquetoast criticisms of the Israeli government, bathed in performative declarations of our love for Israel, formulaic calls for a 2-state solution and an appeal to complexity. All of this will carry on after the merger as it has been thus far.

For many this is all fine and expected. But it does fly in the face of the traditions of both the Liberal and Reform movements, both of whom have long had a radical side, and have been treated as fringe by the institutions of the organised Jewish community. Liberal Judaism has been the more radical of the two; as Gavin Schaffer describes in his new book, when Reform became a national movement in 1942 it called itself the Associated Synagogues of Great Britain (ASGB), anxious not to antagonise traditional Jews or create a new denomination. But thanks to the likes of Lionel Blue, Hugo Gryn and Dow Marmur, the tradition of breaking norms and contesting the communal consensus is there in the history of both movements.

On one of the most important contentious issues, Zionism, the reality is that both movements were originally anti-Zionist and have been anti- or non-Zionist for most of their histories.  Sure, it wasn’t exactly the anti-Zionism of today. But neither was it purely motivated by the desire to assimilate into Britishness, as the Zionist caricature has it. It was based on a principled rejection of nationalism, and a firm belief that it was in total opposition to their vision of Judaism, and to prophetic ethics. How could they be a light to the nations, and spread the message of ethical monotheism to the world if all or most Jews were confined to a hot little piece of land on the mediterranean? David Woolf Marks, first reverend of the West London Synagogue was an anti-Zionist, as was assistant rabbi Philip Magnus, as were Claude Montefiore, Lily Montagu and Israel Mattuck, the key instigators of Liberal Judaism, with Mattuck the first rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Yes, things changed with statehood, but more so after 1967 when the progressive movements found it difficult to resist the wave of nationalism that was sweeping across the Jewish world. But even then, the dovish, and sometimes non-Zionist politics of John Rayner, Blue, Marmur, and later Jeffrey Newman, Eli Tikvah-Sarah and Frank Dabba-Smith remained far from those found in Orthodox or even Masorti synagogues.

It feels like that radical spirit has dried up in recent years, with the movements afraid to do anything that would attract negative coverage in the JC or get attacked by the Jewish lunatic right on social media. Reform Judaism hasn’t been politically radical for decades while Liberal Judaism ceased to be so after Danny Rich stepped down as its chair in 2020. This reality makes it difficult to oppose the merger on radical grounds; if it was to fail the existing organisations would presumably continue along their current mainstream course. Given this, the best approach would be for opponents of the merger to try and improve it, to make it more democratic, and threaten to vote it down unless this happens.

But I think there’s a more substantive and interesting option. In reality, Reform and Liberal communities have two choices to make. They have the choice of whether to accept or reject the merger proposal, which is currently being offered as a binary decision even though the proposal could clearly be withdrawn, improved and brought back at a later date. Presuming the merger is passed by the required 75% of communities, an implied second choice arises; should each community join the new organisation or not? These are separate questions; it would be perfectly coherent to vote for the merger, as a community might believe it to be the best option nationally but not desire to join it. They could simply be independent, as West London, Westminster, and Belsize Square synagogues currently are.

They could, however, do something else, which the organisers of the merger don’t appear to have considered. Synagogues which don’t want to join the merger could join another denomination or create their own. There are denominations that hitherto have existed in North America but not in the UK: Reconstructionist Judaism and Jewish Renewal, both of which are on the more ‘radical’ end of the denominational spectrum. I feel that both have much to offer, and I especially like the democratic, civilisational approach of Mordechai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionism. There’s no reason why a British synagogue could not affiliate to one of these denominations and rely on their organisational umbrella. More creatively, and probably more realistically, a group of dissenting synagogues could create a new UK denomination and affiliate to that rather than to Progressive Judaism. The benefit of this could be that such a denomination could genuinely stand for something, beyond managerialism and conformity with the ‘mainstream Jewish community’. I’m sure different dissenting communities would have contrasting ideas about what its approach should be. Certainly, the meaningful dividing lines now will be different from the 1840s, when the West London Synagogue was formed, the early 1900s when the Jewish Religious Union (the precursor to Liberal Judaism) was formed or the 1960s, when Louis Jacobs was forced out of the United Synagogue. My view is that a denomination formed today should be distinguished by its approach to the state: towards the UK, Israel, and states everywhere. I suggest that where other denominations at best cosy up to the state and at worst treat it as a golden calf, the new denomination should take a critical, even antagonistic approach to the state, challenging governments rather than appeasing them.

