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IT’S JN JUNIOR! NEW KIDS’ SECTION, P51 2 September 2021

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Lily Ebert and Robert Peston battle in the book charts Pages 41 & 45

Real life avengers Page 24

God’s speed!

Religions unite for faith fun run, pages 38 & 39

Net closes in on Stamford Hill attacker Muslim leaders urge their own community to help find suspect

by Jack Mendel jack@jewishnews.co.uk @mendelpol

The hunt for a man linked to FIVE assaults against Orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill intensified this week with Muslim leaders urging their communities to help bring the perpetrator to justice.

Detectives issued new CCTV images of a man they want to speak to over a series of attacks, including against a 64-year-old man who was punched and knocked unconscious.

The assault on Jacob Lipchitz was one of five unprovoked attacks in Stamford Hill on 18 August. Other victims include a 30-year-old Jewish man who was struck on the head with a bottle in Cazenove Road at around 6.41pm and a 14-year-old Jewish boy was assaulted in Holmdale Terrace at around 7.10pm.

Officers say they have been informed of fourth and fifth victims, but neither have made an official allegation.

The Muslim Council of Britain told Jewish News: “These attacks are shocking and completely unacceptable. We cannot tolerate any such hatred in our society.

Wanted: Latest police image of suspect

“Muslims and Jews have excellent relations in Hackney. We hope they and other local residents will do all they can to help the police in identifying the perpetrator and bring him to justice.”

On Tuesday, the Met said CCTV footage confirmed the man they want to locate stayed at a hostel in Seven Sisters Road, Hackney, between Tuesday 17 August and Thursday

Continued on page 3

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

News / Leader criticised / Labour view / SNP meeting

Welsh leader ‘hugely lacks judgment’ on fringe event

by Lee Harpin lee@jewishnews.co.uk @lmharpin

The leader of the Welsh government and Labour Party has been accused of a “huge lack of judgment” over his decision to speak at a fringe conference at which film-maker Ken Loach is also booked to appear.

In a new attack on Mark Drakeford’s decision to apppear at this month’s The World Transformed (TWT) event in Brighton, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies accused Drakeford of ignoring the Jewish community’s feelings.

Meanwhile, Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies, called on Drakeford to “withdraw” from his speaking engagement.

In a statement on Tuesday, she said: “We are deeply concerned by this and have raised the matter with the first minister’s office and with Labour officials.

“It cannot be fitting for the first

seeing him cosy up with those who have shown disregard to the very real presence of the world’s oldest form of racism in the Labour Party?

“Drakeford’s actions beg the question of why he thinks it is appropriate to make friends with those Sir Keir Starmer has said have no place in the Party.”

Davies also questioned whether Drakeford’s decision to speak at the event, which takes place at the same time as the official Labour Conference on the south coast, could spark tensions between the Welsh leader and Starmer.

Drakeford is due to speak at a session on the future of universal benefit at TWT, which runs from 25 to 28 September. It is not known whether he was aware that the lineup and TWT also included speeches from Loach, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other figures who have

minister and Welsh Labour leader to participate in events with people who have been suspended or expelled from Labour for their role in the Party’s antisemitism crisis over recent years. We call on Mr Drakeford to withdraw from this event and instead address the important topic of welfare reform at a more appropriate forum.”

Davies, leader of the Tory group in the Welsh Parliament, said: “Given he is leader of the Welsh government and Welsh Labour, you would think Mark Drakeford would have no truck in attending a counter-event at his own party’s conference, hand-in-hand with cranks thrown out of that very party for their association with antisemitism.

“This demonstrates a huge lack of judgment and sensitivity on the first minister’s part – how will Wales’ Jewish community feel in

Mark Drakeford

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YIZKOR – Living with

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has been informed he faces autoexclusion from Labour over his involvement and sponsorship of the now-proscribed Labour Against The Witch-hunt group. His comments around the Holocaust caused outrage at a previous Labour Party conference fringe event appearance.

ship Council event, the Labour front bencher said there were people who used the Israel/ Palestine issue to “spout hate and divide people”.

Nandy has confirmed the party are against Lisa Nandy this week said the Labour Party will “always believe that Israel has the right to the United Nations singling out Israel and will vote against it in power. defend itself” against attacks.

Reiterating the Labour Party’s supSpeaking at a packed event in port for a negotiated two-state soluManchester on Tuesday, the shadow tion and her opposition to the Boyforeign secretary also voiced her cott, Divestment and Sanctions opposition to a complete ban on movement, Nandy addressed weapons sales from the UK to the concerns over the UN’s disproJewish state. portionate focus on Israel.

She said both herself and For the first time she suggested shadow Middle East Minister that Labour agrees with the govWayne David “didn’t support the ernment’s position of voting blocking of the sale of weapons to Labour’s Lisa Nandy against all item 7 motions at the Israel that helped it deflect rocket UN Human Rights Council. attacks”.

Item 7 is the only permanent agenda item Nandy added: “Israel has a right to defend itself and Israel’s citizens have a right to live in dedicated to condemning a single country.

After the event, Nandy said: “I was delighted peace and security.”

In a wide-ranging discussion, at the Jewish to be able to listen to members of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Man- community tonight. Only by listening can chester & Region (JRC) and Jewish Leader- we rebuild the trust we so desperately need.”

by Lee Harpin lee@jewishnews.co.uk @lmharpin

BRITAIN’S BLIND SP O T

ANTI-JEWIS

downplayed the extent of antisemitism in the party.

Organisers of the event say it will represent those “alienated” by Starmer’s leadership. Other MPs speaking include John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Jon Trickett and Clive Lewis.

Loach has confirmed that he

‘Rebuild trust by listening’

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SNP AND JEWISH LEADERS MEET Senior Scottish National Party MPs have held a “constructive” meeting with the country’s Jewish communal leaders following concerns about the party’s stance on Israel during the recent conflict with Hamas, writes Lee Harpin.

Ian Blackford, the party’s

Westminster leader, and Kirsten Oswald, his deputy, held talks with the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities and Glasgow Jewish Representative Council. The meeting took place after a visit to the Giffnock and Newlands Synagogue.

Oswald later said the talks

had been “very constructive” and had touched on “looking at importance of Jewish community in Scotland, interfaith dialogue and always standing against antisemitism”.

She also tweeted images of the group inside the synagogue observing the open Sefer Torah.

www.jewishnews.co.uk

2 September 2021 Jewish News

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Synagogue concerns / Police appeal / News

Bevis Marks faces ‘existential threat’ Britain’s oldest synagogue fears an “existential threat” if proposals to build two high-rise office blocks nearby are approved, writes Joshua Salisbury.

Bevis Marks, a Grade I-listed building in the City of London, celebrates 320 years of regular services on Saturday, but its Rabbi Shalom Morris says its future is at stake if nearby towers of up to 48 storeys are given the go-ahead.

Developers are proposing a 21-storey building in Creechurch Lane and a 48-floor tower in Bury Street, which the synagogue says would completely block out sunlight apart from one hour a day, making services impossible.

The synagogue is famous for being lit by up to 240 candles. These were supplemented in 1928 by limited electric lighting, which cannot be enhanced because the synagogue is a listed building.

“While each new development on its own is unacceptable, all of them together would be catastrophic.

The iconic Grade I-listed building has hosted services for three centuries

The very survival of our great synagogue as a place of worship is at stake,” said Morris. He added: “Not only will light be blocked, on which the building depends for ambiance, spirituality and atmosphere, but the very foundations will be at risk.

“Yet the Jewish community’s British heritage is treated by the planners and developers as just another building.”

The synagogue was built in 1701 after Jews banished from England in 1290 were allowed back by Oliver Cromwell, and has survived the Blitz and IRA bombs.

It is known as the home of the UK’s Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community.

But those involved in the synagogue fear it could soon be the end, criticising the City of London’s planning approach. “Due to the pandemic there’s already unfortunately a surplus of office space in the City so it doesn’t need another tower block,” said synagogue chair Jonathan Solomons.

POLICE STEP UP HUNT FOR ATTACKER Continued from page 1

19 August. Detective Chief Inspector Yasmin Lalani, senior investigating officer, said: “We remain determined to identify the man responsible for these unprovoked attacks.

“As a result of our investigation, we now know that the man captured on CCTV was staying in a hostel. Were you there at the same time? Do you know

anything that might help us? I would encourage anyone with information to call police. I would also urge this man to come forward and speak with us.”

The Community Security Trust and Shomrim, a neighbourhood watch group, backed the police’s renewed appeal to find the perpetrator. Shomrim president Rabbi Herschel Gluck said it was “working full-out to facilitate the

arrest of the perpetrator of the recent spate of antisemitic attacks” in addition to enhancing security with extra patrols and measures.

“The enduring friendships [between the Muslim and Jewish communities in Hackney] and great working relationships should never be underestimated.”

Lipchitz told Jewish News last week

the attacker was “not representative of the Muslim community”, adding: “It will not affect one iota my feelings about the local Muslim community.”  If you recognise the man in the images, or witnessed any of the assaults and are yet to speak with officers, call 101 quoting reference 4492/20AUG, or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

A CCTV image of the suspect

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News / Labour activists / Bristol inquiry

‘Jew process’ councillor told she faces expulsion A Labour councillor who used the term “Jew process” is among party activists to be warned they face expulsion over their membership of banned organisations, writes Lee Harpin.

Jo Bird, previously investigated over antisemitism claims, confirmed she has received notice of possible auto exclusion from the party.

The charge relates to her involvement with the Labour Against The Witch-hunt organisation, one of four groups now proscribed by the party. The Wirral councillor had spoken at events organised by LATW, which was set up to defend activists expelled or suspended by Labour over antisemitism claims.

Bird said she would appeal against the possibility of expulsion – though in a tweet she described a speech given at a LATW event as “one of my best”.

She has previously sought election on to Labour’s ruling national executive committee. However, in a series of speeches she also suggested claims of antisemitism were taken more seriously

by Labour than other forms of racism.

Registered Charity No. 1113409

A meeting of Labour Against The Witch-hunt and, inset, Jo Bird

She attacked the expulsion of activist Marc Wadsworth as “unfair”, and said “due process” should be known as “Jew process”.

In an article on the Jewish Voice For Labour website, Bird wrote: “One thing that worries me is the privileging of racism against Jews as more worthy of resources than other forms of discrimination such as against black people, Muslim people and people who have crossed borders to this country.”

Bird has previously told how her

Jewish grandfather “never knew his cousins because they perished in the Holocaust”.

Labour sources have confirmed to Jewish News that the decision taken in July to proscribe four organisations was taken primarily as a means of dealing with groups who downplayed or dismissed antisemitism with the party.

Alongside LATW, those groups include Labour In Exile Network and Resist.

Other activists to receive notice they face auto explosion include Leah Levane, co-chair of JVL.

ACADEMIC CRITICISES BRISTOL UNI’S DELAY The director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism has said Bristol University’s “apparently dilatory” investigation into David Miller and claims of harassment of its Jewish students “is doing no one any good”, writes Jenni Frazer.

Professor David Feldman said he had “made it very clear that some of the things that David Miller has said are antisemitic and that needs to be acted on by Bristol University”. Birkbeck had been consulted by “many institutions, including universities, on how to address the issues of antisemitism on campus”, which was “an important part of our public-facing activity”.

He said Birkbeck would be happy to “give advice to any university, including Bristol”, on the matter, adding: “Professor David Miller has been publicly denounced over antisemitism, so it is right and proper that Bristol University investigates that. There needs to be due process. However, without knowing the details, it does seem to be taking a long time to resolve the situation”.

This year Feldman wrote an opinion piece for Ha’aretz in which he said Miller had “overstepped the mark” between antiZionism and antisemitism.

Feldman said all previous surveys had shown that the number of “ideologically committed antisemites in the British population is relatively low, at 5 percent or lower, but the percentage of people who would assent to one or more negative stereotypes of Jews is much higher, up to 30 percent.”

This was replicated in political parties, “and across the spectrum, not just the Labour Party. It needs to be addressed through educating people and making them aware of the language that they use and the tropes that they draw upon. Discipline alone [such as expulsion] works only in the most egregious cases, and won’t get to the heart of the problem.”

Feldman was speaking to Jewish News after Birkbeck secured new grants totalling more than £1million, which, he said were a result of “the academic quality and the reputation of the Institute”.

2 September 2021 Jewish News

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News / Almigh-tea row / President’s plea

HERZOG’S NEW YEAR MESSAGE Israel’s new president has said he will be praying for Jewish people around the world as his “extended family” while marking his first Rosh Hashanah in office.

Isaac Herzog said he looked forward to seeing Jews from around the world visit Israel as soon as possible.

In a message released this week, the president said: “Each of us has the privilege to chart our own course and yet, at the same time, we depend on each other: on our community, on our congregation, on the power of each of our tefillot, prayers.

“So on this Rosh Hashanah, and as we are heading into Yom Kippur, I will be praying for the wellbeing of my immediate family as well as my extended family: The people of Israel and the Jewish people at large.

“Take care of each other and know that Israel is your home away from home. May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life.”

Family ‘ordered to leave’ café after kosher request

by Josh Salisbury josh@jewishnews.co.uk @josh_salisbury

A 1940s-themed tearoom in Stratford-uponAvon has denied claims it ordered a Jewish family to leave after they asked for a chicken sandwich to be left off their plate for kosher reasons.

Jonathan and Shayna Evans visited the Fourteas tea shop with their two-year-old daughter over the Bank Holiday weekend and asked if the restaurant could remove chicken sandwiches from a high tea plate they wanted to order.

The establishment refused, saying it could not accommodate “individual preferences”, even after the couple suggested they could swap it for cucumber, or simply pay full price for the tea and sandwich selection without a replacement for the two chicken sandwiches.

After mentioning that they would be putting this in their TripAdvisor review, the family say they were ordered to leave.

“The owner came over quite aggressively, saying: ‘I’ve been told you’re using the review to get what you want,’” said Mr Evans. “He said, ‘You need to leave the restaurant.’ I said,

‘I don’t understand, all we’re asking you to do is accommodate our religious belief.’”

Mr Evans added: “It was very distressing.

We were quite shaken up and felt like we were discriminated against based on our religious belief.”

When home, they wrote a review on TripAdvisor about their experience.

In a now-deleted response, the restaurant responded: “We regret we cannot accommodate mindsets seeking refuge behind imaginative or cultural reasons to justify selfish and arrogant attitudes.

“Respect and appreciation works both ways!”

Mr Evans told Jewish News: “They might as well have had a sign saying ‘No Jews allowed.’ That’s certainly how we were made to feel.”

In an updated statement on Tuesday, the café denied the family was asked to leave over the request for an adjustment.

It said it promoted inclusivity and was working with the local Jewish community to resolve concerns.

“We would like to put on record the family were asked to leave due to their behaviour and out of respect to the other customers,” it claimed.

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2 September 2021 Jewish News

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

News / Israeli ambassador

Tzipi: Sorry you couldn’t visit

by Michael Daventry mike@jewishnews.co.uk @michaeldaventry

Israel’s ambassador has apologised to British Jews for the travel restrictions that have prevented thousands of people from visiting her country this year.

Tzipi Hotovely said she recognised the price had been “very heavy” for Jews who were hoping this year to visit relatives or enjoy the country in “the way they used to every year”.

