It is strange (returning after a long visit to America) to rediscover how closely knit is British Jewry. Here is a community that for prestige, variety, and interest must surely rank very high, not only in contemporary life, but even in history. Yet one’s dominant feeling on coming back is that one is returning to a small family. Everybody knows everybody; and though British Jews are related to their various British backgrounds in a deeply integrated way that is a constant surprise to American Jews, this does not interfere with a quite separate Jewish pattern—an interrelationship of synagogue, Zionist, philanthropic, and other activities—which is as complicated, and as familiar, as the London subway.
At the center of this active beehive of friendly (or unfriendly) relationships, and playing a very special part, is the good old—or bad old—London Jewish Chronicle. For endless years now, the Chronicle has appeared in every “respectable” Jewish home in Britain every Friday, bringing, with its excellent reports of all news of Jewish interest, a complete and unique coverage of all Jewish parochial and family “gossip.” A good deal of this local information is provided in a lengthy array of paid advertisements; and it is perhaps typically British that these items are printed in two different sections of the paper—the snobbish “Social and Personal Column” (where Mr. and Mrs. Levi announce the Bar Mitzvah of their son on the forthcoming Sabbath side by side with Lady Grafton-Abrahams’ announcement that she will be out of town for the summer) and the more plebeian columns where, at a lower rate, deaths and births, engagements and marriages, are recorded with no more social distinction than that given to the adjoining advertisement for a “hazan and shohet,“ or one offering a house for sale in Golders Green (the London Bronx).
_____________
Leadership and Politics
Bridging the gap in the Chronicle between world and family Jewish news are the detailed reports of all public meetings, with faithful accounts of who moved and who seconded the votes of thanks to the visiting speakers. Out of all this, the names and activities of communal leaders like Sir Robert Waley Cohen (one of the directors of Shell) and Neville Laski (brother of Harold, and an eminent barrister) become as familiar to readers of the Chronicle as those of their local synagogue members. The reaction works both ways. The masses look to the limited circle of the names they know for leadership; the leaders, fully aware that in a small community everyone is responsible for everyone else, have what is by American standards a very acuse sense of community responsibility.
Hitler has, of course, sharpened this sense; but it arises also from the long tradition of service that a number of old Anglo-Jewish families have nourished for themselves and spread by example to the newer families. A name like Montefiore, Mocatta, Rothschild, or Franklin, carries with it membership in a very large, interrelated clan, the nexus being sometimes marriage or business, sometimes philanthropic or other public activities. One frequently sees the younger members struggling against this obligation to serve, but ultimately (as in the case of the young Lord Rothschild) they seem gradually to take one chairmanship or treasurership after another, until they are right in the thick of it with the older members of their families. Not that the principle of noblesse ( or richesse) oblige is automatic, or restricted to the “old” families. There is a constant seepage from the “old” families; and some of the “new” families—notably the Marks and Spencer clan, which is now known, because of its immense charity and influence, as “The Family”—set a pace in public work that is hard for some of the older ones to keep up with.
The “old” and “new” are getting more and more mixed up together, just as in general public life the Labor party has its staunch adherents from Eton and Harrow, while the Conservative party counts it a triumph to put forward a “working man” as a candidate for Parliament. The struggle between the old and new in Anglo-Jewish life is conducted at a number of levels. In the classical period immortalized by Israel Zangwill, it revolved round the struggle between the old Sephardim and the parvenu Ashkenazi families, extending gradually, as some Ashkenazi families grew “old,” to a simple class distinction between Jewish “Mayfair” and the rest. Overlapping this distinction was that between Orthodox and Reform. The West London synagogue of British Jews, the first and still the most important Reform synagogue, was founded in 1840 by a blue-blooded mixture of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and was dominated for many years by descendants or collateral branches of the same families. Today, its leaders include members of “new” families, provided they put sufficient accent on the word “British” in the name of the synagogue.
