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BRITAIN’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER 9 January 2020

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12 Tevet 5780

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Issue No.1140

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@JewishNewsUK

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Chief Rabbi is barred from Torah celebration Mirvis blacklisted by ‘petty politics’ of Charedi group Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis was prevented from attending a major Torah celebration at Wembley Arena this week by a Stamford Hill Charedi group, amid opposition to his inclusive stance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Jews, writes Mathilde Frot.

Mirvis was “disinvited” from attending Tuesday’s Siyum HaShas event, marking the end of the Daf Yomi – a seven-and-ahalf year cycle spent reading the Talmud every day. It was hosted by the group Agudath Yisroel of the United Kingdom, as first reported by Charedi blogger @Ifyoutickleus.

A spokesperson for Rabbi Mirvis told Jewish News: “How sad that the petty politics of a small minority should distract from what should be a wonderful celebration of Torah.”

Jewish News understands the Chief Rabbi was invited weeks ago to sit on the podium alongside other dignitaries – but the invitation was withdrawn on Monday amid concerns about possible disruption from audience members.

Rabbi Mirvis divided public opinion among the strictlyOrthodox community in 2018 when he released a landmark guide advising schools on steps to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) pupils.

The document, produced with the Jewish LGBT group KeshetUK, included tips to protect students from bullying and abuse and urged tolerance towards young Jews discovering their sexual and gender identity. Rachel Fink, headteacher at JFS, hailed the guide at the time as “an important publication which every Jewish school should embrace”.

But critic Rabbi Mordechai Rose hit out at the Chief Rabbi for his partnership with KeshetUK, writing that while the group is “in their own eyes … committed to a worthy cause,” the Orthodox view is “fundamentally” different. “This collaboration of the Chief Rabbi with KeshetUK might be compared to the United Synagogue collaborating with the Reform movement to produce a definitive guide to Jewish religious belief,” he said.

Critics cited the guide as a key factor in the Chief Rabbi’s apparent exclusion from the event. Twitter user @see_through613 tweeted: “Certainly his presence would taint the whole event. Let him perhaps ask KeshetUK to organise an event for him.

Another, @green_sruli, wrote: “There is Halacha and the Chief Rabbi decided to disregard it.”

Agudath Yisroel of the United Kingdom was approached for comment.

HOW ANNE FRANK INSPIRED MANDELA This poignant oil painting depicting Nelson Mandela taking inspiration from the diary of Anne Frank during his 27 years behind bars as a political prisoner is set to appear at venues across the country after it was commissioned by Anne Frank Trust UK. Artist Michael Italiaander, who marked his 97th birthday this week, said his work reflected how when Mandela read the iconic text, he “sees how the tragedy that was hers, was also his.”

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

News / Labour leadership

Who can clean up Labour?

Leadership contender Rebecca Long Bailey revealed this week she privately pressed for tougher action to root out antisemitism in the party, writes Mathilde Frot.

The Jeremy Corbyn ally launched her bid with an article in Tribune magazine in which she praised Corbyn’s manifesto and leadership. “I don’t just agree with the policies, I’ve spent the last four years writing them,” she wrote.

The shadow business secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We weren’t strong enough on antisemitism and I’ve been quite clear about that before.”

Challenged on Corbyn’s handling of the row, she replied: “Ultimately, he has to take responsibility as the leader of the party. He has to lead, and I think he has apologised.”

But Long Bailey, 40, added: “There were things that should have happened far quicker. We should have sped up our processes. We should have listened to Jewish communal organisations and involved them, and now we’re in a situation where trust has been completely broken.

“The new leader, whether that’s myself or any of the other candi-

Lisa Nandy, Jess Phillips, Keir Starmer, Clive Lewis, Emily Thornberry and Rebecca Long Bailey are competing to replace Jeremy Corbyn

dates, has to rebuild that trust very quickly and we have to make robust proposals.”

Measures should include an “independent” disciplinary process to handle complaints, she said.

The candidate also called for recommendations to be made by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – the watchdog currently investigating allegations of antisemitism in Labour.

When asked whether she argued behind the scenes for these measures to be adopted, she replied that she had.

Long Bailey is standing against

Sir Keir Starmer, Clive Lewis, Emily Thornberry, Lisa Nandy and Jess Phillips in the contest, with the results due on 4 April.

Starmer, the 57-year-old shadow Brexit secretary, has taken part in communal projects such as Mitzvah Day. A critic of Labour’s handling of the antisemitism row, he told the Guardian last month that the issue became a “question of values and a question of competence”.

Phillips, 38, a member of Labour Friends of Israel, attended Limmud Festival in Birmingham in December, where she tore into Labour’s handling of antisemitism.

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She was endorsed last month by former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, who also backed her rival Nandy, saying that together with Dan Jarvis and Yvette Cooper, they “showed leadership on racism when others were cowards”.

Smeeth, who lost her Stoke-onTrent North seat at the election, said last week that no Labour shadow minister “deserves” to be leader due to the shadow cabinet’s response to the antisemitism row.

Thornberry has called for tough action on antisemitism, telling the website Labour List that “we need to start calling it out from the top and

being utterly ruthless”. The shadow foreign secretary, 59, who visited Israel and the Palestinian territories last year, is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has opposed boycotts of Israeli products and academics.

She has been critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him during a speech at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton of turning Israel into an “apartheid state”.

Meanwhile, Lewis, 48, echoed criticisms made by his rivals in an article in the Independent last week, lamenting “Labour’s inability to deal effectively with the antisemitism”.

Khan: Labour’s lack of humanity breathtaking London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said voters “got it right” at the general election and accused Labour of displaying a “breathtaking lack of emotional intelligence or humanity” in its handling of antisemitism.

Khan, who is seeking re-election in May, described the result of the 12 December vote as “catastrophic” and has discussed the row about anti-Jewish racism that overshadowed much of Labour’s campaign.

He told the Sunday Times he blamed Labour’s position on Brexit and the perception of it as “a racist party because of our failure to tackle antisemitism”.

“For the leadership not to understand the impact of us being seen to condone antisemitism is heartbreaking,” he told the paper.

“We’ve demonstrated a breathtaking lack of emotional intelligence or humanity.” He urged Labour to expel members accused of antisemitism. “The ease with which Alastair Campbell was chucked out for talking about voting for another party, and yet you have antisemites still in, beggars belief,” he said, referring to Tony Blair’s former communications aide.

Khan hit back at references to alleged Islamophobia in the Conservative Party being used at times to shield Labour from accusations of antisemitism, a tactic he described as “whataboutery”. “Sure, the Tories may be Islamophobic. That doesn’t concern me. The standards I expect from Labour are higher than other parties.”

The mayor also criticised Labour’s handling of the case againt former London mayor Ken Livingstone.

EHRC WRITES TO WHISTLEBLOWERS London School of Jewish Studies

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The Equalities and Human Rights Commission is to use whistleblower testimonies to question Labour on alleged antisemitism, a leaked letter from the watchdog shows.

The EHRC’s investigation was launched in May to determine whether the party unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised Jews.

Evidence from whistleblowers will be used as a basis

John Ware’s Panorama lifted the lid on the issue

for some questions put to the Labour Party, according to the letter signed by the EHRC’s

principal lawyer dated 6 January and published online

by Sunday Times reporter Gabriel Pogrund.

The EHRC’s final report, expected early this year, may refer to some of the information provided, according to the letter by Stephen Lodge.

Under the investigation, the EHRC has statutory powers to demand full access to emails and documents.

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Antisemitism probe / Manifesto fear / Labour posts / News

CPS considering five hate cases Prosecutors are weighing up whether to bring charges against five former Labour Party members over alleged antisemitic hate crimes, the Metropolitan Police’s commissioner has said, writes Mathilde Frot.

Speaking to LBC radio host Nick Ferrari, Dame Cressida Dick confirmed police handed files against five people to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in September.

Pressed to speculate on a timescale for the CPS decision, Dame Cressida told Ferrari: “It is a very complex crime type, to be honest. There is a lot for them to look at and a lot for them to consider as to whether there

is either sufficient evidence to charge and whether it is in the public interest so to do.”

Police launched a criminal investigation into some allegations contained in a dossier of evidence submitted by the radio station during an interview with Dame Cressida back in 2018.

Four people, including three men in their 40s and 50s and a woman in her 70s, were arrested on suspicion of publishing or distributing material likely to stir up racial hatred and released under investigation.

Two men in their 60s were interviewed under caution in July. Police enquiries into one of them are ongoing.

Dame Cressida Dick speaking to Nick Ferrari

A CPS spokesperson declined to comment on timelines for charging decisions, but a statement from the public agency in November stated: “We are

considering the material to see if more information is needed from the police before we begin considering charging decisions.”

LABOUR GROUP ‘SORRY’ FOR POSTS A Labour pressure group, whose honorary president is shadow chancellor John McDonnell, has apologised after claims it promoted “antisemitic” material on Facebook.

The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) apologised in a statement this week after receiving several complaints about its recent social media activity.

The left-wing group said it removed the material and reviewed its posting processes.

“We recognise a number of the posts that have attracted criticism were, at the very least, careless.

Others have led to accusations that we have promoted antisemitic content, counter to all the values and policies of the LRC. These posts

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should not have been made, they have now been deleted, and we apologise for them,” the group said.

“We recognise some views expressed via our Facebook page do not reflect LRC policies, the views of our officers nor our wider membership, as would be expected of a platform representing an established Labour left membership group.”

‘MANIFESTO PLAN WAS DISTURBING’ Labour leadership contender Emily Thornberry said yesterday she was left “deeply disturbed” by a plan to drop reference to Palestinian terror attacks against Israel from the party’s election manifesto.

In an exclusive op-ed for Jewish News, the shadow foreign secre- Emily Thornberry with Israeli tary accused Jeremy Labour Party chair Avi Gabbay Corbyn’s advisers of planning to drop a reference to terror and rocket attacks against Israel in a manifesto clause about the conflict with Palestinians.

She claimed aides assured her the suggested language was “balanced considering the considerable imbalance in the conflict” despite her concern it was “utterly” unacceptable. “Disgustingly, attacks on Israeli civilians were being deliberately dismissed in a way that would never have been tolerated of attacks on any civilians in any other country around the world,” Thornberry wrote in the piece.

Thornberry also wrote that she said she believed Corbyn’s reaction at a later meeting indicated the Labour leader “knew nothing about the row”.

But while the suggested change was never adopted, she wrote, “the whole process left me deeply disturbed at the mentality of the advisers around Jeremy”.

Labour was approached for comment. � Emily Thornberry, page 21

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Jewish News interview

‘Labour must go back to decency’ Before last month’s general election, Joan Ryan chose not to reveal the extent of the abuse she suffered as one of the Labour Party’s most outspoken Israel advocates, writes Raphael Ahren.

But now that the party under Jeremy Corbyn has been handed a massive defeat, the former MP no longer wants to remain silent about the personal price she paid.

Ryan received death threats, dead rats were placed on her doorstep twice and a letter slipped under the door of her Commons office, likely by someone who had regular access to the corridors connecting parliamentarians’ private offices, called her a “Jew whore” who should be “shoved back in the oven”.

“These are attempts to frighten you and intimidate you and bully you,” she said during a visit to Jerusalem. “It’s toxic.”

Ryan, who is not Jewish, said it would not be surprising if the perpretrators of those acts had been fellow Labour supporters. “Because the infiltration into the party of every hard-left extremist you’ve almost ever heard of means that there are now more antisemites in the Labour Party than we’ve ever known before.”

Former Labour MP Joan Ryan says the party ‘stands at a crossroads’

Ryan quit the party last February after 40 years, during which she held positions in government and in opposition, and, for the past four years, chaired Labour Friends of Israel.

Happy about Corbyn’s decisive loss, she is now urging her former colleagues to root out the antisemitism she says has infested the party.

“They’ve got to stand up and speak up and take action, as Labour MPs, as leaders, and do all that they can to drive this out,” she said.

“The last thing we need now is Jeremy Corbyn replaced with another [leader] with his views.”

After the party’s defeat, Corbyn said “Our time will come”, and called for a “resistance” to Johnson. He will step down as early as March and the party has started the process of replacing him.

Ryan, who decided not to stand in the December election, had noticed a handful of “moderate, decent, centreleft Labour Party members” beginning to speak out against Corbyn, and

says the party now needs to reassert its character and the values on which it was founded.

“It might be a very hard struggle.

They might not be able to do it all in one fell swoop,” she continued, “but they’ve got to start that effort to find the way back for the Labour Party – and not just for themselves.

“The people of the UK need a decent centre-left party to be able to look to and to be able to vote for, so that when we come to the next general election they’re not faced with a poor choice or no choice.”

Ryan, MP for Enfield North from 1997-2010 and 2015-19, was in Israel last month for a convention of the International Institute for Strategic Leadership Dialogue in Jerusalem.

The forum, founded by FrenchIsraeli businessman Albert Dadon, brings together lawmakers and professionals from Israel, the UK and Australia.

As a Labour veteran, Ryan, 64, was “very sad” about what happened to her former party, she said.

“But I am also very relieved.

We simply could not countenance the idea of having an antisemite as our prime minister. That would have been a disaster of untold proportions.

He was palpably not fit for public office.”

The public consists of decent people who want a prime minister they can respect, she said. “Labour gave them no choice. That’s a tragedy.”

She said of Corbyn: “His antisemitism comes from his world view, his political ideology, which is a very hardleft, extremist ideology that is based on wanting to tear down and defeat capitalism.

“And because he sees America, Israel and even the UK, as flag bearers for capitalism, as perpetrators of capitalism, he doesn’t just want to reform it to make life fairer and better for most people,” Ryan said.

“He wants to tear it down. And because he views Israel as a colonial, occupying power, because he sees Israel as part of this imperialism of the West, they then are his enemy.”

Ryan, who was born in Warrington, near Liverpool, says Labour should be the very first party to combat antisemitism, but under Corbyn it has become the perpetrator. “He allowed it to be normalised in the Labour Party.

It became mainstream.”

She concludes: “We now stand at a crossroads. That’s a heck of a more positive place than where we were.”

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Royal trip / Shock tweet / Epstein associate / News

Charles to meet survivors in Israel Prince Charles will meet British Holocaust survivors, hold talks with President Reuven Rivlin and make the first official royal visit to Bethlehem, during a two-day tour to Israel and the Palestinian territories this month, writes Justin Cohen.

The World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem will be the centrepiece of his tour – the highest level official royal visit to the region.

The heir to the throne has previously visited in a private capacity for the funerals of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

The visit marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Global leaders leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian President Vladimir Putin and America’s Vice President Mike Pence will gather at Yad Vashem for the Forum.

His Royal Highness is “delighted” to be one of only five international figures to deliver

Prince will make a two-day visit this month

a speech and will lay a wreath, according to a spokesman.

He has long taken an interest in supporting survivors in the UK and abroad, from hosting

various receptions of Kindertransport evacuees to being the driving force behind the creation of a community centre in Krakow. He is also patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

His spokesman said he was “very much looking forward to meeting” survivors travelling to Israel for the event, many of whom he has met before to further a relationship he greatly “values”.

Charles would also undertake a a number of engagements to further “deepen [his] personal interest in Judaism and Jewish culture and celebrate the vibrancy of the bilateral relationship”, the spokesman added. This will include a reception at the residence of British Ambassador Neil Wigan.

The Prince will also visit the Shrine of the Book at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum and travel to the West Bank to meet President Mahmoud Abbas on the final leg on the tour. He will make

the first official Royal visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as part of his commitment to religious freedom and interest in interfaith relations.

A Foreign Office spokesman suggested that he would not follow in the footsteps of his son, the Duke of Cambridge, in visiting the Kotel.

He said there was an aim to “maximise engagement and not duplicate”.

The visit is being undertaken at the invitation of Rivlin, but there “may be engagement” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the margins of the World Holocaust Forum.

The Prince of Wales will travel to Tel Aviv from Davos, where he will launch the Sustainable Markets Council with the support of the World Economic Forum. It will bring together leading figures from the private, public and philanthropic sectors to find ways to decarbonise the global economy.

Ghislaine ‘protected in Israel’ INSTA STAR’S ‘OVEN’ TWEET Ghislaine Maxwell, the British Jewish socialite wanted for questioning about her alleged role assisting the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is reportedly being hidden by friends in Israel.

Maxwell, whose disgraced father Robert misappropriated his company’s pension fund before drowning in mysterious circumstances, was this week reported to be in Israel. A source quoted by The New York Times said: “She moves

around. She is sometimes in the UK but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection.”

FBI officers investigating allegations made by several young women that they were sexually abused by Epstein and his friends when they were underage want to question Maxwell.

Maxwell’s involvement has never been proven.

the memorial. The photo caption was later removed and the caption amended to include the hashtag #neverforget.

In an email to Jewish News, she said: “I used that hashtag without any evil about my pregnancy, which was unfortunate due to the location, without imagining twisted minds would take it out of context with such evil.”

A pregnant social media influencer with 136,000 followers criticised for using the hashtag #babyintheoven in an Instagram post about Berlin’s Shoah memorial has accused “twisted minds” of taking her caption out of context.

An image published on Instagram account @hellentablada showed designer Elena Tablada (pictured), 38, leaning against

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9 January 2020

www.jewishnews.co.uk

News / Court cases / Elizabeth Wurtzel mourned

Teen jailed for UK shul bomb plots A teenage neo-Nazi from Durham who planned to torch local synagogues using Molotov cocktails has been jailed for more than six years.

The 17-year-old was sentenced this week after being found guilty of drawing up a terrorist hit-list including schools and council buildings, and of researching weapons such as knives, guns and explosives.

