Should Jews Back Brexit?

Speaking in support of the UK’s continued presence in the European Union, on which a referendum is being held today, Prime Minister David Cameron recently argued that without Britain the EU will move in an even more anti-Israel direction, and Jews should therefore vote against “Brexit.” Jonathan Neumann responds:

Is Israel better off with Britain remaining inside the EU? The question might better be asked as follows: would it be better for Jews as a whole? Chief among the issues the EU will surely take up of keen interest to the continuance of Jewry in Europe are the possibility of future restrictions by the EU on kosher ritual slaughter and circumcision as well as the flows of migrants into Europe, some of whom have already targeted Jewish businesses.

The prime minister is probably right that Britain may be able to play a role tempering the EU’s negative diplomatic stance toward Israel from within, and might be a voice against rules that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Jews to live in Europe. Indeed, if the EU’s current policies toward the Jewish state are the outcome of Britain’s positive influence, one dreads to think what the EU might do were Britain to leave. But the primary concern of Britain’s Jews will not be this issue but rather the general set of concerns Jews share with their fellow Britons over the economy, immigration, and sovereignty.

Read more at Commentary

More about: British Jewry, David Cameron, Europe and Israel, European Union, Israel & Zionism, United Kingdom

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society