In politics, too, the old distinctions are breaking down. For many years it was automatic for Jews to support the Liberal party, which represented, among other groups, industry, finance, and non-conformism; and the Jews who rose highest in politics—such as Lord Reading and Lord Samuel—belonged to this party. As the character of the main parties began to change, however, industry and finance, with many Jewish members, moved over very considerably into the Conservative party, and soon there were quite a few Jewish Conservative members of Parliament (notably Alfred Mond, first Lord Melchett), and many Jews voting naturally for that party. (One Jewish M.P.—a Mr. Samuel who became the first Lord Mancroft—not able to prove that his ancestors actually came over with William the Conqueror in 1066, contented himself with claiming that they had lived uninterruptedly in Norwich, his Parliamentary seat, since 1200 A.D. The expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290 apparently passed them over.) The Labor party was slower to find Jewish parliamentary members, since for a number of years the trade unions, in which Jews did not play any great part, were the dominant influence in labor. However, as the social background of the party widened, more Jews came into it; and in the 1945 election 28 Jews won Labor seats out of a total of about 390 Labor members of Parliament. Outside the Labor party, there are only two other Jewish members, one an Independent Conservative, the other a Communist.
This remarkable increase in Labor membership was predominantly, of course, a sign of the political times, with Jews behaving like the rest of their fellow citizens; but it had its special Jewish significance, for it betokened that a considerable number of British Jews (higher than their “proportion”) were now actively in the ranks of Labor, especially, it may be said, the younger first-generation Jews who are, as in other countries, usually leftist in sympathy. In Britain, though, there were other reasons why Jews tended to vote Labor at the 1945 election. The dominant feeling among many British Jews must have been that some elements of the Conservative party were tainted (at least in pre-war days) with a legacy of Mosleyism; that the Liberals, though “good,” were ineffective; and that the only safe protection against any future neo-fascism was the Labor (or Communist) party. To this must have been added the Labor party’s promises on Palestine, and, even more, the reformist zeal symbolized by Labor, and attractive to many types of Jews—workers and businessmen, as well as intellectuals. This passion for social reform-echoing, one likes to think, the Biblical Prophets—may not, however, suffice to keep the large proportion of Jewish voters in the Labor party. In any revival of Conservatism—and even more, of Liberalism—Jews would be found playing a part, reflecting more closely their particular economic interests—or prejudices.
_____________
Zionist Crosscurrents
ZIONISM, too, used to be a fairly clear dividing line between the “old” and the “new,” but not too reliably, since “old” families—represented by men like James de Rothschild, Norman Bentwich, or Brigadier Kisch—provided some of the strongest supporters of the Zionist upbuilding of Palestine. It is true that the great majority of the old Anglo-Jewish families took a rigorous line in opposition, but here, too, the distinctions have broken down in recent years. The most remarkable example is perhaps the Marchioness of Reading, daughter of the first Lord Melchett. Educated as Christians or near-Christians, she and her brother, the second Lord Melchett, have been “officially” reconverted to Judaism, and are now very active Zionist leaders. They are only two of many who, brought up to believe that the Jew can have no political interest beyond full citizenship in his native country, have come round to the view—mostly since Hitler—that a Jewish national home or commonwealth in Palestine is a debt that the world owes to the homeless Jews of Europe and to any others who wish to settle there.
This new approach has become common, not only among those who obscured their Jewish origins for social reasons, but also among some who opposed the Zionist philosophy because of political convictions. Harold Laski and Victor Gollancz could not reconcile active Zionism with their socialist or internationalist views before the war, but they are today in the forefront of Zionists, together with many of the Jewish Labor members of Parliament. On the other hand, the Zionist philosophy is still rigidly opposed by a group who find it irreconcilable with wholehearted devotion to British citizenship, or with their solely religious conception of Jewishness. Basil Henriques, the eminent welfare settlement pioneer, and member of a famed Anglo-Jewish family (which includes some devoted Zionists) is the chief personality in a movement—the Jewish Fellowship—that holds these views. Among rabbis, his main support in Britain comes from two Americans, Mattuck and Reinhart, heads, respectively, of the Liberal (“Free”) synagogue and of the West London synagogue of British Jews.
