Jewish News issue 989

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‘NOT YOU AGAIN!’

BRITAIN’S BIGGEST JEWISH NEWSPAPER 9 February 2017

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13 Shevat 5777

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TRUTH BENDER? JLGB’s Neil Martin on his unforgettable week with Prince Charles See page 17

Extracts from timely Uri Geller biography See page 24

WORTH THE WAIT… Netanyahu left stranded outside Number 10 before first meeting with May Pages 2 & 14

Race against time to save critically-ill grandmother Family’s plea to Jewish News readers as donor search becomes desperate

The family of a grandmother from Kenton is calling on the Jewish community to help find an urgent stem cell donor to save her life.

Sipy Howard, 65, [pictured, inset] was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia [AML] on her birthday in December and began intense treatment that same day.

AML is the same form of aggressive blood cancer suffered by fellow Kenton resident Sharon Berger, whose family created the phenomenally successful Spit4Mum campaign back in 2012-13.

A member of Neve Shalom Synagogue in Preston Road, Sipy was a beauty therapist and hairdresser before becoming a housewife when her children Sammy, Emma and Jolene were born.

She now has two granddaughters – Sofia, who is four years old, and two-year old Sienna.

This week Sammy launched a heart-wrenching appeal, saying: “Mum now urgently needs a bone marrow transplant and we are really looking for the Jewish community, specifically the Sephardi community, to

potentially save her life.”

She described Sipy as a “very bubbly woman, always laughing and generally a bit nuts, an amazing wife, an adoring mother and grandma, who dedicates her life to our dad Eli, working so hard to make sure we have everything we need”.

Sammy described Sipy as “a key member of her community, known for her open-house policy and caring for everyone, whether it’s hosting dinner for our extended family and friends every Friday, or trying to make people smile by sending motivational texts”.

In an effort to encourage Jewish community members to register as donors if they have not done so already, the family has organised a string of events, saying: “All we need is a swab from your mouth. Her best chance is to find a match is from her ethnic background.”

Sipy, whose family is now working with the donor charity DKMS, is the same age as Sharon Berger, whose family’s remarkable and tireless campaigning encouraged Continued on page 9

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

News / Netanyahu in London

UK and Israel’s post-Brexit plan Britain and Israel have announced the creation of a new group tasked with “preparing the ground” for a postBrexit trade deal, writes Justin Cohen.

In their first direct talks in Downing Street on Monday, Theresa May and Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to establish the UK-Israel Trade Working Group to build on a burgeoning trade relationship that was worth £5billion last year alone.

The two leaders also discussed opportunities to strengthen partnerships in research and development and tech at government, university and business level, according to a Number 10 spokesperson.

The announcement was welcomed

by Hugo Bieber, chief executive of UK Israel Business, who said: “With trade levels between the UK and Israel at an all-time high, we see untapped opportunities for bilateral trade and investment between our two countries.

“The establishment of the UKIsrael Trade Working Group is a very positive step forward by our governments and UK Israel Business are here to continue to support businesses and investors from the UK and Israel”.

In March, UK Israel Business will be holding a summit in Tel Aviv, addressed by the Chief Economist of Investec Bank plc, to discuss the chal-

lenges and opportunities for Israelis presented by the UK’s impending exit from the EU. Also on the agenda for the leaders’ working lunch was the peace process, with May reiterating the UK’s commitment to a two-state solution and opposition to settlement construction.

On Iran, she stressed the nuclear deal must be enforced and policed “while recognising concerns about Iran’s pattern of destabilising activity in the region”, the Downing Street spokesperson said.

May has described the 2015 nuclear agreement as “vital” for the security of the region, while Netanyahu has long made clear he regards it as a bad deal that will do nothing to halt Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. US President

Donald Trump has attacked it as “the worst deal ever negotiated”.

Speaking in front of television cameras as they began talks at Number 10, the Israeli prime minister – who is due to meet Trump in Washington next week – told May: “Iran seeks to annihilate Israel, it seeks to conquer the Middle East, it threatens Europe, it threatens the world. It offers provocation after provocation. That’s why I welcome President Trump’s insistence on new sanctions. Other responsible nations should follow suit.”

The pair also discussed cooperation on cyber security and May invited her Israeli counterpart to join events in the UK this year to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.  Editorial comment, page 14

Great shakes: Theresa May greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives in Downing Street on Monday

PROTESTERS FACE OFF OUTSIDE DOWNING ST

Neturei Karta with fellow anti-Israel protesters

Hundreds of pro and anti-Israel demonstrators faced off opposite Downing Street as Benjamin Netanyahu arrived for talks with Theresa May, writes Justin Cohen.

Carrying placards proclaiming ‘Free Palestine’ and calling for the Israeli prime minister to be taken to The Hague, the crowds protesting against Netanyahu swelled to around 300 by the time the prime minister’s convoy arrived. More than 150 joined the counter-demonstration, organised by the Zionist Federation (ZF).

At one point, the larger demonstration chanted ‘From the river to the sea’ – seen by Israel’s supporters as a call for the Jewish

state’s destruction – as the country’s supporters sang Am Yisrael Chai (the people of Israel live).

“Regardless of politics, we are here to ensure the relationship continues to thrive and the leaders of the two countries must be able to meet,” said ZF director Arieh Miller.

Others addressing the crowds included Israel Britain Alliance’s Michael McCann, Luke Akehurst of We Believe in Israel and Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush.

Arkush said: “I’m very pleased such a large crowd has come in the middle of a working day to welcome Netanyahu. As I told an Iranian media outlet this morning, he is the democratically elected leader of the UK’s most depend-

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able ally in the Middle East.”

Directly addressing the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which organised the main demonstration, he decried the lack of freedoms for gays and trade unions within the Palestinian Territories.

A large police presence and barriers separated the two demonstrations and kept them well away from the gates of Downing Street.

One demonstrator carried a banner branding Netanyahu a “Nazi murderer’. She told Jewish News’ reporter to ‘f*** off’ after being asked for a comment, before giving a thumbs up to a group of Neturei Karta protesters as they joined the demonstration.

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Israeli aid / Survivor mourned / News

Anger over ‘betrayal’ of Sir Nicky’s legacy A furious backlash erupted on Wednesday night after it emerged only 350 lone child refugees will be brought to Britain from Europe under the so-called Dubs Amendment.

The number is well below the 3,000 campaigners originally called for the UK to accept.

Ministers introduced the scheme last year after coming under intense pressure to give sanctuary to lone youngsters stranded on the Continent. Calls for the measure were spearheaded by Jewish Labour peer Lord Alf Dubs.

He said: “During the Kindertransport Sir Nicky Winton rescued 669 children from Nazi persecution virtually single-handedly. I was one of those lucky ones. It would be a terrible betrayal of his legacy if as a country we were unable to do more than this to help a new generation of child refugees.”

Holocaust survivor Chaim Ferster dies Chaim Ferster, a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor who spent time in eight concentration camps, has died, aged 94, in Manchester. He was with his three sons and other family members when he died.

ISRAELI DOC ARRIVES IN LONDON TO HELP IRAQI GOVERNMENT ADVISER A top Israeli surgeon travelled to London this week in a last-ditch attempt to save the sight of an Iraqi father-of-seven, writes Justin Cohen.

Dr Ygal Rotenstreich of Sheba Medical Centre and the 54-yearold Iraqi, who asked to remain anonymous, flew to the UK last weekend for tests after his vision deteriorated over the past three months to the point that he can’t leave his home alone.

He specifically sought out an Israeli doctor after being told at a hospital in Turkey that the country is at the cutting-edge of optical medicine.

Iraqi-born Jewish philanthropist Edwin Shuker was approached to help and after a chance meeting with Dr Rotenstreich on holiday last year. He arranged for the pair to travel to London last weekend.

Speaking exclusively to Jewish News, the patient – who lost the sight in one eye in his youth – said: “I know of an Iranian woman who went to Istanbul, went to the Israeli consulate and asked for assistance.

They took her to Israel and restored

her sight. She had lost all hope. I can’t forget that story.” He had previously also been successfully treated by a Jewish doctor, who has since retired, at Moorfields in the UK. The man – an adviser to the Iraqi Government who is also a sayed, the honorific title given to descendants of the Muslim prophet Mohammad – claimed that “hundreds of Arabs and Iranians” are going to Israel under the radar for treatment.

Rotenstreich, who leads research on novel treatments and diagnostic tools for retinal degeneration, sent him to Moorfields for an ultrasound to discover more about the state of the eye, on which he has already undergone three cornea transplant operations. He has pledged to continue to remain in contact with and advise the man with the hope he can eventually undergo sight-saving surgery, in Europe or possibly even in Israel.

The doctor said: “Treating patients is how I try to make the world a better place. It’s the responsibility of a doctor to make the patient better whoever they are, that’s in our DNA. I don’t care

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Advice: Dr Ygal Rotenstreich with his anonymous Iraqi patient

siders Jews his “cousins” and would have no objection to travelling to Israel for treatment.

And asked about the first thing he would do if he regains sight, he said without hesitation: “I would pray in Jerusalem.”

Shuker, special envoy for the European Jewish Congress, said: “No matter the results of any operation, the contact between the syed and the doctor has already brought light into our world. This encounter proves humanity recognises no boundaries or walls.”

about borders.”

The patient was forced to stop working as an adviser to local authorities in Iraq late last year but has decided to hold off retiring in the hope that he can regain his sight.

“Before I was travelling and my borders was the world. Now my world is 200sq metres,” he said during a second meeting with the doctor at Shuker’s house.

“I feel like someone sentenced to death and got a reprieve. The effort the doctor has already made is half the treatment. He said he con-

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

News / Limmud FSU Conference

Russians in the mood for

By Jenni Frazer @JenniFrazer

Ekaterina Braun, who was born and brought up in Russia, has lived in Germany since 2006. She works as translator and, in her small Jewish community, she was the organiser of the family club. But in the past decade, even in Germany, she has never known an event such as last weekend’s Limmud FSU first Europe conference, a groundbreaking gathering for more than 700 Russian-speaking Jews from more than 20 countries.

“I was missing this Jewish feeling,” she says. “It’s really a good feeling to be here, you can exchange information with people and meet new friends – and people accept you as you are.”

Ekaterina’s recognition of the unique event, which took place over three days in Windsor, was echoed throughout the conference, which took more than 18 months to plan.

Chaim Chesler, the founder of Limmud FSU – which works all over the former Soviet Union – was fizzing with enthusiasm as he proudly viewed the sold-out conference.

“We wanted to attract people who are Russian speakers who have no other Jewish focus,” he said, and in that ambition, he certainly succeeded.

The weekend was a full-on packed schedule familiar to anyone who has attended Limmud UK — but this was

Limmud with a difference. While the English-language sessions featured American heavy-hitters such as Malcolm Hoenlein, chief executive of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, philanthropist Matthew Bronfman and historian professor Deborah Lipstadt, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

The Russian-language sessions went far deeper into the culture of the former Soviet Union, offering big names such as artist Erik Bulatov, author Boris Akunin, chess prodigy Igor Selivanov, and actor and theatre director Veniamin Smekhov. Igor Meerson, billed as “the only Russian comedian successfully performing on the English stage”, presented a standup show.

Political scientist Marianna Levtov, who lives in Switzerland, was a member of the organising committee. “What we have in common with western European Jews is the Holocaust,” she said. “But there it stops. Then we had 70 years of repression of Jewish life – and so we Russian speakers are far behind you in the west in terms of our knowledge of our Jewish identity.”

But the very fact that Russianspeaking Jews are no longer confined to the former Soviet Union has had an extraordinary impact on their appetite for expressing their Jewish identity. As Semyon Dovzhik, the chair of Limmud

Above: Limmud FSU volunteers at the Windsor event. Right: Rabbi Lazar [second left] joins havdallah celebrations

FSU Europe, explained: “Limmud FSU is now a very strong brand in the Russian-speaking diaspora. It has a reputation of being pluralistic, open – and, importantly for Russian Jews, with no one telling them what to do.

“We have attracted the top scholars, rabbis, and the creme de la creme of Russian culture, and we are showing people that there are many routes to Judaism.”

Dovzhik has lived in London for the past eight years and is one of an extraordinary estimated 8,000 –

A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON, FROM BRITAIN TO BIROBIDZHAN ANDREW GILBERT

LIMMUD CONFERENCE CHAIR, 1990-1997

Limmud never considered it could be exported to five places around the world – let alone 75. It is now in Jewish centres such as New York, Tel Aviv, Paris and Moscow, and more curiously Birobidzhan, Beijing, Bulgaria and Bogota.

Initially Limmud rejected having any role in activities outside of UK. However, once it became clear that Limmud was of global interest it refocused – often working with one of two core partners such as Limmud FSU. Limmud FSU, led by Chaim Chesler, Sandra Cahn, Matthew Bronfman and hundreds of local volunteers, has guided and found funding for the most remarkable gatherings of Russian-speaking Jews.

It was not an easy task in the complex and confusing world of Russian Jewry. While the initial agreement covered only within the former Soviet Union, Limmud FSU has since expanded to North America, Israel, Australia and now Europe.

Each Limmud group has its own interpretation of the principles of the movement.

Limmud acts as an open-source community and the challenge is to guide groups through its principles.

No group, including Limmud conference here in the UK, is a perfect example of Limmud’s principles, but all are examples to one another of innovation and creativity – learning from each other.

Some of these groups are extremely purist, others more pragmatic.

Every group has leaders and participants in their 20s, is transformative of its community and contributes to leadership development, communal enrichment, community mobilisation and outreach.

The remarkable story of Limmud, mainly funded by participants, is not only British Jewry greatest export – it is now at the core of Jewish communities worldwide.

For Limmud FSU to create an event of more than 700 Russian speaking Jews in Berkshire is far beyond the expectations and visions of Limmud of 20 years ago.

It adds to the richness, vitality and challenges of the Limmud community.

With 300 Russian-speaking Jews from the UK attending the event, it clearly has a valuable place and role to play here in Britain in the years to come.  Andrew Gilbert was founding chair of Limmud International

10,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the UK. At least 200 worked as volunteers for the Windsor conference and the blue T-shirted multilingual volunteers, switching easily between Russian, Hebrew and English, became the invaluable spine of the event.

The major difference between Limmud FSU and Limmud UK was plain to see — its decision to present only Orthodox Jewish teaching, rather than the multi-denominational strands familiar to anyone attending the annual UK educational confer-

ence. And given, by their own admission, the Jewish knowledge gap between the participants and the lecturers was even greater than might be found at Limmud UK, this might be considered an odd decision.

But as Chesler explained, the heart and soul of Limmud FSU is Rabbi Berl Lazar, the father-of-13 Chabad rabbi who is said to be President Vladimir Putin’s intimate adviser and is styled “chief rabbi of Russia” — a title that not everyone accepts.

“Chabad is the strongest force in

Conference sparks Jewish bonds For decades, the name “Bronfman” has been the leading voice on the world Jewish stage.

But in Windsor, it was Matthew Bronfman, the American Jewish philanthropist and businessman who emerged as one of the leading voices behind Limmud FSU Europe.

Son of the late president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Edgar Bronfman, Matthew Bronfman, 58, says the intention of the Windsor gathering was “to spark people’s Jewish commitment.”

The success of Limmud FSU previously had been astonishing, he said. “We had an event in Eilat, which sold out in 90 minutes, with 2,000 people. It builds on itself – and we think that the same will happen here.”

Part of the thinking behind Limmud FSU Europe was to give people “a Russian environment”, Bronfman said. “Listen in the hallways, people are feeling comfortable.”

He became involved “because you can’t say no to [Limmmud FSU founder Chaim] Chesler.

He came up to me at a WJC event in Cordoba, Spain, and explained the Limmud concept to me. He wanted to hold a first conference in Moscow and he said he needed $250,000 and asked me for $25,000. He said he’d get nine other people to help. I started laughing. I said, I’ve been working around the Soviet Union for 25 years with my dad and no two organisations talk to each other.

“I said: ‘Chaim, here’s the deal. You’ve got my money, you’ve got my name, and when

Bronfman, right, with Malcolm Hoenlein

you fail, forget you ever met me and throw my number away.’ But he said: ‘I’m going to make it happen.’” That was 11 years ago “and now we travel the world together”.

Bronfman – who, as a New Yorker, has known Donald Trump for 20 years – says he is not sure how Trump is going to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “But I don’t think Jews should be more or less afraid than with any other change of administration in the US. Nobody knows, we should be patient, and calm, and we’ll see.”

Should Jews be silent, then? Bronfman smiles. “Jews should be as quiet as they’ve always been.”

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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Limmud FSU Conference / News

Windsor Limmud Russian Jewish life,” said Chesler, “and many people here don’t have any other address.”

Rabbi Lazar, a prominent speaker at the conference, described the participants as “heroes” who had joined the event in spite of coming from “a community which was destroyed by communism. Limmud FSU Europe has brought the Russian Jewish community to a new level of appreciation, of success, of understanding”.

Britain’s Rabbi Bentzi Sudak described Shabbat at Windsor as “a miracle of the renaissance of Soviet Jewry”.

He added: “When we grew up, the idea of open Soviet Jewry was something that would be equated with the Moshiach.

To see Jews coming out of Russia and approaching Judaism not with apathy, but with passion, is nothing short of miraculous, and a lot of it is testament to the stellar work being done by Rabbi Lazar and the [Chabad] shlichim across Russia.”

Many of the Russian-speaking Jews at Limmud FSU Europe are involved in Jewish life in various communities.

Nicole Zairova, who works in financial services, is originally from Uzbekistan and has lived in London for 15 years. She knows the British Jewish community but says the influx of young Russianspeaking Jews into the UK – “and more coming every year” – has highlighted the fact “there is literally nothing for them.

That is why this event is so important” and thinks the appetite has now been whetted for more such gatherings.

Yoni Gluhovsky, head of the fundraising committee for the event and one of the volunteers, has lived in Britain since 2000 and says he and his wife do

have British Jewish friends, although he acknowledged that has been unusual. But as more young Russianspeaking Jews arrive in Britain – attracted, he says, by a conviction that “it is the complete opposite of Russia, with due process and not tainted by corruption”, he believes there is a possibility of formalising the relationship.

“Russians are very cynical by nature,” he says, “and so anything aimed at Russian Jews has to be targeted with a specific purpose and tailored very carefully.”

Gluhovsky is unusual among his friends because he took his A-levels in Manchester and lived with an Orthodox Jewish family while attending Manchester Jewish Grammar School. “My friends call me the rabbi,” he jokes, “but I am much more the exception than the rule.” But even for him, Limmud FSU Europe is “the biggest Jewish thing I have ever done”.

