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I’m not neurotic!

Woody Allen on the upside of social distancing and remembering his barmitzvah portion

THE VOICE OF OUR COMMUNITY 18 June 2020

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26 Sivan 5780

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Issue No.1163

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Exclusive interview on pages 22-23

@JewishNewsUK

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THE COMMUNITY THINKS ONLY WHITE PEOPLE CAN BE JEWS

I WAS TOLD I WASN’T JEWISH SO COULDN’T BE IN SHUL – IT’S BRUTAL

Jessica Morgan

Jodeci Joseph

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SOME BLACK JEWS DON’T SOCIALISE WITH FELLOW JEWS BECAUSE OF RACISM

I OFTEN FEEL INVISIBLE AND ABANDONED BY JEWISH LEADERS

Madeline R Young

Nadine Batchelor-Hunt

Black Jews tell Jewish News of bitter communal experiences as more than 30 contact the inclusivity inquiry in first week Full story and analysis on pages 4,5,6,16 &18

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

News / Online hatred

The web’s darkest corners A shocking report into online extremism has found that thousands of pieces of violent antisemitic material are being disseminated on social media, writes Mathilde Frot.

The Community Security Trust (CST) sounded the alarm on reams of “easily accessible, extreme and violent” videos, memes and posts it said were discovered across at least four social media platforms.

The Jewish charity detailed its findings in its latest report, entitled Hate Fuel: The Hidden Online World Fuelling Far-Right Terror, which it said was shared with police, government and counter-extremism officials.

The document, seen by Jewish News, was not made public because of the extreme nature of the material it contains.

Social media posts found by the CST included material blaming recent anti-racism protests around the world on the HungarianAmerican philanthropist George Soros and the wider Jewish community.

The CST said it produced the report amid concerns about the “quantity and spread” of the material, which it warned poses an urgent threat to Jewish communities.

Speaking to Channel 4, Neil Basu, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, voiced concerns about online radicalisation during the lockdown.

“My professional instinct is to tell me that throughout all of Covid, one of my biggest fears is people have been locked down

Sick online graphics

looking at nothing but their screens for over three months now, and there has been an increase in propaganda grievance narratives being twisted online to try and radicalise people who

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Footage of terrorist attacks filmed on body cams and broadcast live on the internet

are vulnerable – and people have never been more vulnerable,” he told the broadcaster.

Meanwhile, the government’s adviser on extremism has announced the launch of a legal review to determine whether current

legislation adequately deals with hateful extremism.

Sir Mark Rowley, the former head of UK counter-terrorism policing, will put forward proposals later this year.

HATE FUEL FIRING UP ONLINE ANTISEMITES

BY MARK GARDNER

COMMUNITY SECURITY TRUST

You won’t be able to read CST’s new report, because the content is so extreme we cannot make it public. The report, Hate Fuel, examines the online social media networks by which today’s ‘Nazis’ spread hatred and incitement to terrorism, including live footage of actual neo-Nazi terrorist attacks.

When the jihadis at Isis used to film and post their videos of people being murdered, we all rightly expressed outrage. When their Jihadi propaganda offices were bombed by drones, we nodded in approval.

Now, neo-Nazis post their own murder videos, on sites that anybody can get access to, but nobody is really being arrested and they certainly aren’t targeted for drone strikes.

The ‘hate fuel’ revealed in this report consists of online memes, videos and slogans that

celebrate (and sometimes show) recent terrorist attacks on synagogues, mosques and churches, and tell others to copy them.

This is a global movement that has already sparked terrorist attacks on synagogues, mosques and other minorities in Europe, North America and New Zealand. Perpetrators are held up as heroes by right-wing extremists around the world, who celebrate their deeds and encourage each other to emulate them.

Previous neo-Nazi terrorists are pictured, with the number of people they murdered written next to their faces. Then comes the challenge, asking “can you beat the high score?”, as if it were a video game. The footage of the attacks does indeed look like a video game, because the camera is strapped to the terrorist’s helmet or chest, as if you were playing Call of Duty.

At the very least there must be urgent international regulation, criminal investigation and judicial action.

Anything less and it is a green light for more neo-Nazi terrorism.

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The chief executive of the CST, David Delew, is to step down in August after seven years in the role. Current communications director Mark Gardner is to take over the top job.

Speaking of the “difficult decision”, Delew said: “I will greatly miss the huge honour of leading CST, but it is right that I now move permanently back to Manchester to be with my wife, Amanda, my children and my first grand-

child. I wish Mark every success and have no doubt that CST will be in great hands.”

Gardner said: “I’ve fought against antisemitism, racism and extremism since I was a teenager and am deeply honoured to now lead CST on behalf of our entire community.”

He thanked Delew for “his excellent leadership” and “for the 30 years of friendship we have enjoyed working for our community”.

18 June 2020 Jewish News

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School warning / Pandemic help / News

Hasmo fights for survival Hundreds of Hasmonean parents logged into an “extraordinary” online call this week as they heard a “heartfelt plea to ensure the survival of the school” in its current form, given the parlous state of its finances, writes Adam Decker.

Founded by Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld in 1944, Hasmonean has long been part of the bedrock of Jewish education in the UK, but in the Zoom call 500 participants were told by trustees that the school was in a “very difficult financial situation”.

Hasmonean, which has both a girls’ and boys’ secondary school, is part of a Multi-Academy Trust, whose chair of trustees Gary Swabel

and chief executive Andrew McClusky issued “a heartfelt plea to ensure the survival of the school”.

McClusky said the pandemic had “hit Hasmonean’s voluntary donations hard,” explaining that the schools need voluntary contributions and donations to survive because government funding does not cover costs.

“Imagine a Hasmonean with no Beis, no Midrasha, no small group classes for students who need more attention, no informal education and no funds to recruit and retain first class staff,” he said.

“We owe it to Dr Schonfeld, to the children of the schools and their children’s children

munities and the Jewish Small Communities Network, as collated by the Board of Deputies.

A spokesperson said: “We recorded five further deaths than last week. Every loss is a tragedy. We’re seeing a reduction, but vigilance must be maintained.”

The school is at the heart of Jewish education in the UK

to keep the Hasmonean flag flying.”

Swabel urged parents to “preserve what’s precious” and unveiled a matched fundraising campaign, with attendees urged to “cast the net wide and reach out to friends, family, colleagues

and neighbours, to raise the much-needed funds to keep all of Hasmonean’s programmes going”.

The matched funding campaign begins at 10am on Sunday 28 June and continues until 10pm on Monday 29 June.

VISUALLY-IMPAIRED PEOPLE ASK PUBLIC FOR HELP Members of the public should do more to help the visually-impaired practise social distancing as the lockdown eases in the UK, a leading communal charity has said.

Jewish Blind & Disabled (JBD)’s chief executive Lisa Wimborne made the appeal on Monday just as England’s high streets and shopping centres drew crowds for the first time after a three-month shutdown.

497 communal deaths The number of coronavirusrelated fatalities stood at 497 among UK Jews as of last Friday, up from 492 the previous week.

The latest figure, released on Tuesday, covers deaths in hospital and beyond, using data gathered from burial boards, regional Jewish com-

She said: “Having a visual impairment and going out and about at the moment, even just trying to get into a shop or walking down the street, and social distancing at the same time is incredibly difficult, especially when you can’t then have someone guiding you, touching, holding your arm or whatever it is to move you out of the way.

“It is us, not them, who should be taking

the lead to ensure we are supporting them with social distancing.”

JBD tenant Michael Henriques, of Mill Hill, called on pedestrians to inform any visually impaired passers-by of their presence and offer help at a distance. “Vocalise their presence and indicate there’s plenty of room, or not as the case may be, and tell us there’s room to pass by,” he urged.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Special Report / Black Jewish experiences

‘The community still thinks o Prominent black British Jews discuss their experiences of racism in the community and the challenge facing the Board of Deputies’ Commission on Racial Inclusivity JODECI JOSEPH, 23, whose father is Nigerian and whose Jewish mother is from Hackney, identifies as Modern Orthodox. He went to a Jewish school, lives in Ilford and attends United Synagogue services, normally in Golders Green. He was critically ill in March with Covid-19

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I’ve been refused entry into a synagogue because they said I wasn’t Jewish, and I’ve faced a lot of questions on the door. Even before entry I’m constantly getting stares from the CST volunteers on the street as I’m walking to shul on Shabbat in my suit. I’ve had the CST follow me before.

It makes me feel really uncomfortable.

When I go to a new synagogue I get anxious because I’m questioned for up to 10 minutes. It’s brutal.

On Simchat Torah 18 months ago I was told I wasn’t Jewish so couldn’t come in. My white Jewish friends, some of whom went to that synagogue, were allowed straight in but my brother and I weren’t, meaning we couldn’t even go in and speak to the people inside who knew us. That was very traumatising.

He was a non-Jewish security guard and didn’t even check with the rabbi. My mum called up the next day,

I think he got fired.

I understand people need profiling, but if I look different and don’t come to shul, don’t question me in a hostile way.

You don’t need to be aggressive and make me feel like I’m a criminal. And if you’re going to question visitors you don’t know and don’t recognise, don’t just question those of colour. The profiling should be justified, too. How many black people have attacked synagogues?

Just a few months ago I went to a synagogue I’d been to a few times before, but was questioned extensively on the door.

Congregants who knew me were walking past saying ‘Hi Jodeci’ but still it continued. It was so embarrassing.

The guard actually went in and got the head of the shul to come out of the service to verify me.

It affected me the whole day, I couldn’t concentrate on my prayer. I just felt frustrated and angry that I’d had to justify my Judaism just because of the colour of my skin.

Once I’ll get into the shul I get a lot of stares, like I’m a new species or something. I also get lots of personal questions, asking if I converted and such. It’s like they want an interesting story to fulfil some social fetish. It makes me feel uncomfortable, like I don’t fit in and like I can’t be myself.

It’s as if basic social etiquette goes out the window. If you

come up to me and say hello, offer me a seat and don’t ask for my life story, just talk to me like anyone else, then I’ll feel welcome. If you make me feel like I’m on stage then I won’t.

Congregants don’t need to know my life story. I’m Jewish from birth but that doesn’t matter — Jewish texts tell us to make converts feel extra welcome.

I know people who are converting who struggle every week to find a Friday night meal to go to — ­ ­­they’re just not invited. One Indian guy who has spent years converting quit very recently because of the racism. He wrote a whole thing on Facebook. It’s sad that people feel like this. I know about 20 to 30 black Jews in London they all think change is needed. They all experience similar things. A friend of mine, who teaches at a Jewish school, was even called the n-word within the community.

There are things people can do to help. For a start, don’t stare. Make new people feel welcome in shul. Train the guards. Tell them that Jews can be black as well. There’s a lot of work to be done in the Jewish community. The Jewish community’s history of persecution means we should be all the more empathetic and welcoming to people of different races.

This is a non-denominational issue, and people listen to their leaders, so every leader needs to ask: what can we do better? The Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years. We can’t be doing it to our own people.

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Black Jewish experiences / Special Report

only white people are Jews’

Jodeci, back left, with his mother, brothers and sister

MADELINE R YOUNG, from Islington, is a French American who became a UK citizen last year. She is a university economics lecturer and PhD student with a grandparent from Guinea, West Africa, whose mother is Jewish

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I’m involved in the community – part of Limmud, former board member of the Movement of Reform Judaism, former board JESSICA MORGAN, 27, lives in Essex and describes herself as ‘part latkes, part plantain’. She is a journalist and recently recovered after contracting the coronavirus in March

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members of the two biggest minorities, in a world where you feel neither wanted nor appreciated.

On the statues, Churchill was a great British leader who fought Nazi Germany, so I disagree with those campaigning to take his statue down, yet when they tore Edward Colston’s statue down I felt total joy. My Jamaican ancestors were enslaved. Statues celebrating slave masters should be removed immediately. I’m shocked that anyone could disagree with that. A statue of Hitler would be destroyed instantly, so why are we not offered the same respect?

George Floyd’s brutal murder has been a catalyst for change. Enough is enough. The world is waking up. I was disappointed with the Jewish community’s silence at first, but it seems to have finally woken up to the severity of racism in recent days. The community still tends to think that only white people can be Jews, but we have black Jews and Jews of colour all over the world. If people broaden their mindsets and educate themselves they’ll be shocked to see the huge overlap and connection between Jews and black people.

To those who want to be a true ally to a black Jew, I’d say: please don’t question my Jewishness, or ask me if my mother’s Jewish, or if I had a batmitzvah, or quiz me on my Hebrew, and please don’t act like I’m wearing my Magen David as if it’s a fashion statement.

We hold ourselves to higher standards of acceptance and forgiveness so let’s practise what we preach. No culture or religion is full of people who look exactly the same.

Jews are no different.

we’re oppressing people, including our own people.

On Sunday I was at a brunch talking to another Jewish woman who said there’s no racism in France. I lived in France and I can tell you there is. Denying racism is toxic. It makes Jewish people of colour disengage with the community entirely.

I’ve met people who consider themselves both black and Jewish who tell me they don’t socialise with the Jewish community because of the racism.

For Jews who want to educate themselves on the impact of racism, I’d say look at the data in areas such as health outcomes, imprisonment, policing, poverty, even maternal mortality, before learning about the history of colonialism, including Europe’s relationship with Africa and the transatlantic slave trade. We’ve never dealt with that in our education system, but tons of Jews of colour have written about it, so we can listen to voices from both outside and inside our community.

As European Jews, we guard our memory of the Holocaust, but the history of slavery and racism is so deep, so global and so structural that there’s a resistance to really look into that historic wrong. It’s almost like people need to feel sad and ashamed in order for things to change.

There’s a Jews of Colour Facebook group and this year I’ve organised a Juneteenth Celebration, which commemorates the liberation from slavery of the last group of enslaved African–Americans in Texas. We’re doing a kosher picnic.

Why not? We have Passover every year. We celebrate Exodus.

Why can’t we celebrate this? As Jews we should celebrate other people’s liberation too.

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I’m adopted and embraced my Judaism in my early 20s after learning more about my biological mother’s background and heritage.

The community I wanted to join wasn’t very friendly or welcoming because of the way I looked. Like other black Jews I know, I got stared at in shul, and felt like I had to jump through hoops to be accepted.

It’s improved, but the community needs to use this opportunity to better itself and open its doors to people on the outskirts.

I attended the #BLM protests last Sunday.

It warmed my heart when I looked up to see a big banner reading: ‘Jews for Black Lives Matter.’ I felt so grateful that people showed up for us and I hope they continue to do so.

Yet the last two weeks have been extremely difficult for me. My anxiety has skyrocketed seeing all these far-right football hooligans protesting #BLM, abusing the right to free speech by using disgusting abusive racial language and making Nazi salutes.

It’s felt like a gut punch, watching it all unfold. I’m terrified. I live in fear not only of racism but antisemitism too. I feel like I have the biggest target on my head right now and it’s not a nice place to be. I wear my Magen David around my neck with pride but I can’t change the colour of my skin and now wonder if I’ll be attacked outside. Being black and Jewish is especially hard because you’re

member of the Jewish Volunteer Network, working on inclusivity at the Board of Deputies – but because I’m 75 percent European and 25 percent Guinean, people don’t know my ethnicity — I’m ambiguous. In Israel, they just assume I’m Moroccan.

Depending on how I style my hair, people don’t ask me questions. Like many with Sephardi of North African origin, I have curly hair, but if I style it differently, more African-American for example, then they start asking me about my religion. This is in the synagogue, during Shabbat service, during kiddush. It’s really offensive and basically racism, although people don’t mean it that way.

Having to constantly police my appearance within the Jewish community so that I’m not asked if I’m Jewish can be traumatising. It means I can’t make choices about my own clothing, my own hair. It’s racial policing. Converts to Judaism who are seen as white or Ashkenazi don’t get asked, whereas people who are born Jewish can get questioned. I feel like I have to suppress any expression of my non-European, non-Jewish culture, such as a love of West African food or music, because I’ll have my Judaism called into question.

There’s a lot of awakening that needs to happen. People need to know that Jews are diverse, that they can look very different, and that it’s none of your business. Policing our Judaism isn’t your business either, unless you’re marrying us or you’re our rabbi.