The various Jewish approaches to Zionism may not differ so much from those in any other Western country, but the attitude of non-Jews in Britain has unique facets of interest. There is no “Jewish vote” in Britain, or none that counts—the Jewish population is about 400,000, which is much less than one per cent of the total population—so that non-Jews can afford to be pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist in strict accord with their convictions. In making up their minds, they weigh in various degrees the strategic aspects of the area—which is Britain’s Alaska or Panama Canal—a romantic sympathy for the Arabs as a people, a passionate belief (alternatively) in the virtues of Zionists, and the moral implications of Britain’s rather conflicting promises on Palestine.
Strongly supporting the Arab view come the inheritors of generations of British Arabists. The ancient names—Bedwell, Sale, Lane, Burton, Doughty—lead in an unbroken line through Gertrude Bell, Nicholson, Lawrence, and others to their modern disciples—Freya Stark, Driver, Gibb, Philby, and a host of scholars, travelers, and soldiers—who write with a clarity, and sometimes a magic, that reflects the depth of their beliefs and the discipline of their studies. Opposing them and supporting Zionism is an equally fervid group, typified by Britain’s sincerest newspaper, the Manchester Guardian, or by people like Sir Wyndham Deedes or the Reverend Dr. James Parkes, all too disinterested to be suspected of anything but the highest devotion to truth and justice as they see it.
Yet despite these clear-cut extremes, both indigenous to the country, to be pro-Zionist or pro-Arab is not a black and white issue for most Britons. In the early days after the Mandate, there were many British imperialist Tories (normal candidates for the Arab-lover camp) who saw in a strong Jewish commonwealth on the shores of the Mediterranean the best safeguard for Britain’s lifeline. (Amery and Churchill were examples.) By contrast there were many Laborites, normal opponents of anti-Semitism and potential admirers of Jewish social experiments in Palestine, who felt on principle that the Arab in Palestine was the poor native who had to be protected against the exploitation of British imperialism—even when this imperialism took the strange guise of Jewish social colonization. (Sidney Webb’s and Cripps’ attitudes were typical.)
As the years went on, the epochal transmutations of political forces in Hitlerian and post-Hitlerian Europe threw British sympathies into still further confusion. At first, the dominant sentiment in British minds was a profound desire to help German Jews to escape Hitler’s persecution; and while this was translated most immediately into a liberalization of immigration policy into Britain itself, it also strengthened the appeal of a Jewish Palestine that could absorb refugees so conveniently. The humanitarian support for Zionism grew apace; and when war loomed in 1939, it was only those directly responsible for Britain’s military safety who had any stomach for the White Paper which sacrificed Jewish rights to Arab appeasement. Mr. Chamberlain’s policy was, of course, supported by the ineffable pro-Arabs and by slavish Conservative back-benchers; but it was hotly resisted by Mr. Churchill’s group as well as by Liberals and most Laborites—who by now had come round to the view that if you hated Hitler, you were in favor of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
_____________
Labor and the Zionists
It was this warm-hearted but indefinite sympathy for the victims of Hitler that enabled the active pro-Zionists in the Labor party to win such hearty support at their 1944 Convention for the resolution pledging Labor to a reversal of the White Paper and the boundless encouragement of Jewish immigration to Palestine. To most of the voters the resolution must have had as much reality as a similar resolution at an AFL convention in the United States. In both cases it would have seemed churlish for the convention to deny their Jewish comrades a friendly pat on the shoulder that cost nothing but words.
It was only when British Labor came unexpectedly to power that the problem of Palestine was seriously considered, and then the argument split, as it had before, between those responsible for policy and those who still dealt only in wishful generalities. The question was not whether the Cabinet would implement the Labor party resolution (for that began to seem far too unreal for action), but rather whether it would decide to make a great bold gesture towards peace in Palestine of the kind they later made in Egypt, India, and Burma. The gesture was not made because in practice three factors weighed too heavily in opposition. The first was Russia; the second, oil; the third was Bevin’s ultimate sympathy for the old Labor party attitude under which the Arab was still the “native” and the Jew the interloper.