Jurors at Manchester Crown Court had heard that the young extremist had accessed a vast collection of farright literature before officers seized his phone and computer equipment in March last year, during his arrest.

Synagogues were listed in an “areas to attack” section in his “manifesto”.

In court, he said he had no intention

of carrying out any attacks, arguing that his far-right persona was for “shock value” only, but the jury didn’t believe him.

He was found guilty of preparing for terrorist acts between October 2017 and March 2019, disseminating a terrorist publication, possessing an article for a purpose connected with terrorism, and three counts of possessing a document or record containing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.

He was sentenced to six years and eight months.

Mark Gardner, director of communications at the Community Security Trust said: “This is yet another example of possible terrorism from British neo-

Nazis. It is important that our community realises the scale of the threat that is now posed by such people.”

Drawings and a hit-list by the 17-year-old, convicted of preparing terrorist acts and jailed for more than six years

Four ‘neo-Nazis intent on killing Jews’ Prosecutors told a jury in Birmingham on Tuesday that four defendants accused of being members of a banned neo-Nazi group had “a particular interest in the eradication of Jews”.

The three men and a woman, including a couple in their twenties from West Yorkshire, are accused of being members of National Action, which Barnaby Jameson QC described as “a fellowship of hate”.

Jewish Helpline General Flyer_Layout 1 copy 2 04/02/2014 10:39 Page 1 Alice Cutter, 23,14-047-AW one of the defendants Prosecuting at their trial, he said: “We are

entering the neo-Nazi world of ‘white jihad’. We are talking about a tiny, secretive group of diehard neo-Nazis with no compunction about attaining their objectives with the use or threat of terror.”

He described them as “a group with a common admiration for Hitler and the architects of the Holocaust” that “shared the same pathological racial prejudice and conviction in brutal white supremacy, with a shared enthusiasm for ethnic cleansing” and “a particular interest in the eradi-

cation of the Jews”. The defendants are Mark Jones, 25, and Alice Cutter, 23, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, Garry Jack, 24, from Birmingham, and Connor Scothern, 18, from Nottingham.

Jameson said they advocated “Nazi aims and ideals, the violent ethnic cleansing of anyone who did not fit the Nazi mould of racial purity – Jews, primarily, but also blacks, Asians, gays and liberals”. The trial, at Birmingham Crown Court, is expected to last ten weeks.

Prozac Nation author Wurtzel dies, aged 52

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Elizabeth Wurtzel, the Jewish author who gave a blunt confession of her struggles with addiction and depression in Prozac Nation, died on Tuesday aged 52.

Her husband, Jim Freed, said she died at a Manhattan hospital after a battle with cancer.

Her bestselling memoir Prozac Nation was published in 1994 when Wurtzel was in her mid-20s and set off a debate that lasted for much of her life. It made her a voice and a target for an anxious generation.

Critics praised her for her candour but also accused her of self-pity and self-indulgence, vices she fully acknowledged.

Wurtzel wrote of growing up in a home torn by divorce, of self-harming in her early teens, and of spending her adolescence in a storm of tears, drugs, bad love affairs and family fights: “I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat. I know that into every sunny life a little rain must fall and all that, but in my case the crisis-level hysteria is an all-too-recurring theme.”

She became an advocate for testing for the BRCA gene mutation and pushed for insurers to cover testing for all Ashkenazi Jewish women, regardless of whether they have cancer symptoms.

“I caught it fast and I acted fast, but I must have looked away: by the time of my double mastectomy, the cancer had spread to five lymph nodes,” she wrote in The New York Times in 2015.

Elizabeth Wurtzel and (inset) the cover of her acclaimed 1994 memoir

Wurtzel was born and raised in New York City. She attended the Ramaz School, a modern Orthodox day school, and attended Harvard as an undergraduate and Yale Law School. In December 2018, she wrote about finding out that the man she had thought was her father was not: her biological father was Bob Adelman, a photographer with whom her mother had had an affair.

In 2015, she described the initial success of her cancer treament. “I live in an age of miracles and wonders, when they cure cancer with viruses. If I ever meet cancer again, I will figure it out. You see, I am very Jewish, which is to say … I am undefeated by the worst,” she wrote.

Wurtzel’s other books included Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women and More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction.

9 January 2020 Jewish News

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School boost / News

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More than 200 Jewish primary pupils in London moved into their new purpose-built school building this week and learned about how their old furniture was going to Africa to help schoolchildren there, writes Stephen Oryszczuk.

The opening last week of the £3.9million single-storey facility at Noam Primary in Burnt Oak marked an end to two decades of making do with “mismatched furniture cobbled together through haphazard donations” now on its way to Ghana.

Pupils in the central African country will receive hundreds of chairs, desks, cupboards and printers as a gift from the school. A fundraising drive has begun to kit the new building out with modern equipment.

School head Chaya Posen said the building, which has eight classrooms and interactive screens, had been “designed to match our ethos of maximising potential, right

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down to the innovative walls of cupboards which double as huge whiteboards”.

She added: “We’re so proud of Noam’s achievements and can only imagine what pupils and teachers can now achieve with a state-of-the-art building.”

The building, which pupils entered for the first time on Wednesday, includes breakout rooms, a Beis Hamedrash study, new library, school hall,

playground and a dedicated early years play area.

It was funded by parents and donors after 20 years of financial struggle and uncertainty in Wembley United Synagogue. Pupil numbers are already swelling, in part because the school topped the SAT tables.

Governors’ chair Mike Levene said the move marks “a dream come true”.

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Holocaust remembrance / Controversial tweet / Yiddish apology / News

The BBC is to broadcast a historic ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau this month.

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is Stand Together, and it also marks the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. In a bid to honour victims of genocide and preserve their stories, the UK ceremony will be broadcast on 27 January and feature readings, music and testimony from survivors.

BBC Two previously broadcast the UK ceremony organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust in 2015 and 2016. The trust’s chief executive, Olivia Marks-Woldman, warned

that “identity-based prejudice and hostility is worryingly prevalent in the UK and internationally”.

“At this important moment, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we are asking people to stand together against prejudice, and in memory of those who were murdered during the Holocaust, under Nazi persecution and in genocides that have taken place since,” she said.

The BBC’s director-general, Tony Hall, who last Thursday announced a range of programmes to be released around HMD, urged viewers to reflect on the “consequences of prejudice and hatred”.

He said in a statement: “This is an

important moment to stop and reflect on a period in our history, which showed both the worst, and the best, of the human spirit.”

Coverage will include a two-part series on the individual legacies of the Holocaust starring Judge Robert Rinder, who travelled to Lithuania and Treblinka to trace his family’s past as part of the BBC One programme My Family, The Holocaust and Me. The BBC Two drama The Windermere Children, starring The Miniaturist actress Romola Garai, Blackadder‘s Tim McInnerny and Game of Thrones’ Iain Glen, explores the story of the 300 child survivors who sought a new life in the UK after

‘ROTHCHILDS’ TWEET CAUSES UPSET A football player who became a cult hero after scoring against Manchester City is facing a potential Football Association (FA) investigation over an allegedly antisemitic tweet.

Hours after making headlines for an eye-catching display in Port Vale’s 4-1 FA Cup

defeat by Manchester City, Tom Pope, 34, took to Twitter to answer a question from a fan.

“We invade Iran then Cuba then North Korea then the Rothchilds [sic] are crowned champions of every bank on the planet,” he said in response to a Twitter user who asked

The Windermere Children, featuring from left: Chaim ‘Harry’ Olmer, Kacper Swietek, Arek Hersh, Tomasz Studzinski, Pascal Fischer, Sir Ben Helfgott, Marek Wrobelewski, Sam Laskier, Kuba Sprenger and Ike Alterman

the Second World War and recuperated in the Lake District. Accompanying the drama is the BBC Four documentary The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words, which features first-hand accounts from survivors.

Other highlights include Holocaust

Denial: A History With David Baddiel, an hour-long BBC Two documentary about Bergen-Belsen and a special edition of the BBC Radio 3 programme Words and Music with actors’ readings of Holocaust poetry and prose, including works by Primo Levi.

Yiddish tweet apology The BBC World Service has apologised after a tweet stating the number of Yiddish speakers was “severely depleted by the mid-20th century” did not mention the Holocaust.

The since-removed tweet, intended to promote a radio programme discussing the

him to “predict the World War III result”.

Pope later deleted the tweet, but the FA could launch an investigation depending on the outcome of talks with the player and club.

He said: “It was only banter and people have dug it up.”

Save the date

Photo by Wall to Wall / ZDF / Helen Sloan

BBC reveals line-up for 75th Shoah anniversary

history of the language, was widely criticised online for appearing to gloss over the reasons millions of European Jews no longer live to speak the dialect.

The broadcaster issued an apology, tweeting: “The wording wasn’t right and we apologise.”

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Jewish News

9 January 2020

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News / Birthday letter / School admissions

Sir Ben Helfgott says he was “truly humbled and honoured” to receive a 90th birthday card with 90 signatures in a special edition of Jewish News in November.

The Holocaust survivor, who competed as a British weightlifter in the

1956 and 1960 Olympic Games, was presented with a birthday card signed by five prime ministers as well as sporting legends and wellknown names from the world of arts and media.

“I was truly honoured and humbled to have read

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all the most kind and generous tributes,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published this week.

“I am writing to thank Jewish News and each and every one of the contributors.

Your gracious words will give me even greater incentive to pursue the ideals of a more tolerant society that we have all been working towards.”

Helfgott was born in Poland on 22 November 1929 and survived several camps including Buchenwald and Theresienstadt before arriving in England in 1945.

His mother and sister were shot by the Nazis.

In 2018, he was knighted

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Church’s mea culpa tians to ‘repent’ for antise Historic report urges Chris

mitism

Christian persecution urges addresses historical supThe report, published today, antisemitism from Palestinian of Christians of Jews, towards Israel, and evangeremorse over the role Jews to Christianity. and porters, attitudes of England report groups misgivings” A landmark Church in centuries of antisemitism for lism, but does not cut Church ties to Mirvis’s “substantial in the to “repent” for his“repent” calling on Christians calls on Christians to for Jesus.’ were voiced in his ‘afterword’ from attitudes such as ‘Jews and reset Jewishrecalled how, tion report toric antisemitism past sins and challenge In an incisive retort Mirvis a mixed reac- once-in-a-genera Faith and seed-bed for committed the Catholic Christian relations received Church’s influential that provided a “fertile con- in 2015, the Vatican this week, writes the titled God’s support any murderous antisemitism”, tion from Jewish leaders Order Commission (FOC), to “neither conduct nor Church by Holocaust. approved targeted tributing to the Word, which was Jack Mendel. mission work specifically Mirvis wel- Unfailing had document, institutional Welby, The While Chief Rabbi Ephraim the Church of England the Mirvis’s friend Justin in at Jews” but that 11 the main, he simultayears three of Canterbury Continued on page comed the report in Archbishop of Canterbury reproach of the Archbishop most senior the making, also neously launched a blistering Justin Welby the Church’s to disavow their and Anglican leaders for failing still seek to convert bishop. institution with those who

Jewish News’ tribute to Ben

for services to Holocaust remembrance and education, but is best known in the Jewish community for his 46-year chairmanship of the ’45 Aid Society, set up for the 732 Jewish boys and girls brought to the UK at the end of the war.

• Letters, page 19

BOY ‘PUNCHED AND ABUSED’ ON BUS

BOARD CONDEMNS RACIST GRAFFITI

A 13-year-old Jewish boy was punched in the stomach before being subjected to antisemitic abuse while travelling on a bus in north London, the neighbourhood watch group Shomrim said.

He was attacked while travelling along High Road towards Stamford Hill in north London at about 11.45am on Sunday, according to a retweet by the Metropolitan Police’s Haringey account. The original tweet – posted

by Shomrim – said a male hit the boy and shouted: “You stupid Jews think you own the world.” Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 101 or tweet @ MetCC and quote CAD 4968/5Jan.

The Board of Deputies has condemned anti-Islamic slogans Scotland Yard said were daubed on a building close to a mosque and cultural centre in south London.

“This latest anti-Islamic graffiti found on a building near an Islamic centre in Brixton is appalling,” the Board tweeted.

“Let’s hope the perpetrators can be found and prosecuted for this vile and cowardly behaviour.”

Officers were called to near the North Brixton Islamic Cultural Centre on Brixton Road following reports that “anti-Islamic slogans” had been spray-painted on a building nearby.

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More than 750 people have signed a petition against proposed changes to JFS’s admission policy.

Parents urged the school to rethink plans to turn two local primaries into “feeder schools” next year.

JFS, Europe’s largest Jewish secondary but heavily oversubscribed, said in

December it was changing its rules for 2021, giving priority to students applying from Sinai and North-West London Jewish Day School.

The head, Rachel Fink, wrote to parents citing “demographic changes” as a reason for the shift, according to the JC. This week, a petition was started claiming that “chil-

dren who do not attend Sinai or North West London Jewish Day School will have hardly any chance of gaining a place at JFS” under the proposed new rules. Signatories ask the school to rethink, saying “all children should have a fair and equal chance of attending”.

The petition also cites concern about the potential impact

to Barnet’s Jewish primaries, which “will become a less attractive option, may not be able to fill their spaces despite many Jewish families living locally, and suffer from drops in funding, resulting in fewer resources and falling standards of education for their pupils”.

JFS has been approached for comment.

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

News / Charity inquiry / Hungary row

UK charity in Soleimani vigil A British–Islamic charity that publicly mourned the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani is being scrutinised by the Charity Commission, writes Jack Mendel.

The watchdog told Jewish News it is “assessing information” after a video emerged of the vigil outside the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, along with a ‘message of condolence’ on its website.

The London-based charity reportedly flew the Iranian flag at a candlelit vigil on Saturday, at which mourners held placards featuring Soleimani and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

During a short clip posted online, Islamic prayer can be heard, and according to Mail Online, 25 minutes before the vigil took place a man was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace and for obstructing officers.

The organisation says on the commission’s website its aim is “advancing the religion of Islam and education, and the provision of social and religious welfare facilities”.

Tehran vowed harsh retaliation after President

Trump authorised the killing of General Soleimani, as millions took to the streets across Iran to mourn him.

The message of condolence, by a representative of Ayatollah Khamenei and the Director of Islamic Centre, Seyed Hashem Moosavi, refers to the “martyrdom” of Soleimani.

It claims that he was “consistently present on the battlefield with the devils and the diabolic powers of the world”, and adds that he “fought bravely and sincerely… until his blood was shed at the hands of the most wicked members of human race”.

The Charity Commission said: “We are aware of a vigil held by the Islamic Centre of England over the weekend and publications on its website.

“We are currently assessing information and will be contacting the charity to seek further information.”

The Islamic Centre of England has been approached for comment. � Analysis, page 14; Editorial comment, page 18

The candlelit event in Maida Vale

NEWS IN BRIEF

POLICE PROBE INTO GRAFFITI ATTACKS ‘PROGRESSING WELL’ Metropolitian Police chief Dame Cressida Dick has sought to reassure the community after several shopfronts and a synagogue were daubed with antisemitic graffiti last month.

Speaking to LBC radio on Wednesday morning, she revealed the investigation was “progressing well”.

Dame Cressida added: “We have a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitic crime. We are taking that investigation extremely seriously and it is progressing well I am pleased to say.” Police confirmed on Wednesday that no arrests have yet been made.

Promise of ‘special relationship’ with Orban condemned A senior Conservative aide has been chastised by Jewish leaders for promising a “special relationship” between the UK and a Hungarian government accused of antisemitism.

Tim Montgomerie, a former journalist who works as Boris Johnson’s social justice adviser, made the comments about Brexit and Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian government at a meeting hosted by a

right-wing think-tank in Budapest last month. BuzzFeed reports that Montgomerie praised the “interesting early thinking” Orbán’s government was doing on “the limits of liberalism”. He likened Johnson to Orbán and Donald Trump.

Downing Street said Montgomerie was not speaking for the government, adding that “during the election all special advisers resigned their positions…

Tim Montgomerie has not currently returned to his position”.

Nevertheless, the sight of a former No 10 adviser cosying up to one of Europe’s most authoritarian regimes in the context of post-Brexit relations sent shivers down the spines of Jewish leaders.

“We have in the past raised a number of concerns with the Hungarian government on issues relating to antisemitism,

Holocaust revisionism and different forms of prejudice in the country,” said Board of Deputies’ president Marie van der Zyl. “We have also conveyed these thoughts to the UK government, which has been largely supportive. We note that the government has distanced itself from the comments made

by Tim Montgomerie.”

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Cyprus case / Israel trade / News

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A British teenager found guilty of lying about being gang-raped in Cyprus by a group of Israelis has arrived back in the UK – vowing to clear her name, writes Adam Decker.

The 19-year-old was on Tuesday handed a four-month suspended jail term by a judge who said he was giving her a “second chance”.

She hugged her family and legal team and left the court in Paralimni weeping, with her head in her hands, after being sentenced for public mischief. Her mother shouted “She’s coming home” to supporters outside before flying with her daughter to Heathrow that evening.

Lewis Power QC, the teenager’s lawyer, said her legal team would be challenging her conviction and were prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The young woman from Derbyshire told the Sun: “I am innocent and the fight will go on to clear my name. It’s been a nightmare for me, Mum and everyone. Now I just want to be with my friends and family.

“What kept me going was my family and the amazing support of my friends and all other people who got in contact to say they believed me.” The teenager was stuck on the Mediterranean island for almost five months after claiming she was raped by 12 Israeli tourists in a hotel room in the town of Ayia Napa on 17 July.

She was charged and spent about a month in prison before being granted bail.

