Britain's former chief rabbi has warned that Jewish people are thinking about leaving the country because of anti-Semitism.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks told the BBC on Sunday that for the first time in the 362 years Jews have been in Britain, many question whether it is safe to raise children there.
He singled out Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a possible candidate for the prime minister's seat, for failing to address anti-Semitic attitudes in the main opposition party, saying Corbyn would pose a danger as prime minister unless he expresses "clear remorse" for past statements.
Sacks said, "When people hear the kind of language that has been coming out of Labour, that's been brought to the surface among Jeremy Corbyn's earlier speeches, they cannot help but feel an existential threat."
Gordon Brown, the most recent Labour Party leader to serve as prime minister, added his voice to the chorus of party figures calling for Labour to endorse an internationally agreed-upon definition of anti-Semitism rather than the more limited one now in place.
Speaking at a meeting of Jewish Labour MPs in London, Brown said it was "not just a procedural issue but about the soul of the party."
''It is time to say that this wrong must and can be righted,'' he said.
"It is needed now to deal with practical threats, to confront gathering dangers and on-the-ground realities of very real, week-by-week threats to Jewish communities that demand an unequivocal response and unqualified resolve," he said.
The party's executive committee is set to discuss its definition of anti-Semitism at a conference in Liverpool in the coming days. The party came under fire recently for opting to reject the official definition of anti-Semitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Corbyn consistently denies allegations that he is anti-Semitic but has been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks amid a focus on the Labour Party's failure to address rising anti-Semitism among its members.
Recent reports have shown him alleging that British Zionists don't understand English irony at an event promoted by Hamas and laying a wreath at a memorial to the Black September terrorists who were involved in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
In late July, three Jewish newspapers in the U.K. ran a joint editorial calling Corbyn "an existential threat to Jewish life in this country." The editorial, which ran in the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish News, and Jewish Telegraph, said that since Corbyn's election as Labour leader in 2015, the party had grown increasingly tolerant of anti-Semitism.
"The party that was, until recently, the natural home for our community has seen its values and integrity eroded by Corbynite contempt for Jews and Israel," the editorial said.
