You wouldn’t ordinarily look to Preston when trying to assess the impact on Jewish life of the October 7 terror attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, but events in that Lancashire town over the past week reveal something about the way that Jews are getting squeezed out of parts of public life that, prior to this conflict, had previously been open to them.
Those who seek to exclude "zionists" from as many spheres of activity as possible need to be pressed to explain what exactly they mean by the term. (My impression is that they tend to be vague about this.) If they concede that their definition covers the majority of Jews (as it seems to), it will be pretty hard for them to maintain that they have nothing in common with the antisemites of all the previous centuries (and are in fact opponents of antisemitism, as some of them like to claim).
Maybe our community leaders need to be wary of whom they seek to engage in dialogue. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote, “With those who believe that Jews, alone among the nations of the world, are not entitled to their own land, it is hard to hold a conversation.”
This is my story of being hounded out of civic life. https://www.thejc.com/lets-talk/i-was-targeted-as-colleagues-stayed-silent-f3ri3gaj
Those who seek to exclude "zionists" from as many spheres of activity as possible need to be pressed to explain what exactly they mean by the term. (My impression is that they tend to be vague about this.) If they concede that their definition covers the majority of Jews (as it seems to), it will be pretty hard for them to maintain that they have nothing in common with the antisemites of all the previous centuries (and are in fact opponents of antisemitism, as some of them like to claim).
Maybe our community leaders need to be wary of whom they seek to engage in dialogue. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote, “With those who believe that Jews, alone among the nations of the world, are not entitled to their own land, it is hard to hold a conversation.”