NEWS STORY: Feud between Orthodox, Reform rabbis in Britain goes public

c. 1997 Religion News Service LONDON _ Simmering tensions within the British Jewish community came to a head over the past week, prompting calls by Reform leaders that Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks renounce his title and role as national spokesman. The dispute arose following the death last August of the widely respected Reform Rabbi Hugo […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

LONDON _ Simmering tensions within the British Jewish community came to a head over the past week, prompting calls by Reform leaders that Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks renounce his title and role as national spokesman.

The dispute arose following the death last August of the widely respected Reform Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a survivor of Auschwitz who gained a national reputation as a Jewish leader.


It broke into public following the publication in the current issue of the Jewish Chronicle (March 14) of a private and confidential letter to the leader of an ultra-Orthodox group from Sacks in which he described Gryn as”amongst those who destroy the faith.” Sacks, who became chief rabbi in 1990, has sought to walk a tightrope between the Orthodox community, to which he belongs and of which he is a leader _ chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations _ and the more liberal communities.

Sacks, for example, refused to attend Gryn’s funeral because, he said, it would have meant attending a Reform religious service and thus conferring a degree of legitimacy on the Reform movement.

But last month he did attend a memorial gathering organized by the Board of Deputies of British Jews on the condition it would not be a religious service but a secular occasion. He said he did not attend as chief rabbi but as president of the Council of Christians and Jews.

Nevertheless, his appearance at the event sparked private protests from ultra-Orthodox Jews who threatened to make their protest public.

In an attempt to ward this off, Sacks wrote the now public letter to Rabbi Dayan Chanoch Dov Padwa, leader of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, in which he described Reform Judaism as”this false grouping”that should be given no recognition.

He also expressed his opposition to other strands of non-Orthodox Judaism while expressing his determination to safeguard the position of the chief rabbi as spokesman for the Jewish community as a whole. “The leaders of the Reform, Liberal and Masorti (Conservative) movements know that they have no enemy and opponent equal to the chief rabbi, who fights against them intelligently and defends the faith in our holy Torah in his writings, articles, and broadcasts, that he has in this respect achieved considerable standing in non-Jewish eyes, and that he does not accord them any gesture of recognition,”Sacks wrote.

Emphasizing his determination”to fight against the false philosophy of pluralism in our community,”Sacks added:”There would be no greater victory for Reform and pluralism than that there should be two chief rabbis, one Orthodox and one Reform, at every ceremony and national or communal gathering.” Publication of the letter brought a swift and sharp response from Reform leaders who demanded Sacks renounce his role as a spokesman for the whole of British Judaism.”Today could signal a break between the chief rabbi and a sizeable percentage of British Jewry,”said Rabbi Jonathan Romain, a leading Reform rabbi.”Clearly the chief rabbi no longer represents all Jews and speaks only for the Orthodox sector. He no more represents Reform and Liberal Jews than does the Archbishop of Canterbury represent Catholics and Methodists.” Romain called on the Sacks to give up his title and to adopt the more limited description as”leader of Orthodox Jews.” Rabbi Tony Bayfield, chief executive of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, said what is at issue is the chief rabbinate rather than the chief rabbi, the office rather than the man.


The chief rabbinate was established in Victorian times on the model of the Church of England with the chief rabbi as a version of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, however, it reflect less of the reality of the Anglo-Jewish community where non-Orthodox forms of Judaism have greatly expanded in the past century.”What the situation now illustrates is that one institution simply cannot represent the entire community religiously,”Bayfield told RNS.”It is quite clear the Reform community cannot be represented by an institution which is even unable to send its representative to the funeral of one of the most distinguished rabbis seen in this country and which declares itself to be at war with Reform.” He called for”a quiet but effective restructuring of the community”that recognizes the chief rabbi only as the spiritual leader of central Orthodoxy.”It does not mean the non-Orthodox or Reform community wants its own chief rabbinate _ God forbid _ but we have appropriate representatives, and those appropriate representatives need to be seen as the religious representatives and spokespersons for our section of the community,”he added.

Sacks, in his defense, said his letter had been written in medieval rabbinic Hebrew,”a language which uses hyperbole rather than understatement … and in which some words or phrases … are idioms that cannot be translated in such a way fairly to reflect the far milder language that would have been employed in modern English.” In an article in the Jewish Chronicle, Sacks said he has been attacked by both the right and left but said the chief rabbi”can, does and must work with all sections of the community on matters which affect us all, regardless of religious differences.”It was on that basis that Hugo and I worked together in life, and on that basis that I paid tribute to him after his death.”

MJP END NOWELL

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