1402 - 16th Jan 2025

Israel and Hamas reach ceasefire and hostage deal

Israel and Hamas have finally agreed to a deal to bring about the phased release of hostages from Gaza, along with a pause to 15 months of deadly fighting, sources on both sides confirmed last night, writes Lee Harpin.

The deal, set to be formally announced as Jewish News went to press, outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv last night, many holding placards demanding the release of the hostages, as negotiations to end the war reached their final stages.

The Israeli security cabinet and full cabinet still needs to approve the deal with a majority in a vote taking place on Thursday. Israel’s Supreme Court will also hear petitions from those opposing the release of Palestinians in the deal.

Reports suggested 33 hostages could be freed over the course of seven weeks, with three hostages released at first.

The release of the hostages would be the first phase of the deal being finalised, with negotiations to reach the second phase – intended to end the war – beginning on the 16th day of the implementation.

Implementation is likely to start on Sunday. Some reports claimed Hamas would release three hostages, while Israel would release 30 prisoners from Israeli jails to start

the process. It is expected that the deal will also allow Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza and there would be a massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed Al Thani was set to hold a press conference on Wednesday night.

Responding to the news, United States president-elect Donald Trump posted to this Truth Social platform: “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East.”

Trump said the agreement, which closely resembled the one put forward by the outgoing Biden administration last year, could have only happened as a result of his “historic” election victory “as it signalled to the entire world that my administration would seek peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our allies”.

According to a statement from Hamas, a delegation led by Khalil al-Hayya informed Qatar and Egypt that the group approved a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

An Israeli source, meanwhile, told Haaretz newspaper that lastminute issues over the deal had been resolved,” after an official said earlier on Wednesday that Hamas had presented new demands regarding the Philadelphi corridor, contrary to the maps approved by the cabinet and American mediators, adding that Israel strongly rejects “any changes to these maps”.

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately comment on the news other that to caution: “Final details are still being reached.”

‘NO STONE UNTURNED’ ON HOSTAGES IN GAZA

The UK is leaving “no stone unturned” in efforts to free the hostages captured by Hamas in Gaza, including conducting surveillance flights over the region to try to locate them, writes Lee Harpin.

Answering written questions from the Commons foreign affairs select committee before the ceasefire deal was announced on Wednesday evening, David Lammy said: “We have left no stone unturned in our efforts to get the hostages home” and the “Ministry of Defence conducts surveillance flights over Israel and Gaza”.

The foreign secretary added: “These aircraft are unarmed and do not have a combat role. They are tasked solely to locate hostages.” He said the Foreign Office “cannot… share everything that the government is doing”.

Lammy’s letter also stated that the FCDO is working specifically to secure the safe and immediate release of British national Emily

British surveillance aircraft over Gaza

Damari and three hostages with strong UKlinks: Eli Sharabi, Oded Lifschitz and Avinatan Or. It says a ceasefire deal is “the best way to get the remaining hostages out”.

In recent week, Lammy says, he has “spoken to the Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar and the US secretary of state Antony Blinken, ensuring that Emily’s release, and the release of the UK-linked hostages, is at the top of their agenda”.

Meanwhile, in a speech given on the Biden administration’s Middle East policy, the United States secretary of state Antony Blinken was deeply critical of both Hamas and Israel over their conduct throughout the war.

Hamas has “cynically weaponised the suffering of Palestinians”, Blinken said in the speech, pointing to evidence that the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told mediators the death of Palestinian civilians were “necessary sacrifices”.

But turning to the Israeli gov-

ernment, Blinken said: “We’ve long made the point to the Israeli government that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone, that without a clear alternative, a post-conflict plan and a credible political horizon for the Palestinians, Hamas, or something just as abhorrent and dangerous, will grow back.” He then suggested: “Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost. That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and a perpetual war.”

US House votes

to punish ICC officials

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would sanction officials of the International Criminal Court or anyone who supports its effort to prosecute Israeli leaders for war crimes.

The Republican-led bill passed with the support of 45 Democrats. It comes after the ICC, based in the Hague, Netherlands, issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders, for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The United States had condemned the charges, and an earlier version of the bill passed the House last year but did not advance. Last week’s bill is expected to be brought to the Senate, where Republicans have a majority.

The bill freezes the property of, and denies

US visas to, anyone who helps the court in its effort “to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute” a citizen of the United States or any ally who is not a signatory to the court. Neither Israel nor the United States are signatories.

Republican representative Brian Mast of Florida, chair of the House foreign affairs committee and a former civilian volunteer with the Israeli military, said: “America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally, Israel, who is not only responding to an enemy which conducted a genocide, killing as many men, women and children as possible… but an enemy who still holds 100 hostages, scores of bodies of those that they murdered, including seven of my fellow Americans.”

ICC’s Karim Khan

A weekly vigil has been held for the hostages in Borehamwood for the past 15 months

Blinken with Benjamin Netanyahu

‘Let protesters gather – but not near shuls’

Communal leaders have said they do not oppose the right of pro-Palestine campaigners to stage peaceful protests – but they object to marches taking place near a synagogue on Shabbat, writes Lee Harpin.

In a joint statement ahead of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s 18 January demo, the Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and Community Security Trust said: “This Saturday’s National March for Palestine must not take place in the vicinity of BBC given its proximity to a synagogue and the impact on worshippers.

“We support the right to peaceful protest and are not asking for this march to be banned. However, we support the Metropolitan Police in imposing conditions to protect those who are attending central London synagogues.”

The Met had earlier used powers under the Public Order Act to prevent the PSC-led march begin in Portland Place, near Central Synagogue.

In response, the PSC and other groups said they would reverse the route and end the rally in Portland Place, outside the headquarters of the BBC.

The London force responded by saying that this new route is “not one we have agreed and it would breach the conditions that have been imposed under the Public Order Act”.

The PSC responded with a letter

signed by more than 700 people “who identify as Jewish” – including Sir Geoffrey Bindman KC, author Gillian Slovo and actress Miriam Margolyes.

It stated: “As Jews we are shocked at this brazen attempt to interfere

with hard-won political freedoms by conjuring up an imaginary threat to Jewish freedom of worship.”

Police are due to holding meetings with the PSC for further talks aimed at resolving the differences.

Legislation aimed at protecting free speech on university campuses is being revived by the government.

But a clause that could have allowed Holocaust deniers who were blocked from appearing potentially to take legal action against universities is likely to be removed.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, “paused” the implementation of the previous government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act shortly after Labour came to power, citing concerns raised by the Union of Jewish Students and other communal groups that the laws would allow antisemitism hate speech to flourish on campuses.

There was also concern that extremists prevented from speaking on campus could then take legal action, exposing universities and student unions to high legal costs.

Government sources suggest that some form of complaints process overseen by the Office for Students would be in place in the revised laws. This would ensure that those engaging in clear-cut cases of Holocaust denial and hate speech could not take legal action against universities and student unions.

Universities UK, which represents higher education providers, has backed Phillipson’s decision to take a closer look at the legislation.

ANGER OVER INVITATION TO HIGGINS LIPSTADT HAS DOUBT AND HOPE

A row has broken out in Ireland over the announcement by Holocaust Education Ireland that President Michael Higgins has once again been invited to give the keynote address marking Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD).

It is to be the sixth such address made on HMD by the Irish president. But it has also been a year in which Higgins denied there was antisemitism in his country, criticised the Israeli embassy in Dublin, and denounced Israel over its war against Hamas. His remarks led to Israel’s decision to shut its embassy in Dublin.

Higgins is due to speak at the national ceremony on 26 January, the day before HMD. Maurice Cohen, chair of the Irish Jewish Representative, described the invitation as “inappropriate”, adding: “This solemn occasion demands respect, sensitivity, and a commitment to honouring the memory of victims. His participation risks offending many in the audience, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who expect dignity and unity on such a significant day.”

Rabbi Yoni Wieder, Ireland’s chief rabbi, said: “President Higgins has failed to take seriously the concerns put to him by representatives of the Jewish community, and back in May he described talk of antisemitism in Ireland as ‘a PR exercise’. With that attitude, I fear his address marking Holocaust Memorial Day will inevitably ring hollow for many Irish Jews.”

Hostage families at inauguration

Relatives of the seven American hostages held in Gaza will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, representatives of the families have announced.

Representatives for the families of the American hostages also said that the relatives will meet with Trump administration officials when they are in Washington, D.C. for three days surrounding the inauguration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also expected to attend the inauguration, although the announcement did not mention any plans for the relatives of the hostages to meet with him.

Israeli officials have confirmed that four of the seven U.S. citizens held in Gaza have been killed and that Hamas is holding their bodies in Gaza. They are Omer Neutra, Itay Chen, and husband and wife Gad Haggai and Judith Weinstein. Americans Keith Siegel, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Edan Alexander are also being held captive.

The relatives in attendance will be either parents, children, siblings or the spouse of a hostage. Two sets of parents who spoke at last summer’s political conventions — those of Neutra and of hostage Hersh GoldbergPolin, who was murdered in captivity — will be among the attendees.

The announcement of the invitation came before news of a deal to release the remaining hostages.

Responsing to the news, the New York branch of the Hostages and Families forum said: “We anxiously await the reunions of families with their loved ones.

“The next few weeks will bring a wave of emotions, but one thing remains unwavering – we will stand by the families until the very last hostage is brought home. Our collective strength is making a difference. Yet our fight is not over.”

There was speculation last night that the first hostages may be released on inauguration day next Monday.

Dr Deborah Lipstadt has expressed doubt about the Trump administration’s ability to tackle rising antisemitism in the United States.

“I certainly hope so – I don’t know,” said the historian, during her final roundtable with the Jewish press at the State Department.

President-elect Donald Trump is yet to name a successor to Lipstadt, who stepsdown after three years as special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. Whoever succeeds her will take the helm of an office that was elevated to an ambassadorship and whose budget rose fourfold to $2m under her leadership.

Ticking off her accomplishments in the role, Lipstadt cited bringing antisemitism to the fore in high-level meetings around the world, securing 42 signatories on new international guidelines to combat antisemitism, and expanding the office to include a core of experts set up to continue their work under Trump.

“You can’t have a functioning state department office if every time there’s a change of administration, the entire office goes away and has to be rebuilt from scratch,” Lipstadt said. But she acknowledged the size of the problem, and data released this month by the Anti-Defamation League suggests that the problem has only grown in the past few years. “I’m too much of a historian to think that someone can solve it,” Lipstadt said.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s parents Rachel and Jonathan at their son’s funeral

Police form a cordon at a London protest. Communal leaders object to marches on Shabbat near a synagogue

Young Jews in theatre face Israel ‘loyalty test’

Acclaimed theatre and film producer Sir Nicholas Hytner has warned that young Jewish workers in the industry are being subjected to unsettling “loyalty tests” over their views on Israel, writes Lee Harpin.

Appearing at Sunday’s Jewish Labour Movement annual conference in north London, where he was quizzed by JW3 chief executive Raymond Simonson, the former artistic director of London’s National Theatre said he was frequently asked what it was like being a Jewish theatre worker at the moment.

Hytner, 68, grew up in what he previously described as being “a typical Jewish, cultured family” in south Manchester.

He explained that as a result of his own status within the theatre world today, he was personally not subjected to the same treatment as those who were from a younger generation in the industry.

“I’m often asked what it’s like being a Jewish theatre worker at the moment,” he revealed. “Personally I don’t know, for not particularly reputable reasons.

“Because I am who I am, nobody would dare do to me… I’m sorry I’m just being honest. What I know they do to younger Jews in the theatre, which is ask them where they stand (on Israel),” he observed. “That’s the thing that really unsettles young Jewish theatre workers.

“‘Where do you stand?’ The loyalty test.”

Responding to Hytner’s observations, Simonson said he had noted how in his role as JW3 chief executive he had seen increased interaction with “young Jews who during the, let’s call it ‘the Corbyn years’ – I think that’s how it’s known in the community – they weren’t kind of siding with the mainstream Jewish community.

“These were more progressive, more left wing, young Jewish people who didn’t really feel the antisemitism at that point, who were still comfortably voting Labour, who were kind of keeping their heads down, getting into arguments with the generation above them.

“And yet, in the last year, for the first time, they have felt incredibly vulnerable, have been moved to tears, have been forced out of spaces where they felt with their people… mostly progressive spaces. And who have now sought the mainstream Jewish community”.

Hytner’s inspirational decision to bring the play he directed, Giant, written by Mark Rosenblatt, to the Royal Court, was also at the

centre of Sunday’s fascinating discussion.

The play, which revolves around an explosive book review written by the antisemitic writer of children’s books Roald Dahl, railing against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, has gone on to be London’s theatrical sensation of the year.

