‘You look at him and wonder: What has he seen? Surely more than a child ever should’
A staggering 58 percent of Israelis believe their country is in a ‘state of emergency’, writes Jotam Confino.
A survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Family Centre for Public Opinion and Policy Research asked Israelis questions on a number of issues dominating the debate, including the government’s judicial reforms, police conduct and the future of the economy.
When breaking down the answers into societal categories, fewer than 20 percent of those identifying as ultra-orthodox (18.5 percent) and national religious (19 percent) agreed Israel is in a state of emergency, compared to 78.5 percent among the secular.
Some 60.5 percent of Israelis think the newly-passed “reasonableness law”, which prevents the Supreme Court striking down government decisions, is bad for
democracy while 35 percent believe the law is good for democracy.
Not surprisingly, the di erence between ultra-orthodox and secular respondents was huge - 84 percent of the ultra-orthodox said the law was good for democracy compared to 14 percent among the secular.
Overall, 68 percent of Israelis say the government and opposition should have reached a compromise before the vote in order to tone down the “reasonableness law.”
The poll found 46 percent of Israelis oppose formation of an emergency government headed by Netanyahu with centre parties Yesh Atid and National Unity replacing the Religious Zionism party; 39 percent supported the idea.
However, an overwhelming majority (69 percent) of those voting for Benny Gantz’s National Unity party supported the formation of an emergency government.
Asked which grade would Israelis give the police for its functioning at the protest events of the past few months, 42 percent answered “poor/very poor”.
While the survey does not give a reason for the negative attitude, police violence against demonstrators has reportedly increased significantly in recent months, with numerous documented examples of excessive use of force.
The study shows 56 percent believe protests will grow stronger in the coming months, in light of an overall view (64.5 percent) the government is planning to move ahead with its reforms when the Knesset returns from summer recess.
Lastly, 64 percent of Israelis believe their personal financial situation will be harmed to some degree following the warnings issued by credit rating agencies about the Israeli economy.
Israel defence minister Yoav Gallant has warned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah not to make mistakes in dealing with Israel.
Gallant said Nasrallah had paid “very heavy prices” for past errors and if an escalation or conflict developed “we will return Lebanon to the Stone Age. We will not
hesitate to use all our power and erode every inch of Hezbollah and Lebanon.”
Gallant’s warning comes as Hezbollah ramped up activities against Israel along the Lebanon border in attempts to damage the security fence.
It also erected two tents in the contested Mount Dov/
Shebaa Farms region. One was removed but the other remains in Israeli territory, with Nasrallah warning Israel not to touch it. However, a security ocial told Jewish News the tents marked a “red line” for Israel, which has asked the UN to help remove the remaining one.
The Conservative Party has said it received 14 complaints of antisemitism last year but gave no information on their outcome.
Data was shared in a one-year review of a report by Professor Swaran Singh following a 2020 investigation into high-profile allegations of discrimination including Islamophobia and anti-Jewish hate in the party.
The review was to assess the extent to which the Tories had enacted Singh’s recom-
mendations from 2021. One recommendation was to publish data on case volumes, completion times and outcomes, especially where these relate to specific Protected Characteristics, such as religion and belief. The report shows 18.5 percent of complaints cited one Protected Characteristic. While only 21 percent went to investigation, half of those citing a Protected Characteristic were investigated. No breakdown of outcomes was submitted.
Finance minister Betzalel Smotrich is being accused of racism after freezing funding for Arab municipalities and education programmes for Palestinians in Jerusalem.
The municipalities cash, approved by the previous government, is meant to improve infrastructure and
fight crime, currently at a record high, and interior minister Moshe Arbel and minister of intelligence Gila Gamliel have called on Smotrich to unfreeze the funds.
Smotrich refused despite widespread criticism and claimed without o ering evidence that “a large number
of authorities in Arab society have fallen prey to criminal organisations.”
“The funding ends up in the hands of those that cause damage,”he added.
“Money is the main generator of organised crime and it is impossible for the state to fund these things.”
gift can help change their lives
Frustrated Jewish students have expressed feelings of “hopelessness” as the academic pay dispute leaves them in graduation limbo, writes Michelle Rosenberg.
Speaking to Jewish News, students from Cambridge, Durham and Leeds universities described how industrial action by members of education unions has left them and fellow graduates uncertain about their pathway to careers, graduate schemes and masters degrees.
Sam Grankin, 21, from London, has just completed a history and politics course at the University of Cambridge. He told Jewish News: “Our graduation was actually an ‘end of degree celebration’, as a large number of students, myself included, were unable to formally graduate having not received any final grades.”
He noted that Cambridge academics “specifically voted down mitigatory measures” that would have allowed students to graduate without their grades “in order to bolster the supposed e cacy of the strike”.
Fortunately for him, embarking on a law conversion course next year, City, University of London have been “very understanding”, and have allowed him to begin the course with no formal degree, but he says he knows of others “far less lucky” whose jobs or future studies have been placed on hold due to the situation.
“That is,” he adds “also not to mention the large numbers of international students who are having significant visa issues due to their lack of grades.”
While Grankin says he has the “utmost sym-
pathy” for the lecturers and academics who have “reasonable points of dispute on pay, pensions and conditions”, he says their “means of harming final-year students who already lost their first year due to Covid is almost unforgivable.
“They are sacrificing our future and materially harming us, not the universities they are in dispute with.”
Joshua Thompson, who has just completed his first year at Durham University, told Jewish News industrial action isn’t just impacting graduates.
“A big problem with the strikes is the issue of not know whether you have to do retakes due to the strike,” he said. “This means it could take until October before someone finds out they need to retake, meaning they have to redo di cult exams during typical working week hours. It makes succeeding extremely di cult.” Thompson says the uncertainty could lead to students “doing second/third year work without even knowing whether you’re guaranteed to still be at the uni post-retake”.
Joel Walters, who has just completed his fourth year studying economics at Leeds University, said: “The situation feels hopeless. If this was a business I’d be demanding my money back or at the very least compensation. There must be consumer rights? This is not the service I’d expect from any organisation I’ve paid for, so why and how the universities are getting away with this is beyond me.”
He says he has “sent email after email to my personal tutors and lecturers but haven’t even received an acknowledgement”. While he understands “maybe the matter is out of their hands” he wants more communication. “I feel like there has been little regard for my well-being.”
Like many students in his position, Walters says “the prospect of my graduate training scheme being in jeopardy has left me feeling really anxious. They require an o cial degree, but all I’ve got so far are some transcripts and a few grades for some papers which means nothing to my potential employer.”
“The impact of this strike is so much more farreaching for us students and I don’t think anyone has taken this aspect into consideration.
“It’s actually very upsetting. Instead of celebrating and graduating, I’m in limbo with my job and career in jeopardy. I’m left feeling utterly dismayed at the university education system.”
Walters is one of many students who should have got his grade by 10 July. The action by the University and College Union (UCU) and EIS-Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-FELA) has been ongoing since April. Union bosses have rejected an o er by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) for a pay rise worth between five and eight percent.
Without final grades, students who should be fully graduating are in limbo, unable to move forward with employee schemes, masters programmes or jobs.
According to the website of the UCU, more than 1,800 sta at Leeds University are striking, with all who do so facing 100 percent loss of pay.
The boycott covers all marking and assessment, including in writing, online, or verbally at 145 universities.
Israeli-Canadian billionaire and philanthropist Sylvan Adams, a key figure in the development of Israeli competitive cycling, won a world championship of his own in the 65-69 age group.
At the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships in Scotland, Adams, who owns the IsraelPremier Tech Cycling Team, finished first in the Masters age group on Friday. Despite only starting to cycle in his forties, he has won several competitions, including the 2017 World Championship in Manchester.
Israeli model Shay Zanco was allegedly asked to leave a hotel in Egypt after staff found out her nationality. Walla Celebs, which broke the story, reported that Zanco had travelled to Egypt to accompany rapper Travis Scott during his upcoming concert. When Scott’s concert was cancelled, Zanco decided to stay in Egypt and explore the country as a tourist. The Israeli model said she was asked to leave the hotel immediately after staff discovered her background.
One of the most vehement critics of the Iranian regime, Vahid Beheshti, says he believes “we are seeing the imminent end of the regime. At any moment, we can expect the final game.”
And the British-Iranian national, speaking on the 166th day of his sit-in protest outside the Foreign O ce in Whitehall, told Jewish News “our best friends [in the fight against the Iranian regime] are the Jewish community and Israel. We have the same enemy”.
The Coventry-based campaigner spent 72 days on hunger strike outside the Foreign
O ce, ending up in hospital, in pursuit of a single goal — to have the terrifying Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) proscribed by Britain.
Reports over the weekend quoted home secretary Suella Braverman saying Iran represented “one of the biggest threats to UK national security”. She was expressing concern after The Sunday Times reported Iranian intelligence agents were recruiting members of criminal gangs to take out regime opponents.
Beheshti, 46, speaking to Jewish News from his protest encampment opposite the
Foreign O ce, said Britain had come tantalisingly close to proscribing the IRGC in January, only to abandon the plan on what he believed to be the advice of the Foreign O ce.
The campaigner says a fatwa has now been issued against him by Iran but he is refusing to give up “until Britain stops its policy of appeasement and proscribes the IRGC”.
Born and brought up in Borujerd, 400km south-west of Tehran, Beheshti describes himself as an activist against the regime from an early age. He paints a picture of an argumentative and rebellious boy, repeatedly challenging
religious teachers in school and once daubing anti-regime slogans on walls all over the city at night. By his late teens he had been arrested twice “for conflicting with decisions in the city” and it became clear he needed to leave Iran.
Aged 21, he arrived in Britain and for a few years says: “I decided to stay quiet – but it didn’t last.”
By 2009, the rise of the so-called Green Movement in Iran protesting against the regime drove Beheshti back to activism. He led demonstrations and wrote and performed street theatre. He visited the European Parliament regularly, providing MEPs with evi-
dence of Iranian human rights violations.
By the middle of the decade he was working in journalism, relying on information from regime opponents inside Iran to bolster his reports outside the country, but it was the advent of the striking “Women, Life, Freedom” protest movement inside Iran in autumn 2022 that raised his activism to another level.
“We decided to focus on the threat of the IRGC, particularly to campaigners outside Iran,” he says. “We believe that in the past 44 years there have been at least 545 assassinations carried out by IRGC agents outside Iran”.
After two conferences in Parliament in which Beheshti spelled out the danger of the IRGC “we thought we were very close to proscription taking place. Suddenly we found there was an obstacle ... we found out the Foreign O ce was holding the government back.”
The precise trigger for his hunger strike, he says, was a phone conversation his wife, Matty Heaven, was having with a journalist from Iran International TV, which reported regularly on human rights violations by the regime. “While my wife was on the phone to this journalist, she [the journalist] was attacked.” Convinced the
attack had been carried out by IRGC agents, Beheshti launched his radical action. Twentysix days into his hunger strike, Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the foreign a airs select committee, told Beheshti the lack of proscription was being blamed on the Americans — that the Biden administration had asked Britain to hold o because they were in the middle of a delicate hostage exchange.
A furious Beheshti maintains hostage-taking underpins every action of the Iranian regime, as a way of manipulating foreign governments. But, he says, America has backed o from this “excuse” while Britain says its priority is “the safety and security of British nationals” — the reason it gives for not proscribing the IRGC.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We will continue to take strong action against Iran while they threaten people in the UK and around the world. The UK has sanctioned more than 350 Iranian individuals and entities, including the IRGC in its entirety. The foreign secretary has announced plans for a new sanctions regime which gives the UK powers to target Iranian decision makers.”
• Editorial comment, page 14
British-Iranian hunger striker Vahid Beheshti delivers a message of hope on the 166th day of his sit-in protest outside the Foreign Office in Whitehall, writes Jenni FrazerVahid Beheshti outside the Foreign Office in Westminster
Parents of an 18-month-old baby are appealing to the community to help fund his vital cancer treatment, writes Michelle Rosenberg.
