1335 - 5th Oct 2023

EXHIBITORS

Kidswear Collective

Pre-loved and past season designer childrenswear. kidswearcollective.com

@kidswearcollective

Hello Baby

Midwife-led antenatal classes, hypnobirthing courses, midwifery care and social events for expectant and new parents.

hellobabyantenatal.co.uk

07944 181 676 / 07908 188600

@hellobaby_antenatal

Specsavers Borehamwood

The well-known solution for all your optical needs.

020 8736 0390 specsavers.co.uk

Opatra Clinic Borehamwood

Award-winning luxury skincare. opatraclinic.com

020 8016 6063

@opatraclinic

Dr Silberstein Clinic

High-quality care for babies and parents. drsilbersteinclinic.co.uk / breastfeedingdoctor.co.uk

07421 223577

@breastfeedingdoctor.uk

PaL – Phone and Learn

Free Jewish learning programme. phoneandlearn.org

020 8455 3118

@phoneandlearn

Babylon Park

Space-themed adventure and amusement park in Camden. babylonpark.com

020 8819 0044

@babylonparkldn

Nook & Niche

Celebration designs for weddings, birthdays, bat/bar mitzvahs. nookandniche.co.uk

@nookandnicheuk

The nctNeurofeedback Clinic

Neuro-physiological brain assessment and training for cognitive and emotional challenges and disorders in children and adults.

nctneurofeedback.com

0333 444 0930

La Maison

Independent boutique in Virginia Water and Windsor. lamaisonfashion.co.uk

07795 342334

@lamaisonfashion

Mowbray Puzzles

Quality, educational puzzles and toys. woodliketoplay.co.uk

01785 813014/ 07868 725895

UW Utility Warehouse

Simplify your life and finances with a single, cost-e ective bill for all your home services.

yousavehere.co.uk

07958 959822

Seed

Meaningful Jewish experiences and education for adults and young families. seed.uk.net

020 8958 0820

@seedfamilies

Yaya Maternity

Antenatal education, breastfeeding support, and nighttime care. yayamaternity.uk

07838 429929 / 07946 113687

@breastfeedinglounge

In Stitches Gi s

A range of handmade tablerunners and gi s for babies and toddlers.

Etsy Shop: InStitchesGi sStore institchesgi s8@gmail.com

Hairbraiding Masterclass Braiding services, gems and glitter for parties and functions.

@hairbraidingmasterclass

Purer

Award-winning supplements developed by doctors. bepurer.co.uk

GetSetGo Swim Academy, Golders Green

Exceptional swimming lessons in beautiful, purpose- built venues. get-set-go.com/goldersgreen

020 8050 0070

@getsetgoswimacademy

Little Fingers Tiny Toes Casting Treasured keepsakes that will last a lifetime. l t.co.uk 07946 455892

@littlefingerstinytoescasting

fact-packed,

noodle-juice.com @noodlejuicebooks

The Wolberg Studio Judaica Pintillism-art by George Wolberg. wolbergstudio.com

020 3439 4664 @thewolbergstudio

Engineering 4 Kids

Robotics and coding workshops, parties and camps. engineering4kids.co.uk

01727 638955

The SIP Store

The perfect sugar-free Shabbat tea. thesipstore.co.uk 07849 653284

Good Egg Medical Empowers better health through first-aid training and education. goodeggmedical.co.uk

020 8125 7003

Me-Shirt Kits

Personalised fabric painting kits. meshirtkits.com @meshirtkits

SBI (UK)

For all your banking needs. sbiuk.statebank 0208 458 3856 / 07584 880565 mgr.goldersgreen.sbiuk@statebank.com

Sign

Jewish Volunteering Network (JVN)

Volunteering opportunities within the Jewish and wider communities. jvn.org.uk

020 8203 6427

JW3

Celebrating 10 years of engaging families with everyday activities and bigger events. Don’t miss the upcoming ice rink and the first Jewish panto in London. jw3.org.uk

020 7433 8988

@jw3london

All About Antenatal

Classes for pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period. allaboutantenatal.co.uk 07946 581524

@allaboutantenatal

Hilton London Watford

Fantastic accommodation and a wide range of event spaces. hilton.com

01923 235881 @hiltonhotels

Moonlite Entertainments

Photobooths, mobile DJs and other hire services for events moonliteentertainments.co.uk 01727 841025 / 07970 275998 @moonlite_entertainmemts

WeJam

WeJam Entertainment experience where your guests get to become rockstars! wejam.studio

Jackie’s Gi s With Love Homeware, gi s and bespoke silk flower arrangements. jackiesgi swithlove.co.uk

07949440096

@jackies_gi s_with_love

NRah Photos Family photoshoots for families, engagements and weddings. nrahphotos.mypixieset.com

07384 431019

@nrahphotos

Costco

From newborn up to teenage years, all you need under one roof. costco.co.uk

01923 830477

Mini First Aid

A range of award-winning classes for all the family. minifirstaid.co.uk

07908 078524 / 07967 228986

@minifirstaidnorthlondon / @minifirstaid_watford

Just Go Check

Comparisons of private medical insurance policies covering every provider in the UK. justgocheck.com

01202 283680 / 07788 926682

OB1 Theatre School, Art Club and Rhythm & Rhyme Confidence-building classes where children can unleash creativity.

OB1TheatreSchool.co.uk

07552 405486

Zidannes Sports School Multisports coaching company for children aged 4+. zidannessports.com

020 3005 2844

@zidannessports

Club Excel

Multi-activity holiday camps run alongside Excel Sport which o ers specialised term-time football training. clubexcel.co.uk Club Excel 01923 46947 Excel Sport 020 8950 8526

@campexcel

Victoria Ward Facepainting and Cra s

Facepainting and cra parties for all ages, plus personalised gi s. 07976 613127

PJ Library 8,000 children in the UK receive the gi of a PJ Library book each month, celebrating Jewish traditions, values and culture. Pjlibrary.org.uk

Jasmine Catering

Quality kosher catering for events large and small. jasminecatering.co.uk

020 8951 0100

@jasmine_caterers

The Baby Cot Shop Inspiring, unforgettable spaces for your little one. thebabycotshop.com 020 3371 7530

Little Dreamers Sleep Consultancy

Baby and child sleep consultancy 07467 192095 @littledreamerssleepconsultancy

WIN WIN WIN!

VISIT

A kids’ party at BABYLON PARK worth £500, tickets for the first ever Jewish panto in London at JW3, a free treatment at OPATRA, £200 to spend at KIDSWEAR COLLECTIVE, a pair of glasses from SPECSAVERS, a two-day adventure at ENGINEERING 4 KIDS worth £130, two free days at ZIDANNES SPORTS SCHOOL, a free term at OB1 THEATRE SCHOOL, £50 to spend at NOOK & NICHE, a session at WEJAM worth £280, a grey stone planter from JACKIE’S GIFTS WITH LOVE.

Politics of fear

Tory mayoral candidate sparks outrage after claiming Jews

‘frightened’

under Sadiq Khan

Claims by the Conservative London mayoral candidate that Jews in London are “frightened” of mayor Sadiq Khan have raised concern that the community could again be used as a “political football” ahead of next year’s elections.

Susan Hall, who is challenging the Labour mayor as he seeks a third term next May, refused to apologise for remarks made in a speech at the Conservative Friends of Israel reception at the party’s Manchester conference.

In her keynote speech on Tuesday, home secretary Suella Braverman defended Hall’s attempt to open up a wedge between the capital’s Jewish community and mayor Khan, who is Muslim. Braverman described widespread criticism of Hall’s comments, including from the

Board of Deputies, as part of a “character assassination” driven by Labour.

In a speech yesterday, Rishi Sunak singled out Hall for praise, saying she is “doing a great job holding Sadiq Khan to account”.

Referencing the “wealth and joy” of the north London community, Hall had told attendees at Monday’s CFI event that she knew “how frightened some of the community is because of the divisive attitudes of Sadiq Khan”. The London Assembly member and former hairdresser also claimed she

needed help to defeat Khan “particularly for our Jewish community”.

Her comments drew instant condemnation from the Board of Deputies, which issued a widely shared statement on social media, stating: “Throughout his tenure as mayor, Sadiq Khan has treated our community with friendship and respect.

“We hope to co-host the key mayoral candidates at a 2024 Jewish hustings where it will be clear that while London Jews may have varying political views, there is no fear present at all.”

Hall’s comments also drew sharp criticism from moderate Conservative voices, including the respected commentator and author Danny Finkelstein, who tweeted: “This claim about the mayor is unfounded and flatly wrong.”

Business minister Nusrat Ghani, a Conservative Muslim voice who has spoken out against antisemitism, also told a conference fringe event: “The language of fear and demeaning our political opponents is not a Conservative value that I recognise… and we shouldn’t stoop to it.

“To get the Board of Deputies to issue a statement to slap that comment down shows these comments do not work, especially when they attract such condemnation from the people that you are purporting to support.”

Jewish Labour veteran Dame Margaret Hodge said: “If she had any integrity Susan Hall would immediately retract

Continued on page 2

ANSWERED PRAYERS

FAMILY’S APPEAL FOR LIFE-SAVING DONOR

A grandmother of four from Barnet is appealing to the community to help her find a lifesaving kidney donor, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

Ruth Adley has Crohn’s disease as well as polycystic kidney disease (PKD), which has left both her kidneys covered in inoperable cysts and her kidney function at a dangerously low 16 percent.

Speaking to Jewish News,

the 67-year-old said: “You can’t blast the cysts. There is literally nothing they can do. It’s not like kidney stones which I’ve had in the past. I’m cold the whole time and get cramps in my feet and legs. I never get a good night’s sleep.”

Now Adley, along with her children, Joshua and Natasha, and sister Suzanne, are desperate to find a donor. Ruth added: “My son has the same

disease so is not a match and my daughter has tried to go on the list but she has very young kids, so it’s not practical. My sister also tried but because she’s also got Crohn’s they rejected her.”

Following a recent hospital appointment, Adley was put on the pre-assessment transplant list under the umbrella of the Royal Free Hospital.

She says she has “no idea”

where she is placed on that list. Almost breaking down towards the end of the conversation, Ruth added: “Please, please find it in your heart to give a kidney to try and help me so I can enjoy my grandchildren.”

 If you would like to be considered as a potential kidney donor for Ruth Adley, please email kidney4ruth@gmail.com

How 50 years ago this week Israel turned the tide of the Yom Kippur war. P16 & 18

Continued from page 1 her remarks”, while London Jewish Labour councillors, including Rebecca Filer and Miriam Mirwitch, also posted angry attacks on her claims about the mayor.

Sunday Times journalist Josh Glancy tweeted that Hall was “turning the Jewish community into a political football again, which is something people really don’t want”.

But in further interviews on Tuesday, Hall told GB News: “I’ve got so many friends that are literally talking about leaving the country because they don’t feel safe. That is unacceptable in London.”

Asked if those friends were Jewish, she added: “Yes. Yes, going to Israel.”

Hall added: “Since Sadiq Khan has taken over, these sort of attacks have doubled – literally doubled, over 1,000 or around about 1,000 this year.” But she was unable to clarify when asked by GB News if she was referring to physical attacks.

According to Scotland Yard figures, there were 542 antisemitic hate crimes in London in 2016/17 when Khan came to power as mayor, and 836 in 2021/22.

Some of this increase is, according to police, down to better recording of statistics. The 2021 figures were also dominated by the surge of incidents in the capital in May, during the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Later on Tuesday, Hall, who is not Jewish

herself, told Sky News: “I will never apologise for defending the Jewish community.”

The Jewish Labour Movement later wrote directly to Hall, and to Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands, urging the candidate either to substantiate her claims or “retract and apologise” for them.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman was among the most senior Tories to defend the former Harrow councillor’s comments in her keynote speech at the party’s conference.

Braverman said: “If there’s any justice, Susan Hall is going to wipe the floor with him [Khan] next May.”

She then blamed “Labour”, adding: “They’ve already started the character assassination against Sue. The distortions. The insults. The lies.”

Other communal leaders told Jewish

News they did not want to comment publicly on the matter, but several said that the Board’s statement had spoken for the entire community.

Hall’s supporters in the community attempted to defend her comments by pointing to incidents such as the failure by police to charge anyone for the Finchley Road pro-Palestine convoy in 2021 that sparked fear and anger.

But other senior communal figures said it was wrong to attempt to single out the mayor for blame over such issues, with multiple factors to be taken into consideration over the failure to convict anyone for the convoy.

They accused Hall of attempting to score political points.

One policing expert pointed out that the most serious increase in incidents a ecting the Jewish community in London took place in 2009, when Israel carried out Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, when Boris Johnson was mayor of London.

One senior Conservative Party supporter in the community also stressed that London remains one of the safest cities in Europe to live as a Jew, with overall crime figures lower than most cities in the region.

