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Who: Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis
What: Orthodox Jew
Where: Chief Rabbi United Hebrew Congregations of Commonwealth
LISTEN TO PODCAST
Transcript of the Radio 4 broadcast
The SecondThought Report (podcast script)
Welcome to the SecondThought for the day podcast. In this episode we dissect a Radio 4 Thought For The Day (TftD) to expose all in it that is not factful or reasonable. If all this has already stopped making sense, please listen to the Welcome podcast. No promises, but it might help.
This podcast is in response to the BBC’s TftD from Friday 11 April 2025 which was by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
If you’ve listened to our podcasts on the early April contributions of Sam Wells and Angela Tilby, you’ll be aware that the quality bar has been set very low. It is with some relief we can report that Mirvis has skillfully set about redressing the balance.
Mirvis opened on the 25-year anniversary of Justice Charles Gray’s ruling that historian David Irving was a Holocaust denier and a falsifier of history. This ruling 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: After several months of interrogating the evidence, Justice Charles Gray ‘s judgment was unequivocal: Irving was a falsifier of history. A Holocaust denier. A propagandist for antisemitism.
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.
That’s not to say he was not a propagandist for antisemitism, it’s just that Mirvis’ attribution was off. It wasn’t Justice Gray, it was instead a different authority. It was no less that Her Majesty’s Government that pronounced that Irvine was a propagandist for antisemitism. 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. Or perhaps it was simply a careless error.
Mirvis also wallows a little in hyperbolic exceptionalism. The hyperbole is forgivable, I’m less sure about the exceptionalism. He describes the case…
MIRVIS: The libel trial between Holocaust denier David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt, alongside her publisher, Penguin Books, was not just a dispute between two sides. It was a battle between truth and falsehood; between history and its deliberate distortion.
Was this, though, so exceptional? Many (perhaps even, most) litigated disputes will be characterised by precisely the same two battles. The importance of these will be enhanced for anyone who cares about the outcome. This is unjustifiable exceptionalism from Mirvis. These two battles are commonplace in litigation.
Mirvis, though, was entirely accurate when he notes the ruling as not just a victory in the fight against Jewish hatred but a victory for all who cherish truth. And not just because of the profile afforded the case in the media.
Mirvis goes on to illustrate just how important truth is, with a cascade of claims:
MIRVIS: Because history, when rewritten in order to deceive, leads to moral blindness. And moral blindness leads to injustice, oppression, and ultimately, tragedy.
A case could be made here for a category error; that moral blindness leads to tragedy of which oppression and injustice are examples. Error or not, is of little consequence.
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:
MIRVIS: Today, when one needs no more than a social media account and some home recording equipment to become a global influencer, the distortion of truth once again threatens to shape reality.
This is a groundless and fatuous claim. To be a podcaster, perhaps one needs only recording equipment and a social media account. To be a global influencer (if those words are to be taken at face value) one would need considerably more.
Mirvis mercifully moves swiftly on to present Passover as the festival of questions.
MIRVIS: The festival of Passover, which begins this weekend, has at its heart the antidote to the scourge of falsehood. Passover is our festival of questions. For more than three millennia, on this festival, we have recounted the famous story of the Israelite exodus from Egyptian slavery. But not by lecture or sermon. Instead, every facet of the Passover meal is designed to provoke questions.
Passover, it appears is not just about remembering and teaching but about learning to learn, through the encouragement of curiosity. Passover as an antidote to the scourge of falsehood. It’s good stuff.
Does leave me wondering how all this curiosity, if honestly brokered, has not led, though, to the quiet demise of Judaism….
He opened his closing with a call to honour the courage of those who defend the truth.
MIRVIS: Let us all honour the courage of those who, like Deborah Lipstadt, examine evidence, test assumptions, and refuse to let truth be silenced. Because in every generation, truth must be defended.
His final words were ‘the surest path to [the defence of truth], begins with a question.’
Fuck yeah.
More like this please BBC.
Second Thought podcast with Dan Beach 
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