Plans are afoot for a new communal centre in Hendon bringing together ten charities in a four-storey building.

Our Story will incorporate organisations including Aish, JRoots and Gift and will cost umbrella charity Jewish Futures around £20 million – double the combined operating budgets of its constituent organisations before the pandemic.

Project leaders say the aim is to give young people an experience of Jewish life, practices, culture and community in an “immersive and relevant way”. 

Sceptics may point to similarities with JW3 – the purpose-built Jewish community centre on Finchley Road – such as provision for education about Jewish history and the Holocaust, cookery activities and socialising.

Jewish Futures founder and chief executive Rabbi Naftali Schiff told the JC the focus would be on Jewish education rather than culture

“They’ve finished with Netflix and there’s nothing else to watch,” he said. “We have to responsibly step up to the bar with energy, with aspiration, with vision, with dynamism – and offering something new.”

He wanted the education offered to be "cutting-edge, modern and vibrant".

Despite the financial impact of the pandemic, Rabbi Schiff was confident of raising the money.

 “Every week there’s another charity, Charidy or CauseMatch [fundraising platforms], and every single time people think: ‘I can’t believe they’re doing this. They’re going to fail.’ I don’t know of  one of these campaigns that’s failed – even in the last six months. It’s remarkable. Which means there is an appetite.”

The project would be relying on a “large group of existing, generous supporters”. He declined to say how much of the £20 million had been raised.

Bringing ten charities together under one roof would lead to operational savings, he pointed out.

Jewish Futures has purchased the land in Brent Street and submitted planning proposals to Barnet Council.

Rabbi Schiff believed that the trend towards home working during the pandemic would be reversed once things improved.

Our Story was not about "the age of the coronavirus. There will be the day after. Of course, everybody needs to adapt to a new normal but the new normal is not going to have us sitting in our bedrooms and only speaking on Zoom.

“Whether it’s six months, one year, two years – whenever it is, we’re going back to work.”

JW3 CEO Raymond Simonson told the JC he was not worried about the new project affecting his own centre’s funding. But he conveyed the general “nervousness” among communal CEOs about the financial support organisations could draw on in the current climate.

However, he added that Our Story could be “part of the continuing renaissance of the British Jewish community”.