Some Ashkenazi Jews align themselves with privilege and discrimination, but just a few generations ago in Europe they were anything but privileged. We can’t get comfortable when

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Special Report / Black Jewish experiences NADINE BATCHELOR-HUNT is a writer, journalist and the former president of the Cambridge University Black and Minority Ethnic Campaign. She has suffered online antisemitic abuse, including instances that have required police involvement

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Being a black Jew can feel like an alienating space. In an overwhelmingly white, Ashkenazi diaspora community, being black singles you out and makes you ‘other’. It can make the British Jewish community an intense, upsetting and difficult space.

You get stared at when you go in a kosher shop, gawked at when you go to synagogue, questioned on how you’re Jewish at Jewish social events, asked how come you know Hebrew. As you proceed towards the synagogue you know you’ll be stopped and searched on your way in.

While these things may seem insignificant to some, together they create an atmosphere of being constantly on edge. It makes me feel as if I’ll never truly be Jewish.

Overwhelmingly, it seems that anti-black racism, and therefore racism towards black Jews, is less of a priority to Jewish communal organisations. Their attitude is one of ambivalence.

While my own denomination – Masorti – has made a concerted effort to address the issue, I and many other black Jews feel

worthless, invisible and abandoned by the Jewish establishment.

Black Jews and Jews of colour may be small in number in the UK, but we exist. The narrative tends to acknowledge Jews of colour in Israel or abroad, such as Mizrachi and Ethiopian communities, but pays little attention to those of us over here.

Baby steps are being made. JW3 ran an event on how the community can support black people, the Board of Deputies finally set up a commission to address grievances and concerns, and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the community must do more to stand with black people. But while these steps are encouraging, a complete rethink is needed of what the Jewish community actually is.

It is not just Ashkenazi. There are black Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, Sephardi Jews, Mizrachi Jews, Yemenite Jews and so many more. In the words of April Baskin, a black Jew, the community must stop seeing itself as a monolith but rather as multi-ethnic.

It must see the fight for the equality of black Jews as a Jewish fight, as the community’s fight.

We need to celebrate our diversity from school to shul, textbook to Torah. If we do that then black Jews and Jews of colour will no longer feel unwelcome in Jewish spaces, or erased from Jewish communal life. Only then will the Jewish community be a truly welcoming and inclusive space.

Solidarity rally in the suburb

More than 150 people attend Sunday’s demonstration

Jewish protesters gathered in Hampstead Garden Suburb last weekend to show their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, writes Adam Decker.

The demonstration drew more than 150 people on Sunday, including senior Masorti and Reform faith leaders and the former Labour MP Luciana Berger, organisers said. Antiracism placards spotted at the event contained references to the 2017 Grenfell fire, the Windrush scandal and Jewish texts.

Organisers Rebecca Moss, 24, from Hampstead Garden Suburb, and Rachel Rose, 23, from Finchley, called on the community to stand up in solidarity with black British communities and Jews of colour.

They said: “We are glad to have seen so many people from different backgrounds and of varying ages, and it’s important that many could attend their first protest in such a supportive atmosphere.

“This cannot be the end of the essential conversation and action in our communities and in British society at large.”

NEWS IN BRIEF

MDA DEDICATES BIKE TO OUTGOING ENVOY Magen David Adom UK has dedicated a medicycle to honour Israel’s departing envoy to the UK, Mark Regev. On seeing the vehicle at a socially-distanced ceremony at the Israeli embassy in Kensington last week, the top diplomat, 60, said: “This thoughtful gesture from MDA’s friends here in the UK was very moving. Members of my own family have proudly volunteered with MDA in Israel and have experienced firsthand the vital lifesaving work that they do.” Regev was joined by MDA UK’s chief executive Daniel Burger.

FORMER LABOUR MP STARTS NEW ROLE Former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth has taken on the top job at Index Against Censorship this week.

Writing her first blogpost as chief executive on Monday, Smeeth warned the nonprofit’s role had “never been more important”. “If we have learnt anything at all from the turmoil that 2020 has given the world, it’s that free speech is central to who we are and journalistic freedom is integral to the type of global society we aspire to live in,” she added.

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18 June 2020 Jewish News

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World Refugee Day/ Memorial service / News

UK Jews join global aid effort for 70m refugees

Photo by IsraAID/Amnon Bikovsky

don’t forget me And don’t forget to leave a gift to World Jewish Relief in your Will you can help end jewish poverty An IsraAID worker with face masks. Jews are asked to stand in solidarity with refugees

British groups this week joined a global call for Jewish communities to work together to help more than 70 million refugees, writes Stephen Oryszczuk.

Conflict in places like Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Myanmar has led to “the largest population of displaced persons in history”, with many millions around the world in makeshift camps now particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.

The #70million campaign, launched ahead of World Refugee Day this Saturday, will run for 10 days and calls on Jews in Israel and worldwide to stand in solidarity with refugees and other displaced people and to take action to support them.

It is being organised by OLAM, a platform of more than 50 Jewish and Israeli international development organisations including the

UK’s World Jewish Relief.

Those behind the initiative said the situation was urgent.

A spokesman for OLAM said: “Refugees and asylum seekers who are trapped in overflowing camps and overcrowded cities around the world lack access to clean water, health care, and even clear information.

“For many, social distancing and regular hand washing are not an option.”

Among the UK organisations supporting the campaign are the Office of the Chief Rabbi, United Synagogue, Masorti Judaism, Reform Judaism and Liberal Judaism.

WJR chief executive Paul Anticoni said: “British Jewry has an innate connection to the refugee experience and we thank our community for its support to WJR’s refugee programmes, but refugees and those displaced are now

among the hardest hit by Covid-19 and will require additional assistance.

“We are pleased to have assisted refugees in the UK who have played critical roles as key workers during the Covid-19 response, giving back to society in much the same way we have known Jewish refugees to always have done.

“We are proud to stand alongside other Jewish and Israeli organisations as part of this.”

OLAM chief executive Dyonna Ginsburg said the campaign “draws on shared values and history to encourage the global Jewish community to act for the vulnerable”, adding: “Jewish wisdom teaches to care for the stranger, to love them as ourselves. Jewish history is full of displacement and forced migration.”

AJEX online service open to all British Jews are being asked to join an online commemoration service to fallen Jewish servicemen and women next week in place of the usual in-person service at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

The Jewish Military Association UK (AJEX) will hold a virtual service on Sunday 28 June at 11am during National Armed Forces week, with a variety of online interviews and events in the days leading up to the ceremony.

This year is the 75th anniversary of VE day and VJ Day and the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. AJEX said it was “even more determined than ever” to gather together online at home to reflect on the contribution of those who served, as it launched its series interviewing both veterans and serving personnel from Sunday 21 June.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, AJEX patron, will speak at the ceremony, together with Army

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Chaplain Rabbi Reuben Livingstone, AJEX chair Mike Bluestone, Board of Deputies’ president Marie Van der Zyl and young students.

Bluestone said: “We look forward to seeing the community coming together for this memorial week which is so vital to help us honour those who have fought for our freedom.”

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

News / Grant for needy / Temperature test / Annexation anger

Kosher food bank boost The government has given £100,000 to a London food bank to provide kosher meals to hundreds of Jewish families struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic.

The grant last week, to Hot Line Meals and the Jewish Community Council (JCC), has been earmarked to help 1,200 adults and children over the school summer holidays.

Hot Line Meals Service (HLMS) is based in Hackney and the grant from the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was obtained with help from the JCC, which is based in Stamford Hill.

Orthodox community and welfare groups such as North London

Bikur Cholim, Ezer LeYoldos and Bikur Cholim D’Satmar refer needy families to HLMS, which provides daily threecourse kosher meals to people unable to shop or cook for themselves for reasons such as illness, disability or frailty.

The JCC identifies households that need Defra has given £100,000 to the London service extra help as a result of the pandemic, and negotiates with ically-deprived families who have suppliers to stretch the grant fur- fallen into crisis. Their food packages will comprise milk, bread, vegther.

Chani Rapaport, of HLMS, said: etables, fish, meat, eggs and cereal “We have identified 300 econom- over an initial eight-week period.”

OY, I NEED A DEGREE TO PRAY? Shulgoers could face having their temperatures taken when religious buildings reopen to the public.

The government gave the goahead for places of worship to reopen for individual prayers on 15 June.

The United Synagogue said it had been investigating the benefit and practicality of devices for taking the temperature of

attendees at shul, to see if they may have a fever, one of the key symptoms of the coronavirus.

Dayan Menachem Gelley, Rosh Beth Din of the London Beth Din, said: “If taking people’s temperatures is required by the government in order to enter places of worship, then non-touch infrared thermometers would be permitted to be used, provided the person

operating it isn’t Jewish, such as by the shul caretaker.”

Israel’s Charedi and Sephardi leaders are at odds over the use of thermometers on Shabbat: Israeli hospitals require anyone entering to have a temperature taken.

Chief Rabbi Mirvis has issued caution on easing lockdown, saying it should “not come at the expense of human lives”.

CHRISTIAN LEADERS PROTEST The UK’s most senior Christian leaders have told Boris Johnson that they oppose Israel’s planned annexation of large areas of the West Bank.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, penned his concern together with Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic leader in the UK. They also wrote to the Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev.

A statement from Lambeth Palace said they “expressed their opposition to any move by the government of Israel to annex West Bank territory after 1 July”, the date Benjamin Net-

anyahu’s government plans to start claiming sovereignty.

• The prime minister said on Tuesday the UK “strongly” opposes Israel’s reported plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Challenged in the Commons by Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, Boris Johnson replied: “I believe that what is proposed by Israel would amount to a breach of international law and we strongly object to it. We believe profoundly in a two-state solution and will continue to make that case.”

145 for envoy, 650 against Rival petitions both protesting and welcoming the appointment of Israel’s Settlements Minister Tzipi Hotovely as the next ambassador to the UK garnered hundreds of signatories this week.

A petition calling for the British Government to reject her appointment gathered almost 650 names by Wednesday lunch-time, while a counter-petition initiated

by Jewish activist Jonathan Hoffman attracted 145. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher rejected Israel’s choice of

UK ambassador and five years ago Brazil rejected Israel’s appointment of Dani Danon as envoy, leading to him being reassigned as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

The anti-Hotovely petition, addressed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, pointed to this precedent and urged the Government to ask Israel for a less divisive figure, drawing attention to her past comments, including her call to fly the Israeli flag over Temple Mount.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

News / Suspect charged / Hudson hire / Faith landmark / New mikveh

Man charged with attempted murder A man has been charged with attempted murder after a rabbi was stabbed in London.

Police said Stanley Francis,

44, from Stoke Newington, was also charged with possessing an offensive weapon.

He appeared in custody at

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Rabbi Alter Yaacov Schlesinger, who is in his 50s, was attacked near a bank in Stoke Newington. His condition is not life-threatening.

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Hudson role Interfaith gala A senior figure in progressive Judaism in the UK has been appointed as communications director at Durham University.

Lucian Hudson is a vice-president and past chair of the Liberal Judaism movement, as well as a past governor of Leo Baeck College and a former member of the Jewish Leadership Council, who has served as director of communications for the UK government.

A journalist by training, who has worked for both the BBC and ITV, Hudson will oversee advancement activities, marketing, communications and developing Durham University’s alumni networks worldwide.

Hudson has previously worked in communication roles at both the Open University and at Oxford University.

The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester celebrated its 15th anniversary online this week, with guest speakers recalling the group’s late co-founder Henry Guterman.

While the Forum’s tenth anniversary was celebrated by a dinner attended by religious and civic leaders at Manchester Town Hall, the pandemic meant it moved online this year.

Among the speakers were local MP Afzal Khan and Guterman’s son Mark, who recalled how his father came to the UK with his family as a refugee from Germany in 1938 at the age of 12. Henry was a stalwart of Manchester’s Jewish community, serving as president of the city’s Jewish Representative Council and active in more than 25 organisations. Many of those on the call were on the verge of tears recalling his “devotion to uniting people”.

UTENSIL MIKVEH IS APPROVED A new mikveh in Elstree has been approved for use, despite others being ordered to close for safety reasons during the coronavirus pandemic.

A delegation of doctors attended the Elstree Shtiebel, a synagogue, to inspect the keilim (utensils) mikveh, including Dr Martin Harris of The Temple Fortune Medical Group, and approved it for use.

Mendel Tajtelbaum said it was “the only utensil mikveh in north-west London that

they’ve allowed” for use during the Covid-19 pandemic, when hygiene has been of primary concern.

“We’ve been surprised,” Tajtelbaum added. “People are coming from far and wide, not just from Elstree but Golders Green and Hendon, because it’s the only mikveh that has been properly allowed and passed by doctors.

“We have a cleaner come every day, we provide gloves, we’re using special chlorine. It’s all very safe during the crisis.”

Volunteer network joins JLC Would you like to train as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Counsellor?

The Jewish Volunteering Network (JVN) has joined the Jewish Leadership Council.

JVN was accepted as a member of the umbrella body at a council meeting this month.

The JLC’s joint interim chief executive, Michelle Janes,

said the organisation was “thrilled” to welcome JVN. “Volunteering is essential to the success and sustainability of the Jewish community,” she said. “It is important that those who give their time and energy to our community through their volunteering have a voice

and can be supported through JVN.” JVN chief executive Nicky Goldman said the volunteering hub looked forward to working with the JLC and “expanding our reach across the community and continuing to create opportunities for volunteers”.

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More than 100 people gathered at north London’s JW3 on Sunday to donate blood while practising social distancing.

The Jewish community centre’s main auditorium was transformed into an NHS blood donor centre during World Blood Donor Day. JW3 chief executive Raymond Simonson thanked the donors, NHS staff and JW3 vol-

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unteers, saying the response to the event among the local and Jewish community was overwhelming. “The blood donated at JW3 is enough to save up to 187 lives, which I find quite incredible,” he added.

Speaking at the event, NHS donor care supervisor Matthew Best thanked all those who “came out in this distressing time to donate”.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Special Report / Public memorials

Should they stay or should they go now?

As Britain re-examines its past, we scrutinise memorials – many erected very recently – to kings, politicians and others with antisemitic views RICHARD THE LIONHEART (KING RICHARD I)

England and imposed heavy taxes upon them.

This deprived England’s Jews of a significant source of their money-lending business, threatening their very existence. This was followed by the Statute of Jewry issued in 1253, which was aimed at segregating the Jews and imposed on them the wearing of a badge shaped like the two tablets of the ten commandments. The statue pictured is in King’s College London’s library.

KING EDWARD I

King Richard the Lionheart’s coronation sparked pogroms of unprecedented severity against English Jews. On 3 September 1189, Jewish dignitaries bearing gifts for the newly crowned king were beaten and banished, sparking a false rumour that Richard had ordered the mass murder of England’s Jews. A slaughter quickly ensued across London, spreading to other English cities including Stamford, King’s Lynn and Colchester. On 16 March 1190, at the urging of Rabbi Yomtov of Joigney, approximately 500 Jews in York killed themselves rather than be forcibly converted or massacred.

By the end of the pogrom, York’s entire Jewish community had been eradicated. Richard I’s statue, pictured above, features prominently outside the Houses of Parliament.

SIMON DE MONTFORT, 6TH EARL OF LEICESTER

In 1231, Simon de Montfort expelled the small Jewish community from Leicester “in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world”. Justifying his actions as being “for the good of my soul, and for the souls of my ancestors and successors”, the move bolstered the 6th Earl of Leicester’s popularity. The Jews of Leicester subsequently found refuge in the eastern suburbs, which were controlled by Montfort’s great-aunt Margaret, Countess of Winchester. Today the Earl is commemorated in De Montfort University in Leicester. His statue features on the city’s Haymarket Memorial Clock Tower.

KING HENRY III Another medieval monarch with a virulent hatred of the Jews, in 1245 King Henry III issued a decree prohibiting Jews from residing in most towns across

in co-founding the Labour Party, whose constitution she helped to draft. Nonetheless, in 1897, in a book co-authored with her husband Sidney, Jews were described as a “constant influence for degradation”. She also lectured the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann after the Hebron massacre in 1929: “I can’t understand why the Jews make such a fuss over a few dozen of their people killed in Palestine.” No statue exists of Beatrice Webb, but this blue plaque is on the wall of her former Hampstead home.