If Palestine, in this period, had been at peace, the Bevin-Attlee view (almost indistinguishable basically from the White Paper approach) would still have had very strong opposition on humanitarian grounds in many British quarters, even though a Parliamentary majority for it would probably always have been found. But the outbreak of violence and the succession of British casualties have changed the picture for many Britons, their views hardening not only against the Jews of Palestine, but also against the Jews of Britain, who are felt, inevitably, to be in some kind of sympathy with these “foreigners who are shooting British Tommies in cold blood.” Coming at a time when Britain’s mothers and wives are tired of having their menfolk in uniform for so many years and when industry is crying out desperately for more manpower, it seems to the British man-in-the-street that it is the Palestine Jews who are causing all the trouble, since otherwise Britain could clear out and leave the country to the Arab majority. Querulously they will point out that “Britain has done more for the Jews than any country in the world—and now look how they are treating us.” To every visitor from America they say: “How would you like it if your soldiers were out there being shot at?”
Against this background it is not surprising that Bevin is always able to win complete support for his Palestine policies from the same Laborites who voted unanimously for the Palestine resolution in 1944. Even in Parliament, though the hard nucleus of genuine pro-Zionists may be supported in criticism of the Government by others trying to score Opposition debating points, there is little widespread feeling now to urge policies that can be represented as capitulation to force or as leading to the assumption of permanent and costly military obligations.
The friends of a Jewish Palestine look in vain to the Government for a fresh directive that, as in the case of India, would revolutionize the traditional policy of the “officials.” Within the Cabinet, the real pro-Zionists—Dalton, Greenwood, Creech-Jones, and perhaps Morrison—seem cowed, either by the weight of Bevin or by the belated realization that though an active pro-Zionist policy in Palestine would win hearty approval from American radio commentators, it would get no practical support from a State Department that will think hard before offending the Arabs. And if, despite this, the British pro-Zionists struggle towards what they feel to be a workable compromise fair to the Jews, they run up against the new “uncompromising” leadership of American Zionism—which they now assert to be the greatest obstacle in the way of a solution.
Leading British Jews are, in private conversation, equally irritated at what they call the irresponsibility of American Zionists, just as American Zionists consider often that the Jews of Britain—even the Zionist ones—tend to be more British than Jewish. Both charges may have some validity. It is certainly true that when the British Jew reads in his paper of British soldiers being kidnaped at assassinated by Palestine Jews, he feels in the same dilemma as that of Don Rodrigue in Corneille’s Le Cid:
O Dieu, l’étrange peine!
En cet affront mon père est l’offensé
Et l’offenseur le père de Chimène.
The fundamental question as to how a British Jew is to judge his Government’s Palestine policy objectively has led to constant upheaval within the community. When the Board of Deputies of British Jews—the old-established Jewish elective body—was “captured” by the Zionists in 1943, the not-so-vehement Zionists rallied to the more “assimilated” Anglo-Jewish Association, whose leader, Leonard Stein, though a well-known Zionist, sought ways to state the Jewish position without forcing the Jews and the Government into irreconcilable camps. A similar conflict took place over the Jewish Chronicle, whose editorial policy had grown so vehemently anti-Government that its directors forced the editor to resign, replacing his trenchant denunciations with neatly balanced homilies.
_____________
The Jewish M. P.’s
INEVITABLY the dilemma has been particularly trying for the twenty-eight Jewish Labor M.P.’s, most of whom are keen Zionists. Back-bench Labor members may speak, and even vote, against Government policy and a number have raised the issue repeatedly in Parliament. No one has questioned their right to speak and ask awkward questions, and indeed everyone respects their special interest in the fate of their fellow-Jews; but there is clearly great trouble looming ahead, without apparent solution, in the conflict between British and Zionist policy.
