Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 4th April / 17th Nisan 5786

Pornography, Antisemitism and a New Synagogue in Town

I would like to propose an analogy between antisemitism and pornography.

The two phenomena have something deeply in common: they are difficult to define in the abstract, but when we encounter them, we recognise them. Both inhabit a grey area, both often present themselves in apparently respectable forms, and both help to normalise what, in its more extreme forms, prepares for or accompanies violence. To pursue this line of thought, I believe that women, the victims of pornography , should have a greater voice in defining what pornography is and what, by contrast, might be called art. And, continuing the comparison, it is obvious that there is such a thing as artistic nudity devoid of pornographic intent, just as there is criticism of Israel that is free of antisemitic motives.

Criticising a government, a military strategy, a political choice is legitimate. The problem arises

when rights granted to every other state are denied to Israel, or when political language becomes a

disguise for older anti-Jewish stereotypes. In that case criticism does not enlighten: it conceals.

There is clearly a distinction between antisemitic speech and physical violence against Jews, just

as pornography does not necessarily mean rape. But it would be naive to deny that a correlation

exists. Words are not the same thing as violence, but they can prepare the ground for it: they make

it imaginable, justify it, normalise it, identify a target. Where there is incitement against Jews,

physical attacks often follow and we know that all too well. In the same way, the idea that

consent is secondary, or even irrelevant, an idea conveyed by much pornography, has an obvious

connection to sexual violence.

For that reason, the question of limits cannot be brushed aside lightly. Has the suppression of

pornography among consenting adults really helped to reduce rape and crimes of violence against

women? That is debatable. But absolute freedom of speech is also a principle that no society truly

applies in absolute form: there are already limits when it comes to threats, defamation, incitement,

exploitation. Antisemitism and pornography are two cases that show how freedom without

boundaries is not a workable ideal, and how limits are sometimes necessary in order to defend

human dignity and collective security.

Having established that, I would like to speak about those anti-Zionist Jews who are so often

brandished by Israel’s enemies as proof that being against Israel does not mean being against

Jews. With all due respect, this is the same line of reasoning used by those who argue that, because

there are women who work in the pornography industry, pornography can have nothing to do with

the objectification of women, their exploitation, rape, or sexual violence. The presence of a

victim, or an accomplice, within a system does not absolve that system. On the contrary, it often

makes it more presentable.

There are Jewish intellectuals who play precisely this role, with formulations such as: “I support a

Jewish presence in that part of the world, but I do not believe there is any need for a Jewish state.”

It sounds like a balanced position, almost a refined one. Like that of actresses who construct a

public persona by moving in the space between eroticism and pornography.

But there is one small problem. Just as pornography is often linked to violence, so coexistence

between a Jewish minority and an Arab majority in that part of the world has often ended in

pogroms and massacres of Jews. To look at the reality of today’s Middle East and preach the

virtues of Arab-Jewish bi-nationalism in our own time is the equivalent of mistaking a

pornographic video for a declaration of romantic love.

Apart from these narrow, and fortunately not very influential, intellectual circles, the most

famous anti-Zionist Jews are probably those of the tiny Neturei Karta group, ultra-Orthodox

Jews who are highly visible and vastly overexposed in the media compared with their real

numbers. But here we need to be precise. The world from which they come, the ultra-Orthodox

world, is largely detached from contemporary politics. The majority of ultra-Orthodox Jews

are not anti-Zionist; more properly speaking, they are non-Zionist. They do not invest their

identity in national sovereignty, and what they ask of politics above all is to preserve their way

of life, centred on the primacy of religious study, with as little outside interference as possible.

Neturei Karta, by contrast, represent an extremist and marginal offshoot, at odds even with

much of the rest of the ultra-Orthodox world. At the origins of their anti-Zionism there lies a

history of divorces and ruptures within the family of their Rebbe. Their opposition to Israel has

nothing genuinely political or religious about it. Yet they are used as though they were

representatives of authentic Judaism. They represent no one but themselves, but they enjoy a

wildly disproportionate amount of media attention.

