Safe havens

congregations need urgently to change their approach if they do not want to be part of a membership reduction of a further 20 per cent or more in the next 25 years.

Kenneth Morrison,

London NW2

It seems prescient that your headline article highlighting the collapse of the orthodox ‘middle’, shared newspaper space with the unedifying spat surrounding Rabbi Dweck’s shiur on homosexuality.

Hasn’t anyone in authority joined the dots, and worked out that many of the most integrated (aka, ‘middle’) British Jews can no longer relate to an institution that resolutely refuses to evolve?

And that, like the dinosaurs, if it won’t evolve, it is in danger of disappearing altogether... Caroline Boobis,

Newcastle upon Tyne, NE3

Your article on the demise of the mainstream shuls occludes the real and tangible growth in unaffiliated chevurah groups, the stiebl factor.

We live in a pop-up society where long-term commitment is being replaced by ephemeral places of engagement. Like-minded families, or groups of individuals, gather together to “do their own thing” Jewishly, free from the constraints of the Shul and able to do things that may have been rendered impossible due to the intransigence of Rabbinic leadership.

So family minyanim thrive, pushing boundaries and doing things “differently”, and re-defining egalitarianism and pluralism

The challenge is for the mainstream leadership to embrace these stiebls and chevurah groups and ensure their future, and most importantly be counted as full mem- bers of the community. Laurie Rosenberg, Woodford Green, IG8

“If being a safe haven for world Jewry is not enough” in response to Mr Lipitch last week, would Jews who chose to become Jewish under Reform or Conservative auspices be considered candidates for a safe haven? If one is going to tastelessly exploit the threat of “another Holocaust” in order to encourage aliyah and/or donations, which I do not, it is worth considering the way in which successive governments, tied to the Stygian coattails of ultra-Orthodox parties treat those who already made aliyah. For those who plan to do so, this is a case for electoral reform, for those who plan to stay here, a good case against it. Ruth Ben-Or,

Harrow, HA8