The UK Jewish Film Festival, now entering its 28th year, has become one of the country’s most loved cinematic events. But the charity’s award-winning education programme which uses film to teach children about Britain’s Jewish community in a bid to promote interfaith dialogue and curb classroom antisemitism is no less valuable.
They learn about dead Jews in history, they learn about weird Jews in RE
“Where do people learn about Jews? They learn about dead Jews in history, they learn about weird Jews in RE, and they learn about murdering Jews in the playground or the staff room,” she says.
“A lot of our work is about the Jewish tradition of anti-fascism in this country,” says Burns, who explains that children in Tower Hamlets, for example, don’t necessarily know about the history of Jewish activism from the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to the 43 Group set up by ex-servicemen after the Second World War.
They are also shocked to learn about the diversity of Jewish experience. Two regular fixtures on Burns’ curriculum include The Adeni of Stamford Hill, which profiles the Yemenite Jews who live cheek by jowl with the strictly Orthodox community of Stamford Hill, and Growing Up Mizrahi, a film by Carol Isaacs about coming of age as the daughter of Iraqi Jews in an “Ashkenormative” world. But when Burns asks which films and TV shows students have watched depicting Jews, replies invariably include The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Schindler's List, and Netflix’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Her task, she says, is to “complicate and broaden” these snapshots of Jewish experience.
It's tough but rewarding work. Most children are not aware of the Edict of Expulsion in 1290 but learning that context equips them to better understand the long history of antisemitism in this country, and how it can shape-shift from Merchant of Venice written in 1596 to the antisemitic caricatures in the 1908 film The Robber and the Jew, for example.
Sometimes, her efforts to “de-other” Jews are accomplished with surprising ease. In one class, a girl from a Bengali family said she could relate to the main character in Growing up Mizrahi, who speaks Arabic at home but English at school. Another child of Columbian heritage drew comparisons between her community which has settled in Elephant and Castle, in London, to Jewish Adeni migration from Hackney to Hendon, because of proximity to places of worship. “We're always looking at transferable experiences which are culturally specific, but relatable to anyone who comes from a migrant heritage, who is not part of the dominant culture and yet is completely British,” she says.
Teaching about lived Jewish experience should not be a controversial but it has become so
But there are barriers. “I cannot explain how much pressure schools are under,” says Burns. “Their priority is exams, that’s what they're judged on.” This focus on targets can translate into a reluctance to “book anything” that takes away time from exam preparation. Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza has also had its impact. Burns was shocked when a teacher said the school would not book one of her workshops because it was taking a “neutral” stance in the wake of October 7.
Other schools have censored or cancelled screenings of films and one workshop to which an academic was invited to talk about British-Jewish identity descended into an abrasive question-and-answer session about “occupation” after the children learned he was Zooming from Jerusalem. “Teaching about lived Jewish experience should not be a controversial issue, but it has become one,” says Burns.
But overall, the children she encounters are “really open to learning” and she mostly leaves her workshops feeling hopeful about the future. And when “hidden Jews” who have hitherto been highly circumspect about disclosing their Jewishness “come out” to her, Burns knows she has done a good thing by visiting their school.
Donate to Jewish Film UK’s Winning Young Hearts and Minds Through Film fundraiser here: ukjewishfilm.org/support/winning/
Class act: a UK Jewish Film workshop[Missing Credit]