In January, not long after his first birthday, Robin Samuel was diagnosed with high-risk MYCNAmplified Neuroblastoma – an extremely rare and aggressive childhood cancer.
The cancer, which began in his right adrenal gland, had also spread to his abdomen, pelvis, spine and bone marrow. Since then, parents Nick Samuel, 39 and Rachel Samuel, 43, from Muswell Hill, have been on a “rollercoaster of weekly hospital admissions”
for eight cycles of high-intensity chemotherapy, a stem cell harvest and a nine-hour operation.
While Robin currently has no visible cancer left, his journey is far from over. Due to the aggressive nature of the cancer, he needs a course of cutting-edge immunotherapy to help boost his immune system, which will train it to recognise cancerous cells in the future.
Father Nick told Jewish News Robin needs five rounds of the treatment – available only via a specialist doctor in Barcelona – for the best chance of survival without additional health complications.
He says that while the next step
in the UK would be to give Robin very high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell transplants, it would mean a minimum eight-week stay in hospital where the risks include fatal liver complications.
Long-term, as a result of this treatment, Robin would be infertile, get a secondary cancer like leukemia, be deaf or have problems with his hearing and have permanent heart, lung and thyroid issues.
In the US, at the New Yorkbased Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and in a sister hospital in Barcelona, this damaging high-dose treatment is not systematically given to babies like Robin
who have no visible cancer cells.
Instead he would begin with a pioneering immunotherapy treatment, often including a specialised vaccine, to help his body recognise any microscopic cancer cells and support his immune system to prevent relapse in later life.
To start the life-saving treatment, Robin’s parents have to provide the cost of least three of those rounds, each costing between £60k and £70k. To date, a crowd-funding campaign has been supported by 1,032 donors, raising more than £65k – enough for the first round. • crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-babyrobin-survive-cancer
A communal charity that helps young people reconnect with Jewish studies is o ering up to £600 a month to new recruits for payment of their rent, writes Lee Harpin.
The Jewish Learning Exchange is actively approaching young members of the community looking for flatshares and other rental opportunities with their o er of substantial support, in exchange for a weekly commitment to study and attendance at synagogue over Shabbat.
Jewish News has learned that the programme, which is being run by Rabbi Amrom Nemeth, has attracted about 15 young people since its launch by JLE this year.
A spokesperson for the organisation confirmed that rent payments of “up to £600” – made possible with a grant given by the US organisation Olami – were being o ered to young
people who needed to live “in the area of Golders Green and Hendon particularly.”
Asked what those interested in the financial support needed to do in return the spokesperson confirmed the need to commit to a couple of hours learning with one of the organisation’s rabbis each week, attendance at shul along with the requirement to attend “some Friday night dinners and Shabbat lunches”.
They said payments were o ered as part of a “continuous programme” although the spokesperson could not stipulate for how long the rental payments would be o ered to each new recruit.
Asked how many young people had taken up the o er of help with their rent, they added: “Quite a lot. This has been going on for quite a few months.”
As with wider society, young Jewish people have been left struggling to a ord rent, both in the capital and elsewhere, as a result of the escalating monthly demands and the lack of wage increases during the cost-of-living crisis.
Jewish News learned of one member of the community who had been searching for an a ordable flatshare on a website, who was approached by JLE o ering up to £600 rental support a month.
In November the JLE’s gala dinner in London was addressed by former US Senator Joe Lieberman, and raised more than £3 million to a campaign named ‘Next Level’, which aimed to commit £5million towards upgrading services for young Jews, and included an upgrade of the charity’s Golders Green headquarters.
The city of York, whose Jewish population was massacred in a medieval pogrom, has its first rabbi in 800 years.
Rabbi Elisheva Salamo arrived from California last week after decades of pulpit work in the United States, Switzerland and South Africa.
She will take a part-time pulpit at the York Liberal Jewish Community, whose congregation was founded in 2014 and now has about 100 members.
Her hiring is a milestone for York, a city in northern England whose medieval Jewish community was wiped out in March 1190, on the Shabbat before Passover.
Seeking protection from rioters who intended to forcibly convert the Jews to Christianity or kill them, York’s Jews sought refuge in a tower in the king’s castle. Realising that they would not make it out of the tower alive as troops amassed outside, they chose to
kill themselves rather than convert, a choice made by other European Jewish communities facing antisemitic armies during the Crusades. About 150 people are estimated to have died in the York pogrom. A century later, the Jews were expelled from England entirely; they were permitted to return only in 1656.
“Helping to rebuild what was once one of England’s most vibrant Jewish communities is an honour and a privilege,” Rabbi Salamo told the Guardian Salamo was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and attended Reed College and Yale University, where she studied biology and cellular and molecular biology.
To hire her full time, York Jewish Liberal community has raised an initial £75,000 and has set up a Just Giving page to double that figure (£25,000 a year for the next three years) to make the most of the appointment.
Judges in London have rejected an appeal by a strictly Orthodox man against extradition over his alleged involvement in a riot outside an electronics shop in Jerusalem.
Efraim Fishel Grinfeld was living in Clapton, east London, with his wife and their eight children when he was arrested on an international warrant.
He had fled Israel for Canada days before the verdict in his trial at Jerusalem District Court was due to be handed down. Grinfeld, 40, and his wife Sara,38, then moved
to London in 2016 and joined the Charedi community of Hackney, where he worked for a property firm, despite only speaking Yiddish, according to court papers.
After his arrest, he appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, with the judge sending a request from Israel for his extradition to the home secretary for approval.
It was alleged that on dates between June and August 2008 in the Guela area of central Jerusalem, he and 15-20 people “used or threatened unlawful violence for a common purpose” and their “conduct taken together, would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear
for their personal safety”. The riot was sparked by anger at the sale of DVDs and other material in the shop, in the strictly religious area. It emerged that Grinfeld, whose Polish passport was confiscated, was wanted for six o ences including rioting, common assault and blackmail by use of force.
In his appeal, lawyers for Grinfeld argued that prison conditions in Israel would violate his human rights. They also argued that extraditing him would have a disproportionate e ect on his family. Relocating to Israel was not an option for Grinfeld’s wife, who was content in the UK, as were their children, who were “happy” at their school, the court papers stated.
In a judgment in the High Court last Thursday, Lord Justice Williaim Davis and Mrs Justice McGowan dismissed Grinfeld’s arguments. They accepted that one count of common assault against him should be disregarded, but dismissed his appeal on other grounds.
The NHS has commissioned a 12-month research project into inequalities in health provision for the Jewish community.
The work will look at how to promote e ective communications between NHS providers and the community, improve patient experience and prevent disengagement from healthcare services.
It will examine how NHS England is communicating and engaging with the Jewish community, the methods used to deliver key public health messages, and potential barriers in distributing messages in areas around topics such as vaccination, preventive health care examination and investigations (such as for hypertension
and diabetes), healthy dietary practices and mental health.
Intent Health is conducting a rapid evidence review to identify best practice methods and recommendations. This work will also highlight access in inequalities in health and consider how any guidelines and policies aimed at Jewish communities, are implemented.
An 18-year-old man is facing a trial next year accused of having a note detailing a plan to attack a synagogue.
Mason Reynolds, of Moulsecoomb Way, Brighton, appeared at the Old Bailey by video link from Lewes prison. He pleaded not guilty to a charge of possessing an article for terrorist purposes between 7 May and 27 June.
Mr Justice Jeremy Baker set a provisional trial at Winchester Crown Court from 10 April 2024, with a further hearing on 8 December. Reynolds was remanded into custody.
The Wiener Library has launched a crowdfunding campaign to restore a Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust, writes Daniel Pesin.
One of the world’s principal archives on the Nazi era and genocide, the institution needs to crowdfund £2,000 for the preservation work on the scroll, which was confiscated and stored in Prague. The restoration e orts are needed for it to be displayed again in the library building.
Following Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Jewish communities in Czech lands had objects from their synagogues, including Torah Scrolls, confiscated by the Nazis and placed in 40 warehouses in Prague.
The sta at the country’s Jewish Museum managed to catalogue all of them, before being deported to Nazi concentration camps.
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A Chelsea fan who referred to Jews as “Yids” and “vermin” in a lengthy series of racist social media posts has been handed a lifetime ban by Chelsea Football Club, writes Lee Harpin.
Kerry Hardwell, 35, from Bognor, was reported to Sussex Police last August, after fellow Chelsea supporter, Dan Levene, uncovered more than 50 antisemitic tweets published from Hardwell’s account, including posts that referred to Jews as “vermin” and “parasites”.
Hardwell pleaded guilty at Worthing Magistrates’ Court on 25 July to three charges of sending communications with offensive messages and one charge of sending an offensive message by a public communication network.
The tweets were sent over the 10-year period 2012-22.
Levene, a sports journalist writing for publications
statement, which was read out in court. He said: “The ‘Y-word’ is three letters that are often thrown away by people who may claim they don’t fully appreciate their collective meaning; with some football fans among that number.
“But everyone, most notably the defendant here, should be aware that it is a racially offensive word – and its use in a pejorative sense, as in this case, is a hate crime. This word, and variants of it, have been used throughout
history by extremists to demonise and persecute a minority. My minority. This history is relevant, because it explains the pernicious nature of the word’s usage today.”
Chelsea FC said: “As soon as Sussex Police made us aware,
Mr Hardwell was suspended pending the outcome of criminal proceedings.
“Subsequent to Mr Hardwell’s conviction, we can confirm that he has been issued with a lifetime ban from Chelsea FC. We commend Dan Levene for coming forward. Nobody should have to be subject to the type of disgusting abuse he has had to endure.”
Levene praised the work done by Chelsea in trying to eradicate anti-Jewish racism. “Antisemitism is on the rise…. but so is knowledge of it: and that is in a large part thanks to the former ownership’s excellent work on this,” he said.
Sussex Police’s dedicated football officer, PC Darren Balkham, said: “The vitriol in the messages were sent in the belief that because the person was behind a keyboard, they wouldn’t be identified.
“There is no place for antisemitic and racist abuse, either in football or in society.”
Israel’s Eurovision pop star Noa Kirel is set to make her United States concert debut next year with a performance at Madison Square Garden. Kirel, 22, will play a concert at the arena on 30 June 2024, Israeli media report. She will be the second Israeli ever to headline a concert at the 20,000-seat venue following Ishay Ribo, the Orthodox Israeli pop star known for bridging religious gaps among his fans. His performance is scheduled to place on 3 September.
Tisha B’Av events attract over 1,000
More than 1,000 people joined Jewish Futures for its Tisha B’Av programme in person and online. Attendees listened to last month’s array of inspirational singing and engaging stories shared by Jewish Futures rabbis including Rabbi Klein, Rabbi Roodyn, Rabbi Schiff, and Rabbi Stemmer. In parallel, a women’s programme was held online in the evening, with female educators, attracting 320 participants seeking a deeper connection to Tisha B’Av.
The Imperial War Museum this week hailed newly-unearthed Holocaust footage from April 1945 showing Jews liberated from a train bound for Theresienstadt for shedding fresh light on the final days of Nazi terror.
The two minutes of black and white film, revealed last week by the National Archives in the United States, shows three cattle car trains, each with 2,500 survivors on board, heading from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt on 7 April 1945. The prisoners, called Austauschjuden (“exchange Jews”), had been selected because the SS thought they could be swapped for German prisoners of war.
After six days of travel, in horrifying conditions, the train stopped outside the village of Farsleben, 80 miles west of Berlin, where it was liberated by American soldiers.
The footage shows some prisoners looking malnourished and wearing bandages, many sitting or lying motionless.
James Bulgin, head of public history at the Imperial War Museum, told Jewish News: “This footage is amazing in terms of what it shines a light on. It’s powerful to go from being fixed photographic images to suddenly seeing moving images that join the gaps.”