KEIR HARDIE By the late 1200s England’s Jewish population had reached around 3,000 people, with prosperous settlements in London, Norwich and Lincoln. However, rising antisemitism linked to the blood libel, the Crusades and financial pressures resulted in King Edward I passing a law forbidding Jews from lending money for a living (usury). England’s Jews became impoverished, with many hundreds also being hanged or imprisoned. Finally, in 1290 under the Edict of Expulsion, Jews were banished altogether by King Edward I. Jews did not return to England until the 1650s, when they were invited by Oliver Cromwell to resettle. The statue pictured was unveiled in 2007 in Burgh by Sands, Cumbria.

WILLIAM GLADSTONE

Four times prime minister William Gladstone has been memorialised across several statues, including this one in the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament. However, the leader of the Liberal Party held antisemitic views, most notably towards his Conservative arch-rival, Benjamin Disraeli. In 1876, a failed uprising of Bulgarian Christians against Ottoman rule provoked a mass slaughter of the Christian population. After Prime Minister Disraeli upheld Britain’s longstanding support for the Ottoman Empire, Gladstone accused him of harbouring dual loyalties, describing what he termed in a letter as “Judaic sympathies”.

BEATRICE WEBB

One of the best known leftist intellectuals of the late 19th century, Beatrice was instrumental

From humble beginnings, James Keir Hardie rose to become one of Britain’s most notable politicians as the Labour Party’s first parliamentary leader. Yet in the very month the party was established, Hardie publicly blamed the outbreak of the Boer War on “half a dozen financial houses, many of them Jewish, to whom politics is a counter in the game of buying and selling securities”. The Labour Leader newspaper, of which Hardie was editor, also published numerous virulently antisemitic remarks stating that wherever there is trouble: “You may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances.” This bust of Hardie is outside Cumnock Town Hall in East Ayrshire.

Manchester, and today there is a nationwide network of family-planning clinics named after her. The bust of Marie Stopes pictured was unveiled in 2008 in Camden.

ERNEST BEVIN

Ernest Bevin was foreign secretary from 1945 to 1951, the most senior Cabinet member in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government responsible for implementing British policy around the establishment of the State of Israel. In this position he went out of his way to prevent the entry into Mandated Palestine of Holocaust survivors, rejecting an Anglo–American commission’s proposal in 1946 for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe. Fellow Labour politician Richard Crossman is even said to have likened Bevin’s outlook as “corresponding roughly with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. This bust of Bevin is in Bermondsey, south London.

NANCY ASTOR

MARIE STOPES

A pioneering author and campaigner Marie Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain. However, her devotion to family planning derived partly from her obsession with eugenics and in 1935 she attended a Nazi-sponsored Congress for Population Science in Berlin. She even sent Hitler a collection of love poems, declaring in 1942: “Catholics and Prussians /The Jews and the Russians/ All are a curse / Or something worse.” Stopes became the first female academic to be appointed at the University of

Theresa May last year unveiled a controversial statue of Nancy Astor, the first female MP to sit in parliament. Installed in Hoe Park in Plymouth to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Astor’s election as a Conservative MP, the bronze was also visited by Boris Johnson. At the time, the Campaign Against Antisemitism warned of her “appalling views”, which included labelling Jews the “killers of Christ” who were themselves to blame for antisemitism. According to British diplomat Harold Nicolson, she also once told the MP Alan Graham: “Only a Jew like you would dare to be rude to me.”

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Paris rally / PA threat / News briefs / World News

‘Dirty Jews’ chants at rally European Jewish groups have condemned antisemitic chanting heard during a demonstration in Paris against the death of a black man in police custody.

Chants of “dirty Jews” were voiced by some protesters at Place de la République on Saturday, as thousands called for justice for Adama Traore, who died in 2016.

Paris police are investigating the chants, which were heard after counter-protesters unfurled a banner reading: “Justice for victims of antiwhite crimes.”

European Jewish Con-

Protesters in Paris call for justice for Adama Traore

gress president Moshe Kantor said: “People who claim to march against hate and racism while shouting violent antisemitic statements are hypocrites acting against the worthy cause of the majority

ANNEXATION ‘THREAT’

If Israel annexes parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will declare a state on the 1967 borders with a capital in eastern Jerusalem, its prime minister has said.

Speaking to members of the Foreign Press Association last Tuesday, Mohammad Shtayyeh called annexation an“existential threat” to Palestinians, i24 News reported.

Such a move, he said, would also mean the end of the Palestinians’ recognition of the state of Israel.

Last month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to all agreements with Israel, including security, over Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel would begin to annex parts of the West Bank in July.

and trying to hijack and piggyback on the justifiable anger and hurt of anti-racist demonstrators.”

Francis Kalifat, president of French Jewish umbrella group CRIF, said the antise-

mitic chants were “an insult to the Republic, but also to the cause that the demonstrators claim to promote”.

In recent days, as demonstrations and marches have taken place across the world against racism and police brutality following the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, Jewish leaders have said “small minorities” are using it as an excuse to target Jews and Jewish institutions.

Kantor said: “As people with a history of oppression and discrimination, the Jewish people stand shoulder to shoulder with the black community.”

Trump backs ICC sanctions including Israel Donald Trump – for possible war has authorised crimes. economic sancHis executions and travel tive order would restrictions block the finanagainst Internacial assets of tional Criminal Court workers President Trump and court employees involved in inves- Benjamin Netanyahu and bar those employees and tigating US troops and intelligence officials, their immediate relatives and those of allied nations – from entering the US.

WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF

Your weekly digest of stories from the international press ARGENTINA

Synagogues in Buenos Aires began streaming services this week after city authorities allowed religious leaders to enter places of worship to record or transmit online services. The Argentinian capital has a Jewish population of around 160,000, and worshippers are still unable to attend, but rabbis there said they were ‘very excited’ about once again reentering their temples.

Jewish schools remain closed.

GERMANY

The police chief in Halle has said the city’s Jewish community neither requested additional protection nor provided a list of important dates before a deadly

attack on a synagogue there over Yom Kippur last year. After the attack, Jewish officials criticised the police for failing to protect the site, but this week Halle Police chief Annett Wernicke and colleagues told a committee of inquiry extra protection was on offer.

UAE

Annexation will ‘upend’ growing security, economic and cultural ties between Israel and the Arab world, according to the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador in Washington, DC. Yousef al-Otaiba said the effects would be ‘certain and immediate’. The envoy’s op-ed in an Israeli paper will be seen as a warning: Benjamin Netanyahu counts improved ties with the Arab world as one of his main achievements.

Rabbi Jacov Di Segni, right, officiates at the wedding of Marco Del Monte and Elinor Hanoka at the Great Synagogue of Rome this month

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Editorial comment and letters ISSUE NO.

1163

Not so warm and welcoming for all Last week we spoke to journalist Stephen Bush, who’s chairing the Board of Deputies’ Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. He will invite fellow black British Jews to share their experiences of racism in the Jewish community.

This week, we proudly provide a front-page platform to four black Jewish voices. The Board would do well to invite each of them to contribute to its timely and critical investigation.

The experiences of Madeline R Young, Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, Jessica Morgan and Jodeci Joseph will help inform the Board’s terms of reference. They’ll also serve as a distressing wake-up call to all those who consider our community a warm and welcoming environment for every Jew. It clearly is not.

Reasons to be hopeful

After 87 days of lockdown, finally some tiny green shoots of recovery across the community. Jewish life, if still far from anything approaching normal, at least shows signs of normality with schools tentatively reopening, rabbis returning to synagogues and the high street back in business. Meanwhile, who couldn’t have been moved by the sight of care home residents emotionally reuniting with loved ones after a long and painful separation? Whisper it quietly but perhaps, just perhaps, the worst is finally over.

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Send us your comments PO Box 815, Edgware, HA8 4SX | letters@thejngroup.com

Things we miss the most I was very tempted to visit Brent Cross Shopping Centre when it reopened this week.

Not that I need new clothes or something for my home – just to see what shopping looks like after so many weeks at home. But now there’s no touching the goods! How can I look at the clothes without feeling the fabric?

Brent Cross always includes coffee with a friend. Not now. Once I return to shul when it reopens, I shall miss sitting beside another congregant. No chit chat, no Kiddush and no singing. Let’s pray for a rapid return to shopping normality.

Norma Neville Hendon

Sketches & kvetches

Operations Manager Alon Pelta 020 8148 9693 alon@jewishnews.co.uk

THIS WEEKEND'S SHABBAT TIMES...

Shabbat comes in Friday night 9.07pm

Shabbat goes out Sedra: S helach Lecha Saturday night 10.28pm

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“As a lockdown activity, I suggested that the kids play ‘statues’ with me.

So, they picked me up and threw me in the river!”

I can’t tell you how much I miss my fellow synagogue congregants.

As the weeks of lockdown have dragged into months, I have realised how much I have come to rely on my synagogue as the beating heart of my community.

I’m not a religious man – far from it. I attend Shabbat services once a month at most. Shul for me is a place I go to meet like-minded people, read the Jewish newspapers and play a good game of cards.

Rest assured when this dreadful lockdown finally comes to an end, I’ll be there for Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv too! The rabbi is going to be sick of the sight of me.

Alan Gavron By email

STATUES RECALL PEOPLE WHO ARE GOOD FOR SOME, BAD FOR OTHERS High on the list of unsavoury statues for removal is that of Simon de Montfort, adorning the Haymarket Memorial Clock Tower in Leicester.

As Earl of Leicester, Montfort expelled the Jews from the city in 1231, banishing them “in my time or in the time of any of my heirs to the end of the world”. He justified his action as being “for the good of my soul, and for the souls of my ancestors and successors”.

In this, he was far ahead of King Edward the First’s nationwide expulsion of the tiny Jewish community of about 3,000 souls in 1290.

Jews had to await Oliver Cromwell allowing them the right of return in 1656.

A hero to British Jews, Cromwell remains a monster to many Irish people. Who knows but that we may soon see campaigns to remove his statue from the Palace of Westminster precincts. He was no lover of democracy.

The former Leicester Polytechnic was disgracefully renamed de Montfort University in 1992, despite his antisemitic views.

When his statue goes, as it should, the university needs a new name.

Barry Hyman Bushey

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Editorial comment and letters

ship would probably still be locked.

It is time a forthright initiative were taken by the public. I would urge all members of our community, especially rabbinical leaders, to email three letters – to the prime minister, the communities secretary and their MP. The respectful request should be to restore community prayer in places of worship by the next official lockdown announcement on 4 July. Social distancing and other safeguards wil have to be strictly implemented.

Brian Gordon Councillor, Barnet

Unilateral action required Your columnist Alex Brummer states: “In global affairs unilateral actions end badly, whether Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza,or Russia’s attempt to assert sovereignty over parts of Ukraine. Properly negotiated treaties or truces may be hard to achieve, but tend to have buy-in from most sides.”

If it were not for unilateral actions, Israel would probably not have been created. This is because the Jews would still be awaiting “properly negotiated treaties” despite the

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OPEN UP OUR SYNAGOGUES Since 26 March, citizens of this country have been denied access to their places of worship for community prayer.

The millions in this country for whom faith is indispensable have been patiently awaiting government relaxations, relying largely on assurances from community leaders that the matter was in hand and the government was listening.

Alas, there have, as yet, been no tangible results. The only efforts that have noticeably achieved anything are those of the Catholic clergy, without whose outspoken demands, the doors of every law-abiding place of wor-

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As for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the clamour for immediate withdrawal was deafening, followed by shock when Israel acted on it. Or perhaps it’s all about perpetuating anti-Israel sloganeering?

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Opinion

The sheer stupidity of tearing down statues JENNI FRAZER

O

f all the various aspects of stupidity that have followed on from the tragic death of George Floyd, it seems to me that the statues issue ranks high, and bids fair to be the stupidest.

In the wake of the charged anti-racist protests – which may well have had as much to do with frustration over the Covid-19 lockdown as genuine desire to support the Black Lives Matter campaign – we have seen, in the past couple of weeks, a campaign to pull down statues in Britain.

The statues – almost all of men, of course – are largely the legacy of Victorian Britain, a way of honouring royalty and philanthropy, without, usually, paying attention to how the subjects achieved their prominence in public life.

I will lay bets that 98 percent of these statues have received almost no public attention in the past 100 years, at a minimum.

I used to walk past an equestrian statue almost

every day near my office, and I still couldn’t even tell you who was being remembered, let alone whether he was a good person.

The exceptions are two men who made their fortunes from slavery and racism — Edward Colston and Cecil Rhodes. Colston’s name permeates the city of Bristol and has been a contentious issue for decades. Successive Labour councils – and, indeed, the current mayor of Bristol, who is black – have sat on the attempts to remove Colston’s statue, until people took the law literally into their own hands and pushed the edifice into the harbour.

Rhodes, whose name, of course, is given

❝

DO I WANT EDWARD I'S STATUE REMOVED? I DO NOT: WE ARE STILL HERE AND HE IS LARGELY FORGOTTEN

to the prestigious squad of foreign highachieving scholars, is another difficult case, and there have been numerous attempts in Oxford, where the Rhodes Trust is based, to rid Oriel College of his memorial.

Given that I am not black, I have not the slightest inkling of what it might be like for a black person to walk past a statue that celebrates the life of an unashamed racist. And we, as Jews, are fortunate that in this country, at least, there are few effigies of those who hated Jews more than strictly necessary.

There are no statues, that I know of, of Sir Oswald Mosley, the 20th century Fascist politician and professional Jew-baiter. Nor, to take a ludicrous example floated this week on social media, is there a statue of Adolf Eichmann in Golders Green, to which I would certainly be opposed if such a thing existed. But it does not.

What does exist, however, are two vile examples – Simon de Montfort, whose name is all over Leicester — and Edward I, the king who expelled the Jews from medieval England. De Montfort spent considerable time and energy in cancelling debts owed to

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Jews and in 1265, killing many of them.

In 2001, Leicester City Council issued a formal statement rebuking de Montfort for his blatant antisemitism. I am not sure what good this may have done other than to assure the very small Leicester Jewish community that de Montfort’s legacy no longer meant anything in the city. His statue remains in place.

Edward I – or Edward Longshanks, as he was known on account of being six foot two inches tall —issued his Edict of Expulsion against the Jews in 1290.

His memorial in London consists of a seated statue erected in 1903, high on a building and looking out over the traffic in Holborn. Do I want his statue removed?

I do not: and the primary reason is that eight centuries after he tried to get rid of us, we are still here, and he is largely forgotten.

It seems to me that most of those honoured with statues were, at various times in their lives, less than honourable men.

A sense of proportion would be a good idea at a time like this, and the statues, if they are to go anywhere, should go into a Museum of Disgrace.

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Opinion

How we talk and teach about race LYN JULIUS

CO-FOUNDER, HARIF

M

ore than 700 former students and staff have signed a petition calling for JFS to adopt a ‘decolonised’ curriculum. A comprehensive Jewish education, they say, should provide an honest portrayal of the British empire and slave trade.

While it is laudable that the petitioners should wish to broaden the curriculum, there are two pitfalls they must avoid.

One is to impose the straightjacket of identity politics on society – this categorises people into tribes or ethnic groups, some of whom can claim to be victimised by other groups. Thus black people are generally being seen as victims of white people. Third World people are seen as victims of white colonials.

Where do Jews fit in? There is a dangerous trend afoot to shoehorn Jews in to the white colonial category. Added to the classic antisemitic trope of Jewish power and world domination, Jews then become portrayed as oppressors of black or coloured people. It is a short step to extending the analogy to Israel: a ‘white’ colonial state oppressing ‘black’ Palestinians.

This tendency is worrying for two reasons.

One is that Jews in Europe were also victims

of oppression – until recently, Jews suffered from systemic bans and quotas. The other is that recent waves of Jewish refugees into Britain from the Arab and Muslim world testify to the oppression of (people of colour or) black people by other black people.

It is a fact that Jews were only one notch above slaves in a systemic Muslim structure of racism branding non-Muslims as dhimmis.

Ironically, it was western colonialism that liberated these Jews from subjugated status.

The late Albert Memmi got it right. He was a Tunisian Jewish writer and philosopher who supported the anti-colonial movement for independence against the French.

But surveying the dismal failure of postcolonial states to respect the rights of minorities, and witnessing the flight of his fellow Jews from Arab countries, Memmi also acknowledged that ‘black’ people could be oppressors.

