Jewish Values

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.

Jewish Policy Research conducts its biggest survey

Simon Rocker — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:30:13 +0100

The largest survey of British Jews in two decades was launched this week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

Members of the community will be invited at random to take part in the online questionnaire over the next two months, which will be conducted in association with pollsters Ipso-Mori.

The project, supported by a number of leading Jewish charities, is the largest communal survey of its kind since the JPR carried out a similar exercise in 1995. It will look at religious belief and practice, involvement in Jewish cultural and communal life, charity-giving and other areas such as the health, economic status and educational levels of UK Jewry.

JPR executive director Jonathan Boyd said: “The data we gather will have a significant bearing on how Jewish charities serve people’s needs going forward, and JPR’s research team will be ensuring that the findings are made available to as many charities as possible.”

The first results are due to be published before the end of the year, adding to information about the Jewish population that has come from the 2011 Census.

Asked whether the use of online polling would make it hard to get a representative sample from the strictly Orthodox community, JPR development director Judith Russell said: “We looked very carefully into internet penetration levels generally and are not overall concerned about this as Charedim have greater access to the internet than many people think.”

We must take a stand against settler violence

Simon Rocker — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:43:37 +0100

Acouple of months ago a young Arab woman from Qalansuwa in central Israel set off to do what we would consider a mitzvah. She was a teacher of Arabic in a Jewish school and she went with a Jewish friend to go to the shivah of a colleague in Jerusalem.

But when they left the shivah, they were confronted by a gang of local yeshivah students. “They cursed her, they spat on her, they threw oranges at her,” said Israeli religious activist Dr Gadi Gvaryahu. “They said to her friend ‘How dare you come with an Arab woman to our neighbourhood’. And then they damaged her car, broke the window, let down her tyres.”

When Dr Gvaryahu and his friends heard about the incident, their response was to organise a delegation to see the woman to apologise for what had happened. They also asked new Education Minister Rabbi Shai Piron to join them.

“He said he could not come but that he’d surprise us,” Dr Gvaryahu said. “The day before we came to Qalansuwa, he took his team to her class in her school and he, the minister of education, gave a lesson to her students on how Jews and Arabs can live together in the land of Israel. She was touched.”

Such acts of reconciliation have become a sad necessity for Dr Gvaryahu, a leading Orthodox campaigner against Jewish extremism. A year and a half ago he helped to set up an organisation to counter the “price taggers”, militant young settlers who carry out revenge raids for Palestinian attacks or government attempts to uproot West Bank outposts.

Sometimes the price taggers may be content with spraying graffiti. But they have also engaged in physical asssaults and arson. And whenever they strike, members of Dr Gvaryahu’s organisation will go to the place to talk to the victims and offer help, sympathy and sometimes compensation. “In a [Palestinian] village called Jabba, where extremists tried to burn down the mosque, we met many children,” he said. “One father said he was happy that we’d come because his child had started saying that all Jews are evil.”

His group is called Tag Meir,“tag of light”, a punning riposte to “price tag” in Hebrew, tag mechir. “They want to create damage, we want to create light,” he said.

Although most religious Zionists and most settlers oppose price tag attacks, he notes, enough extremists exist to cause trouble. “One person can create an enormous amount of damage,” he said. “You just need one Yigal Amir to kill a prime minister, and one Baruch Goldstein to kill 29 innocent Muslims at prayer.”

An eighth-generation Jerusalemite on his mother’s side — who has a doctorate in animal behaviour — he was inspired by the religious values of his father, a Holocaust survivor. “For him, anything that sounded like racism or hate crime was a sin,” he said.

Tag Meir is not his first venture into activism. He is also a founder of the Yud Bet Cheshvan Foundation, named after the yahrzeit of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin. “Yigal Amir was unfortunately a religious Zionist. And we feel a kind of responsibility for what he did. He received our education,” he said.
Amir was thought a model student at Bar Ilan University and also studied at the respected Keren B’Yavneh Yeshivah. “You cannot say he was not part of us, that he was crazy,” Dr Gvaryahu said.

