We must build relationships to conquer prejudice
We write as the 4 Jewish trustees of Nisa-Nashim (the Jewish/Muslim women’s network), to express dismay regarding Melanie Phillips’ article (We must call out the Muslims who hate Jews, April 12).
Yes, there is Muslim-based antisemitism. However, as pointed out in our new #ActiveAllies charter, the use of deliberately inflammatory language against Muslims, or indeed anyone, simply fuels hatred
Calling out antisemitism within Muslim communities is not enough to tackle it. It is much more effective, in Britain today, to build human relationships to break down prejudice.
Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred are not based on the the same tropes, but both fester in people who are often ill informed, intolerant, and who are encouraged by articles like this one.
Judith Flacks-Leigh
Miriam Gitlin
Denise Joseph
Laura Marks
Nisa-Nashim
An evil genius
Your reference to Netanyahu’s “genius” (Leader column, April 12) at winning elections should be “evil genius”, for what else can one call his continual racist incitement against and intimidation of Israel’s Arab citizens and his working with the extreme racist Kahanists to enable them to enter the Knesset?
It is past the time when Anglo-Jewry’s religious and lay leadership should have shown the moral courage to condemn Netanyahu’s racist provocations. And if we do not condemn them, what moral authority have we to expect others to condemn antisemitism?
Stanley Bloom
Tel Aviv
Liberal love and respect
I was very pleased to read about Chevra in the United Synagogues (In death, dignity and care trump the rules of life, April 5) and as a Liberal member of Belsize Square Synagogue (BSS), I would like to respond.
Liberal synagogues also meet on 7th Adar, the symbolic date of Moses’ death. We attend an annual dinner amongst several non-orthodox chevra teams in North West London.
We were fortunate recently to be entertained by a mixed choir from Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue. Last year it was BSS’s turn.
We at BSS perform taharah with men for men and women solely for women. Thirty percent of the volunteers of the Chevra team are retired or can re-arrange work enabling taharah to be performed during business hours.
Taharah is carried out and completed at the premises of the funeral directors who have provided facilities and tachrichim for this purpose.
On enrolling in BSS everyone is given the option to opt out of Taharah if they so wish.
Like the US, when a loved one dies there is no worry about how they will be treated. The loved one is treated with the utmost love and respect and tended to humanely.
Helen Grunberg and Sue Arnold
Belsize Square Synagogue
German-Jewish landmark
Further to your report (Germany’s armed forces set to advertise for its first military rabbi since the Shoah, April 12), there is a Jewish-German landmark few people are aware of.
In 1997 the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires became, in collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, the first Catholic temple in the world to have a Memorial Mural that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and those who were murdered in the attacks to the Embassy of Israel (1992) and the Jewish Community Center of Argentina (AMIA, 1994).
The Memorial contains pieces of religious books rescued from the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka and other relics like a partiture of the Kadish which belonged to the Synagogue of the Ghetto of Warsaw.
It also contains fragments of the Book of Samuel, rescued from the debris of the Embassy of Israel and pieces of the Talmud found among the ruins of the AMIA.
In 2004 a replica of the Mural was inaugurated inside the Vaterunser Protestant Church, in Berlin.
Bishop Wolfang Huber, then president of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), the largest church in Germany; the German Secretary of State, Otto Schily; and the president of the Berlin Jewish Community, Stephen Kramer, among others, attended the inauguration ceremony of an event that has no precedent in the history of the German-Jewish relationship.
Baruch Tenembaum
Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
New York
Saucy Pesach rip-off
Your article on the cost of keeping Pesach (Poverty hits hard at Pesach time, April 12) brings to mind an interesting example.
Throughout the year my wife purchases tins of tomato and mushroom sauce from our local deli. This Rokeach product is labelled kosher and also kosher for Pesach all the year round. Two weeks ago this was £1.80. This week the identical product, with the same use-by date of March 2020, was £2.55.
When this price hike of over 40 per cent was questioned, the shop offered to show their invoice which they claimed carried an increased delivery charge, even though nothing about the product had changed from that being supplied all year round. Can this be justified, or is it an example of a manufacturer taking advantage of Pesach?
Clive Rosen.
London N11
Bankers, not Jews
Marianne Levy (Is this Harry Potter image antisemitic? April 12) should not take offence at Warner Brothers’ image of a Gringotts Bank gnome. There is nothing labelling the image ‘Jew’, unlike the infamous Der Sturmer cartoons or the cartoons in present day Arab publications. Nor should oil sheikhs take offence, because there is nothing labelling the gnome ‘oil sheikh’. The ‘woke’ must stop seeing offence where none is intended. The one group which might legitimately take offence at the ugly image of a Gringotts gnome is bankers.
Dr David Barnett
London NW6
Remember Michael Flome
April 22 marks seventy five years since the tragic wartime accident which took the life of one of this country’s leading musicians, Michael Flome (Hyman Flaum) at 36.
Michael was killed when the army truck in which he was travelling was involved in an accident while returning to London after playing with his band at a UK troop base, while on military service.
He had only recently returned unscathed from playing many troop bases abroad.
He had risen to fame as a brilliant violinist with his band during the 1930s and at various times had residencies at several top nightspots.
He also broadcast regularly on BBC radio with his orchestra from the Mayfair Hotel, London.
Some of his recordings are still available to listen to on YouTube including his hit version of Lambeth Walk from the show Me and My Girl.
Michael is buried in the Commonwealth War Grave section at Marlowe Road Cemetery, East Ham.
If anyone has any memories of Michael they are welcome to contact me.
Les Cazin
les.cazin@sky.com
