Splits emerge as candidates bid for Board
THE THREE rivals for the presidency of the Board of the Deputies engaged in a sometimes sharp exchange of views as they pressed their leadership claims at the JC’s hustings on Tuesday.
After weeks of campaigning, Laura Marks, Alex Brummer and Jonathan Arkush — the Board’s current vice-presidents — sought to gain a final advantage ahead of Sunday’s vote, which is likely to be decided more on personality than policy.
Ms Marks insisted she was a “brave, decisive leader” amid accusations of flip-flopping last week from Mr Brummer for reversing her original decision not to stand for the top post.
“The day when I said I am not going to do it I knew I had made a bad decision,” she said. “A brave leader changes her mind.”
While she pledged that she could do the Board job “full-time”, Daily Mail City editor Mr Brummer and barrister Mr Arkush gave assurances that they would have time to fit it in with their careers.
The president’s role was to set strategy and not to try to micro-manage staff, they argued. “Laura, I have actually seen you trying to choose the stationery,” Mr Brummer remarked.
Mr Arkush highlighted his track record as an advocate speaking out against antisemitism and for Israel, Mr Brummer his high-level contacts in government and business, and Mitzvah Day founder Ms Marks her interfaith work reaching out to other communities.
But while on most issues of policy it would take a laser cutter to distinguish between the candidates, some differences of opinion emerged.
Mr Brummer, though not opposing faith schools, feared that they could lead to ghettoisation and emphasised the advantages of children from different faiths learning together.
But Mr Arkush responded: “The crude reality is if you don’t live in a leafy sub- urblikeRichmond[whereMrBrummer lives], you just won’t send your children to the local schools. They are rife with problems — bullying, violence, drugtaking, racism.”
At previous hustings, both men criticised the comments by United Synagogue president Stephen Pack that Ms Marks would be a “divisive” choice.
Mr Arkush said at the hustings: “The Board is the one place in our community where we can have a fantastic crosscommunal debate and get things done irrespective of which part of the community you come from.”
The debate, in Finchley, north-west London, was organised by the JC and the Board and streamed live online.
Mill Hill Synagogue’s Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, backing Mr Brummer, tweeted that Ms Marks would be divisive, while Mr Arkush would make the Board irrelevant.
According to a cross-section of more than a tenth of the 306 deputies eligible to vote, who were questioned by the JC before the debate, Ms Marks was narrowly ahead of Mr Brummer as a first choice, followed by Mr Arkush. But under the Board’s voting system, second choices could prove critical.
More than a quarter of the deputies who were approached said they had yet to decide how they would vote.