By Antony Lerman | 22/04/2010
With a general election on 6 May, we're on the verge of a political upheaval in Britain. Whatever the outcome, the winds of change will blow. Some will be asking that classic question: Will it be good for the Jews? Others know that the question belongs to an age that has passed.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky
The reason is not because the answer is a foregone conclusion. Nor is it because we no longer want to know. Rather, the question is an expression of a set of assumptions about the position of Jews in society and self-imposed restrictions on public political engagement as Jews, which no longer apply. Ever since the first Jew, Lionel de Rothschild, was legally allowed to take his seat in parliament in 1858, hiding your Jewish origins in order to run for elected office was not necessary. But you still had to leave your Jewish identity, religious commitment, your engagement in Jewish life, at home.
All that has changed. Today, you can choose to be minimally Jewish in public, if you wish. But you can also choose to carry a strong Jewish identity into public life. The leader of the Conservative (Tory) Party—traditionally the home of ‘genteel' antisemitism—from 2003 to 2005, Michael Howard, is the son of Romanian Jews and made a virtue of his origins during the 2005 general election campaign. The very fact that he became leader in the first place, was a sign of how the old rules no longer applied.
Across Europe, with just a few exceptions, the picture is much the same. In Germany, even prior to the 1989 watershed moment, which played a major part in creating a Jewish-friendly public space in a number of countries, the political affiliation of prominent Jewish leaders was well known. The late Ignatz Bubis, a very wealthy property developer who led German Jewry in the mid-1990s, was a leading figure in the Free Democratic Party, a regular on television political discussion programmes, and was even spoken of as a possible Federal President. The deeper integration of the post-war generation of German Jews is partly reflected in the significant role some of them play in political life. Micha Brumlik, the professor of education at Frankfurt University, is a prominent Green.
The former communist countries in Eastern Europe and the European states of the former Soviet Union also became open to Jewish involvement in politics, albeit in rather more risky and less democratically accountable ways. Victor Pinchuk, a wealthy oligarch and the Jewish son-in-law of the former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, was a member of the Ukrainian parliament. He remains a very influential figure in Ukrainian society. In Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, also of Jewish origin, was once the country's richest man through his position as head of Yukos Oil. Just as he was beginning to play a major role as facilitator of independent political initiatives and a significant funder of Jewish communal activity, he fell foul of Putin's Kremlin and now languishes in jail.
Fortunately, the Khodorkovsky experience is not typical. In many European countries, Jews are highly active as political commentators, political advisors, funders of political parties, members of legislatures and cabinet ministers. In most places, except at the antisemitic margins, there is no serious prejudiced speculation about whether they can combine Jewish engagement with their public roles. Jewish participation in politics is an integral part of the rich, although not entirely unproblematic, tapestry of minority group engagement in civil society in Europe's multicultural states.
What has been discussed and analysed openly for decades in America—the Jewish vote—is also becoming a very legitimate subject of discussion in a few countries where the Jewish population is sufficiently large and concentrated to swing the result in constituency-based political contests. The Jewish historian of British politics, Geoffrey Alderman, wrote in the Jewish Chronicle last week, amid speculation that no party will emerge with an absolute majority of seats in the new parliament: ‘In such a climate, it is inevitable that every ethnic card that can be played will be laid on the table. The public invocation of a Jewish vote is not only predictable, therefore. It is a sign of a vibrant democratic state.' Whatever the outcome, it's clear that Jews are no longer sitting around waiting for others to determine for them whether this particular wind of change is ‘good for the Jews'.