Israel has spent most of the summer on Britain’s green list, meaning travellers returning to the UK do not need to quarantine, but visits have nonetheless been almost impossible because of restrictions placed by Israeli authorities.

In an interview with Jewish News ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Hotovely said: “I’d like to apologise on behalf of the State of Israel that we had to limit the entrance to Israel because of the pandemic.

“Of course the only thing behind it was keeping everyone healthy but I think the price was very heavy.

“My prayer for the next year is that we will get over the pandemic, either

New arrivals: Olim at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport this year

thanks to the booster or other things science can offer, and we would love to see the Jewish community come and visit – especially delegations, especially young people.”

Many young British Jews had been dismayed at the choice of Hotovely as ambassador because of her previous criticism of progressive Judaism and support for West Bank settlements.

In April the Masorti youth movement Noam refused to attend a

panel event with her because of her “beyond the pale” comments.

Hotovely said the Noam boycott did not represent the majority of the British Jewish community and that most groups had been open to her since she took up the role last year.

“My answer to them was I opened my house and I want you to come.

I don’t boycott anyone and I hope that people that call themselves liberal will be open-minded to speak

and have a proper dialogue with the opened Israel’s diplomatic offices in Rabat last month.

Israeli ambassador.”

Hotovely said the agreements And it became clear last week that she will serve out her full term in were a sign that her country was London as ambassador despite wide- doing something “historic” and “on spread rumours that the new Israeli the ascent” – but indicated that no government wanted to withdraw her. other Arab nations were on the verge Over the summer sources close to of signing up. Asked if Saudi Arabia foreign minister Yair Lapid briefed might recognise Israel, she said “evethe Israeli media that they were ryone is asking me this” but did not seeking her resignation because she offer an answer.

Israel’s enthusiasm for new was a close political ally of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. engagement with the Arab world does But Hotovely said Lapid phoned not appear to extend to the Palestinher last week to clear the air: “The ians, with whom a peace deal remains foreign minister called me, person- as distant a prospect as ever.

“The prime minister said it very ally, and said he was really upset by those kind of rumours. He said, ‘I clearly: there won’t be a Palestinian state,” Hotovely said, referencing totally respect the fact that you Naftali Bennett’s recent interare the ambassador and I trust view with the New York Times. your work very much.’”

Times “He said there won’t be This work will annexation, there won’t be a include an event in parPalestinian state. He said we liament next week to need to work on [improving] mark the first anniversary daily life. of the Abraham Accords, “There is something which normalised Israeli very not realistic ties with a number of Arab about thinking that countries including it all depends on Bahrain, the UAE the Israeli side.” and Morocco. Lapid Tzipi Hotovely

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If a student has 15 seconds to get to safety and there are over 1,000 students in school, how much time in total do they have to get to safety?

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

News / Sexual abuse inquiry

Handing in child abuser to police a sin, says strictly-Orthodox leader A strictly-Orthodox leader has claimed that it would not be acceptable to hand over a child abuser to secular authorities, describing it as a “severe sin”, according to reports, writes Joshua Salisbury.

Dayan Paltiel Schwarcz argued that there were almost no circumstances in which a Jewish abuser could be reported to the police, according to The Times, in a rabbinic paper written in Hebrew earlier this year.

The claim comes ahead of today’s publication of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s report, Child Protection in Religious Organisations and Settings.

Dayan Schwarcz, 37, a member of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC), had reportedly claimed in the rabbinic paper it would be forbidden to report an abuser if he is married with children, because his family would be “destroyed”.

Among other instances it is also, he claimed, forbidden when the abuser can be treated with “medical methods” to “prevent him from carrying out such acts”.

This is in apparent conflict with the position of the UOHC. Its representative, Rabbi Yehudah Baumgarten, told the inquiry last year that mesirah – a rule against informing

Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the child sexual abuse inquiry, and, inset, Yehudis Goldsobel

secular authorities of misconduct by another Jewish person – was “not applicable where the person being reported was causing harm to others, such as in cases of child sexual abuse”.

The UOHC has since repeated, following the newspaper’s report, its stance that mesirah

would not apply in cases of child abuse.

A spokesperson said the document was “an unaddressed, unsigned, incomplete academic draft that was sent to one person for review and for consultation regarding its standing in English law,” and had not been published.

The UOHC said the document did not “take away from the seriousness with which the rabbinate consider this matter, nor do they abrogate our unambiguous position” that mesirah does not apply.

Some campaigners have raised fears at the inquiry of a “consensus” not to tackle child sexual abuse. The indictment was levelled by Yehudis Goldsobel during an hearing of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in May last year, in which she said offenders were often “welcomed back into the community as heroes”.

Goldsobel, who heads Migdal Emunah, which supports abuse victims, was among one of several Jewish witnesses, including the United Synagogue, the Movement for Reform Judaism, Liberal Judaism and the UOHC. The inquiry has sparked a move to close a ‘position of trust’ legal loophole by including religious leaders in the ‘position of trust’ law. The law makes sexual relations between people in these roles illegal. The move to extend the law to religious leaders was welcomed by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

News / Agunot abuse / Royal approval

‘100 women’ trapped in Charedi marriages More than 100 Charedi women are trapped in religious marriages in the UK, Lord Mendelsohn has said, writes Lee Harpin.

Speaking in his role with a cross-party parliamentary group formed to help those trapped in religious marriages, the Labour peer said he was “shocked” by the number of women contacting him for help since he raised the issue.

“The thing that has shocked me [is] I alone have been contacted by people since I raised this issue,” he says. “Tens of cases, including a number of people in the Jewish community in which I live.”

An amendment to the statutory guidance under the Domestic Abuse Act now says that withholding a get (the legal document validating a Jewish divorce ) can be a form of domestic abuse. If it is deemed controlling or coercive behaviour, the man could be charged and, if found guilty, imprisoned.

Ministers hope the change will give women more power to complain to the authorities about their ex-partners for not granting a religious divorce.

Mendelsohn believes there is no clash between religious and non-religious law, and

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A legal amendment makes withholding a get a form of abuse

questions the motives of the rabbis who say there is.

“They’ve chosen to create a conflict where none exists.

I suspect [it] is because they feel they’re losing control of parts of the process,” he told BBC2’s Newsnight. “I think they have to get a grip of the situation and come to realise this is Britain in 2021.”

Newsnight featured stories of women trapped in religious marriages who are known as agunot, or “chained wives”.

Eli Spitzer, a headteacher who is part of the Orthodox Jewish community in London, says some rabbis believe women seeking help under

the legislation “would start a process that is then irreversible”.

Some worshippers told the programme they believe the Torah did not intend for women to feel stuck in unhappy marriages.

The Federation of Synagogues, a group representing Orthodox Jews, says any get “given under duress, whether due to physical threats, financial threats or the threat of imprisonment, is absolutely invalid” under Jewish law.

“The couple would remain married to one another, notwithstanding the granting of a get,” it said in a letter.

Charles ‘humbled’ to be part of Lily’s book posting a bank note signed by Prince Charles has paid tribute a solder who liberated her. A to the great-grandson of Holotweet he sent helped reunite caust survivor Lily Ebert for Ebert with the solder’s family his “engaging and effective use within eight hours. of social media” in sharing her “Through his engaging story, writes Jack Mendel. and effective use of social In a deeply personal foremedia, Dov has demonword, the heir to the throne strated a determination to praised the book, Lily’s Promise: share his great grandmothHow I Survived Auschwitz and er’s story with a global audiFound the Strength to Live, ence.” At the start of the book, written by Lily Ebert, 97, and Forman reflects on an article Dov Forman, 17. published by Jewish News The prince recalled lighting focusing on how Holocaust memorial candles in 2015 testimony continued during alongside Ebert, saying that the pandemic. by co-writing the book, she “lit The prince wrote the foreThe heir to the throne drew her own candle, and recognised word to Lily Ebert’s memoir on teachings of Rabbi Lord the urgent necessity of passing both its light and the responsibility of remem- Sacks who “spoke about the difference between history and memory” and writes he considers it brance between generations”.

He said Forman who, thanks to Ebert has “a privilege to have met survivors” through the more than 1,000,000 followers on TikTok, has Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Calling Ebert’s story “as profoundly moving “shown himself more than capable of carrying as she is inspirational”, he says he was “humforward” the task of remembrance.

Forman has gone viral on Twitter while bled” to contribute to the book. sharing his great-grandmother’s story, including • Lily Ebert interview, page 45

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Survivors project / Afghan crisis / News

Kids under six meet survivors

Youngsters under the age of six are to meet a Holocaust survivor to ensure testimony is remembered and shared by the next generation, writes Joshua Salisbury.

The event on 12 September, called Tomorrow’s Testimony, will lead children aged six and under in a day of interactive events.

Rather than teaching them about the Holocaust, there will be a family photograph with the survivor. The children will be sent a booklet with the photograph and testimony, which families will be encouraged to give to their children at a suitable age.

The concept behind the booklet, says March of the Living, which is organising the northwest London event, is for children eventually to share the testimony of the survivor that they met, “becoming a witness for life”.

Eve Kugler, 90, one survivor taking part, said it “means so much” for children to feel connected to her story.

“They will remember me because they will have the photo taken of us together and will have my family’s story.

“Remembering the Holocaust in the future is vital, but this is not a serious day. It will be

The event next week is designed to teach our very youngest about their history

great fun to do the activities together and spend time with them.”

Scott Saunders, founder of March of the Living, said: “We are not teaching the history of the Holocaust to three- and four-year olds.

“We are ensuring that in 10-plus years’ time, when the survivors are not with us, their memory, their stories and the importance of learning about the Holocaust will live on through these young people.”

WE CAN ALL SPREAD LIGHT AT A DARK TIME

BY RABBI ELCHONON FELDMAN

SENIOR RABBI, BUSHEY UNITED SYNAGOGUE

Our Afghan refugee appeal has taught me that giving is truly all about people. There have been many adjectives used to describe the phenomenon that the Bushey United Synagogue community witnessed over the past week or so: overwhelming, inspiring and amazing.

These sentiments refer not just to the sheer volume of high quality goods collected.

The words came from individuals making a personal donation, from people who had arranged collections among their friends and neighbours and from those who had collected items at their place of worship, from across the faith spectrum.

Despite the horrific images coming from Afghanistan, individuals can make an impact.

People, with their sense of empathy, their sense of love, can spread light at a time of darkness.

The Torah portion of Ki Teitze that I read for the community last Shabbat informs us that we must care for the stranger, the orphan and widow in our midst. The Torah says clearly why: you must remember that you, too, were once a stranger in the land of Egypt.

We, too, were once in need of assistance.

And, God says, I redeemed you from there and it’s for that very reason that I command you to do these things today.

The memory of what it means to be ‘other’, to be a minority, to be in need, is implanted within the Jewish genetic code, within our souls. This inspires us to be the best possible

This Rosh Hashanah,

YOU CAN CHANGE A LIFE FOREVER Moshe was sent to a psychiatric institution as a child. He was never spoken about at home. Then his family discovered Norwood and everything changed.

We need your support this Rosh Hashanah to help people like Moshe at every stage of their lives.

Call 020 8420 6970 to make a donation today.

Alternatively, visit norwood.org.uk/ rosh or scan the QR code below using your smartphone:

A young volunteer does his bit at the shul

version of ourselves and drives us to reach out to those who are in need of help.

It has been a privilege playing a small role in this response. But, more importantly, it’s been a privilege to work alongside so many people who have demonstrated this beautiful display of love for the ‘other’.

15

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

Special Report / Campaigning for Uyghurs

Resolute pursuit of ju How China’s oppression of an ethnic group resonated with UK Jews and led them to mobilise The distance from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Beijing is 4,932 miles but Rabbi Barbara Borts up in the north-east has been doing her best to make her voice travel.

Forty years ago, she became one of the first women in Europe to be ordained as a rabbi, and today she is one of a small but growing number of British Jews taking to the streets to protest against China’s oppression of its Uyghur Muslim minority, something the United States calls “genocide”.

Noticeably, her recent stand was outside neither an embassy nor a consulate, but a Volkswagen dealership. Likewise in London, British Jews have been massing outside a VW showroom in Colney Hatch Lane on the North Circular.

It shows a shift in the battle lines – and battlegrounds. Letters to MPs, alas, did not work, so now the pressure has moved to companies and profit margins, in particular focusing on firms like VW which have factories in Xinjiang, the region where a million or more Uyghurs have been detained in ‘re-education’ camps.

In Newcastle, Borts says her protest – alongside Benny Ross, past chair of Newcastle Reform Synagogue – is more symbolic than practical. The dealership is located on a busy road with few passing pedestrians for her to collar and explain about China’s persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

themselves – with Dan even persuading Andrew to go to Speaker’s Corner. In short, things are ramping up.

JEWISH PROTEST

VW is a target today because it has a small factory in Urumqi, in the heart of Xinjiang, where “at least one of its component suppliers uses thousands of Uyghurs as forced labour”, she claims.

Founded by Nazis in 1937, VW says no forced labour is used at Urumqi, but when pushed on this, its China’s chief executive Dr Stephan Wollenstein could not guarantee that none of his Uyghur employees had been through the camps.

One prominent German politician and member of the European Parliament says VW is “a company without a conscience, complicit in upholding a totalitarian hell in Xinjiang”.

Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, a former Bundestag representative of Lower Saxony, where VW is based, said the company’s Xinjiang factory “gives the Chinese Communist Party a higher legitimacy”.

She says: “Volkswagen knows this. They have done it exactly for this, to get a comparative advantage. It was a political issue from the very beginning. Economically it is useless. It doesn’t make sense at all.”

Be that as it may, hers is just one example of how Britain’s Jews are steadily taking their horror over Xinjiang further than the usual letters and petitions, especially as the Uyghurs’ plight has become far better known over the past year or two.

Back in February 2019, one of the first to hit the streets was Andrew – who prefers not to give his surname – an Orthodox businessman in north London who felt he just had to do something. His response has since inspired others, including Rabbi Borts.

That year satellites finally showed the extent of the vast camp network in Xinjiang, and he was moved to action. “China hides everything, but it can’t hide its camps from space, because of the sheer number of people involved,” Andrew says.

“These images made it clear what was going on, and the vast scale of it. With the obvious exception of the Holocaust, the world has never before seen the placing in concentration camps of millions of men, women and children on account of their religion.”

Several others have since joined him, including Baruch Solomon, Judith Shipton and her granddaughter, and Dan – whose surname is also withheld at his request – who saw Andrew holding up a placard by the side of the road and felt inspired to join him twice a week.

As campaigners the two men are now inseparable – “equal protagonists” as they describe

ALL TOO FAMILIAR

Millions of Muslims in Chinese concentration camps and slave labour strikes a chord with Jews everywhere, they say, and Mia Hasenson-Gross, director of Jewish human rights group Rene Cassin, is another who has taken up the cause.

Jews “speak with experience” on the issue of persecution and forced labour, she says. “It goes back thousands of years, to the Egyptians, but also more recently, during the Second World War, when Jews were used as forced labour, including in occupied territory such as Alderney [one of the Channel Islands].”

On the Uyghurs, she says: “The evidence is indisputable. In both instances, forced labour is linked to genocide and the persecution of a people. In some cases, it is even the same companies collaborating with oppressing forces.”

The “strongest example” is Volkswagen, says Hasenson-Gross, to whom the company’s wartime record is not lost. “In the 1940s, VW operated four concentration camps and eight forced labour camps on its property, and actively sought out forced labour from the concentration camp system.”

