Jewish community attacks chief Rabbi over warning

Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks today faced fierce criticism from within the Jewish community after warning that the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians is “corrupting” Israeli culture.

Departing from his customary stance of offering only public support for Israel, Professor Sacks voiced shock at reports of smiling Israeli servicemen posing for a photograph with the corpse of a dead Palestinian.

“I regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic. It is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals,” Prof Sacks told The Guardian.

He added: “There is no question that this kind of prolonged conflict, together with the absence of hope, generates hatreds and insensitivities that in the long run are corrupting to a culture.”

His comments prompted a sharp rebuke from Rabbi Sholom Gold, Dean of the Jerusalem College for Adults.

“We who are living here day in and day out, our perspective is the one that really counts,” insisted Rabbi Gold.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One that the Palestinian agenda was “the destruction of the state of Israel.”

“For this there is only one response, the only moral response that is compatible with Jewish belief is to stand up and fight and defend yourself. And every act of that sort is not immoral, on the contrary it is the height of morality.

“I have a great deal of respect for the Chief Rabbi ... and therefore it is extremely sad for me to hear him make comments of such a nature which for all intents and purposes will now make him irrelevant in the world Jewish community.”

However, back in London Rabbi Dr Charles Middleburgh, executive director of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, welcomed Prof Sacks’s comments.

“I salute Jonathan Sacks for the courage he has shown in expressing these views in the certain knowledge that they would not go down very well in certain quarters,” said Dr Middleburgh.

“I would like to think that Rabbi Sacks’s views, rather than making him less relevant to the general debate ... that they will actually make him more relevant.

“I think that Rabbi Sacks will get a lot of flak from the orthodox sections in the Jewish community.

“But I hope very much that as far as he goes – and of course many of us would like him to go much further and express much more detail than he has – but we will I hope give him some support.”