On Sunday, as they left Windsor, the participants ran around, pressing business cards into hands and extracting promises to meet on social media. There was a distinct sense that next year’s event – planned for Berlin – will be even larger.

FORMER ISRAELI ENVOY LIFTS LID ON LIFE AT UN Israel’s former ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, lifted a corner of the curtain at the United Nations in his presentation to Limmud FSU Europe in Windsor.

Prosor [pictured], who represented Israel at the United Nations until 2015, now holds the Abba Eban chair of international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya, the major Israeli strategic and political think tank.

To a crowded lecture room, the diplomat

revealed he had spent time at the United Nations in New York both cajoling and entertaining the most reluctant of ambassadors.

He managed to woo them with stunts such as bringing the popular Israeli singer, Rita, to perform at the General Assembly in Farsi and Hebrew and simply made them laugh — for example, suggesting that tunnels were being dug in Gaza for a future new metro system.

But Prosor insisted that the jokes had a serious purpose, and that he had had below-the-radar feedback from numerous Arab countries at the UN. And he warned: “We need to maintain Israel as a bipartisan issue in the United States.

“It is as important to seek ties with Democrats as it is to keep the ties we have built up with Republicans.”

Hero Ben Helfgott receives lifetime achievement award Holocaust survivor Ben Helfgott has been honoured for his lifelong work in promoting education and remembrance of the darkest moment in human history.

The 87-year-old, who survived Buchenwald and was liberated from Theresienstadt before being brought to the UK aged just 15, was recognised at Limmud FSU’s conference in Windsor with an honour presented

by Greg Schneider of Ben Helfgott, pictured far right, receives his honour the Claims Conference.

For half a century until last year, very humbled to receive this award. What I Helfgott – who also represented his do is something very important to me. We adopted country in weightlifting at must never forget.”

He hailed the work of Limmud FSU in two Olympics – led the ’45 Aid Society, to assist the more than 700 children connecting people to their Judaism and who arrived with him in the UK after the expressed hope that the young delegates war. He has also been a leading figure in from around the world who came up to shake teaching younger generations about the his hand would pass on the memory of the horrors of the Nazi era and holds numerous Shoah. Chaim Chesler, founder of Limmud roles including honorary president of FSU, described the recipient as “a true hero”.

Also honoured at Limmud FSU’s first the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial conference in western Europe were Board of Foundation, which is overseeing the creation Deputies president Jonathan Arkush for his of a national memorial and learning centre contribution to UK Jewry and Rabbi Berel in Westminster. He told Jewish News: “I’m Lazar of Russia.

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

News / Balfour Declaration / Student advocates / Einstein art

Rothschild on cousin’s Balfour role The current and fourth Lord Rothschild has described the Balfour Declaration that helped pave the way for the creation of Israel as a “miracle” and revealed new details about his cousin Dorothy’s crucial role, writes Stephen Oryszczuk.

Speaking ahead of the 67-word document’s centenary, they are his first ever public comments on the show of support from thenforeign secretary Lord Balfour to the second Lord Rothschild, his eccentric uncle Walter, and were made in a rare television interview with former Israeli Ambassador Daniel Taub as part of the Balfour 100 project.

Jacob Rothschild, 80, head of the family’s banking dynasty, said the declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine went through five drafts before finally being penned on 2 November 1917, adding: “It was the greatest event in Jewish life for thousands of years, a miracle. It took 3,000 years to get to this.”

The way it was achieved was extraordinary, he said. “It was the most incredible piece of opportunism. You had an impoverished would-be scientist, Chaim Weizmann, who somehow gets to England, meets a few people, including members of my family, seduces them, he has such charm and conviction, he gets to Balfour, and unbelievably, he persuades Lord Balfour, and Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, and most of the minis-

Lord Rothschild in conversation with Daniel Taub. Inset: Lord Arthur James Balfour

ters, that this idea of a national home for Jews should be allowed to take place. I mean, it’s so, so unlikely.”

The letter “changed the course of history for the Middle East and the Jewish people,” said Taub, who interviewed Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, a country pile bequeathed to the nation by the

family in 1957, where the declaration is kept.

It was written to Walter Rothschild, a naturalist and collector, who was first and foremost interested in ornithology (the study of birds), said Jacob, and a “deeply eccentric man who rode around Tring Park on giant tortoises and whose carriage was pulled by zebras”.

Walter only became interested in Zionism in later life, but Rothschild said he had been “deeply committed to Israel since the 1960s and had been there every year since”.

However, he said his family at the time was divided on the idea of Israel, noting that some members “didn’t think it was a good thing that this national home be established there”.

He also revealed for the first time the role of his cousin, Dorothy de Rothschild, who acted as a critical go-between while still in her teens.

Describing her as “devoted to Israel,” Rothschild said: “What she did, which was crucially important, was to connect Weizmann to the British establishment, and extraordinarily, she told Weizmann how to integrate, how to insert himself into British establishment life, which he learned very quickly.”

Her letters, which are stored at Waddeston, detail her later dealings with Zionist leaders, and her advice on the organisation of the Zionist Conference. Rothschild said she had a profound effect on him, introducing him to Israel and the family’s philanthropic foundation in 1962.

Balfour’s ‘pride’ at declaration The current Lord Balfour has spoken for the first time of his family’s pride at the Declaration that helped to pave the way for the creation of Israel – and insisted it is “oversimplistic” to blame the historic document for the ongoing conflict.

Roddy Balfour’s message came in a written greeting to Limmud FSU’s first conference in western Europe, which brought around 700 participants from 18 countries to Windsor.

He said: “My family are very proud of the importance to Jewish people everywhere of this initiative by the British government of the day.

“The relevance to you all here today is that the imperative for it stemmed from the appalling Russian pogroms at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

“Thus, and this is what we are most proud of, the declaration was first and foremost a humanitarian act trying to repatriate a talented but much-persecuted people to the land of the original Judaic roots.”

It is “over-simplistic” to blame the declaration, as some have, for the “subsequent political turmoil in the region”, he insisted.

“The borders imposed by Sykes-Picot were never going to be fit for purpose and nobody in 1917 could have foreseen the Holocaust or the extraordinary high birth rate among the Palestinians in recent decades,” he said.

But he added “how much more we could celebrate” the centenary of the document if a two-state solution was reached this year “which in effect brought closure on one of the central tenets of the declaration”.

Rare Einstein art auctioned An etching of Albert Einstein, signed by the German-Jewish physicist and artist J J Muller, has gone under the hammer at R R Auction.

The framed portrait from 1934 fetched £2,195.

NEWS IN BRIEF

STUDENTS TRAINED AHEAD OF ‘ISRAEL APARTHEID WEEK’ Student advocates for Israel have finished a StandWithUs training programme preparing them to counter the annual Israel Apartheid Week at the end of March.

A group of 60 students concluded a full-day training session on Sunday, which included a presentation from a director of the Henry Jackson Society, together with involvement from Alpha Epsilon Pi, a US-based Jewish fraternity, and The Jewish Agency.

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9 February 2017 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Future leaders / Family’s plea / Charedi fighters / News

Family’s plea for life-saving donor Continued from page 1 thousands of British Jews to register with the Anthony Nolan Trust in recent years.

The campaign bore fruit and, in May 2013, an apparently successful donor match for Sharon was found, leading to a bone marrow transplant. However, last year, blood tests revealed that the cancer had returned.

This week, Sipy’s family urged community members to support the Saving Sipy campaign, with a registration event in Kenton on Sunday, 19 February at 2pm at the David Ishag Synagogue in Preston Road, and an earlier event in Maida Vale this Sunday.  Details of these events and others across London are available at www. facebook.com/savingsipy

Last chance to nominate!

There just days left to have your say in Jewish News’ and the Jewish Leadership Council’s search for individuals set to define AngloJewry in the decades to come.

We’re asking readers to nominate the individuals who should be included in our forthcoming Who’s Who of current and future high-flyers in two lists – Thirty Under 30 and Eighteen Under 18.

Nominations can come from across the country, making this a truly nationwide initiative, with the top places selected by a range of Jewish leaders in the worlds of politics, art, education and culture.

The process will culminate in the spring when Jewish News will publish the results of the judges’ Previous winners include Ella Rose and Labour MP Luciana Berger deliberations.

We will reveal who has made the final cuts before the end of April, by which time older nominees should still be under 30.

For the Eighteen Under 18 category, nominees should still be 18 or under on 1 September 2017.

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UNDER

Sipy with husband Eli and family members

Thirty UNDER

Nominate at jewishnews.co.uk – Deadline: 14 February

NEWS IN BRIEF

UNIVERSITIES CHIEF AWARE OF NEED TO PROTECT STUDENTS The chief executive of Universities UK has said higher learning institutions were “acutely conscious” of the need to protect Jewish students on campus. Nicola Dandridge was speaking to 130 people at an evening held by the Union of Jewish Students in London on Tuesday night. She said she recognised growing concerns around anti-Semitism and Jewish student welfare on campus, and the impact it has on the wider community.

FIRST CHAREDI PARATROOPER COMPANY SWORN IN Israel’s first Charedi paratrooper company has been sworn in at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, only one month after the new recruits arrived at the induction centre.

Paratroopers’ Commander Colonel Nimrod Aloni said: “I don’t have a slightest doubt the new company will be professional and strong both physically and spiritually.” He told the new soldier: “From now on you will become paratroopers. I wish you great success, you are true pioneers.”

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

News / Communal report / Shoah denial / Twitter hate

Revealed: 7.4 percent of UK Jews have learning disability A groundbreaking report has identified that 7.4 percent of Jews nationally have some form of learning disability, writes Jenni Frazer.

The Learning Disabilities report was commissioned and funded by the Langdon Foundation to mark its 25th anniversary, and undertaken by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).

For the first time, it shows statistics in relation to an arc of learning disabilities, from dyslexia and dyspraxia to Down’s Syndrome.

The report, written by JPR senior research fellow Dr Daniel Staetsky, says there are an estimated 23,000 Jews nationally with some form of learning disabilities, 7.4 percent of the Jewish population as a whole. Almost twice as many males as females have a learning disability, the report says.

Dr Staetsky notes: “Looking at this 7.4 percent as a group, seven percent of them have a “severe” learning disability (e.g. Down’s syndrome); nine percent have a “borderline” learning disability (e.g. unlikely to be in mainstream educa-

Service users of the Langdon Foundation, which issued the report

tion, but some ambiguity about the medical cause); 31 percent have a “moderate” learning disability (i.e. likely to be in mainstream education, but with a statement of special educational needs that the school is obligated to act upon); and 54 percent have a “light” learning disability (e.g. in mainstream education with dyslexia or dyspraxia)”.

Langdon chairman Jonathan Joseph said: “We now have an invaluable backdrop against which to plan, along with other communal

organisations, how Jewish people with learning disabilities can be supported in the decades to come.”

JPR executive director Dr Jonathan Boyd said: “Developing an accurate sense of the scale of any issue is the first step towards devising informed policy. Our report estimates the specific counts by age, geography, religiosity and severity of condition to enable Langdon and other charities working in this area to determine the extent to which their services are required.”

SHOAH DENIAL LEAFLETS AT UNI Students have expressed shock at “deeply concerning” Holocaust denial leaflets that have appeared at British university campuses.

Literature denying and belittling the Nazi genocide has been found at University College London, Cambridge University, Edinburgh University and Glasgow University, according to the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).

One cites the film Denial, which dramatises the trial from 2000 in which Holocaust denier David Irving took historian Deborah Lipstadt to court for libel.

Labour councillor’s ‘racist’ Twitter posts A former Labour parliamentary candidate has been condemned for anti-Semitic postings on Twitter.

Serving Essex councillor John Clarke was criticised after endorsing a post saying “the Rothschild Family” has used money lending and Israel to “take over the world.” Claiming the post by @Tinnelle88 was “an oversimplified view of the world economy but containing a great deal of truth”, he was condemned as promoting anti-Semitic material by others.

UJS said: “The safety of Jewish students remains our highest priority; these incidents are deeply concerning and we continue to work closely with the Community Security Trust and the respective Jewish societies to ensure the welfare and safety of all Jewish students.”

The councillor, who is also chair of governors of Essex primary school White Notley, and the local Parish Council, promoted the tweet, which is headlined “Israel owns the senate, Congress and the Executive” of America… but who owns Israel?”.

The text reads: “The Rothschild Family.. has been creating almost all of the world’s money at interest for a couple of hundred years”. It adds they “have used usury alongside modern Israel as a imperial instrument to take over the world and all of it’s [sic] resources, including you and I.” He said he would block those who “accuse me of Antisemitism merely to close down legitimate criticism of Israel &/or Rothschild family. End of”.

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West Bank building / Israeli tech / Blair at JW3 / News

UK blasts Israel settlement law

A Jewish settler looks at the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim

Britain has criticised Israel for passing a contentious law meant to retroactively legalise thousands of West Bank settlement homes built unlawfully on private Palestinian land.

It is a step expected to trigger international outrage and a flurry of lawsuits against the measure and is the the latest in a series of pro-settler steps taken by Israel’s right-wing government since the election of Donald Trump as US president.

Trump is seen as more sympathetic to Israel’s settlement policies than his critical predecessor, and the Israeli government has approved plans to build thousands of new homes on occupied territory since he took office.

APP IDENTIFIES THIEVES Cork debate An Israeli university has developed a smartphone app that can identify if the user is the owner or not within 14 seconds.

Scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) developed the security after learning how easily passwordprotected devices can be broken into. Their solution works by analysing the way the

user presses the touch screen, including how often they touch it and in what way. “We account for the application being used, since how one presses on the screen is different for each application,” said researcher Liron Ben Kimon.

BGU has also created an app that assesses if someone has drunk too much to drive.

now back on University College Cork has said a conference debating the legal legitimacy of the state of Israel will go ahead at the end of March, but questions remain over whether the university’s campus facilities will be used.

The three-day event, called ‘International Law and the

UK Minister for the Middle East Tobias Ellwood said: “It is of great concern that the bill paves the way for significant growth in settlements deep in the West Bank, threatening the viability of the two-state solution.”

“As a longstanding friend of Israel, I condemn the passing of the Land Regularisation Bill by the Knesset, which damages Israel’s standing with its international partners.

“We reiterate our support for a two-state solution leading to a secure Israel that is safe from terrorism, and a contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian state.”

However, ahead of the vote on the bill, Israeli Cabinet Minister

State of Israel: Legitimacy, Exceptionalism and Responsibility,’ was cancelled last year by Southampton University, and delayed by Cork this year, after London Jewish leaders called it a “propaganda gathering”.

In a statement this week, UCC said conference organisers plan to host two of the three conference days in an off-campus location in Cork on 31 March and 1 April.

Ofir Akunis said: “We are voting on the connection between the Jewish people and its land. This whole land is ours. All of it.”

Critics say the legislation enshrines into law “the theft of Palestinian land”, and it is expected to be challenged in Israel’s Supreme Court. According to the law, Palestinian landowners would be compensated either with money or alternative land, even if they did not agree to give up their property.

The vote passed 60-52 in Israel’s 120-member Knesset following a debate in which opposition politicians shouted from their seats at governing coalition MPs speaking in favour of the vote.

BLAIR ADDRESSES JW3 Tony Blair has addressed a capacity crowd at JW3.

The former prime minister’s talk was the latest in the Alan Howard series and follows an appearance

by David Miliband in November.

Blair (pictured) also spoke at the European Parliament’s Holo-

caust memorial Day commemoration, in association with EJC, last month. “There is no small act of prejudice that does not enlarge space for prejudice to flourish,” he said.

“So all of us must stand against it from the beginning.”

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

News / Mosque solidarity / Right of reply / Baddiel spat

Faith ‘solidarity circle’ Londoners of all faiths formed a “human circle of solidarity” at one of the capital’s biggest mosques, writes Jack Mendel.

Last Friday’s gathering, called ‘London Is One’, was organised in the wake of news of a 36 percent rise in antiSemitism, Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on citizens from seven Muslimmajority countries and a deadly attack at a mosque in Quebec.

Faith leaders marked the event by linking arms around the mosque, in Wightman Road, Haringey, during Friday prayers, holding signs reading ‘London is One’, and ‘Build Bridges Not Walls.’

At the event, Laura Janner-Klausner, senior rabbi to Reform Judaism, was joined by Imam Ajmal Masroor and the Bishop of Edmonton, Rob Wickham.

Rabbi Janner-Klausner said: “We are here because we are showing with our bodies that we have solidarity across the faiths. In a week in which

CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT FAITHS PROTEST TRUMP’S BAN A photographer captured the moment a Jewish boy wearing a kippah and a Muslim girl wearing a hijab hold protest signs at Chicago’s O’Hare international airport in the wake of Trump’s travel ban.

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, Bishop of Edmonton Rob Wickham and Imam Ajmal Masroor

we have seen the Muslim ban, Quebec murders and a 40 percent rise in anti-Semitism, it’s time to say: nothing else will happen here. We will stand in solidarity, forming a circle that will ripple out to other circles.”

Imam Masroor said: “It’s important for all of us to stand together, especially at times like this. “Muslims

are feeling increasingly isolated. This is when our Christian and Jewish friends, and people of faith and no faith, come together, and give a lending hand and shoulder to lean on.

“Hopefully we shall overcome this difficulty, this terrible ban, and this bigotry sweeping the world.”

Bishop Wickham said: “It’s

a clear demonstration, the three of us standing together, that London is united. United to make a stand against any kind of faith community being persecuted in any way.”

The event was sponsored by the London Faiths Forum, Reform Judaism, the Christian Muslim Forum, Islamic Society of Britain and HOPE not hate.

NEWS IN BRIEF

DRUNK TEENAGER SOBS IN COURT AS HE IS SENTENCED FOR ANTI-SEMITIC ABUSE An intoxicated teenager who yelled “Heil Hitler” while pelting Jewish shoppers with gas canisters has been jailed.

Patrick Delaney claimed he bombarded four Orthodox Jews – including a 13-year-old boy – with the anti-Semitic abuse after he had fallen out with his girlfriend. Victim Chaya Stern, who was with her teenage son, was left “very shocked” when Delaney, 19, who was with two other men in a van, yelled “Hitler” at her repeatedly in Tottenham Hale retail park in January 2016.

Delaney sobbed as he was sentenced to six months in prison and told his actions were unacceptable in “any civilised society”.

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A British Muslim leader who threatened legal action against this newspaper after the editor branded him a “non-violent extremist” has pledged to be “more careful with my words to ensure my support for the occupied Palestinian people cannot be misconstrued”.