The dozen young men and boys, aged between 15 and 20, arrested over the incident were freed after she signed a retraction 10 days later. But she maintains that she had consensual sex with one of them before he pinned her down and raped her with others, a claim they all deny.

The woman said she was forced to change her account under pressure from Cypriot police after hours of questioning alone and without legal representation.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he has raised concerns about her treatment with the Cypriot authorities, after the teenager’s conviction provoked outrage in Cyprus and the UK. After the sentence, he said: “We will be following up on some of the issues in relation to the case. I spoke to the Cypriot foreign minister about that.”

Judge Michalis Papathanasiou told the court he would not be jailing the teenager, despite insisting that all the evidence suggested she was guilty. Sentencing, he told Famagusta District Court: “Her psychological state, her youth, that she has been away from her family, her friends and academic studies this year … this has led me to decide to give her a second chance and suspend the sentence for three years.”

ISRAEL’S EXPORTS TO UK UP FOURFOLD IN DECADE Israeli exports to the UK grew by almost 300 immediate aftermath of Britain’s withdrawal percent over the past decade, according to offi- from the EU. The FTA said the value of all Israeli exports, including products and services, cial figures published this week.

Israel’s Foreign Trade Administration (FTA) to all countries in 2019 was 4.5 percent higher said the country’s overall exports increased by than in 2018, with high-tech exports leading the almost 70 percent, but exports to the Britain charge. Exports to China had now increased five-fold; other important markets include had grown by 286 percent since 2010.

The UK government said last year that bilat- Turkey, Brazil, Chile, Taiwan, and Japan. eral trade with Israel was about £4 billion annually, with particular business in medicines, technology and defence.

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9 January 2020

www.jewishnews.co.uk

World News / Soleimani assassination

Israeli embassies on high alert for Iranian revenge Israeli embassies around the world heightened security this week after the killing of Qasem Soleimani, responsible for arming Israel’s enemies.

Soleimani, who led the Quds Force, which carries out Iranian military and intelligence operations abroad, was killed in Baghdad on 3 January by an American drone strike ordered by Donald Trump.

Although Trump’s team has since criticised European allies for their lack of support, Benjamin Netanyahu told his security cabinet on Monday that it was Trump’s decision to kill the general, not Israel’s.

The Israeli prime minister surprised observers by distancing himself so emphatically from his top ally, saying: “The assassination of Soleimani isn’t an Israeli event but an American event… We were not involved and should not be dragged into it.”

Military Intelligence chief Major General Herzi Halevi, who heads the IDF Southern Command, reiterated that the killing was “part of a fight between Iran and the US”.

He added that “the assassination has ramifications for us as Israelis… The coming few weeks will be very interesting.”

Trump’s other staunch ally, Saudi Arabia, has been notably

Thousands of people attended the funeral ceremony of Qasem Soleimani

quiet on the killing, with Iraq’s prime minister having earlier said Soleimani had been on his way to give an Iranian response to a Saudi message, with Iraq the intermediary.

Analysts said it was not a question of if Iran would hit back but when and where. Tel Aviv is one option, but most believe that it will be US military interests that are targeted.

Over Monday and Tuesday, huge crowds gathered across Iraq and Iran as Soleimani’s coffin was taken through the streets of cities, including the Iranian capital Tehran.

MASTERMIND OF AMIA BOMB BLAST Brazil’s pro-Israel president welcomed Soleimani’s assassination, accusing the general of having been behind the deadly 1994 attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish centre in Buenos Aires.

Jair Bolsonaro, who is a big admirer of both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, said Soleimani was behind the bombing, which killed 85 people and injured hundreds in the Argentinian capital, despite Hezbollah agents having been accused.

In Israel, political leaders such as Yair Lapid of the Blue and White party have also argued that that Soleimani was the ultimate mastermind of the 1994 atrocity.

A report jointly compiled by America’s FBI in 2003, and accepted by Israel, concluded that the bombing was carried out by Hezbollah, but in 2006 Argentina blamed Iran and filed arrest warrants for Iranian leaders through Interpol.

In 2015, federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead hours before he was due to testify that Argentinian leaders had covered up Iran’s involvement in the AMIA bombing.

Government-appointed experts said that his death was suicide, but overwhelming evidence to the contrary made this untenable and in 2018 it was declared to have been a homicide.

Thousands chanted “Death to America, death to Israel”.

Iran has cancelled its commitments to the nuclear deal.

Since the killing, intelligence operatives have noted sizeable Iranian troop movement. The Iraqi parliament ordered US forces out of the country and Hezbollah promised to cleanse the Middle East of any US military presence.

Soleimani’s successor, his deputy and friend General Esmail Qaani, said the death will “certainly” be avenged. US commanders this week scrambled to shift troops around the

region to protect US bases.

Middle East watchers said Trump’s decision to kill a man his predecessors knew not to would have dire consequences for US influence in the region, and for Israel’s security.

“Rarely has any single tactical move, untethered from any long-range thinking, produced so many potential strategically negative consequences for the US,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In one single decision he has undermined 17 years.” u Editorial comment, p18

WHY SOLEIMANI WAS A PRIME TARGET QASEM SOLEIMANI’S KILLING has brought renewed focus on Iran’s regional strategy, of which he was a principal architect. The origins of this strategy can be traced back to Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003 or even the vicious eight-year Iran–Iraq War, which began in 1980.

Today, we think of Iran’s economy as crippled by sanctions, its people scorched by violence, but the 1980-88 conflict consumed a generation and bred fighters like Soleimani (pictured below with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei), who fought US money and machinery as much as he fought Saddam’s men.

When Saddam’s Iraqi regime fell, Iran immediately set about executing the initial stages of an aggressive “hybrid-warfare strategy” to frustrate US objectives in Iraq while simultaneously reshaping Iraq’s political dynamic to favour Iran.

Militarily, Iran was weak, so avoided direct confrontations with powerful adversaries.

Instead it used unconventional

force and proxies such as Hezbollah. It gave them equipment and training, and oversaw strategy. The lack of any Western strategy, coupled with instability in countries like Iraq, played into Iran’s grand plan.

The collapse of Syria in 2011 provided opportunity for Iran to do as it did in Lebanon, that is intervene and entrench itself in the new order.

Had Iran lost Syria, it would have lost its only state ally in the region, and the logistical infrastructure needed to sustain Hezbollah.

Then, in 2014, Yemen collapsed, providing yet another opportunity for Soleimani. A Saudi-supporting government was kicked out of the Yemeni capital Sana’a by the Houthis, a mountain tribe with a habit of unseating presidents.

Initially cool in Iran, in early 2015 the Houthis blamed Israel for orchestrating terrorist attacks against Houthi civilians which killed hundreds of people.

Iran took that as an invitation.

US now weaker, not stronger

BY DANA ALLIN IISS FELLOW

“The killing of Soleimani is a US event, not an Israeli event, and we should stay out of it.” It is wise not to over-interpret this statement from Benjamin Netanyahu to his security cabinet, but it does convey at least a hint of recognition that maximum conceivable American belligerence against an enemy of Israel is not necessarily and always in Israel’s interest.

Israeli generals, intelligence chiefs and other leading members of the security establishment have understood this much for a long time, which is one reason why they were a lot less enthusiastic than their prime minister about Donald Trump’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal.

Netanyahu was loathe to recognise that abrogation – and Trump’s strategy of “maximum pressure” against Iran – could lead to a war that the US was not really prepared to fight.

For Americans at large, the 21st century’s bitter lesson is that overwhelming military

superiority does not make land wars in the Middle East easy; or even, after two decades of buried blood and treasure, palatable.

Few Israelis will mourn the demise of Qasem Soleimani, whose poisonous anti-Zionism was part of his ruthless, and somewhat successful, expansion of Iran’s regional power. Yet Israelis should also recognise that the narcissistic impulsiveness of their Trumpian champion – more evidently motivated by resentment of his predecessor Barack Obama than a coherent strategy in the Middle East – is making America weaker, not stronger, in the region. It is hard to see that weakening as good for Israel.

There is a range of scenarios, and it does not look promising.

One is an escalation of the US–Iran conflict to a level of destruction that lets the US re-establish a modicum of deterrence.

Another is that Iran avoids direct escalation because it benefits from a more peaceful blowback if Iraq’s parliament and acting government follow through on demanding the departure of American forces. A third is that mediation efforts by France and others lead to some form of diplomacy between

Washington and Iran.

There are other scenarios, some of which include Iran targeting Israel, despite Netanyahu’s expressed desire to stay out of it. What characterises them all is that no successful outcome is conceivable without restoring America’s atrophied – or, more accurately, amputated – diplomatic muscles.

Recall another Middle East crisis: the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.

Nixon leveraged a calculated escalation, warning the Soviets off intervention by placing American nuclear forces on alert.

It worked, but only because of Henry Kissinger’s relentless diplomacy in Moscow, Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem.

The result was a strengthened American position in the Middle East, including the de facto alliance with Egypt, and the eventual peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

Trump, alas, is no Nixon, and his administration contains no Kissingers. This is likely to be Israel’s loss, as well as America’s. u Dr Dana H Allin is Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy and Transatlantic Affairs at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

15

Israeli roles / Suspect charged / Man abused / World News

Bibi quits cabinet roles Multiple charges following indictment for NY suspect Benjamin Netanyahu was this week forced to appoint several new cabinet ministers after being ordered to divest himself of all ministerial roles in the wake of corruption charges.

Netanyahu does not have to resign as prime minister, although questions remain as to whether he will be allowed to form a new government if he wins the mandate to do so in elections on 2 March.

He appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely of his Likud Party as Diaspora Affairs minister; David Bitan of Likud as Agriculture Minister; Deputy Finance Minister Yitzhak Cohen as Construction

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CLUB MAY SUE FANS The owner of Beitar Jerusalem has said he is kicking racism out of the Israeli football club by threatening to sue fans. Moshe Hogeg decided the courts were the best way to deal with supporters who are proud that theirs is the only Israeli club never to have an Arab player.

Divested: Benjamin Netanyahu

Minister; and current Construction Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton of the Kulanu Party as Welfare Minister.

Last week, he appointed Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman as Health Minister in a controversial

BORIS TOON CONTROVERSY After Italian cartoonist Mario Improta posted this illustration on his Twitter account, depicting the EU as Auschwitz and Boris Johnson as an escaping prisoner, Rome’s mayor Virginia Raggi revoked a planned collaboration with him.

move, since Litzman remains under investigation for allegedly blocking the extradition of an accused child abuser.

Bitan also has legal problems.

Police in March recommended he be indicted on multiple corruption charges, including bribery, fraud and money laundering for crimes that took place from 2011 to 2017 during his term as Rishon LeZion deputy mayor and as a Knesset member.

Hotovely said on Sunday she would “work to enhance the ties between Israel and all Jewish communities and denominations of Judaism around the world”.

Alleged Monsey stabber Grafton Thomas was this week indicted on multiple attempted murder charges.

They include six counts of attempted murder in the second degree, three counts of assault in the first degree, three counts of attempted assault in the first degree and two counts of burglary in the first degree.

Thomas, 37, was arrested following the 28 December attack at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg (pictured). He denies stabbing anyone and his family says he suffers from mental illness.

Meanwhile, Josef Neumann, 71, who was wounded in the attack

remains unconscious and on a respirator. Doctors are not optimistic he will regain consciousness, his family said in a statement released by the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council.

If he does partly recover, the doctors say, he is expected to have permanent brain damage that will leave him partially paralysed and speech-impaired.

WOMEN ASSAULT CHASID Two women yelled “F*** you Jew” and “I will kill you Jews” at a Chasidic man in New York and shoved him to the ground when he tried to film their antisemitic tirade.

The 22-year-old victim was approached by the women, aged 24 and 34, in Brooklyn, according to the New York City Police Department.

The 24-year-old woman grabbed the man’s mobile phone and punched him in his throat and the 34-year-

old made antisemitic remarks.

There has been a big increase in the number of violent attacks against Chasidic Jews in the New York area in recent months.

Elsewhere, two men – one of whom was seen holding a knife – threatened a Jewish teenager in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn.

The two men yelled “Hey Jew boy” at the teen, as one pulled out the knife, The New York Post reported.

16

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Special Report / Entering the workplace

Peyot with a pay packet Jenni Frazer on help for Charedim in Israel pursuing a career while preserving their culture Slowly, almost by stealth, the strictlyOrthodox world is changing. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Israel and the vexed question of getting Charedi men into the workplace, something that was previously unthinkable, but is now, gradually, becoming more acceptable.

One man who should know is Rabbi Nechemia Steinberger, a cheerful Jerusalemite who, 10 years ago, aged 25, changed his life. In London to meet supporters of Kemach, the organisation that promotes Charedi employment, Rabbi Steinberger, Kemach’s director of strategic partnerships and development, spoke of the unwritten contract in the yeshiva world that work is not To get a job men need basic maths, and good English, Hebrew and IT skills discussed, that men devote themselves Kemach he was better qualified is to preserve and keep their values,” says Rabbi to Torah study, and that their wives, than most yeshiva students — Steinberger. “And that means that Kemach where possible, are the breadwinners. because he grew up in an English- does everything possible to meet that aim, proThe result of such an approach is that speaking environment. So he had viding the men who approach it with support thousands of Charedi families live in poverty and on benefits. Kemach Rabbi Steinberger one of the four “building blocks” and assurances that they will be able to enter Kemach deems necessary for suc- the job market on their own terms — that is, (Hebrew for flour, from the rabbinic teaching ‘if there is no kemach, there is no cess in finding a job: a basic understanding of without compromising the Charedi way of life.

“What works for Kemach is what works for Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no kemach’) maths, good English and Hebrew, and a facility seeks to change that by helping men to enter with computers. With these basics, Kemach the Charedim. We have one aim, to get as many the workforce, through training and educa- has placed 20,000 Charedim into the Israeli job strictly Orthodox into work as possible. So we provide viable options: and we tell them, you market in the past 10 years. tional programmes.

“The main goal of the Charedi community can be a plumber or an electrician, or you can be When Rabbi Steinberger first approached

a rocket scientist. It’s up to them. But we don’t try to change them: and we ensure, right from the start, to get approval from the rabbis”.

There are said to be around 1.2million Charedim in Israel, with an average of seven children per household. Kemach estimates that more than half of the children are growing up beneath the poverty threshold.

Increasingly, the men are concluding that they cannot provide for their families by living on benefits. And the incentive cuts both ways, says Rabbi Steinberger. “Official statistics say that for every Charedi who goes out to work, the state saves 240,000 shekels (£51,600) per person, per year.” This is because once the man is off benefits and paying taxes, he is making an improved contribution to society.

In the years since its founding in 2007 — spearheaded by British philanthropist Leo Noe and supported in Israel by UJIA — Kemach has encouraged hundreds of men, and, latterly, women, to enter the workplace. There have been some singular successes including a Charedi airline pilot, a chef, law graduates and medical students. One of the best known is Yehuda Sabiner, who has just completed his training at the Technion medical school. There is even a Charedi man who runs a horse farm, to provide riding for the disabled courses.

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17

New York unity / Mayflower exhibit / Japanese hero / Diaspora News

25,000 join rally against antisemitism in New York Up to 25,000 Americans braved the cold winter’s air on Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday to protest against a rise in antisemitism in and around New York.

Recent attacks on Jews, including a multiple stabbing at a rabbi’s home in the suburb of Monsey, and a deadly shooting in a Jersey City kosher store, led to calls for the rally, which was endorsed by The New York Times.

The rally was supported by several high-profile Jewish organisations, including UJA-Federation of New York, the local Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Despite the rally being held to oppose antisemitism, observers noted that there were still signs of partisanship from the crowd, with some protesters holding placards accusing Donald Trump of fomenting Jew hate, while others accused Democrats Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib of doing the same.

“Too many are pointing fingers at the other, at the other community, the other political party,” said Eric Goldstein, who heads UJA-Federation of New York.

“We need to call out inappropriate conduct in our own communities, in

Your weekly digest of stories from the international press UKRAINE

UNITED STATES

FRANCE

NORTH MACEDONIA

Ukrainian Jews have added spice to their fundraising by opening the country’s first zhug factory, making the spicy green Yemenite sauce that serves as a common topping for hummus. It was opened by the Odessa branch of Hesed, a local Jewish charity. Its leader Anatoliy Kesselman said: ‘Zhug is doing well because four, five years ago the average, nonJewish person in Odessa had no idea what hummus is.’

People in New York attended a solidarity march against antisemitism

our own parties.”

The rally was attended by Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish, but not

by New York’s Orthodox community, representatives of which suggested they had not been asked.

Cuomo said he would introduce a bill that would define antisemitism as

LITHUANIA TO MARK YEAR OF THE ‘JAPANESE SCHINDLER’ Lithuania’s government has declared 2020 “the year of Chiune Sugihara”, a Japanese envoy who saved 6,000 Lithuanian Jews while serving as a diplomat in Europe during the Second World War. The young Sugihara defied orders and issued thousands of visas over six weeks in 1940, helping Jewish refugees travel to Japan to escape the Holocaust.

After the war, he returned home and became a trader based in a quiet coastal town, never talking about what he had done. It was only shortly before he died in 1984 that his family found out, when Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations.

Now, 80 years after he defied Tokyo to issue “visas for life” to Jews who sought his help, the country to

WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF

which he was posted is honouring his heroic actions.

The official programme includes an exhibition of photographs in Lithuania’s parliament, plus concerts, conferences, films, postage stamps and a monument erected in Kaunas, the former capital, where Sugihara was posted in 1939.

Declassified records show that his posting was in part as a spy, since he was charged with gathering intelligence on Nazi intentions. He did not expect hundreds of refugees to flock to the consulate in June 1940 to seek his help.

