Judaism, as any Jew and many non-Jews know, contains 613 commandments or as they are called in Hebrew ‘Mitzvot’. These commandments govern everything in an observant Jew’s life. As well as forbidding things like murder and incest and theft, they also govern what we do when we wake up, what we eat, what we say before we eat and what we say after eating. They control how to behave ethically in business, the importance of having accurate weighing scales and declare the necessity of having honest and unbiased judges in a court of law. They also stipulate what we should do at the end of the day before we lay down to sleep. Some of these Mitzvot have fallen into disuse, either because the Moshiach or Messiah or Messianic Age hasn’t in our view arrived yet and these Mitzvot cannot be undertaken, or because later knowledge and subsequent reform has shown them to be unwise, unjust or unworkable in a modern society.

This reform and accumulated knowledge is why you’d be hard pressed to find a Jew in the modern world who would agree with the idea of the stoning to death of isolators for instance. Not every Jew follows every commandment and there are slightly different interpretations of these commandments for different sects of Jews. However we all accept that there are 613 commandments based on the Torah or five books of Moses For those who are interested, I’ve pasted a list of all the widely accepted 613 commandments in an appendix at the bottom of this piece.

However there are other Jewish principles, which although not one of the 613 commandments found in the five books of Moses, are nevertheless extremely important for Jews. One of these supplementary principles is especially important for those Jews who live as a minority among non-Jews and that is to ‘keep the peace of the city in which you live’ (Jeremiah 29:7). In other words, to translate this into modern parlance don’t commit crime, don’t be a bad neighbour and don’t annoy your hosts. If you do so, then not only may you bring trouble on yourself as an individual, but you will as likely as not bring down trouble on the whole Jewish community.

As a non-Orthodox Jew of the political Right, I’ve become increasingly horrified at some of the stuff that Left wing Rabbis have been doing. I’m especially concerned that involvement by Leftist Rabbonim in the ‘refugees welcome’ movement is not only breaching the principle of ‘keeping the peace of the city in which we live’, but may also be feeding anti-Semitism. Here are my reasons for my concern.

Firstly, it is becoming more and more apparent to the average person, whether they are Jewish or not, that many of those who say they are ‘refugees’ are anything but, they are often instead economic migrants with no moral claim on anywhere or anybody. It is also becoming more and more noticeable that many of the alleged ‘refugees’ are not exactly the sort of people who could be called ‘conducive to the public good’. Although not all of these alleged ‘refugees’ are bad people, a significant minority are so bad and have been involved in so much jihad-related activity and have committed so many sex crimes and been so anti-social that it is morally justified and certainly safer to shut the door on the lot of them. I am convinced that the involvement of Jews, especially Leftist Jews runs counter to the exhortation to ‘keep the peace of the city in which you live’. This is because many of these ‘refugees’ are making the cities in which they’ve been placed by ‘refugees welcome’ campaigners considerably less peaceful and certainly less safe for the indigenous inhabitants of these cities. I defy anyone to tell me, hand on heart, that places like Malmo, Cologne, Vienna, Berlin, Rome or Paris have been enhanced by the introduction of these ‘refugees’. Working for ‘refugees welcome’ campaigns at the present time is definitely not keeping the peace of the city.

Secondly, and this is very important and should be noted and acted upon by those many Jews who may treat the Leftist Jews as a bit of a joke, consider what sort of impression of Judaism these Leftist Rabbonim are giving to the rest of the non-Jewish population? From what I can see, it’s not a very good impression at all. The majority population do not share their ‘refugees welcome’ concerns, are appalled at leftist Rabbonim sharing platforms with known Islamic extremists and are taking away the impression that all we Jews are like that, when we are not.

Of course I do concur with these Rabbonim when they say we should ‘not oppress the stranger’, as that also is a very strong Biblical commandment, but this does not have to be translated into bringing potentially dangerous strangers into the UK. Instead help to those displaced by conflicts, such as the Syrian one, should be given closer to the area of conflict. There’s also nothing good to be gained by agitating for the entry into the UK of the fake refugees and even faker ‘children’ connected with the Calais ‘Jungle Camp’. The ‘reinstate the Dubs Amendment now’ that some Rabbonim are involved in is foolish and damaging to the Jewish community as a whole. To put it bluntly, it’s making the community look like dangerous open borders madmen. I am very concerned that the majority population will look at the small but very loud contingent of Leftist Rabbonim and become angry at the whole Jewish community, which will translate into a rise in anti-Semitism from the majority population as well as that of many of the refugees themselves.

