Chief Rabbi
Title of religious leaderWikipedia
78
MENTIONS
25
EPISODES
25
PODCASTS
Search complete. 78 mentions across 25 episodes found for "Chief Rabbi".
Sep 30, 2026
Chris DoyleGUEST
Certainly that change.
Chris DoyleGUEST
But the British Jewish establishment groups like the Board of Deputies, the chief rabbi as well, you know, United Jewish Leadership or Jewish Leadership Council.
Chris DoyleGUEST
they all tried to uh you know state that the british jewish community is united they try to say our view we are the only legitimate bodies who represent british jews but actually what all the debate that has ensued has demonstrated this is far from the truth that actually the british jewish community does have many different strands of opinion and quite passionately held.
Chris DoyleGUEST
And we saw many British Jews going out on protests.
Chris DoyleGUEST
But that is how those groups that have really acted as pro Netanyahu organizations have depicted this.
Chris DoyleGUEST
And I think Ed, because he did and does understand British Jewish politics better than most of his predecessors, was very savvy in the way he went about it.
Chris DoyleGUEST
did meet with the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies, but he met with groups like Yeched as well.
Chris DoyleGUEST
He met with groups who, and he's basically saying, actually, I know there isn't a single Jewish voice, and I'm not going to count out of this idea that you alone represent British Jewry.
Hilary JeffsHOST
to make clear that this was about the Israeli government and about the settlements and not about Jewish people.
Hilary JeffsHOST
And I'm wondering actually what it will do, because the chief rabbi, they were talking about how this is sort of a dark day for Judaism, how it's going to give people carte blanche to attack Jews more on the street, which is absolutely abhorrent.
Hilary JeffsHOST
And we've had enough attacks that's happened in the last year or two that I really don't ever want to see any of the rise of that at all.
Hilary JeffsHOST
But whether...
Peter KindermanHOST
motivated reasoning again.
Peter KindermanHOST
Why are you arguing this? Why are you formulating your argument in the way that you are? Why are you choosing to emphasize some facts rather than others? So yes, I think it might.
Peter KindermanHOST
I think the chief rabbi may well be correct in the sense that any steps that move towards condemnation of Israeli policies in the Middle East might motivate people towards anti-Semitism.
Peter KindermanHOST
I think that's conceivably true.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
It's Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis making British Jews less safe, not Ed Miliband.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Mervis confirms the anti-Semites' worst assumptions when he keeps confusing Jews with Israel and using his influence to protect Israel from ever being held accountable for its crimes.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
By Jonathan Cook.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Finally, someone in high public office has had the nerve to state the obvious, that Britain's Orthodox Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis is talking complete nonsense.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Sadly, no one in the media seems ready to listen to Ed Miliband, the UK's Foreign Secretary.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Mervis is one of Israel's most visible and influential cheerleaders in the UK.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Yet when Miliband set out the British government's slightly tougher line on Israel's illegal settlements this week, through a trade ban that will be difficult to enforce and that his officials have reportedly said will, in any case, be largely symbolic, none of this context about Mervis was mentioned by the very establishment media outlets that are only too eager to quote him.
Matthew AlfordNARRATOR
Which is all of them.
William CrawleyHOST
Those sanctions have divided opinion in the Jewish community in Britain, to say the least.
William CrawleyHOST
The Chief Rabbi called it a dark day for British Jews and said the policy would further embolden those who use hatred as a weapon against Jews.
William CrawleyHOST
Claudia Mendoza is Chief Executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, which represents major Jewish organisations and charities here.
Claudia MendozaGUEST
We've had a number of concerns.
Jeremy GordonGUEST
both more extreme political parties, albeit extreme political parties who sit in the cabinet of the Israeli government, and more mainstream Israeli political parties.
Jeremy GordonGUEST
And I just think it's really important to condemn what's going wrong and to try and make a distinction between that and the right of Jews to live in peace, both in Israel and, of course, in this country.
William CrawleyHOST
Clearly, we heard a very different response from the chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mervis, this week.
William CrawleyHOST
He said this was a dark day for British Jews.
Alex ThomasHOST
We'll move on in a second.
Alex ThomasHOST
But on the domestic consequences, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called it a dark day for British Jews.
Alex ThomasHOST
There's a bit of a debate going on about the views differ across the Jewish community, but there is undoubtedly a, a sense of concern and upset in parts of the Jewish community, and there are security aspects potentially to some of these sorts of decisions.
