Latest / REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph / REALLY JEWISH SE1:E16 - Police, nice job for a Jewish boy

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REALLY JEWISH SE1:E16 - Police, nice job for a Jewish boy · REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph

• Oliver Joseph: Okay, welcome. ⁓ Ben, it is wonderful to have you here with Really Jewish. Ben is the Ben Russell is the Assistant Deputy Assistant Commissioner in Metropolitan Police. You are a Director of Intelligence and Covert Policing. You have a pretty senior job in the police force and you are identified as the most senior Jewish police officer in the Metropolitan Police. It's exciting to have you on. What's exciting is I never in a million years thought that one of my 16th episode on this podcast was going to be interviewing a police officer, but we grew up together and this was too good of opportunity to turn down. I have to just tell one anecdote of recent weeks before I let you have the first word, which is that we were both outside shul together a couple of months back and I went up and said hello to a couple of the people standing outside show the security guards, which is a common thing that I just, you know, make people do some smiling and say hello to people. And I saw you but I didn't even look at your face because you're wearing a very fancy police uniform. And then on my way walking away, you shouted Olly. And I suddenly realized it was Ben Russell, the very same person but had not even looked at your face because you're wearing a uniform. Ben, it's really lovely to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Ben: Thank you very much. But they say, bring your whole self to work. And you know, if you work in a uniform role, sometimes you put on that uniform it feels like you are turning into someone else. So I did have to remind you that the me in the uniform was the same person that you knew out of the uniform. It was very funny. So it's nice to see you. Oliver Joseph: ⁓ It's nice to see. No, I guess, listen, that's part of the interest of the podcast to have you on is I often talk about being a rabbi and it's not a good job for a nice Jewish boy. And that's kind of a little bit tongue in cheek because, you know, there's got to be some Jewish boys and girls who might be rabbis or teachers of Jewish life. But it's, there aren't that many active policemen who come from the Jewish community, although there is a fair whack going back in history and currently. but it's not an everyday occurrence that you meet people who work for Metropolitan Police who come from the Jewish community. So it's definitely an area of interest to discuss how you got here and ⁓ how you perceive this job. Just tell us a little bit who you are, what you do, and what you do day to day, because that's interesting to know somebody who's at that level in the police force of the Metropolitan Police and what you actually do day to day. Ben: Yeah, thanks. So I am the head of covert policing and intelligence in the Metropolitan Police, which means I'm responsible for what we do to tackle organised crime and ⁓ crime in London. So all our intelligence and all our covert invest tactics to ⁓ to stop ⁓ crime, organised crime, we do some work to support counter-terrorism as well. That's a large part of my role. I'm also responsible for custody. So those are our 22 different cell blocks across London where we take people who've been arrested, and we that's part of the criminal justice process if you've been arrested, and we keep them safe and we keep them alive and we interview them and then we decide what we're going to do with them. ⁓ and I'm also responsible for criminal justice, which is ⁓ our part of the criminal justice system where you take someone from investigation. to charge, to court, maybe to prison, maybe not, and that whole system ⁓ in London. So it's a it's a broad role, it's got all sorts of different things in it, and it's ⁓ quite interesting. Your question I think was what that I'm not sure that answers your question, which is what do I actually do every day? which is a harder question to answer. So ⁓ I'm responsible for about four thousand people. So in any world, if you've got that number of people, a lot of it is management, budget, resourcing, having the right people in the right place. ⁓ I get a little bit involved in operations, so ⁓ we have to certain tactics and things in law, you need to be a certain police rank to authorise it, like surveillance or undercover of officers, that kind of thing. So we have a lot of oversight of that, and risk management. We do lots of risky things. And having the right processes and governance and assurance around risk is very important. Going back to what you said at the beginning, you know, you you question kind of a bit like your joke about a rabbi being ⁓ an interesting job for a nice Jewish boy. You they're not it's not that different for being a police officer, if you think about it. So as a rabbi, you spend a lot of time studying the law, you deal with trauma, you deal with complexity, with ⁓ families, with death, ⁓ with the kind of the highs and lows of life. It's not all that different for being an officer. You don't you probably investigate less crime as a rabbi than you do as a police officer. Oliver Joseph: Hmm. So that's the follows on nicely to the one of the core questions, I guess, of the podcast, which is what's really Jewish about policing, I asked that kind of knowing you since we were tiny, we kind of grew up together, we have kind of family in