I’m using this post to speak about antisemitic comments prompted by a photo posted on Facebook by the Movement for Progressive Judaism. The photo showed two senior Progressive rabbis, Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy posing for a photo with the Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband after a meeting in which they spoke of ‘…the impact of rising antisemitism and global events on Jewish communities in Britain, before moving into a broader discussion about Israel and Palestine, the nature of Jewish life in the UK, and the challenges and opportunities facing our community.’

Being a member of a Progressive congregation myself, I have been disappointed in recent years to find that the thoughts and prayers of progressive clergy, formerly called Reform or Liberal, are so steadfastly offered on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank although, to be fair, not to the exclusion of Israeli citizens. It is in their vision of Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world’ that the suffering of an enemy is lamentable. Why do we subtract drops of wine from the glass at the Passover Seder? Is it not a symbol of our own distress at the plagues endured by the Egyptians? This is perhaps a template for the insistence of some Progressive clergy for displaying empathy with the Palestinians from the pulpit and elsewhere.

However, run of the mill, middle of the road British antisemites have little idea of synagogal denominations or their political stance. They know of Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, who expressed himself openly against Labour antisemitism while Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader and they assume that the Movement for Progressive Judaism is more of the same. I have noticed that some of the most offensive antisemitism on X, formerly Twitter, is sent to Chief Rabbi Mirvis who posts a weekly derasha on the Torah reading for the forthcoming shabbat. I say ‘the most offensive’ but there is always something worse to be seen. I personally have been sent images of gas canisters with the promise that ‘This time it will really happen’ and found the message ‘Gas Lazarus’ on one of my blog posts. When you think they’ve hit rock bottom, there is always something worse, some madder blood libel or greater devotion to the memory of Hitler or, if they’re on the left, gloating about our people murdered on 7 October or afterwards, in captivity.

So the following screen shots are not actually the worst available, tending towards the view that a Jewish conspiracy empowers us to control the Western World. The photo of Ed Miliband with the rabbis strikes them as irrefutable proof.

It is clear that the people who post this racist nonsense are concerned citizens, comparable with the anti Dreyfusards or with Germans who wanted only a recovery from the strictures of the Versailles Treaty, or the anti-capitalists who think Jews are the personification of capitalist clout and the far right who still see nothing but Jewish agency in the rise of Bolshevism.

The contributors to the screen shots above are not even fussy about saying ‘Zionists’ rather than ‘Jews’.

I used to think education was the answer to ignorance, bigotry and prejudice but you can ‘educate’ someone to believe whatever you want. Antisemites believe that they know about the Talmud because they’ve seen a meme of false or garbled Talmudic quotes on one of the many neonazi websites.

I was pleased to see that the administrators of the Movement for Progressive Judaism page imposed a limit to the comments on their Ed Miliband post. I do understand that the Palestinian advocacy is not put forward for self-preservation, a belief in ‘being eaten last by the crocodile’. I know it isn’t about that but about enlightenment, altruism, Tikkun Olam. ‘B’tzelem Elohim,’ they like to say, meaning that we are all created in God’s image. I ask only that they don’t throw our communities under the bus which is coming down their road as well as mine.