COMMERCIAL LINKS

FROM PARLIAMENT TO THE BOARDROOM

On 17 March last year, hundreds of Jewish schoolchildren and students were due to join Andrew and Dan in a protest at China’s cultural embassy but the lockdown ended those plans.

Months later, they say, the focus shifted.

‘With the obvious exception of the Holocaust, the world has never before seen such suffering of m

“In the November lockdown, a BBC piece by John Sudworth [who has since been forced to leave China owing to harassment] on Xinjiang was broadcast,” says Andrew. “That showed Dan and I that there was a new way to spread the message.”

They looked at several Volkswagen dealerships and settled on one on the North Circular, where tens of thousands of cars pass every hour. “At rush hour they crawl by so you get real engagement,” says Andrew. “Our demand is that VW cannot credibly carry on having a factory amongst concentration camps.”

THE WINTER OLYMPICS

Beijing is due to host the Winter Olympics in February 2022 but Zumretay Arkin at the World Uyghur Congress says the International Olympic Committee (IOC) “completely dismissed our experiences and sufferings” during a meeting in October. “They hedge behind political neutrality on China,” she says.

By letting China host the Games, critics say the IOC tacitly endorses the regime.

The IOC disagrees, saying its mission is to create a better world, but activists don’t buy

it. “A better world to us means no camps, no forced labour, no cultural or religious repression, no arbitrary arrest, no police brutality, and no genocide,” says Arkin.

The recently re-elected IOC president Thomas Bach says he dislikes boycotts because “they don’t work” while insisting that human rights “will be part of the host city contract.

This includes, for instance, supply chains or labour rights, and their freedom of press and many other issues.”

Yet the words ring hollow – what happened was that the IOC gave its Beijing 2022 uniform contract to the Chinese textiles firm Hengyuanxiang (HYX) Group, which makes no secret of its use of Xinjiang cotton. At a meeting in Beijing, Bach said he was “pleased to be working with HYX, one of the most famous textile companies in China”.

Now, René Cassin says it is working with the World Uyghur Congress, an international organisation of exiled Uyghur groups, “to label the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics as ‘the Genocide Games’ and to persuade companies implicated in Uyghur forced labour to cleanse their supply chains”.

2 September 2021 Jewish News

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Campaigning for Uyghurs / Special Report

justice will continue similar to Nazi Germany, which was characterised by high social control. Xinjiang in 2021 is a high-tech police state. Everyone who can work must work, in a government-approved place.”

resonance. I was very moved by Andrew’s protests in London and tried to do something similar up here.

“With the fighting in Gaza [in May], I’m not sure how much energy there is to feel compassion, but to British Jews I’d say: ‘This is too WHO BENEFITS? All this suits China. Xinjiang is a manufacturing close to what we went through. Whatever else hub, particularly in textiles, so millions of low- you do, you must stand and protest in any way skilled labourers are needed to make clothes you can and donate money to people working or assemble things like electronics, shoes, fur- on legal challengers.’

“People in power need to hear that we as niture, or toys. The region is also one of the world’s largest producers of cotton and toma- Jews feel that there are similarities between what we went through and what’s going on toes, both of which require pickers aplenty.

Western retailers such as H&M, New Bal- today with the Uyghurs.”

It may take government action to really ance, Hugo Boss, Nike, Adidas, Uniqlo and Burberry have expressed concern about the change things, she says, but if a VW boycott persecution and exploitation of hundreds of helps then so be it. Suddenly, this genial 78-yearthousands of Uyghur labourers. Some, such old starts laughing. “My father boycotted VW! as H&M, have gone further by promising to He’d never buy a German car, especially VW – remove Xinjiang cotton from their supply ‘Hitler’s car!’”

In London, Dan and Andrew also plan to chains. The White House has weighed in with continue their Tuesday and Wednesday afterits own export ban. noon protests, starting China’s backlash has included a boyoutside the Southgate VW dealership 4.305.45pm, then moving to the Chinese cultural embassy in Hampstead from 6-7pm. Tuesday is described as “Jewishled” while Wednesday is led by local Labour Party activists.

“They film us from behind their twitching curtains,” says Dan with a smile, when asked about any adverse reaction from the Chinese. “They’re embarrassed.

They even took down the sign saying they were the Chinese embassy.”

Might the protests work? There is a chance they will help, says millions of men, women, and children on account of their religion’ Andrew, because of the psychology involved. were interned, to be indoctrinated HOLOCAUST COMPARISONS “If we pressure VW, Dieter Steinert, professor of modern European or ‘re-educated’, as Beijing calls it. that pressures China, history at the University of Wolverhampton and China doesn’t want and whose research interests include forced OPPRESSION AS STRATEGY to be seen as the world’s labour, fires a boardroom warning from the “The strategy is control and opprespariah,” he says. past, pointing out that companies using Jewish sion,” says Zenz. “Now we are seeing “The Chinese menforced labour eventually had to pay out billions people being shifted from camps tality cares tremenin compensation claims. “It is questionable to forced labour. Factories are dously about ‘face’. whether all German firms have learned from springing up next to the camps surThey want to be seen as history,” he says. rounded by razor wire, sometimes a good world power and Adrian Zenz, a scholar focusing on China, even in the camps themselves.” they’re very offended by adds that Germany in the 1930s and early The Uyghur forced labourers – Protests about China’s brutally oppressive treatment of the Uyghurs the thought that people 1940s “really is a very chilling comparison to often educated and successful busithe Uyghur context”. nesspeople – are put to work after being given cott against the brands. H&M, for instance, know what’s going on in Xinjiang. That’s how Uyghurs, originally Turkic in origin, a long-term prison sentence. “Beijing is using had its stores removed from Baidu maps and we can help. We’re a match to light the kinnumber around 12 million in Xinjiang. Ethni- this strategy to destroy the culture and distinc- its goods pulled from Chinese e-commerce dling.” Dan echoes that. “I hope it goes worldsites. Hugo Boss initially tried to backtrack, wide and that more and more people get on cally and culturally, experts say they are “closer tiveness of this ethnic minority group.” to Istanbul than Beijing” and are very distinct Parents and children are separated, educa- promising to “continue to purchase and sup- board. Each person really makes a difference. to the ethnic majority – Han Chinese. tion is ‘weaponised’, and Uyghur women are port Xinjiang cotton”, in a social media post it For me, I can’t just sit there and do nothing after reading about what’s happening, it’s Mao’s armies claimed Uyghur lands in 1949 sterilised, he says, to bring down the Uyghur later deleted. unconscionable. “I’m encouraged. We get a and 60 years later, in 2009, tensions boiled over population. Meanwhile, forced labour is praclot of Jewish people on Tuesday. Jewish News during the Urumqi riots, prompting Beijing to tised under the guise of “development” or KEEPING UP THE PRESSURE change strategy. Soon, state police were being “poverty alleviation”.

In the UK, there is no stopping. “The parallels supports us, so does the Chief Rabbi. Bearing bolstered, surveillance systems set up, and from Beijing controls a great deal with technology, are just too frightening,” says Borts. “I teach in mind our history, we aren’t just turning a 2014 a vast network of camps erected in deso- Zenz says, using apps to “categorise” people. a Holocaust module at Newcastle University blind eye to this. We’re being a light unto the late areas, into which a million or more Uyghurs “It’s predicated on a highly securitised society, and wanted to do something because of the nations.”

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News / Sacks tributes / Refugee honoured Former IDF soldier’s documentary film A British former Israel Defense Forces soldier is raising funds for a short film that would tell the story of a serviceman growing up in the UK’s Jewish community. Jonah Moore is hoping to attract support for a £10,000 crowdfunding campaign to make the film Soldier Boy with producer colleague Keren Shefet. Supporters |of the project can make a donation by visiting www.indiegogo.com/ projects/soldier-boy

Charities team up for new year scheme

Two Jewish charities have joined forces to support patients in hospital during Rosh Hashanah. Learning disability charity Kisharon has partnered with Bedside Kosher, which provides fresh kosher meals for patients, to offer a Kiddush box for those in hospital containing grape juice, honey, dried apple and a card printed with blessings to be recited on the Jewish new year.

Stonesetting recalls ‘great leader’ The stonesetting for Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks took place on Monday at Bushey New Cemetery, attended by the Israeli ambassador and with eulogies delivered by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Dayan Ivan Binstock and Lady Elaine Sacks, writes Adam Decker.

Referring to Sacks as his “illustrious predecessor”, Mirvis said: “He was a great leader. He led us in action.

He passed away but he continues to ...guide us and to inspire us”, while Binstock said the former Chief Rabbi “bestrode the Jewish and non-Jewish world like a colossus” and hailed his “superb clarity and international reach”.

Meanwhile, Sacks’ legacy is to be hon-

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ tombstone

oured in a book featuring anecdotes and pictures from former colleagues – as well as his own teachings.

Rabbi Sacks And The Community We Built Together will include more than 250 pages of Torah, recollections, photographs and stories about his distinguished career. Among contributors are those he worked with during his time as Chief Rabbi, a position he held from 1991 to 2013.

Sacks died in November 2020, and tributes poured in from across the community and around the world, including from the Royal Family, former prime ministers and other faith leaders.

His wife, Lady

Elaine, said: “So many friends and colleagues have opened their hearts and joined in making this a very special tribute.”

The United Synagogue (US)’s Rabbi Michael Laitner said: “Ahead of Rabbi Sacks’ yarzheit [anniversary of death], the United Synagogue wanted to honour his memory, bring some comfort to his family and all those mourning him and to share some of the most important lessons of his Chief Rabbinate for today’s and future generations. We hope readers enjoy learning from some of the people who knew Rabbi Sacks best and who learned so much from him.”

A complimentary copy of the book will be sent to every US member.

‘INSPIRATIONAL’ ERIC DIES, AGED 101 A Jewish refugee from Austria who arrived in the UK with his family after the Nazis invaded his home country has died, aged 101.

Eric Sanders, who served in the British armed forces before becoming a teacher and later a screenplay writer and translator, died peacefully at home this week.

Steve Reed, Labour’s shadow communities secretary, led the

tributes to his “wonderful inspirational friend” and local constituent in Croydon North.

During the Second World War, Sanders served in the British Army for seven years – three in the Special Operations Executive. He served one year as an interpreter at a German Prisoner of War camp and another in the legal division during the British Occupation of Austria.

Moving to live in London with his wife and family, Sanders later received an Austrian Cross of Honour for Culture and Science.

Sanders was a long-time member of the Labour Party in Norbury and Pollard Hill – having joined more than 70 years ago, making him “possibly” their oldest member at the time of his death, said Reed.

Eric Sanders served in the British Army

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Special Report / Farewell to peace

No great shakes In the early 1990s, Israel entered its era of peace – the heady days of the Oslo Accords, when the nation seemed to finally be close to resolving its enduring conflicts with the Palestinians and its neighbours. But these hopes, as award-winning Israeli writer Nir Baram shows, have since faded. In a piece in the latest issue of The Jewish Quarterly, Baram speaks to a wide range of Israelis – including religious, secular and Palestinian Israelis, and his own family and friends – to explore their experience of the Oslo days and to understand how they now view the prospects for peace

W

hen Israel signed normalisation agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House, there was little enthusiasm among the Israeli left. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just declared a national lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19. The occasion also marked the final collapse of the Israeli progressive camp’s long-held conviction that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was the catalyst of Middle East tensions, and that only its resolution could effect peace in the region.

Recent decades have shed light upon the

obvious truth: hostilities in the Middle East are only marginally related to Israel. The region is rife with conflicts that date back far before the establishment of the State of Israel. Moreover, the Arab states no longer view their ties with Israel through an Israel– Palestine lens. Egypt long ago circumvented the Palestinian quandary when it signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, and by 2020 there was general indifference toward the conflict, as evident in the Gulf states’ policies.

For most Israelis, the White House ceremony and the subsequent thronging of Israelis to Dubai – for both business and

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False dawn: Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the White House in 1993

pleasure – was a funeral for the focal point of Israeli politics since the mid-1980s. Here was further evidence that the Palestinians do not hold the only key to rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world. From a utilitarian viewpoint, if not a moral one, the Israeli right wing had chalked up a win.

And then came the devastating spring of 2021, with another round of hostilities, which reminded us of the plain truth: Palestinians and Jews still live here, permanently intermingled, and twenty years from now there will be 25 million of them, divided roughly equally between the two nations. What will life look like then, without a resolution, without equal rights, with most Palestinians still under Israeli occupation? Israelis have stopped asking these questions. They seem too distant, too vague, and most of the risks posed by a failure to solve the conflict have ostensibly receded. In 2021 we learned once again, however, that the conflict is always here, even if most Israelis are able to ignore it in between escalations. With the Hamas regime in Gaza, and constant tensions at the holy sites in Jerusalem, these waves of violence will not end.

One Saturday during the war, my son and I went to the beach. Kids were playing in the water, running at the waves. It was the picture of serenity, until I paid attention to the children’s voices: they were pretending that the waves were rockets from Gaza, screaming, “You won’t fall on Israel!” as they kicked them. I felt a crushing sense of failure when I realised that this was the reality our children are inheriting from us.

How did we get here?

My father and I are driving on the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway. The country is under curfew because of the pandemic, and the roads are deserted. Hardly anyone is at the gas stations, and the few people we do see hurry by, their faces masked. If we get stopped by the police, it’s going to be hard to justify our excursion. My father, Uzi Baram,

is eighty-two. He became a member of the Knesset in 1977, in the elections known in Israel as “the upheaval”, when Likud first took power after three decades of Labor governments. In 1992, he was appointed minister under Yitzhak Rabin.

These evening drives, which have no clear destination, have become a custom. The driving makes us feel a little better, easing the suffocation of lockdown. Sometimes we stop at the Jerusalem Forest or in any open space where you can see the stars. My father says it’s important to remember that there are stars in the sky.

“Remember how you once told me that I was born after the Yom Kippur War because it was fashionable to have kids then?” I ask.

“Yes. It was considered a patriotic act.”

“Because of all the dead?”

“Because lots of people died, yes.”

“Where were you in the 1973 war?”

“I’ll tell you something: even though I was close to government circles, the war came as a complete surprise to me. I was called up for reserve duty, and we went off to the Sinai Desert. We ran into an Israeli battalion emerging from the battlefield, and the soldiers were a wreck. I remember the smell of Israeli tanks burning. If you’d asked me a week before that, I’d have told you aliens would land on Earth before the Egyptians could trounce Israeli armoured units.”

“What was your political response to that war?”

“You don’t respond immediately. You gradually come to grasp that things you viewed as unequivocal reality were in fact unfounded assumptions. For example, the Arab states’ military weakness compared to our enormous power. All of a sudden, new questions arise.”  This is an edited extract of Nir Baram’s essay “After Oslo: A farewell to peace” in the newest issue of The Jewish Quarterly, issue JQ245: The New Middle East, out now

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News / Synagogue artefact / Immanuel role / JFS headteacher

1873 time capsule on show

The glass time capsule has a wax seal

A glass time capsule from 1873 has gone on display for the first time at Manchester Jewish Museum, but its contents remain a mystery, writes Joshua Salisbury.

Last year, construction began to add a multimillion pound extension to the museum, alongside a renovation of its Grade II*-listed Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

During the work, builders stumbled upon the time capsule, which had been buried deep in a wall cavity near to the synagogue’s ark, dated to the building’s foundation in 1873.

