UK Special Reports

Multi-faith trips to Auschwitz

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A pall of fog had settled over the birch forests of south-west Poland as the distinguished party from Britain headed towards its destination. Headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, it comprised 14 other representatives of the UK's main religious communities: Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Bahais and Zoroastrians.

Together in a show of interfaith solidarity, they were making, in the words of the Archbishop, a "pilgrimage not to a holy place, but to a place of utter profanity".

How a Holocaust memoir was saved in translation

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Like Nobel laureates Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, Rafael Rajzner was one of the few Holocaust survivors who wrote about his traumatic experience in the immediate post-war years. But unlike them, his harrowing, 324-page eye-witness account of the liquidation of Bialystoker Jewry, published in Australia in Yiddish in 1948, was never translated into English - until now.

Simcha on the square

Thousands bathed in warm afternoon sunshine on Sunday for the third Simcha on the Square in Trafalgar Square, Central London.

Although the square was not as packed as it had been for the Salute to Israel event in June, nevertheless Jews and non-Jews alike seemed agreed: you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy klezmer, chazanut, Sephardi music or Israeli dancing.

The Statement on Communal Collaboration

Pluralism means living creatively with diversity. It is based on treating other groups and their philosophies with respect, while maintaining the right to uphold the value of one's own position. Diversity is a reality within the British Jewish community; true pluralism is, as yet, not. We believe that British Jewry both needs and deserves better.

Key players in the non-orthodox coalition

Rabbi Dr Tony Bayfield was born in Ilford, Essex, in 1946. After reading law at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he became friends with the future Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, he took a doctorate at the Cambridge Institute for Criminology and then studied rabbinics at Leo Baeck College where he received semichah from rabbis John Rayner, Hugo Gryn and Louis Jacobs.

After 10 years in Surrey, he became director of the Sternberg Centre for Judaism. He is now head of the Movement for Reform Judaism.

‘We are still too divided. Time for a new strategy’

The "statement on communal collaboration", issued today by the leaders of Britain's Reform, Liberal and Masorti movement, was born out of frustration and hope.

Frustration that the Stanmore Accords, the 10-year-old peace pact signed by the three movements and the United Synagogue, has produced too little of the practical co-operation proposed a decade ago.

The cost of Friday dinner

The cost of making a Friday-night dinner is continuing to soar as the credit crunch bites.

Increased food, utility and fuel prices have led to sharply rising costs of essential dinner ingredients.

Food prices alone helped to lift inflation to a 16-year high last month, the steepest monthly climb for a decade, according to economists. And nowhere is this felt more than the Shabbat table.

Many kosher bakers have noticed customers scaling back what they buy, even when it comes to staple items such as challah.

Charities feel the credit crunch

Jewish Child's Day
Provides support for children with disabilities or suffering abuse
Gross income (July 06 - June 07): £997,826
Total expenditure (July 06 - June 07): £1,063,848

JCD has seen a five per cent drop in donations this year. Spokesman Daniel Berger said: "There has been a major downturn. We expected one in around six months, but were affected almost immediately.
"I'm surprised at how quickly the crunch took effect. Not only are people giving less, but some are not giving at all."

"Cancer was in my genes. I had to stop it any way I could"

A simple test left Masha Gessen with the most personal of dilemmas. She tells us genetics may soon govern our life choices

Twelve years after her mother died of breast cancer, journalist Masha Gessen was told she had inherited the "breast cancer gene", BRCA1. Her lifetime risk of the disease shot up to 85 per cent, and she had more than a 50 per cent chance of contracting ovarian cancer.

They pulled a knife on my son. How would you cope?

My three sons had already been mugged. In the fourth attack, a robber pulled a knife.


It was midnight when my 17-year-old son came into my bedroom. I knew something was wrong - he looked really shaken up. "I got mugged tonight, mum." I tried not to panic, despite the sharp pain in the pit of my stomach. I had been here before; although we live in the leafy suburbs of Finchley, all three of my boys had previously been mugged. "Are you OK?" I asked tremulously.

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