Friends with Jewish connections
Harvey Gillman writes about Quaker and Jewish relationships
A few years ago, at a Holocaust memorial meeting in Brighton, I told the woman sitting next to me that, although Jewish in origin, I was a Quaker. She looked at me disapprovingly and announced that Quakers were anti-Semitic. Needless to say, I found this shocking. I was then told that there had been an article in the Jewish Chronicle under the title ‘How Quakers turned Spiteful’. According to this article, Quakers used to be friendly to Jews, but the new generation of Friends with their constant criticism of the state of Israel changed their attitude. The minute from the 2011 Meeting for Sufferings, concerning a boycott of goods produced in the Occupied Territories, and the later statement of Yearly Meeting in 2014 held in Bath, on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, increased this antipathy.
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