Jews in England
Sir: Mr Adler (Letters, May 20) asserts "The rightof a nation to keep its racial character, whether that nation be Britain or Israel." The attitude underlying his letter represents a bizarre and unpalatable distortion of the truth. The disabilities which Jews have suffered in this country have been based almost without exception on religious, not racial, considerations, and have in many cases applied equally to Roman Catholics and other non-Anglicans. (The prospectus of St Paul's School, about which there has been a public debate recently, speaks specifically of "non-Christian pupils" and "boys of other religious faiths.") There is current, it is true, a racial definition of 'Jew,' according to which Lord Beaconsfield, the first Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, the present, Bishop of Kingston-uponThames and numerous other prominent non-Jews were or are Jews.' The consequences of this attitude were amply demonstrated in Hitler's Germany. Those consequences were, as I suppose few would deny, intolerable.
What Mr Adler means by the racial character' of the British nation is, to me at least, a mystery. A pure British race is far to seek, and not to be looked for in present-day Britain, whose population is as mixed as her rich history deserves. When one turns to Israel one finds an even more noticeably ' multi-racial ' society. I dare say the indigenous Palestinians have more in common with the ancient population of Israel and Judah than do most Jewish immigrants. If the racial theory were accepted in Israel there would have been no objection to Father Daniel's claim to be a Jew, and many Israelis would be compelled to give up their Israeli nationality. There is no justification whatever for a racial definition of the problems of Arabs in Israel. It is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that.
Nicholas de Lange
3 Causewayside, Cambridge
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