Why religion is not popular. With a note about Diane Abbott

So the Coronation is here, it will be one week from today. Details of the ceremony will be made public this evening at 10.00. Where? On the website of the Church of England.

Lest we forget, the Coronation of King Charles is, first and foremost, a religious ceremony. He is the “Defender of the Faith” and “Supreme Governor of the Church of England”. Many religious elements will be part of the ritual of Coronation, which we no doubt will watch with interest and fascination.

I mean, who does not like religious rituals? But, at the same time, we Jews feel a bit of discomfort, of being out of place, because that religion, Christianity, is not ours.

Actually, the relationship between us, the Jewish people, and the Christian Churches has often been difficult, to say the least. Our enemies used the symbols of Christianity during the Crusades and while leading the pogroms. The Inquisition, by which hands so many Jews have been burnt at the stake, was -generally speaking- a department of the Catholic Church. True, the record of the Church of England is better than other Churches, yet their symbols and beliefs are not compatible with ours.

And most of us literally cringe at the thought of Christian customs surreptitiously introduced into Judaism: flowers at the cemetery, for example.

More generally, as we Jews know too well, marriage between religion and political power is never good. It gives religion a horrible reputation.

Religion is especially unpopular when it practices power and control over human bodies. It is inconvenient or annoying to fast on Yom Kippur or during Ramadan.

It can be actually argued that is precisely the point, religious fasts and other forms of self-denial (such as those prescribed in our Torah portion) exist -among other reasons- to make us human beings feel weak and exposed, to experience how limited control we have on our bodies -which the rest of the year we believe we have.

Fasting is a spiritual experience. But no one can deny that it is difficult. And it’s obviously difficult to like religion when religion prescribes fasting and other practices of self-denial.

But is this, let me ask, really the problem that people have with religion? The connection with power and authority, the restrictions to observe?

I think there is something more. I believe religion is not popular nowadays because it deals with something we don’t like, a part of human nature we would prefer to ignore. That is guilt.

We fast on Yom Kippur to do teshuva, adjust our spiritual journey’s direction, and amend and correct our mistakes. Or, to use a language I do not like, to expiate for our transgressions.

Part of the process is the examination of our past actions. We examine what we have done in the past year and the status of our relationships, and we try to recall mistakes to amend.

This is the meaning of the expression תְּעַנּ֣וּ אֶת־נַפְשֹֽׁתֵיכֶ֗ם, which we find at the beginning of this week’s Torah reading (Lev 16:29). It is often translated as “you shall afflict yourself”, and in our Chumash, we read “you shall practice self-denial”. But, as noticed by the great Sephardi commentator Abarbenel [ad. loc.], the real meaning is “you will make your souls more humble”. This is how the process of teshuva begins; when we face our mistakes and transgressions honestly and with humility.

And we begin to understand why religion is not so popular nowadays. Because this process — humbly recognising your mistakes so that you can make proper amends- is literally the opposite of what we see on the public scene today.

Last Sunday, I was, like everyone in this room, appalled in reading the letter by Diane Abbott to a Black journalist, Tomiwa Owolade. There, she stated that Irish Travellers and Jews have never really experienced racism but just prejudice, like redhead people.

Nothing serious. Jews have never been asked -she explained- to sit on the back of the bus like Afro-Americans during the Jim Crow era (yes, Diane, more or less in the same era, Jews were put on cattle trains instead). Nothing similar happens to the Irish travellers, either (yes, Diane, even today, Travellers are instead asked to get off the bus — at least in Italy, as I have seen with my eyes).

As if the letter was not enough, Mrs Abbott managed to be more offensive with her apologies. First, she bubbled some nonsense about sending a draft, not a letter. A draft with no mistakes, it seems… And then she rushed to apologise publicly. Yes, to the public. Not to the persons she has offended. Not to the Irish, not to the Travellers, and of course, not to the Jews. Corbyn's acolytes never apologise to the Jews.

That was one of the most pathetic and fake letters of apology I have seen. Nonetheless, I am grateful because, with that letter, Ms Abbot has provided an accurate example of what is not genuine repentance, real teshuva. There was such arrogance in these apologies to the public. And even worse in those tweets, posts and social media entries by the supporters of Diane Abbott and the Corbyn fan club — sadly, some of them Jewish.

A few seconds after her apologies appeared on Twitter, the deluge started. They preached that we Jews had to accept Diane Abbott’s apologies. That we need to turn the page as soon as possible and move on. The wording may have been unfortunate (the vocabulary of a Cambridge graduate, mind you…), but her intentions were good. Why? Well, because she is Diane Abbott! Because she has been racially abused so many times. Because she is the first Black British MP … The journalist she was lecturing is Black as well, but this does not matter for the devotees of Mrs Abbott. Even the fact of not accepting her apologies became, for her devotees, another proof of how marginalised she was. On the planet where I live, a Cambridge-graduated MP does not look precisely “marginalised”, but never mind…

In other words, we have to take as authentic and sincere a poorly written letter of apologies to the public, spiced with lies about a draft. This is the precise opposite of what Judaism teaches. This is the depressive side. Jews who side with Diane Abbott should know about Judaism, at least…

These apologies to the public have nothing to do with teshuva, with a real change of attitude towards the non-Black minority and the younger Black journalist so brutally patronised. Will Diane Abbott and the people she used to vacation with -in East Germany- ever admit that racism may have nothing to do with social class? In other words, will she get that even if Jews or Travellers are relatively well off (as some Travellers are), nonetheless, they can be victims of racism? Of course not! When there is a conflict between facts and ideology, “theory of oppression”, “critical race theory”, or whatever theory, facts must be cancelled to preserve the theory.

No change of attitude. This is what nowadays passes as an apology. A couple of lines, which everybody knows won’t cancel the abuses, and that the offended person is supposed to receive with grace, and be grateful. What an honour! Haven’t you seen it? Diane Abbott apologised publicly. Now shut up.

Truly, the Jewish concept of teshuva is not so popular nowadays. Equally unpopular are those religions that teach to deal with guilt through humility. In the current cultural atmosphere, humility is not a value, and many politicians, unfortunately, know it too well.

Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue, 29 April 2023.