A different discussion is needed for those anti-Zionist Jews who present themselves as heirs to

an internationalist and socialist tradition, especially that of Eastern Europe a century ago. Here

the reference is to the Bund: a Jewish socialist movement rooted in a real proletariat, hostile to

Zionism and to every form of nationalism, because it saw in them instruments by which the

bourgeoisie consolidated its power. One may disagree with the Bund, but one cannot deny that

its vision had a certain historical coherence, a real social base, and a genuine idea of

emancipation.

The figures who now claim to be heirs of that tradition, however, barely preserve even its

name. They are not proletarians; they are more often middle class or upper class. They do not

share the socialist project of their predecessors. Nor do they share their universalism, if by

universalism one means a vision capable of judging all forms of power with equal severity.

The only thing that holds them together is a fierce opposition to everything Israel does and to

the very fact that Israel exists. In our own city we have glaring examples of this: people who

spend their time compiling lists of Israel’s crimes and defects in order to prove that that state

has nothing to do with Jewish morality. Israel is the only state from which they demand

morally impeccable conduct; and precisely for that reason it ends up being described as the

source of racism and Islamophobia, while everything is forgiven to other historical and

political actors.

The only real point of contact between these neo-Bundists and the historical Bund is their

polemic against Zionism, accompanied by a certain reading of the origins of antisemitism, or,

more precisely, by a systematic minimisation of antisemitism on the left. The Bund genuinely

believed that antisemitic racism, being part of capitalism, would disappear with socialism. It

was an illusion, but it was a sincere illusion. Today’s neo-Bundists, by contrast, cobble

together improbable alliances between groups that proclaim themselves liberators and worlds

that are profoundly illiberal, and ask us to believe that the salvation of the Jews will somehow

emerge from precisely those contradictions.

A few days ago, while the rest of the Jewish world was busy preparing for Pesach, a group of

residents of this city declared that they intended to found England’s first anti-Zionist

synagogue. Of course, one can make many witty jokes. For example: what do anti-Zionist Jews say at the end of the Seder? “Next year in Stalingrad?” One may also smile at the fact that such a project

was announced on one of the very days when religious Jews have better things to do than read

the news. And yet I believe it is not a development to be underestimated. Indeed, I would like to offer my congratulations to these neo-Bundists.

First of all because I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of association — freedoms that

are routinely denied to Jews wherever “anti-Zionists” come to power. Secondly, because the

existence of this group will finally make it possible to clarify that broad grey zone of Jews who

“would be Zionists, but...”. I mean those who, ever since the 1990s and the collapse of the

Oslo process, have never missed an opportunity to distance themselves from the rest of the

Jewish community, adopting the sanctimonious tone of the moral admonisher, warmly

welcomed and petted by the Guardian and similar circles.

I call them conditional Zionists. Not because they criticise Israel, that is perfectly legitimate,

but because they feel the need publicly to distance themselves from Israel whenever doing so

may bring them social respectability, intellectual comfort, or applause in the right drawing

rooms. One need only read any of the many letters, petitions, and statements in which the

“peace process” is presented as the absolute priority even while Hamas is massacring Israeli

citizens. There you will find them. They are the ones who pray for peace in Israel, but never

for the victory of the Jewish state.

And now they will finally have a synagogue all their own: a synagogue of anti-Zionist Jews in

which no one will be obliged to pray for the safety of Israel; in which being Jewish will no

longer mean belonging to a people that, as such, has a right to a state; nor even believing in a

God who entrusted that people with a historical mission and also assigned them a land in

which to carry it out.

And this is where the project becomes truly interesting. Because a synagogue, traditionally, is

born out of a shared belonging: Torah, memory, peoplehood, covenant, destiny. This one, by

contrast, would seem to be born out of a negation. Not out of what one is, but out of what one

refuses to be. Not a synagogue built around a “we”, but around a “not we”. It is a fascinating

idea, in its own way: a synagogue founded on what it denies.

I sincerely offer my congratulations to these people, the same people who had the good taste to

curse me and my son in Yiddish, as if to underline that, being non-Ashkenazi, I do not really

belong to this city. But my thoughts turn above all to the others: to that broad grey zone of conditional Zionists for whom supporting Israel is too tiring, too embarrassing, too socially costly at cocktail parties or in the company of other Guardian readers. To them I would like to recall how Moses’ spiritual journey begins.