As a result, he was a fervent supporter of Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.

If the JFS petitioners wish to broaden the curriculum, by all means. Let us talk about the evils of colonialism. Let us talk about the white slave trade. But let us also talk about the Arab slave trade, which trafficked 17 million people, whereas the transatlantic slave trade trafficked 11 million. Let us be frank about antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world.

Let’s not reduce history to simplistic categories of white bad, black good.

SAMUEL OYEWUSI

HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST AMBASSADOR

A

t this point there is nothing I can say that’s not been said. Like many, I was struck with horror at the murder of George Floyd and reminded of the horrific mistreatment of black people around the world.

This specific case caused me to take a break from social media to collect my own thoughts and speak to those whose opinions I value deeply. For many black people in the UK, it is a reminder of the hold that racism and white supremacy still have and the trauma with which many have had to deal.

This experience has forced me to reanalyse my view of the many institutions around me, what I had been taught in the past, and experiences that I had ordinarily brushed off.

Even though George Floyd was murdered in the United States, the truth is the UK is not innocent. Whether through the lack of acknowledgement of the horrors of colonialism, the role of the UK in the transatlantic slave trade, or even the presence of racism on our campuses and within schools today. The truth is more needs to be done.

If there is one thing I can take from my time as a regional ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust, it is the importance

of people educating themselves on the issues while standing up for those who are targeted with hate and face injustice.

While we can post and raise awareness, what is important is that this leads to real actions and steps to fight racism, both institutionally and in our individual lives.

It means that, when faced with bigotry and hate, we do not stand quiet. This in itself only allows perpetrators to have their way.

Furthermore, without institutions taking real action to deliberately be anti-racist, the fight remains to create an environment that no longer praises or allows space for racism and white supremacy.

As a black person in the UK, you are always forced to consider the role of race in the environment you are in, and this was not more true than when I started at university. Initially, I was almost put off because of the lack of black students within the student population, even though I knew I would be getting an education from a place that would be of great value.

More needs to be done to make sure bright people of all races are able to obtain the opportunities that they rightly deserve.

Above all, this is a time for solidarity and action. I encourage you to look within your own surroundings and stand up against racism in whatever form it might take. Take these conversations inside the household and be educated on how racism and white supremacy still exist and are issues here in the UK.

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From Sunday 21st June, AJEX will be running a series of fascinating online interviews featuring veterans and serving personnel. Then, on Sunday 28th June our annual commemoration ceremony will include Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Secretary of State for Defence, speaking on the vital contribution of Jewish servicemen and women to British society.

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The Jewish Brigade

This year is the 75th anniversary of VE and VJ Day as well as the Battle of Britain. As our usual venue, the National Memorial Arboretum, is closed due to the Coronavirus, we are more determined than ever to gather, online, and honour their memory.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Opinion

We must remain united, even if we do disagree FORMER ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES

❝

he letter signed by British Jews condemning the Israel government’s plans to annex a large section of the West Bank said as much about this controversial issue as it did about the state of Israel-diaspora relations. With the proposed annexation only weeks away, the Israeli government has yet to launch a concerted campaign to explain its position to diaspora Jews.

On the other hand, the signatories seemed unaware that the Israelis most opposed to the policy are not centrist liberals but extreme rightists who reject the Trump peace plan.

Indeed, the decision to publish the letter in Haaretz, a leftist paper with minimal circulation, instead of one of the more mainstream dailies, indicated a certain detachment from Israeli reality. Annexation has become another symptom of a much more pervasive – and dangerous – trend.

That process has been deepening in recent years, with diaspora Jews increasingly accusing Israel of abandoning its enlightened values and

undermining their ability to defend it publicly.

Israelis, on the other hand, were profoundly offended by the large numbers of diaspora Jews, especially in the United States, who supported the Iran nuclear deal and opposed US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

That resentment influenced the Israeli government’s withdrawal from the Kotel arrangement, a move which, in turn, further alienated liberal diaspora Jews.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, efforts to address the tension have been frustrated by the cancelation of virtually all exchanges between Israeli and diaspora youth, and the understandable turning inward of communities both within the Jewish state and abroad.

This situation is not only morally tragic, but strategically dangerous. Diaspora Jewish support, both political and financial, is vital to Israel’s defence, and a strong Israel greatly enhances the security of Jews worldwide.

MICHAEL OREN

T

JEWISH PEOPLE MUST NOT FALL VICTIM TO THE CHRONIC POLARISATION PLAGUING SOCIETIES The gravest threat, though, is to the Jewish peoplehood on which Israel is predicated and to which the large majority of diaspora Jews is still passionately committed. At stake is the Talmudic adage of Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – all of Israel is responsible for one another.

It is impossible to be mutually responsible and at the same time be mutually obtuse.

Annexation – or rather, the extension of Israeli sovereignty, for Jews cannot annex their own homeland – is fraught with complications. Proponents will stress the need to exact a price for Palestinian rejectionism, to prevent the peace plan from stagnating, and to render its two-state solution palatable to the Israeli centre-right.

Opponents warn of serious damage to Israel’s international reputation, the collapse of both the Oslo Accords and the peace with Jordan, and the erosion of Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state. Annexation

may help defend Israel from military threats in the Middle East while exposing it to sanctions from Europe.

Certainly, there is much to discuss here and to debate, often ardently. But both sides, Israelis and diaspora Jews must first be willing to listen. Urgently needed is a respectable and widely inclusive dialogue. Previous initiatives, such as diaspora-Israel summits sponsored by President Ezer Weizman in the 1990s, ended in failure, and later Israeli leaders recoiled from what they saw as a politically unprofitable endeavour.

But we no longer have a choice. Israeli and diaspora Jews – writers, rabbis, public intellectuals and decision-makers from across the religious and political spectrum – must meet and air their differences openly, frankly, and in the spirit of klal yisrael.

Internal divisions, our history teaches us, have often hurt us more than external enemies.

The Jewish people must not fall victim to the chronic polarisation that is now plaguing so many societies. We can still pull back from that brink. We can still gather, agree to disagree if we have to, and remain united. Whatever gains annexation may bring in terms of territory, it must not be at the cost of our people.

Councils divesting from Israel won't bring peace LUKE AKEHURST

DIRECTOR, WE BELIEVE IN ISRAEL

D

isappointingly, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) won a Supreme Court case in April that overturns the government’s regulations preventing Local Government Pension Schemes – the huge pension funds for all UK council staff – from divesting from companies on the basis of their links to Israel.

I expect the government will now look at reintroducing the ban on divestment via primary legislation, and that there will be little appetite to pursue anti-Israel divestment among local authority pension fund committees, but there is political pressure from local PSC groups to do so.

Chairs of local pension fund committees are receiving campaign letters from the PSC urging them to divest from a range of companies they claim are “complicit in Israel's war crimes”.

The basis for this alarmingly worded claim is extremely tenuous, and examination of the list of companies from which they are demanding

councils divest reveals it includes a wide range of both Israeli companies and large multinationals, either because they supply the Israeli government or they simply have a presence in Israeli settlements in the West Bank (e.g. banks with branches or ATMs in settlements).

The list includes major UK high street and Israeli banks, defence and aerospace companies, IT companies, travel companies, civil engineering suppliers, medical and scanner manufacturers, Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva (which supplies one-seventh of the NHS’ drugs), energy and telecoms companies, government contractors and sportswear companies. Divesting from all of them would seriously diminish the investment options open to pension funds. PSC claims council pension funds have more than £2billion invested in companies it is blacklisting.

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Almost all pension funds have an ethical investment policy that will have deemed them compliant. In many cases, they employ advisers on ethical investment, who do not advocate divestment from Israeli-connected firms.

Whatever the arguments about the legal status or merits of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, there is no legal prohibition on trading with them, supplying civilians or government institutions there or investing in them.

The divestment demand is part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which is opposed by all the main Jewish communal organisations in the UK. Local authorities should not be engaging in any way in the BDS campaign, as this negative campaign demonises Israel, falsely compares it to apartheid South Africa, and drives Israelis and Palestinians further apart – they should be

BDS DEMONISES ISRAEL AND DRIVES ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS EVEN FURTHER APART

encouraging greater cooperation and coexistence between the sides. When they impose BDS, they import foreign conflicts and divide communities. Jews and others will recoil from the idea the council on which they depend for the equal provision of schools, social care, and other public services would target Israel in this way.

This extensive and absurd PSC blacklist gives the lie to any claims of a targeted approach to divestment. Major pillars of the Israeli economy are targeted, as are global businesses for having the temerity to supply Israel or trade there.

The issues at stake over Israel’s next steps in the West Bank are serious and deserve proper debate that doesn’t demonise Israel. Attempts to piggyback BDS back into prominence on the back of legitimate opposition to the annexation proposals must be resisted. A council going down the divestment path wouldn't be helping to bring peace to the Middle East but it would be fanning the flames of the conflict.

The sooner the government closes this legal loophole with new legislation and stops the possibility of councils using their investment clout to make clumsy interventions in a complex conflict, the better.

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Community / Scene & Be Seen

1 PURPLE PROJECT

Members of the community answered Jewish Care’s calls to show support for the charity between 14 to 21 of June. Some painted purple artwork and whipped up purple dishes while others dressed in the charity’s colour. Director of fundraising and community engagement Adam Overlander-Kaye, who dyed his hair purple, said: “It doesn’t matter how you join in with Go Purple, the main thing is to have fun and support Jewish Care’s amazing staff who are looking after older people in our care homes and in the community.” Pictured are the Flaum family with their pets. To take part, share photos on social media using the hashtag #GoPurple.

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And be seen!

The latest news, pictures and (virtual) social events from across the community Email us at community@thejngroup.com

FUZZ-FREE

Camp Simcha’s chief executive Neville Goldschneider raised more than £1,100 after shaving off his 12-week lockdown beard, grown while shielding. The challenge was broadcast live on Facebook. “[It was] a fun way to show people that even when you cannot leave the house, there are ways you can help support charity,” he said. “At the beginning, I didn’t mind having the beard, but as the weather heated up, I was counting the days until I could finally shave the monster off. I am very grateful to all those supporters who have joined me in lockdown challenges.”

3 CARE PACKAGES

Project ImpACT volunteers baked and delivered almost 500 muffins to care home staff at residential homes across London. The Zoom event was led by chef Fabienne VinerLuzzato and her daughters.

One recipient thanked volunteers, saying: “The muffins were amazing and all so carefully made and presented.

Many staff members have been very scared about coming to work on the frontline of the virus, in particular, our Filipino members, whose risk factor is high and who support family members overseas.”

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4 BRUSHING UP

The Dental Wellness Trust, has donated more than 3,400 essential toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste to Norwood, Jewish Care and GIFT. “As we learn more about the virus, it’s increasingly clear your risk of severe illness and death increases with age,” says trust founder Dr Linda Greenwall. Dr Saul Konviser, also of the trust, said: “We desperately need more donations from dental practitioners and also their commitment to support their communities.”

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Weekend / Jewish News meets... Woody Allen

‘I’m not as neurot Brigit Grant has her life wish come true in a virtual chat with Woody Allen, who can still recite his barmitzvah portion and reveals why social distancing is a blessing

I

In association with

A look

Inside Mime of his life: Jesse Eisenberg on playing French artist Marcel Marceau in new film

always imagined my first interview with Woody Allen would take place at The Carlyle or sharing a Broadway Danny Rose sandwich at the the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue.

“Not on the telephone during a global pandemic,” I tell him after being introduced. “Well here we are, and it’s nice to meet you by phone,” he says.

And there it was – the signature Brooklyn cadence that has flavoured his films since 1963’s What’s New Pussycat which he wrote, starred in and believes deserves the bad reviews.

Fortunately, Woody has never taken notice of negative critiques and gave up reading many decades ago, although some appear within the vast recounting of his life in his first autobiography, Apropos of Nothing.

It’s a fitting title for this tome by a selfdeprecating author, who questions his relevance to pretty much everything.

But it is the unvarnished truth and compulsory reading for his detractors – although that’s not why he wrote it.

“People have been asking me for years to do an autobiography, because I’ve been in showbusiness since I was 16 and have worked in print, radio, television, written theatre plays, directed opera, played jazz all over the world, acted and directed on the screen.

“So I’ve had lots of experiences people wanted to hear about and I had no interest other than making it entertaining.”

It is certainly that and more, as his vivid recollections transport you to the New York of his childhood, which served as the template for Radio Days, although the memories are conduits to other tales about his stand-up career, movie casting and relationships with women (including first wife Louise Lasser and live-in partner Diane Keaton), who remain Woody’s closest friends.

Keaton is my cue to mention my Annie Hall obses-

sion, which began in 1977 with waistcoats and peg trousers leading to ownership of a VW Beetle.

“I can understand that,” Woody says. “Diane has influenced fashion since she’s been around.”

For my sartorial emulation to be acknowledged by the creator of kooky “La Dee Da” Annie was thrilling – and exactly the conversation I’ve dreamt about for 30 years.

Unusually, I have loved all of his films, from the wacky comedies to the Ingmar Bergman-style weighty dramas and latter-day wistful romances, such as A Rainy Day in New York, which is now on

demand, in spite of Amazon’s attempt to bury it because of ‘#Me Too’ pressure.

The Soon-Yi controversy (Woody and the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow have been married for more than 20 years) and allegations of abuse from Farrow are addressed honestly in the book, yet still waft around his legacy like a bad smell.

“I never had the slightest interest in or illusion that anything I would write would change anybody’s mind about anything,” he tells me when I suggest it might.

“The ‘trouble’ I had was part of the chronological telling of my story, so I had to devote a certain amount of space to it.

But then I went back to my movies.”

So back we go to Rainy Day, in which student film enthusiast Ashleigh (Elle Fanning) accompanies her boyfriend Gatsby (Timothée Chalamet) to New York, where an interview with disillusioned director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) reveals a man who is ready to quit the business. Is that how Woody feels?

“I’ve always had a little secret, selfdestructive hope that things would happen and I wouldn’t be able to make movies,” he volunteers. “Not because of ill health, God forbid, but because no one would back my films.

“But I didn’t want stopping to be my choice. So as long as people are willing to put up the large amount of money needed to make a film, I feel obliged to make them.

“But it would be nice if I woke up one day and no one would give me a penny, then I could do something else without any guilt.”

So what would you do? I ask, hoping he doesn’t mean it.

“I could do other things I’d enjoy, like work in the theatre and write books.”

The fact Woody has just written one hasn’t totally passed him by, as he describes the process of narrating

In a spin: Gal Gadot celebrates as Wonder Woman 1984 finally gets release date

Progressively Speaking: Why pulling down statues won’t solve racism From left: Woody Allen with Diane Keaton in Annie Hall; with his wife, Soon-Yi; and with his previous partner, Mia Farrow, in Hannah and Her Sisters

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Jewish News meets... Woody Allen / Weekend

it for the audio version as “tedious and enervating”, but after a project completes, he just moves on.

Thankfully, his dislike of recording the audio is not reflected in his narration, which bubbles along with humour and Yiddishims.

And he hasn’t held back on Jewish content, revealing as early as page 34 that his observant mother was “pretty strict about dietary laws that forbid pork, lobster and many delectable treats available to lucky infidels”.

Two pages prior, he describes school detention as a “mitzvah” as it made him late for Hebrew school, which he hated.

“The language is too guttural for my taste.

Plus it was written backwards. Who needed that?

I had enough trouble at school where things were written left to write.”

Yet he can still remember his barmitzvah portion.

“Your mind is like a sponge when you’re young and you absorb things you never forget, because they’re drummed into your head. But I never took those things seriously, I just did my barmitzvah to make my parents happy and it did. The second I was out on my own I didn’t have any interest in faith.”

He has filmed in synagogues since, but never attended as organised religions are not his thing.

“I’ve great respect for individual personal religious feelings and even envy it at times.

“But people who join religious groups, which require wearing certain clothes, eating ‘these’ foods and meeting every week to pray to some non-existent God… not for me.

“So once I was no longer subjected to the rules of my parent’s house, I never followed any religion.”

I remind him of his character Mickey’s search for faith in the Oscar winning Hannah and Her Sisters, but despite any interest in religious epiphanies, he and Soon–Yi raised his adopted daughters Bechet, and Masie, 20, faith-free.

