JC comment

Union heeding wake-up call

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:46:19 +0100

On the assumption that most of you are not devotees of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, or in full paid-up membership of one of its numerous conventicles, I need to bring you up to speed on developments within the Union and its affiliates that are without precedent. Not only do they offer a very public window into a world that has shunned all publicity hitherto, they constitute a landmark in the slow but hopefully steady progress of the Anglo-Charedi world towards some semblance of an emotional maturity sadly lacking hitherto.

Towards the end of last year a number of leading rabbis based in London put their names to a remarkable statement declaring that an unnamed rabbi was "not fit and proper to act in any rabbinic capacity". This being the Charedi world, addicted to nothing so much as gossip and innuendo, the name of the rabbi soon emerged, but what also emerged were very serious allegations against him of an explicitly sexual nature, relating to the way in which he had allegedly counselled women who came to him for guidance over their marital problems.

At first the UOHC seemed reluctant to act. This being the Charedi world an attempt was made to hush matters up by establishing a special Beis Din to hear the allegations, doubtless in the hope that this would head off any involvement by the police. But, this being the Charedi world, the attempt was clumsily executed and failed miserably. As the Union rabbinate must have known, this was always a police matter, and the police should have been involved as a first resort, not a last. Once they did become involved a number of arrests were made. These were accompanied by a very sensible public statement from the desk of the most senior police officer in the borough of Barnet (where the arrested men were being held), chief superintendent Adrian Usher, who reassured the Jewish community that those so detained were being treated "with fairness, dignity and respect".

On such matters the law will take its course. All those already charged or who might be will come before the courts, where their innocence or guilt will be established. Meanwhile the Union has taken some very welcome steps to put its own house in order. At the end of May, through its recently established "Committee for the preservation of purity in the camp" (my translation) it inserted an astounding notice in the Charedi press, drawing attention to the fact that "the behaviour of rabbonim in some counselling and marriage guidance workshops in our area is inappropriate and disrespectful towards their female patients and falls below expected standards of modesty". Some days later another UOHC announcement (behind which there must be lurk a collection of unsavoury stories as yet untold) condemned "the behaviour of staff in some tailoring and dressmaking workshops in our area" as "inappropriate and disrespectful towards their female customers and [which] falls below expected standards of modesty."

It's too easy to snort and snigger at such pronouncements. I imagine that those in charge must have thought long and hard about making them. What they tell us, on the record, is that the UOHC acknowledges wrongdoing of a sexual nature by some of its rabbis - and clearly, by its own admission, by the use of the plural "rabbonim," more than one rabbi was involved. They also suggest that such inappropriate behaviour extends beyond the very private arena of marital counselling into the somewhat less private milieux of dressmaking.

I have before used this column to draw attention to incidences of sexual impropriety in Charedi circles. But these recent public admissions are in no sense an occasion for smugness. The Union has at last commenced the journey that it knows it must undertake, as the Catholic Church has painfully done (or rather, been forced to do). But in permitting the rabbi at the centre of last year's allegations to officiate at a recent wedding in London the UOHC has also demonstrated that its grasp of the need to act appropriately and with integrity is still far from perfect.

And in agreeing to officiate in this way the rabbi concerned has merely given his detractors further ammunition to use against him.

Lazy hazy freezy days of summer

Cari Rosen — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:53:21 +0100

And so - finally - the sun came out after (approximately) 337 consecutive days of cold and rain. And, following a spring of snow and near constant drizzle, frankly it has been hard not to get over-excited by the sight of a clear blue sky.

Trouble is, we know from bitter experience that these interludes can be fleeting. And so we enjoy one warm day… and out comes the barbecue. Yes, it may be distinctly chilly once the sun drops but hey - this is "summer" and we can't possibly miss a moment. Let's just ignore the fact we're shivering as we munch on charred sausages and undercooked drumsticks. It's not raining, after all.

Perhaps that's the thing about being British - sun is such a precious commodity that, having seen it for a day or two, we start believing that by sporting an open-toed sandal and an optimistic air we can somehow make it stick around.

Indeed, I'm just back from a picnic - a very nice picnic but one at which most of the guests had dressed for high summer and were consequently turning blue with cold and were barely able to speak for the chattering teeth.

"The forecast did say it was going to be 23 degrees," we all agreed, regardless of the fact that the skies were steel grey and it was absolutely freezing. "It is June," we declared to excuse our summer get-ups, ignoring the fact that by wearing them we were likely to spend the next week nursing ourselves with Lemsip.

I'm not sure those who live in sunnier climes can fully appreciate our desperation to feel warmth that has not been generated by British Gas - or how hard it is to bare flesh that has spent the last 11 months goose-pimpled under layer upon layer of woollies.

I have done my best with my whiter-than-white legs, but discovered:

1) I am incapable of applying fake tan without ending up looking like an anaemic tiger.

2) Anaemic tiger stripes do not "just wash off" - however hard you scrub.

3) You should ignore anyone advising that lemon juice will do the trick. Not only will you still be stripy, but you will now smell like a pancake and your every move will be followed by a stream of enthusiastic wasps.

4) You should not experiment with any form of fake tanning the day before you have promised to take your daughter swimming - at least, not unless you are happy to put up with pointing, staring and confused small children asking their parents whether you are a mutant zebra.

I'm not sure I can take another summer of pasty pallor. So let's hope that the rest of this one is warm and dry. Just enough to be able to bronze naturally. To sport flip-flops without the risk of losing a toe to frost bite. Or to spend periods of longer than an hour out of doors without having to take an umbrella or a duvet.

But if it's anything like last year then I'm off. You will find me on a one way flight to Ben Gurion.

Women's prayers answered

Miriam Shaviv — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 10:38:13 +0100

When you hear the same promises from leaders for years, or even decades, cynicism is inevitable. So I will forgive any readers who laugh when I predict there is going to be significant progress on one of the thorniest issues facing our community: the role of women in Orthodoxy. Still, my gut feeling is that, nearly 20 years after the report on Jewish women commissioned by Lord Sacks, something important is happening.

On Sunday, I was one of 100 people who attended what, at first glance, seemed like a regular Orthodox minyan in Golders Green. Men and women were separated by a thick, high mechitzah. The liturgy and tunes were familiar from any United Synagogue service. So were most of the participants.

But there were differences. The decorum was perfect; the singing unusually joyful and rousing. And parts of the service, such as Hallel and the reading of the Torah, were led by women.

This was the UK's first official "partnership minyan", an Orthodox service in which women conduct as much of the prayers as they are allowed to by halachah. While such services will never become mainstream, it was an important step. First, because expectations of female leadership in regular shuls will inevitably change as such sights become routine, particularly as members of at least two US synagogues are currently planning their own partnership minyanim.

More importantly, unlike in the past, participants did not feel the need to wait for the approval of UK rabbis. Having studied and travelled overseas, and having access to the internet, they know that "partnership minyanim" are well established in Jerusalem and New York, and are backed by reputable halachic authorities there. Without that hold over them, local rabbis have no way to stop the phenomenon.

Later, I attended the inaugural UK Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (Jofa) conference. The 200 participants - who included some of our leading Orthodox educators and lay leaders and cannot be dismissed as marginal - spoke passionately about their commitment to Torah, mitzvot and Orthodoxy, and their determination to participate more fully in shul life, ensure that their daughters are given a more ambitious Jewish education, and share more equally ritual life in the home.

Here, again, is a grassroots organisation that is fully committed to halachah, but does not seek the imprimatur of British institutions or rabbis, who are notoriously slow-moving. While some did caution that it was necessary to work within existing frameworks, it was clear that as a group, these sisters (and quite a few brothers) are going to do it for themselves.

Neither the partnership minyan nor Jofa appeared in a vacuum. Over the past few months, I believe Orthodox women have been energised by the JLC's Commission on Jewish Leadership and by the US's sudden decision to allow women to chair shuls, which made it clear that some objections to women's leadership are cultural and political rather than halachic. Several women's megillah readings, which began in private homes, have now moved into synagogues, and there is more demand for women's Simchat Torah dances, Shavuot learning and more meaningful celebrations of batmitzvahs. US Women, who work indefatigably behind the scenes, have organised several well-attended seminars on women's issues.

Together, these add up to significant momentum. The community is ripe for change. For many rabbis and others, this is scary, and the temptation may be to fight new initiatives. This would be a shame, as there is room for both right and left on the spectrum of Orthodoxy and both sides should respect, not undermine, each other.

But it would also, ultimately, be a losing battle. Completely fed up with decades of obstruction, my sense is, these ladies are not for turning.

Open day should open doors

Neil Taylor — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:50:49 +0100

Next Friday, people are being asked to pay a visit to their local care home, to take a look at what goes on, to meet the staff and residents, and generally to find out about more about these local resources. Some will be taking part because they are nosy neighbours curious about what they might see, while others may be motivated by altruism, curiosity or even suspicion.

You may well be wondering: why? Why the mass exodus into care homes on a Friday in the middle of June? The short answer is that it is the first ever National Care Home open day. A day when "the UK's care homes will take centre stage, uniting for the first time to create lasting links between care homes, residents and their local communities".

Of course, it would be churlish not to applaud an initiative that gives care homes the opportunity to take centre stage for all the right reasons and encourages the development of necessary links. However, the cynic in me says this is not something that can be achieved in a day. Nor should care homes be confined behind closed doors for the other 364 days of the year.

Generally speaking, perceptions of care homes in this country tend to be poor. I can see the need for initiatives that offer an insight into what life in a care home is really like, in order to bridge the gap between perception and reality. The rare cases of poor practice blight the sector. And, in the main, care homes are still seen as places of last resort; where you go when you can no longer cope. Static places you go to and never leave.

The reality is so very different. For many, they provide somewhere to stay for a short period, maybe while they recover from an illness or in order to give a carer a break.

Even more hidden from the public eye is the role that care homes play in supporting family members living with the strain that caring for a loved one often brings. They can also be a hub for bringing generations together - perfect environments for educating the young about their heritage and history, enabling older generations to share their "pearls of wisdom" with future generations.

In the Jewish community, we have a wealth of assets, many of which we take for granted - not least some 15 care homes owned and managed by a spectrum of providers from within the community. Our communal care homes pride themselves in providing excellent, culturally sensitive care. But excellent care isn't enough. Homes need to be embedded in communities and their residents need to be seen as part of that wider community.

Residents of care homes have as many needs as the rest of us; even, I would argue, more entitlement to good community services that can meet their spiritual, cultural and medical needs. For some, these services need to be provided within the care home environment, but others can access them outside of the care home.

Following a spate of terrible, high-profile cases about neglect or poor standards, protecting vulnerable people is a key concern. An effective way to safeguard and protect the interests and the residents of care homes is to have doors open and make these places accountable to the community. It is for all these reasons that every day should be an "open day" in a care home. As a community we need to make sure that our Jewish care homes are active places bringing together people from all generations and providing services for those too vulnerable to leave.

But the opening of care home doors should be a two-way process, in which residents who are able are supported to enjoy all that the outside world has to offer.

Closing the doors on the most vulnerable people in our community is something that belongs in the last century. This open day may be a start for some but the truth is that in the Jewish community, we should be aiming for this to be one day that we don't need.

Neil Taylor is director of care and community Services, Jewish Care. This is the first is a series of pieces on aspects of care over the next decade.

Zionist history's murder mystery

Colin Shindler — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:41:39 +0100

Eighty years ago this coming Sunday, Haim Arlosoroff was gunned down during a Friday-night walk with his wife on the Tel Aviv beach. He was 34 and a rising star in the Zionist firmament. He was a respected political thinker - in the words of his biographer, Shlomo Avineri: "the critical student of Marx, Kropotkin and Nietzsche, a product of Russian populism and German Romanticism". His death robbed the future state of a great talent and a potential prime minister.

Arlosoroff's journey to Tel Aviv started in the Ukraine in 1899, where he was known as Vitaly. Facing bloody pogroms, his family fled to East Prussia to escape murder and pillage - and, in Germany, Vitaly became Victor.

He became an activist in the non-Marxist pioneering Zionist party, Hapoel Hatzair. In 1921, he visited Palestine and the disturbances of that year brought home to him that a national movement existed among the Arabs of Palestine. He castigated those Zionists who ignored it, as being "like a doctor who denies the existence of a malady in an obviously sick person because the microbes he finds in the blood of the patient are different from those he is used to seeing under the microscope".

Following his appointment as head of the political department of the Jewish Agency in 1931, Arlosoroff attempted to find a way to defuse the rising tension between Jew and Arab. He discovered that a cash-strapped Emir Abdullah, who ruled the East Bank of the Jordan, was amenable to the idea of selling land to the Zionists from the unpopulated tracts of his country.

Arlosoroff did not regard all British officials in Palestine as antisemites. Most, he believed, were clueless about Zionism and ignorant about Jewish immigration. "The worldwide Jewish question interests them as much as last year's snow," he said, arguing that many a British administrator became pro-Arab because the figure of the Arab better reflected the imagery of the ruled in the colonial psyche. Such views led to disputes with Ben-Gurion and other labour Zionist luminaries.

After Arlosoroff's murder, suspicion immediately fell on his ideological adversaries in the newly emergent Revisionist movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky. The finger was pointed at one of its leading intellectuals: writer Abba Ahimeir, a recent defector from Hapoel Hatzair.

Ahimeir not only joined the Revisionist movement but became the leader of its maximalist wing. In November 1927, he wrote an article entitled: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" He noted that Rabbi Hillel's saying had been converted into the slogan of Sinn Fein - and said that this should be the Zionist pathway as well. In this and subsequent articles, he argued the case for Italian fascism, at a time when it was not antisemitic.

Passionately anti-Communist, Ahimeir began to sympathise with the national dictatorships that were spreading across Europe. As a teacher of the leaders of the youth group, Betar, he attracted a group of committed followers. Affronted by the continuing Arab disruption of Jewish services at the Western Wall - and without informing the official leadership of Betar in Palestine - they organised a disciplined march to the Wall. The following day, however, a Muslim demonstration took place that ended with the dispersal of Jewish worshippers and the burning of prayer books, with little interference from the police. This was the catalyst for the disturbances of 1929 and the slaying of many Jewish civilians by Arabs - and many Arabs by British troops.

Ahimeir labelled those killed, "martyrs to the building of the Jewish homeland" and asked whether Jewish youth was prepared to do something about this. Young Jews in Palestine and the diaspora such as Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir rallied to the maximalist call.

Ahimeir's network formalised itself by creating Brit Ha'Biryonim, named after the zealots of the Second Temple period. For some the biryonim were recalled as the assassins of the perceived enemies of the Jews, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Significantly, Jews with "moderate" views were especially deemed worthy of assault.

Yet it was Lenin rather than Mussolini who was held up as the exemplar. During one of his lectures to the Brit Ha'Biryonim, Ahimeir commented: "We reject the doctrines and philosophies of Lenin and his followers, but they were correct in their practical path. This is the path of violence, blood and personal sacrifice."

Ahimeir and his acolytes became a thorn in the side of the British and an irritant for the Zionist establishment. Arlosoroff's killing presented the authorities in Palestine with a golden opportunity to liquidate the maximalists.

In the eyes of Brit Ha'Biryonim, Arlosoroff was responsible for the controversial transfer agreement allowing Jews leaving Nazi Germany to depart with some of their belongings. Ben-Gurion had taken a pragmatic view that the Zionists should not provoke the Nazis by initiating "an irresponsible battle against Hitler".

Five weeks after the assassination, the police seized the Revisionist archives and some of Ahimeir's writings. They discovered his unpublished script, The Scroll of the Sicarii, dedicated to two well-known assassins of the past, Charlotte Corday and Fanni "Dora" Kaplan. Ahimeir argued that the legacy of the biryonim was that history changes its course because of "the work of negative heroes - not the divine but the satanic".

Ahimeir suggested that history seemed to permit killing if it was deemed to be for the public good but criminal if conducted for private reasons. He gave the examples of Julius Caesar, William of Orange and Tsar Alexander II. All this was in the realm of intellectual theorising. The British, however, viewed it as concrete evidence.

On the night of the assassination, Ahimeir was lecturing in Jerusalem. The central figure in the case, Avraham Stavsky, had recently arrived in Palestine and was lodging with Ahimeir. That night, Stavsky was staying at the Turjeman hotel in Jerusalem. The police said he had slipped out, travelled to Tel Aviv, committed the act and returned swiftly. Another accused, Ze'ev Rosenblatt, said he had been at a social gathering in Kfar Saba. Ahimeir was seen as the inspiration while Stavsky and Rosenblatt were charged with the actual murder. Ahimeir claimed he and his co-defendants were "the Dreyfus and Beilis of our generation". Initially, Stavsky was sentenced to death but the evidence proved flimsy and the accused were released on appeal. But suspicion between left and right deepened.

Mapai, the leading labour Zionist party, viewed the Revisionists as fascists. The right saw Mapai as ideologically subservient and willing to use dirty tricks to entrap leading nationalists. Although opposed to the radicalism of Brit Ha'Biryonim, Jabotinsky came out in open support of the arrested. While describing Arlosoroff as "an honest, quiet, hard-working Jewish patriot", he described the case as "a lie which has no legs to stand on".

Despite an inability to make the charges stick, the extensive police searches located incendiary material. Although the charges relating to Arlosoroff were formally dropped on May 16 1934, Ahimeir was charged on several counts of sedition a few weeks later and sentenced to 21 months in the Jerusalem Central Prison.

Jabotinsky suspected that the killers had been Arabs, and that it had been part of a chain of events, starting with the mass killings of August 1929 and ending more recently with arson in the Balfour forest. In early 1934, Abdul Majud, a Jaffa Arab claimed responsibility for the killing together with Issa Ibn Darwish. It was portrayed as a fumbled attack to ward off Arlosoroff so that they could sexually assault his wife. A few weeks later, Majud retracted this, stating he had been bribed by the Jewish defendants in prison. He was never cross-examined in court.

In the 1970s, it was suggested that Joseph Goebbels had sent Nazi agents to murder Arlosoroff. Before her marriage to the Nazi leader, Magda Goebbels had been Arlosoroff's lover in Germany. Brought up Catholic with a Jewish stepfather, Magda had even worn a star of David, given to her by Arlosoroff, and attended Zionist meetings. Their ways parted but, weeks before his death, Arlosoroff visited Berlin where he came across a marriage photograph of his old flame, arm-in-arm with Goebbels.

One opposition paper carried the headline: Nazi Chief weds Jewess. After the initial shock, Arlosoroff began to view Magda as his conduit to Goebbels with the aim of securing an arrangement for the transfer of German Jewish assets to Palestine.

According to the German writer, Anja Klabunde, Arlosoroff did talk to Magda and they arranged to meet again. This meeting never took place, but Arlosoroff later received a message from Magda to warn him that he was in danger and should leave Germany immediately.

Despite an inquiry initiated by Begin in the 1980s, all theories remain within the confines of conjecture. An accidental bungling? A well-planned assassination? Unlike contemporary TV drama, this mystery remains unsolved. As time recedes, it is unlikely we will ever know the identity of the killers of Haim Arlosoroff.

Colin Shindler's 'History of Modern Israel' has been published by Cambridge University Press in an updated second edition

Want us to get closer to Israel? Try something new

Marcus Dysch — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:55:24 +0100

The Wembley Conference Centre was a concrete monstrosity, sensibly knocked down seven years ago. But it lives on in my memory thanks solely to the events of April 26 1998.

It was on that date that 22,000 of us marked Israel's 50th birthday in style. The Dysch family travelled down the M1 on a packed coach, much as we would for a day out at the FA Cup Final played at the opposite end of Wembley Way.

For a 15-year-old from Hull it was great fun. You could fax a message to the Kotel, see the gala show, or, in the case of my father, be interviewed by the BBC for a follow-up documentary.

Sadly, I doubt that in the summer of 2028, as Israel celebrates its 80th birthday, many will look back on last week's Closer to Israel event with such warmth. Some of us struggled to remember the alleged highs even later the same day.

The organisers had predicted a turn-out of 20,000 and the most unforgettable Israel advocacy event in living memory. The eventual attendance was barely a quarter of that figure.

We are told that Closer to Israel was the "umbrella for a programme of year-round grassroots activities". These "activities" include coffee mornings, musical soirees and film screenings.

Then wake me up when the year is over. Such staples of the 1970s no longer cut the mustard. Trafalgar Square was largely bereft of teenagers and people under the age of 40. Why? Because they have little desire for more of the same.

Speeches. Middle-aged white men. Stilt-walkers. It was another dose of "meh" in a multi-cultural, high-definition era when organisations have to refresh as quickly as a teenager's Twitter feed to maintain interest.

A quick digression here, as similarly conspicuous by their absence were the supposed legions of anti-Israel activists that the boycott proponents are so quick to claim exist. For all their talk on social media beforehand, such groups could barely muster two dozen protesters on the day.

They may have big mouths but when it comes to the crunch their hate does not outweigh our love. It is a point that is worth remembering.

Our leading concern, though, should be what more could have been done with the £250,000 that the event astonishingly cost? A three-and-a-half-hour, one-off event in a few square miles of central London is not a lot to show for such a sum.

For quarter-of-a-million quid we could have had something different for once. How about Idan Raichel performing a series of gigs around the country? Or Bar Refaeli in dozens of British glossy magazines? Yossi Benayoun promoting Uefa's showpiece Under-21 tournament in Israel? Who knows whether these would have been possible, but isn't it worth finding out?

Ambassador Daniel Taub and the Chief Rabbi are, alongside Howard Jacobson, the finest Israel advocates in the UK. But they are not exactly short of public speaking opportunities. Putting them on a stage to speak for two minutes to a crowd that already loves Israel achieves nothing.

Imagine the impact if the wider British public had instead been introduced to Yityish Aynaw, the current Miss Israel. An Ethiopian orphan whose grandparents took her to Israel, Yityish thrived in her new home, serving in the IDF before her title catapulted her on to the global scene and gave Barack Obama the chance to tell her she was "very beautiful" at a state dinner. Her story is every bit as remarkable as Israel's own miraculous development, and would surely have made a greater impression on wider views of a country that is regularly derided as belligerent.

Think back to those big Australian advertising campaigns - "So where the bloody hell are you?" - that caused such waves of excitement in Britain a few years ago. California ran similar commercials. They were ballsy, good-humoured affairs. Why not try something similar for Israel?

The mix of excitement, youth, fun and the bit of chutzpah required for such a campaign certainly exists in the Holy Land. Imagine showcasing Tel Aviv's beaches, Jerusalem's history, Gay Pride parades, pioneering medical innovation, Arab-Israeli football stars, and so much more.

In 1996, Dutch soccer star Ruud Gullit coined the term "sexy football". People laughed, but his point was made. It is time to do a better job of showing off Israel's sexy side.

Our approach to Israel advocacy needs to go the same way as Wembley Conference Centre. We would certainly get more bang for our buck than from an hour of speeches in Trafalgar Square.

UK needs the start-up nation

Liam Byrne — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:49:15 +0100

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the first ever Google "Hangout" - a live link between tech experts in London and Tel Aviv, bringing home an exciting discussion that began last year on an eye-opening visit with Labour Friends of Israel to the self-styled start-up nation.

Together with shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, former innovation minister David Lammy and senior businessman Sir Trevor Chinn, and hosted by Google at their campus in East London's Tech City, we were video-linked to an expert panel in Google's Tel Aviv offices. The aim was to get to grips with how Israel has become so successful in the tech sector, and how we can work more closely together on innovation.

There is much more to this part of the world than what we see on the evening news. Israel has the largest concentration of start-ups outside Silicon Valley and, per capita, two-and-a-half times as much venture capital investment. Israel's chief scientist Avi Hasson told us last year: "In the area of innovation, government has an inherent role to play. You can't optimise the role of innovation by leaving it to the market." He invests some $500 million a year in start-ups and some 3,000 companies a year apply for help. We have a huge amount to learn from the way Israel has got the policy mix right

However, thinkers like Saul Singer, co-author of Start-up Nation, are the first to point out that there are many factors in Israel that are unique, and this is why I think this conversation should not only be about what we can do to replicate Israel's success, but also what we can do to deepen collaborative and mutually beneficial relations with Israel's innovators. And we have a solid base to work from, with around 300 Israeli companies operating in the UK, and bilateral trade reaching a record high of £3.81 billion in 2012.

So, how do we enhance collaboration? The first place to look has to be the incredible new Tech Hub based at the British embassy in Tel Aviv. Unlike traditional embassy operations, it is not simply trying to conclude trade deals, but is creating a space for British and Israeli companies, start-ups and innovators to come together, and form new and exciting collaborations.

Before I left the Treasury in 2010, I'd become fascinated with just how much economic growth was now driven by our key cities. When I think about my home city of Birmingham, I can see the great potential for innovation residing in our institutions. There is the city council, especially for the role it plays co-ordinating schools, along with our great teaching hospitals that not only save lives but break the ground of new science, our science parks that are homes to cutting-edge ideas, and our universities that are not just teaching but also researching ideas and partnering with great R&D leaders like Rolls Royce, Jaguar Land Rover and AstraZeneca.

The question for Birmingham and for other major British hubs is how we orchestrate these players into a faster pace of growth that results in more exports and more jobs. And I think we could go a lot faster if we strengthened our city-to-city links in the Middle East, especially with Israeli cities. We must also think harder about what we can do to help unlock the economic and creative potential of the Palestinian territories, starting with the exciting technology firms in and around Ramallah.

Both the UK and Israel are intensely innovative places. Britain is home to great global businesses, highly experienced at doing business internationally, especially in the key emerging markets of China and India. However, Israel is a far more entrepreneurial country, as its start-up rate shows. Together, an innovative, entrepreneurial partnership could be a powerful win-win.

No need to move the goalposts

Rabbi Daniel Rowe — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:07:49 +0100

Cecil Roth ended his History of the Jews with a challenge: "Throughout our history, there have been weaker elements who have shirked the sacrifices which Judaism entailed. They have been swallowed, long since, in the great majority; only the more stalwart have carried on the traditions of their ancestors, and can now look back with pride… Are we to be numbered with the weak majority, or with the stalwart minority? It is for ourselves to decide."

Apathy, assimilation and intermarriage present some of the greatest challenges to Jewish survival today. One approach is to redraw the goal posts, and embrace intermarriage. Its short-term benefit is as obvious as its long-term cost; it is the approach of the "weak majority". However well-intentioned it may be, it is the road to disappearance.

There is another approach, and that is to re-invigorate the Jewish connection of those who are disaffiliating. In contrast to defeatism, this approach believes that being Jewish is a privilege, and that intermarriage is cause for concern but not despair; that the battle for the Jewish future can be won.

Focusing on revitalising the community, does not mean saying goodbye to those who have left. Conversion should be encouraged where it is sincere. There are few things more incredible than watching the experience of a convert as they learn more and more about the beauty of Judaism, typically bringing their Jewish partner up with them. Nevertheless, when we stop asking how we stem the tide of intermarriage and begin finding ways to simply live with it, we admit defeat in the battle for Jewish continuity.