It explored pressures placed on Dahl to withdraw his racist slurs against Jews, and his conflation with Israel and why he decided instead to double down on them.

Approaching the Royal Court, under new leadership showing signs of wanting to address a problematic past in relation to antisemitism, Hytner said it was “encouraging it turns out that there’s a grown-up audience that really wants to be told how complicated life is and complicated the Middle East is”.

He added: “It really isn’t susceptible to the kind of gross simplification that motivates quite a lot of the yelling and the demonstrators and the fury and the violence.”

The audience at the sell-out run had a significant number of Jews, but “that significant portion is never a majority, unlike New York where it is very often”, he added.

“This was not a Jewish audience falling great on a play written by a Jewish writer, with both Jewish roles played by Jewish actors, it wasn’t that. It felt at least tentatively a cause for optimism.”

‘TWO-TIER JUSTICE CLAIMS NONSENSE’

People peddling claims Keir Starmer’s government is operating a “two-tier justice system” need to “take a long hard look at themselves”, Finchley and Golders Green MP Sarah Sackman told the Jewish Labour Movement conference at JW3, writes Lee Harpin.

Sackman, the minister for courts and legal services, also said chronic underfunding of the criminal justice system under the previous government was hampering the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.

“I don’t accept we have a twotier justice system, and those peddling that accusation against the prime minister, against the government, need to take a long, hard look at themselves,” she said.

“We have an independent operation, independent prosecution service that does its work without fear or favour. We saw that in the wake of the disorder that followed the Southport murders.

“What should have been about the victims, those little girls, became about the worst kind of thuggery

and racist criminal behaviour. The swift justice that we saw there was an example of the criminal justice system operating at its best. ”

Turning to the fight against Jewhate in society, Sackman added: “We have got to fix the justice system and make sure our criminal justice system is properly funded in order to tackle the scourge of antisemitism and extremist behavior.”

On the threats to the Jewish community, she said: “I’ve seen first-hand the prosecutions being brought in by the CPS against those who perpetrate hate crimes, those who glorify Hamas and other terrorist organisations on our streets.

“How do I know that? Because certainly in the months that I was solicitor-general, I was signing o on providing consent for those prosecutions to be brought forward.

“But I come back to this point: we cannot fight antisemitism or extremism in a broken criminal justice system, and that’s why we have to fix it, not least to keep our community safe. ”

Also speaking at Sunday’s JLM event, which attracted over 600 people, health secretary Wes Streeting repeated his determination to come down hard on evidence of antisemitism within the NHS, saying he was “shocked” when shown examples of some conduct.

next six months. And the cabinet doesn’t underestimate that – we understand the choices she has to make, the pressure she is under.”

recently appointed a peer by Keir Starmer, also drew warm applause as she addressed attendees.

Other senior Labour figures to speak at the conference included attorney-general Richard Hermer, Middle East minister Hamish Falconer and international development Minister Anneliese Dodds. Luciana Berger, who was

A police presence was visible outside JW3 throughout the allday event, but there was no repeat of the pro-Palestinian demos that greeted a conference held at the same venue by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last year.

in building a health and social care

He thanked JLM members for the hard work they had done during the general election campaign and “for the work we will do together in building a health and social care system fit for the future”.

Streeting also defended underfire chancellor Rachel Reeves, telling the audience: “People continue to underestimate both the amount of heavy lifting she has had to do in her first six months and the amount of heavy lifting she will have to do in her

Streeting also defended underher and the amount of heavy lifting

Sarah Sackman talks at the Jewish Labour Movement conference in London

More than 50 panel sessions took place over the day, including Lord John Mann and Progressive Judaism co-chair Rabbi Charley Baginsky discussing the threat posed to the community by extremism on the far-left and from the far-right, and the need for interfaith dialogue to combat issues such as Islamist-inspired hate.

Lord John Mann and ProgresCharley Baginsky discussing the from the far-right, and the need for inter-

One session, with international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, was closed to journalists attending the conference on the grounds that he could not discuss material in open session relating to ongoing court cases that was sub judice.

One session, with international Sands, was closed to journalwas sub judice.

Photo: Ian Vogler

Sir Nicholas Hytner

ARSENAL FANS SHARE 2,000 YELLOW RIBBONS

Arsenal fans have launched a campaign to raise awareness of the plight of Israel’s hostages in Gaza, with 2,000 yellow ribbons handed out ahead of the FA Cup match against Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium.

Jewish supporters and allies backed by Stop The Hate came together to launch the She Wore Campaign, covering the stadium in yellow ribbons on Saturday evening in an initiative to amplify calls for the hostages’ immediate return.

Inspired by the Arsenal FA Cup song She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the campaign symbolises solidarity with the 98 innocent people still held hostage by Hamas.

Organiser Max from Stop the Hate told Jewish News:

“As an Arsenal fan and season ticket holder, I’m incredibly proud to see the Gooner community rallying behind such an important cause.

“Football has the power to unite us, and this campaign is about more than just the game – it’s about standing in solidarity with the hostages and their families.

“By wearing these yellow ribbons, we’re not only showing our compassion for their plight but also sending a clear message that no one should be forgotten.

“Together through football, we can amplify the call for the hostages’ safe return.”

Hermer: Love Israel but care about Palestine

Attorney-general Richard Hermer has described a situation where it is not possible to “love being in Israel but be deeply concerned about the plight of Palestinians” as being “absolutely not the world I want to be in”, writes Lee Harpin.

In a revealing conversation at the Jewish Labour Movement’s conference with Rabbi Laura JannerKlausner, his former teacher in the RSY Netzer Reform Jewish youth movement, Britain’s most senior lawyer showed his deep understanding of both Jewish liturgy and values.

Hermer revealed he had visited Israel both in his youth and more recently as a senior human rights lawyer and as a member of Keir Starmer’s government and spoke of the current horrific situation of the hostages captured by Hamas along with

the horror of the conditions faced by those living in Gaza throughout war with Israel.

Hermer said his frustration was “somehow you have to pick one side or the other. Or that you can’t love being in Israel, but can’t be deeply concerned about the plight of Palestinians.”

“That is absolutely not the world I want to be in.”

Speaking at JW3, Hermer said he could as attorneygeneral explain the government’s position but not disclose advice he might give on a particular decision.

On his views on the current conflict, Hermer spoke of seeing matters through “the prism of our Jewish values” and “tikun” and “about taking other themes picked up through my Jewish experience”.

But Hermer also expressed commitment to the concept of Rosh Gadol, or “taking leadership”, noting there were countless people

in the world “amplified by social media” who took “extreme positions not trying to look at things through the eyes of others, occasionally sympathising, but never empathising, not trying to find common ground”.

He added: “Now is the time for people to be taking leadership positions, all of us, to try to show actually it does not need to be like this.”

On the government’s announcing a suspension of 30 UK arms export licenses to Israel, Hermer continued to insist it was “purely a legal decision – the decision that this government made”, governed by domestic law, and a legal test was made.

Hermer rejected claims by a lawyer in the audience that legal decisions were inevitably also the result of “interpretation”.

Asked about the problems faced by Jewish students on campuses in the aftermath of 7 October, Hermer said he

was “absolutely” concerned, not least because he is “the father of a child on a campus involved in Jewish life”.

There was a role for both the university authorities and the government in the issue, he added.

Hermer also addressed concerns in the community on the impact of pro-Palestine demos on Jewish life, agreeing it was an “important issue” but one which involved balancing the right to protest with the complaints made by a significant section of the community.

“I want to go back to the kind of grown-up approach we want to take as a government,” said Hermer.

“I think what we want to do as government is try to understand what the competing tensions are, undoubtedly when it comes to public protest, and we want to carefully understand whether the law at present has got this balance right. “

HET hosts MPs for HMD

The Holocaust Educational Trust has staged a moving event at Parliament ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.

MPs and peers were in attendance, alongside survivors, and their families, to hear speeches from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Holocaust survivor Renee Salt BEM, and from HET young ambassador, Sayali Dhavale.

Tuesday evening also saw Speaker Lindsay Hoyle visit the Testimony 360: People and Places of the Holocaust installation at Westminster’s Portcullis House, where he also spoke of the vital importance of continuing to educate on the horrors that took place in Nazi Germany.

The cutting-edge technology features AI and VR technology, with parliamentarians and visitors able to ask questions to a digital

version of Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg BEM, and virtually explore the sites from his testimony.

In her speech the education secretary said: “Remembering what happened and educating young people is a responsibility this Government takes extremely seriously, especially given the shocking rise in the antisemitic abuse that we have seen since the since the 7 October attacks across this country and beyond- and I know the prime minister.

“That is why he confirmed that the Holocaust will remain a compulsory topic for schools, following the completion of our curriculum review.”

The event was hosted by Bob Blackman MP, with other guests including Lisa Smart MP; Dan Tomlinson MP; Lord Walney; Lord Austin and Lord John Spellar.

Fans show their colours at the Emirates Stadium

Hermer accepts a yellow ribbon from activists calling for the hostages to be freed

News / Survivors at Buckingham Palace

King meets survivors as he prepares

The King has spoken of his pain at the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors as he kicked off the UK’s commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, writes Justin Cohen.

Charles III met 94-year-old survivor Manfred Goldberg during an event at Buckingham Palace on the day it was confirmed he would join other world leaders to visit the notorious camp later this month.

Goldberg, who survived concentration camps including Stutthof and a death march when he was just a schoolboy, said the first thing the King mentioned was the trip, saying: “I feel I must go for the anniversary, (it’s) so important.”

The monarch was introduced to students and teachers from a Cheney School in Oxford who were among the community groups, interfaith activists and prisoners to take part in the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s (HMDT) 80 candles for 80 years project.

The school collaborated with the Rumble Museum and Museum of Oxford to learn about survivor Anita Laskar-Wallfish, who was part of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz. The result is a candleholder that includes broken glass to represent her time in the camp as well as musical motifs.

The King was speaking to students involved in the Echo Eternal project during a reception marking Holocaust Memorial Day at Buckingham Palace.

HMDT CEO Olivia Marks-Woldman told the King the initiative had encouraged creativity from the most destructive of times, while chair Laura Marks said the 80 candleholders will be showcased in a special digital exhibition on Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January – stressing the challenge to represent the stories of survivors when they are no longer with us.

One answer to that challenge is provided in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s special Testimony 360 project to which the King was introduced by CEO Karen Pollock and chair Craig Leviton.

Launched last year and used by schoolchildren across the country, it uses VR technology to enable students to ask a virtual Goldberg hundreds of questions about his experiences in the Shoah.

HET ambassadors Phoebe Winter and Jake Grey and Sacred Heart School students Lara Moreyra Gouveia and Victor Luiz Carvalho De Jesus, who have taken part in the programme, spoke of its impact, prompted by an intrigued monarch who quizzed the youngsters on their studies. He also took his chance to ask the VR Goldberg a question.

Goldberg was asked by Charles about his 2017 meeting with the Prince and Princess of Wales at Stuttof and later said of the King’s decision to join the Auschwitz commemoration: “I find it almost difficult to put into words, and I’m not often lost for words. But

King Charles speaks to Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg during a reception at Buckingham Palace

prepares for Auschwitz visit

I think it is an astounding affirmation by His Majesty that he fully understands the colossal injustice and atrocity that was perpetrated against Jewish people during the Holocaust.

“He seems to have made it an active component of his life to do what he can to ensure that people become aware.

“He, like me, is trying to spread knowledge that once people understand what the Holocaust represents, I think every single one contributes to preventing it ever happening again. Silence never helps the oppressed.”

Goldberg also expressed his concern for the future of the country “not because of

politics, [but] because of the social media platforms”.

The King said he “couldn’t bear” that survivors were becoming fewer in number and described Goldberg as “extraordinary” for continuing with his work in teaching young people about the lessons of the Holocaust.

Goldberg, who was accompanied by his wife, told reporters: “It was nice to hear that from His Majesty,”

The King also met Natasha Kaplinsky, a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation advisory board who told of interviewing more than 100 survivors following David Cameron’s Holocaust Commission.

The event concluded with a moving performance by Echo Eternal, a project of the CORE Education Trust and the National Youth Music Theatre which encourages school groups to create artistic responses to survivor testimony. The performance featured comments from the late survivor Zigi Shipper urging people not to be consumed by hate. Pollock said: “As antisemitism continues to surge across the globe, today’s event reminds us of the urgency of educating where antisemitism and hatred can lead. We are profoundly grateful for His Majesty’s support and dedication to this critical work.”

