Like the Jews, the Queen had to make a 'covenant of impersonality and disinterestedness', and that under the protection of the Royal family Jews can find refuge.
September 15, 2022 16:20
Howard Jacobson, Britain’s best-loved Jewish novelist, delivered a tribute to the Queen on Radio 4 on Thursday, crediting her for British Jews having ‘good reason to feel safe under the protection of the British Royal family.’
The Booker-Prize-winning author began his reading with the assertion that one of the first functions of royalty is to make us daydream, before speaking about the powerful effect that watching the coronation on television in 1953 had on him as a child.
He said: “For the few real monarchs that are left, not to reawaken, even in the most Republican-minded, some of the old awe, and fantasy.
“The music, sending shivers down our spines. The diamonds sparkled like the heavens, we smelled the incense and we swooned.”
Jacobson compared the pageantry and passion to religion, and Judaism, saying: “The expression of a national religion that has the breath of the people, could overwhelm the senses.”
He noted the significant Jewish influence that met Queen Elizabeth as she entered Westminster Abbey on the day of her coronation: Psalm 122, “Praying for the peace of Jerusalem, and the plenteousness of its palaces.”
“Thus, with all conceivable pomp, did Elizabeth become the recipient of her Divine right to rule, in language taken from the Jewish Bible,”
“I’m not of course saying that the coronation was just a Bat Mitzvah but with more smoke.” he joked.
“It is the case anyway, that English Jews repose a great trust in the Royal family and feel a respect, indistinguishable at some points from affection, for the Queen.”
Jacobson said that everyone, even those that take a more literal meaning to the word sacrifice, agree that the Queen carried out her public duties with “extraordinary conscientiousness, was pious, but not pettifogging, in upholding protocol, was graceful in small talk, patient with fool Prime Ministers, respectful to wise ones,”
Jacobson acknowledged that he had no right to talk on behalf of other Jews, but to him the one thing that spoke to him most, as a Jew, was her seriousness and her commitment to duty. Like the Jews, the Queen had to maintain a “covenant of impersonality and disinterestedness”.
Comparing the Queen’s stoicism through difficult times to the Jewish spirit of survival, Jacobson said: “When Jews speak of being chosen, they are not asserting spiritual superiority. The covenant God made with them demanded a renunciation of frivolity, and self-assertion, in favour of the pursuit of ethical purpose. Call it a covenant of impersonality and disinterestedness.”
Jacobson went on to highlight Princess Alice of Battenberg, paternal grandmother to King Charles III, being recognised by Yad Vashem for hiding Jews in her house during World War Two. She is now buried, in accordance with her wishes, on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
Of the late Queen’s successor, Jacobson spoke charitably: “King Charles III has been a regular guest at Jewish charitable events, and has spoken out often, and eloquently, against antisemitism in all its forms.”
Jacobson admits, of course, that he doesn’t know how many Jews the royals actually know but, “Atmospherically, by virtue of its principled apolitical lukewarmness, the Royal family seems to promise refuge.”