Repenting for past sins
What’s behind the Church of England’s planned apology to British Jews for its 800-year-old expulsion decree
LONDON – Next year marks the 800th anniversary of the Synod of Oxford, which issued a set of antisemitic decrees that forced Jews to wear badges of shame, limited them to certain occupations, prohibited new synagogues from being built, and saw the invention of the blood libel, which led to killings and massacres.
More discriminating laws hit the Jewish community in the years that followed, and hostility toward them grew. The year 1290 saw the nationwide expulsion of Jews from England.
Eight centuries on, not only is the oldest hatred not eradicated, antisemitism is alive and on the rise. UK Jews are physically and verbally abused, synagogues are vandalized, and a Jewish man is reported to have faced two separate antisemitic incidents on London transport within one hour. An Essex rabbi was assaulted and hospitalized, a convoy of cars drove down London’s Finchley Road with a man shouting “F*** the Jews… rape their daughters” through a megaphone, pro-Palestinian protests featured anti-Israeli hatred, teachers left a union in protest of an anti-Zionist narrative, and more.
According to the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), nearly half of Britain’s Jews now hide any Jewish symbols in public. But perhaps worst of all is the fact that antisemitism has gone mainstream, becoming an ever-present constant within British life.
In a bid to address the alarming rise, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has announced that the Church of England will next year offer its repentance, to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the Synod of Oxford in 1222. Through the symbolic, historic gesture, the church will apologize for the 1290 expulsion of England’s Jews, and its part in fueling the hatred that preceded it.
It should be noted that the Church of England itself did not exist in the 13th century, so Welby will be repenting for the hatred fueled by the Catholic church.
The matter was raised by General Synod member Jacob Vince, who asked whether, in light of increasing antisemitism, “might the 800th anniversary next year be an opportune moment for the Church of England to consider making a formal break with these historic prejudices as a gesture of solidarity with our Jewish neighbors, England’s oldest ethnic minority?”
His suggestion most probably rested on statistics, released by the Community Security Trust, showing that between May 8 and May 31 of this year, there were 351 recorded antisemitic incidents in the UK – a sharp spike attributed largely to Israel’s Guardian of the Walls operation.
CST’s Dave Rich has welcomed the planned repentance, believing that “even though the historic trauma of medieval English antisemitism can never be erased... at a time of rising antisemitism the support and empathy of the Church of England for our Jewish community is most welcome.”
The CAA also welcomed the Church’s offer, noting that “the Church of England, inspired by decrees from Rome, was absolutely central to the horrific antisemitism suffered by English Jews in the Middle Ages, including wearing badges of shame, limiting them to certain occupations, prohibiting new synagogues from being built, the invention of the blood libel, massacres and the first national expulsion of an entire Jewish community from a European country – there is much to repent for in this ignominious record.”
From 1189 to 1190, the anti-Jewish pogroms in York, London and other cities and towns showed a level of barbaric cruelty never before experienced by English Jews. Religious sentiments fueled by the Crusades stirred many Christians’ hostility towards the Jews. It was then that the cruel blood libel cases were invented – their legacy lingers till today. In 1190 Jews were killed in Lincolnshire and massacred in Bury St. Edmonds, while the pogroms taking place in York were so brutal they tainted the city’s name to eternity.
This deep hatred set the tone for generations to come, as evidenced by antisemitism’s unwavering potency in general and blood libels’ survival in particular – the trope of Jews as baby/child killers is still used by laymen and public figures alike.
The history of antisemitism is long, and the Church’s role in sustaining it is undeniable – from the Diaspora through the establishment of the State of Israel to the present day. The establishment of the State of Israel created a new reality where Judaism became the majority religion and Christianity marginal. It demonstrated the vitality of Judaism and challenged traditional Christian claims that the Jewish people’s continuing exile from the land was proof of its punishment by God, for failing to accept Jesus as the Messiah.
THE CHURCH has in the past reflected on its role in fueling the oldest hatred.
In the 1960s, the historic Vatican statement known as Nostra aetate signaled the abandonment of the charges of collective guilt against the Jewish people for rejecting the Messiah.
In 2019 Welby, in his foreword to the Church’s document God’s Unfailing Word, said that “too often in history the Church has been responsible for, and colluded in, antisemitism.” Referring to his moving 2016 visit to Birkenau, he wrote that amid the ruins of the gas chambers, the leader of the visit “called on us to hear the voices of the millions murdered in that place, the vast majority of whom were Jewish. The bitter cold and the colorless outline of the landscape reflected the horror in our spirits, minds and hearts that this had taken place and Christians had done much of it.”
Signaling what he called the start of a new “Christian-Jewish encounter,” Welby pointed to theology as a way to eradicate the antisemitism “virus,” saying: “It is a shameful truth that, through its theological teachings, the Church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus.”
“The attribution of collective guilt to the Jewish people for the death of Christ and the consequent interpretation of their suffering as collective punishment sent by God
God’s Unfailing Word).
“Recognition on the part of the Church that it bears a considerable measure of responsibility for the spread of antisemitism demands a response from the Church” (ibid.)
