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Why Have Jews Migrated and Assimilated?
Yemenite Jews walking through a desert, near Aden, before being airlifted to Israel, November 1949. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
There are very different reasons why Jews have always migrated, and many have assimilated. When we feel insecure, some of us just sit the crisis out. Others just move on to more welcoming or financially more promising situations. The present is no different, but here are two examples from the past.
In 1985, I became the rabbi of the Western synagogue off the Finchley Road in Central London. I had previously been the Rabbi of Giffnock Synagogue in Glasgow and Principal of Carmel College. In 1984, I went with my family on a sabbatical to Israel. Much as I loved Israel, I could not fit into its political world, and so I joined the Western in 1985. Unlike most of the other synagogues in London, this one was independent.
The Western had a long and noble history of independence going all the way back to its initial establishment in 1761 as a private minyan started by Wolf Liepman. He had migrated during the eighteenth century and chose to live outside the main Jewish communities in the East End of London. Hence its name “The Western.”
As it grew, it acquired its own burial ground in Brompton Road. Over the years it continued to grow. I chose the Western synagogue because it was independent. I knew that I didn’t have to worry about the politics of the United Synagogue and the Chief Rabbinate. It was a very special, warm, and genteel community, with its own social and educational center. Although most of its members were not so Orthodox in practice, they were very attached to its traditions.
By the time I arrived, the Jews of the West End area were moving further north to where the major Jewish communities of London are today. And so, after a few years, we entered into negotiations with other declining communities in the West End, to get together. Eventually the Western relinquished its independence to merge with Marble Arch, which was part of the United Synagogue. And that was when, after seven very happy and rewarding years, I resigned rather than come under the United Synagogue.
As soon as I arrived at the Western, I had been asked to deal with a very delicate problem. Its Brompton Road Cemetery had been filled completely by the beginning of the 20th century. The synagogue had been approached by developers to sell its disused burial ground which would be turned into residential buildings and would have made a great deal of money for the community. Initially the Western approached the Chief Rabbinate of Israel who agreed, on the grounds that one could move graves if it was to holier ground (in Israel).
English law required that to do this would need to have the approval of relatives of all those buried in the cemetery. The Western had all the documentation and was able to track down the relatives of the 280 bodies buried there. To everybody’s surprise, they discovered that there was not one family buried in that cemetery with Jewish descendants. They had all married out.
We were ready to go ahead, when the Chief Rabbi and the Beth Din stepped in and asked us to stop. The Western had no obligation to accept their authority or opinion. But we chose to listen to their advice. They argued that there remained a significant number of other redundant and historical Jewish burial sites across the United Kingdom. If any one of them transferred bodies to Israel for real estate development, this might begin a wave of such transfers, which would look very bad in the eyes of what was and still is an atmosphere of prejudice against Jews.
The idea of moving bodies for financial gain would be used by antisemites to prove how materialist the Jewish people were.
In contrast, my first job in the Rabbinate was in Glasgow in 1968. Giffnock was a growing, independent, dynamic, and warm community of a thousand souls. With strong religious and secular roots, Glasgow itself was a community of nearly 15,000 Jews with eight significant functioning synagogues and a few other smaller communities, built primarily by refugees from Lithuania. I enjoyed the community and life in Scotland immensely.
Since then, the Jewish population has dropped to around about 2,000. Under a pro-Palestinian Scottish government, life for Jews is not what it was. Some have indeed married out . But many have simply moved on to enrich other communities and countries. Wherever you go in the Jewish world today from Canada, the US, Australia, and Israel, to name only the largest, you will find colonies of positively committed former Glaswegians.
October the 7th and its horrific aftermath has had a huge impact. For some it confirmed their alienation from Jews and Judaism. But others realized that the Jewish people remain marked for prejudice and hatred — and that the only response is to strengthen their identity and commitment, to stand up and be counted as Jews.
We Jews have always moved on. This past year, some have moved to Israel, others have moved away. Communities rise and fall. Many have been destroyed. Who remembers that Otranto and Bari at the boot of Italy, a thousand years ago, were the most vibrant Jewish communities in Europe? Will the Diaspora now go like them, or will Israel ensure we thrive and do not disappear?
