Sharon Klaff Ambrosine Shitrit, Humayun Mirza, Akeela Ahmed, David Collins, James Martin, Stephen Collings, Steven R. Harvey and Enfield and Winchmore Synagogue share their views with JC reader
July 11, 2019 11:12
Ben Weich’s report of our screening of Katie Hopkins’s film Homelands (JC, July 5) resulted in our being bullied online by Jewish establishment figures and antisemites, including George Galloway, none of whom were there on the night. We understand we have even been reported to Prevent.
Homelands is merely about certain demographic changes in Europe, particularly the UK and France, that have left much of the British population feeling alienated.
Weich mocks those who are interviewed in the film, referring to “vox pops of white British residents”. That fails to address the kind of alienation issues that led, for example, to so many voting for Brexit. Hopkins visits Savile Town in Yorkshire where the white population is less than one per cent and which was home to three of the four 7/7 suicide bombers.
French Jews describe their worries about whether they and their children have a future in France. We hear how Nadia Remadna, a Muslim woman in Paris who is working to curb the growth of extremism among Muslim youth, was thrown out of a café for being a woman.
The film discusses the murder in Paris of 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, which Weich refers to as “hijacking” her memory. Mireille was reportedly murdered by Yacine Mihoub, the 28-year-old Muslim son of her neighbour. We fail to understand how this can be considered “hijacking” when discussing Islamic antisemitism in France.
Significantly, Weich’s report ignores the story of a French couple who made aliyah. Monique Kritowsky, the wife, said: “In Germany before the War, the pessimists ended up having a swimming-pool in Hollywood and the optimists ended up in Auschwitz.”
In the words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Islamic antisemitism is of a scale and scope that most people in the West do not understand and is therefore all the more insidious.”
Sharon Klaff and Ambrosine Shitrit
Campaign4Truth & Eye on Antisemitism
I write as a reader with Muslim heritage to commend your article by Ben Weich on July 4, which is an exemplar of a writer finding a painful truth about members of his own community and calling out the racism he saw when he came across it.
It’s a credit to the editorial team on the JC to print the story, knowing that it could have been used to criticise the Jewish community as a whole for the actions of a minority.
I will be sharing this article with my Muslim friends and relatives as an example of how we in our community should expose racism that we may find within our community, however awkward or uncomfortable, and to acknowledge and respect that the most critical of the Jewish community, is the Jewish community itself.
Humayun Mirza
Dunstable
Bedfordshire
The JC’s coverage of the Katie Hopkins event at the Pillar Hotel was appropriately scathing. The vilification of Muslims is prejudiced and wrong.
Indeed, fuelling hatred and conspiracy theories is something that Jewish people know well, and is dangerous. The Jewish and Muslim trustees of Nisa-Nashim are determined, instead, to work together, acting as active allies towards a different narrative; one of hope, friendship and shared values.”
Akeela Ahmed,
Judith Flacks, and six other signatories
It can indeed be a challenge when more people turn up to shul than a community was expecting. But what a wonderful problem to have!
I would hope that every community would be delighted when hundreds of young families turn up in shul on Shabbat and so I was saddened to read Harry Thompson’s letter regarding the CRP “points” system for children to join a Jewish school (Letters, July 5).
While the concept of CRP was not of our making, the United Synagogue sees the increased participation of families as something to embrace. Some of these families would not normally attend shul and so we welcome the opportunity for our communities to engage with them.
Creating a warm welcome within our communities is one of our core values.
We have been encouraged by the many programmes United Synagogue communities have developed in order to make these CRP visits as meaningful as possible and just this week we were talking with five separate families who have become regular synagogue attendees thanks to their CRP engagement.
The CRP “season” gives us an opportunity to welcome more people to shul. We hope that a warm welcome will result in even more Jews engaging with their Judaism.
David Collins
Chief Programmes Officer, United
Synagogue
Following the editorial about the importance of Israel tours being equipped to deal with all manner of personal and identity issues (JC, July 5) I would like to suggest that now might be a good time for community educational providers to look at alternative ways for 16-year-olds to develop their personal and Jewish journeys — including engaging the 50 per cent of people who don’t go on tour.
This might include smaller groups that are more activity focused, providing a depth of educational engagement that isn’t really possible within the whistle-stop nature of an Israel tour.
The summer “rite of passage” does serve as a social fest and a vital connection to Israel but, in my view, the movement leaders have not had enough life experience to manage and understand the chanachim and often struggle to cope with the schedule themselves.
James Martin
London NW2
In the course of her interesting article (The danger of taking lectures on antisemitism, JC, July 5), Shoshannah Keats Jaskoll asserts that the Jews “are all of two per cent of the world’s population”.
In fact, with a world population estimated at 7.7 billion and a Jewish population of no more than 15 million, the correct proportion is nearer 0.2 per cent. This, of course, reinforces her primary argument regarding disproportionate attention to Jewish experience in the battle between right and left, but it is particularly important to get such facts right in an age when antisemitic conspiracy theories abound.
Stephen Collins
Pinner, Middlesex
The resignations of Lords Triesman, Darzi and Turnberg from the Labour Party, warning that it isn’t politically safe for Jews, shame both Labour and the JLM. Moreover, the process of reselecting/deselecting existing Labour MPs as Parliamentary candidates for the 2022 General Election is now beginning, and the PLP is reported to be in a state of “fear and paranoia” as the hard left prepare to “purge” 70 anti-Corbyn moderate MPs, undoubtedly including the few remaining Jewish ones.
So it is time JLM members stopped deluding themselves, put ethnic loyalty above misplaced party loyalty and walked out with dignity like their lordships.
Steven R. Harvey,
Cheadle Hulme,
Cheshire
The Enfield and Winchmore synagogue will shortly be celebrating its 70th anniversary. We are seeking people who can recall Reverend Abraham Issac Lewin, the first Minister of the community.
Rev Lewin cared for many young people who escaped Germany on the Kindertransport. From the mid-1930s, the three-storey house that was to become the synagogue in 1949 was the private home of Rev Lewin. When the Kindertransport began he housed more than 20 youngsters, and his name is perpetuated in the synagogue by the naming of the Abraham Lewin room.
Please contact our Chairman, Michael Rubinstein, at the following email address: