Jews in the UK breathed a hearty sigh of relief last week when anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was defeated in the elections.
“I believe that it was a divinely inspired result,” Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of Britain’s Sephardi Jewish community, to The Jerusalem Post.
By: Jon Plonowitz
Rabbi Dweck, a member of the Conference of European Rabbis, told the paper in an interview that he felt “grateful for the results. I believe that there is a renewed confidence that the Jewish community has both in Britain and the British people. We know now that we have a fast friend of the Jewish community at 10 Downing Street [Prime Minister Boris Johnson], who has, throughout his political career — especially during his time as mayor of London — proven his care, attention and protection of the Jews of Britain.”
In an opinion piece published at Bloomberg.com, Therese Raphael noted that Corbyn’s “failure to get a grip on anti-Semitism prompted an extraordinary intervention this week from Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who normally stays removed from politics. Corbyn has tried to dismiss the complaints and change the subject to the National Health Service, but his record is impossible to ignore. It now threatens to contribute to a “Never Corbyn” vote that takes the Dec. 12 election away from the battleground of inequality where Labour would prefer to be fighting — something that might ease Boris Johnson’s path to Downing Street.”
Rabbi Dweck recommended that Prime Minister Boris Johnson “should continue as he has: denouncing antisemitism, and to work with his government to eradicate any and all expressions of it in the country.” He admitted to being “deeply concerned” about the growth of antisemitism, adding he was as “concerned about it here in Europe as I am about it in America. We have seen a great upsurge of antisemitic crimes occurring in the States, and the antisemitic rhetoric that is rampant in many American universities is profoundly worrying. It will not be long at all until those students hold government office.”
Rabbi Dweck also told the Post, “To think that the existence of the State of Israel has no part to play in worldwide antisemitism is, in my opinion, quite naïve. But there is an old and underlying culture of antisemitism that has laid its shadow for many centuries over the European continent, and it seems that when any laxity occurs in its vehement opposition, its waves gain strength.”
In 2013, Rabbi Dweck was appointed Senior Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community of the United Kingdom. He was elected with a 270-4 vote, a margin believed to be the largest in UK synagogue history. In 2014 Rabbi Dweck was officially installed as Senior Rabbi at the community’s cathedral synagogue, Bevis Marks.
The Jewish Chronicle reported that: ‘Religious leaders from across the Anglo-Jewish spectrum, from Liberals to Lubavitch, came to celebrate the arrival of the fresh-faced new leader, aged just 39, at the community’s oldest congregation. Dayanim from the Federation and United Synagogue and a large contingent from independent Sephardi communities attended, as well as Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, who took part in the ceremony’.
