We are not going to agree about Israel.

April 27, 2023April 27, 2023 levtaylor

It is a blessing in synagogue life when rabbis really get on with each other, and I am so lucky that Rabbi Jordan and I do. We drop in and out of each other’s offices, check in on how the other is doing, and always look for ways to support each other.

And we don’t agree about Israel.

We don’t agree, and we’re not going to. That’s OK. That’s good. It means we can have real conversations. It means when we need to make decisions or work out our thoughts, we can bounce ideas off each other as critical friends.

Last week, after a discussion on Zionism, he did what he often does, and left an earmarked book on my desk. The book, edited by Rabbi Larry Englander, is called ‘The Fragile Dialogue.’ It includes various reflections on Israel.

The chapter Jordan highlighted was by a self-proclaimed TwentySomething Congregant. In a heartfelt letter to her rabbi, she pleads not be excluded from her synagogue because of her views on Israel. She speaks on behalf of her generation, which opposes occupation and supports boycotts. She begs that she, and the rest of the Jews of her generation, will not be cut off from their own communities.

The letter highlights something many of us already know but struggle to articulate: the debates around Israel and Zionism are largely generational.

These differences were visibly lived out last week at a funeral. The great Israeli singer and poet, Yehonatan Geffen, died. He had been a cultural icon, associated with the songs of Israeli childhood.

In three generations of his family, you can see the wildly different approaches to Israel.

Yehonatan Geffen’s uncle was Moshe Dayan, a fierce Israeli military chief famed for his eyepatch and hard right attitudes. He had been a combatant in Haganah, the guerilla army that founded Israel, led the IDF, and gone on to become a politician.

As far as he was concerned, the Holocaust left only one imperative: to conquer and settle the land and become so strong that Jews could never be hurt again. He pledged to blot out Palestine, and respond to hate with greater hate. He was a true hawk.

Fast forward to the funeral of his nephew. The mourners arrived wearing shirts that carried the slogan: אין דמוקרטיה עם כבוש – there is no democracy with occupation.

Yehonatan’s daughter, Shira Geffen, wore this slogan as she gave the hesped.

This slogan argues that Israelis cannot protest Netanyahu’s anti-democratic measures while ignoring the millions of Palestinians denied basic democratic rights to vote, freely assemble, and even walk to their homes without facing checkpoints and guns.

The t-shirts are produced by מסתכלים לכבוש בעיניים – an Israeli left organisation who insist on looking the occupation in the eye. They speak out about what they call “the power relations between the coloniser and the colonised,” urging the public to see how the occupation is destroying the dignity of Palestinians and the humanity of Israelis.

Sandwiched in the middle between these generations was the man they mourned, Yehonatan Geffen. He had been part of Israel’s cultural establishment, and a true icon. He was associated with what many Israelis saw as the best in their culture. One of his eulogisers was the centre-right politician Yair Lapid.

Geffen was also an outspoken peace campaigner. He wrote extensive criticisms of the army. In 2018, he wrote lyrics in praise of the Palestinian child protester, Ahed Tamimi, resulting in him being cancelled on Israeli military radio and censured by government officials.

Within one family, within one century, you can see such a huge diversity of Jewish views.

They do not agree about Israel. They will not agree. But they prayed together. They came together to say kaddish and mourning prayers. They joined each other as a family.

Of course, these differences of opinion on Israel are not just generations-based. I know anti-occupation activists in their 80s and I know pro-settlement campaigners in their teens. Nevertheless, what we have seen of Israel in our formative years is decisive.

I belong to Shira’s generation, and one of my most formative memories of Israel was witnessing the inexcusable assault on Gaza in 2009: Operation Cast Lead.

During the commemorations of Yom HaAtzmaut last week, I could not hide my discomfort. I find prayers for a state tantamount to idolatry, and when I hear blessings for troops, I can only think of those priests who poured holy water onto bombs. I do not see how one can pray for peace while praising the instruments of war.

Yet I understand why, for many in this community, honouring Israeli independence and those who fought for it feels like an important undertaking.

Some of you belong to the generation that came just after the Shoah. The memories of genocide and antisemitism still loom, and it is understandable that you should want to know there is some security against that. For you, defending Israel matters.

Others of you came up in the generation of Peace Now. You believed in Israel and its mission, and held onto its constitutional claims of what it would be: a safe haven for all its peoples. You hoped, even campaigned, for an Israel where Jewish culture could thrive while Palestinian minorities received justice and human rights. For you, holding on to that dream of what Israel could be matters.

