Divided We Stand

Using the ideas of the celebrated Anglo-Jewish historian, the late Judge Israel Finestein QC, as the intellectual framework for this original work, the author explores the history of division which has formed and fractured the modern Anglo-Jewish world. Colin Lang invites the reader to consider Anglo-Jewish history in terms of Jewish identity, purpose, and survival. This book focusses on the Anglo-Jewish experience from the Emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day. It looks at the impact of the Reform, Liberal, and Masorti secessions, and asks 'whither orthodoxy?' It recounts the impossible search for pluralism in the face of unbridgeable religious divisions, and considers the stresses imposed on communal institutions, and on a leadership obsessed with unity. The author examines the divisive impacts of Zionism and the great immigration, which between them transformed the Jewish world. He looks at other areas of Jewish life affected by competing interests, such as the governance of the community, the rise to prominence of women in the secular (but not yet religious) world, the importance of the provinces, and the role of the secular Jew. What emerges is a convergence of totally separate, self-contained (often antagonistic) communities, with Israel at the center, both inspiring Jewish life in the Diaspora, and, at the same time threatening the cohesion of the Jewish world. The author concludes that, despite a history of fragmentation and ceaseless argument, what the Jews have in common far outweighs what divides them. And, in some cases, as in Anglo-Jewry, the lack of unity and a greater pluralism has enabled the community to thrive.