• Editorial comment, page 18

Palace marking Holocaust Memorial Day

Speaking to students involved in the ‘Echo Eternal’ project With Natasha Kaplinsky of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation

Former mayor mourned

Tributes poured in this week to long-serving Barnet councillor Eva Greenspan following her death, write Michelle Rosenberg and Jenni Frazer.

First elected in 1990, the Conservative councillor gave nearly four decades of public service, including serving as mayor in 2006 and standing up for issues involving her local Jewish community.

Former Finchley and Golders Green MP Mike Freer said: “Eva was a truly wonderful colleague. Warm, supportive with a sharp intellect. Her many charitable endeavours went unrecognised and her support will be hard to replace. May her memory be a blessing.”

Conservative group leader Peter Zinkin, said: “Since her first election in 1990, Eva has served the residents of her wards and the wider Barnet community unstintingly.

“Eva was a stalwart of Barnet Council and Barnet Conservatives. She was a fiercely dedicated councillor in Finchley who would not allow ill health to prevent her from serving her residents.

“She was constantly active and finding new ways to improve.

WIZZ AIR SERVICE FROM LUTON TO TA RETURNS

With the return of Wizz Air’s London to Tel Aviv route yesterday morning – the 07.25 flight from London Luton – the Israeli tourism sector hoped that it signalled a return to “normal” service for British travellers.

Despite an inevitable drop in travel from Britain to Israel in the aftermath of 7 October 2023, previously unpublished data shows UK visitors remained committed to visiting the Jewish state.

In fact, 79,000 tourists entered Israel from UK during 2024, representing 42 percent of the 2023 figures.

In December 2024 alone, 6,500 visitors entered Israel from the UK, a 63 percent increase from December 2023.

The figures are despite highly restrictive Foreign, Commonwealth and Development O ce (FCDO) advice remaining in place for almost all of 2024 and limited flight options: indirect routes or a much-reduced choice of direct air UK to Israel carriers (El Al and Israir).

Nevertheless, travel from the UK remained remarkably active throughout the whole of 2024.In 2019, the last full year of “undisrupted’’ travel pre-Covid and pre-7 October, visitors from the UK to Israel peaked at 235,000 visitors.

Michael Ben-Baruch, director of Israel’s tourism arm in the UK, welcomed the flights as a sign that “Israel wants you back”. He added: “Israel is a country that thrives on its interaction with the outside world.”

RABBIS BACK CLIMATE ACTION

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism, has added his name to those of a group of faith leaders calling on Keir Starmer to back next week’s climate bill.

The Climate and Nature Bill is due to go to the vote on 24 January.

More than two dozen national religious leaders have now asked the prime minister to back the bill, saying that by doing so he will “take responsibility for the international impacts of all our actions”.

A letter expressing the views of the religious leaders was handed in to 10 Downing Street by a delegation on Monday. The private members’ bill is supported by 250 parliamentarians, and ministers are under increasing pressure to give MPs a free vote.

The proposed law sets out sweeping changes to nature protections in the UK and is set to be debated as news of the devastating Los Angeles fires continues to make headlines all over the world.

There’s only one Eva Greenspan and her passing will leave a hole in the hearts of many of us. Eva was nothing short of exceptional. May her name be a blessing.”

Barnet Council leader and leader of the Labour group Barry Rawlings added: “Eva was a formidable member of the council and a strong voice for her residents and the community, serving them with tenacity and vigour.

“Her long service award was well deserved as recognition of her contribution to the civic life of Barnet over many decades. She will be sorely missed.”

Greenspan served in roles including chair of planning during her decades of service. Recently, she started a charity called Kosher School Meals. She was chair of Barnet Ramat Gan, strengthening ties and fostering collaboration between Barnet and its twin city, Israel’s Ramat Gan.

She was a governor for five schools, contributing to the strategic direction of educational institutions and striving to provide quality education for all students.

Her governorship roles spanned

more than 30 years.

She was trustee of multiple housing associations and worked to ensure quality housing was available to those in need.

Mayor of Barnet, Tony Vourou, said: “Eva Greenspan is remembered for her remarkable legacy serving our community with unwavering dedication. As a councillor and former Mayor, Cllr Eva Greenspan was a beacon of leadership, integrity, and compassion, leaving an indelible mark on our borough.

“Beyond her professional achievements, Eva was known for her kindness and approachability. She took the time to listen to the concerns of local residents, always striving to find solutions that benefited all.

“I, along with the mayoress and the mayoral o ce, express our sadness of the news of Eva’s passing and give our condolences to her family and wish them long life.”

Greenspan is survived by her children Natalie, Stephanie and Jason, as well as numerous grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Tributes will be paid at a full council meeting on 28 January.

Mon 10th February 2025

8pm - 10.15pm

Join us for a special evening singing songs of peace and a selection of music in Hebrew and Yiddish

The Zemel Choir is open to amateur singers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, and has vacancies in all voices. Some experience in singing and reading music is desirable but not essential. Rehearsals are held on Monday evenings in North London, Sept to July, except Jewish festivals and public holidays.

Eva Greenspan: warmth, a sharp intellect and unwavering dedication

Wizz Air is resuming flights to Ben-Gurion

News / Truss lawsuit / Pupil

Israel-based lawyers helping Truss

Liz Truss has hired a law firm whose largest o ce is in Tel Aviv to send a cease-and-desist letter to Keir Starmer asking him to stop saying she crashed the economy, writes Lee Harpin.

A letter sent to the prime minister by lawyers from Asserson accuses him of making “false and misleading” comments that Truss while she was in o ce “crashed the economy” or was “crashing the economy”, which it claims are defamatory.

Asserson, founded by British lawyer Trevor Asserson, has its headquarters in London but its largest o ce is in the heart of Tel Aviv’s business district.

Based in the Azrieli Centre, its sta work primarily in the English legal system, which is often used to settle international disputes.

The letter sent to Starmer on behalf of the former prime minister claims: “Of particular concern are the false and defamatory public statements you made about our client in the lead-up to the UK general election from late May 2024.”

Truss’s lawyers then claim that references to her having crashed the economy “were likely to materially impact public opinion” during the July 2024 general election, when she lost her Norfolk seat.

Asked to comment on the letter, a Downing Street spokesperson said Starmer had no plans to moderate his language when discussing Truss’s economic record.

Founded in 2005, Asserson Law initially

o ered English legal services from its oshore location. But it has expanded from dispute regulation services to become a Legal 500-ranked full-service law firm, o ering clients advice on dispute resolution, real estate and corporate, finance and commercial under both English and US legal systems.

Trevor Asserson, who lives in Jerusalem with his family, is the firm’s senior partner and has a number of public interest claims on behalf of various causes – including founding

Menorah pupil killed in Belgium car crash

A 12-year-old boy from Menorah Grammar School in Edgware has been killed in a car crash on a Belgian motorway, days before he was due to celebrate his barmitzvah with his twin brother.

The tragic accident occurred on the E40 in Veurne, West Flanders, on Thursday last week at around 1am and left the vehicle overturned on its roof.

The boy’s parents and his three siblings all sustained injuries as a result of the crash, but local reports have suggested these are not life threatening.

The family was reportedly returning from a simcha in Antwerp the night before when the accident occurred, with poor weather conditions blamed.

Volunteers from ZAKA’s International Unit – a volunteer post-disaster response team – confirmed they had attended the accident.

ZAKA deputy director of operations Haim Weingarten said: “This is a devastating and painful event.

“Just last month, the boy who was killed celebrated his

first tefillin ceremony here in Israel and he was due to celebrate his barmitzvah along with his twin in the coming days.”

An email sent to Menorah parents confirmed the tragic accident and o ered advice on how to break the news to pupils.

It confirmed that a year three girl and her parents were safe after being involved in the accident but that the girl’s brother had died.

The letter added: “If you decide to tell your child, then it is very important when talking to your child to be calm, direct and clear and to say that the brother has died.

“This is a very important part of helping your child to process the information and helps them come to terms with it.

“It is quite normal for children to show strong emotions of anger, upset and tears. You must reassure them that these feelings are normal. Please stress to your child that it is very rare for children to die in a car accident.

“Should further support be required, we are in touch with the Crisis Trauma Team who are ready and available to step in but, as they told us, support is best given by teachers whom the children know and trust.”

relation to Israel left him open to charges of bias himself. Asserson replied saying he had used AI working alongside a team of Israeli data scientists to ensure the 199-page report adopted an impartial approach to its analysis.

bbcwatch, which analyses BBC media coverage of the Middle East.

Asserson last year produced a report into the BBC’s reporting of the war in Gaza and alleged the corporation was biased against Israel and had breached impartiality rules on multiple occasions.

The Asserson Report received praise from several communal organisations, although some questioned whether the author’s track record as an outspoken critic of the BBC in

The letter to Starmer refers to comments in June 2024. It alleges that he made the claims at “a time when you knew or ought to have known that those statements were false; and the statements were likely to materially impact public opinion of our client whilst she was standing as the parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in South West Norfolk”.

The letter argues that the market movement during Truss’s tenure in September and October 2022 should not be classified as a crash of the economy.

Protecting and securing the Jewish community in the UK against antisemitism is what we do. CST will leave no stone unturned in the fight against those who wish to do us harm.

We need your ongoing and long-term support to continue our work.

Liz Truss speaks at a Conservative Friends of Israel reception in Birmingham

Keir Starmer has received a legal letter

The crash site in Veurne, West Flanders, last Thursday

Chabad warned over IDF aid

A Chabad Lubavitch charity has been issued with an o cial warning over a fundraising campaign in support of a soldier of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), writes Lee Harpin.

The Charity Commission opened a compliance case into the Chabad Lubavitch Centres North East London and Essex Limited charity in December 2023 after a fundraising page was set up in October that year to raise funds for a soldier stationed in northern Israel.

The page, which was removed in January 2024, raised around £2,280, of which £937 was sent to the soldier. The trustees could not account for how these funds were spent.

The rest was spent on non-lethal military equipment bought by the trustees and sent to the same soldier, it has now emerged.

The case determined the fundraising activity was outside the charity’s purposes and not capable of being charitable and the trustees had failed to act in the best interests of the charity and its reputation.

The commission, which regulates charities in England and Wales, says this was misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of charity, and a breach of trust.

Charities with appropriate purposes can in law raise funds to promote the e ciency of the UK armed forces, but providing aid or military supplies to any foreign armed force is not a charitable purpose, and no charity can legally undertake such activity.

The commission’s o cial warning to Chabad imposes a number of requirements on the charity’s trustees to remedy the misconduct and/or mismanagement.

Director for regulatory services Helen Earner said: “It is not lawful, or acceptable, for a charity to raise funds to support a soldier of a foreign military. Our o cial warning requires the charity to set things right and is a clear message to other charities to stay true to their established purposes.”

The commission says failure to implement the requirements in the o cial warning may lead to further regulatory action.

The trustees of Chabad Lubavitch Centres North East London and Essex Limited said in a statement: “Following our full coopera-

tion with the Charity Commission after this matter was raised with them, the commission has as a matter of course issued an o cial warning concerning a fundraising appeal that briefly took place following the horrific events of 7 October 2023.

“While that is regrettable, we accept the commission’s findings regarding an activity that went beyond the scope of the charity’s purposes. The attack on 7 October, the ongoing plight of the hostages and the continuing conflict were and remain a source of deep trauma, as has the steep uptick in antisemitism in the UK and the threats made against our own community rabbis and their families.

“As a charity ministering to the spiritual and emotional needs of our community, these have been and continue to be incredibly trying times due not only to the deep religious and cultural connections that we all have with Israel and the despair at the unfolding humanitarian tragedy, but also due to the fact that many of our congregants have sons, daughters, siblings, cousins and friends living there and, in some cases, being killed or injured or called up as reservists at a time of mass emergency mobilisation.

“We acknowledge that in facilitating a campaign to provide warm clothing and the like, however briefly and however modest its results, the charity exceeded its purposes and we are grateful for the guidance provided by the Charity Commission to ensure this won’t happen again.”

YOUR LEGACY

TOP HONOUR FOR JEWISH CARE TEAM

Jewish Care has become the first Jewish charity in England to be named an Investing in Volunteers achiever, receiving accreditation from the UK Volunteering Forum (UKVF).

The award, supported by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), demonstrates commitment to quality assurance and continuous improvement by a charity in relation to the way that it values and supports the contribution of its volunteers to the organisation.

The award process included self-assessment along with oneto-one and group interviews with 29 sta and 75 volunteers, plus written evidence to support the volunteer work and management.