In every generation, people have argued that Judaism was not sufficiently "with the times". The Roman historian Tacitus mocked Judaism for repudiating infanticide. Christian thinkers mocked Jews for maintaining belief in a return to Israel, while 19th-century German academics saw Judaism as far behind humanist secular ideals. In each generation the "weak majority" submitted to the criticism and assimilated out of Jewish history. The "stalwart" re-invigorated their Jewish life in the face of challenge.

Today, we enjoy the freedom to do as we please, the wealth to buy what we want, and the technology to create what we like. But freedom does not tell us how to achieve dignity. Wealth does not bring fulfilment and technology cannot tell us what purpose we are here for. Judaism teaches us how to make every aspect of time special and how to utilise every moment to become a greater person.

Many areas of the community are in demographic decline, but there are rays of hope. The Charedi success in bucking the trend is often dismissed as being due to isolationism, but the observant modern Orthodox communities have also enjoyed strong growth. And there is increasing evidence that Orthodox educational organisations are having a strong impact. Young people are increasingly recognising that Judaism is dynamic, exhilarating and more relevant than ever.

As a community, we have invested strongly in shuls so that there are places where Jews could be Jewish. We have invested in formal education so that young Jews know how to be Jewish. We must not now forget to invest in ensuring that they know why they should be Jewish, something that is achieved at home and via informal education programmes. This is not theory. It has been borne out in practice.

While parts of the mainstream community are disappearing, there is a strong counter-trend. In recent years, the groundswell of informal activity in our schools and communities has grown enormously. On campuses, hundreds attend weekly Jewish learning and leadership programmes. Countless young Jews are rediscovering the beauty of Judaism. If anything, this is a time for optimism.

If Jewish history has taught us anything, it is that what seems impossible today is more often than not the outcome of tomorrow. The quiet revolution taking place in our schools, campuses and young professional communities is encouraging. If nurtured properly it can help shape our future in a way that seemed unthinkable just a decade ago.

There will always be naysayers, defeatists and cynics. Some will mean well. But the immortal words of Herzl must be our response: "If you will it, it is not a dream."

Burning the bush at both ends

Simon Round — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:02:38 +0100

There have been many health hazards associated with being an observant Jew over the centuries. Of these, my perception is that lighting Shabbat candles comes relatively low down. Aberystwyth University thinks differently. It has ruled that it is too risky to have Orthodox Jews stay in accommodation on campus unless they agree not to light candles there.

It might well be that, through the millennia, there have been serious fires caused by Shabbat candles but I would estimate that only a tiny number of Jews have perished in this manner. Of course, the kindling of a naked flame on a Friday night carries with it a small risk but this would be negligible when compared to, say (to take a random example), having thousands of undergraduates inhabiting the same accommodation during term time.

We Jews do not have the reputation of indulging in risky behaviour en masse. I recently watched a documentary about Brits on holiday on the Costa Del Sol in which the hotel manager needed to patrol outside to stop beer-crazed holidaymakers attempting to jump from balcony to balcony. I'm guessing that they do not have the same problems in Wales with Jewish visitors after a night on the Palwins.

Still, maybe someone should do a proper risk assessment. What might there be about being Jewish that really is bad for your health? I'm guessing health and safety officers don't often get to shul. If they did, they would surely be tempted to ban shockelling with its risk of lower back damage and headaches. And those who lift the Torah may be flirting with serious spinal problems from using incorrect posture.

There are also dangers lurking in the kitchen - not sharp blades or hot ovens but from the spectacular amount of saturated fat lurking in chopped liver and cholent, and the diabetes-inducing amounts of sugar and stodge in lokshen pudding.

And Orthodox men and women who carefully cover arms and legs at all times might well be at risk of vitamin D deficiency, particularly those living in the largely sun-deprived UK. (Although, on the other hand, this does limit the risk of severe sunburn.)

Other Jewish-specific forms of behaviour could have disastrous consequences. Those who rush to the back of the plane to daven may be undermining the aerodynamic balance of the airliner. Opening the door for Elijah on Seder night could be the cue for armed robbers to take all your possessions and kidnap your grandma. And driving while holding a mobile phone in one hand and gesticulating with the other might be more-or-less compulsory in Israel but could be detrimental to the health of road-users.

But lighting candles on Friday night? It may be considered reckless in parts of Wales, but the very same people who ban candles would probably sanction the playing of rugby on a Saturday afternoon. So what is more dangerous? A: scrumming down against the Pontypool front row Or B: making kiddush. Answers on a postcard to Aberystwyth University health and safety department.

Britain’s quietest immigration story

Andrew Caplan — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 10:18:23 +0100

We have been talking about the politics of immigration since the 1960s, sometimes with a barely hidden xenophobic subtext. At first, the focus was on migrants "of colour"; of late it has become a proxy for anti-Europeanism and concern about the "clash of civilisations".

All the while, there has been another, quieter immigration story, clearly visible from the heights of north west London and Canary Wharf, but little remarked on elsewhere. This is the gradual accumulation over the past 60-odd years (accelerated since the 1990s) of a small but substantial South African Jewish population that has settled in north London.

South African Jewry is descended from migrants from the Baltic (mainly Lithuania) and Western provinces of the old Russian Empire. By the 1970s, it numbered upwards of 120,000, largely centred in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Now it has declined to 73,000 and falling, as people have upped sticks for Australia, Israel and America, heading for work, joining family, and trying to recreate a semblance of the life they had enjoyed in South Africa. And a smaller fraction has settled in the UK.

A few years ago, the Centre for Minority Studies of the Royal Holloway was asked to examine the particular circumstances of South African Jewish migrants to London.

Whereas most studies of migration have focused on the movement of people from deprived circumstances - mainly economic, but also socio-political - to areas of greater economic and political freedom, this looked at a relatively privileged group who were neither oppressed or expelled. An additional challenge was posed by the dearth of reliable statistics on the size of the community. Best estimates, based on the 2001 Census and GLA survey, suggested it was in excess of 6,000 in 2009.

The research team interviewed 314 people aged between 27 and 92, living and/or working in the Greater London area. They found a typical middle-class community - three-quarters married, 85 per cent with children, 92 per cent possessing a higher-education qualification, and 89 per cent owner occupiers, most commonly in Camden, Barnet and Harrow and the contiguous districts of south west Hertfordshire. In most respects the South African Jewish community in London resembled the "comfortable" sector of the host Jewish community.

They retained a moderate to strong attachment (particularly second and third generation South Africans) to their homeland, reinforced by regular visits, following the news and the ease of contacting family using modern technology. Early arrivals, often single and in search of work, education and a cosmopolitan lifestyle, had immersed themselves in British relationships to a greater degree.

More notable than the continuing strength of South African identity is that of Jewish identity, which is as strong as any national identity, with a solid commitment to Jewish education at least until barmitzvah. The community has continued the tradition of charitable giving (mainly to UK Jewish charities) but shed the generally left-leaning liberal stance of the apartheid period for a southern-England conservatism. Attachment to Israel is strong, although accompanied by criticisms of its policies, and the move to London does not seem have affected the commitment to a diaspora-centred Zionism.

The "push" factors for emigration varied widely from a lack of belief in the viability of their future, politically and economically, particularly during the apartheid era, to a feeling of displacement and distrust since the fall of apartheid. A typical remark of an early migrant was: "I couldn't remain and do nothing and I didn't want to go to jail". Later arrivals are older, have come with family, and were concerned that they had lost their role in the new South Africa. The break with the old country has left nostalgia for the cultural and religious life of the community there, as well as for the sights, tastes and smells of the African landscape and beach life.

Many had envisioned their future outside the country from an early age - to fulfil a Zionist dream, break out from colonial insularity, enhance professional and cultural opportunities, and a variety of other personal reasons. Constant, however, was a feeling of a collapsing future ("getting out before the curtain comes down") that would not include them - in the words of one migrant: "I knew I was going to leave - just not when. I felt I didn't belong. As a Jew… I was always on the periphery." When the peaks of emigration are plotted against political events (for example the Sharpeville massacre, the Soweto riots, Mbeki's presidency) there is a strong correlation - though these seem to prompt the decision rather than directly cause it - and emigrants in general had time to reflect, plan and make a relatively orderly move.

Despite "feeling" South African (and being seen that way), the vast majority have developed a substantial attachment for "England" and feel at home here without having thus far been transformed into full "Englishmen and women". In general, South Africans have adapted themselves well to their new lives and are unlikely to leave (although whether this will hold true for their children is impossible to say). They live in, or in relatively close proximity to, London and near other Jews, especially South African ones; prefer their children to attend Jewish schools; and encourage their children to seek "traditional" (though short of strict Orthodoxy) Jewish partners.

Zionism is an issue of great concern to this community, virtually all of whom have visited Israel. They suggested that antisemitism now masqueraded as anti-Zionism; that non-Jews and Islamists now had a freedom to express their hitherto private views publicly without fear of ridicule, criticism or contradiction.

In effect, the reduction in social antisemitism that had been previously prevalent in England (but apparently not in South Africa) and associated with the political right, had been replaced by a political anti-Zionism on both wings. Despite variations in religious observance, feeling and commitment, South African Jews in London, especially those in the "heartland" boroughs generally mix with their own religious group and maintain South African-based friendship groups that are reinforced at times by the synagogue. As a so-called "South African mafia" has developed in recent years, and opportunities to meet, socialise and do business with fellow ex-South Africans has blossomed. The desire to "de-tribalise" and "fit in" has somewhat receded and South Africans feel freer to be themselves. Given the widely entrepreneurial nature and high achievement of the group, it is not surprising that its members attract employment in the higher levels of the London tertiary economy.

The limits of attachment were often felt over sport and the maintenance of the connections with the teams of one's youth - mainly cricket, but also rugby - most strongly felt by ex-practitioners. Several people invoked the Tebbit "cricket test" as evidence of their support for/ambivalent attachment to England, and referred to the "tribal" nature of sporting support.

The Jewish community has often been complimented - in implicit contrast to other seemingly more troublesome ethnicities - for its record of dutiful loyalty. South African Jewish immigrants, with their white skin, English-based education, and European-influenced culture, had opportunities not offered to other immigrants to integrate and assimilate. By all obvious criteria, they have integrated well. The question of "assimilation" - the loss of individuality by blending into the mainstream - is more problematic.

To the extent that we can read the future by a study of the past and present, there are signs of blending and fusing. When asked whether they felt more British or South African, more than a third said they felt more British (though "it felt like a desertion", said one) and a fifth said they felt both equally. The minority who felt strongly South African were among the more recent arrivals, and possibly reflected that it is now less "cool" to be British.

South African Jews who arrived early, or who are in relationships with British or non-Jewish partners, or who live outside the "heartland", show all the signs of seamless mutation into the mainstream. They have lost the South African vowels and intonation; they rarely communicate with South African friends or family and ignore news of South African interest. For these, in time, the South African sojourn may well be but a temporary episode in the wandering migration out of Lithuania. And then, given this group's general prosperity and qualifications? Re-migration to who-knows-where? The South African episode could be confined to an album of faded snaps of the beach at Muizenberg and a half-remembered childhood song about a "Train to Kimberley".

Andrew Caplan is an honorary research associate of the department of history at Royal Holloway University. He gave three talks at the London Jewish Cultural Centre in association with the recent 'Memories of Muizenberg' exhibition

Put iJudaism on the curriculum

Chana Kanzen — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 10:02:45 +0100

At this moment, my 12-year-old is creating a book on the iPad, while texting friends, Googling on the home PC, logging on to her school's Virtual Learning Platform and skyping her grandfather. While I peer over my laptop, she takes out her homework, and photocopy after photocopy emerges. Finally, she gets out her pen - when was the last time I wrote? My five-year-old refuses to sit through his "Mount Sinai" of worksheets and I resort to bribing him with a tablet app so he will work. I've yet to work out how he manages to find the apps on my iPad without being able to read.

There is a profound gap between what most children are learning in school and the knowledge they will need when they graduate. Twenty-first century skills like collaboration and communication are essential for the jobs of the future. Do we really need rote learning when every answer known to man is on Google?

Why are we not utilising more technology to enhance learning? Kids are savvy, and can find out information for themselves - just ask my son. Teaching them how to ask the questions in order to collate and present that information digitally may be more useful than learning, say, about the establishment of Israel by reading a textbook and taking a test.

With mobile phones populating most secondary schools, we have the most sophisticated forms of technology stored away in lockers - why not use them to tweet opinions during a discussion or scan a QR code for more information? It may be challenging to manage at first, but the alternative is to bury our heads in the sand. It could also do away with photocopying endless worksheets or buying countless text books, recouping costs of the technology hardware, and saving trees.

There are the obvious concerns regarding internet safety, and likewise the spread of misinformation on some sites. But just as children are taught to use dangerous equipment in science lessons, they need guidance in web safety and etiquette, with teacher/parent training on how to avoid cyber dangers.

The teacher's role is changing - but can our schools keep up? Technology should be embedded in the classroom, and that includes Jewish studies, for which teachers often struggle with limited time. The "flipped classroom" model can change this - innovative teachers are putting lessons online for students to digest at their own pace, thus releasing precious class time for more in-depth discussion. And by asking them to create a digital resource rather than fill in a worksheet, there is the added bonus of more children actually wanting to do their homework.

Most teachers recognise that education is changing, and there is a real need for high-quality Jewish educational apps and programmes that equal other products. At Jewish Interactive we are beginning to meet this demand, providing Jewish studies teachers with a resource they do not have to edit, mark or stay up late creating, only to be met with disappointment that it is not nearly as good as Moshi Monsters!

Tablet technology is starting to transform Jewish studies, with four-year-olds learning to photograph mitzvot for an interactive reward chart, and teens no longer having to carry 20 text books but using apps to locate key texts in seconds.

Through effective use of technology the brick-and-mortar school building is giving way to a virtual world where we can Skype an Israeli child to practise Ivrit, share an assembly with a school on another continent and zoom in to Jerusalem when learning about holy sites.

King Solomon said: "Educate our youth according to his way". If we "digital immigrants" do not respond to our "digital natives" and share our wonderful heritage in their language, we risk losing a generation.

When the Israel boycott goes mainstream

Jonathan Freedland — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:56:56 +0100

Sometimes it takes just a single word. This particular word, used three times in a newspaper article, offered a glimpse of an unwelcome future - one in which Israel is seen all but universally as a pariah state.

It appeared in a Daily Express report on Stephen Hawking's decision to join the academic boycott of Israel. The article focused on what it called the "barrage of vile abuse" and "disgusting" jokes aimed at Hawking by defenders of Israel on social media, quoting the "sick user" who posted that "the antisemite Stephen Hawking can't even wipe his own a**," another who said "He should die already!" and a third who wrote that the physicist was "also crippled in the head".

Appalling as they are, none of those remarks includes the word that struck me. For the Express report referred to Hawking's decision to join the boycott of "the Israeli regime," which is why he was staying away from a conference hosted "by the regime's president," Shimon Peres.

Regime. That's the word reserved for Iran and North Korea. Yet here it was applied to Israel, not in a rant from George Galloway or a fiery polemic in the left press, but in the Express, a paper of the centre-right with little interest in foreign affairs.

As it happens, the word was changed in later versions of the online story (after what I'm told was a very angry phone call from the Israeli embassy to the reporter involved). But the memory of it lingers because it shows how things could end up - with Israel shunned and vilified, not just by activists and campaigners, but by the mainstream.

As I understand it, no anti-Israel animus drove that story; that's not really the Express' thing. The angle instead was appalling abuse directed at a British national treasure. If that abuse had come from opponents, rather than defenders, of Israel, the Express would have condemned it just as vehemently.

But the sad truth is Hawking was speaking out against Israel, not for it. And his status as a national treasure affects how that stance is perceived, making it instantly mainstream rather than fringe or radical. It's too early to tell if his decision will prove a tipping point for the boycott movement, but it could. As I never tire of pointing out, quoting scholar Ze'ev Mankowitz, people don't believe in ideas - they believe in people who believe in ideas. Many people around the world believe in and respect Hawking and will, as a result, now think that perhaps they, too, should boycott Israel.

Avowed opponents of the boycott - and I am one of them - should fear this shift, rendering anti-Israel sentiment less Palestine Solidarity Campaign and more Blue Peter Appeal, a view that is not controversial, or even that political, but apparently held by all right-thinking people. Once that kind of consensus settles, it can be impossible to shift.

Those who resorted to such vile insults against Hawking were obviously wrong. But so, too, were those who, in more elegant language, cast Hawking as some congenital Israel-hater. The painful truth is that Hawking has a long track record as a friend of Israel; he had visited the country four times, given the red-carpet treatment when he went in 2006. But now he has had enough.

Rather than slamming him, those who wish the best for Israel should contemplate what Hawking's move means - that unless the country changes course, ending an occupation 46 years old this week, then Hawking's action will become the norm. The great physicist has allowed us a peek inside the black hole inhabited by the world's pariah nations. That glimpse alone should make us recoil.

How do we want our views to be remembered in 100 years?

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:13:21 +0100

They "assert these things with a violence bordering on mental aberration," complained one aggrieved gentleman in a letter to this newspaper a century ago. "Things are implied, all of which are the last word in absurdity to the really Jewish imagination."

The source of such frothing outrage? A rabbinic proclamation that Shabbat was to be cancelled every other week, but Yom Kippur would be observed twice? A claim that Moses had actually just got frightfully lost? In fact, it was the extension of a basic measure of equality. With the Great War still a year away, votes for women was the issue of the day and, as history tells us, it wasn't quite the self-evident reform we now see it as.

Our disgruntled writer went on: "A movement pledged to saddle women with responsibilities foreign to the female temperament and physical capacity." In his not-so-humble opinion, extending the franchise would condemn Judaism by triggering the demise of "the glory of Jewish home-life" - presumably because liberated women would refuse to cook Friday-night dinner.

Ninety-six years after women won the vote, I think we have proved him wrong (and shown that men can roast chickens, too). That's not to say our community is the same - nor even that it remains as sturdy - but that it survived what was once deemed an incredibly radical change.

Stay safe or take the risky path? The dichotomy goes to the heart of Jewish life; the religion teaches us hope, but history and experience have given us the impression that things can only get worse. That was the sense I was left with, anyway, after rifling through Foreign Office files newly released at the National Archives.

In 1941, officials intercepted David Ben-Gurion's papers. They were particularly enthralled by a meeting between the Zionist firebrand and prominent British Jews, including Anthony de Rothschild and Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, at which these gentlemen let it be known they considered a Jewish homeland a low priority. Sir Robert "wondered whether they could not achieve their aims without asking for something so peculiar and so dangerous as a Jewish State". Later, de Rothschild wrote: "At the present juncture no useful purpose would be served by further talks and anyhow this is not a favourable moment for bothering our Government." As he told Chaim Weizmann, he and his associates were "unalterably opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state".

For many of our great and good, when it came to rocking the boat and challenging the government, the instinct for caution triumphed over any enthusiasm for the gamble. With hindsight, knowing that the Wannsee Conference was only months away, it is tough to digest the reasoning.

It is "impossible to foretell what would happen at the end of the war," said de Rothschild, and of course they could not have known the extent of the Nazi campaign, so to condemn them for lacking this foresight is unfair. In the same vein, by no means all those opposed to women's votes were intolerant chauvinists.

Indeed, few societal changes have come about with universal backing and just because the opponents were defeated does not mean we should dismiss all their arguments as worthless.

Those who fought for the losing side presumably did so in good faith. Still, looking back, we can see clearly when people were standing on the wrong side of history, warning of disaster and upheaval that would never come. How perplexing, now, to read that suffrage would represent "the last word in absurdity to the really Jewish imagination".

Yet we continue to entertain the prophesies of the pessimists. In the community today, warnings fly around about the effects of such changes as equality for men and women in shul, gay marriage, or the potential consequences of publicly criticising the Israeli government. How often have I heard the argument that to change anything - reduce Yom Tov from two days to one, for example, or alter our archaic divorce laws - would lead Orthodoxy down a slippery slope, or that interfaith co-operation could have dangerous ramifications, so should be avoided.

We should not let the naysayers drown out those who push for change. It may be easier to choose the status quo over the unknown, but look to the words of one female correspondent, arguing in support of suffrage in 1913: "Why should it not be the function of the synagogue to take the lead in social reform?"

Today, we celebrate the courage and conviction of those like her who took the leap.

Of course prudence is necessary. But we should still be wary that our instinct for caution does not put us on the wrong side of history.

My role as David Attenborough

Maureen Lipman — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:10:27 +0100

My partner's idea of a good holiday is a 13-hour flight to a bus to a port to a ship to a dinghy to a rock to an oversized tortoise. Mine is a family-run hotel with a pool, walking distance of a village with a good restaurant and, preferably, something to look at. This time he won. I admit it was interesting. I did marvel. I did see nature at its most natural. Occasionally, it felt like Paradise.

How do I feel? Like a woman who needs a holiday. My partner has been coughing his lungs up for 10 days and I have a throat thing that makes me sound like a Spanish transvestite in an Almodovar film. I have not the faintest hint of a tan and a gentle spill from a bike has left me with wince-inducing toes.

Before I start my next play, I have to get away, and it has to be to somewhere that wraps me in alpaca fleece, spoons nectar down my throat and allows me 10 hours uninterrupted reading a day. Suggestions please, on a plain brown envelope with enclosed aspirin.

We flew Air Iberia. We'd given our food preferences but still the ham and bacon kept coming. If the coffee had had thin slivers of salami in I would not have been surprised.

Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, is lovely. The Mercure Hotel was serviceable in a beige sort of way but we wouldn't have noticed as long as there was a flat surface to sleep on and no pork. The museum at the city centre was an absolute delight. They placed a sink on one side of the line and when they poured water in it, it went down the plug clockwise. On the other side, just two feet away, and it ran anti-clockwise. How magical is that?

Being of the glass-half-empty brigade, I had thought from the photos that our ship looked like a harmonica, verging on unseaworthy. In fact, it was rather nice. No frills, but ship-shape. The buffet on the first night was roast pork but alternatives were numerous.

I left the patronising introduction from the guide - "I tell you, you don't listen and this is what happens!" - rather early. I was tired, but the good Lord put me on this earth to learn patience and I'm still here because he's not yet satisfied with my progress.

Cabin-wise there was little rolling around and no sea-sickness. You rose at seven and by 7.30 were in a life jacket being helped into a dinghy for the first island - North Seymour. It was a dry landing (as we explorers say). You walk up the beach and along the rocks for five minutes and then, if you are me, turn to your partner (last there 20 years ago and worried I wouldn't like it) and say: "Now I get it!"

Blue-footed boobies have blue legs and feet that look like they're wearing blue Marigolds. They stand in their dozens and watch, unafraid. They wheel and swoop in the air and dive in the sea with poise and accuracy. Sea lions honk beside you and olive-green iguanas with yellow heads the size of dachshunds crawl over every rock and each other. You don't touch or wander off the trail. Conservation and respect are the order of the day.

Later, we saw legions of black-feathered frigate birds, which, when showing off for females, inflate a small red pouch on their necks into a vast balloon. They look like liquorice curled around a gobstopper. Back in the cabin, I called home. I was a very happy woman.

Over the next week, we saw dazzling red and navy crabs, lumbering tortoises making noisy love, tiny terrified turtles fleeing preying herons and, on Porto Ayaya, wonderful interdependence as sea lions and pelicans stood to attention to help the fishermen with the gutting. Real Attenborough stuff. Our mistake was in not booking a few days at the end to unwind by a pool on Flint island.
We flew back from Guayaquil (Don't!) and collapsed home on the Wednesday. The Galapagos is often heart-stopping but not if your heart is faint. Next year, Majorca.

The false dignity of departure

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:08:46 +0100

Last week, London's Barbican Centre staged the glitzy spectacle of the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, being interviewed by David Frost. According to one report, "successive speakers waxed lyrical" about Sacks's influence on them, the Jewish community, and British society at large. United Synagogue president Stephen Pack apparently declared that Lord Sacks had become "the moral compass of the country".

In answer to a question from Frost, Sacks declared that his greatest accomplishment had been presiding over a Jewish community that had "transformed itself," growing numerically for the first time since the end of the Second World War, revitalising its Orthodox shuls and tripling the number of children going to Jewish day schools."

He denied that he had "come out strongly" against same-sex marriage. But he avoided a question about what he would have done differently, preferring to concentrate instead on his numerous frightfully important visits to 10 Downing Street. As for the Hugo Gryn affair, he brushed that aside as "one of those moments of turbulence".

As a historian of British Jewry (I am currently updating a text on the subject that I first published some 20 years ago), I feel the need to plug one or two gaps in the Sacks legend that is now being created, and which was clearly being previewed at the event.

The first myth that I need to expose is that Sacks himself has had anything to do with the transformation of the community over which he has presided - the United Hebrew Congregations. The welcome numerical growth in the numbers of British Jews has had nothing to do either with him or with his community: it has happened within the Anglo-Charedi world, over which he most certainly does not preside - but which he unquestionably fears. Inasmuch as there has been a "revitalisation" of what one might term "centrist" Orthodox shuls, this can be traced to the enthusiasm and hard work of a relatively small number of individuals, working mostly outside the Orthodox establishment.

The Jewish day school movement is an undoubted success story - but Sacks has played no part in its fulfilment. For the record, the major catalyst in ensuring this success has been the Huntingdon Foundation, expertly directed by its founder, Benjamin Perl. Lord Sacks's one foray into the arena of spiritual renewal with Anglo-Jewry was "Jewish Continuity," an initiative that foundered spectacularly - not merely on account of strictly Orthodox objections to what the sectarians believed was unacceptable leniency toward the non-Orthodox, but also because of Lord Sacks's blatant inability to confront this bigotry.

As his term draws to a close and his admirers hasten to give him a hero's farewell, I need to remind them that Sacks came into office waving the banner of "inclusivism" (his phrase). In One People? he had argued that it fell to the Orthodox to be inclusivist rather than exclusivist, and that this meant, among other things, not speaking of other Jews "except in the language of love and respect". His infamous letter of January 1997 to the late Dayan Padwa, famously leaked to the JC, gave the lie to this pious platitude, for in it he spoke of Gryn in scathing and I would say spiteful language. In January 1995, following an outcry from the right over his recognition of Masorti marriages, he saw fit to publish an article in the Jewish Tribune condemning Masorti adherents for having "severed their links" with the faith of their ancestors. Yet a week later, in the JC, he had the chutzpah to stress his belief in an orthodoxy "uncompromising in its tolerance."

But Sacks did indeed "come out strongly" against same-sex marriage. Last July, in his official capacity, he stressed, on the record, that marriage was a sacred union between a man and a woman and that any redefinition would undermine it. Why does he seek to belittle now what he publicly affirmed then?

Finally, I need to remind us all that, in 2002, in order to placate the strictly Orthodox, he agreed to rewrite key passages in The Dignity of Difference, in which (like Chief Rabbi Hertz before him) he had argued that Judaism could learn from other religions.

In short, his tenure does not strike me as having been guided by any "moral" compass at all - but rather by the politically expedient dictates of the moment.

Chicken, Dickens and Death

Peter Rosengard — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:16:19 +0100

I've got a book coming out. My publisher is very busy - often the only time we talk is when he's walking home in rush hour. He's a power walker so he is always out of breath.

