A MOMENT Interview with Immanuel Jakobovits
IMMANUEL JAK0BvIT5 MOMENT INTERVIEW For openers, just what is a "chief rabbi"? In Britain, this office goes back originally to 1696, with the rabbinate of the Great Synagogue in London, and...
...And this is quite an extraordinary phenomenon...
...But constituting less than three percent of the total society, it is not likely that he will ever achieve actual equal status with the remaining ninety-seven percent...
...That disdain springs from similar factors, from an experience of a cruel world that, as it were, has betrayed not only its trust, but its debt to the Jewish people over the years...
...Does that increase in day-school population reflect growing dissatisfaction with the grammar schools, as it often does in the States...
...Having lived for so many years now, in such critical years in our people's history, as one of a group of contending movements, is it ready for the grace that needs to attend power...
...This is an indication of what happens when the mystique of Judaism, and of the Jewish people, gives way to norms which are entirely alien to us...
...I don't think it is inherent at all...
...The British Jews—as indeed do European Jews generally—at all times accepted not only that they were a minority, but that all they were seeking was equality as individuals, and not equality as a group, or as a community...
...Remarkably enough, although the bulk of Anglo-Jewry is made up of the same wave of immigrants from Eastern Europe as eventually reached'the shores of America, the development of the two communities, across the Atlantic, and indeed the mentality that characterizes them, is entirely different...
...These were all factors that could only be experienced in a Diaspora condition...
...Well, in England itself, of course, I get around...
...That is unique...
...And to some extent the same goes for the Conservative movement which to this day has remained more or less limited to the American scene...
...The question is not whether we will survive, but who and how many will survive...
...Orthodox parents then would usually have children who were less committed...
...In the United States, when this wave arrived, they did not already find a community structure into which to integrate...
...Do you find, speaking of that, that the quality of debate on Jewish matters in the United Kingdom is significantly different...
...Yet you cite a statistic on day schools which is astonishing from the American perspective...
...Also, we don't have the competitiveness of each congregation being a law to itself, having to assert itself, and so there isn't the same sen^e of rivalry that sparks the energies or the dynamics of progress...
...there was no attempt at any kind of intimidation, no effort to suppress the expression of opinions...
...There's a certain degree of surprise, certainly among the non-Orthodox, and I suspect among the Orthodox themselves, that here in 1980 Orthodoxy has not only held its own, but appears to be gaining strength and confidence and adherents...
...They prefer to take the tried paths of past experience rather than the uncertainties of unknown ways...
...And now that rabbis have surrendered the ultimate control of Jewish affairs to an assortment of politicians, communal "machers" and public relations experts, we, for the first time in our millenial history, are haunted by the threat to Jewish survival...
...I'm sure that it would require very major changes to condition the Orthodox community to assume reins of leadership that will govern the overall destiny of our people, inside and outside Israel...
...Is that a view that you share...
...It's virtually a life sentence...
...They have provoked considerable controversy in Israel, in England, and in the States...
...To this, you must add the numerous Israeli institutions that have their Friends working very actively in Britain—all the universities, most of the yeshivot, hospitals, and so on...
...So there are good reasons for opting out from our wider Prophetic assignment as a light unto the nations, for abandoning our sensitivity and responsibility to moral standards in the world at large, and eventually the brotherhood of man, in all its ramifications...
...Therefore, there are few people who could observe as precisely the differences between English Jewry and American Jewry...
...Therefore the mainstream of the staunchly Orthodox element today I would still regard as being within, call it broadly, the moderate rather than the extremist camp...
...Is the British diffidence that is so striking to Americans manifested at all in the philanthropic endeavor of the community...
...And therefore there is a greater degree of self-consciousness about being Jewish in the United States than I find to exist in Britain...
...And that is one of my problems, because whenever I make a new suggestion, the first reaction is, we've managed for three hundred years, why rock the boat...
...So I cannot quite see that there is a vacuum to be filled in Israel by people in search of religious values and not finding them in Orthodoxy...
...Out of it have grown virtually all the major institutions in the country, including the United Synagogue, Jews' College, the Board of Guardians (now called the Jewish Welfare Board) and many others...
...So I have plenty of opportunity for feedback, and also partly through the organization that I head, notably my colleagues, ministers with whom I meet, and who supply me with a certain amount of assessment of public opinion...
...Today, the children, by and large, are far more committed than their parents, and the grandchildren even more so...
