The British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has attracted a lot of comment and accusations in his new role in large part because his wife Victoria Alexander identifies as jewish but is not halakhically jewish (her mother was non-jewish and her father wasn’t a member of Kohanim or a Levite as far as I am aware; thus she isn’t halakhically jewish although she’s certainly jewish in terms of the Israeli right of return). (1)
There have also been a lot of previously unsourced allegations floating around social media that Starmer is himself of jewish descent, (2) but this was seemingly untrue since his parents Rodney Starmer and Josephine Starmer superficially looked like they were working class White Britons with no known jewish ancestry whatsoever (3) unlike Starmer’s predecessor as head of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn who openly boasted that he was part-jewish to the ‘Church Times’. (4)
However, footage has since emerged from a Question-and-Answer Session hosted by the ‘Jewish Labour Movement’ and ‘Jewish News’ where Starmer openly states in response to a question about whether he was a Zionist or not as follows:
‘I don’t know how many people know this but my… um… parent’s family are Jewish and we’ve got extended family in Israel that we feel this [our jewishness] every day. I don’t… um… describe myself as a Zionist but I understand, I sympathise and I support Zionism. So, I wouldn’t describe myself in that way but of course you know we have family in Israel and that is part of my family.’ (5)
This means in effect that Starmer has jewish ancestry – or at least claims to have it – and to be honest the likeliest candidate for that is his mother Josephine in my experience rather like in the case of Stephen Fry whose mother Marianne Neumann was jewish but had he not confessed as such then it wouldn’t have been superficially obvious as she would have otherwise been known as ‘Marianne Fry’ and ‘Neumann’ is also a common enough German surname as well as sometimes a jewish one (sometimes anglicized to ‘Newman’ or ‘Neuman’) which is why – prior to this video footage of Starmer openly talking about his jewish ancestry – this was doubted by his jewish supporters within the Labour Party themselves. (6)
Given that Starmer’s wife Victoria Alexander is part-jewish and adheres to Reform Judaism – the only section of Judaism which would have been okay with her parent’s marriage – there is also a possibility that Starmer formally converted to Judaism – he was raised as an Anglican not jewish despite his jewish ancestry – in order to marry Alexander, which would make sense of his keeping Shabbos every week despite repeatedly claiming to be ‘an atheist’. (7) This could also be reconciled by seeing his keeping and celebrating Shabbos every week as a cultural tradition designed to remind his children of their jewishness and promote it to them. (8)
So yes, while previously I believed that Starmer himself wasn’t biologically jewish but rather… shall we say… culturally jewish: now I am happy to say that I was wrong and that we know that he is not only culturally jewish but also biologically jewish.
References
(1) https://worldisraelnews.com/uk-labour-party-returns-to-power-after-14-years-in-landslide-victory/; the lack of Kohanim/Levite status of Alexander’s father is implied by https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/06/22/every-week-theres-a-challah-and-we-say-kiddush-keir-starmer-opens-up-about-jewish-side-of-family/
(2) See the first version of this article here: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/is-keir-starmer-jewish
(3) For example: https://web.archive.org/web/20200405171214/https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/03/keir-starmer-sensible-radical and https://web.archive.org/web/20240705023430/https://metro.co.uk/2024/07/05/inside-keir-starmers-family-life-wife-victoria-toolmaker-dad-2-21166904/
(4) https://www.thejc.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-my-jewish-ancestry-jzw08qry; https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-uk-labour-leader-corbyn-claims-vague-jewish-heritage/
(5) You can watch Starmer stated this yourself here: https://x.com/RaggedTP/status/2000935500878872577
(6) See for example: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/keir-starmers-journey-to-jewishness/
(7) https://www.thejc.com/news/our-family-treasures-our-shabbat-dinners-says-keir-starmer-hrnmdcu7
(8) https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/06/22/every-week-theres-a-challah-and-we-say-kiddush-keir-starmer-opens-up-about-jewish-side-of-family/; https://worldisraelnews.com/uk-labour-party-returns-to-power-after-14-years-in-landslide-victory/
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