He rang me yesterday. "Peter? puff… puff…It's your… puff…publisher… puff puff."

The next day I had an idea: "Peter, you're a life insurance salesman! If you can sell that, you can sell your book. The reader won't even have to die to get the benefit - and it's a lot funnier than death."

Which is why last Tuesday I was at a Covent Garden pizza restaurant about to go on at the trendy Hospital club before a packed house to compete in "Literary Death Match" - books and words instead of gloves and punches. There were going to be four authors competing.

OK - three authors and a life insurance salesman.

Earlier, I'd gone to pick up my Lily, my daughter, from the station. While I was waiting, I thought I'd practise by reading my piece to someone.

I looked around. Who looked like a Larry David fan?

"Excuse me." I said to the fair-haired young man in his 20s. "Have you heard of Curb your Enthusiasm?"

"I love LD," he said. "Hey… 'Palestinian chicken'!?"

"Great. I'm about to do a reading of a story from my book… about how I once bumped into Larry David at breakfast in New York - can I read it to you?"

" You met LD!!? " he said. "Hang on… are you entering Literary Death Match?"

"Yes! How did you know?

"I'm waiting for my brother - he's one of the authors!"

"What are the odds! What's his book about?"

"The Artful Dodger… but it starts six years after Oliver Twist ended," he said.

"Terrific!" I thought. "I'm against the new Dickens."

I was now eating pizza with Lily and Dani, my publicist. Dani's a sweet young north London Jewish guy - really a Daniel.

"Can we talk about what you're going to be reading in 10 minutes?" he said.

I read them a bit of the Larry David story, but kept getting the accents muddled. One minute LD had an English accent and I was the New Yorker.

"No Dad, you can't read that one," said Lily.

"I agree," the young Sicilian waiter said. "Too much dialogue; I think you need more narrative."

"OK Lily… why don't you and Roberto choose?"

Lily said "How about 'The night my ears melted'. It's really funny!" "Roberto… what do you say?" I asked.

"Yes it's funny." "Ok… we'll go with the ears."

"You're on in three," Dani said. "Ciao," Roberto said, adding: "Remember sir… please, no Larry… I love LD… but you're no Larry."

"Are you really a life insurance salesman?" one of the other authors asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I think they wanted to add a bit of glamour to the evening," I said.

Like us, others are different too

Ivor Baddiel and Jonny Zucker — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 10:12:26 +0100

There is no reason why Jews should be different to anyone else. We should eat, sleep and breathe the same oxygen as our fellow humans. And yet, when it comes to racism, prejudice and discrimination there is a reason we should be different.

Not at heart, not in our genes, not because we're the "chosen people", but in the legacy we carry, the thousands of years of anti-Jewish racism that culminated in the Holocaust.

We've been on the front line when book burning morphed into ghettoisation and then led us to gas chambers. If we, or indeed any people who have faced a monstrous genocidal onslaught, can't learn from this that all forms of racism, discrimination and prejudice are abhorrent, then what hope is there for anyone else?

This history means that we are sensitive to every word uttered in reference to ourselves, our religion or our national homeland. If we saw, for example, children running around London during Comic Relief wearing "comedy" Chasidic dress with clip-on peyot and fake beards, we would be justifiably enraged. We have seen what mocking, humiliation and parody have led to.

And yet, last Purim, Jewish children could be seen thronging the streets of Golders Green wearing "Rasta" hats with attached dreadlocks. Their outfits were part of the spirit of the occasion, part of the "fun".

At least, that must have been the opinion of those managing them. Could they not see that these "comedic" outfits might cause offence? Was it so hard to see that this was a case of "it's OK for us to belittle or parody, but it's not OK for you?"

We are the people of the book, a people that has produced scores of remarkable writers, essayists and fiery speakers. We have used words for the greater good, to lift civilisation, tolerance and peace to higher plains.

There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel and the rest of the world who fight racism with courage and a steely resolve, upholding Jewish values and battling for the underdog, championing the mocked and despised. But how many Jews do you know who still casually throw about such words as "yok", "shiksa" and even "schvarzer"? These are offensive, racist terms that might seem harmless within a private grouping, but they belie the same sentiments, the same attitudes that anti-Jewish racists hold - that other people are different from us, below us and thus easy prey for mockery.

It is precisely that some see these terms as harmless that makes them so bad. It normalises the words and with them the attitudes. These slurs get taken for granted and the prejudice that accompanies them becomes embedded, second nature. And dare we say it, however much anyone who uses these words would protest, from there it is a short step to more invidious forms of racism.

If Israel is attacked with a passion not reserved for other countries, especially those guilty of far greater abuses, we stand up against this hypocritical differentiation. We will not be picked on just because we are a minority. And yet in Israel recently there have been reports of racism against minorities, mostly directed at Arabs, but also at black people.

There have been sickening attacks on women whose only crime is to wear the hijab; there has been taunting of people with different coloured skin. Here is a country born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a beacon of hope and defiance, a potent symbol that said: "not only has your evil fascism failed, it has made us stronger and better".

Yes, "better". Not better than others, but better in the sense that we, both in Israel and the diaspora, know the signs and see the red flags from studying the past, (and the very recent past, at that). Of course we want to be stronger so that a Holocaust can never happen again; but stronger so that we become headstrong and complacent, and allow prejudice to rear its grotesque head? That is not strength; that is deplorable weakness.

So no, Jews aren't different or better than anyone else. Anyone who went through the Holocaust would surely learn the lessons from it. And yet, if we don't learn those lessons, then surely we are different to anyone else, because we are worse.

Israel does not hold the key

David Aaronovitch — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 10:06:56 +0100

When Israel was founded out of Jewry's near-destruction, it was at once a liberation for Jews and a disaster for Palestinian Arabs. What happened in the subsequent years - who did what to who and when - is not the subject of this column, but we need to agree that something that was good for one people was bad for another.

By the time most of us under the age of 60 came to adulthood, the basics had been settled. Israel was there but it was evident that the Palestinians were not going to go away, to be absorbed, like the Volksdeutsch of central Europe, into another land.

Over time and, in particular, following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the first intifada, it became one of the deepest desires of many of us that there be justice for Palestinians, too, an end to occupation and the construction of a Palestinian state existing side-by-side with Israel. That, we thought (I still think) would make Israel more secure.

Given the centrality, in rhetoric at least, of the Palestinian issue in Arab and (to a much lesser extent) Muslim life, it seemed natural also to assume that such justice, if achieved, would "bring peace to the whole region".

The Arab countries could then drop their popular hostility to the West and we might get on with the business of encouraging democracy and friendship. That may be why the Israel-Palestinian embroglio was described as the "Middle East Peace Process".

This thinking partly led to Tony Blair arguing in 2002 and 2003 that action over Iraq should be accompanied by an attempt to get us back to Oslo. It was thinking resisted by some of those in Israel and elsewhere who did not want to see such momentum resumed - who wanted peace but only without any sacrifice.

The trouble is that, in this one matter, people like me were wrong and they were right. Looking at the Middle East now it is all too obvious that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not even in the top three of the biggest issues in the region.

To illustrate this, you only have to listen to what Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, had to say this week. He was appealing to Sunnis in Lebanon not to get nasty with his party of theocratic neo-fascists, just because it was pitting Lebanese Shi'ites in battle in Syria against Turkish and Qatari-backed Syrian rebels, who were mostly Sunni.

Though he used the usual arguments that Israel was behind the rebellion, it is doubtful that even he believes this, let alone those who he was arguing with. The Syrian civil war has - as those who urged early intervention always argued it would - burst its banks and is flooding its neighbours with blood.

But the war in Syria, now grinding through its 80th thousand in deaths, depends in no way on the old "Middle East Peace Process". Nor does the renewed insurgency in Iraq, which killed up to 500 last week. Nor does the threat posed by the Iranian atomic programme - as violently opposed by the Gulf states as by Israel - and nor does the difficult, precarious and essential business of creating a modern state out of crisis-ridden Egypt. Nor even does whatever happens in the huge, lawless margins of Mali, Libya, Chad and Algeria.

So if you were John Kerry, and you had to make a list for President Obama of the crisis points in the world and the order in which they had to be dealt, where would Israel come in your order of priorities? Would it even appear? Or is it the case now that the need for peace is far more about the peoples of Israel and the occupied territories than it is about the sensitivities of the rest of the world?

Wall ﬁght is to return Judaism to Israel

Laura Janner-Klausner — Fri, 31 May 2013 10:20:15 +0100

The debate about Women of the Wall, the cross-denominational group that has campaigned for a quarter-of-a-century for the right of women to pray together and read from the Torah at the Kotel, has been heating up of late. But the real significance of the campaign is neither about women nor about the wall.

When one considers the Kotel itself, what is important is not only the stones, but the contents of the spaces between them. The real message lies in the slips of paper tucked into the gaps, packed with prayers of longing and desire. Similarly, when it comes to Women of the Wall, look at the tiny preposition, the "of" tucked between the words. This "of" is the crucial sign that this debate is really about belonging and exclusion, who is permitted and who is banned. Who is "of" and who is "not of". Permitted activities at the Kotel should be seen as a barometer of freedom of religious expression.

The level of attention that the Women of the Wall campaign has attracted is perhaps rooted in the fact that the Kotel has absorbed a vast amount of our spiritual and psychological projection of belonging to our own Jewish community. Even the term "Wailing Wall," used in reference to the Kotel for so many years, seems to capture the emotionally heightened layers of Jewish hope that act as spiritual grouting between the large and beautiful Herodian stones. This projection of a symbol of belonging - belonging in space and time, in the arc of history - affects men just as much as it does women.

In 1988, the Israeli government transferred day-to-day supervision of the Kotel to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a government-controlled, Charedi-influenced not-for-profit organisation. The agreement has since been extended to the end of 2015. The foundation head was given authority to define the "custom of the place", the Minhag HaMakom for the Kotel. A consequence has been the limiting of religious practices, such as men and women praying together on the Kotel plaza, women reading from a Torah scroll, and women equally having the right to wear prayer clothes. The stifling of women praying aloud at the Kotel is justified through disproportionate extension of the idea of kol ishah, "a woman's voice", the view of one talmudic rabbi, who called a woman's voice, erva, meaning "nakedness".

The monthly Women of the Wall services often attract physical and verbal antagonism, particularly from Charedi Jews but, until recently, none of those attacking the women was ever arrested. Now, however, the situation at the Kotel is changing. Last month, following an escalation of tension in which police detained women for wearing talitot and for saying the Shema aloud, the Jerusalem District Court provided a new interpretation of Minhag HaMakom that allows women to pray at the Kotel in a manner they see fit - to sing aloud, to wear a talit if they so choose, and to read Torah together.

Instead of the police detaining and arresting women for "disturbing the peace", there has been a complete about-turn. Now, those who physically attack women at prayer are being arrested. This is the right way. The Women of the Wall need physical protection - only a few weeks ago, an estimated 10,000 protesters were bussed into the Kotel area to demonstrate against them and intimidate them into stopping praying.

Rabbi Alexandra Wright, senior rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, was at the Kotel for the last Rosh Chodesh. As she detailed in a recent sermon, she witnessed the protesters "making crude signs, spitting… throwing stones, jeering, whistling, cat-calling, throwing rubbish and chairs, water and rocks towards the place where the Women of the Wall had gathered… It was terrifying. I have never felt such hatred, such fanaticism or seen such crude and uncontrolled behaviour as I witnessed that morning… At the same time, something had taken place: the monopoly of the religious far-right was destabilised that morning and I felt I was witnessing Israel take its first steps towards pluralism and equality."

As we approach Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, the spiritual leader of the Shas political party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, threatens to bring 100,000 protesters with him to the Kotel. It is to be hoped that this will not lead to a repeat or escalation of last month's violent outbursts.

The irony of Israel being one of few places in the world where Jews are prevented from praying freely cannot escape our attention. But there are encouraging changes on the horizon. Natan Sharansky, chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel, was asked by Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a solution for the tension. He has proposed raising the area of the Wall around the Robinson's Arch to enable an equally sized space at the Kotel for egalitarian prayer.

I was part of a group of cross-denominational British rabbis who met him last month and he stressed then that his proposals were motivated by a desire to increase the "of" - the level of belonging. He asked rhetorically: "How can people feel the state acts legitimately if the state is delegitimising their religious life?"

Sharansky - who served in the past as minister for the diaspora - pointed to the change in the climate of opinion in Israel. He maintains that in this climate lies an opportunity to ensure the feeling and reality of belonging of all Jews to the Jewish people.

Sharansky's work has been taken up in the Knesset. The chair of the Knesset's committee on the status of women (Aliza Lavi of Yesh Atid) has presented a bill promoting equally dividing - in terms of physical space - the Western Wall plaza. The men's section is currently three times bigger than the women's area and includes a covered space, something that is denied to women. She points out that altering this "is the beginning of a systematic, comprehensive and inevitable change in religious services in Israel… in order to return Judaism to the Israelis".

To echo Sharansky, the expansion of opportunities for prayer at the Kotel will not only return Judaism to Israelis, it will return Israel to the wider Jewish world, where there are many different expressions of devoutness. As British Jews, we tend to be good at this - our minhag is one where boundaries between denominations are permeable. In mainstream Anglo-Jewry we believe in decency towards other denominations - supporting other people's right to attend the "shul that I don't go to" or, in this case, "the section of the Kotel that I don't pray at".

We are witnessing a transformational moment in Jewish history. There is far more to this than just a controversy over a group of Orthodox and Reform women praying at the Kotel. What is at stake is the very nature of the Jewish people - the understanding of who is "of" and who is not "of". The ripples are spreading into the whole question of religious freedom in Israel and the future of Jewishness in the Jewish state. The very nature of Jewishness is under debate.

Away from the Kotel, questions are being asked about the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate (now mostly Charedi) and its monopoly over status issues and religious functions such as marriage, divorce, burial and conversion. The additional layers in this religious wall are the increasing attempts to impose gender segregation in the public sphere - whether it is the illegal practice of making women sit at the back of buses, or the banning of women's participation in official ceremonies and the erasure of female images in advertising.

A few years ago, these issues were not on the agenda in Israel. Now we are almost at the point of thinking they are normal. Perhaps we have become numb. It is time for us to be shocked again from the outset.

This month, the Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, asked the government to implement the Justice Ministry's proposals to criminalise gender discrimination and forbid gender separation at state ceremonies, health clinics, walking routes and public transportation.

It is indicative of a wider struggle for the future of Judaism, in Israel and the diaspora, between the exponentially growing Charedi minority and the non-Charedi community. In Israel, this struggle has been emphasised by the success of Yesh Atid, which flourished at the last election not least because of the strong opposition to the lack of Charedi conscription to the army and the deeply unbalanced burden of tax payments and the heavy reliance on state benefits. The Israeli government is now moving towards ending exemptions from the army for yeshiva students and overhauling the curriculum in Charedi schools.

In the summer of 1967, when taken by our parents to the Kotel following the Six-Day War. I remember my mother saying the Shema aloud with me. If I were standing at the Kotel today, I would find a quiet spot, and gently say, "May it be your will, our God and God of our ancestors, to bring the Jewish people together in freedom and equality so that, whatever our religious background, we are included in the possibilities and vitality of the most recent manifestation of Your covenant - the state of Israel." I just hope those around me would say "Amen".

Laura Janner-Klausner is rabbi to the Movement for Reform Judaism

Media’s trail of blood along the rotten path to stardom

James Inverne — Fri, 31 May 2013 09:18:29 +0100

The actor had the spotlight. This was the moment, the moment he'd been rehearsing under his breath and in front of the mirror and at every chance he got. And he didn't want to screw it up. He faced his audience, and he began his oration.

The script wasn't brilliant, his delivery was strangely staccato but out it tumbled. It was the big scene where the murderer is revealed and dares the entire country to disregard his heinous, horrific act. "None of you are safe!" he stormed, hitting the line with all of his well-practised fury, belting it out front and centre.

But there was no applause, no standing ovation, not then and not at the evening's end. Partly because this had switched from street theatre to a television show. He had remembered to pause, to wait until the cameras were on him. They hadn't been turned on fast enough, so, "Film me!" he barked.

This was his moment. It was not to be ignored. He held his hands slightly out to his sides. They were crimson with blood, holding his weapons - not overplaying that, just making sure that the blood was noticed. Sometimes the best dramatic effects are understated.

Yet this was no actor. How I wish it had been. This was no play, no street show. Not even one of those scare-you-silly experiences that have been popping up in our towns over the last few years. This was real life and the worst of it.

But I wonder whether that's wholly how our news media see it. Let me tell you a story. I was once hanging around the newsroom of one of this country's more respectable broadsheet newspapers, and the news editor wandered over and asked me if I'd write a piece about how a leading and very newsy figure in the arts world had lost his touch. The editor would give it a huge space, he continued.

"Er, but it's not really true," I replied, and proceeded to explain why the story was far more complex than he was suggesting - changing market conditions, changing times, that sort of thing. "Oh come on," he cajoled with a grin, "It's only news…"

That was the moment I realised something about the news media. It is all entertainment. It's all the "razzle dazzle", to borrow a phrase beloved of Billy Flynn, the crooked lawyer in Kander and Ebb's musical, Chicago. You ask why, as many Jews do, Israel gets so much disproportionate coverage, why it's held up as a flashpoint for the entire Middle East? Because that's a great story. It sells newspapers. Every magazine, every newspaper, every TV and radio programme needs what in the business are called the "hero products". The things that get you the widest audience the fastest.

For a football magazine that's Rooney, or Ronaldo. For a car mag, I suppose it's a Porsche or Ferrari. For wildlife programmes it's sharks. For gossip mags, its Will and Kate. For newspapers it's often Israel.

The barbaric attack on that poor soldier in Woolwich should never have been allowed to become theatre. But that's exactly what happened. "Film me!" cried the murderer. And film him they did, and then they broadcast the film. On ITV, on the BBC, everywhere. They made him a star. A villain, sure. But a star. A hero product. Because who among us could not watch? Who watched only once? The viewing figures must have been astronomical.

But why did he and his comrade-in-evil want to be filmed? Many of the great villains in history have had a complex about attention not being paid. How much were their dreadful ambitions fuelled by the notion of becoming famous?

Well, we did those guys proud in Woolwich. Nobody who saw it will ever forget that dreadful image of that raving lunatic with the red hands. It's branded upon my brain, up there with Pacino in The Godfather. Yeah, that guy's a star all right.

There are still many journalists in the job in order to do good for society. But the system - especially now when commercial media outlets are fighting for their lives and the subsidised BBC often follows their strident style rather than leads - doesn't encourage responsible reporting.

We've seen its lack when it comes to Israel, and experienced the disruptive consequences to the peace process. And now, though I fervently hope I'm wrong, perhaps some would-be young terrorist in England, ignored by the in-crowd and feeling the world owes him more, has seen what happened this time.

Maybe he wants his 15 minutes of fame. Maybe he knows just how to get it.

Children damaged by image

Tracy-Ann Oberman — Tue, 28 May 2013 09:29:27 +0100

There are certain news moments that never leave you. They get under the skin and worm right through to the core. I don't think many of us have ever come back from seeing those images of the plane going into the second tower and the ensuing horror of 9/11.

Similarly I still cannot shake off the visceral punch-in-the stomach reaction I had in September 2004 when armed Islamic separatists demanding an independent Chechnya, violently took a school in Beslan and held hundreds of children hostage in the gymnasium where they systematically starved, dehydrated and brutalised them. I can still remember sitting on the phone with my friend Frances, both of us bawling our eyes out, watching the bungled Russian attempt to free the children, during which at least 184 of them were killed.

The Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 left many dead, but the image that stays with me is of the orphaned baby boy who witnessed his parents killed. After the news that toddler James Bulger was tortured and then murdered by two baby-faced 10-year-old boys, I remember sitting in a silent tube carriage; the only sound the sobs of men and women reading about what had happened.

These past few weeks, I have had a similar visceral reaction to the news. It has been non-stop really since Jimmy Savile was outed as a dangerous, predatory paedophile. And an ever-growing number of sex offenders appear in the headlines every day. Worryingly, many of those accused are men who made up the prime-time television of my childhood, people considered heroes of entertainment.

This month, reports of the abduction and sexually motivated murders of April Jones and Tia Sharpe have dominated the headlines. Not to mention the Oxford grooming case, which, like those in Rochdale and Telford, told of vulnerable girls taken from under the noses of a disinterested care system and sexually exploited in the worst ways imaginable. These stories seem to be everywhere and I feel vulnerable about the future of my daughter and her friends.

I'm all for freedom of expression but I see sexualised images of women and children all around me. We seem to have regressed. The images of my youth - the girl draped over the Cortina - pale against Beyoncé writhing in her bikini at bus stops all over the country. Or there is the fetishising of pubescent girls in the American Apparel adverts. Image-makers, you are leading our kids to hell in a handcart. An old D&G advert passed my desk this week simulating a gang rape but with beautiful people. "C'mon it was pulled after a few days," clamoured some.

Well, it never should have been made at all. What are we telling our young? We have made them far too aware of their sexual image. I go to barmitzvahs where little girls look more like lap dancers from Vegas. Every barmitzvah boy and girl should be given a consciousness-raising course in what they see around them every day, and what images teach them self-respect, self-worth and self-awareness.

Capitulation of the Deputies

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 27 May 2013 09:24:49 +0100

'What goes around comes around" - so they say. I began writing this column 11 years ago. My debut appeared in the issue of March 1 2002. The topic I had chosen for my inaugural essay was the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The subject-matter had been triggered by a silly contretemps involving the Board, its then president (former headteacher Jo Wagerman) and the Chief Rabbi, whose attempt to involve himself in a Holocaust Memorial Day event in Manchester had annoyed her. This was because it seemed he had - through an innocent oversight, no doubt - omitted to seek permission.

This story had reached the press through the leak of an internal Board memo. That leak had been accompanied by another, involving a protest from Mrs Wagerman to the Home Office, which had thoughtlessly declined to front Home Secretary David Blunkett as the principal government "guest" at an HMD gathering.

I dismissed these incidents as side-shows that were unimportant compared with the actual needs and concerns of British Jewry at the time. Of the Board itself, as it functioned at that period, I wrote that I could not think "of an organisation more irrelevant to the contemporary well-being of British Jews".

I was reminded of that on reading, on the front page of last week's JC, about the extraordinarily convoluted condemnation of the Board by its former vice-president, Jerry Lewis.

The Board, Lewis wrote, is "in chaos." He denounced Board president Vivian Wineman and his team for "presiding over the rapid disintegration". He also blamed Wineman's predecessor, Henry Grunwald for "two strategic errors" - namely, hiving off shechita defence to Shechita UK, and creating the London Jewish Forum to confront Ken Livingstone.

Lewis concluded by saying that although, as vice-president he had felt himself unable to support the Jewish Leadership Council (which, he might have added, arose from another Grunwald initiative), he now proposed to throw in his lot with it, because it had stepped up to the plate and was "taking urgent measures to plug the numerous lacunae" created by the Board's present and recent leadership.

Nowhere in Lewis's article was there any mention of the undeniable fact that the Board does not, as presently constituted, represent anything approaching the totality of British Jewry. Lewis needs to remind himself that the Charedim, the fastest growing section of British Jewry, with their very high birth-rate, are not part of the Board (or, indeed, of the JLC) and do not wish to be.

Shechita UK was created partly in order to address that "lacuna". Grunwald was right to sponsor its birth, a decision vindicated by the excellent work it continues to do.

As for the London Jewish Forum, let's be frank: this is a peripheral piece of theatre that played no part whatsoever in the gratifying defeat of Mr Livingstone in last year's mayoral contest.

But the JLC is a quite different creature. It has money. Therefore it exercises power. And that - surely - is why Lewis has now done a U-turn and is calling upon us all to support it.

I have on more than one occasion devoted this column to the JLC, and to the communal ambitions of its leading light, Mick Davis. The JLC originated a decade ago as an attempt by Henry Grunwald to engage with the moneyed classes. The initiative was entirely honourable. Even I supported it, to a point.

The fact is, however, that under the weak leadership of Vivian Wineman, the JLC has been permitted to usurp the Board. As I wrote in 2011, Davis is intent upon imposing upon British Jewry a "New Order", in which, by design or circumstance, the JLC will appropriate the functions of the Board.

I believe the current plan, for the Board to share with the JLC its staff and resources, has no other purpose. Lewis hopes this will happen "as soon as possible," so that "a new democratic structure for the combined organisation" can emerge.

If Lewis seriously believes that Davis and his wealthy cronies are actually interested in democratic structures, then he is a bigger fool than I ever imagined could be the case.

How Board is moving forward

Vivian Wineman — Sun, 26 May 2013 09:27:56 +0100

Change is difficult. Everyone knows this, but few appreciate just how difficult until they are caught up in it. The Board of Deputies is in the process of radical change - and, inevitably, not everyone will accept or understand it.

The Board has always had the responsibility of representing the community, either defensively by fighting antisemitism and protecting Jewish practices such as shechita, or in a positive fashion - for example, promoting Jewish education.

In the past few years we have launched a plethora of new projects, including the Community Partnership Project, bringing much-needed support to small communities, and the Women's Commission. We have launched guidelines against hate speech on campus and the Grow Project; fostered the establishment of the Late Applicants Fund by the Claims Conference to obtain justice for heirs to Holocaust property, and undertaken interfaith work, recently with the Church of Scotland, the Methodists and the Quakers.

In addition, the Board was instrumental in setting up Milah UK to protect religious circumcision; it continues to administer the Cross-Communal Group (the Stanmore Accords) to allow different streams of Judaism to interact with each other, and has now set up a new forum where representatives of all synagogal bodies meet the Board's executive to discuss issues of common concern.

Work on education continues, administering Pikuach (the inspectorate of religious education in Jewish schools), protecting rights of students and teachers over festivals, as well as liaising with the Charedi community to a greater extent than ever before.

All have one common denominator: the Board is the communal address for interfaith work, overseas communities, government departments, universities and other organisations. It is the forum in which all the different denominations in the community can meet in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Never in the history of the Board has there been so much activity in so many areas.

At the same time, we have sought to modernise internal procedures by making them more open and less dominated by a few deputies. Such changes, particularly regarding our monthly plenary sessions, command broad support. Nevertheless, there are bound to be deputies, particularly garrulous ones ,who resent change, invoking arguments based on imaginary constitutional points. This is unfortunate, but we are a forward-thinking organisation that must operate accordingly. The cornerstone of the Board's work is its democratic structure. Those who do not accept this need to rethink what they are bringing to the communal table.

I am not going to refute the many inaccurate charges, some quite outrageous, made by Jerry Lewis, who was defeated in last year's vice-presidential election. I will comment, however, on his statements about the Jewish Leadership Council, an excellent umbrella body that brings together the main organisations of the community. Its mandate is to support these organisations - including the Board - which it does most effectively. It is no secret that talks are progressing with the JLC to change the communal architecture, which may only possibly result in a merger.

