opinion
Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet
P erhaps the strangest part was sitting
through a Sunday service in the
1,000-year-old nave of St. Albans
Cathedral (the longest nave in England!) and
hearing the Hebrew Bible (specifically I Kings
1:32-40) read aloud in English.

Maybe stranger yet was hearing part of
that passage set to the music of 17th-century
maestro George Friedrich Handel! These, and
many other oddities, were only a fraction of
the wonderful and unusual experiences of
being an American-born British rabbi during
the first coronation this country has seen in
70 years.

As with the funeral last year of the late
Queen Elizabeth, the scale of organization
and competence required to pull off such
an event is astounding. For a country where
it often feels that small-scale bureaucracy
can get in the way of day-to-day life, the
coronation was, by all accounts, seamless.

This, of course, makes it the exception rather
King Charles III
than the rule, as coronations past were often
marred by logistical issues, bad luck and
wouldn’t return (officially) for 400 years — or get an
sometimes straight-up violence.

It was the coronation of Richard I in 1189 that official apology from the church for 800.

These festivities, thankfully, were of a very different
unleashed anti-Jewish massacres and pogroms
across the country and led to the York Massacre caliber. Not only were Jewish communities front and
in 1190, in which more than 150 local Jews killed center, but Jews, religious and not, were active and
themselves after being trapped in Clifford’s Tower, welcome participants in the ceremony in Westminster
which was set ablaze by an angry mob. During that Abbey. Indeed, despite the ceremony taking place
year there were attacks in London, Lynn, Bury St. on Shabbat, the United Synagogue (a mainstream
Edmunds, Stamford, Lincoln, Colchester and others. Orthodox denomination that accounts for 40-45%
It was exactly 100 years later, in 1290, that Edward of British Jewish synagogue membership) was
I would expel Jews from England altogether. They represented by Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who, together
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with other faith leaders, played a role in
greeting the king as he left the church. This
was especially unusual as it has long been
the position of the United Synagogue that
their rabbis and members should not go into
churches (much less on Shabbat). In many
ways, this demonstrates one of the consistent
themes of the coronation: the interruption
of normal routine and the continued
exceptionalism of the royal family.

Judaism is agnostic, at best, about kings.

Our own monarchy came about because the
people insisted on it, but against the will of
the prophet Samuel against the desire of God.

Once it was established — a process that
involved several civil wars, a lot of bloodshed
and the degradation of many historical
elements of Israelite society — it did, for a
brief time, bring some stability to the fragile
confederacy of Israelite tribes.

But it was really only the half-century golden
era under King Solomon that managed this
feat. After him, and ever since, the monarchy
has been a source of conflict and violence.

While we still hope that a righteous heir of the
Davidic monarchy will reappear and take their
place as king of Israel, we, famously, are not
holding our breath.

Our approach to non-Jewish monarchs is even
more complex. Whilst King Charles III was being
coronated to the words of our holy texts and being
anointed in oil (the ceremony for our monarchs) from
the Mount of Olives (in our holy land), we were at the
same time reciting a litany of prayers, as we do daily,
to remind us (in the words of our prayers): “We have
no king but You” (Avinu Malkeinu); “Your kingdom is
an everlasting kingdom” (Ashrei); “God is King, God
has ruled, God will rule forever (Y’hi Khavod); “God’s
kingship is true there is none else” (Aleinu).

These words were chosen by our sages for our
prayers in part because they shared the biblical
anxiety about monarchs. Halacha, Jewish law, does
retain the notion of a king over Israel, but that king
is so heavily bound by legislation, it is far from the
absolutist monarchies of most of Europe.

However, since 1688 at least, after the brief (and
failed) experiment with the notion of divine right of
kings, England (and now the United Kingdom) has
See King Charles III, page 13
Hugo Burnand/Royal Household 2023/PA Wire / Avalon/Newscom
As an American Rabbi in King
Charles’ Court, I’m Learning to
Love the Idea of Monarchy



opinion
A Shooting in Buffalo Brought
Jewish, Black Communities
Together. What Took So Long?
Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein
T he attack on the Tops Friendly Market on
Buffalo’s Jefferson Avenue last May 14 shook
Western New York to the core. In less than 10
minutes, an 18-year-old wielding an AK-47 killed seven
and injured three Black people.

The victims were teachers, caretakers, activists,
new fathers, grandmothers, community leaders and
all-around good people. If not for the heroism of
retired police officer Aaron Salter Jr., who lost his
life in the attack, and the quick response of the
Buffalo Police Department, the death toll could have
been far higher.

For our Buffalo Jewish community, the attack was
a call to action. In years past, the Jefferson Avenue
corridor was the heart of the Jewish community. As
Jews joined the white flight to the suburbs, it became
a place that few Jews ever frequented. The vigils held
in the aftermath of the attack were the first time many
Jews in our community had been back in the East Side
of Buffalo in decades, if not more.

