Summary/Abstract |
It is unusual to find the words “revival” and “British Jewry” in the same sentence. Several decades ago, the title of this paper would have come as a surprise to the many critics of British Jewry. For example, in 1989, Professor Daniel Elazar observed that “the powers that be in British Jewry are content with the status quo and do not seek change.” Author Steven Brook (1990) scathingly remarked that the leadership of British Jewry “revels in its mediocrity, shallowness and philistinism.” And, in 1996, in the conclusion of his study, entitled Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews of Europe Since 1945, Professor Bernard Wasserstein stated that the Jews of Britain are “slowly but surely … fading away. Soon nothing will be left but a disembodied memory.”
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