A campaign was launched in Stamford Hill this week to raise £600,000 before Shavuot in order to help parents fight custody battles for their children.

The Hatzolas Yeladim campaign, backed by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, urged London Jews to save children “being taken away from our faith”.The aim of the appeal is to raise money for legal fees to support parents in divorce cases who believe their former partner has gone “off the derech” – strayed from an observant Orthodox life.

A leaflet supporting the campaign cited the case of one family break-up where the mother was left praying to God to help ensure “my children should always remain frum” and that "the satan" did not win.

But it said the situation was “not unique” and there were “more than ten yiddishe neshomos [Jewish souls] who are at the threshold of deciding which route they will go down”.

It said in order to win the battles, “we need to have the top lawyers, which means that every case ends up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds”.

As of Monday June1, the campaign had raised almost half of its target - £296,000.