My generation came after. I was born not long before the signing of the Oslo Accords, and came of age as they failed. During my 34 years on this planet, Netanyahu has been Israeli Prime Minister for nearly half of them. I have never known Israel as anything but the aggressor and the occupying power.

Based on our ages and experiences, we will have different views. If we cannot have disagreements about Israel, we cannot have an intergenerational community.

We will not agree about Israel. And that’s fine. That’s good.

Rabbinic literature prizes disagreement. One of my heroes in the Talmud is Rabbi Eliezer. He stood solidly by his principles, no matter how unpopular they were. It’s not that I agree with Eliezer’s principles: he was a conservative surrounded by liberals and radicals. It’s the fact that he held fast to what he believed.

He was so strict in his adherence to religious law that the other rabbis eventually excommunicated him. They wouldn’t talk to him unless he recanted his views, and he never did. Only at the end of his life did his students and colleagues realise what an error they had made by cutting him out.

They placed him in the Mishnah, the foundational Jewish text, as one of its most-cited rabbis. Even though they completely disagreed with him, you can find his opinions everywhere.

The Maharasha says the reason for this is for future generations. While one position may be minority at one time, it may become majority, and those who follow will need to know what they rest on. Even if they never agree with it, they need to see how the conclusions they support were reached.

This is why we welcome disagreements: for the sake of intergenerational conversation.

For those growing up now, they are entering a polarised and febrile environment.

Future generations will develop their own politics, and find their own relationships to Israel, Zionism, and the occupation.

And I hope they can do so within the synagogue.

I hope they will find an environment that embraces Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists. I hope they will find communities that do not impose red lines that keep them out. I worry that the TwentySomething writing to her rabbi will be proven right, and synagogues will become platforms for single positions on Israel.

What then? Will we split into Zionist and anti-Zionist shuls? Will we keep splitting further, based on varying different policy proposals for what should happen in the Middle East? Those aren’t synagogues – those are political parties!

Such divisions have pulled apart Reform communities before. In the period prior to World War II, Zionists were forbidden from studying at Hebrew Union College, the Reform Rabbinical school in America. This meant that for nearly a century you could not be a Zionist and become a Reform rabbi. One early Reform Zionist, Maurice Perlzweig, said that professing his views in polite Jewish company was like admitting to being a member of the Flat Earth Society.

At the turn of the century, the Reform Movement completely reversed its position. The 1997 Miami Platform declared that Reform Judaism was unequivocally Zionist. It said that Jews were a people; that we should all move to Israel and build it up. Ensuing from that came a programme parallel to the early push to exclude Zionists from the Jewish community, but this time, flipped: to exclude critical voices from the Jewish community and maintain only a pro-Israel consensus.

Is this really what we want? Do we want to keep going back and forth drawing new lines depending on which position has the upper hand? Do we want to enforce conformity of political views in Reform congregations?

Surely what we stand for is bigger than that! Surely our Judaism, our God, our people is bigger than that!

The joy of a synagogue is that it brings together so many different people. Where else are you going to find people of different backgrounds, classes, genders, abilities, beliefs, and ethnicities, all under one roof, bound together by something greater than themselves? Only the synagogue – greek for beit knesset – the House of Gathering – can achieve that.

We are not going to convince each other of our political opinions, and that’s fine. That’s good. If we have a space filled with diverse views, we have a community. If you have uniformity, you have an echo chamber.

We are Reform because we understand that the Jews of tomorrow will not look like the Jews of yesterday. The Judaism of tomorrow will not look like the Judaism of yesterday. Reform Judaism is an ongoing commitment to learn and struggle and grow, always adapting to new ideas and developments. That is what makes it Reform.

And what makes it Jewish is that we do it together. We hold on to belief in the same God, the same cause, the same traditions. We hold all the manifold opinions of the congregation in a single setting.

So, let us answer the question posed in Larry Englander’s book: will this TwentySomething be excluded from her synagogue?

More pressingly, will she have a home in ours?

The answer depends on how we act. If we draw red lines and kick people out based on their views; if we define our Judaism solely by its relationship to Israel; if we make public policies about the synagogue’s stance, then, no. She probably will not.

On the other hand, we can model an alternative Jewish future. A better Jewish future. A Jewish future where we don’t repeat the mistakes and have the same regrets as the framers of the Mishnah. A Jewish future based on plurality and discussion. We can demonstrate through our relationships with each other and the synagogue that Judaism is diverse, creative and engaging across divisions.

