A chaplaincy service used by British universities to provide pastoral support for Jewish students requires its chaplains to be pro-active advocates for Israel, Middle East Eye can reveal.The University Jewish Chaplaincy (UJC) is a registered charity that operates in dozens of universities across the UK. It provides chaplains and chaplaincy couples and says they are “there for Jewish students of all backgrounds and affiliations”.The UJC is also currently advising ministers on new guidelines the government has promised to deliver on tackling antisemitism in higher education.But in job descriptions on its website for vacant chaplaincy posts in Brighton, Bristol and Glasgow the UJC listed being a "pro-active Israel advocate" among essential requirements for candidates.
Noted anti-Israel professor Neve Gordon is shocked....shocked - that rabbis are expected to be sympathetic with the political opinions of most Jews.
Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at London's Queen Mary University and vice president of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (Brismes), questioned how a chaplain expected to advocate for Israel could provide pastoral support to all Jewish students on campuses.“In these job advertisements, there is a conflation with being Jewish and being an advocate of Israel, which by no means reflects the position of many Jews in the UK,” said Gordon, who is Israeli.Gordon said he had recently met at another university with a Jewish student group supportive of Palestinian rights who said they did not feel that their views were taken into account by the Jewish student society.“If a chaplain conceives of their role as an advocate of Israel, that chaplain will not only be unable to represent many Jewish students and staff across campuses in the UK but will be advocating a position that undermines some of their core values."
And how, exactly, would the vast majority of Jewish students who are Zionists feel if their chaplain was an anti-Zionist? Apparently Gordon's concern for Jewish students' feelings only extends the ones who are least likely to attend events at Jewish groups.
(Also, Gordon is knowingly deceptive. He conflates the job of the chaplain with the entire Jewish student societies. The chaplain doesn't choose what programming to approve, for example.)
Now, let's look at the entire list of requirements for those jobs, the list that upsets anti-Zionist Jews so much (the page was taken down, this is from an archive copy:)
Why isn't Gordon upset that Orthodox ordination is required? By his logic, doesn't that exclude the majority non-Orthodox students from feeling comfortable?
And the chaplain needs to be sensitive to halacha! Why not hire chaplains who violate Shabbat? Why are they so intolerant???
Two seconds of thought gives the answer to both requirements of Orthodoxy and Zionist. A religious chaplain can understand the needs of students who are both religious and non-religious; a Zionist rabbi can be sensitive to the needs of students who are both Zionist and non-Zionist. An anti-Zionist chaplain - whether from Neturei Karta or from the Reconstructionist movement - could not possibly be an effective role model for Zionist students just as an anti-religious chaplain could not possibly minister to religious Jewish students.
The religious chaplain, and the Zionist chaplain, are more likely to be respectful of those they disagree with than the anti-religious, anti-ZIonist chaplain is likely to be.
Indeed, the requirements mandate that the chaplain is inclusive, non-judgmental, and open to secular events on campus.
It is like a Jewish organization requiring that its facilities are kosher - while most Jews do not keep kosher, it is more respectful to all to insist that the building does. This is what inclusiveness means.
People who scream that Zionists are complicit in apartheid, genocide and other crimes are not being inclusive and tolerant of their fellow Jews. Gordon si using a faux concern for tolerance to push an intolerant agenca.
It is a shame that this needs to be pointed out.
People like Gordon and Jewish Voice for Peace members deceptively pretend that their concerns are for the well-being of others when in fact they are trying to marginalize, exclude and demonize those who disagree with them, This ends up becoming incitement to and actual violence, as we are seeing more and more.
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