“Let us not forget, it is safer to eat outside at a kosher restaurant in London than it is in Paris, or probably even in some parts of Israel.”

HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP FEARS ECHR EXIT THREAT

Angry attacks on Hall’s claims SINAI

A Jewish human rights charity has written to the Conservative Party chairman to stress the importance of the European Convention on Human Rights, which it says has “underpinned individual liberties in the UK” since the Holocaust.

Mia Hasenson-Gross, executive director of René Cassin, wrote to MP Greg Hands following a speech by Suella Braverman, in which the home secretary questioned whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights. She

wrote: “It has been alarming to hear members of the government and other Conservatives recently calling for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Have they forgotten their history?

“The convention gave legal weight to the aspirations expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was drawn up by the UN as a response to the horrors of the Holocaust.”

During this week’s Tory conference Michael Gove, lev-

elling-up secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, business secretary, both said the option to leave the convention should be on the table. But security minister Tom Tugendhat warned of the consequences of leaving, pointing out that it shored up the Good Friday Agreement.

In her letter to Hands, Hasenson-Gross wrote that the ECHR is “particularly important in protecting minority communities. Those calling for the UK to withdraw from the convention are reckless and irresponsible.”

Grant Shapps has told the Conservative conference that he and his wife Belinda welcomed a Ukrainian family into their home because they were “partly moved to act because our own ancestors fled to this country to escape the pogroms of eastern Europe”.

In his first big speech as defence secretary, the most senior Jewish politician in government said that regarding support for the fight against Vladimir Putin’s actions: “We

must not let up now … We must remain steadfast.”

He referred to the UK public’s generosity in welcoming people under the Home For Ukraine scheme “including for a year, into my own home”.

“Complete strangers were provided with clothes, school books,” he noted, adding that we should never overlook the generosity of the public here.

Later in his speech on Sunday, he launched a highly partisan attack on Labour

leader Sir Keir Starmer, claiming the party “could not be trusted” on defence, and insisting Starmer “personally campaigned for Jeremy Corbyn” a man he said “called for Nato to be disbanded”.

Shapps announced two new military deployments, to Poland to protect against Russian interference, and a peacekeeping mission to Kosovo. Elsewhere in the speech, he said Putin cannot win the war – but can’t find a way to exit it.

‘My family had to flee’

Cleverly pours scorn on ‘apartheid state’ abuse

James Cleverly has poured scorn on the claim that Israel operates as an “apartheid state” in a speech delivered at a packed Conservative Friends of Israel reception, writes Lee Harpin.

Speaking at Monday night’s Tory Party conference event in Manchester, the foreign secretary recalled how: “The first experience I had in the ‘apartheid state’ of Israel... was the Islamic call to prayer from the mosque next to our hotel.”

He added: “I’m looking at Arab Israelis... and just next to them were bikini-clad Israelis… in perfect peace and harmony.

“That was a really, really impressive moment for me. It encapsulated why we remain a staunch defender of Israel. It is a Jewish state, but it’s a Jewish state where there are Christians, Muslims, Jewish and secular people.”

Cleverly was one six cabinet ministers to speak at the CFI event, which attracted more than 500 attendees, once again proving itself to be one of the most popular fringe events at Tory party conference.

Speaking ahead of London mayoral candidate Susan Hall, leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt had pointedly warned about the danger of “conspiracy theories and misinformation directed towards Israel and the UK’s Jewish community”.

She added: “We need to get much more sophisticated in how we combat these lies.”

Mordaunt said steps had been taken in the House of Commons to “combat this misinformation”.

In her speech, home secretary Suella Braverman told the audience:”When we read the story of Israel and what Israel represents it is something unique to our world. Israel is defying the odds…. democracy, freedom, strength and courage.”

She added: “These values and that spirit of of Israel here in the UK is something unparalleled and incredibly powerful.”

CFI’s parliamentary chairman Stephen Crabb claimed that while “left-wingers [are] trying to dele-

PM shakes up sukkah

Rishi Sunak found time during his hectic conference schedule to visit a sukkah placed outside the main arena in Manchester.

The prime minister was photographed discussing the significance of the lulav and etrog during Sukkot with Board president Marie

ISRAEL’S BLOCK ON VISIT

gitimise Israel, speaking down Israel, trying to trash the UK-Israel friendship, we have some great supporters who will stand up in the House of Commons and challenge them and make the case on why the state of Israel will last forever and why our friendship with it will last”.

In his speech, Health Secretary Steve Barclay also noted that in his science sector the UK’s partnership with Israel was flourishing.

“One in seven medicines that we use in our NHS are from Israel,” he noted.

Barclay also said the “shared values” held by Israel and the UK were the same ones that drew him to the Conservatives and to CFI itself.

Defence secretary Grant Shapps also spoke at the reception, stressing how Israel “always will have the right to defend itself from terrorism and extremism”.

He also told attendees that as the most senior Jewish cabinet member he had “not once experienced antisemitism” in the party.

Also delivering a hard-hitting speech was Liam Fox MP, who accused the government of having “missed a track” by not proscribing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Fox said: “We need to recognise the IRGC are a danger to the United Kingdom. The IRGC are not just a threat to Israel, not just to the region. They’re a threat to us.”

James Cleverly was prevented from visiting Palestinian towns in Area C of the West Bank on his visit to the region last month after Israeli officials raised security concerns, writes Lee Harpin

The foreign secretary had visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories on a programme compiled in conjunction with the host authorities.

As part of this schedule, which takes into account the UK’s priorities as well as security and logistical considerations, he had been scheduled to meet with Palestinians in Area C, the fully Israeli-controlled territory in the West Bank.

The minister is believed to have intended to engage with Palestinians living in the region, which comprises 60 percent of the West Bank, to hear reports of settler violence. Sources said he intended to visit the village of Ein Samiya, It is understood that he still engaged with Palestinian communities affected by settler violence when in Ramallah.

van der Zyl as he braved the rain on Tuesday. The Board’s president told Jewish News:

“The prime minister shook the lulav and etrog. It was an honour to host him and discuss the festival of Sukkot.”

Others to stop at the sukkah included the MPs Chris Philp and Nickie Aitken,

along with the author Lord (Danny) Finkelstein.

The Board held a fringe event on Tuesday at the conference, with a panel including the president, Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers, and Finkelstein, discussing the rise in the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

PM: CFI’S SUPPORT WILL BE KEY TO ELECTION SUCCESS

Rishi Sunak has said the support of Conservative Friends of Israel is “going to be more important than ever” before the next election.

In a letter in the group’s Informed magazine, he also says the “relationship between the UK and Israel is going from strength to strength under our party’s leadership”.

Praising CFI for its continued support, Sunak writes: “I have greatly enjoyed working with the Conservative Friends of Israel this past year, and as we look ahead to the next general election, your support is going to be more important than ever.”

Ahead of the start of the Conservative Party confer-

ence in Manchester on Sunday, there has been increased speculation about the timing of the next election. It can take place any time until January 2025, although it seems likely that the Tories would opt for sometime in autumn next year.

Elsewhere in his letter

Sunak describes himself as “a proud friend of Israel”. He adds that he wants to help to ensure that “Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon” and that the UK will “stand lockstep with Israel in its efforts to counter Iranianbacked terror groups, which have dangerously expanded into the West Bank”.

He refers to the 2030 UKIsrael roadmap which “will see us working hand-in-hand [with Israel] in critical areas” as well as the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, signed into law in May, “which will protect Jewish and proIsrael students on campus, rooting out antisemitism and antisemitic anti-Zionism”.

WE DON’T NEED NO ROGER WATERS

IT’S TIME TO STAND TOGETHER AND DELIVER A MESSAGE:

JOIN US AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM MONDAY, 9TH OCTOBER, 18:00

Roger Waters has a long history of baiting the Jewish community.

You will have seen the front page coverage of Campaign Against Antisemitism’s new documentary in last week’s Jewish News.

Despite thousands of you writing to Andrew Lloyd Webber, the owner of the London Palladium, to draw his attention to the new information revealed in the documentary, Roger Wates is set to be hosted there for performances on 8th and 9th October.

Though Roger Waters is also playing on 8th October, it is Simchat Torah and we won’t disrupt our traditions for the likes of him, so join us outside the London Palladium to protest the second of the two performances on 9th October at 18:00.

HEY! ROGER! LEAVE THEM JEWS ALONE!

‘APARTHEID’ IS TAKEN OFF ADVERTISEMENT

The Labour Friends of Israel organisation has praised a decision taken by o cials in Keir Starmer’s party preventing the Palestine Solidarity Campaign from using the phrase “End apartheid” in an advert for one of its events.

PSC director director Ben Jamal told the website Labour List that his organisation had been told they could not use the words at a fringe event being held at Labour’s conference next week.

JN to co-host Ehud Olmert event

The event had originally been entitled “Justice for Palestine: End Apartheid”, but now is listed without the final two words.

Jamal wrote that the move by was “instructive” and that under Starmer, Labour “prefers not to face a reality which it finds politically inexpedient”.

LFI told Jewish News: “The party is absolutely right to refuse to propagate the morally abhorrent apartheid smear in its own brochure.”

Jewish News and JW3 will jointly host a conversation with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in London on 16 October.

The event will take place at 7:30 at JW3’s building on Finchley Road and last two hours.

Speaking on behalf of organisers, the Choose Democracy coalition, Hannah Weisfeld and David Davidi-Brown said: “We are delighted to be partnering with JW3 and Jewish News to engage our community with Israeli leaders raising the alarm as Israel’s current government continues its assault on the rule of law and protections for minorities.”

“Coming a day after the Knesset begins its next session and with important decisions

MIRVIS IN CLIMATE INVITE

UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has been invited to this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop 28) in Dubai, joining global politicians and faith leaders at the event which runs from 30 November to 12 December, to speak in the faith pavilion, the first of its kind at the conference.

The inaugural tent is notable, as

the Chief Rabbi told Jewish News, in that at the 2021 event in Glasgow, he was “saddened to discover that faith leaders played so little part in the global call for action on climate change, despite the fact that over 80 percent of the world’s population identify with a religious tradition”.

• Comment, page 23

expected from the Supreme Court, this event is a timely opportunity to hear from a former prime minister keenly aware of the existential threats facing Israel,” they added.

Olmert was elected to the eighth Knesset in 1973 at the age of 28 and was reelected eight times. In 1993, he was chosen as mayor of Jerusalem and led the city through the di cult years of Palestinian terror attacks.

In 2003 he returned to national politics holding many senior ministerial positions and serving as PM Ariel Sharon’s vice prime minister. Following Sharon’s stroke in 2006, Olmert became acting prime minister.

In the March 2006 elections, Olmert led the Kadima Party to

victory and was elected as the 12th prime minister of the state of Israel.

During his time as leader, he led the country during the Second Lebanon War which reestablished Israeli deterrence giving Israel quiet on its northern border for over a decade. He also worked towards a peace agreement with the Palestinians and in November 2007, attended the Annapolis Peace Conference led by President George W. Bush. Olmert served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence for corruption. He was released in 2017.

• For tickets to this event go to jw3. org.uk/whats-on/ehud-olmertconversation

Clive Myrie’s 7/7 anger

BBC presenter Clive Myrie has spoken about the loss of his friend Miriam Hyman, who was killed in the London 7/7 bombings, and his anger towards the terrorists who killed her.

Hyman, who was Jewish, died in the Tavistock Square bus blast on 7 July 2005. In total, 52 people were killed and more than 700 were injured in the four suicide attacks on London

tubes and buses. Myrie said he was left “angry at the senselessness of it all”.

He said in an interview with the Daily Mirror: “My wife Catherine worked with one of the victims who died.

“Miriam came to our wedding and the beautiful pottery she gave us as a present 25 years ago still sits in our home.”

“If it wasn’t for Jami, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Jami gave me hope for life and hope for the future”

More people are struggling with mental illness than ever before.

Bennett: Israel protesters are like freedom fighters JOIN THE BATTLE MASORTIS TOLD

Israel’s former prime minister Naftali Bennett has likened protesters contesting proposed judicial reform in Israel to freedom fighters.

“It’s wonderful to be here. I feel at home,” he told a 350-strong audience in a 30-minute wide-ranging speech at UJIA’s campaign launch dinner.

Taking to the stage as keynote speaker, Bennett said the Yom Kippur War had changed everything for his family; before the 1973 conflict, his parents didn’t have a particularly strong connection to Israel. They returned to the US after his mother found living in a kibbutz in the young state too challenging. But at the onset of the war, “my dad got on the first plane he could find and fought,” he said.

On then returning to Israel, his parents “felt different. They felt Israeli. Because they’d fought in a

war. It changed everything. We stayed in Israel because of the Yom Kippur War.”

