Chief Rabbi?
This story will sum much up... it's not directly about religion, but very much about the jewish community.
I was sitting in a cafe one day in Oslo, Norway. This cafe is walking distance from the Jewish temple and after the morning weekday services, the Jews who attend (typically orthodox as no one else would bend their weekday schedules for temple) often visit this cafe. Seeing that the cafe sells chicken and cheese as well as pork chorizo sandwiches on the same dishes which are used for saucers for the coffee cups, I'll assume the coffee is not kosher.
There were three gentlemen sitting at the cafe drinking their coffee, wearing their yamukas and conversing in Yiddish under the assumption that there couldn't possibly be anyone nearby who would understand them. While they were together, they were talking so poorly of the labobature members of the synagogue that the terms used would be tasteless to translate. Thankfully, I have heard some of those members talk about the others as well and the term they used were somewhat comparable.
When one gentleman got up to go to the bathroom, the other two started slamming the one who wasn't present and who was one of their obviously close friends only moments earlier. When he returned, another got up and went out for a cigarette and he became the new target of disgust. When the last got up and left to go to work, the remaining two laid into him for a solid 5 minutes.
Let me point out that Oslo has barely enough observing jews to fill the one temple on important holidays. There is a requirement that there must be at least 10 males at a service for it to happen otherwise, it doesn't count. In addition, there must be one member of each of the 3 classes, the Israelite, the levis and the cohans... the Israelite being the normal every day shmucks, the levis and cohans being the descendants of the leaders of the empire of Jerusalem. This temple has an odd luxury problem as they are excited at any opportunity to gain an Israelite member because all the members of the temple somehow stem from only the rich and powerful leadership and they're seriously lacking for schmucks that are too modest to upgrade themselves when no one is looking.
With such strict requirements to be able to pray... and praying being as critical as it is, you'd imagine these people would make a greater effort to get along and unite as one. But no... there are orthodox, conservative, reformed, hasidim, labobature and who knows what other levels of jews that pretty much all look at the others as idiots.
So... I'm forced to wonder, what is it that justifies this guy being the chief rabbi? Who chooses that? I mean, I was forced into temple after temple throughout my youth and if there's one thing I am sure of, the only thing that unites the jews is an overwhelming belief that everyone is out to get them. Who chooses this guy on behalf of the jews in England... they have even bigger problems... they have german speaking jews and yiddish speaking jews. They have english speaking jews and all those different sects see the others as less than themselves. The conservatives would never want a labobature rabbi as their chief as that would be a disaster. The labobature don't even consider a plain old orthodox rabbi to even be jewish. The conservative don't even give a crap since they wouldn't get a say in the matter anyway. The orthodox have such a superiority thing going that everyone else be damned, they'll do their own thing.
What do you expect from a bunch of people who still run their lives based on the rules given to a bunch of uneducated, idiot brick layers to keep them alive 3800 years ago... even now, the greatest reason they have for praying in a language which none of them understand is that they want to make sure they pray in precisely the right words... and yet, we can be 100% certain that the language they're praying in didn't even exist until a 1000 years after the first copy was written and the alphabet didn't even exist in the used form for another 1000 years and the oldest copy in existence to use as a reference is a partial copy from around 900AD. So they'll blindly pray to a god in a language that no one understands, without having a clue what they're praying about and that's apparently good enough for them.
Really... we take these people seriously?