Charedi activist’s deceit over pro-Corbyn letter
A LITTLE over a year ago, one of the UK’s leading Charedi rabbis, the Gateshead Rav, Shraga Feivel Zimmerman, warned that British Jews were facing “possibly the most serious issue” since Edward I expelled them in 1290.
His alarmism had nothing to do with antisemitism. What worried him was the threat of religious schools being forced to teach “alternative lifestyles”.
When the government published its draft relationships and sex education (RSE) curriculum, due to come into effect next year, the Charedi community mobilised in opposition to the mandatory inclusion of LGBT issues. Charedi leaders have so far preferred quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying to persuade ministers and civil servants of their cause.
Their efforts look to have been in vain. The latest version of the Department for Education’s RSE guidelines expect children to be taught some LGBT content “at a timely point” before the end of their school career.
But the guidance may give Charedi schools room to manoeuvre. The DfE distinguishes between relationships education, which is compulsory, and sex education, where parents retain the right to withdraw their children. Schools define what goes into relationships education and what into sex education. So the option remains for Strictly Orthodox schools to bracket any LGBT issues under “sex education” which parents can boycott.
Some in the Charedi community, however, argue a new government might not accept this interpretation of the guidance; and nor will the inspection service Ofsted, which has already put Charedi schools under pressure to talk about same-sex relations as part of the “British values” requirements to respect diversity. Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman only recently repeated her view that all children should learn about families that have “two mummies or two daddies”.
The RSE guidance is due to come before Parliament on Wednesday. Professor Geoffrey Alderman, who has lodged a formal objection to it, notes that since it takes the form of secondary legislation, it cannot be amended by MPs. They have the choice of approving it, rejecting it or referring it back to the DfE.
The dissident Stamford Hill activist, Shraga Stern, believes a softly-softly approach is futile. When the Charedi weekly Hamodia reported last week that leading rabbis discouraged lobbying against the government for the moment, he saw red and accused some in the community of being “kapos”.
Meanwhile, there are others campaigning in what they see as a critical battle for religious rights. Judith Nemeth, former director of the now defunct National Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools, is at the forefront as executive director of the Values Foundation, a multi-faith coalition set up to promote “traditional family structures”, which formally launches next week.
More than 40 rabbis were among the 140-plus signatories of an open letter organised by the foundation calling on the government to respect religious rights. Only last week, one of the signatories, Rabbi Shimon Winegarten, one of Golders Green’s most senior Strictly Orthodox rabbis, wrote: “Even if… a school may avoid teaching matters which are against its beliefs, how will its pupils, on becoming adults, be able to survive in a Britain whose younger generation is being nurtured upon the notion that having two daddies or two mummies is normal and that gender dysphoria and forbidden relationships are the norm.”