Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, the Reform movement’s Senior Rabbi, has hit out at the United Synagogue over its handling of the stone-setting of her father Lord Janner.
She said she had been allowed to read out the inscription on his stone at Willesden Cemetery today only as “a final concession”.
In a post on Facebook after the ceremony, she said there had been “a bizarre and upsetting negotiation” with the cemetery’s religious authorities.
The Orthodox rabbi, Reuven Livingstone, who is Chaplain to the Armed Forces, who attended the ceremony, had been “a shining light of rachmanut (compassion) amidst unnecessarily harsh restrictions that were placed on my participation, whether it was because I am a woman – or this specific woman.”
She said: “Only after mustering considerable determination and many different conversations was I allowed ‘as a final concession’ to read out loud the words on my father’s stone.”
Lord Janner died just over a year ago in December 2015.
Rabbi Janner Klausner wrote that “due to the false allegations that have been made against Dad and our desire to protect ourselves and my parents' double grave, we made the stone setting just for close family and a very few friends”.
She added: “However, the process leading up to the stone setting was excruciating. It exacerbated rather than healed our very public pain.”
Lord Janner, a former Leicester MP, had faced allegations of historical child abuse, which his family strongly denied.
At the stone-setting, his son, Daniel Janner, said the family had begun "a monumental battle to clear his wonderful name".
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