The foundation has established a number of schools and also a youth movement. “We decided we need to bring more values of tolerance and open-minded pluralism. As we say in Hebrew, derech eretz kadma l’Torah, you need to be a human being before you practise your religious obligations.”

Whereas Orthodox Zionism was once a liberal, even left-leaning movement politically, he noted, it swung right after the 1967 War, gripped by messianic idealism which viewed settlement in Judea and Samaria as holy work. But that sense of divine mission has also spawned among a small, but dangerous, minority, a disregard for democratic norms.

The struggle against extremism is not just for Israelis. “Our religion is under attack and not only in Israel. If you let extremists burn mosques and churches all over Israel, tomorrow someone will do it with a synagogue,” he said.

Which is why his just he paid his first visit to London, as a guest of the New Israel Fund, which supports his work in Israel. He addressed a Yom Ha’atzmaut lunch at Golders Green Synagogue and spoke to groups from two other United Synagogue communities, Muswell Hill and South Hampstead.

If the religious Zionist sector were slide to the extreme right, it could spell disaster for Israel. “Because they serve in the army, they know how to use guns. They can destroy the country,” he said.

Instead, if it regained a more moderate voice, it could play a major bridge-building role in Israeli society, he believes. “I think at the end of the tunnel, we’ll win the battle. But there is a long way.”

New Jewish Leadership Council members

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:59:05 +0000

The Jewish Leadership Council has announced two new appointments to its Vice-Presidents Group.

Gillian Merron is a former MP for Lincoln, a member of Liberal Judaism’s Board of National Officers and an active member of the Lincolnshire Jewish Community.

Leeds-born teacher Michele Vogel has been an active member of Wizo for over 30 years serving as national chairman from 2002 to 2006. She is currently national president, working on major fundraising events.

Business ethics are too precious to sideline

Simon Rocker — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:17:02 +0000

The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, seems cut from a different cloth from his predecessor. Whereas Dr Rowan Williams is a poetry-writing scholar with better Hebrew than most of us, the Bishop of Durham’s pre-clerical career as an oil executive has marked him as a man of more worldly experience.

His business background stood him in good stead as a member of the commission on banking reform and will give him added authority when speaking on economic affairs. His qualifications could not be more timely. For in the wake of the crash of 2007/8 and various banking scandals, the conduct of some of the most powerful commercial institutions has come under renewed scrutiny amid a growing sense that money-making has drifted too far apart from morality.

There is a widespread belief that parts of the financial world need to reset their moral compass — particularly as the repercussions of their actions travel so far and wide. “The amount of collateral damage we can do in the 21st century suggests we need help from wherever we can get it,” Alpesh Patel, the Hindu author of such books as Online Trading, said at “faith and finance” panel discussion last Thursday, which was co-hosted by at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Faiths Forum for London and the Council of Christians and Jews. “One good place where we can get it,” he added, “is faith.”

But it is ironic that the one Jewish organisation that might have been best equipped to grapple with such issues bit the dust a year ago, itself a casualty of the recession. The Jewish Association for Business Ethics was founded early in the Chief Rabbinate of Lord Sacks. Jabe embodied the message that has run consistently through the Chief Rabbi’s writings: that the teachings of Judaism could contribute to the good of society as a whole. It operated outside as well as inside the Jewish community, not only running courses in the workplace but also pioneering a curriculum for schools.

In a 1998 lecture, Chief Rabbi said that “the hugely popular” Jabe was “one of the institutions I am proudest of having had a share in creating… In extending its work to schools, it has shown sixthformers that business can and should be an ethical enterprise, and that an ancient tradition has compelling things to say in today’s marketplace.”