...It is as if, in correcting for the past mistake of over-univer-salism, we've over-corrected, moved to over-particularism...
...We have something in the region of 40 Jewish MP's, and quite a number of them are very committed Zionists, and certainly belong to the Friends of Israel Parliamentary Committee, to which, of course, non-Jewish MP's also belong...
...One is what we loosely term the "Yeshiva" community, with its enormous and burgeoning, flourishing institutions in Israel and in America and in England and throughout the world...
...In other words, the content of their assignment as Jews is not derived from their Jewish heritage, which is virtually unknown to them, but from the conglomerate of general values that they absorb in the course of their presumably rather shallow education...
...And Israel-oriented causes have also been able to mobilize by far the most dynamic human resources...
...We probably cover a rather wider network of contributors than would be the case in America...
...Now that is as far as constitutional, or official assignments, are concerned...
...I was born in Germany...
...Now in these two elements the "fundamentalist" expression—certainly as far as its political form is concerned—is very, very minimal...
...Now all that we need is a sweeping, revolutionary, never-done-before re-ordering of our Jewish educational priorities: the badgering of teachers and principals and rabbis, the hell-raising with synagogues and JCC's, the battering down of old, seamy doors of the Establishment to get them to see that the alternative is a generation of bright, well-degreed, well-to-do egocentric Jews...
...If I can shift now, for a moment, to the question of Orthodoxy and its future, let me ask you a purposely provocative question...
...In that regard, specifically—take, for example, Gush Emunim in Israel, or the Jewish Defense League—is there, in your view, a necessary correlation between religious fundamentalism and fundamentalist—or reactionary—politics...
...Also, it reflects a surrender of the faith in the inevitable progress of man which was once so widely shared, notably in countries like Germany...
...I wonder, for example, whether the fact that such a large proportion of younger Israelis prefer to think of themselves as Israelis rather than as Jews, may not be because Orthodoxy asserts a monopoly on the meaning of the word Jew...
...In my case, that call was unanimous...
...I gather that your belief, based both on the empirical data and on your own ideological conviction, is that Jewish survival is not really in jeopardy...
...The present estimate is just over 400 thousand...
...It does make for a far greater sense of stability in Jewish life in Britain...
...In the 1960s, the common prediction was that Orthodoxy, faced with the temptations of secular culture, would continue to erode...
...I stayed in Ireland for ten years until 1958, then became the first rabbi of New York's Fifth Avenue Synagogue, was there for a further eight years, and then returned to London on my appointment as Chief Rabbi, assuming office exactly thirteen years ago...
...And of course England itself is a very traditional country, and this has both advantages and disadvantages in terms of Jewish vitality...
...And it exercises a very considerable influence, not so much I think by the opinions that it happens to represent editorially—as by the fact that you get a very balanced presentation of both domestic and world Jewish news, with special emphasis, of course, on events in Israel...
...I have no synagogue of my own which would be my regular pulpit, though I have a seat in all synagogues and preach there on pastoral visits or other special occasions...
...So there are extraneous factors here that have had something to do with this remarkable phenomenon of both religious resurgence, or Orthodox resurgence, and of a certain tendency within this resurgence towards what you might term "fundamentalism...
...Since his time, there is a retirement age of seventy, and he in fact retired at seventy, and I was the first Chief Rabbi ever to assume office in the lifetime of his predecessor...
...He runs a car which looks like a SO thousand earnings car, and gives charity accordingly, too...
...And he can therefore form more solid opinions, make more mature judgments, and not jump to conclusions on the basis of facts and opinions conveyed to him in sheets that hardly merit the title "newspaper...
...I suspect that this can only be a passing phase, because it is clearly a distortion of the Jewish message...
...he is nominally, therefore, the spiritual head of all these congregations...
...Often neither his constituents, nor the rest of the Jewish community, would be aware of the fact, and it certainly wouldn't be an election issue...
...1 How many Jews are we talking about in total...
...I'm struck by the fact that if you're correct, one would assume that the best political solution to the current controversy would be for the Orthodox to permit the Conservative and Reform movements their day, on the theory that they would then quickly simply crumble of their own lack of weight...
...So it's a fairly old and well-established office...
...When I read letters, say, of Jewish participation in debates on moral problems such as abortion or euthanasia, which happen to be areas of special interest to me, I find that those who participate on the universalist basis, on the general basis, have no Jewish insights or commitments to offer whatsoever...
