In recent weeks I’ve
given interviews to British, Israeli and even German newspapers on
the subject of the fate of the Jewish Chronicle. Naturally I have
been careful to declare a number of interests.
It was for the
Jewish Chronicle that from 2002 until 2016 I wrote the paper’s
weekly anchor comment column. I never missed a deadline. Besides
filing these columns I wrote others for the paper, including book
reviews and obituaries. Then I should add that as part of my academic
research I have actually read every edition of the JC, from its very
first in 1841. I still resort to its invaluable online searchable
archive to check this fact or that.
In common with many
other newspapers the JC has been struggling financially in recent
years. In 2018 it posted a loss of around £1.5 million. Its
immediate future appeared to have been secured by donations from (as
the Financial Times unhelpfully put it) “unnamed individuals,”
but evidently this was not enough to save it from virtual bankruptcy,
and over the recent Passover holiday we learned that it had filed for
something called “a creditors’ voluntary liquidation.”
This news triggered
a series of the most touching displays of nostalgia and regret. The
JC’s apparent death-throes were mourned on the right of the
political spectrum, but also on the left. In the Spectator, Stephen
Daisley declared that the JC was not merely “a Jewish institution …
it is also a British institution… the JC is too important for this
to be the end and Jews and Gentiles alike have a stake in preventing
its disappearance.” Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland (also,
like me, a JC contributor) told JC readers “More than any other
institution, the JC is the place where we meet. For years,
it called itself “the organ of British Jewry.” It is … our
beating heart. We are not a community without it.”
I wonder!
The JC has indeed
chronicled the life of British Jewry over the past 180 years. But it
has done so in a biased and partial manner, less concerned with the
reporting of communal truths than with the preservation of communal
image. For example, it took an intentionally hostile view of the
writer Amy Levy, whose sensational novel Reuben Sachs (1888) had
lifted the lid on the undisguised nepotism and the deep, irreverent
materialism of the Jewish middle classes in London in the third
quarter of the nineteenth century. The novel told the truth, and was
for that very reason was condemned in and by the JC. Deeply
depressed, Levy (a friend of Oscar Wilde) committed suicide the
following year.
The JC’s overblown
ultra-patriotism during the First World War meant that it had little
if any sympathy for those British-born Jewish men (they happened to
include my maternal grandfather) who resisted conscription because
they naturally objected to laying down their lives to preserve
Britain’s ally, antisemitic Tsarist Russia.
Turning to more
recent times, Geoffrey Paul (editor 1977-90) was too overawed by
United Synagogue chief rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits to expose him for
the liar that he privately (in my presence) acknowledged him to be.
Paul [real name Geoffrey Goldstein] refused to report the
comprehensive repudiation of Jakobovits’s authority by a range of
UK-based orthodox groupings at the time of the great shechita
controversy in 1988, triggered by an attempt by the then Farm Animal
Welfare Council to have shechita banned. In order to find out what
was going on, one had to read the New-York based Jewish Press, which
naturally had no such inhibition.
In August 1990 a
communal scandal arose over the conviction of Golders-Green-based
orthodox paedophile Sidney Greenbaum, who pleaded guilty in open
court to three charges of indecent assault on young boys. Greenbaum
was not only Quain Professor of English Language at University
College London. He was also an alumnus of Jews’ College and has
assisted in the English translation of a new edition of the Singer’s
Prayer Book.
The Chronicle
maintained an obstinate silence on this entire episode. I should add
that when Greenbaum died, in 1996, his carefully crafted JC obituary
[14 June 1996, at page 25] naturally made no mention of his criminal
record. “He resigned [the Quain chair] in 1990 to devote more time
to his writings,” the obituary ran. In fact – as the JC well knew
- he was forced to resign; had he not done so, the University of
London would have publicly stripped him of his professorial title.
Geoffrey Paul
Goldstein was succeeded by Ned Temko, who appointed me the JC’s lead
columnist in 2002 but with whom I had actually had a turbulent
relationship. This had culminated, in 1997, in my publishing (in
"Judaism Today") an exposé of the manner in which he'd
handled the leaking of the now notorious Hebrew letter that United
Synagogue chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks had written to Dayan Chenoch
Padwa, Av Beis Din [Head of the Ecclesiastical Court] of the Union of
Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, justifying his (Sacks') decision to
speak at a public meeting called to eulogise deceased Reform rabbi
and Auschwitz survivor Hugo Gryn.
In the JC of 14
March 1997 Temko had published a translation of that letter, merely
omitting (he claimed) "three passages of a personal nature which
are not central to its meaning." I counted seventeen omissions.
Whilst some were certainly just quotations of biblical text, others
were in fact of pivotal significance. In my "Judaism Today"
article I highlighted these omissions and provided translations of
the most heinous of them.
I ceased filing my
weekly JC column in 2016, but continued contributing occasionally
until, late last year, current JC editor Stephen Pollard suddenly and
without warning banned me from appearing again on its pages. I remain
at a genuine loss to understand this decision. Mr Pollard has never
explained to me why he took it.
It now appears that
after an almighty financial kerfuffle a much-moneyed consortium
(entitled “JC Acquisition Ltd”) has saved the JC from oblivion.
The JC has alluded to this consortium, but has named only some of its
members. Why?
I want it to be
clearly understood that I would have mourned the passing of this once
great newspaper. I look forward to writing for it again when all the
dust has settled. But it must learn to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth – no matter who is offended in the
process.
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