Ajmal Masroor, who makes regular media appearances and leads prayer services at mosques across London, instructed lawyers in response to a 2015 column by Jewish News editor Richard Ferrer, headlined: ‘Where are the mainstream Muslim voices?’

Ferrer’s piece addressed then prime minister David Cameron’s call to tackle “non-violent extremists who radicalise young people and overpower mainstream Muslim opinion”.

He wrote: “The danger [of radicalisation] does not come from mad mullahs. Rather, consider a popular mainstream imam like Ajmal

Masroor… who preaches that Zionism “stands for racism and Jewish supremacist ideology”… warns of “abusers” in the UK “Jewish lobby” and the “Jewish supremacist ideology” that “holds our government hostage”.

Accepting Jewish News’ open invitation of a right of reply, the imam writes in this week’s issue: “Following Brexit, Trump, the rise of Islamophobia and indeed the continuing rise in anti-Semitism, I felt I should take you up on your offer of a right to reply, as if there were ever a time that we need to understand each other’s perspective it is now.”

He adds: “You selectively quoted a Friday sermon I gave following the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2014. I do hold my hands up and on reflection I can see that some of my words... could be misinterpreted.”  Ajmal Masroor column, page 17

BADDIEL’S TWITTER BUST-UP

Jewish comedian David Baddiel [pictured] and the head of the representative body for British Jewry were embroiled in a heated public argument on social media after the former used the F-word in relation to Israel.

Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies, took exception to one of Baddiel’s comments on Twitter, itself a response to comments by Piers Morgan.

Morgan angered Baddiel by describing the Holocaust as “not just about the Jews” and, after Morgan posted about Donald Trump’s support

for Israel, Baddiel tweeted: “I don’t give a f*** about f***ing Israel. I give a f*** about Holocaust denial.” Arkush then tweeted that Baddiel’s F-word comment on Israel was “racist and beneath contempt,” and asked for an explanation. Baddiel said he would direct message Arkush to explain the context, but Arkush replied: “No context justifies ‘f***ing Israel.’

Damning an entire country is racist. Period.”

The public bust-up garnered dozens of comments with others asking why Baddiel’s lack of concern for Israel meant he was racist.

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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13

Genesis Prize / Interfaith trees / Twitter crackdown / News

Kapoor donates $1m prize Artist Anish Kapoor has spoken out against “abhorrent government policies” towards refugees after being named the recipient of this year’s Genesis Prize. The Turner Prize winner said he wanted to use the award, dubbed the Jewish Nobel by Time magazine, to highlight the situation.

Kapoor, 62, who is based in the UK but was born in Bombay to a Baghdadi-Jewish mother and Indian father, said he is donating his $1million prize (£800,000) to help refugees.

Kapoor said he had to “speak out against indifference for the suffering of others”. He added: “Jewish identity and history have witnessed recurring conditions of indifference, persecution and Holocaust.

Repeatedly, we have had to repossess ourselves and reidentify our communities.

“As inheritors and carriers of Jewish values, it is unseemly, therefore, for us to ignore the

Anish Kapoor, left, and, above, American-Jewish actor Michael Douglas receiving the 2015 prize

plight of people who are persecuted, who have lost everything and had to flee as refugees in mortal danger.”

Kapoor noted there were more than 60 million refugees in the world today – “|whatever the geography of displacement, the refugee crisis is right here on our doorstep,” he said.

He added: “To lose one’s home, one’s land, one’s sense of belonging, is bewildering.

All that is left is one’s body… how long before – for so many – even that is lost?”

Kapoor said: “I believe that in the current political climate the world over, it is more important than ever that we continue to stand against the abhorrent government policies that are an offence against our ethics and the very tenets of what it means to be human.”

Kapoor created the Holo-

caust Memorial for the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London and the 70 candles for Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain in 2015, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

The prize is awarded by the Genesis Prize Foundation, the Office of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Its creators say it is designed “to recognise individuals who have attained excellence and international renown in their fields and whose actions and achievements express a commitment to Jewish values, the Jewish community and the State of Israel”.

Hollywood star Michael Douglas, who is a previous recipient of the award, said: “The current refugee crisis is one that, unfortunately, we all know too well.

“Anish Kapoor’s message that we must not stay silent is powerful and important. His desire to help displaced people resonates with the Jewish people, and all humanity.”

WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF

Your weekly digest of stories from the international press...

BRAZIL

Newly-declassified messages between Brazilian and Israeli officials outline a Hezbollah plan to kidnap an Israeli diplomat in Sao Paulo or the Brazil’s capital Brasilia in the 1980s. Terrorist teams were sent to the country before the plot was foiled. The messages, from 1989, say the envoy was intended to be traded.

FRANCE

A Jewish man who is on trial for stealing $100million in art from a Paris museum says he threw the paintings in a bin. Yonathan Birn, 40, a dealer in luxury watches, denies claims by prosecutors that he sold them in Israel instead. Birn

is one of three people charged with stealing work by Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani.

POLAND

Polish Jews have sent matzah to a TV executive accused of anti-Semitism. Marcin Wolski, director of state-funded TVP2, read a poem on-air about Jews ‘handing out matzah’ at antigovernment protests, suggesting they were behind it. An anti-racism monitoring centre accused Wolski of ‘hate speech’.

GERMANY

A Jewish teenager has been barred from a Leipzig high school for raising his arm in a Hitler salute.

Israeli police evict settlers from the West Bank outpost of Amona (AP Photo/ Oded Balilty)

CHILDREN PLANT INTERFAITH TREES Twitter anti-Semitism crackdown Children from single-faith schools across the capital came together this week to plant trees in St. Albans, to show their shared love of the environment.

Students from Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools met to plant saplings at the Woodland Trust’s Heartwood Forest and discuss how trees act as natural carbon sinks to clean the air and cool urban areas.

Jewish students explained how the event linked to the upcoming tree-planting festival of Tu Bishvat, Christian pupils shared prayers, and Muslim students shared rel-

evant stories of the Prophet Muhammad and extracts from the Qur’an.

Lucy Bushill-Matthews, chief executive of Muslim Action for Development and the Environment (MADE) told the participating 45 pupils that “the Torah is known to Jews as the Tree of Life”.

Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, praised the pioneering interfaith work, saying: “At a time of rising Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance, I commend the work of this interfaith alliance.”

Jewish community representatives this week welcomed news that social media giant Twitter has introduced a host of new measures aimed at stopping abuse and harassment.

The media platform said it had developed new ways to stop banned users from opening new accounts, and introduced a “safe search” feature to remove offensive words, comments and phrases.

Last year the company banned a number of social media commentators from the so-called alt-right, including the editor of the Brietbart

News website, which has been derided for hate speech aimed at minorities.

Twitter bosses, who have sought not to police the billions of tweets sent through the site, say they suspended 360,000 accounts in the year to August “This is a welcome move,” said Danny Stone, director of the PCAA Foundation, which supports the AllParty Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism. “The company has a huge job to tackle abuse on its platform but it is heartening that they are taking such steps.”

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

Editorial comment and letters ISSUE NO.

989

VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS

Bibi times it right As supporters of both Israel and the UK, we were naturally pleased to see Benjamin Netanyahu on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street this week – one of the first foreign premiers to meet our PM in her new workplace.

The two have much to discuss. Bilateral trade, worth £5billion and rising, is booming – not least in technology. London is increasingly the preferred launch-pad for Israeli start-ups listing on international stock exchanges and the states are purchasing each other’s defence equipment and software, deepening both ties and trust. In the labs, scientific collaboration in pioneering fields such as regenerative medicine helps Israelis and Brits break new ground, to the benefit of all. The picture is rosy.

Politically, the two leaders are ‘as one’ on most things, including the need to defend Israel’s right to defend itself, and to neutralise the threat it faces from foes such as Iran.

If May is keen to follow where Donald Trump leads, we may yet see her tighten the screw on the Islamic Republic. Although she would not easily withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, she might yet make it even more difficult for British banks and businesses to deal with Tehran.

On settlements, though, they are at odds. May represents a government committed to condemn settlement building, whereas Netanyahu represents a government committed to expanding them.

This issue was raised, but notably wasn’t the priority for the prime minister that it might have been had the Knesset’s latest contentious settlement vote taken place earlier in the day when Netanyahu gave legal cover to almost 4,000 previously illegal settlers.

This policy is clearly the Israeli leader’s way of telling world leaders that he’s going to carry on regardless, thank you very much. To his fans, its chutzpah, but to many in the Jewish world and the international community it’s a land grab that will only breed resentment against the Jewish state.

And that’s a concern for everyone.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Send us your comments PO Box 34296, London NW5 1YW | letters@thejngroup.com

WHY NO FUSS WHEN ISRAELIS FACE BANS? Last week’s report (Sadiq Khan told Israelis are also hit by nationality bans) stated: “The perceived double standards were highlighted after Khan condemned Donald Trump for his Executive Order banning US entry for people from seven Muslim-majority countries [while ignoring similar] discrimination faced by Israeli citizens in 11 [Muslim-majority] countries.”

This apparent contradiction was explained by Heinrich

Himmler, who was responsible for the Nazi camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads: “Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness.”

On the other hand, in November 1944 he said that Islam is “a practical and sympathetic religion”.

Daniel Bernard, former French ambassador to the UK, showed a similar attitude when he said in

Sketches & kvetches

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“Sorry folks. For safety I’m only admitting American animals.”

an unguarded moment: “All the current troubles in the world are because of that sh***y little country Israel.” No wonder nobody makes a fuss when Israelis are barred from Muslim countries.

Martin D Stern Salford

TWO WAYS WE CAN TACKLE HATRED ON OUR CAMPUSES

WE MUST PLEDGE TO PROACTIVELY PREVENT SCOURGE

Regarding Maajid Nawaz’s column on the rise of antiSemitism on British university campuses [27 January], perhaps there are ways to combat this after all.

One problem seems to be the indifference shown by the governors at LSE and SOAS. They must show more of a backbone in these matters.

The second area which might make a difference is to investigate the funding given to each of of these universities and to ascertain whether it is possible to influence sponsors to reconsider their support because of the biased view and behaviour of the various students.

It is extremely disconcerting that there has been a significant rise in anti-Semitic hate crime in London.

Of course any rise is deplorable, but the 65 percent increase reported by the Community Security Trust last week is terrible.

London is a world renowned culturally inclusive city, but obviously more work needs to be done.

I will continue to encourage the Metropolitan Police and the Mayor of London to work more proactively to prevent these types of hateful crime.

Saul Morris By email

Keith Prince London Assembly Member for Havering and Redbridge

9 February 2017 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Editorial comment and letters

Rabbis are so wrong about Trump’s policy Last week, some 40 leaders from the Reform and Liberal communities, headed by Laura Janner-Klausner, wrote to The Times expressing dismay at Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration to the US from seven Muslim countries for 90 days while immigration processes are being reviewed. Their letter claimed to draw a comparison with the “lessons of history”, a direct reference to the horrors of the Holocaust. Rabbi Klausner later posted an article on Facebook by Qari Asim entitled ‘Trump’s politics of hate stir dark echoes of the Holocaust’.

I’m sorry Rabbi Klausner, but they don’t. Genocide is characterised by the organised murder of an entire ethnic group. The Holocaust, like all genocides, was an evil act of systematic mass-murder.

What these so-called leaders of the Jewish community have said and insinuated serves to undermine and belittle the memory of the Holocaust.

Citizens of European countries were

starved in ghettoes, abused, humiliated, murdered and burned in ovens.

Their memory is not a political point to be scored and their suffering is not to be belittled.

It is disgraceful to equate an EO calling for a temporary immigration restriction from seven countries with the crimes of genocide. I am ashamed by these representatives of our wider community and disgusted by their letter’s sentiments.

As a community we should hold such actions to account. I think a retraction is in order.

Avi Friedmann NW4

WILFUL IGNORANCE OF JEWS WHO LIKE TO ATTACK ISRAEL Seeing in another Jewish newspaper last week a full-page advert for Jews for Justice for Palestinians made me think of German Jews in the 1930s, who thought they would be fine.

When I looked down the list of names in that advert, all people living in this country, it made me ashamed to call them Jews.

Are these people simply blind to the vile anti-Jewish Palestinian media and Mahmoud Abbas warning time and again that no Jews will ever enter in a future Palestinian state? Do they think he does not mean it?

Are they utterly ignorant to the threat of Hamas and what might happen the day after Palestinian independence is declared? Israel is the only thing protecting the world from such horrors.

Sidney Sands N12

PUT THIS ‘ADVICE’ IN THE BIN Alistair Burt [pictured] labels President Trump Mr Unpredictable, while calling John Kerry a “critical” friend of Israel.

The same Mr Burt who invited derision and contempt at a JNF event in London when he excoriated Israel for building “illegal settlements”.

Missing from his words calling for a “nuanced neutrality” on the “Palestinian issue” is any acknowledgement of the multiple offers of statehood by Israel to the Palestinians, who rejected them all.

I was in Jerusalem at the same event as Burt when news of David Friedman’s appointment as the future US ambassador came through, but there was no “tangible mood of disquiet” following that announcement. It was Burt’s wishful thinking.

Burt is not a friend of Israel, “critical” or otherwise. His “friendly” advice should be consigned to the bin.

Roslyn Pine N3

My 16 questions why Why such anger about President Trump’s decision to ban Muslim countries that have carried out acts of terror? He should protect Americans. So why did the Chief Rabbi condemn him?

Why is he not condemning countries that ban all Israeli citizens from entering? There are

16 of them – why is he so quiet about this? Why are Jewish people protecting Muslims instead of their own kith and kin? Why are they joining in these anti-Trump protests?

Leonora Czarny By email

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Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

9 February 2017

Opinion

Peek out from your duvet and embrace the positive JENNI FRAZER

I

t would be understandable — and almost forgivable — if much of the Jewish community were to take to its bed with a large duvet and a hot water bottle, and a note pinned on the cover: “Please don’t disturb me until this madness is over.”

I don’t know about you, but most mornings I approach the news as though it were a rabid dog, about to bite in all the wrong places.

For months on end, the innate wish of the Jewish community to be off the radar, and on no one’s agenda, has not been granted.

It can be Trump’s White House insanity over the Holocaust statement that didn’t mention Jews, or it can be the near-certain knowledge that this week’s May-Netanyahu mini-summit is not going to go that well for Israel, which is bound to get rapped over the knuckles for its settlement announcements.

It can be the seemingly endless hardscrabble arguments with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party over its refusal to deal defini-

tively with anti-Semitism, or the utter crassness of Baroness Tonge (who else?) in blaming the latest Community Security Trust anti-Semitism stats on Jewish unwillingness to condemn the aforementioned settlements.

Apropos of which, I have often thought Lady Tonge lived on another planet, but she confirmed her pseudo-alien status with this latest stunt.

Does she truly imagine that the lowlifes who get their jollies from scrawling swastikas on Jewish communal buildings, or chucking gas canisters at blameless Jewish passers-by, would behave more beautifully if British Jews spoke out against Netanyahu more forcefully?

I mean, I don’t care for many of Bibi’s policies and have frequently aired this opinion in this space, but I haven’t noticed a diminution in lunatic anti-Semitism as a result.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the depressing relentlessness of news about Jews. But not everything needs to be depressing and there are some reasons to be cheerful, even if international events suggest Donald John Trump would benefit from a swift lobotomy.

Top of my cheerful agenda is the sculptor Anish Kapoor, who, citing Jewish consciousness, is donating his $1million Genesis prize to help refugees.

Sir Anish said: “Jewish identity and history have witnessed recurring conditions of indifference, persecution and Holocaust. Repeatedly, we have had to repossess ourselves and reidentify our communities. As inheritors and carriers of Jewish values, it is unseemly, therefore, for us to ignore the plight of people who are persecuted, who have lost everything and had to flee as refugees in mortal danger.”

Hooray for Sir Anish, a literal example of someone putting his money where his mouth is.

Let us also acknowledge, as reported else-

where this week, the fantastic achievement of Chaim Chesler, one-time leader of Israel’s Soviet Jewry campaign, who has built an extraordinary success story in Limmud FSU, the umbrella group for Jews of Russia and the former USSR. As Chesler himself admits: “For years we worked under the assumption that there was no future for Jews in the communist Soviet Union; that they could not live there as free people nor bring up their children with a proud Jewish identity.” And yet Limmud FSU thrives and young Russian-speaking Jews are indeed exploring their identity.

Which leads me to conclude it is time to come out from under the duvet, and embrace the positive.

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THERE ARE REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL, EVEN IF EVENTS DO SUGGEST DONALD JOHN TRUMP WOULD BENEFIT FROM A SWIFT LOBOTOMY

The prince and the frog – my week with Charles NEIL MARTIN, OBE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, JLGB

L

ike those movies that start in the present day then flash back several days earlier, this story begins with me in Buckingham Palace for the second time that week. About to collect my OBE, I bow my head and walk towards Prince Charles, who, as he pins the medal on me, says: “It’s so lovely to see you again, Neil! We’ve had quite the week haven’t we?”

Cue the flashback music and wavy screen transition, as I’m instantly transported back in time to where it all began... not several days earlier to the first of three times I would meet The Prince of Wales that week, but all the way back to my childhood.

My dream as a young child was not the norm, as I wanted be a puppeteer, working with the Muppets and my hero, Kermit the Frog. The world of Jim Henson set my moral and ethical compass and to paraphrase Kermit, my dream, like his was ‘to make millions of people happy’.

Aged 14, I joined my local Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade (JLGB) group in Redbridge.

Then, I was a painfully shy teenager. JLGB helped me to discover who I was, to grow in

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CHARLES BURST OUT LAUGHING AND WITH WHAT FELT LIKE GENUINE ADMIRATION HE SAID: ‘YOU SHOULD BE SO VERY PROUD OF ALL YOU DO’

confidence and develop a sense of responsibility to give back to others.

Years later, I had no intention to become the professional chief executive of JLGB, but when approached in 2004, I could see how JLGB could be remediated to become what was needed in the modern, digital and global 21st century. It felt so right on the week of receiving my OBE that I would be able to showcase the work of the JLGB to the future king of England not just once, but three times.

My first encounter was with the youngsters of Redbridge Band at Buckingham Palace. As I chatted with the prince, I felt a real sense of pride, not just British pride but, more importantly, Jewish pride.

Inspiring young people and ensuring that those of faith backgrounds have access to everyday youth provision has been my mission now for 12 years and could not have been demonstrated better than by encounter number two, when His Royal Highness visited Yavneh College to see youth social action both inside and outside the classroom.

“You’ll be sick of seeing me soon,” joked the prince, as we talked about how JLGB has been running his father’s award, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, since it began.

