The classic joke about the Jew stranded on a desert island is that when his rescuers find him, he has built two synagogues — one to pray in, and the other that he wouldn’t be seen dead in.
 
It’s meant to illustrate our disputatious nature, the idea that even in an empty room, we can start an argument. 
 
In recent weeks there have been a series of fevered and increasingly histrionic arguments within the community. Ironically, each of them seems to stem from a belief outside the community that we Jews — particularly we diaspora Jews — all think similarly; that we all sing, as it were, from the same siddur.
 
Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl certainly got a taste of this in her meeting earlier this month with BBC director-general Tim Davie, also attended by Fran Unsworth, the outgoing head of BBC News and Current Affairs.
 
Ms Unsworth took exception to the BBC being named third on a list of shame produced by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, dedicated to the world’s leading antisemitic bodies (places one and two went to Iran and Hamas). As if the Board and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre could be lumped together as "Jews". 
 
According to Ms van der Zyl’s account of the meeting, Ms Unsworth said that the Board of Deputies had accused the BBC of being antisemitic. 
 
In a letter to Mr Davie afterwards, Ms van der Zyl declared: “We were extremely taken aback by the comments made by Fran Unsworth during the meeting; her false accusation that we had accused the BBC of 'antisemitism’ was offensive and damaging; we noted with regret that you did not contradict her”. 
 
She went on: “The Board of Deputies had absolutely nothing to do with this list, produced by an American-based organisation, and has not promoted it in any way. We are not collectively responsible for this action”. 
 
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre speaks for no one other than itself. But this is hardly the first time that a north American organisation — or its representatives — has behaved as if it knows what British Jews think, and that there is one received view.
 
In July 2020, a large number of British Jews staged a 48-hour “walkout” from social media platforms in protest at the virulent antisemitism voiced by the rap artist, Wiley. At the time, a Toronto-based Black Jewish community activist called Tema Smith, derided the UK Jewish response. Among his abusive rants, Wiley had written on Twitter: “Hold some corn, Jewish community, you deserve it.” The term “corn” is said to be slang for bullets — that is, in this case, that Jews deserve to be shot.
 
But Tema Smith had a different take. She wrote on Twitter: “One of these days we need to talk about how the Jewish community’s reactions to antisemitism coming from Black people is inherently tied to (implicitly racist) fears of Black violence”.
 
Smith has just been appointed as the Anti-Defamation League’s director of Jewish Outreach and Partnerships. One Twitter comment said: “I can’t understand how this appointment was even considered. Tema called British Jews racist for calling out Wiley’s extreme antisemitism. Surely a basic requirement for the role is dealing with complexity, sensitivity —and not aggressively alienating people”.
 
But we don’t need to go as far afield as north America to find profound and somewhat troubling splits in the Jewish community. In the last several weeks there have been unedifying fights between the Board of Deputies and JNF UK, resulting in the resignation of a Board honorary officer, Gary Mond, and a subsequent “letter of censure” by the Board to JNF UK trustees for their “failure to disavow the inflammatory and bigoted remarks of its chair, Samuel Hayek”.
 
In the fall-out from the row, there has also been really vicious online abuse between communal activists, which each ‘side’ accusing others of nefarious motives.
 
It’s not realistic to expect total peace and harmony among Jews, and it certainly gives us something to write about. But we do ourselves no favours with much of this internecine scrapping. Externally, our American cousins should grant us the courtesy that we do actually know our community best… and internally, a bit of forethought as to how this fighting might be perceived by the outside world would do us all some good. 

Me, I’m off to the shul I wouldn’t be seen dead in.