As with all A-list interviews, the clock is ticking, but with restrictions imposed by the virus being particularly relevant to this 84-yearold – “I’m at the epicentre” between short walks, practising his clarinet – “just to maintain the level of badness I have achieved” and watching reruns of baseball games, there’s time to talk.

So we do. About social distancing, which he has no problem with as he likes his own space and is not thrilled by “someone leaning in to give me some kind of pretentious double cheek kiss when I hardly know them. But that’s my thing”.

He doesn’t mind a hug or handshake from those he knows, “but not if it means transmitting an ominous disease”, and he fears the diagnosis for getting back to work is way off because of the closeness required for movie making.

“As for audiences sitting in theatres, I don’t really know when that is going to be a practicality. So I work on my script and I’m ready to go if somebody comes up with a vaccine.”

Once he can travel, Woody has an idea for a film in Paris: “Any excuse to shoot there I grab, because the prospect of living there for several months is delightful.”

I make a mental note to visit when he lands, just as I scheduled a visit to Spain when he was shooting the upcoming Rifkin’s Festival with

Christoph Waltz and Gina Gershon.

Spain is also where he made Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but now hankers to return to the film’s location, San Sebastian – “a little paradise”.

If Woody is wowed by a place, his fans will be too, as his films are travelogues with vibrant vistas and unexplored streets, notably in New York, the jewel in his catalogue.

The city of old is a presence in his book, but he did not have a diary or consult notes and photos to nudge the synapses as this octogenarian’s memory is pin sharp.

So much so that should he bump into an old school pal, he can recall in detail their address, nickname, love of stamp collecting and talent for chemistry.

“I don’t always recognise them physically because they’re 60 years older, but if I get the name, it just comes to me without a problem.”

The admission is modest, which is an endearing trait, but the traits he gives to film protagonists resembling him are not his, he insists. “I do impute characters with feelings of my own, but the mistake is to think they are me.

I exaggerate characters, otherwise they would be as boring as I am in reality.”

Boring? Not true I bellow in the receiver.

“It’s true,” he says. “I lead a very quiet middle-class life. Were I as neurotic as the characters I write, I wouldn’t be able to make film after film.

“I’m well organised, go out to dinner with my wife and watch sport. In a movie, you want Hamlet, Lady Macbeth; extraordinary characters who are homicidal and tremendously neurotic.”

Woody believes his wardrobe off-screen contributes to the confusion as identical tweeds are worn by his male leads. So much for the nebbish neurosis theory, yet there’s no denying his bleak view of the world as proved by his hopes for humanity.

“I never thought there was any hope because I am such a pessimistic person,” he groans.

“Check the world at any point and there is always something terrible going on in some place, if not many places.”

To escape the pessimism, we move to musicals; Gigi, Singing in the Rain, and Fiddler on the Roof, which he admires, but didn’t interest him.

My Fair Lady he preferred on stage and I’m tempted to paraphrase a song and ask if we can talk all night, but the last question is called.

In A Rainy Day in New York, Gatsby says real life is for the people who can’t do any better – is that your belief? Woody pauses.

“Yes, real life is not very nice, so you really want to try to inject as much magic into it as possible. We’re stuck with the real sad part, so create anything that takes you momentarily into a world that is more exciting.

“Sitting at a poker table, a love affair, raising children or watching a movie, will lift you out of the mundane and sad reality we all face every day.”

I struggle to say goodbye. So does he.

“I hope you like Rifkin’s Festival, it’s an interesting movie and if you’re a film buff and like film-makers I like – Truffaut, Fellini and Bunuel – I think you will like it.” Woody Allen hopes I like his film. My life is complete.

Photos courtesy of Signature Entertainment

tic as my characters’

From top: Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning in A Rainy Day in New York, Woody Allen on the film set with Timothée and Selena Gomez

A Rainy Day in New York (12) is available on demand from Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube, Sky Store and ukJewishfilm.org Apropos of Nothing is published by Arcade Publishing, priced £24.77 (hardback). Available widely and from Audible.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Weekend / Entertainment

Wordon the tweet

WATCH NOW Alex Rider Anthony Horowitz’s ’s teenage spy Alex Rider has been brought to life in a gripping, eight-part series from Amazon Prime Video.

The coming-of-age thriller is based on Point Blanc,, the second novel in the Alex Rider franchise, which has become a global phenomenon, selling more than 20 million copies worldwide.

Otto Farrant stars as Alex Rider, a London teenager who has unknowingly been trained since childhood for the dangerous world of espionage. Pressured to help investigate his uncle’s death, and how it connects to the assassination of two high-profile billionaires, Alex reluctantly assumes a new identity and goes undercover in a remote boarding school called Point Blanc.

Isolated far above the snowline in the French Alps, Point Blanc claims to set the troubled teenage children of the ultra-rich back on to the right track. As Alex digs deeper, he discovers the students are in fact the subjects of a disturbing plan, which Alex will have to risk his life to stop.

The cast also features Game of Thrones actor Stephen Dillane, Line of Duty’s Vicky McClure and Broadchurch star Andrew Buchan.

Alex Rider is available on Amazon Prime Video now

Wonder Woman 1984

After months of delay, Wonder Woman 1984 finally has a release date – and star Gal Gadot couldn’t hold back her excitement. Taking to Twitter, she told her fans to count down the days until 2 October for the return of Diana Prince’s super alter-ego.

“Wow, it’s finally happening and I couldn’t be more excited!,” she wrote. “To all the fans that stuck with us through this time, thank you so much. We couldn’t have done this without you. I’m so excited for you to get to see this.”

For those who can’t quite wait, Warner Bros and DC this week announced a free virtual event, DC FanDome, on 22 August, which is likely to feature some sneak footage from the film, as well as the forthcoming Zack Snyder’s Justice League, The Batman and The Suicide Squad.

IN PRODUCTION Shtisel DRAMA On The Spectrum Amazon has teamed up with Parenthood creator Jason Katims and Yes Studios, the team behind hit series Fauda, to adapt Israeli dramedy On The Spectrum, which explores the lives of three 20-somethings living with autism.

The untitled series revolves around the trio of roommates, who strive for the same things that everyone else does: to get a job, keep a job, make friends, fall in love, and navigate a world that eludes them.

Rick Glassman, Sue Ann Pien and Albert Rutecki, who each identify as living on the autism spectrum, star alongside Sosie Bacon, Chris Pang and Joe Mantegna.

Katims, who will write and executive produce the series, said the project was “deeply personal” for him.

“Having a 23-year-old son on the spectrum, it is deeply personal for me to get to tell this unique story of what it’s like to come of age as someone with autism,” Katims added.

Lockdown has seen cameras stop rolling and sets abandoned, but there may be light at the end of the horizon with Shtisel 3 stepping ever closer to going into production.

Shira Hass, who plays Ruchami Weiss on the hit show exploring the trials and tribulations of a strictly Orthodox family, posted a photo on Facebook of herself holding a script fresh off the printer.

Peeking from behind the stapled pages, Haas – who recently won plaudits for her role in the Netflix series Unorthodox – beams as she teases her fans with the news.

“We can’t wait to start production on #Shtisel3 and see our amazing cast and crew again… it’s been a long time coming, but will be worth the wait!” the caption says.

Production was due to begin again in May, but has been delayed by two months due to the pandemic.

Coming Soon

This Is Going To Hurt Ben Whishaw (Skyfall, A Very English Scandal) has been cast in Adam Kay’s forthcoming BBC series This Is Going To Hurt, based on his award-winning, bestselling memoir about life as a junior doctor.

Kay’s diaries, scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, tell the unvarnished truth about a doctor working in obstetrics and gynaecology.

Whishaw is set to play the fictional version of

Adam, who wends his way through the ranks of hospital hierarchy — junior enough to suffer the crippling hours, but senior enough to face a constant barrage of terrifying responsibilities.

The series sees Adam clinging to his personal life as he is increasingly overwhelmed by severe stresses at work: the 97-hour weeks, the life and death decisions, and all the while knowing

the hospital parking meter is earning more than him.

Whishaw says: “It’s an honest, hilarious, heart-breaking look at the great institution and the army of unsung heroes who work there under the most stressful conditions.

“The Covid-19 crisis has now shed even more light on their great work and underlines the necessity to support the NHS and its workers.”

18 June 2020 Jewish News

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25

Film / Weekend

THE MIME OF HIS LIFE Stephen Applebaum speaks to Jesse Eisenberg about a new film exploring the wartime heroics of French artist Marcel Marceau

Above and below: Jesse Eisenberg in scenes from Resistance

J

esse Eisenberg was nothing less than “shocked” when he compared pictures of himself and the famous French mime artist Marcel Marceau, because their alikeness was “too uncanny”.

Digging further, he discovered that Marceau's father came from a town in Poland “an-hourand-a-half” from where his own family originated. “So,” he tells me by phone from New York, “we must have very similar genetics.”

There was more. His mother used to be a party clown and was “over the moon” when she heard he had landed the lead role in writerdirector Jonathan Jakubowicz's latest project, Resistance, which explores the wartime story of Marceau, who was Jewish.

“She said, 'I looked like Marceau!' She'd painted her face to look like him her whole career and I had never put that together.”

Playing a Jewish lead might have made Eisenberg think twice at a time in the past when he was concerned about becoming “boxed in”.

“I have certain characteristics that come across as particularly Jewish,” he says, “and when you're in a movie, whatever characteristics you have, irrespective of your attempt to hide them, emerge, because it's an incredibly intimate medium.”

Although he has played some identifiably Jewish characters – most notably Mark

Schindler's List as an important film in his educaZuckerberg in The Social Network, and a Chasid tion about the Shoah, but while that was “a great in Holy Rollers – he says that when he was movie” made by a Jewish film-maker – Steven starting out, he'd be sent scripts with parts that Spielberg – its hero was a “rich, tall, attractive were “coded as Jewish, like the thin virgin who's German businessman who finds it in his heart to the punchline or something. I just hated those save these emaciated victims”. things”, he spits.

“It humanises Jewish people,” he says, “but it “To me they were not only stupid roles, doesn't empower them.” but a bit offensive, from a cultural perspective.

Resistance, So, I guess I was more hesitant to play Resistance on the other hand, explicitly Jewish roles; I thought it creates a Jewish saviour who is would be limiting as an actor.” “heroic on his own terms”, using That was then. Today, “we're ways that are “artistic, clever, in a wonderful place in our fantastic” to outwit the Nazis.

Mime, Marceau tells culture,” declares Eisenberg.

“I'm in a similar place in children under his protection, my own psyche, which is we is about making that which is don't have to be in denial. We invisible visible and, likewise, can depict different cultures in that which is visible invisible. the media, which is respectful to the It appeals to the imagination of culture and empowering. Those kinds performer and audience alike and is of tropes that I would say were stuck Marcel Marceau shown as something simultaneously sophisticated and childlike. in 90s comedies are not accepted Did Eisenberg, now a father of in the culture anymore as funny or a three-year-old son, with wife Anna Strout, entertaining. And thank God.” have a strong imaginative life as a boy?

Marceau's story, as told in Resistance, is one "I was funny, but incredibly quiet and very of empowerment. Jakubowicz's focus is not just shy, and I hated any kind of social gatherings,” on Marceau as a blossoming artist, but as a Jew he says. “I didn't go to any birthday parties or who helped hundreds of Jewish children escape anything. I probably had a strong imagination, from Nazi-occupied France. but it came from a place of feeling really on the This was key for Eisenberg. He refers to outside of normal life.

“I always just knew: 'Once I'm an adult, I'm going to be home free, but this is just torment.'

I hated being a child. So yeah, I developed a rich imagination. But it certainly wasn't something that was winning friends at that age."

In Resistance, Marceau uses his art to break through the children's trauma and, momentarily, pull them out of their grief. There's a lovely scene where he playfully interacts with the youngsters and something real and magical seems to be happening between them. It was a special moment, Eisenberg confirms.

“You can imagine, after spending seven months learning the same routine over and over in my bedroom alone, to perform for these kids was just so illuminating.

“It made me realise, if this scene happened in real life, the joy it must have brought Marcel

Marceau, who spent his fledgling career performing in dive bars for unappreciative adults. I could imagine this just gave him purpose for his work in a completely new way.”

That purpose is evident in a scene shot in Congress Hall in Nuremberg. In this vast, unfinished arena for Nazi rallies, Marceau/Eisenberg gives a transportive, elegiacal performance for US troops, that silently combines pathos with anger. I ask him how he felt as a Jew in that space.

“It was amazing just to go in there, let alone perform there,” he says.

“But, more broadly, it was a real, unusual and wonderful victory that this hall was to be completed when the destruction of the Jewish people was completed, and not only did both of those things not happen, but here we are performing a movie inside it about a Jewish hero.

“If the Nazis are alive somewhere, or looking down, I can imagine nothing as discouraging as the image of movie cameras rolling on that scene, in that building."  Resistance (15) will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from tomorrow (Friday)

26

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Orthodox Judaism

Torah For Today

SEDRA Shelach

BY RABBI ALEX CHAPPER Poised to enter the land of Israel, fulfilling the promise God made to their ancestors, the people dispatched 12 men to survey it and report back on its terrain, produce and inhabitants.

Forty days later, these spies returned bearing samples of the land’s luscious fruit, but with a negative report claiming it was unconquerable and uninhabitable. Despite two men providing a different report, the people accept the false account and destined their entire generation to perish in the wilderness.

Frank Koch in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute, shares an experience that may shed light on this. Two battleships had been at sea on manoeuvres in heavy weather for several days. Frank was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog. Shortly after dark, the lookout reported: ‘Light, bearing on the starboard bow.’

‘Is it steady or moving astern?’ the captain called out. It was steady, meaning they were on a dangerous collision course. The captain asked the

signalman to send a message to the ship and advise it change course 20 degrees. A message came back asking them to change their course. They repeated the request, only to be told they should change their direction.

The captain was furious. ‘Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.’ Back came the reply: ‘I’m a lighthouse.’ They changed course.

The spies concocted a story and the people accepted it as they were resistant to change. They had become so accustomed to a miraculous existence where God provided their every need that the thought of their lives being transformed upon entry to the Promised Land was viewed as a terrifying threat. To a greater or lesser degree, we all face that dilemma.

We know we do not grow if we do not change, and if we don’t grow then we are not really living. Change is challenging, but we must embrace it because it allows us to achieve new things and makes us feel truly alive.

◆ Rabbi Chapper serves Borehamwood and Elstree United Synagogue

What does the Torah say about: Dying alone

BY RABBI ARIEL ABEL A recent news story highlights the plight of people living on their own who died of coronavirus and, as a result, have not been found for up to two weeks – by which time their bodies have started to decompose. What does the Torah say about this?

God asked Moses to leave the Israelite camp and die on the mountain of Nebo, all alone.

Why was there no hue and cry to find Moses? I once addressed this topic to a meeting of Chevra Kadisha – those who prepare the deceased for burial – and one prominent rabbi remarked to me that, all too often, it is the ‘Moses’ of the congregation, its rabbi, who goes pastorally unnoticed by his congregation.

Perhaps God was testing the Israelites to see whether, since the episode of the Golden Calf, they had learned to ask: “Where has Moses gone?” out of compassion,

rather than rebellion.

Poignantly, many Chevrot Kadisha observe a fast day each year on 7 Adar, the anniversary of Moses’ death.

In modern Britain, neighbours who have no contact with each other may have felt embarrassed during this pandemic to ask to exchange phone numbers.

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However, not knowing your neighbour is not tolerable in Judaism, as we are commanded to “love thy neighbour”.

If we have not done so already, we must knock on the door of neighbours we know to live alone; of those who may be vulnerable or we have not seen in a couple of days, we should enquire as to their welfare.

This fulfils the mitzvah of bikkur cholim, enquiring after the welfare of the sick.

We, the people of Moses, should be the first to ensure that our neighbours are safe.

Lives could be saved or, at least, the agony of a lonely passing and the undignified lying in state avoided. ◆ Rabbi Abel serves Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation and is padre to Merseyside Army Cadet Force

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Progressive Judaism

Progressively Speaking

The Bible Says What?

When is it right to pull down statues?

‘Greedy people will be eaten by dogs!’