Jewish Care director of community services, volunteering, social work & hospitality Richard Shone, said: “We are extremely proud to be leading the way and to have been awarded the Investing in Volunteering standard. We have worked hard to achieve this because our volunteers are invaluable to us and the skills they o er are infinite. If we were to pay for all that they contribute, we estimate that it would equate to £9.25 million a year.

“It’s important to us that our volunteers enjoy a first-class experience, and that they feel valued, appreciated and supported. That’s why we have built up our professional training opportunities, have volunteers’ handbooks, and hold an annual awards ceremony, a volunteer

conference, special events during Volunteers’ Week, and outings for them to enjoy. We also produce an annual volunteer survey, using the feedback from the results to inform improvements in the following year.”

In the report to accompany the standard, the UKVF said: “Jewish Care has demonstrated a real commitment to volunteering, proving that their volunteer management policies and procedures meet nationally recognised standards.”

The charity was assessed against six quality areas covering vision for volunteering, planning for volunteers, volunteer inclusion, recruiting and welcoming volunteers, supporting volunteers and valuing and developing volunteers and found to excel in all aspects.

Volunteers were unanimous in their view that their contribution was valued, appreciated and recognised.

Chabad Lubavitch said it accepted the findings of the Charity Commission

Jewish Care won praise for the standard of its volunteers

Chabad’s east London office

‘Remember this’, say UK survivors

by Jenni Frazer @Jennifrazer

Four British Jewish Holocaust survivors have taken part in I Survived Auschwitz: Remember This, a digital campaign launched by the New Yorkbased Claims Conference.

The series of video testimonies marks the 80th anniversary of the extermination camp’s liberation.

Over six months, the Claims Conference recorded 80 testimonies from survivors worldwide. These stories, each a deeply personal reflection, are being shared on social media over a two-week period, ensuring their voices reach new generations.

Recognising that this may be one of the final opportunities for survivors to share their experiences firsthand, the campaign focused on a single, profound question: “Given your experience as an Auschwitz survivor, what is one specific thing – a person, a moment, or an experience – you want people to remember for generations to come?”

The answers, often heart-wrenching, reflect the losses endured. The project drew inspiration from the testimony of Aron Krell, who survived five concentration camps and ghettos, including Auschwitz. Aron shared the story of his brother Zvi, a talented footballer who succumbed to starvation after a year in the Lodz ghetto. Aron recalled Zvi’s final words: “Please, never forget me.” The campaign serves as a tribute to Aron, Zvi, and the millions of others who su ered under Nazi persecution.

“I lost not only Zvi but my brother Moshe and my mother Esther in the Holocaust,” Aron said. “I know many can’t fathom what I endured. But everyone can understand the love I had for my brother and the pain of losing him. The lessons of the Holocaust must always be remembered.”

SEX ASSAULT GP IS JAILED

A Jewish GP from Salford has been jailed for eight years for sexually assaulting female patients during examinations.

Dr Wayne Davis, 69, was sentenced after a jury at Manchester Crown Court found him guilty of conducting unnecessary, intimate examinations on two women between 1995 and 2006.

Gill Petrovic, senior crown prosecutor for CPS North West’s rape and serious sexual o ence unit, said: “Wayne Davis was in a position of trust as a doctor and a highly respected man within the community. He abused his position to commit sexual o ences against women under his care.

“I would like to thank the women for supporting the prosecution and hope they can move forward knowing Davis has now been sentenced.”

Among the UK participants is Anita LaskerWallfisch, 99, perhaps the best known of UK survivors, who survived because she could play the cello.

She says the one thing she wants people to remember is that “the Holocaust was di erent from other genocides. We were recycled. They made other things out of us.”

Another UK-based survivor, Ivor Perl, was born Yitzchak Perlmutter in 1932 in Mako, Hungary. He was raised in an Orthodox family with eight siblings.

During the Holocaust, he and his family were forced into a ghetto. His father and eldest brother were sent to hard labour, never to be heard from again.

Ivor was 12 when he was deported to Auschwitz. When he arrived, he said he was 16 and was selected for labour. With the arrival of the Red Army, Ivor and his eldest brother were sent to the Kaufering camp in Germany. In 1945, he was transported to Dachau and liberated.

• I Survived Auschwitz: Remember This can be found on the Claims Conference social media channels and online at claimscon.org/ rememberthis

EX-MINISTER ARRESTED

A former Labour minister and Jewish Labour Movement chair has been arrested on suspicion of “engaging in sexual communication with a child”.

Ivor Caplin, 66, was released on bail after spending a night in a police cell, with o cers opening an inquiry into the alleged incident.

The former veterans minister under Tony Blair was stopped by a group of activists last Saturday who claimed they had arranged to meet him posing as an “underage boy”. Reports suggested a flat in Hove was searched by police on Saturday with items seized as evidence.

Caplin was suspended from the Labour Party last year over undisclosed ‘serious allegations’, which he denies. He is due to answer his police bail on 10 April.

He was first elected as a MP for Hove in 1997 and represented the constituency until 2005.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 99, gives her testimony

Wayne Davis, 69, attacked two patients

Former Hove MP Ivor Caplin

Gene tests: 235 people are told of higher cancer risk

Hundreds of people with Jewish ancestry have been identified as having a gene mutation which puts them at a higher risk of developing cancer, writes Adam Decker.

The NHS in England initiated a genetic testing programme for people with Jewish backgrounds because of their higher risk of some cancers.

Now new data from the programme, shared with the Press Association news agency, show that 235 people have been identified as having a higher risk of cancer.

These people will be offered extra support including preventive treatment and extra screening to spot any cancers early. The screening programme looks for mutations in the BRCA genes which push up a person’s risk of cancer.

Everyone has BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, but people who have changes in the gene are at higher risk of certain cancers including cancers of the breast, ovaries, prostate and pancreas.

Ethnicity can play a role in the odds of a person having these changes to the gene – for example people four in every 10 people who have an Ashkenazi Jewish background have been found to carry the gene change in BRCA1 and

BRCA2 and one in 140 Sephardi Jews have a faulty BRCA gene.

As part of the screening programme, anyone over 18 in England with Jewish ancestry offered a simple saliva test.

Saliva samples are collected by people in their own homes and then sent to a lab for testing.

During the first year of the NHS Jewish BRCA Testing Programme some 25,000 free saliva test kits have been requested and delivered.

About 11,000 tests have now been processed, with 235 people (2.1 percent) testing positive for a BRCA gene mutation.

People who are found to have altered BRCA genes are given early access to cancer detection services such as mammograms or MRI scans.

They may also be offered preventive surgery or medication and advised to make risk-reducing lifestyle changes.

Prof Peter Johnson, NHS England’s national clinical director for cancer, said: “It’s encouraging that so many people have come forward for testing and that hundreds living with an increased risk have been identified and can now be supported to make informed choices about monitoring and risk-reducing options.

“We want as many people as

WILL BE BIGGEST YET

Sunday sees the biggest Jewish Volunteering Network awards yet, following more than 100 nominations from 50 charities.

Taking place in Hertfordshire, the event, media partnered by Jewish News, honours exceptional volunteers across four categories: Volunteer of the Year, Volunteer Team of the Year, Young Adult Volunteer of the Year and the Lifetime Achievement Award.

An independent panel of judges will select an outstanding achiever in each category, with the winners announced during the awards ceremony. This added recognition celebrates the exceptional impact of a select few whose contributions stand out even among this incredible group.

Nicky Goldman, chief executive of JVN, said: “We are delighted to see such an extraordinary response from the community. This year’s nominations reflect the inspiring work of individuals across a wide range of roles, from supporting educational programmes to trusteeship. Volunteering enhances wellbeing and social cohesion and JVN is so happy to celebrate so many volunteers who make a difference to other people’s lives throughout the year.”

possible to take advantage of this innovative testing programme, so please continue to come forward for a simple saliva test if you are eligible.

“If you are sitting on a testing kit at home, we encourage you to complete and return the testing kit.

“The majority of people won’t be variant carriers of the BRCA gene, but if you are, the NHS can provide you with appropriate screening or treatment.”

Adam, a 59-year-old from London who found out that he had a genetic change, said: “Knowing that you’re BRCA1 positive, that you have a mutation that you may have passed on to the kids, can feel very overwhelming.

“For me, it was guilt, but we live

in a day and age that means we can actually test for this.

“Because of the incredible support and expertise of Jnetics, Chai and the NHS it is amazing to see the options that are available for me and my family.”

The screening programme was developed by NHS England in partnership with charities Jnetics and Chai Cancer Care.

Jnetics chief executive Nicole Gordon said: “We are pleased with the uptake of the programme across all sectors of the community from the religious to the unaffiliated.

“Our mission now is to continue to drive awareness, giving individuals the opportunity to gain knowledge that will help mitigate against the impact of hereditary cancer and ultimately save lives.”

Lisa Steele, chief executive at Chai Cancer Care, added: “We know it can be daunting to test positive for the BRCA gene mutation.

“However, finding out means people can make informed choices and get the support they need.”

Anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent can register for a saliva kit to be sent to their home address by visiting: nhsjewishbrcaprogramme.org.uk

£72,000 raised for mental health

Jewish Action for Mental Health raised more than £72,000 of a £100,000 goal in a fundraising campaign, ensuring the continuation of the charity’s essential services.

Founded in 2019 in response to a series of teenage suicides in the Manchester Jewish community, the organisation provides one-to-one professional therapy for individuals in crisis.

Since its inception, Jewish Action for Mental Health has delivered more than 7,000 counselling and therapy sessions to Jewish individuals across Greater Manchester, regardless of their level of religious observance, positively affecting more than 760 lives and providing crucial support to those who often suffer in silence until they reach out.

Kate Lurie, project manager and co-founder of JAMH, said: “Our commitment is to

provide rapid intervention, matching individuals in crisis with professionally registered therapists swiftly and effectively.

“The overwhelming support from our community ensures we can continue offering this lifesaving service to those who need it most.”

A total of 1,491 donors supported the campaign, which is still live at charityextra.com/ JAMH

AJEX HONOURS STUDENT CADETS

Three students at Europe’s largest Jewish secondary school received AJEX honours at the annual JFS Combined Cadet Force awards this week.

The voluntary youth organisation at the Kenton school was approved by the Ministry of Defence in 2019, the first at a Jewish school and the first all-Jewish cadet force since the 1950s.

The main awards were given to Cadet Corporal of Horse, Harry Gordon (most outstanding cadet), Yair Josebashvili (Max Karo Trophy for most improved cadet) and Itamar Mason (most outstanding recruit).

The awards were presented by AJEX trustees Mike Bluestone and Jonathan Kober.

The JFS CCF cadets engage in a wide range of activities designed to foster leadership, discipline, teamwork and personal growth. They participate in military training, including

drill practice, fieldcraft, and weapons safety, while also developing leadership skills through planning, decisionmaking and taking on responsibilities within their units. Adventure training, such as climbing, kayaking, and trekking, helps build resilience and confidence, while parades and ceremonies, including Remembrance Day events, instil a sense of pride and discipline.

The JFS CCF also integrates Jewish values and practices into its programme, ensuring respect for religious observances like Shabbat and providing kosher food.

Award winner Yair said: “I have been a CCF cadet for almost two years now and it has had such a great impact on me. The staff are always there to support you, and the other cadets are always striving to make the best environment for anyone that joins.”

About 11,000 tests have been processed, with 235 people testing positive

Ann and the late Bob Kirk receiving an outstanding lifetime achievement award in 2023

Luciana Berger (left) takes part in a JAMH podcast

Ashkelon

‘It’s gone’ – historic LA shul reduced to ashes

Beloved spiritual home of 400 families destroyed as infernos leave community reeling. ‘It’s like Armageddon,’ one longtime member tells Michelle Rosenberg

“The building has been razed to the ground. It’s gone,” a devastated Janis Fuhrman tells Jewish News following the destruction of Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center in Altadena, California –completely destroyed in the devastating LA wildfires.

The historic community centre and beloved spiritual home to more than 400 families is one of more than 100 structures destroyed in the area.

Thousands of fire fighters were still tackling the unprecedented blazes this week. Speaking to the Associated Press, the temple’s executive director Melissa Levy confirmed sta had been evacuated safely and the shul’s Torah scrolls taken to the home of a community member.

Fuhrman, 75, lives in the Jewish

area of Pico Robertson, half an hour from the devastation. While the area has not been under any evacuation or immediate danger, she says the wildfires have “a ected us, people we know, and the air quality is horrible.

“Yesterday morning, it looked still like the night. Today, it’s clearing up, but the worst thing possible that could happen was the winds we had.

A very usual pattern, but a very unusual behaviour. It was like being in cyclones and tornadoes, very high winds, and that’s what made these fires just take over. You can still see the skies black from where we are.”