Whatever the result, the Board needs to increase the involvement of its deputies. It also needs staff who can deliver. We have now appointed an outstanding public affairs director and an experienced human resources director. We are in the process of appointing a dynamic professional team. Staff turnover is a normal part of organisational life and is rarely easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

In carrying out these changes, the Board is not merely the representative of the community, but also its mirror. It reflects a community that exists not merely because of antisemitism and anti-Israel agitation, but also because of pride in its heritage, faith and rich culture. This is an open invitation to support us and help make things happen.

Report is too little, too late

Melanie Phillips — Sun, 26 May 2013 09:17:25 +0100

The reported "killing" of Mohammed al Dura in a hail of Israeli bullets was nothing of the kind and was instead a modern-day blood libel. So said the state of Israel this week.

What kept it?

The al Dura travesty is a scandal that has been simmering for the past 13 years. It is hard to overstate the significance of the footage, broadcast on the station France 2 in September 2000 by reporter Charles Enderlin. It purported to show 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura clinging to his father under a sustained barrage of Israeli fire during a demonstration at the Netzarim Junction. The child was shown slumping to the ground - whereupon Enderlin declared that he was dead.

Mohammed al-Dura became the poster child of the last decade's terrorist war. The image of him clinging to his father was the recruiting sergeant for countless acts of murder, and the further delegitimisation of Israel.

The definitive evidence that this "killing" was, however, a faked performance out of the "Pallywood" terrorist repertory has been available for years. Yet Israel remained silent.

Now an Israel government committee has found that France 2 had edited the raw footage and thereby excluded a part at the end in which the boy - declared dead by Enderlin moments earlier - is clearly seen alive and moving. Quelle surprise!

Back in 2007, I myself saw this missing footage in a French court that had demanded it be produced. France 2 had brought a libel suit against French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty for saying the station had broadcast a faked killing. It's a case which is, incidentally, still trudging its way through the French appeals system.

I was in a packed courtroom which saw the child move after Enderlin said he was dead. With one or two exceptions, the world's media has studiously ignored this startling evidence. And Israel, too, remained silent.

Years earlier, Nahum Shahaf, a physicist in Israel's defence establishment, had concluded that al-Dura had not been killed at all at Netzarim and the whole thing was a theatrical set-up. Yet Israel remained silent.

Nor is this the full extent of Israel's incompetence over this affair.

Originally, the IDF actually accepted responsibility for the boy's death. After an internal inquiry, it claimed instead that father and son had probably been hit by Palestinian gunfire. But anyone looking at the broadcast footage could see that neither father nor son was wounded in any way. Did no one in the IDF or foreign ministry ask why there was no visible wound on a boy who had allegedly just been killed by snipers, no blood anywhere?

The fact is that at no stage did Israel want to get to the truth. After its gross incompetence in taking responsibility for a killing that never happened, it looked the other way as the facts emerged. The result is that this tale has been suppurating poison for 13 years. France 2 has never been called to account. Untold numbers of Israelis have been murdered as a result of this footage. And Israel has been libelled as a nation of child-killers.

So why did it stay silent until now? The foreign ministry seemed to believe it was all just water under the bridge and no good would come of stirring it up again. This "heads down" attitude is sometimes called "ghetto mentality". What the scandal surely tells is that you can take the people out of the ghetto, but you cannot always take the ghetto out of the people.

And now, 13 years too late, Israel has published the results of a government inquiry, which the rest of the world won't believe. Why now? Why produce this without the all-important independent element to guarantee its credibility? Why do so without even putting on the web for all to see the critical unbroadcast footage showing the child moving?

Why is the Israel government so monumentally incompetent?

How Hague’s visit can help keep peace process on track

Dermot Kehoe — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:30:29 +0100

'A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you" - Elbert Hubbard.

Israel and the UK are friends. William Hague has described the UK's relationship with Israel as going "far beyond the realm of diplomatic relations… It is based on bonds between families and communities as well as shared values and common interests. Israel is a friend and a strategic partner of this country." Therefore, his visit to Israel is important and welcome.

The UK-Israel partnership is based on shared values, an understanding that those values are challenged by common threats, and a determination to tackle those threats together.

The threats include Iran's nuclear ambitions, Syria's deteriorating civil war and the rise of Islamism across the Middle East. These issues will no doubt form a significant part of Hague's busy agenda. However, as he recently declared at a joint press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry, "there is no more urgent foreign policy priority in 2013 than restarting negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians".

Clearly the UK and US share a similar perspective on this issue. President Obama's recent visit to Israel was widely seen as a success. I remember watching his speech to the packed hall of students in Jerusalem and getting goose bumps. It was the most cogent, passionate and clear-sighted articulation of the case for a two-state solution that I have heard, ever.

So what can Hague do this week, as a friend of Israel and supporter of two states for two peoples? First, he should take a leaf out of President Obama's book by investing personal capital in the bilateral relationship with Israel. The Foreign Secretary should show that he has a clear sight of Israel's legitimate concerns and interests and therefore demonstrably distance himself, and the wider British government, from the wholly retrograde campaign to boycott Israel.

He should also ensure Britain's position (and the EU's) is well co-ordinated with the US. To give Kerry's efforts the best chance of success, other international players need to send a consistent message to the parties that they will back them if they engage in the US-led process, and will not support alternatives.

This is a particularly important message for the Palestinians to hear. Certainly, Israel should be encouraged to act constructively: to continue its current quiet restraint on new settlement construction and demonstrate that diplomacy delivers improvements for Palestinians on the ground. But the Palestinians must reciprocate by not confronting Israel at the International Criminal Court or in other international forums.

Hague will be aware that there is currently little enthusiasm in the PA for negotiations with Israel. That being so, it is important to be realistic about what to expect at this stage. The priority is to secure a framework of reduced tensions, avoiding another negative spiral like the one set off by the UN resolution in November, and creating a political space where Abbas and Netanyahu can develop trust and explore what kind of bilateral progress might be possible.

In that context, Hague should also get behind Kerry's efforts to stabilise the Palestinian economy and breathe new life into the bottom-up development West Bank programme - a programme to which Britain has made a very positive contribution up to now.

Thirdly, he should choose his words carefully about the future. Both Hague and Kerry have recently warned that time is running out for a two-state solution - no doubt aiming to push those who want this to get on with it. But they may inadvertently be encouraging opponents by creating the impression that some alternative is around the corner. Palestinian rejectionists may mistakenly believe that the window closing on a two-state solution means there is hope for their campaign to secure rights of citizenship in Israel through international pressure, thereby replacing Israel with a single, Arab-majority state.

Such a belief is illusory, and Hague needs to send a clear message. He needs to stress to both publics that Britain sees no alternative to a solution of "two states for two peoples" as a way to reconcile the demands of the two sides. The alternative is no solution - only more pain, instability and conflict for both sides.

The best advice for Hague on his trip? It comes from Albert Camus: "Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."

Music’s transcendent potential

Gloria Tessler — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:26:36 +0100

On Wednesday, it was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner. In his birth city of Leipzig he will be celebrated throughout the year. But many Germans have voiced their wariness about music that, to some, resonates with something harsher - Wagner's proclaimed antisemitism and his adoption by Hitler as a primal force behind Nazism.

Wagner lived five decades before the Nazi ideology was conceived. He could not have lent personal credence to Hitler's views. He is said to have refused to sign any public declaration against the Jews. Yet whether he was a theoretical or a practical antisemite, Wagner was conflicted.

He resented the success of Jewish composers Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, but had a Jewish conductor, Hermann Levi and - to quote a cliché - some of his best friends were Jews. This did not stop him writing a pamphlet in 1850 deriding the work of Jewish musicians and blaming them for the decline in German culture. Yet he was admired by Theodor Herzl. He also wrote music of great beauty, even spirituality.

An informal, if controversial, boycott of the composer persists in Israel despite attempts by Daniel Barenboim and Zubin Mehta to include him on the grounds that great music transcends politics. His work was not performed in public there until 2000. Music is not ideological, Barenboim argues. Wagner was antisemitic. His music wasn't.

Still, Israeli concert planners are inclined to respect the anguish of Shoah survivors, who recall Wagner being played in the camps, or the raising of the SS banner when Meistersinger was played during the Nuremberg rallies. Mass protests led Tel Aviv University to cancel a Wagner concert last year.

Why is this particular composer so hated? Can he really be blamed for Hitler's patronage? Does this make him worse than other composers, also outed as antisemitic? Carl Orff was a self-confessed card-carrying Nazi, and Richard Strauss managed to ban all Jewish performers from public view during the Nazi era. Writers from Charles Dickens to T S Eliot have derided Jews or cynically portrayed them in what could be seen as a kind of contemporary social antisemitism - the rejection of "the other". No one bans them.

But music works in more subtle ways. Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, about the downfall of the gods, includes Jewish caricatures, the dwarves Mime and Alberich. In its time, it was viewed almost as an antisemitic epiphany, an attempt to free German culture from Franco-Jewish influences, eagerly taken up in 1940s Germany.

Broadcaster Paul Mason considers that in his later works, Wagner developed depth and humanity. His three modernist operas are real human dramas, Mason feels. He claims that under the influence of the philosopher Schopenhauer, Wagner abandoned racial purity myths and began to incorporate strands of eastern thought. And Dominic Lawson, in the Independent, argues we should learn to love the music but hate the man.

Perhaps this is the point. Learning to love. Even without charges of antisemitism, some of Wagner's music is terrifying, suggesting the martial threat that made him Hitler's favourite composer, and also the brooding quality generated by the Second World War. But then there is the pure elegance of the finale to Tannhauser.

So did Wagner grow out of his small-minded racism and virulent antisemitism to create some of our greatest music? The two seem so contradictory. But in a way, does it really matter? Shouldn't great art be transcendental? Surely it comes from a different place within the soul of humanity, a place beyond the consciousness of even the greatest artist?

In Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, the composer Salieri complains that Mozart, base and unworthy, had been blessed with the musical genius Salieri himself so deeply craved.

Here is the disconnect: the only resolution lies in the eternal truth that, once the work is born, it is a separate entity from its creator, and must be allowed to live for its own sake.

We don't 'marry out'. We are made to

Ben Rich — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:16:17 +0100

"Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." - Ruth 1:16

About 15 years ago, my wife leapt on to a Routemaster bus as it was moving away. She was followed by a woman in a hijab, who tripped. My wife grabbed her arm and pulled her on. And as the woman straightened up, she noticed my wife's Chai, which I had bought her on a visit to Jerusalem, and cried: "Get your hands off me, you dirty Jew." Rather than be upset, my wife - Rachael - responded by deciding that the time had come to convert to Judaism.

It was another step on a long journey from a Catholic upbringing via Quakerism and half a dozen years attending shul with me. It would take her a further two years to complete her conversion through the Liberal Beit Din.

If conversion were as simple as in the Book of Ruth, which we read last week on Shavuot, then her journey may have been completed sooner and there might be many more "new Jews", but I support conversion processes that challenge and educate proselytes just as I support Jewish education for those who are genetic Jews. Nevertheless, our attitude there still has a very long way to go.

When my wife and I decided to get married, we spoke to a rabbi. That rabbi - to whom I will be forever grateful - asked whether Rachael wanted to convert. When she said "not really", the rabbi encouraged us to press ahead and let events take their course.

Of course, that was not what we should have been told. Dependent on our affiliations, it might have ranged from ripping cloth to a gentle encouragement to conversion and a sigh. But it was what we needed to hear at the time.

Now our Jewish family includes our two children, who attend Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue cheder and RSY-Netzer summer camps. When my daughter switched schools, she made a friend who turned out to have a Jewish father and an incredibly supportive but non-Jewish mother. Now that child also attends cheder with my daughter, as a matter of choice.

Four new Jews, but how different it might have been. An estimated four out of every ten Jewish children in the UK will marry a non-Jew. If only a third of their kids grow up to regard themselves as Jewish then our small community will shrink by a further quarter in a generation.

The recent census masked a steady decline in mainstream Jewish communities offset by a massive growth in strictly Orthodox numbers. In reality, the intermarriage rate above is an under-estimate for the mainstream, whether Orthodox, Masorti or progressive. Within a few generations Anglo-Judaism, as it has been known for 300 years, will vanish, and we will be represented almost solely by exclusivist fundamentalists and cultural secularists.

Yet it is not intermarriage that is the existential threat, but our approach to it. Let's consider if the number of children of intermarried couples who grow up to identify as Jewish is not one-third, but two thirds. Within a generation, the community grows by a sixth. Shuls flourish. Youth movements grow. Mainstream Judaism thrives.

For some this misses the point. These children are at best Jews from non-Jewish homes and at worst not Jews at all, dependent on which parent is kosher. To accept them fully is to divide the K'lal Yisrael, between those who believe in traditional matrilineality and those with more "flaky" [sic] definitions. Disregarding the fact that, in the Torah, it is patrilineal descent that matters - that's another essay - this approach is reminiscent of that of the Jews of Kerala: that ancient Indian community that, in its striving for purity, is now on the verge of extinction.

A strategy based on exclusivity might have its merits in the ghettos of the Pale or today in Stamford Hill, but it is repeatedly failing from Edgware to Essex, let alone in those far-flung corners of Liverpool, Sheffield and Southend. Jews in these areas inevitably spend much of their time with non-Jews and, of course, fall in love with them. It is the inevitable consequence of tearing down the ghetto walls. A blinkered approach, which sees every mixed-faith marriage as a failure and never as an opportunity, is a one way ticket down an ethnic cul-de-sac to extinction.

Yet there is another way: to ensure that, whatever decisions our kids take, we continue to include them in our community, always looking to provide them with pathways back to Judaism, rather than pushing them away.

In my previous role, I frequently visited small Reform communities, for example, in Harlow and Hull. The pattern was clear: in every case the majority of members were in mixed-faith relationships. It is unlikely that any of these communities would exist without these couples - the contrast with the closure of Orthodox shuls in Bradford and Blackpool is testament to this. Economically, closing these shuls makes perfect sense. Long term, it condemns mainstream Judaism to a handful of enclaves in north London, Hertfordshire and Manchester, and seals our community's decline.

Yet this is not a smug congratulation of progressive Judaism. Indeed, I saw the same complacency and narrow-mindedness in some Reform shuls: chederim that exclude the children of non-Jewish mothers for fear that they will be disappointed they cannot go on to Bnei Mitzvot (indeed, the universal rejection of the Bnei Mitzvot for such children) and convoluted burial arrangements. Even the "associate membership" and "friends" schemes on offer, ensure that - however welcoming the warden - mixed-faith families will see themselves as outsiders.

And then there is marriage. As one Reform rabbi put it to me: "Most of our synagogues do now make the right noises when it comes to non-Jewish partners. We welcome them into our services, allow them to participate in our events, bury them, bless their children, but the one time when such couples most often approach us - marriage - is the one time we unambiguously turn them away." Hardly surprising, then, that many choose not to come back.

The Assembly of Reform Rabbis recently took a small but key pigeon-step, ruling that "involvement in a mixed-faith marriage ceremony, would no longer be viewed as incompatible with membership of the Assembly". It will, no doubt, enable those who in the past have quietly participated in private blessings to do so openly.

Why is this a disaster? How does it threaten our community's integrity? My wife and I wrote and conducted our own service, a mixture of our two traditions. We built in elements that worked for our families and explained to guests the significance of each of these traditions. It was a public declaration of our commitment to our heritages, and our determination that they would be part of our married life. But why should that rabbi who provided us with such sound advice not have been able to be part of our celebration - as would still be the case today, whether the service was Reform or Liberal - because of our determination to include the ritual elements of a Jewish ceremony? What is the red line that we, as a community, are attempting to draw, and to what end?

Are we in search of the holy grail of common acceptance of Jewish status across all communities? If so, we have failed. Orthodox communities are no nearer to accepting the validity of progressive conversions. Are we attempting to defend some kind of racial purity? Surely not, not after the Holocaust when patrilineal Jews died alongside the matrilineal and neither was judged by their circumcision?

Are we concerned by the ability of mixed-faith couples to create a Jewish home for their children? If so why - in this day and age - have we such confidence in Jewish mothers but not in Jewish fathers? And why - even within the Liberal tradition - do we make the pretence of asking mixed-faith couples to sign up to providing a Jewish upbringing for children who do not yet exist? We seem to have such little faith in the integral value of our beliefs and customs, let alone the powers of a Jewish education, that we are constantly erecting barriers to prevent back-sliding, rather than tearing them down to welcome all those who wish to join us.

During my time at the Movement for Reform Judaism, people were often surprised to discover that my wife had not been born Jewish. Outside those smaller communities, some tactlessly wondered aloud that someone who "married out" was still so involved.

In fact, I never married out. My Judaism remained as strong as ever. Indeed, my relationship with my wife and the opportunity to re-engage with my identity through her eyes only enhanced my personal commitment.

We only "marry out" if that's what we choose for ourselves, or how our community judges us. Every part of the mainstream community needs urgently to re-evaluate its attitude and approach to intermarriage and seize the opportunity arising from hundreds and thousands of wives and husbands who are only too willing to marry in.

The clock is already ticking towards midnight. Pigeon-steps will never be enough to travel the road we must journey together if we are to survive.

Travel? It's an uphill struggle

Cari Rosen — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:14:44 +0100

I have been trying to book a holiday. Other people seem to manage organising this without sleepless nights, threats of divorce, tears and angst - so I clearly have a lot to learn.

Now obviously it's not the first time that we have attempted to pack up and leave the old homestead behind for a week or two. We've been to France and stayed in a cottage on a big hill in the middle of nowhere (in fact, we've done this on several occasions). We have also been on holiday to Scotland and stayed in a flat on a slightly smaller hill in the middle of nowhere (several times). We've stayed closer to home - but still managed to find a holiday-home on a hill… in the middle of nowhere.

It has become apparent that not only are we creatures of habit - but also compulsively antisocial. So perhaps it's time for us to enter into the holiday spirit with a touch more bonhomie.

If you prefer to vacation without seeing or speaking to anyone else, then school holidays - when everyone wants to go away - are really not the time to do so. Therefore, it may be good timing on our part that we have chosen to embrace this new spirit of sociability the first time we've been restricted by term dates.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that both husband and I have a pathological aversion to sand (as well as having to talk to people) we picked out a popular beach-front location for said trip and paid our deposit in full.

I say "picked" - though I wonder if any single word is adequate to describe the fortnight of poring over maps and forums, the pacing and panicking and the all-consuming addiction to Tripadvisor.

And all that before we worked out how we were actually going to get there. Which airport to fly from? Which airport to fly to? Which airline to fly with? If there was a gold medal for going round in circles I'd be proudly singing the national anthem on the podium right this minute.

Then came the discovery that, on these airlines, whichever one we chose, you can book a kosher meal. Or a child's meal. Or a gluten-free meal… but not a meal that allows you to be a non-treif-eating, non-wheat-eating minor all at the same time. Which is, you understand, ever so slightly awkward if your travelling companion is a five-year-old who fits that very description.

Even now that everything is finally booked and paid for, there is no time to relax. I may not yet be up to speed with what one is meant to wear on a boiling hot beach, but I am still fairly sure it's not the kind of thing you'd sport atop a French hill. Or what you'd sport on a Scottish hill. Or even an English hill. Which is a shame really, because cagoules and wellies we have in abundant supply. Sarongs and sunglasses not so much.

Decisions, decisions… I'm so worn out by all the dithering and the to-ing and fro-ing that I could really do with another holiday to get over it all. But how to find someone who's willing to book it all for me?

When hypocrisy met vanity

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:20:37 +0100

Coincidence is a funny thing. Take last Wednesday. I had reserved that morning to prepare a lecture on the intellectual origins of Nazism. I intended asking why so many apparently sane academics saw fit to endorse Nazism, and indeed promote it. I proposed examining several German men of science and letters, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the physicists and Nobel Laureates Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark.

It was Stark who, in 1907, asked the comparatively obscure Albert Einstein to write an essay on the principle of relativity. The essay launched Einstein on to the world stage. But, much later, as proponents of "German Physics," Stark and Lenard denounced Einstein and became fanatical flag-carriers for the Nazi state.

Well, there I was, busily researching these individuals, when I received a call asking me to comment on the startling news that Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned theoretical physicist, had reportedly acceded to requests from Palestinian-Arab academics and rejected an invitation from Israeli President Shimon Peres to attend the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.

After some confusion, stemming from a highly misleading statement from Cambridge University suggesting that Hawking's decision had been prompted merely by the state of his health, it became clear that the underlying motive was indeed political.

The previous Friday, Hawking had told the conference organisers: "I accepted… with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster."

On hearing this, I reminded the reporter of the words of my late father: "You can't teach common sense at a university."

I observed that the attributes of scholarly brilliance and political idiocy were not, alas, mutually exclusive and recalled that several renowned physicists had espoused Nazism.

I also pointed out that the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter had openly supported the Serbian murderer Slobodan Miloševic. And that Hawking himself, while clearly determined to boycott Israel, had in 2007 seen fit to grace Iran with his presence - despite Iran's comprehensive abuse of basic human rights - and had also visited China, a brutal totalitarian state in which the suppression and torture of political dissidents are (especially in Tibet) everyday occurrences.

I observed that in boycotting the event Hawking was denying himself the platform he had apparently sought - to denounce Israeli policy (which of course he is entitled to do).

But I then had some less than generous words for those who had extended the invitation to him in the first place.

The Presidential Conference is not an academic event. Over three days, a gathering of some 5,000 celebrities - including Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Albert of Monaco and Barbra Streisand - will meet in solemn conclave to debate "Facing Tomorrow" - and will "engage the central issues that will influence the face of our future: geopolitics, economics, society, environment, culture, new media, and more".

The idea that any concrete good can come from such an assembly is fatuous nonsense. The first such conference took place in 2008. The conferences stem from an initiative of Peres and - to be blunt -their purpose is simply to enhance the international image of Peres. They have no other rationale.

Of course, if Hawking were not such a hypocrite he would - in the interests of the boycott he clearly supports - forego all the technology, originating in Israel, that enables him to cope and function in spite of the motor neurone disease from which he has suffered for the past half-century.

But if Shimon Peres were not so conceited he would never have summoned the "Presidential Conference" in the first place.

Time to dispel migrant myths

Edie Friedman — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:11:23 +0100

In the heated debate about immigration, which seems to intensify daily and has by no means been settled by the recommendations in the Queen's Speech last week, the Jewish community can look back with pride at the number of Jewish migrants who came to Britain and made an enormous contribution to this country.

But can this pride lead us to a romanticised view of our migrant past - one that colours our perceptions of immigration today? There are real debates about how much we allow what has gone before to define our identity, in terms of our place in the Jewish world and also within the wider society.

I am not alone in worrying that this identity can be too defined by victimhood. Our views on modern immigrants might well be influenced by certain pervasive myths, for example that all Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century were refugees. As shown by historian Tony Kushner, many were economic migrants - the very group subject to so much opprobrium today.

The belief that all came seeking refuge, rather than acceptance of the more complex truth, may make us less tolerant of more recent migrants, who, like our Jewish ancestors, come to these shores for various reasons. Some come in desperation, seeking a place of safety. Others come to find a better life for themselves and their families, as migrants have done for centuries.

But we must beware of simplistic analysis: that we were the good and deserving migrants and those arriving today are not. And we would do well to remember that, like today's migrants, we were the targets of a hostile press. Even the most cursory look at the headlines that greeted the arrival of Jewish refugees in the 1880s and before the Second World War demonstrates this:

"These immigrants have flooded the labour market with cheap labour to such an extent to reduce thousands of native workers to the verge of destitution," complained the Manchester City News in May 1888.

Or the Sunday Express, in June 1938: "But just now there is a big influx of foreign Jews into Britain. They are overrunning the country. They are trying to enter the medical profession in great numbers. Worst of all, many of them are holding themselves out to the public as psychoanalysts".

The headlines that portrayed us as people who were swamping the country, taking jobs away from the indigenous population and not wanting to integrate are paralleled today with monotonous regularity.

This constant drip of sensationalism leads to a widespread perception that Britain is now swamped by migrants. But the cross-party Migration Matters Trust, using Office for National Statistics data, tells a different story. It finds that migrants make up about one in 10 of the population, lower than Australia, the US or Germany and that almost 90 per cent of new jobs go to British nationals.

Our community must be on guard against falling prey to anti-asylum rhetoric and the current trend for blaming migrants for many of the country's ills. Jewish teaching prevails upon us to assist the stranger in our midst. Thus in spite of the prevailing zeitgeist, the impulse for a more positive approach to migration resonates strongly within the community.

Organisations such as JCore and Rene Cassin educate about migrant issues and outstanding practical help is given to asylum seekers at drop-in centres, including those at the New North London, North Western Reform and West London synagogues.

The motivation for such work is not a rose-tinted view of Jewish refugee history, but rather a more nuanced view of the complexity of our past experience and the knowledge that evidence, not myth, should determine public policy. And it springs from an understanding that scapegoating today's migrants is a threat to the community cohesion upon which we depend for our wellbeing.

Surely it is incumbent on us, a group that too often fell victim to anti-migrant rhetoric, to ensure that mythmaking and scapegoating have no place in our public discourse.

Remember: when loyalty is blind, you can’t see straight

Richard Verber — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:09:52 +0100

I was standing in Auschwitz last month when news filtered through that Margaret Thatcher had died. After flying home from March of the Living, we landed to newspapers, television and social media saturated with analysis of her time at the top.

Views were strong. There were those arguing with passion that she had saved Britain, successfully taking on the unions and forging economic stability. Equally strident critics blamed her for destroying communities, particularly in working-class, northern cities.

Twitter - the social media platform whose greatest success is perhaps to give a voice to the voiceless - was unrelenting in its coverage. And the photos and videos from parties marking her death found a ready audience online.

Two things struck me as I caught up with all of the commotion. First, how deeply un-Jewish the celebrations were but, more usefully, how the debate over Thatcher's legacy has a lot to teach us about how we talk about Israel today.

Judaism doesn't take kindly to celebrating people's deaths - even those who might have made us suffer. Two of our most popular festivals are marked by consciously recognising the personal sorrows of people who have caused us harm.

On Pesach, at the Seder table, we spill a few drops of our wine at the mention of each of the 10 plagues. While the plagues were an essential part of the process leading to the Children of Israel's emancipation from Egypt, we deliberately waste some of our wine - a substance that is generally a symbol of rejoicing - in recognition of the suffering of the Egyptians.

And on Rosh Hashanah, we remember the suffering of the mother of Sisera, whose story is told in the book of Judges. Sisera is a brutal and violent Assyrian warrior who spends much of his time raping and pillaging. He is killed, memorably, by Yael after a battle with the Israelites.

The following evening, when Sisera doesn't return from the battlefield, his mother, full of anguish, stares out of the window hoping he'll soon come home. She consoles herself that he is probably busy enjoying the spoils of war and she cries 101 times in anger at the Israelites.

The shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah somehow counteract her curses. But she whimpers 101 times; we blow the shofar only 100, holding back one blast to show our compassion for a weeping mother.