He worked 18-hour days over a six-week period, writing out by hand 2,139 transit visas, a record only discovered years later in the archives of Japan’s foreign ministry.

“domestic terrorism” in law.

“Racism and antisemitism is antiAmerican and we have to remember that,” he said.

“It is ignorant of our history because to know the history of the Jewish community is to love and appreciate the Jewish community… New York would not be New York without the Jewish community.”

The French are known for the finesse in the kitchen, but it was an Israeli chef working in Paris who took the accolades last week. Assaf Granit from Shabour, which opened only three months ago, took the bows after it was named ‘best restaurant’ in the French capital by Le Figaro’s authoritative gastronomic guide Le Figaroscope.

Public schools in Chicago are bucking the national trend with an increase in Hebrew classes, according to newlyreleased figures. Around 1,400 students in the city are learning the language, almost half of them in public schools. Only 22 American public schools teach Hebrew, of which nine are in ‘the windy city’.

North Macedonia has named its first Jewish cabinet minister, a year after changing its name from Macedonia. Rasela Mizrahi, one of only 200 Jews in the country, becomes minister of labour and social policy after snap elections last Friday. Her centre-right party VMRO-DPMNE has, however, been termed ‘fascist’ by opponents.

Exhibit opens on ‘Israeli Mayflower’ An exhibition showcasing the ship that took hundreds of Russianspeaking Jews to Israel has been opened 100 years after it docked in the port of Jaffa.

The Ruslan, which carried 600 Jewish refugees from Odessa fleeing persecution, has been dubbed the Israeli ‘Mayflower’ after the ship that took English Puritans from Plymouth to the New World across the Atlantic in 1620.

A new exhibition commemorating the story of the ship that became a symbol of the Third Aliyah opened late last month at the Israel Museum, marking 100 years since her voyage and the establishment of the Central Zionist Archives.

The exhibition, called And the Ship Sails On: Cultural Pioneers aboard the Ruslan was established with support from the Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG) and includes details of its notable passengers’ later achievements in art, film, photography and literature.

The Ruslan anchors at the port of Istanbul in 1919

Among those disembarking at Jaffa on 19 December 1919 were Zionist ideologues, intellectuals, artists, poets, leaders and activists who went on to influence the early development of Israeli society, culture and art.

“The unique combination of an art exhibition alongside historical documents allows a rare glimpse into the formative processes of a

significant part of Israeli art and culture in pre-state times,” said the museum’s Professor Ido Bruno.

GPG president and chief executive Ilia Salita said the journey of the Ruslan “signifies the renewal of the Jewish nation on the path to independence and the transfer of the cultural and intellectual treasure of the Jews of the decaying Russian Empire, from Odessa to Israel”.

Wild Jewish West portrayed in new film

Chiune Sugihara defied orders to help Jewish refugees

A documentary due out this year is set to raise awareness about a littleknown side of American history: Jewish cowboys.

Historians behind the project have shown how there was a very successful move to get 75,000 Yiddishspeaking Jews based in and around New York to resettle “out west”, but that their adventures were over-

looked by American history.

Jews of the Wild West, by director Amanda Kinsey, shows how thousands of families went from Europe’s shtetls to filthy New York tenement buildings to the new frontier.

“Their stories were sidelined for social, political and economic reasons, but they were visionaries who saw the opportunity, and who

were rooted in family and tradition,” said Kinsey.

Among those to set their sights on new horizons was Bavarian-born Levi Strauss, who was leader of the nascent Jewish community of San Francisco in the mid-19th century when a tailor approached him with the idea of putting rivets in trousers, to cut down on wear and tear.

18

Jewish News 9 January 2020

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Editorial comment and letters

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS

First among equals?

British Jews watching political events unfold in Israel will feel naturally uneasy at the sight of an Israeli prime minister indicted on serious corruption charges asking parliamentary friends to grant him legal immunity.

The state of Israel is a beacon of democracy in the region in part because its checks and balances remain intact, because the judiciary remains independent, and because the whole set-up means no-one is above the law.

The early drafters of that law recognised that political immunity may sometimes be needed to protect against political persecution. It was never intended to help a powerful sitting prime minister avoid a corruption trial.

If Netanyahu is innocent, his lawyers will argue his case in court and win, and if he is not compelled to resign having been indicted, he should be free to continue to lead Israel for as long as Israelis want him to.

But to get his political friends to shield him from justice would be a devastating blow to the argument we all regularly make, and shatter a founding principle of a state we believe in – that everyone is equal before the law.

E

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I was truly honoured and humbled to have We all say... read all the most kind and generous tributes that were paid to me on the occasion of my 90th birthday.

I am writing to thank Jewish News and each and every one of the contributors most sincerely.

As we start the next decade of the 21st century, 2020 will mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the final liberation of the concentration camps. Who would have believed that 75 years later, we would still be facing the 90 messages for 90 years Pages scourge of antisemitism, racism and dis18-20 crimination that continue to blight our modern the ideals of a more tolerant society that we society? have all been working towards.

Your gracious and most flattering words Sir Ben Helfgott His N2 c report urges Christians to ‘repent’ will give me even greater incentive to pursue tori for antisemitism

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A landmark Church of England report Jews to Christianity. calling on Christians to “repent” The report, published today, urges for hisMirvis’s “substantial misgivings” addresses historical Christian toric antisemitism and reset persecution remorse over the role of Christians Jewish- were voiced in his ‘afterword’ of Jews, antisemitism from Palestinian in the Christian relations received a mixed supin centuries of antisemitism and reac- once-in-a-generation report porters, attitudes towards Israel, and from tion from Jewish leaders this week, evangecalls on Christians to “repent” for writes the Church’s influential lism, but does not cut Church ties Faith and Jack Mendel. to groups past sins and challenge attitudes Order Commission (FOC), titled such as ‘Jews for Jesus.’

God’s While Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis that provided a “fertile seed-bed for wel- Unfailing Word, which was In an incisive approved by retort Mirvis recalled how, comed the report in the main, murderous antisemitism”, conhe simulta- the Mirvis’s friend in 2015, the Vatican committed the Justin Welby, neously launched a blistering reproach Catholic tributing to the Holocaust. Church of the Archbishop of Canterbury to “neither conduct nor support Anglican leaders for failing to disavow any their and the Church’s most senior The document, institutional mission Archbishop of Canterbury institution with those who still seek work specifically targeted to convert bishop. three years in at Jews” but that the Church Justin Welby of England had the making, also Continued on page 11

CHERRY PICKING THE CHEER Brian Gordon’s “Cheerful vision for 2020” (Jewish News, 3 January) stated that “recent governments have been excellent on almost every issue relating to Jews and Israel”. I take issue with him on this. Surely, he must be aware that on most of the UN resolutions against Israel, the UK Government either supports them, or has abstained, but rarely voted against the anti-Israel bias.

It has, also, allowed antisemitic demonstrations under the guise of anti-Israel demos, such as the Al Quds to continue. He seems to have forgotten this. However, as he wrote this in his capacity as a politician – he signed off as Cllr Brian Gordon rather than in a personal capacity, I forgive him. Politicians are selective with their memory.

Mike Hinden Harrow

VILE VIEWS TRICKLE DOWN

“Actually Sam, I just daubed a few anti-Semitic messages on the walls myself and the council have repainted my whole shop-front!”

Last week’s antisemitic graffiti in north London shows how the vile views around Jeremy Corbyn permeate down to the mindless and ignorant bigots who attack innocent people on the streets and

in their homes. Never has a party leader together with his malignant cohorts enabled such a programme of hatred among party supporters.

Simon Weinberg Dorset

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The prospect of a nuclear Iran breathing down Israel’s neck has been thrown back into sharp focus since the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the puppet master behind the Islamic republic’s malign influence across the Middle East.

His fingerprints are engraved on sickening Iranian state-sponsored murders on foreign soil going back almost 30 years to the 1994 bomb attack on the Israeli Argentine Jewish centre in Buenos Aires.

By the time of his killing, Soleimani had used Iranian sinister influence to pervert the course of conflicts in countries across the region. The ingredients of Iran’s success have been transnational Shia militancy, fighting capability and an ability to confront different enemies on different battlefields simultaneously.

Whether an attack was on the seas, from the air or in cyberspace, Soleimani was never far behind, pulling strings, waving the conductor’s wand, growing as Iran’s sinister extraterritorial influence grew.

Whoever succeeds him will inherit a terrifying strategical blueprint that stretches right across the Middle East to Israel’s front door.

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9 January 2020 Jewish News

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Editorial comment and letters

HOW TO MARK ELECTION? Does anyone agree that the 2019 election result should be annually celebrated publicly by British Jews, with prayers of thanksgiving said in shul on the day, as well as on the Shabbat beforehand, and a celebratory festive meal?

The only question would be, does one celebrate the day of the election itself (12 December) or the day of the result (13 December).

On the one hand, the event happened through actions performed on polling day.

On the other, the joy only erupted once the result was known the next day. Celebrating the latter would also have the benefit of debunking superstition, as it was Friday 13th. But

then, being on one of the shortest winter erev Shabbats, it might prove “tirchah deTzibbur” – a burden on the congregation – to have to conduct an extra Yom Tov meal while preparing for Shabbat. It could be resolved by saying that the Jewish day always starts the night before, so we can “bring in” this Yom Tov on the night of 12th – as the results started to come in. Or maybe we could have a 2-day Yom Tov, as it is very much “chutz la’aretz”.

Either way, let’s never forget the miracle of deliverance that took place in Britain 2019.

Max Witriol By email

Nominate unsung leaders Anyone reading the New Year Honours List would be struck by the number of Holocaust survivors duly recognised. This is testament to the remarkable resilience and bravery of so many survivors in our community. Despite unimaginable trauma, they have dedicated themselves to teaching young people about where hatred and racism can lead. Our community and country are rightly proud of their service ensuring the Shoah is never forgotten.

We should also reflect on the amazing

number of people who lead lives dedicated to the benefit of others. So many leaders, educators, rabbis, care workers and philanthropists are doing extraordinary work in the Jewish community. It is is important those acts of kindness that do not garner public attention are recognised within our national honours system. We should nominate all those remarkable people in our community.

Shimon Cohen N2

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Opinion

Rape case Israelis show sickening entitlement JENNI FRAZER

I

t’s a hop and a skip from Tel Aviv to Larnaca, Cyprus, and then a bus ride to Ayia Napa, the holiday resort of choice for teenagers from all over Europe.

For a scarcely noticeable 40 euros a night, it’s possible to check in to the cheapest, crummiest accommodation, complete with stained floors, barely clean bedlinen, and open doors to every room, all the better to drink and party in.

And in this hormone – and alcohol – filled atmosphere, last summer, a British teenager says she was raped by a group of 12 Israelis, filmed by them, held down by them, while one after the other entered room 723 of her hotel.

Last week, the young woman was found guilty of the crime of “public mischief” by first claiming rape and then retracting her statement. She and her lawyers from the campaign group Justice Abroad say that the Cypriot police forced her to withdraw her allegation.

Whatever happens this week, the case raises more questions than answers, not least in the extraordinary and surely indefensible behaviour of the Israelis.

Twelve of them were arrested initially and then released, returning to Tel Aviv to cavort about the airport with their families, whooping and cheering, wearing white kippot and dancing under a hail of confetti. These were the “heroes” of Ayia Napa, never properly questioned by the Cyprus police and, at a minimum, not even obliged to take part in a line-up so that they might be identified – or not – by their British accuser.

None of the young men – who apparently include a professional footballer – has expressed any remorse about what went on in Cyprus last July.

Instead, they have exhibited a somewhat sickening air of entitlement and victimhood.

One of the arrested Israelis, Yona Golub, even gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which he says he is going to take the British woman to court for compensation, saying she has “turned his life into a nightmare… we deserve

❝

NONE OF THE YOUNG MEN HAS EXPRESSED ANY REMORSE ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN CYPRUS LAST JULY compensation for what we went through.

They need to put her in prison”. He’s not sure, incidentally, about how much he’s claiming, just that she should be imprisoned first and then the money can be worked out later. It’s almost laughable, if it weren’t so awful.

A number of theories have been advanced as to quite why the Cyprus police were so anxious to have the British woman retract her statement about the rape: some say it is because Ayia Napa is so dependent on the vast numbers of sun, sangria and sex tourists that they can’t afford to have such

an allegation associated with the resort.

Others say the political pressure comes from higher up. Observant readers may have noticed that last week, before cutting short his break to deal with the fall-out from the Soleimani assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed a three-way energy deal with the governments of Greece and Cyprus, for Israeli gas to be delivered to Europe via an undersea pipeline. What could possibly put the mockers on such an arrangement? Twelve Israeli men on trial in Cyprus is a credible bet.

This is a disgusting case and Israel’s government would do well to consider its implications. A good start would be to hold its own investigation into what the Israeli men did or did not do; and perhaps to limit their career options in the army until such an inquiry has been concluded.

At the very least, it might be time to make pre-army trips to places such as Ayia Napa unaffordable, even for privileged Israeli teens. And a little humility wouldn’t go amiss, either.

If you care about Jews in Labour, join the fight PETER MASON

NATIONAL SECRETARY, JEWISH LABOUR MOVEMENT

T

he Labour Party will not be led by Jeremy Corbyn after 4 April. But the departure of the beleaguered leader, who has decided to remain in post despite the worse election result since 1935, may not mark the end of the party’s antisemitism crisis.

As the party now turns to select a new leadership team, legitimate questions will undoubtedly be raised with each of the candidates over how they intend combatting the culture of antisemitism, bullying and harassment that became one of the distressing, disappointing and avoidable hallmarks of Corbynism.

The ongoing investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission into unlawful discrimination against Jews inside the party will be one of the first major events, alongside local elections in May, that the new leader will be forced to contend with.

Their response will likely set the tone for the coming years, and their willingness to take the kind of decisive radical action a

pivotal moment in British politics.

In order to get the top job, MPs who throw their names into consideration will need to secure the support of Labour Party members as well as affiliated supporters; people who are involved in their trade unions and organisations tied to the party like the Jewish Labour Movement.

Herein lies their dilemma. While the majority of Labour members are good and decent people, it seems denial and diminishing the experience of Jewish members has been mainstreamed within the culture of the party.

Many of those accused of disgraceful behaviour, as revealed during the election remain as members, having been handed

❝

MANY OF THOSE ACCUSED OF VILE BEHAVIOUR HAVE BEEN LET OFF THE HOOK ALLTOGETHER

warnings or let off the hook altogether.

With the leadership election now underway the briefest post-election period of reflection has given way to some doubling down on the status quo.

Just in the last few days, both senior officials and leadership candidates have attempted to paint Corbyn as the true victim of Labour antisemitism, of grand conspiracy of media smears and not the calamitous chain of events and inaction each of them have played their part in presiding over.

Rather than remorse, the reaction is one of vindictiveness with threats of mass sackings of staff as retribution for whistleblowing. The demands for loyalty and unity once again seem to drown out calls for solidarity.

Courageous leadership candidates with a shot at winning may well set out their agenda on tackling anti-Jewish racism.

The risk is that anyone who may dare to do so will dampen their chances of success amongst a membership radicalised against hearing and accepting some hard truths about the state of our party.

For Jews on the left, once the overwhelming majority of our community over the last century, this could present yet

another three months of disempowering glumness that came to define many an experience of the general election, and deepen a growing schism.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In the past few days, nearly 1,000 new members have joined the ranks of the Jewish Labour Movement. For our community this is an expression of mass defiance and hope in one. Hope that a new leadership will have the confidence take the action required and defiance against those who haven’t and won’t.

A small window still exists. Anyone who joins JLM by 20 January, and registers as an affiliated supporter with Labour will get a vote in the leadership election.

If the past few years of dealing with antisemitism in Labour and on the left has taught us anything, whether inside the party or in Parliament Square, it is that action only ever happens when we force it.

If you care about the future of Labour, the community and our country, don’t sit this fight out.

It’s too important.  You can join JLM and vote in the leadership election at: jewishlabour. uk/membership

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

21

Opinion

On our hands and knees we must beg forgiveness EMILY THORNBERRY MP SHADOW FOREIGN SECRETARY

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hen an expert looks into a problem you have – whether it’s a doctor, a mechanic or a plumber – you take their advice and follow it without thinking twice.

So when the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), and imminently the Equalities and Human Rights Commission give the Labour Party specific recommendations about how we need to root out the poison of antisemitism from our movement, our starting point must not be to dispute their proposals but to ensure that every single one is implemented unless we can rationally explain why not.

If I’m elected Labour leader, I hope there will be very few recommendations we can’t take on. But as a veteran of the bitter struggle inside the shadow cabinet to get us to endorse the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, and all its examples, I know how hard these fights can be.

However, even that didn’t prepare me for the battle I had over Labour’s 2019 manifesto, where the advisers around Jeremy Corbyn proposed to amend the language we had used in the 2017 version to remove the condemnation of rocket and terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups against Israel, while rightly continuing to condemn the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and the blockade of Gaza.

When I repeatedly complained that this was utterly unacceptable, I was told by Jeremy’s office that they thought this was “very balanced considering the considerable imbalance in the conflict”. Disgustingly, attacks on Israeli civilians were being deliberately dismissed in a way that would never have been tolerated of attacks on any civilians in any other country around the world.

At Labour’s Clause V meeting to agree the manifesto, I finally won the argument, and succeeded in reverting the proposed text to the 2017 language, but the whole process left me deeply disturbed at the mentality of the advisers around Jeremy.

And to answer what I call the [Daily Mail columnist] Dan Hodges question – why did you not simply resign in protest at what you saw and experienced – I can only answer that it was because of moments like that, where I wanted a shadow foreign secretary in place to fight and ultimately win these arguments.