As minister of the economy and minister of education, Bennett said he “made it my business to be minister of diaspora affairs.

It was not considered prestigious “but I did it because I think it’s one of the top three

missions of any prime minister and the state of Israel”.

Bennett said the diaspora should be worried about the “complicated” political situation in Israel [but] “it is incredibly solvable. If two sides come in with goodwill, it’s four hours. It’s easy.”

He said he was angry at the undercurrent of division in

society being “fermented and heated up for political reasons, adding: “It’s being artificially inflated.”

Calling Israel “an amazing miracle”, Israel’s 13th prime minister said 75 years on from the establishment of the state, reinventing social disparities between Ashkenazi and Sephardi for political use is “horrible and wrong”.

He added: “Everyone is whining about the problem but I want to talk about the solution: reverting back to a government like my government.”

“Am Y’Israel (the People of Israel) is learning the hard way that extremes are not good. Sometimes you have to go through it in order to understand. I believe mainstream Israel does not like what is going on and what we need is to revert. And that’s why the government we ran is a model of what we can do.”

• UJIA raises 1.4m, page 9

Xmas & New Year IN SUNNY EILAT

One of Masorti Judaism’s most senior rabbis has encouraged his congregation to join the protests against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul.

In a Yom Kippur sermon, Rabbi Jeremy Gordon said: “I’ve been at the protests, and that’s why I feel I’ve been pushed right up against the edge of how far I think I, as your rabbi, should be engaging in these political matters, on this holy night.

“It’s why I think we should all be protesting. And why I don’t think we dare walk away.”

He urged New London Synagogue members to fight for an “open, tolerant and inclusive” Judaism, adding: “It’s a very religious thing to protest the actions of leaders of Israel when these actions threaten the application of justice and the future of the people.

“We’ve been doing it for millennia. It’s what’s makes being

a leader of Israel such a challenge. But it also might be reason we are still here, millennia later. It might be that the very reason for the survival of the Jewish people is that century after century and unjust bill after unjust bill, the religious leadership of our faith have stood up to speak out in favour of justice, no matter from where the threat comes.”

He continued: “The state of Israel is the most extraordinary transformation in the hopes and possibility for selfdetermination of our people in 2,000 years... We can’t walk away from the millions protesting in Israel, asking for our help and saying the threat they experience is existential. ”

He also urged the congregation to think carefully which pro-Israel organisations they donated to, taking into consideration “the kind of Israel” groups were supporting.

Royal Beach £2411 BB

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News / Sukkot celebration / Waters reaction / Mirren interview

Noah built an ark, now London Zoo’s created a zookah

London Zoo this week welcomed 150 guests to its first sukkah, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

Encouraging the crowd to enjoy the kosher breakfast on offer was ZSL’s (Zoological Society of London) new CEO, Matthew Gould.

Gould, who was Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel, 2010-15, said his team had invited guests from South Hampstead Synagogue, with whom they partnered for the event, and the Saatchi, Western Marble Arch and West London Synagogues. Speaking exclusively to Jewish News, Gould said he would “very much like this to be something that we do regularly and that we do similar things for other communities. I’m very keen that we should do an iftar for Ramadan and something for Diwali. I would like us to be welcoming to every community.

“It’s a big focus on making sure that every community in London feels that London Zoo is welcoming to them and they can come here very comfortably.”

Rabbi Shlomo Levin, from South Hampstead Synagogue, praised the “real sense of togetherness” that the event had created. “The fact that there can be a sukkah standing in London Zoo is saying something about the society in which we now live.

“There is an acceptance that we as a Jewish minority have the freedom to be able to be accepted in wider society and I can’t tell you how enthusiastic all the team here at London Zoo have been.”

Sally Friend, from Dennington Park Road Synagogue, who attended with her daughter-in-law Suzanne, a

member of South Hampstead Synagogue, said:

“It’s just the most amazing idea. It puts Sukkot on the map.”

Rebbetzen Ilana Epstein, of Western Marble Arch, said: “The idea of welcoming people is part of Sukkot. People don’t always have a sukkah to go to, so putting it somewhere that anyone can go is, I think, brilliant.”

Jonathan Ison, communications and programmes manager at the United Synagogue, said: “I’ve been to the zoo many times over the years and to be able to access kosher food this week whilst in a sukkah is really a fantastic experience. It’s wonderful and I hope the kosher food continues!”

Gila Sacks, a former colleague of Gould and the daughter of the late

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, said she was “really delighted to hear that there was going to be a sukkah in the zoo for the first time. All the kids in our neighbourhood are very, very excited to come along and see it.”

Daniel Simmonds, ZSL’s animal operations manager, said: “For a Jewish zookeeper, of which I think I’m the only one, this is a momentous occasion. As a Jew to have Sukkot in London Zoo is one thing. But to be a Jewish zookeeper with Sukkot in London Zoo is really special.”

The sukkah is open until tomorrow to picnic and pray in, with guests able

to spend the day exploring the zoo and learning about its 14,000 animals. Kosher pizza and snacks are also available at the venue during the festival.

Entry to the sukkah is free with zoo entry. All tickets to London Zoo must be booked in advance. This can be done at www.lon donzoo.org/sukkot.

As an aside, Gould’s favourite animal ‘at the moment’ is a Blue Crested Laughing Thrush called Peanut. An endangered species hand reared at the zoo, much like the zoo’s own new CEO, she “extremely friendly and always comes over to say hello”.

ROGER WATERS DEFENDS

EMAIL REVELATIONS

The singer Roger Waters has justified his intention –revealed in a documentary – to write “dirty kyke” on an inflatable pig at his concerts.

Campaign Against Antisemitism’s The Dark Side of Roger Waters, presented by John Ware and released last week, features interviews with Waters’ former saxophonist, Norbert Stachel, and with Bob Ezrin, who produced Pink Floyd’s album The Wall Stachel says Waters mocked his grandmother, who was

murdered in the Holocaust, and that a colleague warned him not to react if he wanted to keep his job.

In a statement shared on X (formerly Twitter), Waters appeared to confirm that the

2010 email was genuine but did not apologise.

He wrote: “The offensive words I referenced in quotes in an email 13 years ago were my brainstorming ideas on how to make the evils... of fascism and extremism apparent and shocking to a generation that may not fully appreciate the ever-present threat. They are not the manifestation of any underlying bigotry. Quite the opposite.” Waters is due to perform at the London Palladium on 8 and 9 October.

Dame Helen Mirren has said she thinks she “can see” why some people are uncomfortable with non-Jewish actors playing Jewish historical figures and that there is “something offensive” about “assuming a certain physiognomy” to play a particular race.

The actress plays the former prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, in the biopic Golda and was asked if she understood the recent backlash Hollywood

actor Bradley Cooper faced for wearing a prosthetic nose to portray the composer Leonard Bernstein in film Maestro

Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg whether she sees why some people are uncomfortable with what they call ‘Jewface’, Mirren, 78, said: “I think I can see, but sometimes I can’t see, because, I can’t see who in this room is Jewish.

“We are all such an amazing mix and certainly I don’t have

an issue with Kirk Douglas playing a Viking. Kirk Douglas was Jewish.

“I think the whole question of assuming a certain physiognomy because you’re playing a particular race – there is something offensive about that. On the other hand, if you’re playing Leonard Bernstein, and this is really what Leonard Bernstein looked like, you know, maybe it’s a good idea. It’s a very delicate balance.”

‘K***’

Helen Mirren sees ‘Jewface’ row as ‘very delicate balance’

JN teams up with Kebab Awards to dish out prize

For the second consecutive year, Jewish News is partnering with the British Kebab Awards (BKA) to crown Britain’s top kosher kebab, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

Baker Street deli Reubens won the inaugural prize in 2022, as 1,200 guests, including parliamentarians for whom the date is a popular diary fixture, celebrated at a ceremony at Westminster’s Plaza Hotel.

BKA founder Ibrahim Dogus told Jewish News: “We are proud to be partnering with Jewish News once again for the 2024 awards.

“Kosher restaurants and takeaway play a significant role in our

industry and I’m looking forward to welcoming many more kosher restaurants and takeaways

SPURS STAR OUR GUEST FOR A NEW YEAR FEAST

In true Israeli style, the party carried on long after the main event was over at the Rosh Hashanah celebration at Lilienblum – Eyal Shani’s latest culinary gem in Shoreditch.

In partnership with Jewish News and Tel Aviv Institute, chefs Eyal Shai and Oren King collaborated on a menu to celebrate new beginnings, while keeping true to traditions.

Those lucky enough to nab tickets included Spurs player Manor Solomon and his girlfriend Dana Voshina, influencer Hen Mazzig and Smashing the Glass blogger Karen Cinnamon. Solomon was presented with a football cake from the team at Carmelli bakery.

seated guests were served Lilienblum’s sought-after hummus, beetroot carpaccio with a dollop of crème fraîche and a dusting of fresh horseradish.

at the 12th awards ceremony on 27 February.”

With 1.3 million kebabs sold every day, the British kebab industry is worth an estimated annual £2.8 billion to the British economy.

 Nominations for the British Kebab Awards, including the kosher category, can be made online by visiting voting. britishkebabawards. com

Guests were treated on arrival to a seasonal pomegranate spritz with white candles and pomegranates decorating the tables and tomatoes, peppers and herbs for the open-kitchen counter.

Those familiar with Shani’s style will not be surprised to learn that the tables were covered with brown paper. Once

Larger dishes included chraime (fish stewed in a heady sauce of tomatoes, peppers, and sweet onions, studded with charred slices of lemon), autumnal mushroom pasta and Shani’s famed cabbage dish.

Lilienblum owner Daniel Goldstein thanked the 80 diners for coming “and supporting Israeli food and culture”, while Hen Mazzig told those gathered the role of Israelis in London “is to empower people to be proud of who they are”.

Councillors’ BDS motion removed

Labour councillors aligned with the Momentum group have attempted to defy party leader Keir Starmer’s longstanding opposition to boycotts of Israel by tabling a motion in support of BDS at a council meeting.

Jewish News has been forwarded a “draft” copy of the “defend the right to boycott” motion drawn up by a section of the Labour Group on Brent Council, in northwest London.

It is understood that the motion has been circulated among supportive councillors for a number of weeks, with the intention of it being tabled at a full council meeting.

While the motion does not

have the unanimous support of the Brent Labour Group, according to local sources it continues to have enough backing to ensure that it does not “go away.”

After being approached for comment a senior Brent Labour source responded confirming a draft motion of the Right To Boycott motion “was brought to a private meeting” of the Labour Group.

But the source added: “It was decided the motion would not be taken forward in full council in line with national Labour policy.”

A Jewish Labour Movement spokesperson said: “While it’s good this motion has been pulled, it is clear that there are still parts of the Labour Party, even in diverse borough like Brent, which struggle to understand left antisemitism .

UJIA raises £1.4m at gala

UJIA raised £1.4million at its annual dinner and campaign launch last week, the first it has staged since the pandemic, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

Some 350 guests attended the event in the royal surroundings of Kensington Palace, with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett giving the keynote speech, as reported by Jewish News Organisers predicted about £1 million would be raised from the dinner, with the money going towards muchneeded funding to ensure young British Jews can take part in life-changing educational programmes in Israel.

The dinner comes as UJIA announces a campaign with focused on promoting among young British Jews a sense of belonging to the Jewish people through Israel engagement

and visits to Israel.

In a heartfelt appeal speech, UJIA CEO Mandie Winston said: “One in six participants in teen summer tours required significant financial assistance this summer. The equation is simple: The more funds UJIA raises the more young people have a quality Israel experience that allows them to feel

they belong to the Jewish people.” She added: “Many of them will become the rabbis, educators, communal professionals and volunteers our community will need in order to thrive. They will not take being Jewish for granted and they will pay it forward.”

UJIA chairman Louise Jacobs said: “We are so thrilled to have been able to hold an annual dinner for the first time in years. We are grateful to our incredible supporters who tonight made a commitment to the future of our community and the young people who will shape it.”

UJIA president Sir Trevor Chinn made a dedication to the late Ruth and Michael Phillips, in honour of their long-standing contributions to the organisation.

EXERCISE GURU HONOURED

The founder of an exercise club for people diagnosed with neurological conditions including Parkinson’s disease, MS and dementia has been honoured by the prime minister, writes Fergal Jeffreys.

Harris Frazer was awarded the Point of Light Award by Rishi Sunak for his “Neuro Kinetics Club”, which was founded as the first specialist exercise organisation of its kind in Manchester. Frazer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 55, and began attending local exercise classes to help to slow the progression of the disease.

When the pandemic forced the classes to shut, Frazer set up his own club for people with conditions like his, offering twice-weekly exercise sessions with trained specialists.

The UK Points of Light award was set up in April 2014 to recognise “innovative and inspi-

rational volunteering across the length and breadth of Britain”.

