It’s time we started investing in the people working to keep Jewish life alive

We’ve all heard the saying “charity begins at home”, which I always assumed was a Christian teaching, but it turns out it’s just a very old proverb. I mention it because over the past few years, as antisemitism has continued to escalate and our community has become increasingly isolated, I’ve repeatedly had the thought that we need to invest more in ourselves. Financially. With cold, hard cash.

The thought first occurred to me a few years ago when many of the Jewish social media activists I follow started talking about the financial strain they were under. These selfless, mostly young people are on the front line every single day, fighting against an unceasing torrent of misinformation and hatred and they do it with pride, eloquence and often great humour. Many – such as Eve Barlow, formerly an acclaimed music journalist – have sacrificed their careers to fight on our behalf. Yet they receive absolutely no formal or financial support. Instead, as many point out, communal money continues to be pumped into cumbersome, legacy organisations that are no longer fit for purpose.

Last week the thought came to me again; not once, but twice. The first time, thanks to a tweet by fellow JC contributor Nicole Lampert. “I’m sick of people making entire careers in antisemitism academia when they appear to have no understanding of the many manifestations of antisemitism,” she wrote in response to posts by Brendan McGeever, a senior lecturer in sociology at the Birkbeck’s Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, who refuses to call what happened in Amsterdam a pogrom but is happy to label Israel’s defensive war in Gaza a “genocide”.

It was an explanation of this phenomena by the brilliant Jewish academic David Hirsh that made me think, once again, that we needed to get our house in order. David explained that Birkbeck’s centre was originally founded with money from the Pears Foundation, described as “an independent, British family foundation, rooted in Jewish values”. However, things went wrong when “they allowed Birkbeck to insist that by the principle of academic autonomy, they should choose the director. They chose David Feldman, a historian, with no record of studying contemporary antisemitism, over Philip Spencer”. Explaining how this led him to establish the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (LCSCA) in 2022, David added: “So we had to set up an academic centre that would take contemporary antisemitism seriously, with no funding and with no academic institutional support. We’re doing OK. But we shouldn’t have had to.” Sigh.

A few days later, I saw an Instagram post (yes, I spend far too much time online) by the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, announcing that they would be closing their doors for at least one year “amidst a challenging financial landscape, compounded by attendance and general support that have not fully recovered since the pandemic”.

How excruciating it is to see so many forward-looking Jewish organisations struggling when now is the time we need them the most.

Jews are frequently accused of being insular. “They only care about their own,” you’ll sometimes hear snarled. But the truth is quite the opposite. (Which is strange because, you know, antisemites are usually so on the money.)

As we all know, Jews played key roles in many, if not all, of the liberation movements that transformed the 20th century, from civil rights to gay rights, second-wave feminism to ending apartheid in South Africa. Meanwhile, Jewish philanthropists donate untold sums to good causes, largely outside of the community. A Times of Israel article last year with the headline “Half of US’s 25 most generous philanthropists are Jews. Few give to Jewish groups” noted: ”One thing that stands out about these Jewish philanthropists is that almost none focus giving on the Jewish community.”

Most of us don’t have millions to give away (despite what our adversaries may say). I don’t have the means to endow anything or anyone, but I give a little tzedakah each month to various Jewish causes: £10 goes to the LCSCA to support the vital work being done by David and his team, and I am a paid subscriber to Eve Barlow’s and Lee Kern’s Substacks.

It might be ugly to admit it, but increasingly I worry that we are outward-looking to a fault, regularly raising money to support people and causes who wouldn’t do the same for us. It might seem petty to channel our money elsewhere, but I’d argue that now, more than ever, it is absolutely necessary.

Like Israel, our community is currently fighting a multi-front war for our very survival against enemies who seek to destroy us. If we want to secure our future, it is imperative that we start investing in our present: our academics, our activists and our artists, the people working day in, day out, to keep Jewish life alive. In the words of the UK’s biggest retailer, Tesco, founded by Jack Cohen in 1919, every little helps.