He said the film will allow historians to challenge misconceptions about the nature of liberation at the end of the Nazi era: “Liberation took many forms at the end of the Holocaust, but the popular perception of it has been dominated by a relatively limited volume of content that focuses on specific
places, predominantly Bergen-Belsen. “Ironically, that’s where this train had come from, but also places like Mauthausen and Dachau. Hopefully this footage will start to change these perceptions and show how diverse liberation was for Europe’s Jews.”
For Bulgin, one of the most powerful aspects of the film is that it “focuses on the Jewish experience of liberation”. He adds: “It’s not filmed from over the shoulders of liberating armies,
showing the soldiers as valiant and glorious. It’s just focused on the individuals. In the image of the small boy staring at the camera you get a sense of the unspoken horror. You look at him and think,‘What have those eyes seen?’ Surely far more than a child of that age ever, ever should have.”
Bulgin added that “there’s still this sort of broader perception in the public at large that the Nazis, as soon as the war broke out,
somehow got a hold of every Jew in Europe and threw them into a concentration camp where they were all kind of somehow systematically murdered. And I think the problem with that is, it is obviously, completely wrong.
“But also it denies quite how much individual action was involved. Because for something like this to really happen, it needs the active participation of tens of thousands of other people, knowingly, willingly, actively participating, and the idea that there’s slightly more consideration or forethought, to me really sharpens how horrific it all was. If we just indulged that it was this massive, faceless thing that happened, somehow of its own volition, it doesn’t acknowledge that sufficiently. And there’s something about the idea that they’ve made a decision about exchanging and selling Jewish people in this camp.”
Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: “This footage is nothing short of remarkable. This is the first time we’ve been able to see on film the people swept up in these extraordinary events – the liberation of one of the so called ‘death trains’ from Bergen-Belsen.
“This footage brings to life this history, reminding us to look beyond the nameless, faceless statistics of the past and to remember the Jewish men, women and children persecuted, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Through this film we have a window on to a pivotal moment in history and are able to be witnesses to a past that is rapidly fading.”
A dedicated history and research website detailing the Nazi occupation of Alderney is now live, writes Michelle Rosenberg.
Lord Pickles, the UK’s post-Holocaust issues envoy, this week announced the launch of www. occupiedalderney.org, an accompanying part of a review (launched on 27 July) into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island during the Second World War.
The site will showcase cutting-edge research and in time highlight key documents currently stored in historical archives. It will also be the place where the latest evidence on the number of people, including Jews, Spanish, Ukrainians and Russian prisoners of war who died through the Nazi policy of ‘extermination through labour’ (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) in the construction of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, can be found.
Manchester’s largest Jewish social welfare charity will receive a substantial award from The National Heritage Lottery Fund.
The grant of £246,075 will underwrite the future of The Fed’s ‘My Voice’ Manchester project for the next two years.
A unique storytelling project which publishes the life story books of Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, from Greater Manchester
and the Northwest, ‘My Voice’ has published 35 books – the first nine as part of a joint venture with the Association of Jewish Refugees.
The lottery funding means that ‘My Voice’ can ensure the legacies of previously recorded and published life-stories of Holocaust Survivors and refugees. It will also help create educational resources for schools, colleges, further education and other establishments.
“When I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, I just didn’t know what to do. I had my surgery in Israel as both mine and my husband’s families live there. Then I had a big decision to make - where would I have my treatment? How could I uproot my husband and girls? But equally, how would I get through my chemotherapy here without our families’ support? Then my oncologist told me about Chai. They have been amazing – I truly believe there is nothing like it in the world.
Being able to rely on Chai’s all-encompassing support gave me the confi dence to come home to my husband and girls. Thanks to Chai, we’re together as a family again”
World ORT, a global education network driven by Jewish values and innovation, has helped three Ukrainian teenagers to join a summer school in Bulgaria by facilitating their journey from their wartorn home country.
The three, Natan, 15, from Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region; Ihor, 15, from an ORT school in Kyiv, and Polina, 16, from the ORT school in Zaporizhzhia, travelled thousands of kilometres across the border to Poland, and then to Sofia in Bulgaria for the programme.
The project o ers tuition by professionals to ORT students in photography, video and audio production.
Kyiv-based ORT Ukraine sta member Anna Chumakova joined the three teenagers, saying they were excited to take part.
She added: “Combining
this opportunity to have a distraction from life at home and the constant air raids with the opportunity to learn so much and have this priceless experience was really an amazing thing for them all.”
World ORT sta and sup-
Wales’s first minister has visited the Victorian grade II-listed Merthyr Tydfil synagogue being turned into a Welsh Jewish Heritage Centre.
Mark Drakeford was invited by Senedd (Welsh parliament ) member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney Dawn Bowden to find out more about the project, which is being overseen by the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, the charity that owns the synagogue building.
The first minister was met by foundation chief executive Michael Mailand and heritage centre project manager Neil Richardson for a detailed briefing on progress to date.
Once established, the centre will showcase the Welsh Jewish community’s 250-year history while also addressing contemporary issues on diversity and social inclusion, promoting cross-cultural understanding.
The project is being funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Welsh government and Merthyr Tydfil country borough council.
porters across ORT’s global education network have worked throughout the 18-month war in Ukraine to support the thousands of ORT Ukraine students, teachers, sta and their families a ected by the violence.
The synagogue opened in 1877 but closed in 1983 and had been unused since 2006, its condition deteriorating to the extent that it was formally designated as at risk. The Foundation for Jewish Heritage bought the building in 2019 with the vision to create the heritage centre.
More than 100 students from di erent denominations and age groups have taken part in Edinburgh’s Azara cross-communal yeshiva, the first of its kind.
The variety of events included sessions of textual study of Talmud, Halacha and books on modern Jewish thought, as well as get-togethers with the wider local community. Attendee Sam Gaus said the meeting was “one of the best Torah events I’ve been to in Edinburgh”.
Jessica Spencer, a founder and teacher at the yeshiva said the participants “bonded remarkably well” and “were very invested in hearing other people’s thoughts and understanding their world views”, showing the possibility of respecting and learning from others’
views, while not compromising one’s own values.
Jeremy Tabick, a Talmud teacher at the yeshiva, added: “Azara is giving access to deep Torah learning to a whole group of people who have never had the opportunity. It’s inspiring to see such committed and excited participants.”
Organisers said the students had committed to sharing their studies when they return to their own communities.
Azara said it believed this summer’s session would be the catalyst for text learning across the community, and, as Jessica Spencer put it, “we’re certainly hoping that this will be the first of many”.
The overriding feeling in Pittsburgh now that the gunman Robert Bowers convicted of murdering 11 Jews there in 2018 has been sentenced to death is gratitude, writes Ron Kampeas.
Not for the penalty itself, which was the preference of some but not all of the victims’ families and which some local Jews openly opposed, and not even for the end of a trial whose long delay protracted communal trauma.
Instead, the gratitude is for people — those who made the trial happen, those who supported the victims’ family members as they sat through weeks of painful testimony, and those who kept the singular Jewish community thriving even when so much had been lost.
Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi of the Tree of Life congregation, which was housed in the synagogue attacked by the gunman, opened a press conference at the Jewish community centre in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood with a prayer of thanks after the sentencing.
Dozens of family members and survivors
of the attack joined him as he recited the Shehecheyanu prayer in Hebrew, then translated it for the media. The prayer, he said, thanks God “who has kept us alive, sustained us and enabled us to reach this stage”.
There was palpable relief. “The only thing positive about the sentencing of a criminal is that this long slog is over,” said Audrey Glickman, who hid in the synagogue on the day of the attack.
Myers, who during the trial recalled praying as he waited for the gunman to kill him, thanked the Pittsburgh community, the prosecution and the first responders for what he said was the “embrace” they conferred on the Jewish community since the attack on 27 October 2018.
Last Wednesday, he noted, was Tu B’Av, the Jewish calendar day marking rituals of courtship and love.
“I don’t believe in coincidences. It was meant to be today,” he said of the end of the trial. “Why today? Because today we received an immense embrace from the halls of justice around all of us, to say that our government does not condone antisemitism in the vile form that we witnessed, and that we were embraced by a system that supported and nurtured us and upheld us.”
Survivors and family members stepped up to the microphone, some with notes, some not, and expressed their thanks to the law enforcement officers, to the prosecutors, to others who rushed to their assistance after the attack and who have nurtured them since.
“I want to take the time to thank all of those people that were part of the jury, the court system, our local community here, the massive support structure and staff and police taking care of us,” said Howard Fienberg,
Of the nine families, the relatives of at least one of the victims, Jerry Rabinowitz, objected to the death penalty; seven of the other families involved supported it.
Speakers at the press conference who did address the ultimate sentence were in favour of it, with Glickman saying: “Even if he (Bowers) sits alive on death row for decades, he is separated from others.
“Had he been sentenced to life in prison… he would have been afforded an increasing ability to communicate and play with others and the chance of working his way out of any high-security situation,” she added. “This has been a step in the right direction.”
David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh law school, said differences about the death penalty persist but they had not had an effect on the sense of mutual solidarity within the community.
whose mother Joyce was one of the 11 murdered.
“I especially want to thank the prosecution team for their steadfast focus on this capital crime as an antisemitic act, as a frontal assault on the constitutional freedom of religion, and the freedom to be Jewish and practice Judaism in the United States.”
“There’s still a lot of active conversations up to and including today that I’m having with people about, well, ‘I think he should get this,’ the death penalty or a life sentence,” said Harris.
“But even though the community is not of one mind, we don’t have one universal opinion, we are united in supporting each other.”
“We are united in wanting this horrible thing to go right and be over and to say we did our best to support those who have been injured.”
EVEN THOUGH THE COMMUNITY IS NOT OF ONE MIND REGARDING THE DEATH PENALTY WE ARE UNITED IN SUPPORTING EACH OTHER THROUGH THIS ORDEAL
❝
A 42-year-old Israeli was killed in a terror attack in Tel Aviv last weekend, writes Jotam Confino.
Police identified the terrorist as 22-year-old Kamal Ab Bakr from the West Bank city of Jenin, who left behind a note saying he wanted to be a shahid (martyr).
Police said municipal inspectors in Tel Aviv noticed an individual who “aroused their suspicions”, prompting them to approach him.
At that stage, the terrorist opened fire toward the inspectors, severely injuring one of them. The victim, identified as Chen Amir, was subsequently transferred to Ichilov Medical Centre, where he died from his wounds a few hours later.
The police statement said another municipal inspector responded swiftly and “managed to neutralise” the terrorist.
Kamal Ab Bakr was a member of the Jenin Battalion, a Palestinian group identified with Islamic Jihad.
Islamic Jihad said the attack “emphasises the unity of the Palestinian struggle and a natural response to the daily killing that the
occupation carries out against the Palestinian people.”
Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu praised the personnel of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality security
patrol “for their alertness and for engaging, thereby thwarting a much more serious attack. Our security forces will settle accounts with everyone who seeks to attack us.”
Members of Israel’s coalition have defended Jewish settlers suspected of killing a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank.
The Israeli army said settlers from the illegal outpost of Oz Zion brought sheep to fields near the Palestinian village of Burqa on Friday just before Shabbat.
Witnesses said settlers began vandalising Palestinian property, which led to Palestinians
throwing rocks at the settlers who responded by shooting toward the Palestinians. One Palestinian was killed, four injured and a Palestinian vehicle burnt.
The dead Palestinian was identified as Qosai Jammal Mi’tan, 19. Two settlers, named as Elisha Yered [pictured], former spokesman for Jewish Power party lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech, and Yehiel Indore, were arrested on suspicion of killing Mi’tan.
The UK condemned the killing but Israeli ministers and lawmakers defended the settlers, claiming they acted in “self defence”.