Fuhrman’s ties to the 100-yearold-plus shul run deep.

“My family’s been a liated from the beginning,” she says. “My parents were married in a prior building in 1939. I have many, many years of experience with the temple in Pasadena. It’s gone. The building has been razed to the ground. It’s just gone.

like this is a forest where there’s a cabin and you expect fires to come. These are residential streets where people walk and children ride bicycles. This is a town that is gone.”

service here in the west side of LA.”

“Right now, tens of thousands of people, maybe even 100,000 people, have been displaced. I have no idea where everybody’s going to live. People have gone to hotels, to Airbnbs, to friends. We’re not talking

Fuhrman says she knows three families who lost their homes “but I’m sure I know over 100 people or more who have been displaced, and they can’t get back into the area to see if their homes are there or not. People were instructed to leave their homes unlocked and unfortunately there’s a problem of looting.”

She’s resolute that she will “continue doing what I do” to support her community. “I work through the Jewish Federation at the food pantry

She also helps at the Skirball Cultural Center, a Jewish educational institution founded in 1996.

“I think what people need more than anything is money just to survive and buy the essentials they need.”

She describes the wildfires as “very, very unusual. First responders, people who have been here their whole life, nobody has seen anything like it. It’s like Armageddon.”

Sifting through family photographs, she recalls being asked to go to the shul, to “speak at a ceremony they had last Sunday to rededicate a stone from one of the original temples in the Pasadena area.

“I made a point to be there and talk about childhood memories. Looking back, it was almost like we were there to say goodbye.”

As for what future Shabbats will look like for the community, she says: “Where will people be going? Most of them can’t even go home. You can’t even imagine that this could happen. It’s beyond. I’ve seen the extent of the damage. And it’s just mind boggling. The sheer scale of it. But you know, Jews wandered for 40 years and moved from place to place. Every time something’s been established and then it’s been destroyed. We’re not through with this story.

“We have our children and our grandchildren, and it’s going to be fine. But people are literally walking around in the fog. They really need time.”

 A Go-Fund Me page to support the community has so far raised £23k of a £400k target

The temple’s Go Fund Me page showing the building on fire

Fuhrman and family at the shul in 1990 for her son’s barmitzvah

The shul Facebook page showing food and other essentials provided by Chabad of Pasadena

The rubble of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center after it burned down

Photo by Sandra Haynes-Esenste

Arab Christian tunes up to sing for Israel at Eurovision

Valerie Hamaty is leading the race to represent her country in Switzerland

A frontrunner on the latest season of Rising Star, the Israeli talent show, has advanced on the basis of her renditions of an iconic Israeli song that includes words from the Shema, one of Judaism’s central prayers, and Hurricane, the country’s post-7 October anthem that she performed alongside a survivor of the Hamas massacre that day, writes Deborah Danan.

Those might be unsurprising selections in a Jewish country that has lately been defined by its response to 7 October But it’s not just her voice that sets Valerie Hamaty apart: She’s also an Arab Christian, the only such contestant on a show whose winner becomes Israel’s entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest. And her success is sparking debate at a time when Israel’s war in Gaza has tested relations between Jewish and Arab Israelis.

“That an Arab should represent Israel on an international stage is a huge source of pride,” said Zohurha Abonar. “And the fact that she’s from right here? That makes it even more special.”

Abonar is a Muslim resident of Jaffa, the city adjacent to Tel Aviv that is a heart of Arab Israel and Hamaty’s hometown. She was speaking at a Christmas market where Hamaty’s recent advance added to the seasonal cheer.

One teenage girl, who said she was Hamaty’s cousin but asked not to be named, said the singer’s growing success resonated deeply within her Christian community. “She’s inspiring so many of us,” she said.

But Hamaty’s rise hasn’t been welcomed by everyone.

“She’s always pandering to Jews,” said one young woman from a group standing nearby, who declined to give her name.

“My generation in the Muslim community will never stand behind her,” she added, pointing to Hamaty’s decision to wear a yellow pin in support of the hostages, and what she viewed as the singer’s public alignment with Israeli Jews during the ongoing war. Hamaty has made regular visits to hospitals to cheer soldiers wounded in Gaza, sung at the funerals of victims of the 7 October attack, and toured battered kibbutzim and communities.

Among Jewish Israelis, opinions are similarly divided. While some welcome her Eurovision candidacy and her decision to perform well-known Hebrew and English songs in Arabic — which Hamaty translates herself — as a reflection of Israel’s diversity, others see her performances during a time of war as tone-deaf and believe that the privilege of representing Israel on the global stage should be reserved for a Jewish artist.

“How can we send a non-Jewish singer to represent us?” one commenter wrote in response to a video of Hamaty’s most recent performance. “After all, Israel is the state of one nation, the symbol of the Star of David is on the flag. This is a fact, not an opinion.” The comment drew a handful of responses accusing the author of racism — but also more than 80 thumbs-up emojis.

Hamaty’s father, Tony, says he follows every online exchange about his daughter closely but has managed to stay level-headed. “I go into every article written about my daughter and if there are a thousand talkbacks [comments], I’ll read every single one. I like to understand what people think,” he said.

“The comments sections are tainted by a few very loud racists who answer everyone,” he added. “But the sane majority has shown nothing but love for Valerie.”

Tony Hamaty was speaking from his eponymous pizzeria in Jaffa’s old city, where a TV on the wall played a loop of his daughter’s performances.

One of the most emotionally arresting was a duet performed with another contestant, Daniel Wais. Wais’s father, Shmulik, was killed on 7 October in their home in Kibbutz Be’eri as he tried to defend his wife, who was kidnapped, brought to Gaza and later murdered. Her body was eventually recovered by the IDF.

Just before filming the episode, Wais had come from his parents’ reburial, moved from temporary graves to the kibbutz cemetery now considered safe enough for a proper funeral.

duet performed with another contestant, Daniel Wais. Wais’s father, Shmulik, was killed on Oct. 7 in their home in Kibbutz Be’eri

The two sang “Hurricane,” the song performed by Eden Golan, who represented Israel in last year’s Eurovision. The song, which referenced those murdered on 7 October, had its lyrics and title altered after Eurovision organisers deemed it too political. Golan performed it in the final, hosted in the Swedish city of Malmo, amid loud jeers and boos from audience members opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, as well as cheers. Golan ultimately placed second in the audience vote and fifth overall.

In their rendition, Hamaty and Wais incorporated lyrics from the original version, entitled October Rain.

Tony Hamaty shared that his daughter had received overwhelming support from survivors and family members of victims of the Oct. 7 attack, saying they had urged her to “stay strong and not let the racist voices get to her.”

people who have given me their blessing, I have nothing left to prove. Music constantly amazes me — if Arabic triggers fear in some, singing transforms it, reaching their hearts in a different way,” she told the outlet.

Nevertheless, Hamaty said she has no plans to sing in Arabic if she gets the chance to represent Israel at Eurovision. Instead, she plans to sing a ballad in English with some Hebrew — a standard mix at the multinational contest that has recently been dominated by English-language lyrics. She explained that her presence as an Arab on the Eurovision stage already carries the message of diversity.

“The goal is to connect with Europeans, so English is necessary for them to understand, and Hebrew represents Israel, the official language here. The fact that I’m Arab is already part of the story. There’s no need to overstate it.”

On various Arabic forums, discussions about Hamaty reflect this divide. Some praise her for breaking cultural barriers and serving as a rolemodel for young Arab artists.

Others express discomfort with her association with Israeli national events.

During the show, Wais shared that he and Hamaty had competed against each other in a talent competition before the war. His father, who attended that event, had told him afterward that he needed to find a way to perform with her someday. Reflecting on the duet, Wais said, “When I realised we’d be singing together on Rising Star, I got goosebumps.”

One of the most emotionally arresting was a

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Valerie recounted a moving encounter with Shani Goren, who was taken hostage to Gaza and released in a deal with Hamas in November 2023. Goren reached out to the singer, expressing her desire to hear Hamaty sing in Arabic, explaining that she wanted to reconnect with the beauty of the language despite the trauma she endured.

“I don’t want to associate it only with what I went through there,” she said Goren told her. “You’re the only one who can help me see it differently.”

For Hamaty, the moment was transformative. “If this is my mission, and these are the

If she ends up representing Israel at Eurovision in Basel, Switzerland, in May, it wouldn’t be the first time the country uses the competition as an opportunity to showcase its multiculturalism.

When Israel hosted the contest in 2019, after winning the previous year, the country’s public broadcaster released a promo video with a selfdeprecating ditty sung by an Arab-Israeli personality, Lucy Ayoub, along with Russian-Israeli presenter Elia Greenfeld. “In fact most Israelis have complex identities/that is why we all look at each other here as frenemies,” they sang.

Tony Hamaty was candid about the resistance Valerie has faced from some in the Muslim community. “I have many Muslim friends who raise an eyebrow and ask, ‘Why does your daughter support Israel?’”

Valerie Hamaty’s success has ignited debate among Arab and Jewish Israelis

Last year’s entry Eden Golan

New kinder data unearthed

Thousands of Jews who fled Nazi Germany as children will for the first time learn details of their journeys to freedom thanks to the discovery of new documents.

Records which were used by border o cials in Holland – to allow Jewish children to pass through the Netherlands on trains to the UK as part of the Kindertransport – have been discovered in archives in Israel. They list the names of almost all the 9,000 children who fled to the UK and Holland on the Kindertransport between December 1938 and August 1939.

It is believed that the records were created by the Dutch Jewish Children Committee to ensure safety of passage for children travelling from Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria and Italy. They include the children’s names, home addresses, dates of birth, parents’ names, chaperones’ names, Kindertransport numbers and departure dates.

The documents were discovered in the archives at Yad Vashem by Nottingham Trent University (NTU) alumna Dr Amy Williams. Williams is now working with NTU

Emeritus Professor Bill Niven to piece together the facts and make the lists available to the public.

who are still alive today, who were so young that they cannot recall their journeys, will for the first time learn how they fled the war to start new lives in the UK and Holland.”

Dr Williams is also making available separate records she discovered in the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute New York for children who left Gdansk in Poland. These contain the names of several hundred children for the Kindertransport from Poland, though sadly some of them never made it onto their train.

though

one has ever seen before.

“It may be possible for people to trace where they lived, how many children were on their train, and the names of the children they sat next to. For some children it gives the address that they were going to.”

Surviving Kindertransportee

Hanna Zack Miley, 92, who lives in Arizona, said: “I am still feeling the reverberations of seeing my details on the Kindertransport list.

began working through

Dr Williams has also just began working through the Austrian lists to the UK, France, Belgium, Australia, and other nations held at the new National Library of Israel.

“Since I started my research into the Kindertransport ten years ago, I was told repeatedly that the lists of children travelling to Britain and Holland did not exist,” said Dr Williams. “But I have found them. These lists will allow thousands of people to reconstruct their family units and understand more about their grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives before the horror ensued.

“Many of the Kindertransportees

Professor Niven said: “These documents are of huge historical significance and will help answer questions that many Jewish people have carried for their entire lives. It’s the first time that many people will know that they were definitely on a Kindertransport, where it travelled through, the names of those who accompanied them and other minor details that no

“My first reaction was a feeling of authentication – this actually did happen, I was really there. I’m embracing more deeply both the losses and the deliverance, the saving of my life. Already the discovery of the lists has led to a Zoom meeting with two of Doris Aronowitz’s sons. Her name was next to mine on the list. I think it’s only the beginning.”

It is hoped that all the documents will be made available to the public through the Association of Jewish Refugees and World Jewish Relief to allow survivors and their families to learn about their past.

 Check if you or your ancestors are on the lists at amy. williams2011@my.ntu.ac.uk

Siblings arrive in London in 1939. Inset: Newly-found doc

onto their train.

Editorial comment and letters to the editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS

Courage from the Met King holds torch of remembrance

Later this month King Charles III will join world leaders at Auschwitz to mark the 80th anniversary of the concentration camp’s liberation. The significance of his presence there cannot be overstated.

As monarch, Charles –like his mother for so many decades before him –represents continuity, bridge between generations. His return visit sends a clear message: that the memory of the Holocaust is not confined to those who experienced it but is a duty passed down to all of us.

Charles’ engagement with survivor-led initiatives, such as the Holocaust Educational Trust’s innovative VR project Testimony 360, highlights the importance of using modern technology to preserve and share these stories with future generations. Charles has spent decades embracing survivors, amplifying their voices and supporting initiatives to preserve their stories.

This anniversary – which is likely to be the last big milestone shared with our precious living survivors – carries heavy significance.