As for Jeremy, based on his reaction at the meeting, I think he knew nothing about the row, even though his advisers had invoked his name several times beforehand when pressuring me to drop my objections, something I believe they frequently did without his knowledge.

If I was leader, I would simply not have

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NO MORE SUSPENSIONS OR TRAINING SESSIONS, I WOULD JUST KICK THESE SCUMBAGS OUT OF OUR PARTY, THE WAY WE SHOULD HAVE DONE that. Instead, driving antisemitism out of Labour would be my most urgent and immediate priority. No more suspensions, training sessions, or forgiveness, I would just kick these scumbags out of our party, the way we should have done long before now.

I stood up for the foreign policy debate at our party conference in 2018 in Liverpool, following two anti-Israeli speeches by delegates, with a sea of Palestinian flags being waved in response, and a BBC journalist who had the draft of my speech said to one of my team: “She can’t say all this now.”

But I got up on that stage and said loud and clear that you could criticise the Israeli government all you want, especially Netanyahu’s, but if you use that as a cloak for your despicable hatred of Jewish people or your desire to destroy the state of Israel, then you have to be kicked out of our party.

And that is exactly the attitude I’d take as leader.

In practical terms, we need to act on the recommendations from the EHRC, the JLM and the BOD. And if he’s still willing to do so, I’d ask Charlie Falconer to lead on all those changes, as well as examining our own internal procedures himself.

But we also need Labour’s new leader to call this evil out whenever we see it, and lead from the front in taking it on.

I’ve done that myself, reporting many so-called Labour members who’ve repeated antisemitic tropes, and standing up against the online hate mobs attacking Jewish people simply for standing up against prejudice.

But ultimately, we have a long, long road to rebuild trust with the Jewish community. We need to start by apologising to our Jewish brothers and sisters for the hurt and fear that they’ve been caused at the hands of the sickening, despicable people who call themselves part of the Labour movement but betray our party’s values and history with their every insidious remark.

And we then need to get down on our hands and knees to the Jewish community and ask them for forgiveness and a fresh start. I know that this will be a long road, but we need to take the first step, and prove that we mean it.

I hope I can lead us on that path.

Emily Thornberry with Momentum chief Jon Lansman at Limmud in December 2018

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Opinion

Israeli prosecutors are wrong to indict the PM DAVID WOLCHOVER AUTHOR & BARRISTER

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ith Israel in constitutional deadlock and regional instability intensifying, there could not be a more opportune moment for Likud and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party to join forces in a unity government.

Yet with Gantz professing to dismiss collaboration while Benjamin Netanyahu, under indictment for corruption, remains Likud leader a third procrastinating general election in under a year is due in March.

Although the majority in a recent opinion poll opposed granting him immunity, his decisive backing by party members last week endorsed his refusal to step down as prime minister and gave him the confidence to ask the Knesset for immunity. With the Supreme Court deferring a ruling on whether he is eligible to form a government, the impasse is surely set to threaten Israel’s strategic interests.

In pondering whether to indict Netan-

yahu, Attorney-General Avital Mandelblit had eminently sound reasons for declining to prosecute. But a narrowness of vision has disappointingly led him to make the wrong call. A close scrutiny of the allegations reveals they are either tendentious or otherwise susceptible of sensibly innocent explanations. The police may have been impelled to “follow the evidence”, but they have shown a blinkered ignorance of the psychological dynamic involved in the relationship between potentates and acolytes and Mandelblit has been wary of letting them down.

Moreover, most of the allegations are dependent on the evidence of witnesses with

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DOES THE FEARLESS PURSUIT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE ALWAYS TRUMP NATIONAL INTERESTS?

a clear axe to grind or who are otherwise selfconfessed accomplices and wrongdoers. The principle of not enlisting such witnesses was one to which English Common Law used to subscribe before it surrendered to expediency.

Second, these supposed accomplices were mostly lured into confessing their guilt and simultaneously denouncing Netanyahu by the threat of lengthy sentences. Yet the Talmud decrees ein adam meissim atsmo rasha (Sanhedrin 9b), no one shall accuse himself, the origin of the Common Law privilege against self-incrimination. The rule renders confession evidence absolutely inadmissible – even where there has been no compulsion. If the criminal courts in Israel applied strict rabbinic law, with its traditional concern for protective justice, instead of resorting to Anglo-American laxity, Netanyahu would not be facing prosecution.

But perhaps of even greater importance is Mandelblit’s apparent failure to take primary regard of Israel’s national interest. In a wide-ranging interview in Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2018, former State Prosecutor

Moshe Lador spoke of the circumstances in which he brought down Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In the aftermath of the war against Hezbollah in 2006, Omert was conducting crucial peace talks with Syria and the Palestinians that might well have led to a milestone agreement with a far-reaching impact on Syria’s relations with Iran and Russia. It would have benefited not only Israel but the whole region. Ought this not to have stayed Lador’s hand? Absolutely not, he protested. To have refrained from “bothering” the prime minister would have betrayed his prosecutor’s duty and rendered meaningless the principle that everyone is equal before the law.

Lador’s analysis is sadly misconceived, placing the fearless pursuit of criminal justice in a vacuum. To suggest it always trumps considerations of national security is both precious and pompous. His belief that such overarching strategic objectives are irrelevant in guiding state prosecutors is to isolate one element of the public interest from the broader dimension of national survival.

Mandelblit should think again.

Killing of Soleimani was an act of defensive war JEREMY HAVARDI AUTHOR & HISTORIAN

T

he assassination of Qasem Soleimani may turn out to be the defining foreign policy event of the new decade. It is certainly much bigger than the killing of Osama Bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the previous decade. These figures were powerful symbols of decaying terrorist organisations, whereas Suleimani was a major player within, as well as a prominent face of the Iranian state.

He was quite simply the guiding figure and chief architect of Iran’s bid for regional hegemony. More than anyone else, this shadowy figure helped to cement the infrastructure of terror that now convulses the Middle East and which has allowed Iran to assume dominance in four Middle East capitals (Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and Sana’a).

Soleimani, who for more than two decades headed the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, masterminded Iran’s intelligence gathering and covert military operations. The man who The Times dubbed ‘the Machiavelli of the Middle East’ became in effect the chief

strategist of its overseas operational activities. But he was also a blood-stained tyrant.

According to one Iraqi intelligence official, he was the ‘sole authority for Iranian actions in Iraq’.

His Quds Force plotted attacks against US forces in the country, funding and arming the militias who shelled American bases. The weapons he supplied killed an estimated 600 US troops from 2003 to the present, and the attacks he was reportedly planning prior to his death would have killed others.

Without Soleimani’s intervention, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not have survived the civil war that engulfed his country. Assad’s survival now means that Iran has created a Shi’ite crescent of influence that enables it to spread its tentacles of terror across the region.

Soleimani personally aided Hezbollah during the 2006 war and arranged for the transfer of weapons in the years following, helping to make it one of the most formidable armed forces in the region. He sought to create Iranian bases on Israel’s borders from which to launch attacks on it, and also funded Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

All of this enables us to unpick the conven-

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THE ASSASSINATION REPRESENTS A HUGE BLOW TO IRANIAN POWER AND PRESTIGE tional wisdom about this killing, namely that such a dramatic policy was an unwise ‘act of war’ against Iran. The more accurate assessment is that Soleimani was the architect of decades of asymmetric war against the US and its allies. Thus his assassination was a vital means of reasserting American deterrence, of making a clear statement to the Iranian ayatollahs that Tehran could no longer attack its adversaries with impunity.

This was an act of defensive war against a terrorist mastermind who considered himself untouchable. It was also a powerful reminder of the old adage that to defeat terrorist movements you must first sever the head of the snake. As such, this assassination represents an enormous blow to Iranian power and prestige.

But it is also a strategic action with farreaching consequences. Tehran will doubtless retaliate against US interests in Iraq, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. America should be equal to all these threats and not be cowed by Tehran’s belligerence. Iran, like any bullying, rogue regime, thrives more on the appeasement of its opponents than on their strength. As it is, America has vastly greater firepower and any long-term confrontation with the US would only weaken the Islamic Republic.

Iran is already weakened, thanks to crippling US sanctions, severe domestic unrest and the growing resentment that Iranian imperial overreach has bred among citizens of neighbouring states. The US should make it clear any Iranian escalation will be met with the sternest response, a posture that will doubtless be matched by Israel if there is any hint of terrorist action by Hezbollah.

While this sits uneasily with Trump’s desire to bring troops home, he has little choice but to reaffirm US strength. To send mixed signals would certainly be fatal.

For now, we should welcome the death of a terrorist mastermind and hope that it strengthens the position of America and its regional allies for many years to come.

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

23

Community / Scene & Be Seen

1 COUNTRYWIDE TREK

Twenty long distance trekkers raised more than £40,000 to support Emunah’s mental health facility Sarah Ronson Trauma and Crisis Centre in Sderot, in Israel’s western Negev. The group braved the Yam Le Yam Challenge, a trail stretching across the country from the Mediterranean Sea to the Sea of Galilee.

All money raised will go towards the £300,000 the charity says is needed to relocate and refurbish the facility, which supports children and families affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.

And be seen!

The latest news, pictures and social events from across the community

2 MEDIA CAMPAIGN

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks answered the American Jewish Committee’s call for Jews to mark #JewishandProud Day and wear Judaica on 6 January amid rising levels of antisemitism. The ex-Chief Rabbi tweeted a picture of himself holding up a sign marked “Jewish and proud”, adding: “Despite its threats, #antisemitism & anti-Zionism doesn’t define our people. We have been, are, & will always remain, #JewishAndProud. #AmYisraelChai, the Jewish people lives.” The Board of Deputies’ Marie van der Zyl and the Jewish Leadership Council’s Simon Johnson also took part.

Email us at community@thejngroup.com

3 CENTRE FUNDRAISER

People at a Jewish care home in south London paid tribute to former resident Jack Stern in a project inspired by his personal notebooks, filled with advice and aphorisms and passed down to his family. Residents at Nightingale House played musical bingo with nursery children and conveyed their life advice to younger generations in the form of clay tiles, collages and screen printing.

Jack’s granddaughter, Samantha Schneider, said: “When Papa Jack died, he said he was the richest man in the world, but I believe I was the rich one for having him in my life.” Pictured is resident Eve, left, with her artwork.

2

3

Photo by Yakir Zur

4WORDS OF WISDOM

1

Photo: Twitter

Hendon Synagogue played host to Israel’s emergency service at an annual dinner, which raised more than £16,000 for Magen David Adom Hendon UK. The money will go towards the new blood and logistics centre in Ramla, a 5.43-acre facility built to withstand rocket attacks. Guests were entertained by three tenors and Major Rami Sherman spoke of the miraculous rescue of the 1976 hijacked Air France flight 129 at Entebbe.

David Hillel, the chair of the MDA Hendon Committee, said: “I am thrilled to say we are on course to raise our £150,000 pledge towards the centre.”

4

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Scene & Be Seen / Community 5

5 TALMUD STUDY

6

Five women educators spoke at London’s Jewish Vegetarian Society to mark the end of the Daf Yomi, a seven-and-a-half year Talmud study cycle. The event, organised by the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance UK, was among several around the world affiliated with Jerusalem’s Siyum HaShas Hadran event. Organisers said the UK event celebrated the “many thousands of women who are studying and teaching Talmud worldwide”. Pictured are Rabbi Eryn London, Jemma Silvert, Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz and Rachel Lewis.

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7

8

The Goodman family in Hendon, pictured, was among Londoners who spent the winter holidays doing acts of kindness with charity GIFT, including packing food parcels for more than 1,000 people and surprising firefighters with mince pies, doughnuts and mugs decorated by North West London Jewish Day School pupils on Mitzvah Day. GIFT’s Keren Pinhas said: “From children to teens and adults of all ages, it was lovely to see how excited they were to be involved. A week of giving left the family with a great feeling and huge smiles.”

6 HOMELESS HELP 9 ROUND TABLE

IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT WE THINK OF OTHERS WHO MAY BE STRUGGLING OR LONELY

Yavneh College pupils Ollie Warren, 11, and Olivia Waller, 12, raised more than £1,530 for homeless charity Crisis in the lead-up to the festive season by selling raffle tickets at Hair Inc in Borehamwood. Ollie said he is passionate about helping the homeless, to whom he often donates food and drink, while Olivia said: “It’s really important we think of others who may be struggling or lonely.”

7

JOBSEEKER ADVICE

10

Students and recent graduates grappled with the struggles of jobseeking at an event run by employment charity Resource, the Union of Jewish Students and charity ORT UK. Groups were given tasks deployed by recruiters to assess applicants, and entries were scored by industry professionals. “Nothing gets as close to the realities of the recruitment process as events such as this,” said Resource CEO Victoria Sterman.

Photo by Chiko Photography

9

8WINTER KINDNESS

Chai Cancer Care raised its target £1.2 million at a dinner at London’s Roundhouse.

The evening, which ended on a performance of L’Chaim and Stand By Me by the band The Conductors, drew some 750 guests. Chai chairman Louise Hager told them: “A cancer diagnosis ... takes a life that might be considered ordinary or familiar – and changes it forever.”

10LOUNGE L’CHAIM

Jewish Blind & Disabled held a l’chaim to open the newly-refurbished lounge at Frances & Dick James Court in Mill Hill East. Guests included tenants, volunteers, trustees and staff and local residents. The charity’s chief executive Lisa Wimborne and president Malcolm Ozin MBE were joined by United Synagogue chief executive Dr Steve Wilson and Rabbi Bentzi Mann of the Mill Hill East Jewish Community, who gave an address.

Your family announcements Jonathan Darvill celebrated his barmitzvah at Beis Gavriel, Hendon

STEIN ICKY

Photo by Contributor

Twenty five years (January 2, 1995) have passed since I lost my wonderful dad.

Photo by The Photo People

Jake Fortag celebrated his barmitzvah at Chigwell & Hainault Synagogue

Photo by The Photo People

Toby Roukin celebrated his barmitzvah at Chigwell & Hainault Synagogue

Father-in-law to Lynne, grandpa to Natalie and Zoe. May he rest in peace. He is so dearly missed and will never be forgotten.

His only son, Aron.

Have you had a recent simcha?

Send your picture to picturedesk@thejngroup.com

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

25

Theatre / Weekend

A real

High Flyer!

Francine Wolfisz speaks to acrobat Shelli Epstein about returning to her native London in the latest Cirque du Soleil show

W

hen it came to thinking about what she wanted to do in life, Shelli Epstein’s ambitions were always, quite literally, sky high.

After years of showing her prowess in gymnastics, the talented 26-year-old is today a principal performer and Russian swing flyer with the prestigious Cirque du Soleil, which opens its latest show at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday.

Luzia, which runs until March, is described as “a waking dream of Mexico” and explores the cultural and visually vibrant traditions of the country through breathtaking acrobatic performances.

Among them will be Epstein, who plays the lead role of the Running Woman, a character inspired by the Tarahumara, a native Mexican tribe renowned for their long-distance, barefoot running abilities.

As just one of the magical elements of this show, her character metamorphosises on stage into a gigantic monarch butterfly, with spectacular gossamer wings, as a nod to the thousands of monarch butterflies that migrate every year from Mexico to Canada, where Cirque du Soleil was founded 35 years ago.

Arriving on the London stage is particularly special for Epstein, a former pupil of Akiva and JFS, having performed abroad for the past eight years after landing a role straight out of school with the Franco Dragone company, based in Macau.

“At the age of 18, I told my parents I was moving to China to run away with the circus,” laughs Epstein. “I had never been to China, but I had no filter, no fear factor. I just knew so badly that was what I wanted to do and just went with it.”

As for her parents, Janice and Avron, she says her decision “took them by surprise”, but Epstein had since a very young age made no secret about her ambitions to become a circus performer and adds they have always been “fully supportive” of her career.

What is surprising is Epstein’s admission that her path to becoming a professional acrobat started when she was just a few months old.

“I had a lot of energy as a child, so my mum put me in baby gymnastics to release some of that energy – and unfortunately it had the opposite

effect,” she laughs. “I did baby gymnastics from the age of six months, mostly just crawling around, but by age four I was selected for the squad.”

For the next three years, she trained at Hendon Youth Centre, until the family moved for a short period to Israel, where she represented Hapoel Tel Aviv.

When Epstein returned to London, she went back to Hendon, followed by Heathrow Gymnastics Club, before becoming a member of Child’s Hill Gymnastics Display Team.

It was while training in the gym one day that she noticed an audition notice for Franco Dragone and decided there and then to apply.

She speaks fondly of her time in Macau, from 2012 to 2015, as well as in Montreal with Cirque du Soleil, where she has been based since then.

But Epstein admits she was pushed a little outside her comfort zone when she was asked to work on the Russian Swing – something she describes as “one of the most high-risk acts you can do”.

She tells me: “It was one of the disciplines I said I would never do, going from swing to swing.

You have two giant pendulums with a pusher and catcher on both sides. The flyer is on the front of the swing and we fly from our feet, using our legs to land on the other swing. There are mats, but no nets.”

When asked if she ever feels afraid, Epstein says, “most definitely”, but adds: “That’s what drives me. If you don’t have nerves, then you shouldn’t jump. The nerves are there for

my safety. Afterwards I get this amazing adrenaline spike and it feels very special.”

As one of only four women on the team, and the only British-born performer – with the others hailing from Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia – Epstein says she feels “very proud” of herself for conquering the discipline.

Looking ahead to Luzia opening in London, she enthuses that the first time she saw a Cirque du Soleil show was at the Royal Albert Hall aged 11, and returning there as a performer will be “a beautiful full circle moment”.