This is, of course, not the only link of interest between the new Labor Government and the Jewish community. There are four Jewish members of the Government, and they are watched with close interest, for all, as it happens, have key jobs in the new nationalization plans. Emanuel Shinwell, Minister of Fuel and Power (and a member of the Cabinet), has carried through the first crucial nationalization program—coal—and is now preparing to nationalize electricity and gas. On an immediate increase in production hangs the fate of reconversion; on the success of the long-term experiment in nationalization hangs the whole future of Labor’s plans. Shinwell attracted national interest first when he defeated the punctured Ramsay MacDonald in a coal-mining constituency, Seaham Harbour, in 1935. He came much more clearly into the limelight when, refusing office under Churchill’s coalition government, he became an unofficial spokesman for the Opposition, striking telling blows, day after day, at governmental “inefficiency,” and giving vocal expression to the mounting sense of exasperation that accumulated during the trials of war. But the bluster that was so telling in Opposition has begun to wear a somewhat shoddy look when applied to problems of action on a national scale. The general feeling that Shinwell prefers to beat down rather than convince opposition was intensified when the recent coal crisis was laid neatly at his door, for he had always vilified those who said that it could happen. Nevertheless, the miners are loyal to “Manny,” and the remarkable increases in coal output under nationalization may be the forerunner of triumphs that will give him the last laugh over his opponents.
Lewis Silkin, the second Jew in full charge of a Government department, has a job of great long-term significance as Minister of Town and Country Planning, and one that, like Shinwell’s, is an integral part of socialist planning. Under the Bill he introduced in February, every acre of land in Britain will be subject to the planning of his department. The problem of compensation and betterment, long a stumbling block to all land planning, has been mastered; all new building and all preservation of land for agricultural or pleasure purposes are now to be planned decisions; and a number of entirely new towns are to be built where homes, factories, and gardens will be planned as self-contained units with new standards of comfort, dignity, and happy living. Silkin is a lawyer by profession, careful and dogged and not dangerously imaginative; but his consummate skill in presenting his bill, and his active policy on new towns, have already made him an important national figure.
The third Jewish member of the Government is Lord Nathan (better known as Colonel H. L. Nathan), head of a distinguished law firm and long active as a Liberal before he joined the Labor party in 1934. Harry Nathan, coming from an “older” Anglo-Jewish family than Shinwell or Silkin, has been more active in Jewish affairs than they, taking a leading part in the Board of Deputies and in activities connected with Palestine. As Under-Secretary for War, he was directly responsible, with his Minister, for the conduct of the British army in Palestine. Later, he was appointed Minister of Civil Aviation, which is, in Britain, a nationalized industry. Nathan is an English Jew of a well-established type: highly moral, a devoted public servant, eloquent in good causes, “proud” both of being an Englishman and a Jew.
George Russel Strauss is the fourth Jewish member of the Government, holding the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. Member of a very wealthy family of metal brokers, he and his wife Patricia belong to the group of “aristocratic Left-wingers” who are always slightly suspect to rank-and-file Labor men, but who yet played a most essential part in bringing about a Labor victory. Strauss (who has never identified himself in any pronounced way with the Jewish community) has shown his mettle in handling the transport nationalization Bill which is still before Parliament.
The twenty-four Jewish back-bench Labor members are naturally a mixed crowd, with one common factor: almost all are first-generation English Jews, in contrast to the former Jewish Liberals and Conservatives who always came (with the notable exception of the first Lord Melchett) from older Anglo-Jewish families. A good number are lawyers (a common profession in Parliament), and there are also doctors, journalists, a playwright, and businessmen. One of the latter, Ian Mikardo, a thirty-eight-year-old industrial consultant, has a reputation for incisive and unconventional speeches on industrial questions; and Sidney Silverman, a very ardent Zionist, is known for his fighting spirit on any question he tackles—a quality which always arouses respect. With the possible exception of these two, however, no Jewish back-bencher has yet shown signs of rising automatically out of the great mass of other back-benchers to higher office.