We can show that we do not have to agree. Even about Israel.

Shabbat shalom.

Jews are coming home

December 4, 2021December 4, 2021 levtaylor

The 1996 UEFA Cup was when I first truly became aware of football. I was 7. Everyone was talking about it. My mum, a proud Glaswegian, made sure all the neighbours knew that she would be supporting Germany in the upcoming semifinal. Still, she seemed to feel little glee when England inevitably lost on penalties.

Football, I soon discovered, was not for me, but I still enjoyed the atmosphere. In the last UEFA Cup, I couldn’t help but join in the excitement and feel the buzz of possibility. Everywhere, you could hear a song that had been popularised in the first competition I could remember. Football’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming…

Legendary comedian, Frank Skinner, and his Fantasy Football League co-host, David Baddiel, wrote the song: ‘Three Lions’. It is more than a catchy anthem. It tries to put forward a vision of the nation that is about shared struggles and optimism in the face of defeat. It speaks to something wonderful: the joy of being an underdog; the thrill of hoping for a victory that might never be realised; the bittersweetness of feeling like your favourite thing belonged in your favourite place, but was also part of a much wider world.

Recently, David Baddiel has come back into the public consciousness, this time with a new memorable slogan. Jews Don’t Count. This was the title of his book, published earlier this year, which seems to have been read by every politician and pundit in Britain. It is accessibly-written by a popular writer. Many Jews have a copy. Some have come to cite the book’s title, as if it were already a well-established truism.

This meant that, last week, as the Royal Court Theatre showcased a play where the main character was a greedy billionaire called Hershel Fink, whose climax is the sacrifice of a child, pundits asked whether this was evidence that ‘Jews Don’t Count.’

This week, when a group of teenagers attacked a bus full of Haredi kids celebrating Hanukkah on Oxford Street, the incident was treated within the prism of whether Jewish suffering matters. That is a narrow way to look at antisemitism, probably never even intended by the book’s author.

The most common criticism of Baddiel has been that he is the wrong messenger. 25 years ago, he dressed up as black footballer Jason Lee by covering his face in brown paint and putting a pineapple on his head. The offensive image sticks in many people’s minds, so they question how well-equipped he is to speak on racism.

Baddiel addresses this in his book. He says that he has already apologised, and, in any case, the people criticising him for doing blackface are the real racists because they think his historic racism invalidates his current experiences of antisemitism. He cites the example of Malcolm X, who despite having made antisemitic comments in the past, is still upheld as a visionary of anti-racism.

What Baddiel seemingly misses is that Malcolm is an icon precisely because of his journey. He went from a pimp to a fundamentalist to a person committed to the liberation of all people. His earlier mistakes are viewed in light of where he ended up. If only all of us could be so willing to publicly make mistakes, learn, and grow.

Still, I don’t think it is helpful to criticise Baddiel as a man. We must engage with the content of what he has to say. The book’s thesis is that there is an oppression Olympics taking place, and Jews should have better odds of winning than the bookies have given them. It doesn’t challenge the idea of whether there is such a thing as a competition over who has suffered most, nor whether such a contest would be desirable. He just wants everyone to be clear that Jews have suffered as much as anyone else.

In only the opening pages, Baddiel bemoans hearing an antisemitic poem on the BBC and insists “no other minority group would be compared to rats, or envisaged as any similar negative racist stereotype, on Radio 4.” The claim is bizarre. The last few years have seen intense attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers, often likening them to vermin and plagues. Barely a day goes by without some racist dog-whistle making it into our mainstream press.

Even if Baddiel was right, and it was only Jews who were subjected to bigotry in national media, his complaint about other minorities’ treatment is far from helpful. Freedom is not a finite resource and tolerance is not in short supply. If others did have more of it, our task would be to make the case for why we need it too, not to undermine others’ gains. Setting up the struggle against antisemitism as a competition with other antiracist struggles only weakens potential allegiances and undermines our cause.

But more than sending out the wrong signals to other minorities, this book gives the wrong message to Jews. It reads every silence as hatred, complicity or indifference. We are alone. Nobody likes us. The right wants to destroy us and the left doesn’t care. We are isolated on an island where nobody cares about our suffering and the only solution is to wallow in our own self-pity.

If Jews were a football team in this narrative, we would be Manchester United: unfairly reviled by everyone simply for being successful. No one likes us and we are very upset about it.

