The Politics of Progressive Judaism, and what it could learn from the Quakers

Things I’ve been writing / reading

I recently published this review of Marc Dollinger’s Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s in the journal Racial and Ethnic Studies, including some wider discussion of the scholarly and political issues in question. (This is a limited gift link, if it has expired just email me for a copy)

This is a powerful and disturbing piece from Jewish Currents about ‘October 7^th Tourism’ in Israel.

This piece argues that Israel has expanded the human shield argument to new degrees, tracing the history of the concept.

A rich account of a contemporary descendant of a German Jews returning to his family bookshop in Berlin

A provocative but often insightful piece on the antisemitism of the Israeli state

An extraordinary account of the 1989 Mizrachi-Palestinian peace conference in Toledo

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This week I want to write about a topic that absolutely nobody is asking for. A subject so niche and so deeply British and Jewish, that it cries out to be covered on Torat Albion. That’s right, you’ve guessed it, it’s the merger of the UK Liberal and Reform movements and the creation of a new single body called Progressive Judaism. To the seven people who are really interested in this: strap right in, it’s going to be one hell of a ride. To everyone else, stay with me, the subject is deceptively interesting, and contains much ideology underneath its managerialist façade.

The merger was first announced in April 2023, in a top-down manner. Presumably the organisers wished to get the announcement out before consulting synagogues – to present it as a fait accompli. Two primary reasons have been given for the move. The first is technocratic: it will save costs. Why run two offices, with two backroom teams, when you can have one? Within a neoliberal hermeneutic, in which everything is reducible to expenditure and profit, this logic is difficult to refute. No doubt there is also a desire to bring in the three independent synagogues who are broadly aligned with progressive Judaism – West London, Westminster, and Belsize Square Synagogues. Bringing some or all of them into the fold would certainly increase funds and reduce costs.

The second given reason for the merger is strength – the new movement promises to punch above its weight, saying ‘our reach, our voice and ultimately our Judaism will be stronger’. In practice this means its leaders will have more power; whoever speaks for the new movement will be able to claim to speak in the name of more synagogues and more Jews. Government will take them more seriously and they will get invited to many more receptions and civic events. It is not difficult to see why the current leaders of the movements would be in favour of this. It is harder to see how this will benefit ordinary Liberal and Reform Jews. Perhaps the kudos will somehow cascade towards them in the manner of trickle-down economics.

Those organising the merger have been keen to emphasise that the barriers which prevented the last serious attempt at unification, in the 1980s, have now been overcome. This has occurred largely through the Reform movement (MRJ) changing its policies on issues of sexuality and Jewish status. In the last 15 years, Reform reversed its opposition to Jewish same sex marriage, mixed faith weddings in synagogues and the acceptance of patrilineal Jews. These significant steps brought Reform into line with Liberal Judaism, making the merger possible. But the focus on these issues has led to the implication that there are no other grounds for concern regarding the merger, or over the form the new movement might ultimately take. If the differences between Liberal and Reform are now so minute as to be insignificant, what kind of nudnik could possibly object?

One such objection might be about politics. British Reform Judaism, for all its quarrels with Orthodoxy has tended towards small c conservatism. Liberal Judaism, in contrast, has always had a radical streak – it was founded as part of the New Liberalism movement in the early 20^th century. Social reform was always part of its agenda. The movement even gained an offshoot in Mumbai amongst the Bene Israel of India, the racialised underclass of the Indian Jewish community.  The first rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue was Israel Mattuck; a radical American Reform Rabbi who foregrounded ethics and was both socialist and anti-Zionist. In the postwar era the movement had Rabbi John Rayner – who was born in Berlin in 1924 and came to Britain on a Kindertransport. As senior minister of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue from 1961 and primary Liberal liturgist he imparted a highly universalist, ethical and radical liberal perspective to the movement. He was outspoken on Israel, delivering a powerful sermon in the wake of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982, and called for mourner’s kaddish to be said in synagogues for its non-Jewish victims. In his last years he also spoke out against the Iraq war, suggesting that the halachic requirement for a full Sanhedrin to vote for war would find its equivalent in a unanimous vote of the UN Security Council.

Even after Rayner’s death in 2005, the movement was led by Rabbi Danny Rich, who consistently took positions to the left of the rest of the mainstream Jewish community. Rich became a Labour councillor during the Corbyn era, met with the leaders of JVL when everyone else treated them as pariahs, and employed a young leader on the LJY-Netzer Israel tour who had been sacked by RSY-Netzer for her participation in the Kaddish for Gaza. Liberal Judaism has regularly been more radical, more outspoken and more willing to be ‘fringe’ than Reform.

There have been examples of radicalism in the Reform movement. Two rabbis stand out; Dow Marmur and Lionel Blue, both amongst the earliest students at the newly formed Leo Baeck College in London in the 1950s. Serving as the Rabbi of South West Essex Synagogue, Marmur pioneered social outreach work, including to Black and Asian migrants, and gave a bold sermon on race relations at a Reform Conference in 1969. He gave a similarly forthright sermon on racism and injustice in the wake of the 1981 riots while Rabbi of Alyth, before moving to Canada in 1983.

Blue was more famous, largely through his broadcasting work, particularly on Thought for the Day. But his cuddly, humorous persona disguised a radical theologian, who found divinity in the lowest and most mundane places. He advocated for a one-state solution in the 1970s and 1980s, attracting opprobrium for doing so. And he was the first out gay rabbi in the UK, finally coming out publicly in 1989 when a journalist was otherwise going to out him, although colleagues had known much earlier. Despite their prominence, I would suggest that Marmur and Blue were outliers in a movement that has been predominantly conservative, and keen to demonstrate its mainstream credentials to the United Synagogue and the rest of the organised Jewish community.