Frazer said: “I feel honoured and humbled in equal measure to receive this award.”

PERSONALISED, COLLABORATIVE CARE IS KEY TO COMMUNITY HEALTH.

Prof. Ruth Whitby, Chair of General Practice for Cleveland Clinic London.

With over 30 years of experience working as a GP in London, Prof. Whitby also has considerable international experience. She was the first native English-speaking doctor to be awarded a Japanese Medical Licence whilst working as a GP in Tokyo.

Drawing on both UK and international healthcare experiences, Ruth was ideally positioned to be part of the team developing Cleveland Clinic’s global model of care. The team was able to combine the best of British healthcare with the best of US healthcare, enhanced by support from global centres of clinical excellence.

The new care model has been well received by local communities and since the opening of the first outpatient centre at Portland Place in 2021, Cleveland Clinic has further expanded its UK footprint to include the 184-bed Cleveland Clinic London hospital in Belgravia last year, and an additional outpatient centre is set to open at the end of this year.

The eight-floor hospital delivers comprehensive inpatient medical and surgical services with a special focus on cardiovascular, digestive, neurological and orthopaedic care.

The hospital is known for delivering cutting-edge treatments in a calming, healing environment,

complete with an impressive art collection and an enviable view of Buckingham Palace.

Cleveland Clinic London was also the first private healthcare provider in the capital to have a fully integrated electronic medical records system to support collaborative, fast, safe and effective decisions about patient care. This secure digital health management tool, provides patients and their care team with instant access to up-to-date information about their health.

Patients can view test results, message their care team, schedule appointments, order repeat prescriptions and more through the MyChart app. sonalised

Expanding personalised healthcare

Plans are underway to expand the GP services under Prof. Whitby’s leadership to the hospital so that they will be available at all three Cleveland Clinic London locations.

“Prevention, early diagnosis and timely treatment are key to good health,” Prof. Whitby says.

“Working with our world-leading consultant specialists, informatics and diagnostic tools under one roof creates a setting for rapid, seamless care for our patients’ health.’’

Following her years of commitment to developing Cleveland Clinic’s footprint in London, Prof. Whitby says it is gratifying to see the facilities are making a real difference in people’s lives.

“The hospital and outpatient centres are increasing the UK’s available healthcare capacity, and for those patients opting for private healthcare, our facilities provide quick access, and a focus on safety and transparency, together with the latest technology, global best practices and knowledge. It is a privilege for me to work for Cleveland Clinic,” she concludes.

“Cleveland Clinic’s ‘team of teams’ approach puts patients at the centre of care and sees experts across medical disciplines collaborating on cases, ensuring patients get the safest, most appropriate and timely treatment for their individual needs.”

Ruth Whitby, BSc, MBBS, DRCOG

US warning over Iran nuke threat

Iran has the capacity to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear device in less than two weeks, according to the latest assessment by the United States, writes Jotam Confino.

The US Department of Defence’s 2023 Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction report says Iran is a “persistent threat” and while it has the capacity to build a bomb in two weeks, “it is assessed that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear

weapons programme at this time”.

Thew report goes on to say “the United States further assesses Iran to be “noncompliant with its Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) obligations. For example, Iran has not submitted a complete chemical weapons production facility declaration to comply with CWC processes”.

The strategy document concludes:

“The US is also concerned that Iran is pursuing dual-use central nervous system-acting chemicals for o en-

GINSBURG’S STAMP OF APPROVAL

sive purposes.” Iran has advanced its nuclear programme rapidly over the past two years, but still denies through its leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini that it has any intentions of developing nuclear weapons.

Israel has warned repeatedly it will now allow Iran to become a nuclear power, though experts believe Tehran should already be categorised as a nuclear threshold state due to its advanced programme.

Iran, on its part, has been vocal in

its criticism of Saudi Arabia’s normalisation talks with Israel.

“Normalising relations with the Zionist regime is a reactionary and regressive move by any government in the Islamic world,” Iran president Ebrahim Raisi said on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly seeking permission from the US to develop its own nuclear programme in return for normalising ties with Israel, while threatening to develop its own nuclear weapons if Iran does. Iran leader Ali

NON-KOSHER ‘MAKES YOU STUPID’

The Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yitzhak Yosef, has accused secular Jews of being “miserable” and claimed those eating non-kosher food become “stupid”, writes Jotam Confino.

In a sermon leaked on social media, he said:

“A person who eats nonkosher food, his brain gets stupid, he can’t understand things, doesn’t get it. As soon as he starts keeping kosher, you can start to influence him.”

Rabbi Yosef said he “sees everything

that is going on in the secular public, and they are miserable. They are dissatisfied with their lives. It’s all about lust… It’s incredible… You can see the permissiveness in the secular public”.

The rabbi also commented on the current debate dividing Israel over gender-segregated prayers in public, which the Supreme Court has deemed illegal.

“They have been secular for several generations, but we need to bring them closer [to God]. This is what… is being done by all kinds of dif-

ferent organisations that are bringing them closer. This is what needs to be done,” he said, referring to the Rosh Yehudi yeshiva which organised gendersegregated prayers in central Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur, defying the court order and enraging secular people in the city.

Israel Opposition leader Yair Lapid hit out over the remarks, saying Yosef “is not the chief rabbi of Israel, but the rabbi of a loud minority who curses Jews ... who serve in the army, risk and sacrifice their lives, work and keep this country alive. He was right about one thing – they felt a little stupid tonight when they remembered that they were the ones paying his salary”.

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Literature professor, pioneering educator, social activist and Israel Prize laureate Alice Shalvi has died, aged 97. She was also awarded top spot in Jewish News’ aliyah list back in 2018, celebrating Jews who moved from Britain to help shape the modern state of Israel.

Shalvi was among 70 Jews on the list, which marked the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.

Shalvi was born in Germany in 1926. Her family moved to London a year after Hitler’s rise to power, with the precocious seven-year-old, presented to her new classmates as ‘our little refugee’, winning a class prize for English just 18 months after arriving in the country and going on to study the subject at Cambridge.

Making aliyah in 1949, Shalvi plunged headfirst into the melting point of the new state. She typified the ingenuity of Israel’s founding generation – whenever she identified a societal issue which bothered her, she would not think twice before

looking to redress it.

Arriving in Jerusalem, Shalvi taught English at the Hebrew University. It quickly transpired her restless intellect would take her further than running English classes for struggling undergraduates.

She acquired a PhD in 1962 and headed the university’s English Literature department with such élan that when the fledgling Ben-Gurion University of the Negev was seeking a leading academic to found and direct its own parallel department, Shalvi was clearly the leading candidate – were it not for the supposition a female academic couldn’t demand her husband abandon his job to move to another city.

Shalvi’s feminism dated from Cambridge, where she successfully proposed a Jewish Society motion for women to lead after-dinner singing. The Ben-Gurion episode (she did, eventually, assume the role in Beer Sheva, and excelled) made her realise how starkly women were under-represented in Israeli public life, so she founded the cross-party Israel Women’s Network (IWN) in 1984.

The IWN was the country’s leading pressure group in advancing female leadership, and the MKs Shalvi mentored sponsored and passed groundbreaking legislation granting women greater employment rights and criminalising sexual harassment.

In 1975, Pelech, the religious girls’ school in Jerusalem where two of Shalvi’s daughters were studying, seemed in dire straits. Shalvi temporarily took over its management and ended up staying for 15 years, in order to implement fully her vision for a centre of academic excellence.

Israel’s first democratic religious school emphasised both broader secular learning and more Talmud and religious study – so young women would be equipped to participate fully in debates about religion in society. Many of Shalvi’s techniques are staples in the make-up of Israeli schools today, while the network of Pelech sister schools across the country consistently tops results tables.

Professor of Israel Studies Colin Shindler told Jewish News he would always visit Shalvi with his wife when in Jerusalem. “My wife, Jean, first

met Alice when she was involved in the womens’ Rosh Chodesh groups in the UK in the 1980s. She remained throughout her 75 years in Israel a liberal Zionist, forged by her upbringing in England.

“Although her physical decline was noticeable on each visit, her mind remained crystal-clear. Her smile broke through ailments. She deeply

bemoaned the demise of the Zionist values of 1948 and understood very clearly where she stood when it came to Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich,” he added.

Rabbi Lindsey Taylor also commemorated Shalvi, calling her a “towering and inspirational figure, loved and looked up to by thousands around the world”.

Educator and aliyah icon Alice Shalvi dies LIBERAL JUDAISM CONSECRATES NEW CEMETERY

Liberal Judaism has held its first consecration ceremony in more than 50 years as rabbis and members gathered to open the movement’s new woodland burial site at GreenAcres Chiltern in Buckinghamshire.

Prayers were led by Liberal Judaism vicepresident Rabbi Dr Andrew Goldstein and Rabbi Aaron Goldstein, one of The Ark Synagogue’s senior rabbis, combining the consecration with a celebration of Sukkot.

Rabbi Aaron Goldstein said: “It might seem strange to rejoice in consecrating a burial space, but as we walked round this new plot singing psalms and waving the arba minim (the four species otherwise known as the lulav and etrog), it could not have been more appropriate.

“This was our chance to rejoice in life and fulfil our duty to provide for the dead, comfort the mourner and ensure the future planet for our generations to come.”

Rabbi Andrew Goldstein is the most senior member of the Conference of Liberal Rabbis and Cantors, having been in the rabbinate for 53 years.

He said: “I have done countless baby-blessings, b’nei mitzvah, weddings and funerals, so it was extra special after all this time to add another experience – dedicating a burial ground; and what an inspirational place!”

GreenAcres Chiltern is a beautiful and peaceful woodland cemetery in the heart of the Buckinghamshire countryside and gives both Liberal Judaism members and non-

members another option for a green burial – allowing the body to return naturally to the earth with habitats remaining undisturbed. Its Woodland Hall, where funeral services for burials and also cremations can be held, looks out to a view of the forest.

Phil Stone, a Liberal Judaism vice president and the chair of its cemeteries committee, said: “Members of Liberal Judaism who attended the consecration service were overwhelmed with the beautiful surroundings of GreenAcres Chiltern and the sense of peace they provide.

“Bereaved families will find this new cemetery to be a refreshing and inspiring place to visit a loved one, at one with nature and its healing powers.”

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‘Those first desperate days of battle were complete chaos’

“There were many killed, a lot of them in front of me. Many were my friends.”

Danny Pearl chokes up as he recalls the horrors of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, writes Jotam Confino.

Jewish News spoke to the 71-year-old on the 50th anniversary of the war, to this day seen as the biggest intelligence failure in Israel’s history. A war that nearly brought the country to its knees.

Pearl, who was a soldier in the IDF Southern Command special forces unit, was stationed in the Sinai Desert. But it took him almost 48 hours before he knew that Israel was facing a multi-front war, and not just a limited attack.

Pearl, commander of the 14 soldiers in his unit, was ordered to go to Mount Um Hashiba, which served as the “army’s eyes over the Sinai desert”.

“I was told to go and check the wadi [valley] and spend

Shabbat there. It was supposed to be a regular exercise, checking if there were any terrorists or weapons and so on. But we had absolutely no idea what was waiting for us.”

The following day, on Yom Kippur – 6 October – war broke out. Unlike the government and IDF central command, Pearl and his unit had no idea what was happening.

“At around 2pm we saw four planes above us, flying in pairs. We didn’t know who they were, and thought it was an exercise. But all of a sudden they start dropping bombs on Um Hashiba where we had just come from. They flew so low we could look the pilots in the eyes. Then I understood

something was wrong and we started firing at the planes,” Pearl recalls. “We hit one of them and it exploded.”

What he and his unit witnessed was the Egyptian surprise attack over the Sinai, which bombarded Israeli army bases and caused panic in the Israeli security cabinet.

Pearl’s unit left the wadi and drove to the nearest IDF base, where they were met with the sight of Israeli soldiers killed and injured. An Egyptian commando unit had ambushed them.

“It was chaos. There were many injured and killed. We stayed there overnight where we helped helicopters land in the desert at night by putting gasoline in tuna cans and lighting to mark a runway.”

The assault by the Egyp-

tian army had caused severe damage to antennas carrying the radio signals in the Sinai Desert. It therefore took Pearl a long time to understand that Israel was at war and that it wasn’t just a limited military operation by the Egyptians.

“Me and my unit had no idea we were at war yet. It was only the next day we knew what was really happening,” he said. “It was only when I arrived at the Tassa base [in Sinai], that I realised we were at war. There were constantly planes over us. Our job was to protect the base from Egyptian attacks,” Pearl recalled.

It didn’t take long for Israel to decide that the army had to cross the Suez Canal to fight back the Egyptian army and halts its advancement in Sinai.

