Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
Great work. Mirvis draws beautifully on a famous legal judgement and on Passover to illustrate the importance of truth as prophylaxis for injustice. Relevant, elegant and informative.
Canon Tilby, please take note.
Thought Sniper 11 April 2025
68 at time of broadcast
Subject: The importance of curiosity when seeking truth
Overall impression
Introduction
Twenty-five years ago, a judge ruled that a racist and antisemitic historian had not been libelled by the author of a book about the importance of challenging Holocaust deniers. This anniversary coincided with the Passover festival, part of which is about challenging account of history with questions to uncover truth.
Thought Sniper script
Mirvis opened on the 25-year anniversary of Justice Charles Gray’s ruling that historian David Irving was a Holocaust denier, a falsifier of history and a propagandist for antisemitism. This was an emphatic victory for Professor Deborah Lipstadt who’d been accused by Irvine of libelling him in her book: Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.
Mirvis’ account of the case was flawless in all but one detail. It was not accurate to imply that Gray judged Irving to be a ‘propogandist for antisemitism’. The complete judgement is published here. Gray did rule that that Irvine was a holocaust denier, a racist, an antisemite and that he deliberately and persistently misrepresented and manipulated history. Gray did not in his judgement describe Irving as a propagandist. It was instead the British Parliament that did. According to Lipstadt, this took the form of an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons. It’s a minor point but a needless piece of editorialising by the Rabbi, especially given the standard to which one should be held when broadcasting about truth.
Mirvis also wallows a little in hyperbolic exceptionalism. The hyperbole is forgivable, I’m less sure about the exceptionalism. He describes the case as more than a mere legal dispute but as battles of truth against falsehood, and between history and its distortion. Sure, of course. Except, for anyone who cares about the outcome, every litigated dispute is by definition precisely the same two battles.
That said, the judgement was certainly not just a victory in the fight against Jewish hatred but a victory for all who cherish truth, as Mirvis claims, particularly given the profile afforded the case in the media. Mirvis goes on to illustrate just how important truth is, with a cascade of claims: First that deceitfully rewritten history leads to moral blindness. Then that moral blindness leads to injustice, oppression and tragedy. A strong case could be made for a category error; that moral blindness leads to tragedy of which oppression and injustice are examples. Error or not, is of little consequence here.
If there’s a weakness in Mirvis’ broadcast, it comes next. Instead of expanding his theme of the essential need for truth through an account of Passover, he pauses briefly to indulge the role of online influencers to reinforce the danger of our reality being shaped by distorted truths. It’s needless and includes a groundless and fatuous claim that to be a global influencer, one needs only a social media account and a microphone.
Mirvis mercifully moves swiftly on to present Passover as the festival of questions. We learn about the sacred nature of asking, probing and exploring as paths to truth and understanding. Passover, it appears is not just about remembering and teaching the exodus from slavery but about learning to learn, through the encouragement of curiosity, and the importance of asking, why? Clearly he’s now, in this case, preaching to the choir.
He praises the value of asking questions, and described Passover as an antidote to the scourge of falsehood. It’s good stuff.
He opened his closing with a call to honour the courage of those like Lipstadt, who examine evidence, test assumptions, and refuse to let truth be silenced.
His final words were ‘the surest path to [the defence of truth], begins with a question.’
AI TRANSCRIPT OF BBC BROADCAST
This week marks twenty years since Prince Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor Guildhall. The civil ceremony was followed by a service of prayer and dedication in St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
I remember watching it on television—not quite knowing what to make of it. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, seemed a bit hesitant, a bit uneasy, as he conducted the service. Like millions of others, I couldn’t get out of my mind the tragedy of Princess Diana’s death in 1997, and the massive outpouring of grief at her funeral.
But by the spring of 2005, more people were prepared to shrug and accept what was going on. And that wasn’t only due to good PR. Over time, the public became used to the idea—and it has become more and more obvious that the now King has a genuine partnership with Camilla, one which has lasted fifty years.
Throughout history, royal and high-class marriages have often been arranged to firm up alliances, or to keep assets within royal or aristocratic circles. In the theology of the Middle Ages, marriage was a kind of contract—a way of ordering society and holding lust in check. Marriages took place in the church porch, as if they were half worldly and pragmatic, half holy.
In the first English prayer book of 1549, a more positive view was stated. The ceremony was brought into the body of the church, and was accompanied by a compulsory little sermon on why God ordained marriage.
Three reasons were given.
First, to provide for the procreation of children, and to ensure they were brought up in the fear of the Lord.
Second, for the avoidance of the sin of fornication—sex outside marriage.
But then Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who drafted the new service, added something quite new: that marriage was instituted for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. He also added the words “to love and to cherish” to the marriage vows.
The historian Diarmaid MacCulloch suggests that we owe these additions to Cranmer’s own happy experience of marriage.
It’s all too easy to marry for the wrong reasons. The important question for those contemplating marriage is whether they really like each other—whether they’re prepared to stand by each other, and help each other to be strong and resilient.
As I look back, twenty years on, to that rather tentative ceremony in St George’s Chapel, it seems to me that Charles and Camilla’s lasting friendship has been a blessing—to themselves, and perhaps to the rest of us, too.
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