She adds: “I can’t wait to show London what we have to offer, because I think it’s going to blow everyone away. The show is poetic and uplifting and when I’m on stage, it feels magical.

“As clichéd as it sounds, I really am living my dream.”  Luzia runs at Royal Albert Hall from January 12 until 1 March 2020, www.cirquedusoleil.com

In association with

A look

Inside Torah for Today: Humour and the Holocaust

Travel: Stepping through time in York

Competition: Win tickets to Touching the Void

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Weekend / Entertainment

Worth a Mensch-ion

Timothée Chalamet sent his 4.9million Instagram followers into a spin this week, following reports the Little Women star is tipped to play Bob Dylan in a new biopic about the music icon. Variety reported on Monday that the 24-year-old actor, whose mother is Jewish, is now “in talks” to play Dylan, 78, in the James Mangold directed film, Going Electric, and is apparently taking guitar lessons to prepare for the role. Several high-profile biopics have been made in recent years about the Blowin’ In The Wind singer who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and who famously converted to Christianity in the 1970s.

MUSIC

Off the Top

TV and Broadway veteran Jason Kravits arrives at Crazy Coqs next week with his improvised solo show of music and comedy, Off The Top for a week of live music, comedy and fun – and never the same show twice!

Kravits has appeared on stage and screen for more than 30 years, including roles in The Big Bang Theory, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Kominsky Method and the last episode of Friends. He stars as Rabbi Arthur Grossman alongside Al Pacino (pictured) in the upcoming Amazon Prime drama series, Hunters, about a band of Nazi hunters living in New York in 1977.

Off The Top runs from 13 to 19 January (excluding Tuesday and Wednesday), 7pm, at Crazy Coqs, Sherwood Street, www.liveatzedel.com

TELEVISION Death at the Mansion In 2011, Rebecca Zahau, the girlfriend of Jewish billionaire and pharmaceutical mogul Jonah Shacknai was found hanging, having been bound and gagged, in the courtyard of his Californian mansion.

Tragically, her death came just days after his six-year-old son suffered a fatal accident while under Rebecca’s care. An investigation after Rebecca’s death ruled she had taken her own life, but a captivating new four-part series follows an elite team of investigators as they take another look at what really happened that night.

Death at the Mansion airs on Sunday, 12 January, 9pm on Sky Crime and Now TV

THEATRE RAGS The Musical

The heart-warming tale of a group of Jewish immigrants who arrive in America to start a new life is explored in RAGS The Musical, Musical opening at Park Theatre this week.

Fresh from Ellis Island, a young mother and her son search for a new life and a sense of home as the 20th century beckons.

The streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1910 may not be paved with gold, but they echo with the music of opportunity, optimism and hope.

With a score by the songwriters of Wicked and Annie and the book-writer of Fiddler on the Roof, this sweeping saga of America’s immigrant past stars Carolyn Maitland, Dave Willetts and former EastEnders actor Sam Attwater.

Rags The Musical runs at Park Theatre from today until 9 February, www.parktheatre.co.uk

FILM

Uncut Gems (15) Brothers Josh and Benny Safdie have earned serious acclaim for their gritty indie works that probe the New York City underworld, including Heaven Knows What (2014), about a homeless heroin addict, and Good Time (2017), which stars Robert Pattinson as a bank robber.

Their latest and sixth collaboration, Uncut Gems, is also possibly their most Jewish.

Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, an unscrupulous jeweller in New York’s extremely Jewish Diamond District. Howard’s marriage to Dinah, played with steely resolve by Idina Menzel, is in tatters after his affair with a young employee in his shop and his debilitating gambling problem. He pools money he makes from sales and under-the-table deals to bet impulsively on NBA games, and is in debt to the kinds of characters to whom no one wants to be indebted.

The film is a frantically paced freight train of suspense and emotion capped off with a bombshell ending. It’s also full of nuanced underlying commentary on consumerism, the downsides of international trade, addiction, family life and even basketball.

The film also deeply explores modern Jewish identity. Like the Safdies, who are distant relatives of the famed architect Moshe Safdie, Howard is part of a tight-knit Syrian Jewish clan rooted in New York City. While he fits in comfortably among the other Jews of the Diamond District, he is still a proud outsider to the wider world of wealth with which he regularly interacts. His Jewishness defines him to that world – to Garnett and his posse, he’s a “crazy Jew”, not a crazy jeweller.

Through it all, Sandler is uncannily good. He deploys a subtle but idiosyncratic ethnic New York accent. He oozes an eagerness to please his many clients and the people to whom he owes money – and explodes with frustration when conflict caves in on him. Sandler not only keeps up with the film’s frenetic, disorienting pace – he pushes it forward.

The now 53-year-old actor has been great in dramatic form before, perhaps most notably in The Meyerowitz Stories. But this is a new level for Sandler, an intense character study that ranks alongside other Oscar-winning performances from years past. Review by Gabe Friedman Uncut Gems (15) is in selected cinemas from Friday

Coming soon

Fauda, Series 3 While UK audiences may have to wait a little longer, Israeli fans of hit drama Fauda couldn’t get enough of the first episode of series three – viewing it a million times in the first 48 hours after it aired.

The Israeli drama, in Hebrew and Arabic, received a 12.6 percent share of viewers during its debut last Thursday night, according to broadcaster YES.

Fauda focuses on a commando unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) whose members embed themselves in the Palestinian community, gathering intelligence and preventing terror attacks.

Netflix aired its first two seasons with English subtitles. The third will be aired in the coming months, with the focus shifted to Gaza. Creator Avi Issacharoff and actor Lior Raz, who stars in the show, both served in the IDF unit depicted.

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

27

Travel / Weekend Clifford’s Tower

Left: Enjoying the Harry Potter theme in The Shambles.

Above: At Clifford’s Tower

A YORK through time Francine Wolfisz takes an idyllic journey through the centuries in one of England’s most storied cities

O

ver in one corner, we saw a bearded man hard at work, turning the lathe and carving out wood, while a cobbler sewed a new pair of shoes. We heard children giggling playing games in the street and elsewhere, long-haired ginger pigs squealed and snorted as they tucked into the day’s leftovers. There was even a couple arguing over what to eat for dinner.

Had it not been for the ancient clothing, long beards, old Norse accents – and distinctively unsavoury smell of sewage – one could have imagined these scenes anywhere, but in fact we were in 10th century York, having been transported back in time thanks to the fantastically interactive ride at the city’s Jorvik Viking Centre.

Our youngsters were in their element, gawking at the 22 animatronic characters on display, the more-than-realistic rats, the fantastical Viking witch doctor chanting incantations and their favourite – the man looking for a bit of peace and quiet on the privy.

Each scene captures the reality of Viking life in ancient Britain and is based on the multitude of 1,000-year-old finds unearthed around York over the years, including – much to the children’s delight – a fossilised human poo.

For youngsters wanting to have a go at unearthing their own buried treasures, walk on over to DIG, located inside St Saviour’s Church, where they can find out everything about becoming an archaeologist and excavate parts of a Roman fortress, Viking city, medieval burial site and Victorian workers’ cottages.

But York’s fascinating past isn’t just to be found here. In

Robotic models on display at the Jorvik Viking Centre

fact, there’s much to discover everywhere you walk in this place known as Eboracum to the Romans and Eoforwick to the Saxons, where the 7th century architecture of York Minster mingles seamlessly with smart-fronted Georgian townhouses, the Victorian rail station and the impressive medieval city walls.

Even our accommodation for the weekend – The Grange Hotel – is reminiscent of a bygone era inside a beautifullypreserved, Grade II listed building built originally in 1830 and located in York’s affluent Bootham.

As we enter the boutique, four-star hotel – which is also dog friendly – we glanced upon the grand sweeping staircase leading from the chic lobby to 41 en-suite rooms and the luxurious Regency-style décor.

Our junior suite room is impressive, with a comfy, king-size bed for the adults and a sofa and extra bed in the lounge for our children. The en-suite bathroom is generously-sized, decked out with White Company toiletries and underfloor heating.

The hotel also features The Ivy Brasserie, awarded 2 Rosettes, which offers a wide range of fine dining options, including vegetarian. For more family-friendly dinner options, there are plenty of restaurants just a few minutes’ walk away in the city centre.

A nice touch was a map handed on arrival to the children to follow in the steps (or paw prints) of the hotel’s resident pooch, Buster, which takes in some of the most iconic sights around York.

After marking all the places off, they happily skipped off to the lobby and were rewarded with their very own Buster cuddly toy to take home with them. Now that’s customer service!

Next on our itinerary was a visit to Clifford’s Tower, located just over a mile away from our hotel. The tower is all that remains of a castle originally built in 1068 by William The Conqueror, but which burnt down during one of York’s darkest moments: the massacre of 150 Jews in 1190.

Numerous accounts detail the anti-Jewish feeling in England during the 12th century that led to that fateful day. According to one account, a violent mob began looting the homes of York’s Jewish residents and caused them to seek protection from the ‘keeper of the King’s Tower’ inside the castle.

But relations between the Jews and the keeper broke down and the mob arrived at the castle, pelting the besieged Jews with stones taken from the castle walls.

Rather than waiting to be murdered or forcibly baptised, they took the tragic decision to set fire to their possessions and for the father of each family to kill his wife and children, before taking

his own life.

We climb the 110 steep steps to the top of the tower and take in the magnificent panorama of York, contemplating how just over 800 years on, life is thankfully very different for Jewish families living here.

Wanting to explore more of the city from a different perspective, we make our way over to Lendal Bridge on the River Ouse and hop on board a tourist boat operated by City Cruises York.

Our 45-minute round-trip takes us along York’s waterways, past the city’s National Railway Museum, which is home to more than 100 engines and the only Shinkansen Bullet on display outside of Japan, past the famous racecourse and the site of the old Terry’s chocolate factory, which alongside Rowntree’s, put York firmly on the map as a pioneer in the confectionary industry.

We also sail past St Peter’s School in Bootham, where we learn that every 5 November, the burning of a Guy Fawkes effigy is banned – an understandable decision, given Fawkes was an old boy of the school!

Tourists today can also visit the house where his parents lived and where the man behind the infamous Gunpowder Plot is said to have been born, located in Stonegate.

The boutique four-star Grange Hotel in York

Our weekend visit is rounded off with a trip to The Shambles, the most famous of all of York’s snickelways and ginnels – or extremely narrow streets, as we might call them. Once home to medieval butchers’ shops, the streets were kept purposely narrow to keep the meat out of direct sunlight and indeed, at certain points along the road you can actually shake hands with someone in a house opposite, from the upstairs windows.

Today The Shambles is filled with shops selling antiques, jewellery and curiosities – and if the streets look vaguely familiar that might be because they are said to have inspired set designers from the Harry Potter films in creating Diagon Alley.

Fully embracing that connection, The Shambles is now home to no fewer than four Harry Potter-themed shops, including The Potions Cauldron, an old-fashioned apothecary offering specially-concocted drinks, such as Serpent’s Venom Poison, Elixir of Love and Basilisk Blood.

For die-hard fans, The Shop That Must Not Be Named is also well worth a visit. It certainly provided an enchanting end to an already magical city.

FRANCINE’S TRAVEL TIPS Francine and her family stayed at The Grange Hotel, where rates start from £210 per night, for a double room on a B&B basis. To book, visit www.grangehotel.co.uk or call 01904 644744. For more information about York City Pass and tourist information, go to www.visityork.org

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Weekend / Food & Drink KE BEER-BATTERED HA

I

t’s a mystery as to where fish and chips originally came from. However, some believe that it arrived in the UK hundreds of years ago, brought by the Jewish communities from the Iberian peninsula.

In Seville, there is a popular tapa called pavia, which is similar to a fish finger! And, of course, fish and chips.

I always eat pavia at Casa Morales in Seville, a restaurant that’s been running since 1850 – the family arrived in Andalusia to sell wine from Valdepeñas in Castilla La Mancha, and have been there ever since. You can substitute the hake with cod if you wish.

1. Mix the flours in a medium bowl, season well and set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a deep saucepan to 180°C (350°F) – or until a cube of bread browns in about 20 seconds.

3. Whisk the beer into the flours until well incorporated. Place the fish into the batter, turning until well coated.

4. Lower the batter-coated fish into the oil with heatproof tongs. Hold under the oil for a few seconds, then release into the oil. Cook for 3 minutes, or until the batter is golden and crisp.

Remove with the tongs or a slotted spoon and place on to kitchen paper to drain any excess oil.

SERVES: 4

INGREDIENTS 70 g (2½ oz / ⅔ cup) cornflour (cornstarch) 70 g (2½ oz / ½ cup) plain (all-purpose) flour sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 litres (68 fl oz / 8 cups) sunflower oil 800 ml (27 fl oz / 3½ cups) Pilsner lager 8 × 100 g (3½ oz) fillets of hake (or cod)

Depending on the size of your pan, you may have to cook the fish in batches; if so, keep the cooked pieces warm in a low oven while you fry the rest.

Photo by Emma Lee

Serve with cold beer and plenty of fries!

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29

Orthodox Judaism

SEDRA Vayechi

BY RABBI JEFF BERGER Parshat Vayechi, like the relationship among Jacob’s family, is complicated. Jacob’s crossed hands over grandchildren Menashe and Ephraim and the language used in blessing his own children is convoluted. Trust between Joseph and his brothers is complex. Yet, through Joseph, a profound reconciliation takes place echoing back to the start of Bereshit!

Vayechi is about promises: the promise to bury Jacob in Canaan. The promise that Ephraim and Menashe will be given full tribal status, and Joseph the city of Shechem.

Returning from his father’s state funeral, Joseph promises to sustain his brothers, and their descendants promise to take Joseph’s bones out of Egypt.

Of the 12 blessings, Reuben, Shimon and Levi are rebuked. Zebulun is put before Issachar. Dan is not followed

by Naftali, nor Gad by Asher.

Leadership goes to Judah and ancestral blessings to Joseph. Rashi suggests this occurred while the darkness of exile was settling in, a transition from freedom to oppression. From the archetype of Abraham’s righteousness emerged Jacob’s dysfunctional family.

Yet their cris de coeur, and Joseph’s response, redeems them as cathartically as the final curtain at a Shakespearean play. Foregoing revenge, Joseph acknowledges the Divine hand. As Genesis closes, his self-restraint, forgiveness and compassion redeems the family, ending the cycle of dysfunction and preserving the Almighty’s promise to Israel.

 Rabbi Jeff Berger is Interfaith advisor for Mitzvah Day and can be contacted at RabbiJeff London@gmail.com

Torah For Today What does the Torah say about: JoJo Rabbit

BY RABBI GARRY WAYLAND As the satirical film JoJo Rabbit is released in cinemas, what does the Torah say about finding humour in such serious matters as the Holocaust?

Jewish humour is a deadly serious topic. Mel Brooks once quipped: “If they’re laughing, how can they bludgeon you to death?”

Our history is like no other nation.

The 19th century philosopher Nietzsche wrote in his book, The Dawn of Day, that Jews “have gone through a schooling of eighteen centuries such as no other nation has undergone… as a consequence of this, the resourcefulness of the modern Jews, in both

❝

BEING ABLE TO LAUGH AT THE IMPOSSIBLE IS NOT NEW

mind and soul, is extraordinary”.

Part of this resourcefulness is – coupled with a lot of Hashem’s help – our sense of humour; the ability to laugh at ourselves, our protractors and the situation in which we may find ourselves is a reflection of an ability to see beyond the here and now and to see those who try to cause us harm as pawns in a divine plan, however dark and distant the goal may be.

Being able to laugh at the impossible is not new: Isaac was named for laughter. Yitzchak’s name stems from tzachok, meaning laughter.

Of all the forefathers, his existence

was the one considered most impossible and least guaranteed. He was born to a mother who was biologically infertile, and at the Binding of Isaac, came face to face with the paradoxical fragility of existence. Yet he laughed, and God laughed with him.

Of course, no one has the right to laugh at another and God forbid we find any humour in the river of tears of individuals and communities that is our shared heritage.

Yet, in the footsteps of Isaac, we have laughed at the impossibility of the situation and the improbability of our survival.

Some faced adversity with defiance, tenacity and raw courage, but realising this world is a mirage, a smokescreen with the occasional divine wink, gave so many of our ancestors the ability to deal with the worst that history has thrown at us.  Rabbi Garry Wayland is a teacher and educator for US Living and Learning

Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 or EYFS Class Teacher MPS/UPS Required for September 2020

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Closing date for applications: 22nd January 2020 We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

Successful candidates will be subject to an enhanced DBS check.

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Progressive Judaism

Progressively Speaking

The Bible Says What?

After the darkness of antisemitic attacks, how do we add light to the world?

Some people hear the voice of God

BY RABBI CHARLEY BAGINSKY

BY STUDENT RABBI DEBORAH BLAUSTEN The notion that there are people who claim to have heard the voice of God – and that it is wise to listen to them – might seem slightly farfetched in our contemporary reality.

The biblical prophets spoke words and warnings from God from the margins of society to a population that was largely unprepared and unwilling to hear their message.

As contemporary readers, what are we to make of these figures, and the very idea of prophecy?

Many have asked what is the difference between prophecy and madness, such is our scepticism about the manner of prophetic revelation. What were these people really hearing? Was it actually God? The anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann has studied people in our era who believe they hear God’s voice.

She explains how life in a religious community conditions people to recognise key messages and values as God-like, such that they experience

Chanukah is always one of the most joyous of Jewish occasions – full of light, fun, festivities and, of course, presents. Yet, as sadly seemed to be the hallmark of 2019, our community again woke to devastating news.