“We had to cross the canal but because we couldn’t cross by swimming. We kept waiting for a temporary bridge to be built.” The day before the

bridge was ready, the Egyptians launched a massive attack on the bases next to the canal where Pearl was stationed, which was later named the ‘Yard of Death’, due to the many people killed there.

The biggest surprise, he said, was the Egyptian commando units which were so lethal. “There were many killed, a lot of them in front of me. Many were my friends.

The fire was as big as the Azrieli mall (in Tel Aviv). One big chaos,” Pearl said.

Pearl and his comrades managed to break the Egyptian army, fighting day and night during the 18-day conflict. “You don’t feel the days pass. And you have no contact with anyone at home,” he said. For Pearl, the memories of his comrades who were killed will always be with him.

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Special Report / 50th anniversary of Yom Kippur War

‘An operational victory that surpassed 1967’

Fifty years ago this week, Egypt and Syria invaded Israel in a surprise attack during Yom Kippur. To mark the anniversary, former prime minister Ehud Barak speaks with Jotam Confino about his predecessors’ existential failures ahead of the conflict and how Israel managed to beat the odds to complete ‘one of the most brilliant military victories’ in its history

According to Ehud Barak, the only Israeli to have held the key o ces of military intelligence chief, IDF chief, defence minister and prime minister, the almost fatal disaster of poor intelligence, planning and leadership that befell the Israeli Defence Force in October 1973 was a “triangular failure”.

Declassified documents over the years revealed that both defence minister Moshe Dayan, Mossad chief Zvi Zamir, IDF chief David Elazar, and military intelligence chief Eli Zeira significantly underestimated Egypt and Syria, dismissing crucial intelligence that painted a picture of the intentions of the two Arab nations.

several mistakes were made on an operational level.

“The army didn’t have a plan B. What happens if intelligence fails?

ship would admit that war was on its way. At 2pm, Egypt and Syria launched simultaneous attacks in the Sinai Desert and Golan Heights.

Israel was vastly outnumbered militarily on the borders with Syria and Egypt, with both countries mobilising their forces in the days leading up to the war.

Barak to this day considers an outstanding achievement in modern military history.

“On an operational level it was a brilliant military victory. In my opinion even more so than in 1967. Surprise can cause big powers to collapse – such Nazi Germany’s attack on France in WWII.

the position of our government was not easy to defend,” he said.

Barak points to the fact that Sadat tried to initiate negotiations with Israel through Washington in 1973. “Yes, Sadat said he wanted all of Sinai, which was against our

Israel even had an agent in Egypt, Ashraf Marwan, son-inlaw of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and advisor to his successor, President Anwar Sadat, who collaborated with Mossad and delivering accurate intelligence about attack plans.

There was an underlying assumption, stemming from certain arrogance from the results of the 1967 war, that if the Arabs would stupid enough to attack us, Israel

would easily win,” he said.

Dayan infamously had a nervous breakdown shortly after the war broke out and allegedly suggested to Meir that Israel should consider preparing the option of using nuclear weapons.

After su ering heavy losses the first couple of days, Israel turned the tide, something that

“In our case, within six days we were closer to Damascus and 10 days later closer to Cairo than before the war. That’s impressive, from a military point of view. Our objective was to remove the threat and we did,” he said.

“But Sadat didn’t have an objective to reconquer all of Sinai or go as far as Be’ersheva or Tel Aviv. Sadat mainly wanted to use all his force for very limited objectives to get certain holds on the other side of the Suez Canal and prove to Israel that he could shake their self confidence,” he added.

position, but in stages over time,” Barak said.

Sadat, who collaborated with

According to Barak, there is no doubt that, more than anything

doubt that, more than anything

“The political leadership made a mistake in listening too seriously to the intelligence of Mossad and the military. The leadership had their own independent sources. They didn’t just hear abstract assessments of the material,” Barak said, mentioning as an example the visit by Jordan’s King Hussein to the Mossad headquarters in Israel before the war.

their self confidence,” he added. While Barak holds Golda Meir in high regard, describing her as “very strong and e ective” during the war, Israel’s first female prime minister made a huge mistake when she refused to find a diplomatic solution before the war.

were capable of giving at least

“He warned Meir and Dayan that to the best of his judgment Sadat was preparing a full-scale war together with (Syria’s president) Assad. We don’t know why, but they ignored it,” he said. It wasn’t until 6 October, on Yom Kippur, that the leader-

Because the army could mobilise

else, the war was an intelligence failure: “They promised that they were capable of giving at least 48 hours’ early notice before a major war. And for the political leadership, and on an operational level, it was kind of an insurance. Because the army could mobilise the whole reserve forces in less than 48 hours and be ready. In such a scenario, the chances of the enemy making any major achievement would dramatically lower.”

Barak, who fought in the war as a commander of a tank unit in Sinai, said

“For many years I thought there was no way to have avoided the war because the Egyptians couldn’t swallow the humiliation of the 1967 war and save their honour through war. But when you read all the documents that have been exposed, you find that

“Months before the war there was a discussion in the inner cabinet, where they agreed that all signs pointed to Egypt wouldn’t swallow the defeat from 1967. So inevitably we were headed for war. But there was one minister (Israel Galili) who said, ‘Gentlemen, if we all agree that we are headed for war, we are not the government here, just three ministers, we don’t have a mandate to decide if we are going to war. We have to bring in the whole government to discuss it.’ But they never did. It’s a great responsibility to go into war without even trying to avoid it.”

swallow the defeat from 1967. So But there was one minister (Israel for war, we are not the governif we are going to war. We have to discuss it.’ But they never did. It’s a great responsibility to go into war

After 18 days of fighting the war ended; 2,656 Israel soldiers were killed, 298 were taken as prisoners of war and more than 7,000 were injured. Egypt lost 7,700 soldiers and Syria an estimated 3,500.

The future peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and ceasefire with Syria, Barak said, “were born from the battles in Golan and Sinai”.

He concludes: “Peace with Egypt stood firm even when Israeli tanks rolled into Beirut. When the extreme Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt they still didn’t cancel the peace agreement with Israel.”

After 18 days of fighting the war ended; 2,656 Israel soldiers were killed, 298 were taken as prisoners of war and more than 7,000 were and Syria an estimated 3,500. The future peace treaty with Syria, Barak said, “were born from the battles in Golan and Sinai”. stood firm even when Israeli tanks rolled into Beirut. Brotherhood took power cancel the peace agreement with Israel.”

Editorial comment, page 22

World News / Torah crown / Musk’s claim / Visas waived

Kristallnacht Torah crown rediscovered

An exquisite silver crown that once adorned a Torah scroll in a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht has been rescued from a Hamburg antique shop, writes Michelle Rosenberg.

The Keter Torah was the crown of the Bornplatz Synagogue, inaugurated in 1906, once the largest shul in northern Europe and looted by the Nazis during 9-10 November 1938.

It was discovered by chance by Hamburg Chief Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky and Bornplatz Synagogue reconstruction foundation honorary chairman Daniel She er and now has pride of place in the community’s temporary Hohe Weide Synagogue.

She er told Jewish News: “Until

Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky and I freed the ‘crown of the Bornplatz Synagogue’ from an antique shop in Hamburg, we have never seen one single piece of the Bornplatz Synagogue. Every valuable item was looted. I

ELON MUSK: I’M AN

ASPIRATIONAL JEW

purchased this crown and donated it to the Jewish community.”

Finding it four years ago was a “small miracle” he said, adding: “The fact that I had to purchase this crown, even though it had been plundered from our forefathers, the synagogue destroyed and the entire property seized during the dark days of aryanization, stirred a sense of indignation.” The antique shop shut in the aftermath of the pandemic.

She er, a father of three, says he felt called to initiate the synagogue’s reconstruction. The crown is now in front of the Ark in the community’s temporary dwelling, awaiting its return to the Bornplatz Synagogue.

US LETS ISRAEL INTO VISA WAIVER SCHEME

Israelis will be able to enter the United States without a visa from next month after a major change.

Israel’s entry into the Visa Waiver Programme, which now includes 41 countries, means Israeli travellers no longer have to deal with a lengthy visa application process that carried the threat of denial.

It also means Palestinian-Americans living in the West Bank and Gaza will be able to enter Israel after completing a form and a short waiting period.

Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian travel were one barrier to its joining the scheme earlier. United States homeland security secretary

Alejandro Mayorkas said Israel had successfully passed a three-month test of its commitment to treat Palestinian-Americans equally.

As part of the programme’s reciprocity requirement, the USA mandates countries in the programme also allow American citizens to enter without restrictions.

Elon Musk has called himself “aspirationally Jewish”, tried to avoid a prominent rabbi’s invitation to visit Auschwitz and insisted that claims of rising antisemitism on his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, were “absurd”.

The billionaire tech mogul added that antisemitic posts should not be deplatformed but should instead be met with “counterpoints”.

Antisemites not given other views online are “just going to be hidden antisemites, and that’s not going to do,” he said. “That’s perhaps worse.”

Musk cited Kanye West, whom he reinstated after the rapper’s antisemitic tirade saw him banned last year.

The statements and more were made during a friendly forum featuring Musk and a lineup of Jewish men, most of them avowed conservatives, addressing antisemitism on X since his acquisition.

Hosted by the politically conservative Orthodox Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro and his publication The Daily Wire, the nearly two-hour chat, X, anti-Semitism, Faith and Free Speech, came days after a call from more than 120 Jewish activists, most of them progressive, for advertisers and app stores to drop the platform.

It also followed a series of attacks by Musk on the Anti-Defamation League. He blames an ad boycott spearheaded by the ADL for the site’s revenue loss, and has threatened to sue the antisemitism watchdog for billions of dollars. He has also amplified antisemitic accounts on X that have joined in condemning the group.

Musk has previously denied being antisemitic. At the meeting, he went further, saying: “In some respects I think I am Jewish, basically,” owing to what he said was his large proportion of Jewish friends.

“They use the X platform and I’m like, ‘Do you guys see anything?’ And they’re like, ‘Nope,’” he said.

He also insisted that “multiple third parties” had verified that hate speech has declined on the platform since his acquisition but did not share what the sources were.

The of Israel

Having relocated from Manchester to Tiberias, photographer Julian Alper gives Jewish News readers a seasonal sense of wildlife in Israel

THIS WEEK: Roughtail rock agama

On a hot day in Israel, people like to be in airconditioned rooms. But lizards are coldblooded and, in order to gain sufficient energy to operate, they bask in the sun on stone walls, rocks and trees for much of the day. This roughtail rock agama (about 12in long), will shed its long tail if attacked by a predator – the idea is to sacrifice a non-essential limb, hoping to save its life.

NANCY REUBEN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Open Morning for 24/25 ADMISSIONS

Thursday 26th October | 9am

Wrap Around Care: 7am-6pm

Playgroup starting age 2

Winner of PaJes Ivrit Spelling Bee

Winner of the Etgar Competition

To pre-register email admissions@nrps.co.uk

A fitting farewell to family History’s warning

The Yom Kippur war in 1973 is widely considered the most catastrophic intelligence and leadership failure in Israel’s history.

Inflated confidence from the Six Day War contaminated otherwise brilliant minds among Israel’s decision makers. It was, however, also a stunning military victory from a tactical point of view, as former prime minister Ehud Barak, who fought on the frontline in 1973, tells Jewish News in an exclusive interview this week. To be able to fight off two enemies launching a surprise attack simultaneously is nothing short of remarkable.

While 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed, a historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt rose from the ashes of the war. Today, Israel is facing enemies who, like Egypt and Syria back then, hope to wipe it off the face of the earth.

If anything, the lessons from the Yom Kippur war should reverberate today more than ever. Israel finds itself in the worst internal crisis in its history.

The IDF has suffered in recent months due to thousands of elite soldiers, pilots and intelligence officials in the army reserve refusing to show up for volunteer duty in protest of the government’s judicial reforms.

The Yom Kippur war showed exactly how indispensable these reservists are. Without them, the 1973 war would have been lost.

It is to be hoped that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not make the same mistakes as his predecessors by ignoring the red flags around him.

JEWISH NEWS CONTACT DETAILS

Last month I travelled to the village of Katy Wroclawskie with five of my family to lay two Stolpersteine memorials to grandparents I never met. Adolf and Frieda Stein were arrested in 1942 and died at the hands of the Nazis in the Izbica holding camp on their way to the death camps.

Katy Wroclawskie is today in Poland. Before the war it was the German village of Kanth just 20 miles southwest of Wroclaw, formerly Breslau, the main city of Silesia.

I first identified the site of my grandparents’ house in 1996 with a lot of help from Hortense Gordon, the daughter of one of the very few Jewish

ROGER AND OUT

While it is essential to acknowledge the importance of free expression and artistic freedom, it is equally important to draw the line at promoting hatred, discrimination or violence. The values of inclusivity and mutual respect should be paramount, even within the realm of artistic expression, something Roger Waters is long renowned for. I’ve enjoyed his concerts. They are quite a spectacle, as much opera as rock. News that he wanted to write “Dirty k***’ on a pig and shower fans with swastika confetti serves as a stark reminder of the ongoing struggle against hate and prejudice.