Britain was clearly divided on whether it should weep over Thatcher's death. Britons of all ages - even those born after her time in office - had an opinion. Yet strikingly, even when the criticism was at its most unpleasant, or praise at its most fulsome, none of the debate was deemed "anti-British". Political disagreements were seismic, full of bile (and at times hatred), but recognised as part of mainstream public discourse. The Jewish community played a part in the debate too: responses ranged from fond recollections of how Thatcher enjoyed a good relationship with British Jews to a high-profile funeral snub. Again, though, nothing which was termed "anti-British".

Why is it, then, that when our small and fractious community comes to discuss Israeli politics, we are only too keen to label each other as "anti-Israel" or "anti-Zionist" if we find that someone has a different opinion to our own? When was the last time you heard a critic of Francois Hollande, the French president, be called "anti-France"?

If only we could discuss Israel with the same maturity we (perhaps) approach British politics. The idea of using support for every single government policy as a yardstick by which to measure one's patriotism is nonsense (unless, perhaps, you find yourself in North Korea).

Mark Twain, he so beloved of those in need of a good quote, got it right. In 1905 he wrote the essay The Czar's Soliloquy. "The only rational patriotism," he said, "is loyalty to the nation ALL the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it".

There seems to be greater tolerance for exploring the nuances of British politics than those of Israel. As a community, 65 years after Israel's establishment, we need to move away from our knee-jerk reaction of crying foul whenever we perceive someone to be criticising Israel. Of course, assaults sometimes come from those who have no desire to see a Jewish state flourishing in the Middle East and such attacks need to be called out for what they are. But a robust democracy can cope with robust debate and doesn't require repetitive, unflinching, unthinking advocacy whatever the circumstances.

Blind loyalty doesn't exist in any democracy in the world. It shouldn't with Israel either.

Truman show’s real star

Daniel Finkelstein — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:18:31 +0100

As ome of my best friends are Jews. It is a boast so thin and irrelevant that it has become an in-joke. So it was a surprise to discover, when reading the other day, that one of the most important and positive events in the modern history of the Jewish people took place because someone's best friend was Jewish. And I thought it was a story worth telling.

It is, after all, Israel's 65th birthday and birthdays are a moment for reminiscence. When Harry S Truman (the S stood for nothing, by the way, his middle name was just S) returned from the First World War, he didn't want to go back home to the farm where he had done back-breaking work from his youth into his 30s. He had seen some of the world now, and he wanted something better.

So he had the idea of going into business. He knew how, too. He had met a Jew. And with his Missouri rural upbringing, he thought if he knew a Jew he was half-made. So he hooked up with his army buddy, Eddie Jacobson, and set up a shirt and haberdashery store in downtown Kansas City.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, given how things turned out for him) Truman's confidence was misplaced. "Truman & Jacobson" did well at first but after the first year it began to struggle and eventually the company collapsed, leaving both men with considerable debts. Harry Truman, with the patronage of "Big Boss" Prendergast, went into politics partly because it promised a steady income with which he could pay off his creditors.

Not much more than 20 years later, after a series of extraordinary political events, the failed shirt salesman became the most unlikely president of the century. And to him, rather than Franklin Roosevelt, fell the incredibly difficult decisions thrown up by the Second World War. What to do about the Russians and their advance through Eastern and Central Europe, what to do about the atom bomb and then the H-bomb, what to do about Korea, what to do about the collapsing economies of Western Europe?

And what to do about the Jews. "Everyone else," Harry Truman used to say to his aides, "everyone else who's been dragged from his country has someplace to go back to. But the Jews have no place to go."

After the war, it fell to Truman to decide what to do when the British could no longer afford their mandate. Should the country be partitioned, with a Jewish state created? Should America recognise a new state of Israel? Two big things led him to think it should. The first was that he had natural human sympathy for the Jews and their plight. The second was that the domestic politics of the Jewish vote in the presidential election of 1948 said he should support them.

But two things said he should lean the other way. The state department was opposed, meaning that the man Truman admired the most, the man he credited with winning the war, General Marshall was opposed. The second, oddly, was that Jewish lobbying had driven the president to distraction. He was more than fed up with it.

There was, however, one other factor. One of his best friends was Jewish. Truman had decided that he would stick close to his diplomats. Chaim Weizmann came to lobby and Truman wouldn't even see him. But then Eddie Jacobson asked to see his old business partner. He begged just one favour.

Truman had an idol, said Jacobson, and it was former President Andrew Jackson. Well he, Jacobson had an ally and it was Chaim Weizmann. Would his old friend, for old time's sake, spare just a few minutes for his idol? Truman felt he had to agree.

And it was in his meeting with Weizmann that Truman committed himself. America would support partition.

So the next time someone says that one of their best friends is Jewish, be polite about it. You never know when it might come in handy.

Thank you for helping my mum

Jonni Berger — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:12:46 +0100

What do a student in Birmingham, a tour guide in Jerusalem, a housewife in Bournemouth, a doctor in Sydney, a teacher in Bushey, an actor in Finchley and a rabbi in New York have in common? If they're Jewish, maybe religion? But if they're Reform, Orthodox, culturally Jewish or a "BuJew" (Buddhist Jew) between 16 and 70, how likely is it that they would all be united by a common purpose, particularly when that purpose is to come to the aid of a hitherto unknown, north-London Jewish mother? Not a celebrity or a communal figure, just someone loved by her family though a stranger to the majority.

You may already be aware; you may even have taken action. Over the past four months, I've been truly touched by the support of previously unconnected strangers who have attempted to help "Sharon Berger, 61, from Harrow" - otherwise known as my mum.

Like the son who doesn't know how to ask at the Seder, I was the son who once would never have dreamt of asking for help so publicly . But when my dear mum was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition curable only via a stem-cell donation from a stranger, I knew I needed to ask for help - and quickly. Our 999 call was to the entire Jewish community and they responded with the blues and twos.

Of course, some decided that being a donor wasn't for them, whether because they couldn't handle the potential consequences or didn't take the time to get past their misconceptions. But that didn't stop us.

Spit4Mum, as the campaign became known, captured the hearts and minds of so many, not only "traditional do-gooders" but individuals across generations, irrespective of affiliation or denomination. Anybody can be a lifesaver and what spurred us on was the thought that the next person to register could be her lifesaver.

While social media is too often abused by those conducting witch-hunts, or used for sharing inane detail, the worldwide reach of Spit4Mum has shown that sites like Twitter can be valuable tools for appealing to the good in people.

The press, and particularly the JC, also came out in spades to show their support - not only looking for a story - with journalists registering as donors and keeping the coverage going throughout. The young, often dismissed as self-obsessed, got behind Spit4Mum in a big way –- with sixth-formers and students pushing for new donors in places where campaigns are typically unable to make headway.

For those who joined in, of course, involvement was motivated by the recognition that what happened to my mum could happen to theirs. But their individual mitzvot have created a ripple effect. What started as a response to an appeal to help a fellow Jew could help many others around the globe, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Thankfully and amazingly, a match was found during the course of our appeal. It wouldn't have been possible without so many individuals in the Jewish community taking action - showing that, as a group, we are stronger when we work together.

I am proud of having led an increase in the numbers of Jewish donors on the UK stem cell register - up by around 30 per cent in only three months - not to mention the impact worldwide.

My mum still has a long way to go to recover. While we don't know what the future holds, we desperately hope that her transplant will be successful and enable her to reclaim her life. If our family's story was a Hollywood film, it would be introduced with a dramatic voiceover full of promise and surprise. I sincerely hope that it also has a Hollywood ending.

Toxic, weak and chaotic at the Board

Jerry Lewis — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:25:01 +0100

The departure of Jon Benjamin as CEO of the Board of Deputies is not only welcome it is also, I believe, much overdue. He is one of the nicest guys around but the introduction of fresh blood at the Board cannot come soon enough to improve effectiveness across the organisation.

Against a background of rising antisemitism, growing anti- Zionism and ongoing attacks on shechita and brit milah, the need for a pro–active Board has never been greater. Yet it has become increasingly irrelevant and has been outpaced by the Jewish Leadership Council. Not, as many suppose, because the JLC's members want to run our community but because, under the Board's current lay and professional leadership, it has left so many gaps - black holes, to be more precise - that, were it not for the quick-reacting JLC team, would have left our community in a far worse place.

Fitting the JLC and the Board onto the same stage was always going to be a difficult juggling act. In my periods as a Vice President and Senior Vice President of the Board, I was opposed to the JLC, fearing it would eventually dominate the communal scene and diminish the role of the Board.

Former Board President and senior JLC office holder Henry Grunwald ensured in his own way that the two organisations worked in parallel. But they rarely worked together.

And he made two strategic errors that lost the Board key roles: hiving off the protection of shechita to Shechita UK; and the creation of the London Jewish Forum to tackle the Livingstone threat. Both should have remained under the Board's auspices.

Jon Benjamin's departure coincides with what can best be described as a calamity in other staffing at the Board. Two key departments have no experienced personnel. Four key staff have left over the last month; another is due to go on maternity leave next month.

Staff morale is already very low; the atmosphere has been described as 'toxic'.

Junior staff are paid such ridiculously low salaries that, within a year or two, they move on to a better level of remuneration. Such short-sightedness wrecks continuity and gives no encouragement to those who wish to make a career in our community. We lose talented young people.

I have held my counsel until now and admit I did not do enough when I was a Vice President, until May 2012. But I can keep quiet no more. The President, Vivian Wineman, and his team are presiding over the rapid disintegration of what was once an organisation of which I and so many others were immensely proud. Any Deputy close to the Board will be witness to the alarming signs of chaos, verging on disaster.

Small wonder the Jewish Leadership Council have surveyed the situation and are taking urgent measures to plug the numerous lacunae.

For a start, the President pays scant attention to constitutional guidance and precepts designed (by me amongst others) to protect the Board from unwelcome influences, such as restricting speakers at debates to just two minutes, ignoring the standing order that allows for four.

Individuals are appointed to posts, expenditure is approved without adequate scrutiny and the Board signs up to campaigns which, according to its rules, should follow a debate and the agreement of all 265 Deputies. But communication is poor or non-existent, and attempts to ascertain information can hit a brick wall.

For years there has been harmony between the various segments of the community represented at the Board. Henry Grunwald and I worked scrupulously to ensure that no sector or denominatio was disadvantaged in our decisions and work. That is now changing. One wing - Reform - is now trying to assert itself and throw out the careful balance on which the Board depends. The President has allowed this.

Worse still is the atmosphere at the top. The Board are proposing a Code of Conduct for Deputies, a move I championed for 30 years. It will deal with a host of issues. But as far as I am concerned, the most important section relates to bullying. In my last years as a Vice-President, I sensed an uncomfortable climate amongst staff.

As for a President who has verbally attacked his own colleagues at the Jewish Leadership Council: this does such harm to the very relations that need to be encouraged and improved. Little wonder that those same - usually very generous - individuals have tended to shun the Board's requests for donations.

The Board used to have ten committees on differing subjects (Israel, international, shechita, education, parliament etc) each of which elected their own chairman. They were knowledgeable and experienced and constituted the Executive. About 40% of Deputies were thus 'involved' in the Board.

Then management consultants were called in, who failed to understand the representative and democratic nature of the Board. Now only 50 Deputies are involved and there are just four divisions of 12 people. The four Honorary Officers are elected separately and appointed by the President to head a Division, with little regard for their abilities or knowledge.

Add to that a Chief Executive who had what might politely be described as a hands-off management style and one quickly sees a recipe for disaster.

Judge for yourself. When a delegation led by the JLC goes to meet a minister, it is serviced with a briefing document listing all the participants, the issues to be raised, who is to lead on each issue, descriptions of who they are to face on the other side of the table and on occasion a draft statement to be agreed at the conclusions of the talks.

In all my time as an Honorary Officer, not once was I given even a single such note. Hopeless.

No wonder we do not operate as we should.

Another example. I was asked by the President to work on a scheme for Israel and other advocacy. With my experience in Westminster, Whitehall and the media I had the ideas and know how. But even though a budget and an intern were provided, every attempt to get the scheme off the ground was frustrated.

The Board is in a complete mess. It is a relief, although no way to run an organisation, that the JLC repeatedly steps in to provide cover for our failures. The Honorary Officers of the Board will deny all this but the JLC and many others who try to deal with the Board have been aware for a long time that it is no longer 'fit for purpose'.

When Mick Davis addressed the Board - and was treated despicably by Deputies - he could not have been clearer. The JLC sees itself primarily as a strategic body. It was constituted to allow key communal organisations to deal collectively with risks and deliver solutions.

From a position of having opposed the JLC, due principally to its undemocratic set up, I have now turned 180 degrees. It is a vital piece of our communal architecture.

Out of the shambolic situation the Board is now in, the best move we can now make to save it is to secure an immediate merger of the two civil services. That will automatically cut out rivalry and enable those who know what they are doing to get on with the real work - and to do so under the imprint of the Board.

This will need goodwill from both sides and carefully worked on safeguards to retain the democratic and representative nature of the Board. There will need to be properly elected committees to set out policy which, via accountable, transparent procedures, a revitalised staff can implement. Talks are now underway - but without the vast majority of Deputies being involved in any changes.

The CEO's departure and the serious situation facing the Board today afford an opportunity to reconstruct the Board to work in partnership with the JLC, with staff able to work in a professional atmosphere, properly rewarded for their endeavours in a framework that adheres to the principles of accountability, openness and transparency, retaining the democratic and representative aspects of the Board to be combined with the professionalism and well resourced JLC. It could be a winning combination.

There is a place for both organisations to work alongside each other. Each of us have a role to play but, for the Board to continue, it now has no option but to share resources and staff with the JLC.

I desperately want the Board to survive but the only way left is for a rapid merger with the JLC at staff levels and a new democratic structure for the combined organisation. I am prepared to work for that. I hope Deputies will respond to the call to enable this to happen as soon as possible.

In Venice, I needed a route canal

David Robson — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:10:12 +0100

I was in Venice. It was Shabbes. I thought I would visit the area where the Venetian republic confined its Jews 500 years ago - the place that gave the world the word, ghetto. But no sooner had I set out than I got totally lost. For centuries, Jews have been trying to find their way out of the ghetto, my problem was different - I couldn't find my way in. That is a common experience for me. I have no sense of direction whatsoever. But is that just me, or is it Jews? I don't think it is just me.

The worst marital spat I have ever witnessed was between a Jewish couple. I was travelling in their car on the way to a funeral. Neither of them was the deceased, though by the time we eventually got there each wished the other was. We had totally lost our way and, as you know, you can't be very late for a Jewish funeral because they really don't last very long. "Reuben," the wife screamed, "I knew you'd do this, I knew you'd do this!" How did she know? Because he's Jewish and that's what we do. We lose our way. Reuben could easily navigate a path through a complicated law book but the third turning off a roundabout proved impossible.

It's not a new problem for us. Crossing the Sinai desert should have been a relatively short trip. We left Egypt in a hurry but it turned out to be more haste, less speed. Other peoples would have completed the journey in a matter of days; it took the Jews 40 years. We were heading for the Promised Land but clearly we had no idea where it was and certainly didn't know the best route to get there.

For gentiles, explorers are people who go from point A to a rarely-visited point B in the most direct way possible - Ranulph Fiennes (or Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes to give his full moniker) heads for the Pole by the shortest route. But if his name were Raphael Feinstein he'd still be looking for the Pole and we'd still be looking for him. We simply are not great explorers in that sense. Exploring the human mind, that's quite another matter. That's something we do, it's a sedentary activity you can comfortably do in your own home. Fiennes has a sledge, Freud had a couch.

There is a school of thought that believes Christopher Columbus was a Marrano Jew just pretending to be Christian. I am of that school. He is obviously the greatest Jewish explorer in history (not that there's much competition) and he certainly did his exploring the Jewish way - he set off in search of the New World, got to the Bahamas and thought it was India.

That was more or less what happened to me in Venice. In fairness to myself, one canal does look very much like another but nobody I met there got as lost as I did. Unlike the simpletons who value simplicity, we are people with a respect for complexity and doubt. Whatever the subject, we tend to say: "On the one hand… on the other hand…" In my case, it was: "On the one hand, I could go right; on the other hand, I could go left." I always chose the other hand and I was always wrong.

Grand gestures in art and religion

Naftali Brawer — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:34:43 +0100

The Tate Modern's current retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein's pop art includes a series of 1960s paintings called "brushstrokes". In these paintings, the Jewish artist parodies abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning who freely expressed their feelings through "action painting" by throwing, smearing or dripping paint on canvas. Lichtenstein parodies this by carefully recreating spontaneous expression in a highly disciplined, controlled and contrived way. Describing his work, the artist said: "Brushstrokes in painting convey a sense of grand gesture but, in my hands, the brushstroke becomes the depiction of a grand gesture."

This distinction between the grand gesture and the depiction of the grand gesture brought to mind the work of the 19th-century philosopher of religion and psychologist, William James.

In his 1902 book, Varieties of Religious Experience, James makes a clear distinction between the spontaneous religious experience of the founders of a religion - whom he calls religious geniuses - and that of the "ordinary religious believer" who comes later and "follow[s] the conventional observances":

"I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances… His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather."

For James, there is little value in this "second-hand religious life". It is the grand gesture of the original experience that is of genuine value, not - using Lichtenstein's brushstrokes as a metaphor - the reproduction of it.

To better understand James, let's take an example from our own Jewish tradition: prayer. According to Maimonides, the Torah obligates a Jew to pray daily. However, the words, text, structure and time of this daily prayer were not originally defined and it was left to each individual to express whatever spontaneous feelings welled up within:

As he explains in his Laws of Prayer: "There is an affirmative command to pray each day… but the number of prayers is not from the Torah, nor is the text of this prayer from the Torah. And prayer has no fixed time from the Torah… Rather, the obligation of this command is as follows: that a person plead and pray each day, and speak praise for the Almighty and then request his needs that he requires with petition and supplication, and then give praise and thanks to God for the goodness that He has bestowed upon him - each in accordance with his ability… Some pray once a day, others pray many times."

In Mishnaic times, there were no prayer books and even if there were, they would have been of little use to the masses that were illiterate. The role of the prayer leader, the Shaliach Tzibur, was to improvise. His function was to capture and articulate in elegant language what the congregation was feeling. Eventually, a skeleton structure for daily prayer - the Amidah - emerged. Over time this was then fleshed out with specific texts that became fixed. Times for prayer were also set. The result of all this is that when we pray today we do so within a fairly rigid linguistic and temporal "second-hand" framework.

James would say that the early form of prayer is the genuine religious experience, in as much as it was a spontaneous outpouring of a deeply personal experience of God. Like an abstract expressionist it was a "grand gesture". He would deem our highly regulated, fixed and structured prayer today, "second-hand" - or, to return to the art metaphor, a "depiction of a grand gesture".

It is interesting that the great Chasidic master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev - who died when James was a young man - raised this very point in relation to prayer, which he felt had become stale and a matter of rote rather than an exciting, spontaneous outpouring of one's soul before God.

In a rich parable, as detailed in Samuel Dresner's biography, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak illustrates what happens when the original art form of prayer is replaced by a dull habit: "There once was a king who so loved music that he directed his musicians to play before him at a certain hour each morning… for many years all went well. The musicians delighted in playing each morning before the king, and the king delighted in hearing their music.

"When at last the musicians died, their sons sought to take their places. But, alas, they had neither mastered the art of their fathers nor had they kept their instruments in proper condition. Worse still, the sons no longer loved the king as did their fathers but set their eyes only upon the reward, blindly following their fathers' custom of arriving early each morning at the palace to perform. But the harsh sounds that emerged were so offensive to the ear that after a time the king no longer listened to their music… Still there were among the sons of the old musicians some who recognised that they were not worthy to play before the king. And they were determined to correct the situation. They set about the difficult task of relearning the forgotten art… Thus was their music received by the king with favour."

The early musicians in the parable represent the early generations of spiritually sensitive worshipers, for whom prayer was a first-hand, religious experience. The ignorant musicians who play with imperfect instruments, represent the vast majority of people in subsequent generations who approach prayer in this second-hand, superficial way. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and his followers are represented by the small group of young musicians who try to re-learn the craft of their fathers amid the din and cacophony of the other tuneless musicians.

But is James justified in dismissing organised, structured religion as second-hand? Is there not something of value in the structure and formula even as its spontaneity is compromised?

The contemporary philosopher of religion, Charles Taylor, thinks James is too harsh. Taylor argues that, in order for the ideas and insights of religious geniuses to be handed down, there needs to be some conceptual and practical structure. How else can believers be organised to take action that flows from their faith?

Taylor goes further and argues that the corporate or collective religious life - a community of like-minded believers engaging in a common set of rituals and customs - is intrinsically valuable from a religious perspective. His framework is Christianity but if one applies his thinking to Judaism there is a further element that commends structure over spontaneity and that is the importance of halachah as a well-trodden path along which the observant Jew journeys.

Halachah does not involve "spontaneous" or acute religious fervour. It demands discipline and adherence to a fairly rigid structure of behaviour. In contrast to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak's parable emphasising the importance of individualistic expression in ritual there is a striking passage in Rav Soloveitchik's Halakhic Man that emphasises the importance of dry, steadfast, obedience of halachah at the expense of a God-intoxicated religious experience:

"Once my father was standing on the synagogue platform on Rosh Hashanah, ready to guide the order of the sounding of the shofar. The shofar sounder, a God-fearing Chasid who was very knowledgeable in the mystical doctrine of the 'Alter Rebbe,' Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady, began to weep. My father turned to him and said; "Do you weep when you take the lulav? Why then do you weep when you sound the shofar? Are not both commandments of God?"

For "Halakhic Man", the Chasidic or Jamesian first-hand, spontaneous religious experience is at best unhelpful and at worst spiritual self-indulgence. The important thing is clinical adherence to the law. Religious fervour expressed through weeping, or dancing for that matter, has no place in his religious outlook.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and Rav Soloveitchik represent two poles within Jewish thought; spontaneity and structure. As with all polarities the key is not to chose between them but to hold them in creative tension. Structure without spontaneity is dull, hollow and uninspiring. Spontaneity free of structure is wild and leads to antinomianism.

Having said this, at the moment - at least within Orthodox Judaism - there is an unhealthy bias towards structure; an obsession with conformity and religious box ticking and not nearly enough attention to developing a heightened sensitivity to God. To paraphrase a colleague recently; it's time we stopped worshipping the shulchan aruch (code of Jewish law) and started worshipping God through the shulchan aruch. It is time we redress the balance by seeking deeper meaning in our rituals and infuse the meticulous practice of halachah with a deep sense of God–consciousness. In doing so we will renew our faith and thereby inspire the next generation.

One small step, not a giant leap

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:56:21 +0100

The election of Mrs Karen Appleby as the first female chair of a United Synagogue shul (St Albans) is certainly a landmark. The question is, precisely what sort of a landmark is it?

The role of women within Orthodox synagogal structures has been a matter of debate and contention for an exceedingly long time. The apparent prohibition on women holding positions of authority within the synagogue is of purely rabbinic origin, and can be traced back to a particular rabbinic interpretation (the Sifrei) of Devarim 15:17, which speaks of kingship but not queenship.

From this interpretation, the dictum was inferred that women should not wield any authority over men. We might object that the chairmanship of a shul board is a far cry from the right to sit on a throne, and we might ask whether, in any sense, the office of synagogue "chair" can be equated with that of a head of state.

We might also note that simply because the verse addresses kingship, that does not mean that the Almighty has necessarily vetoed queenship, and that, indeed, some later rabbinical commentators argued the verse this way. Be all that as it may, until recently the precise wording of the relevant text in the Sifrei - "A man may be appointed leader over the community, but a woman may not" - has remained one of the cornerstones of normative Jewish Orthodoxy.

But what does this text mean? The book of Kings refers to the rule of Queen Athalia and, more famously (Judges 4:4) we are told that the prophetess Deborah "judged Israel."

A succession of medieval rabbis drew a distinction between a king being imposed (or imposing himself) upon a people and a community voluntarily accepting the authority of a queen - or, if you prefer - a female synagogue "chair". As Rabbi Gideon Sylvester remarked in the JC last year, this was indeed the thinking adopted - controversially - by Ben Zion Uziel, Sephardi chief rabbi of Palestine/Israel between 1939 and 1954; Rabbi Uziel added that the laws of modesty were not infringed by this. And since Mrs Appleby was clearly voted into office, the halachah would appear to be satisfied.

But the interpretation and reinterpretation of halachah has never taken place in a political vacuum. Important sections of the Orthodox world never accepted the arguments advanced by Rabbi Uziel. Perhaps for this reason, the gradual entry of women into the shul boardroom, and, by stages, into the chair normally reserved for its president, has (to be blunt) been comprehensively fudged.

It seems likely that the success of Karen Appleby at St Albans - and Rosalind Goulden at Cockfosters - will be followed by others, and that before very long the incidence of a woman "chair" of a US affiliate will be nothing out of the ordinary.

The abominable no-men of Stamford Hill, Golders Green and Gateshead will doubtless wag their fingers and solemnly shake their heads. The US will be able to answer, truthfully, that the status quo is alive and well. The argument will be put that no synagogue in membership of the US is truly independent: at best (the argument will go), women can be elected to preside over subsets of a monolith, the headship of which is reserved to a male of the species.

The same fudge can be observed at work in the Federation of Synagogues which, as I reported last year, is changing its constitution to permit women to become full members of (as opposed to observers at) its governing council. But ultimate power within the Federation is being removed from that council to a much smaller, male-dominated body.

Don't get me wrong. Fudges have an honourable part to play in any socio-political system, since they enable all sides to claim a victory. Nor do I wish to be thought at all disparaging. I offer my congratulations to Mrs Appleby and to all the other women who may be elected chairs of synagogues within the family of the US.

But we need to be realistic. A citadel has been stormed and, for a time, Jewish women may be satisfied with this victory. Then, one day, one of them will surely ask why women can't be trustees or presidents of synagogues, or president of the United Synagogue itself. The fudge will be seen for what it is. The battle for true gender equality will then begin in earnest.

This church report on Israel sets the clock back 70 years

Patrick Morrow — Sun, 12 May 2013 10:11:28 +0100

'A slap in the face to the Jewish community" is how Jonathan Arkush, vice-president of the Board of Deputies, responded to the report, The inheritance of Abraham? A report on the "promised land". This document comes from the Church of Scotland's church and society council, and is to be debated by the general assembly next week. As a Christian (an Anglican priest), I can sympathise. There are several contenders for its most contentious phrase. But the sharpest must be the rhetorical question: "Would the Jewish people today have a fairer claim to the land if they dealt justly with the Palestinians?"

So, has Jewish-Christian dialogue reached the end of the line, following the recent unhappiness with the Methodist Church and the Church of England? Or is there still a case for the differing parties to meet, talk, listen, and arrive at - not necessarily agreement (for why should we agree?) - but a better quality of disagreement? I have to believe the latter.

What of the substance of the report? The church and society council is clearly committed to work for justice. Its other reports are on human rights, and poverty. But when it comes to Israel, its attention slips from the modern realities.

