Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 24 October 2026¹

• In my previous life as a movement worker for LJY-Netzer, the youth movement of Liberal Judaism, I used to run Jewish summer camps.
• We’d hire a boarding school somewhere in the countryside, and, on day-trips out to the real world, would always be instructed for security reasons not to ‘out’ ourselves as Jews. The leaders, when we were in public, were no longer מדריכים, but just ‘leaders’. The children were no longer חניכים, but ‘participants’. And everyone was told to make sure they had no Hebrew words or stars of David on T-shirts.
• And so it was, that, on a day-trip to a theme-park near Bournemouth, we were all carefully avoiding Judeo-clothing; carefully avoiding Hebrew terminology; and doing everything possible not to draw attention to ourselves as Jews. Then, when a group of boys started to wander off, I had to yell across a crowded plaza: “Malachi, Gideon, Yoni and Yoni, come here!” – after which I of course had to turn to some passers-by and reassure them: “We’re not Jewish.”
• I was always quite uncomfortable with the idea that we ought to hide our Jewishness and teach our young people to do the same. It felt artificial, impractical and, in the case of Bournemouth theme-parks, in all likelihood unnecessary. The Dorset branch of Isis never really got off the ground.
• Yet of course, the ritual of circumcision – the most iconic and ancient symbol of Jewish identity – is by its very nature hidden. Malachi, Gideon, Yoni and Yoni (presumably) carried that indelible mark of their Jewish status, a mark commanded by God in our Torah reading this morning. But it would have been invisible to everyone in the theme-park.
• Was God, then, following the security guidance which said Jews should conceal our identities in public?
• Rabbi Yosef B’chor Shor, a 12th-century Torah commentator, says just that.² “This symbol of the covenant is in a hidden place, in order that it will not be seen and lead to the nations of the world jeering at us for being a race of deformed freaks.”
• That seems… rather cowardly. Why should we live our lives in fear of languid taunts from the nations of the world? Why should we change ourselves to be more pleasing to, or less overt in the face of, antisemites?
• As some of you may have noticed, just over a year ago I decided to start wearing a kippah full-time.³ I was particularly inspired by Dr Patricia Munro, an American Jew who decided to start wearing a kippah in solidarity with other persecuted minorities after the 2016 presidential election. “I know my Jewish history,” she said, “I know the dangers of silence.”⁴ In the face of deteriorating relations between the various groups which make up our society, proud visibility felt like the way to go.
• Therefore, despite occasional warnings from friends and family, my kippah travelled on my head all the way around Brighton and Hove – including Taj the Grocer on Western Road, which, if you believe the Everything Jewish Brighton Facebook group, is a hotbed of Jew-hatred as proven by the fact that it has a Palestinian flag sticker in the window.
• My kippah has come with me on all my pastoral visits to the Sussex villages. I’ve worn it in Bethnal Green and Bristol and Broadstairs. Belfast, the Hague, San Francisco. I keep it on when I make my weekly visits to the immigration detention centre at Gatwick Airport, whose population is largely made up of those Muslim migrants against whom the Reform Party is so keen to warn us.⁵
• And I have not had a single hostile interaction. Not one.
• The one uncomfortable moment was when a taxi-driver saw my kippah and told me he wished Israel luck in “wiping out those Palestinians” – and even that was a ham-fisted attempt to show solidarity with me as a Jew rather than any sort of anti-Jewish hatred.
• In fact, far from having experienced hostility and antisemitism, I’ve had many positive encounters. I’ve lost count of how many people have called out a friendly שלום as I’ve walked past. Men in the detention centre have warmly shaken my hand and asked if my knowledge of Hebrew means I can understand Arabic (sadly, only a few words). A guy in Marks and Spencer came up to me to say how sorry he was to hear about those Jewish ambulances being burned.
• I’m not trying to minimise the seriousness of street antisemitism. It happens. It’s a disgrace. And it needs tackling by responsible people at every level of society, from individual police officers on the beat up to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister.
• But I do want to displace the narrative that to go out in public visibly Jewish is inevitably to invite a ceaseless stream of catcalls, graffiti and hurled bricks. That simply isn’t true.
• Although Abraham’s circumcision was hidden, his Jewish identity was not. He was open and vociferous in telling everyone who he was: a monotheist, an ethical monotheist, the first Jew.⁶
• However we choose to display, or not to display, physical indications of our Jewishness, let us be sure that ethical indications of our Judaism are there, unmistakably, for everyone to see. כן יהי רצון, may this be God’s will.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Genesis 17:5-16 ↩︎
2. B’chor Shor to Genesis 17:11, in very loose translation. ↩︎
3. See here for my reasoning at the time. ↩︎
4. Patricia Keer Munro, “As a woman, wearing a kippah is a transgressive act”, The Jewish News of Northern California (10 April 2019). ↩︎
5. See eg Nadeem Badshah, “Reform candidate filmed saying asylum seekers should be put in ‘concentration camps’”, The Guardian (17 October 2026). ↩︎
6. See eg B’reishit Rabbah 38:13. ↩︎