If Ken Livingstone could attend Seder with my family I might be spared the indignity of having to explain Labour’s inaction on antisemitism, argues Jay Stoll 

Next week is Passover, the Jewish festival of liberation. For those unfamiliar, or for comrades a bit too attached to the adaptation in Disney’s Prince of Egypt, Passover can be neatly summarised in a few words that echo across the Jewish festivals: ‘they tried to kill us, we survived; let’s eat’.

Breaking it down a little further, the true joy of Passover is found in the Seder. This is the service in which families retell the story of Exodus, with a huge meal at the halfway mark providing the only interval. Conversation at the meal is often guided by the key themes of the festival, namely social justice and the various existential crises Jews have endured over the years. More often than not, it will also descend into general political chatter.

This year I anticipate a starring role for Brexit. There will inevitably be rubbish jokes about the Israelites having a better exit plan from Egypt than Britain from the European Union. This will be quickly followed by a debate on whether Moses’ demand of ‘let my people go’ was the first iteration of ‘let’s take back control’.

Once Brexit is done, I will likely be hauled in front of my family to explain the current state of the Labour party. Imagine a select committee, and then imagine one comprised solely of despairing grandparents. That is my predicament.

The Seder select committee members will demand answers over how a party that was built to fight racism has tolerated an individual like Ken Livingstone for so long. They will demand answers over how a leader’s conference speech, promising to fight antisemitism ‘with every breath in our body’, was followed by months of inertia whilst dead Jews were accused of collaborating with their Nazi killers.

Short of answers, I will find myself longing for a new kind of Passover – a kinder, gentler Passover.

Granted, my family are a particularly tough crowd. Our beginnings can be traced to Vienna, where we lived up until the 1930s. My great grandfather was the sole escapee, with the rest humiliated, dehumanised, and eventually gassed for no other reason than because they were Jewish.

Faced with this audience, I cannot help but wish Livingstone could attend my Seder himself. Notwithstanding the risk that he would explain how Pharaoh was an Israelite ‘before he went mad’, I would at least be spared the indignity of having to explain why the Labour party has not acted with certainty in the face of such overt antisemitism.

Each year the Seder concludes with the chanting of phrase ‘next year in Jerusalem’. No, not a declaration of support for the Israeli settler movement, but a collective cry for renewal and spiritual fulfilment in the year ahead.

Mercifully, my sense of spiritual fulfilment is not entirely determined by the fortunes of the Labour party. However, the ongoing inability to deal with antisemitism in our ranks is seriously testing. There is some solace in that the Jewish Labour Movement now boasts a membership of around 2,000 people, and that many Labour members of parliament and activists remain tireless in their support for our community.

However, if the party is to win back the trust of the wider Jewish population, beyond the eight percent that Survation polling says still support us, then we are going to have to do a whole lot better.

Until then, let’s eat.

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Jay Stoll is a member of the Jewish Labour Movement’s national executive committee. He tweets at @jaystoll

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