LBC's Iain Dale and his knowledge of Judaism

I was listening to the Iain Dale show on LBC (London Talkback) radio last night. The show started off talking about cults and then somehow switched to discussing the Anglo Jewish community. It would have been amusing had it not been so tragic with such dangerous consequences. The untruths which were spouted out about Judaism on his programme went completely unchallenged.

Iain asked his listeners a question. How many Jews live in Britain? He then added that no one would believe it when he told them!  Iain eventually gave a figure of around 266,000 and remarked that the Jews certainly punch above their weight. I wasn’t sure what he meant by this. Was he saying that the amount of Jews who contribute to British society is way out of promotion to the percentage of the UK population (Less than one half of one percent), or was he saying that for a tiny minority, they have an incredible amount of power and influence? Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he meant the former.

A caller called Keith came on and said that he was from “Jewish extraction” (whatever that means?) and said that although there were “officially” 170,000 Jews, this figure was a count of only Jews who had registered with a synagogue and,  most importantly, this figure did not include (and I quote) – “The Ashkenazis” (who I understood by his comment, were not real Jews!). If you counted them, he informed us, then there were around two and a half million!

He went on to say that he couldn’t believe in a religion that believed that the world was created in seven (sic) days. "Don't get me wrong!", he said, he wasn’t against Judaism or Jews and proved it by saying that he had recently gone to his friend’s Chanukah party which he explained was the commemoration of G-d creating the world in 8 days (sic)!

Iain seemed fascinated by his caller's "knowledge" and seemed to accept everything he said as fact without confirmation or challenge.
 

I had had enough. I immediately fired off an email via the LBC web site on my mobile phone explaining why Keith was talking total and utter nonsense. I have no idea if Iain even read my email as he never mentioned it during the show and I did not get a reply.

 

These were the points I made:

The Jewish population of the UK
 

The Jewish population includes both Sefardi and Ashkenazi Jews.

If we discount those people who wrote round that they were Jewish despite not being so according to Halacha (Jewish Law) and count in those who by choice chose not to answer the Census question on Religion I would guess that the figure would come to around 300,000 Jews left in Britain.

According to Institute for Jewish Policy Research UK, www.jpr.org.uk/) there are around 270,000 Jews who identify themselves as Jewish living in the UK. Most of these, (with the exception of the Orthodox Jewish community), it claims will more likely than not see their children marry non-Jews. The Institute estimates that there were some 450,000 to 500,000 Jews in the Britain around the 1950s.

Chanukah

Chanukah is the commemoration of the civil war and the victory by the Jews of Israel who remained loyal to G-d and His Torah against the Jews who had adopted Greek culture, during the second Temple period. However, most Jewish children in the UK are taught that it was a war between the Jews of Israel and the Greeks invaders in order to avoid the painful issue of secular verses religious Jews.

Therefore, the vast majority of British Jews do not learn beyond kindergarten level Judaism and therefore would not know anything about the civil war. However The Talmud, tractate Shabbat 42-43 states it openly.
 

The Age of the World

The estimate that the world is millions of years old is totally compatible with Torah Judaism. It is the fundamentalist Xtians who absurdly interpret their Xtian Bibles literally, despite the text which they are relying upon having gone through numerous mistranslations(sometimes unintentional, others intentional) from Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, German and various English versions.

It is quite ridiculous to assume that the word “day” in the context of Bereishis (the Genesis) story means a period of 24 hours or even a single night and day period when you consider that the sun was not created until the fourth day!

The Hebrew word used in the Bereishis story is “Yom”. The word consists of three letters. A Yud, Vav and Mem.  The Yud is a tiny vertical line. The Vav is a larger vertical line. The Mem is completed box, the same height as the Vav. Its true meaning is expressed in its graphical format. Tiny, larger and completed. In other words, a process of creation. The word “Yom” simply means an unspecified period of creation.

יום

Another “Jewish” (I use the term lightly) caller phoned in and said that he was very proud that all his family celebrated Xmas, his daughter had married a Buddhist and his son a Xtian. Iain Dale praised him for his open mindedness. The caller remarked that he assumed that the quoted figure of UK Jews was very low due to assimilation or moving to Israel and he would guess that it had been a lot larger at one time. Iain replied that he would check but he was sure that the Jewish population of Jews in Britain had remained steady for generations.

I found Iain Dale’s complete ignorance when it came to Jews and their beliefs staggering and deeply troubling. If this is what the cream of British intelligencer believe then it shows a frightening ignorance of who Jews are and what they believe in, within mainstream Britain which profoundly effects its views not only of local Jewish issues, but also its views of Israel and our historical and religious right to the Land of Israel.

*** UPDATE ***

I received a reply from Iain Dale the next morning:

Rob
Thanks for this. I don't think I ever professed to have any great knowledge of Judaism! In the new year we will be doing an hour every Wednesday looking at different religions.

Kind regards

Iain

Well, at least he read the email.
 