_____________
Anti-Semitism
RETURNING to England, one is met everywhere by the statement that anti-Semitism, in its odd, unformalized British form, is stronger in Britain now than it was before the war. Many will qualify this immediately by saying that a conscious attitude to combating anti-Semitism has also increased among sensible non-Jews, but this is itself a recognition that the disease has become more serious. One is always more conscious of immunization measures when an infection is raging. Mostly, increased anti-Semitism is Hitler’s gift: the Jews have been talked about so much as a “problem” that it has become natural to think of them first in seeking a scapegoat for the exasperation which has arisen in Britain over wartime and postwar hardships. Some Jews, a very small number, have helped the anti-Semites by taking part in black-market activities. The relatively high proportion of Jews in the trades affected—particularly clothing—has made it plausible to exaggerate the Jewish role here, but the black market is so small in law-abiding Britain by comparison with other countries that this problem is not insuperable. The refugees from Europe have also been singled out. More than 200,000, a large proportion of them Jews, have been admitted since 1933. Very obviously “alien,” however hard they try to be British, they have become a natural butt for anti-Semites. Finally, one must allow (against the post-Hitlerian background) for the very small element of English Jews who, for some reason never adequately explained by sociologists, compensate for a feeling of insecurity by a rather noisy display of wealth and possessions that serves to exaggerate their “difference.” Perhaps this is a common pattern among all types of new settlers, but when it concerns a Jew, it is looked upon as something evil and permanent instead of amusing and transitory.
Abuse and discrimination, though not yet a grave problem, have grown to a degree that has alarmed the Jews of Britain, and the Board of Deputies has discussed both in its own counsels and with the Home Secretary the possibilities of steps to control it. A government committee is at present considering alterations to the law of libel which may provide some legal remedies, but the general attitude of the government is that as long as the influence of “poison” groups is small, one should refrain from giving them gratuitous advertisement through prosecution. For this reason, Sir Oswald Mosley is permitted to address meetings of “book-clubs” if his supporters can find a hall (not always easy) which will accept a booking. It is almost as if the government quite likes to have a few small “cranky” movements at large in order to demonstrate to the world that Labor Britain is not a totalitarian state and that free speech is available for all. The British, it must be admitted, are known eccentrics. To keep an apparently tame rattlesnake in one’s house may give a certain zest to living, but Jews have never gone in for such pleasantries. And they shudder when they read of Mosley’s “book-clubs,” even though Mosley, in his latest book, denies that his pre-war fascist movement was anti-Semitic. This, he says, was confined to the “lunatic fringe.”
Far more serious, however, are the long-term effects of the present situation in Palestine. Day after day, the ordinary Briton reads in his newspaper and hears over the radio that British forces—their own sons and brothers—have been attacked (or killed) by Jews or are in active operation against them. The man-in-the-street cannot be expected to analyze all the facts; and while no violent reaction has yet occurred, it is quite certain that anti-Jewish sentiment is being stored up, with great potential danger to the Jewish community of Britain unless a satisfactory solution can quickly be found. Yet even here, the newspapers, while supporting government action to “control” the situation in Palestine, have consistently reminded readers of the Jewish tragedy in Europe that precipitated this conflict.
_____________
The Larger Pattern
IN CONSIDERING anti-Semitism in Britain, it must not be forgotten that it is not of the same type that Jews encounter in the United States or Canada. Wherever “quotas” or “restrictions” exist for schools, colleges, apartment houses, hotels, golf clubs—or jobs—they are almost always handled with a maximum of English delicacy and refinement. It is, on the whole, still “bad form” to refuse anyone anything openly because he is Jewish, although if this refusal can be engineered discreetly it is not considered so bad. In practice, education poses few barriers to Jews as such, nor does the question of where to live or where to spend one’s vacation. Most Jews who have been born and brought up in Britain have many non-Jewish friends, and for a considerable proportion of them—a much higher proportion than in America—their social life is largely unaffected by the fact that they are Jews. Yet the shadow is there.
