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Articles by Jonathan Guttentag
Jonathan Guttentag: Excellence is the aspiration, toil is the discipline and responsibility is the purpose
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a longstanding Manchester-based rabbi and Jewish communal leader. He founded and leads the Whitefield Community Kollel and serves as International Liaison for the Coalition for Jewish Values. Some years ago, while sightseeing in the picturesque English market town of Oakham, in Rutland, I came across something that stopped me in my tracks. There, on the exterior of an old school building, were words carved in Hebrew. I was astonished.
Jonathan Guttentag's Blog
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK-based Orthodox rabbi, educator and public commentator. He is Principal of Whitefield Community Kollel in Manchester and has played an active role in communal, civic and parliamentary engagement around religious liberty, Jewish education, Israel, and the articulation of Torah values in contemporary public life.
The World Aunt Freda Carried
Last month, my aunt, Freda Steinberg, née Guttentag, passed away in Jerusalem, at the age of more than one hundred. Freda Steinberg in later years, at the home of her brother, Mechel Max Guttentag ז”ל Tomorrow evening marks the yahrzeit of my father, Mechel Max Guttentag ז״ל — Aunt Freda’s elder brother. As I write about her life and passing, I find the two memories naturally intertwined. In her voice, her gestures and her quiet dignity, I often glimpsed something of my father still present.
The World Aunt Freda Carried
Last month, my aunt, Freda Steinberg, née Guttentag, passed away in Jerusalem, at the age of more than one hundred. Tomorrow evening marks the yahrzeit of my father, Mechel Max Guttentag ז״ל — Aunt Freda’s elder brother. As I write about her life and passing, I find the two memories naturally intertwined. In her voice, her gestures and her quiet dignity, I often glimpsed something of my father still present.
Until This Day: My Mother’s Matzevah
Until This Day: Reflections at My Mother’s Matzevah Last week, our family gathered at Agecroft Beis Hachayim in Manchester to set the matzevah for my mother, Mrs Eva — Chava bas Reb Shlomo Osher — Guttentag, a”h. In Jewish tradition, a matzevah is not merely a marker upon a grave. It is an act of honour, memory and love — an attempt by transient human beings to ensure that a life of dignity and goodness continues to speak ad hayom hazeh, until this very day.
Until This Day: My Mother’s Matzevah - Jonathan guttentag
Until This Day: Reflections at My Mother’s Matzevah Last week, our family gathered at Agecroft Beis Hachayim in Manchester to set the matzevah for my mother, Mrs Eva — Chava bas Reb Shlomo Osher — Guttentag, a”h. In Jewish tradition, a matzevah is not merely a marker upon a grave. It is an act of honour, memory and love — an attempt by transient human beings to ensure that a life of dignity and goodness continues to speak ad hayom hazeh, until this very day.
Jonathan Guttentag: British Jews need clarity, not despair
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is involved in public affairs through the Coalition for Jewish Values UK. A recent ConservativeHome article powerfully captured what many British Jews have been forced to confront: denial is no longer possible. The fear is real. The attacks are real. The evasions by some political figures are real. Something has changed in Britain.
Jonathan Guttentag: When the state mistakes a yeshivah for a school, liberty is at risk
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester. At nearly ten o’clock on a winter evening in the House of Lords, one of the clearest public defences of Britain’s yeshivot came not from a rabbi, a Jewish communal spokesman, or a campaigner, but from the Bishop of Manchester. For months, the debate over under-16 yeshiva provision has too often been framed as though there were only two possible positions.
Israel’s haredi draft crisis needs more than crackdowns
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Israel’s haredi draft crisis needs more than crackdowns - opinion
ByJONATHAN GUTTENTAGAPRIL 26, 2026 11:28 The Jerusalem Post is right to say that Israel faces a real military strain. Reservists are exhausted, the war has dragged on, and the IDF’s manpower shortage cannot be brushed aside. But that still does not settle the argument. Too much of the current debate assumes that once the army has issued a warning and the court has ruled, all that remains is tougher enforcement. That is a mistake.
When the Bishop Defended Yeshivot
As government sought to fit Britain’s yeshivot into a regulatory framework designed for schools, an unexpected defender emerged in the House of Lords: the Bishop of Manchester, who understood that a yeshivah is not a failed school, but a different moral and educational world.
Jonathan Guttentag: The fate of the Iranian regime will matter in Britain too
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester. Keir Starmer keeps saying that this is “not our war”. But wars of this kind do not remain neatly where they begin. Vulnerable ceasefire or not their consequences travel. They reach beyond borders, beyond alliances, beyond the battlefield itself. Iran is not merely a difficult regime in a volatile region.
Jonathan Guttentag: When soldiers guard synagogues, something has already gone deeply wrong
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester. When a European government sends soldiers onto its streets to protect synagogues and Jewish schools, it is tempting to describe the move as a tough law-and-order response. It is not. It marks a more serious shift: from policing a society to defending it. That distinction matters. Police operate within a functioning civic order.
Western Wall debate must not overshadow prayer, unity during times of war - opinion
ByYAAKOV MENKEN, JONATHAN GUTTENTAGMARCH 24, 2026 16:00 As we prepared this piece for submission, Israelis were repeatedly forced to seek shelter, while gunmen attacked Jews in both Israel and the United States. We pray for all of our safety. We also find it particularly distressing to discuss attacks upon the layout and usage of the Western Wall prayer area, which was recently closed due to missile threats, at this time.
Jonathan Guttentag: Iran exposes the West’s crisis of moral clarity
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester. As the confrontation between the United States, Israel and Iran unfolds, Western governments — including Britain’s — now face not only a strategic challenge but a test of moral clarity. Public statements from many European capitals have emphasised legal caution and diplomatic restraint while avoiding direct engagement with the ideological nature of the Iranian regime.
Jonathan Guttentag: Extremism, pluralism and the need for moral red lines
Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a Manchester-based communal leader and International Liaison for the Coalition for Jewish Values UK. Britain rightly prides itself on pluralism. But pluralism is not the same thing as passivity. A liberal democracy cannot survive if it refuses to defend its own moral boundaries. Yet in confronting Islamist extremism, we have too often substituted hesitation for clarity and process for enforcement.
Zionism depends on responsibility, Jewish continuity
ByJONATHAN GUTTENTAGJANUARY 14, 2026 09:51 Zionism has always been a broad movement. From its earliest days, it brought together Jews of sharply differing philosophies and temperaments, united less by unanimity than by a shared sense of destiny. That diversity was real – and it mattered. But diversity alone never sustained Zionism. What sustained it was something deeper: a shared responsibility for Jewish continuity, security, and collective fate.
Why ‘The Guardian’ newspaper’s Yiddish socialist analogy doesn’t hold
(Jan. 4, 2026 / JNS) The Guardian’s recent defense of New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, relies on a striking and emotionally resonant historical analogy. We are invited to see Mamdani not as a radical break, but as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition: Yiddish socialism, embodied by the Bundists and Jewish radicals who helped build New York and were once themselves denounced as dangerous extremists. It is a powerful story. But it is also the wrong one.
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