At a time when the British Jewish community already feels beleaguered and lacking confidence, it is unsurprising that such a depressing message has taken hold. But is it helpful? Does it give us clarity about what antisemitism is and how to combat it? Does it strengthen our position as a people and foster solidarity with others?

Part of the problem with Baddiel’s analysis is that his main objection is to The Guardian and its readers. I am not a reader of The Guardian, so perhaps I underestimate its importance. But I do find it hard to accept that the problem of antisemitism begins with middle-class liberal progressives. Some may well be antisemitic, and I have no doubt that some are ignorant of Jewish experiences of prejudice. But they are hardly the part of British society that worries me most.

Antisemitism is not just an exchange between two people, or a trade-off between different groups, but a system that has been embedded in Europe for over a millennium. Since medieval times, Jews have been used as a racialised buffer class between the peasants and the elites.

Jews were not citizens of the countries where they lived, but treasured subjects, offered physical protections by the monarchs if they did the most undesirable jobs. They were tax collectors, money lenders, merchant traders, and publicans.

This precarious position meant that, when things turned bad, the poor would not storm the castles but then their ire on the middlemen. The elites actively encouraged pogroms. They spread blood libels and shady conspiracies about how the Jews were really the ones with all the power.

Antisemitism continues to work in the same way. Jews are not kept at the bottom of the barrel, nor are we permitted entry into the upper echelons. We do enjoy privileges that other minorities do not, and we do nevertheless experience discrimination and stereotyping.

That is the context in which we must view the recent ordeal at the Royal Court. They put on an antisemitic play, not because progressives are indifferent to Jewish suffering, but because British theatre is entrenched in centuries-old systems of promoting Jews as lascivious and money-grabbing. They reproduced the same images of Shylock and Fagin that have been used to promote antisemitism for years.

That is also the context in which we need to view the group of teenagers attacking a bus of Jewish kids celebrating Hanukkah. They didn’t harass them because they were indifferent Guardian-reading liberals. Far from it. They attacked them because they have grown up in an antisemitic system, imbibed its propaganda, and believed its lies. Any theory of oppression that doesn’t focus on its real origins will only address the symptoms at the expense of the root cause.

When we understand that antisemitism is systemic, we can see that the way to combat it is by directing our criticisms at the system itself. Outbursts of violence on the street are only terrifying results of something more deeply rooted.

It is in our interest, then, to join our struggle that of all other victims of racism. It is necessary to treat other minorities not as adversaries for attention from well-meaning liberals, but as allies in a struggle for fundamental change.

I hold on to a faith that such change is possible.

In this sense, Baddiel’s original classic of ‘Football’s coming home’ speaks much more closely to my experience of being a Jew in Britain. It is not that I believe things are great, but that they could be. It is not that I feel like we are always doing well, but I feel invested in the struggle to get there. I am joined to others by a misty-eyed possibility of what this country could be. I hold out hope for ultimate redemption that may one day come, and work with others towards that goal. Like England fans, no amount of hurt has ever stopped me dreaming.

This place where we live really is our home, and it is also somewhere that we must make our home. It has been where we belong and we must shape it into a space we never want to leave. We are here, and we are not yet, because we always have some way to go. Together, with all victims of oppression, we are always coming home.

Jews are coming home, we’re coming home, we’re coming…

debate · israel · sermon

The end of the two state solution

May 9, 2020May 9, 2020 levtaylor

In 1982, Rabbi David Goldberg, z”l, gave a sermon so controversial that half the congregation at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue stormed out. The other half stuck around for the rest of it just to make sure they disagreed.

I have no way of knowing whether this was strictly true, but it is certainly plausible. It is most believable because, even though I haven’t yet mentioned the word, you already know which topic would elicit such a reaction.

Israel. Of course it is Israel. It is a topic so contentious that friends and families have refused to speak to each other over it. As a result, although I do have strong views on the matter, I have so far managed to go three years without preaching on it. I have been strongly tempted to do the same thing today and just speak about the Torah portion, but I feel that I cannot do so this week.

What has happened in Israeli politics in the last two weeks will likely fundamentally change the way that Diaspora Jewry will engage with the country. Already every major Jewish communal body has released a statement, some of which I know have been circulated among members of this community. It would be a cowardly dereliction of duty if I did not comment.

If you are surprised by the gravity of what I’m saying, it’s not because you’ve missed anything. There is no new president or prime minister. No new war, no withdrawal, no peace treaty, no assassination. What has happened is really the result of bureaucratic decision making at the end of another stalemate election. But its result is that the fabled two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is now impossible.

