The Kosher Bookworm: A review of the Thatcher Jewish connection

Comments by two friends of mine concerning the link between the recently deceased former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and the Jewish people prompts this week’s review; this time, a review of essays, not of books.

Ashley Rogoff of London wrote: “From a Jewish perspective, she was a warm friend of the Jews and represented a constituency with a large Jewish population. She had a great affinity with Jewish work ethic values, as reflected in her ennoblement of Lord Jacobovitz to the House of Lords, the first Chief Rabbi to do so. He was often referred to as her ‘archbishop’ – she had little time for the Christian incumbent of that post.”

British trained Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, now of the Persian Synagogue in New York differed:

“But it’s also true that she was responsible for the policy of appeasing and empowering the largely Muslim immigrants and turning a blind eye to their extremism. But, that could be a culture thing, the old English attitude of appeasement that only acts when it’s almost too late.”

A fascinating aspect of her biography appeared in an essay in Tablet Magazine, December 28, 2011, entitled, “Thatcher and the Jews” by historian Charles C. Johnson.

“The woman who reshaped British politics and served as prime minister from 1979 –1990 often said that her greatest accomplishment was helping save a young Austrian girl from the Nazis. In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year old Jewish girl, wrote to Murial Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the future prime minister’s older sister, asking if the Roberts family might help her escape Hitler’s Austria. The Nazis had begun rounding up the first of Vienna’s Jews after Anschluss, and Edith and her family worried she might be next. Alfred Roberts, Margaret and Murial’s father, was a small-town grocer; the family had neither the time nor the money to take Edith in. So Margaret, then 12, and Murial, 17, set about raising funds and persuading the local Rotary club to help.”

“Edith stayed with more than a dozen Rotary families, including the Robertses, for the next two years, until she could move to join relatives in South America. Edith bunked in Margaret’s room, and she left an impression. ‘She was 17, tall, beautiful, evidently from a well-to-do family,’ Thatcher later wrote in her memoir. But most important, ‘she told us what it was like to live as a Jew under an anti-Semitic regime. One thing Edith reported particularly stuck in my mind: The Jews, she said, were being made to scrub the streets.’ For Thatcher, who believed in meaningful work, this was as much a waste as it was an outrage. Had the Roberts not intervened, Edith recalled years later, ‘I would have stayed in Vienna and they would have killed me.’ Thatcher never forgot the lesson; ‘Never hesitate to do whatever you can, for you may save a life,’ she told an audience in 1995 after Edith had been found located, alive and well, in Brazil.”

Johnson also wrote:“Thatcher’s philo-Semitism went beyond the people she appointed to her government; it had clear political implications as well. She made Jewish causes her own, including by easing the restrictions on prosecuting Nazi war criminals living in Britain and pleading the cause of the Soviet Union’s refuseniks. She boasted that she once made Soviet officials ‘nervous’ by repeatedly bringing up the refusniks’ plight during a single nine-hour meeting with Gorbachev. ‘The Soviets had to know that every time we met their treatment of the refusniks would be thrown back at them,’ she explained in her book, The Downing Street Years.

Johnson also cites many negative aspects concerning British relationships in the Middle East. Nevertheless, Johnson maintains that her core values as seen in her absolute intolerance of anti-Jewish bigotry was uncommon in British politics of that time,and her appointment of a large, record number of Jews to high public office, was deeply appreciated by the British Jewish community.

As for Soviet Jewry, Colin Schindler in the April 11, 2013 Jewish Chronicle of London, wrote, “In Her Fury, I Saw Values Alien To Us,” wherein he attributed her concerns on this issue to her anti-Communist political beliefs, something that I would find to be an ideological virtue and not a vice.

In another fascinating essay, this one in The Jewish Chronicle of April 4, 2013, entitled “Her Bond With Lord Jakobovits Was Profound – and It Helped Save Shechita,” reveals a previously little known episode in the late prime minister’s relationship with the Jewish community. The writer, Shimon Cohen, a member of the chief rabbi’s staff at that time, goes into some detail concerning the availability of shechita. “Much has been written of the special bond between Baroness Thatcher and Lord Jakobovits.” This was a relationship that was to loom large to both of them in the years to come.

“When shechita came under attack in the late 1980s, Dayan Berger and I went to see the Agriculture Minister, John Gummer. He wanted to help us but was under pressure from animal groups. He suggested that the matter would only be resolved if the Chief Rabbi approached the Prime Minister.

“Lord Jakobovits was hesitant, reluctant to circumvent the formal process. But so serious was the situation, that he recognized that his relationship with the PM was the only card left to play. In a private meeting in her flat above Number 10, a deal was hatched which secured shechita. The PM’s clear statement of support has been successfully won from every successor.” If I am not mistaken, no other European head of state has ever performed so effectively in the matter of the performance of shechita.

Also, “Baroness Thatcher was in awe of Lord Jakobovits’ passion for Jewish education and Jewish schools.” This began when she was Education minister in a previous government and continued for all her years as PM. “He taught her why Jewish education is the security of our people and why the bond between Jews of the Diaspora and the State of Israel is so vital to our future.”

There are many other reactions to the Thatcher legacy concerning the Jewish people, much too numerous to detail here. However, in her long tenure as PM, she set the mark that served to help enhance the British Jewish community’s quality of life, a legacy that will be deeply appreciated in the annals of world Jewish history in the many years to come.