BY RABBI MIRIAM BERGER

BY RABBI JANET BURDEN

Some of the most powerful stories in the Hebrew Bible are those that illustrate how easy it is to slip into immoral action due to overwhelming desire. David’s passion for Bathsheba is perhaps the best known of these. Nathan’s rebuke to him sends shivers down my spine.

Another such tale is that of Nabot’s vineyard. King Ahab wanted this vineyard for a vegetable garden, as it was near his palace in Samaria.

The king offered Nabot a good price for it and offered to exchange better land for it.

Nabot refused, saying: “The Lord forbid it me that I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you.”

Out of frustrated desire, Ahab allows his wife Jezebel to plot against Nabot and have him killed.

Averah goreret averah, meaning one transgression will lead to another, sealed the couples’ ignominious downfall.

Both suffered dramatic and humiliating deaths. Ahab’s blood was licked up by dogs, while his wife was devoured by them.

The lesson here is obvious: unilaterally taking something you want because you have the power to do so can never be right.

Like many, I have been following the news about the proposed annexation of parts of the West Bank. I love Israel and want the best for its safety and future.

But I believe this proposal constitutes a major threat not only to Palestinian rights, but also to Israel’s democracy.

I fear it will only endanger the state’s long-term peace and security, just like taking what wasn’t theirs did to Ahab and Jezebel.

◆ Rabbi Janet Burden serves Ealing Liberal Synagogue

As a university student in Bristol in the 1990s, the irony was completely lost on this white, middle class girl as I walked down roads with my white, middle class circle of friends, that the white privilege that got us there was the same one woven into the very fabric of society.

Whether we were walking to our lectures via Whiteladies Road or down Blackboy Hill, I realise I entered university life without fully appreciating all that got me there.

In all my years as an undergraduate in the city, the history of the docks and slave trade were unmissable. Yet never was I offered the opportunity to critique its history or impact on the 20th century.

Nobody helped me understand the direct link between the statue of Edward Colston and the lack of diversity within the student body.

Whether through blue plaques, statues or signs, our architecture passively tells the story of our heritage. It is hugely important

The statue of Edward Colston being thrown into the River Avon

that parts of our history considered shameful are not whitewashed (pun fully intended).

The statue was not the problem, but the words extolling his virtue were. What words could have been used instead to have changed the narrative completely?

Jewish educator Jeremy Leigh teaches us through his Jewish Journeys, the power of using the world as our classroom, whether in a town square or under a shop sign, these stories are memorable in a way books or news items are so easily forgotten.

I would love generations of children, university students and Bristol business owners to have had their chance to stand in the shadow of Edward Colston and explore the challenges of race discrimination in our world today. His statue ended up being destroyed in such a way because he, like the abhorrent legacy he left us with, has been long ignored.

We must stop shying away from such history. The statue, along with all the shameful street names and landmarks, should have been made an outdoor classroom years ago.

I wish he had spurred us on to challenge difficult matters such as the levels of black and ethnic minorities of staff employed in the highest levels of their companies.

We still live in his shadow, whether or not he is on the podium, and it can only be removed by educating against unconscious bias and racism that pervades society. ◆ Rabbi Miriam Berger serves Finchley Reform Synagogue

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“Thus says the Lord: ‘In the place where the dogs licked up the blood of Nabot, the dogs shall lick up your blood, too.’” (1 Kings: 21:19)

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Business / Entertainment

candicekrieger@googlemail.com

With Candice Krieger

'LIFE IS ABOUT CREATING OPPORTUNITIES' Showbiz agent Jonathan Shalit tells Candice Krieger why failure is not an option and why it's premature to sound the death knell for the entertainment industry look to me to further their careers are desperately testing times. “If no and protect their incomes. If I vaccine is found, this could cost the fail, others suffer.” entertainment sector north of Shalit has 200 clients and £200 billion. If the worst-case 19 employees across his four scenario plays out, then more companies, under the Interlike hundreds of billions. Some Talent Rights Group, which businesses will never recover. he founded in 1993. “Being “And what we still don’t busy keeps my mind active,” know is how long Covid will take adds Shalit, who was awarded to overcome and if there will be an OBE in 2014 for services to the further spikes. The worry is it’s hard entertainment industry. “If you to imagine large gatherings of any can keep stimulated, you have more Jonathan Shalit OBE kind. Even when given the all- clear, chance of getting through this in a confidence will take time to rebuild.” positive way.” And positive he is.

So how does Shalit, who counts having a cup “Winston Churchill said: ‘An optimist sees of tea with Prince and Maria Carey at a postthe opportunity in every difficulty’, which is Grammy party in Beverley Hills among his many how I have approached every challenge. The career highlights, stay so positive despite the gutparadigm will be very different when we emerge wrenching statistics? “We have to be upbeat and from lockdown. But ultimately my life is about dynamic in finding solutions to the challenges. creating opportunities for those I work with.”

“In the next few years, we will see this forced But Shalit, 58, who has worked in the confinement and period of lockdown manifest industry for close to three decades, knows these itself in renewed and re-energised creativity.

I believe one direct consequence of the Covid crisis will be the 2020s being the most creative and defining era of this century. Even now, millions of people are creating and imagining.”

The West London Synagogue member has been supporting both the ‘Jewish Homes Emergency Appeal’ and the ‘National Emergencies Trust’. “Being a British Jew, I felt it important to support both the community and my country.”

He is as reflective when it comes to business.

“This is the biggest economic crisis to hit since the Second World War. But we need to put it in perspective. It is a health crisis of a severe and tragic magnitude, but so far manageable.

“I have an overarching view. This crisis will predominantly kill businesses that were already struggling and needed change for the 2020s.

Strong businesses will re-emerge with newfound strength, vision and working practices.”

The entertainment industry will need to adapt. Many areas already are. “TV and radio shows are being broadcast successfully from where people live. UK soaps are back in production. Theatre and music have been adapting with their in-audience offerings. And for those embracing virtual and augmented reality, the

world can literally come to your home.”

Last year, Shalit was named one of the London’s most influential people in the Evening Standard. He is credited with turning the 11-yearold Charlotte Church into a global superstar before her mum famously fired him. Before showbiz, Shalit had two careers – a stint as an insurance broker at Lloyds of London, and in marketing and advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi.

He then entered the entertainment industry and launched his own consultancy. A big break was working with Sir George ‘Beatles’ Martin, whom he hired to produce a tribute album of Gershwin music featuring Elton John, Sting, Cher and Jon Bon Jovi celebrating the 80th birthday of American harmonica player Larry Adler. Other “memorable moments” include driving through the gates of Buckingham Palace to receive his OBE. Fast forward a few years and a different world is emerging. Covid-19 has led a dramatic shift to online streaming, with consumers turning to digital platforms for entertainment and “contactless” socialisation. The pandemic has accelerated change in an unprecedented way. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says they have seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in as many months. “The big winners are absolutely the subscription global streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+,” says Shalit.

Even once the crisis passes, the psychological overhang from the virus might mean it takes time for consumers to embrace external consumptions models again. “When video came along and you could watch movies from your home, everybody said it would be the death of the cinema… and I don’t think this will be the death of social activities,” says Shalit.

“As soon as the demise of Covid allows, the world is chomping at the bit to play again and be out having fun. Once people begin to feel confident, the entertainment industry will bounce back strongly. Popular forms of entertainment will very quickly hit record levels of income, and once social distancing is such that venues can fill their seats again, something close to normal will return quickly.”

And Shalit will no doubt have an instrumental part to play in making that happen.

Photos by Richard Young

S

howbusiness agent Jonathan Shalit could be forgiven for going into some sort of “lockdown hibernation”, as he puts it. Shalit has spent the past few months watching the industry with which he is synonymous pretty much grind to a halt.

According to reports, Covid-19 will cost the entertainment and showbusiness industry $160 (£127) billion in growth over the next five years, hitting advertising and theatre the hardest.

The Office for National Statistics says 68 percent of workers in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector have been furloughed.

But failure is not an option for Shalit. The affable talent manager, who counts Susanna Reid, Dame Joan Collins and Robert Rinder among his clients, has too many people relying on him. He tells me: “Failure is not an option because of both the role of my company and the responsibilities I have taken on in the community. My staff and my clients rely on me and

Jonathan with Vanessa Feltz, Ben Ofoedu, Katrina Sedley, Barbara Windsor and Sarah Ferguson

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18 June 2020 Jewish News

29

Professional advice from our panel / Ask Our Experts

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allows for part-time return to work for any amount of time or shift pattern for previously furloughed employees.

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Ask Our Experts / Professional advice from our panel

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DYSLEXIA PRACTITIONER SARAH BENARROCH Qualifications: • Director of Literacy Specialist Ltd, educational services for children with literacy difficulties and dyslexia.

• MA in Specific Learning Difficulties (dyslexia), APC, British Dyslexia Association, PATOSS, 20 years’ experience in child education and development.

• Full diagnostic assessments and reports for dyslexia.

• Primary-age tuition in reading, writing and spelling.

LITERACY SPECIALIST LTD 07940 576 286 sarah@literacyspecialist.co.uk

JEWELLER

ADR CONSULTANT DONIEL GRUNEWALD Qualifications: • Accredited mediator to International Standards offering civil/commercial and workplace mediation; in a facilitative or evaluative format, or by med-arb.

• Experienced in all Beth Din matters; including arbitration, advocacy, matrimonial settlements and written submissions.

• Providing bespoke alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to the Jewish community.

JEWISH DISPUTE SOLUTIONS 020 3637 9638 www.jewishdisputesolutions.co.uk director@jewishdisputesolutions.co.uk

ISRAELI LAWYER 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.

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

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

CAROLYN ADDLEMAN Qualifications: Lawyer with over 20 years’ experience in will drafting and trust and estate administration. Last 14 years at KKL Executor and Trustee Company.

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

Member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

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.

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.

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

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

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

• • •

Got a question for a member of our team?

Email: editorial@thejngroup.com

Thinking about ALIYAH? Contact the Jewish Agency for Israel certified by the Israeli government to facilitate Aliyah!

0-800-051-8227 | 020-8371-5250 | gci-en@jafi.org

TRAVEL AGENT

CRIMINAL DEFENCE SOLICITOR

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.

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

REMOVALS MANAGING DIRECTOR

PRINCIPAL, PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL

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.

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

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Professional advice from our panel / Ask Our Experts

ACCOUNTANT

PROPERTY DEVELOPER

DENTIST

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.

JOE GRIFFIN Qualifications: • More than 13 years’ experience in the construction and property industry, with a specialism in high-end residential and commercial property.

• Negotiation of site acquisitions and property deals; design and planning strategies.

• Focus on niche market purchasing airspace above commercial and residential blocks to create additional stories of accommodation and penthouse apartments.

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

• Regional clinical lead for Bupa Dental Care UK. • Providing NHS and private dentistry, whitening, implants and cosmetic treatment.

• Bachelor of Dental Surgery and member of the Royal College of Physician and Surgeons Glasgow; GDC registered 212542.

SOBELL RHODES LLP 020 8429 8800 www.sobellrhodes.co.uk a.shelley@sobellrhodes.co.uk

LONDON PENTHOUSE 020 7665 9604 www.londonpenthouse.com info@lphvgroup.com

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

INTERNATIONAL PAYMENTS SPECIALIST

INSURANCE CONSULTANCY

IT SPECIALIST

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

ISRAELI ACCOUNTANT

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

ALIYAH ADVISER

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

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

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.

LESLEY TRENNER Qualifications: • Provides free professional one-to-one advice at Resource to help unemployed into work.

• Offers practical support, workshops and networking opportunities to maximise job prospects.

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

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 more than 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

Quote New20

20% off new private dental patient check-up* Book before 31/03/2020

01923 889 520 DUK03782 v1 | Dec19

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.

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

PHOTOGRAPHER

The Gingerbread Centre, Black Lion Hill, Radlett, WD7 9DE health@gingerbreadhealth.co.uk * Terms and conditions: 1. Offer only available at Gingerbread House Dental and Health Centre to new private patients who book and attend a consultation between 06/12/2019 and 31/03/2020 inclusive. 2. Discount is made to the full price of a private check-up. 3. The full price of a private check-up is £90. 4. Appointments subject to availability. 5. Patients must be 18 years of age or over.

6. One offer per eligible patient. 7. Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. 8. Offer may be withdrawn or amended at any time. 9. No cash alternative is available. 10. Patients must quote ‘New20’ at the time of booking.

Gingerbread House Dental and Health Centre is a trading name of Oasis Healthcare Limited. Registered in England and Wales no: 03257078.

Registered office: Bupa Dental Care, Vantage Office Park, Old Gloucester Road, Hambrook, Bristol, United Kingdom BS16 1GW.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU COVID-19, THE LOCKDOWN AND RETURN-TO-WORK ISSUES HAVE BROUGHT RENEWED AND, IN SOME CASES, NEW PRESSURES ON INDIVIDUALS, FAMILIES AND BUSINESSES DON’T HESITATE TO CONTACT OUR EXPERT LAWYERS IF YOU NEED TO DISCUSS MATTERS IN ANY OF THE FOLLOWING AREAS: FAMILY LAW Divorce, Financial, Child Arrangements, Pre-nuptial Agreements, Domestic Violence MANISHA RAJA – CALL: 07539 174046 or EMAIL: mr@axiomstone.co.uk REAL ESTATE Commercial and Residential Purchases, Sales, Rental, Leases IDNAN LIAQAT – CALL: 07432 050067 or EMAIL: il@axiomstone.co.uk LITIGATION AND REAL ESTATE LITIGATION Breach of Contract, Landlord/Tenant, Rental Arrears, Possession, Financing Issues, Bank Loans DANIEL GLEEK – CALL: 07538 175635 or EMAIL: dg@axiomstone.co.uk EMPLOYMENT Employer-Employee Issues, Furloughs, Redundancies, Dismissals, Settlement Agreements RACHEL LESTER – CALL: 07399 774412 or EMAIL: Rachel.Lester@axiomstone.co.uk BUSINESS RECOVERY AND INSOLVENCY Financing Issues, Insolvency Procedures, Lenders/Borrowers CLAUDINE LAWRENCE – CALL: 07779 000068 or EMAIL: cll@axiomstone.co.uk PERSONAL INJURY Employer Liability, Medical Negligence, High-Value Road Traffic Accidents, ‘Slip & Trip’ SHYAM MISTRY – CALL: 07432 059973 or EMAIL: sm@axiomstone.co.uk PRIVATE CLIENT Wills, Probate, Intestacy, Powers of Attorney, Inheritance Tax, Supporting the Elderly & Vulnerable VASSOS VASSOU – CALL: 07804 485888 or EMAIL: vv@axiomstone.co.uk

AXIOM STONE SOLICITORS OFFER A FREE INITIAL TELEPHONE CONSULTATION Axiom House | 1 Spring Villa Road | Edgware | Middlesex | HA8 7EB | DX 57162 Edgware t: 0208 951 6989 f: 0208 951 0999 w: www.axiomstone.co.uk (With offices in Mayfair and Birmingham)

HOW CAN EQUITY RELEASE BENEFIT YOU THROUGH THESE CHALLENGING TIMES? We offer free, impartial, no obligation advice, with access to a wide range of products across the market.

During the coronavirus pandemic, this advice can be provided via phone or video call.

Please telephone or email for your FREE no obligation Guide to Equity Release

Equity Release can: • Provide a regular income if yours has been affected.

• Help family members who have fallen on hard times by providing you with a lump sum to gift or lend to your loved ones.

• Support your small business with a cash injection without resorting to a loan.

• Avoid significant losses from selling stocks and shares during a market dip if your income from investments has been affected by market uncertainty.

• An alternative to a mortgage holiday,which would need to be paid back by extending your mortgage term or increasing monthly payments.

If you would like more information about the benefits of equity release, and are 55 years of age or older, please contact: Elliot Simberg ewealth.co.uk esimberg@vintagewealth.co.uk 07944 682 653 vintagewealth.co.uk

This is a lifetime mortgage. To understand the features and risks, ask for a personalised illustration.

Vintage Wealth Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. FCA Number 593380. Registered in England and Wales No. 07879453.

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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FOCUS ON FINANCE… ADVERTORIAL

Helping you stay balanced, but here in case you fall These are unusual times for business. Initial panic owing to the lockdown was followed by uncertainty and fear and, although there has been great hardship for many, for others it is an opportunity for change.

