When around 50 young Jewish activists gathered in Parliament Square in May to say Kaddish for the 62 Palestinians killed in the clashes around the Gaza border, they cannot have known that their actions would trigger a crisis in the community that has still fully to play out.
For some — almost certainly the vast majority of British Jews — their actions were a grotesque warping of the Kaddish prayer. But for others, even if they did not agree with the stance of the ‘mourners’, the reaction has been out of all proportion, with participants ostracised and attacked for “kapo-ism”.
Beyond the immediate rights and wrongs of the Kaddish itself, the broader context highlights a potentially seismic change in our community.
Younger generations are always more radical than their elders. But traditionally they have been reticent about channelling that radicalism into direct challenges to the communal leadership, whether that be the people or the structures. That reticence appears to be vanishing.