In New York, a man with a knife wounded five people during a Chanukah celebration at the home of Rabbi Chaim L Rottenberg, the minister of the Orthodox synagogue next door.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the attack an act of “domestic terrorism”.

At almost the same time, antisemitic graffiti was sprayed across South Hampstead Synagogue, as well as on various shops in the Hampstead and Belsize Park area where many of our community live.

The graffiti depicted the Star of David and the words 9/11, referring to the appalling antisemitic belief that Jews were responsible for the September 11 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

part of their mind and conscience as the voice and presence of God. When people are steeped in religious teachings and ideas, they understand the appearance of such thoughts as not their own mind, but rather as God speaking within them.

Luhrmann’s research can help us understand what the dynamics of prophecy may have been in antiquity.

It is hard to believe that within historical memory there were individuals who were singled out for a particular revelatory experience.

Instead, we might view the prophets as individuals who, steeped in the teachings and principles of the God of the Torah, were sharply attuned to the value of those words to the world around them, and whose conscience drove them to speak the truth in their age.

 Deborah Blausten is a student rabbi at Leo Baeck College Everything you need

to create the perfect

holiday

Quite rightly, the police are investigating this as a suspected racially motivated hate crime. Patrols in the area have been stepped up.

It was both shocking and saddening to hear about these two incidents during our Chanukah celebrations and especially heartbreaking as the festive period is a time for people to come together, no matter their religion or beliefs.

We pray that those injured have a speedy recovery and vow to continue working together as a united Jewish community against antisemitism and hate.

During Chanukah, we start with just one candle and light another each day until, at the end of the festival, we build up to a chanukiah full of light. This light may begin small, but it keeps on growing.

As we light the candles, we ask too, how can we add light to the world? Central to Chanukah is the idea that a tiny bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.

Thus, the way we fight is by adding light into a world that can be so dark.

As we hear about antisemitic incidents such as those in New York and London – not to mention the terrible evil we see daily in our world – it is easy to feel helpless.

But Judaism says that you are never helpless.

You can always make the world a better place by adding a little light.  Rabbi Charley Baginsky is Liberal Judaism’s director of strategy and partnerships

www.jewishnews.co.uk

2 FEBRUARY 2017

F

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BRITAIN 10 November 2016

LET THERE BE SHAB BAT LIGHT!

’S BIGGE ST

• 9 Cheshvan 5777

JEWISH N EWSPA

• www.jewishnews.co.uk

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@JewishNewsUK

Heaven help US!

How you can join the thousands taking part in this weekend’s ShabbatUK celebrations Pages 8 & 19

Israel • Mexico

• Italy • Cool Kosher

It’s time for a

• 24% of American Jews voted Trum p • ‘End of era’ for Pales tinian state hopes • Fury over UK Jewis h ‘congratulations’

HOLIDAY!

MEDIA SALES EXECUTIVE Good basic, uncapped commission structure and friendly working environment The popular consensus elect Donald Trump’s on Presidentsurprise march to the White House has been shock and horror. How can a man who says what he says and behaves how he behaves

– while displaying the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old – be allowed to have his finger on the nuclear codes?

He may have looked and sounded a little

VOICE OF THE

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more like a statesman during his victory speech on Wednesday somehow managed to gain the trust morning, but this and won’t begin to wash votes of 50 million Pragmatic politicians away the unstatesAmericans – a quite are, of course, manlike bravado that staggering statistic. making the best marred his campaign of it, insisting the from start to finish. new leader of the free Most politicians – world should be judged Vladamir Putin and Nigel Farage aside If this man has any on future actions – didn’t want to see hidden depths they rather than the wicked the words that certainly didn’t emerge billionaire reality brought him to power.

TV star anywhere during his battle near with Hillary Clinton. the White House.

Theresa May said Now that’s where the UK and US he’s will remain heading, The often-vile personality “strong and close we witnessed knuckle the world will simply have to partners on trade, down and deal with security and defence” him.

Continued on page 12

Reports and reaction,

pages 2, 3, 4, 5,

6 & 12

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31

Making a difference / Business

candicekrieger@googlemail.com

With Candice Krieger

‘I WANT TO USE POWER AND CAPITAL FOR SOCIAL IMPACT’ For our Tech for Good Series, profiling start-ups using technology to tackle society’s toughest challenges, Candice Krieger talks to sustainable investor Angela Homsi, whose company Ignite Power provides clean and safe energy solutions across Africa

I

Tech4Good

nternational impact investor Angela Homsi is so passionate about making a difference that, nearly 36 hours after the birth of her first child, she was back working. For Homsi’s daughter was born the day she and her business partner – and husband – launched the commercial operations of their renewable-energy company, Ignite Power.

Ignite uses clean technologies to improve the lives of people in emerging markets, primarily through solar, agriculture and financial technologies.

It has become a leading solar power operator and financier in Africa, providing customers in rural areas with off-grid solar solutions at affordable prices using digital payment technologies.

Following the signing of a national electrification agreement in 2016 with the government of Rwanda, Ignite implemented a successful pilot. It has since rolled out projects in five other countries in Africa, reaching last-mile customers. More than 1.1 million people are already connected to sustainable, clean and safe energy for the first time, creating some 3,500 local jobs. There are plans for Latin America and the Middle East.

Based on Ignite’s success, Homsi has also co-founded an African Innovation Fund focusing on sustainable impact investments in the continent.

She is on the investment committee of Microvest, and was chair of the YPO Global Diplomacy network (a global network of young chief executives).

The mother-of-two says: “Africa is now the fastestgrowing continent in the world. It is due to double in size in the next 30 years. We either have to find a way to support sustainable positive growth, or it’s going to cause many future crises with people who are living

in unacceptable conditions. This is a big challenge today and technology and smart investment is the determining factor.”

Homsi’s passion for using business and technology to solve some of the world’s problems is deep-rooted.

Describing herself as an EgyptianLebanese-Israelite, she was exposed to different cultures from a young age.

She recalls: “I quickly realised that if you wanted to have a constructive conversation focused on the future in conflict situations, you had to do it through business.

Often business people forget about their differences and manage to think about how they can look towards positive relationships through working together. I thought that if I want to make an impact, I need to be a good businessperson.”

She studied maths and finance in Paris before joining Goldman Sachs in London as a trader and explains: “I tried to identify people in the firm who would want to use all this power and capital for positive social impact. But the concept was still very young and at the time people were like, ‘cute idea, but go back to your desk and make money’.”

She left and joined pre-eminent Eygptian-born businessman Sir Ronald Cohen at The Portland Trust and became involved in cross-border investing in Israel and neighbouring countries. “I wrote to him (Sir Ronald) out of the blue. I felt like we had a similar vision; to use private sector and finance for social good.” She spent a lot of time on the West Bank building private sector solutions to improve lives.

“It was a great experience, but I really wanted to do something on a larger scale. I thought that if you want to change the world and make an impact with the capital that you need, you need to tap into the for-profit traditional ways of doing business.”

She joined Generation IM, a $20 billion [£15bn] investment manager founded by former US Vice President, Al Gore and David Blood, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, that was investing into renewable energy companies.

Her work at Generation IM took her to Israel, where she spent time researching different sustainable technology companies. “I discovered the tech and entrepreneurial side of Israel and was blown away.”

Just before Homsi joined Generation IM, the firm had invested in Camco, a renewable energy provider founded by her husband-to-be Yariv Cohen. But the couple did not meet properly until years later (through a connection to YPO, the global leadership community of chief executives) and decided to team up both personally and professionally to launch Ignite Power.

She acknowledges that the potential impact the renewable energy revolution has is huge. “The fact that these new technologies exist today – they were not commercial five, 10, 20 years ago – such

as fintech, payment systems, solar with battery storage, and the innovation that has happened in the past few years, create the possibilities to build economies that are really in line with sustainability, creating more opportunities for everyone.”

Local employment is a core value at Ignite Power, and the company invests many resources into training and developing their employees to make all its business units sustainable and scalable over time.

The couple also runs a television programme called Face the Gorillas – an African-style Dragons’ Den, for budding entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas.

“Our philosophy is [about] how can you create value for the entrepreneurs and simultaneously create value and returns for investors. Everybody is aligned: we want to invest in opportunities whereby making money out of the growth of the business is directly positively correlating with the impact you are creating on the world.

“Today we have so many more digital solutions to the problems the world is facing that it is much more

Left: Angela Homsi with the very first beneficiary of Ignite’s services and, above, with Rwandan children

possible to generate success, profit and impact.”

In her not-for-profit work, Homsi chairs Seeds of Peace Global Council and was a founding board member of the Negotiation Strategies Institute.

Homsi and her family are mostly based between Dubai and Rwanda, but spend a lot of time travelling.

At the time of writing, Homsi’s eldest child is three and has been to more than 30 countries, and her youngest is 15 months and has been to about 14.

www.ignite.solar

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Jewish News 9 January 2020

Books / Podcast With Zaki Cooper

In association with Listen to the podcast at jewishnews.co.uk

Interview:

Lord Livingston

In our latest interview with Jewish people changing the world – also available as a podcast at jewishnews.co.uk – leadership communications expert Zaki Cooper invites Lord Livingston to select the books that have the most meaning to him

L

seminal treatise on business, he describes two business characters. There is Tigger who is positive, everything’s going to go right, like the banker in 2007, who could only see growth and success. He also describes Eeyore, the person who is overly cautious and trying to make sure you don’t go wrong.

A business that is all Tiggers can get into big trouble. A business The first book you’ve chosen is Lord Livingston that is all Eeyores doesn’t move forward. In a business, you really Winnie-the-Pooh by A A Milne. want that combination of Tiggers and Eeyores.

It seems an unlikely choice for a serious A great board has a mixture of the two. A great business leader. business leader is able to be Tigger and Eeyore I sometimes get asked what business books at different times, and that’s what I tried to I can recommend. I don’t tend to read business do as CEO. I invested £2 billion in 2008 when books. But I answer it by saying I follow the banks were closing left, right and centre. business guru A A Milne. In Winnie-the-Pooh, his ord Livingston of Parkhead is a business leader, who served as chief executive of BT from 2008 to 2013. He was also the youngest FTSE 100 finance director (aged 32 at Dixons), served as Minister for Trade and Investment and now holds a number of business and charity roles.

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That description of Tigger and Eeyores really applies to the business world and I’m going to enjoy reading my new granddaughter Winnie- the-Pooh stories as well.

Fast forwarding to today, you are now chairman of Dixons Carphone and outgoing chairman of Man Group. How do you spend your time?

It’s quite a peripatetic existence. People ask if that fills the week. The week is actually seven days, not five. You do a lot of work at weekends and a lot of reading and travelling. I spend two days a week on Dixons matters, two days a week on Man and half a day to a day a week on House of Lords things on average. I sit on the board of Jewish Care and have a number of other advisory positions and activities. My wife says that, for a semi-retired person, I appear to be working very hard!

Behind your amazing business achievement lies a lot of hard work. You have selected the book, Candide by Voltaire, written in the eighteenth century. Why did you choose that?

I read Candide when I was very young and it left an impression on me. It’s based on these travels around the world and it’s a very satirical book, dealing with then-current affairs such as the Lisbon earthquake. The people spend their life philosophising and, pushing aside the issue of Voltaire’s somewhat questionable attitude to Jewish people (that’s always a challenge when you have artists and they may have an antisemitic streak), what I really liked was that, after all this philosophising, right at the end of the book, they basically say – “enough of this, there is work to be done in the garden”. I think that’s a pretty good attitude to life. You can spend your time philosophising or indeed in business strategising but what’s really important is execution, hard work and commitment. There are some people who say things and some people who do things. I am a much bigger fan of people who do things and achieve things. So I like the idea that there is work to be done in the garden.

Talking of saying things and doing things, that’s a good segue into your experience in politics. You served as a government minister for more than 18 months starting in 2013. How did that come about?

I didn’t really have much involvement in politics and one night I was at a dinner, and sitting next to me was Jeremy Heywood, who was then head of the civil service, a wonderful man who sadly died recently. He asked me if I had thought about what I was going to do when I left BT. I said: “I am not about to leave BT. It’s going really well. We’ve got the Premiership rights, business is booming and the share price is increasing.” And he said:

“Have you ever thought of working in government?”

I said no. The next day he called me and said: “Would you come and see the prime minister?” I put my Outlook calendar on month view because the prime minister is a busy man. And he said: “4.30 pm tomorrow!”

My secretary was convinced I had done something very wrong.

So I went along the next day and David Cameron said to me: “Ian there is something I’d like you to do. I can only guarantee it up until the next election; its full-time, it’s unpaid.”

So that was a great start. And then he said the worst seven words in the English language: “But it’s really important for the country.”

My great-grandfather was an immigrant and he came here penniless. This country has been really good to my family. So I took the job as Minister of Trade and Investment, and it was an absolute honour and privilege to do it.

What does being Jewish mean to you?

I’m proudly Jewish. I am a member of a shul and have been involved with youth groups.

It’s a hugely defining part of my identity. Being Scottish, being British also features. There are so many positive things about our community.

The role of family and community plays a very important part in my life.

Two further books you’ve chosen are Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2017, and Konin by Theo Richmond.

Why did you choose these books?

Both are about refugees and the fragility of one’s existence in countries. Konin describes a town in 19th century Poland and the rise of the shtetl communities. We tend to think of these communities only in terms of their destruction, but these were the lives of our ancestors. In the case of Exit West, it’s set in some Middle Eastern country in the midst of an impending civil war and, again, this community had become refugees. It said a number of things to me, about recognising the fragility of one’s existence in a country and also how lucky we are to be in the UK and the stability we’ve had generation after generation, and hopefully that continues.

And thirdly they’re about the welcoming of refugees and we should remember all refugees are really just our parents and grandparents.

We are all immigrants – it just depends to which generation you go back.

Lord Livingston’s page turners • • • •

Winnie-the-Pooh – A A Milne Candide – Voltaire Exit West – Mohsin Hamid Konin – Theo Richmond

www.jewishnews.co.uk

9 January 2020 Jewish News

33

Professional advice from our panel / Ask Our Experts

Ask our

Registered Charity No. 259480

Leave the legacy of independence to people like Hayley.

Our trusty team of advisers answers your questions about everything from law and finance to dating and dentistry.

This week: Advice on making aliyah as retirees, shipping quotes for Israel and resistance training exercises...

DOV NEWMARK ALIYAH ADVISER

NEFESH B'NEFESH

Dear Dov My parents are seriously considering making aliyah to be with their children and grandchildren here in Israel.

What can I tell them?

Caroline Dear Caroline Wonderful news! First, tell them they are not alone. More and more people are choosing to spend their retirement years in Israel.

The main concern they are likely to have is healthcare and will have many questions such as: Will they be covered? Will there be any exclusions? What happens if…? The Israeli

healthcare system accepts every applicant for the basic and supplemental healthcare package regardless of age or pre-existing conditions.

Availability of long-term, in-home caregivers or foreign workers is managed through Bituach Leumi and is means tested. More information can be found on our website.

Another concern is what happens to their pension. All their UK pensions (state/private) will follow them to Israel; and how they are structured will determine if they are taxed at source in the UK. It is worth taking professional advice if they aren't sure. Your parents would be entitled to the full basket of government benefits, just like all olim when they make aliyah.

I would recommend your parents meet with me to discuss their thoughts and help them plan. Appointments can be made via our website www.nbn.org.il/uk

eNABLeD PLease remember us in your wiLL.

Visit www.jbd.org or call 020 8371 6611

Since 2002 SweetTree has provided award winning care and support to people in their own homes and in the community

C all us for a free assessment or advice

Live-in & live-out home care Dementia - End-of-life care - Learning disabilities - Autism - Brain injuries Neurological conditions

020 7644 9554 www.sweettree.co.uk doing. Can you help?

Judith

STEPHEN MORRIS REMOVALS MANAGING DIRECTOR

STEPHEN MORRIS SHIPPING LTD Dear Stephen You were kind enough to come to my house and survey for my move to Israel next month and I have just received your quotation. Is this price fixed or can I add or subtract items?

Rebecca Dear Rebecca The total volume does sometimes change for a variety of

reasons. You might add some items or you might decide not to ship some items – that is very common. And I may have made an error in my volume calculations! This is less common because I have been quoting for moves for more than 40 years.

But resolving the matter is not difficult. Subject to a 4cbm shipment minimum, I can give you a reliable quotation for any volume.

That volume is checked once everything is packed and any

under or over volumes will be recorded and discussed with you prior to shipment.

You will still have all your options available and we can even just charge you for the packing and not ship, if you wish.

We are now the largest household and personal effects movers between the UK and Israel and our excellent reputation for honesty, clarity of charges and customer service are paramount.

ANNA SCHUCHMAN & CHARLOTTE WIKLER HEALTH & FITNESS

ACELIFESTYLE Dear Anna and Charlotte I'm a 61-year-old woman who has just been diagnosed with early stages of osteoporosis. My doctor has told me I will need to start resistance training, but I have no idea of what that means or what exercises I should be

Dear Judith We are sorry to hear you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, which is a skeletal condition that weakens bones, making them fragile and more likely to break.

Taking part in weightbearing or resistance exercises are crucial to slowing down its effects. Studies have shown that this type of exercise can not only help prevent bone loss it may even help build new bone.

In addition, muscle mass declines by one percent a year from our late 20s in untrained individuals. There is an even sharper decline in women post-menopause.

Maintaining strong

muscles through weighttraining helps to keep up your balance and coordination, a critical element in preventing falls, which can lead to osteoporosis-related bone fractures.

Here are some exercises we recommend: Weight bearing: • Dancing • High impact aerobics • Hiking • Brisk walking /jogging/ running • Skipping • Tennis Muscle strengthening: • Lifting weights • Resistance bands • Body weight exercises For more information, contact us at info@ace-life style.com or visit our website: www.ace-lifestyle.com

34

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 9 January 2020

Ask Our Experts / Professional advice from our panel

Our Experts Got a question for a member of our team?