Here are words absent from the report: Herzl, secular, Knesset, Fatah, Hamas.These absences are telling: the paper does not seriously engage with contemporary Judaism, religious or secular, or contemporary Israeli politics. Islam and Islamophobia are both mentioned only once. So it is not that the contemporary Palestinian reality is more truthfully encountered. A radical political-theological critique of Israel would have been one thing, if still controversial. But the paper barely addresses the politics. So what is really going on?

The bulk of the report discusses how the Hebrew Bible and New Testament treat "the land". God's promise of the land to Abraham's descendants is held to be "literal" and "unconditional". Devastatingly wrongly, based on little more than one quote from David Ben-Gurion, the report determines: "This is the position of Zionism".

The second biblical idea is a land held in trust: God offers the land on condition that the inhabitants act justly, as the prophets insist. It is in this context that the question of the "fairness" of the Jewish claim today is raised. But even this conditional offer is held to be problematic. Drawing on the US Jewish critic of Zionism, Mark Braverman, the report finds the root problem to be Jewish notions of "separateness, vulnerability and specialness". Bluntly, the argument is not only that Zionism is bad, but so is the conviction that "the Jewish people are serving God's special purpose". It is shocking to read such a cavalier undermining of mainstream Judaism. Yet if the idea of a special vocation from God is unacceptable, orthodox Christianity is itself stymied.

The third idea is of a land with a universal mission. Evidence for this is supposedly found in the book of Jonah, which brings the message of God's universal care, from "a time when Jewish people were turning inwards". But is it really Jesus who putatively sets things right, offering "a radical critique of Jewish specialness and exclusivism"?

So the report's basis is a good number of the tropes of Christian supersessionism. According to this Christian triumphalism, the Hebrew Bible can be portrayed as bad (promoting Zionism), or as useful preparation (the warnings of the prophets); either way, it is exclusivist and it takes the great universaliser - Jesus - to heal. In this frame, it is unsurprising that the newer "problem" of the "ethno-national" state of Israel can apparently be solved only by the universalism of Christianity. Bluntly, it is as if there had been no Jewish-Christian dialogue since the Second World War.

But there has. Other Christians' claims are not negated by this rather breathless document. The Vatican has said of the Jewish attachment to the land: "Christians are invited to understand this religious attachment ,which finds its roots in biblical tradition, without however making their own any particular religious interpretation of this relationship." We can honour a profound theology of the land, even though it is not ours.

The most generous reading of the report is that it is struggling to say something like this: as Christians we are not compelled to have a Christian theology of the land. The real protagonist in sight is the archetypal "Christian Zionist". In any event, my prayer is that the general assembly will have the courage to listen. The dialogue needs their more-considered input.

A damaging document

Oliver Kamm — Sun, 12 May 2013 09:46:53 +0100

'All men," wrote Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Protestant ethicist, "are naturally inclined to obscure the
morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity. This is why religion is more frequently a source of confusion than of light in the political realm."

Niebuhr was a steadfast friend of Israel. His warnings about the temptations of deploying religion in political argument are confirmed by a document arguing a very different position.

As revealed in the JC last week, the Church of Scotland is considering a report from its "church and society council" that challenges the Jewish national claim to the land of Israel. The Church stresses defensively that the paper (tellingly entitled The inheritance of Abraham? A report on the "promised land") has yet to be debated by its general assembly.

The damage has been done, however. This isn't a rogue opinion-piece: it exemplifies an approach that has become common in recent Christian thinking. Eschewing historical scholarship and running to just 10 pages, the report does little more than apply a radical patina to some highly traditional stereotypes. It obsequiously commends an American activist called Mark Braverman for being "adamant that Christians must not sacrifice the universalist, inclusive dimension of Christianity and revert to the particular exclusivism of the Jewish faith because we feel guilty about the Holocaust".

It's as if the 20th century never happened. As late as 1939, Jacques Maritain, the Thomist philosopher, could write a book entitled A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question that perplexedly treated the Jews as a historical aberration. In spite of a historic catastrophe in which the Jews' resilience was not some abstruse theological conundrum but a matter of bare survival amid barbarism, a major Protestant denomination is now reprising the dismal philosophy of counterposing Christian universalism to Jewish particularism.

The Church of Scotland's report is tendentious and inflammatory but it has recognisable ideological roots. While denouncing the biblical literalism that it claims underlies the cause of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, it derives from a reactionary and atavistic theology. According to the paper's authors, Zionism holds that "God promises the land to Abraham and his descendants". That's so crude a depiction of the Jewish national movement that it doesn't even reach the level of caricature. Many early Zionists were reacting against the notion that the Jews were a people engaged in prayer and scriptural study till the Messiah returned. One of the deepest fissures in modern Israeli society is between an ultra-religious minority and a far bigger constituency that supports pluralism.

As a commentator sympathetic to Israel, I pay precisely no attention to sacred texts. I'm swayed instead by Israel's status as a democracy in a region where that form of government is scarce, as a force for scientific inquiry and secularism, and as a polyglot and multi-ethnic society. Under armed siege since its birth, the Jewish state has perpetrated mistakes, injustices and crimes. These tarnish its history but do not invalidate its ethos, whose commitment to pluralism would be exemplified in a pacific two-state solution with a sovereign Palestine.

The Church of Scotland declares portentously that it "is called to speak out against injustice" yet is heedless of the implications. Niebuhr noted "a pitiless perfectionism" within liberal Protestantism that imagines there is a simple method of resolving conflict. In considering the tragic clash of national claims between Israelis and Palestinians, the churches should understand that peace will not be advanced by calumnious sanctimony.

How to explain why I won't date outside the faith?

Abigail Radnor — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:04:21 +0100

The first time I told a boy I couldn't go out with him because he was not Jewish I was 14 years old and I didn't know what I was saying. I was being courted by a charming, refreshingly tall rugby player, also 14 years old, who I just didn't fancy. So, instead of hurting his feelings, I decided to play the Jewish card. He seemed to move on pretty quickly, as 14-year-olds tend to do.

The next time I told a young man I couldn't see him because he wasn't Jewish, I was 23 and things were not quite as simple. In my mind, it wasn't serious - he was moving abroad at the end of the year and I was in my early 20s with little thought of marriage, so I didn't think it would cause much harm.

I was wrong. A few months into the relationship, I made a half-joke about how he would never meet my mother. He probed, I struggled to explain and he didn't find it funny. He was so hurt that I wouldn't even consider taking our relationship further because of a religion I haphazardly observed. There followed a few weeks of squabbles and tears before a phone call that concluded: "The day you mentioned the Jewish thing. That was the end of it for me." From that point on, I decided it was unfair for me even to casually date someone who wasn't Jewish. I didn't want to hurt anyone like that again.

"The Jewish thing." How many times have I had to explain "the Jewish thing"? And how many times have I failed so miserably? I have been trying to explain for a decade and I still struggle to find the right words. A colleague with a proclivity for numbers once calculated the percentage of the British population that I would permit myself to date - "0.025 per cent", he announced, throwing me a quizzical and pitiful look.

I often find myself being the token Jew in the room. And although I know we are not a perfect people and I am far from a perfect Jew, I take great pride in my Jewish identity. This is what I try to convey when I explain to friends who struggle to understand why I won't even consider a relationship with someone outside the faith.

They invariably ask "but do you not think if someone loved you enough they would get that and do the Jewish thing for you?" At which point I try to explain that doing "the Jewish thing" is not so simple.

"It's cultural," I tell friends over drinks and not quite so kosher meals on a Friday night. Naturally, they stare at me bemused. How can I belong to such a vastly different culture when I behave just like them? "Erm yes, well er…" This conversation does not bring out my articulate side. Once, I told a friend that when I do get married and they attend my Jewish wedding they would understand. As though on witnessing the shafta mayim dance all would suddenly become clear.

"I want to bring up my children the same way I was raised," I try, which firstly baffles those who cannot comprehend why I should concern myself with the lifestyle of my unborn babies at this stage. And then the more fundamental issue: trying to justify why you seem to think your childhood was better than theirs. Never easy.

A few years ago, I had a heated debate with a friend about this. I tried to explain that it was about where I had come from and wanting to find someone who shared those values. "Yeah, but that's like saying because I come from Stoke, I can only go out with people from Stoke," he responded. I squirmed. The rest of the conversation did not go well. I got so exasperated that I fumbled a mention of the Holocaust and it all ended in tears (mine). It wasn't my finest moment.

It is both baffling and depressing that I cannot articulate a decent argument on an issue that I so firmly believe in. But perhaps it is difficult to define because it is beyond logical reason. For me, and I know for many others, being Jewish is intrinsic. Our Judaism may not be as explicit as the more observant members of our community, but that does not mean it is any less important to us and our identities. It is a part of my soul. Therefore my soulmate needs to share it.

And I suppose that is worth putting up with the raised eyebrows and judgment of others who think I am being at best silly and at worst, a little bit racist. Even if that does mean I only have 0.025 per cent of the population to date.

There’s delusion and 'delusion' when it comes to Iran

Con Coughlin — Fri, 10 May 2013 09:58:00 +0100

Ever since Iran's insistence on developing nuclear technology triggered the worlds biggest security nightmare, there have been a number of naive souls who have sought to contend that, on the contrary, we really have nothing to fear.

They argue that any suggestion that the Islamic Republic is working on a clandestine nuclear programme that could be used to fulfil the ayatollahs' oft-stated desire to destroy Israel, is nothing more than anti-Iranian rhetoric whipped up by Western powers that are determined to cut Iran down size.

The latest ingénues - a polite description - to peddle this ludicrous fiction are the journalist Peter Oborne and his fellow author David Morrison in their new book A Dangerous Delusion. Mr Oborne is one of Britain's finest political polemicists and I suspect his unhappy descent into the world of international fantasy has much to do with his association with Mr Morrison, a left-wing activist who takes a perverse interest in twisting the facts to suit his disagreeable political agenda.

Mr Morrison stands accused of suggesting that he believes the death toll figures at Srebrenica during the Bosnian civil war in 1995, which have been physically verified by UN war crimes investigators, were deliberately exaggerated by the West to demonise the Serbs. His attempts to clarify his position on this issue have lacked conviction. And his dubious grasp of historical fact was again laid bare during a recent podcast I did with him for the Telegraph website when he made the preposterous claim that the current Iranian leadership are not Holocaust deniers.

Given the authors' alarming ignorance about the rudimentary principles that underpin the current Iranian regime, it is a wonder that their warped interpretation of the facts ever made it into print. Certainly, the book's title more aptly applies to the specious arguments advanced by the authors themselves than the way the West has attempted to handle the Iranian crisis during the past decade.

But when there is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the facts, it is vital that peddlers of untruths are brought to book, lest their ridiculous claims somehow acquire credence. For example, take the authors' fanciful suggestion in the opening chapter that, since Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, it has been scrupulous in complying with its international obligations.

Setting aside the fact that Iran signed the treaty when the Shah was still in power, and long before the ayatollahs seized control, the authors appear to have paid no heed to more than a decade of alarming reports published by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, which have detailed a number of grave violations. These include enriching uranium to a level far in excess of that required for peaceful nuclear programmes, and failing to declare the existence of key facilities, such as the underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Add to this evidence that Iran has conducted research on missile delivery systems that can only be used in atom bombs, and you see why the West has concerns about the direction of Iran's nuclear programme.

In the most authoritative intelligence assessment yet made public, the CIA has concluded that Iran had an active nuclear weapons programme until 2003, which was frozen after the invasion of neighbouring Iraq. All the evidence suggests Iran is now very close to resuming this programme, assuming it has not already done so.

These are just a few of the facts the authors of this incompetent attempt to rewrite history have deliberately chosen to ignore. We should all do the same by treating their conclusions with the contempt they deserve.

It’s not necessarily good to talk

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:50:45 +0100

In 1906 a portentous meeting took place between Chaim Weizmann and the Conservative leader Arthur Balfour. Weizmann expounded to a shocked Balfour the broad principles of Zionism. Balfour was shocked because these unashamed nationalistic aspirations did not reflect the views he was accustomed to hearing from the highly assimilated Anglo-Jewish establishment whose company he enjoyed. Weizmann admonished him, bluntly: he had been meeting "the wrong kind of Jews".

I was reminded of this reprimand as I pondered the remarks of Baroness Warsi on the subject of anti-Jewish prejudice amongst British Muslims. Warsi, who is currently minister for faith and communities in the coalition government, was the guest of honour at the recent opening of an exhibition celebrating the work of "Righteous Muslims" who saved Jews during the Holocaust. An adherent of Islam, Warsi used the occasion to speak frankly about Islamic antisemitism. And she pointed out that anti-Israel sentiment "can sometimes be a cover for antisemitism". She added with remarkable candour that the relationship between Britain's Muslim and Jewish communities was "not an easy subject to tackle".

This was not the first occasion on which Warsi has addressed this most sensitive issue. In November 2011, speaking at a lecture at the House of Commons, she drew the attention of her audience to anti-Jewish utterances that had been mouthed by an Anglo-Islamic group subsequently banned by the Home Secretary. "If you can't live by our values (she declared), get off our island."

Warsi is by no means the only British Muslim courageous enough to confront - publicly - the reality of Islamic-inspired anti-Jewish prejudice. Last February the JC reported on a debate that had taken place at Friends' House, asking "Interfaith Dialogue: Does it work?" Martin Bright, who chaired it, subsequently reported: "Heated doesn't come close to describing some of the exchanges. But the most moving account of the evening came from Dr Muhammed Al-Hussaini, a fellow in Islamic studies at Leo Baeck College, who had been urged by some Muslims not to attend."

Al-Hussaini is certainly not your average Anglo-Muslim. He used the occasion of the Friends' House discussion to condemn the "interfaith industry," claiming that on the Muslim side its private purpose was merely to provide the cloaks of respectability to interests that seek political influence rather than genuine interfaith dialogue. In 2009, in an essay in the Middle East Quarterly (a highly respected peer-reviewed journal published by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum) Al-Hussaini argued that the Arabic text of the Koran suggests that the Almighty awarded the Holy Land to the Jews in perpetuity. "Although the Jews come in for severe criticism in the works of Muslim apologists and theologians (he explained), there are no grounds in [Muslim] religious law to entertain the conceit that God's promise to the children of Israel has been broken, and none to support the view that Israel is now the property of the Muslims."

My inexpert guess is that Al-Hussaini's challenging interpretation of the Koran is not shared at all widely (to put it mildly) within the world of Islamic theology. But that's not why he interests me. According to one member of the Friends' House audience (blogging at Point of no return) he "reduced the audience to tears as he threw away his prepared statement and talked with emotion about how his very appearance on the panel had exposed his family to threats and harassment. Interfaith dialogue, he claimed, was an industry funded by petrodollars whose function was to manipulate genuine people of good-will for 'PR advantage' and confer legitimacy on extremists."

This accusation must be taken seriously by all those in leadership positions within Britain's Jewish communities. To take one example, I have from time to time debated in the media with spokespersons from the Muslim Council of Britain. The MCB is a body whose relations with the British government have blown hot and cold. Three years ago senior Jewish communal leaders reacted furiously to the government's decision to restore a dialogue with the MCB, which both the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council rightly condemned for its "deep-seated ideological Islamist bias".

Should we not, therefore, be concerned that the self-styled "authoritative" Council of Imams & Rabbis is supported by the MCB, and is the recipient of its official hechsher - conferred, apparently, as recently as March 2012? Or, to revert somewhat a-historically to Weizmann's caution, are we talking to the right kind of Muslims?

Wrong arm (and wrist) of the law

Peter Rosengard — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:40:38 +0100

The editor has had quite a week. He tweeted: "I've had car vandalised, been pick-pocketed and had pram stolen from locked car. In leafy suburbia." And "the police don't give a damn".

I am of course hugely sympathetic but it could have been worse. It did at least ebb and flow over the whole week and didn't erupt in one great, cataclysmic, criminal episode.

And it's not just media folk like my editor they're after. Just last Saturday morning, I was standing in Clifton Road, Maida Vale, waiting for my friend Toby who, for 10 minutes, had been trying to master the complexities of text-parking in Westminster, when he suddenly took off at speed like an enraged hippo - that is to say as rapidly as a large, very overweight, red-faced man in his 60s can manage while running across the road bellowing: "Stop! Thieves!"

Two tough-looking Eastern European men in their 20s were walking casually towards me carrying two fully laden Harrods bags remarkably like the two bags I had loaded half-an-hour earlier into the boot of Toby's car. So I, too, started shouting: "Put those bags down!" (I admit I embellished this slightly with a suitable expletive just to show that I really meant it.)

It was a classic pincer movement. We had them surrounded. They nonchalantly put the bags down on the pavement and, without missing a beat, continued in my direction. And, as they passed me, they repeated back to me the very word I had just uttered to them … only this time with the word "you!" added.

A heavily puffing Toby - who had by now made it across the road - and I briefly discussed the advisability of two decidedly non-slimline 65-year-olds chasing after them, rugby-tackling them to the ground and hanging on until the police arrived.

"Lets go and have a cup of tea… and you can forget about the police." Toby said. And he should know - he is a judge.

They'd opened the boot while he was preoccupied with his serial unsuccessful attempts to text-park.

"What's in those bags anyway?" Toby asked me as we sat in Raoul's café. "Paint", I said. "Paint!!?" he said.

"Yes… I'd loved to have seen their faces when they got home. No diamonds, jewellery or watches. Just 10 pots of Daler Rowney artist acrylic paint."

("Has the man no end to his talents? I hear you say. "He writes, he paints… he sells life insurance!" )

I'd actually painted Toby's portrait recently and he'd observed: "Not bad but you have made me look a little red in the face." This was probably because I'd used only red paint.

It seems crime is rampant in present-day London. Not so long ago, burglars got into our house while we were having dinner downstairs and were off with the swag before we'd noticed a thing. The WPC who later dropped round told me: "They put their hands through your letter-box and pick your door keys off your shelf." Reacting to my amazement, she assured me that "some people do have very thin wrists and tiny hands". "Do they?" I was intrigued. "Oh yes, sir, she confided: "Moroccans."

Our community must not ignore its genetic heritage

Ellie Cannon — Sun, 05 May 2013 09:41:29 +0100

While these days it is politically incorrect to refer to certain traits or features as being particularly Jewish, we cannot deny what is in our genes. And as well as the characteristics so familiar to us, these sadly also convey genetic illnesses. Many genetic illnesses are prevalent within the Jewish community, as we remain a tight-knit population that generally marries our own. Our only realistic answer is knowledge and understanding of how to manage our risks. In short, it's time for the Jewish community to take control of our genetic fate.

One of the diseases which is known to be prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews is Tay-Sachs. Being a "carrier" of the illness confers no medical problem to an individual. But if that individual conceives with a fellow carrier the chance of having a child with this devastating condition is one in four.

The National Screening Committee (UK NSC) has recently announced that it has no plan to offer a nationwide screening programme for Tay-Sachs or the other genetic conditions specific to the Ashkenazi population, including Canavan Disease and Familial Dysautonomia.

This is perfectly reasonable given that we offer no other pre-natal genetic testing in this country on a population basis. Because the risk of these rare conditions is concentrated in a few areas, a population-wide programme is unjustifiable. But the NSC acknowledges that testing is highly valued by the Jewish population and will make sure it is still available to those at higher risk.

Given this, we must acknowledge that screening for Tay–Sachs remains our own personal and community responsibility. It's up to us.

No letter is going to arrive in the post like it does for cervical or bowel cancer screening. There may be no national programme but there is still provision for screening for anyone who is at risk of being a carrier. That means all Ashkenazi Jews can be screened within the NHS - but that you have to proactively request it.

Taking control of your health is part of modern medicine. Doctors also now expect patients to be in control. With so much access to information online, we no longer preach to the unwitting. Patients of all ages are now far more aware of medical terminology and treatments and should be on board for clinical decision-making. Thankfully, we no longer practice paternalistic medicine, and the patient's agenda is at the forefront of a good clinicians mind. The happy consequence of this open landscape is that it should make requesting screening easy.

My concern is that our beloved NHS is not well-used to proactivity. We react to health problems. It's not the culture to try and predict them. In contrast, in Israel genetic testing at the pre-conception stage is offered as a standard for a vast range of diseases. Yet here in the UK it accounts for very few GP consultations. We just expect people to get on with it. In my experience, patients only come to discuss starting a family if they have a background medical issue that may affect a pregnancy - one that they are already aware of. Given Tay-Sachs screening has NHS funding for everyone within the Ashkenazi community, pre-conception counselling with your GP should be the norm within the community.

In order to be proactive, it is equally imperative to ensure knowledge of genetic illness among the community is not lost. We have had such successful awareness and screening programmes since 1980 that only one in 360,000 live births is affected by Tay-Sachs. What is more phenomenal is that these births are rarely within the Ashkenazi population, because we have succeeded in sustaining the dialogue about Tay-Sachs. The concern for the future is that the conversation is lost - out of sight out of mind. We have seen this happen with vaccination programmes: once people forget how serious whooping cough is, they forget how important the vaccination is, leaving everyone vulnerable. We mustn't let this happen with genetic testing - we have to keep talking about our genes and what they can convey. We know about Tay-Sachs, but what of the other, less discussed genetic diseases? The group Jewish Genetics Disorders UK fights hard to keep the dialogue going.

It is crucial that we take control of our future by taking advantage of the screening provision that is on offer and maintaining awareness among the community. These illnesses are our heritage, but they don't have to be our fate.

Dickens’s Jew — from evil to delightful

Charles Drazin — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:40:29 +0100

When David Lean directed Oliver Twist 65 years ago, the character of Fagin had already been long established as a popular villain. There was the serialisation and subsequent editions of Charles Dickens's novel, while the celebrated actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree played the part in a successful stage version in 1905. And there had been many film adaptations. Lon Chaney was Fagin in one of several silent versions; Irving Pichel took on the role in a 1933 sound version.The George Cruikshank drawings, which accompanied the original serialisation, provided a model that made Fagin, with his long beard, hat and notorious, beaked nose, as instantly recognisable a villain as Captain Hook or Dracula.

The crude, racist stereotyping went back to the original conception of the character. When Fagin makes his first appearance, he is described as "a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair". He is then referred to invariably as "the Jew" as though that were the key to his behaviour.

Dickens came to regret this, explaining that, at the time, the kind of criminal he was describing invariably was a Jew, but he was so uncomfortable that he removed many of the references from a later edition. In practice, however, it was no more than a gesture, offering little practical mitigation of the racial slur. A richly dramatic caricature, Fagin lived on into the 20th century as a negative but often revived archetype of Jewishness.

Lean's 1948 adaptation presents Fagin faithfully as the duplicitous criminal of "evil conscience" that Dickens had created. It does not add racist colour that was not already there, yet at the same time gives full weight to a portrait of rare nastiness. Beneath a surface warmth lies utter viciousness. Fagin grooms his young orphans to steal. He seems to offer them sanctuary but in reality condemns them to ruin. In their joint criminal enterprise, even his accomplice Bill Sikes is the victim of Fagin's superior intellect. Sikes steals, Fagin fences; Sikes provides the brawn, Fagin the brains. Although Sikes kills Nancy, it is Fagin who puts him up to it.

In a chilling sequence in the Lean film, which culminates with Nancy's murder, Fagin asks Sikes what he would do if he discovered that the Artful Dodger had "peached" on him. "I'd smash his head in," he says.

Fagin asks what if it were one or other of the boys.

"No matter who, I would do the same." It is only then that he tells Sikes that his girlfriend Nancy has turned informer. The effect is that of unleashing a savage dog.

Lean distilled Dickens's work into brilliantly cinematic images but it was the fidelity of those images to the original racist conception of Fagin that made them especially shocking in the context of the 1940s. The immediate aftermath of the Holocaust might have seemed the time to avoid such a negative stereotype, yet Lean carried on regardless of the consequences.

It wasn't that he hadn't been warned. In May 1947, the Production Code Administration, Hollywood's self-regulatory censorship body, said: "We assume, of course, that you will bear in mind the advisability of omitting from the portrayal of Fagin any elements or inference that would be offensive to any specific racial group or religion. Otherwise, of course, your picture might meet with very definite audience resistance in this country."

Not long after, make-up artist Stuart Freeborn began turning Alec Guinness into Fagin. He recalled that Lean requested two looks: one that followed the Cruikshank drawings, and another toned-down version. In the latter, Fagin "looked like Jesus Christ," remembered Freeborn. "David said: 'Forget that. It's not what we want at all'."

If Lean's instinct overrode a wider awareness, the ivory tower he occupied served only to encourage a blinkered outlook. Around that time, he explained the astonishingly favourable conditions under which the Rank Organisation financed its top producers to make whatever they wanted, how they wanted: "We can cast whatever actors we choose, and we have no interference at all in the way the film is made. No one sees the films until they are finished, and no cuts are made without the consent of the director or producer."

But surviving correspondence from the company's US distributor, Eagle-Lion, reveals that, behind the scenes, Rank was already regretting this set-up. In November 1947, Rank's publicity chief, Jock Lawrence, wrote to the head of Eagle-Lion, Robert Benjamin: "There are such problems… the Jewish one on Oliver Twist is a very serious one. It is something that I will have to show you here, rather than write them in a letter." He must have known that Lean had disregarded the Production Code Administration's advice concerning Fagin.

What made this seem all the more foolhardy was the crisis in Palestine. Lean's Oliver Twist opened in Britain a month after Israel's declaration of independence. Rarely could a première have been so badly timed.

Lawrence derived some comfort from the finished picture, which he saw only days before the première. "I was very happily surprised by the Fagin character," he wrote to Benjamin. "The film itself is so very good that the character of Fagin sinks somewhat into insignificance as compared to the whole. The fidelity of characterisation is such that I believe we have strong grounds for fighting any attacks… There is no doubt in my opinion, however, that the 'lunatic fringe' will attack the film on the basis of Fagin. But… it would not at all be justified except for the unusual length of the character's nose. However, we have it that way, and it is a truly great picture that I believe should overcome any such objections."

Lawrence believed that attacks would be inevitable when the film opened in the US. He suggested that Eagle-Lion delay the release to allow time for the Palestine situation to be settled, so that the film "might not be used by the Zionist groups for propaganda". He suggested, too, that Eagle-Lion's publicity stress the fidelity of the character to the original story. And it seemed to him "doubly important now" to organise a US visit of the child star of the film. "We can, in that way, stress the title Oliver Twist, through the character himself, taking away any attention possible from the Fagin character."

The Rank Organisation settled on a US release of September 1948. Following Lawrence's advice, it arranged a private advance screening for Jewish campaign groups. The reaction was not favourable. The Anti-Defamation League considered the characterisation to be an offensive stereotype that would be harmful in the light of existing tensions. The New York Board of Rabbis went even further, declaring it a "vehicle of blatant antisemitism" that "would play into the hands of un-American elements". It wrote to the president of the Motion Picture Producers Association of America asking that the film be banned. Rather than risk further protests that might jeopardise the company's other prestige releases, Rank postponed the release until a more opportune time.