...they would all accept the religious orientation to which I subscribe, and therefore no problem at that level exists...
...While the rest of our people lost one-third of their number, they may have lost as much as 90 percent of their fortifications, of their institutions, of their sages, their leaders, and their heartland...
...Therefore, by no stretch of the imagination do they in fact translate the accumulation of Jewish teachings and Jewish insights into the wider arena of the world experience today...
...This makes the upsurge of these elements all the more extraordinary...
...as a result he feels completely at ease in his environment, and accepted by it, and able to make his due contribution to its advancement...
...When the community does seek to make its views not only known, but also felt, in the councils of government, is it not Jewish MP's, typically, who are asked to carry the ball...
...It is more mature...
...I mean, for instance, the Reform movement originally grew up in Germany, and later on in the United States, because of the need felt to adjust to external pressure for praying in the same language as did the others, of doing away with reference to our national restoration in Zion...
...These may, perhaps, eventually produce new nuances of orientation, such as we've seen in 19th century Germany with the rise of the so-called Neo-Orthodox movement of Samson Raphael Hirsch...
...In that respect, tradition, the addiction to tradition, works in our favor...
...We have now something like 25 percent of all our children of school age attending Jewish day schools, as compared with 16 percent when I took office 13 years ago...
...In England, the attitude is the opposite, in that, if anything, they like underexposure, or the "typical British understatement...
...There is a kind of College of Electors, made up of representatives of all the congregations in the United Kingdom as well as in Australia and New Zealand which recognize the jurisdiction of this office...
...Either you do it our way, or you don't do it...
...If I can shift for a moment to a somewhat related question having to do with Jewish pluralism, and specifically with religious pluralism, one of the problems that some of us have with the institutionalization of the Orthodox perspective in Israel is that it appears to give young Israelis an either/or choice...
...It's the States rather than Europe and other countries that represent the exception, because Chief Rabbinates today exist in France, in Holland, in Belgium, in virtually all European communities, as well as South Africa, and of course Israel...
...Nor does it seem, as one might think, that Orthodoxy had adapted to its secular environment...
...They're reticent and discreet, and they prefer not to obtrude onto the front pages of the newspapers or on the television screens...
...The schools range all the way from what we call Zionist day schools, but which arc also religiously oriented, to Chassidic schools, like Lubavitch schools and other "right-wing" schools...
...If a man in the States has 100 thousand, he would like to appear as if he had 200 thousand, and therefore buys a car which looks accordingly, and gives donations which make it appear as if he had 200 thousand...
...Some arc more intensive than others, but they are all Orthodox...
...Well, I think it is because attention is no longer given to the struggle of emancipation, that Jews here were able to attend to the more important struggle for self-preservation...
...In other words, there is here a self-liquidating process, whereby the less committed are not just opting out, but are heading for disappearance, physically as well as otherwise...
...To my mind, this resurgence will determine the entire shape and composition of the Jewish people in just one or two generations...
...Therefore, over half my domestic time, I would say...
...Here there may be a point of contact with the fundamentalism to which you made reference, which of course also is an expression of a disdain for the outside world, an indifference to it...
...I mean, in the States people discuss things that have never been said, and that don't even in the remotest represent my actual views, whereas in Britain, the reports were fairly accurate, and therefore at least the discussion is on what actually was said...
...The demonstrations and manifestoes, placards and marches, and sit-downs and strikes—the whole Megillah of tactics we learned in the '60s can now be put to full use L'Shem Shamayim—for the sake of heaven and for the Jews' own self-integrity and preservation...
...Institutions such as Bar Ilan University which, after all, represented initially an element that was far off the maincominued on page 56 Jakobovits continued from page 24 stream of Orthodox life in Israel, and denounced as such, have a special role here...
...For instance, in any American election, if the candidate is Jewish, this will not only be known, but presumably be an election issue, whereas here in Britain, you would hardly know if a Jewish person stands for Parliament...
...Does that mean that all schools supported by the Trust must be Orthodox...
...Our discussion in Britain, first of all, was fed by far more reliable information...
...It can change from one extreme to another overnight by just one announcement or so, and it hasn't the same depth and validity as in England...
...Yes, sure...
...That faith was shattered with the Holocaust...
...That influences the level of the debate as well...
...It is partly, I think, a reaction to the Holocaust, which leads to disillusionment with the values of the secular society...