Transported back to the present, there I was

once again in Buckingham Palace in front of the Prince of Wales. I looked up and said: “Thank you, your Royal Highness, it has been an absolute honour, now three times in one week, sir.”

The prince replied: “I was so pleased to see what amazing work you do and what a remarkable school Yavneh is, with so many doing awards and volunteering opportunities that you provide, it really is truly marvellous.”

“There are seven more Jewish secondary schools,” I proudly responded, “and over 30 JLGB groups across the country.”

“Really?” he asked. “I’d love to see them!”

To which I quipped without hesitation: “Well I’m free tomorrow if you are, sir!!” He burst out laughing and with a twinkle in his eye, with what felt like genuine admiration, he smiled, shook my hand and said: “You should be so very proud of all you do and I’m simply delighted for you.”

My dream week with Prince Charles reminds me of the finale of the original Muppet Movie where, sung by Kermit the Frog, the closing song sums up this entire incredible experience to date: “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We’ve done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you!”

9 February 2017 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

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Opinion

The conflict over there must not divide us here AJMAL MASROOR IMAM AND BROADCASTER

R

eaders of Jewish News may be aware from previous editions that I am an imam involved in several campaigns and organisations in Britain. In 2015, the editor of this newspaper labelled me a “nonviolent extremist” when he selectively quoted a Friday sermon I gave during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2014.

In the wake of Brexit, Donald Trump, the rise of Islamophobia and, indeed, the continuing rise in anti-Semitism, I am taking up the Jewish News’ invitation of a right of reply, as if there were ever a time when we need to understand each other’s perspective it is now.

I write in my own capacity and not as a representative of any group or mosque.

I have always been fiercely pro-Palestinian and that will never change. I have consistently condemned the murder of civilians anywhere in the world and that

also will never change.

To take just two examples, when Yusuf al-Qaradawi was banned from entry to the UK for supporting suicide bombings in Israel, I spoke out very publicly through the media to state unequivocally that such attacks are not permissible in Islam – there is no justification for killing civilians of any “side”. I received a lot of abuse for this stance from certain quarters.

Following the tragic murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, I condemned the perpetrators in such strong terms I received advice from the police that I was subject to serious threats from Al-Shabaab and Daesh, meaning my family had to leave the country for two years.

My statements are not the words of a “non-violent extremist”.

I did clearly state in that 2014 sermon that any actions or protest in relation to Palestine must be peaceful and, in my concluding words, I stated that in the Holy Land, we must “…establish a state for all people whether they are Jewish,

Christian, Muslim, people of faith or no faith…all people with same rights, equal right to dignity and honour and protection”.

These are the words of someone who believes in a single-state solution in the Holy Land, with equality and justice for all.

I do hold my hands up and, on reflection, I can see that some of my words that day could be misinterpreted.

I will do my best to ensure that, even in the midst of conflict, I am very careful with my words to ensure that my unflinching support for the rights of the occupied Palestinian people cannot be misconstrued

by the congregation, online listeners or the media.

We may disagree vehemently about Palestine, but we must all work to ensure that we do not “import” the conflict into our mutual home in Britain.

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are stains on Britain and we must collectively struggle to ensure that our country does not descend further into intolerance.

Ultimately, we are all human beings, created by God, and we are also all British.

Perhaps that is how we must start to see one another, before we see our respective politics.

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AFTER I CONDEMNED THE MURDERERS OF LEE RIGBY, POLICE WARNED ME I WAS BEING THREATENED BY AL-SHABAAB AND DAESH

Saturday 18th February The annual event for Jewish young professionals in London: JFriends are celebrating their 2nd anniversary.

Time: Sat 18th of Feb 7:30pm – 1am

JFriends is one of the largest, most diverse and friendly platforms for young professionals in London and is celebrating its second anniversary with an amazing party. The hotly anticipated annual event attracts young Jewish professionals from all across the world.

Dress Code: Black tie

On the red carpet there will be a black tie reception, cocktails, and open bar throughout the night, with a DJ mixing and playing great music to dance to until the early hours.

Location: North London (exact location will be given upon booking for security reasons) Regular: £20. On the door: £25 Booking: www.jfriends.co.uk/jfriends-parties Open to all Jews from all backgrounds, aged 20-45.

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www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 9 February 2017

Opinion

Israelis have a responsibility to stand up for British Jews YORAI LAHAV HERTZANO CHAIR, YOUNG YESH ATID

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delegation from Young Yesh Atid travelled to London last week for a campus advocacy tour. It was headed by MK Elazar Stern, a celebrated IDF major general and one of the most unique voices of Jewish Orthodoxy in the Knesset. The event was a direct continuation of the efforts made by Yesh Atid and its leader, Yair Lapid, to fight the lies of those who seek to delegitimise Israel.

It was a result of cooperation with the Pinsker Centre, a group of graduates who seek to educate intelligently about Zionism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. During our visit, we had fascinating meetings with Minister Andrew Percy, MP Ian Austin, Luke Akehurst of We Believe In Israel and Michael McCann of the Israel Britain Alliance – all great friends and supporters of Israel.

But we really came to make the case for Israel on campuses. We visited Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, LSE and SOAS and spoke to hundreds of students. We come from the leading opposition

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WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY NOT TO LEAVE THE JEWISH COMMUNITY TO FACE THE CHALLENGES ALONE

party in Israel and at home we are the leading alternative to Likud, with Yair Lapid the main candidate to replace Benjamin Netanyahu. But when defending Israel, we are united. So, we left our differences at home. We might have disagreements with the prime minister and his party, but we are all patriots who love our country and believe in the fundamental justice of our cause.

Aside from two incidents of anti-Semitism, we were welcomed by halls packed with students who were eager to listen and ask questions.

We spoke about the values shared by Israelis and Brits, especially young people.

As former soldiers and officers (and serving reservists), we discussed the centrality of IDF’s ethical code of conduct to our time in the military. We spoke about our commitment to an agreement that would ensure Israel’s security and its identity as a Jewish and democratic state.

The atmosphere was unpleasant and, at times, even hostile. We heard from Jewish students who swapped their kippah for a baseball cap and hide their Star of David necklaces while walking through campus. The anti-Israel movements use the language of human rights and justice, but they are driven not by opposition to Israeli policy but to the core idea of Israel, to the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination. They are driven by anti-Semitism.

We found a strong, diverse and proud Jewish community ready and willing to fight back. A community that loves Israel and shares our commitment to ensuring its future as a Jewish and democratic country. We heard of the difficulties they face and their determination to stand strong. Many students stopped at our stand and

said our presence on campus was a refreshing change from the stream of anti-Israel activists promoting distorted and one-sided agendas.

We have a responsibility not to leave the Jewish community to face the challenges alone. We must become engaged with the life of your community and provide support to those making Israel’s case. We need to combine our knowledge and first-hand experience of Israel with the knowledge and experience of local proIsrael communities. We need to combine the resources Israel can provide with local coordination to ensure those resources are put to the best use. We need to build a coherent, unified strategy against those who defame Israel and tailor it to each specific arena through the people on the ground. We need more initiatives that bring young Israelis to your campuses and more initiatives that bring young people to Israel.

Standing wrapped in the blue and white flag of Israel alongside Jewish students was a moment of great personal and national pride for our delegation. We know Israel has friends in the UK Jewish community and you have friends here in Israel. We’re stronger when we stand together.

Chief’s views on Trump are misguided nonsense RABBI YY RUBINSTEIN

BROADCASTER, WRITER & LECTURER

J

ewish News reported last week that Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis condemned Donald Trump’s clampdown on entry to America from seven Muslim-majority countries as “totally unacceptable”.

To huge applause at a packed Guildhall audience of the World Jewish Relief annual dinner, he said: “President Trump has signed an executive order that seeks to discriminate based totally on religion or nationality. We as Jews, perhaps more than any others, know what’s it’s like to be the victims of discrimination.”

Now, I well know that British Jews like the Office of the Chief Rabbi and are usually very fond of the person occupying it.

That means that any voice that is critical of him is likely to induce anger and rejection, even before the argument is heard or read.

For the past six years I have lived in the US. I have had a deluge of anger directed at me from American Jews over Rabbi Mirvis’ attack on their president. I try to explain what the Office of the British Chief Rabbi is, what it is meant to do

and the fact he rarely sends what he intends to say for my approval before he says it. But Americans don’t get our humour or sarcasm well.

The first part of what he said, “The executive order seeks to discriminate based totally on religion or nationality” is, of course, totally misinformed nonsense. The executive order discriminates against seven Muslim-majority lands. That is not the reason they are selected.

They were identified by former US President Barack Obama because they have the cancer of Islamic terrorism (al-Qaeda, ISIS etc.) thoroughly metastasised throughout them. If you read the document, Trump has ordered a temporary travel ban to freeze potential threats and assess the level of threat these states pose.

Unlike his predecessor, who refused to link the words “Islamic” and “terrorist” in the same sentence or indeed any sentence, Trump has no difficulty. It is one of the reasons he got elected.

But the thing in Rabbi Mirvis’ speech I find anathema is these words: “We as Jews, perhaps more than any others, know what’s it’s like to be the victims of discrimination.”

There are Jews at demos waving banners that proclaim “Jews Reject Trump”. These people, like the Chief Rabbi, draw parallels between Trump’s closing the door to Syrian

refugees and the UK and America doing the same to Jewish refugees before 1939. But this parallel is as false as it is profoundly offensive.

The British justification for refusing Jews fleeing Hitler, was the laughable and derisible claim that the Nazis could have insinuated spies among them, claiming to be Jews. This was baseless and the real motive was British antiSemitism. As George Orwell wrote in his superb essay, Anti-Semitism in Britain, published in 1945, there was almost as much Jew-hatred in the UK before the war as there was in Germany.

The fact ISIS and other Islamist terrorist groups have placed their agents among Syrian and other refugees from Islamic countries, who have gone on to commit atrocities in the west is well-documented. Then there is the equally disturbing cases or rape and sexual assault committed in Germany by refugees as reported

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by the Gatestone Institute think tank.

The Chief Rabbi’s parallel either endorses the old lie given for the UK slamming the door in the faces of Jews trying to escape the Final Solution or the new one that Angela Merkel’s refugees posed no threat and have done very little wrong.

But there is no parallel. No Jews who were trying to get into Britain were raping or sexually assaulting British women and girls and neither were they planning violent terrorism against the British state and people.

As Chief Rabbi of the UK and Commonwealth, how does the temporary halting of travellers to the US from states with a chronic terrorist problem directly affect you?

If you cannot convincingly answer that, your regrettable comparisons between Jews fleeing the Holocaust and the Syrian refugee crisis is totally unacceptable.

BRITISH JEWS TEND TO BE VERY FOND OF THEIR CHIEF RABBI, SO ANY VOICE THAT’S CRITICAL OF HIM IS LIKELY TO INDUCE ANGER

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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Opinion

Why Jewish youngsters should know the F-word STEPHEN ORYSZCZUK FOREIGN EDITOR, JEWISH NEWS

J

ust as George Orwell asked in 1944, so must we now ask: What is fascism? As a British 30-something, I’ve never known it. I’ve read about it. I know anti-Semitism is often but not always a distinguishing mark. I know it thrives on economic malaise. I know it starts with nationalism. I know it feeds off the beating drums of war. And I know that most fascist leaders are elected. But I don’t know what it feels like to live under it. It’s a virus my body has never encountered, never had to fight off.

What would a fascist government look like today? Would it build walls and close its borders to ‘others’? Would it create an internal security apparatus so tight that every element of our lives fell under surveillance? Would it seek to stop dissent by singling out dissenters, targeting independent media, and pushing ‘alternative facts’?

Would it force its version of ‘legal’ on judiciaries

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HOW MANY JEWISH YOUNGSTERS WOULD KNOW FASCISM IF THEY SAW IT? EVEN IF THEY KNEW IT, WOULD THEY FIGHT IT?

by firing those who thought it otherwise? Would it, in short, seek to make the power of the executive absolute? And would it then use its military to further its own ends, at home and abroad, a rallying cry to bring the armchair legions in line?

All the while, would it invoke the God of love, light and national security in all that it does?

I ask because fascism is essentially revolutionary in nature, and the western world – if nothing else – is in the midst of a revolt. I ask, The UK Friends of the

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too, because patriotism and national loyalty are unrivalled motivators of hate.

Here, the vote out of Europe. In the States, Trump’s walls and entry bans. In Israel, the walled-in mentality fed from the top. In Germany, a million immigrants now blamed for all its ills. In France, Le Pen’s anti-Islam argument, which has already seen her win, regardless of whether she ends up in the Élysée Palace.

Islamist terrorists, who hate above all else the west’s traditions of coexistence and tolerance, are having a field day.

Finally, and most importantly, I ask because every Holocaust Memorial Day we say ‘never again, never forget’. But we cannot forget something we have never known, never had to fight off. How many Jewish youngsters would know fascism if they saw it? Even if they knew it, would they fight it? Or would they acquiesce, even if their government was as above described? If they’d stand back, head down, what would be their final straw? Would they, say, put up with a ban on public demonstrations against the government, issued in the interests of ‘public

order’? Would they go along with the online censure of ‘wrong’ opinion, instigated for the same reasons? Would all be well, so long as Jews and Israel weren’t taking a bashing?

Assuming no fascist government were ever to call itself such, at what point would these Jewish youngsters call it out? Or would they not, if they were doing OK out of it? Would they, in fact, welcome such a government, if its enemies were also their enemies? It would not be unheard of.

Britain’s fascist leader Oswald Mosley started his movement with prominent Jewish followers.

I plan to ask these Jewish youngsters what they think fascism looks like today, and what they’d do about it, if the schools will allow me, and I will feedback their answers. Because I can think of few more important things for the community to understand right now.

In the meantime, those who want to refamiliarise themselves with the F-word need look no further than the Jewish experience itself.

But hurry. There is a reason why Hannah Arendt’s 1951 book ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’ has been flying off the shelves of late.

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

Scene & Be Seen / Community / In association with www.norwood.org.uk

1 ROYAL CROWN

Ten-year-old Avigail Dryer proudly poses with the ‘Royal’ blue balloon crown, which was fashioned by the Prince of Wales when he attended GIFT’s ‘hands-on activity’ session at Yavneh School last week. The charity, which educates young people in social action and involves them in activities that make a difference for the less fortunate, welcomed the prince. Avigail and her siblings received the crown, then made Charles a thank you card.

She later passed the crown to other children.

And be seen!

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

2 JFRIENDS PARTY JFriends, one of the largest platforms for young professionals in London, will celebrate its second anniversary next weekend with a glamourous black tie party in the capital. The reception, cocktails and open bar will be held in a north London venue on 18 February between 7.30pm to 1am. The event is open to all Jews aged 20 to 45 and tickets cost £20 or £25 on the door. To book, visit jfriends.co.uk/jfriends -parties

3 JOYFUL EVENING Fifty ladies helped raise more than £1,000 for Wizo at a Shemesh Aviv Wizo event entitled An Evening with Joy Salem.

A holistic therapist, she gave a demonstration of some of her techniques to the audience.

4 QUIZZICAL FUNDS

More than 200 friends and supporters attended a supper quiz to raise funds and awareness for The Paperweight Trust.

The charity, based in Hendon, provides a professional service to help those who find themselves alone and in need of practical guidance on all manner of paperwork, bureaucracy and domestic administration.

1

2

Make a difference in our community

4Find out how a few hours of your time can give a brighter future to those we support.

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4

For more information please contact: info@norwood.org.uk • 020 8809 8809

Patron Her Majesty The Queen • Registered Charity No. 1059050

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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Email your story to: community@thejngroup.com / Scene & Be Seen

Photo: John Rifkin

Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen and art historian Anne Webber were the recipients of awards at the 26th Jewish Care Women of Distinction Lunch. The event raised £55,000 and was organised by the committee led by co-chairs Philippa Mintz and Danielle Lipton.

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More than 200 people helped raise £17,500 at Norwood’s 12th annual supper quiz. Alan Dedicoat, better known as the National Lottery’s ‘voice of the balls’ hosted the entertainment, with Enterprise Supper Quiz Committee Co-Chairs, Jeremy Callman and Ron Fogelman.

TOASTS MAKING 2BFHU TO THE BIG 9-0!

5DAVID'S SURE TO MOVE

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British Friends of the Hebrew University celebrated its 90th anniversary with 200 guests at Claridge's.

Speakers included Hebrew University president professor Menahem BenSasson and Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev, who emphasised the intertwined history of the Hebrew University and the state of Israel and the impact of the university in almost every aspect of the state since before independence until the present day.

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I'M DELIGHTED WITH THE SUCCESS OF THE EVENT AND A 22 PERCENT INCREASE IN SUPPORT FROM THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

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David Baum is taking part in the 365 Challenge as he seeks to raise awareness of posttraumatic stress disorder. The challenge involves taking part in some form of exercise, even if it is just for one minute a day. To find out more, follow David @bogfather or visit www.365challenge.org.uk

6 KISHARON'S £45K BREKKIE

Special needs charity Kisharon raised a record £45,000 at its annual business breakfast. Vernon Hill, the billionaire chairman and founder of Metro Bank was the guest speaker, addressing a 200-strong crowd at the Park Lane Hotel. Guests saw a film of Kisharon’s work with children and adults with learning disabilities.

Fundraising director Richard Franklin said: “I’m delighted with the success of this event and a 22 percent increase [in profits on last year’s breakfast] in support from the business community – it's something that even Metro Bank would be proud of!”

HOPES TO 3ARYEH MINIMISE STRESS

Photo: John Rifkin

Photo: Blake Ezra Photography

CARE SUPPER QUIZ 1 JEWISH HONOURS WOMEN 4 RAISES £17K

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A new book by Aryeh Sampson hopes to offer “an alternative solution” to the stresses of everyday life. Go To Yourself, which was launched last week at Kinloss Synagogue, brings together teachings from Jewish texts and modern psychotherapy. Sampson is a practicing counsellor and psychotherapist in north London.

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Your simcha announcements Nathan Dalton celebrated his barmitzvah at South West Essex & Settlement Reform Synagogue.

Deborah Moscisker & Dan Artman were married at Finchley Synagogue.

Photo by Jocelyn Levy

Photo by Paul Lang Photography

Oliver Lenga celebrated his barmitzvah at Barnet United Synagogue.

Photo by Paul Lang Photography

Photo by Karen Zetter

Rachel Masters celebrated her batmitzvah at Theydon Bois Village Hall.

Have you had a recent simcha?