The film's notoriety made it a magnet for further trouble. When, in February 1949, it opened in the British sector of Occupied Berlin, protesters picketed the theatre. They were mostly Jewish displaced persons, but their anger was shared by many in a city that was trying to recover from the poison of an all-too-recent-past. Berlin's mayor was one of several prominent gentiles to sign a petition that warned of the danger of "arousing antisemitism in Germany", and urged that the film be withdrawn. When the British authorities refused to intervene, the crowds were back the next evening and there were riots in which several were badly hurt. The British military government still stuck to its line that it would not impose a ban but must have been very relieved when Rank decided to withdraw the film.

The question of banning Oliver Twist was an issue that divided even its Jewish critics. The ADL stressed that at no time had it called for a ban, even though it believed events had borne out its warnings about the film's inflammatory nature. The American Council for Judaism condemned outright such calls, arguing that "opinions formed or opposition voiced after the event constituted the proper exercise of public opinion".

The film finally opened in the US in May 1951 after the Production Code Administration granted its seal of approval on the basis of cuts intended "to eliminate wherever possible the photography of the character of Fagin". The New York Times welcomed a sensible compromise: "Except in so far as the appearance of Fagin in point of time has been reduced, his motivating influence and his impact upon the story have been preserved. And that is both just to the purpose of the producers and considerate of those who might take reasonable exception to an excessive portrayal of a stereotyped Jew."

The lesson was that Fagin had to be rehabilitated. When Lionel Bart wrote his musical in 1960, he gave him the heart that was absent in both Lean's film and the novel. Reviewing the situation, Fagin finds it hard "to be really as black as they paint…" With irresistible tunes, the musical provides a lyrical redemption that makes him lovable. It rescues Fagin from the gallows that awaited him in the novel so that, memorably in the 1968 adaptation, he can dance towards a new dawn with the Artful Dodger, Jewish, exotic, other, but delightful.

Polanski's 2005 adaptation did not duck the retribution that faced Fagin but still offered a revisionist version. The novel describes Oliver's new guardian taking him to visit Fagin in prison, to show how he has received his due punishment. Polanski switches the agency for the visit from the adult to the child, who wants to express his gratitude to a man who gave him shelter.

"Fagin, you were kind to me," says Oliver. They hug and Fagin offers a final gesture when he tells him where to find his box of treasures. "It's yours, Oliver, it's yours."

What would Dickens have made of this? Essentially humanist and progressive, I think he would have understood why. But nonetheless he would have regretted the loss of a complex articulation of evil. Such was the price of too easy an acceptance of a racial stereotype.

Far-right drops its mask

Matthew Goodwin — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:36:09 +0100

The British National Party could once put up more than 400 candidates, and attract national media attention. As yesterday's local elections showed, today the BNP is very much a shadow of its former self, and can barely contest 100 seats.

While the party is retaining its focus on areas that have long been used to extreme right candidates - Essex, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Worcestershire - the numbers are down across the board, and an electoral revival appears distinctly unlikely.

For the first time since 2001, in the run-up to the election, anti-fascist campaigners were scribbling "no threat" alongside most BNP candidates.

Its electoral collapse has been both quick and dramatic. Since its peak in 2009, at European Parliament elections that saw the voting in of two BNP candidates and almost one million voters shifting behind Nick Griffin's party, the BNP has become engulfed by factionalism, unable to calm a grass-roots rebellion and establish basic financial discipline.

The loss of experienced local organisers, some of whom have switched allegiance to rival parties like the English Democrats, and a broader downturn of morale within the party have severely dented its electoral chances.

While the severity of this infighting has since subsided, and some large donations have bolstered the party's finances, prospects remain bleak. Much of this is of the party's own making as, in its attempt to retain a smaller hard-core of "true believers", it has returned to what many would regard as overt expressions of biological racism, for example praising Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn movement, thus further discouraging ordinary voters from endorsing the increasingly toxic brand.

One thing, however, remains clear. Despite the BNP's decline, the broader climate of British politics remains favourable for radical right-wing politics, with the UK Independence Party being the chief beneficiary of the changing political winds. Public concern over immigration is once again on the rise, with the latest Ipsos-MORI tracker telling us that 29 per cent of all voters identify this issue as one of the most important facing the country (a level not seen since summer 2011).

This number is also likely to increase further, as the Farage brand of populism seeks to intensify public concerns over looming migration from Bulgaria and Romania. In fact, as things stand today, British voters rate immigration as an issue that is more important than unemployment, and we remain more likely than many of our continental counterparts to voice anxieties about this. Add to this a stubbornly persistent economic crisis, which is sharpening perceptions of resources under threat, and a coalition government that has absorbed the natural party of protest, the Liberal Democrats, and it becomes clear that opportunities for radical right populists remain.

The BNP will not receive the dividends that these trends produce for right-wing parties. Indeed, perhaps the most striking development on the extreme right is the way in which it has responded to this climate, and the end of electioneering, by returning to the streets and abandoning its quest to flirt with mainstream voters.

Gone are the days when the far right sought to connect with voters through electoral modernisation. Instead, right-wing extremist groups - ranging from the BNP to the English Defence League and their various splinter movements - have become more disorganised, and much less predictable.

The old strategy of "march and grow" is very much back in fashion, as an increased number of small, fractious and openly confrontational groups seek to replace both the struggling BNP - and the EDL, which has also failed to protect itself from the extreme right's traditional Achilles heel: infighting.

My Week: Alexa Christopher-Daniels

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:41:05 +0100

● My week in Israel begins at sunset on Saturday. As the traffic gradient darkens to the week-time rush of cars, motorbikes and Breslevmobiles, I sit down to my weekly Shabbat blog Trial By Fire – detailing the ins and outs of life as ola chadasha and Artistic Director of a British-Israeli cultural platform. By Sunday morning feedback has led me to meet an up-and-coming singer-songwriter in the obligatory coffee shop. She agrees to create a Hebrew/English hybrid for our next British-Israeli Tel Aviv event and we share the baked cruvit – an entire cauliflower, the appearance and effect of which earns it our "brain food" branding.

● Mid-Monday I take the sherut to the new central Bus Station – home to Nico Nitai's Karov Theatre and the She Festival 2013: To be his daughter - a promenade circle of performance rooms by British and Israeli female artists inspired by their relationships with their fathers. Nico's daughter, the founder and co-director of She festival Dorit Nitai Neman and I develop our "rooms", focusing on their relevance to forthcoming audiences in Leeds. What can they glean from switch between Oedipus and his daughter Antigone to a fighting/loving banter between a real-life father and daughter who are also actor and director.

● On Tuesday I go to the apartment of Nico Nitai himself where we work on his English pronunciation for SHE. Nico, 80, informs me that tomorrow will be "Shakespeare's birthday, Shakespeare's death day, the anniversary of when I arrived in Israel, and of the first time I went back." There are amazing photos of older Romanian and newer Israeli parents, children, grandchildren, all amidst the remnants of a theatrical career still striving to confront, evade and forget life pre-Aliyah over fifty years ago.

● At some point on Wednesday I rescue my own dad, playwright and former New End Theatre artistic director Brian Daniels, from the fragranced belly of the Crown Plaza and whisk him into the Karov for a workshop. We replay a cathartic exercise with questions about our mutual empowerment, working the responses into a performable structure. I love showing dad the full-on eclecticism of the bus station, though many Israelis still sadly fear the area with its influx of refugees and asylum seekers.

● Israeli-born Erika Linor Kutzuk and I discuss the layout for her exhibition in She. Raised by Ashkenazi parents, her intimate photography tells a complex story of daughterhood that leaves me moved. The open-plan home/studio in the Shapira district is filled with inspiration, work and materials and, sipping orange juice from a swing hanging from the upper gallery, I contemplate the weekend ahead.

● Friday morning is taken up with content-writing for Gems' new website and re-drafting promo material after Skyping with two British participants including poet/Paralympic skier Dr Jo Willougby. The lull of late Friday afternoon is welcomed with wine with friends in Florentin and on the morning of Shabbat my boyfriend and I sit in the park and eat Alexa-improvised vegan canapés before heading to his grandparents in Haifa. It's an effort to muster excitement about leaving for two weeks, but when I think of what's gone before and what lies ahead; the luxury not only to live but to create between these two countries, peoples, cultures and languages, I feel truly baalat mazal.

Alexa Christopher-Daniels is artistic director of Gems of Mazal and Meow Kacha, and co-director of the British-Israeli She Festival 2013: To be his daughter, May 15-18, at the Heart Centre, Headingley, Leeds. Book tickets online here

Sacks must heed Hillel’s advice

Shmuley Boteach — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:31:34 +0100

I have always believed that sins of omission are much more serious than sins of commission - that the good things we fail to do are of greater consequence than the sins we commit

I once counselled a woman who caught her husband cheating. The man was utterly broken by his actions and wanted to repent. "Can you find it in your heart to forgive him?," I asked. "Never," she said, "Because he was never a husband in the first place. Had he made me feel loved and cherished, I could overlook a terrible transgression. But since he never made me feel like a wife, why would I forgive this stranger?"

This lesson should be borne in mind as we examine infractions on the part of rabbis and communal leaders. America is abuzz with the scandal of Rabbi Michael Broyde - a leading Orthodox mind - and his confession to having used fabricated identities to engage in online rabbinical discussions. Broyde, who reportedly was a leading candidate to become chief rabbi, was forced to resign from the Beth Din, his reputation in tatters.

Really? That's it. One strike and you're out? No possibility of penitence? No second chance? Is a man then really nothing more than the sum total of his most recent misdeeds, with all his virtue being lost?

In Judaism, no woman is a divine personage and no man is the son of God. Everyone in the Torah is flawed. Moses is denied entry into the Holy Land because he disobeyed a divine command. Yet we Jews do not remember him for his errors, but for the deliverance from Egypt and the 10 commandments.

By all accounts, the chief rabbinate of Lord Sacks has been a PR bonanza. He has emerged as one of the most eloquent advocates for Judaism in the English-speaking world and, arguably, its finest writer. Some predicted that his early mistakes, like the Hugo Gryn affair, would sink him. But his imposing presence on the world Jewish stage gives hope that the errors committed by great men can be outweighed by the sheer force of their communal contribution.

Sins of omission, however, are different.

As Lord Sacks's term draws to a close and as he prepares for a new life largely at US academic institutions, it behoves him to correct the most glaring chasm of his leadership, namely, the failure to use his universal prestige to combat the tsunami of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment - really, one and the same - that has erupted in Britain under his tenure. British universities have become cauldrons of Israel hatred, with even students at Oxford - where I served as rabbi - recently voting on whether to ban Israeli academics. And this in the year 2013!

Rabbi Sacks is highly regarded by scholars the world over. That he has failed to go before British students and academics and thunder against the rising tide of antisemitism remains the most mystifying facet and the single greatest failure of his tenure.

That he has allowed the UK campus to become a place where students often fear even to wear kippot is a blemish on an otherwise radiant reputation. That he has not used his regular BBC appearances to condemn the prejudice that organisation regularly displays toward the Jewish state constitutes an act of timidity incongruent with his robust Jewish pride.

And that he has not been prepared to risk his reputation in standing up to peers of the British establishment who speak ill of Israel is a misuse of his unparalleled eloquence.

But it is not too late. He can devote the majority of his remaining time in the UK towards a tour of all UK campuses where he can call on students to live up to the proud history of British Zionism - the legacy of Balfour, Lloyd George, and Churchill. He can remind Muslim students of Sultan Saladin's call for the Jews to return to Jerusalem after the first crusade. And he can use his fluency to verbally eviscerate Israel's enemies with facts and logic.

With so little time left in office, and as the great sage Hillel said, "If not now, when?"

End this personality cult

Miriam Shaviv — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:46:31 +0100

It has been a bad year so far for Orthodox rabbis. Across the channel, French chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim quit after admitting plagiarising texts and faking his academic credentials while, last weekend, similar charges were levelled by Maariv against the Israeli chief rabbi, Yonah Metzger.

Across the pond, a modern Orthodox religious judge, Michael Broyde, has just admitted using an alias, "Rabbi Hershel Goldwasser", to promote himself in print and online and access the email list of a rival rabbinic organisation. This fictional character was even thanked in Lord Sacks's Koren siddur - together with Rabbi Broyde - for his "invaluable suggestions and corrections" while "David Weissman", another alias that has been linked to him, sent out emails to the Times of Israel last year touting Broyde's candidacy for the British chief rabbinate.

What could explain such a string of rabbinic scandals? Defenders of some of these gentlemen, in particular of Rabbi Broyde, have rushed to assert that to err is only human. The implication is not only that we should forgive misdeeds (if they are proven) but that rabbis cannot be expected to behave any better than anyone else.

This is wrong and dangerous. Religious leaders must be people of unimpeachable personal and moral integrity who elevate Torah, not debase it. If they cannot practise what they preach, their scholarship and speaking skills are irrelevant.

Yet we also should not be surprised when some rabbis steeped in learning behave abominably. It is in inevitable in the peculiar rabbinic culture we have created.

Before the modern era, the authority of most rabbis was confined to their own little shtetl. Nowadays, a successful rabbi can command a significant following nationally and even internationally, by publishing, lecturing, blogging and making media appearances. Rabbis within the top tier has a voice both in Jewish and wider cultural debates.

They also exert considerable influence on the private lives of individuals. In the past few decades, Orthodox society has come to treat its "star" rabbis like Chasidic rebbes, creating a cult of personality around them.

It is no longer enough to go to rabbis for halachic advice. Now many people ask whom they should marry, where they should live and what mortgage they should take. in effect, rabbis are treated as holy life coaches.

It is inevitable, then, that among the great majority of sincere and honest rabbis, there are a few who see the opportunity for irresistible self-aggrandisement, or to take advantage of others, sexually and otherwise.

Not only may they be difficult to spot, they may be the exact type bound to succeed. Very often, the charisma that marks an individual out for leadership can mask more problematic personality traits, such as egocentricity and a desire to manipulate.

But success comes with its own risks. For the true rabbinic superstars, there must be enormous pressure to maintain a high profile, and some - such as, it seems, rabbis Bernheim and Broyde - may feel the need to cheat. Others are finally in a position to exploit their followers, and get caught.

Perhaps the main problem is the temptation for these rabbis to believe their own press. If you treat rabbis like megastars, some of them are going to believe that they are infallible and behave in inappropriate and unethical ways, convinced they are not subject to the same rules as the rest of us.

Misguided supporters who plead for their rabbis to be given a second chance only reinforce this delusion.

So while every individual is responsible for their own behaviour, blaming the recent spate of scandals on human nature is too easy. The global Orthodox community has put its rabbis on pedestals, and must share the blame when they topple.

When segregation is acceptable

Geoffrey Alderman — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:17:52 +0100

Recent media reports have focused on instances of gender segregation at events arranged by Islamic societies at British universities.

One concerned University College London, the "godless" establishment founded in 1826, when no one who was not, at least on paper, a communicant member of the Church of England, could enter Oxford or Cambridge. UCL, by contrast, advertised that it would admit students without any religious test.

In March, this godless college was the setting for a debate ("Islam or Atheism? Which makes more sense?"). Speaking in favour of atheism was the eminent American cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, who features in Wikipedia's list of "Jewish American physicists".

I'd always imagined men of science to be tolerant and open-minded. Not so Professor Krauss. On observing that the seating arrangements provided separate places for men, for women and for a mixed crowd, the good, godless professor threatened a walk-out, and could be prevailed upon to desist only when the voluntary seating arrangements were abandoned.

A week later, at the University of East London, a meeting featuring controversial Islamist presenters was suppressed by the university authorities. Although the major grounds for this appear to have been the unashamedly extreme, public, past utterances of the speakers, it seems that the organiser's apparent insistence on gender segregation at the event was also a concern - with claims that this contravened its equal opportunities policy.

Meanwhile, the University of Leicester has launched an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding a public lecture last February organised by the university's Islamic society and featuring a popular speaker who addressed a packed meeting on the subject of whether God existed. Segregated seating was certainly offered at the event (part of Islamic Awareness Week); there were in fact separate entrances signposted. But a university spokesperson explained: "[We] will not interfere with people's right to choose where to sit. If some people choose to sit in a segregated manner because of their religious convictions, then they are free to do so. By the same token, if people attending do not wish to sit in a segregated manner, they are free to do so. To our knowledge, no one was forced to sit in any particular seat. If there is evidence of enforced segregation, that would be a matter the university and students' union would investigate." These sentiments strike me as admirable, reflecting as they do a balanced view of an issue that it is vital not to get out of proportion.

In 1954, the US Supreme Court held that, "in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This celebrated judgment struck at the heart of the so-called "Jim Crow" laws, manufactured by bigoted politicians in America's Deep South so as to confer legal status on policies designed to perpetuate mandatory racial segregation.

I do not believe that separate educational facilities are always - necessarily - unequal (if I did, I would oppose faith-based education). Be that as it may, however, it is vital in a liberal democracy to uphold freedom of choice. If, at the events I've described, attendees were compelled to segregate themselves by gender, that was clearly wrong. But if the opportunity was merely offered to segregate themselves by gender on a purely voluntary basis, it seems to me that the organisers were behaving entirely properly.

And we must differentiate between equality of opportunity and identity of opportunity. No sensible person would argue (surely?) that the provision of separate public toilets for women and men is a breach of "equal opportunities". In our public hospitals, the wards are generally - and by public demand - segregated by gender. Public pools frequently offer women-only sessions. Gender segregation in sport is of course widespread.

In matters of gender segregation, as in so many other matters, a test of reasonableness has to be applied. If male and female students at any of my lectures wish to sit separately, I am certainly not going to stop them. Neither am I going to blackmail them into sitting together by threatening to down tools.

Love and lost sleep in Geneva

Tracy-Ann Oberman — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:27:06 +0100

Sometimes, inspiration comes in the least likely places. I've just finished a crazy, round-the-world, film-work trip that saw me, in the space of 10 days, pass through three time zones and four countries. The sun rose and set over Spain, London, New York, Vancouver, Toronto and Geneva. Geneva, the last place on earth I expected to find enlightenment and yet it came to pass.

The film I'd been working on is all about the search for happiness by a psychiatrist who has become inured to his patients and lives in an emotionally barren world of platitudes and placebos.

He chucks it all in to undertake a quest to discover the meaning of life and happiness, should such a state exist. His adventures challenge him to the core but, by the end of his journey, he feels awakened to the meaning of a joyous life.

I hit Geneva feeling a bit like Hector, the psychiatrist in the film, exhausted and burnt out. I was convinced I'd been part of a sleep deprivation experiment. All I wanted to do was put my head on a pillow and snooze for the week. But the absolute, pure happiness of being reunited with Mr O and little daughter Mini O reminded me on a cellular level how all that really matters in this world is love. The family hug that went on for an age banished any need for sleep. I'm sure that's what the Talmud is all about really. As The Beatles say: "Love is all you need".

Later that day, I went to speak to a group of 15-year-olds at a school in central Geneva. I had about as much enthusiasm for this as I did having to cook a Chicken Kiev from scratch on Masterchef. But what an inspirational group of youngsters they were, passionate about all aspects of film making, acting, writing and directing. They were full of questions as to how to hone their craft and create good work. What an antidote to the usual, I-jus-wanna-be-famous bunch that I so often meet at school talks. Here was a group of young people who loved their hobbies.

At the Geneva Jewish Film Festival, eyes barely open, I sat down to watch A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, settling in for a 90-minute, well-deserved shluff. But sleep eluded me as I was moved to tears by the simplicity of this beautiful film. Following a bomb attack on a local café, a teenage, French-Israeli girl throws a bottle into the sea near Gaza with a message asking for an explanation, A thoughtful but angry 20-year-old Palestinian living in Gaza finds the bottle and tries to answer her question, starting an email correspondence.

The teenagers' respective lives are portrayed on both sides of the divide. Both live in a different kind of hell and both are challenged to reassess their view of the enemy. Both want the same thing: a future that includes love, laughter and hope and not to be defined by futile, never-ending conflict. To be able to believe that the world is not necessarily a hostile place. It was all about communication and empathy. And love. My Geneva awakening reminded me that, at the end of the day, that is all we've got.

Denied a Jewish education. Why?

Victoria Prever — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:09:04 +0100

Last week, my four-year-old son lost his place at Clore Shalom school. And so, at the end of this term, he will be forced to leave an institution with a religious ethos that mirrors our own Jewish beliefs.

We were awarded his place fairly. A parent who had failed to tick the right boxes challenged the system and forced a rule change. It is unfair but we have no legal recourse. For our son, the door to a Jewish education has been slammed shut.

Why? Because we practise a pluralist way of Jewish life and will not masquerade as Orthodox in order to secure our son a place elsewhere. We are not prepared to play the "faith game" as described by Ellie Levenson in her JC comment piece a fortnight ago.

Contrary to her beliefs, Jewish schools consistently perform better academically. We would also prefer our son to start his day with the Shema rather than Morning has broken. And attending a Jewish school doesn't mean living in a ghetto. They even have non-Jewish teachers. We also have friends of many religions and cultures.

But we refuse to send our children to an Orthodox school only to have them question why we are not practising what they are taught. Friends with children at Orthodox schools scream: "But no one does that here - they're all like us!" Something is very wrong.

In the year preceding their school application, many families shlep their offspring to synagogue weekly. Having clocked up sufficient visits to fulfil the requirements of forms accompanying the applications, many do not return to shul until the next Yom Tov or until a sibling requires their school place.

And, once at their chosen school, many have lives entirely at odds with the teachings given to their children there. Kippot and tzitzit are explained as "school uniform" and shoved in bags immediately outside the school gates. Kashrut is not followed at home, and families who do observe the laws of kashrut are forced to police which schoolfriends their children can visit, as they cannot be sure they will not be fed treif.

Obviously, many families of children at those schools are shomer Shabbat, but many are pluralist or even secular Jews - choosing them for their high standards of education.

The letters in response to Ms Levenson's piece reveal support for Jewish schools. The skirmishes that takes place between prospective parents every year offer further proof.

The Board of Deputies says its aim is for there to be "Jewish schools for all people who want them". But there are insufficient pluralist schools, particularly in areas that need them. Hertfordshire's Jewish population has increased by nearly 27 per cent over the past 10 years but that has not been reflected in the number of Jewish primary school places there. The Board is failing a large proportion of our kids. It doesn't seem to care about, or is oblivious to, the fact we are not all Orthodox.

Pluralist schools are oversubscribed. This year, Clore Shalom received 60 applications for five free spaces. Alma Primary - Finchley's new school - received 70 applications for its first reception year and Eden Primary in Muswell Hill received 198 applications for 30 places.

The Board claims there are sufficient places for all but that is true only if you are prepared to pretend to be something you're not and, in some cases, travel long distances.

We are not ashamed of wanting a Jewish education for our kids. What the Clore Shalom School complainant has highlighted is that the system - in which the nursery year is a de facto pre-reception class – is an almighty mess, and no one is taking responsibility.

Meanwhile, six innocent children have been evicted from the school in which they had settled. Whether you are for or against a faith education, that cannot be right.

Plan could end in blame game

Jonathan Freedland — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:19:30 +0100

The long-ago BBC Jerusalem correspondent, Michael Elkins, once lamented that too many war reporters had not served a journalistic apprenticeship by working on a local newspaper. How, he asked, could they understand the grief of a woman in Beirut devastated at seeing her house blown up if they had never witnessed the tears of a lady in Somerset, disappointed to miss out on first prize in the village flower show? They had no measure of comparison.

Elkins was suggesting there is a scale in such matters, with the local at the mild end of the spectrum. Except it doesn't always look that way. In Britain, there are few things that get people more agitated than their immediate surroundings - the more immediate, the more agitated. Just ask those reporters who've covered neighbours at war over a disputed hedge or overgrown leylandii.

Which is why I'm worried about the row currently playing out in my own patch of Stoke Newington and next-door Stamford Hill, home to Britain's largest community of strictly Orthodox Jews.

The trouble began with a proposal by the government that would allow "neighbourhood forums", made up of local people, to make planning decisions previously left to the council. In the spirit of the Big Society, the idea is that communities will take control of their own streets and houses, rather than having to wait for the ruling of the town hall.

Nice in theory, but here's how it's playing out in London N16. Many in the Charedi community like the idea of a forum that will bring planning decisions closer to home, seeing a chance to deal directly with what is their most pressing problem: a shortage of living space. With an estimated average of eight children each, Charedi families need more room.

But that has sparked local opposition from those who worry that if a neighbourhood forum - with a Charedi majority - takes over, it'll instantly lift planning restrictions, enabling Charedim to build outsized extensions that would blight the street or block their neighbours' light.

Worse still, they imagine expanding families suddenly winning the right to concrete over and build on their back gardens.

Predictably, there is plenty of arcane local politics at play. One group bidding to establish a forum is led by Conservative councillors apparently keen to tighten their hold on Charedi votes (and end the Labour-supporting habit still maintained by some of the borough's Charedim).

And, of course, the Charedi community is far from united, some supporting this Tory-backed initiative, others hoping to create a wider, cross-communal forum that would enjoy more non-Jewish support. Things have turned nasty, with allegations of antisemitism and "social cleansing" hurled at those who oppose the forum scheme.

My own view is simple. I don't want to see a system that pits strictly Orthodox Jews against everyone else, one that would cause local people to grow resentful as they watch their streets or gardens become disfigured by excess construction. Right now, if a bad planning decision is taken, people blame the council. What nobody should want is a situation where they would blame the Jews.

Luckily, the Charedi leadership seems to recognise this danger. They are not in favour of some narrow group winning control of planning. Instead, as the indomitable Rabbi Avraham Pinter puts it, they want a forum that is "broad, inclusive and represents all views." I agree. But if it's too tricky to set up a new body that meets all those criteria, I can think of an old one that ticks the same boxes. It's called the local council. Let it decide who can build and where - and let its members take the blame.

This teenage squabbling will drive young members away

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:28:39 +0100

As anyone who has ever been or met one will know, a teenage girl in the midst of a catfight can give Abbas and Bibi a run for their money in the stubbornness stakes.

"You won't even remember what you're fighting over when you look back," and "life is too short to argue like this," were just a few of the platitudes I offered when, as a leader on a Jewish camp, I was faced with two resolute warring young women.

In the event, they put aside their differences, at least for the duration of the trip. I imagine their reunion had more to do with teenage politics than with my guidance, much as I would like to think of myself as some kind of modern-day Gandhi. But occasionally, I wish the elders of Anglo-Jewry would heed the same advice.

It took the chief rabbi's office more than a week after Baroness Thatcher died to confirm whether he would be attending her funeral. Now they may have felt like such vacillation was necessary, given the historic sensitivities surrounding both rabbinic interventions in politics and presence at non-Jewish religious services. Indeed, attendance at Churchill's funeral was not a given for Israel Brodie - not simply because it was a Shabbat - while Lord Sacks' decision not to attend Princess Diana's funeral, but to mourn from the crowd, provoked a flurry of criticism .

Add to that Reform rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, who chose not to bid farewell to the Baroness because of her personal views - thus incurring fury for jarring with the Reform response to the 1996 Hugo Gryn affair (Lord Sacks, famously, did not attend the progressive rabbi's funeral).

