Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Monday 21 September 2026

William Ellery Channing¹

• You’ve heard of the Treaty of Versailles. You’ve heard of the Maastricht Treaty and the Oslo Accords. But have you heard of the Stanmore Accords?
• Unlike the first three, which ended the First World War, established the European Union and brought lasting and permanent peace to the Middle East respectively, the Stanmore Accords had a slightly narrower focus.
• In 1996, the Reform rabbi, popular broadcaster and Auschwitz survivor Hugo Gryn died.² The then Orthodox chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, refused to attend Rabbi Gryn’s funeral,³ and wrote a letter to a colleague (which leaked to the national press)⁴ in which he said:⁵

He also attacked Hugo Gryn specifically as being “among those who destroy the faith”.⁶ Jonathan Sacks’s letter was written in Rabbinic Hebrew (because of course it was), and the term it used to refer to Hugo Gryn, אותו האיש – “that man”, is a rabbinic idiom for Jesus… and not a complimentary one.⁷

• Relations between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews had never been exactly cordial, but this exposé led to a bout of infighting particularly vicious even for Anglo-Jewry.⁸
• Eventually, all parties sat down together to look for a constructive way forward. Just over two years after Rabbi Gryn’s funeral, the leaders of the Orthodox, Reform, Liberal and Masorti movements published the Stanmore Accords, a peace pact on a par with the Treaty of Versailles, declaring:⁹

• It’s difficult. Communal rows are damaging in terms of public relations; exhausting for those Jewish professionals who have to spend time dealing with them instead of getting on with the challah-and-butter work of leading a community; and, in the case of the funeral of poor Rabbi Gryn being subverted, deeply distasteful. At the same time, though, we can’t force people to respect practices which conflict with their values. We don’t like it when Orthodox Jews condemn the fact that we conduct same-sex marriages and allow women to become rabbis¹⁰ – but at the same time we absolutely reserve the right to condemn Orthodox synagogues’ refusal even to let women set foot on the bimah.¹¹
• I think there are four fundamental rules which can help denominations to navigate this conflict.
• Firstly, we should not judge a denomination by the practices which we find distasteful. Orthodox Judaism is more than its exclusion of women. Progressive Judaism is more than same-sex marriage. When we have a heart-to-heart with our friends and colleagues ‘across the aisle’, we actually find much of which we should be envious. The level of Jewish literacy in Orthodox congregations far exceeds that in many or most Progressive shuls. I’d like it if we had that. Equally, I’ve chatted with an Orthodox rabbi who was jealous that, because we allow writing on Shabbat, we can have our cheder take place on Saturdays, bringing the whole community together at once. Denominations can identify each other by our strengths rather than our sore points.
• Secondly, parody and sneering is to be avoided. Not all Orthodox rabbis are old men with white beards; not all Liberal rabbis are lesbians with guitars. It’s a natural human tendency, and I hold my hands up as being guilty of it myself, to stereotype the Other. And there are moments and spaces where the levity is appropriate. Nonetheless, on the whole, it’s unhelpful and unkind. In the words of rabbi Angela Buchdahl, it “infects and inflames” us.¹²
• Thirdly, we should explore each other. Whenever we have a bat or bar mitzvah here, there are normally some Orthodox relatives who come along. Sometimes they really like it and appreciate our silent atmosphere, our informality and, yes, our brevity. Sometimes they find us happy-clappy and can’t wait to get back to New Church Road. Both of those reactions are good: taking informed decisions is a Jewish value. I’d urge all of you to do the same at some point. Spend a morning at an Orthodox shul. You might like the intensity and the swaying. You might feel lost and wonder why they say Kaddish so many times. But it’s far better to know than to speculate.
• Fourthly and finally, we shouldn’t be scared of borrowing from each other. Leyning – chanting from the Torah – was historically frowned on in Liberal congregations because it was ‘a bit Orthodox’. But it’s not Orthodox. There’s no theological reason not to do it; there’s no inclusion reason not to do it; it was only rejected out of spite: the Orthodox do it so we shouldn’t. That was a wrong decision. Leyning is great, and by refusing to do it we were impoverishing ourselves. There are plenty of other examples too, in both directions.
• We began our Torah service, this Yom Kippur afternoon, with a quote from Isaiah: “Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us ascend the Mountain of God.’”¹³ We are “many peoples”. We, the Jewish people, are many peoples.
• Rabbi Sacks referred to Progressive Jews as the “enemy”, denigrating us for our differences. By way of contrast, Rabbi Solomon Schechter, a Conservative rabbi who was definitely no Progressive, revelled in our differences:¹⁴

• So, this Yom Kippur afternoon, as we ask God to “restrain our anger and control our aggression”,¹⁵ let God instead give us the strength to see what is good and admirable and inspiring in our fellow Jews. כן יהי רצון, may this be God’s will.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. William Ellery Channing, Complete Works (London: Christian Life Publishing Company, 1884) @p287. ↩︎
2. Meir Persoff, Another Way, Another Time: religious inclusivism and the Sacks Chief Rabbinate (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010) @p92. ↩︎
3. Ibid @pp92-93. ↩︎
4. Ibid @pp102-103. ↩︎
5. Ibid @pp105,107. Rabbi Sacks’s solicitors fought tooth and nail to prevent the letter from being published: ibid @p101ff. ↩︎
6. Lawrence Rigal and Rosita Rosenberg, Liberal Judaism: the first hundred years (London: Liberal Judaism, 2004) @p175. ↩︎
7. Geoffrey Alderman, The Communal Gadfly: an anthology (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009) @p75. ↩︎
8. Persoff, ibid @p125. ↩︎
9. Ibid @pp138-139. Of course, around a decade later, the various denominations were all briefing against each other in the JFS case [2009] UKSC 15, [2010] 2 AC 728… ↩︎
10. See eg Chaim Bermant, “Same-sex spouses = non-kosher houses”, The Jewsh Chronicle (11 October 1996): 10. ↩︎
11. See eg Persoff, ibid @p244. ↩︎
12. Angela W Buchdahl, “Crowns of Torah: Re-forming Judaism“, Central Synagogue (13 September 2015). ↩︎
13. Isaiah 2:3; Machzor Ruach Chadashah @p356. ↩︎
14. Solomon Schechter, Seminary Addresses and other papers (Cincinnati: Ark Publishing, 1915) @pp240-241. ↩︎
15. Machzor Ruach Chadashah @p369. ↩︎