...My own sense is that the social or ideological pendulum swings in rather wide arcs...
...And is it an election for life, or is it periodically re-ratified...
...Until my predecessor, the late sainted Sir Israel Brody took office, it was a life appointment...
...Exactly...
...You said a few minutes ago that the fact of an MP's Jewishness is really coincidental, is not widely registered...
...The JIA raises something in the region of 15 million pounds sterling, which would correspond to some 35 million dollars...
...Sometimes...
...In other words, American opinion is more volatile...
...And there is the Chassidic community, which also has undergone a remarkable upswing...
...One of the two things that we look at with a measure of awe, and certainly with envy, is the existence in England of a national Jewish newspaper of some quality, which is something that our community does not have...
...I do recognize that there is a vacuum, that Orthodoxy in Israel, for a variety of reasons, partly institutional, and partly intellectual and ideological, cannot meet the groping for spirituality and for religious bearings of an increasing number of young people who are disillusioned with the purely secularist sense of values in which they've been brought up...
...Oh, I am absolutely convinced that we are the people of eternity, and will prevail over any future tribulations, as we've done in the past...
...There was no contested election, although other candidates had been considered...
...Hence in Britain, by and large, deep as this controversy strikes into highly committed people on both sides, nevertheless it was conducted in a relatively low key, and opinions on either side found the fullest expressions...
...As a result, the fragmentation was far too great to allow for any offices such as, for instance, a Chief Rabbinate or a United Synagogue, which is a very closely-knit synagogue organization, to be set up—or indeed even for a Board of Deputies, such as we have it...
...That's curious...
...Hence, the traditional element is still fairly strong, though mainly by virtue of the momentum of the past...
...Israel commands not just a special type of contributor, but a worker and a fund-raiser of a level and of an intensity probably far superior to what we're able to command in the spheres of, say, welfare, or synagogue administration...
...there is a certain mobility and dynamic in the present situation...
...It probably has its parallels...
...So I do think that the present situation in Israel is far from fossilized...
...the fundamentalist religious sense appears intact...
...And the same goes for every other area of the Orthodox experience—its relation to the thinking, the science and technology, indeed the culture of our age...
...Tz'dakah continued from page 50 retarded, and they are responsive...
...That is a legal requirement...
...They can carry on for the five years, more or less without constant reference to the changing fads of public opinion...
...Hence, the British Jew feels that his struggle for emancipation, which was quite acute in the 19th century, when he sought the right to be elected to Parliament and other civil rights, is now behind him...
...However, in my own case, none of these functions has the priority that education does...
...It was founded in the year of the appointment of the first of the present series of Chief Rabbis, in 1844...
...And therefore, while we do rely largely on Parliamentary friends to make their opinions felt, and give expression to them both inside and outside Parliament, we would not limit this to what you might term the "Jewish lobby...
...It is almost as if we have created a generation of specialists...
...There are those who specialize in the defense of the Jews, devil-take-the hindmost, and others whose concern is with the wider society, the universalist values, and who ignore the importance of Jewish continuity...
...For instance, we have over 60 percent of the total community affiliated with synagogues, and of that number, over 80 percent belong to Orthodox synagogues, which is quite exceptional, and probably has no parallel anywhere else...
...In Britain, the office has a special character in that it wields greater authority over all other rabbinates...
...I have in mind in particular, of course, your own political statements...
...I have been around a little...
...One would suppose that a greater degree of integration and acceptance would lead to more assimilation...
...One must not of course forget that the system of government in Britain does not allow for the influence of lobbying in the same way as it does here, and therefore the function of the Jewish community in expressing its views on, say, notably Israel, or even Soviet Jewry, or other burning issues of the day, is quite different from what it is in the States...
...Hence my concern to devote the bulk of my interests and time to the promotion of intensive Jewish education...
...But one should not forget that these represent fringe elements on the Orthodox horizon...
...But I think that the negative factor of the low level of education at the general schools is not the major motivation for parents to send their children to Jewish schools— although it is, of course, a factor...
...British Jews don't like innovation and experimentation...
...And this will depend on the degree to which we can try and recapture the masses of our young people to the thrills of Jewish learning and Jewish living...
...Well, only potentially so...
...Well, that, again, is one of the characteristic contrasts between the Anglo-Jewish and the American Jewish mentality, and I think it reflects the attitudes of society at large...
