UK election result ‘divinely inspired,’ says senior UK rabbi

Rabbi Joseph Dweck, a member of the Conference of European Rabbis, says he's ‘grateful for results.'

By ILANIT CHERNICK
Senior rabbi of Britain's Sephardi Jewish community, Rabbi Joseph Dweck (photo credit: WIKIMEDIA)
Senior rabbi of Britain's Sephardi Jewish community, Rabbi Joseph Dweck
(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA)
“I believe that it was a divinely inspired result,” said Rabbi Joseph Dweck, senior rabbi of Britain’s Sephardi Jewish community, describing Thursday’s landslide defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK election.
A member of the Conference of European Rabbis, Dweck told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that he was “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.”
Asked how Johnson should continue dealing with antisemitism in the UK, Dweck said he believes that “he should continue as he has: denouncing antisemitism, and to work with his government to eradicate any and all expressions of it in the country.”
Dweck said he is “deeply concerned” about rising antisemitism, but made it clear that he is 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.”
Asked why we are seeing a surge in antisemitism, he said that he believes there are many reasons.
“To think that the existence of the State of Israel has no part to play in worldwide antisemitism is, in my opinion, quite naive,” Dweck explained. “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.”
He said that this is what we are now seeing today, and that European governments must not be afraid to see what is happening and to call it what it is.
“They must do all they can not only to fight against it, but also to prevent it,” he said. “Both with legislation and with education.”
However, he said, the problem is “the severity and threat is often downplayed, and that leaves room for greater antisemitic acts and sentiment.”
With the memory of the Holocaust fading, Dweck said that “education is paramount” to encourage the next generation to learn and remember the horrors of the Holocaust.
“The more we educate all people as to the possibilities of atrocity and evil that can easily breach the delicate walls of civilization, the greater are our chances of fighting it,” he said.
Dweck concluded by citing “the powerful and true words of Will Durant: ‘For barbarism is always around civilization, amid it and beneath it, ready to engulf it by arms, or mass migration, or unchecked fertility. Barbarism is like the jungle; it never admits its defeat; it waits patiently for centuries to recover the territory it has lost.’”


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