As the King prepares to join world leaders at Auschwitz, he reaffirms a critical truth: that the responsibility to remember and to educate grows even stronger as survivors leave us.

His inpsiring example, as a keeper of memory, ensures that their voices will echo long into the future.

020 8148 9694 benny@jewishnews.co.uk Operations

@jewishnews.co.uk

Pelta 020 8148 9693 alon@jewishnews.co.uk Events

020 8148 9709 beverley@jewishnews.co.uk

I write to express my gratitude for the decisive and responsible action taken by the Metropolitan Police to prevent a proPalestinian protest gathering near a synagogue this weekend. By using legal powers to redirect this demonstration, the force has sent a powerful message that intimidation will not be tolerated in our society.

In these fraught times, many Jewish communities across the UK are feeling an acute sense of vulnerability, with many facing the twin burdens of antisemitism and the broader

tensions stemming from global events.

The decision to ensure that this protest did not occur near a shul demonstrates a clear commitment to protecting minority groups from potential hostility and harassment.

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Metropolitan Police for their courage and steadfastness. Its efforts do not go unnoticed and are deeply appreciated by those of us committed to a society free from fear.

Emma Hamilton By email

BBC WEBSITE MANGLES THE TRUTH

Philosopher Sir Karl Popper noted: “True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” This quote came to mind as I prepared a lesson in my role as a teacher based on the official BBC teaching website.

I understand the BBC’s grasp of history leaves much to be desired, especially in light of its ongoing excuses for antisemitic genocidal organisations like Hamas. However, misleading young minds by putting inaccurate statements on an official website such as,

“The Nazis sought to control or limit the influence of Christianity. They set up an official state church, called the Confessing Church, which adapted Protestant teachings to Nazi ideology”, is beyond belief! They have turned heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer into Nazi collaborators. Ignorance is not bliss. If we do not teach our students the truth, we will see more “Intifada now!” placards around us. The BBC doesn’t seem to care.

David Frencel, Hackney

SOCIAL CARE REFORM IS NOW URGENT

I refer to last week’s front page headline, “Concern grows over social care reforms”, and the accompanying article.

Jewish charities – the bedrock of our Jewish community – have rightly flagged up their worries over the timescale, this government has in mind to deliver potentially any reforms the social sector urgently needs – now. They clearly recognise, as do so many of us, that we need a new model of funding to deliver for Great Britain a sustainable level of money to meet ever-increasing costs.

Our Jewish charities do a wonderful job in such difficult times but they cannot continue doing so in the absence of a solution to the national crisis in social care. They have proudly been at the vanguard of providing social care to our community for a long time and their pleas need to be heeded.

In recent days, the current government has announced, yet again, another review of social care, which is not due to publish its final report until

Support your Jewish community. Support your Jewish News

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2028. Even then, this government (like all before it), is not even committed to implementing the resultant recommendations. By then, we could have a new government in place. We have at least four years to wait for any possible action – many people today don’t have four years to live, and will die in the meantime, horribly and unnecessarily.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has effectively sentenced many of our elderly and vulnerable people in need of social care to more misery, loneliness, increasing poor health and in some cases an unnecessary death in 21st-century Great Britain.

The current system for providing social care is not “fit for purpose”.

The warnings are prescient – adult social care provision needs a settlement for the sake of not just the Jewish community but for those of all faiths and none.

J D Milaric

By email

‘So, Hampton, are you kosher, or are you treif?’

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My survivor grandpa’s legacy of resilience

YONI WIEDER CHIEF RABBI OF IRELAND

My grandpa Ivor (Yitzchak)

Wieder was barely a teenager when he was thrown into the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. He endured starvation, disease, extreme cruelty and immense grief.

Ivor, who passed away earlier this month, carried the weight of his experiences with him for nearly 80 years. He was forever plagued by what he had been through, and by the fact that no one – God or man – had stopped the Nazi atrocities. Yet in his remarkably stoic, businesslike manner, he went on to build an incredible life and a legacy of quiet inspiration.

Ivor was born in the early 1930s, though he never knew his exact date of birth. His family lived in the small village of Barsana, in the Maramures region of Transylvania. Growing up as the fourth of five children in a warm, Vizhnitz Hasidic home, Ivor attended Romanian state school in the mornings and cheder in the afternoons. His family was very poor, with

no electricity or running water, and village life was marred by relentless Jew hatred.

In March 1944, Nazi forces occupied the region and crammed thousands of Jews into the Berbesti ghetto. Ivor’s family, violently torn from their homes and their lives, slept in stables.

After a few harrowing weeks, the ghetto residents were packed like cattle onto trains and taken to Auschwitz.

One of Ivor’s most vivid memories was of SS o cers, with their guns, truncheons and barking dogs, throwing the cart doors open and shouting “Araus!” (“Get out!”). The stench was su ocating.

Within hours of arrival, Ivor’s mother and youngest sister were sent to the gas chambers, their bodies incinerated.

Despite being no older then 12 or 13, Ivor was miraculously selected for forced labour – the youngest known boy from the Berbesti ghetto to make it out of Auschwitz alive. Ivor was stripped, shaved, and tattooed with the number A-3388 – a replacement not just for his name, but his very humanity.

From Auschwitz, Ivor and his older brother

Leo endured brutal transfers to other camps: first Fürstengrube, then Mittelbau-Dora, and finally Bergen-Belsen. On these journeys there was no food or water, and in winter temperatures were freezing. Several prisoners died in the carts, and Ivor survived the bitter cold by lying underneath dead bodies.

The savagery in the camps was, to use Ivor’s word, indescribable. He was forced to watch as the Nazis viciously maimed their victims, hanged them, or used them for target practice. Inmates stole bread from one another, sometimes fighting to the death. Ivor saw several commit suicide by throwing themselves onto electric fences.

While in the camps, my grandpa didn’t cling to a dream of one day rebuilding the life that had been so viciously taken from him. He wasn’t thinking about teaching the world what had happened or spreading the message of “never again”. He didn’t tell himself that life is a gift, even in the most torturous circumstances.

At 13 years old, my grandpa was too young to think in such terms. Even in his later years, he could not identify with other Holocaust survivors who credited their survival

to an ideological or purpose-driven mindset. When asked what kept him going through all the terrors he faced, my grandpa would respond simply that he didn’t know.

When I pressed him directly – why hadn’t he jumped on to the electric fences, as others did? – he admitted that he often asked himself the same question but had no good answer.

Yet with nothing more than an innate, stoic drive to keep going, my grandpa pulled through. On the surface, his outlook may not seem as uplifting as others. But to me, his is a story of remarkable resilience, one that speaks to the human capacity to endure unthinkable su ering, sometimes even without having a clear reason to do so.

In the decades following the Holocaust, my grandpa did not talk much about what he went through. “What is there to say?” he would ask. Instead, he focused on the practicalities of forging a new life from next to nothing.

My grandpa has always been an incredible source of inspiration for our family, for those who heard his story, and for so many who knew him. Nothing makes me prouder then being his grandson.

Charedi leaders do not believe their own words

The second reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and School’s Bill last week drew a fresh round of protests that have been both feverish and tone-deaf.

London protests were mirrored by parallel demonstrations at the British Consulate in New York, with protesters wearing black and white scrubs reminiscent of concentration camp uniforms.

One widely circulated explainer of the draft Bill drew a sickening comparison between the Nazi practice of tattooing numbers on the arms of Jewish people and the Bill’s intention to allocate single unique identifiers to children, which will enable health, education, and other public services to work together to safeguard children.

The previous government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the lack of regulation of unregistered educational settings - which Charedi yeshivas

largely are - leaves children vulnerable to abuse. But extremist elements of our community are attempting to persuade the government to ignore these findings, brandishing the only card they have: religious exceptionalism. Determined to prevent children from accessing a basic, secular education, crowds of Charedi men and boys outside parliament have repeated calls for a bill that has children’s wellbeing at its heart, in order to undermine the wellbeing and prevent the safeguarding of Charedi children. This dismal situation should invite the urgent and critical attention of the wider Jewish community.

The regulatory improvements that this Bill provides, as they pertain to Charedi children, are simple: Yeshivas will no longer be able to continue to claim that they are not schools, despite being places of education for children of school age, and will be required to register, bringing children into line of sight of safeguarding authorities. In addition, the Bill proposes a register of homeschooled children. It makes provisions for local authorities to ensure that parents who are genuinely educating their children at home are free to

continue to exercise that right. There are also provisions to identify those who are cynically claiming to do so, when their children are, in fact, spending long days studying exclusively religious studies with no access to maths, English, or science education.

Home education has long been the go-to, if implausible, explanation rolled out to explain how Charedi parents whose children are not on any school register are fulfilling their legal duty to educate their children. But those who assert that children are genuinely being homeschooled rely on challengers being inhibited in further investigating such obvious inconsistencies. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is urgent and it does what it says on the tin: it ensures the wellbeing of all children, including Charedi children. The Bill ensures they are known to the authorities, so that they can be certain that these children have proper access to education. There is nothing controversial about supporting it. Those who ask you not to are relying on you doing a cost benefit analysis in which you attach less value to the wellbeing of Charedi children than you do to smooth inter- and intra-community relations.

What the ‘yellow star’ protesters want you to forget is that ordinary Charedi parents want their children to have access to safe, adequate schooling, but that the social cost of even expressing this desire has intentionally been made extremely high.

It is simply not safe for Charedi parents to say, out loud or in writing, that they want their children to be educated in a Jewish school where they learn as much about their faith as possible, whilst simultaneously receiving a broad and balanced secular education.

On the day of the second reading, a Charedi father of eight with children in yeshivas and Charedi (registered, independent) primary schools texted me to say “Most people want the changes, but we are scared and silenced. We are under tight control, with no freedom and no ability to voice independent opinions”.

The control this man speaks of is by design and, I argue, testifies to the lack of faith that Charedi leaders photographed protesting at the second reading have in their own rhetoric: it appears they do not believe that anyone able to make an educated choice would actually stay within the community.

Time to make Britain a Khamenei-free zone

JON PEARCE

PARLIAMENTARY CHAIR, LABOUR FRIENDS OF ISRAEL

Last year, the Iranian regime celebrated the 45th anniversary of the revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power and ushered in more than four decades of brutal repression at home and the export of terror across the Middle East and beyond.

The ayatollahs have rather less to celebrate this year. Tehran’s two most powerful proxies – Hamas and Hezbollah – have been severely weakened as a result of their terrorist attacks against Israel; Iran’s attacks on the Jewish state appear to have led to the destruction of much of its air defence system and the Assad regime – the cornerstone of Tehran’s strategy to encircle and destroy Israel – has fallen.

Domestically, anger is growing among an already restive population which has borne the vast cost of the regime’s shattered neoimperialist ambitions.

But the threat posed by Iran remains potent – to Britain and our allies both in Europe and the MiddleEast.

Tehran commands the biggest ballistic arsenal in the region – with a range that can reach NATO and EU territory – and its nuclear programme is on the threshold of producing a nuclear weapon. Its alliance with Russia and China is aiding Putin’s war against Ukraine, providing the Kremlin’s war machine with drones and missiles to terrorise Ukrainian civilians. And its support for the Houthis endangers freedom of shipping and international trade, as well as threatening our ally Israel with escalating attacks.

Moreover, United Against A Nuclear Iran’s new campaign presents deeply concerning evidence of current leader Ali Khamenei’s pernicious network here in the UK, which seeks to promote the regime’s violent and extremist ideology, foster antisemitism and hatred and stoke community tensions.

This poses a clear and present danger to the Jewish community, the Iranian diaspora and wider British society.

We have already seen its impact in soaring antisemitism and extremism on our streets, the targeting of journalists and dissidents and the 20 terror plots linked to the regime uncovered by MI5 since 2022.

As the director-general of the security service, Ken McCallum, warned last

DESPITE SETBACKS, THE THREAT POSED BY IRAN TO US ALL REMAINS POTENT

autumn: “Since the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, we’ve seen plot after plot here in the UK, at an unprecedented pace and scale.” Like its Russian allies, the regime, he added, frequently uses criminals “from international drug traffickers to low-level crooks” to carry out its dirty work.

LFI (Labour Friends of Israel) has long warned of this danger and called for a robust and coordinated government response, one which recognises our duty to strengthen regional peace and prosperity and fight antiZionist antisemitism here at home.

First, we welcome the government’s increased sanctions on the IRGC and believe we must now ban Tehran’s terror army – the ideological vanguard and driving force behind the regime’s noxious agenda overseas and the

chief perpetrator of its bloodshed at home. Second, we should go further in sanctioning the regime’s leadership, using the Magnitsky sanction regime to target human rights abusers who suppress women, minorities and the Iranian people’s legitimate demand for “life and freedom”.