...But in the staunchly and intensely committed section of the community, the opposite factors operate—that is, an extraordinarily high birth-rate, and, virtually for the first time in our modern history, the almost non-existence of any dropout rates, rates which were very significant until, say, 10 or 20 years ago...
...I mean, I meet literally thousands of people every week, because of my multifarious activities that take me up and down the country, and enable me to meet virtually every grouping within the Jewish community at least once a year, in one form or another...
...In Britain, this office goes back originally to 1696, with the rabbinate of the Great Synagogue in London, and assumed its present form with the appointment of Nathan Adler as Chief Rabbi in 1844...
...The great bulk of the element that has now enjoyed such a remarkable comeback is made up of two major sections...
...But, in terms of issues that are under discussion, both at the leadership level and at the ordinary lay level, the degree of seriousness, and of balanced judgment, and even of a willingness to listen to opinions that one doesn't share, is greater in Britain than it is in the States, where discussions are often far more superficial and slogan-ridden, and also more subject to whimsical changes...
...To me, this is no problem...
...This would often include a very eloquent non-Jewish spokesman as well, who would speak on exactly the same level as his Jewish counterparts...
...This doesn't reflect a process of deliberate choice...
...It's as if we assign different missions to different groups within the community, and that's not the way it was supposed to be...
...There is equally a desire by many parents today to give their children what they themselves missed out on, and while formerly parents thought of this only in material terms, wanting children to get the benefits that were denied to them when they were children, they now feel that not having had the advantage of a good Jewish education themselves, at least their children should...
...Presumably because the party is so very much stronger in England than in the States...
...is devoted to education...
...Is that a proper concern, or is that a concern you share...
...The phenomenon is all the more remarkable since both these worlds, the Yeshiva world and the Chassidic world, had been virtually destroyed in the Holocaust...
...Do you have anything more than intuition to go on in making that claim...
...by and large, all our institutions today are of 19th century origin...
...j The values in which we believed have been shown to be not only nonexistent, but in fact they have been replaced by a form of decadence and brutality that we hadn't suspected to exist in such a vicious form...
...We are now raising millions of pounds, for both new school construction, and extension of existing schools, and above all, for intensification of Jewish studies at these schools, by way of better teaching, teacher-training facilities, and so on...
...But people don't bother to check their facts, or their allegations, and that is something that you wouldn't find on quite the same scale in Britain...
...Much is being done on this, and considerable progress has been made, but the process would have to be greatly accelerated...
...It was the only expression of Judaism...
...Let's assume that your predictions about the growing centrality of Orthodoxy, given the birthrate, given the very high morale of the Orthodox movement, are correct, and that within a generation or so, there is in effect a return to that time when there was no such thing as Orthodox Judaism, because the two words were synonymous...
...Of course, some people question the wisdom of expressing any controversial opinions on these matters...
...It so happens that in Britain, which is a predominantly traditional community, all day schools are Orthodox...
...And therefore, the average English Jew is far better informed about Jewish affairs than I find the average American Jew to be...
...I think the significance of this phenomenon has been largely overlooked, or insufficently recognized...
...Roughly, what does JIA raise annually...
...He wants, whenever reference is made to priests and ministers, rabbis to be mentioned in the same breath, or churches and synagogues...
...It's a tradition so remote, so distant from anything we know in the States...
...It doesn't exist in Britain, for instance, or in most other European, and other overseas, communities...
...But again, it is not by way of representations in the form that they are made in the States, because of the difference of the system of government, which in Britain is simply less amenable to lobbying pressure of this kind...
...But in our allocation of resources, Israel takes a far higher priority than it does for you...
...The American Jew is outgoing, he is an extrovert...
...Well, that again of course is a reflection of the difference between the high degree of centralization in England and the fragmentation that obtains in America...
...But I would imagine that if an answer is to be found for such people, it would eventually have to be an indigenous Israeli answer, probably finding expression by some broadening of the Orthodox message...
...Eventually, we will have to recover our balance, come to terms with what clearly is an imperfect world, and perhaps feel all the more challenged to contribute towards its perfection, as we did in the past...
...The Chief Rabbi is also, by law, the Chairman of a Rabbinical Commission that endorses shochtim, and no one can practice ritual slaughter in the country without such authorization...
...The resurgence of Orthodoxy is one of the most astounding phenomena of the post-war Jewish world...