The wax-sealed capsule, which is filled with papers, coins, and synagogue documents, is now on display in the window of the museum’s new Collection Store.

Officials at the museum say they are working with paper conservators to safely open the capsule next year.

The museum’s curator, Alex Cropper, said: “To discover such a perfectly preserved artefact whilst constructing our new building was something we could never have predicted.

“It gives us a glimpse in time of when our beautiful Spanish & Portuguese synagogue was founded, and of the community that founded it.

“I can’t wait to finally open it and discover more about the synagogue’s origins and preserve it as a vital part of Manchester’s Jewish history.”

It is the oldest surviving synagogue building in Manchester, and was given a new lease of life as the Manchester Jewish Museum in 1984.

It became home to more than 30,000 objects, ranging from personal letters and photographs to Torah scrolls hidden from the Nazis during the Second World War. The museum reopened its doors on

The capsule was buried deep in a wall cavity

2 July, after a £6 million major capital development supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

HEADTEACHER GRIFFIN RETIRES JFS names another new head The headmaster of Immanuel College is to retire from his role at the end of the autumn term, it has been announced.

Gary Griffin will step down following four years in charge of the Bushey school, after overseeing improved grades and an ‘excellent’ record according to the inspectorate.

The College’s Board thanked him for his “impressive stewardship”, including during the global pandemic, while announcing

that Michael Buchanan will take over as interim head as of 1 January.

Praising Griffin for “modernising policies, procedures and facilities whilst recruiting high quality staff and restructuring the senior team”, the college said finding a permanent replacement was “not an easy task”, but the process has already begun.

Buchanan was previously head at Ashford School and senior deputy head at Highgate.

JFS has appointed its fifth headteacher in seven years.

Martin Tissot, executive head of a Catholic academy trust, takes over from former Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw, who was was put in charge of the school after a damning Ofsted inspection and the departure of Rachel Fink.

JFS was downgraded by the inspectorate to inadequate and placed in special measures amid concerns over safeguarding and behaviour.

Tissot, who runs the Cardinal Hume Academies Trust, wrote to parents this week, saying: “We are challenged to ensure that safeguarding in the school is robust, that there is a culture of vigilance and that we have a concern for the welfare of each individual.”

He said online activity was “too often a source of harassment” and asked parents to support him “in ensuring phones are left at home and use of the internet and social media is supervised”.

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

World News / Summer research / Papal lecture / Course canned

Study: Sun nature’s aphrodisiac

by Josh Salisbury josh@jewishnews.co.uk @josh_salisbury

Getting out in the sun boosts your sex drive according to an Israeli study, because sunlight causes you to release higher levels of sexual hormones.

A research team from Tel Aviv University found that P53, a protein in the skin cells that protects DNA from being damaged by sunlight can seemingly also get humans in the mood for love.

Researchers exposed 32 adults to different levels of ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, while quizzing them about their libido.

When they were asked to avoid sunlight for two days, then sunbathe for 25 minutes, both the male and female volun-

A protein in skin cells seems to get humans in the mood

teers were more sexually excited, it was found.

“Our lab studies skin cancer, and we accidentally started looking into how rays from the sun affect this protein and how in turn it impacts on sexual desire,” professor Carmit Levy, of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, told The Times of Israel.

“There are many proteins we observed changing in the blood after exposure to sunlight that are related to passion.”

The findings have been peer-reviewed and published as a cover story in the scientific journal Cell Reports.

Scientists have known for years that sunlight plays a role in both the behavioural and hormonal regulation of sexuality in mammals.

However, the mechanism responsible

for this regulation remained unknown, so the Israeli team created an experiment to uncover the details.

In the first stage of the experiment, mice were exposed to UVB rays, resulting in “dramatic” increases in hormone levels.

Then the scientists removed the P53 protein from the mice’s skin cells, to test whether it was behind the observed hormone increases.

Finally, 32 people were questioned about their romantic feelings after sunbathing, with both men and women on the study reporting increased desire.

The research could lead eventually to therapies that assess p53 levels and administer specific amounts of UVB radiation, mimicking sunlight, to boost sex drive.

POPE URGED ON TORAH COMMENTS University scraps controversial course Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has asked Pope Francis to retract a recent comment about Jewish law that it said might lead Catholic listeners to “derogatory conclusions” about Jews.

Rabbi Ratzon Arusi, chair of the Chief Rabbinate’s Commission for Interreligious Affairs, sent a letter to the

Vatican, expressing concerns about a lecture on 11 August about God giving the Torah to the Jews, Reuters reported.

“God offered them the Torah, the Law, so they could understand his will and live in justice,” Francis said in the homily, according to a translation provided by the Vatican.

PRECIOUS STONES

He then said: “The Law, however, does not give life, it does not offer the fulfillment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfill it. The Law is a journey, a journey that leads toward an encounter … Those who seek life need to look to the promise and to its fulfillment in Christ.”

A Spanish university has cancelled a course titled Auschwitz/Gaza: A Testing Ground for Comparative Literature, according to the European Jewish Congress.

The course at the University of Santiago of de Compostela in Galicia was criticised by Jewish groups for trivialising the Holocaust by comparing it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The

Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the seminar in a letter sent to Spain’s minister of universities. “This very title and expected content is ... a banalisation of the Holocaust, which can incite to hatred and violence against Jews,” wrote Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations.

The university has not issued any comment.

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2 September 2021

Special Report / Memoir

Kindertransport to the White House

British journalist Hella Pick’s scintillating new memoirs recount her remarkable life journey, writes Robert Philpot

F

or nearly four decades, Hella Pick, the doyenne of British diplomatic correspondents, had a front row seat at the events that shaped the post-war age: the end of Empire in Africa, the tumultuous upheavals that shook America in the 1960s, and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

But in her newly published memoirs, Invisible Walls: A Journalist in Search of Her Life, the pioneering female reporter reveals her constant and continuing struggle with feelings of insecurity about her identity. Pick traces that sense of herself as an outsider back to March 1939 when, uprooted from her home in Vienna, “child Number 4672” arrived at London’s Liverpool Street Station on the Kindertransport.

Alone and aged just 11, the woman who would later write thousands of words explaining the world to the British public, could speak only one in English: “Goodbye.”

At 92, Pick has, however, also come to realise that her attempts to escape her “invisible walls” – the “unresolved questions of exile and identity… vulnerability and selfdoubt” – have also played an important part in her professional success.

“My insecurities increased my determination to focus on the things I knew I could do reasonably well and always trying to prove myself,” she tells The Times of Israel with characteristic understatement.

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Left: Hella at the UN in the 1950s and, above, her new book

Pick’s upbringing in Vienna had been a comfortable one. But the family’s illusions and largely happy existence were shattered by the Anschluss.

Pick’s mother, Hanna, was impoverished when a trickster, posing as a courier who said he would deposit her stocks and shares in a Swiss bank, disappeared. The Gestapo hauled Hanna in for questioning on five occasions. And while Hanna eventually managed to follow her daughter into exile after obtaining a permit to work in the UK as a domestic servant, her own mother, Olga, was unable to escape and is believed to have perished in Theresienstadt.

The strong will and determination that would later mark Pick’s professional career were evident at an early age. As she waited anxiously for Hanna, Pick sent her mother what she described as “a short but important postcard”. It read: “I demand that you leave no later than Saturday and come direct to London,” the 11-year-old wrote. “I understand the situation better than you do. Please do as I say.” Further missives in a similar vein followed.

This streak would be apparent again later when the teenage Pick resisted pressure to go to a secretarial or teacher training college – then considered suitable work for women – in favour of staying on at school and going to university.

“I can’t really reconstruct myself to understand how it came about that I was so strongwilled about it,” she says. “I sensed at that age in my teens that I was not destined to become a teacher and I certainly didn’t want to do secretarial work. I wanted to be fully educated, to make my own life and to be independent.”

Pick’s determination is all the more remarkable given her mother’s straitened circumstances: Forced into domestic service, her wages did not even cover the basics. “We had to rely on the charity of refugee organisations. It was shaming,” writes Pick. In the Lake District, where they spent much of the war, Pick’s headmistress paid for her schoolbooks and later, when she went to the London School of Economics, Pick’s professor, the renowned political theorist Harold Laski, helped pay her fees.

Pick got her foot on the first rung of the journalistic ladder as a reporter at West Africa magazine. Despite a lack of experience and being virtually the only woman covering decolonisation in British and French West Africa, she excelled in the role. Indeed, she soon struck up friendships with some of the key political players, and future leaders in the

region, including Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Sékou Touré in Guinea. Pick’s meetings with French African leaders were so frequent, the French secret services believed she might be a British spy.

From Africa, Pick moved to New York, where she became the United Nations correspondent for The Guardian, the liberal British newspaper on whose staff she would remain for over 30 years. Pick’s stint occurred at a time when the UN was at the centre of the clash between East and West. Her persistence and charm when in pursuit of a story didn’t escape the notice of UN diplomats. When she asked a French diplomat one day where his British colleagues were, he replied: “They are all in the men’s room, hiding from you!”

Her subsequent posting to Washington, Pick says now, was the most enjoyable of her career. And while she later returned to the UN, The Guardian frequently sent her across the US. She reported on the Kennedy assassination, Barry Goldwater’s doomed bid for the White House, and Richard Nixon’s triumph in ’68 and ignominious fall six years later. She was on the scene when the Beatles made their triumphant debut in New York in ’64 and in Selma a year later as civil rights marchers helped hammer a decisive nail in the coffin of segregation.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Pick moved to Europe and reported on Britain’s convoluted entry into the EEC (which became the European Union) and on the first signs of cracks in the Soviet bloc, when a million Poles turned out to greet Pope John Paul II returning home in 1979.

As the Cold War drew to a close in 1991, Pick was having coffee with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet leader waited for US president George Bush, who was marooned on a US destroyer in heavy seas off the coast of Malta.

Her commission in the 1990s by her friend, publisher George Weidenfeld, to write a biography of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal led her “to confront… my culture and my responsibilities as a Jew”, as well as to question whether her “reconciliation” with her Austrian roots was justified.

Pick’s account of her remarkable life closes on a somewhat melancholy note thanks to Britain’s acrimonious departure from the EU. “I found it increasingly difficult to identify with a nation that consented to divorce itself from Europe,” she writes. “If self-distancing has become the signature tune of lockdown, selfdistancing from Britishness has become my personal heartache. The net result? I no longer know where I really belong.”

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2 September 2021 Jewish News

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Bennett-Biden meeting / Tackling Tehran / World News Amsterdam to hand back Kandinsky

The city-owned Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will return a Wassily Kandinsky painting it acquired under duress from a Jewish family during the Holocaust.

Painting with Houses, thought to be worth £16m, will be given to the family of Irma Klein, who have been fighting to retrieve it.

‘I’ll use other options on Iran’ President Joe Biden has said that although he prefers diplomatic means to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, he is not afraid to “turn to other options” on the issue.

In his first meeting with Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, delayed after bombings at the Kabul airport killed 13 US troops, he pledged: “We’re going to put diplomacy first and see where that takes us. But if diplomacy fails, we’re ready to turn to other options.”

Back home, Bennett is presiding over a fractious political coalition with a single vote majority, struggling to control a new Covid-19 surge that

has dented his popularity and dealing with the fallout of an embarrassing phone call, in which he confused the name of a fallen soldier.

But for a few hours the two leaders were able to pivot to Iran and other issues of import to Israel – a significant gesture on Biden’s part, given his preoccupations with the Afghanistan situation. Pro-Israel officials said the meeting went well for a first visit; there was chemistry between the two men and it went longer than planned.

Bennett opposes Biden’s efforts to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal – the diplomacy to which Biden referred – but, unlike his predecessor, Ben-

Israeli court rejects Morocco Jews claim

Israel’s Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit seeking to recognise Jews who suffered under Vichy race laws in Morocco as Holocaust victims entitled to state compensation, according to a Haaretz report. The three justices upheld a ruling that the discrimination against Jews in Morocco during the Second World War by Vichy France does not qualify as a form of Nazi persecution.

Chemistry: Joe Biden and Naftali Bennett

WANTED MEN GET KEY ROLES

The remains of the AMIA centre after the 1994 bombing that killed 85

Iran’s new government includes two men who have been implicated in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

The parliament last Wednesday approved Ahmad Vahidi as interior minister and Mohsen Rezai as vicepresident of economic affairs among the 19 nominations by president Ebrahim Raisi.

In its investigation of the bombing, which injured 300, Argentina has said

Shana Tova U Metuka!

From the entire Israel Bonds team in the UK! Arnon Perlman

jamin Netanyahu, he is realistic about the prospects of dissuading Biden from trying. So extracting a robust promise from Biden to consider “other options”, including possible military ones, will allow Bennett to claim he influenced the president.

“The Iranians are spinning their centrifuges in Natanz and Fordow,” Bennett said, referring to two uranium enrichment facilities. “We [have to] stop it, we both agree. The first goal is to stop Iran on its regional aggression and start rolling it back into the box. And the second is to permanently keep Iran from being able to break out the nuclear weapon.”

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Vahidi and Rezai played key roles. Both are listed by Interpol with red alerts, meaning they are wanted for arrest internationally.

Since 2010, Vahidi has been the subject of US sanctions, which seek to freeze any assets he has under US jurisdiction. He headed the Quds Force, the paramilitary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, at the time of the 1994 attack, and was Iran’s defence minister between 2009 and 2013.

Jewish institutions in Argentina

and Israel, as well as the Argentine government, criticised the Vahidi nomination. “This decision once again exposes the Iranian government’s contempt for Argentine justice and the victims of terrorism,” DAIA, the Argentine Jewish umbrella, said when Vahidi was nominated two weeks ago.

Argentina’s Foreign Ministry urged that Iran “fully cooperate with the Argentine courts, allowing the people accused of participating in the attack against the AMIA to be tried”.

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Editorial comment and letters ISSUE NO.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS

1226

A healthy new year

We are about to mark our second Rosh Hashanah under Covid constraints. Shuls will be busier than during last year’s High Holy Days, when the dreaded ‘Rule of six’ rendered communal gatherings impossible. Limits on social interaction were eased on Freedom Day back in July, but in many ways this year will prove tricker than the last, as communities attempt to balance keeping synagogue-goers safe with maintaining the integrity of Rosh Hashanah services.

Congregants are being asked to take a coronavirus test before arriving at shul and stay away if they live with someone who has tested positive, whether they’ve been double jabbed or not. The United Synagogue has asked those blowing the shofar to record a negative lateral flow test the night before services and to remain two metres apart from everyone else when blowing. Because of high infection rates in children, some United Synagogue youth services will take place in separate buildings or outdoors.

Many, on reflection, will reluctantly err on the side of caution and forgo synagogue to avoid long periods in crowded spaces. Those who do attend in person may sensibly decide that it’s safer to limit their time in synagogue, wear a mask and avoid singing and praying out loud.

Our houses of worship may have reopened but the Jewish new year remains in the grip of the pandemic. Whether you choose to daven in public or at home, Jewish News wishes you a happy – and most importantly a healthy – new year and well over the fast. Shanah tovah.

Send us your comments PO Box 815, Edgware, HA8 4SX | letters@jewishnews.co.uk

A ‘Jewish point of view’ As a member of the Board of Deputies serving on the defence division, I represented the Board in multi-faith matters and was often asked to give talks on the so-called ‘Jewish point of view’.