So why did Jabe collapse? It operated on a relatively modest budget of £300,000 a year. But as the financial downturn squeezed charities, and welfare organisations in particular faced ever greater calls on their services, an organisation devoted to business ethics would have come well down the list of needy causes. But there was another reason behind Jabe’s failure.

Although it attracted backing from across the Jewish community, as an organisation under the Chief Rabbi’s patronage, the only rabbis allowed to speak on its platforms were Orthodox. Eventually, some of the leading donors had enough of the exclusion of non-Orthodox rabbis and left, narrowing Jabe’s support base.

Some of Jabe’s former trustees then hatched plans for a new cross-communal ethics organisation, with a wider brief which included business as well. Called ResponseAbility, it flickered briefly, but when its inaugural director left for another communal post last year, it vanished from the scene.

Like money, ethics does not grow on trees. Good practice needs to be cultivated and striven for. Within rabbinic literature there is a storehouse of wisdom, which could be usefully incorporated into courses for companies and business schools.

The biblical commandment against putting “a stumbling-block in front of the blind” was extended by the rabbis into a broader prohibition against preying on ignorance or vulnerability. It could apply to selling mortgages to people who have no hope of repaying them, lured by introductory low-interest sweeteners. Or to persuading small businesses to take complex loan packages without explaining the attendant risks.

The concept of geneivat da’at, “theft of knowledge”, means withholding what people need to know to make an informed decision. At last week’s seminar, the philanthropist Lord Fink criticised the sale of financial products which “did not do what they said on the tin”.

A former supporter of Jabe recently told me that he was looking at whether it were possible to resurrect it. It is questionable, however, whether a stand-alone organisation is the best route. If there is a room for a fresh Jewish business ethics initiative, then it may be better to include it as part of a multi-faith platform, such as the Faiths Forum for London.

And if there is a need to stimulate thinking on business and other areas of ethics, then there is one organisation ideally placed to do it: Limmud. A Limmud Institute of Ethics could be a natural progression of its educational work.

Limmud is the cross-communal agency par excellence, able to draw support from across the religious spectrum; it brings together rabbis and Jewish educators with people with expertise in other fields; over the years it has helped to foster new lines of ethical inquiry, such as environmentalism; and it has built up an extensive teaching network, not only here but internationally.

A Limmud Institute of Ethics should be relatively inexpensive to set up. It would be able to tap into Limmud’s educational wealth and redistribute it for the benefit of wider audiences.

Lord Sacks: religion can help sustain welfare state

Jennifer Lipman — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 11:55:45 +0000

Lord Sacks has described religion as "the redemption of our solitude" during a parliamentary debate on the role of faith in society.

The chief rabbi, who will retire from his post in less than a year, suggested that while in secular times religion was often misunderstood as "a strange set of beliefs and idiosyncratic rituals", it could be better understood for its teachings about "making sacrifices for the sake of others, through charity".

"Long before these functions were taken over by the state, religious groups, here and elsewhere, were building schools and hospitals and networks of support," he said, referring to Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam's research on the role of faith groups in society.

"Not for a moment do I say that to be good you need to be religious. However, religiosity as measured by attendance at a house of worship turns out to be a better predictor of altruism and empathy than education, age, income, gender or race."

Lord Sacks went on to discuss the "social implications" of religion, for example sustaining the welfare state when the government was unable to do so. And in a remark reminiscent of his criticism last November of Apple's role in the consumer society, he added that religion could "act as a counter voice to the siren song of a culture that sometimes seems to value self over others, rights over responsibilities, getting more than giving, consumption more than contribution, and success more than service to others".

The debate was called by Lord Singh, a Sikh, who said he wanted to counter the fact that "religion today has a bad press", and involved contributions from peers of all faiths. Among those speaking was Labour peer Lord Janner, who spoke of last weekend's Mitzvah day as an example of "the Jewish community's role in society".

"It is a day when the Jewish community comes together to help society, not financially, but by giving our most valuable asset: our time," he said. "The contribution made by religious communities to our society is outstanding and we should recognise and praise their input into our country."