common, families that were close to live close by and had close relationships over the years with my parents, your parents and siblings and cousins. what the podcast is all about what it is to be Really Jewish and you know like framed as an insider's kind of take or you know being a fly on a wall in a conversation between two Jews and giving people an opportunity to really dig into that in what are some quite difficult times for the Jewish community for us to identify who we are and what we are and what we represent but all that being said having grown up through the Jewish community, having served the Jewish community in terms of being a director of our youth movement, Noam, I know for many of us who grew up in that youth movement, some of the leadership skills that we learned were quite transformational and influential on the careers that we ultimately choose, including myself as a rabbi and the work that I do now. But to simplify the two questions, is being a policeman good job for a nice Jewish boy and what's Really Jewish about this journey that you have over the last years in the Met Police. Ben: Yeah, so so in terms of my journey, I wouldn't be doing any of this had it not been for my job at NOAM with you working in youth leadership. I I've ended up in the Met through a very unusual route. I'm sort of the first person to have done this. So I'm a one of our senior police officers, but I was never a police officer before I became a senior police officer. There's only two of us in the UK have ever done that. I worked for NOAM ⁓ for two years. like yourself, working in that leadership, ⁓ you know, youth leadership and engagement space, social responsibility, that kind of thing, and running a charity. And I saw an advert in the newspaper to work at what was called the serious organised crime agency at the time and I applied for their like ⁓ talent program and I went for my job interviews and they s you know, I was how how old was I, twenty three or something, twenty four and they What do you do? And I said, ⁓ I manage a I run an organisation, I'm responsible for a budget of nine hundred thousand peop pounds and I manage I manage with nine people and I'm responsible for eight hundred volunteers or we'll help four hundred volunteers and they were like they thought I was making it up. Because they were that you know, how is someone at twenty three running an organisation like this? And the answer is within our community that was perfectly normal. and I kind of started to realise that maybe for a lot of people that wasn't very normal. And I absolutely wouldn't have had the opportunities I had it not been from having come through that Jewish youth in get youth world where it's all about social responsibility and youth empowerment and giving young people a chance to do things ⁓ run organisations and take decisions that I was no way qualified for. ⁓ insufficient safety nets behind me. But every you know, everyone survived, so that's okay. ⁓ I think that's how I kind of so I worked at The serious organised crime agency, which became the national crime agency for twelve years in cybercrime and financial crime before transferring to the Met in 2022. In answer to the kind of what is Jewish about that and what is Jewish about policing, well I think you you know, in any kind of public service role when you ask anyone there's an element of you ask anyone with any kind of faith background, which is a weird word, isn't it? And the first thing people most people will say is that ethical framework and kind of the right and wrong. But I do think it's more complex than that. ⁓ it's not just about ⁓ you know, saying, Well, I come from a specific faith and therefore I was brought up with a you know, strong sense of right and wrong for a young age. Most people can say that. I think that you know, Judaism has a very strong legal tradition and ⁓ that means there's lots of Jewish lawyers, right? You know, the the the lot the tr the textual tradition of, you know, the people of the book and and ⁓ you know the law and what does the law say and the d really detailed analysis and understanding and text that you and I and others have studied, you it's all about study and learning. And and the importance of the law. It's not a coincidence there's lots of Jewish lawyers. And policing is not that different. And for me to come in at a level where I'm not dealing with criminals day in, day out, I'm not out on the streets, you know, I'm not wearing a uniform every day, ⁓ i is more of that kind of legal route. similar to, you know, some parts of ⁓ you wouldn't ask a lawyer, hey, why do you you know, why funny true funny job for a Jewish boy, because there's loads of Jewish lawyers like my dad. ⁓ so I it's not at the level and the way I came in, it's not that different. And it is that kind of you know strong Jewish tradition of of legality and the law and and looking at the details. I think if I'm honest, there's also something about the minority experience in London. You know, for me, unlike many of my colleagues, You know, if you if you talk to black police officers, they will say that it's really, really hard to manage the different parts of their identity within the commu you know, different communities in London. And I never thought about that at all. Part partly 'cause I can walk down the street and, you know, I'm not visibly visibly Jewish, I don't wear a kippah. You know, I can choose when and where to hide my identity, you know, or or to not to hide it, but to kind of, you know In a way that a black or an ethnic minority colleague can't. But