Previously, sitting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that if he won the next general election, he would annex the Jordan Valley. In the last year, there have been three elections, each resulting in impossibly hung parliaments, but it looks like Bibi has now secured the majority to pursue his agenda.

As such, he will now go through with his plan for annexation, supported by the smaller right wing parties in the Knesset. That means that the entire Jordan Valley will become formally part of Israel. There will remain isolated enclaves of Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza, but what remains of Palestinian territory will never form a viable state.

For most Palestinians, this won’t mean much of a change to their daily lives. For some time now, West Bank Palestinians have lived under Israeli rule. Although able to elect representatives to the Palestinian Authority, Israel has maintained control over the military, borders and economy. Israeli control will become tighter and more far-reaching, but annexation will only formalise a policy that has been in place since at least 2005.

Nor will it make a difference to most Israelis. With official backing from Donald Trump and the United States, an international military backlash is unlikely. It is already the case that few Israelis live east of Jerusalem. For those who do live in settlements, their private security will likely be supplemented by state army support.

There will, however, be a shift in Israel’s relationship with its Jewish diaspora, especially among progressives. Most Jews in Britain do consider themselves connected to Israel, but want a just peace, even if it means giving up land or power. For decades, Diaspora Jewish support for Israel has been contingent on the possibility of a peaceful solution that involved a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

With Israel’s proposed annexation, a Palestinian state will now become formally impossible. I suspect that the two state solution has not been truly viable for some time. But if the door was closed before, it is now being locked.

In response to these unfolding events, Rabbi Lea Muhlstein of the Liberal Zionist group Artzeinu released a statement insisting that the two state solution was still possible. I am afraid I do not see how. Most efforts to defend the viability of the two state solution seem more concerned with reassuring Diaspora Jewry than with grappling with the conditions on the ground.

Diaspora Jewry is, however, not reassured, and the British community has seen considerable fallout. The President of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, urged communal unity as representatives from StandWithUs, Habonim Dror and LJY-Netzer wrote to express their opposition.

Even in unlikely quarters, people are lining up to attack Bibi’s decision. Sir Mick Davis, former Treasurer of the Conservative Party, has urged against annexation, saying that it would run contrary to Jewish values.

I think that is right, and that the values that would be contravened are given in precisely this parashah. Moses tells the Israelites: “You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike.” (Lev 24:22) Both right and responsibility, privilege and punishment, must be the same for all those living under the same rule.

Annexation will create a situation in which a people is formally and irrevocably governed by a party it did not elect and could not deselect. It will formalise a tiered class system, where Jewish Israelis have full rights, Palestinian citizens of Israel have fewer and West Bank Palestinians have none, while all live in the same space under the same rule. This is unjustifiable.

Most of the attacks against Bibi’s plans seemed to have focused on belated efforts to salvage the two state solution. As I have made clear, I think that option is already politically defunct. But that does not mean progressives must give up entirely on any hope of a just solution in the Middle East.

One possibility which has so far only been advocated from the political fringes is of enfranchising the Palestinians. It is, strangely, a position that unites both some settlers and Israel’s radical left, but has been considered outside of acceptable political discourse among mainstream Diaspora Jewry until recently.

If Israel is to be a single state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, let it be a democratic one, where everyone who lives there has full voting rights and representation. The Palestinians should be able to set the political direction of the country just as much as Israelis, if it is indeed to be one country.

The main reason that this has remained a fringe view is that it would certainly mean an end to a Jewish political majority. The Palestinians living in the region almost outnumber the Israelis and could thus theoretically out-vote them. As such, Israel would cease to be a Jewish state, at least in an ethnic sense.

In that sense, a single democratic state could not be considered within the spectrum of Zionist opinion. But I am less concerned by the certainty of an ethnic Jewish majority than I am by the moral standing of the Jewish people.

If Israel is indeed willing to implement policies tantamount to occupation, segregation and apartheid, and the Diaspora Jewish community does indeed continue to meet such policies with indifference and even support, what will be left of Judaism? Who are Jews if we refuse our God-given task of being a light unto the nations? What are we if we do not meet but exceed the ethical standards our tradition has taught us?

For years, Progressive Zionists have faced a tension between being progressives and being Zionists. Many have managed to hold nuanced aspirations that balanced their desire for peace with their desire for security; their commitment to other Jews with their commitment to all humanity; their belief that Israel could be both Jewish and democratic. That tightrope has now fallen under the weight of the two poles it was balancing, and most Jews will have to choose one or the other. Politically, they will either be Progressives or they will be Zionists.

