How else would you justify the decision to explore issues faced by someone from a Jamaican-Jewish background, in the same report that explores the experiences of an ultra-Orthodox Yemenite family from Stamford Hill?
Furthermore, the attention the minority communities are given in the report is disproportionate to their numbers. Take Phase 1 of the Commission in which key evidence will be gathered: three of the five meetings are dedicated to black Jews. One is dedicated to the UK’s 25,000 Mizrachi, Sephardi and Yemenite Jews, while the other session is committed to ‘non-black Jews of Colour’.
Keen to separate my instinctive reaction from a more measured one, I called communal figures from a Mizrachi background to gauge their response. To my surprise, respected rabbis said they had not been consulted and did not know about the decision to include Mizrachis in the commission.
Others questioned why it took the BLM movement to provoke an investigation into the experiences of Mizrachi Jews, when leaders had for years called for more education and understanding of the community’s rich history, culture and practices.
One figure, who would not go on-record, said it was indicative of the British Jewish mainstream’s misunderstanding of minorities — though they appreciated that Mizrachi history was finally being considered.
Clearly, I was not alone in my reaction. I’m not here to say one minority’s experience is superior to another’s — but I would say that though it may be well-intentioned, when the experiences are so fundamentally different; grouping them together in the same commission is arguably in itself a form of typecasting that does not give our minorities the respect they deserve.