My response was always to decline, explaining that simply putting two Jews together would result in three points of view. But I was always clear that, strange as it might appear, these differences were to be celebrated. We enjoyed this positive side to Judaism and the challenge was learning to respect one another and agree to differ without anger. So rather than quitting the Board, I

Sketches & kvetches

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THIS WEEKS SHABBAT AND ROSH HASHANAH TIMES...

01

Rosh Hashanah begins Monday night 7.21pm Rosh Hashanah ends Wednesday night 8.19pm

Rabbi Swerveman practices his shofar calls in the car...

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DANGEROUS NEIGHBOURS The debacle in Afghanistan and fleeing of Western forces from must surely make us think of what the world would do if such a situation were to arise on Israel’s borders. These scene must be giving Iran and its proxies great satisfaction.

Afghanistan is now once again a haven for a variety of terrorist organisations. The subjugation of its people and the return of medieval laws means Israel will have to be even more united to ensure its safety.

Sidney Sands, Finchley

GOOD NEWS FOR HEZBOLLAH

benny@jewishnews.co.uk

jack@jewishnews.co.uk

Shabbat comes in Friday night 7.28pm Shabbat goes out Saturday night 8.29pm Sedra: Nitzavim

wish Eric Bradman (Jewish News, letters, 26 August) had soldiered on, doing all possible to persuade, through informed argument, those who offended him. Of course, the president is duty-bound to give him ample opportunity to make his case.

Somehow, too, those divided by a community split must soon ‘agree to differ’, recognise each other’s sincerity and live peacefully side by side.

The alternative is to stop consideration. Just one point of view with no adjustment. That will certainly help anyone asked to talk about the Jewish point of view. But it will surely be a history lesson of yesteryear. Jack Lynes, Pinner

“This did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated”, said President Joe Biden about the Taliban advance following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. America’s decision to abandon its responsibilities was completely ill-planned.

As we witnessed this fiasco being played out, along with the chaotic nature of the withdrawal, the scenes will give succour to Hamas and Hezbollah and their paymaster Iran. Israel needs no reminding that to fight the good fight you need to rely on your own intelligence and resources.

Stephen Vishnick, Tel Aviv

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Living in my Jewish Blind & Disabled flat has made a complete difference to my life.

I am now living in a place of safety and security. I can live life as I choose, not as my disability might otherwise dictate.”

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2 September 2021 Jewish News

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Editorial comment and letters

RABBIS THWART SCREAMING CAME OLYMPIC HERO FROM AUDIENCE While agreeing with Rabbi Miriam Berger that Artem Dolgopyat is an Israeli national hero, he can’t marry under Orthodox rabbinate rules because his mother is not Jewish. This would be the case in the UK, where my own Reform wedding is not recognised under Orthodox auspices and I needed my parents’ ketubah for my children to marry Orthodox. It is not Israeli society which is at ‘fault’, it is the Orthodox rabbinate not recognising the Reform movement.

Kay Bagon, Radlett

I was quoted in last week’s report in Jewish News about differences of political opinion between the left and right wings of the Jewish community. I want to make very clear that those, at the panel debate I mentioned, who “screamed at me and called me a racist” were from the audience at the event, not my fellow panellists, who behaved with civility throughout. The panellists have their differences of opinion but we have much in common too.

Rabbi Andrew Shaw, Chief executive, Mizrachi UK

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COUNT BLESSINGS SILENT ON ISRAEL As we approach Rosh Hashanah let us all enjoy the benefits from bringing together our families, unlike so many others who are suffering at this time. We read of displaced persons deprived of free will, homes and comforts that we take for granted. Our tables may not be crowded with guests due to restrictions, but we will taste the honey and appreciate the sweetness of what we have, not what we lack.

Norma Neville, Hendon

I was interested to read that Jonathan Arkush avoided commenting on Israel during his time as Board of Deputies president, because British Jews “don’t live in the country, don’t pay taxes, don’t vote, don’t undergo the daily realities” in the Middle East (Jewish News, 26 August). The Board should make this policy. It has no business making public pronouncements about a foreign country – even the Jewish state.

E Cleeson, By email

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

Opinion

What do British Muslims really think of the Taliban?

WASIQ WASIQ

MUSLIMS AGAINST ANTISEMITISM

T

he speed of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has been extraordinary. No serious analyst could have predicted it. Yet, with the same speed, here in the UK, we encounter quotes from British so-called Muslim voices of authority sympathetic – or even in support – of the Taliban. Are these voices representative of British Muslims? I don’t think so.

Take for example Khola Hasan, scholar at the Islamic Sharia Council. Interviewed on the BBC’s Radio 4 Sunday programme and later on LBC, she claimed every Muslim she knows on social media is celebrating the Taliban’s victory and urged people to give the Taliban a chance. Hasan further claimed that 20 years is a long time and she hoped the Taliban has matured its thinking.

While Hasan is of the view that the Taliban has seemingly changed over two decades and is grateful for the language they’re using regarding women’s rights, the Taliban seems to have other ideas. It was reported only last

week that Najia, an Afghan mother with four children, was killed by the Taliban. Not because she was a threat or had done anything to warrant being murdered. She was slaughtered because she was a woman and didn’t cook.

If this is the kind of mature thinking Hasan believes justifies celebrating the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, or a reason to give them a chance, she is clearly deluded. More worryingly, Najia’s killing happened before her interview with the BBC. That she or her social media friends were either not aware of it or knew, but still maintained their position in relation to the Taliban, is seriously worrying.

Hasan is not alone. Saddique Hussain, manager of Central Jamia Mosque Ghamkol Sharif in Birmingham, shared a post of armed Taliban militia in the presidential palace in Kabul and remarked: ‘How beautiful and civilised and no “I”’. When members of the mosque found out, they complained and he had to take it down. Furthermore, Hussain was later given a police warning.

While it’s welcome that Hussein removed the post, it is worrying that he only did so after complaints. That Hussein thought it was OK in

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THERE ARE ISSUES IN MUSLIM COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE UK THAT NEED DEALING WITH the first place to seemingly praise the Taliban while it carries out a hostile takeover of a country – where hundreds of British soldiers died defending women and minorities – is a slap in the face for British values of free speech afforded to him here, but would never be allowed under the Taliban.

So what do British Muslims really think of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan? There is no polling. However, what we do know is that there are problems within our own communities here in the UK that need dealing with.

Last week it was reported that a number of attacks against Jewish people in London have been taking place. Quite rightly, just looking at the footage, we can accurately describe who the victims are. All visible Jews in orthodox dress.

Yet the perpetrator, who is quite clearly dressed as a visible Muslim, is not being described as such. That this individual is going around

attacking members of a religious minority, and both Hasan and Hussein seem to be more concerned about the Taliban, appears to reveal their misplaced priorities.

This line of thinking isn’t new. In fact, this is why, alongside other like-minded Muslims, we founded our charity Muslims Against Antisemitism (MAAS). We do not shy away from talking about and addressing issues within our own communities such as antisemitism and extremism.

We do not make any apologies for working with and alongside our Jewish brethren.

Indeed, we will not support the Taliban while other Muslims in privileged positions of power seemingly do the same. Yes, the British Muslim community is not a homogenous bloc, but our approach to tackling antisemitism, extremism and deploring everything the Taliban stand for should at least be a united one.

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Opinion

I fear Covid could leave our shuls permanently scarred ALEX BRUMMER

CITY EDITOR, THE DAILY MAIL

T

he email invite to my son Gabriel to chant Haftarah on the morning of Yom Kippur was hard to decipher.

Like many other shuls ours in Richmond is to operate a shift system over the Yamim Noraim so it was not immediately clear if the honour related to Option A at 8am or Option B at 11am. Both included an element of reading from the Torah.

This might not appear terribly complicated but it is one of the many adjustments to Jewish life in the seemingly never-ending pandemic.

Israel is back behind barriers, Sydney (where we have close family) is in lockdown and in the UK people are being asked to set their own standards. Goldman Sachs in the US is mandating that returning staff are fully vaccinated. Here in the UK it is still a matter of choice.

Most synagogues have done a great job in keeping open by enforcing mask wearing, social distancing, sanitising and cutting back on social

interaction. But no one should kid themselves that these changes will not have made an indelible mark on attitudes towards shul going.

In our relatively small but vibrant Thamesside community we have managed through the valiant efforts of Rabbi Meir Shindler (soon to decamp to Cockfosters & Southgate Synagogue) and our lay leaders to keep the Friday night, Shabbat and Yom Tov minyanim alive and kicking except when lockdown rules prevented it. We have even managed a couple of bar and bat mitzvot and a wedding in recent weeks. Even if the new normal is very different from the old there can be no pretence that it is life as usual.

Assembling the minyan can be tricky, particularly over the summer holidays. Success has often depended on a small group of almost ever-present regulars. The attitude of the broader community about coming back to shul is mixed. I spoke recently to one of elderly shul elders who for as long as I can remember would guard the gates of the Aron Kodesh during the Neilah service on Yom Kippur. He was doubtful about attendance in spite of vaccines and other precautionary measures. He is in his early

eighties and his spouse, a regular attendee before Covid, sensibly did not want to take the risk.

A younger friend, who has served long, hard and attentively as an honorary officer, is saying Kaddish for his father this year. He has stopped coming to services, except when necessary, because without his father it’s not the same.

He also thinks a sparsely attended service populated by mask wearers is a sterile environment where it is hard to conjure up religiosity.

He still wants to work on community strategy and building membership. Traditional prayer understandably is not doing it for him at present.

If Covid has taught communities anything it is that they are about much more than worship.

They are about reaching out to the older or infirm members; they are about intellectual fulfilment achieved through Zoom events, podcasts and a short daily blast of mishnah through WhatsApp. They have also exploded the myth that the traditional long, often drawn out services cannot be changed. The pandemic has demonstrated that they can be edited and focused on the most prescribed elements of prayer and

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THE PANDEMIC HAS SHOWN THAT SERVICES CAN BE UPLIFTING WITHOUT THE THRILLS Torah. Services can be completed in less than two hours. Shul-going for Selichot services, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be spiritually uplifting without the frills.

One fears permanent scarring in communities who find the ease of online services, the avoidance of arduous walks (and dare one say parking difficulties) makes for an easier and safer life. The challenge as we approach the sound of the shofar and 5782 is going to be restoring anything like the status quo. If the rabbinate was hard-going before, it is going to be even more difficult now.

Happy new year to all our wonderful, disputatious and loyal readers.

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

Opinion

Lessons in humanity from a celebrity TV presenter JENNI FRAZER

I

don’t know how many people caught up with the celebratory programme of Sir Michael Parkinson’s 50 years of celebrity interviews, shown at the weekend on BBC1.

There were the usual suspects – a lot of Billy Connolly (some might say too much), the revelation (to me) that comedian Peter Kay was once Parkinson’s warm-up man, the inevitable controversy as to whether the chat show host, a man of his time, had been sexist and misogynistic. Answers to the last: yes, but he owned up to both sins, and acknowledged that he would not do the same today.

But the most unexpected moment came right at the end of the programme when his

son, a TV producer who had worked with Parkinson during his last series, asked what had been his favourite interview.

And Parkinson, with tears in his eyes and a crack in his voice, chose a name probably unknown in Britain today to anyone under 50.

He picked the once household name Dr Jacob Bronowski, talking about his broadcast from Auschwitz, and what it had meant to him.

Bronowski, a Polish-Jewish mathematician whose TV masterwork was his 13-part series The Ascent of Man, described how he had “not been keen” to visit Auschwitz, not least because so many of his relatives had died there. And he spoke of how he had decided what to say – and that it had to be something in one take, because he couldn’t repeat his words as though it were an ordinary broadcast.

Parkinson, watching the playback, was

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IN THIS CLIMATE WE NEED EVERY FRIEND WE CAN GET – SO THANK YOU, MICHAEL PARKINSON

visibly affected. And it reminded me, this week of all weeks, of the truism that we Jews repeat to each other, and how it applies elsewhere.

We tell ourselves, and the wider world, that antisemitism is not a Jewish problem, but a problem for humanity.

Nobody, watching the scenes from Kabul airport, and reading the terrible stories of people’s near-death experiences, could have failed to be reminded of the death marches endured by Jews in the dying days of the Holocaust.

In just the same way, nobody seeing the newsreels about the Uyghur persecution in China, and the loading on to trains and the placing of thousands in “re-education” centres, could escape the inevitable comparisons with trains and concentration camps.

Is it the same? No, Afghanistan and the Uyghur disaster are not the same as the Shoah.

But their echoes and what they have to tell the world are sufficiently similar to make one weep. There is heartbreaking stupidity and acts of genuine selflessness, walking side by side as the world tries to figure out how to respond to these tragedies.

In this week, as we approach the High Holy Days, with their peaks and troughs of celebration and reckoning, we should also think about the controversy surrounding the proposed Holocaust memorial centre in Westminster. There has been genuine and perhaps justified opposition to the centre, regarded by some as a waste of money and a vanity project.

Maybe the Holocaust centre is an opportunity for us all, Jew and non-Jew, to widen its remit. If antisemitism is a problem for humanity, and not just Jews, then surely the centre should also be a place to talk about the Afghans and the Uyghurs and the Syrians?

It’s not just the chagim on the horizon, but also the party conference season. Already the haters are out in force, publishing leaflets suggesting that Labour antisemitism was a fantasy spun by those who wished to depose Corbyn.

In such a climate, we need every friend we can get. So thanks to Sir Michael, then, for reminding us that we have allies in unexpected places.

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EXPERIEN C E

WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND A MEANINGFUL SERVICE TO HELP YOU CONNECT THIS HIGH HOLIDAYS?

EXPER I ENCE XPERIENC E X P EERIEN CE E

Aish UK is delighted to offer a range of explanatory services, interactive discussions and breakout sessions in locations across the country.

AISH YOUNG PROFESSIONALS

H O L I D A Y S H O L I D AY S

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1st Day ROSHWHAT? HASHANAH (Tues Sept 7th) and YOM KIPPUR (Sept 15th and 16th) Congregation, Manchester Hampstead Garden Suburb Hendon and West Hampstead Or you can find Aish educators atbreakout any of thediscussions following communities: Service highlights, explanations, and brunch (not on Yom Kippur!).

Bushey United Synagogue WHERE? Prestwich Hebrew Or you can find Aish educators at any of the following communities: THE NORTH LONDON GREATER LONDON Congregation, Manchester WHAT? Hendon and West Hampstead South Hampstead Borehamwood Connect Etz Chaim Synagogue, Leeds (The Shrubberies Shul) LONDON GREATER LONDON THE NORTH Service highlights, explanations, breakout and brunch (not on Yom Kippur!). (a joint project of Aish discussions UK, MEMBER

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38 Jewish News

2 September 2021

Scene & Be Seen / Community round-up

And be seen!

The latest news, pictures and (virtual) social events from across the community Email us at community@jewishnews.co.uk A message of unity and friendship between faiths was sent from London on Monday, as the inaugural London Interfaith Fun Run brought together hundreds of people from different communities.

At the event, which was held at StoneX Stadium in Mill Hill, hundreds of runners – the majority in London but some joining virtually as far away as Hyderabad, India – challenged themselves and raised money for charity.

