Failing innocence
Martin Stern (Letters, June 15) believes that the comments made by Lord Justice Singh and Mrs Justice Whipple in relation to the North London Coroner, Mary Hassell are applicable to the current dispute between the Charedi community and Ofsted.
However, these two situations are not analogous. Mary Hassell chose not to use her legal discretion to ensure the prompt burial of deceased members of the Jewish community.
Ofsted inspectors, on the other hand, do not have a legal discretion to permit independent schools to fail to meet the Independent School Standards.
Simon Rocker (JC, June 8) reports that Charedi leaders have told Ofsted that “any reference to the protected characteristics relating to religions, beliefs, sexual orientation and gender reassignment was a “red line that will never be crossed”.
And Melanie Phillips has written about Charedi schools “not being allowed to preserve the sexual innocence of their children”.
Sexual innocence should not be confused with sexual ignorance.
Innocence is a lack of experience, not a lack of knowledge or understanding.
Children should be protected from harmful experiences so that their innocence is preserved but it is important that they are given sufficient knowledge and understanding to protect themselves as they advance towards adulthood.
What Ofsted requires is that schools should not preserve the sexual ignorance of their children as it may well compromise their innocence.
Children who are kept unaware of the current sexual climate in Britain are being prevented from understanding how their religion offers a different approach to sexuality from the way it is practised by a minority of the British population.
If Charedi schools develop and implement their own methods of teaching the realities of the wider British society in which we live, alongside their own religious requirements and moral code, then children will learn to treasure their heritage and make choices as adults that reflect the importance and success of their education.
Adopting such an approach will demonstrate the vast difference between a Charedi education and the extremist religious threat posed by those Islamic schools where, as Melanie Phillips says, “children are taught to hate western society and to aspire to replace it”.
David Shinegold
Worthing Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey in
Without being professionals, we all piously observe the medical advice to take a complete course of antibiotics if needed.
That advice is based on the need to kill all the bugs infecting us and not let any survivors develop — evolve — resistance. This is well observed and documented and the big public health problem on our doorstep is resistant microbes that will close down the use of penicillin and similar.
There is an inferred acceptance of evolution in our taking all the antibiotics prescribed.
Could the religious be humble enough to recognise the “change nothing” ruling of the Chatam Sofer has run into diminishing returns? The Bible was written before modern instruments and maths and a lot of the real knowledge that has accrued was initiated by clerics.
As a maths don skilled in the
logic of overlapping circles in Venn diagrams, Martin Stern is equipped to open enquiry in reconciling different sources of knowledge. Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch did so in taking the agreement of any two of the trio of Maimonides, Alfasi and Jacob Asher as the definitive advice for his “magistrates’ handbook.” Frank Adam
Prestwich
Jewish Voice for Labour get an extraordinary amount of press and air-time considering they are such an apparently tiny group and so out of step with the vast majority of the Jewish community.
The JVL brand is considered to be toxic by most mainstream Jews and Jenny Manson’s interview (JC, June 15) was an attempt on her part to humanise the brand, underlined by: “I have a soft spot for babies, children and human relationships.”
But JVL should not be normalised. Their membership includes Labour members disciplined or under investigation for antisemitism. Some of their leaders appear to hold Jews partly responsible for the Holocaust. At the “enough is enough” demo against antisemitism under Corbyn, a JVL leader wore a yellow star stating “Jews for Jez”.
Ms Manson appears to have admitted she weaponises her identity against Jews, saying she only began to “self-identify” as a Jew in order to criticise Israel. Other minorities are not accused of dishonesty when they are racially abused, yet Manson openly admits JVL was formed “to tackle allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.”
A Hearn
Labour Against Antisemitism
For the second successive week, I feel compelled to point out major errors in an article on Jews and football in the JC (These Jewish stars changed football and the World Cup, June 15). This is a serious subject, which requires proper attention.
Márton Bukovi was not a Jew, unless Anthony Clavane believes that a Jew could coach a top club in Zagreb at a time when Croatia’s Jews were being exterminated. Neither have I ever been able to find any evidence that Alexander Fabian was an Austrian international. He was a Hungarian Jew, who spent five years in Austria and the United States in the 1920s.
There were also some gaping omissions — how, for example, can an article about “our greatest players, coaches and teams” leave out Árpad Weisz who won the Italian league three times as a coach in the 1930s before his murder in Auschwitz?
Or those Jewish coaches who were at the helm when the European giants Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Benfica won their domestic leagues for the first time? I understand that this was an article, not a long thesis, but to pair MTK Budapest and Hakoah Vienna together as “Jewish sides” misses a crucial distinction in pre-Holocaust Europe between clubs that happened to have been founded by Jews, and proudly Zionist and all-Jewish clubs.
I believe we have a responsibility to work extremely hard to uncover a history that was lost in the gas chambers and ovens of Europe. It is too easy to quote powerful words about the need to remember, as at the end of Clavane’s article. By its actions, the JC runs the risk of appearing as if it does not really care.
London N14
I have to correct Rina Wolfson’s statement (JC, June 15) that both Orthodox and Reform rabbis would find it difficult to co-host a Seder.
It is not the case, certainly as far as Reform rabbis are concerned, and I daresay the same for more open-minded Orthodox rabbis. Whether the latter would find it possible to actually cross the threshold of a Reform synagogue and attend a service where men and women participate on an equal basis is another matter.
There is progress. As president of my own Reform synagogue, I was invited by my neighbouring Orthodox rabbi to accompany him on a school educational visit. I counselled him that he might be drummed out of the brownies, but he took his chances and lived to tell the tale.
Barry Hyman
Bushey Heath
The courts do not take antisemitic hate crime online seriously.
This can be seen in the Alison Chabloz case by her social media ban being a measly one year in duration.
Once this annus horribilis is up, she will be able to post, to her heart’s content, racist bile with the only hindrance to her being whether or not the state prosecutes her again.
I think from past experience England have more chance of winning the World Cup. Julian Hunt
Barrister, London SW1
The knighthood awarded to Simon Schama is very much deserved but without my help he probably would not be here to receive it.
While giving a lecture on his book, The History of the Jews a few years ago at the Sheldonian in Oxford, he was seated on a chair on a low platform near the back.
Being a somewhat animated speaker, his chair was moving inexorably backwards to the edge of the platform.
It would have tipped over the edge with almost certainly fatal consequences as he would have fallen back on his head with nothing to save him.
My companions were urging me to do something but it was difficult to interrupt him in full flow.
In the end, I shouted out to him to beware.
As a result, he wrote in my copy of his book: “To Julian. My saviour and rescuer”.
Julian Marks
Wallingford
In the report about Eden Primary School children visiting the Jewish Care complex in Friern Barnet (JC, June 8), one resident is quoted as recalling “an Anderson rocket flying over his house during the Second World War.” But there were no Anderson rockets during the Blitz.
Anderson was a shelter erected in the garden.
What we did endure were flying bombs (called doodlebugs). We also had indoor shelters named Morrison.
Philip Rosenfeld
London NW4