Published: 10 April 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
THE UNITED KINGDOM last had a Jewish prime minister in 1880, the final year of Benjamin Disraeli‘s service.
Now, with the coronavirus sending Boris Johnson to the hospital, the country is again being run by a man with Jewish roots: Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab took over Monday after the prime minister was moved into intensive care.
Raab’s father, Peter, was a Jewish refugee who immigrated to Britain at the age of 7 from what was then Czechoslovakia following the Nazi annexations there in 1938. Peter Raab died in 1986, when his son was 12, according to the Daily Mail.
Raab was raised in the Church of England before marrying a Brazilian Catholic woman, according to ITV. He studied to become a lawyer at Cambridge and joined the Foreign Secretary in 2000.
Raab, 46, does not identify himself as Jewish. Though multiple media outlets in the United Kingdom have noted that his father was Jewish, Raab rarely acknowledges this part of his background.
FULL STORY Dominic Raab, whose father was a Jewish refugee, is Britain’s acting prime minister (JTA)
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Keir Starmer expected to avoid internal debates on Middle East as much as possible; his foreign policy chief, by contrast, is known as a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause
With Starmer, Labour can return to being a balanced voice on the Middle East (Jewish Chronicle)
We should now help Sir Keir rebuild the party, says the chair of Labour Friends of Israel
Photo: Dominic Raab (EPA)