Runners and spectators were treated to a diverse range of music, dance and storytelling performances in collaboration with Faiths In Tune, which organises interfaith music festivals and events across Europe.

The London Interfaith Fun Run organisers, the Faith & Belief Forum in partnership with Maccabi GB, were joined by 34 other charities that brought supporters and beneficiaries to run, fundraise for their cause and take part in the other activities on the day.

Charities ranged from refugee support organisations to those tackling climate change and those bringing together different faith groups to build trust and understanding between neighbouring communities.

One of the runners, Hagir Ahmed, the Refugees and Asylum Seekers Officer for the United Nations Association, said: “I was inspired by the London Interfaith Fun Run as a chance for the refugees and asylum seekers to have the opportunity to participate and engage, while socialising with positive people from all religions and cultural backgrounds.”

The London Interfaith Fun Run was sponsored by Dangoor Education and supported by the Greater London Lieutenancy’s Council on Faith. Sir Kenneth Olisa, LordLieutenant of Greater London, also attended the event and spoke to the audience about the important role the city’s faith and belief groups play in supporting their communities.

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2 September 2021 Jewish News

39

Community round-up / Scene and Be Seen

INTERFAITH RUN QUICK TO INSPIRE

BY DAVID DANGOOR BUSINESSMAN & PHILANTHROPIST

... AS THOUSANDS JOIN MACCABI RUN 1. The Maccabi GB Community Fun Run 2021 returned on Sunday as the largest in-person community event since the pandemic. Thousands of members of the community took part to raise funds for 76 communal charities. Each of the runs – 10km, 5km, 5km walk, 1km or the Tri-Run, which combines all three distances – began with official starters, including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who commenced the 5k run.

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2. More than 70 runners raised more than £3,700 so far for Chai Cancer Care as part of the annual fun run. Participants ranged in age from one to 79.

Among those taking part was Zoe Ingram, who ran 1k with her daughters, Maya, seven, and Eden, five.

She decided to support the charity as her husband, Marc, died from lung cancer last month. Meanwhile the Feldman family also took part in the 5k colour run with mum Nicole explaining that she was supported by the charity after being diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma.

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3. Children were among those running at the event for Camp Simcha, a charity supporting seriously ill Jewish children and their families. Pictured are several of the runners themselves, who raised money for the charity. Meanwhile, other youngsters took the opportunity to grab a photograph with the charity’s mascot, Simi the Monkey.

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4. About 20 people supported by Kisharon were at the fun run, said the learning disabilities charity, including some who met Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. Kisharon chief executive Richard Franklin said: “It was amazing to witness the wonderful atmosphere created at the community Fun Run. Thank you to all our amazing runners who raised important funds that will make a great difference.”

4

On Bank Holiday Monday, hundreds of charities, fundraisers and community members from across London’s diverse communities came together at StoneX Stadium, Mill Hill, for the city’s first Interfaith Fun Run. I was delighted to work with The Faith & Belief Forum and Maccabi GB who partnered with 30-plus of the city’s charities to organise London’s inaugural Interfaith Fun Run. More than 500 people gathered to run, connect and celebrate the coming together of our many faiths and cultures while raising money for a myriad of charitable projects working hard to build a better future for all Londoners.

The day was a potent demonstration of our collective spirit and strengthened the bonds that make London a strong and welcoming, diverse, community. It featured a bustling fair that gave charities the opportunity to meet and mingle with Londoners and connect over what really matters to them.

Each organisation tackles unique challenges across our communities, complementing each other’s work, and now they are more connected than ever before, to work together to address complex issues for a future where we all can thrive no matter our background.

The buzzing community spirit inspired me above all. Runners provided mutual support by forming small groups to encourage one another to complete the runs, and families discovered each other’s faiths in the interfaith zone and enjoyed lunch together at the international food court. The day showed that Londoners stand together against division and for unity, community and friendship.

We hope it will inspire many of those who form the beautiful social tapestry of our great capital city, young or old, whatever their ethnic group or faith, to join together in strengthening our bonds. We look forward to this event becoming a staple of London’s cultural calendar.

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2 September 2021

Happy New Year from all the JDA family

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Book / Weekend

‘No one seems to take responsibility’ ITV’s political editor Robert Peston tells Jenni Frazer about his new novel, which he says has a ‘dual purpose’, and bemoans the ‘growth of amorality’

G

il Peck is obsessive, compulsive, an awardwinning journalist, the son of an eminent academic and – oh, yes – lightly Jewish.

But Robert Peston, political editor of ITN, insists that Peck is not entirely his alter ego. “It’s important to say that there is lots of Gil that is not me,” drawls Peston, speaking about his debut novel, The Whistleblower.

Peston, however, whose trademark vocal hesitancy, while his fertile brain is thinking of the next thing to say, has become much parodied, is indeed formerly a prey to OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder. It’s not as bad these days, he says. And he is, indeed, the son of a distinguished Jewish academic, the late Lord Peston.

Add to that the fact Gil Peck’s fictional meltdown is hot on the heels of a terrible cycling accident endured by his sister – that happened in real life to Peston’s own beloved sister Juliet –and it’s hard not to wonder where Robert Peston ends and Gil Peck begins.

As with a number of surprise novels currently on the market, Peston’s venture into fiction is as a result of lockdown, a hiatus in his regular working pattern that gave him the space “to try something different”.

It’s not his first book: he’s written a number of non-fiction books, largely political or economic analyses. “I wrote something (fictional) in my 20s, but put it away. Lockdown was a distraction, so I began this last summer, and I loved going into another world. But I also felt that to be credible and authentic, I had to write about what I know.”

And so he does. The Whistleblower recreates the dying days of the Conservative government before Tony Blair’s dramatic first election victory for Labour in May 1997, complete with rampaging press barons and powerhungry Whitehall types.

“Everybody in the book is a sort of amalgam of people I have observed.

You’re right, there are definitely bits of me in Gil – but there are large parts of him which are very different from me.”

Peston set out to write The Whistleblower as entertainment, he says, but he has a dual purpose.

“I set this book in the late 1990s because I wanted it to be a trilogy of books about Gil Peck, the last of which will bring us right up to date. But although it’s fiction, I also wanted

Political journalist Robert Peston, above, and his new book, The Whistleblower

to write these books to explain how we got to the kind of chaos that we are in today, with so much disillusion with politics and politicians and the media, the destruction of our sense of collective purpose as a nation.

“I do think a big part of that sense of who we are, that awful fragmentation, starts in the era in which I set this [first] book”.

The second book will be set at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008, the period in which Peston could arguably be said to have become a household name. His acute ear for untangling the threads of financial turmoil, and his BBC explanations, became unmissable broadcasting – and gave rise to the consequent lampooning of his unique presenting style.

In the late 1990s, Peston reminds me, “there was an enormous sense of optimism, Cool Britannia”, explaining: “I fear that in many ways those hopes have been dashed and things have changed – and not for the better.”

He deplores “the growth of amorality in all parts of public life, the

sense that we didn’t have to make all sorts of choices”, adding: “The Blair conceit was a sort of rationalism in the centre of politics and that you could be soft left or soft right and we could all rub along together”.

In fact, says Peston, hard choices did need to be made, and “that notion that you didn’t have to make those choices contributed to a cynicism, and a sense by many people that they were being ignored, and that the country was being run by an elite in the south of England”.

He believes this cynicism has trickled down into public life, to the point where it is rare to find politicians taking responsibility for their actions.

“The world in which Lord Carrington resigned [as foreign secretary] because he felt the Foreign Office didn’t have its eye on the ball over the Falklands – that feels like ancient history now”.

An exception, says Peston, is Amber Rudd, who did resign as home secretary. “She took responsibility, and did the right thing, relating to the appalling and tragic mess over the Windrush

generation. It’s terrible people can’t see that having the confidence to say ‘I got it wrong and therefore I have to go’ is in the end a better route.

“It’s a brave thing to do because we all make mistakes. But we seem to be living in a world in which no one takes responsibility – and characterises criticism as some sort of media storm with no underlying principles to it.”

Peston is sounding positively Old Testament prophet here – which leads, naturally, to talk of Israel, where he and his journalist partner, Charlotte Edwardes, spent time earlier in the year.

A former kibbutz volunteer, Peston says he “loves” Israel, an “incredibly lively” country that is “absolutely gripping” and is rapturous about the food, particularly in Tel Aviv.

But he says he is unlikely to write about it in detail in any future fictional ventures – “it’s not really my world, it would be pretty arrogant to do that”. Just the same, he is fascinated by the current Israeli political situation – “highly complex and riveting”.

At school, Peston has said elsewhere, he “came across people who said casually antisemitic things”, adding that he had prefaced a story about Labour’s antisemitism with the words “as a Jew”, leading to a refusal by Seumas Milne to let Peston interview his boss, Jeremy Corbyn.

Today, he tells me, he is working out how best to capture the woeful antisemitism of the Corbyn Labour leadership for his third book. I predict many crises of conscience for Gil Peck.

To conclude our talk, I ask Peston, surely the arch-cynicist, if there is any politician whom he truly admires.

And there is: “Gordon Brown. I think he is a deeply flawed individual, but he thinks strategically and he is a man of moral purpose.

“I think history will treat him a lot more kindly than in his period as prime minister. He was an important chancellor – and he remains a person worth talking to and listening to.”

As does Peston.  The Whistleblower by Robert Peston is published by Zaffre, priced £14.99 (hardback).

Available now

A look

Inside Words of wisdom: Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert publishes her memoir

The ultimate revenge: New film inspired by audacious plot to poison six million Germans

Dinner delight: Aunt Annette’s holiday brisket

42 Jewish News

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2 September 2021

Weekend / Film

‘We only wanted revenge’ A new film explores the real-life Holocaust avengers who plotted to murder six million Germans, writes Stephen Applebaum

L

Kovner’s group numbered about 50 iving in Israel, the filmmen and women. While there were maker Yoav Paz grew up widespread calls for revenge among immersed in the Holothe Yishuv in Palestine as early as caust. There were visits to 1942, those who actually acted were Yad Vashem, books, plays, films, the “exceptions”, says Yoav. “For and, he says, stories from an us, it was really fascinating. We felt aunt who had survived “horrible that from this minority group who operations” performed on her by couldn’t go on with their life, we Mengele. could learn a lot about all of the other People talked about the death survivors who did want to start a new camps and survivors bravely life, and for them that was the rebuilding their lives. But about real revenge.”

10 years ago, Yoav and his As third-generation brother Doron, who is Israelis growing up also his filmmaking “as a free spirit, with partner, heard a free mind, in a free something new: a country”, he says friend told them they weren’t afraid that as his grandto ask uncomfortfather was close to able questions. “And, death, he confessed of course, the main that he had returned Yoav and Doron Paz question [asked by a to his childhood home character in the film] is, why after being freed from did you let this happen? And also a labour camp and killed the after everything was over, how could neighbour who “snitched” on him you go on with your life? Some Jews and his family. started a new life in Europe around “This blew our minds. We said, people that killed their families a few ‘Wow, this is an amazing story. You years before. So it’s complicated.” never hear about revenge.’”

Although the Avengers’ deadly The anecdote now informs the plan has been known about for years, opening scene of their new film, Plan the protagonists themselves only A, which is based on professor Dina really started talking publicly in the Porat’s book, Li Nakam Veshilem past decade. “Many of them kept (Vengeance and Retribution are their face in darkness,” says Yoav.

Mine). It tells the true story of a “No one knew how people would group of Jews (codenamed Nakam), react to their actions.” led by the fighter-poet Abba Kovner, The brothers were lucky enough who plotted to kill six million to meet three of the Avengers, Joseph Germans by poisoning the water Harmatz, Yehuda “Poldek” Maimon supply in five cities. and Chaim Miller, all since deceased, Also known as the Avengers,

and during their “sessions” tried to understand how they thought and felt.

Some described the need for retribution as “a cancer growing inside them” and recalled Nakam members who “broke down along the process and couldn’t go on with the plan”; others “got stronger and stronger, but said it was like a torture”.

Because their endgame “sounds horrible, monstrous”, says Yoav, they requested not to be judged by today’s standards. “They told us, ‘We were young people, we’d lost our families, we were alone in the world, and all that we could think about was revenge.’”

With this in mind, the co-writerdirectors tried to tell a story where there is “no right and wrong, no black and white”, and that asks: what would we have done in their position?

To test this question, they created a fictional Holocaust survivor, Max (subtly played by the non-Jewish German actor August Diehl), who becomes involved with a group from the Jewish Brigade – a unit in the British Army recruited from Mandatory Palestine – who track down Nazis, hold field trials to prove their identities, and execute them. “This is pure justice,” says Yoav.

They were delighted to find that Kovner had approached a Jewish Brigade group to join him and “they didn’t want to help because they realised he was taking things too far.”

This real-life meeting meant they could move Max into Nakam by having him infiltrate them as a Haganah spy for his former Brigade

Main picture: August Diehl stars as Max in Plan A alongside, above, Nikolai Kinski, Milton Welsh and Sylvia Hoeks

ally (Shtisel’s Michael Aloni), and through him explore the comparatively morality of their plan as his allegiances get pulled in different directions.

“We wanted to have an escalation,” Yoav explains. “I think most people can understand and relate to taking down the life of war criminals… [but] the idea of revenge on a larger, deeper scale, that is much more difficult to understand.”

The brothers introduced the device of a sack supposedly containing death to allow them to show “what will happen if death takes over … [and] darkness is unleashed.” It didn’t, because Plan A failed. But why?

What is known is that Kovner obtained poison in Palestine but realising that he was going to be arrested

by British military police while on a ship bound for Europe, he threw it overboard.

David Ben-Gurion and the Haganah had heard rumours

about the plot, says Yoav, but historians disagree over whether they tipped off the British, or whether Kovner was apprehended on a technicality.

Whatever the truth, there were concerns, as voiced by Aloni’s character, that any revenge mission could threaten the establishment of Israel.

“All the leadership in Palestine wanted to do is raise a country of their own,” says Yoav, “and they knew they needed the support of the UN, and that revenge operations could damage the Zionist operation.

So they were against them.”

Putting yourself in the shoes of the Avengers today is a queasy sensation. Their suffering and loss is made palpable in the film, but so is the suffering, loss and horror they planned to inflict on millions. What would you have done? Hopefully, none of us will ever need to find out.  Plan A is in cinemas and on premium digital from Friday

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Vaccinated staff help protect our homes against Covid-19 L

ooking for a care home which is safe as possible in the current pandemic? Then you could do no better than to join us as a resident in one of the homes in the Springdene Group, one of the premier care organisations in north London.

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45

Survivor’s memoir / Weekend

‘You can’t fear the worst if you can’t imagine it’ Lily Ebert promised that if she survived Auschwitz she would tell the world her story – and, aged 97, has now published her memoir, writes Kari Colmans

S

ocial media might have its negatives but it can also greatly restore your faith in humanity, if 97-year-old Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert and her great-grandson Dov Forman are anything to go by.

Not only have they accumulated 1.3 million followers on TikTok (and counting), with each clip of Lily’s Holocaust experiences amassing well over 100,000 views, but they are also inundated daily with messages from all over the world.

While held at Auschwitz on Yom Kippur, 1944, Lily promised herself that if she survived she would tell the world her story – and now indeed she is.