It is hard to know which tradition will come to dominate in a merger situation. It could be that the Liberal influence will make the whole of the new Progressive Judaism movement more radical. My fear is that the opposite will occur – that the new movement will go out of its way to be ‘centrist’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘at the heart of the Jewish community’ rather than promoting radical and necessarily controversial positions. The early signs are mixed. Faced with a huge challenge – how to respond to Israel’s brutal and likely genocidal assault on Gaza over the last nine months, the leaders of the merger have failed to meet the ethical needs of the moment. The first intervention was Our Jewish Values in early November 2023, which spoke in broad terms of peace, compromise, rules of war, and the need for complexity. It was better than nothing, but its drive to attract maximal signatories led it to fail to take a fully anti-war, pro-ceasefire stance. To be fair, it was better than most of the organised Jewish community’s positions at that point.

A statement by Progressive Rabbis in February 2024 used much stronger language to describe the suffering in Gaza, but its concluding call, urging that ‘all steps are taken, as soon as possible, to end the bloodshed and to bring the hostages home’ was not the same as calling for an immediate ceasefire and a prisoner/hostage exchange. Even so, the leaders of the merger chose not to sign this statement, preferring to stay above controversy.

Most recently the leaders of the merger posted a statement after meeting with ministers, in the wake of government announcements that they are resuming funding to UNWRA, are removing UK objections to the ICC arrest warrant for Israeli and Hamas leaders and are rumoured to be considering suspending arms sales to Israel. While their statement was far better than that of new Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg, it was still too weak, including the lines ‘While we may disagree with aspects of the UK Government’s policies, we were reassured by the commitment we heard to Israel and the UK Jewish community’ and ‘We explained that central to our Zionism is a commitment to self-determination for both Jews and Palestinians and respect for the human rights and dignity of all peoples’. What is the efficacy of championing Zionism and expressing disagreement with such evidently sensible government policies at this point? Surely this is the moment to adopt an explicit anti-war, pro-hostage exchange and even non-Zionist position?

A recently formed group – Progressive Jews for Justice in Israel/Palestine, is doing important work pushing for such positions to be adopted within the movement. They held a very powerful Zoom event with Rabbis and youth leaders on the subject that deserves to be widely seen and discussed. I hope they might come to operate as a faction within Progressive Judaism, something like the role Momentum briefly played within the Labour Party. Moreover, I hope that those implementing the merger will listen to them and avoid a knee-jerk identification of the new movement with Zionism.

I want to suggest a constructive way in which Progressive Judaism could be stronger and more radical: the introduction of meaningful democracy. In the past most major decisions about the movements have been made by Rabbis; a hangover from the Orthodox model of Rabbis as halachic decisors.  But in Progressive Judaism, a child of the enlightenment, power and sovereignty should rest with the people. I am not talking about representative democracy here – our parliamentary system in which MPs are only accountable to the electorate every 4 or 5 years – but rather more radical systems of direct democracy. Public assemblies, to which anyone can attend, where the people deliberate, view evidence and try to reach consensus on the key issues of the day. Versions of this process have been known as ‘participatory budgeting’ and the Porto Alegre Model. I’m suggesting that all members of Progressive synagogues (and those who attend but cannot afford membership fees) are invited to come to a range of open meetings to debate, propose and ultimately decide policy on the key issues. Who should count as a Jew? How easy or difficult should conversion be? Should the movement be Zionist, non-Zionist or Anti-Zionist? What position should it take on the war? What prayers for Israel/Palestine should ee say in our services? What should our attitude to Halachah be? Should Progressive synagogues all become vegetarian/vegan? How should Progressive Jews deal with government philosemitism? How can our liturgy and movement be more inclusive of trans and non-binary people? What national political issues should the movement campaign on? There are many such questions, and little justification for them to be decided purely by a small group of Rabbinic and lay leaders.

British Quakers provide an interesting model.  Each generation of Quakers rewrites their central book of doctrines, Quaker Faith and Practice, which states what the community believes and does. The previous iteration took place in 1994-5 and in 2019 they opened a new process of revision which remains ongoing. It requires a very long period of public meetings, consultations, suggestions and deliberations.  This bottom-up process is highly appropriate for an egalitarian movement born in the radical climate of 17^th century England which believes prophecy and vision can arise from any person, not simply from a religious or scholarly elite. The Society of Friends don’t call this, or the broader Quaker business model ‘direct democracy’; they use religious language such as wisdom, or worship, and make extensive use of silence, as in weekly meetings. In secular terms they seek to arrive at consensus, but describe it as discernment, or even revelation. I don’t see why Progressive Jews couldn’t do something like this. Liberal and Reform Siddurim are rewritten at roughly similar intervals to Quaker Faith and Practice; but hitherto the work has been carried out by an editorial committee of Rabbis. Communities may be consulted, but they are not in charge of the process. Next time surely the people should decide what they wish to pray for, and what the movement stands for? We are not exactly good at it as a people, but a little silence wouldn’t kill us.

Ultimately, Liberal and Reform Judaism is different. It is not, ultimately, grounded in ethnocultural belonging, on which so much of the Jewish world is based. It is concerned with ethics; a prophetic stance that the world that is is not the world that should be. That we should act to change the world, to make it more just, more equal and more kind. To be heirs to the prophetic tradition means to engage in such change even if it leads to you being labelled extreme, disloyal or self-hating. It means standing for economic justice even if it endangers your hard-earned middle-class position. It means distancing yourself from the state, even if you lose some privileges in the process. And it means speaking out for justice and freedom for all between the river and the sea, even when the whole Jewish world is against you. As the Midrash says – who is a Hebrew? One who stands on one side while the whole world stands on another. What could be more Jewish than that?