Israeli Arab teenagers sit between 143 ‘coffins’ as they hold placards during a protest against rising crime rates in Israeli Arab society and lack of enforcement, making 2023 the deadliest year on record.
A human rights organisation alleged to have close links with Iran is at the centre of renewed controversy over its staging of a event featuring disgraced professor David Miller and a vehemently anti-Israel writer.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) confirmed to Jewish News that the event, promoting Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Antisemitism, was going ahead at the organisation’s bookshop and headquarters in Preston Road, Wembley, tomorrow, despite renewed anger this week about inflammatory comments about Jewish people made by Miller on social media.
When the three sta members were approached by Jewish News and asked about allegations of anti-Jewish racism made against Miller and Winstanley, they all proceeded to dismiss these concerns.
They also confirmed that Miller, who was sacked in 2021 by Bristol University following a string of complaints made against him by Jewish students, and Winstanley would both be present at the event in a downstairs room at the IHRC HQ. The event is also being shown on YouTube and Facebook.
A male shop worker, who declined to disclose his name when asked, said: “Anyone who is o ended by anti-racists is themselves a racist. This is a problem we always have to deal with as a human rights organisation.”
when asked, said: “Anyone Asked about a tweet are not discriminated
Asked about a tweet posted by Miller last week which claimed that “Jews are not discriminated against” and that they are “over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power”, the man working in the IHRC accepted that this was not something he would say. But he was also keen to reference Israel, which he said was a “racist apartheid” state. He added: “Apartheid is one thing, saying stupd things on Twitter is another.”
Jewish News understands that concerns about the Miller-Winstanley event at the IHRC bookshop were raised at a recent meeting of Brent Council, which has come under increasing pressure to look into the activities of IHRC, which receives more than £1m in charity cash.
Asked to comment on tomorrow’s MillerWinstanley event, the Board of Deputies’ Phil Rosenberg, who represents the Brent-based Brondesbury Park Synagogue, told Jewish News: “The IHRC has a shameful track-record in baiting the Jewish community. Inviting
such appalling that the organisarights or Islam, but sordid platform for
Winstanley has
such appalling characters as David Miller and Asa Winstanley deepens the sense that the organisation has nothing to do with human rights or Islam, but that it is merely a sordid platform for those banished for bigotry elsewhere.” Winstanley has repeatedly faced allegations of antisemitism and quit Labour ahead of an investigation into allegations against him after he described the Jewish Labour Movement as a “proxy for the Israeli Embassy”. His new book includes widely discredited claims that the “Israel lobby” was responsible for the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
The IHRC bookshop, which is next door to a kosher deli, was at the centre of further complaints in April after a flag bearing the slogan “Boycott Israel” and another saying “Free Palestine” were displayed in the front window, prompting complaints from local people.
Following interventions by Brent Council and local Labour MP Barry Gardiner the two flags were eventually removed.
But ahead of this week’s Miller-Winstanley event, the front window of the shop featured posters advertising the discussion and copies of the author’s book were displayed alongside other
anti-Zionist text books. Three sta members in the shop insisted to Jewish News the IHRC did not engage in “political” activity but was purely a “campaigning human rights organisation”.
Jewish News asked the trio if the IHRC –which helps to stage the annual Al Quds Day rally in central London at which the flag of the terrorist organisation Hezbollah was displayed before the group was proscribed by the government – would ever campaign against allegations of human rights abuses by the Iranian regime.
Two women who worked in the shop both said: “We are not involved with Iran.” The male sta er then added: “There is nothing in our remit that says we don’t” [campaign against human rights abuses in Iran].
Asked if it would launch a campaign against the persecution of women in Iran seen in public not wearing the hijab, the man in the shop said: “As a Muslim I don’t think I need to answer that. I find that o ensive. You are asking me as a Muslim. I have told you we don’t deal with Iran.”
Asked why he would not disclose his name, he said: “I don’t want to give you my name because I don’t trust you. You are asking me because I am a Muslim about what’s going on in Iran.”
In 2019, The Times noted that 22 years after it was formed the IHRC o ered no support to women’s rights activists and religious minorities in Iran. Amnesty International has labelled the country’s discriminatory laws against women “appalling”. It alleged the IHRC had received more than £1m in charity cash despite being run by self-declared Islamist revolutionaries closely aligned to Iran who say that the West is “the enemy” and Britain a “Stasi state”.
Massoud Shadjareh, the ex-chairman of the IHRC, spoke of Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric who became Iran’s supreme leader after the 1979 revolution, as “a torch of light for the whole of mankind”. The IHRC’s wrath has also been directed at London mayor Sadiq Khan, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the European Court of Human Rights. Corbyn once said the group represent “all that’s best in Islam”.
In a statement, the Board of Deputies said:
“The fact that the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ is reportedly hosting an event with David Miller and Asa Winstanley in Wembley shows their utter contempt for the Jewish community. We hope local politicians in Brent will come together to make it clear that those who deny antisemitism or accuse Jews of ‘weaponising’ it should not be welcomed in the borough.”
Asked to comment on the decision to proceed with the ‘author evening’, a spokesperson for the IHRC told Jewish News: “The event for Asa Winstanley’s book is going ahead.”
� Daniel Sugarman, page
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Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in a Florida jail for her role in Je rey Epstein’s sexual assaults on teenage girls, has had her prison conditions improved after adopting Judaism.
Maxwell, whose father Robert was from an Orthodox Jewish family in Czechoslovakia, has listed Judaism as her religion and will receive kosher food, access to a rabbi, time o work on Shabbat and breaks from prison duties on Jewish holidays.
Details were revealed by
investigative reporter Silja J.A. Talvi, according to The Sun Maxwell, 61, had been approached by Reaching Out, an American civil rights group which helps Jewish prisoners.
The British socialite was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2021 for recruiting and grooming four girls for her husband, Je rey Epstein, who abused them between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein killed himself in his prison cell in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while he was awaiting his own trial.
Knesset members from the far-right Jewish Power party have lashed out at the IDF for “abusing” settlers and called on the government to annex the West Bank.
Jerusalem a airs and heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu told Army Radio an annexation of the West Bank should begin “as soon as possible”.
Jewish Power, Religious Zionism,
Noam and several Likud MKs support the move but the government has so far refrained from following through on it.
Meanwhile, tensions between far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have risen again after Jewish Power MK Limor Son Har-Melech accused defence minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Central Command chief Maj Gen
Yehuda Fuchs of failing to protect settlers in the West Bank.
“He takes care of the Arabs and on the other hand he abuses the residents of Judea and Samaria,” Har-Melech told ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Barama.
“The time has come for a defence minister that cares for the right... who will care for the settlers,” she added.
A 17-year-old Israeli youth leader has discovered part of an ancient “magical mirror” in an archaeological excavation in northern Israel.
Aviv Weizman [pictured] from Kiryat Motskin near Haifa found the 1,500-yearold artefact at the dig at the ancient site of Usha.
Navit Popovitch, curator of the classical periods for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), said the fragment was part of a “magical mirror” from the Byzantine period of the fourth to sixth centuries.
“A glass mirror, for protection against the Evil Eye was placed in the middle of the plaque: the idea was that the evil spirit, such as a demon, who looked in the mirror, would see his own reflection, and this would protect the owner of the mirror,” Popovitch explained.
“Similar mirror plaques have been found in the past as funerary gifts in tombs, to protect the deceased in their journey to the world to come.”
IAA director Eli Escusido said the youth leaders, who were on a week-long trek from Mount Meron to Mount Hermon during which they joined archaeological excavations along the route, came across “additional finds”, including pottery jars, coins, decorated stone fragments and even a water aqueduct.
“History, usually taught in the classroom, comes to life from the ground. A pupil who uncovers a find in the course of an excavation will never forget the experience.
“There is no better way to attach the youth to the country and the heritage,” Escusido said.
Hampstead Court Care Home has a dedicated Well-being team to produce an exciting and varied programme of activities and events every day. We treat each resident as a unique individual, nurturing their personal interests. Our memory, physical and sensory-based activities are thoughtfully designed to promote therapeutic outcomes.
Vahid Beheshti’s brave and unwavering protest against the Iranian regime symbolises a resolute fight for change. Speaking to Jewish News this week outside the British Foreign Office, where he has staged a one-man sit-in for almost six months – much of it on hunger strike – his words speak for all who wish for the end of a regime marked by tyranny and antisemitism.
Vahid’s claim that it is on the brink of its downfall, that the “final game” is upon us, might sound ambitious – even hopefully naïve – but it resonates as a clarion call for global action.
Iran’s malign influence spreads across the Middle East and beyond, reaching our shores. The home secretary recently warned that Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is now the biggest threat to British security.
The UK’s hesitance in proscribing the IRGC exposes the complexity of the issue. While official statements point toward prioritising the safety of British nationals, especially the 70,000 British-Iranians who, like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, regularly return to visit family, it is imperative that appeasement is replaced with action.
Vahid’s belief in the impending end of the regime serve as a beacon of hope. A beacon that shines not only for the people of Iran but for all who yearn for a world free from oppression and terrorism. It is the collective effort of the global community that will ultimately determine the regime’s fate.
Alex Brummer still views M&S with 20th-century eyes (27 July), but times change, not least in post-Covid retailing.
I am the proud possessor of a splendid tankard marking the last great extension, in 1987, of ‘The Arch’. I dealt with the PR involved.
The Marble Arch store, opened by Simon, later Lord, Marks and son of the founder, was the flagship of the company, opened in 1931 and first managed by Len Cohen in his early thirties.
For years it was in the Guinness Book of Records as the store with the greatest sales per square foot of selling space in the world.
Now it constitutes thousands of superfluous feet of space. The public no longer flock to a very rundown Oxford Street.
While I generally endorse Michael Gove’s decisions – a rare sane voice in Westminster – he is wrong about plans to demolish and build a smaller store with office and residential space above.
The High Street is restructur-
Peter Lerner (27 July) describes “whataboutery” as a “shrewd ploy” of deflection designed to turn the spotlight away from the subject under discussion by asking of the accuser why the same focus hasn’t been applied to other people or countries exhibiting similar behaviour.
Lerner’s indignation is an inversion of the truth. Whataboutery actually is the accuser’s ploy of deflection to conceal his double standards, his censure always solely of Israeli right-wing “behaviour” and never applied to others in similar or identical circumstances.
Colin Rossiter WC2Aing. Companies and premises come and go. Anyone remember Woolworths, Littlewoods, C&A, Debenhams, Sock Shop, Tie Rack, Macfisheries? All gone.
Survival – and M&S survives and opens new stores – involves modernising. The Arch is not listed… it ain’t Stonehenge.
The new management – Simon Marks died 60 years ago and St Michael was ditched over 30 years ago – looks like doing a bit of shehechyanu for the new M&S.
Barry Hyman, Bushey Heath
I take issue with Joni Grodzinski’s letter “Non-kosher peril”, published in Jewish News (20 July).
Jewish News does indeed serve mainly the Jewish community – many of whom do not keep kosher. Readers of the JN (like most Jewish people), are likely to observe their Judaism, if at all, to varying degrees and it is not for this newspaper to make judgments about what they do or don’t do. Such behaviour certainly would not be appreciated by many readers and likely alienate them.
Many Jewish people patronise non-kosher eateries. They do not consider consuming non-kosher food to adversely affect their spiritual health. I don’t believe Jewish News has any responsibility to readers regarding kashrut.
JD Milaric, By email
Re Mick Davis’ article (“Israelis need us”), they don’t. Israel is doing fine without us, especially those they hear from only when criticising. If those who lost the elections want or need help it would be in extra votes for the left, not from yordim demonstrating against their country which they have abandoned Ann
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Phil Rosenberg to stand for president of the Board of Deputies? Fabulous! We in Manchester remember how he fought for the Board’s first regional manager.
