The United Synagogue has, as it said it would, investigated the circumstances underlying the scandal of parents being lied to about the burial of their babies, unearthed earlier this year by the JC. It has made that report public. It has apologised. And it has promised that nothing of the sort will ever happen again. That is all good.

But the report is a whitewash. Despite the claims of the new officers of the US that they left no stone unturned in their investigation and are alive to the need for openness, not one person has been held responsible for what happened. It is relatively easy to offer apologies; but atonement is impossible without fully confronting the past. And the US' report offers almost nothing that the JC has not already reported. Had the US said that it knew who was responsible but felt that the matter should be dealt with privately, that would have been defensible. But by choosing to ignore any direct personal responsibility by its employees, the US has lived down to expectations.