Have you noticed how the word apology has become a virtual mantra of society lately? Saying sorry — or being urged to do so — is turning into an epidemic. It seems there’s a mea culpa on everybody’s lips these days. It’s royals mumbling half apologies for the atrocity of colonial slavery. It’s people turning to social media to express heartfelt regret for some unconscious bias in their past. There’s definitely a surging sense of guilt in the zeitgeist.
And then there’s the non-apology apology. Boris Johnson, with all his wavering regrets over partygate, not quite apologising for endangering Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe by telling the Commons she was in Iran teaching journalism (equivalent in Iranian political psychology to espionage).
I have been reflecting on the latest apology: this one from the Church of England for prohibitive anti-Jewish laws passed some 800 years ago which, in 1290, led to their expulsion by Edward I. These antisemitic laws forbade mixing of Jews and Christians, forced them to wear identifying badges, imposed church tithes on them, banned them from some professions and forbade them from building new synagogues or from passing on their inheritance to their children.
Some 3,000 Jews were expelled. It was only 360 years later, in 1656, that Oliver Cromwell re-admitted us. Less, perhaps, from philo-semitism than the demands of the fiscal purse, although, at a time of greater religious tolerance, he did allow Jews to practise their religion, largely influenced by Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam.
Last month, the Church of England met Jews to say sorry at a special service in Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral to mark the 800th anniversary of the Synod of Oxford. The event was attended by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis (albeit outside the cathedral) and a host of ecclesiastical luminaries. Christians were urged to “reject contemporary forms of anti-Judaism and antisemitism”.
This followed a 2019 document issued by the Church of England stressing the value of Christian-Jewish relationship and urging Christians to challenge antisemitism.
Apology is a good thing, a noble thing, isn’t it? So why does this leave me with a strange and uncomfortable feeling?
It is obviously to its credit that the Church of England, which was not even created 800 years ago, claims continuity with the pre-Reformation English church and is now asking Christians to “think carefully” about evangelising their Jewish neighbours, to be “sensitive to Jewish fears”. But will this sensitivity actually validate Judaism in the eyes of the Church?
The Archbishop’s most profound statement was when he urged Christians “to appreciate and receive the gift of our Jewish neighbours”. Those words are the key.
We need dynamic change in society to overturn generations of anti-Jewish thinking. If we can listen to each other and appreciate each other’s gifts, as Welby said, do we even need an official apology?
For some people, an apology has a powerful symbolism. But the real question is: how do we, ourselves, respond to it? Do I — or you for that matter — have the right to forgive the murder of our co-religionists over hundreds of years of religious bigotry, or during the more recent Nazi era?
No confession of guilt, however well-meaning, how formally dressed up or steeped in genuine spiritual humility, will overturn the racism in society, nor the antisemitism which arguably still simmers within the body politic of the Labour Party. It is as though the urge to say sorry is part of a deeper malaise in society itself — the urge to absolve oneself from any guilt while doing nothing to make genuine reparations.
As my father used to say, “actions speak louder than words”.
If antisemitism and every type of racism could be magically erased from the national consciousness, that would be the most meaningful, the most profound, the most honest event of all. Forget the apology.