Jay Charara, Deputy, Jewish Representative Council, Greater Manchester and Region
Ehud Olmert’s claim that Benjamin Netanyahu is on the verge of a nervous breakdown (27 July) is a disgusting piece of fiction. I feel very sorry for Mr Olmert. No one takes him seriously here in Israel.
Rachelle Shamoon By email
Jewish News is owned by The Jacob Foundation, a registered UK charity promoting cohesion and common ground across the UK Jewish community and between British Jews and wider society. Jewish News promotes these aims by delivering dependable and balanced news reporting and analysis and celebrating the achievements of its vibrant and varied readership. Through the Jacob Foundation, Jewish News acts as a reliable and independent advocate for British Jews and a crucial communication vehicle for other communal charities.
‘It’s a guy called Noah, complaining about us saying that
Israel’s reputation as a modern industrial state, able to join the Paris-based elite of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), rests on its success as the ‘start-up’ nation.
No country, with the possible exception of the United States with its Silicon Valley, enjoys such a garlanded image for innovation and pioneering engineering.
Indeed, until this year, when the extremist Netanyahu-led coalition betrayed the country’s democracy, it had bought Israel credibility in geopolitical terms.
Access to Israel’s tech know-how was critical in unlocking the Abraham Accords and Israel’s greatly improved relations in the Gulf including Saudi Arabia.
It was also instrumental in putting the ‘camel corps’ in the UK’s foreign policy establishment on the backfoot, transforming British-Israel relations. I could not have been
more surprised when a senior UK diplomat privately told me that 80 percent of its work with Israel was now economic and tech.
One fears that a valuable moment in Israel’s history has been betrayed.
The struggle for democracy in Israel has displaced a positive narrative. Once again, there is a focus on the unfinished business of the West Bank, hardship and radicalism in Gaza and settlement activity.
As a leader, Netanyahu finds himself compared to Donald Trump because of his leanings to crazed authoritarianism.
The tech nation is no accident. Partly it was self-generated a result of the great science of institutions such as the Haifa Technion and Weizmann Institute.
Israel also enjoyed the gift of the 1980s and 1990s generation of immigrant Russians, some of whom were distinguished scientists and software experts.
The Israel air force and ‘needs must’ technology and avionics also have contributed. But it could not have happened without government support, including that initiated by Benjamin Netanyahu when he was finance
minister in 2003-05 and economic strategy minister 2008-13.
Of all the OECD members, Israel spends more of its GDP (gross domestic product, or total output) on research and development, than any other nation. Government backing for R&D amounts to 4.6 percent of GDP. The UK struggles to reach 2.6 percent of output.
Tech industries are not stationary. Unlike heavy industry, they are easily relocated.
Indeed, even before the current assault on democracy many Israeli tech entrepreneurs chose to take their pioneering work to California, where there is more developed infrastructure and large angel investor funds.
The risk now is that unsettled political conditions in Israel could lead to a mass exodus undermining Israel’s economic progress and leaving it bereft of the innovation and productivity that drives prosperity and provides the resources to maintain the IDF’s strategic edge.
Programmes such as Iron Dome could become una ordable at a moment in history when Iranian-backed Hezbollah – now deeply embedded in Lebanon and Syria –
threatens Israel more than Hamas in Gaza has ever been capable.
Since the battle for Israel’s democracy flared, the Start-Up Nation Central think-tank says 68 percent of innovative firms have taken legal and/or financial advice on moving operations o shore. Investment in new tech, critical to preserving the sector’s pre-eminence, has fallen o a cli . It was 67 percent lower in the first half of this year than last.
Fundraising also has become more di cult. Together with the higher borrowing costs, prompted by Israel’s reputational hit, the concern in Jerusalem should be that the golden period of economic progress is ending.
New York investment bankers Morgan Stanley reckons that growth could be mangled by developments.
Visitors to Tel Aviv’s tech towers may not notice any di erence. The seats at upmarket nearby eateries such as Meatos (where I dined in May after attending protests) are still filled to the rafters.
However, economically, I fear that the judicial changes in Israel are an act of selfharm from which it could be hard to recover.
If someone is on the far-left and wants to engage in behaviour that most Jews would immediately identify as antisemitic, there is only one rule they need to follow to ensure their comrades defend them. Always substitute the word “Zionist” for “Jew”.
David Miller, formerly of the University of Bristol, appears to have forgotten that this week, tweeting the following to a critic: “If you’re not Jewish, don’t be cowed by racial supremacists who want to hector you into political subservience.
“Judeophobia barely exists. Educate yourselves about Zionism and the tactics used by its adherents.”
He went even further in a subsequent tweet, saying: “The facts: 1. Jews are not discriminated against. 2. They are overrepresented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power. 3. They are
therefore in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups”.
To recap: many readers will remember that Miller was let go by Bristol in 2021 after years of delay and obfuscation. He promoted wild conspiracy theories about Zionism – you may recall his accusation that an interfaith event at east London mosque where Jews and Muslims made chicken soup together for the needy was all part of a cunning plan by Israel – “a Trojan horse for normalising Zionism in the Muslim community”.
When brave Jewish students at Bristol complained about Miller, he accused them of being “political pawns” of Israel. Back then, Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies (which I work for), said some of Miller’s rants “would not look out of place on the pages of Der Stürmer”. It appears Miller is leaning in to that description.
Yet at the time of Miller’s ousting, hundreds of academics from around the UK signed an open letter condemning what they described as “prolonged harassment of a highly regarded scholar”. The signatories predictably claimed to “oppose antisemitism,
Islamophobia and all forms of racism”, before reaching the crux of their ‘argument’: “We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate.”
Even now, the names of those academics remain attached to the online letter on the “Support David Miller” website.
This is despite Miller since becoming a regular contributor to Palestine Declassified, a Press TV show hosted by former Labour shadow minister Chris Williamson, in which he and others promote conspiracy theories about British Jewish organisations and individuals. Press TV is controlled by the Iranian regime. Miller also writes for Al-Mayadeen, a Beirut-based pro-Hezbollah media outlet.
And now, of course, we have his latest statements about Jews, where even some of those in our community who often deny examples of antisemitism on the far-left have been forced to conclude that this goes well beyond “anti-Zionism”.
The hundreds of academics working at UK universities who publicly lent their names to support Miller in 2021 now have a decision
to make. They can just as publicly make clear that they find his statements loathsome and that they dissociate themselves from him. Or they can remain silent, leaving us little choice but to conclude that they still have a high opinion of him and contempt for his critics.
If they take the latter course, vice-chancellors at universities across the country, including Bristol itself (20+ academics in support), Leeds (16), UCL (14), KCL (12) and many others, may want to consider what sort of message that sends to the Jewish community about their institutions.
Even now, as he makes such statements, Miller is planning to take Bristol University to an employment tribunal to try to get his job back. His lawyers have reportedly described this as a “test case”, where those adjudicating will need to consider whether anti-Zionism is a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act.
It certainly is a test case. Will a deeply disturbing individual be reinstated to a role he never should have had in the first place? Or will common sense prevail? The Jewish community will be watching closely.
In the Kol Nidre of his life, my grandfather, Zigi Shipper, confided in me that he had developed a preference for One Day International (ODI) cricket over Test matches. As a comment on the e ects of ageing, it was as pithy as Barry Cryer’s observation in his own final years that he would no longer buy green bananas.
I have thought of Zigi every day since his death in January, particularly over the past six weeks as England and Australia played out the greatest Ashes series since 2005. My grandfather, born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Łódź in 1930, adored cricket so much that he reduced my grandmother to literal tears of boredom by dragging her to a game at Hove on their honeymoon in 1955.
Most observers don’t link as nebulous a concept as the spirit of cricket with a thick eastern European accent but, for me, the sport and Zigi are intrinsically linked. When I first visited Lord’s, in the early 1990s, it was a multigenerational a air involving my brother, father and grandfather. We saw Middlesex take on the West Indies in the
sort of match usually only dreamed up by five-year-olds and computer game programmers. I still eagerly await a football match between Manchester United and England with a cloned Marcus Rashford.
A new exhibition at the MCC museum at Lord’s tells the story of the Jewish community’s relationship with cricket. There is nary a mention of my bowling figures of 7 for 25 away at Orley Farm School in 1997 but one can’t have everything. As it happens, I attended precisely one session of this summer’s series, at the same location as the exhibition and that formative experience watching Curtley Ambrose and Courtney Walsh terrify a group of county cricketers.
At Lord’s, on the first Sunday in July, I witnessed Alex Carey cause a diplomatic incident by running out Johnny Bairstow in controversial circumstances, an incident I like to believe changed the course of the series. I had to leave the ground at lunch as it was my daughter’s third birthday and there were celebrations planned at home rather than at the home of cricket.
As we celebrated our daughter’s birthday with more than one eye on the cricket, the only thing missing was Zigi urging Ben Stokes on with his familiar refrain, when watching
any sport, “Make a name for yourself, son.” I have often wondered if that focus on names came from being reduced to a number during his formative years. Either way, he would have loved the way in which England have essentially brought an ODI-style to test cricket over the last few weeks and months.
The series concluded at The Oval while I was abroad with the extended family. While we waited to board our delayed flight home, we sat in Bologna Airport listening to Test Match Special and celebrating wickets (much to the confusion of the locals).
Trips to synagogue with skilfully hidden portable radios came flooding back and, while that may seem like sacrilegious behaviour, I am unsure of the existence of
a higher power but unquestionably believe in James Anderson. Indeed, surely no God would possibly have allowed it to rain for those last two days at Old Tra ord.
As Stuart Broad took the final wicket of the series with the last ball of his storied career five minutes before our plane took off, it dawned on me that sport and Judaism serve a similar function. They are about stories and things we hand down and a sense of community.
Long after the specifics have disappeared from view, we will remember the moments. I remember Zigi leading the Seder service and I remember him enjoying Carl Hooper destroying those humble trundlers and, like the best moments of the Ashes series that has just concluded, I suspect I always will.
THEY ARE ABOUT STORIES, ABOUT THE THINGS WE HAND DOWN AND A SENSE OF COMMUNITY
❝The author receives a prize from Mike Gatting
Performer Marlon Solomon explains why he’s putting a comic spin on antisemitism at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Not everyone, Marlon Solomon thinks, has the patience or temperament to sit down and read a book about important subjects. So instead of expecting or hoping they will do so, he introduces ‘heavy’ issues through humour.
And you can’t get much heavier than antisemitism.
For those lucky enough to be in Edinburgh during this month’s summer Fringe festival, (almost) everything will be explained in Marlon’s new show, How To Be An Antisemite
The one-hour performance comes six years after his groundbreaking production, 2017’s Conspiracy Theory: A Lizard’s Tale, which also opened at the Edinburgh Fringe and had an extraordinary and far-reaching impact, in that it resulted in David Icke’s arena shows being cancelled across Britain and Europe.
Conspiracy hit a nerve with audiences at the peak of the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party’s dalliance with previously unexpressed antisemitism.
Marlon mixed stand-up comedy, song and interactive
By Jenni Frazerfilm and provided an educational, though creative and entertaining, resource for understanding antisemitism.
Now, though, he wanted to explore the issue in more depth.
“I don’t think it’s properly understood how antisemitism is hardwired, baked in to everything from our shared language to the fabric of our culture,” he says.
wired, baked in to everything from
“It’s so important to understand that if we are to attempt to dismantle this prejudice. In my previous show I talked about antisemitism as being from the Protocols of Zion onwards. But antisemitism had a 2,000-year-old history before the Protocols, and I wanted to talk about that.”
How To Be is not, obviously, an action plan for people proposing to express Jewish race hatred.
But antisemitism had a and I wanted to talk an proposing to express in a similar way to “more dramatic edge”, score composed for the show by musiwho, says Marlon, “is
Instead, Marlon uses film clips and interactive comedy in a similar way to Conspiracy, but this time accompanied by a “more dramatic edge”, courtesy of a musical score composed for the show by musician Sam Eastmond, who, says Marlon, “is absolutely on the same wavelength as me about this subject”.
