During the month of March, I published a daily suggestion of how to transform the British-Jewish community by a community figure. Now it's the readers' turn. I am extremely grateful for all the excellent suggestions which were sent my way. The following is a selection:
Establish a Kosher Restaurant Week, by food blogger Anthony Silverbrow
I know the point of maxims is that they are poignant because they ring true and for me. “They tried to kill us. We won. Let`s eat" is a nice encapsulation of the Jewish approach to eating. Along with images of bubbes or Jewish mothers force-feeding their offspring, food is both perceived as, and is actually, central to the Jewish identity.
Yet as a community in the UK, food is rarely a topic for debate. Food is something we all do, it is something we sometimes do together as a community, but it is rarely a topic of discussion.
In the United States there is a vocal movement discussing the ethics of kosher food. These are not debates about shechitah, rather it is a discussion about why is kosher meat so expensive? Why have animals destined for the shochet`s knife lived in conditions rarely much better than factory farms? Is it all about quantity, or does quality matter as well?
The secular world has handled similar issues, focusing on provenance, animal husbandry and alternative farming methods. The kosher community in the UK blindly goes on eating puffy, watery chickens and heavily processed foods.
In the UK, kosher shops or restaurants get credit for selling food approximating treyf equivalents, not the quality of their produce.
I'm advocating that we shouldn`t just be celebrating with food, we should celebrate our food.
We should have a kosher restaurant week where restaurants show off the quality of their cooking rather than crowing that they can cook kosher versions of sizzling beef or an ersatz version of the already ersatz chicken tikka massala. Butchers should do blind tastings comparing organic-style and `normal` chickens. Fishmongers should remind us that it was Jews who brought fish and chips to the UK.
It’s time to embrace what we eat and how we eat it and stop being so reticent about something so self-defining.
Promote Jewish, and particularly Sephardi, cultural literacy, by 'bananabrain' (whose six other proposals can be read here)
We are not short, for good or ill, of Jewish education organisations, from the controversial chabad to the inestimable limmud and all points beyond. However, for the most part, systematic approaches aimed at enhancing jewish identity are without exception entirely religious-based. More worryingly, they seem to be ignoring the question of cultural literacy.
Whilst there are instances of successful specific initiatives, like the Yiddish summer school run by the jewish music institute, or the various ulpanim run by israel-focused organisations, there is a distinct lack of provision for the sephardic and oriental communities to promote the learning of ladino and judeo-arabic.
Essentially, globalisation is being driven by majority tastes, hence the largest groups attract the most funding. If one didn’t learn it at one’s mother’s knee, one might struggle to gain familiarity with anything from cookery to piyyutim, history to dress.
There are organisations, including musical groups and individual tutors, who are promoting and disseminating the results of their knowledge and expertise in specific areas, normally as a result of academic research, but there is no-one who can teach you about the culture of, say, an “Indian Iraqi”, everything from how to make sambusak and sehug to singing shbahoth pronounced correctly – in other words, the customs, the language, the music, the food, the history.
And the same goes for the different Ashkenazi traditions, with the possible exception of Chabad, who integrate their cultural traditions such as “farbrengen” as part of their outreach programmes.
It is possible that this may be the result of a hundred years of zionist shelilat ha-galut (“negation of diaspora behaviours”) or an enlightenment/modernist hangover against the backward ways of “ghetto culture”, or simply the influence of organisations whose sole concern is increasing religious observance. But surely one can no longer argue that diaspora Jewish culture is simply something to be outgrown.
Yet we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this one – and forgotten much of what made being Jewish interesting. This is something I believe where we can learn something from how other diasporas have preserved their cultures, the various south asian communities being a case in point.
Run more inter-generational projects, by Daphne Berkovi
As a mature student completing a course in Intergenerational Projects from Lampeter University, my final assignment is to write up the organising of an Intergenerational Project.
Reading through the 2007 JPR report, Jews in Britain: a snapshot from the 20th census, it was interesting to note that, the report showed that there were a high proportion of Jews living alone at both and younger old ages; also the Jewish population had a much older age structure than the general population. The Inner London population shows a significant number of households with dependent children. The London Borough of Barnet has the largest older age population and a high proportion of older Jewish people living alone in England and Wales.
There are many intergenerational projects that are established in the wider British community. Personally, I would like to see more initiatives in this area, within the Jewish community; that is why I am completing my course as it gives me an opportunity to gain the necessary skills to work on intergenerational projects and ideas.
In my research I found for a variety of reasons statistics indicate that social changes and trends within communities and family life have notably changed over the decades. It has been argued that there has been a decline in community life and that there is a far greater disconnection between the generations that is, the young and the old. As Jews, we have always revered family and community life, but we also like the general population have our issues.
It would be wonderful to encourage some social entrepreneurs amongst our community, from both ends of the generational spectrum, and as noted in my course: "By bringing together two generations which have become separated from each other....... Intergenerational Projects have the potential to reduce tensions and misunderstandings between the two groups and can offer solutions to many of the social issues that concern communities."
Welcome all who have strong and worthy links with Judaism, by Reading Hebrew Congregations's Rabbi Zvi Solomons
Some of us seem to have an aversion to those who feel an affinity to us. For a start, what of out-married mothers and their Jewish children? We should be encouraging them to come to our shuls and community centres. Instead, I often find them abandoned by their Jewish family, friends and community, who even go so far as to cut them – and their children – out of the Jewish world.
Tell them they’re Jewish and that the intermarried Jew is always welcome in our community. The Jewish kids are also very welcome too.
The same is true for intermarried fathers and their offspring. As Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo says: Children of out-married Jewish fathers are mizera yisrael - of the seed of Israel. He was one such child. Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer says: "We are obligated to open before him the Gate of Hope to circumcise him now according to his father's wish and when he grows up he can speedily do as his father wishes and immerse himself lawfully.” Rabbi Bentziyon Uzziel, the Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Palestine and then of Israel at its foundation, writes, “...Even though the children are drawn after their mother, and are considered as gentiles by all of their [the Sages’] statements, in any case they derive from the seed of Israel and it is a meritous act to return them to their origin... so that …(they) shall not be utterly lost.
The third point is, I believe, not exceptionable, but needs careful handling. We need to reach out to non-Jews and educate them about Judaism and their duties as Children of Noah (Humanity). This is one way in which we can ensure that they relate to us as people, while the tide of Jewish settlement in this country flows steadily to London and Israel. It also provides occasion for scouting for unidentified Jews – the ones who slipped through the net because intermarried men, women and their children were not nurtured by those too firmly focussed on those already in the fold.
With a discriminating eye, a careful measuring mind and a heart devoted to our deepest interests, it should not be too hard for our communal leaders, rabbinic and lay, to find ways to become friendly and welcoming when we have hitherto appeared to be somewhat over-cautious and even grudging.