Send your picture to picturedesk@thejngroup.com

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

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Community / Scene & Be Seen

BICOM offers food for thought

Photos by John Rifkin

Hundreds of guests including Middle East minister Tobias Ellwood descended on central London for BICOM’s annual dinner, which heard a message of support from Israel’s president. Reuven Rivlin hailed the UK-Israel relationship and the think tank’s contribution to it in a video message to diners at the Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge. Guests also heard from Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev and Brigadier General Mike Herzog, who offered an assessment of regional challenges and urged Israeli leaders to “lead and not be led” when it comes to the conflict with the Palestinians. BICOM’s James Sorene said: “We are privileged to play a leading role in the conversation about Israel in Britain – in the media, academia and wider society.”

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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Life

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Lifestyle

IN THIS SECTION: Travel 23 / Health 24 / Competition 31

Headlines you don’t read Francine Wolfisz chats to director Martin Himel about his new film, Eyeless in Gaza, which reveals how journalists are forced to tow the line

S

easoned journalist Matti Friedman had noticed all was not as it should be at the Associated Press (AP) bureau in Gaza.

Hamas fighters had burst into the office and threatened staff over photographs they had published. Then they witnessed a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering the lives of staff and nearby residents – and yet AP did not report it.

Likewise, the news coverage failed to show how cameramen waiting outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties, but at the behest of officials, would turn off the cameras when wounded and dead fighters turned up – an attempt to preserve the illusion that only Palestinian civilians were being targeted by Israel.

Of course the truth was far from that, but while Hamas took pains to control how journalists portrayed conflicts in the region, the world’s media instead turned its attention on Israel.

It was a situation that Martin Himel (pictured above), a Middle East correspondent for 25 years, had also observed before coming to the troubling conclusion that Israel was always portrayed as the aggressor and the Palestinians as victims – or, as Friedman says: “A morality play starring a familiar villain.”

Curious to discover how this

came to be the media’s viewpoint, Himel has interviewed combatants, civilians and politicians from both sides of the conflict for his provocative documentary, Eyeless In Gaza, which premieres in London later this month.

Using the 2014 Gaza War as a starting point, the film features clips taken from media coverage at the time, and includes such sensationalist headlines as: “Israel is targeting… hospitals”. As the documentary sets out to show, neither of these statements were accurate.

Himel, who divides his time between homes in Tel Aviv and New York, believes there has been “significant distortion” in such reports on Israel, but the real question is why.

“It’s something I call ‘group think’,” explains Himel. “Group think isn’t a malicious attempt to lie or distort the truth, but there is a strong herd instinct of what is allowable and what is not.

“When you look at reporting on the Middle East in general, the same model is used. The Syrian conflict was described as a fight for human rights and the Arab Spring was hailed as a revolt against brutal dictators.

“What often happens is the group think will significantly distort what’s really going on when you are reporting something – and if you violate group think you can be in a lot of trouble.”

Censored: Eyeless in Gaza claims Hamas tries to control how the Israel-Palestine conflict is portrayed

As a case in point, the film highlights the naval blockade and subsequent raid by Israeli forces on a Palestinian freighter named Karine A in 2007. The vessel was found to be carrying 50 tons of weapons, including short-range Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles and explosives.

But as the documentary notes: “Very little of the weapons found… made it to the media. Instead, the news focused on flotillas trying to break the naval blockade.”

Why, then, did journalists focus more on the flotillas than the success of the Karine A operation?

Himel explains: “The group think is that an unjustified blockade is causing hardship for the people of Gaza. They can’t get basic food, they can’t move around, they can’t get to family in other places. The media will be attracted to things that strengthen that assumption.

“So a flotilla coming in trying to save the besieged people of Gaza, like those besieged in Leningrad in 1942, is appropriate, whereas if you

are talking about a naval blockade that’s stopping arms getting in, you are instantly making the picture more complex – and that doesn’t sit well with editors.”

The consequences for journalists who veered away from the accepted narrative can be extreme.

When RTV reporter Harry Fear tweeted that Gaza rockets had fired into Israel, he was immediately expelled from the area by Hamas officials, while Palestinian journalist Ayman al-Aloul was imprisoned and tortured for being critical about the governing authority in Gaza.

“You pay the price,” says Himel.

There is, however, also another element, which Himel believes underscores the very reasons why the Israel-Gaza conflict is reported in the way it is.

“The real story is there’s a really serious war of beliefs going on, that’s the basis for all of it.

“But editors don’t want to say it, because that means it’s a religious war and you begin to realise how sensitive and complex the

whole issue is.”

That decision not to report the conflict as one based on religion has also effectively blocked out mention of Hamas and its anti-Semitic ethos.

“Look at the amount of effort going in to show Donald Trump as an Islamophobic racist – not even a thousandth of that effort is going to show these Islamic groups, particularly Hamas, are anti-Semitic. Now why isn’t that covered? After all, if we labelled Hamas overtly as a racist, fanatic, anti-Semitic militia, the coverage would be very different.”

While not offering a fix to the problem, Himel does suggest that people can’t just rely on one news source to find the truth of a story.

“The idea of objectivity, that was very sacrosanct in journalism 50 years ago, is basically gone. Everything is from a point of view today, so you can’t just rely on one source – even if it is an established source.”  Eyeless In Gaza shows at Central Picturehouse on Monday, 27 February, 6.30pm

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

Lifestyle / Exclusive book extracts

Bending the truth?

Declassified CIA files have renewed interest in the secret life of ‘psychic spy’ Uri Geller, who claims a UFO gave him special powers as a child

Uri Geller leads a spoon-bending masterclass at Westfield shopping centre in London

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ome merely dismiss him as entertainment, one of the most convincing stage magicians in history, courted by presidents and rock stars. But for others who have known Uri Geller, who recently turned 70, truth is far stranger than fiction.

Last month, the CIA published more than 12 million pages of declassified documents online, renewing interest in Geller and his paranormal powers, as well as detailing how he served as a psychic spy for the military during the Cold War and the more recent fight against terrorism.

In this compelling extract from The Secret Life of Uri Geller, author Jonathan Margolis investigates the truth behind his extraordinary powers and his revelation they began aged three, following a UFO encounter in Tel Aviv…

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The Uri Geller story is complex and, at times, baffling. The film-maker Ken Russell, who once made a movie, Mindbender, starring Terence Stamp and based on Uri’s life, summed up the enigma of his subject during shooting. ‘Was Geller genuine?’ he was asked? ‘Only God knows’, Russell replied. ‘And he’s not telling.’

There is no balanced, moderate way to put it.

Really, there isn’t. But Uri Geller is pretty much convinced that late in 1949 or possibly early in 1950, he had a contact experience with some extraordinary force field in the middle of the day in a crowded quarter of Tel Aviv. Whether this was something supernatural, or a scientific

phenomenon like ball lightning, or even something extraterrestrial, he has no idea.

The events, which over 60 years later he continues to believe, were the start of everything, occurred in the shady garden of an old Arabic house opposite the Gellers’ flat in Tel Aviv. The family, who had emigrated to the new state of Israel from Hungary, occupied a modest apartment three flights of cool stone stairs up at 13 Betzalel Yaffe, on the corner of the busy Yehuda Halevi Boulevard. Uri’s encounter was in a shady, walled garden that then occupied a spot now taken up by a modern, eight-storey branch of the Hapoalim Bank.

Then, as now, this was a noisy, vibrant downtown area, packed with characteristic Tel Aviv, four-or-five floor apartment blocks, shops, offices and schools. There were scooters and motorcycles darting among the cars, horns hooting, people shouting and arguing in the streets, dogs barking, children laughing, old ladies scuttling, and delicious lunchtime cooking smells coming from every apartment.

‘The garden had a rough iron fence, all rusty, and inside, it was wild, with bushes and tress and flowers and grass,’ he recalls. ‘It looked like no one had taken care of it for 10 years.

I suddenly heard kittens crying. My first reaction was to find them. I was very small, so going into the tall grass was like a jungle.

‘The next thing I remember,’ he continues, ‘I felt something above me and I looked up and saw a ball of light. It wasn’t the sun; it was something more massive, something that you could touch.

It was really weird, like a sphere, but nearer to me, above me. It was just hanging there,

shining and strobing, then gently and silently drifted down towards the ground. Then after some moments – I don’t remember how long – something struck me. It was like a beam or a ray of light; it really hit my forehead and knocked me back into the grass. It was exactly like that scene in the John Travolta film, Phenomenon.

‘I don’t know how long I lay there. I wasn’t scared. I was just eager to run home and tell my mother. Maybe I’d stayed there for another minute, not thinking, not wondering, not understanding. At that age, about four or five, anything and everything is possible for a child. To me, it didn’t look like some kind of phenomenon or a paranormal occurrence or a UFO. It just happened. But because it was a bit threatening, because it knocked me down, I tried to tell this to my mother, and obviously she thought I was making it up. And that was the end of that. It never happened again.’

It would have remained an intensely private memory – one for people either to believe or scoff at – had it not been for a possibly intriguing new piece of evidence about Uri’s past that emerged in 2007. It was surprising both to those who study Uri’s life and power and to the man himself. A retired Israeli reserve air force captain, Ya’akov Avrahami, after seeing a BBC Reputations documentary on Uri, came forward to say he believed that at around this time, he had witnessed what had happened to Uri in the garden.

‘I was walking to the bus stop, down the road next to the Rothschild cinema,’ Mr Avrahami said, ‘when I suddenly saw a powerful light, a sphere-shaped light, a metre in diameter, bright and dazzling. At the same moment, I noticed that from a building on the left, a small child coming out dressed in a white shirt. The light halted again and, as if it had senses, for some

Left: Uri aged 11 with his father, Tibor. Right: Uri being tested at INSERM lab in France

reason, it suddenly turned around and approached the child.

The light embraced him.’

Uri assumed it was a hoax, but he agreed to meet Avrahami when he was next in Israel. ‘He was an older gentleman, married with children and he told the story again. And it was the way he described me as a little boy with the white shirt and black trousers, which is what my mother always dressed me in, that convinced me. He remembers that I ran home and this sphere of light chased me, and when I got to the apartment building entrance, and went in the door, the sphere of light exploded on the building and left a black residue.

He was so shocked that he couldn’t believe his eyes. And when I told the story on the TV, he realised after all these years that it was me.

‘So after 55 or more years of me repeating this story, because I know it happened, but being told all these years that it was my imagination, or I was hallucinating, for the first time in my life, someone was validating what I’ve always known.

It was a very emotional thing for me, this man coming forward. Doubts have often slipped into my mind about the incident, whether maybe I dreamed it. But it was always very, very real to me and now with this man’s testimony, I know it definitely did happen.

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 The Secret Life of Uri Geller: CIA

Masterspy? is published by Watkins Publishing Limited, priced £8.99

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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25

Travel / Lifestyle

I love you so Dutch!

Caron Kemp jets off to Amsterdam and enjoys a romantic anniversary break ahead of Valentine’s Day

A

fter 10 years into a marriage with three children in tow, quite frankly any escape for a few days is a welcomed luxury. So to mark this special anniversary minus the offspring and wanting to visit somewhere new, we headed to Amsterdam to discover its romantic side.

We opted for the relative ease of flying from Southend Airport. Lacking the commotion of Heathrow or Gatwick, we made it from check-in to the gate in a stress-free 30 minutes.

Our Easyjet flight left for Schiphol before breakfast, and we had a return lined up for the end of the weekend by dinnertime, so it felt no more hassle than a commute up the M1.

The exceedingly short flight time and easyto-follow train system meant we were in central Amsterdam before midday and had ample time to begin our celebrations at the delightfully unique De Kas restaurant.

Situated in the former City Greenery, the dedicated chefs grow all their own herbs and vegetables on site and each day create one fixed menu based on its harvest. While meat and fish feature, it is the vegetables that take centre stage and so we indulged in a four-course feast, paired with suitable wines, that despite

The airy De Kas restaurant

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WE WANDERED THE STREETS, MEANDERING ROUND THE WEB OF CANALS, ENCHANTED

BY THE CITY’S CHARM AND CHARACTER the grand greenhouse setting was every bit the intimate, personal and decadent introduction to Amsterdam we had hoped for.

Suitably stuffed and ready to explore, we opted for the long, picturesque walk back to the city centre, via the beautiful Jewish Museum.

Housed in four former Ashkenazi synagogues dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, it documents the 400-year history of the Jewish people in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, covering themes such as Jewish identity, religion and culture as well as Jewish history. Well worth a visit, it also boasts a kosher café serving inexpensive tasty snacks and lunches.

Our hotel was the palatial, multi-award winning Sofitel Legend The Grand; a sprawling yet demure building offering 177 guest rooms and suites, as well as a Michelin-starred restaurant, luxury spa and banqueting rooms, including the former Council Chamber where Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands married in 1966.

We were shown to our well-appointed suite by the dedicated butler and, with views of the canals at our feet and the apartment oozing Dutch stylistic charm with hints of French elegance, we felt the stresses of life immediately wash away. Observant without being obtrusive, the staff made us feel extremely welcome and the steady stream of thoughtful touches, including Hermes toiletries and local foods to

sample, were much appreciated. Tempting as it was to don a fluffy robe, sink into the vast bed and tuck into the complimentary home-made chocolates complete with edible ‘happy anniversary’ message, there was a city to explore.

With Dam Square a stone’s throw from the hotel, we wandered the streets, meandering round the web of canals, enchanted by Amsterdam’s charm and character. It mattered not that temperatures had plummeted; indeed, the crisp air and foggy haze only added to its beauty.

Convinced that every day should begin with a Bridges breakfast, the next morning we sipped champagne and feasted to our hearts’ content on Dutch delicacies in the hotel’s flagship restaurant, before heading out to hit the infamous Nine Streets. One of the city’s most delightful shopping areas, the streets straddle the 17th century canals from the Singel to the Prinsengracht and are peppered with beautiful and quirky boutique offerings alongside high street chains.

We left to experience Amsterdam in the most traditional and arguably finest way possible. On board the Tourist, the stunning and quintessentially Dutch canal boat owned and managed

by The Pulitzer hotel, we enjoyed a 90-minute tour of the city by water. Travelling down the Reguliersgracht canal as the sun set and seeing the famous seven bridges all illuminated was truly impressive.

After warming up inside the confines of the Pulitzer, we spent our anniversary night dining at its renowned Dutch-inspired eatery, Jansz.

A concise but inviting à la carte menu offered

The elegant Sofitel Legend The Grand

something for everyone and my miso-glazed cod with dashi broth was quite possibly my favourite fish meal ever. It’s also safe to say that the chocolate cake with salted caramel sauce and almond crumble surpassed expectations.

Bustling yet attentive, it was the perfect venue in which to toast our marital milestone.

Whatever your reason for visiting this city, you cannot leave before taking in the Anne Frank House. The endless queues, comprising tourists and natives, is testament to the importance it still has in modern-day Amsterdam.

Book ahead to avoid disappointment.

Having robustly tapped into other markets, Amsterdam isn’t the obvious choice for a European romantic getaway, yet it really is a hidden gem. Offering masses of culture, exquisite dining experiences and top-class hotels, all against the backdrop of the whimsical canals and rickety bicycles at every juncture, it is the perfect setting to escape, indulge and enjoy.

WHERE TO STAY...

Caron stayed at the Sofitel Legend The Grand, Amsterdam, sofitel-legend -thegrand.com and enjoyed a 90-minute tour aboard the Tourist, pulitzeramsterdam.com/concierge/boat. She dined at De Kas, restaurantdekas.nl/home and Jansz, janszamsterdam.com

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

Orthodox Judaism / Torah for Today / It’s Biblical

SEDRA – Beshalach

It’s Biblical

BY RABBI JONNY ROODYN The Children of Israel are free at last! Leaving the labour camps and ghettoes of Egypt behind them, they march triumphantly into the desert. It seems like they have the whole world at their feet as they advance to their destiny in the Promised Land.

From the sedra’s opening lines, it’s clear this will not be plain sailing. Rather than take the most direct route, they are told to journey through the desert to avoid conflict with the neighbouring Philistines which could result in their reconsidering their new-found freedom and taking a U-turn back to Egypt.

This apparent regret of their new-found freedom is repeated.

Almost every time they encounter a challenge, whether being hemmed in at the Red Sea or running out of food, the refrain is the same: ‘Are there no graves in Egypt that you have taken us out to die in the wilderness… It is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.’ (Shemot 14:11-12).

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that last week’s sedra deals with the theoretical and ideal aspects of freedom; this week’s deals with the reality people faced. Put succinctly, freedom doesn’t come for free, it has to be earned. The Chasidic masters note the Torah mentions the exodus from Egypt 50 times, as if to tell us that attaining true freedom is gradual.

The Hebrew for the Egypt exodus, yetziat mitzrayim, means ‘the taking out of Egypt’. To be free, they need to be liberated from the slave mentality. As much as the Israelites need to leave Egypt, they need Egypt to leave them. That takes time.

 Rabbi Jonny Roodyn is educational director of Jewish Futures Trust @rjroodyn

Everything you ever wanted to know about your favourite Torah characters, and the ones you’ve never heard of...

BY RABBI ARIEL ABEL THIS WEEK:

BARAK

Barak was an Israelite military general during the Tribal Confederacy, which preceded the reign of the Kings of Israel.

Faced with an attack by Sisera, commander-in-chief of Jabin, king of the Canaanite stronghold of Hatzor, Barak consulted Deborah, the prophetess and judge of Israel.

Deborah, by divine command, suggested that he fight the enemy. In spite of the numerical supremacy of Israel, this was no mean feat.

Hatzor resurged after Joshua’s conquest as an independent Canaanite city. As in Joshua’s time, Hatzor was equipped with iron-clad chariots, as they were able to race them in the valley of Jezreel.

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agree to face the enemy.

Although Barak was Deborah, both in able to muster a considerrebuke and reassurance, able army of 10,000 men, told him that she would they were matched by come, he would fight, 9,000 chariots, almost one but the credit would ultichariot to each soldier. mately not be his, but No wonder Barak needed hers. reassurance.

The battle was fought He had called for help on the slopes of Mount from his own tribe, Naftali Tabor, on the edge of the and neighbouring Zebulun.

Jezreel valley, near the Another local populamodern city of Afula. tion, the Kenite people, Barak and Sisera The sudden rush who were descendants of confounded the enemy and all the Jethro, remained neutral.

With only two tribes against a chariot, Canaanite attackers fled on foot, Sisera born superior army, a dispirited Barak included. Owing to a sudden meteorotold Deborah that unless she came with logical change, probably a downpour, him as spiritual leader, he would not the Cannanite chariots were mired in mud on the slopes of Tabor, causing the enemy to flee.

Barak is remembered as less intrepid, more a team player through whom the image of women as non-military was challenged.