He delves into the origins of the blood libel “and how it began in mediaeval England and spread all over the world, because I don’t think that people really know about this.
“As we are wrestling with some of the darker aspects of British history such as the horrors of colonialism, more people should also know about mediaeval persecution of Jews and what happened, which still has major echoes today.”
He’s not concerned about giving such a weighty issue a comic spin.
“I treat the subject with enough reverence, with enough gravitas, to allow myself to be able to make jokes. And I also think there’s a very long and proud history of Jewish people making humour out of the darkest aspects of our persecution. So that’s carrying on quite a rich tradition. I do it in my own style — and you can’t account for everyone’s taste. But if you are just going on stage to talk about how antisemitism is bad — you can’t do that for an hour, you have to entertain people.”
Marlon is keen to emphasise that antisemitism is too often understood through “the prism of dead Jews”. He says: “There’s a fantastic book, People Love Dead Jews [by Dara Horn]. We don’t understand antisemitism in terms of how it a ects Jewish people living today. But I was too shy, and nervous, even to put the word in my previous show. So I made a show about antisemitism in disguise. I used conspiracy theory as a vehicle to explain how antisemitism exists in our society.
“This new show is unashamedly about antisemitism, and talks about my experiences since the last show.”
• How To Be An Antisemite runs from August 4 to 27 at the Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose in Edinburgh (except for 11 August), and Marlon Solomon fans can catch up with Conspiracy: A Lizard’s Tale in the afternoons at the Little White Pig on the same dates, part of the Free Fringe events
We are right in the middle of Afternoon Tea Week and from where I’m sitting with my Earl Grey tea in a china cup and my scone (jam first, naturally) I’m only too happy to indulge in this most delightful of traditions.
The concept of afternoon tea as a meal came about in the 1840s, when the Duchess of Bedford found that she was getting hungry at home in Woburn Abbey in the long hours that stretched between her midday lunch and the evening meal, which was served fashionably late, at around 8.30pm. She asked her maid to bring her some light refreshments at 4pm: “Perhaps a few triangles of bread, butter and jam, and a couple of small biscuits.”
Today it’s a more elaborate affair with scones and cakes, and of course a heimische tea wouldn’t be complete without bridge rolls, which according to Debbie, née Grodzinski, were first seen in 1926 and were popular for children’s tea parties. Bridge rolls are mezanot, meaning that they are defined as cake rather than bread, and therefore in Orthodox circles do not require the washing of hands prior to consumption. The reason we all love bridge rolls is that they are sweeter than sandwiches, and that is because the dough is made with fruit juice rather than water, which is what renders it cake.
Afternoon tea expert Gillian Walnes Perry, who travels the country giving talks on this esteemed tradition, says: “Afternoon tea has a great sense of nostalgia attached to it, and it’s something special and uplifting - not something that you have every day.” Should you decide to indulge one day soon, here are a few places to try.
MANOR TEA
Enjoy a quintessentially British afternoon tea in the luxurious surroundings of The Manor Elstree. In the summer months, take
it al fresco on the terrace overlooking the stunning gardens and views towards London. In the winter, cosy up by the fire or in the elegant Cavendish Restaurant. Smoked salmon, egg mayonnaise and cheese and pickle feature on the sandwiches list, plus avocado with lime, chilli and tomato. Tuck into fresh scones and cakes, plus prosecco or champagne – a treat!
From £40pp
SUMMER TEA
The new summer afternoon tea at Sopwell House hotel in St Albans has traditional finger sandwiches such as cucumber and cream cheese on basil bread and smoked salmon and cracked black pepper on brown bread. Homemade scones with Devonshire clotted cream and strawberry preserve follow, before delicious cakes and pastries including strawberry layered slice, exotic coconut tart and milky oolong and dulce cheesecake. Raise a glass of fizz to that and if it’s a sunny day take it outdoors overlooking 12 acres of lovely grounds. From £48pp
TEA LOVERS’ TEA
Mariage Frères’ stunning salon de thé in
Covent Garden is a must-visit for tea lovers. Select from over a thousand aromatic varieties of tea, including the Marco Polo, before indulging in a luxury Parisian afternoon tea with tea-infused scones, sandwiches and perfect patisserie made fresh each day. From £50pp
Hidden away in the woodlands of the Berkshire countryside, Coworth Park provides the perfect setting for an afternoon tea. Inspired by the surrounding views, The Garden Afternoon Tea includes delicate finger sandwiches including smoked salmon with sweet cicely crème fraiche, and ogleshield cheese with onion and rosemary jam. These are served with freshly baked scones and a selection of sweet treats including a coconut cake with cherry blossom, a chocolate mousse with hazelnut and a raspberry and elderflower choux. Veuve Clicquot is the bubbly option here. From £55pp
Afternoon tea doesn’t have to be a traditional British affair. The Masala High Chai at Masala Zone in Piccadilly draws inspiration from several Indian regions, with authentic savoury bites such as bhajias, pakoras and mini baroda batata vadas alongside traditional sandwich fillings reimagined into punchy flavours of chicken tikka and cheese with a spiced Bombay green herb chutney. There follows an assortment of traditional Indian treats including mango srikhand and a nankhatai biscuit, plus of course masala chai, poured from colourful, hand-painted Indian teapots. From £32pp
Timeless and elegant, The Stafford London has launched a sophisticated new afternoon tea served from a bespoke cake trolley for an added sense of theatre and occasion, and to allow guests a choice of cakes and pastries. These include coffee choux bun; lemon and basil tart; a slice of showstopping signature Earl Grey and honey layer cake; and a vanilla and raspberry White Mouse, created in honour of the Allies’ most highly decorated servicewoman of WWII, Nancy Wake. She became the Gestapo’s most-wanted woman, code-named The White Mouse because of her ability to elude capture. Later in her life, she became a resident at The Stafford London. From £70pp
The Athenaeum in Mayfair is the ideal pitstop for a touristy day out in London as it’s close to Buckingham Palace. Traditional afternoon tea sandwiches are followed by sweet treats such as amarena and cherry blossom macaroon, and rose and lychee mousse. The savoury afternoon tea includes offers Welsh Rarebit English muffins, quail egg and mushroom tartlets, mackerel rillettes on olive toast plus Lincolnshire Poacher cheddar scones and fig and walnut scones. From £45pp
The Summer Garden Collection at Pan Pacific London in the City is a wonderful offering of Kopi Tim, Singapore’s take on afternoon tea. Start with Siu Mai dumplings in a variety of flavours including salmon roe and mushroom, alongside steamed lotus and sweet potato buns. Then indulge in delicate patisseries inspired by summertime gardens including the Lemon Drop with lemon verbena, raspberry and peach or the Basil Smash with strawberry, basil and kalamansi a glass of English sparkling wine. A very special experience, served in The Orchid Lounge. From £62pp
AFTERNOON TEA AT SOPWELL HOUSE IS A TREAT NOT TO BE MISSED!
This popular occasion features a beautiful, tiered stand complete with delicious cakes and pastries, homemade scones with Devonshire clotted cream, strawberry preserve and traditional finger sandwiches.
Sopwell House is a stunning Georgian manor house in the city of St Albans. The hotel is the perfect place to dine, with a traditional Brasserie serving European fayre with a modern twist, and its Omboo restaurant serving Asian delights inspired by the spice routes of the Far East. Drinks are served in the elegant Octagon Bar, outdoor terrace or conservatory lounge. The hotel is also home to Cottonmill Spa, a haven for rest and relaxation.
To celebrate A ernoon Tea Week we have a champagne a ernoon tea for two people to give away.
To enter please visit jewishnews.co.uk/sopwellhouse
To find out more about Sopwell House and a ernoon tea please visit sopwellhouse.co.uk
Prize will be in the form of a gi voucher valid for 12 months from the date of issue, excluding 23 December – 1 January, Saturdays, Valentine’s weekend, Easter weekend, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day weekends.
and vegetarian a ernoon teas are available but must be requested 48 hours in advance. Prize includes one glass of champagne per person. Only one entry per household. Closing date Friday 25 August 2023. Winner will be notified by email
Hila Hila Saada is not what you expect. Fans of the hit Israeli series Beauty of Queen of Jerusalem know her as drab and downtrodden Rosa, mother of ravishing and flirtatious Luna (Swell Ariel Or). But it’s a role that belies Hila’s real life good looks, which are evident from the moment she arrives on Zoom.
Elegant and beguiling, with the whitest teeth, her long dark hair sweeps over her shoulder showcasing tiny gold hoops. I marvel aloud that she could be the ‘Beauty’ of the title’s subject. She laughs. “Throughout my career, I’ve been cast in colourful and glamorous comedy roles, like Vanessa in the popular series Beauty and the Baker. However, as Rosa, I undergo a transformation with minimal makeup that dulls my skin. In later scenes, I’m aged with lines on my face and grey hair.”
I suggest this must have been difficult. “To begin with, it was challenging to see myself like that. However, after a few weeks, I grew to love it, as I became someone else entirely – I embraced Rosa fully.”
This is reflected in her performance as the poor, illiterate woman who Gabriel Ermoza (Michael Aloni) is coerced into marrying by his overbearing mother Mercada (Irit Kaplan).
Following Sarit Yishai Levy’s book of the same name, the series is dominated by the female protagonists, with Rosa as the stalwart, scowling supporter of anyone in a
crisis, of which there are many as the family live through the Ottoman Empire, The British Mandate and Israel’s War of Independence. The series also presented a new linguistic challenge for Hila, as the script moves between Hebrew, English, Spanish, Turkish and Ladino, the Judaeo Spanish language. “Learning Ladino with the cast’s private tutor was lots of fun,” she tells me. “I love acting in other languages”.
Hila was always destined to be a performer. Growing up in Migdal Haemek, a small city in the north of Israel, her family were her first audience. “From the age of five, whenever my family gathered at my grandparents’ house on a Saturday afternoon, I would have them sit like a proper audience. I performed little shows, acting and singing, and I absolutely loved it when they clapped for me.”
Following her army service, Hila attended Yoram Levinstein’s acting studio in Tel Aviv. She had numerous theatre roles after drama school and, about five years later, landed significant TV parts. However, it was her role in
As the first member of the cast to be chosen for Beauty Queen, the author Sarit told the actress “she couldn’t imagine a better Rosa,” and she is indeed mesmerising with every subtle gesture and expression revealing the depth of her emotional turmoil from being unloved, marginalised and neglected by her spouse.
I’m curious to know if Rosa’s subservience annoys Hila?
“Actually, Rosa has a lot of inner strength. She holds the fabric of the Ermoza family together! I especially loved playing her in season 1 – when she was 17 years old. So young and so determined”.
worry!”
Working with the cast felt like being part of one big family, particularly during the first season when they filmed during quarantine. Both seasons were shot in Tzfat, an ancient city with striking similarities to Jerusalem, except it’s notably quiet – especially during quarantine, when it was basically empty.
Beauty and the Baker that was a turning point in her career. One of Israel’s most successful romantic comedy series, it gained international recognition when its format was sold and remade in the US. But it was in Israel that Hila became a household name, propelling her career to new heights.
Can she relate to Rosa at all in her own life? “Well, I’ve gone through life being a strong woman – so has Rosa! Our lives are completely different and set in different eras but in every situation I tried my best to access her emotions, her inner desires and honestly they are relatable – after all, many of us have been in similar situations without love, battling difficult mothers-in-law, ungrateful daughters!”
