Tara Kar is grateful for the “practical support” from her Camp Simcha family liaison officer after her son Luca was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at 18-months-old. Luca, who is now three, is in remission after undergoing chemotherapy treatment and a bone marrow transplant.

Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein are both distinguished Jewish writers in their 70s, Raphael is a novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter; Epstein a fine essayist, superb short-story writer and some-time academic and editor.

Sir Trevor Chinn put it simply. “As a community, we have a decision to make. Do we accept decline as inevitable, or do we challenge it?”

There seemed no doubt that, on a cold but sunny morning in the grounds of JW3, the new Jewish Community Centre for London, the decision had been taken to take the challenge to the barricades.

Ariel Rosenthal appears a typical gaucho, the name given to Argentine cowboys who work the land and rear cattle in the country’s vast Pampas.

He wears bombachas, rugged, loose-fitting trousers; alpargatas, cotton shoes; and a boina, a beret-style cap.

The first Jewish employment centre outside of London has opened in Manchester with funding from Bury and Salford councils.

JCom’s shop-fronted Employment Support Centre in Prestwich will offer a job search and advice service in partnership with local job centres. Features will include a benefits surgery and “hot desk” office space at a nominal fee for new small businesses.

Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet is one of the most high-profile rabbis in the country. But could the outspoken minister of Mill Hill Synagogue be proving a magnet for the area?

Mill Hill in north-west London is one of the ten wards in England and Wales with the biggest Jewish population, according to the latest data released from the 2011 census.