The most common argument of anti-Semites in Britain is to point to a number of “Jewish-owned” businesses that are not only nation-wide in distribution but enter into the daily life and consciousness of the masses to a very great degree. Burton’s, now followed by a number of non-Jewish imitators, provides excellent custom-built clothes for the masses in every town and township in the country, all manufactured at very low prices in the largest and most efficient clothing factory in the world at Leeds. Lyons’ began with “tea shops” which spread to every part of Britain. Today they have also a unique string of restaurants and hotels in London and other large cities where at very low prices the most remarkable range of food and services is provided, backed by a catering organization that covers anything from a tennis-club tea to a Royal garden party. Marks and Spencers’ have chain stores throughout the country offering goods at a price and quality that were never before available to the masses.
All three firms have played a decisive part in raising the living-standards of the “working classes,” and the Jews cannot be expected to apologize for their existence. If a genius for commerce comes out in some Jews, with such notable benefit to the country, it is not enough to point out that over the whole field Jewish businesses constitute only a fraction of the country’s commercial enterprises. It must be added and stressed that when a Jewish commercial idea prospers, it is frequently as beneficial to the people, in its own way, as the “Jewish” discoveries of Ehrlich (salvarsan), Freud (psychoanalysis), or Chain (penicillin).
It must be admitted that at the public level, the achievements—as well as the benefactions—of these and other Jewish firms are fully recognized. Sir Montague Burton, Justice of the Peace, and founder of a number of important professorships in industrial relations and international peace at various universities, has come a long way from the “yeshiva bochur” who opened a tailor shop in Leeds about thirty-five years ago. Sir Simon Marks, who is just as uncompromising in his support of all Zionist and other Jewish causes as he is in business, is a notable public figure. The heads of Lyons’, men like Sir Isidore Salmon or Major M. Gluckstein, have made their mark particularly in the ranks of the Conservative party. And there are many other business leaders—Lord Bearsted (oil), Lord Melchett (chemical industry), Lord Swaythling (banking), Lord Southwood (press), Sir Samuel Instone (shipping), Sir Louis Sterling (gramophones), to name but a few—who have risen to the top either by their own efforts or through their families.
Not that business leaders are necessarily the Jews who have done most for their country or their community. The English Jews one thinks of with particular pleasure are those like Samuel Alexander, Professor of Philosophy at Manchester University, until his death in 1939 the most beloved eccentric of his day, and the holder of the most distinctive honour the King can bestow—the Order of Merit; Sir Leon Simon, a distinguished civil servant, whose unique synthesis of English and Jewish culture is reflected in his translations of Ahad Ha’am into English, and of Plato into Hebrew; the young Lord Rothschild, who rose above the handicap of distinguished birth to become at an early age a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and whose scientific war work, at extreme personal risk, was honored by both the British and American governments; Dr. Redcliffe Salaman, eminent agricultural scientist of Cambridge University and Fellow of the Royal Society, chairman of his local Board of Magistrates, and a tireless worker for all Jewish and humanitarian causes. His deceased wife, Nina Salaman, was the Constance Garnett of Anglo-Jewish literature. And coming down to the man-in-the-street, one thinks of the many Jews in small communities who as tradesmen, doctors, schoolteachers, or simple “workers,” have become mayors of their towns, heads of their lodges, secretaries of their trade union locals, or who just remain plain good neighbors.
If only one can break through the miasma that is Hitler’s legacy to his conquerors, Jewish life here in Britain offers a chance for decent normal fellowship which seems rare in the world today. At the ordinary level, Arthur Cohen gets on quite happily with his neighbor Bill Smith. They serve together on the same town council (even where there is no Jewish vote), and they play together in the same village cricket team. At the “higher” level, Sir Philip Hartog, famed educationalist, sits down to lunch with Professor Gilbert Murray at the Athenaeum, the most “restricted” club in Britain, since admission is only by merit of public distinction. At a nearby table, the late Chief Rabbi, Dr. J. H. Hertz, might have been seen in close discussion with his fellow-member, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
England can be, on rare summer days, a green and pleasant land. Perhaps we can really build Jerusalem here, as William Blake wanted. It will be difficult though, particularly for English Jews, unless peace comes to the other Jerusalem.
_____________