I never really thought about the duality and the kind of conflict between being Jewish and being a police officer until recently, where it has felt like there's that kind of conflict. For me, the minority experience of kind of wanting to be part of British culture and society and help shape the city I grew up in and help keep other people safe felt important to me in a in a way that I think talking to colleagues, a number of other colleagues from kind of different minority backgrounds, I say would I think would say something similar. ⁓ one kind of small anecdote. When I did my ⁓ training course to become a chief police officer, I was one of the few people on the course, as I said, not from a policing background. And they gave us a bunch of psychometric tests to try and understand what we were like. And if there's about 80 of us on the course, 79 people all scored very highly on obedience to authority and kind of doing what they were told. And I scored very low on obedience to authority and doing what I was told. And and ⁓ it was like spot the person in the room who's not a police officer. But I w I also think, you know, I know ⁓ I know Judaism, as I said, has that strong legal tradition. We also have a strong tradition of trying to get round things and find ways and excuses and different approaches and there's an innovation in trying to cheat cheat the law and che cheat the halakha, isn't there, of saying, Well, I know, you know, I know you're not supposed to light flame, but what if I transfer a flame? Or I know I'm not supposed to I saw ⁓ About a year ago I was in our public order command room for one of the big ⁓ pro-Palestine protests. And I watched on one of the screens a guy who, for all the world, looked like a Haredi Jew, stood there on Whitehall holding a sign. And I was thinking, hang on, this is an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding a placard on Shabbat. Can't be right. You know, you can't carry, there's no error. And I so I I was racking my brains and I was thinking, is this, you know, what is this a guy dressing up as an Orthodox Jew? Can't you know? Surely not. So I I did I did the honourable thing and I went and asked my rabbi the next day when I dropped my kids off Sunday morning, and she said to me, well, one of our rabbis, she said to me, Well, did you see him walk around? I said, No, he was just standing there holding a sign, I'm sure you know what I'm about to say. ⁓ well, he so long as he's not walking, he's allowed to carry. So he can carry, so so long as someone produces his pro-Palestine sign. He walks to the protest, not carrying anything, someone hands him the you know, down with Israel sign on Shabbat, and when the protest is finished he gives it to someone else and goes home, then no laws are broken. And it made my ⁓ you know, the classic ⁓ you know disobedience to authority in the Jewish mentality, which I think I have a little bit. Oliver Joseph: ⁓ So let's go there. an aspect of where the MET kind of comes into this ⁓ strongly held... Let me start that again. So let's go there for a moment. Let's have a drink of water, there you go. That's fine. It's good to have a break. Let's go there for a moment. An aspect of these times is a strong sense in the Jewish community that, let's say there's lots of division on the street and the Jewish community feels, well, I say this in podcasts often. One of the characteristic features of doing this work as a rabbi Ben: Go ahead. ⁓ Oliver Joseph: particularly for the last three years since October 7th, is a real sense inside many people in the Jewish community that they once felt very, very at home and very, connected to London, to the UK, to kind of broader UK society. And that, at best, that experience has been lessened over this time in lots of different sectors. And at worst... you know, the community really feels in some way or another thrown under the bus and very much ostracized from the broader community. I wonder what that looks like kind of, and the meta is at the center of it in some way or another, because you're here, because you are in part responsible for the way that protests are policed and one of the features of the time, a feature of that kind of sense of... degradation of communal relationships between the Jewish community in the wider world has been the kind of volume of protests on the street in relation to Israel, Palestine and the war in Gaza and the wars in general, have been fought over these last months and years. So what does that look like from the most senior Jewish policemen in the Met? And was that like kind of from a Met point of view? And how have you negotiated that time? And you're feeling Jewish, but also kind of having responsibilities at work and towards the Metropolitan Police. Ben: Yeah, so I mean on the one hand like we've always known that when there is war in Israel there is more anti-Semitism in London. That's always been the case. Equally, I grew up, you know, always feeling British like yourself, like like all of us, but you know, my my grandparents, you know, two of my grandparents came from Germany in the nineteen thirties, like you know, we lost family members, we're Holocaust survivors. Nothing We grew up we you know, we grew up knowing that maybe things were not always permanent. And the conversation of where where where would you go if you had to, how many times have we all had that conversation? You know? I don't think ever as Jews in the diaspora we have ever really felt like this was going to be the place we would live for the rest of our life. So I came into this