The JC Letters Page April 28 2017

Dora Hirsh, 
London, N3

I agree wholeheartedly with  Leah Pennisi-Glaser in her concerns about faith schools. 

Lord Sacks and I were contemporaries at Christ’s College Finchley in the 1960s. Many others who went on to become leaders of the Jewish community also attended. Almost half the boys were Jewish. But, around 10 years ago, my wife’s nephew was the only Jewish pupil in the sixth form.

I discussed this  with a colleague who is a devout Muslim. She attended Copthall, where she had many Jewish friends.  She told me that, in her community too, there is considerable pressure for children to be sent to faith schools. She also said that, despite living in a “Jewish” part of Hendon, her children do not know any Jewish children. The only Jews they come across are the stereotypes they read about in the media, or the ultra-Orthodox they see in the street.

Faith schools have many clear advantages. My daughter sends her two older children to such. But this comes at a cost. It is also true that many parents choose such schools, not out of religious conviction but out of fear their children will be isolated in a hostile outside world. But if our multicultural society is failing it is because different ethnic and religious communities confine themselves to self imposed ghettos — a problem only likely to become worse in “post Brexit” Britain. Could it not be argued that faith schools, for all their positive aspects, are part of the problem, not the solution?

Anthony Melnikoff, 
Herts EN5

Sanctimonious

The programme for the Copthall Stadium Yom Hashoah event contains one of the most embarrassing pieces of bowdlerisation of Hebrew possible. Hannah Szenesz’s beautiful, moving song Eli, Eli is billed as Keili, Keili. 

This is preposterous fawning upon the wish by some to indulge in what is not religious observance, but a piece of sanctimonious religiosity. The G-dash-D school of thought  is here taken to barmy extremes. I have attended a batmitzvah where a speech was ended by three little girls saying “Halleluka.” This is not a sanctification of The Name, it is a mockery of it.

Barry Hyman,
Bushey Heath

Deputies’ democratic determination

As the national, democratic, representative organisation of the UK Jewish community, we are always open to constructive suggestions about how we can do our work even better (JC April 21).

We are very proud of the work that we do across the country. We take our work to every Jewish community, however big or small, through our Deputies, local representative bodies and organisations. We held a councillors’ seminar in Manchester in February, a similar event in Newcastle-Gateshead in April and we have another planned for Leeds. Our interfaith engagement programme has taken us to Bradford, Leicester and Leeds in the recent past for a series of encounters with faith communities in each location.

For our regional weekend we were in Exeter last month, one of the smallest communities in the country, and there was a record attendance of Deputies travelling from all regions of the country.

Our political engagement extends to all regions. We will be sending our Jewish Manifesto to every Parliamentary candidate standing in the General Election, and in the past year we have published manifestos for the Scottish and Northern Ireland Assemblies and a version in Welsh for the Welsh Assembly Elections. We are in the process of developing a manifesto for local councillors.

Never has the Board of Deputies been more engaged with communities across the UK. We will continue to roll out our programmes and strive to represent every Jew in every community.

Jonathan Arkush
President, Board of Deputies of British Jews,
 London NW5

Ignoring  valuable Charedi charities

In Lionel Salama’s article calling for a radical charity overhaul (JC, April 21) he makes a statement which is both irresponsible and can be taken as offensive.  He states: “In a little over a decade, it is estimated that more than half of Jewish children in the UK will be born to Charedi families.  At best, the mainstream community will stagnate; at worst, it will decline. By 2030, the relatively smaller mainstream community will have to support a larger Jewish community”. 

A widely accepted definition of charity is the voluntary giving of help.  No part of the community “will have” to support anyone. What makes Mr Salama feel that Charedim don’t contribute to charities?

There are hundreds of small charities set up and run by Charedim that operate extremely leanly as opposed to the large mainstream Jewish charities of which Mr Salama speaks, which have huge costs and are cumbersome to operate.  Moreover, in a 2016 JPR charity report, they found that Jews in general are more likely to give to non-Jewish charities then Jewish ones.  In the same report, it identifies that the more religious give larger amounts and  are more likely to give to Jewish causes, the most religious giving only to Jewish causes.  Therefore as the “mainstream” declines, the evidence suggests contributions to Jewish charity will rise. 

Modi Spitzer, 
Manchester M25

Lionel Salama asserts that when the Jewish Blind Society and the Jewish Welfare Board merged to create Jewish Care, Norwood Child Care was invited to join but Norwood’s lay leaders declined. 
Norwood received no such invitation which in any case would have been inappropriate given the very different client base.

Brian Levy, Chairman Norwood Child Care 1986-1992, 
London NW3