CONFLICT

Conflict, to paraphrase Henry Feingold, is the sine qua non of Jewish communal life.
Never was this more apparent than in Anglo-Jewry and its ‘tangled web of communal politics
during Second World War’. During this time the central institutions were racked by
internecine battles.

The list of conflicts is a long one and prompts questions about the more general causes
of communal dispute in this period, particularly as the conflicts seem to lack any ideological
dimension. It would seem that it stemmed primarily from the lack of an established political
hierarchy within Anglo-Jewry’s organisational structure. It was unclear for instance whether
or not the President of the United Synagogue was subordinated to the Chief Rabbi. Similarly
the relationship between the Board of Deputies and the chief Rabbi was undefined and
likewise subject to many different interpretations. Thus there were no strict rules as to what
should occur if the Chief Rabbi and the President of the Board or the President of the United
Synagogue were in conflict. Furthermore, the degree for those who held communal office but
had no status in English Gentile society should be beholden to those whose status derived
wholly from their wealth or position in general society was much open to dispute. Often those
who derived power from the general society were given office within the Jewish community,
but this usually exacerbated the instability and contentiousness of the community.

FEAR OF DOMESTIC ANTI-SEMITISM

Of all issues concerning the Gentile world, it was concern over anti-semitism which
most occupied the mind of Anglo-Jewry. But the preoccupation was with the anti-semitism
within British shores rather that that occurring on the continent of Europe.

On this issued two views of emancipation often produced contradictory results. Liberal
politics suggested that anti-semitism was an anachronism which could be eradicated by the
education of the non-Jews. A rival philosophy sees the emancipation as a contract between the
state and the Jews. As a result, the British Jews, fearful of any anti-contract, paid considerable
attention to the specific accusations that they were too rich, too powerful, sly in business, un-
English and clannish. The community strenuously attempted to address these problems
through education and other strategies involving, among other things, some significant
internalisation of anti-semitic accusations.

The intense anxiety over anti-semitism was, in part, due to the difficulty the
community had in understanding the phenomenon. In the eyes of Anglo-Jewry, Britain was a
model, perhaps the exemplary model, of enlightened tolerance. Anti-semitism, in the form of
direct physical and verbal attacks or discrimination against Jews in and out of work, was
therefore portrayed as a marginal phenomenon. It was the product of poor education,
economic rivalry or one uncharacteristically bad experience, even strengthening, of anti-
semitic sentiment in the 1930s and 1940s did not fit in at all with Anglo-Jewish thoughts of
progress and its supposedly beneficial effects on British society. Indeed it presented the
community with an unexplored – and from their vantage-point unexplorable – phenomenon.
Such anxiety was accentuated at a time when Hitler was demonstrating the strength of anti-
semitic feelings in a country once considered as civilised as England. It was a situation
profoundly at variance with Anglo-Jewish liberal understanding.

British Jewry had failed to differentiate between different forms of Jew-hatred. It thus
convinced itself of an exaggerated danger of domestic anti-semitism. Such a preoccupying
conviction was a result of the socio-political ideologies which so dominated the Anglo-
Jewish community and which so severely restricted its behaviour.