THIS WEEKS SHABBAT & YOM TOV TIMES

residents of Kanth, whose father was the village doctor, Dr Georg Heidenfeld.

My sister and I both made speeches detailing some of the history of our father’s family and expressing disappointment that the world does not seem to have learnt from its lessons with regards to the persecution of minorities.

The afternoon’s events were widely reported in the Wroclaw press. The ceremony was emotional and moving and gave the opportunity for our family to say farewell with a kaddish to my grandparents, who had never been accorded a proper funeral.

THE PALESTINE MANDATE

A recent letter in Jewish News stated there is no such entity as Palestine. This false statement needs a most definite correction.

For many centuries there has been an area known as Palestine, originally named by the Romans. Stretching from the Mediterranean to Iraq, that entity was mandated to Britain in the 1920s. Colin Rossiter should actually have said that “Palestine has never been a country.”

If Britain had dealt with the mandate as it should have, Israel would have existed west of the Jordan river and Palestine to the east. Probably illegally, Britain gave eastern Palestine to the alien Hashemites, creating Trans (now) Jordan. Perhaps the real villains in this complex issue should now take responsibility for the stateless Palestinians of today.

ACTOR LAURENCE FOX’S JEWISH RELATIVES

This is not the first time the words and wisdom of actor Laurence Paul Fox have been made public, although perhaps not in such a misogynistic way as occurred last week on GMB News

A former unsuccessful candidate for London mayor, Fox comes from theatrical royalty including his father, James Fox, and grandfather, impresario Robin Fox, the son of actress Hilda Hanbury who was of Dutch Jewish origin. Her sister, actress Lily Hanbury, was cremated and buried in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden. Robin Fox is said to have been partner to the well-known agent Rosalind Chatto, late motherin-law of Lady Sarah, daughter of Princess Margaret.

Support your Jewish community. Support your Jewish News

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Laurence Fox’s paternal grandmother, Angela, was the daughter of playwright Frederic Lonsdale, and is said to have inspired Noel Coward’s song Don’t Put your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington Angela’s mother, Muriel Worthington, was granddaughter of Sophia Levien, daughter of a wealthy stockbroker and a descendant of the distinguished, but nonconformist Goldschmidt family, who did so much to achieve Jewish civil rights in this country.

It will be interesting to see whether his career as a political commentator will continue. Laurence Fox might still be one to watch.

Doreen Berger, Stanmore

THE JACOB FOUNDATION

Jewish News is owned by The Jacob Foundation, a registered UK charity promoting cohesion and common ground across the UK Jewish community and between British Jews and wider society. Jewish News promotes these aims by delivering dependable and balanced news reporting and analysis and celebrating the achievements of its vibrant and varied readership. Through the Jacob Foundation, Jewish News acts as a reliable and independent advocate for British Jews and a crucial communication vehicle for other communal charities.

Why I’m taking a group of students to Rwanda

CHIEF RABBI

EPHRAIM MIRVIS

The midrash tells a story of a passenger on a boat who began to drill a hole under his seat. When his fellow passengers challenged him, he responded indignantly: “It’s a hot day and I want to cool my feet by letting some water into the boat.”

“If you do that, we’ll all drown,” they cried.

“But I paid for this seat,” insisted the passenger, “I can do as I wish.”

This is a powerful cautionary tale about the impact our actions have on those with whom we share this planet and those who will inherit it from us in generations to come.

Take, for example, the challenges of a young man named Emmanuel, whose life in Rwanda is an extraordinary story of survival and fortitude. In the spring of 1994, aged just nine, his life was devastated by genocide. He narrowly survived a vicious machete attack, when both of his parents and five of his siblings were brutally murdered.

For Emmanuel, survival was just the beginning. He found himself responsible for five siblings without a home or any source

of income. Over time and with some help from charities, including World Jewish Relief and its Rwandan partner UNM, Emmanuel became a successful watermelon farmer and today he has a wife and children of his own.

Yet, one extreme weather event could destroy his livelihood all over again. One drought. One landslide. One flood. It could happen at any time and without any warning.

For some citizens of the UK, the impact of climate change can feel like a distant problem, if it even registers at all. Warmer summers might well mean that we can enjoy the feeling of sun on our faces, but at what cost to the countless other people who also call the earth their home?

In Rwanda, some 90 percent of the population depend on the land for survival and prosperity. That is one of the reasons why, this year, my o ce will be taking a group of outstanding Jewish university students and apprentices to meet people like Emmanuel in Rwanda. Throughout the programme, they will gain a better understanding of the devastating impact of climate change, as well as other global issues, and learn why there is a Jewish imperative to respond to them.

When I addressed participants at Cop 26 (Conference of the Parties) in Glasgow in 2021,

I was saddened to discover that faith leaders played so little part in the global call for action on climate change, despite the fact that more than 80 percent of the world’s population identify with a religious tradition.

Since that time, my o ce has been campaigning alongside others who felt similarly, to ensure greater representation of faith communities in global climate action. I held discussions with representatives of the government of the UAE, which will be hosting Cop 28, and met with leaders at the United Nations.

I’m delighted to say that, when I attend Cop 28 in Dubai this year, for the first time there will be a faith pavilion at the conference. This will better harness the catalysing impact that influential faith leaders can have on the climate crisis, and enhance e orts within and across faith traditions. In time, I hope this will lead to meaningful change in the attitudes of more people to climate action around the world.

As well as planning for the future, we must be ready to act now. The climate crisis, with its rising temperatures, extreme weather events and ecological disruptions, threatens not only the natural world, but also the delicate balance upon which human societies depend.

I urge everyone to embrace the call to tackle this issue as an essential expression of our Jewish values. If you are a student, that could be by joining our Ben Azzai Programme or it could be by working within your community to make a change. Learn about the work being done by the United Synagogue’s Dorot initiative and EcoJudaism to find out how you can contribute.

In anticipation of the forthcoming ban on the sale of many single-use plastics, consider how and where they could be replaced by reusables at your synagogue and at home.

The choices we make today are having a very real impact on the lives of others. Climate change is not merely an environmental issue; it is a test of our values, our empathy, and our commitment to a better future. Let us embrace the teachings of our tradition as a guiding light on the path towards action on sustainability.

Together, we can be the custodians of a healthier, more compassionate world, fulfilling our Divine mandate to care for the earth and ensure that its beauty and abundance will successfully endure for generations to come.

To apply for the Chief Rabbi’s Ben Azzai programme, visit: chiefrabbi.org/ben-azzai

Revealing and confronting Romania’s murderous past

What do you think of when you hear the word “Romania”?

Perhaps some weak jokes about Transylvania and Dracula, echoed by the rubbishy fridge magnets and keyrings I saw last week in the duty free shop at Iasi airport.

It’s certainly not mass murder of Jews which springs first to mind. And yet, Romania’s deeply disturbing past, 80-odd years on, continues to bubble up to the surface, as the country does its best to face up to its role in the Holocaust.

Romania is notorious for what became known as the Iasi, or Jassy, Pogrom. Over three appalling days at the end of June 1941, hundreds of the town’s Jews were rounded up by Romanian militia and brought to the central police station. This long, low building was once, ironically, owned by Jews.

Once in the courtyard of the Chestura — as the police station was known in the

Romanian language — the majority of the Jews were beaten, shot and clubbed to death. The perpetrators, according to Yad Vashem academic Dr Alex Avram, were “the mob, neighbours of the Jews”, together with police and soldiers sent specially from the capital, Bucharest. The streets, eye-witnesses reported later, “were rivers of blood”.

Those who didn’t have the “fortune” to die at the Chestura were herded towards the Iasi train station where they were made to lie, face down, in a huddle in front of the station building. Passengers from an incoming train from Bucharest were encouraged to leave the area by walking on to the Jews.

Two trains, cattle cars, were filled up with Romanian Jews. The death trains went back and forth, the sealed carriages leading to death by asphyxiation while bodies of the dead and dying were randomly thrown out onto the lines.

In all, around 13,500 Iasi Jews died in this pogrom. To get some measure of what took place, it’s important to know that pre-war, Jews comprised half the city’s population. There were 127 synagogues.

Today, for the remnant of 300 Jews who still live in Iasi, there are just two in operation, the Great Synagogue, a grand cathedral-like structure, and the so-called “Apple-Sellers’ Synagogue”, used for Shabbat services.

All of this evil happened at the initiative of the wartime fascist leader, Ion Antonescu, anxious to prove to the Nazis that in the fight against the Soviet Union, he was more antiJewish than strictly necessary.

In the main Jewish cemetery today, long runs of bleak concrete, topped with a star of David, form mute witness to the Iasi Pogrom

— these are the mass graves of the Jews who died at the Chestura. And in a piquant mirror image, on the other side of the cemetery are rows of individual graves of Jewish soldiers who fought for Romania in the First World War. All of them, those who died in battle and their sons and nephews murdered in the pogrom, were heroes.

As for the Chestura itself, it has now been transformed into the Pogrom Museum, each terrible picture providing testimony of what Ro-mania did to its Jews. The young woman who showed me round the museum wept, and apologised for weeping. She said she, like almost all her contemporaries, had not known about the Iasi Pogrom, but had often met descendants of survivors, who had made it to Israel or America, and who were able to fill in one more part of the jigsaw for her. From this academic term on, ignorance will be no excuse as the Romanian genocide against the Jews and the Holocaust in general will be a compulsory subject to be taught in schools.

I won’t forget Romania in a hurry. And it no longer means Dracula to me.

USED TO BE 127 SYNAGOGUES IN IASI – TODAY THERE ARE JUST TWO FOR A

1

WHEELCHAIR DISCO

Residents from the nursing and dementia households at Nightingale House enjoy the hugely popular dance and singalongs run by 101-year-old Jo Purvis, affectionately known as the Disco Queen. Jo tells Jewish News: “I used to play Kylie and Madonna at the wheelchair discos and they would all be dancing in their wheelchairs. Then I’d suddenly stop and play the Blue Danube and everyone would laugh.” When asked, “Do you ever play classical music?”, she replies: “God forbid.”

2GOLFERS THE BEST BY PAR

Jewish Care’s supporters teed off for their annual golf tournament, raising more than £25,000 for the charity’s Rela Goldhill at Otto Schiff care home for adults with physical disabilities and sensory impairments, which is based at the Maurice & Vivienne Wohl Centre. The 60 amateur golfers and 20 professionals played at Brocket Hall Golf Course on 11 September at the 45th Pro Am Golf Tournament, which was organised by the Pro Am Golf Committee. To date, the tournament has raised more than £1m for Jewish Care.

3

FOCUS ON BEE-ING GOOD

The AJR (Association of Jewish Refugees) volunteer team launched this year’s Mitzvah Day project, Plan Bee, in the gardens of the Signature Care Home, at Hendon Hall. Embracing 2023’s theme, Tikkun Olam – meaning ‘repairing the world’– the campaign focuses on encouraging the community to visit a friend, relative or someone in need of a friendly face and, together, plant bee-friendly shrubs, plants or bulbs. AJR is providing members with a starter kit, including a plant pot, soil and seeds.

4

PRIMARY SCHOOL CHIEF

Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis enjoyed a special assembly at Hertsmere Jewish Primary School in Radlett on Monday. He enjoyed a tour of the grounds and festive meal in the sukkah, before blessing a new mezuzah at the school entrance. Headteacher Rita AlakLevi said: “We are honoured that the Chief Rabbi visited our school and took the time to answer the children’s questions. They really appreciated having such a special visitor.”

5A MEANINGFUL WELCOME

About 35 migrants and asylum seekers in Redbridge were welcomed into the beautiful sukkah at Oaks Lane Synagogue, Newbury Park. The group included single men, older people, parents, children and babies from countries in Africa and the Middle East. Most were Muslim or Christian and had never been in a synagogue before, let alone a sukkah. Rabbi David Hulbert explained the Biblical origins and the meaning of the festival, pointing out the similarity of the sukkah to temporary homes hastily built by refugees or by those who survive natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods. His explanation was translated into Arabic by Imam Dr Mohammed Fahim, of the South Woodford mosque.

SIMPLY THE BEST

Steve Brinberg has performed as Barbra Streisand for 30 years but is neither a drag artist nor a tribute act, and is yet to meet her, he tells Louisa

Did Barbra Streisand

foresee Zoom meetings and their opening lines when she first sang the words Papa, Can You Hear Me? It’s 40 years since Yentl and New York-based Steve Brinberg is bringing his Simply Barbra show to London to celebrate.