When these wars are over, I strongly believe that a new generation will do better than the past to restore our days of old. There is much to be optimistic about, despite the almost universal pathology of irrational hatred. But we are often our own worst enemies, and we must sort ourselves out first before we turn to the rest of the world. There are plenty of reasons for optimism this year.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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Top Teachers Union Votes to End Alliance with ADL Over Israel Support
NEA Headquarters in Washington, DC. //WikiCommons
On Sunday, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to cease its relationship with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), citing the latter’s defense of the Jewish state.
The policymaking, 7,000-member assembly of the nation’s largest teachers’ union approved “new business item 39,” a measure that resolved: “NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics. NEA will not participate in ADL programs or publicize ADL professional development offerings.”
In response to the decision, the ADL called it “profoundly disturbing, that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.”
The ADL declared: “We will not be cowed for supporting Israel, and we will not be deterred from our work reaching millions of students with educational programs every year.”
Cautioning that “there’s an internal NEA process that deals with issues like this, and it is far from a completed process,” the ADL vowed: “We will continue to call out this antisemitism and prioritize our Jewish students and educators.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a consistent and influential critic of Israel’s right to exist, praised the teachers union’s rejection of the ADL.
“We welcome the NEA’s vote to stop exposing public school students to biased materials provided by the Anti-Defamation League due to its long history of spreading anti-Palestinian rhetoric,” CAIR said in a statement.
“The ADL has only become worse under its increasingly unhinged director Jonathan Greenblatt, who has repeatedly smeared and endangered students in recent years,” the group said. “This principled move is a significant step toward fostering respect for the rights and dignity of all students in public schools, who must receive an education without facing biased, politically-driven agendas.”
In a post Wednesday on X, ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote: “The answer to the surge in antisemitism in our classrooms isn’t to exclude the Jewish community from the conversation. Anti-Israel activists within @NEAToday cannot poison U.S. classrooms with politics. @ADL‘s priority is, and has been, to support Jewish students and educators. Our nation’s school systems should have access to the best resources for education on the Holocaust and antisemitism.”
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‘Transparently Antisemitic’: Google Founder Sergey Brin Blasts UN in Internal Company Forum
Sergey Brin of Google
(Source: ReutersConnect)
Google cofounder Sergey Brin criticized the United Nations in a company forum, calling it “transparently antisemitic” after the release of a report that accused Google and other tech firms of enabling Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Brin was responding to a UN report that claimed companies including Alphabet, Google’s parent company, profited from what it called “the genocide carried out by Israel” by providing cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government and military.
“Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” Brin wrote in a discussion thread on a Google DeepMind employee forum. “I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the U.N.”
The report was the brainchild of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. The Trump administration has accused her of antisemitism and has called for her removal, saying she has demonstrated consistent antisemitic biases in her work and has unfairly singled out Israel.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US was imposing sanctions on Albanese under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.”
In a post on X, Rubio accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on “human rights violations” that Israel allegedly commits against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and rationalize Hamas attacks on the Jewish state. In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
Google has faced internal uproar over the company’s $1.2 billion Project Nimbus deal with Israel. The deal has faced sustained criticism from human rights activists and some Google employees, who argue the technology could be used to enhance Israeli military operations and surveillance of Palestinians. According to a recent UN report, the agreement provided Israel with key cloud and AI infrastructure after Hamas launched its deadly October 7, 2023 attack against the Jewsih state, killing approximately 1,200 people and prompting a large-scale Israeli military response in Gaza.
Google has previously punished employees who protested the company’s relationship with Israel. After a wave of internal demonstrations in 2024, CEO Sundar Pichai issued a companywide memo urging staff not to use the workplace to debate political issues.
In the months following Oct. 7, Israeli defensive military operations in Gaza have led to the deaths of more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Health Ministry, has repeatedly fabricated casualty statistics in the past.
The UN report accused US tech firms of exploiting a lucrative opportunity created by the conflict and Israel’s need for digital tools. It singled out Google and Amazon as being complicit in Israel’s so called “genocide” in Gaza.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
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