Baroness Neuberger also spoke, urging the government to assess the "broad lack of public understanding of the roles that faith can play in wider society".

The West London Synagogue rabbi added that the government should "consider drawing in people of faith to debates about education for everyone, volunteering for everyone and the need to learn to give and receive."

Responding, Baroness Warsi said: "This Government believe that religion plays a vital role in British society. Not only do we support people in their right to follow a faith if they choose to do so; we also celebrate faith and faith communities' contribution to society."

US Jews ponder how to engage young people in community life

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:00:25 +0000

Rabbi Rick Jacobs faced some of the 3,000 people attending America’s annual conference of Jewish philanthropic organisations and presented a key challenge now confronting north American Jewry: how to engage young people in Judaism and in organised communal life.

“We know that those in the next generation are not jumping on the Jewish bandwagon,” said Rabbi Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. But hope remains, because far from disengaging, young Jews are expressing what Judaism means to them, albeit in a different form, he said.

“Jews in their 20s and 30s are hungry. They’re hungry for meaning and purpose in their lives. Young Jews want to connect in a way that is beyond themselves,” Rabbi Jacobs told delegates in a packed Baltimore ballroom.

Rabbi Jacobs was the first of a series of speakers to raise the issue during the three-day gathering of the Jewish Federations of North America, which represents the 155 local federations that raise funds for Jewish needs.

Sessions dealt with ways that social media can be exploited — and already are — to reach young Jews who might be unaffiliated to traditional organisations. Unstated was the long-range necessity of bringing them into the fold: someone will have to shoulder the responsibility for funding and sustaining the myriad charitable organisations that Jewish federations endow. They include synagogues, schools, hospitals, sports and recreation centres and senior citizen residences; and services, such as vocational training, counselling, food banks and Jewish programming on campuses.

The amount at stake is significant, with the federations raising and disbursing $1 billion annually. Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky told the federations’ presidents that outreach to young Jews was “one of the seminal challenges of contemporary Jewry. The question is how to reconnect them and re-engage with them in their communities” .

Gift horse with rotten mouths

David Robson — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 10:18:51 +0000

The other day, I came across one of my barmitzvah presents — a beautiful, old, not so say ancient, evening scarf. Cream silk it is, with black-and-white silk fringes and my initials embroidered on it. It came from Sulka (of New York, London and Paris), a gentlemen’s outfitters who had catered for the Duke Of Windsor, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford and Clark Gable. We are talking luxury from the days when luxury was exclusive, not some cheapjack international label hawked in every airport and shopping mall with knock-offs going cheap everywhere from China to Chelmsford.

I can’t remember who gave it to me but clearly it was someone who had high hopes that I would mature into the sort of chap who was rarely out of a dinner jacket after 6.30pm. Sad to say, I haven’t lived up to it. Not only have I not spent evenings at opera galas or palaces or embassies, I haven’t even been a regular at the sort of simchas where a chap without a silk evening scarf would feel underdressed.

These days kids get barmitzvah presents that guarantee “instant gratification”, which is a nasty way of saying something a boy will actually use and enjoy from the moment he lays hands on it. Mine was the time of “today I am a fountain pen” – a parody barmitzvah speech that was a tragically true account of the fountain of fountain pens barmitzvah provoked. Swans, Watermans, Parker 51s. They looked better in your blazer pocket than a cheap Platignum or Osmiroid but nobody presented them to you thinking they would give you a good time. They would come in handy when you became a solicitor.

My uncle gave me a bicycle — a black Raleigh Roadster with sit-up-and-beg handlebars and a chain completely encased in heavy metal. It was no fun and it took a crane to lift it. I was told it would be useful “when I went to university” — possibly the most depressing thing anyone ever said to me. But being a dutiful type I kept it and did take it to university where happily it was stolen on the first day.