The gunman specifically targeted the neighborhood,
traveling three hours away from his home to “kill black
people.” As the national media emphasized over and
over, Buffalo is the sixth most segregated city in the
country. What does it mean that our white Jewish community
is so removed from our Black and brown neighbors?
A casual remark by a young Jewish parent a few
King Charles III
Continued from page 12
endorsed the notion of a constitutional monarch — a
king or queen who is esteemed, but also bound by
the law and by restrictions imposed by the people. In
practice, this makes today’s monarchy an awful lot like
that of ancient Israel, and very different from historic
European monarchies, as well as very different from
how Americans and others often see it. After nearly
six years living and working on these green isles, I’ve
come to appreciate the complexities and absurdities
of the British monarchy and to value the role that the
ceremonies play in the collective life of Britons.

Many here are surprised to find that, being a
Yankee, I’m not also a republican (an anti-monarchist,
in the British context). Indeed, while I have my doubts
weeks after the attack really struck home for me.

He said the shooting at the school in Uvalde, Texas,
in June 2022 hit a lot closer to home than the
shooting just down the road at Tops. As a parent of
school-age children, he could relate to the suffering of
the parents in Texas, not to the horror that occurred in
Buffalo’s inner city. How could this be? Where did our
community go wrong?
As the rabbinic consultant at our local Jewish
Communal Relations Council, I take this disconnect
personally. I grew up in a predominantly Black part
of West Philadelphia. Back in the 1980s, none of my
classmates in my suburban Jewish day school would
come to visit my house. They and their parents were
afraid to come by, locking their car doors whenever
they happened to drive by my home. Sadly, the divide
has only grown worse.

Starting in 2017, our local Jewish federation has
made a concerted effort to bridge this divide. We have
held two missions to Israel, specifically geared toward
our local African-American leadership. We hired a
racial justice coordinator, and are part of the initial
cohort of the Jewish Federations of North America’s
Jewish Equity and Diversity Initiative.

It has begun to make a difference. The Sunday after
the May 14 attack, dozens of Jewish communal leaders
showed up on the street outside Tops. Over the
past year, we have held racial healing circles, hosted
museum tours of local Black artists, held a Freedom
Seder and toured gardens on Buffalo’s predominately
Black East Side. While we are very far from the shared
society we aspire to, I can honestly say we are making
strides toward closing the gap. Our community is
much more open and accepting of Jews of color, and
its members are beginning to accept our role in the
systemic racism that is pervasive in our society.

This has been a very bad year for us in Western
New York. Beyond the mass shooting at Tops, we had
the stabbing of Salman Rushdie at the Chautauqua
Institution, two major blizzards that left more than 40
people dead and the near death of Buffalo Bills player
Damar Hamlin on the football field.

The one-year anniversary of the Tops attack will hit
us hard, but it will not deter us from the work ahead.

We, the Buffalo Jewish community, will be there in
full force at the various events planned to mark the
occasion, not as bystanders, but as upstanders. We
are, after all, not only Jews, but Buffalonians.

As my friend, fellow recent traveler to Israel and
poet laureate of Buffalo, Jillian Hanesworth, wrote
in her poem “Choose Love”: “[W]hen evil tries to
break us / we choose to stand tall / We’ll shout loud
and live louder / until the walls of hate fall / because
justice can’t be limited / so we choose it for all… So,
no matter what others say / no matter what they try
to do / love, light, and each other / is what we will
always choose.” ■
about the idea of monarchy and while, religiously,
there is a strong argument against human authority,
the monarchy as it operates in modern Britain is fairly
compatible with the idea of kingship as established
by halacha — restrained, limited and primarily
occupied with being a moral exemplar rather than
an authoritarian ruler. Maybe then it shouldn’t be
so strange that so much of the ceremonies this
weekend were drawn from our texts, and so much
of the symbolism referential to our tradition. We can
be grateful that King Charles’s coronation, the first
in a generation, went off without a hitch and without
bloodshed, and with the support and involvement
of a diverse representation of Britain’s peoples and
faiths. To the outside, the coronation likely appeared to
be just a lot of pomp and pageantry. No doubt, it is
often Americans who are camping out on the Mall in
see-through tents or wearing the royal family’s faces
as masks in coronation parties — but this American,
after more than half a decade here in Britain, can
appreciate the depth of the monarchy in ways I
couldn’t before.

I see both its deep significance and history, its
connection to our own tradition (sometimes through
appropriation) and its negatives. As a rabbi and a Jew,
I will always believe that there is only one Sovereign
who truly rules, but there is something to be said for
having a king as well as a King. ■
Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein is the rabbi of
Congregation Shir Shalom of Buffalo in Williamsville,
New York, and a rabbinic consultant to the Buffalo
Jewish Communal Relations Council.

Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet is the rabbi of St. Albans
Masorti Synagogue. He was ordained by the Jewish
Theological Seminary where he also received an MA
in Jewish thought and moved to the UK in 2017.

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