Her new book, Lily’s Promise, is an equally heart-warming and heart-wrenching account of her life before, during, and after the Second World War, beginning with a supremely happy childhood. She describes growing up in a rural town in Hungary, surrounded by extended family and friends where, unlike today, she was totally unaware of any racism towards Jews.

Her story unfolds through the ghettos,

Lily with her great-grandson Dov Forman and, left, a banknote given to Lily by a Jewish-American soldier in 1945. Below left: one of Dov’s tweets

c­ oncentration and labour camps, and out the other side, where she rebuilds her life first in Israel and then London.

For many years, she kept quiet about her ordeal – a “family tradition” of keeping silent, she muses, as the three of us chat over Zoom – although her children, and later great-grandchildren, had some idea of what she must have been through, as she made no attempt to hide the blue numbers forever etched not only on her arm but also on her soul.

In fact, it wasn’t until the pandemic, when Dov, 17, was separated from his great-grandmother (or safta, as he lovingly calls her), that he started to dig a little deeper, with Lily’s blessing.

When Lily was liberated in 1945, a JewishAmerican soldier gave her a bank note on which he had written, in rudimentary Hebrew, “good luck and happiness”.

Fast forward a few decades, and Dov decided it was time to track down the GI, using the power of social media. Their almost immediate success at finding the young soldier’s family propelled the pair to make headlines across the world and offered Lily the opportunity she needed to make good on that promise – in print.

“I’ve always found it easier to answer the questions of strangers, to talk to large groups in

public, than to discuss my past with my own family, at home,” she writes towards the end of the book, reflecting on her life and her work. I ask if she ever still feels reluctant to discuss her story so openly, leaving herself vulnerable to hatred and denial, as well as reliving her own trauma. She replies in thickly accented English: “If we keep quiet now, nobody will ever learn.”

With recent political unrest abroad leading to a spike in antisemitic and anti-Zionist sentiment in England, I ask whether the public stayed engaged and supportive when Jew-bashing seemed all the rage.

They both feel that people are now more interested in the Holocaust than ever before and are grateful to platforms such as TikTok for enabling them to become educators.

But, like many others, they have been trolled – especially while tensions were high a few months ago. These aren’t, however, the messages on which they want to dwell, and they both accept that the backlash is part and parcel of what they are trying to achieve.

If anything, they say, it’s proof of why Lily’s work is all the more pertinent. They recount messages from all over the world, especially from isolated Jews living in communities where perhaps there are few others left, telling Lily she makes them proud of their faith.

One man thanked her for pulling him through a suicidal episode, purely with her tenacity and courage. They’ve even received a beautifully sketched portrait of Lily from the Netherlands, which they hold up proudly.

It seems many victims of trauma recognise

in Lily a fellow survivor and essential storyteller, regardless of race, gender, religion or age.

Despite breaking the internet, Lily is keen to get back into schools to keep on educating the younger generation, something that has been paused by the pandemic. She is also a founder member of the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre and was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to Holocaust Education (indeed the foreword is penned by the Prince of Wales).

The book touches on the topics and tensions of survivors’ groups, which is equally as informative and important, as well as the inherited trauma carried by the offspring of many survivors.

In the book, Lily writes: “I have no better understanding than you of how any of it was possible,” and “You cannot fear the worst if you cannot imagine it.”

She tells me that the Holocaust started with words, not actions. And neither Lily, nor Dov, will be silenced.

“We have to be very strong and say it again and again – it happened.”  Lily’s Promise: How I ­Survived Auschwitz and Found The Strength To Live

by Lily Ebert and Dov Forman is published by Macmillan at £18.99 (hardback). Follow Lily and Dov on TikTok, @lilyebert

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

Weekend / Food

AY BRISKET ID L O H ’S E T T E N N A AUNT RIED FRUITS D D N A E IN W T E E WITH SW

L

ong before my indoctrination into barbecue, I ate brisket. It was the ultimate holiday dish, and nobody made it better than my aunt, Annette Farber – it was braised for hours with onions and carrots and sweet red kosher wine. Lavished with apricots, prunes and other dried fruits, it was the sort of sweet-salty, meaty-fruity mash-up typical of so much Ashkenazi cuisine.

Aunt Annette served it at Rosh Hashanah

PREPARATION TIME: 15 minutes COOKING TIME: Depending on the brisket and other factors, 2½ to 3 hours, or as needed

SERVES 6 – 8

1 brisket flat (3 to 4 pounds) Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons canola oil 1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped 4 carrots, trimmed and peeled (1 diced and 3 cut crosswise into 3-inch chunks) 2 ribs celery, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped ¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 1 ½ cups sweet kosher Concord grape wine or 1½ cups dry red wine plus ¼ cup granulated or brown sugar 2 dried bay leaves 2 to 3 cups beef or chicken broth or stock (preferably home-made or low sodium) or water 1 ½ cups dried apricots 1 ½ cups pitted prunes

Extracted from The Brisket Chronicles by Steven Raichlen, published by Workman Publishing, priced £14.99 (paperback). Available now

Photos by Matthew Benson

INGREDIENTS

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F/150°C. 2. Using a sharp knife, trim the brisket, leaving a layer of fat at least ¼ inch thick). Be careful not to over-trim. It’s better to err on the side of too much fat than too little. Generously season the brisket on all sides with salt and pepper.

3. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven (or roasting pan – though a Dutch oven is preferred) over medium-high heat.

Add the brisket and cook, turning once, until browned on both sides, four to six minutes per side. Transfer the meat to a platter and pour out and discard all but three tablespoons of fat from the pot.

4. Add the onion, chopped carrot, celery, garlic and three tablespoons of the parsley to the pot and cook over medium-high heat until softened and lightly browned, five minutes.

5. Return the brisket to the pot and spoon half the vegetables in the pot on top. Add the wine, bay leaves and enough stock to barely cover the brisket.

Cover the pot (if using a roasting pan, cover it tightly with aluminum foil), place it in the oven, and braise until semi-tender, 1½ hours.

6. Remove the pot from the oven and transfer the brisket to a welled cutting board; set the pot aside. Using a sharp knife or electric knife, thinly slice the brisket across the grain. Stir half of the carrot chunks, apricots, prunes and

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raisins into the juices in the pot. Using a spatula, neatly lay the sliced brisket on top. Pour in any juices from the cutting board and arrange the remaining carrot chunks and dried fruits on top. Season with salt and pepper. Add additional stock as needed just to cover the meat and fruit.

7. Put the lid on the pot and return it to the oven. Continue braising the brisket until the meat is tender enough to cut with a fork, another 1 to 1½ hours, or as needed. If there’s too much cooking liquid (the brisket should be moist, not soupy), uncover the pot for the last half hour to allow some of the juices to evaporate.

8. Transfer the brisket slices to a platter.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer the fruits and vegetables to the platter and arrange them around the meat.

Pour the pan juices into a gravy boat with a fat separator. (If you don’t have one of these, pour the gravy into a bowl or measuring cup and skim the fat off the top with a soup spoon.) Spoon some of the gravy over the meat and fruit, serving the rest on the side. Sprinkle the remaining one tablespoon of parsley over the meat and get ready for Jewish holiday awesomeness.

Note: Sometimes, Aunt Annette would add a peeled, seeded, sliced lemon to her brisket to offset the sweetness of the dried fruit. It’s a nice touch.

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

Business / AI technology

candicekrieger@googlemail.com

With Candice Krieger

HOLLYWOOD’S FUTURE RESTS ON AI TECHNOLOGY The founder of a company using artificial intelligence in the area of facial recognition tells Candice Krieger he believes films will soon be entirely made using the technology

A

film made comin the facial recognition space, such pletely by as blurring digital images so they artificial can’t be cross-referenced to intellidetermine identity. Its products gence (AI) range from animating still could soon photos to facilitating highbe a reality, says Israeli quality video productions and developer Gil Perry. supporting the anonymisation Perry, is the CEO and of video content. co-founder of AI start-up D-ID, The way we consume media has which recently collaborated with changed dramatically. Streaming Warner Bros and digital studio The co-founders has surged and AI is disrupting the Oblio, to help promote Reminiscence, of D-ID way we create and engage with media. the recently-released sci-fi thriller Perry believes the media and entertainstarring Hugh Jackman. ment industry is on the cusp of a technological He says: “The future is that films will be revolution. “We can educate the market and made completely using AI. It might be five to make sure AI is used for good and [that] we are 10 years away, but we hope to push it to the ... the first to be able to create full high-quality lower end. Different technologies need to be video productions using AI.” combined and if you combine them in the right While creating entire films using AI may way, then it will definitely happen.” be a few years away, there are other ways the Short for de-identification, D-ID uses AI, technology can be used in the meantime to deep learning and image processing technology help media companies and brands to directly

interact with their customers, be it in pre- or post-production of films or marketing.

Earlier this year, D-ID created Deep Nostalgia for the genealogy company MyHeritage, enabling users to bring to life photos of their ancestors. The app became the top-rated one in the Apple Store, with users creating some 90 million animations and growing. D-ID gets paid per animation.

The company recently partnered with video app Josh, India’s answer to TikTok, and one of fastest-growing social networks in the world.

It developed a photo transformation feature specifically for Josh’s users to be able to create videos from still photos, add music, and then share those videos with followers on the app.

“We are enabling meaningful creative reality experience. It’s about combining creative, virtual reality and AI.” Perry and co-founders Sella Blondheim (COO) and Eliran Kuta (CTO) realised the potential of using AI within facial recognition when they served together in the IDF’s special forces. “We learnt about the privacy issues before people were really aware of it, and wanted to tackle the problem.”

The trio gained work experience in startups before setting up their own. Perry and Kuta worked as developers at the social networking app Houseparty. “We learnt how to manage a start-up and, after a while, decided it was the right time to leave and set up D-ID, together with Sella.” They raised funds and secured some of the top facial recognition and privacy experts in Israel, launching in 2017.

The aim initially was to tackle facial recognition from a privacy perspective by manipulating images in ways that improve the viewer experience while maintaining privacy, but the Israelis always had one eye on the opportunities within the media and entertainment market. “We were always fascinated by this area and felt we could do something huge.”

The pandemic rapidly accelerated the shift towards AI. The use of social networks soared as people looked for ways to stay connected.

Top: D-ID recently collaborated on the film Reminiscence, featuring Hugh Jackman.

Above: It also created an app for MyHeritage

“People were stuck at home, looking and managing their photos and using services such as Zoom to create their own videos. Younger audiences have become ‘creators’, putting videos on social networking sites. The creator market has grown massively and these creators are using AI tools to monetise their content from home.”

Some 50 million people worldwide have joined the ‘creator economy’, considering themselves to be ‘creators’ as their job. According to Perry, the market is worth an estimated $100 billion. More than two million creators make six figures or more on YouTube, Twitch and Instagram, and sponsored influencers are worth more than $8bn (£6bn) – a number expected to grow to $15bn (£11bn) by 2022.

“Social networks such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are putting a lot of focus on this market, competing to keep these creators on their platforms,” notes Perry. “Companies are now understanding the importance of using AI tools within this area, and within media and entertainment, or risk falling behind.”

D-ID’s IP-protected solutions have been successfully implemented by leading Fortune 500 companies and institutions worldwide. Its tech is done in Israel and it has offices in the UK, with plans to expand into the US. “Our long-term mission is to be the first to create full video productions and feature films using AI. But we can help the entertainment industry – which was really harmed by Covid – in other areas, such as doing shoots from home.

We are really excited about the future.”  www.d-id.com

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JN Junior / In association with

JN Junior

Hands on!

The big question

What did you like about this year that you hope will continue into the new Jewish year, 5782?

Genius Jake says: Millions of pupils in the UK are returning to school after the summer holidays, following months of disrupted education because of the pandemic. At one point, more than 1.5 billion children worldwide were affected by school closures! It’s been a really challenging year. But it’s a new school year and soon-to-be a new Jewish Year, Rosh Hashanah, with lots to be hopeful about.

Rosh Hashanah is the time when we reflect on the past year. While it has been tough for so many with people getting unwell, losing their jobs and not being able to see family and friends, there have also been good things.

Silver linings were more respect for key workers, getting to know our neighbours, appreciating our homes and hugs with loved ones, flexible working for adults, using technology to do so much, including school – and less pollution, which was better for the environment.

Livvy Saunders, age nine, from Totteridge, says:

“

Before the pandemic, I didn’t know the other children in my street. But during homeschooling, we would all meet outside when the school day finished and scoot up and down. We became good friends and I hope it stays that way next year. I also hope we don’t have to do any more home-schooling – although I did love the daily lie in!

Make a home collage The ritual of tashlich is a powerful way of letting go of your mistakes. Here’s another idea: Turn them into art!

Supplies • • • • •

Piece of large poster board Colourful/patterned paper Scissors Pen or marker Glue

Anytime you need to say sorry to someone for something you’ve done wrong, do your best to make it right.

Then, write or draw a picture of it on a small piece of colourful paper (for example, “I didn’t share my toy with my sister”). Cut the paper into small piece so that you can’t read the words anymore. Glue these pieces on to the poster board in any design you like. Continue to add different coloured paper each time, letting go of your mistakes as you create something new and beautiful.

“

Riddle me this

Good news for...

The Israeli Paralympic Team! At the time of going to press, the team have won seven medals in Tokyo, including four golds. Their swimmers have earned six of those, including double gold medal winner Mark Malyar and Omer Dadaon, who broke a world record in the 200m freestyle. Israel is in 20th position on the medal table, with Great Britain second.

and What has a dtoaeils not a head but body? have a

A coin!

Five things to enjoy this month: 3 1 Van Gogh Alive

Get lost in sunflowers and gaze under a starry canvas at this interactive exhibition in Kensington Gardens, www.vangoghaliveuk.com

2

What The Ladybird Heard Julia Donaldson’s tale of the ladybird helping to save the farmer’s cow is showing in Radlett on 23 and 24 September, www.radlettcentre.co.uk

Compiled by Candice Krieger candice@jewishnews.co.uk

Sign up for your free monthly Jewish book at pjlibrary.org.uk

Morgan & West

These time-travelling magicians are at artsdepot to delight all ages, on Sunday, 26 September, www.artsdepot.co.uk

4

Celestial Storytelling Youngsters will love this PJ Library session at JW3, featuring yoga and star projectors in the succah! www.jw3.org.uk

5

Legoland Offers Sun Superdays 2 for 1 Tickets and Cadbury’s vouchers from 2020 expire on 30 September so book now: www.legoland.co.uk

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Jewish News 2 September 2021

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Orthodox Judaism

SEDRA

Torah For Today

Nitzavim

What does the Torah say about...

New year, new opportunities

BY RABBI JONNY ROODYN Our pre-Rosh Hashanah parsha begins: Atem Nitzavim Hayom Kulchem Lifnei Hashem Elokeichem (You stand this day, all of you, before Hashem your God).

The Chasidic luminary, Rav Leibele Eiger, explained that the use of the term hayom, today, in the present tense, means here “every day”, we stand in the presence of the Almighty.

The last two sedras were called Ki Teitzei, “when you go out” and Ki Tavo, “when you come in”.

However, now, just before Rosh Hashanah, we are Nitzavim, “standing still”. We may move from place to place, job to job, or friend to friend, but that’s just external travel.

In truth, we are stationary, because each of us stands in God’s presence.

In fact, Rabbi Moshe Isserles (the Rema), at the start of his commentary to the Shulchan Aruch (code of Jewish Law) implies that the purpose of all mitzvot is to develop a constant awareness of being in the presence of God.

