December days: Board of Deputies
Dec. 14th, 2014 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo most of two years ago kerrypolka asked me about the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and I accidentally wrote five thousand words about the history and politics of Anglo-Jewry instead. So in this regular posting meme round, jack asked me again what the deal is with the Board.
So the thing that's amazing about the Board is that it was founded in 1760, counter to the impression many people have that British Jews are a 20th century phenomenon. The idea has always been to have an organization that can be considered to be meaningfully representative of the Jewish community, originally because they wanted to be able to congratulate George III on his accession to the throne as a community, rather than as individuals, but subsequently because it's very useful to have a moderate, reasonably pluralistic and representative group available to give quotes to the media and to lobby politically, rather than have journalists seeking out the most headline-grabbing extremist "Jewish" view they can find. (The Muslim Council of Britain is trying to achieve a similar unified voice for the Muslim community, though they are newer and have some teething problems.)
So the board has a quarter millennium of priding themselves on being respectable and establishment and British. Deputies are elected democratically by communities and affiliate organizations, so they have a reasonable case for actually representing the people they speak for. They have always tried to remain non-denominational, (the fact that they've managed to keep denominational politics mostly out of the Board is already a triumph; part of how they do that is insisting that Deputies have to be lay people and not rabbis or religious leaders, but still), being united behind a political consensus rather than focusing on religious differences. The consensus is basically that Jews should be part of modern British society, that British culture is our culture, and that we believe in what in the nineteenth century was called Liberalism and now is all about democracy and multiculturalism and such. And that we are loyal British citizens who "support" the State of Israel.
The last is of course the controversial thing. I think it arose out of the early Zionist political movement towards the end of the nineteenth century. The BoD threw their weight behind the view that there should be a Jewish state specifically in the Land of Israel, and lobbied the UK parliament accordingly. Once the state was established (and I have the recording of the UN vote echoing in my head,
Who gets elected to the Board of Deputies? Well, people who are active in synagogues, who are comfortable dealing with fairly influential orgs up to and including national level politics, who have enough free time and money to travel to London regularly... That tends to be a certain demographic, mostly retired people who are themselves fairly middle-class and pro-establishment. The Board is aware that these Deputies are becoming less and less representative of British Jewry as a whole, partly because a shrinking proportion of us are actually members of synagogues, and partly because obviously the community includes people under 60 and people who aren't really part of the middle class. So they're trying to reform and deal with that issue, while keeping the structure that's been successful for over 250 years.
So for example, they're trying to make room for Deputies who represent Jewish interest groups other than synagogues. This is of course problematic because it's a bit hard to work out who's entitled to elect a Deputy, if they don't have any formal membership of a defined group. And their attempts to reach out to younger folk have been mixed in success, partly because most young people simply can't afford the time commitment involved. And partly because the younger generation sees the Board as staid and boring and irrelevant, and partly because people my age and younger are increasingly unhappy with the must defend Israel no matter what stance. Lately there's been controversy over an organization called Yachad, meaning "Together" because groups causing big schisms always name themselves after unity. Yachad is a non-affiliated organization of younger Jews who explicitly support an independent state of Palestine, and want the Board, as the de facto voice of UK Jewry, to be able to criticize Israel when it's called for, as well as defending it. To an outsider it kind of looks like a storm in a teacup, honestly.
Anyway both my parents are Deputies, my Dad representing their local community in Cambridge, and my Mum one of a small number of representatives of the Reform movement as a whole. So I am hoping to get them to write a guest post some time cos they can talk more knowledgeably about the Board than I can. But generally I think the Board, for all its flaws, is a pretty excellent thing for the community to be able to support, giving the Jewish community as a whole a voice in politics and the media which is secular and political rather than purely based on religion.