Third, we should counter Iran’s support for radicalisation, ban entry permits to Iranian extremists and close ideological centres which seek to propagate the regime’s violent and extremist ideology.

Fourth, we should combat and disrupt the threat posed by Iranian-linked platforms which spread disinformation and hatred.

Finally, we should identify and sanction Iranian regime oligarchs, elites and proxies in the UK, treating them in the same manner as those of Putin’s regime.

This is an agenda for national security and international solidarity. One which keeps our country and its people safe, while also seeking to stand alongside our allies in Ukraine, Israel and the wider Middle East, and shows the Iranian people their voices are being heard here in the UK and we stand with them in their long fight for freedom.

It is time to make Britain a Khameneifree zone.

It can't be left to Jews to face this cancer alone

PAUL RICHARDS FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT

The spectre of antisemitism haunts Europe and the rest of the world. The oldest hatred is finding new forms of expression and repertoires, but the targets remain the same. A synagogue in Melbourne is set alight. Jews in Amsterdam are hunted through the streets. Children in Leeds, London and Manchester hide symbols of their identity. In the UK, from January to June 2024, the Community Security Trust (CST) had reports of 1,978 anti-Jewish hate incidents, against 964 in the first half of 2023. Jewish people across the EU continue to face high levels of antisemitism, according to the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). Of more than 8,000 Jews in 13 EU countries, including Germany and France, interviewed, 96 percent said they encountered antisemitism in their daily lives. Most had experienced harassment online. There has been an explosion in anti-Jewish hatred and violence since the 7 October attack, with sporadic acts of violence, symbols of hate

worn on marches, attacks on businesses and a poisonous discourse transposing murderers with resistance fighters and describing rape and hostage-taking as legitimate anticolonialism.

More than 100 campaigners, academics, community leaders and politicians met in Vienna last week under the aegis of the European Leadership Network (ELNET) to discuss this world-wide tsunami of antisemitism on university campuses, in international sport, the arts and on social media. This last has seen exponential growth since 7 October, with absurd denialism of facts and sickening justification for blood lust. We are all a few clicks away from vile antisemitism masquerading as commentary and analysis.

The workshop on antisemitism in universities saw excellent contributions from student leaders and academics. The pattern is the same – the occupation of shared spaces by antisemitic sloganising, name-calling and demonising, holding Jewish students accountable for the actions of the Netanyahu government.

This is the opposite of any notion of the campus as the agora or forum, where ideas are freely exchanged. This is the totalitarian imposition of a uniform set of ideas.

Dave Hirsh, newly-minted professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, London, explained how the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism analyses antisemitism in its modern forms. Jew hatred is as old as the hills but morphs in each era, subverting the dominant ideas of each age from religion to economics to anticolonialism. Without constant investigation, analysis and explanation, the mainstream can overlook antisemitism in the media, online, in conversation and within their own frames of reference.

There is much good work going on in parliaments and assemblies, in academia and in the media to challenge the hate, yet a recurrent themes of the conference was the need for action. There was frustration that those in power in governments, institutions and the judicial system seemed ignorant of what antisemitism is, a sense that authorities overlook or dismiss reports and a recognition institutions themselves are institutionally antisemitic.

There is no single simple solution. States must continue to protect their citizens from violence and threats, with extra security measures, more police and a judiciary prepared to hand out the harshest sentences to racists.

But more fences, more bullet-proof glass, more razor wire is not a solution. Education is vital: explaining what antisemitism is and isn’t, how it works and how it is spread.

This should start with legislators, decisiontakers and policy-makers ensuring that no public o cial or representative can claim ignorance as a defence.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, with all its examples, must be adopted by organisations and governments; the unregulated Wild West of social media must be tackled, with stronger sanctions against those who spread hate online. The role of hostile state actors such as Iran must be exposed, and the flow of funding into Europe must be choked o .

However, my main takeaway from the conference was that it cannot be left to Jewish organisations and communities to tackle the spectre of antisemitism alone.

As with all progressive struggles, there is a vital need for "allyship", whereby those unaffected directly by oppression and hatred have a solemn responsibility to act. To be an ally is to speak out, to engage, to act. Antisemitism is an aggressive cancer, and it attacks us all.

Music at Auschwitz Winning in the ‘wallet wars’

Filmmaker Neil Grant’s four-part

BBC documentary digs deep into the tragedy of the 7/7 bombings, writes Michelle Rosenberg

20 years later

It was one of those ‘I remember exactly where I was when I heard...’ days.

On 7 July 2005, 52 people, including Jewish victims Miriam Hyman, 31, Susan Levy, 53, and Anat Rosenberg, 39, were killed when three trains and a bus were blown up in London. Hundreds were injured. Another series of attempted bombings followed and in the subsequent manhunt, the police shot dead an innocent man – Jean Charles de Menezes.

Twenty years later, producer and former JFS teacher Neil Grant is behind a new documentary on the first suicide bombings on English soil. He says he wants viewers to understand what it was like when four bombs exploded on London’s transport system on 7 July 2005.

7/7: The London Bombings, is a series of four hour-long programmes telling the story of the biggest police investigation in British history and the three-week hunt to catch all the bombers. The series follows the investigation minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, and includes interviews with key figures at the time of the events: Tony Blair, prime minister, Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, and Charles Clarke, home secretary, together with members of the police investigation team.

features survivors, bereaved parents and first responders.

Simon Young, BBC head of commissioning, history, says: “It’s di cult to comprehend just how febrile and frenzied those weeks felt like in London and across the country, nearly 20 years ago.

“This series painstakingly pieces together the chain of events, moments of resilience and hope, as well as tragedy and horror. The result is a frank portrait of how the nation responded, when our streets became a new kind of frontline.”

Neil has been “making telly for the last 35 years”. He says his work always deals with huge complex issues and this involved trying to “put together as a matter of historical record, an event that touched so many people, particularly in London, and had an immense impact, politically as well as emotionally, thereafter.”

He and his team started by essentially unpicking the police response to the event that happened so many years ago.

“We wanted to get viewers back into the moment, to understand exactly what it was like, reliving that bubble, bringing them back all those years that had so much impact on so many people’s lives.

The documentary series also

“You can bring a completely new audience to storytelling by actually immersing them back into those moments, which has an extraordi-

nary ability to re-engage people.” He wants viewers to feel “emotionally engaged and emotionally a ected. And if I am too that means that that’s a story important and worth telling.”

Adam Wishart, joint series director says: “After telling the story of President George W Bush on 9/11, we wanted to understand what happened to the British state when faced with a huge crisis of its own. What does it feel like to run the police or the country, when faced with the biggest attack on English soil? And what is it like when you or your family are caught in the blasts? How does anyone cope with the emotional consequences and the political repercussions?”

Neil is well aware that the new 7/7 documentary “is going to raise the spectre of Islamophobia, because, of course, the terrorists responsible were Muslim. I think that we have to tread very, very carefully and have to be very, very sensitive.

“When you’re making this sort of film, you’re mindful of the impact that it has. There is a responsibility that we have as filmmakers to draw attention to those situations that are controversial, that need to be unpicked, but to be mindful of the consequences that might have on the respective communities.”

He adds: “And that’s the lesson, because in many respects, we within the Jewish community have had to put up with a hell of a year. I’m mindful of the reaction

that people have towards us as Jews as a consequence of what we are fighting for and believing as a consequence of October 7th.”

In an article for industry magazine Broadcast on 8 November 2023, a month after the Hamas attacks in Israel, Grant issued “a plea for understanding” as antisemitic incidents soared across the UK. At the time, he said that the BBC “tied themselves in knots to avoid describing the group of attackers who killed innocent civilians ‘terrorists’. Compounded as it was by John Simpson’s insensitive defence of the BBC’s initial position, I couldn’t even count on the state broadcaster to do the right thing.”

Fourteen months later, once again commenting on what it’s like being Jewish within the television industry, he says he thinks Jewish members of sta at the BBC are “extremely beleaguered. And I

think that it has been extraordinary year for them.”

For his next project Neil would “love to make a film about how our community itself feels extraordinarily threatened; to make a film about contemporary antisemitism.”

In an ideal world, he’d also “like to make an observational documentary about Trump”.

The tales he has told are “dicult stories, but they need to be confronted by a matter of historical record. I, as a filmmaker and as a documentary filmmaker, have a responsibility to bring them to the widest possible audience, and that means they need to be journalistically and factually accurate. And if that means then that I push my team to ensure and to deliver on that, then that’s a job well done”.

 All episodes of 7/7: The London Bombings are available to watch on BBC iPlayer

The aftermath of the bus bombing in central London on 7 July 2005

Neil Grant

CCTV of some of the bombers was used by police during their three-week manhunt to catch the culprits

The music played at Auschwitz is explored in two new films on television, writes Jenni Frazer

Notes of hope

It is said of concentration camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau that they are places where, even today, no birds sing. Indeed, the more we have learned about the Holocaust in the 80 years since the end of the Second World War, the more we have come to believe that there was no outlet for the creative arts.

However, music had prominent roles in the life of Auschwitz, as two films showing this month on British television illustrate.

There was a cynical role: up to 15 orchestras were formed in the death camp, with members forced to play cheerful marches as slave labourers left for work and returned. Or random Nazi officers would wander into the prisoners’ barracks and demand to hear a particular piece by a favourite composer. The musicians themselves, the majority of whom were Jewish, were terrified of playing the wrong notes but benefited by having slightly better food and conditions than other prisoners.

And there was a private role, in which music was composed and played in secret, rebellious comfort by the prisoners, reminding them of the world that used to be, and the world they hoped would return.

The Sky Arts film The Lost Music of Auschwitz takes viewers through the musical detective work of British composer and musician Leo Geyer.

Geyer, who is not Jewish, first visited Auschwitz when he was 23, and was astonished to learn that the camp’s meticulously maintained museum contained fragments of music manuscripts composed by some of the prisoners.

Eight years later, after painstaking research and at least ten more visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, he has pieced together some of the music composed in the camp. Where the manuscripts were blurred

and faded, or where the papers were torn so badly that no music could be read, Geyer has filled in the gaps by composing music himself which links the fragments together.

Most poignant is Geyer’s present-day orchestra, which he has assembled to play the revived music. Because, in so many cases, the Auschwitz orchestras comprised people playing unusual instruments such as the accordion, or the recorder — which were likely to have been the items a prisoner brought in with them — Geyer has arranged the music to reflect that. So we hear Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik as it would have sounded at Auschwitz, played then by the camp’s women’s orchestra.

“This music was part of the infrastructure of the camp,” says Geyer. “Music was weaponised.” Susan Pollock, one of several Holocaust survivors giving testimony in the film, recalls hearing the “famous music” on arrival at the camp. “Suddenly we remembered that there was a world which we used to know.”

Geyer tells us that the barracks of the women’s orchestra, led by Alma Rosé, were sited next to the crematoriums. The women’s relatives were being burnt to death while they themselves strove to survive by playing music for the Nazis.

The Jewish soprano Caroline Kennedy, many of whose family died in Auschwitz, performs a searing version of Chopin’s Tristesse, with lyrics and arrangement by Alma Rosé, and it is hard to hear it without tears.

In the BBC’s Last Musician of Auschwitz,

there are more powerful, raw performances, recreations of music played and sung in the camp.

Heartbreaking instances are songs written by a Czech Jewish woman, Ilse Weber, mother of two sons, Hanus and Tommy. She managed to save Hanus’ life by sending him to Britain with Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport but she and Tommy met their deaths in Auschwitz. We hear two of Weber’s compositions: And The Rain Falls, inspired by Hanus’ departure from Prague, and Wiegala, a lullaby she sang to children to comfort them as they entered the gas chamber at Auschwitz.

The film tells the story of Polish political prisoner Adam Kopyciński, a conductor of the first orchestra at Auschwitz. We see a performance of his composition Lullaby — the rare handwritten manuscript of which still survives today. The piece is played at night in the grounds of the former camp commandant’s house, adjacent to the camp itself.

The life and work of Polish composer Syzmon Laks are also highlighted, with a haunting and powerful performance of the plaintive second movement of his Third String Quartet, based on Polish folk tunes. Andre Laks, his son, plays some of his father’s music.

But the “last musician” is Anita LaskerWallfisch, who survived Auschwitz because she was able to play the cello. Blessed with the dryest of dry wit, Lasker-Wallfisch, now 99, recalls that she was “interviewed” for a place in Rosé’s orchestra while she was naked, having just arrived at the camp and been stripped along with all the other prisoners.