current period knowing that. war in Israel equals anti Semitism, knowing that maybe nothing's permanent. But even with that mindset, I think the last few years has felt shocking. ⁓ even kind of with that, you know, so it has still felt shocking to me because the amount and the level and the extent, and I say that kind of as a British Jewish Londoner b and also from a work, you know, or and ⁓ also as a you know director of intelligence and then a police officer, like it has still felt shocking to me. And seeing, you know, I was I was our public order goal commander, I was responsible for protest policing on the day of the Gold of Green terrorist attack. And I ⁓ the ⁓ at the point where I was sat in our operations room and and someone came in and said to me there's been a terrorist attacking Golders Green targeting, you know, ⁓ at the time they said a Jewish male, I was looking on the screen at a woman who was protesting outside at the time the minute that someone came in, who was protesting outside Parliament, five hundred yards from where I'm sitting today, and she was dressed up like a person in a Holocaust ⁓ in in a concentration camp with some sign saying something about how Israel was the real Nazi. Or something, I can't remember exactly. And at the moment in which I was looking at this person who clearly believes they're a protester but is doing something that to me felt abhorrent, someone came in and said there's been a targeted attack against Jews. Now, even if literally there was no link between those two things emotionally, it felt like that just felt like a complete description of what the last few years has felt like to me. The other experience I had is like you, we do security at the same synagogue. ⁓ and on the day on Yom Kippur on the day of the Manchester terrorist attack, I was paired up in a field, securing a nothing in a field, staring into the distance, in the Austin in June Mincha, with a guy who explained to me that he owns a flat in Tel Aviv and a house in North London, and he feels safer in his flat in Tel Aviv. And at the time, of course, the rockets were literally landing on Tel Aviv. And when he went to his flat in Tel Aviv, he would be sitting in his bomb shelter when the siren goes off, and he'd be woken up repeatedly during the night, and you would hear the bomb and the boom, and when the sirens stopped, he'd go back to his normal life. And he told me he felt safer in his flat in Tel Aviv than he did in London. And I said to him, Have you ever been a victim of crime in London? No. Have your family ever been a victim of crime in London? No. Well, do you have all these protests and I you know I see them through my phone? And I and on the one hand, like, there's a part of me that thinks desper that's desperately sad and like as you know as Britain's most senior Jewish police officer I feel like I failed. On the other hand, I don't know if you if policing can defeat that. I don't know if policing can solve that because we don't have a censored media. We you know the the owners of the social media platforms in which that content is being distributed make money off hate and off you know pushing algorithms that that spew hate into people's lives. How can policing fix that problem? I don't know. We have a responsibility to be really, really present in the community. And we've with you know over a thousand officer shifts a week dedicated to protecting and keeping the Jewish community safe. We've got a team of a hundred officers now based in North West London we want with extra government funding, and we're we're kind of positive that we might be able to grow that to three hundred officers. Their job will be to investigate hate crime, to be a visible reassurance. reassurance in the community. And when and when I put on my uniform and I walk around North West London, people say thank you. Trust me, that is not the case in a lot of parts of London who feel that the police c you know, we police to them, not with them. Our job, you know, will be reassurance, it will be investigating hate crime and it will be prevention. Because some of these attacks will not take place if we're there. So on the one hand, you know, I I sometimes feel like I'm failing. On the other hand, I sometimes feel like what what could we be doing Within the law and within the importance of respecting free speech rights, and I always say this, in countries that come after free places, you know, history will tell you if you come after free speech, that tends not to end well for the Jews. So what more could we be doing within that framework? I kind of I rack my brains often and I think maybe, maybe we're heading in the right direction. I'm not sure we start well I'm not sure we got off on the right footing after October the seventh. You know, as the Met, I don't think we were quick enough to understand where this was going at a reactive pace, but I think we're now in a I think, reacting and and trying to get ahead of the threat and be as proactive as we can. And we and you'll have seen we've made a large number of arrests in some of these appalling investigations and incidents recently. Oliver Joseph: So one of the questions that comes to the Jewish community and I think about often is the degree to which this is an imagined, know, there's lots of kind of political reflection in the Jewish community, which is also bound up in kind of dark Jewish humor. So one of like the kind of quips I've heard of the part in the past is not shocking and surprising that the Jews know when to run or hide or change tact as some kind of. essence