Guernsey hero

He was a maverick historian, a relentless archivist and a single-minded clergyman.

He angered and frustrated both Christians and Jews and escaped Hitler's assassins. But he is described as 'the 20th century's most dedicated gentile fighter against anti-Semitism' - and he was a Guernseyman. Shaun Shackleton discovers more about the Rev. James Parkes The writer

IT'S nine digits to get through to Beer Sheva in Israel and I'm tapping these into the phone in a near-deserted office on a nondescript Sunday in January. It's not really a day for heroes.

But the reason for the phone call is my link to perhaps Guernsey's bravest, yet least-known example. He is Jewish author and academic Haim Chertok and the hero is the subject of his latest book, He Also Spoke as a Jew: The Life of the Reverend James Parkes.

The phone in Beer sheva rings four times and the receiver is picked up. I introduce myself.

'Hi, Shaun,' comes the reply. 'I've been expecting you.'

It could be the distortion of thousands of miles, but the voice is a throaty stew of New York and Israeli, kindness and wisdom.

It has taken Mr Chertok half a decade, three trips to the University of Southampton and two visits to Guernsey plus countless hours of research to complete the book on local man James Parkes. But the result is worth the time and effort.

'It was intense work,' he says.

'But I thought it only fair and just and right to undertake Parkes' biography and to record his devotion to the Jewish people.'

I find it amazing that a Guernsey clergyman became so embroiled in such a task as reconciling the differences between two faiths.

Mr Chertok has different ideas.

'I believe an island upbringing and traditional beliefs in the supernatural shaped Parkes' mental landscape,' he says.

Parkes' mother died when he was young and his father moved the family to a bungalow at Le Jaonnet du Trepied. He had an unhappy upbringing and his father was increasingly distant towards him.

His elder brother was an athlete, his younger sister was outgoing and, stuck in the middle, James was a bookworm. His father favoured his siblings.

The house was haunted and it was Parkes' belief that his family was trespassing on the ghost's domain.

Parkes didn't believe in joining Christianity and Judaism together to form one religion, like the Jews for Jesus ministry who believe that Yeshua (Jesus) is the Jewish Messiah, and had a 30-year running battle with the Messianic Jews.

'He believed there were clear distinctions between the two religions,' says Mr Chertok. 'Both were fully valid and each had separate ways of achieving salvation.

'He was also 30 years ahead of the Nostra Aetate of 1965.' Promulgated by Pope Paul VI, this document of the Second Vatican Council revolutionised the approach to Judaism after nearly 200 years of pain and sorrow.

For the first time in history, Nostra Aetate called for Catholics and Jews to engage in friendly dialogue and biblical and theological discussions better to understand each other's faith.

'I like to describe him as a left-leaning internationalist maverick Anglican minister from Guernsey.'

Writing and researching the book was a 'large chunk of my life', admits Mr Chertok. His research took him several times to the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton where he pored over manuscripts, books and pamphlets originally collected by Parkes but which have been added to for more than 50 years to make up an archive of over one million items.

It also brought him to Guernsey, where he met his now good friends, teachers Jane Brock and Dr Phil Rankilor.

'My mission was to account for a good man,' says Mr Chertok, 'or what embodied my idea of what a good man was. He's a kind of saint.'

Before Mr Chertok rings off, I ask him if he thinks the life of the Rev. Parkes would make a good movie and whether he has been approached for film rights of his biography.

'Do you have any contacts?' he says, his laughter crackling down thousands of miles of cable from Beer Sheeva to Guernsey.

We say goodbye and I hang up and I realise that you don't need to be a warrior covered in gold braid and medals to be a true Guernsey hero. Just an everyday saint like James Parkes.

The hero

The Rev. James William Parkes (1896-1981) was the son of Henry Parkes and Annie Katherine Bell. He was educated at Elizabeth College and Hertford College, Oxford, on an open classical scholarship between 1919 and 1923. He was ordained a deacon in 1923 and a priest in 1926.

His University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, published as The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study in the Origins of Anti-Semitism (London, 1934), established him as a specialist in the fields of Jewish-Christian relations and the history of anti-Semitism.

He became affiliated to the Student Christian Movement and the International Student Service in Geneva. It was there that he began to confront the growth of nationalist and racist organisations and became involved in the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One of the most notorious works of anti-Semitic propaganda in modern times, this forgery claimed to describe a secret Jewish conspiracy for world domination.

He began collecting material that ranged from early printed books to contemporary pamphlets on the history of Jewish communities and their relationships with their host countries.

Parkes was adamant that anti-Semitism was a Christian creation and stemmed from the belief that Judaism was the dead and discredited predecessor of Christianity rather than a living religion.

He was also an agent for the 'underground railway', a covert escape route from Berlin to Geneva through which thousands of Jews were smuggled.

On many occasions, refugees would stay in the Rev. Parkes' flat until he was given a secret code and they would be taken to safety. It isn't known how many Jews Parkes helped this way, but for someone as well known to the authorities as he was, this was a dangerous undertaking.Indeed, his relentless campaigning against anti-Semitism brought him to the attention of Adolph Hitler, who arranged for Swiss Nazis to assassinate him.

Due to mistaken identity, the assassin attacked and brutally beat up Parkes' valet, something about which the reverend felt guilty for many years.

He managed to escape to England, where he wrote extensively on Judaism, Christianity and anti-Semitism, both under his own name and under the pseudonym of John Hadham.

During that time he helped to mobilise opinion about the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and played a leading role in helping refugees escape from occupied Europe.

Despite infuriating and inspiring in equal measures both sides, in 1942 he founded the Council of Christians and Jews and began to build up his library, which he made available to other students.

By the time the Rev. Parkes donated his collection to the University of Southampton in 1964, it had grown to 4,000 books, 2,000 pamphlets and 140 sets of periodicals.

During an academic career that spanned more than 50 years, Parkes wrote several hundred articles, pamphlets and books and his writings were published in works as wide-ranging as The Jewish Chronicle and The Observer to Punch and The Fig Tree: a Douglas Social Credit Quarterly Review.

Parkes also took part in several BBC Home Service radio debates concerning Jewish and Christian religious practices.

His writings form important contributions not only to the study of anti-Semitism and Jewish/ Christian relations, but also to such diverse fields as the history of Jewish sectarianism in the ancient world and modern Zionism.

In recent years, his writing and life history have been rediscovered by a whole new generation of Jews and Christians.

He is included in the Dictionary of National Biography (1981-1985) and his life story, Christianity without Antisemitism: James Parkes and the Jewish Christian Encounter, by Robert Everett, was published by Pergamon Press in 1993. He stands also as a seminal figure in Marcus Braybrooke's official history of the Council of Christians and Jews, Children of One God (1991).

It has never been recorded and it can never be measured how many lives James Parkes saved. But it can be said without a doubt that the tireless work of this single-minded Guernseyman has brought together thousands.

* He Also Spoke As A Jew, The Life of the Reverand James Parkes, by Haim Chertok, is by Vallentine Mitchell Publishers (www.vmbooks.com) priced £45 cloth-bound or £19.95 in paperback.

* Mr Chertok was born in the Bronx in 1938. He has degrees from Fordham University (NY) and the University of Pennsylvania.

After military service in the Far East, he was an antiwar activist in the 1960s and, before emigrating to Israel in 1976, he taught at the University of California in Berkeley, Fordham and other institutions.

He has published four books and many of his articles have appeared in publications such as New York Times, American Jewish Congress Monthly and Granta.