Brinberg is, quite simply, Barbra. On stage, anyway. The rest of the time he’s just a regular theatreloving Manhattanite. But when he dons a sparkly dress and a razorsharp blond-bob wig, he transcends into arguably the greatest female singer of all time, with undoubtedly the closest singing voice to hers. The first time I saw him live, if I closed my eyes I could genuinely believe I was at a Barbra Streisand gig.

“When I realised I could sing like Barbra, I thought I should probably do something with this,” he tells me over Zoom from New York.

“I put my voice on tape singing like Barbra. My father found the tape, which was labelled Steven Singing and said, ‘I found this tape. I listened to it. It’s your name, but it’s not you. It’s Barbra Streisand.’ I said, ‘No, it’s me.’”

Growing up in the Bronx, Brinberg loved music and his parents often took him to the theatre.

When he was young, his aunt paid for him to have piano lessons. “I could sort of play by ear but I realised I liked singing more than I liked playing,” he says. “I was very shy, so I didn’t pursue that until high school when I started singing and putting my voice on tape. Once I got to college, I took a voice class and I was like, oh, singing – that’s what I was always meant to do.

“My voice is as deep as can be, not really a falsetto, or a countertenor –it’s like a mix, so I can pretty much sing in all Barbra’s original keys. I’ve taken a few of them down over time and I think having a strong or deep voice has made the high voice deeper. Another female voice I do is Cher, which I do in my deep male register, whereas I do Julie Andrews in the same placement as Barbra.”

That Streisand has a unique voice with stunning enunciation makes Brinberg’s talent all the more impressive. “Nobody sounds like her – except me! – but a lot of people evoke her style,” he says.

“I grew up listening to her. I always say she was my voice teacher, my voice lessons and I learned all her phrasing. I’ve always loved to do songs that she’s never done and if she then does them, in some cases it’s almost note for note what I imagined. It’s very easy for me to be in her skin and her voice.”

Brinberg has never met Streisand but has met “literally every single person who is close to her. I know she’s aware of me because when her best friend Donna Karan had a 60th birthday, Barbra couldn’t come so her manager hired me to sing and through somebody else Barbra directed my performance.

“Usually for a party, I’ll sing a couple of songs and then end with Happy Birthday. But her direction was ‘I want him to come in and sing Happy Birthday first, and then sing the other two songs.’

“Bless my parents – I went to the concert that she did in her backyard in Malibu. It was crazy expensive. And I was like, that’s what the barmitzvah money was for. It was amazing. Even then, the thing was –she may never sing again.”

Brinberg spent many years working with Marvin Hamlisch. “Marvin phoned me when Barbra

was doing one of her big tours and said he was thinking of having a bit in the show where she says, ‘You know, I’m so busy. Sometimes I wish there were two of me,’ and then I would appear.

“He called me back a week before the show was supposed to begin and said, ‘We already have this little girl in the show playing young Barbra so it’s too late as it’s already written, but I really want to work with you.’ Within a couple of months, he called me to sing with him in the symphony for Barbara Cook.”

Brinberg toured with Hamlisch for 11 years. He would start playing The Way We Were and Brinberg would start humming from the wings and then come out and do the number with Hamlisch and the 80-piece orchestra. Towards the end of the show, he would take off all the makeup and come back out as himself.

This is a big year for Streisand. As well as being the 40th anniversary of Yentl, it’s the 50th anniversary of The Way We Were and in November her much anticipated book, Name is Barbra, is due out. “There’s been so much written about her, I think she probably wants to set the record straight about some of the stories. I don’t think we’re going to hear much about her love affairs and all that stuff, because that’s just not her style. She is very much a lady and if anything unsavoury has been said about her, she has sort of taken the high road. Everyone said when she did Hello, Dolly! that she and Walter Matthau hated each other, but when I was at the concert in her backyard, he was there. And then I read that she later became friendly

with him and his wife.

It’ll be interesting to see what she says about the making of that film, which is very, very beloved by many of us.”

Brinberg recalls Streisand caught a lot of flak for Yentl. “People thought, who does she think she is directing and starring, but men do that all the time. She kicked in the door for women directors.

“There was controversy about Mandy Patinkin in the movie because he is a great singer, but he didn’t get to sing anything. The fact is that he was cast very late – that role was meant to go to Michael Douglas, who of course doesn’t sing. I think it did Mandy Patinkin a favour, because if he had sung in that movie, he might have been pegged as ‘musical theatre guy’.”

Brinberg says that when he takes

the stage, his goal is to make us think of Streisand. “I always say I’m not in drag. I’m just in costume playing a character.

“On a radio show with Diana Rigg, I said I would never dress like that to vacuum. And she said, ‘Oh, why not?’ which was pretty funny. But the physical part of it has never been as important to me as the musical. I really think if I had to, I could do Barbra in a tuxedo as long as I had the fake nails – she has the most beautiful hands and nails.”

If you go to his show, you’ll see Brinberg using his hands with fake nails to push that blond hair off his face, and you will most definitely think of Barbra Streisand.

 Simply Barbra is at Brasserie Zédel on 11, 18 and 23 October and then on UK tour. brasseriezedel.com

‘Men can write romance too’ Harvey Lisberg

Walters

From Scotland with love

Write what you know, authors are told, which explains why so many use autobiographical detail in their books. This is particularly true of the television, film and radio scriptwriter Paul A Mendelson.

His new novel, The Forever Moment, centres on an acclaimed Scottish author Charlie Dickens (yes, really), who is on a US book tour to promote his latest book. Charlie has met a young woman who bears a striking resemblance to Laura, a long-lost love he met during a secondary-school exchange programme in Lexington, Kentucky, and he is forced to wonder what really happened between them so many years ago.

Scottish-born Mendelson came up with the idea for the novel while watching the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, which is set in the Kentucky city in the mid-1960s. The protagonist, a chess prodigy, plays her first championship match at the Henry Clay High School.

“I said to my wife: ‘I went there.’ I went from Glasgow on an exchange tour to Lexington and stayed at the Veterans Administration Hospital and went to that school,” he tells me. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me to make a story out of it, but it all seemed to go together. I think everybody writes from somewhere inside themselves.”

On Mendelson’s 1967 trip, aged 16, like Charlie he met a girl and corresponded with her for some time. The similarity to his character ends there – and, not wanting to give away any spoilers, Charlie is reunited with Laura with interesting consequences.

He describes the adult Charlie as “locked in this betrayal of the past – or he’s used that as an excuse”, adding: “He has not been able to form lasting relationships. Maybe that’s his own inadequacies or maybe he hasn’t met the right person. But he’s putting the blame on the fact he’d been betrayed by somebody who he thought was going to be the great love of his life.

“And it took what happened later on, in the current day, to jolt him out of it because suddenly he realised that she hadn’t betrayed him, at least not in the way he thought. And

Laura almost hadn’t realised how much she loved him until he came back and the whole thing started again.”

Mendelson is intrigued by the idea of being aged 40 and suddenly meeting someone you’d known at 17 and discovering the di erences.

“Charlie can’t get his head around who Laura is now. She’s mature and sophisticated. She’s a feisty woman – she’s been through divorce, she’s got two children who are mixed race, she’s a teacher. She’s not the person he knew.”

What does Mendelson want readers to take away from the novel, I ask. “That you can write a romantic novel that is funny –because most of them aren’t, and gripping and written by a man – which most of them aren’t.

“Some women said it was very nice to read a romantic novel from a man’s perspective, as they’re not normally. People have said that they laughed a lot. They don’t realise it’s quite hard to be funny.”

The novel is indeed entertaining –Mendelson has extremely witty turns of phrase. Charlie’s newfound Scottish friend, Norman, wears a kilt to meet his American hosts, and Charlie “might even consider wearing one himself, were they ever to uncover or create a Dershowitz or Dishowisky tartan”. The rest of the teenagers “all appear to entertain two overriding cultural ambitions for this trip – to have 100 percent American burgers and 50 percent American sex”.

Mendelson muses that if you write serious pieces, you get “praised to the skies”. But if you write family comedy that people find funny, as he does, it’s underrated.

“People think ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ but writing funny and writing clean – because I tend not to be particularly rude in my writing – that does take a bit of skill,” he admits.

And skill is what he has in spades. Mendelson, who left Scotland when he was 16 to move to London with his family, studied law at Cambridge University. His first job was running a family law department in a small legal practice, but he left after six months, becoming an advertising

copywriter, first for Ogilvy & Mather and then for other agencies.

He created several much-loved BBC comedies, including May to December, which received a BAFTA nomination for best comedy. Broadcast between 1989 and 1994, it told the story of a solicitor who falls in love with a client half his age. He also wrote the acclaimed ITV play Losing It, which starred Martin Clunes, about an advertising man who gets testicular cancer. The drama was based on Mendelson’s own experience with the disease.

So Haunt Me, a BBC series about a white Anglo-Saxon family who relocate to a rundown home that is haunted by Yetta (his own mother’s name), an interfering Jewish mother whose daughter ran o with a nonJewish pop singer, aired for three series.

“That was a fun show,” recalls Mendelson. “The BBC’s head of comedy initially said, ‘You’ve done everything wrong; you’ve got ethnic humour, suspension of disbelief, children, dogs and special e ects. I like the writing: go write something else.’ So I thought, ‘Well, I know what my brief is –basically no Jews and no dogs!’”

Mendelson started writing The Forever Moment, his seventh novel, two years ago, on his 70th birthday, but it initially wouldn’t come. So, rather than forcing it, he wrote the script for it, because, he says, “scriptwriting

comes very easily to me – in a sense it’s my original discipline.

“I like writing things that are, at their core, very serious, but because I’m a comedy writer, I come at it from a comedic perspective.” How lucky for us.

 The Forever Moment by Paul A Mendelson is published by The Book Guild, £8.99

TV and radio scriptwriter Paul A Mendelson tells Alex Galbinski he’s proof men can write romantic novels, and they can be funny too

Shine On Harvey!

Harvey Lisberg’s memoir is a who’s who of Jewish men. By Jenni Frazer

It is safe to say that music mogul Harvey Lisberg is no Walter Yetniko , the infamous record industry executive whose career — even by his own lights — was a litany of drugs, drugs and even more drugs.

But Lisberg, speaking from his home in Los Angeles where he and his wife Carole live when they’re not in their native Manchester, looks almost a ronted when I practically accuse him of being a nice Jewish boy.

“There was gambling,” he ventures. “And sex.” But I can tell his heart’s not really in it as far as vices go.

Lisberg rose to fame as the manager of two huge acts — Herman’s Hermits in the 1960s, and 10cc in the 70s. And he also cut a swathe in the world of sports agenting, managing snooker stars such as Jimmy White and Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins.

In Lisberg’s charming memoir I’m Into Something Good, named after the Go n and King mega-hit for Herman’s Hermits, he traces his life back to his 1940 birth and his upbringing in Waterpark Road, in the heartland of Jewish north Manchester.

Unusually for someone in the rock and pop business, Lisberg makes no attempt to hide or play down his Jewish background. So he writes entertainingly of his parents’ decision to get him away from smog-ridden Manchester by sending him down south to Berkshire, to board at Carmel College, headed by the former rabbi of Manchester’s Higher Crumpsall Synagogue, Kopul Rosen.

Lisberg was only eight and hated Carmel with such a passion that he ran away three times. On the third occasion, he and a friend made it as far as the friend’s aunt in London, but rather than greet the boys with glad cries, she phoned the school immediately and returned them, much to their chagrin.

On their return, Lisberg was sent to Rabbi Rosen’s study. He feared that he was in for a thrashing; but the rabbi o ered him a deal. “You don’t run away again, and I won’t beat you.” The two gravely shook on it: “My first deal,” laughs Lisberg today.

Mention of the Higher Crumpsall Synagogue leads Lisberg to reminisce with rhapsody about its choir, led by Fabian Gonski. “When the choir sang on Rosh Hashanah, that was epic, it was a magical musical performance,” he recalls. Grinning, he says he only went to shul for two things: to look at girls and to hear the “opera” of the choir and chazan.

And in his memoir he talks about synagogue music and its minor keys. His family were keen on music and from that Lisberg says he developed his ear — and his almost unerring ability to spot a hit record in the making.

Long before he entered the music business, he had an early ambition to be a stockbroker — though there weren’t, as far as he knew, any Jewish stockbrokers. Instead, “always interested in shares and commerce”, but not really wanting to be “a boring accountant”, he went to Manchester University, where he studied for a degree in economics.

“Then I did go into accountancy, but found

it just as boring as I’d expected it to be.” His first job was with a Jewish firm in Manchester, doing mindnumbing work which today, he says, would be done by computer.