So one rabbi worries about going to church - for fear of displeasing the devout? - while another, perhaps inadvertently, does what she has once condemned a different branch of Judaism for.

It's not just the rabbis. Too many communal groups seem to be watching over their shoulders, concerned with who gets the credit rather than what is done, worrying about putting their heads above the parapet even if they believe they should. The religious battle the secular, not least over Limmud, while the more progressive occasionally assume that everyone who does not share their view - such as on women sitting next to men at religious events - is backward. The left and right wings appear unable to accomodate the other in our gargantum tent, with the ZF's foolish sidelining of Yachad a case in point.

It would be funny, this teenage bickering, if it wasn't so terribly dispiriting.

Because teenagers, the ultimate authorities on caring what others think, by and large have put their catfighting days behind them by the time they can legally sip their Palwin. Yet these spats have been part of communal life for decades.

Yes, discord is natural (and necessary for newspapers), and we can hardly expect all our organisations to fall in line. It's that sometimes it seems that expectation - "how it might look" - is put above doing the right thing, or what is felt to be right. A case of "I agree with what you say, but it's not expedient for me to defend it right now."

And the fact is that 90 per cent of the community doesn't care. Most won't be aware that the chief might have raised some traditional eyebrows by stepping into St Paul's; most would assume it a normal part of his interfaith duties.

Most see these squabbles - the high-level ones, but also the shul boards divided over the appointment of a rabbi - as petty.

There will always be a disgruntled of Stamford Hill or Stanmore, but why do our communal leaders not have more courage to rise above? As Tony Blair noted, "when you decide you divide".

When the Hugo Gryn affair was brought up, it felt like ancient history. The idea that as a minority, declining and occasionally facing real threats, we could ever divide ourselves over something as basic as attending a funeral - as devotees of a religion that prioritises lovingkindness - was baffling. For many in my generation, religion is seen positively where it encourages building bridges and accepting diversity. We talk about the necessity of interfaith, assuming intrafaith is stating the obvious. That's the religion we want going forwards - one that allows for difference, but does not fear challenging traditional expectation. Pettiness will only drive us away. We want a community, not communal politics.

Disagreement is at the heart of Jewish life; we broiges because we care. We have thrived as a community in no small part because we prioritise educating our members to argue their case. But there is a difference between engaging in healthy debate and behaving like petulant teenagers.

No, Justin Bieber, Anne Frank is not for you

Emma Barnett — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:24:00 +0100

Everyone I know recalls a film, book or photograph that introduced them to the horrors of the Holocaust.

For me, it was Anne Frank's diary. I was 10 when my parents took me to the Franks' hiding place in Amsterdam.

Until then, I had been only vaguely aware that something bad had happened to lots of Jews in the war. I hadn't grasped the scale, or how industrialised this extermination was - nor that it affected girls my age, guilty simply of being Jewish and of the wrong generation.

Consequently, I feel very protective of Anne and her account. It is my entry-point to unspeakable horrors. My husband feels the same way about Esther Hautzig's The Endless Steppe, the first book to explain to him some of what his grandfather, who survived and escaped a Siberian labour camp, endured.

And this is why teen idol Justin Bieber's self-referential comments in the Anne Frank House's guest book angered me last week.

He wrote: "Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber." In case you aren't down with the kids, "belieber" is the term for his devoted fans - the majority of whom are teen or pre-teen girls.

In response, I wrote for the Telegraph that Justin Bieber does not get to second-guess Anne Frank - nobody does. His fans reacted furiously on Twitter. But I was also taken on by several journalists telling me Bieber had unwittingly done good for expanding the knowledge of young people who increasingly don't bother to understand the Holocaust.

Well, I don't buy that positive shine on his egocentric comment for one moment. Yes, he may have prompted a few thousand Google searches for "Anne Frank" - but how many will now really read her diary and actually engage with the full horrors of the Holocaust? The Facebook and Twitter generation - of which I am firmly a part - cannot concentrate easily. Countless studies have shown that the "digerati" find it incredibly hard to focus on anything properly in this era of information being published in real time.

I struggle properly to read to the end of an article, unless I stop, breathe and take a moment to rewire my brain to a slower mode. And this is precisely why I loathe all attempts by people to tell me to stop treating Anne in such a reverent fashion. "She was just a teenage girl and probably would have been a 'belieber'", wailed one fellow commentator, as we thrashed this out.

That's not the conversation we should be having about Anne Frank - the Anne Frank who met her end in the grimmest situation in the world and eloquently represented the millions of children who also needlessly died in the Holocaust, through her beloved diary.

And so begins the conversation about how we should talk about the Holocaust, as the years slip by and it becomes less real and seemingly less relevant.

The digital generation need to be stopped in their tracks actually to take stock of something seriously. Take it from me. We aren't even able to suitably process the dire human rights abuses happening in Syria today.

Bieber's throwaway comment, regardless of how he meant it, feeds directly into my fear of any attempt to normalise and trivialise the Holocaust. The Holocaust, unlike most other events in this world, does not need celebrity endorsements to make it real or interesting. This is not the way to make it relevant to the "kids". And those who believe that it is are patronising both children and teachers - many of whom are battling to keep this part of history very much alive.

Yes, there is a worry about the fact that the next generation will not be able to meet a Holocaust survivor and hear his or her story - which is probably the most effective way for people to understand what happened in Europe only a few decades ago.

But these concentration camps still exist and teachers and children alike can visit them. This is why I believe so strongly in the work that the Holocaust Educational Trust does with its trips.

We cannot and should not let celebrities, cartoonists, politicians and comedians casually trivialise the Holocaust. This is not the way to teach people about the only attempt the world has ever seen to systematically wipe out an entire people, "beliebers" or not.

How peace gap might just be bridged

John Ware — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:31:09 +0100

When it comes to peace, the gap between the most that any Israeli government can offer, and the least that any Palestinian administration can accept, has never been bridged.

But never, since the Oslo peace process began, has that gap seemed wider. And it's still growing. Two weeks ago, the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, resigned. Fayyad was one of the last remaining Palestinians with whom Israeli security chiefs had some chemistry. Working behind the scenes after the second intifada, Fayyad assisted Israel in thwarting a resurgent Hamas in the West Bank, and he got the Palestinian Authority security forces to rein in several hundred Fatah militants.

Personal chemistry matters when nothing else seems to work. It can keep a peace pulse beating, however faint. I think of the chemistry between the former Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein. Those who witnessed their private meetings speak of a genuine bond - they both even smoked cigarettes the same way. It is said that even the erratic Yasir Arafat had a grudging respect for Rabin as a man whose word could be trusted.

Those days are gone. With Fayyad out of the way, Hamas has made a renewed effort to draw Fatah into its orbit in a new unity pact, while asking Europe to annul its designated status as a terrorist organisation. Hamas hopes the European Union will be open to persuasion because Hamas hasn't launched a suicide bombing since 2004. I guess Hamas don't count rockets fired at civilian targets, or a laser-guided, anti-tank missile fired at a school bus killing a 16-year-old in 2011.

Will Hamas succeed? Probably not. But who is to say they might not eventually if nothing changes?

What President Obama politely referred to in his empathetic speech to young Israelis in March was the imperative for Israel to reverse what he called "an undertow of isolation" because of the "frustration in the international community about this conflict". For "undertow" read: "If the status quo in the West Bank continues, and religiously inspired settlements continue to grow, you will one day be staring at global isolation."

Obama's tough love may succeed in giving a resuscitating jolt to the near lifeless body of Oslo. But very few seem to think it will succeed in saving the patient's life.

As Ireland and South Africa remind us, the leaders of both sides in a conflict really have to want a settlement to the exclusion of all else, in order that they find the words and the leadership and the political courage to take their people with them.

And yet, today, the growing fusion between religion and politics on both sides in the Holy Land risks putting the conflict beyond any sort of resolution.

Does any rational Palestinian seriously believe that, never mind the Israelis, the rest of the world is ever likely to accept that the entire Holy Land has been a sacred Islamic endowment since Muslim conquerors consecrated it in the seventh century, with never one inch of it to be ceded by an Arab ruler? By the same token, is the world - let alone the Palestinians - ever seriously likely to expect Palestinians and Arabs to accept that there exists for Israelis an inviolate right to settle on the whole of the ancestral biblical homeland, irrespective of the impact this might have on others who have lived there for generations?

And does any rational Israeli - and most Israelis I know are very rational - seriously believe that scores of checkpoints, entry permits to Jerusalem, the construction of settlements, restrictions on the movements of tens of thousands of Palestinians, can continue in perpetuity without some sort of violent outlet, sooner or later?

The majority of Israelis do not. They have no desire to oppress Palestinians. But then they shrug: what to do?

If you are an optimist, you have to believe, as former director of Mossad Efraim Halevy believes, that ultimately there will be ideological burn-out on both sides and a settlement of sorts will emerge. But this will not happen any time soon because, Halevy told me, both sides will continue to claim rights to the whole of the Holy Land, right up until "one minute to midnight".

Only then will they look into the abyss and accept that, since neither side can sustain permanent conflict, life for both sides will become intolerably wretched. Do things really have to get that bad before they get better?

Every year about now, the gloom lifts for a day or two as Israelis and Jews around the world celebrate the birth of the world's only Jewish state. In London, hundreds of guests of the Israeli embassy are plied with good sushi, salt beef, smoked salmon and wine, and the truly remarkable stories of what the state has achieved in such a short time. The tone is irrepressibly upbeat - and infectious.

So this year, as Israel celebrates its 65th birthday, perhaps I, too, can strike an optimistic note even though the future seems so gloomy.

In January, I travelled around Israel making a documentary for BBC 2. Israel: Facing the Future was broadcast last week.

Television is not the friendliest medium in which to unravel complex subjects. It suffers from what the BBC's former director-general John Birt once called the "bias against understanding". What Birt meant was that television tends to cleave to polarity and in a conflict as complex and visceral as this one, finds it hard to grapple with the nuances that can be vital to a proper understanding.

Because this conflict arouses such huge passions, we attempted, where possible, to paint a picture of the country in some of the colours that we felt showed how Israel actually is rather than the way its often portrayed.

With so much ground to cover in a limited time, inevitably some impressions couldn't be accommodated. But they're worth retelling because to me they show there are still signs of life in the search for peace and reconciliation in everyday events.

Take the Palestinian entrepreneur Bashar Masri, whom I met in the West Bank. He is risking much of his personal fortune to build a new city at Rawabi. As in Israel, there is a shortage of housing in the West Bank, only chronically so. Masri is building homes for 40,000 Palestinians, schools, mosques and a commercial centre. American architects and engineers helped get the project started, but now it's almost exclusively run by Palestinians.

Rawabi gave me a glimpse of a possible future, a mini Palestinian state in the making, free of the religious ideology that has done so much to fuel hatred and mutual mistrust. Masri and his team just want to make a better life for Palestinians. He speaks eloquently about the disaster that will ensue in the absence of some kind of two-state solution - a disaster, he stresses, not just for Palestinians but also for Israelis. "We'll be killing each other throughout time and throughout the next 100 years, which I would hate to think about," he says.

Adjacent to this project is a settlement, legal under Israeli law, but whose members, according to Masri, have been generally obstructive, holding demonstrations, refusing to co-operate over access roads, and even resorting to legal action. Masri says he's had a stream of Israeli visitors - rabbis, MKs, IDF top brass, including chief of staff Benny Gantz. After a tour of the site, Gantz turned to Masri and said: "Any man who can build a place like this is a man of peace. How can I help?" Masri explained his difficulties with the settlers. Gantz said he would sort it, and that is what Gantz did. The hostility has stopped.

Although distrust is the very heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, between them Gantz and Masri showed how to build it.

Masri has also built strong cross-border relationships with Israeli entrepreneurs and philanthropists. And although ordinary Israelis and Palestinians have had negligible contact since the second intifada, in the restaurant of one Israeli hotel I saw a large group of Israel and Palestinian businessmen eating together, joshing with each other, talking earnestly - and laughing together. Again, I could glimpse a future.

And then I read that, on the eve of Yom Hazikaron, some Palestinians from the West Bank who'd had relatives killed by the IDF were given permits to travel to Israel to meet Israelis whose relatives had been killed by Palestinians. A hall with 2,000 seats is reported to have been filled, mostly with young people. This cannot have been easy for either side. Yet it happened.

And what about the last election - the one in which almost everyone forecast Israel would take a big lurch to the ideological right? It didn't happen. In fact Israelis recoiled from it. The country's ideological right may still be the largest single voting bloc in the Knesset, and within it, members seem to be moving ever further to the right. But the Israeli electorate has stayed stubbornly around the centre - as it has for several elections now.

Predictions about Israeli-Arabs disengaging from the democratic process also defied expectations. While the most exhaustive polls point to deepening tensions with their fellow Jewish citizens, Arab-Israeli turnout showed the biggest rise since 2000. And while there are disturbing signs of xenophobia in some sections of the Jewish-Israeli population, here's one more snapshot of Israel that these days, rarely seems to see the light of day.

Having heard all sorts of racist horror stories about Beitar Jerusalem FC, I went to watch then play at home. Sure enough there were extremists - a gang of about 200. Furious that Beitar had just signed two observant Muslim players (from Chechnya as it happens), they raised a sign saying: "Beitar - pure for 70 years."

But was this permitted? Was it applauded? Was it even tolerated? No, it was not. The police moved in to arrest the mob and some have been charged with racist behaviour. The club has been fined, the stand was closed for several matches, and the club's owner has said he wants nothing to do with racists. None of the fans I interviewed on the opposite stand supported them. One or two intimated that they were off their heads.

This peace business is so easy to aspire to and waffle warm words about - and so very difficult to do. None of these events should be overstated. Yet to me they indicate there is a peace pulse, on both sides, that still flickers. And while there's life there must always be hope.

Fit for a king, but not for a rabbi?

Geoffrey Alderman — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:35:08 +0100

The tragedy of Gilles Bernheim is symptomatic of a wider hypocrisy where issues of intellectual dishonesty are concerned.

In 2009 Bernheim became chief rabbi of France. He ought to have served seven years. Last week he tendered his resignation, triggered by revelations relating to instances of plagiarism and an accusation that he acquiesced in the incorrect public characterisation of his academic credentials.

I need to make it crystal clear that plagiarism - passing off the writings and ideas of others as one's own - is nothing more or less than intellectual theft. So far as the world of scholarship is concerned it is also, unfortunately, a growth industry, facilitated by technologies that permit the unscrupulous, without attribution, to "copy and paste" written material stolen (there is no other word for it) from the writings of others.

In its simplest form this type of academic deceit is now reasonably easy to spot: there is software that can facilitate detection, but I routinely demonstrate to my students how a simple Google search can often suffice. Less easy to recognise is the bespoke essay-writing service. Where I suspect this has been used (perhaps because an essay is of a quality far higher than I would have expected) I reserve the right to conduct an oral examination of that student, in the presence of an academic colleague. But these methods of detection are not fool-proof.

At the beginning of April a blogger, referring to Rabbi Bernheim's 2011 book Forty Jewish Meditations, accused him of having reproduced, without attribution, a statement made by the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard and published in 1996. Then another blogger declared that Bernheim had also plagiarised text in a book he had published in 2002. Worse still, accusations surfaced that a pamphlet authored by Bernheim last October - in which he declaimed against the French government's intention to legalise gay marriage - had also contained instances of plagiarism. And a French magazine revealed that he had not actually earned (by passing an exam known as the aggregation) the title of professor that publicity for his books reportedly claimed he possessed.

By resigning, Bernheim appears to have acknowledged his guilt. I am certainly not going to defend him. But I am going to place before you certain facts related to another theologian, and then ask you to ask yourselves why one serial plagiarist has been exposed and disgraced, while another has been - to all intents - canonised.

That theologian is Martin Luther King Jr, the celebrated civil rights activist who was infamously assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 45 years ago this month.

King, in whose honour a national holiday is celebrated in the US, was not just a plagiarist. He was an habitual plagiarist. His Boston University PhD, awarded in 1955, contained numerous plagiarised passages - a conclusion endorsed by a board of inquiry established by that university some years later. To those of you interested in learning more about this I recommend Plagiarism & The Culture War, a meticulous exposé of King by Theodore Pappas from 1994. Pappas reproduces, side-by-side, passages from King's PhD and from the work of a fellow Boston University student, whose doctoral dissertation had been approved in 1952.

The evidence is irrefutable. Armed with his dishonestly earned doctorate, King went on to publish articles and books that incorporated - without attribution - passages lifted from the works of others. His celebrated 1963 oration ("I have a dream… "), which has been described as the "defining moment" of the American civil rights movement, climaxed with the invocation "let freedom ring". King failed to acknowledge that these very words had been used by another black preacher - Archibald Carey - at the Republican National Convention 11 years earlier.

Boston University has obstinately refused to revoke King's doctorate, while his supporters have actually sought to explain - and even to justify - his acts of intellectual dishonesty. Bernheim, whom Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the Legion of Honour in 2009, has been banished, in disgrace. Is this - I wonder - because King was the hero of the left, while Bernheim was an icon of the right?

Don’t drown in Maggie’s wake

Laura Marks — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:14:00 +0100

It is more than 30 years since Margaret Thatcher became our first female prime minister, trailblazing the way for women, changing the rules and smashing the glass ceiling. Although we don't buy that for a moment, it is worth considering what this formidable leader really did for women and what we as a Jewish community can learn.

Today, fewer than 10 per cent of independent nations are led by women. Only 22 per cent of MPs and 15 per cent of seats on boards of FTSE 100 companies are taken by women. In the Jewish world, the situation is even worse; women fill just 13 per cent of top leadership roles. What has gone wrong and why haven't the expectations of Women's Lib, bra burning feminism and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975, filtered through to our community, well over a quarter of a century later?

In 1970, Margaret Thatcher, MP for Finchley, was co-chair of the Women's National Commission. Beyond that, it's hard to find any evidence of Thatcher aligning herself with the women's cause. Her view was that "the battle for women's rights has largely been won". As she said: "I hate those strident tones we hear from some Women's Libbers".

While the number of women MPs rose from 27 to 43 in the Thatcher years, she appointed just one woman to cabinet. While her pool of choice may have been limited, the women who made it to MP were presumably determined and talented. Certainly, the issue of "positive discrimination" is fraught and we shouldn't be promoting anyone with lesser skills. But where there is an equal choice, why not give the under-represented group a voice to offer a different view?

By all accounts, Thatcher had an adoring and supportive husband. We laugh about Denis but, as Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook asserts in her book, Lean In, "I don't know of one woman in a leadership position, whose partner is not fully, and I mean fully, supportive of her career. No exceptions". In the Jewish world, our expectations of women at home are unforgiving.

Jo Wagerman, the only woman president of the Board of Deputies, knew she was the sole honorary officer rushing home at the end of a week of Jewish politics to cook the Friday-night chicken.

We have a deeply held expectation that our women should carry the domestic load. American research shows that, when a husband and wife are employed full time, she does 40 per cent more childcare and 30 per cent more housework. How much more so in Jewish homes? "It's not about biology," says Gloria Steinem. "It's about consciousness."

On occasion, Thatcher used her gender to further her cause. In a famous speech of 1976, she turned the tables on her critics: "I stand before you tonight in my green chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved. The Iron Lady of the Western World? Me?" But who could blame her? After all, she was constantly pilloried in a manner wholly reserved for women. "Attila the hen" (Clement Freud), "Shrill and hectoring" (Peter Mandelson), "What does she want, this housewife, my balls on a tray?" (President Chirac) and "She is a bitch, she's tough… and cannot lead" (Chancellor Schmidt). The term "handbagging", while superbly descriptive, stayed with her for life.

Today, such sexism is toned down but how many times have I heard women in Jewish organisations labelled "hysterical" or "overly emotional" or indeed, heard derogatory comments made about their hair, clothes or even their hat? Such behaviour is too often tolerated, half-a-century after Thatcher fought it.

Thatcher was a role model, but not a campaigner. She showed that a sufficiently determined and talented woman could get to the top but, disappointingly, she abdicated responsibility for the women following behind. Disturbingly, many of the barriers she faced still exist, multiplied in the Jewish world. As we set up Women in Jewish Leadership to bring about change, with the support of the Board of Deputies and the JLC, we invite men and women to join us.

We must be active in demanding variety and diversity in our leaders for, as Thatcher recognised in 1979, "The women of this country have never had a prime minister who knew the things they know. And the things that we know are very different from what men know."

Pogroms that we cannot ignore

David Aaronovitch — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 09:36:38 +0100

The Holocaust, as we know, was not a sudden event and nor is it - as some well-meaning (mostly) religious people often suggest - incomprehensible. Its scale, its ambition was what was remarkable about it. How it came about is not amazing at all.

The most important precondition for the attempt to murder all of Europe's Jews was successfully to depict them as a malign "other"- as not-quite-people who, by existing, represented an existential threat to the majority. So historic ideas about Jewish separateness and hostility to the "goodness" of Christ and Christianity became, in the modern era, ideas about the illegitimate accretion of power, the undermining of the natural community and conspiracies.

The tropes of ancient antisemitism slowly morphed into those of modern antisemitism and as they did, prepared the way for what came later. The early brickwork for the gas chambers was laid in the acts of exclusion and literal stigma: the word "Jew" in passports, laws about what jobs Jews could do, the boycotting of Jewish businesses, the depictions in cartoons and films.

Of course, you knew this and if you have to read another article about the Holocaust you'll scream. Doesn't he have anything else to write about etc? I understand. But I have a very specific reason for having tried your patience with the above. It is to compare the process of "othering" the Jews with what is happening to a group of Muslims in Burma.

To give a very brief recapitulation. In western Burma there are hundreds of thousands of "Rohingya" Muslims, originally from Bengal. The majority population is Buddhist and ethnically Burmese and for years Burmese governments have refused to recognize the Rohingya as Burmese citizens. They have, however, nowhere else to go and have built lives for themselves in the Arakan province.

For years there has been a campaign against them by Burmese nationalists, including that strange phenomenon, Buddhist extremists. But what have been dubbed "tensions" have become something else. In the last few months, in what can only be described as pogroms, Rohingyas have seen mosques and shops taken over and their houses burned. Some have been murdered. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, many to internal refugee camps.

But what must worry any Jew with a memory is the language of the persecutors. One of the leaders of the anti-Rohingya campaign is a Buddhist monk from Mandalay, who preaches a message that is horribly familiar. Take these elements from a recent speech:

Wirathu warns that the Buddhist public needs to adopt a "nationalist mindfulness" in everything it does, otherwise the "Kalars" (a derogatory term for ethnic Bengalis) will take over. These "Kalars" and their influence have prevented Aung San Suu Kyi speaking out for true Burmese people. Muslims are taking over important positions in politics. Now Rangoon is at risk of falling into the Muslims' hands. And, of course, Muslims only think of their own interests.

He cites examples of Buddhist religious sensitivities being assaulted by Muslims and Muslim businessmen and asserts that no-one "will protect the Buddhist faith". So Buddhists must act. "We must do business or otherwise interact with only our kind: same race and same faith" shopping only at shops marked with the sign of a Buddhist owner. Buddhists must use Buddhist owned buses even when Muslim buses are cheaper, "otherwise the enemy's power will rise".

"Consider that extra you have to pay," he exhorts, "as your contribution to your race and faith". Finally, "once we have won this battle we will move on to other targets".

Wirathu is a modern Nazi, is he not? Which means we know where this one is going and where, if nothing is done, it may end up.

Looking back at our history, with sadness and with joy

James Inverne — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 09:17:44 +0100

For a culture that officially always feels (at least) two things at once, Yom Hazikaron (the memorial day for fallen soldiers) in Israel is disconcerting. It's not what we're used to. Every observant Jewish child is taught that the holidays are about two things - being thankful for what we have, and remembering the suffering of others.

At a glance, Yom Hazikaron epitomises exactly this, in that it falls directly before Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. And yet, it doesn't. These are two very pure experiences - distilled mourning, heralded by the joltingly unmusical air raid sirens that sound across the country to call for two minutes of silence. It sounds as though the air itself is crying.

Israeli television channels close down. Shops are shut. During the siren, traffic literally grinds to a halt, as cars even on the motorways stop and their drivers get out and stand, respectful and solemn. There is no joy here. No thanking our lucky stars. Our fortune came at the cost of someone else's tragedy. To celebrate that would be to spit on their grave.

But then something curious happens, and it could only happen in a society where the next day starts at dusk, undivided by a night's sleep. In one instant, Yom Hazikaron ends, and the next, Yom Ha'atzmaut begins. To be flippant, it's rather like that scene in Live and Let Die, where the weeping Harlem funeral procession turns to wild dancing in the street at the sudden call of a trumpet.

And so we are required to dry our eyes, to shake ourselves out of our misery, to put on our party hats and our biggest smiles and dance. With no pause in which to pull ourselves together, we must go from purest sorrow to purest joy.

Why? The arts can offer some ideas. The business of sudden contrasts in mood has long been a stock-in-trade of artists, and the truly great use the device to teach us something about life. One of my favourites occurs in Puccini's La Boheme. The opera is a brilliantly-balanced see-saw - the first half light and romantic, the second riven with anguish, jealousy and death - that pivots around two stabbing, unexpected chords that start Act III. Suddenly we're on entirely different terrain, and yet Puccini has simply fast-forwarded the relationships, showing us the contrasts down the road without charting the gradual path by which the characters get there. So we are presented with stark and crisp realities - Rodolfo is jealous, Mimi is ill, Marcello is argumentative, Musetta is a compulsive flirt. Each character's essential truth, in clear view. It's devastating.

Mahler too dealt in contrasts, working through his own bipolar qualities in his music. With seemingly spontaneous jolts, death-defying swoops from the top to the bottom of the stave, Mahler never lets the listener, or the players, rest. He disorientates everyone with plunge-pool shocks of mood and speed. To what end? Well, it's all so nerve-jangling that one can't help but stay on the edge of the seat, alert – alive. Mahler was terrified of death as much as he clung fiercely to life. And as long as you're listening to this stuff, by heaven do you know you're still kicking.

But, even if you can equate the twisting-turning Mahler effect to, say, some of the films of Quentin Tarantino, or the plays of Martin McDonagh, the Puccini paradigm is more common. Shakespeare uses that inverse mirror-image idea a few times. In Troilus and Cressida, his anti-war play that starts off like a military-setting rom-com and somewhere during the interval turns on its head to become a bitter indictment of the ideas of eternal love and military chivalry. But that isn't about clarity, it's about using shock tactics for dramatic impact.

Maybe that's it. The sheer shock of going immediately from Yom Hazikaron to Yom Ha'aztmaut is so removed from our daily lives that both events stand out. They stay with you throughout the year. And so do their messages.

But there is also an obvious practical reason for having the happy event follow its sad precursor - it helps to ease the sorrow, it brings us out of these days, joined at the hip as they are, with hope and optimism. Ancient Greek actors used to end their tragedies with a comic event, for exactly that reason. And the great director Peter Brook wanting to emulate them at the end of a National Theatre Oedipus Rex, once unveiled an enormous on-stage model phallus. That is also pretty disconcerting. Yet nobody could accuse Peter Brook of being just your average shock jock.