BARAK IS REMEMBERED AS MORE OF A TEAM PLAYER THROUGH WHOM THE IMAGE OF  Ariel is rabbi of the Liverpool WOMEN AS NON-MILITARY WAS CHALLENGED Old Hebrew Congregation

Lifestyle / Cooking

PLATEExpectations

Steamed fruit & nut cake

PREPARATION TIME 15 MINUTES PLUS 1½ HOURS RISING

This is an unusual dessert as it uses both baking powder and yeast as raising agents, which results in a delicious light fruit and nut pudding.

It has no fat or eggs, so it’s great for those on specialist diets. I like to enjoy this dessert with hot custard.

With

Denise Phillips SERVES 8

COOKING TIME 20 MINS

Ingredients 1 teaspoon dry yeast Pinch of sugar 300g self-raising flour 100g cornmeal (polenta) 50g caster sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 teaspoons vanilla essence 300ml warm water 25g each sultanas, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and cranberries 2 tablespoons walnuts – roughly chopped

to activate the yeast.

2 Combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar and baking powder, vanilla essence and pour in the yeast mixture. Mix well using an electric mixer and add the remaining water to produce a soft dough.

3 Combine the dried fruit, seeds and walnuts together. Set aside.

4 Add 2/3 of the fruit and nut mixture and knead in to the dough. Transfer to a greased bowl, cover and leave for 1½ hours to rise or until doubled in size.

5 Knock back dough and knead lightly. Transfer to a lined loaf tin.

6 Scatter the rest of the fruit and nuts over the top of the dough.

7 Steam for 20 minutes either in a steam oven at 100°C or over a bowl of simmering water on the hob.

8 It is cooked when a skewer is inserted and comes out clean. Leave for 5 minutes to cool slightly before removing from the cake tin. Transfer to a serving plate.

DOWNLOAD DENISE’S JEWISH COOKERY MOBILE RECIPE COLLECTION AT

www.jewishcookery.com

MY NEXT COOKERY CLASS: Wed, 15 February – Junior Chef: Half-Term Fun Baking

INGREDIENTS

METHOD 1 Mix the dry yeast with 50ml warm water and a pinch of sugar. Leave for 5 minutes

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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27

he Bible Says What? / Progressively Speaking / Progressive Judaism

The Bible Says What?

Progressively Speaking

We’re ‘chosen people’. Really?

The motivation behind Donald Trump’s travel ban is all wrong...

BY DEBORAH BLAUSTEN To my 11-year-old student, the idea was beyond the pale. “That’s racist!” he exclaimed angrily. “How can Judaism say that? It’s just wrong.”

His reaction was to a passage in his barmitzvah portion (Deuteuronomy 14:12), which declares Israel to be a people treasured by God above all the other nations on earth.

In a world which knows the horrors of ethnic supremacy all too well, the question of how to understand the Jewish concept of “chosenness” looms large.

For my student, suggesting a difference between Jews and others – and especially a difference which cast Jews as the favoured ones – challenged the message he had grown up with, that we are all made in the image of God, and created unnecessary barriers.

He struggled to see it as anything but elitism, and then added: “No one likes a teacher’s pet”.

It’s certainly not a new problem.

This tension between our universal

and particular identities has long concerned Jewish thinkers.

The more painful moments in Jewish collective memory also provoke the question: “If we are really chosen, then why has this happened to us?”

My answer to my student was two-fold. As we repeat each week in our Torah blessings, “chosenness” is not a one-sided notion – “I have chosen you from all the peoples, and given you my Torah.”

Chosenness is about covenant. It is about a specific responsibility in the world. It is a charge given to us by history and by Torah, to act in our world and to be God’s partners in the work of its repair.

The second part is how we respond to this situation. We have to choose as well, because chosenness arguably means little unless we step up to the plate and act on the obligations that come with it.

 Deborah Blausten is a student rabbi at Leo Baeck College

BY RABBI DANNY RICH President Trump wants to shut borders to refugees and impose a travel ban on arrivals from seven Muslim majority countries. The issue may now be caught up in a legal loophole, but the reasons for the ban are still so wrong for so many reasons.

It shows a lack of compassion and judgment. It is discriminatory and unfair. It is inimical to the democratic values upon which the US was founded and on which much of modern life is predicated.

It is probably unlawful and in breach of international guarantees of which the US is a signatory.

It is unlikely to protecting the US from terrorism or contribute to the defeat of extremism.

It also contradicts Jewish values, the same which Jews were entitled to think were shared by others who describe themselves as democrats and/or Christians.

Judaism’s foundational text, the Creation Story recorded in the Book of Genesis (1:26), records that as each human being is created in the image of God, it therefore follows that each man, woman and

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CLOSING BORDERS UNDERMINES THE ESSENCE OF SOCIETAL RESPONSIBILITY

child ought be treasured and treated with individual respect and dignity.

The closing of borders to refugees undermines the very essence of Jewish societal responsibility. Many refugees face death and Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 reminds the reader that “whoever destroys a single human life is considered by Scripture as if they had destroyed the whole world.”

During the first century, the Jewish community was led by Shammai and Hillel. Shammai advised: “Greet everyone with a cheerful face” (Mishnah Pirke Avot 1:15) and his opponent advised: “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace” (Mishnah Pirke Avot 1:12).

I am sending a copy of Pirke Avot to the Oval Office. I will read it to Trump now and as often as he likes!  Danny Rich is senior rabbi of Liberal Judaism and co-chair of the National Refugee Welcome Board

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Fun, games & prizes! / Sponsored by National Stationary Week

THE JewishNews JEWISH NEWS CROSSWORD THE CROSSWORD 1

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ACROSS 1 Recording device (5) 4 Aspect (5) 7 Attach (3) 8 Device for heating bread (7)

Last issue’s solutions

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

1 8 2 3 5

9 Having little or no money (4) 10 Show signs of tiredness (4) 13 Holy sister (3) 15 Concept (4) 16 Do nothing (4) 19 Unknown person (7) 21 Liquid used by a tattooist (3) 22 Baby sheep (5) 23 Produce, deliver (5) DOWN 1 Protective ditch (4) 2 Embryonic frog (7) 3 Come back (6) 4 Quiche (4) 5 Divide (a pack of cards) (3) 6 Host, multitude (6) 11 Best ever (3‑4) 12 Christmas glitter (6) 14 Agreeably (6) 17 Spanish gentlemen (4) 18 Slide out of control (4) 20 Female parent (3)

4 8 3 6 2

4 7 6 1 5 4 2 1

ACROSS: 1 Act up 4 Allow 7 Biplane 8 Ark 9 Reiterate 13 Headstone 17 IOU 18 Breeder 20 Elect 21 Tummy DOWN: 1 Auburn 2 Top 3 Phase 4 Arena 5 Leave go 6 Wake 10 In-house 11 Rod 12 Nearly 14 Abbot 15 Scent 16 Kite 19 Dim

Sudoku

4 9 7 1 5 5 8 6 3 8

3 2 7 1 9 6 4 5 8

1 8 6 4 2 5 3 9 7

5 9 4 7 3 8 1 6 2

4 3 1 8 6 9 2 7 5

8 5 9 3 7 2 6 1 4

6 7 2 5 4 1 8 3 9

2 6 5 9 1 4 7 8 3

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7 4 8 6 5 3 9 2 1

Jewish News and The Supercar Event have five family tickets to give away!

Taking place at Dunsfold Park, in Cranleigh, Surrey, on 24 and 25 June, The Supercar Event has something for the whole family, with attractions and rides for children and adults, including passenger supercar rides around the famous Top Gear track.

The event features more than 150 amazing supercars, such as the Ferrari 458 Speciale, Porsche 991 GT3RS, McLaren 675LT and Lamborghini Aventador SV. You can book passenger rides beforehand or on the day in the supercars, with rides starting from just £30.

Other attractions that make the event a great day out for families are rides in helicopters, Caterham Sevens, hovercrafts, mini tanks,

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Younger guests can have their first driving experience with Stay Safe Driving School (age 14 and above), take a fire engine ride or try the Mini Monster Truck Mania!

To find out more about The Supercar Event and to book tickets, visit thesupercarevent.com.

All money raised at the event will go to The Children’s Trust, the UK’s leading charity for children with brain injury.

JUST ANSWER THIS QUESTION: ENTER ONLINE: jewishnews.co.uk

See next issue for all puzzle solutions.

09/02

Q. Which supercar logo features a horse?

A: Lamborghini B: Porsche C: Ferrari

TERMS AND CONDITIONS: Five readers will win a family ticket for entry to The Supercar Event on 25 June.

A family ticket gives entry to two adults and two children (aged 4-16). Prize is as stated and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or exchange in whole or in part for cash. By supplying your email address you agree to receive marketing information from the JN Media Group or any of its affiliates and carefully selected third parties. The promotion excludes employees of Miroma, their immediate families, their agents or anyone professionally connected to the relevant promotion. Proof of eligibility must be provided on request. Normal T&Cs apply and can be found at jewishnews.co.uk/about-us/promotions-terms-andconditions. For full Ts and Cs see jewishnews.co.uk. Closing date: 23 February 2017.

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WIN A FAMILY TICKET TO THE SUPERCAR EVENT 2017!

THIS WEEKEND'S SHABBAT TIMES

Shabbat comes in Friday night at

16:51

Shabbat goes out Saturday night at

18:01

|

Sedra: Beshalach

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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29

Professional advice / Ask Our Experts

Ask our

The team you can trust Our highly qualified team will: • Offer expert legal advice.

• Reduce Inheritance Tax liability or eradicate it completely.

• Ensure your Will is legally watertight and validly executed.

• Act as Executor in the administration of your Estate.

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

This week: Making amends after overspending, a ski trip during Pesach and home care advice BAYLA PERRIN THE PAPERWEIGHT TRUST See full profile on pages 28-29

Dear Bayla I have a reasonable job and live on my own, but am in a terrible muddle with my finances and seriously overdrawn. I thought I could keep up with my friends and went on quite a heavy spending spree, but I don’t earn as much as them. I really don’t want to open my post. I also don’t want my parents or boss to know as they would be so disappointed in me.

Sophie

Dear Sophie I am sorry to hear about your difficult situation and understand how easy it is to

DAVID SEGEL WEST END TRAVEL See full profile on pages 28-29

Dear David My husband and I look forward to our annual skiing holiday in March, but this year I would rather go during Pesach in April. It makes sense, therefore, to combine skiing and a Pesach holiday. We cannot afford to travel twice and would appreciate your advice and suggestions.

Norma

Dear Norma With Pesach falling in mid-April, I have the perfect compromise for you, allowing you to combine your skiing and Pesach holiday.

I highly recommend the Eurotel Victoria hotel in Villars, Switzerland, a modern four star hotel offering a full 10 night Pesach programme for the 27th successive year.

The hotel provides excellent accommodation, high quality cuisine under strict kashrut supervision and wonderful facilities, including an indoor swimming pool, a fitness centre and a cinema.

The elegant Alpine resort of Villars, which is situated

overspend, especially if your peer group have easier access to funds.

Clearly this is something you will have to address . Maybe you will permit me to refer you to a self-help group that specialises in these issues.

On a practical level, however, my organisation can certainly help you to get your finances in order and tackle your debts.

We can help create a workable budget, prioritising your expenditure and, if at all possible, to negotiate easier terms with your creditors. From our experience, unopened envelopes are not the way ahead and those sending them are pleased to enter into dialogue to achieve a realistic outcome for all parties.

Please call our helpline so we can work with you and commence the process.

at an altitude of 1,300m, is just 30km from the fabulous Swiss resort of Montreux, which is on the shores of Lake Geneva and less than a 90 minute drive from the famous city of Geneva.

The mountains above Villars offer great skiing – there are 125 kilometers of slopes – and you will enjoy superb facilities with breathtaking, panoramic views.

The ski runs, chair lifts, cable cars and mountain railways will all be fully operational over the Pesach holiday period.

I believe that this option will work well for you and will hopefully solve your dilemma. Your husband will love it and so will you.

POLLY LANDSBERG SWEETTREE HOME CARE SERVICES See full profile on pages 28-29

Dear Polly Can you offer advice on what to consider when looking for a local home care service?

Sarah Dear Sarah It can feel daunting when starting out your search for a home care provider – but choosing the right one can

Our services are free* of charge when you leave a legacy to support JNF UK’s vital work in Israel.

For a free no-obligation consultation with one of our highly qualified professionals, please call 0208 732 6121 or email wills@kkl.org.uk *Terms and conditions apply. KKL Executor and Trustee Company Ltd (a Company registered in England No. 453042), is a subsidiary of JNF Charitable Trust (Charity No. 225910) and a registered Trust Corporation (authorised capital £250,000).

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transform your quality of life by providing practical and emotional support and companionship.

Whether you would benefit from having a carer for a few hours a week to help around the house, or you require live-in support for more specialist care, it’s hugely important to take your time and do your research first to ensure that the home care provider you select can fully meet your needs.

You might want to ask a family member or close friend to help you evaluate the various home care options in your area.

Make a list of all your needs, tasks, key questions, expectations and, of course, any concerns you might

have – be ready for that initial conversation with care providers.

It’s worth considering how your needs may change over time and if the home care provider has the capacity to increase the amount of care in the future – can they provide flexible care?

Are there charges involved? When choosing your home care provider, you aren’t just trusting them to help you maintain your health, your lifestyle and your well-being – you’re also trusting them to help you maintain who you are, so don’t make any decisions until you feel completely confident with your choice.

30

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Jewish News 9 February 2017

Ask Our Experts / Professional advice

Our Experts Do you have a question for a member of our team? Email: editorial@thejngroup.com

BARRISTER

SOCIAL WORKER

MICHELLE FREEDMAN Qualifications: • 15 years’ experience as a family law barrister, specialist in divorce and financial relief.

• Approved by the Bar Council to undertake public access work.

• Can be instructed directly by the public for legal advice and representation without having to go through a solicitor.

• Appearances in the media, including BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Newsroom Southeast.

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

• Strictly confidential helpline.

• Specialist medical support and information.

• Counselling for individuals and couples and educational events.

• Expert medical advisory panel.

MICHELLE FREEDMAN 07730 043 500 www.clerksroom.com freedman@clerksroom.com

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

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

ESTATE AGENT

CONSULTANT PAEDIATRICIAN

ELAINE KERR Qualifications: • Able to draw on the expertise of Norwood’s professional staff team, including social workers, educational psychologists, drug and alcohol specialists, speech & language and occupational therapists, teachers, psychologists, benefit advisers.

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

STEVE WAYNE Qualifications: • Owner of Benjamin Stevens established in 2004 with offices in Edgware and Bushey and dealing with all surrounding areas.

• Specialist in buy 2 let investments and managing lettings portfolios.

• Deals with residential sales locally and an expert on all things property in North West London.

• Partner at Frederick George & Co

DR PIYUSHA KAPILA Qualifications: • MB ChB (Man) MD (Lon) FRCPCH; trained in the Childrens’ Hospitals in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London.

• Looks after children and newborns with all sorts of general problems.

• Specialises in endocrinology and diabetes in children.

• Works at N Middlesex University NHS Hospital; private sessions at the Wellington Centres and Hsopital of St John and St Elizabeth.

NORWOOD 020 8809 8809 www.norwood.org.uk elaine.kerr@norwood.org.uk

BENJAMIN STEVENS ESTATE AGENTS 020 8950 7777 www.benjaminstevens.co.uk Steve@benjaminstevens.co.uk

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

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

RCUK 020 8815 4115 www.rcuk.biz maxi@rcuk.biz

MOBILITY SPECIALIST ELAINE FERGUSON Qualifications: • 20+ years experience with mobility and independent living products and services.

• Expert advice to make life easier whether you have restricted movement and are disabled or elderly.

• Manager of north London’s largest mobility centre, member of British Healthcare Trade Association (BHTA).

• Training provider: First Aid, carers, health and safety.

FORTUNA MOBILITY CENTRE 020 8344 4820 www.fortunamobility.com info@fortunamobility.com

LANDLORD EXPERT

TRAVEL AGENT

DR PIYUSHA KAPILA 07741 416557 enquiries@doctorpiyushakapila.org.uk

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

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

• Practical and emotional support for families of deaf children.

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

JEWISH DEAF ASSOCIATION 020 8446 0502 info@jewishdeaf.org.uk www.jewishdeaf.org.uk

SOLICITOR ADVOCATE

PAUL SHAMPLINA Qualifications: • Over 25 years in the legal field helping landlords with problem tenants.

• Founder of Landlord Action • Star of a Channel 5’s Nightmare Tenants and Slum Landlords • Brand ambassador for Hamilton Fraser.

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

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

• Specialist in Israel travel, cruises and kosher holidays.

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

• Frequent travel broadcaster on radio and TV.

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

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

• Visiting associate professor at Brunel University.

HAMILTON FRASER 0345 310 6300 www.hamiltonfraser.co.uk Paul.Shamplina@hamiltonfraser.co.uk

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

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

DIRECTOR OF LEGACIES

WEBSITE DESIGN EXPERT

PRINCIPAL, PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL

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

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

Member of Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners.

•

ANTON HALPERN Qualifications: • Professionally designed and built e-commerce and brochure websites for the professional, retail and voluntary sectors.

• Specialist departments for financial services, property agents and charities.

• Services include graphic design, software development, website support/hosting for both new and existing websites.

LOUISE LEACH Qualifications: • Professional choreographer qualified in dance, drama and Zumba (ZIN, ISTD & LAMDA), gaining an honours degree at Birmingham University.

• Former contestant on ITV’s Popstars, reaching bootcamp with Myleene Klass, Suzanne Shaw and Kym Marsh.

• Set up Dancing with Louise 10 years ago.

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

WEB PRO CREATIVE 033 33 447 300 www.webprocreative.co.uk info@webprocreative.co.uk

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

• •

9 February 2017 Jewish News

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31

Professional advice / Ask Our Experts

CONSULTANT TRAUMA AND ORTHOPAEDIC SURGEON

ACCOUNTANT

IT SPECIALIST

MELVYN SOBELL Qualifications: • Chartered accountant FCA. • Accounting, taxation and business advisory services.

• Specialises in forensic accounting.

• CEDR accredited mediator.

• Expert witness advice for all financial matters.

MR. HAROON A MANN Qualifications: • MBBS MD FRCS (TR & ORTHO) • Consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon • Honorary senior lecturer at UCL Medical School.

• Dedicated NHS practice based at The Royal Free Hospital London NHS Foundation Trust.

• Expertise and specialist interests include all aspects of adult and paediatric foot and ankle disorders.