Fortunately, he got a new job at a big accountancy firm, Binder Hamlyn – London-based but with a Manchester branch — and paying, says Lisberg, three times as much as his previous post.

with a Manchester branch — and paying, says

The big thing about Binder Hamlyn was its roster of star clients, most particularly the Grade brothers, “the epitome of power in the entertainment industry”. Because of the company’s links to entertainment, Lisberg was able to “get o work and go down to the TV studios, and the o ce manager would allow it. And I met lots of people there and made some close friendships.” He was, he tells me, “inspired by Leslie Grade”, a super-agent, and “the biggest schmoozer I ever met in my life”.

On page after page of Lisberg’s memoir we meet others like him, ambitious young Jewish men on the make, sharing musical tastes and, he says, Jewish humour and cynicism. The di erence between the managers and the managed must have been vast: Lisberg first came across Peter Noone, the lead singer of Herman’s Hermits, in a Manchester suburb called Davyhulme — where there was no Jewish community at all. A bigger contrast

with Waterpark Road and Broughton Park could not be imagined.

Lisberg was 23 when he met Noone, and had himself already begun writing songs with his friend Charlie Silverman. He’d gone to hear Noone – only 15 at the time – playing at a club in another seriously non-Jewish neighbourhood, Urmston. In November 1963, with financial support from a cousin and two friends, Lisberg signed Herman’s Hermits up and began booking dates for them around the country.

August 1964 the group, with some changes in the line-up, had recorded I’m Into Something Good, which went to No 1 in the British charts and, by the end of the year, was in the top 20 in America. And Harvey Lisberg was still working at Binder Hamlyn, and preparing to take his final accountancy exams. Finally, after failing his exams dismally, he decided to take the leap into fulltime management.

During that time Lisberg joined the man who became his long-time partner, Danny Betesh, another former accountant who had set up an agency called Kennedy Street Enterprises. That partnership lasted 30 years and though the two operated very di erently –

Jewish Lads’ Brigade premises both to rehearse and to play to local Jewish teens. And Harvey Lisberg, though older than most of the other fans, would often go to the JLB and listen to the band.

He had already picked out Gouldman as “brilliant” and soon he signed him up as a songwriter, separate from the Whirlwinds.

Street flourished, and remains one of the most successful musical agencies

Betesh the conservative nine-to-five man, Lisberg the hustler who flew around the world making deals – Kennedy Street flourished, and remains one of with a high-profile roster of clients. Despite the American success of the Hermits, Lisberg still had an always known Graham Gouldman, who lived not far from him in north Manchester, and at 17 was “working in a shirt shop by day” and playing in a

eye on the domestic market. He had band at night.

The band was the Whirlwinds, who used one of the rooms

who used rooms at the

Before long Gouldman had written the future smash hit For Your Love, recorded by the Yardbirds, and everything took o . Gouldman, under Lisberg’s aegis, became a songwriter for hire, churning out hits before ultimately linking up with old friends Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. With Eric Stewart, the former lead guitarist of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, another Kennedy Street signing, the four creative musicians became the one-o phenomenon 10cc, operating out of their own recording studios in Stockport. Along the way Lisberg and Gouldman became brothers-in-law when Lisberg married Carole Gottlieb and Gouldman married her sister, Susan. Lisberg’s marriage lasted, while Gouldman’s did not.

Together with world-class musical success, and triumphs in sports management, Lisberg’s career has been a rollercoaster ride. But he admits to some mistakes, chief of which was a decision to let go the partnership of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom Kennedy Street had briefly signed. The crunch came when the pair wanted to push their new project, Jesus Christ Superstar. And Lisberg’s innate nice Jewish boy came to the fore. “I had this dilemma, I just thought, I can’t be promoting Jesus Christ while living in a road full of rabbis. It just didn’t feel right. But it was a mistake!”

Today, brimming with showbiz anecdotes, Lisberg is actively promoting his memoir, and has hopes that one day it will be turned into either a documentary or a feature film. I can’t wait for the soundtrack.

 I’m Into Something Good is published by Omnibus Press, £20

DON’T WAIT TO SELL HOPING FOR A HIGHER OFFER

Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, gives Candice Krieger his views about the housing market

Homeowners shouldn’t wait to sell in the belief that they might get a higher offer in six months’ time. That is the message from the chief economist of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Simon Rubinsohn, who has presided over RICS for 15 years, told Jewish News: “It’s dangerous to hold on to the notion that prices might be higher in six months. If you are looking to sell, I am not sure there is a great advantage in holding back.

“If you get locked into believing your property is worth x amount because someone once sold something on your street for x amount, that isn’t how the market works.”

The sluggish state of the UK housing market has been hitting the headlines in recent weeks. Buyer demand and agreed sales continue to fall sharply in the face of higher mortgage rates and economic uncertainty. In the rental market, while there has

been a sustained uptick in demand, the yawning gap between this and the lack of supply remains close to an all-time high, according to the RICS Rent Expectations indicator. This imbalance has sent rents rocketing.

“The whole property market is pretty dysfunctional at the moment,” says Rubinsohn, a member of Finchley Reform Synagogue. “There is defi-

nitely a supply challenge where we haven’t built enough homes across all tenures, and then you throw in the macroeconomics. I don’t think people ever thought we would see interest rates move in this way and they have been caught out and forced into a much more challenging economic environment.

“So, there is the cyclical overlay on the structural.” Rubinsohn, who entered the financial services industry in 1985, concedes that the current situation is “a crisis in some sense”, particularly how it is playing out for young people who either want to get a foot on the ladder or rent.

“The deposits required in London, the Southeast and other big cities around the country are huge, plus the higher interest rates and running costs of a mortgage, but it’s that deposit which is the big difference. It used to be that on a relatively normal salary you could find the wherewithal to get a deposit together, but now, without the bank of mum or dad or grandparents, it’s very hard to get a deposit together.”

A father of two, Rubinsohn says it’s also challenging for those looking to downsize.

“There is a lack of these sorts of properties, so they are likely to be priced quite aggressively even in this market. And again, it’s dangerous to think prices might come down. The place you want to move to is probably reflecting the general market tone and you shouldn’t get too fixated on what’s going to happen over the next 12 months.”

So what is going to happen? “I would like to say things are going to improve as we head into the autumn but unfortunately that’s a little premature and it might be that we are looking through into 2024 before we get some visibility on the likely turning point.

“Realistically, interest rates are not going

back to where we were so when buyers think about their finances, they need to plan around the higher cost of money being embedded in mortgages.

“It’s a different environment today. We are dealing with mortgage rates that are higher than they have been for an awfully long time.”

Rubinsohn says the recent decision by the Bank of England not to raise interest rates is “a sensible one in light of the latest inflation data”, but he still doesn’t expect an early reversal of course on interest rates. “The housing market is likely to remain flat for a while to come.”

Rubinsohn joined RICS in 2007, having previously been a senior strategist for Barclays Wealth, where he played a key role in managing client asset allocation.

A former lecturer in economics, in 1985 he joined ANZ Merchant Bank as a UK economist.

He says there needs to be a holistic approach when it comes to easing the imbalance in the market.

“Some of our [RICS] members are saying is the answer to roll back on some of the taxes and regulatory measures that discourage landlords, but I’m not sure that’s the longterm answer.

“These buy-to-let landlords are competing for properties with first-time buyers, so they’re not adding to the sum total of properties, they’re just switching between tenures.

“Whoever is in power really needs to think about a bipartisan approach and about a long-term strategy in terms of how we approve developments.

“We need to be mindful that more property is required, but we don’t want to rip up the whole Green Belt, so we need to think about it holistically.

“The government has a role to play in trying to convene lots of relevant parties and stakeholders. It can’t pull all the levers on its own.”

MAKING SENSE OF THE SEDRA

seem to sit so far apart from those with whom we disagree?

The answer, I believe, is the sukkah.

Despite the aphorism that time heals all wounds, recent ruptures in Israeli society between the right and the left, the secular and the religious seem to intensify over time.

When looking at the news and seeing the weekly mass protests, a deep reflection of the societal schisms which unfortunately manifested in the clashes during the public Yom Kippur services in Tel Aviv, we are left with a feeling of despair and hopelessness.

How is it possible to ever attain peace – internal national peace among our brethren – when we

Every Friday evening in Ma’ariv we beseech Hashem to protect and watch over us, and to “u’fros aleinu sukkat shlomecha” (spread over us the sukkah of Your peace).

If we are asking Hashem to grant us peace, why do we ask for a ‘sukkah of peace’, a flimsy and temporary makeshift structure, rather than a ‘fortress of peace’, a peace that is robust, secure, and enduring?

Rav Kook notes that according to halachah, even an imperfect sukkah is still a bona fide kosher sukkah. A sukkah can have gaping holes, it can be built with little more than two walls instead of the full four, it can have crooked walls and large spaces

between the walls and in the roof. Yet, such a fragile and imperfect structure remains a kosher sukkah.

Ordinarily, we strive for perfection with mitzvot. A Sefer Torah that missing even one letter is invalid. We don’t use a broken loaf of bread at kiddush. An etrog that loses its pitom (its stem-like protrusion)is not kosher. But in a sukkah, Hashem tolerates imperfection.

The same is true, says Rav Kook, when it comes to making peace. Peace is so precious and vital to our personal wellbeing and that of the nation and world at large, that even if we are not able to attain complete and perfect peace, we should still pursue any partial measure of peace. Imperfect peace between neighbours, family members, in communities and among nations,

remains worthwhile, even if only partial and incomplete.

We ask Hashem to provide a ‘sukkah of peace’ because peace can never exist if we insist on perfection! We can only get along if we are willing to sit in the same sukkah, despite its imperfections, and

despite our imperfections, because even a piece of peace is valuable.

• Last week’s sedra by rebbetzin

Ilana Epstein of Western Marble Arch Synagogue incorrectly stated that she is still rebbetzin of Cockfosters and N Southgate synagogue. We apologise for our error.

Piece of peace is precious enough

In our thought-provoking series, rabbis and educators relate the week’s parsha to the way we live today

Progressive Judaism

LEAP OF FAITH

come at the right time, we are in danger of famine.

The rainy season in Israel begins with Shemini Atzeret, the last day of Sukkot. In the temple, a libation of water from the Spring of Siloah was added to the usual sacrifices, in a celebration called Simchat Beit Ha’Sho’eva.

Today, we recite a special prayer for rain on Shemini Atzeret and praise God as our rain-giver in the Amidah until Pesach when we refer to the gentler dew.

The Talmud tells us that on Sukkot the world is judged by rain – and we know that if the right kind of rain does not

There are stories of rainmakers in the Talmud, and the lulav also functions as a rainmaker, the shaken leaves sounding like raindrops.

Rabbi Tanchum ben Hiyya said: “The falling of rain is greater than the giving of the Torah, for the giving of the Torah was a joy only to Israel, while the falling of the rain is a rejoicing for all the world, including the cattle and the wild beasts and the birds.”

Rabbi Levi ben Hiyyata said: “Without earth, there is no rain, and without rain, the earth cannot endure, and without either, humans cannot exist.”

Water features from our earliest texts. In Creation, God separates the waters into their

various locales, allowing dry land to emerge. Moses is drawn from the Nile, the escaping Jews cross the Red Sea, and Miriam’s well follows the people in the desert.

God is called m’kor mayim hayim (source of living waters).

Biblical Hebrew uses at least six words to describe rainfall, and Torah itself is equated with lifegiving water.

Our tradition appreciates what we may overlook: that uncertain weather is problematic, that we are dependent on sunshine and rain at appropriate times, and that our existence is predicated on a profound relationship with the land and with the environment.

On Simchat Beit Ha’Sho’eva the people celebrated extensively, accompanying the

Can’t

priests away from the Temple to the Siloah pool, and Mishnah describes dancing, juggling and music, saying that “whoever has not seen this celebration has not witnessed real joy”. Indeed, the partying was so ecstatic that Tosefta tells us they had to build a separation between men and women for the event – the first mechitza. This separation of the sexes, which was clearly temporary and only for this particular celebration, has become entrenched in some parts of the Jewish world, while the real lessons are diminished. We must be more aware of our place in the natural world, caring for the environment. We must remember that water is the basis of life and that everyone needs to have enough.

The lulav’s shaken leaves sound like raindrops

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A stimulating series where our progressive rabbis consider how Biblical figures might act when faced with 21st-century issues

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WORDSEARCH CODEWORD

The listed words related to simple pleasures can all be found in the grid. Words may run either forwards or backwards, in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction, but always in a straight, unbroken line.

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Fun, games and prizes

SUDOKU

Fill the grid with the numbers 1 to 9 so that each row, column and 3x3 block contains the numbers 1 to 9.

SUGURU

Each cell in an outlined block must contain a digit: a two-cell block contains the digits 1 and 2, a three-cell block contains the digits 1, 2 and 3; and so on. The same digit must not appear in neighbouring cells, not even diagonally.

BIRDSONG

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