Given a choice between a Jewish state and Jewish ethics, I will certainly choose the latter. But even then, I do not think that abandoning the idea of Jewish ethnic majority means sacrificing concern for Israelis’ ability to live and thrive where they are now. I believe it is fully possible for Israel to maintain its cultural autonomy and distinctly Jewish character without clinging to an ethnically based majority or to political supremacy.

The third largest grouping in the Israeli Knesset is the Joint List – a coalition of Palestinian and Jewish leftists. They are non-Zionists who hope for joint political power between Israelis and Palestinians.

Their leader is Ayman Odeh, a lawyer from Haifa. He has now become the de factol opposition leader as Gantz goes into coalition with Bibi. In 2015, in his maiden speech before the Israeli Parliament, he shared his vision for the country:

The year is 2025, the 10-year plan to combat racism and inequality has borne fruit. Hundreds of thousands Arab employees have been integrated into the private sector, the high-tech economy and the public service.

The social gaps between Arab and Jewish citizens have been reduced remarkably and the economy has been prosperous for the benefit of all residents.

Jews are learning Arabic, Arabs are diligently honing their Hebrew skills. Jewish and Arab students are being introduced to the great thinkers and philosophers of both peoples.

His vision has become my vision. That aspiration for a just, peaceful and shared country chimes more with my idea of what would constitute a Jewish state than one based on racial ideas of citizenship or Orthodox ideas of laws.

I hope that, as you wrestle with the tensions that will be drawn out over the coming weeks and years, others will be able to support that dream.

Of course, many will not. Despite the calls for unity, I think this is more a time for diversity. A collapse in political consensus need not mean fallout of the Diaspora Jewish community, but could mean a flourishing of new ideas and renewed conversations. We now have a true opportunity to intellectually engage each other about what Israel’s future will be and how we will relate to it.

If nothing else, I hope that at least less than half of you will storm out in anger.

Shabbat shalom.

israel palestine flags

I gave this sermon over Zoom on Saturday 9th May 2020 (Parashat Emor) for Three Counties Liberal Judaism. I am especially grateful to Tal Janner-Klausner, for being my political tour guide of Israel-Palestine, and for all their help with editing this sermon.

debate · Uncategorized

Can religion play a positive role in progressive politics?

February 16, 2019May 21, 2019 levtaylor

When Keir Hardie set up the Labour Party, he broke with many of the radicals who had preceded him by trying to organise his efforts where working class people really were: in the trade unions and the low church. He reached out to people in both their chapels – the ones where they organised their workplaces, and the ones where they organised their communities.

Since that time, both the trade unions and religious organisations have greatly declined in British public life, and in both cases we’re worse for it. Those traditional ways for people to meet, share culture, build up solidarity and envision a better future have been completely eroded. We’ve been left open to the worst austerity, neoliberal privatisation and attacks on the rights of marginalised people that we’ve ever known. Our lack of organisation and community has meant we’ve been constantly on the back foot, struggling against forces much stronger than us.

On the left, everyone acknowledges the decline in trade unionism for what it has been: a massive setback for working-class organising, an onslaught that has left us weaker, more divided and more isolated. But, to listen to some on the left talk, you’d think that the decline of religion was somehow a victory for our side. Millions of Britons no longer know their neighbours, no longer have any idea about the births, deaths, illnesses, tragedies and joys that are going on in their communities. Young people grow up without any access to traditional songs, stories and culture that was central to previous generations and instead only get the official versions of history. They learn that Churchill and Thatcher were heroes, but they never hear about the religious movements that shaped the country they live in, like the Chartists, Levellers and Quakers. People have completely lost connection to their community, and we’re supposed to somehow celebrate that as an accomplishment.

Absolutely not. Religion isn’t the dark force that it’s been painted, but has been one of the greatest forces for progress and radical change. Keir Hardie recognised that. Socialists of previous generations were able to see the positive role religion could play because they were able to draw a necessary distinction. I say that Kier Hardie organised in the low church, because that’s where he was. He didn’t go out to the priests and the bishops and the high-ranking officials who’d latched on to state power. He was interested in the lay preachers. And that’s because there is a crucial difference between religion as it is imposed from above and religion created from below.

Like with all forms of culture, religion can go one of two ways: it can be a bourgeois, reactionary force that bolsters the forces of power, or it can be an emancipatory, proletarian force that empowers people to challenge systemic violence. I am not here to defend Iranian morality police, Bush’s crusader Christianity, the violent Islamophobia of India’s BJP, still less Kahanists in Israel. I do not want to defend religion’s connection to that kind of politics in any way.