We all lead such busy lives that it’s all too easy to forget what life is about and the things that really matter to us.

Often, owing to our hectic schedules, we can only appreciate the things we value when we no longer have them.

Nitzavim is always read before Rosh Hashanah to remind us that especially now we need to stop for a moment and reflect on that which is truly important.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, one of the best ways to prepare is to realise that we are always in the presence of Hashem and to consider the implications of His existence and His plan for the world.

This is the focus of all the Rosh Hashanah prayers and the key to a meaningful life.

Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy new year.

◆ Rabbi Jonny Roodyn is education director of Jewish Futures and serves Finchley Federation Synagogue

BY RABBI JEFF BERGER Rosh Hashanah this year occurs in the same week children go back to school. Like all new beginnings, we’re filled with a bit of excitement and a tinge of trepidation.

So, what does the Torah say about the start of another Jewish new year as we approach 5782?

It is unclear how many congregants will attend the High Holy Days. Many synagogues are opting for shorter services and a continuation of safety measures against Covid-19. Most communal leaders are taking a cautious yet encouraging approach.

In the three-day period leading to the Revelation at Sinai, God said: “If you listen to My voice and observe My covenant, you will be a treasure to Me from among all the nations.” (Ex. 19:5).

Mehilta explains that “all new beginnings are difficult but keeping one mitzvah enables us to keep further mitzvot”.

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The same can be said about recovery from a pandemic. We’re confronted at the start of our new year by a plethora of challenges – climate change, increasing inequities and an as-yet-unrealised mental health crisis.

All that is before addressing the growing refugee issue, including the most recent victims of the Afghan civil war.

My late mother’s advice to me, when I was a child overwhelmed by the world’s seemingly immense problems, was to start by taking a few deep breaths and focusing

only on things within my control (if only she’d realised that she was at the forefront of a trend today called mindfulness).

There are certainly things to be afraid of. But there is far more to celebrate. Many of us are vaccinated. We’ve resumed holding weddings and bar/batmitzvahs.

And we are attending communal events, such as the Maccabi GB Fun Run and the new Interfaith Fun Run. The most important lesson I take into 5782 is that self-preservation requires unselfishness.

There are countless good causes to support. Choose one – and let it bring you into a better future.

Collectively we can have a significant impact.

Tizku LeShanim Rabot – May you have many good years ahead. ◆ Rabbi Jeff Berger can be reached at rabbi jefflondon@gmail.com

Gary Green Memorials

Wishes all the community a Happy New Year 14 Claybury Broadway, Clayhall, Ilford, Essex, IG5 0LQ Tel: 020 8551 6866 Fax: 020 8503 9889 41 Manor Park Crescent, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8 7LY Tel: 020 8381 1525 Fax: 020 8381 1535 www.garygreenmemorials.co.uk

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Progressive Judaism

Progressively Speaking

The Bible Says What?

The pandemic has given us much to reflect on for the Jewish new year

The shofar reminds us to repent… and go to war!

BY RABBI DEBBIE YOUNG-SOMERS As we dash towards the High Holy Days, communities began blowing the shofar, a ‘warning’ sound so visceral it rarely fails to give me goosebumps. But taking alarm?

That’s not what normally happens, even if the first time we hear it is on Rosh Hashanah.

Moses Maimonides describes the shofar blast as being like an alarm clock; a wake-up call asking us to open our eyes and look at who we have become – it is a call to repentance. But we hear in the book of Amos (3:6) that it was also, perhaps primarily, a call to war, playing a pivotal role when Joshua led an attack upon Jericho when the walls came tumbling down.

It is strange an instrument that feels like a crucial piece of spiritual technology was also a cry rallying the troops to battle; something that is the polar opposite of spirituality.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised – most things in the Jewish world

have multiple meanings. It’s possible the battle cry issued by the shofar is still needed. What battles should we be called to this year?

We are beginning a special year known as the Shmita – the seventh, sabbatical year when the land lies fallow. We are asked to look after the land so it might be more fruitful.

The earth this year has been calling out in pain. Forest fires, floods, a pandemic – our behaviours have waged war on the planet’s resources and health. So perhaps we do need a rallying battle cry – a fightback to defend the planet.

Religious war is not a concept that sits well with me. But perhaps the shofar can call us to battles that need fighting in other ways, waking us up to behaviours that need to be turned around.

◆ Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers is part of the rabbinic team at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue

BY RABBI REBECCA BIRK AND RABBI RENÉ PFERTZEL Jewish time is cyclical and at the same time also linear. Every year we celebrate milestones of our personal and communal lives, and yet, each year is completely different.

How did our ancestors feel when they celebrated Rosh Hashanah in 70CE, looking at the smoking ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem? What was the atmosphere during Kol Nidre in 1492 in Spain, when our ancestors were expelled from their ancestral homes? How did they mark Succot in Auschwitz in 1943?

In a century from now, our descendants will ask the question, how did it feel to celebrate a new Jewish Year in 2021, still in the pandemic of Covid-19?

The Mussar practice, which teaches us how to live a meaningful and ethical life, may offer us a few keys to lift our spirit.

First, savlanut, patience. We have become accustomed to instant gratification, and also to instant access to

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news. In a matter of days, we were told to stay at home. We couldn’t do the simplest things we were used to.

Information was scarce, confusing, scary. We had no idea how long it would last.

The middah (virtue) of savlanut teaches us that we do not need to be in control all the time. There are times when we only need to sit and watch, to reflect on the meaning of our life, a moment of pause. We all benefit from such a break in time. How might patience lift and transform you?

That leads to our second middah: anavah, humility. We cannot use and abuse our planet as if it were

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our possession. We are its hosts, and too often treat it poorly. We cross lines and then the earth fights back.

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Has this truth been reinforced this past year?

Lastly, we have rediscovered the power of community, as the cement that binds us all, with compassion and empathy. In Hebrew, such compassion is rachamnut. Our communities became a place where people gathered to make sense of the situation and, more importantly, to find warmth and comfort. They are still doing so, online and in person.

May this New Year of 5782 be a good one for all of us, where we draw on patience, humility and compassion to work together for the good of our communities and our world. ◆ Rabbis Rebecca Birk and René Pfertzel are co-chairs of The Conference Of Liberal Rabbis And Cantors

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Ask Our Experts / Professional advice from our panel

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

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Wish all of our friends and supporters a happy, healthy and sweet New Year 5782 Rabbi Aryeh MBE & Mrs Devorah Sufrin Rabbi Odom & Mrs Henny Brandman Rabbi Yossi & Rivka Posen Mrs Brocha Muller

Branches:

Head Office & Gants Hill Centre Buckhurst Hill Centre Epping Centre Havering & Westcliff on Sea

High Holy Days Services at Locations Gants Hill, Buckhurst Hill & Epping www.chabadilford.co.uk www.chabadonthehill.co.uk www.chabadepping.co.uk www.chabadsouthend.co.uk

Clinical Manager Noa Girls is a charity supporting adolescent girls in the Orthodox Jewish Community. We are seeking dedicated people to join our team. Ongoing training and development are provided and willingness to learn and develop new skills within a flexible working environment is required.

We are looking for two Clinical Managers to join our busy and friendly team. One to join our main program and one to work in our new eating disorder programme.

You will be conducting intakes and assessing clients as well as supervising and managing Keyworkers. You will also be building relationships with other agencies as well as supporting the development of internal programs.  Minimum qualifications: PG Dip or Masters in the psychology/ counselling/social work fields  Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience  Full or part time - minimum of 20 hours per week, including some evening or Sunday hours For an application pack please email HR@noagirls.com

From all members, trustees, and staff at the Council of Christians and Jews we wish you a Happy New Year!

Trainee Psychologist / Psychotherapist Noa Girls is a charity supporting adolescent girls in the Orthodox Jewish Community.

We are seeking a Trainee therapist in their final year of their doctorate in counselling psychology/ psychotherapy to work within our therapy program. The successful candidate will provide specialised psychological assessment, formulation and intervention for clients and families and may be asked to run groups and staff training.

This is an excellent placement opportunity offering a wide variety of experience in addition to weekly supervision with a clinical psychologist.

Applicants should have at least three years’ experience of client facing work including experience of working with adolescents.

The successful candidate will be able to work well in a fast-paced environment and be able to handle a varied workload.

This is a part-time role.

For an application pack please contact HR@noagirls.com

2 September 2021 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

59

Fun, games and prizes

THE JEWISH NEWS CROSSWORD 1

2

3

4

5

8 9 10 13 17 18 19 20

6

7 8

9

10

11

14

15 16

17

18

19

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

Free of duty (7) Feathered scarf (3) Common colourful butterfly (3,7) Disorder, shambles (10) Vigour, vim (3) Encircle with flowers (7) Move stealthily (6) Burden of responsibility (4)

4

5 6 5 6 8 9 1 1 6 7 4 7 2 3 2 9 5 8 5 2 1 2 4 1 8

DOWN 1 Sink stopper (4) 2 Liquid amount (5) 4 Saucepan cover (3) 5 Fossilised tree resin (5) 6 Suitable for growing crops (6) 7 Branch out (6) 11 Long-tailed primate (6) 12 Preaching platform (6) 14 Replenish (3,2) 15 Shiny silk-like fabric (5) 16 Military canteen (4) 18 The Spy ___ Came In from the Cold, John le Carré novel (3)

12 13

SUDOKU

20

ACROSS 1 Ballot (4) 3 Animal related to the llama (6)

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.

4

WORDSEARCH

CODEWORD

The words related to fuel 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.

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

J

B R Q X W P X L R H O F

J M E O

I

R N L R

I

M

I

14

I

10

G L R N O G B T E S O E V F

I

D P F

I

23

A U A G C N T N O S Q N W I

I

Y S E Q L N E

R S L

I

9 4 2

2

J D R Y A E M C Y A Z X V

Last issue’s solutions Crossword ACROSS: 1 Rivet 4 Dried 7 Car 8 Unequal 9 Knee 10 Apex 13 End 15 Play 16 Euro 19 Angular 21 All 22 Human 23 Hinge DOWN: 1 Rick 2 Veranda 3 Toupee 4 Deed 5 IOU 6 De luxe 11 Pertain 12 Splash 14 Dearth 17 Glen 18 Flee 20 Gum

PROPANE SOLAR TURBINE WIND

1 6 4 3 7 8 5 9 2

8 9 3 2 5 6 1 7 4

3 7 1 4 8 2 9 6 5

S

14

9

4

21

14 14

21 3

15

16

2

14

3

26

11

18

16

20

19

4

8

10

9 14

20

22

16

26 21

14

17

11

9

6

26

20

14

24

21

1

22

3

13 2

6 4 9 1 3 5 7 2 8

4 8 6 5 9 3 2 1 7

26

19

4 5

14

2 3

3

26

9

2

6

14

14

4

24

2 4 2

26 23

19

22 9

T See next issue for puzzle solutions.

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 1

2

3

4

14

15

16

17

O

5

6

7

8

9

18

19

20

21

22

S T

10

11

12

13

23

24

25

26

Suguru 2 5 8 7 6 9 3 4 1

26

4

16

2 3 5

3

22

4

26

14

12

22

17

3

4

9

10 14

22

16 4

O

19

9

14 22

17

10

5

17

9

Sudoku 7 2 5 9 4 1 6 8 3

19

21

26

Z N B H Y D R O L D

KEROSENE OIL PETROL POWER

18

11

L W

P W O E V U J H K M E H A

FIREWOOD FUEL GAS HYDRO

17

7

X U R C C T T T S S U Z C

BUTANE COAL DIESEL ENERGY

17 17

B S A G

K G T G Y A K U E O F U D

F O L

7

26

L R

E P P L A E D P

19

21

R E W O O D E

E N E S O R E K P B

25

4

5 1 7 6 2 4 8 3 9

9 3 2 8 1 7 4 5 6

3 5 4 1 4 1

2 1 2 3 2 3

4 3 4 1 4 1

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

Wordsearch 2 5 2 3 2 3

4 3 1 4 1 5

1 5 2 3 2 4

1 3 1 2 5 1

2 5 4 3 4 3

3 1 2 1 5 1

2 4 5 4 3 2

1 3 1 2 1 5

4 2 4 5 3 4

Y O E P W C G Z P F J Q B

O R S F H G I V Y R D K B

K Y R E E Y F I E X U A O

D R R E O G N A M N J N T

C R Y V B A P R I C O T E

Y E I P W E T N A R R U C

W B G E P A U D L B S U A

Codeword M N T E D N D L B A U R T

U A A M I F S H B N L J J

D R Z S L X R Q K A T X F

R C I T M I G U L N A Q Z

S A P E A C H N I A N P I

R B C T N C R H V T A H M

T EMP T S E I A E ANN E X E D K N E G COGS E L W S A I S L E S U J U N E P H EWS C R C I HAUN T N E N E G S T E AD Y

E D I S G QU S S T F E UN C V E

I C T S R P POO L F A A T E S H AB L E U S U Z Z Z D N E R Y R E R S E S

T B Z S I R V Y DQ L N J 02/09 G H P MWO U K E A X C F

60 Jewish News

2 September 2021

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Business Services Directory ANTIQUES 44

The Jewish News 22 September 2016

Stirling BUSINESS SERVICES DIRECTORY Antique – Reproduction – Retro Furniture Top prices paid (any condition)

WE BUY ANTIQUES VERY HIGH PRICES PAID. FREE HOME VISITS. All Antique Furniture Hille & Epstein Diamond Jewellery, Gold, Silver, Paintings, Porcelain, Glass, Bronzes, Ivories, Oriental & Judaica Antiques etc.

Full house clearances organised.

Please look at our website for more details

www.antiquesbuyers.co.uk FOR APPOINTMENTS CALL SUE ON: 0800 840 2035 or 07956268290 OPEN 8am TO 9pm 7 DAYS. PORTOBELLO RD LONDON.

Hille, G Plan, etc.

CarerEpstein, Archie Shine,Clothing

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

Carer FURS WANTED Auxiliary Nurse Cash paid for Mink House clearances Available to support

jackets, coats, you in your home. boleros, stoles, Single items to complete homes also fox coats, Days/nights. jackets etc.

MARYLEBONE rates.

ANTIQUES - 8 CHURCH STREET NW8 8ED Very reasonable Wardrobes cleared Call 0208 07866 958 2939 614 744 (ANYTIME) Call 01277 352 560 or 07495 026 168

Computer

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All quality furniture bought & sold.

Best prices paid for complete house clearances including china, books, WE BUY ANTIQUES clothing etc. Also rubbish clearance VERY HIGH PRICES PAID. FREE HOME VISITS. service, lofts, sheds, garages etc

Bereavement Counselling for adults and children individually. Support Groups available.

During the pandemic, we offer telephone and online counselling.

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Full house clearances organised.

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Labels are for jars.

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Not shabbat

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w

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Ep Dini D

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2 September 2021 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

61

Business Services Directory SILVER

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D

Jewish News 2 September 2021

Celebrating Rosh Hashanah surrounded by friends in his house.

That’s Livingness for Hadley.

Livingness is the absolute essence of what we provide for our Members and their families.

Langdon supports hundreds of adults and young people across the UK by empowering our Members to live their very best lives independently and be their best, true selves.

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Registered Charity no. 1142742

www.jewishnews.co.uk