...Unhappily, those who look upon themselves as, in your words, specialists in the area of attending to the wider world-view, have very few Jewish insights and perceptions to offer to the betterment of the human order...
...Yes, to some extent...
...Instead, Orthodoxy appears to be operating out of a sense of insecurity...
...How important is the Chronicle...
...All my other work would be of little significance if I didn't insure that there was another generation of Jews to take over, and this can only be achieved by strengthening Jewish education...
...As I said before, there are something like 200 in number, and their representatives then elect an executive that makes the choice, and eventually issues a call to the favored candidate...
...That is something that has been my major theme in various addresses and writings over at least the past 20 years or so...
...I studied in England and held my first three positions in London until 1949, when I was called to assume the Chief Rabbinate of Ireland, in succession to Chief Rabbi Herzog, who had left thirteen years earlier to become Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land...
...above all, as I said earlier, the disillusionment with a world that has betrayed us...
...He loves not only exposure, but often overexposure...
...I'm wondering, in particular, to what degree the non-separation of Church and State in England affects the character and culture of the community...
...But in effect, by virtue of the seniority of his office, the Chief Rabbi is the religious spokesman of the entire community and that would include even elements of the community that do not come under his jurisdiction, as far as representation or spokesmanship is concerned...
...I recall, to stay with the philanthropic endeavor for a moment, that you once observed that there are stylistic differences between American Jewish philanthropists and their English counterparts...
...A generation where brains mean everything, achievement per se is rewarded with high honors, and the heart is left to atrophy...
...And that sense often correlates with a political fundamentalism...
...In your most recent statement you suggested that the silent majority of English Jewry shares your relatively dovish views on Israel...
...It is my impression that any non-Orthodox form of religious commitment in Israel will never be indigenous there, because these are, after all, specifically "galut" manifestations of response to pressures that were unique to the Diaspora experience...
...In Britain, he likes to understate his wealth, and therefore if he has the 100 thousand, he would like to appear as if he had SO thousand...
...I founded the Jewish Educational Development Trust, which now for the first time attends to Jewish educational requirements, especially at school level, on a community-wide basis...
...In America, I find the situation is different, because of this state-and-church issue...
...In fact, they are usually ignorant of the Jewish stand in these areas...
...And this attitude also is reflected in philanthropy...
...On the other hand, because it is a community with a long and venerable history, it tends to be backward-looking rather than forward-looking, so it is far less enterprising than American Jewry...
...Prior to this position, you were in the States for a while...
...So that it is only in this hemisphere that Chief Rabbinates have not been established, other than in some South American countries...
...Now this has a bearing on the question that you put to me...
...The reactions to debates of any kind, as I said, vary greatly from country to country, and in this particular controversy I had this very dramatically illustrated to me...
...The number is somewhat on the decline, for reasons, of course, that apply to virtually all other Jewish communities today, notably our unconscionably low Jewish birth rate...
...It's never very easy to calibrate, and throughout the Jewish world today, most notably in Orthodox circles, but visibly in other quarters of the community as well, perhaps in a reaction to the earlier and somewhat naive secular messian-ism, there is a somewhat distorted emphasis on the "im ein ani li mi li" element of Jewish life—"if I am not for myself, who will be for me"—to the detriment of the commitment to the "u'ch'sheani I'atzmi mah ani" element—if I am only for myself, what am I...
...The American Jew wants to achieve something that is in a way unattainable—that he will be granted equal rights not only as an individual, but that as a group the Jews must also enjoy equality...
...That sounds very much like the classic debate in industry between centralizers and decentralizers...
...For instance, no marriage can be performed at any of the 200-odd synagogues under my jurisdiction without an authorization being issued by my office...
...It does reflect, I think, a growing fear by parents that if they lose their children as Jews, they're likely to lose them as human beings as well, because of vice, of the drug culture and of other forms of escape from the values that they cherish...
...No synagogue rabbi can perform a marriage without receiving such an authorization, just as he must have a civil license before he can register such a marriage...
...Whereas in England, that wave, although much larger than the number of native Anglo-Jews at the time, nevertheless completely integrated into the existing order, and eventually became part of it...
...Is Orthodoxy ready for that kind of power...
...That sounds familiar...
...I greatly respect their view, though again I cannot share it...
...Extraordinarily responsive...
...But, of course, the fact is that until the last century that was the situation, and it was the authentic tradition, now called Orthodoxy, that in fact did insure Jewish continuity, and determined the destiny of our people...