But we need to be clear: the problem with connecting those politics to religion isn’t with religion itself, but with the politics we connect them to. I don’t want religion to play a role in the state – I want to abolish it. I don’t want religion to play a role in war – I want to abolish war. I don’t want religion to play a role in capital, the police, imperialism or the structures that uphold patriarchy, because in every case I want to abolish them.

The politics I’m interested in is politics from below – the struggles of working-class people, women, LGBT people, colonised, enslaved and massacred people to realise their own destinies and take control over the world. I think religion can play a very positive role there. It has done throughout the ages, and religion can continue to be a source of strength for all oppressed people.

When I talk about this religion for oppressed people, this isn’t an innovation. I’m not taking the message of religion and twisting it to meet my own ends. Quite to the contrary: combating oppression has been built into the meaning of religion since its inception. The earliest written religious texts, the Hindu Vadics, bring together a worldview that opposes all forms of systemic violence, from state warfare to animal consumption. The Torah is the story of rebel slaves turned refugees trying to build a just society. The prophet Amos denounced the ruling class of ancient Judea for stealing the spoils of the poor and hoarding them. The prophet Isaiah tells the rich that their prayers are worthless because they exploit people while they deliver them. Jesus comes to take direct action against money-lenders and the hypocrites that collaborate with a colonising army. The Talmud is a lengthy exegesis in how to bring anti-oppressive practices into every part of a person’s life. The Prophet Muhammad comes to affirm the unity and dignity of all of humanity, and to insist that people are treated as if they all contain the spark of the divine. Sikhism tries to break down all the barriers that differentiate religions, genders and ethnicities into one universalising faith. Religion, at its core, is anti-oppression. Don’t the politicians know that the God they claim to believe in despises them and their prayers?

Holy texts are brimming full of admonishments against the ruling class. Reactionaries leap on passing references to sexuality and gender difference, separate them from all context, and use them as a pretext to persecute people. They take what is a radical idea, focused on bringing about the kind of change socialists want to see, and they manipulate it to suit their own ends.

But everyone needs to see that the religious tradition of speaking truth to power is much better represented by our heroes than by our enemies. It’s represented by all the religious activists who worked to end slavery, the ones who fought for democracy and debt relief, the anti-colonial fighters and the indigenous revolutionaries. They represent that prophetic tradition.

Two key people from the Black civil rights movement come to mind here: Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Malcolm X – a Muslim minister in the slums of Chicago and New York, Martin Luther King Jr, a Christian reverend in America’s deep south. Both of them built their organising around their religious institutions and the deep network of Black faith communities across the USA. They based their activism around their religious buildings, religious texts, and religious traditions. Are you going to tell me that they didn’t play a positive role in politics?

It’s not like they could have done what they did without their religions either. Certainly they couldn’t have turned to the unions. At that time, the white-run unions were mostly fighting against black inclusion in workplaces and were trying to uphold segregation in places. They could be racist, reactionary lobbies, and their record of beating up protesters against the Viet Nam war and siding with anti-miscegenation politicians shouldn’t be quickly forgotten. That’s the context in which they were organising, and it was the religions that gave them the strength as a group to fight for their rights.

More than that, the turning point in the struggle for civil rights was when the white religious leaders from across the country came down to join the Black protesters in Selma, Alabama and showed that the weight of public opinion and that the moral voice of the country was firmly on the side of those protesters. The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church was on the frontlines, alongside the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said “when I marched, I felt that my feet were praying.”

When religion is in the hands of the working-class, and when it is used as a fountain for oppressed people to draw strength from, it is a powerful and challenging force. But if you pour scorn on religion, and you say that it’s irredeemable, you hand over religion to the bigots. If you say you don’t want anything to do with it, then you’re leaving that source of power to be controlled by reactionaries. No wonder people wind up believing that God is a homophobic, misogynistic, capitalist demon if you completely disavow religion and leave it in the hands of the right.

Socialists who have engaged with religions have seen incredible success. When the Latin revolutionaries, the Sandinistas, started out with atheistic, anti-religious Marxist arguments, they remained an isolated minority who had no relationship at all to the people. The ultimate success of the Nicaraguan revolution only came about because of the rise in liberation theology and the willingness of socialists to engage with the church.

