A terrible time as Jews celebrate Passover

THIS week the Jewish community in Yorkshire and around the world is celebrating the ancient feast of Passover, which marks the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in biblical Egypt.

Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, retells the story of the prophet Moses urging the children of Israel to escape to freedom so quickly they didn’t have time for their bread dough to rise, as first recounted in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament.

I find it awe inspiring to learn that the sacred Haggadah, read over the traditional Seder family dinner by Jews around the world this week, is the same text as was read in the Temple of Jerusalem well over 2,000 years ago.

The tradition has been lovingly passed down through countless generations, despite appalling persecution of Jews down the years including the Nazi holocaust, demonstrating incredible resilience and a deep love and reverence for the Jewish faith, language and culture.

And it is worth noting that these traditions originate hundreds of years before Christianity and Islam were even thought of, and generations before settler colonists from the Arabian peninsula invaded ancestral Jewish lands from the seventh century onwards.

Indeed, you only have to read a copy of the Bible, or look at the copious archaeological evidence, to establish without any doubt who were the original inhabitants of Israel (spoiler alert – it wasn’t the Arabs). And incredibly Jews have maintained an uninterrupted presence in Israel from Biblical times to the present day.

I am sure the Pesach celebrations have a particular resonance with many Jews this year, as an estimated 135 of their co-religionists will sadly not be able to join the celebrations. I refer, of course, to the Israelis, including babies, young women and elderly people, kidnapped during the October 7 atrocities and held for more than six months by Hamas terrorists in tunnels under Gaza.

In all the heated arguments over Israel’s response to Hamas’s aggression, and the terrible plight of the people of Gaza, the hostages are often forgotten. They shouldn’t be. They are innocent civilians, forcibly taken from their homes, often after witnessing their families being slaughtered. Pressure should be unrelenting on Hamas to do the decent thing and release them.

Rarely has the anguished cry of Moses – “Let my people go” – been more apt.

Passover this year also comes at a time of an utterly disgusting rise in anti-semitism that has become more disturbing and unhinged with each passing week since October 7.

On a weekly basis, cities across the UK are polluted by aggressive pro-Hamas mobs chanting genocidal slogans and brandishing racist posters, while the police stand idly by.

Recently, a police officer in London threatened to arrest a man trying to cross the street during one of these demonstrations because he was “openly Jewish”. What kind of country are we becoming?

Things are even worse in the United States. Elite private universities, attended by the children of the rich who can afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees, have been hit by a wave of Jew-baiting that would not look out of place among the Nazi Brownshirts.

Howling mobs have threatened Jewish students, openly supported Hamas, and glorified in the murder and rape of Israeli civilians, while college administrators have stood by and done nothing. As a result the reputation of these once-prestigious institutions is heading down the sewer.

To say you studied or taught at Yale, Harvard or Columbia universities, which would once have been seen as a sign of honour and esteem, is rapidly becoming a badge of shame.

Imagine being a Jewish parent spending a fortune to send your children to one of these universities and worried sick if they will come out of the experience alive. Imagine being terrified of going into a British city centre because there are mobs celebrating terrorism.

The whole thing sickens me. I don’t think I have seen such a level of naked hatred directed at a minority group simply because of their ethnicity in my lifetime, and I worry for the future.

But then I remember the resilience of the Jews. Judaism has existed for something like 3,500 years, and despite endless cruel persecution and attempts to exterminate them, the Jews have not only survived but thrived.

To Jewish readers everywhere I offer you my good wishes and Chag Pesach sameach!