Glimpses of Anglo Jewish History

family that welcomed me and has supported me for almost four decades now: a connection for which I am truly grateful. And there can be no doubt who was the matriarch of that family. The Liberal Synagogue Elstree has lost a founder member, Liberal Judaism has lost one of its guiding lights and I have lost a friend and a source of support who offered praise and also constructive criticism when necessary. Rosita will be greatly missed, but her memory and her legacy will remain for a long time to come. May her memory be for a blessing.

(YMBJ stood for ‘You Must Be Joking’ because no one believed that a Jewish organisation for that age group would work. It didn’t.)

GLIMPSES OF ANGLO JEWISH HISTORY Rabbi Alan Mann

The Balfour Declaration

robably the most existential event in Anglo-Jewish history was the publication of the Balfour P Declaration of 2nd November 1917. In a short letter to Lord Rothschild, the British Foreign Secretary said “…..The British government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and would use their best endeavours to facilitate this…” As a child, I was taught that this was a reward to Chaim Weitzmann for his work in the manufacture of cordite at the height of the first world war. Weitzmann at the time was president of the British Zionist Federation and teaching Chemistry at the University of Manchester. This was manifestly untrue because the British Government had been discussing the matter since before the war began when it was obvious that the Ottoman Empire was imploding. In 1917 it was far from clear who would win the war. France was at a standstill after the battles for Verdun, the British were exhausted and unable to sustain an attack and America had only just entered the war but had to build an army from scratch. On the other side Germany was able to transfer two million soldiers from the eastern front to the west as Russia was virtually out of the war. Britain did not control the Middle-east, nor was it likely to do so in the near future, yet, with gay abandon, to encourage the Arabs to join in the campaign against the Turks promised them home rule and self determination at the same time as offering a National home for the Jewish people in Palestine. So, the question is, “Why?” In the first decades of the last century, the British Government was pro-Jewish. Not because they liked Jews, but because they were evangelical Christians with a mystic tinge. They believed that the ingathering of the Jews into their ancestral homeland would bring about the second coming of the Messiah. Also, publically supporting the Zionist cause would endear them to the powerful Jewish lobby in the USA and encourage them to join the war on the Allied side. It mattered little that at the time, there was little chance of the British being asked to fulfil their promise, if in the short term, it satisfied their aims of having the Americans in the war and, maybe, bring the Messiah.