Lord Jakobovits in Conversation by Michael Shashar. London, Vallentine Mitchell, 202 pages. £19.50Michael Shashar completed the last of his interviews with the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain shortly before Immanuel Jakobovits died a year ago. In one sense this book of conversations paints an autobiographical landscape, but it is … Read more
Colin Shindler Likud and the Christian Dispensationalists: A Symbiotic Relationship THE AMERICANIZATION OF ISRAELI POLITICS IN THE 1990S ISRAEL HAS, OF COURSE, CHANGED dramatically since 1967. The publication of the 1999 report of the Human Development Index by the United Nations indicated that Israel occupied 32nd position of 174 countries surveyed, ahead of Hong Kong, … Read more
Two demonstrations recently took place in Israel. One of these, ostensibly a prayer meeting, brought together a quarter of a million Jews—a mixture of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist haredim—onto the streets of Jerusalem to protest against the rulings, and raison d’etre, of Israel’s Supreme Court. Yeshiva students were told that it was ‘an obligation’ to be … Read more
In Hampstead Garden Suburb and its environs, it was only with great fortune that you could actually find a copy of the Jewish Chronicle on that terrible Friday. It was a measure of the affection in which he was held. Chaim was different. He was no gossip columnist, but a Jewish writer permeated by tradition … Read more
Last year the Hale-Bopp comet traversed our skies. It was paying its first visit to the inner solar system for two and a half thousand years. The last time that Jews looked up and gazed in wonderment was during that terrible period of exile and return. Carrying with them the harrowing memory of the destruction … Read more
You were amongst the pre-war founders of Bnei Akiva-Bachad in London, but when did you leave for Israel? After my father discovered that her father had perished in Auschwitz, the family went from London to Palestine in May 1947. I was still engaged in Zionist work in London at that time as Director of … Read more
RABBI YOCHANAN, A Palestinian rabbi of the third century, described the qualifications for members of the Sanhedrin: They should be ‘men of stature, wisdom, good appearance, mature, age and they must be conversant with all the seventy languages of mankind as well as some of the arts of the sorcerer’. [Sanhedrin 17a, Talmud Bavli]. Another … Read more
Some British rabbis believed the peace process to be responsible for the recent massacre of worshippers in Hebron. The tension amongst the settlers, they argued, had pushed Baruch Goldstein over the edge. The situation was to blame. In this way, they shifted any moral consideration from themselves and were able to circumvent condemnation of the … Read more
In the winter of 1954, Jacob Sonntag edited a special issue of THE JEWISH QUARTERLY—number seven—which was devoted to an examination of the youthful State of Israel. Looking back at it, after nearly four decades, from the heights of our 150th issue, that passion for the Zionist experiment and the seemingly timeless freshness of statehood … Read more
Five hundred years ago, the Jews of Catholic Spain were expelled from their homeland by the practitioners of a religious fanaticism who believed that they had God on their side. The talents and contributions of minorities, whether Jewish or Muslim, were unwanted in a religiously pure Iberia. Those Jews who did not prostrate themselves before the priests of Ferdinand and Isabella left to seek new … Read more