Jewish chaplains at UK universities recruited to be ‘advocates for Israel’
Zechariah Deutsch, a Jewish chaplain at several Yorkshire universities, served as a reservist in the Israeli army after the 7 October attacks
Areeb Ullah and Simon Hooper report in Middle East Eye on 7 March 2024:
A chaplaincy service used by British universities to provide pastoral support for Jewish students requires its chaplains to be pro-active advocates for Israel, Middle East Eye can reveal.
The University Jewish Chaplaincy (UJC) is a registered charity that operates in dozens of universities across the UK. It provides chaplains and chaplaincy couples and says they are “there for Jewish students of all backgrounds and affiliations”.
The UJC is also currently advising ministers on new guidelines the government has promised to deliver on tackling antisemitism in higher education.
But in job descriptions on its website for vacant chaplaincy posts in Brighton, Bristol and Glasgow the UJC listed being a “pro-active Israel advocate” among essential requirements for candidates.
A “job opportunities” page on the UJC’s website appears to have been removed since MEE contacted the organisation. The UJC did not respond to repeated requests for comment about why it required its chaplains to be advocates for Israel. Alongside providing pastoral care to Jewish students, the UJC says its chaplains speak to university officials, work closely with clergy for other religions, and get involved in interfaith activities on campuses in their regions.
The UJC says its chaplains are also there to “support and encourage” university Jewish societies and “represent Jewish students’ interests to the university to protect Jewish life – eg. cancellation of antagonistic speakers, response to anti-Jewish hostility”. “You will be a source of strength and support to all Jewish students and serve as representatives to the universities in your region,” a website page promoting the vacant chaplaincy jobs said.
But Neve Gordon, a professor of human rights law at London’s Queen Mary University and vice president of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (Brismes), questioned how a chaplain expected to advocate for Israel could provide pastoral support to all Jewish students on campuses.
“In these job advertisements, there is a conflation with being Jewish and being an advocate of Israel, which by no means reflects the position of many Jews in the UK,” said Gordon, who is Israeli. Gordon said he had recently met at another university with a Jewish student group supportive of Palestinian rights who said they did not feel that their views were taken into account by the Jewish student society.
“If a chaplain conceives of their role as an advocate of Israel, that chaplain will not only be unable to represent many Jewish students and staff across campuses in the UK but will be advocating a position that undermines some of their core values.”
UJC under scrutiny
The role of the UJC has come under scrutiny after it emerged that one of its chaplains, Zechariah Deutsch, who works at the University of Leeds and a number of other universities, took leave last year to serve as a reservist in the Israeli army following the start of the war with Hamas in Gaza.