of their genetic makeup, given that we've left, you know, most of the Middle East, given that we've left most of Eastern Europe over the generations and many other countries and many other places, in order to evade and escape persecution. It's not that surprising that we have kind of this ⁓ Jewish Spidey sense where we, you know, know when to move and know when to dodge and know when to duck. Somehow in the context of a lot of ⁓ hate and antagonism against the Jewish community in these times alongside, like you say, think, you know, legitimate and, you know, rightly or wrongly express political concern for what's going on in Israel, Gaza, in the Middle East. But do you have a sense of like how much of this is? It's a dangerous question, but how much this is an imagined kind of Jewish ⁓ generational trauma and how much of this is actually real that there is a risk to Jewish community at this time, more so above and beyond any other minority community, particularly the Muslim community. It's one of the questions I sit with because as a Jewish person and with a young family, I also feel at risk at the moment. I also feel like we're living in heightened times with. Ben: Yeah. I ⁓ Oliver Joseph: heightened attention over lots and lots of years now on the Jewish community. But I sometimes try and pick apart how much of that is my own stuff going back lots of generations or how much of that stuff is a real threat to the community. Ben: Yeah. And and it's a good question. So the data will tell you clearly that hate reported hate crime against Jews per vic per person. So like the c look at the number of Jews compared to the amount of hate crime, and that is off the scale compared to threats against other minorities. You know, absolutely we are in we are worried about anti Muslim hatred and that bothers us and we've particularly seen, you know, really violent incidences of people targeting Muslim premises and and you know Muslim individuals in quite a shocking violent way. But in terms of the volume and the amount and the data is very, very clear. Per Jewish person in London, the amount of hate crime that is reported to us is is is shocking. And it really is shocking. I think, you know, again, like if you look at again, I was reflecting on protests. We had we had a protest about a month ago where you had the ⁓ far right protest or the right wing protest, or you know, people Use different terminology. And you had the pro-Palestinian and associated protests going on in different parts of London at the same time. And they both kind of agreed on, they didn't agree on much, but certain pockets of both protests did agree. It was all the fault of the Jews. Very, very small numbers of people in both protests, you could see holding signs where if you took away the rest of the image, you couldn't necessarily tell. w who who would be necessarily holding that sign. ⁓ and language around Jewish conspiracy gets used, I think, in different ways on both sides of the political spectrum, in a very d in in quite a dangerous way I'd say. And some of the specific language around, you know, Jews as ⁓ as other and not British and you know somehow trying to control, I think is quite specific in the threat. the nature of anti Semitism in that sense, I think, presents itself differently. And I think, you know, you question, you know, is there is is it an imagined threat? Is it self fulfilling prophecy? We we bought, you know, ⁓ I mean me, I can tell you, you know, we had the cupboard under the stairs next to our downstairs toilet. My mum would buy, you know, twenty bottles of shampoo or whatever, and we'd this is ridiculous. And over time it became known as the Holocaust cupboard. You know, you know, you know, go and get you get the run out of toilet rock, get another one from the Holocaust cupboard, because the idea was, why do we stock up in case we have to leave? But no, I don't think it's a fulfilling prophecy, and I don't think it's an imagined threat. And ⁓ the data is very clear on that will back that up. Now some of that reported crime, there is some anti-Semitism reported to us, where if you look at the crime, it will be I'm a visibly Jewish person and someone did something. And there is no reference necessarily to Jewish hatred in that, but they're saying, Well, that that wouldn't have happened if I didn't look like I am. Very, very difficult to ask is that hate crime or not? It's a very, very difficult judgment for officers. If the individual feels that was done to them because of how they look and their you know and their and and their association with the faith or with a minority group. It's very difficult for us as to come in and say, ⁓ no, you're wrong. So it is challenging to sometimes to get the data right. But ⁓ but we think it's very clear on this front. