RUTHFULLY YOURS

The speech was a quarter of an hour’s romp through modern Anglo-Jewish history, beginning with the observation that Roderigo Lopes, Elizabeth Tudor’s Jewish physician, who was done to death on a trumped up charge of espionage, had been tried and convicted in that very location.

Tribute was paid to such luminaries as Sir Moses Monterfiore, the great, very long-lived (1784-1885) Sephardi grandee and philanthropist who was the Board’s president for a total of 39 years during that era – ended as late as 1940 when Zionist activist Professor Selig Brodetsky, an East End boy born in the Ukraine, grasped the Board’s helm –  when an elite of mainly interrelated patrician families dominated communal affairs and made representations to government sotto voce as befitted “gentlemen of the Mosaic persuasion”.

Also mentioned very favourably was the prime minister and novelist Benjamin Disraeli, who as Prince Charles reminded his audience, had been baptised in childhood yet still regarded himself proudly as a Jew – the prince referred fondly to Dizzy’s self-description as”the blank page between the Old and the New Testaments”.

Prince Charles noted the trips overseas made by the extraordinary Sir Moses Monterfiore on behalf of oppressed Jewries, and that Sir Moses visited Jerusalem seven times:

“He so loved Jerusalem that he adopted it on his family crest and wrote it on all his belongings including his bed! He took a bit of Britain to Jerusalem – a Kentish windmill that still stands there, known as the Montefiore windmill – and a bit of Jerusalem to Britain: he is buried in Jerusalem soil, in Ramsgate, in an exact replica of Rachel’s Tomb not far from Jerusalem and Bethlehem.”

Nowhere in his speech did the prince mention the links between Anglo-Jewry and Israel.

That omission might be termed his “blank page”.  But does the page contain any lines to be read between?

It might reasonably be asked why he should have mentioned Israel, since the speech was a celebration of the Board’s 250 years of existence.

Yet it might just as reasonably be observed that since the Board has to some extent concerned itself with matters affecting Zionism and Israel (it established a “Palestine Committee” in 1928, when even Board members steadfastly opposed to “political Zionism” could acquiesce in “philanthropic Zionism” under the British Mandate, a committee renamed the Eretz Israel Committee when the State of Irael was born), and since Anglo-Jewry has played a not insignificant part in the upbuilding of Israel (as explained, incidentally, in several articles in this recently-published reference book, pictured right) the prince should surely have said something.

The Balfour Declaration, it might be remarked, was conspicuous by its absence, and many people will recall that a few years ago a visit by Prince Charles to Israel seemed imminent, only to be stymied, it seemed, by the FCO Camels Corps.  Had it taken place it would have been the first official visit to Israel by a member of the Royal Family since Israel’s birth.  http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/03/right-royal-wrong-british-foreign.html

Regarding the speech, I’ve yet to be convinced one way or the other.

But Zionist stalwart Jonathan Hoffman seems to have no doubt how the lines of the prince’s blank page should be read:

‘Over 2000 words about 250 years of history of British Jewry and he didn’t mention the word Israel once!”

 Moses Montefiore”; “Jerusalem”; “Holocaust victims”; “Kindertransport” … but not one mention of Israel and what that represents for Jews in the diaspora and could have represented for those who died in the Holocaust. Not one mention of the key role that was played by British Jews and the British Government in the founding of the State of Israel, for example through the Balfour Declaration.

No mention of Chaim Weizmann [pictured left] who spent much of his life in the UK.

No mention that one of the Board’s nine objectives is to “take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare, and standing”

Not a word

It’s like Hamlet without the Prince …

Or the Emperor Who Wore No Clothes …

Did anyone who went to the Dinner actually notice?

Did Charles notice?’ http://www.thejc.com/blogs/jonathan-hoffman/charles-speech-the-mystery-of-the-missing-i-word