Hila says the cast are all good friends. “Irit, who plays my mother-in-law Mercada, is my bestie from the set. She’s an amazing woman. We actually just celebrated her birthday together! Michael Aloni who plays my husband Gavriel is so funny. We joked together a lot on set – a contrast to how serious we are together on screen! Swell, who plays Luna, my eldest daughter, is awesome – we have a very positive mother-daughter relationship in real life, don’t
“We all stayed in one hotel – every night was pizza or sushi with wine! Tzfat is famous for its wine! We all meet up regularly, we have a WhatsApp group. Playing a character who isn’t well loved or appreciated was strange for me because everyone loves me in real life! At the end of the day, Rosa’s role in the Ermoza family is that of survival.”
With a blossoming music career as a songwriter and singer, currently showcased on her YouTube channel, Hila has also collaborated with one of Israel’s leading performers, David D’Or, on a touching duet inspired by Gabriel and Rosa’s story in the drama. Song For Gabriel, sung in Ladino and Hebrew is about pure love, explains Hila. “When I was young, I didn’t know as much as I do now about relationships. I’m an artist – so for me to act and sing is all the same, both are opportunities to express myself.”
And finally, as fans including myself want to know, will she be expressing herself as Rosa in a third season of the series? “We will just have to wait and see!” she says, with the smile of a Beauty Queen.
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix
Actress Hila Saada tells Naomi Frankel how not being the glam lead made her a starHila Saada as Rosa and Michael Aloni as Gabriel Ermoza and (above) the cast Hila Saada: ‘I’m an artist, so for me to act and sing is all the same’
When it comes to #CareerGoals we are all different. Your dream job isn’t going to be the same as your sister’s or your best friend’s.
Resource understands this and we’ll give you the perfect employment advice, CV support and skills training that’s just right for you.
Whether you are just starting out in the job market, looking for a change or have concerns about the future, landing your perfect job
well that’s our job.
Visit resource-centre.org or call 020 8346 4000
IT STARTED WITH A CALL TO RESOURCE
orking as a rabbi and an entrepreneur is not such a strange combination as you might think, as Sam Fromson can explain. The part-time community rabbi at Golders Green Synagogue is also the co-founder and COO of YuLife, an insurtech company (where insurance meets technology).
YuLife is aimed at encouraging positive lifestyle changes in its users by rewarding healthy living, and turning financial products into a force for good. Fromson co-founded the company with insurance entrepreneur Sammy Rubin in 2016, a year after he took on the role at Golders Green, and says there is a surprising symbiosis between his two careers.
“I feel like the ‘rabbi me’ and the ‘start-up me’ are quite similar, particularly when it
comes to building a community,” Fromson says.
“As a founder, a lot of ‘startup life’ is about inspiring people and it’s the same for a rabbi – telling a story and inspiring people with that drive to achieve.”
Fromson, who has a background in finance, believes his training and experience as a rabbi has equipped him with the key skills necessary to thrive as a start-up entrepreneur – and vice versa.
“Start-up founders are constantly talking about the mental health challenges they might face, and faith is a powerful component of that – realising that you are not in control of everything. Of course, as a founder you need to put your all into the business, but at the same time we are trained as rabbis to realise that we are not in control of everything and ultimately we are in God’s hands as to whether something
succeeds or not, and for me, that’s been useful to remember. For example, you could prepare and prepare for a pitch with high-profile investors and they don’t even respond to you, and then you could meet someone serendipitously, who ends up being a long-term business partner.”
Fromson and Rubin met at a charity dinner. “We got on really well and met up the next day in Orli in Hendon –that’s where the idea for YuLife was born.”
The two spent six hours together talking through a potential model, before going away to write their business plan.
So how does it work? YuLife provides large companies and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with an end-to-end digital life insurance solution and engages with each member. Through its game-style app, users can earn virtual YuCoins, aka “the currency of well-being” for completing everyday wellness activities, such as walking, meditation, mindfulness and cycling, in return for vouchers and perks from leading brands, including ASOS, Avios, Nike and John Lewis. Members can also choose to improve the world through donating to charity, planting trees or cleaning the ocean.
Today, YuLife is one of the UK’s most successful start-up stories. It is used by more than 1,000 businesses, including Capital One, Co-op, Sodexo, Land Rover and Tesco.
YuLife has expanded into the US and South Africa, as well as into new categories – it has teamed up with Bupa to o er dental insurance for example – and is continually adding partnerships to its growing suite of tools. Last year, YuLife’s workers more than doubled in size to more than 230 team members, aka ‘YuCrew’.
But the mission remains the same: to turn financial products into a force for good. “By
doing this we help people live their best lives. And put their health and wellbeing first – inside and outside work.”
The YuLife HQ is in Old Street, London, but employees are allowed to work from anywhere. “We have a hybrid working model,” Fromson says. “There are no set days when people have to come. We have two meetings a week for all employees and regular team get-togethers.”
The company is often credited as being one of the best start-ups to work for, with employee wellbeing at its core.
Father-of-four Fromson acknowledges that mental health continues to take its toll on the workforce. According to the O ce for National Statistics, the number of people not working in the UK owing to long-term sickness has risen to a new record – more than 2.5 million are not working because of health problems, with mental ill health particularly on the rise.
He says we need a holistic solution. “Companies can’t support people who aren’t in work to get into work, but they can do a huge amount to support employees’ health and wellbeing and ensure they stay performing and not succumb to chronic ill health as a result. If you can help your team to stay healthy, engaged and connected then you have a huge advantage – you get the best out of everyone.”
Fromson continues: “From a government perspective, there are widespread social interventions needed to support people in chronic ill health coming back to the workplace. The NHS does a wonderful job of dealing with people with acute problems, but there is so much more that can be done in terms of planning and preventing long-term ill health. We need to encourage people to look after themselves on a daily basis.”
A word that has taken hold in recent years is ‘deepfake’ – video or audio generated by ‘deep’ machine learning that is so realistic it is almost impossible for humans to tell whether they are real or not. Pictures of Donald Trump violently resisting arrest made their way around the internet and were quickly outed as fakes, but as AI technology grows more sophisticated, the chances of individuals having their reputations ruined by a malicious deepfake become ever more likely.
Given that seeing is apparently
no longer believing, it is no wonder that we are in an age of ‘post-truth’: anything can be declared fake news or ‘alternative facts’. There are many people who steadfastly stick to views that have been long discredited; the notion the earth is flat or that man did not actually step on the Moon in 1969 are myths that hold a real sway on vast numbers of people. And while these ideas may not be actually harmful, ideas such as there being a secret cabal of Jews running the world or that the Covid vaccines are ‘bioweapons’ have dangerous consequences globally.
But when your reality is entirely digital, of course, your perceptions can be manipulated: statistics can be twisted, images edited, videos generated, and an entirely convincing thesis can be the product of AI or
some foreign computer bot. Until you get out and see for yourself – speak to people, breathe the air, feel the heat, listen to the sound of silence in what should be a noisy forest – your digital world may not be your own and may be too di cult to decipher.
“See, I place before you today, a blessing and a curse,” says Moshe in this week’s parsha, Re’eh. Thus Moshe relates God’s words to the Jewish people on the cusp of their entry to the Land of Israel. But this ‘seeing’ is not metaphorical: they were to place two groups, one on Mount Eival, the other on Mount Gerizim, with the Levites in the middle, turning to and fro as they asked one group to a rm God’s blessings and the other to reject the curses for non-compliance. The choice was not just o ered and visualised, it was
one that was literally seen and felt: it is necessary to go out into the open and take steps along a physical path to appreciate that you have the power to change your spiritual path.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchov (d 1809), an early Chasidic master, noted the verse emphasises ‘today’: just as God renews every day the act
of Creation, so too each day he gives a new clarity and wisdom we did not have yesterday. With deepfakes and fake news, it is a di cult time in which to have free choice: may Hashem give us the ability to see the paths before us and may He give us the wisdom and clarity to choose them with honesty and integrity.
Using free choice wisely helps us to spot a deepfake
In our thought-provoking series, rabbis and educators relate the week’s parsha to the way we live today
The recent appointment of my friend and colleague Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, rabbi of Maidenhead Reform, as the chairman of Dignity in Dying in the same week that retired miner David Hunter received a two-year prison sentence for the manslaughter of his wife of 52 years has once again challenged those of us of the Jewish faith and other belief systems who advocate that, in certain circumstances, assisting a person with death may be an act of compassion and love rather than a sin or a crime. Hunter’s wife, Janice, suffering from blood cancer, was unable to move and had begged her husband to end her “unbearable su ering”, which he did by means of su ocation.
Judaism is a life-a rming tradition and the Deuteronomist’s call (30:15) to choose
life and blessing is a powerful and justifiably potent motif. No believing Jew would opt for its opposite (death and curse), but what happens when life itself, through pain or indignity, or fear of the manner of one’s dying, becomes the very opposite of a blessing?
Judaism understands the birth of a child as an event in which God has an interest (Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin 30b), but Judaism’s absence of serious discussion about the ‘quality’ of life leads many Jews to express the view that it is not for the human to ‘play’ God, as though modern medicine – overwhelmingly supported by public attitudes – with its capacity to create embryos, prevent natural conception, revive those whose death would be imminent without intervention, has not already reframed the boundaries of creation.
Judaism demands of Jews that, as God’s partners, we are charged with bringing about the ultimate triumph of good over evil or, as the duty is described in the Aleinu prayer.
“l’takken olam b’malchut Shaddai”: to perfect the world (human society) under the sover-
eignty of the Eternal One. Can it be that this shutafut (partnership) with God is present at procreation but must necessarily be absent at the termination of life?
At the heart of Judaism is a compassion that arises from the Jewish historical experience itself. The phrase “For you know the heart of a stranger [in Egypt]” (Exodus 23:9) concerns itself with the legend of the Exodus whereby God liberated Israelite slaves and others from an Egyptian tyranny which at its essence was about an absence of dignity and a lack of capacity to control one’s own future. The su ering of some individuals can be an evil for which Judaism needs the capacity to assist in its conquest.
I serve as a hospital chaplain and a congregational rabbi with a faith in the goodness of the Divine but I cannot conceive of a God who would permit the su ering and injustice that some of our family members will undergo, and expect us not to intervene when requested under certain circumstances.
Life is, and remains, the most precious of gifts but, if it is to be endured in agony and dismay, then there seems to me to be a Jewish case and a moral case for considering its premature end.
Half Sovereigns - £172.06
Full Sovereigns - £344.12
Krugerrands - £1,460.47
We also purchase sterling silver candlesticks and any other sterling tableware
Dear Donna
I’m moving from a zero-hours contract to a permanent contract with the same employer. My employer has told me that my employment starts on 1 September, but I have already been working for them for 18 months. Is this right?
Philip
Dear Philip
If you have been employed and on payroll throughout the last 18 months, then your employment commenced 18 months ago, regardless of how much you have worked in that time period. The new contract is in e ect a new assignment, just like a promotion or a
transfer would be, but you keep your original continuous employment date. This means you have accrued 18 months of employment protection which counts towards any redundancy payments in the future.
It also means that if you get increased benefits with length of service, such as holiday entitlement, you have 18 months of service which must be included when calculating your annual leave entitlement.
Depending on when your holiday year runs, you will have accrued annual leave up to 1 September based on your zero-hours contract, and your annual leave will need to be recalculated from 1 September onwards
In both cases you are entitled to 5.6 weeks of leave pro-rated for the year. For the part you were a zero-hours employee this will need to be based on average weekly earnings. For the time you are employed full-time, it is based on your contractual salary.
Dear Sue
Since I started losing my hearing, I’m finding it more difficult to enjoy socialising. I don’t have the confidence I used to have. I’m worried if I don’t do something about it I’m going to become isolated and I don’t want that to happen.
My husband is trying to persuade me to go to lipreading classes. I’m not
sure. Do you think I’ll find learning to lipread helpful?
Valerie
Dear Valerie Definitely! Lipreading classes will enable you to meet other people living with hearing loss and develop new ways to cope socially in a fun, lively and stimulating way. You’ll improve your communication skills, discuss common issues and access lots of useful information.