Apart from that, there was The Book Of Jewish Thoughts presented by the shul committee “on the occasion of…” There must have been tens of thousands of these given out and without a doubt are among the least-read books in history. I never opened mine but I’m quite sure that, as page-turners, they make A Brief History of Time look like 50 Shades of Grey. Then there was the set of machzorim from my parents that I had to inscribe myself: “To David from Mummy and Daddy”. The Star Hebrew Book Company, New York edition. To use them, you have to know your way around because when the chap on the bimah says: “we’re on page 473 in this machzor and 592 in that one” it’s not among them.

The beauty of an iPad is that it does away with the need for a fountain pen, or books of Jewish Thoughts come to that. And what about a machzor on an iPad? Or why not give the kinderle a Kindle? There’s a bit of a debate going on among the devout about what would make a Kindle kosher for Shabbos. And if Kindles are today’s fountain pens, at least there’s eBay.

Recycling — it’s all in the Torah

Jessica Elgot — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 12:57:48 +0100

Recycling, green energy and conserving water have their roots in Jewish, Muslim and Christian texts, according to a new book.

Rabbi Natan Levy — social action consultant to the Board of Deputies — contributed the Jewish chapters to Sharing Eden, a Conservation Foundation project.

Other contributors were David Shreeve, the foundation’s director and environmental adviser to the Archbishops’ Council, and Harfiyah Haleem, an expert on Islam and the environment.

Rabbi Levy traces Jewish thought on the environment back to Adam entering the Garden of Eden “confronted with the task of sustainability... Do not let the world remain barren, do not accept brokenness. That is the message that God wished to impress upon Adam, and through him to all of humanity.”

Launched last week at the Royal Geographical Society and supported by the Board of Deputies, Sharing Eden examines religious thought on waste, water, energy, natural resources, climate change, food and biodiversity.

Wanted by police - more Specials from synagogues

Jessica Elgot — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:32:50 +0100

There was a strong police presence at the New West End Synagogue on Monday as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe launched a campaign to recruit a special constable from every London shul.

Posters featuring a police helmet and a kippah will go up in synagogues and Mr Hogan-Howe wants "to persuade people from the Jewish community that this can be a great career.

"You can go from being on the street to being the commissioner - and I should know. If you are good enough, then you are good enough to get to the top. It's not about who you know. You have the opportunity to have great influence."

The commissioner - who was joined by Jewish Police Association members - went on to emphasise his commitment to tackling any anti-Israel disruptions during London Olympics. "These athletes have been training for years and no one should jeopardise their Olympics. I have met the Israeli ambassador twice to discuss the specific security needs of the team and we will tailor the response to each team to make sure the athletes are kept safe."

Around 200 policemen and women are JPA members but it is thought that more Jewish officers are serving.

Chief Officer Lorraine Woolley is the first Jewish - and female - head of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary.

"I decided to volunteer when I was 16 after an elderly neighbour died after being attacked during a burglary," she said. "I had to wait a while to sign up but I've been in the Specials 42 years now. Of course, people are worried about their family members joining the police and being hurt, but it really is very unlikely."

Deputy JPA chair Michael Loebenberg hoped for "substantial recruitment. People might be concerned about a conflict of interest if they work with the CST, but they can come and speak to us about what opportunities there are and we can get around it. We've recruited a lot of Jewish officers who have previously been involved in the CST or Shomrim."

JPA chaplain Rabbi Jonathan Romain acknowledged that "traditionally, being a policeman was not seen as a job for a good Jewish boy, and especially not a girl.

"But I know that when it was first formed, the JPA was astonished at how many Jewish officers were already in the force. They have been underappreciated.

"Obviously there are issues for some observant Jews and keeping Shabbat. But for me there is such a close connection between Jewish values and a career in the police, the concept of morality and the law. I often feel I would like to have been a policeman were I not a rabbi. A policeman can make a dramatic difference between life and death."