The essence of the Church’s repentance message is that “Christians have been guilty of promoting and fostering negative stereotypes of Jewish people that have contributed to grave suffering and injustice” (ibid.)
“They have used Christian doctrine in order to justify and perpetuate Jewish suffering,” and that repentance for the sins of the past means a commitment to “reject such misuses of Christian doctrine” (ibid., p. 3).
THERE IS no doubting the church’s acknowledgment of past crimes, its need to repent and its genuine hope of halting the oldest hatred’s progress. The question to ask is can this symbolic act stop the march of what author Melanie Phillips terms a “unique derangement”?
It is impossible to answer this without considering the culture of today’s church. The sight of high-ranking clergymen taking the knee, hailing the praises of the Black Lives Matter movement and speaking of white privilege is a clear indicator of churches swept away in the social activism wave. The bishops of Leicester, Coventry and Warwick took the knee in honor of George Floyd, while the bishop of Durham, the Right Reverend Paul Butler, has said that it was time to own up to and repent of white privilege. Indeed, it was Welby himself who stated: “I pray that those of us who are white Christians repent of our own prejudices.”
Besides the Church aligning itself with a movement that has shown great animosity toward Israel, the Church’s report Israel/Palestine – An Unholy War goes even further to state that “the Israeli occupation is not only damaging the Palestinian population, but is also corrupting the Israeli culture, and society.”
It includes the testimony of Israeli Jewish conscripts who refuse to serve beyond the 1967 borders who said: “...We have been accustomed to pointing our rifles at children and women... we have accepted a state-sponsored policy of assassinations,
neatly labeled by Israel as ‘focused prevention’... we have been asked to implement discriminatory laws for the sake of the illegal settlements that have trapped our country with war.”
According to British observers, the Church is right to acknowledge its part in the hatred’s spread, but to effectively fight against its present-day spread, the church must address its current anti-Zionist narrative. The Church’s chosen social activism route is its prerogative, but the path it chose, sadly, dictates a pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist stand that could hinder the fight against anti-Jewish sentiments. • many people. If it has been misused, or sold to irresponsible parties, that must be examined.”
Shwartz Altshuler suggested that greater transparency would vastly improve DECA’s results. She called for it to be moved from the Defense Ministry to the Economy Ministry, so that it would be subject to the Freedom of Information Law.
“All the rot happens behind the scenes,” she said. “If there is no
transparency, there is corruption.”
The IDI researcher said there are strong ties between members of the defense establishment and cybersecurity companies like NSO. For example, former IDF chief censor Ariella Ben-Avraham immediately moved to NSO after leaving the military, and the IDF censors elements of news reporting about NSO, as determined by DECA.
AS FAR as the international implications of the NSO scandal are concerned, a senior Israeli diplomatic source said that, at the moment, the damage is mostly in the public sphere and not in government-to-government relations, but there is potential for diplomatic tensions.
The reports come soon after Operation Guardian of the Walls, when there was massive anti-Israel activity. Soon after the NSO story broke, Ben & Jerry’s announced that it will stop doing business in Judea and Samaria, and its board said it wants to boycott Israel entirely. Cybersecurity and ice cream don’t have a lot to do with each other, but the negative stories about Israel compound each other.
The NSO story specifically “connects us to countries that are not
‘like-minded,’” meaning not liberal democracies, the diplomatic sources said. “From the outside, it makes us look like facilitators of countries with human rights problems.”
For example, prominent political scientist and a former minister in the Portuguese government Bruno Maçães, who has a history of support for Israel, pointed to the fact that Hungary blocks anti-Israel decisions in the EU and was an authorized NSO client. Maçães tweeted: “So am I right in concluding that Israel is part of the global forces spreading autocracy worldwide?... Israel seems to have decided its national interest is advanced by supporting autocracies.”
Still, the diplomatic source argued that criticism in that vein “ignores the fact that other countries sell similar products.”
Tabansky said “it’s very easy to create an association between the wicked activities of an Israeli company and the State of Israel or the Jews in general. That is obviously not a new phenomenon; we know how this works.
“Nobody talked about the truck manufacturers in terrorist attacks in Nice or Berlin,” he added.
Shwartz Altshuler said that Israel may lose cybersecurity as a tool that
it used to improve its international relations, “but maybe it’s justified.
“Part of our pride is that we’re the Start-Up Nation, which is how we draw big companies to open research and development centers here,” she said. “There has been a lot of pressure on Facebook to close its center in Israel in the wake of Guardian of the Walls .... If Israeli technology has the reputation of being arms dealers, think how that will influence the Israeli hi-tech world.
“Israel does a lot of innovation for good, but there’s also this,” Shwartz Altshuler said. Scandals like the Pegasus Project “hurt Israel’s good name. Israel is trying to promote hi-tech and be the Start-Up Nation, but the other side spoils it.”
Tabansky pointed to reports on ties between the Kaspersky antivirus software and the Russian government, followed by a ban on using it on US government computers starting in 2017, or when Edward Snowden leaked evidence in 2013 that the US’s NSA was surveilling Americans’ phones, plus those of foreign leaders.
“We’ve been arguing about this for quite a long time,” he said. “Now [the NSO leak] is joining those other major events.” •