Vatican II of 1959 wanted to see the church more closely aligned with the poor and, as part of implementing this, Catholic activists set up “Christian base communities” rooted in poor favelas. These were the first platform from which poor communities could start organising against the capitalist authoritarian Somoza regime in Nicaragua, and it was not an accident. Church theologians of Latin America wrote explicitly about their need to bring their religious beliefs to a political mission. Liberation theology saw that the things most despised by Christianity: individualism, competition, materialism and greed were, in fact, integral to capitalism.

High-ranking bishops and the papacy were, of course, hostile to the work of these low-level bishops and sided with the regime. The upper echelons of the church had to come into direct conflict with their own members initially, but by 1977, the grassroots Catholic activists had been so successful in transforming the church that when Somoza’s newspaper Novedades asked the church to clarify its position, even the high-ranking officials were forced to side with the bishops against what they called institutionalised violence and inequality.

These are not just interesting facts from history – they have a strong bearing on the present day. In my own organising in the Jewish community, I’ve seen how religions can play such a powerful role in activism. Synagogues have preserved the memory of what it meant to be refugees, how Jews came to this country hidden in the bowels of boats and rushed out on the last trains from Germany. This memory has been preserved so well in our religious institutions that, when the migrant crisis came to public attention, the Jewish community was at the forefront of offering help and refuge. Every synagogue in the country had collection points for aid to refugees. Key shuls in every area now have drop-in centres that provide free help and legal aid to asylum seekers. Young congregants drove out to deliver these aid packages and came back embolded and enlightened. I attended a service at an Orthodox synagogue where one such member came back, agitating in her community to lobby for rights and safe passage for refugees. South London Synagogue has organised for over 200 child refugees to be brought over from Calais and housed here. The Jewish community is not alone here. Religious institutions have played a powerful role in demanding an end to poverty, quality council housing and opposing racism. This is the reality of what religions in Britain today do.

I’ll say it again because it needs stressing: I’m not here to defend the religion of the ruling class – whatever form it takes. I’m here for radical religion that stays true to the message of fighting for justice. There is no doubt that awful things can be carried out in the name of religion, but just a cursory glance at history tells us that people are perfectly capable of carrying out the same atrocious acts without religion.

Religion has been associated with violence when it’s been connected to state power and reactionary movements. There’s no doubt about that, but to suggest that it has some kind of connection to religious belief itself is completely ahistorical. Haven’t Stalinist gulags, Maoist terror and the genocides of Cambodia and Nazi Germany shown us that people are perfectly capable of committing the utmost evil without religion? The modern states of France and Turkey are perfect examples of how secularist ideology can be just as violent, colonialist and corrupt as any state that calls itself religious. The problem is capital. The problem is the state. The problem is the military. The problem is certainly not God.

The task of religions is to keep alive that moral, prophetic voice that insists on radical equality and seeks to transform the world. It would be a disaster to throw out all that religion has done to transform the political sphere for the better, solely because fundamentalists and puritans have hijacked it. Religion belongs to all those who practice it – and the faith of left-wing revolutionaries is far more sincere than that which connects itself to state power, capitalism and authoritarianism.

The central message of religion – of all religion – is a radical one that every socialist can support. It is that there is a force much greater than anything we can conceive; that though we are small in the grand scheme of the universe, our lives have meaning. Every one of us is indowed with a spark of the divine. The existence of God makes us all equal – in a profound and spiritual way. Religion challenges us to see that all of humanity is one, everyone deserving of dignity, and to bring that claim to life in the world. It is a call to action – to overthrow the Pharoahs of the world as Moses did; to cast out the demons of legions as Jesus did; to demand rights for widows, orphans and disabled people as Mohammed did; to resist sectarian violence as Guru Nanak did.

Faith can give us the courage to fight for a better world. Thank you.

fists raised

I gave this as a speech at Ideas for Freedom, the annual conference of Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, a Marxist-atheist sect, back in July 2016. There were two other panelists, arguing that religion could not play a positive role in politics. My speech was not well received.

I doubt I could get away with making the same speech today. My teachers would definitely chastise me for over-simplifying matters, making sweeping generalisations, going off on random tangents, and flattening out history. I stand by, however, the central idea, that religion has a radical core, rooted in resistance. I doubt any of my teachers would question that this was a legitimate and necessary expression of religion.

I was moved to upload it by my brother, with whom I spent a long time discussing this topic over the winter holidays. He asked that I write up some of my ideas, and I remembered that I already had. I will speak on a similar theme, albeit to a very different audience, when I preach this coming Shabbat in Newcastle.