British Jews of earlier generations, such as those in the 19^th century, were very well aware how a few bad apples could bring down the opprobrium of the majority non-Jewish population onto the whole Jewish community. Because of this danger, Jewish communities dealt, sometimes harshly, with miscreants. The way that the dodgy Jews were dealt with included holding whip-rounds to pay the sea passage fare for the bad apples in order get them out of the country and send them somewhere, anywhere, else. Even England has been known in the past to expel all its Jews, it was considered very important not to antagonise the community that had given refuge and to be an asset to it as far as possible.

I strongly believe that the ‘refugees welcome’ activities of the leftist Rabbonim is dangerous and counter-productive. The Rabbonim are also being extremely dishonest with their campaigning such as comparing the economic migrant country shoppers who have entered Europe or who have been resident at Calais with genuine Jewish refugees of the past. These leftist Rabbonim have also been saying that the Jewish migration experience which is one of fleeing oppression is the same or a very similar experience to the migrants currently flooding into Europe. This is patently untrue. Jews moved from areas of great danger, often life-threatening danger, to safer countries such as the United Kingdom. We did not move to other countries in search of welfare and we certainly did not move to other countries and commit appalling crimes and then demand that the host nation submit to our demands for special advantageous treatment, something which the current crop of migrants are getting very well known for doing.

There is a story I read a few years back, that may illustrate the difference between the Jewish migration to the UK and the mainly Muslim migrants who are part of the current wave of incomers. I can’t recall where I read it, but it dealt with a Jewish family arriving in London in the early 20^th century to join relatives in London’s East End who had arrived earlier. When one of the Jewish women got off the boat in the East India Dock, she remarked that her now British Jewish female relatives, who had come to meet her, were not wearing the customary wigs as worn by Orthodox married Jewish women. The new arrival was shocked and wondered to her relative whether she had given up Judaism. The British Jew said ‘No I haven’t given up being Jewish, but we are in Britain now and we have to conform to British ways. We are still Jewish but British Jewish, we’ve chosen not to wear a wig because that is the British way’ Of course now a married Orthodox Jewish woman choosing to cover her hair with a wig would not be a problem for British non-Jews, but back then it was a point of contention and some accommodation needed to be made with the host country. I see no willingness to conform to the mores of the host nations with many of these Muslim migrants and that, along with the violence, the aggression and the crime are major differences between the Great Migration of Jews to Britain in the late 19^th and early 20^th century and the current crop of Middle Eastern chancers and troublemakers.

The point I am trying to make is the British Jewish community is tiny. According the representative body for British Jews, the Board of Deputies, data from the 2011 Census shows that Jews make up 0.5% of the population and number 263,346 people. Of that number, those describing themselves as ‘reform/progressive’, the main current of Judaism from whence the loud Leftist Rabbonim are coming, is 18% of that 263K. By my estimate, the far Left Jews who are behind the loud and aggressive ‘refugees welcome’ campaign are an absolute minority of British Jews, a really tiny number. Also, not every non-Orthodox/reform/progressive Jew is backing the idiotic ‘refugees welcome’ campaign, I know I’m not and neither are many of my Jewish friends of the same non-Orthodox persuasion. This makes the ‘refugees welcome’ types and the far Left Rabbonim even less representative of Jewish opinion.

It’s important to know these facts and it’s important to know that ‘refugees welcome’ or the dishonest comparison between the current migrant wave and genuine Jewish refugees of the past is very much a minority view. I know that and my friends on the Jewish political Right know that, but my worry is that non-Jews may not realise these facts.

The loud and unrepresentative voices of far Left Jews are not the voice of the wider community but there are a growing number of non-Jews who do not realise that. It is too easy for the majority non-Jewish community to erroneously assume that the entire Jewish community is gung ho for importing people who are plainly not likely to benefit the United Kingdom and are more than likely to be problematical or even violent. This erroneous assumption could feed anti-Semitism and I’m starting to see more social media posts from non-Jews, many of whom may not have met a Jew in their life, saying things like ‘these Jews are importing destructive Muslim migrants’, or ‘these Jews are disloyal’. This sort of wrong-headed attitude is frightening and dangerous and it needs to be countered.

British Jews should not be in the business of stoking up anti-Semitism, but the longer we go on not confronting the unrepresentative Jewish far Left, or treating this far Left as a harmless irritant, the greater the danger is that anti-Semitism will indeed be stoked up. As I said earlier in this piece, a major Jewish value is to make sure that the place, whether it be the nation or, as the book of Jeremiah says, the city in which you live or find yourself is safe and peaceful. We need to play our part in looking after the United Kingdom, a nation that has given many Jews, including members of my family, a place of safety. Unfortunately, the activities of the Jewish Left run counter to the idea of keeping Britain safe from some pretty dangerous migrants and potential migrants and every Jew should challenge the Jewish Left and tell them that what they are doing will not be good for the nation and the Jewish community as a whole in the long run.