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, no listen, I can say on the flip of that, you know, I have the we say in Jewish life, shivim panim le Torah, there are 70 faces of Torah, I think that's partly representative of the capacity of the human soul and the human spirit to hold, you know, a complex identity in many different sides of that complex identity. I think as a rabbi and as a faith leader, I live in both those places. I've also been a victim of antisemitic hate. Over these times, I worked in the prison system for about four years. After October 7th, as a prison chaplain, October 7th, that became much harder to do. And it was noticeable, the kind of level of animosity against me as one of the only Jewish, visibly Jewish person in the prison that I was working in. And ⁓ a couple of times that kind of came close to actual threat. inside the prison. That's a first for me. ⁓ Like explicit anti-Semitism ⁓ as experienced in my own life and also people in my very immediate family have had specifically anti-Semitic kind of hate thrown their way. Thank God everybody walked away absolutely fine. But that is a real experience. Not just as a rabbi listening to people who've had that experience of being ostracized in various ways from the NHS, from Ben: Yeah. Oliver Joseph: therapeutic services from academia, you know, you name it, people feeling like they're being outed and pushed out as Jewish people, but also kind of that immediate experience of Ben: Absolutely. Yeah. ⁓ Oliver Joseph: of Yeah, that but also that immediate experience of, of feeling out of that. And I have to mention here, because I think it's also relevant, but you know, imagine complex from a policing perspective, that social media is also a big ⁓ boon for for haters, because largely anonymous. And I can say that for every Ben: So I'm sorry. No, from just from my earnings. Oliver Joseph: Thousand clicks or even every hundred hundred clicks that I get on the various social media accounts that we run particularly through this podcast the moment every every extra thousand clicks means at least another three or four or five comments a lot of which are some of which are low-key hateful some of which are like really horrendous and particularly worryingly as you describe kind of venture into all sorts of sometimes explicitly and sometimes the subtext of what they're saying like conspiracy theory tropes of Jews controlling the world, Jews controlling the media, Jews controlling money, Jews controlling, you you name it, which I'm then linked into because I'm presenting a podcast called Really Jewish, which is terrifying. And also, think tough for people in the public or pseudo public eye. ⁓ I wonder how, I wonder, yeah, let's loop to that. wonder how that, the question that I have, the follow-up question is, how does Judaism shape your day-to-day now as a police officer? And also, how do you deal with some of that pressure, know, emotionally, spiritually, as in these very fraught times? Ben: Yeah. It's it's a really good question. I mean my you know, I worked in organized crime for twelve years and really whether I was Jewish or not, you know, it would if you ask my colleagues how many of them knew I was Jewish, I don't know, not many, maybe some did, maybe some didn't, maybe I mentioned I was taking holidays off or whatever, you know, it wasn't it wasn't critical to my job, it wasn't criti it wasn't relevant in some respects. And I spoke about it one few times, but when I came to the Met it has felt different. It's felt important to me to talk about it. And it's felt important to give a voice internally to my to Jewish police officer and staff colleagues who I think have had their own difficult experiences in different ways. ⁓ and, you know, it's always you know, it's a it's always you know, you to look at your senior team and see that they reflect you is important, I think. And I think it's felt important sometimes to the community. And also, if I'm honest, I you I've gone out and I've been to synagogues and I've spoken to you know, go to JW3 in a couple of weeks, and we're doing community events. And I think to have me there is a bit of an intermediary. In ⁓ of anti Semitism, and you share your experiences, which I'm ⁓ you it's all I mean it's awful. Prisons are you know really, really challenging environments for anyone, but I can't imagine as a prison rabbi must be extremely difficult. ⁓ before I started on my first job. You know, bear in mind at the time I I'd had my security clearance interview. Bear in mind at the time I was a full time employee of a very overtly Jewish charity. And this I was ⁓ this woman came to I was living with my parents at time. ⁓ we didn't get paid very much, did we? ⁓ Jewish community professionals never get paid enough, isn't that right, Ollie? and ⁓ she said to me, first thing she said to me, well not the first thing, first thing she said that bothered me was she said if there was a war between Israel and Britain Whose side would you be on? Which is just, you know, classic, classic kind of pointing your finger at an anti Semitic trope, kind of, you know, how and also at the same time really difficult to explain to someone why that's not acceptable as a question. So I just did you know, I just said Britain and pretended the question was reasonable and moved on because I, you know. And then I felt she was kept asking me about money, and I know that a lot, you know, a lot of your security go into interviews about your finances. But she kept pushing and pushing and I was you I was twenty three, twenty-four, you what did I have to say about money? And I and it quickly became apparent over time that she thought that I owned the house, which it was my parents' house. And and I was kind of thinking, you know, how why would I own a house like this? Well, who puts pictures of themselves on the wall of their house? And I and I kind of and I was in my mind again I was left with a kind of, ⁓ is this cause you think all the jew you know, Jews are rich? Is that what this is about? Oliver Joseph: You Ben: And again, it's hard you know, nothing this person ever did you could point your finger to and say this was anti Semitism. But again, I just felt came away feeling completely uncomfortable from the experience. And I and I suspect that is not unusual. And all those experiences for