With the gradual relaxation of the lockdown, the ‘new normal’ will not be a return to the way it was before; many businesses are reviewing how they operate and whether they can be more efficient, seeking more online exposure, more flexible working conditions and concentrating on reducing office overheads.

At Cameron Baum Hollander, our first responsibility was to ensure our clients were aware of and able to access all relevant government support; furloughing, self-employed grants, bounce back loans, CBILS loans, rates holidays and grants and advising on the correct application of government conditions for all these mechanisms. This we did successfully.

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this new reality, all with the personal touch. One client recently told us: “‘You make me feel as though I am your only client.”

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Does your accountant know you’re there?

Does your accountant know you’re there?

At Cameron Baum Hollander we concentrate on improving our clients’ wellbeing and alleviating their stress by listening and providing sound, relevant advice.

Every client is important to us and every client has direct access to a partner with wide ranging business, tax and accounting experience; both business and personal.

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At Cameron Baum Hollander we concentrate on improving our clients’ wellbeing Chartered Accountants | Business & Tax Advisers and alleviating their stress by listening and providing sound, relevant advice.

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The Coronavirus has resulted in every business looking at its costs and if you are currently with a larger firm, you may be paying more than you need to, so help yourself and get in touch with us.

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Advertorial

Keeping your legal affairs in safe hands minimise the concerns of those around them by As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to sensible planning so they can rest assured that severely impact individuals and busitheir affairs are in order. Whether preparing a nesses nationwide, we at Moerans Soliciwill or lasting powers of attorney, our team will tors wanted to remind you that we are advise and assist to make the process as painhere to help you with your legal matters.

Established in 1886, and based in the heart less and efficient as possible.

We are also well known for our expertise of Edgware, we have been providing legal in estate administration. We proactively help services to the north-west London and wider personal representatives (PRs) every step of community for more than a century. the way in navigating the various challenges of Whether helping to build a secure future managing the estate of a loved one, whether or for your family, assisting the personal reprenot a will was left. sentatives with the estate of a loved one after We assist PRs in dealing with the relevant their death or selling or buying property, we financial institutions, arranging valuations and work closely with our clients to ensure their for any inheritance tax to be paid, collecting needs are put first. estate assets, paying any liabilities and legacies We pride ourselves on our friendly and proand distributing the estate accordingly. We fessional approach and our commitment to our recently advised a client on an aspect of inheritclients. We have, over the past 100 years, creance tax law that helped to save the estate ated a client-centred business that we believe makes us different and stand out. We encourage around £42,000 in tax! Our private client team includes two members of the Society of Trust everyone in the firm to put themselves in their and Estate Practitioners (STEP). clients’ position when helping them to make Our property team can help you with all decisions about their future. aspects of buying, selling and remortgaging Rather than being a “jack of all legal trades”, your home. This includes established properwe specialise in private client and property matters. Our small but experienced team excels ties, new builds, shared ownership, help to buy, right to buy scheme auction in helpingNews clientsJune to structure their affairs to Jewish 2020 without editorial 8/6/20 08:47andPage 1 purchases.

of client care, knowledge of the conveyancing process and the many other issues that might affect your property transaction.

Our straightforward sensible and understandable advice has been particularly appreciated by first-time buyers, those downsizing and those considering equity release. Across the spectrum of residential property transactions in England and Wales, our no-nonsense approach has been proven to be successful – and money saving – for our clients.

We hold the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme accreditation, awarded to firms that carry out conveyancing within guidelines and protocols set by the Law Society.

This means that we are assessed annually to ensure we maintain the high levels

We not only deal with matters relating to freehold properties, but are also able to advise on lease extensions, right to manage and right to enfranchise applications. Call us today on 020 8952 0242 for a no obligation discussion to see how we can help you.

www.moerans.com Simon Shaffer

020 8952 0242 Steven Lux

Ask us about:

Planning for when I am Older Wills Trusts

Inheritance Tax

Someone has died Probate

Estate Administration

Help to manage my finances Geoff Dennis

Gabriella Shaffer

Lasting Power of Attorney Court of Protection Care Fees Planning

Moving Home Buying Selling Mortgages

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18 June 2020 Jewish News

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Advertorial

Israel Bonds and the Evolution of Israel’s Economy Despite the economic shocks reverberating throughout the world as a consequence of coronavirus, S&P affirmed its rating for Israel at AA- and its outlook at ‘stable.’- in line with Fitch and Moody’s Ambassador Abba Eban, in reflecting back on Israel’s early, postindependence years, observed, “Israel’s economic situation in 1950 and 1951 was extremely hard-pressed. There were doubts that a tanker would arrive in time to bring us oil. There were doubts that a ship carrying wheat would arrive in time to save us from starvation.”

Today, the legendary diplomat would be astonished by how far the Jewish state has come. The Israel of the 21st century is an energy superpower; an agricultural exporter sharing its expertise with countries in need; and a technological frontrunner continually changing life as we know it.

It is also highly unlikely that Ambassador Eban foresaw a day when Israel would be a recognized economic powerhouse. Yet, Israel steadily strengthened its economy, and the world took notice when Israel was among the first countries to successfully emerge from the global recession in early 2009. Now, in the face of the economic devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel is again demonstrating resilience.

This was confirmed by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) in its latest assessment of Israel’s economy, issued May 15. Despite the economic shocks reverberating throughout the world as a consequence of coronavirus, S&P affirmed its rating for Israel at AA- and its outlook at ‘stable.’ S&P’s assessment was in line with recent reports from Fitch, which affirmed its outlook at ‘stable,’ and Moody’s, which, in its latest action, also accorded Israel an outlook of ‘stable.’

The common theme throughout the three agency reports was a shared confidence in Israel’s economy. Although S&P downgraded 20 percent of the countries it reviewed, and gave another 15 percent an outlook of ‘negative,’ when it came to Israel, S&P stated it “balances downside risks from the COVID-19 pandemic against Israel’s robust economy and its strong external position.” These and other factors, the report explained, will provide “substantial buffers in the face of a fraught external environment.”

As president and CEO of Development Corporation for Israel/Israel Bonds, I couldn’t help noticing the coincidental proximity of S&P’s May 15 report to the May 10 anniversary of the launching of Israel Bonds. The forward-looking assessment was a reminder that, nearly 70 years after the organization’s founding, Israel Bonds continues to play a substantive role in helping the Jewish state forge a strong, resilient economy.

assigning their ‘stable’ outlooks. Fitch, for example, cited “an active Diaspora bond program,” while Moody’s pointed to Israel’s “exceptional access to external funding.”

From the beginning, the centrality of Israel Bonds has been recognized and applauded by Israel’s Finance Ministry. Now, in the face of unprecedented circumstances, the value placed upon the Bonds organization was again confirmed by the Finance Ministry’s request for Israel Bonds to go beyond its 2020 goal and secure additional funding to shore up Israel’s economic foundations.

Bonds leadership and staff take great pride in this overt expression of support, and have implemented a multi-faceted strategy to meet Israel Bonds’ commitment to the Finance Ministry. For our retail clients – the Jewish community – we are proceeding on four tiers: promoting the acquisition of Israel bonds to lock in strong rates and stability in this highly unstable environment; encouraging reinvestment of matured bonds, with the objective of reaching a higher percentage of bonds being reinvested than in the past; asking individuals who already purchased in 2020 to make an additional investment; and expanding the client base by connecting with individuals new to Israel Bonds.

Additionally, we have held virtual meetings with state and institutional investors, and are gratified by their response. Collectively, these entities have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Israel bonds since the onset of the pandemic – a resounding expression of approval for Israel’s sound fiscal policies.

The perpetual need for Israel Bonds was recently articulated by the outgoing Finance Ministry Director General Shai Babad. In discussing the significance of Israel Bonds during a May 11 call with a global Bonds audience, Babad summed it up succinctly: “We always say the Bonds organization is a safety net in times of crisis. Now that the crisis is here, it shows how important Israel Bonds really is.”

As has been the case throughout the history of Israel Bonds, we willingly accept the challenge and look forward to the opportunity to once again help Israel surmount adversity.

ISRAEL BONDS Underscoring this is the fact that although Israel bonds themselves are not rated, Fitch and Moody’s both referenced the Bonds enterprise as a factor in

Israel Maimon is president and CEO of Development Corporation for Israel/Israel Bonds and a former government secretary in the cabinets of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.

O F F E R I N G F I X E D R A T E S A T: Reprinted with permission of Jewish Business News jewishbusinessnews.com

ISRAEL BONDS ARE FIXES AT: 1.08% 1.20% 1.35% 1-year GBP Savings bond

£5,000 min.

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MORE INFO: 020 3936 2712 | israelbondsintl.com Development Company for Israel (International) Ltd.

Your capital may be at risk.

This advertisement has been issued by the Development Company for Israel (International) Ltd., which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and registered in England No. 01415853. This is not an offering, which could only be made by prospectus. Your capital is at risk, the rules under FSMA for the protection of retail clients do not apply. An investment in any of these bonds will not be covered by the provisions of the Financial Services Compensation scheme, nor by any similar scheme. Israel bonds are intended as a long-term investment as they are not listed or admitted to dealing on any recognised investment or stock exchange nor is there any established secondary market, as a consequence Israel bonds are not readily realisable before their maturity date. DCI (International) Ltd is not the issuer of these bonds, they are issued by the State of Israel. Photo credit: Shahar Azran

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Advertorial

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18 June 2020 Jewish News

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Advertorial

Choosing the right divorce and family lawyer for your case can be a minefield Lloyd Platt & Company divorce and family lawyers are leading the way for matrimonial work during Covid-19.

They can assist with the following matters: a. Have you decided whether your marriage or relationship has come to an end? If so, Lloyd Platt & Company can strategise as to the correct way forward relevant to the circumstances of your case. Not all cases are the same. We devise a way of dealing with your situation that best suits the assets, finances and difficulties concerning the children to put you on the correct path. b. Do you want to understand what options you have to resolve difficulties with arrangements over the children in the family? Children’s matters are usually agreed but, in the event of conflict, we at Lloyd Platt & Company specialise in resolving them, whether for parents or grandparents who have been prevented from seeing their children or wish to change the arrangements concerning them, in the best interests of the children concerned. c. Do you need a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement or cohabitation agreement to protect your assets? We at Lloyd Platt & Company specialise in such agreements that can be minefields. We deal with matters of international elements to ensure that pre- and postnuptial agreements can be mirrored in the relevant jurisdictions to ensure they are as binding as possible.

d. Are you considering moving in with a partner and do not know what steps you should take to protect yourself?

A cohabitation agreement can set out the terms of who pays for what, and who retains the interest in your property to avoid any future disputes.

Lloyd Platt & Company has become the go-to firm of solicitors because we offer: i. Advice on divorce strategy and the contents of a divorce petition and information on how and when it should be served; ii. Expert advice on the level of financial support and if these stops, assist in dealing with court applications. Interim finances pending a resolution of the case is all important to ensure that the status quo, or what happened before the divorce continues until matters are finally resolved; iii. Advice on the procedures that can be followed, since there are many ways in which matters arising out of divorce or relationship breakdowns can proceed.

These are: a. By agreement between the parties; b. By mediation through solicitor or other mediation; c. Voluntary disclosure through solicitors; d. A collaborative process where parties and their advisers sign up that they will never go to court. e. Arbitration or court applications.

We at Lloyd Platt & Company ensure you are put on the correct path that best suits your case. Cohabitation cases or cases between people that have never married and who live together are very complex. They are based on contributions either directly or indirectly and a multitude of case law in which Lloyd Platt & Company worked on the groundbreaking and leading case. We guide clients on their rights as a cohabitee, the claims they can make both themselves and through the children of the family under Schedule 1 of the Children’s Act and under what is known as Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act, or TOLATA. Whatever your matrimonial problem, Lloyd Platt & Company is here to help.

Are you looking for the right divorce lawyers who will devise careful strategy appropriate to your case and ensure that you will follow the most effective route in your divorce case?

Call the team today on 020 8343 2998 or visit www.divorcesolicitors.com

Lloyd Platt & Co. Family, divorce & criminal solicitors

We are pleased to help with all forms of matrimonial work including: • Divorce

• Adoption

• Pre-Nuptial Agreements

• Settlement for Co-habitees

• Cohabitation Agreements

• Civil Partnership

• Domestic Violence

• Financial settlements on Divorce

• Childcare

• Any aspect of family law

To make an appointment please telephone

020 8343 2998

Lloyd Platt & Company, Third Floor, Elscot House, Arcadia Avenue, London. N3 2JU Website: www.divorcesolicitors.com Email: lloydplatt@divorcesolicitors.com Regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority

38

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Advertorial

Could e-commerce be the answer?

Are you sitting at home wondering how to make money? One possibility is e-commerce. It is now easy to buy and sell products or services online from an armchair anywhere.

For example, you might select products online from China and ship them to an Amazon warehouse in the UK or US. Amazon publicises and sells your products and ships them to the customer.

WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL PROS? The world is your oyster and profit margins can be good.

It is all done online.

WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL ISSUES? Check out every aspect. For example, how much stock (inventory) should you hold? If you buy a batch of products, it pays to have them inspected for quality.

Also, check the legal side, how to arrange payments and whether to brand yourself.

Tax planning is vital. Until recently, governments rarely knew how to tax activity in the cloud! This is changing. In the UK, there may be customs, VAT and income tax. Platforms such as Amazon typically assist with part of this, although not with everything.

WHAT ABOUT THE BIGGEST PLUM MARKET – AMERICA? Each US each state charges its own sales tax at rates of

five to 10 percent. In the Wayfair case in 2018, the US Supreme Court allowed sales tax to be collected from outof-state sellers (for example UK sellers) in various cases.

WHAT ABOUT THE EU AND ELSEWHERE? The EU has VAT rules for distance selling and electronic services, which change in 2021.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is formulating an income tax reform to allocate profit to the countries of the user or customer. Other OECD pronouncements also tighten up e-commerce rules.

MORE INFO? Please contact us if you would like more comprehensive information. Our motto is: Make More, Keep More! leon@h2cat.com

How do you make money from your easy chair - with least tax?

E-commerce!

Make more take more home with us

Contact: leon@h2cat.com

“ ”

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Advertorial

ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL, TOP NOTCH...COULDN’T HAVE DONE ANYTHING MORE.

Freemans Solicitors celebrated its 25th anniversary this year in lockdown. Established in 1995 by Howard Freeman, advising both individuals and businesses on a wide range of legal affairs, it has a reputation for personal attention and a high standard of professional service, regardless of the nature or value of the case.

Freemans’ strong commercial department is recognised for its expertise in property and propertyrelated matters, and also deals with general commercial advice, disputes and employment issues.

It also has a strong focus on the specific needs of individuals in difficult and life-changing situations and has a first-class and award winning reputation in dealing with children and family law matters, immigration law and criminal defence issues.

Here are what some of Freemans clients and professional directories have to say:

“Freemans Solicitors is ‘second to none in the representation of children in international proceedings.

“Your first port of call. I cannot think of another firm that is so highly regarded by all those that have instructed them, feedback is literally 100% positive. Freemans should be your first port of call.”

“Technically brilliant” (Legal 500, 2019) “Thank you very much for your superb work. I should like to express my gratitude for the highly detailed and efficient way in which you have handled this purchase.

This is in keeping with the high standards I have enjoyed with Freemans Solicitors over the years.”

“The care and empathy among the staff “I have been using this firm for a while now stands out, especially when you’re going and the service is something special, they through a complex case. People talk about will go that extra mile to please! I am a true being client-oriented, but Freemans are fan. Just keep on the great work!!!” more than that: they’re humanity-oriented.”

(Chambers & Partners 2019 Guide)

“We would recommend this firm 1000 times over!!! Competent, efficient and knowledgeable should be their motto!”

The Partners of Freemans would like to say a big thank you to all of their clients who have supported them in the past 25 years and they look forward to serving them well into the future.

Most legal matters benefit from early advice, so talk to Freemans as soon as you can. Call 020 7935 3522 or look at their website for emergency numbers.

“It is because of everyone at Freemans Solicitors, I am still a husband to my wife and father to my children.

Thank you so, so much.”