At the beginning, Moses is an assimilated Jew. He believes he belongs to the palace; he lives

in privilege; he has grown up within the horizon of Pharaoh. Then one day he sees an Egyptian

striking a Jew, and something is kindled within him. The rest we know: from that act begins

not only the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt, but also Moses’ personal liberation from

the ideology he had absorbed in his privileged upbringing. Moses truly becomes Moses at the

moment when he stops identifying with the palace and recognises himself in the destiny of his

own people. [see Exodus 2:13–14]

Let the conditional Zionists look closely at the birth of the anti-Zionist synagogue. A

synagogue that pleases the palace, indeed, one that presents itself almost as a Jewish affairs

office set up by an extreme left that enjoys hegemony in the universities, in the newspapers,

and in large parts of the parliamentary left. If it comes into being, if it takes root, then the time

will come for the conditional Zionists to decide where they stand: inside that palace, or, like

Moses, with their own people?

Lipstadt, Deborah. “We Know Anti-Semitism When We See It.” The Times of Israel Blogs,

May 5, 2016. — Useful above all for the definitional formula, implicitly echoing the famous “I

know it when I see it” and applying it to antisemitism.

West, Caroline. “Pornography and Censorship.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

Fall 2024 ed., edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. Stanford, CA: Metaphysics

Research Lab, Stanford University, 2024. — A good philosophical and legal starting point for

the debate about free speech, harm, and censorship. Mestre-Bach, Gemma, Alejandro Villena-

Moya, and Carlos Chiclana-Actis. “Pornography Use and Violence: A Systematic Review of

the Last 20 Years.” Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 25, no. 2 (2024): 1088–1112. https://

doi.org/10.1177/15248380231173619. — Important because it offers a recent and cautious

overview of the relationship between pornography and violence, without overstating causality.

Ben-Israel, Hedva. “Bi-Nationalism versus Nationalism: The Case of Judah Magnes.” Israel

Studies 23, no. 1 (2018): 86–105. — Useful on Magnes as a symbolic figure of binationalism.

Hermann, Tamar. “The Bi-national Idea in Israel/Palestine: Past and Present.” Nations and

Nationalism 11, no. 3 (2005): 381–401. — Probably the best concise and critical essay on

binationalism as a political option. Fish, Rachel. “Bi-Nationalist Visions for the Construction

and Dissolution of the State of Israel.” Israel Studies 19, no. 2 (2014): 15–34. — More

polemical, and closer to a critique of contemporary binationalism.

Cohen, Amnon. Jewish Life under Islam: Jerusalem in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1984. — Essential for the Ottoman background, and useful against

overly easy idealisations of coexistence. Lieber, Sherman. Mystics and Missionaries: The Jews

in Palestine, 1799–1840. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992. — Very useful on

early nineteenth-century Palestine, with attention to the concrete vulnerability of Jewish

communities.

Friedman, Menaḥem. Society and Religion: The Non-Zionist Orthodoxy in Eretz-Israel, 1918–

1936. Jerusalem: Yad Yitsḥaḳ Ben-Tsevi, 1977. Hebrew. — Still the classic study of Haredi

non-/a-Zionism. Ravitzky, Aviezer. Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. — The best broad framework for the different

Orthodox responses to Zionism. Keren-Kratz, Menachem. “Satmar and Neturei Karta: Jews

Against Zionism.” Modern Judaism 43, no. 1 (2023): 52–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/

kjac023. — The most useful recent study on Neturei Karta, especially for distinguishing them

from other forms of religious anti- or non-Zionism. Inbari, Motti. Ruth Blau: A Life of

Paradox and Purpose. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2023. — A valuable biography

for the personal and family background of the Neturei Karta world, including its more

dramatic aspects.

Gitelman, Zvi Y., ed. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in

Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. — The best volume for

reading Bundism and Zionism comparatively. Slucki, David. The International Jewish Labor

Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,

2012. — Very useful for showing the fate of the Bund after 1945 and the centrality of the

Israel question.

Bearson, Lee. “Jewish Bund’s Anti-Zionism Idealized & Idolized.” Third Narrative,

September 27, 2019. — Not an academic study, but a very useful polemical piece against the

contemporary idealisation of the Bund.