Our classes are held on Monday mornings and afternoons at JDA’s community centre in North Finchley.
If you would like to observe a class, or for more information on the course, please contact Jodie at JDA on 020 8446 0502 or jodie@ jdeaf.org.uk
We look forward to welcoming you to the JDA community… you’re going to love lipreading classes –everyone does!
Dear Jonathan
Every week I check your prices for gold in Jewish News. The price of krugerrands still seems to be pretty good, so does that mean that now a good time to sell? Also, I have some big diamonds which I may wish to sell – is now a good time to dispose of these?
I have in addition a lot of silver tableware with candlesticks which none
of my children or grandchildren want. Can you let me know whether you buy these? And finally, I have many old brooches. Could they be of interest to you?
Renie
Dear Renie
Let me answer your questions in order.
1. Gold is coming o a little bit now, as with interest rates high at the moment, people are putting money on deposit in banks now and not into gold as much. So now probably is a good time to sell; the price has drifted back from £1,620 an ounce to £1,527.
2. This year there had been two or three price drops in global diamond prices, due to lack of demand and with
increased popularity in labcreated diamonds, so again probably now is a good time to sell these, while they are still relatively strong in price.
3. We buy all silverware , as we have clients right across the globe for it.
And finally:
4. We actually do buy brooches, though we actually unfortunately unset the diamonds and remake items with the – I say unfortunately becasue I love brooches but the sad fact is that no one wears them anymore.
Renie, I very much hope I have answered all your queries. And if you wish to come along to our Jewellery Cave showroom in Hendon Lane, London N3 1TT, do feel free to visit.
Our trusty team of advisers answers your questions about everything from law and finance to dating and dentistry. This week: Starting a full-time contract with the same employer, unsure about lipreading classes and selling gold...
TREVOR GEE
Qualifications:
• Managing director, consultant specialists in affordable family health insurance
• Advising on maximising cover, lower premiums, pre-existing conditions
• Excellent knowledge of health insurers, cover levels and hospital lists
• LLB solicitors finals
• Member of Chartered Insurance Institute
PATIENT HEALTH 020 3146 3444/5/6 www.patienthealth.co.uk trevor.gee@patienthealth.co.uk
DONNA OBSTFELD
Qualifications:
• FCIPD Chartered HR Professional
• 25 years in HR and business management.
• Mediator, business coach, trainer, author and speaker
• Supporting businesses and charities with the hiring, managing, inspiring and firing of their staff
DOHR LTD 020 8088 8958 www.dohr.co.uk donna@dohr.co.uk
JACOB BERNSTEIN
Qualifications:
• A member of the APCC, specialising in financial services compliance for:
• Mortgage, protection and general insurance intermediaries;
• Lenders, credit brokers, debt counsellors and debt managers;
• Alternative Investment Fund managers;
• E-Money, payment services, PISP, AISP and grant-making charities.
RICHDALE CONSULTANTS LTD 020 7781 8019 www.richdale.co.uk jacob@richdale.co.uk
MENOPAUSE CHAMPION LABALANCE
ANGELA DAY-MOORE
Qualifications:
• Founder & CEO Sassy La Femme Women’s Wellness
• Passionate about women’s wellbeing
• Home to LaBalance
• Recommended by fellow women for period, perimenopause & menopause
MENOPAUSE CHAMPION LABALANCE 0333 188 6580 www.sassylafemme.com hello@sassylafemme.com
JEWELLER
DR MONICA QUADIR
Qualifications:
• Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist with more than 12 years of experience in treating young people and their families, both in the NHS and privately
• Expertise in assessing neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD and autism, and supporting families to manage these conditions
• Medical director at Psymplicity Healthcare, a private mental health clinic based in London, with a national online presence
PSYMPLICITY HEALTHCARE 020 3733 5277
www.psymplicity.com enquiries@psymplicity.com
ADAM SHELLEY
Qualifications:
• FCCA chartered certified accountant
• Accounting, taxation and business advisory services
• Entrepreneurial business specialist including start-up businesses
• Specialises in charities; personal tax returns
• Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation Volunteer of the Year JVN award
SOBELL RHODES LLP 020 8429 8800 www.sobellrhodes.co.uk a.shelley@sobellrhodes.co.uk
JONATHAN WILLIAMS
Qualifications:
• Jewellery manufacturer since 1980s
• Expert in the manufacture and supply of diamond jewellery, wedding rings and general jewellery
• Specialist in supply of diamonds to the public at trade prices
JEWELLERY CAVE LTD 020 8446 8538 www.jewellerycave.co.uk jonathan@jewellerycave.co.uk
JOE OZER
Qualifications:
• Executive director for the United Kingdom at DCI (Intl) Ltd
• Worked in finance for more than 20 years
• Specialists in distribution and promotion of Israel Bonds
DEVELOPMENT COMPANY FOR ISRAEL 020 3936 2712
www.israelbondsintl.com
joe.ozer@israelbondsintl.com
DR BEN LEVY
Qualifications:
• Doctor of psychology with 15 years’ experience in education and corporate sectors
• Uses robust, evidence-based methods to help you achieve your goals, whatever they may be
• Works with clients individually to maximise success
MAKE IT HAPPEN 07779 619 597 www.makeit-happen.co.uk ben@makeit-happen.co.uk
LISA WIMBORNE
Qualifications:
Able to draw on the charity’s 50 years of experience in enabling people with physical disabilities or impaired vision to live independently, including:
• The provision of specialist accommodation with 24/7 on-site support
• Knowledge of the innovations that empower people and the benefits available
• Understanding of the impact of a disability diagnosis
JEWISH BLIND & DISABLED 020 8371 6611 www.jbd.org Lisa@jbd.org
CAROLYN ADDLEMAN
Qualifications:
• Lawyer with over 20 years’ experience in will drafting and trust and estate administration. Last 14 years at KKL Executor and Trustee Company
• In close contact with clients to ensure all legal and pastoral needs are cared for
• Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners
KKL EXECUTOR AND TRUSTEE COMPANY 020 8732 6101 www.kkl.org.uk enquiries@kkl.org.uk
STEPHEN MORRIS
LESLEY TRENNER
Qualifications:
• Provides free professional one-to-one advice at Resource to help unemployed into work
• Offers mock interviews and workshops to maximise job prospects
• Expert in corporate management holding director level marketing, commercial and general management roles
RESOURCE 020 8346 4000
www.resource-centre.org
office@resource-centre.org
Qualifications:
• Managing director of Stephen Morris Shipping Ltd
• 45 years’ experience in shipping household and personal effects
• Chosen mover for four royal families and three UK prime ministers
• Offering proven quality specialist advice for moving anyone across the world or round the corner
STEPHEN MORRIS SHIPPING LTD 020 8832 2222 www.shipsms.co.uk stephen@shipsms.co.uk
SUE CIPIN OBE
Qualifications:
• 24 years+ hands-on experience, leading JDA in significant growth and development.
• Understanding of the impact of deafness on people, including children, at all stages
• Extensive services for people affected by hearing loss/tinnitus
• Technology room with expert advice on and facilities to try out the latest equipment.
• Hearing aid advice, support and maintenance
JEWISH DEAF ASSOCIATION 020 8446 0502 www.jdeaf.org.uk mail@jdeaf.org.uk
LOUISE LEACH
Qualifications:
• Professional choreographer qualified in dance, drama and Zumba (ZIN, ISTD & LAMDA), gaining an honours degree at Birmingham University
• Former contestant on ITV’s Popstars, reaching bootcamp with Myleene Klass, Suzanne Shaw and Kym Marsh
• Set up Dancing with Louise 19 years ago
DANCING WITH LOUISE 075 0621 7833
www.dancingwithlouise.co.uk
Info@dancingwithlouise.com
for the many hundreds of service users who will benefit from the consolidation of these wonderful organisations – each one of which has been a jewel in the crown of the Anglo Jewish community for so many years. It also sends a very powerful message about what can be achieved when charities with similar objectives can combine their resources, expertise and networks for the greater good of our community. This is a proud moment for our community – may Kisharon Langdon go mechayil el Chayil – from strength to added strength as it embarks on this exciting new chapter of its work.
Chief EphraimI’m very pleased to hear of the coming merger of two fantastic Jewish social care charities in Barnet: Kisharon & Langdon. Both organisations have served our community with great distinction in the past, providing supported living, personalised education & support, employment assistance, and social activities to allow hundreds of adults and young people with learning disabilities and autism to live independent lives.
I am confident that this merger will have undoubted positive benefits for social care provision in my constituency, and I look forward to hearing more on their work moving forward.
Mike Freer MP, Member of Parliament for Finchley & Golders GreenTo find out more about the Kisharon Langdon merger, visit www.kisharonlangdon.org.uk
The merger of Kisharon and Langdon is clearly an important development...
Rabbi Sir
Mirvis KBE
ANTIQUES
Top prices paid
Antique – Reproduction – Retro Furniture (any condition)
Epstein, Archie Shine, Hille, G Plan, etc. Dining Suites, Lounges Suites, Bookcases, Desks, Cabinets, Mirrors, Lights, etc.
House clearances
Single items to complete homes
MARYLEBONE ANTIQUES - 8 CHURCH STREET NW8 8ED 07866 614 744 (ANYTIME) 0207 723 7415 (SHOP)
closed Sunday & Monday
STUART SHUSTER - e-mail - info@maryleboneantiques.co.uk
MAKE SURE YOU CONTACT US BEFORE SELLING
etc. No job too big or too small! Rubbish cleared as part of a full clearance. We have a waste licence. We buy items including furniture bric a brac.
For a free quote please phone Dave on 07913405315 any time.
LAW MENTOR
Costume jewellery and watches etc 01277 352560
Former “Magic Circle” solicitor offers help with:
• CVs and personal statements
• interviews and assessment days
• coping with stress and workload
• promotion and new opportunities
For more information contact Tom lawmentor@btinternet.com / 07590 057097
LEGACY- LEAVE A GIFT IN YOUR MEMORY
HOME & MAINTENANCE
Former “Magic Circle” solicitor offers help with:
• CVs and personal statements
• interviews and assessment days
• coping with stress and workload
• promotion and new opportunities
For more information contact Tom lawmentor@btinternet.com / 07590 057097
WEB DESIGN
10 Idiot, or sedative (4)
13 Squeeze (out) (5)
16 Plea of having been elsewhere (5)
17 Polar dwelling (5)
18 Legally sound (5)
19 Disparaging (5)
20 Smelting dregs (5)
21 Wander away (5)
24 Otter’s den (4)
27 Industry (9)
28 Early stringed
2 Forewarning (4)
3 Young goats (4)
4 Lobby (5)
5 Regal rule (5)
6 Male member of a form (9)
7 Independently owned pub (4,5)
11 Party wildly (5,4)
12 Stimulate gently (9)
13 The Merry ___ of Windsor, Shakespeare comedy (5)
14 Lazybones (5)
15 Unsteady (5)
ACROSS
1 Beautiful creative object (4,2,3)
8 Remnant of an old wound (4)
9 Pride or gluttony, eg (6,3)
22 Double (5)
The listed words to do with boxing can all be found in the grid. Words may run either forwards or backwards, in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction, but always in a straight, unbroken line.
RT EO IW AIA CR NE SGX STE NT U OU AA HE BH IG J RR W ATE RF GU N EN RE NR OC SI I CH AL LE N GEO L
Fill the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, column and 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 to 9.
Each cell in an outlined block must contain a digit: a two-cell block contains the digits 1 and 2, a three-cell block contains the digits 1, 2 and 3; and so on. The same digit must not appear in neighbouring cells, not even diagonally.
In this finished crossword, every letter of the alphabet appears as a code number. All you have to do is crack the code and fill in the grid. Replacing the decoded numbers with their letters in the grid will help you to guess the identity of other letters.
See next issue for puzzle solutions.
All puzzles © Puzzler Media Ltd - www.puzzler.com