Property ● Business Affairs ● Wills Employment ● Dispute Resolution Family ● Immigration ● Crime Probate ● Lasting Powers of Attorney

Call us now 020

7935 3522

39

www.freemanssolicitors.net

40 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

18 June 2020

Advertorial

The comfort of home If your office is now in your house, you’ll need to rethink the furniture

W

e are still reeling from the impact of the virus, but for many there have been some surprise benefits.

Working from home is one of them, with constant access to the fridge and sharing the parenting as major pluses.

Primarily, however, it’s working without a transport trek to the office, which was seemingly impossible until Covid-19 confinement made companies realise what can be achieved by staff staying put. And not just staff, but the self-employed, too, as we now all appreciate how much can be done without leaving the house.

But if your work future is going to be homebased from now on, you need the right set-up and furniture. Chairs positioned correctly alongside desks at the right height are essential in order to help avoid, back, neck, hand and wrist problems, but you can’t guess at that, which is why you need a specialist in ergonomic assistive technology, as provided by Pasquale Mansi at Ufficio.

As managing director of the company, Mansi will waste no time telling you about the quality ergonomic chairs available with the minimum level of adjustability that are available for as little as £350 + VAT. Bespoke chairs and the specially adapted kind are also on offer, and Ufficio also provides electrically actuated chairs for people who need assistance getting in and out of their chairs.

“Customers like the fact that our chairs are fully built when we deliver them,” says Manzi.

“We also build and install the desks we sell on their premises, as well as set up the ergonomic equipment. Compare this with buying on the

internet and having to put it all together yourself and send it back if it doesn’t work, and you will see the benefits and conveniences of dealing with a company such as ours, which has its own professional installation service.”

Adhering to the social distance rules throughout the set-up, Manzi believes the right furniture is an investment for anyone working from home.

“Compromising your physical health because of a bad work set-up could turn the joy of being home-based into a nightmare, so let us take a look and get you sorted.” www.ufficio.co.uk 01462 681370 or mobile: 07926 190407

ARE YOU EXPERIENCING DISCOMFORT WORKING AT HOME ON A COMPUTER DURING THE PANDEMIC? We are the experts in the provision of ergonomic furniture and specialist seating designed to make working at a computer more comfortable and productive at home

IF YOUR BUSINESS IS STILL IN BUSINESS, YOU NEED OUR HELP. In these difficult times our readers can’t find you without a personal introduction.

www.ufficio.co.uk Are you aware of what the Health & Executive says about employees working at home on a computer? Give us a call!

Tel: 01462 681370

Mobile: 07926 190407

We can provide the opportunity by creating sharp and interesting editorial in an original layout that tells the story of your company.

Presented in print and online with links to your website or service.

CREATE YOUR BESPOKE ADVERTORIAL NOW and spread the word about you. sales@thejngroup.com or call 0207 692 6929

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Fun, games and prizes

THE JEWISH NEWS CROSSWORD 1

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ACROSS 1 Clear, absolve (6) 4 Cordial (4)

8 Hydro town (3) 9 Athletics field event (4‑3) 10 Number in a trio (5)

S C O R E E M A G H Y A S L W R

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OPPONENT RALLY

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PLAYER

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Last issue’s solutions Crossword ACROSS: 1 Ought 4 Wages 7 Dancing 8 Log 9 Tom 11 Genial 14 Strobe 17 Too 19 Add 20 Blubber 22 Carat 23 Embed DOWN: 1 Oddity 2 Gun 3 Thing 4 Wagon 5 Gallant 6 Sign 10 Matador 12 Ebb 13 Torrid 15 Orbit 16 Exude 18 Talc 21 Bob

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SUGURU Each cell in an outlined block must contain a digit: a two‑cell block contains the digits 1 and 2, a three‑cell block contains the digits 1, 2 and 3; and so on. The same digit must not appear in neighbouring cells, not even diagonally.

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Sudoku 9 2 7 3 5 1 8 6 4

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In this finished crossword, every letter of the alphabet appears as a code number. All you have to do is crack the code and fill in the grid. Replacing the decoded numbers 10, 11 and 14 with their letters in the grid will help you to guess the identity of other letters.

The words related to badminton can all be found in the grid. Words may run either forwards or backwards, in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction, but always in a straight, unbroken line.

U Q E U K

Imperial length units (5) Punctuation mark (5) Grime (5) Prevalent (7) Wet earth (3) Versatile bean (4) Of time, pass (6)

CODEWORD

WORDSEARCH

J

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

DOWN 1 Advantage or property (5) 2 Argue, bicker (7) 3 Emanate (5) 5 Program on an iPhone (3) 6 School subject, for short (5) 7 Lean, gaunt (4) 12 Pickled herring fillet (7) 13 Game with rooks and bishops (5) 14 Christen (4) 15 Central (5) 16 Close row of bushes (5) 18 Home repairs (inits)(3)

16

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SUDOKU

3 5 4 2 1 7 6 9 8

2 1 6 4 9 8 7 5 3

1 4 3 4 3 4

5 2 1 2 1 5

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

Wordsearch 2 1 2 1 5 1

4 3 4 3 2 3

2 1 2 5 1 4

4 2 4 3 1 2

1 3 1 2 4 3

2 4 5 3 1 2

3 1 2 4 5 4

2 5 3 1 2 1

3 1 4 5 3 5

D R J Y V A R A G F S H C

N A M R Q O P N W T M A H

M Z F R U I T P E S P W I

Y R R E B K C A L B D H C

L B U B F S K O L E V J K

B L U E B E R R Y E M B E

T Y E S K N W G G V R M N

Codeword C B P O R P I E Y A J I A

E H J O O F T K B B O N V

T I E G P A Z U P Z X C T

C A C R B E H R J M B E X

Q K E L R R Y E K R U T K

I X E M K Y E T U D A P Y

P E J WH I MP E R O P E A NG L E R E O E I D L Y D I E S P A R K L E R O O P T I C V U U T E X T S Q D U T

E S S T S I A P R Y S RO V R E E R C A T O U U A R P E

B U R F O ON Z B E S L MS A E R S I I NG A

S H L F T B I X R U P WM E V Z N Y K C D G J Q A O18/06

42

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Jewish News 18 June 2020

Business Services Directory ANTIQUES 44

The Jewish News 22 September 2016

www.jewishnews.co.uk

BUSINESS SERVICES DIRECTORY

Top prices paid

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

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

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

Full house clearances organised.

MAKE SURE CONTACT BEFORE SELLING Please look YOU at our websiteUS for more details www.antiquesbuyers.co.uk

Rapid Response IT support for your PC & Mac Networks, virus problems, broadband, wireless systems, new computers and everything else you may need.

CHARITY & WELFARE For small businesses & home users.

FOR APPOINTMENTS CALL SUE ON: 0800 840 2035 or 07956268290 OPEN 8am TO 9pm 7 DAYS.

Call Ian Green, Man on a Bike on

PORTOBELLO RD LONDON.

020 8731 6171 • www.manonabike.co.uk

ARE YOU BEREAVED?

Stirling of Kensal Green 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

020 8960 5401 or 07825 224144 CHURCH STREET ANTIQUES � 8 CHURCH STREET NW8 8ED

͔͚͚͛͜ ͚͕͘ ͛͘͘ (ANYTIME) Email: gordonstirling65@gmail.com 0207 723 7415 (SHOP) closed Sunday & Monday

STUART SHUSTER � e�mail � stuart@churchstreetantiques.net

MAKE SURE YOU CONTACT US BEFORE SELLING

WESTLON HOUSING ASSOCIATION Sheltered Accommodation

Charity & Welfare Counselling for adults & children who are experiencing loss, and support groups.

Contact The Jewish Bereavement ARE YOU BEREAVED? Counselling Service in confidence

Labels are forTURN, jars.

Refer yourself or aKNOW loved one by IF YOU DON’T WHICH WAY TO Not people. calling 020 8458 2223 orOUR visit HELPLINE. REMEMBER

Counselling for adults & children who are 020 8951 3881 experiencing loss. Support groups offered. enquiries@jbcs.org.uk | www.jbcs.org.uk Call The Jewish Bereavement Counselling Service in confidence

www.jamiuk.org

For confidential advice, information and support don’t forget Jewish Care Direct.

REGISTERED CHARITY NO. 1003345

020 8922 2222

jcdirect@jcare.org

020 & 8951 3881 • 07765 693 160 CHARITY WELFARE

jewishcare.org/helpline

HOUSE CLEARANCE

E: enquiries@jbcs.org.uk

PLUMBSAFE (UK) LTD “Better Safe Than Sorry�

Jami supports and represents people with mental illness across Fast & Efficient House the Jewish community.

| boiler repairs and installation | complete central heating | | power flushing | complete bathroom installation service | | landlords certificates | project management | home purchase reports |

Clearance

#jamithinkahead We are reliable, cover all neighbourhoods & suit all budgets.

Give support • Get support • Get involved We also buy good quality furniture, old books & Judaica.

All NW-London postcodes covered

07860 881505 or 0800 610 12 12

020 8458 2223 | info@jamiuk.org www.jamiuk.org

Call: 078 060 79299 Reg Charity No. 1003345

Not shabbat

PLUMBSAFEUK.COM

We have an open waiting list for our friendly and comfortable For further details and application forms, please contact warden assisted sheltered housing schemes for Jewish people Westlon on 020 8201 8484 in Ealing, EastHousing Finchley Association and Hendon. We provide 24-hour warden support, seven days a week; a residents’ lounge and kitchen, laundry, a sunny patio and garden.

For further details and application forms, please contact Westlon Housing Association on 020 8201 8484

Charity Reg No. 802559

For all your heating and plumbing requirements

We have an open waiting list for our friendly and comfortable warden assisted sheltered housing schemes in Ealing, East Finchley and Hendon. We provide 24-hour warden support, WESTLON HOUSING ASSOCIATION seven days a week; a residents’ lounge and kitchen, laundry, aSheltered sunny patioAccommodation and garden.

ADVERTISE IN THE UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER FOR LESS THAN £24 A WEEK Are you a Jewish woman experiencing domestic violence?

With abuse in your home, do you worry about your children?

Email today at We are Sales here to help sales@thejngroup.com

with free support, advice and information and confidential counselling.

Kosher Refuge available for women and children in need.

Free Confidential National Helpline 0808 801 0500 advice@jwa.org.uk • www.jwa.org.uk

HOME & MAINTENANCE

Home & Maintenance

L

K

PLUMBSAFE (UK) LTD

No further, your

LOCAL PLUMBERS

“Better Safe Than Sorry�

Hall & Randall Plumbers

CENTRAL HEATING, PLUMBING REPAIRS & ADVISORY SERVICE EMERGENCY REPAIRS, BLOCKED PIPES DRAINAGE GUTTERING, ROOFING, CENTRAL HEATING AND BOILERS 12 MONTHS GUARANTEE, 40 YEARS EXPERIENCE

For all your heating and plumbing requirements | boiler repairs and installation | complete central heating | | power flushing | complete bathroom installation service | | landlords certificates | project management | home purchase reports |

hallandrandallplumbers.com

) *" " - *'

STONEMASON

PROFESSIONAL A. ELFES LTD PAINTING, DECORATING memorials & New PAPER HANGING Additional inscriptions Over & 20renovations years experience Friendly, reliable & Clayhall Showroom 14 Claybury Broadway Ilford. IG5 0LQ T: 0208 551 6866

Edgware Showroom 41 Manor Park Crescent Edgware. HA8 7LY T: 0208 381 1525

Email : info@garygreenmemorials.co.uk

Gants Hill service.

Edgware personal

Gary Green ad 84 x 40mm JM Group v2.indd 1

12Very Beehive Lane 130rates High Street competitive Gants Hill, IG1 3RD Edgware, HA8 7EL Telephone Telephone

STEPHEN: 07973 342 422 0207 754 4659 0207 754 4646

www.garygreenmemorials.co.uk

18/03/2019 12:50:51

LOFT CONVERSIONS & UPVC Fitter

Not shabbat

Home & Maintenance

The specialist masons in creating bespoke Granite and Marble Memorials for all Cemeteries.

!

! # ! " " #

+ " ) "# ,! " " ! #

!

•DRIVEWAYS •PAINTING London 020 8485 8176 •PATIOS •PLASTERING •BRICKWORK •PLUMBING ADVERTISE IN THE •ROOF REPAIRS •ALL BUILDING UK’S BIGGEST ADVERTISE IN THE •GUTTERING WORKNEWSPAPER JEWISH City and Guilds Electrician UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH All types of electrical work undertaken FOR LESS THAN NEWSPAPER FOR LESS A WEEK £24.00 FREE ESTIMATES & ADVICE Rewiring, extra sockets, BT points, Economy 7 storage heaters, Shabbat time switches, security lighting, THAN £24 A WEEK ALL WORK FULLYCall GUARANTEED LED spotlights, fault finding, CCTVportable appliance tests, Marc today landlord tests and house buyer’s surveys. on 020 7692 6943 Email Sales 581 Bowrons Ave, Wembley HA0 4QP For an efficient reliable and friendly service. today at Call Harvey Solomons on 01245 211 002 / 07773 102 386 Jewish sales@thejngroup.com 020 8958 6495 / 07836 648 554 hilineroofing.site123.me

PLUMBSAFEUK.COM

office@hallandrandall.com

HI LINE ROOFING

All NW-London postcodes covered

07860 881505 or 0800 610 12 12

020 8953 2094 office 020 8207 3286 home 020 8386 8798

LONDON

srindsmc@hotmail.com

www.memorialgroup.co.uk

18 June 2020 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

43

Business Services Directory COMPUTER

SILVER

AERIAL REPAIR

Man on a Bike will get you working fast!

Rapid Response IT support for your PC & Mac Networks, virus problems, broadband, wireless systems, new computers and everything else you may need.

For small businesses & home users.

AERIALS & SATELLITE • Repairs & Installs • Any work under taken • Sky & Freesat

Call Ian Green, Man on a Bike on

020 8953 4539

020 8731 6171 • www.manonabike.co.uk

ADVERTISE IN THE UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER FOR LESS THAN £24 A WEEK Email Sales today at sales@thejngroup.com

DOMICILIARY CARE FREE CARE if you book before 31st October 2019, for every 4 hours of care booked the 5th hour will be 50% Free.

ADVERTISE IN THE UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER FOR LESS THAN £24 A WEEK

HOME CARE AGENCY Established Over 30 years

Email Sales today at sales@thejngroup.com

Professional Care at Home Day & Night Care available North and Central London T: 020 8088 2789 info@kells-care.com kells-care.com

LEGACY- LEAVE A GIFT IN YOUR MEMORY

JEWISH WAR VETERANS

Leave the legacy of independence to people like Joel.

& THEIR DEPENDANTS NEED

YOUR LEGACY

PLease remember us in your wiLL.

eNABLeD

Tel: 020 8202 2323 Web: www.ajex.org.uk Email: headoffice@ajex.org.uk

visit www.Jbd.org

Registered Charity

or caLL 020 8371 6611 No. 259480 18-361-JM Small legacy advert v1.qxp_Legacy 09/10/2018 10:27 Page 1

Registered Charity No: 1082148

HELP US CONTINUE TO BE THERE FOR OUR COMMUNITY WITH A GIFT IN YOUR WILL. Call Alison on 020 8922 2833 for more information or email legacyteam@jcare.org Chancellors House, Brampton Lane, London, NW4 4AB Tel: 020 8903 8746 | Fax: 020 8795 2240 www.bfiwd.org | email: info@bfiwd.org

Email Sales today at sales@thejngroup.com

Charity Reg No. 802559

WASTE REMOVAL

Secure our

children’s future

Please include

CST in your Will

Charity no. 1042391

Every gift makes a difference legacy@cst.org.uk

ADVERTISE IN THE UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER FOR LESS THAN £24 A WEEK

020 8457 3700

ISRAEL PROPERTY

Legacy advert 84x40.indd 1

Ramat Bet Shemesh Aleph.

New Project from ₪1,290,000

www.cst.org.uk

ADVERTISE IN THE UK’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER FOR LESS THAN £24 A WEEK Email Sales today at sales@thejngroup.com

07/04/2017 14:47

Rannana New Project from ₪2590,000

Hertzlia Pituach New Project ₪12, 999, 000

Jerusalem New Project From ₪1999, 000

www.israel-properties.com

44

Jewish News 18 June 2020

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