Letters - 23 September 2016
From anti-Semitism to spelling
Re-defining anti-Semitism
Bob, a dear Jewish friend of mine, was born in Vienna about 1927. With the rise of Nazism in 1939 he came to Britain, but because his family were very poor they could only afford to send their youngest son. His parents and his beloved sister died in the Holocaust.
With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 Bob took his young wife to the new country, buoyed up with the hope and expectation that his new home would fulfil his idealistic expectations. Two years later he returned to the UK, disillusioned and ashamed of the way that the new Jewish migrants were treating the indigenous Jews, who before the foundation of the state of Israel had lived in peaceful coexistence with their Arab neighbours.
On his return to the UK Bob became a communist, only to reject communism when the Hungarian uprising of 1956 was crushed by the Soviet Union.
We lived not far from the USAF nuclear bomber base at Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire, and Bob was a founder of the Witney Peace Group, where my wife and I first encountered Quakers.
When Bob died in 1998 he had a simple burial service in Witney cemetery. Among those who attended the burial were Jews, ex-communists, Catholics, Quakers and Christians of other denominations. Together they formed a microcosm of what the world would be like if we all lived like my friend. Was he anti-Semitic? The foolishness of that question requires no explanation. He loved people.
Don Mason
Tabular statement
This year, for the first time, the tabular statement recorded ‘Other’ as well as ‘Men’ and ‘Women’. The word ‘Other’ could be criticised, but it is simple and suggested by my ‘gender-queer’ Friend. Some of us do not identify as men or women.
There are forty-five members or attenders in the Society recorded as Other, but thirty-six of them are in Scotland, and only one is a member. Many people I ask have not heard of the possibility, including some I informed in my email announcing Area Meeting(!).
Please, could membership clerks publicise this sensitively?
Abigail Maxwell
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.