Alex ThomasHOST
Outside the Foreign Office, across the whole of government, there's a coordination job presumably that, that has been going on.
Alex ThomasHOST
Have you picked up on anything on the kind of, you know, the role of the Home Office in this or the, the kind of wider government response?
Kitty DonaldsonGUEST
Absolutely, and I was told that Andy Burnham had Jewish leaders into Number Ten last week in order to try and smooth the ground and explain his thinking.
Kitty DonaldsonGUEST
There's also been a rearguard action from Foreign Office sources who've been texting me this morning, kind of the counterpoint to what, um, the Chief Rabbi's been saying.
Kitty DonaldsonGUEST
Other rabbis across the UK who support the government's actions actually have been sent three in a series of messages, and I think you might see those appear elsewhere tomorrow just because the government's trying to show that actually there is no sort of unified Jewish community view on this and that views vary.
Hugo RifkindHOST
And I, I make the point that I think the reason why it's muted is that, uh, uh, members of the British Jewish c- Jewish community, even sort of ardent Zionists in the British Jewish community, they might be divided on the rights and wrongs of the sanctions, but there seems to be quiet agreement almost across the board that settlements themselves are wrong, which makes it very hard to, uh, for that to be the thing that you want to go into bat, uh, for another country for.
Hugo RifkindHOST
Uh, Ed Miliband, the, the Jewish Foreign Secretary, has disagreed with both the US Ambassador to Israel, who accused the UK of Jew hate, and the, and the, the Chief Rabbi, who said the sanctions make Jews, uh, less safe, and, um, which is, you know, the, I mean, it's sort of...
Hugo RifkindHOST
It's remarkable rhetoric flying around.
Hugo RifkindHOST
I basically make the point in the column that many, if not most, b- Brit- uh, British Jews still believe in a two-state solution, and you can't believe in a two-state solution and believe in expanding settlements as well, which is why a lot of people, I feel, are probably opting to stay silent.
Hugo RifkindHOST
Matthew, what do you think about all this?
Matthew ParrisGUEST
I can, I can see it from the point of view of the Chief Rabbi and the, and the Jewish com- British Jewish community, that if you feel a little bit under siege from the outside, if you do sense a little bit more antisemitism in the air than there was before, and I, and I think both those things are true, then argue among ourselves, so to speak, but, but let, let's, um, let, let's try to put up a united front against the rest of the world.
Matthew ParrisGUEST
It's a sort of siege mentality.
Matthew ParrisGUEST
I don't think it's a good idea.
Arielle AngelHOST
it.Emma, I wanna ask you about the communal response in the UK.
Arielle AngelHOST
I know that Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said that it was truly a dark day for British Jews, and that sanctions were little more than a political flag-bearing for mendacious anti-Israel rhetoric that would embolden people who, quote, "use hatred as a weapon against Jews." Obviously, the Board of Deputies of British Jews is not happy with what happened.
Arielle AngelHOST
What are you seeing? What does it mean?
Emily HiltonGUEST
Well, I think first to say that the response from the Jewish communal establishment mainstream, and even to some extent the sort of center left, I'm thinking of the Jewish Labor movement, which is sort of the supposed Jewish affiliate of the Labor Party, has been abysmal.
Philip McCormackGUEST
It fundamentally influenced the founding fathers of the United States of America, in particular writers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Philip McCormackGUEST
And then with the influence of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson upon the French, you see these concepts then being embedded in French Enlightenment philosophical thought so that when you have the French Revolution and you have this Declaration of the Rights of Man, you find the same principles embedded within it, but this time from a secular perspective because it was obvious to them, it was self-evident to them I was struck, however, listening to Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi, who was perhaps one of the most brilliant erudite minds of the 20th century.
Philip McCormackGUEST
And it was my privilege to both meet him and to talk to him about this, but also to listen to his lecture.
Philip McCormackGUEST
And I remember Listening to him where he said, Thomas Jefferson said, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
Matt De GrootCORRESPONDENT
Nothing about that has been acceptable by Israelis.
Matt De GrootCORRESPONDENT
However, it has been a really strong Andy Burnham and a strong UK government who have said, we disagree with some of the Chief Rabbi's stances.
Matt De GrootCORRESPONDENT
We definitely disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Matt De GrootCORRESPONDENT
We believe that we are not putting...
15 more episodes mention Chief Rabbi.
Create an account to see the whole feed, search across every transcript, and follow the entities you care about.