[December Days masterpost]
kerrypolka asked me about the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and I accidentally wrote five thousand words about the history and politics of Anglo-Jewry instead. So in this regular posting meme round, jack asked me again what the deal is with the Board.So the thing that's amazing about the Board is that it was founded in 1760, counter to the impression many people have that British Jews are a 20th century phenomenon. The idea has always been to have an organization that can be considered to be meaningfully representative of the Jewish community, originally because they wanted to be able to congratulate George III on his accession to the throne as a community, rather than as individuals, but subsequently because it's very useful to have a moderate, reasonably pluralistic and representative group available to give quotes to the media and to lobby politically, rather than have journalists seeking out the most headline-grabbing extremist "Jewish" view they can find. (The Muslim Council of Britain is trying to achieve a similar unified voice for the Muslim community, though they are newer and have some teething problems.)
So the board has a quarter millennium of priding themselves on being respectable and establishment and British. Deputies are elected democratically by communities and affiliate organizations, so they have a reasonable case for actually representing the people they speak for. They have always tried to remain non-denominational, (the fact that they've managed to keep denominational politics mostly out of the Board is already a triumph; part of how they do that is insisting that Deputies have to be lay people and not rabbis or religious leaders, but still), being united behind a political consensus rather than focusing on religious differences. The consensus is basically that Jews should be part of modern British society, that British culture is our culture, and that we believe in what in the nineteenth century was called Liberalism and now is all about democracy and multiculturalism and such. And that we are loyal British citizens who "support" the State of Israel.
The last is of course the controversial thing. I think it arose out of the early Zionist political movement towards the end of the nineteenth century. The BoD threw their weight behind the view that there should be a Jewish state specifically in the Land of Israel, and lobbied the UK parliament accordingly. Once the state was established (and I have the recording of the UN vote echoing in my head,
United Kingdom: abstain), the Board continued to lobby in favour of Israel, defending the country against the kind of political slanders that have never really quietened down since 1948. But the fact that the Board have made it their mission to "defend" Israel is becoming increasingly a problem, because it means that by default they defend Israel even against accusations that are actually true.
Who gets elected to the Board of Deputies? Well, people who are active in synagogues, who are comfortable dealing with fairly influential orgs up to and including national level politics, who have enough free time and money to travel to London regularly... That tends to be a certain demographic, mostly retired people who are themselves fairly middle-class and pro-establishment. The Board is aware that these Deputies are becoming less and less representative of British Jewry as a whole, partly because a shrinking proportion of us are actually members of synagogues, and partly because obviously the community includes people under 60 and people who aren't really part of the middle class. So they're trying to reform and deal with that issue, while keeping the structure that's been successful for over 250 years.
So for example, they're trying to make room for Deputies who represent Jewish interest groups other than synagogues. This is of course problematic because it's a bit hard to work out who's entitled to elect a Deputy, if they don't have any formal membership of a defined group. And their attempts to reach out to younger folk have been mixed in success, partly because most young people simply can't afford the time commitment involved. And partly because the younger generation sees the Board as staid and boring and irrelevant, and partly because people my age and younger are increasingly unhappy with the must defend Israel no matter what stance. Lately there's been controversy over an organization called Yachad, meaning "Together" because groups causing big schisms always name themselves after unity. Yachad is a non-affiliated organization of younger Jews who explicitly support an independent state of Palestine, and want the Board, as the de facto voice of UK Jewry, to be able to criticize Israel when it's called for, as well as defending it. To an outsider it kind of looks like a storm in a teacup, honestly.
Anyway both my parents are Deputies, my Dad representing their local community in Cambridge, and my Mum one of a small number of representatives of the Reform movement as a whole. So I am hoping to get them to write a guest post some time cos they can talk more knowledgeably about the Board than I can. But generally I think the Board, for all its flaws, is a pretty excellent thing for the community to be able to support, giving the Jewish community as a whole a voice in politics and the media which is secular and political rather than purely based on religion.
[December Days masterpost]
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-14 08:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-14 11:56 pm (UTC)Yachad name: I have a post on the Filioque schism coming up in a few days, and that made me smile in connection with this considering that "Catholic" means "universal" ...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-15 11:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-15 11:28 am (UTC)