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

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

• More than 18 years’ experience.

SOBELL RHODES 020 8429 8800 www.sobellrhodes.co.uk m.sobell@sobellrhodes.co.uk

ROYAL FREE PRIVATE PATIENTS 020 7317 7751 www.royalfreeprivatepatients.com rf.privateenquiries@nhs.net

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

ALIYAH ADVISER

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

BUILDING CONTRACTOR

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

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

BAYLA PERRIN Qualifications: • Free professional service delivering immediate practical help with domestic administrative matters, assisting those alone and in crisis.

• Providing workable solutions for debt management, budgeting, bills, utilities, insurance, welfare & benefits, form filling, financial correspondence, bureaucracy and divorce procedures. Cross communal and throughout London.

HOWARD GOLD Qualifications: • Member of the Federation of Master Builders.

• Member of the Consumer Protection Association offering an underwritten insurance backed guarantee of 5 years on all projects.

• Providing a tailored end-to-end property service for residential property clients in north and north-west London. Focusing on a quality service.

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

THE PAPERWEIGHT TRUST 020 8455 4996 www.paperweighttrust.com info@paperweighttrust.com

HPS 077 1005 7233 / 020 8457 1320 wwww.hpsuk.com howard@hpsuk.com

JEWELLER

CHARITY EXECUTIVE

BUSINESS GROWTH EXPERT

JONATHAN WILLIAMS Qualifications: • Jewellery manufacturer since 1980s.

• Expert in the manufacture and supply of diamond jewellery, wedding rings and general jewellery.

• Specialist in supply of diamonds to the public at trade prices.

• We buy for instant top cash prices.

HAZEL KAYE Qualifications: • Able to draw on the charity’s 45+ years of experience in providing specialist accommodation designed to enable independence.

• Knowledge of the features and innovations that can empower people to undertake everyday tasks and awareness of relevant grants and benefits available.

• Understands the impact of a diagnosis of disability.

JAMIE GORAL Qualifications: • 17 years working closely with SME business owners and CEO’s.

• Fastest growing U.K. Actioncoach 2015.

• Guarantees results.

• Results includes -Online marketing -£6m loss to £1.5m net profit in 6 years ,Retaildoubled net profit to £2m in 2 years.

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

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

ACTIONCOACH 020 7993 2420/ 077 1745 3063 www.actioncoach.com/jamiegoral jamiegoral@actioncoach.com

CAREER ADVISER

KITCHEN SPECIALIST BERNARD MIEL Qualifications: Managing Director of Kitchens Continental, an independent design company specialising in function and form for bespoke high quality kitchens.

More than 30 years in the industry, providing both retail and contract kitchens.

Familiar with German, Italian and English kitchens.

Full service including cabinetry, worktops, appliances, sinks, taps, floors and fitting.

• • • •

KITCHENS CONTINENTAL 020 8203 6033 www.kitchenscontinental.com hendon@kitchenscontinental.com

FAMILY SOLICITOR

LESLEY TRENNER Qualifications: • Career in global pharmaceutical GlaxoSmithKline with roles in IT, change management & people development. Now an International Coach Federation. certified coach helping people with career development and midlife change including dilemmas around ageing parents.

Provides specialist advice to help unemployed get work.

•

RESOURCE THE JEWISH EMPLOYMENT ADVICE CENTRE 020 8346 4000 www.resource-centre.org office@resource-centre.org

•

POLLY LANDSBERG Qualifications: • 35 years care experience in supporting elderly people at home and in the community.

• Qualified nurse, providing advice and support for individuals with a range of needs.

• Providing care at home for those requiring reassurance and companionship, assistance with personal care, help around the house and specialist services for those living with long-term conditions.

FREEMANS SOLICITORS 020 7935 3522 www.freemanssolicitors.net rg@freemanssolicitors.net

SWEETTREE HOME CARE SERVICES 020 7644 9554 www.sweettree.co.uk info@sweettree.co.uk

•

The Jewish Deaf Association is there for me, for all deaf children and our families - and for everyone with a hearing loss.

CARE SERVICE MANAGER

REBEKAH GERSHUNY Qualifications: Member of Resolution, Law Society Accredited and registered with the Family Mediation Council.

Collaborative family lawyer, with more than 20 years’ experience and founder of family mediation practice, Evolve Family Mediation.

Promotes a constructive and non-confrontational approach.

•

Got a question for a member of our team?

Email: editorial@thejngroup.com

Telephone 020 8446 0502

Registered charity number 1105845

jewish deaf association

BUSINESS SERVICES DIRECTORY 32

Jewish News 9 February 2017

Business Services Directory

Carer

Clothing

Carer Auxiliary Nurse

FURS WANTED

Available to support you in your home.

CLOTHING Days/nights.

ANTIQUES

Very reasonable rates.

Top prices paid Antique – Reproduction – Retro Furniture (any condition)

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

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

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

07866 614 744 (ANYTIME) 0207 723 7415 (SHOP)

Call 0208 958 2939 FURS WANTED or 07495 026 168

MAKE SURE YOU CONTACT US BEFORE SELLING

Cash paid for Mink jackets, coats, boleros, stoles, CLOTHING EDUCATION also fox coats, jackets etc.

Wardrobes cleared

Call 01277 352

560

Cash paid for Mink Computer jackets, coats, boleros, also Man onstoles, a Bike will get fox coats, jackets etc. you working fast!

01277 352 560

Ant

CHARITY & WELFARE

For a lady to call

Networks, virus problems, broadband, wireless systems, new computers and everything else you may need.

For small businesses & home users.

CHARITY & WELFARE

AREFREE YOU BEREAVED? VERY HIGH PRICES PAID. HOME VISITS. All Antique Furniture Hille & Epstein Counselling forGold, adults & children are Diamond Jewellery, Silver, Paintings,who Porcelain, experiencing and&support Glass, Bronzes, Ivories,loss, Oriental Judaica groups.

Antiques etc.

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

020 8731 6171 • www.manonabike.co.uk

IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHICH WAY TO TURN, REMEMBER OUR HELPLINE. ARE YOU BEREAVED? 020 8922 2222

jcdirect@jcare.org jewishcare.org/helpline Counselling for adults & children who are experiencing loss. Support groups offered.

Call The Jewish Bereavement Charity Reg No. 802559 Counselling Service in confidence

Jami supports and represents people with mental illness across the Jewish community.

#jamithinkahead

Give support • Get support • Get involved

Sheltered Accommodation We have an open waiting list for our friendly and comfortable warden assisted sheltered housing schemes for Jewish people IFin YOU DON’T KNOW WHICH WAY TO TURN, Ealing, East Finchley and Hendon. We provide 24-hour REMEMBER OUR HELPLINE. warden support, seven days a week; a residents’ lounge and kitchen, laundry, a sunny patio and garden.

For further details and application forms, please contact 020 8922 2222 Westlon Housing Association on 020 8201 8484

We hav warden in Eal warden

Charity Reg No. 802559

For furt Wes

For confidential advice, information and support don’t forget Jewish Care Direct. jcdirect@jcare.org

jewishcare.org/helpline

Are you a Jewish woman experiencing domestic violence?

Jami andhome, represents Withsupports abuse in your do you worry about your children? people with mentalWe illness across are here to help with free support,community. advice and information and confidential counselling. the Jewish #jamithinkahead

Reg Charity No. 1003345

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

w

Reg Charity No. 1003345

Home & Maintenance

Stirlings of Kensal Green Established over 60 years.

Know who you are dealing with.

All quality furniture bought & sold.

Best prices paid for complete house clearances including china books, clothing etc. also rubbish clearance service, lofts, sheds, garages etc

L

K

P PLUMBSAFE LUMBSAFE (UK) (UK) LTD LTD

No further, your

LOCAL PLUMBERS

Hall & Randall Plumbers

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

020 8953 2094 office

| |boiler boilerrepairs repairsand andinstallation installation| |complete completecentral centralheating heating| | | |power powerflushing flushing| |complete completebathroom bathroominstallation installationservice service| | | landlords certificates | project management | home purchase reports |

| landlords certificates | project management | home purchase reports | All NW-London postcodes covered

All NW-London postcodes covered 07860 881505 or 0800 610 12 12

PLUMBSAFEUK.COM

COMPUTER

PROFESSIONAL Man on a Bike will PAINTING, DECORATING you working fast! & PAPER HANGING

get

City and Guilds Elect

All types of electrical work u

Rewiring, extra sockets, BT points, Economy 7

storage Over 20Response years experience Rapid IT support for yourheaters, PC &Shabbat Mac time switches, securi

LED spotlights, fault finding, CCTVportable ap Friendly, reliable & Networks, virus problems, broadband, wireless systems, landlord tests and house buyer’s surveys. personal service. new computers and everything else you may need.

Very competitive rates For an efficient reliable and friendly For small businesses & home users.

Call Harvey Solomons on

STEPHEN: 07973 342 422

Email: gordonstirling65@gmail.com

Callsrindsmc@hotmail.com Ian Green, Man on a Bike020 on 8958

6495 / 07836 648 554

Tel: 020 8905 7275

Fax 020 8905 7197

020 8731 6171 • www.manonabike.co.uk

STONEMASON

PROFESSIONAL PAINTING, DECORATING & PAPER HANGING

Gary Green Memorials 14 Claybury Broadway, Clayhall, Ilford Tel: 020 8551 6866 Fax: 020 8503 9889

41 Manor Park Crescent, Edgware, Middx Tel: 020 8381 1525 Fax: 020 8381 1535 www.garygreenmemorials.co.uk

!

Not shabbat PLUMBSAFEUK.COM

office@hallandrandall.com

Home & Maintenance HOME & MAINTENANCE

DECORATING

For Forall allyour yourheating heatingand andplumbing plumbingrequirements requirements

07860 881505 or 0800 610 12 12 Not shabbat

020 8207 3286 home 020 8386 8798 hallandrandallplumbers.com

“Better “BetterSafe SafeThan ThanSorry�

Sorry�

Please contact Gordon Stirling 0208 9605401 or 07825224144

srindsmc@hotmail.com

A Wi

Give support • Get support • Get involved

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

STEPHEN: 07973 342 422

MAKE

Kosher Refuge available for women and children in need.

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

Over 20 years experience Friendly, reliable & personal service.

Very competitive rates

S

WESTLON HOUSING ASSOCIATION

Charity & Welfare

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

C

020 8951 3881 www.antiquesbuyers.co.uk enquiries@jbcs.org.uk | www.jbcs.org.uk

Call Ian Green, Man on a Bike on

020 8951 3881 • 07765 693 160 E: enquiries@jbcs.org.uk

HOME & MAINTENANCE

Ep Dini D

WE BUY ANTIQUES

Contact Theclearances Jewish Bereavement Full house organised.

Counselling Service in confidence Please look at our website for more details

Rapid Response IT support for your PC & Mac

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

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Antiques

A. ELFES LTD New memorials Additional inscriptions & renovations Gants Hill

12 Beehive Lane Gants Hill, IG1 3RD Telephone

Edgware

130 High Street Edgware, HA8 7EL Telephone

0207 754 4659 0207 754 4646

www.memorialgroup.co.uk

Distinctive monumental masons NEW MEMORIALS ADDITIONAL INSCRIPTIONS RENOVATIONS AND REPAIRS DUPLICATE MEMORIALS ANNUAL WASH DOWN CONTRACTS. î‚Še Handel Smithy, 105a High Street, Edgware, HA8 7DB

Email memmasters@aol.com www.memorialmasters.co.uk

9 February 2017 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

33

Business Services Directory LEGACY- LEAVE A GIFT IN YOUR MEMORY

Leave a legacy and create the future leaders of Israel

1 in 4 people will experience mental illness.

Youth Aliyah Child Rescue Trojan House, 34 Arcadia Avenue, London N3 2JU t: 020 8371 1580 e: info@youthaliyah.org.uk www.youthaliyah.org.uk

Leave a legacy to Jami to support those with a mental illness across the Jewish community.

Charity No: 1077913

020 8458 2223 info@jamiuk.org www.jamiuk.org #jamithinkahead

Remember our future Please remember the future of Jewish children by remembering Jewish Child’s Day in your will. It is the legacy that will last a lifetime.

To find out more call 020 8446 8804 or email info@jcd.uk.com

Reg Charity No. 1003345 Registered Charity No. 209266

15-040-ER Small legacy advert v2_Legacy 26/01/2015 15:54 Page 1

HELP JEWISH CARE MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO OUR COMMUNITY THROUGH A GIFT IN YOUR WILL. Call Alison on 0208 922 2833 for more information or email arubenstein@jcare.org Charity Reg No. 802559

Leave the legacy of independence to people like Joel.

ILL you...

Caring for the people of Israel

Leave a legacy for future generations of children and families in Israel

020 7319 9169

WIZO Registered Charity Number 1125012 Company Number 6634748 UK

central@wizouk.org

PLease remember us in your wiLL.

eNABLeD visit www.Jbd.org or caLL 020 8371 6611

Registered Charity No. 259480

JEWISH NEWS MONEY TRANSFERS WWW.JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK/CURRENCY

Oya Broch! Compare & save up to 85% versus your bank Every day, individuals and businesses rely on our award-winning platform for better-than-bank exchange rates, with no additional fees. For every £10,000 you transfer abroad, we can help you save between £3-500. Whether you are buying a dream home in Israel or importing goods from Europe, take back control today. Compare live rates and book in three simple steps.

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The British Friends of Reuth

People come to Reuth broken, with no physical and mental independence.

The patients need your legacy to help rebuild their lives T: 020 3286 4100 E: info@reuth.org.uk W: www.reuth.org.uk Charity no: 1126124

34

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 9 February 2017

Sport / Football review, pictures & video highlights: www.jewishnews.co.uk

Grant resigns as Ghana manager

jewishnews.co.uk/topic/sport

London Lions clinched the Masters Division Two title following a 3-1 win over Glenthorne. Michael Abraham, Peter Joffe and Ory Halperin goals seeing them to the win.

In the Henry Swerner Cup, holders Chigwell needed a penalty-shoot-out to beat Raiders. Adam Stolerman and Rob Donn had twice put them back on level terms.

Ashley Davidson, Kevin Lotzof, Mark Wagman and Adam Gishen scored in Brady’s 4-0 win over EDRS.

ISRAEL FALL TO DAVIS CUP DEFEAT

Israel’s hopes of returning to the World Group of the Davis Cup will have to wait at least another year after they suffered a 5-0 whitewash by Portugal in their Group I tie.

Yshai Olie saw his debut in the competition end in a straight sets loss, before Dudi Sela was defeated in Friday’s second rubber.

Sela and Jonathan Erlich lost Saturday’s doubles match, with Sunday’s two final matches proving meaningless.

O’s celebrate Leor’s late winner An injury-time winner from Leor Sidle saw Oakwood A open up a four-point gap at the top of the Premier Division table as they beat Hendon A 2-1.

Kyle Bentwood fired them ahead, only for Moses Seitler to level the score, before Sidle provided a dramatic, late finish.

However, refusing to entertain talk of winning the title, jointmanager Daniel Kristall said: “We still have to play Redbridge, Lions, Team and Raiders, so are fully aware of how difficult it will be to win the title from this position.

“The other teams also have tough run-ins with Redbridge and Hendon yet to face each other, it all makes for an exciting end to the league season.

We know full well we’ve won nothing yet but we’ve put ourselves right in the mix.”

Raiders A saw a hat-trick from Matt Stock help them to a 6-0 win over SPEC. Liron Mannie, Oscar Wagner and David Rhodes also all found the back of the net.

Lions A are up to third spot after Adam Arnold, Alex Taylor and Brad Sharp scored in a 3-0 win over Brady.

Lions B moved to the top of the Division One table as two Benji Weinberger goals saw them win 2-1 at Los Blancos.

Scrabble recorded a comfortable 5-0 win at Hendon B, Brandon Sassoon, Adam Waters, Tom Prevezer, Zac Summerfield and Sam Stead all scoring.

Raiders B drew 2-2 with Finchley City. Will Ufland and Josh Green scored for the former, Josh Green and Oli Sade replying for City.

L’Equipe increased their lead at the top of the Division Two table to 11 points with a 7-2 win over Faithfold B. James Bell and Andy Smith scored two each, with Mark Singer, Max Martin and John Kay also on target.

Catford & Bromley claimed one of the results of the day as they beat Redbridge C 2-1. Richard Winton and Joel Lassman both on target.

Mill Hill Dons moved up to fourth spot thanks to a 7-4 win over NL Raiders C. Jason Weldon scored four times, with Sam Khan, Nicholas Phillips and Zach Cohen also scoring.

One game in the Cyril Anekstein Cup saw Redbridge A book their place in the quarter-finals, as they beat Camden Park 7-1. Dean Nyman scored four times, with Nate Kashket, Sam Sollosi and Daniel Garfinkle goals completing the rout.

 Full review, match pictures,

video highlights & cup draw at jewishnews.co.uk

d’s Watch Oakwoo at: dramatic win .uk/ co s. ew jewishn topic/sport

Photo: European Judo Union

Yarden Mayerson claimed her second medal on the senior circuit, as she won bronze at the European Judo Open Women Championships in Bulgaria. The 23-year-old secured third place in the Repechage of the +78kg event.

STONE SHINES WITH JUST THE ONE SHOE

A top-class hat-trick from London Lions’ James Gershfield saw them avenge their only league defeat of the season as they came away from Bovingdon with a 4-1 win.

Gershfield now looks certain to break the club record for number of goals scored in a season, having amassed 38 in just 22 games – working out at a strike rate of a goal every 52 minutes as he also looks to reach the 100-goal mark for the club.

He claimed his first from the penalty spot, and completed his hat-trick after the break.

Bovingdon netted a consolation through a Ben Goldberg own goal, but the scoring was complete when Max Kyte fired home.

Manager Andy Landesberg said: “Not only was Gersh’s finishing superb, but his all-round play was immense today, he was right on it and

Long-distance runner David Stone was the first Year 10 boy to cross the line in the Year 10 and 11 race at the Middlesex Schools Cross Country Championship.

The 15-year-old was running for JFS, despite suffering from asthma, a chest infection, and running half the 6K course with just one shoe.

Finishing the first 3k lap in fifth position, his right shoe then came off as he chased the leading pack. However, undeterred – despite a large part of the course involving running over gravel which caused extensive pain and bruising to his foot, he eventually finished fifth overall, but was the fastest Year 10 boy, which sees him qualify for the English Schools’ National Cross Country Championship.