Email: editorial@thejngroup.com PRIVATE HEALTHCARE SPECIALIST

DENTIST

ISRAELI LAWYER

TREVOR GEE Qualifications: • Managing director, consultants in affordable family and corporate health insurance.

• Specialise in maximising cover, lowering premiums and pre-existing conditions.

• Excellent knowledge of health insurers, cover levels and hospital lists.

• Board member UK International Health Management Ass • LLB, solicitor finals, FCA Regulated 773729.

DR ADAM NEWMAN Qualifications: • Dentist at the Gingerbread House, a BUPA Platinum practice in Shenley, Radlett.

• Providing NHS and private dentistry including whitening, cosmetic and restorative treatment. Other treatments including implants provided by in-house specialists.

• BDS, Member of the Faculty of General Dental Practitioners RCS England.

GDC registered 212542.

ELI ROSENBERG Qualifications: • All aspects of Israeli law. Specialising in property law, property tax, inheritance law and dispute management.

• Third generation lawyer from Israeli firm established in Israel in 1975.

• Authorised and regulated by the Israeli Bar Association and Ministry of Justice of the State of Israel, with teams in Tel Aviv and London.

PATIENT HEALTH 020 3146 3444/5/6 www.patienthealth.co.uk trevor.gee@patienthealth.co.uk

GINGERBREAD HOUSE 01923 852 852 www.gingerbreadhealth.co.uk Adam.newman@gingerbreadhealth.co.uk

ROSENBERG & ASSOCIATES 0203 994 2278 www.israeli-lawyer.co.uk eli@israeli-lawyer.co.uk

TELECOMS SPECIALIST

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

MAXI ROSE Qualifications: • MD at RCUK since 1999. Grown the business into three substantial UK branches serving clients worldwide – USA, Europe & Middle East.

• Telecoms specialist in business & consumer mobile solutions, landline and broadband services and Ofcom Telecoms registered reseller.

• Successfully established the RCUK International Travel

DR BEV JACOBSON Qualifications: • Able to draw on the expertise of Norwood’s professional staff team, including social workers, educational psychologists, behavioural specialists, speech and language and occupational therapists, teachers, psychologists, benefit advisors and psychotherapists.

• Expertise in services available for children and their families and young people with special educational needs and adults with learning disabilities and autism.

SUE CIPIN Qualifications: • 18 years’ hands-on experience, leading JDA in significant growth and development.

• Deep understanding of the impact of deafness on people at all stages of life, and their families.

• Practical and emotional support for families of deaf children.

• Extensive services for people affected by hearing loss/tinnitus.

RCUK 020 8815 4115 www.rcuk.com Maxi@RCUK.com

NORWOOD 020 8809 8809 www.norwood.org.uk bev.jacobson@norwood.org.uk

JEWISH DEAF ASSOCIATION 020 8446 0502 www.jdeaf.org.uk mail@jdeaf.org.uk

JEWELLER

TRAVEL AGENT

CRIMINAL DEFENCE SOLICITOR

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.

DAVID SEGEL Qualifications: • Managing director of West End Travel, established in 1972.

• Leading UK El Al agent with branches in Swiss Cottage and Edgware.

• Specialist in Israel travel, cruises and kosher holidays.

• Leading business travel company, ranked in top 50 UK agents.

• Frequent travel broadcaster on radio and TV.

CARL WOOLF Qualifications: • 20+ years experience as a criminal defence solicitor and higher court advocate.

• Specialising in all aspects of criminal law including murder, drug offences, fraud and money laundering, offences of violence, sexual offences and all aspects of road traffic law.

• Visiting associate professor at Brunel University.

JEWELLERY CAVE LTD 020 8446 8538 www.jewellerycave.co.uk jonathan@jewellerycave.co.uk

WEST END TRAVEL 020 7644 1500 www.westendtravel.co.uk David.Segel@westendtravel.co.uk

NOBLE SOLICITORS 01582 544 370 carl.woolf@noblesolicitors.co.uk

DIRECTOR OF LEGACIES

REMOVALS MANAGING DIRECTOR

PRINCIPAL, PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL

CAROLYN ADDLEMAN Qualifications: Lawyer with more than 15 years’ experience in will drafting and trust and estate administration, eight years at KKL Executor and Trustee Company.

Keeps in close contact with clients to ensure all legal and pastoral needs are cared for.

Member of Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

•

STEPHEN MORRIS 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.

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 10 years ago.

KKL EXECUTOR AND TRUSTEE COMPANY 0800 358 3587 www.kkl.org.uk wills@kkl.org.uk

STEPHEN MORRIS SHIPPING LTD 020 8832 2222 www.shipsms.co.uk stephen@shipsms.co.uk

DANCING WITH LOUISE 020 8203 5242 www.dancingwithlouise.co.uk louise@dancingwithlouise.co.uk

• •

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

35

Professional advice from our panel / Ask Our Experts

ACCOUNTANT 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 020 8429 8800 www.sobellrhodes.co.uk a.shelley@sobellrhodes.co.uk

IT SPECIALIST

HEALTH & FITNESS ANNA SCHUCHMAN & CHARLOTTE WIKLER Qualifications: • Founders of aceLIFESTYLE, offering practical solutions for becoming and remaining fit, strong and healthy.

• Creators of the aceTRANSFORMATION 12-week weight-loss program.

• Level 3 Personal Trainers and Nutritional Consultants.

• Qualified to help ante and postnatal clients, teenagers and those of all abilities and ages.

MAN ON A BIKE 020 8731 6171 www.manonabike.co.uk mail@manonabike.co.uk

ACELIFESTYLE 07968 484501 www.ace-lifestyle.com info@ace-lifestyle.com

INTERNATIONAL PAYMENTS SPECIALIST

IAN GREEN Qualifications: • Launched Man on a Bike IT consultancy 15 years ago to provide computer support for the home and small businesses.

• Clients range from legal firms in the City to families, small business owners and synagogues.

• More than 18 years’ experience.

SOCIAL WORKER

INSURANCE CONSULTANCY

NAOMI FELTHAM Qualifications: • Leading currency transfer provider since 1996 with over 500 expert employees.

• Excellent exchange rates on your transfers to/from Israel.

• Offices worldwide, with local support in Israel, the UK, mainland Europe and the USA. • Free expert guidance from your dedicated Account. Manager

CAROLYN COHEN Qualifications: • Supports couples dealing with infertility and reproductive health.

• Strictly confidential helpline.

• Specialist medical support and information.

• Counselling for individuals and couples and educational events.

• Expert medical advisory panel.

ASHLEY PRAGER Qualifications: • Professional insurance and reinsurance broker. Offering PI/D&O cover, marine and aviation, property owners, ATE insurance, home and contents, fine art, HNW. • Specialist in insurance and reinsurance disputes, utilising Insurance backed products. (Including non insurance business disputes).

• Ensuring clients do not pay more than required.

CURRENCIES DIRECT 07922 131 152 / 020 7847 9447 www.currenciesdirect.com/jn Naomi.feltham@currenciesdirect.com

CHANA 020 8203 8455 Helpline: 020 8201 5774 / 020 8800 0018 www.chana.org.uk info@chana.org.uk

RISK RESOLUTIONS 020 3411 4050 www.risk-resolutions.com ashley.prager@risk-resolutions.com

ISRAELI ACCOUNTANT LEON HARRIS Qualifications: • Leon is an Israeli and UK accountant based in Ramat Gan, Israel.

• He is a Partner at Harris Horoviz Consulting & Tax Ltd. • The firm specializes in Israeli and international tax advice, accounting and tax reporting for investors, Olim and businesses.

PHOTOGRAPHER HARRISON GALGUT Qualifications: • Experienced wedding and event photographer.

• Specialism in portraits and light management.

• BSc(Hons), BTEC music tech, specialising in film, and member of Royal Photographic Society.

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.

EDIT6 07962599154 www.edit6.co.uk harrison@edit6.co.uk

JEWISH BLIND & DISABLED 020 8371 6611 www.jbd.org Lisa@jbd.org

• Leon’s motto is: Our numbers speak your language!

HARRIS HOROVIZ CONSULTING & TAX LTD +972-3-6123153 / + 972-54-6449398 leon@h2cat.com

ALIYAH ADVISER

CAREER ADVISER

DOV NEWMARK Qualifications: • Director of UK Aliyah for Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organisation that helps facilitate aliyah from the UK. • Conducts monthly seminars and personal aliyah meetings in London.

• An expert in working together with clients to help plan a successful aliyah.

CLAIRE STRAUS Qualifications: • Free professional one-to-one advice at Resource to help unemployed into work.

• Practical support, workshops and networking opportunities to maximise prospects.

• Career coach with MSc in career management and coaching with a background in human resources and general management and experience of private, public and voluntary sectors.

NEFESH B’NEFESH 0800 075 7200 www.nbn.org.il dov@nbn.org.il

RESOURCE 020 8346 4000 www.resource-centre.org office@resource-centre.org

DIVORCE & FAMILY SOLICITOR

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

PALLIATIVE CARE MANAGER

VANESSA LLOYD PLATT Qualifications: • Qualification: 40 years experience as a matrimonial and divorce solicitor and mediator, specialising in all aspects of family matrimonial law, including: • Divorce, Pre/post-nuptial agreements, cohabitation agreements, domestic violence, children’s cases, grandparents’ rights to see grandchildren, adoption, family disputes.

• Frequent broadcaster on national and International radio and television.

POLLY LANDSBERG Qualifications: • Polly has worked in health and social care for over 35 years.

• Has a degree in nursing and a diploma in health visiting.

• Polly is responsible for the day-to-day management of the palliative and end of life care service.

LLOYD PLATT & COMPANY SOLICITORS 020 8343 2998 www.divorcesolicitors.com lloydplatt@divorcesolicitors.com

SWEETTREE HOME CARE SERVICES 020 7644 9500 www.sweettree.co.uk polly.landsberg@sweettree.co.uk

Got a question for a member of our team?

Email: editorial@thejngroup.com

aceTRANSFORM 12-week programme We are ready to help you lose weight, shape up and get healthier.

Regular monthly intakes.

Places go fast so book now at www.ace-lifestyle.com or through our app to avoid disappointment.

Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

9 January 2020

B�h just received a deposit for a job of 170k.

Met the client at JTrade!

5:20 PM

for real?!

YUP!

5:20 PM

5:22 PM

really appreciate the feedback thanks. actual feedback from 2019 exhibitors

36

5:23 PM

thank YOU!!

5:23 PM

29 June

ExCel London

BOOK YOUR STAND TODAY.

37

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Win tickets to an epic adventure! / Fun, games and prizes

WIN A PAIR OF THEATRE TICKETS TO TOUCHING THE VOID Jewish News is offering three winners the chance to win a pair of tickets to see Touching The Void at the Duke of York’s Theatre!

Following its critically acclaimed, sold out world premiere in 2018, Touching The Void has transferred to the Duke of York’s Theatre, Charing Cross, for a strictly limited season until 29 February 2020.

Directed by the award-winning Tom Morris (War Horse) and based on Joe Simpson’s best-selling memoir, turned BAFTA-winning film, this extraordinary story charts Simpson’s and Simon Yates’ struggle for survival on the perilous Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes.

Life-affirming and often darkly funny, David Greig’s thrilling adaptation of Touching The Void takes the audience on an epic adventure that asks how far you would be willing to go to survive.

‘Tom Morris directs with the impeccable timing of a thriller’ – The Times ‘Thrilling, chilling drama’ – The Guardian ‘Nail-biting. You feel as if you’ve been to the ends of the earth without moving from your seat’ – The Telegraph

FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN, ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: In which mountain range did Joe and Simon’s struggle take place? a) The Himalayas b) The Andes c) The Cheviots

ENTER ONLINE:

jewishnews.co.uk Closing date 23 January 2020

 Visit www.touchingthevoid play.com

THE JEWISH NEWS CROSSWORD THE JewishNews CROSSWORD 2

3

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7

5

6

8

9

10

11

12 13

14

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18 19

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ACROSS 1 Swiss currency unit (5) 4 Be consequent on (5) 7 Pressing creases out of fabric (7) 8 Section of a curve (3)

All puzzles © Puzzler Media Ltd ‑ www.puzzler.com

9 11 14 17 19 20 22 23

Feline (3) Warmth of feeling (6) Pledge or commit (6) Once round a track (3) Tree an acorn grows into (3) Receptacle for rubbish (7) Remorseful (5) Lawful (5)

DOWN 1 Draw back (6) 2 Past, gone (3) 3 Articles of porcelain (5) 4 Hemmed (5) 5 Marine bird (7) 6 Design on metal (4) 10 Marcher, hiker (7) 12 Go bad or mouldy (3) 13 Of the back (6) 15 Curiously (5) 16 Artist’s trestle (5) 18 Boy children (4) 21 Creepy‑crawly (3)

Fill the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, column and 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 to 9.

3

4 8

5

6

7 5 4 7 5 8 5 2 3 6 2 4

2 2

9

4

8 9

6 7

9

2

Last issue’s solutions Crossword

Sudoku

ACROSS: 1 Eddy 3 Stucco 8 Insurer 9 Rip 10 Borderline 13 Unbalanced 17 Boo 18 Lawsuit 19 Donate 20 Spar DOWN: 1 Epic 2 Disco 4 Tar 5 Corgi 6 Osprey 7 Bridal 11 Renown 12 Sunbed 14 Brown 15 Equip 16 Stir 18 Let

See next issue for puzzle solutions.

2 7 5 6 8 4 1 3 9

6 9 8 3 2 1 7 4 5

4 1 3 7 5 9 8 6 2

9 5 6 2 1 8 3 7 4

7 2 1 4 9 3 6 5 8

8 3 4 5 6 7 2 9 1

5 4 2 1 3 6 9 8 7

3 8 7 9 4 2 5 1 6

1 6 9 8 7 5 4 2 3

09/01 COMPETITION TERMS AND CONDITIONS:

By Paul Solomons

1

SUDOKU SUDOKU

Three winners will receive a pair of tickets to Touching The Void, valid until 21 February 2020.

Prize is as stated, not transferable, not refundable and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or exchanged in whole or in part for cash.

By supplying your email address, you agree to receive marketing information from the JN Media Group or any of its affiliates and carefully-selected third parties. The promotion excludes employees of Miroma and the promoter, their immediate families, their agents or anyone professionally connected to the relevant promotion. Proof of eligibility must be provided on request.

For full Ts and Cs see jewishnews.co.uk.

Closing date: 23 January 2020

38

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 9 January 2020

Business Services Directory ANTIQUES 44

The Jewish News 22 September 2016

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Stirling of Kensal Green

Top prices paid

BUSINESS SERVICES DIRECTORY

Antique – Reproduction – Retro Furniture (any condition)

Carer

Clothing

WE BUY ANTIQUES Carer FURS WANTED Auxiliary Nurse VERY HIGH PRICES PAID. FREE HOME VISITS.

Epstein, Archie Shine, Hille, G Plan, etc.

Antiques

Dining Suites, Lounges Suites, Bookcases, Desks, Cabinets, Mirrors, Lights, etc.

Cash paid for Mink Available support Allto Antique Furniture Hille & Epstein jackets, coats, you in your home.

Diamond Jewellery, Gold, Silver,boleros, Paintings, stoles, Porcelain, also fox coats, etc.

Glass,Days/nights.

Bronzes, Ivories, Oriental & Judaica Antiques jackets etc.

Very reasonable rates.

Full house clearances organised.

Wardrobes cleared Call Please 0208 look 958 at 2939 our website for more details Call 01277 352 560 or 07495 026 168

House clearances Single items to complete homes MARYLEBONE ANTIQUES - 8 CHURCH STREET NW8 8ED

WE BUY ANTIQUES

07866 614 744 (ANYTIME)

www.antiquesbuyers.co.uk

VERY HIGH PRICES PAID. FREE HOME VISITS. All Antique Hille & Epstein 0207Furniture 723 7415 (SHOP) Diamond Jewellery, Gold, Silver, Paintings, Porcelain, closed Sunday & Monday Glass, Bronzes, Ivories, Oriental & Judaica Antiques etc.

Computer FOR APPOINTMENTS CALL SUE ON:

0800 840 2035 or 07956268290

Established over 60 years.

Know who you are dealing with.

Top prices paid

All quality furniture bought & sold.

Antique – Reproduction – Retro Furniture (any condition)

Best prices paid for complete house clearEpstein, Archie Shine, Hille, G Plan, etc. ances Lounges includingSuites, china, Bookcases, books, Dining Suites, clothing etc. Also rubbish clearance Desks, Cabinets, Mirrors, Lights, etc. service, lofts, sheds, garages etc House clearances Single items to complete Please contact Gordonhomes Stirling

STUART SHUSTER - e-mail - info@maryleboneantiques.co.uk

Man on aOPEN Bike8am will TOget 9pm 7 DAYS. you working fast! RD LONDON. PORTOBELLO

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We have a community 020 8731 6171 • www.manonabike.co.uk nursery shop offering our customers top brands with a personal service.

Charity & Welfare Present this ad for a 5% discount. and conditions apply.)

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closed Sunday & Monday STUART SHUSTER � e�mail � stuart@churchstreetantiques.net

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warden assisted sheltered housing schemes for Jewish people in Ealing, East Finchley and Hendon. We provide 24-hour warden support, seven days a week; a residents’ lounge and kitchen, laundry, a sunny patio and garden.

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Jewish

9 January 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

39

Business Services Directory COMPUTER

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40 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

9 January 2020

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