...Not to the same extent...
...In any public issue, he would like to see Jewish opinion presented on the front page of the New York Times, and rabbis and an assortment of other leaders would try and make sure that they so appear, whether the issue concerns Vietnam or civil rights, or Watergate, or anything that is on the public agenda...
...So it is a profoundly and staunchly traditional community, and I could give any number of criteria to bear this out—the number of households that would be strictly kosher, and so on...
...Look at the very significant growth of the so-called Baal T'shuvah movements, now commanding quite a variety of institutions specifically geared to people who are groping, who've had no Jewish background and seek a new form of commitment, based of course on Orthodox traditional values...
...How do you feel in general about the political role of the Orthodox movement in Israel...
...So that the total amount raised for Israel is many times as high as what we raise for domestic requirements, even including education...
...In fact, there are quite a number of them, but they're mostly for American Jews...
...Can you walk us through your own personal history...
...The quality of leadership there is superb...
...If we have to run a modern state, then obviously pioneering and research work will have to be done to see how the timeless principles of Jewish law can be applied to the timely conditions involved in the administration of a modern state...
...But in the States, the entire debate takes place in a vacuum...
...Once you elect a party, they don't need every three weeks to take a straw vote on public opinion...
...And one of the themes that has run through my various presentations over the past three years has been not just my regret, but my criticism over the gradual loss of the universalist dimension, or the Prophetic dimension, in the contemporary presentation of Jewish values...
...Well, de facto, this is already the case...
...And that, of course, makes for a certain resistance to the adjustments that are necessary in order to maintain the commitment of the rising generation...
...The Jewish Chronicle is now the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world...
...when those who have expressed themselves publicly are challenged it turns out that they've not even read what I've actually stated, although my statements are available, and have been expressed and presented to the public in very, very full and comprehensive forms...
...Partly this will require a great deal of work in the purely technical aspects of the Halachah...
...I once said that so long as rabbis were in control of the Jewish destiny, the Ojie problem that Jews never faced, never even raised on their national agenda, was the problem of Jewish survival...
...We are now faced with an extraordinary form of polarization whereby vast numbers of Jews get lost and the overall demographic trends of our people indicate a minus-zero growth rate, by virtue of both a phenomenally low birth-rate and a startlingly high defection rate by assimilation and intermarriage...
...The main instrument of fund-raising, which is our JIA, unlike its counterpart in America, the UJA, does not include domestic causes at all, and therefore the main energies today, both in terms of manpower and in terms of motivation, are generated by Israel, which is by far the principal dynamic of Anglo-Jewish life...
...So Jews became more inward-looking, less concerned with the outside world, certainly less confident that if they only joined hands with the outside world, they'd become part of this inevitable progress towards the Utopia of human brotherhood that they were aiming for...
...So that there is a greater degree of integration and acceptance because of the virtual absence of self-consciousness about being Jewish...
...I recognize that this is so while at the same time acknowledging that there are valid reasons for this being so...
...These are informed guesses, because we have no absolute gauge for counting the number of Jews in Britain, but it is fairly reliable...
...All appointments of religious officials in congregations under the Chief Rabbi's jurisdiction require the Chief Rabbi's approval...
...This is more or less a purely intellectual movement of very intensive studies, conducted often for periods of 10 years or so, full-time, on a scale certainly never seen before in the Western world...
...And, in Jewish religious terms, this has been expressed by a return, by a search for roots and identification of the most committed sort...
...But that this distortion is, at the moment, a fact of Jewish life, and one which I regret and seek to redress, I cannot deny...
...Exactly...
...There's no British Jew in his senses who would take umbrage at the fact that the Queen is the Head of the Church of England, and that England is a Christian country...
...But it would not be automatic that because an MP happens to be Jewish he would be expected to, or indeed would respond to an expectation that he support the cause of Israel...
...There's nobody to prevent anyone from establishing a Conservative or Reform congregation in Israel...
...But I cannot see that a purely alien import, not only alien in the sense that it happens to come from abroad, but that it is conditioned by circumstances abroad, is going to be the answer to this problem...
...If I can go back to the issue of the Chief Rabbinate for a moment, how does one come to be elected, appointed, named as Chief Rabbi, and how does one, if at all, come to be removed from the office...
Vol. 5 • May 1980 • No. 5