Oakwood celebrate their injury time winner

James nets treble as he closes in on Lions club record

Judo star wins bronze in Bulgaria

Grant has resigned as Ghana boss

Photo: Amy Leigh

LIONS SECURE DIVISION TWO TITLE

Avram Grant has resigned as the manager of Ghana having led them to a fourth place finish at the Africa Cup of Nations.

With his contract due to shortly expire, he said: “I’ve hugely enjoyed my time in Ghana, taking over after the disastrous 2014 World Cup campaign and rebuilding the squad to reach the Africa Cup of Nations final for only the second time in 23 years, and also this year’s semi-final. The supporters passion and loyalty is something I’ll always remember.”

Beaten 1-0 by Cameroon in the semi-final, they then lost by the same scoreline to Burkina Faso in the third-fourth place play-off.

NFL PLAYERS SET FOR TRIP TO ISRAEL

Gershfield is closing in on a Lions club record

his goal ratio is nothing short of phenomenal.

“We had a tricky run of games where we could have dropped points, but have come through in style, and we’ll take on the next run of games with the same attitude.”

A group of 11 NFL players will tour Israel for a week, with their trip including visits to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea. The delegation will also hold an exhibition game against Israel’s national team in Jerusalem on Saturday.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said: “There is a great importance to the visit of a delegation of NFL stars to Israel. I’m sure that this visit will be a great experience for them and that it will give them a balanced picture of Israel, opposite of the deceptive campaign being held against Israel across the world.”

9 February 2017 Jewish News

www.jewishnews.co.uk

35

Visit: www.jewishnews.co.uk for latest Jewish sports news / Sport MACCABI GB SOUTHERN FOOTBALL LEAGUE CYRIL ANEKSTEIN

GOAL OF THE WEEK

Redbridge A 7 Camden Park 2

PREMIER DIVISION

London Lions A 3 Brady Maccabi 0 NL Raiders A 7 SPEC 0 Oakwood A 2 Hendon United A 1 Woodford Wanderers P FC Team A P P Oakwood A 14 Hendon United A 13 Redbridge A 9 London Lions A 11 NL Raiders A 11 Brady Maccabi 13 FC Team A 11 Camden Park 10 Woodford 14 SPEC FC 12

W 11 10 7 7 6 6 4 2 1 1

D 2 1 0 0 2 1 1 0 1 0

L 1 2 2 4 3 6 6 8 12 11

F 41 46 28 26 45 32 30 9 12 10

SAVE OF THE WEEK

Dif Pts 31 35 30 31 15 21 0 21 29 20 3 19 -17 13 -15 6 -39 4 -37 3

jewishnews.co.uk/mgbsfl-prem-div-table/

DIVISION ONE

P 13 9 11 10 9 11 14 11 11 13

W 9 8 7 6 6 4 4 3 2 1

D 2 1 2 2 1 1 0 2 1 0

L 2 0 2 2 2 6 10 6 8 12

F 42 33 32 34 29 29 23 22 9 14

MARC WOOLFE (NL RAIDERS B) Central-midfielder donned the gloves for the second half and pulled off a brilliant penalty save

QUOTE OF THE WEEK DAVID GARBACZ (HENDON UTD A) “I left the pitch yesterday with the feeling that someone had broken into our home and had stolen a sentimental family heirloom in broad daylight.”

SUNDAY’S FIXTURES: (9 Feb) Peter Morrison Cup Fourth Round: Faithfold B vs London Lions U21

Finchley City 2 NL Raiders B 2 Hendon United B 0 Scrabble 5 Los Blancos 1 London Lions B 2 Redbridge B P Athletic Bilbaum P

London Lions B Redbridge B Scrabble NL Raiders B Finchley City FC Oakwood B Los Blancos Faithfold A Athletic Bilbaum Hendon United B

BENJI WEINBERGER (LIONS B) Latching onto a long ball out wide, took on his man and from the tightest of angles, rifled the ball into the roof of the net

Dif Pts 24 29 23 25 14 23 13 20 10 19 7 13 -14 12 -14 11 -28 7 -35 3

jewishnews.co.uk/mgbsfl-one-table/

DIVISION TWO

(12 Feb) Peter Morrison Trophy Fourth Round: London Lions Masters vs Brady Premier Division: Oakwood A vs FC Team A SPEC FC vs NL Raiders A Woodford Wanderers vs Lions A

P W D L F Dif Pts L’Equipe 14 12 2 0 60 40 38 Redbridge C 14 8 3 3 34 14 27 Temple Fortune 13 6 5 2 37 9 23 RC UK FC 11 7 1 3 45 32 22 Faithfold B 14 6 2 6 43 5 20 NL Raiders C 17 6 2 9 45 -6 20 Mill Hill Dons 14 6 1 7 36 -17 19 Catford & Bromley 14 5 1 8 34 -4 16 Real Hendon 12 5 0 7 24 -9 15 Boca Jewniors 11 3 0 8 15 -38 9 Hertswood Vale 12 0 1 11 17 -26 1 jewishnews.co.uk/mgbsfl-two-table

1

4 5

24 Goals: Avi Markiewicz (RC UK FC) 18 Goals: Jordan Sharifian (Temple Fortune) 16 Goals: Jonti Aremband (RC UK FC) 15 Goals: Reiss Mogilner (Brady Maccabi) Zach Cohen (Mill Hill Dons) Zac Lewis (Hendon United A) Max Martin (L’Equipe) 14 Goals: Oliver Sade (Finchley City) Andy Smith (L’Equipe) Liron Mannie (NL Raiders A) Matt Stock (NL Raiders A)

• Full chart: jewishnews.co.ukmgbsflleague-goalscoring-chart-week-20/

Wingate & Finchley 1 Enfield Town 5 London County Cup Third Round: Wingate & Finchley 1 Met Police 2 P W D L F Dif Pts Bognor Regis Town 32 19 7 6 57 25 64 Needham Market 32 17 8 7 60 9 59 Havant & Water 30 17 7 6 56 25 58 Leiston 28 16 7 5 77 38 55 Tonbridge Angels 31 15 7 9 46 8 52 Enfield Town 32 13 11 8 57 22 50 Harlow Town 32 15 5 12 54 3 50 Wingate & Finchley 30 14 6 10 40 -1 48 Dulwich Hamlet 30 12 11 7 56 13 47 Worthing 30 14 4 12 62 4 46 Kingstonian 33 13 4 16 51 -1 43 Billericay Town 30 11 8 11 40 1 41 Lowestoft Town 33 11 8 14 46 -10 41 Staines Town 33 11 6 16 56 -3 39 Folkestone Invicta 30 10 8 12 51 4 38 Metropolitan Police 33 10 8 15 40 -12 38 Burgess Hill Town 28 9 8 11 33 -11 35 Leatherhead 31 8 10 13 52 -5 34 AFC Sudbury 30 9 6 15 45 -5 33 Harrow Borough 26 8 7 11 30 -12 31 Hendon 32 7 10 15 45 -25 31 Merstham 27 7 9 11 48 6 30 Canvey Island 32 6 10 16 37 -36 28 Grays Athletic 33 7 5 21 35 -37 26 jewishnews.co.uk/category/sport/ football/wingate/

RESULTS

VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS Watch match highlights from the MGBSFL Premier Division clash between: Oakwood A & Hendon A

www.jewishnews. co.uk

Watford Friendly League U18 – League Cup Quarter-Final – Whetstone Wanderers Blue 5 Brady Blue 3 Green Division – Brady Red 6 Hinton & Finchley Revolution 3 U16 – Northwood Red 2 London Lions White 1 White Division – Hadley Wood Foxes 4 Brady Blue 4 U15 – London Lions White 4 Hadleywood & Wingate 1, London Lions Blue 2 St Albans Rangers Red 2, Whetstone Wanderers 5 London Lions Blue 1 Spring Plate Group B – Borehamwood Youth Knights 4 Brady Black 0, Brady Blue 3 Alexandra Park East 2 U15 – Hendon Utd 8 Bushey Rangers 0 U14 Green Division – Brady Red 5 Brady White 0 U13 – Northwood Red 0 Brady White 6, London Lions Blue 0 Edmonton Eagles Barsuloa 5 Spring Trophy Group A – Whetstone Wanderers Leopards 13 Brady HGS 0 Group F – Hadley Rangers West 1 Brady Red 1 Green Division – Brady White 6 St Albans North 1 Spring Gold Cup Group A – Hendon Utd Netanya 3 Hadley Wood Foxes 1 U12 – London Colney Red 1 London Lions White 5, London Lions Blue 1 Omonia Youth Gold 2, London Lions Green 3 London Colney Youth 1 Yellow Division – Brady Red 3 Hadley Rangers West 3, Omonia White 8 Brady White 3 Green Division – Brady Blue 3 Harvesters South 2, Hendon Utd Red 6 Colney Heath Jackdraws 6

MGB(S)FL/MASTERS WINGATE/LONDON LIONS

HERTFORDSHIRE SENIOR LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION

London Lions 5 Sandridge Rovers 1 Bovingdon 0 London Lions 4

P W D L F Dif Pts London Lions 19 18 0 1 76 57 54 Bovingdon 20 12 1 7 63 18 37 Ware Sports 21 11 2 8 53 9 35 Belstone 16 10 4 2 50 24 34 Letchworth 20 10 4 6 52 23 34 Bushey Sports 18 10 3 5 50 20 33 Wormley Rovers 21 10 3 8 36 -7 33 Standon & Puck 22 8 3 11 45 -5 27 Knebworth 21 8 3 10 42 -7 27 Sandridge Rovers 14 8 1 5 23 10 25 Buntingford Town 19 6 1 12 38 -22 19 Evergreen 20 5 3 12 32 -27 18 Chipperfield 17 5 2 10 43 -6 17 Cuffley 16 5 2 9 33 -6 17 Hatfield Social 20 4 3 13 29 -50 15 Sarratt 20 2 5 13 18 -31 11 jewishnews.co.uk/category/sport/ football/lions

For results, tables, reports, photo galleries, video highlights, go to:

www.jewishnews.co.uk

GARSTON VETS LEAGUE

MMFL BOND MANAGEMENT DIV 1

Henry Swerner MMFL Cup: Preliminary Round – EDRS 0 Brady A 4 First Round – NL Raiders 2 Chigwell 2 (Chigwell won 4-1 on penalties) P W D L Dif Pts NL Raiders 10 8 2 0 21 26 Chigwell 8 5 1 2 11 16 London Lions A 9 4 2 3 -1 14 Brady Maccabi A 10 3 2 5 -5 11 Scrabble 9 2 2 5 -12 8 HMH 10 1 1 8 -14 4 jewishnews.co.uk/category/sport/ football/masters

MMFL BOND MANAGEMENT DIV 2

Maccabi London Lions 3 Glenthorne 1

London Lions B St John’s Wood Glenthorne EDRS Stonegrove Temple Fortune Marshside Hendon Harriers Brady Maccabi B

P 11 12 11 10 10 12 10 10

W 10 6 6 5 4 3 1 1

D 1 2 0 3 2 4 1 1

L Dif Pts 0 34 31 4 11 20 5 8 18 2 6 18 4 -1 14 5 -15 13 8 -20 4 8 -23 4

jewishnews.co.uk/category/sport/ football/masters

Winchmore Hill London Maccabi Colney Heath F.C.Deportivo Galicia North Greenford Abbey F.C. Garston Latymer Old Boys

P 5 5 5 4 4 7 4 5

WD 5 0 5 0 2 1 2 0 2 0 2 0 1 1 0 0

L Dif Pts 0 31 15 0 22 15 2 2 7 2 -3 6 2 -8 6 5 -13 6 2 -6 4 5 -21 0

ISRAELI LIGAT HA’AL

P Hapoel Beer-Sheva 21 Maccabi Tel-Aviv 21 Mac Petach-Tikva 21 Hap Kiryat Shmona 21 Beitar Jerusalem 21 Bnei Sakhnin 21 Maccabi Haifa 21 Hapoel Haifa 21 Hapoel Ra’anana 21 FC Ashdod 21 Bnei Yehuda 21 Hapoel Kfar-Saba 21 Hapoel Ashkelon 21 Hapoel Tel-Aviv * 21

W D L 14 4 3 12 5 4 10 9 2 8 7 6 7 10 4 8 7 6 7 8 6 7 3 11 6 6 9 4 9 8 3 9 9 3 9 9 3 7 11 4 9 8

F Dif Pts 46 35 46 36 18 41 29 10 39 31 6 31 25 2 31 23 0 31 25 4 29 24 -6 24 12 -10 24 12 -10 21 17 -10 18 14 -10 18 12 -21 16 14 -8 12

* Hapoel have been deducted nine points jewishnews.co.uk/category/sport/israeli/

Send in your nominations for Team of the Week to andrews@thejngroup.com

8 9

1 MARC WOOLFE

5 ZAC GARBACZ

9 RICHARD WINTON

2 ADAM WATERS

6 BENJI WEINBERGER

10 LEOR SIDLE

3 DARYL RUBIN

7 JAMES BELL

4 BRANDON SASSOON

8 RYAN KRAMER

NORTH LONDON RAIDERS C Excelled in central midfield, before donning the goalkeeping gloves – and pulled off a string of fine saves

6 7

3

25 Goals: Richard Fogelman (Faithfold B)

Cyril Anekstein Cup – Dean Nyman 4 (Redbridge A) MGBSFL Premier Division – Matt Stock (NL Raiders A) Division Two – Jason Weldon 4 (Mill Hill Dons) Herts Senior League Premier Division – James Gershfield (London Lions) Watford Friendly League U14 – Jake Greenfield 4 (Brady Red) U13 – Ben Barnett 4 (London Lions White) U12 – Joshua Cowan (Hendon Utd Red) U11 – Coby Snyder (Hendon Utd Blue) U9 – Noah Frankfurt 4 (Hendon Utd Green) U7 – Eitan Aharonovich 4 (Hendon Utd Red)

TEAM OF THE WEEK

2

RYMAN LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION

HAT-TRICK HEROES

Division One: Athletic Bilbaum vs Faithfold A London Lions B vs NL Raiders B Redbridge B vs Finchley City Scrabble vs Los Blancos Division Two: Catford & Bromley vs Boca Jewniors Mill Hill Dons vs Hertswood Vale RC UK FC vs NL Raiders C Temple Fortune vs Real Hendon

Boca Jewniors P Temple Fortune P Catford & Bromley 2 Redbridge C 1 Hertswood Vale P RC UK FC P L’Equipe 7 Faithfold B 2 Mill Hill Dons 7 NL Raiders C 4

MGBFL GOALSCORERS

2016/2017 SEASON

10

11

SCRABBLE Played out of position, defended well and then switched to central midfield and scored Scrabble’s second goal

REDBRIDGE A Was brilliant, composed and a goal threat at set-pieces, described by manager as a Rolls Royce of a defender

SCRABBLE A real captain’s performance, powerful headed clearances and distribution was of top class quality and scored

HENDON UNITED A Wasn’t troubled defensively and made good use of the ball going forward in an encouraging performance

MACCABI LONDON LIONS B Scored a match-winning brace, the latter arriving in the 90th minute, as he showed his terrific finishing capabilities

L’EQUIPE Man-of-the-match performance, won every tackle, displayed some beautiful passing and scored two brilliant goals

MILL HILL DONS Claimed three assists, won numerous crucial challenges and cut the Raiders defence open with some brilliant passes

CATFORD & BROMLEY Tormented Redbridge throughout with a superb performance down the right-hand flank OAKWOOD A Was simply unplayable. Never stopped running and his persistence and pressure paid off in stoppage time

11 DEAN NYMAN

REDBRIDGE A A menace to the whole backline, rolled back the years with a man-of-thematch performance

PLAYER OF THE WEEK LEOR SIDLE OAKWOOD A

PLAYER-MANAGER OF THE WEEK

JEFF GOTCH CATFORD & BROMLEY

36

www.jewishnews.co.uk

Jewish News 9 February 2017

Sport / Awards scrapped / Tennis tears

Going, going... gong!

Jewish football’s biggest night of the year scrapped

By Andrew Sherwood andrews@thejngroup.com @JewishNewsUK

ship Turnout Trophy at the AGM. Managers are mostly in agreement with the decision. L’Equipe player-manager Nick Stern said: Jewish football’s biggest night of “If we win a trophy, we’d want to the year has been scrapped due celebrate with our team, family and friends, giving the trophy and to dwindling attendance. medals at the end of the game League chairman David Wolff allows it to happen.” confirmed the end-of-season Oakwood B manager Jason awards ceremony has been ditched Stein said: “Handing out the trophy due to lack of interest.

A new format and arrangements to the champions on the day will will see medals and trophies handed make winning the league an even more special day”, while Oakwood out on the pitch, with the three A joint-manager Daniel Kristall league champions presented with said: “It’s definitely best to hand their trophy by a member of the out on the day of the achievement.” management committee. RunnersBut Redbridge B player-manager up medals will be given in bulk, Sam Rank said: “Title winners work either prior to the AGM, or if prachard all year and should be rewarded tical at a match, individual awards will be made pitch side or organised with a big event.” by prior arrangement, with the Team Secretary of the Year and Sportsman-  Full story: jewishnews.co.uk

Reigning Premier Division champions, Raiders A, were only a handful of teams who attended last year’s ceremony

Teen ‘ashamed’ of disqualification Canadian Jewish tennis player Denis Shapovalov has said he was “ashamed and embarrassed” after being disqualified for hitting a ball at the umpire during his country’s Davis Cup tie with GB last weekend.

The 17-year-old was born in Tel Aviv, to Russian-Jewish parents and moved to Canada prior to his first birthday. His mother, a former top tennis player in the Soviet Union, said: “I immigrated to Israel because I am Jewish. Although my husband Viktor (Denis’s father) is Greek Orthodox, he was eager to go to Israel as well. I taught and played tennis while we were in Israel, we liked Tel Aviv, but felt it was dangerous there for the boys, so we left for Toronto in 1999.”

Shapovalov said he was “ashamed” after hitting the umpire in the eye

Smashing a ball in anger during the third set of the deciding rubber against Kyle Edmund, he hit umpire Arnaud Gabas in the eye, and was immediately disqualified, which

handed GB a 3-2 win.

Full or remorse afterwards, he said: “I spoke to the referee after and apologised directly to him, luckily he was okay. Obviously it was just unacceptable behaviour from me and to be honest, I just feel incredibly ashamed and embarrassed and I just feel awful for letting my team down, my country down, for acting in a way that I would never want to act.

“I can promise that’s the last time I will do anything like that, I’m going to learn from this and I’m going to try and move past it. I was very lucky that the referee was okay. I think it was just unacceptable from me and I’ll try to move past it.”

He was fined £5,600, though escaped the maximum £8,000 penalty as it was not deemed intentional.

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