Lasker-Wallfisch survived the Holocaust and became a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra, as well as founding her own family’s musical dynasty. We see her son, the professional cellist Raphael Wallfisch, playing Robert Schumann’s Traumerei (Dreams); his mother recalls that the notorious camp doctor, Josef Mengele, once commanded her to play the piece for him.

Perhaps most striking of all is an April 1945 BBC radio interview with 19-year-old

Anita Lasker, just liberated from Auschwitz. Speaking in German, she says: “The few who have survived are afraid that the world will not believe what happened there. There, living healthy people were thrown alive into the fire… Music was always played alongside it. Music was played to the most terrible things.” The film also highlights the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti people, sent in their thousands to Auschwitz, most of whom were murdered in the gas chambers. Petra Gelbart, a musicologist who is of Roma descent, performs There Is A Big House In Auschwitz, believed to have been first sung at the camp and passed down through her family.

Ben Caplan, a Canadian folk musician, gives a rendition of the Jewish Deathsong to end the film. A reworking of a traditional Yiddish folk song, devised by Berlin choirmaster Martin Rosebury D’Arguto in the days before he too was sent to Auschwitz, it testifies to the intended annihilation of the Jews. It speaks of a family of 10 brothers, but only the singer survives. The song was memorised by his friend Aleksander Kulisiewicz, who later shared it with the world, adamant that it must never be forgotten.

 The Lost Music of Auschwitz is Sky Arts on 20 January and The Last Musician of Auschwitz is on BBC2 on 27 January

A scene from The Lost Music of Auschwitz

Susan Pollock

Ben Caplan

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: cellist at Auschwitz

Leo Geyer conducts and soprano Caroline Kennedy sings Chopin’s Tristesse

By Candice Krieger candicekrieger@googlemail.com

CURVE GAINING GROUND IN THE WALLET WARS

Shachar Bialick’s digital payments company is advancing its market share, has Mastercard as a strategic partner and ambitious plans for growth

As consumers ditch cash for contactless, so-called wallet wars have broken out, with contenders such as Apple Pay and Google Pay vying for dominance in the mobile payments industry. But also positioning itself for the market share is Curve.

Founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shachar Bialick, a former member of the IDF special forces, Curve has developed a mobile wallet that consolidates multiple bank cards into a single smart card. Users can pay with their phones via the Curve app – as you would with Google or Apple Pay – as well as manage their payments, access rewards, and simplify their financial transactions.

London-based Bialick came up with the idea for Curve in 2006 but it wasn’t until 2018 that he launched the product. “We wanted to

wait until the market was ready,” he tells Jewish News

The same year he pitched to Mastercard and was “laughed out of the room”, he says.

“ What we were doing was big, it was ambitious but they didn’t think it was possible initially.”

Nearly a decade later, Mastercard is a Curve strategic partner, along with Samsung, Garmin, PayPal, Swatch and many more. Curve has six million customers across the UK, Europe and more recently, the United States.

Curve this month announced the appointment of Lord (Stanley) Fink as chair of its group board. Fink is credited with building the Man Group up to its FTSE 100 public company status, the largest listed hedge fund company in the world. Already an investor in Curve, Fink will continue to support the company through its next crucial stage of strategic scaling.

said: seat unassailable and wellit evolved

Fink said: “Working alongside Curve as an investor, I have had a ringside seat to the company’s unassailable and wellearned rise. Beginning as a card which combines all your cards into one, to the all-encompassing digital wallet it has evolved into, Curve o ers a transformative financial management experience to its users.”

The mobile payments landscape has changed dramatically, in part accelerated by the pandemic.

“There’s no doubt any more. The digital wallet will continue to become the operating system for money,” says Bialick. “We want to empower consumers with innovative financial tools that simplify their lives through selection, pricing and convenience. My goal and curiosity were to answer the question; what would be the end game of the market? Unbundling and then convergence,” he says. Curve di erentiates itself from companies such as Apple Pay and Google Pay by o ering consumers with unique features, including a patented ‘go back in time’ capability for retroactively changing payment methods, and detailed spending insights.

Additionally, Curve Pay provides global usage without foreign transaction fees “saving consumers hundreds of pounds a year”.

“You can use Curve to stack your rewards from other cards, essentially enabling users to ‘double dip’ (getting rewards or benefits from multiple credit or debit cards simultaneously when using Curve),” says Bialick, adding that 50 percent of people in the UK use mobile payment wallets. In the Nordic regions, that figure is closer to 70 percent.

Curve recently announced the appointment of Edoardo Volta to help bolster the company’s ambitious growth plans. Volta has held senior business development and partnership roles at Mastercard, Visa, and American Express.

A graduate of Tel Aviv University, last year Bialick was the guest speaker at a Tel Aviv University business breakfast where he spoke about building a business against the odds.

Prior to Curve, Bialick had built and led several companies in healthcare, finance, e-commerce and mobile telecoms.

He says serving in the Israeli military helped prepare him for the turbulent world of business and taught him that “obstacles are part of life. You have to jump

around them.” This foundation proved invaluable when, in 2020, he received a call from a senior executive at Mastercard. “He told me that the FCA [Financial Conduct Authority] had asked Mastercard to shut down Wirecard [payment processing company], jeopardising Curve’s operations.

around them.” This foundation proved invaluable when, in 2020, he received

told me that the FCA [Finanising Curve’s operations. Everything we had worked the I Curve consolidates payment cards

Everything we had worked for over five years hung in the balance. I knew we couldn’t a ord to remain o ine for long but needed to migrate accounts to Curve — an endeavour that typically required three months. We managed to do it over one weekend.

“Communication was the key to success here,” he noted, drawing parallels to military operations during wartime where “clarity and coordination are vital, and in times of war we must increase communications ten-fold.”

Back to the wallet wars. As competition heats up, Bialick acknowledges that recent regulatory developments will play a key role. When the European regulator forced Apple to open up its NFC (near field communication) tech – which allows users to make contactless payments, exchange digital content, and connect devices with a touch – to competing wallets, it was a “victory for consumers”, he said. Yet, Bialick expressed concerns about the implications for the UK market, indicating that while Apple may adapt its policies, it plans to impose fees on developers of alternative wallets, which he believes could hinder meaningful competition in the UK.

“This whole saga at the European level should be a cautionary tale to the UK regulator, which so far has shown little intent to match the outcomes from the EU’s investigation.”

However, Bialick is nothing if not optimistic about Curve’s role in shaping the future of digital payments, or, as he puts it: “The question going forward will be, ‘Do you pay with Apple, Google or Curve?’”

Shachar Bialick

The EU forced Apple to open up its contactless technology

MAKING SENSE OF THE SEDRA

In our thought-provoking series, rabbis, rebbetzins and educators relate the week’s parsha to the way we live today

BY RABBI JACK COHEN MILL HILL EAST JEWISH COMMUNITY

The psychological roots of antisemitism

Parashat Shemot, the opening chapter of the Book of Exodus, presents us with a recurring theme in human history: the rise of antisemitism, a tragically relevant issue as we all know only too well. To understand the origins of this prejudice, we must delve into the psychological underpinnings of the new Egyptian Pharaoh.

The Torah introduces this ruler with a perplexing statement: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8).

Given Joseph’s pivotal role in saving Egypt from famine, his contributions would have been legendary. The Talmud offers an insightful interpretation: “He [the King] acted as if he did not know Joseph” (Sota 11a). This act of ignoring reveals a sinister

intent and lays the groundwork for the impending persecution.

The Torah recounts that the Israelites, blessed by God in accordance with his promises to the patriarchs, flourished in Egypt (Exodus 1:7). This divine blessing, however, is met with fear and hostility by the new Pharaoh.

The Pharaoh’s fear of the growing Jewish population is not grounded in logic or reason. He perceives their prosperity as a threat to his own power and stability. This fear likely stems from deeper insecurities within the Pharaoh himself. Perhaps, as he is a “new” king, he is feeling uncertain in his position, or perhaps he grapples with internal anxieties and external threats. This internal turmoil leads him to project his anxieties onto the Jewish people, viewing their flourishing as a direct challenge to his authority.

Thus, he declares to his advisers: “Come, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when any war should

chance, they also join our enemies, and fight against us, and so go up out of the land” (Exodus 1:10). The plan that follows is chilling and sinister. The Jewish people are subjected to forced labour and infanticide.

This narrative provides a crucial insight: the blessings bestowed on the Jewish people, their very existence and their success, can be perceived as a threat by those who feel insecure and threatened. The Pharaoh, wrestling with his own internal demons, projects his anxieties onto the Jewish community, viewing their growth as a source of danger.

to antisemitism cannot be solely addressed by the Jews. As Rabbi Sacks eloquently summarised: “Jews cannot fight antisemitism alone. The victim cannot cure the crime. The hated cannot cure the hate.”

This, indeed, is a recurring theme. Flawed individuals often perceive the blessings of others as a threat and react viciously. Since the problem originates within the antisemite and not with the Jews, it’s clear that the solution

While antisemitism will persist as long as people feel threatened by the blessings of the Jews, we pray to God to deliver us from our enemies, to free the hostages, and, despite the hate, to continue to bestow his blessings on the Jewish people.

SENIOR SALES EXECUTIVE

Jewish News is delighted to be entering a digital-first era with the launch of a new website and new regular glossy magazine. We are therefore seeking an enthusiastic, emerging sales force to help navigate this new era and to sell these exciting new products alongside opportunities with our portfolio of events and community-leading social media presence.

• Achieving personal and team sales targets. Working to the teams agreed yield and series framework.

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• Working closely with the Jewish News Publishing and Editorial team to ensure a smooth and commercially successful relationship.

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Email a brief paragraph about yourself (and attach your CV) to Richard Ferrer – richard@jewishnews.co.uk

HASMONEAN MULTI-ACADEMY TRUST

DEPUTY HEADTEACHER FOR THE BOYS’ SCHOOL L20 – L25 (OUTER LONDON) REQUIRED – SEPTEMBER 2025

We are looking for a dynamic and inspirational individual to be responsible for leading the Pastoral, Behaviour, Standards and Inclusion at Hasmonean High School for Boys. If you are an exceptional leader with an outstanding track record in these areas, then we would like to hear from you.

For further details please visit our website https://hasmoneanmat.org.uk/vacancies/

To request a brochure for the Deputy Headteacher role which outlines the job description and person specification, and an application pack, please email hasmonean@hayes.com or for a confidential discussion regarding the post please call Brett Coventry on 07879692409

Hayes is our search partner and supports our recruitment.

Closing date: 12 noon Thursday 30th January 2025

Progressive Judaism

LEAP OF FAITH

BY RABBI JORDAN HELFMAN OAKS LANE REFORM SYNAGOGUE

It is distressing to feel the hate outside our community. And it is even more distressing to see the occasional dehumanisation, polarisation and bullying that comes from within our community – almost always caused by di ering visions of Israel.

Heroism and defending our strongly held beliefs are often tied to wit or skill, but the rabbis of the Talmud challenged us to make silence a fence around wisdom. Today, they would tell us to hold o on writing that angry, dehumanising tweet and instead sit and wait.

A stimulating series in which progressive rabbis consider Judaism in the face of 21st-century issues

turn my colleagues into ‘rabbits’ as well as other more unfortunate errors. Try to look for opportunities to see people as multidimensional beings.

As we start 2025, there are two fundamental technological shifts happening under our fingers and before our strained eyes.

The first is the lack of moderation on social media, leaving channels such as X and Facebook a hard place for anyone right now, let alone a Jew.

This particular problem is only going to get worse as these platforms make it increasingly hard to distinguish the real from the virtual, with the result that the sensational comes to flood the foundations of our reality.

The second fundamental shift is the rise of artificial intelligence, which is inventive beyond all imagination.

It is a reminder of why, though we Jews were among the early adopters of the printed page, we still open a hand-written scroll to encounter the Eternal.

There are four messages of Jewish wisdom from those scrolls that we would do well to remember as we navigate these next few years.

1. ‘Koveish et yitzro – Who is a hero? One who can conquer their instincts’

2. ‘Serve God with joy’ Rise above the negativity, and treasure little blessings and small moments of connection which technology can o er.

This doesn’t mean only sharing a pristine and curated life, but rather share some of the piles of mess with the same joy as you would share the clean table.

3. ‘Make yourself a friend’ Teaching and learning in making lifelong connections in our communities are still important. In online learning and worship, we can all laugh at the AI transcriptions that

4. ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy’ Putting the phone down on Shabbat, stopping the scrolling and looking up at the people who care is fundamental to Jewish life and identity, and it is even more important than telling someone they are wrong or championing that very important cause.

As we face the challenges of the modern world, we can rely on the power of our heritage, and especially our communities, to come together through these times.

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