You are NOT alone

This is a shocking video about the bombardment of Anti-Israel propaganda in America's universities:

I heard yesterday that the enemies of the Israel are planning their next stage of attack. This one they hope will prove the most devastating yet. It is another ship to try and break the Israeli blockade. However this ship will not be full of Turkish jihadists. This ship will be full of European and American Jews!

I keep hearing the same thing from Israelis. They say that they don't see the point of arguing our case, not just to the Goyim (The Nations of the World) but also to Jews living outside of Israel! Bombarded with anti-Israel opinions day in and day out there is surely nothing we can do as they have already made up their minds and are no longer listening.

However we should never stop arguing our case because there are those who are listening, those who feel they are in a boat far from land, being tossed about in a storm with nothing to grab hold of. Those who are looking for the truth will hear it. We must continue to get that message out.

Far more painful than any security council resolution in the UN, any statement made by any foreign government or any demonstration held anywhere in the world, is a hafganah (demonstration) by Jews, screaming that we are robbers of the land.

Indeed, the very first Rashi in sefer Bereishis informs us that the only point in relating the story of creation is to remind us that Hashem rules the universe and gave Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people. Rav Zev Leff explains that this lesson is not meant for the Goyim. No Jewish leader has ever used the lesson of this first Rashi to argue Israel's right to the land with the Goyim. The message is for us, the Jewish people to absorb.

We must first be convinced that Hashem gave Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people.

See Rav Zev Leff's Parshas HaShavuah here

The original agenda of the Zionist movement of the 19th century was to strip the Jew of his/her Torah and produce a new modern Jew who would return to their national homeland and could hold his/her head up high amongst the nations of the world, sharing common socialist cultural, secular, humanist values. However, what the great Zionist thinkers failed to realise was that the Jew's only claim and indeed connection to Eretz Yisrael is through Torah. What has happened is that a generation of secular Jews both in Israel and outside, have grown up with no concept of our right to this land outside of secular arguments. Most of these secular arguments no longer hold any water today. For instance, that the State of Israel will cause anti-Semitism to disappear. As a result, we are now at a stage where secular Jewish University students in Israeli as well as foreign universities are arguing that we stole the land from the Arabs.

I can just imagine the agony of the departed neshamos (soles) of those early Zionists, who did their best to strip the Jew of Hashem and His Torah, looking down on the their offspring in Rabin Square, screaming for the return of Eretz Yisrael to the Arabs.

Not only is this due to the previous generation's attempt to substitute Torah Judaism with a new religion called Secular Zionism but also their obsession to be accepted as part of the socialist modern, secular, humanist enlightened world. This obsession has led to organisations such as Amnesty International Israel division, accusing their own relatives and friends of being war criminals. They know it's not true yet they cannot argue against their enlightened masters in America and Europe who tell them that they are.

How is this possible? Well if you are convinced that the rest of the world represents enlightenment in all things and they all agree that Israel should not exist then it takes a very strong willed person indeed to continue to resist.

The Asch Experiment

Solomon Eliot Asch was a world renowned psychologist who is most famous for his experiments into the power of group pressure. Asch was a holocaust survivor from Warsaw, Poland. He wanted to try and understand how so many people went along with Nazi doctrine even though on the face of it (according to his understanding), it went against all that he believed that the Europeans believed to be moral.

Here is a video showing the Asch experiment in practice:

Faced with continued and persistent pressure by the group that you are wrong and everyone else is right, most people will eventually yield to the majority, no matter how much they initially understand their own position to be correct.

We see this phenomenon in Parshas Shelach. Only two leaders resisted the other leader's poisonous words against Eretz Yisrael. Calev and Yehoshua Bin Nun.

Rashi explains that Calev's personality was that of a rebel. This word usually has negative connotations but Chaza"l explain that all midos (personality traits) are "pareve", that is, neither good nor bad. It all depends on how these traits are applied.

Rashi explains (BeMidbar 13:22) that Calev split from the others and went to Chevron to davan at the keva of our Avos. He did not care what the others thought of him for he was determined to do what he considered was right in Hashem's eyes. In "Asch" terms, he represents the special individual who has the ability to resist group pressure.

However Yehoshua Bin Nun, despite being a Talmud Chacham and Moshe Rabeinu's main talmid, had the personality that made him yearn for acceptance amongst his contemporaries. Therefore, Moshe had to add Hashem's name to Yehoshua's in order to give him chizuk to resist his fellow leaders who he so much respected and admired but who he knew in his heart were wrong.

Faced with the constant bombardment of an anti-Israel agenda in the world's media as well as both by teachers and fellow students at university, it takes a special individual like Calev to continue to stand up for what he/she knows is the truth. One such individual was the 16 year old boy called Daniel in the video post "Daniel in the Lions's Den".

As the Asch's experiments show, most people are not like Calev. However, it is important to remember what the Asch experiment also showed. That when just one other person supports your position, no matter how many more are against you, 95% of people continue to resist and do not yield to the overwhelming majority position when he/she knows that there is someone else who holds the same position.

We must not leave our fellow Jews alone. It is our job as Yiras Shemayim Torah Jews living in Eretz Yisrael to give those living in Chutz LaAretz the chizuk to resist the lies.