Firstly, it should be distant from Israel. No blue and white flags, no Hatikvah, no prayers for the state, no Yom Ha’atzmaut events, no propagandist speakers, no affiliation to the Zionist Federation or to Zionist youth movements. This seems like the bare minimum we should be doing at a time when a self-described Jewish state is carrying out a genocide in the name of the Jewish people. Over time, the new denomination might move away from teaching modern Ivrit to a focus on the classical Hebrew of the siddur, and of rabbinic texts. Reclaiming Hebrew as a Jewish diasporic language, not (only) the language of a state. It would, I would hope, also give some focus to diasporic Jewish languages, particularly Yiddish and Ladino, and the various hybrid dialects that have emerged such as Jewish-English. It wouldn’t have to be anti-Zionist, simply non-Zionist would be enough; refusing to tie Judaism to a state project, declaring our diasporic independence from it. Such a step would return to the Reform and Liberal values of 80 years, before the movements gave up their ethical values for a mess of statist pottage.

Secondly, it should be distant from the British state. This is actually more challenging, as it represents a greater divergence from Liberal and Reform history. The early British Reformers were fiercely patriotic and loyal to King and Empire; for the opposition to these one would need to look to the Jewish anarchists. In the new denomination there should be no union jacks, no prayers for the King, no special shabbats for coronations/jubilees, no loyal addresses (I can’t believe this is actually a thing), no affiliation to national bodies that grovel to the British state such as the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council. Most importantly, it should reject the philosemitic embrace of the British state when it seeks to make us into a model minority and uses claims of antisemitism to crack down on protests, de-fund universities or target Muslims. A denomination, however small, that didn’t go along with any of this and refused the meet-and-greets with politicians which support that agenda, would be significant and worthwhile. This is not to say that the new denomination should be apolitical. There is a history of Reform and Liberal leaders championing causes such as female suffrage, abolition of the death penalty, opposition to nuclear weapons and welcoming migrants. The new denomination should create a series of demands, rooted in Jewish history and ethics such as: an end to British arms manufacture and sales, an end to all border controls, prison abolition, a basic income, commonly own land and debt cancellation. A bit like the Quakers. But noisier and more militant. Such a Judaism could be so much richer than one that toadies to the King and Prime Minister and protests its undying loyalty. It is better, as the old Liberal Service of the Heart siddur used to say, to trust in God than to rely on Princes (Psalm 118:9).

What, just for the sake of fun, might we call this denomination? Some of my favourite ideas – Disloyal Judaism, Rootless Judaism, Judaism Without Borders – would inevitably be rejected due to their unfortunate antisemitic overtones. The ‘Free Synagogue Movement’ could work, referencing the free synagogues of early 20th century New York that didn’t have a party line and that were egalitarian and democratic. But I think the best option might be Diasporist Judaism, a moniker which focuses on the idea of a Judaism without a centre, that doesn’t see itself as in exile or deferential to the state of Israel. This diasporism should be understood as concerned less with where one resides, and more with how political life is organised. Diasporism as the opposite of the nation-state; where communities can govern themselves without dominating others and without the requirement that one must be in the majority and others be in the minority. With such a definition, a person can be a diasporist in the land of Israel if they seek to replace the State of Israel with a political system of equality and open borders. Such a diasporism critiques both Israel, the UK and all states which claim to have a specific ethno-religious character and inevitably place other groups in a subaltern position. This would be a meaningful idea to base a new denomination around. Could it happen? I admit it seems farfetched. But much, much stranger developments have happened before, both in the British Jewish community and the wider Jewish world. It’s got to be worth a try.