me, they kind of make it more important to me to say, I think it's you know really important to be able to talk about all this at work, you know, deliberately. And people have said to me, a number of people have said to me, Are you sure you're happy to do that? you know. Are you sure you're happy to write an article in the Jewish Chronicle or talk to a podcast and talk about yourself and your family and that kind thing? And well, okay, but I'm I keep off social media, which helps. and I know particularly for ⁓ particularly for women, a number of senior police colleagues on social media who have put themselves out there, the abuse they suffer just for being a female senior officer in the police is disgraceful. It's appalling. Commenting people commenting on their hairstyles, on their looks, on their judgment, on everything, you know. So, you know, I've had the fortune of not having to be subject to that and I've done loads of media, you know, in the last ten years. But keeping up social media really helps because I don't if people want to say nasty things about me, I don't have to hear it. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, it's an interesting, it's interesting reflection in terms of Part of the mess that we're in is certainly related to social media and you portray that. I guess we've got a couple of minutes left. The parts I wanted to focus on, let's do that again. We've got a couple of minutes left. Ben: I'm happy to go to four fifteen sorry, sorry I'm happy to go to four fifteen by the way, that's not a problem. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think just in terms of timing, it's good that we don't go too much over 40 minutes, so the timing works. Thank you. Two questions I have just to finish up now as we wrap up. One is, know, Ben, in your role as the most senior Jewish police officer in the Met, if you have a message to the Jewish community, I think it's good to hear. like what the soundbite is, because these are quite destabilizing times for lots of people in the Jewish community, and I think we do better to stand strong and proud on our feet, exactly as you describe, actually, strong and stout contributors to Jewish society and Jewish community, and society as a whole, in many ways more importantly. But I also wonder what's... what shapes you if there's like one teaching or one aspect of our tradition that shapes you and brings you today as ways to close up. Ben: Yeah, so in terms of a message, I think the first message I think is kind of from the Met. It's like we we see what's happening, we hear what's happening, we don't underestimate how hard it is it has been for the British Jewish community in London since October the seventh, but particularly since the war in Iran and between Iran and Israel, that the level of attacks, the extent of the attacks the frequency is not acceptable and is not something that should be lived with. We've all lived with security outside schools and we've all lived with you know fences outside synagogues for a long time. But but we're not accepting living with this level of threat. And that's why we are doing more than we ever have to try to kelp help the community in London to be safe and feel safe. We're putting more officer shifts into North West London and to Stanford Hill. We're putting more resources into investigating hate crime. Our message is very clear. We are not accepting this as the new normal. I think I think the my other message would be that we are here to work with the community. And we, you know, the CST, the Community Safety Trust, the Shon Rim, the Jewish Leadership Council, more letters and more acronyms than you could possibly imagine. You know, we talk as senior colleagues to so many parts of the community on a regular basis, and I think that's a good thing. Because the relationship between the Met and the kind of you know all parts of the community, many parts of the community, is really strong. And I think many people don't see that. They see you know newspaper articles and they see rightly when we get things wrong, but what they don't see is the day-to-day relationships and partnership there exists between the Met and kind of all parts of the community, which I think is many parts of the community, which I think is really, really positive and makes a big difference. And when things have happened, And sometimes what you've seen online isn't true, we can, for example, get our message out really quickly and say, look, that'sn't quite what happened, and and there's voices out there that might believe us. So I think that really matters. Yeah, I think my message is that we get it, we see it, we understand, we're here to help, and it's absolutely about working in partnership. And when you saw me outside New North London ⁓ in ⁓ in my uniform, I was there visiting the security team and visiting the community and you know, saying how things, you know, how's it feeling today? You asked me about, you know. Well, you you asked me about something that shapes me. I d I'm not sure I quite answer that, but y you y you gave me some homework, which I if a rabbi gives me homework I will always complete the homework. ⁓ and you said bring a text Oliver Joseph: That makes you exceptional. Most people I give homework to totally ignore the homework. Ben: Well, I don't know. I don't know. So I brought I brought something. Oliver Joseph: There's a looping back to your relationship with power and your compliance when people give you instructions. Ben: Yeah, true, okay, fine. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I've undermined myself in terms of my obedience to authority, but listen, if a ra you if the rabbi tells you to do something, you do it, right? I brought something ⁓ from ⁓ from the beginning of Shemotz from Exodus. and I I I'm not sure if it shapes me. I was just I was just you know I sp it's been a few weeks since you asked me to come on and I was fucking around the internet for own books and all sorts of stuff for ages and I stuck on this for some reason. So the beginning of it starts with it says the death of Joseph and his brothers and his generation. And it says that the Israelites moved down to Egypt and sorry, in Egypt were fertile and prolific and they multiplied and they grew in size as a people. And it says and that so the land was filled with them. Probably can guess where I'm going. A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph, or in other words, he didn't know the history of how the you know what the Jews had done in Egypt and the and what they've contributed to society. And it says, and he said to his people, Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so they may not increase, etc. etc. I won't you know, right? So so there's all sorts of themes you could pull out of that, aren't there? And then it goes on and says, The king of Egypt spoke to the midwives, the Hebrew midwives, one of whom ⁓ and their names. Saying, when you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birth still, look at the child. If it's a boy, kill him. If it's a girl, let her live. And as we know, the midwives didn't do as the king of Egypt told them, they let the boys live. And I was just I got stuck on that. I'm not sure why. There was lows in there, isn't there? ⁓ there's it starts with the fear of an incoming people, and what does it look and feel like to rule a kingdom, a diverse area, and how do you keep people safe and content and and ⁓ work you know kind of living together in a really diverse, challenging community of different backgrounds. Talks about short memories, ⁓ and people who have kind of hatred of others and what it looks and feels like to have a very short memory. And then you've obviously got this this kind of murderous order and this this kind of you know, the king sending out this ruling to say, you know, kill the first kill the boys and then this the heroic act of civil disobedience. We could talk for another whole hour about what you know, what does a police officer think about civil disobedience? Generally I think it's a bad thing, unsurprisingly. and I know this in debates to kind of who were the midwives, what was their background. ⁓ but there was something in it around the kind of heroics of these women who disobeyed the order of the king with little fuss. They came back with a strong explanation and it was kind of you know, I w I went to the This is I this is completely different, but last year I went to the police bravery awards and I spoke to a number of officers who had done amazing things. And inevitably, every single one of them I spoke to completely downplayed it and said, Well, I was in that situation and everyone else would have done the same thing. No, of course they wouldn't have. And you know, text speaks to the small you know, the bravery of small acts making a big difference. and ⁓ yeah, I thought there was a lot in that. But ⁓ ⁓ your listeners can take from that what they will and kind of make their own judgments. But I it's ⁓ it's an interesting text. What I didn't do was bring this week's Pashau which is Korach, 'cause there you have someone challenging the leadership ⁓ and getting struck down and given the Maker Field Barelection on Thursday. I thought that would be far too political and I wouldn't possibly want to talk about that. So ⁓ yeah. Oliver Joseph: No, but it's interesting that that corner of the book of Exodus, because one of the things that occurs to me as you speak is the way in which the characters are crucial. The characters are crucial each of the characters, whether it's Moses being sent down the Nile, and being plucked out the water by Pharaoh's daughter, or whether it's Miriam Moses sister who kind of has a watchful eye over Moses as he's passed, passed along the river Nile, whether it's Moses himself, you know, having the bravery, Koh v'koh looks in this direction in that direction ⁓ ⁓ to take ⁓ action against the Egyptian slave masters. There's something about that corner of the the ⁓ story that you chose, where every single character counts. ⁓ Ben, ⁓ go back a very long way and what I've learned from this interview is something about the mission that you have. And also something about the importance of everybody playing their own part in the Jewish community and beyond in the way that they know how to. And hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully exactly as described with some kind of vision, l'tovateunu like for some kind of greater good and some kind of aspiration that things will get better. And then we'll come out the other side of this. So from our part, Really Jewish. You you get the Really Jewish tick from our podcast that you are Really Jewish as the most senior Jewish Maybe there's gonna be a new award ceremony that we have on the podcast that you get the tick that yes You count as a really Jewish I Think the Yiddish is a ⁓ But thank you so much for coming on and we really appreciate your insight and your wisdom and for the work that you do Ben: Like a blue pita badge. Can you give me a blue pizza badge on the podcast? Is that allowed? No problem, happy to speak to you. Oliver Joseph: Okay, thanks. Ben: ⁓ good.