Outspoken advocate for Barnet’s Jewish community Eva Greenspan dies at 77 - The Jewish Chronicle

Education, housing and kosher school meals were among the issues promoted by Conservative Barnet councillor Eva Greenspan, who has died aged 77, after nearly four decades in public service. First elected in 1990, Greenspan was noted for standing up for the local Jewish community. During her time as mayor from 2006 to 2007, she raised £250,000 for Barnet charities and in July last year she was honoured with a long- service award.

Working towards her goal of achieving affordable and quality housing, she was chair of planning and trustee of various housing associations. She also chaired Barnet Ramat Gan, which aimed to consolidate links and collaboration between Barnet and its twin city Ramat Gan in Israel.

But more recently she became an activist for the provision of kosher school meals in the borough. She launched the Kosher School Meals charity in 2023 after expressing concern that Barnet’s Jewish schools faced a crisis in their provision of kosher meals for students after a catering service collapsed.

“This sharp and sudden closure left a lot of schools in a position of insecurity in providing the required meals for our young people,” she said. “This issue did not only affect us in Finchley Church End Ward, where a third of our residents are Jewish, but also across Barnet. This was nothing short of a crisis on our doorsteps.

“As a Jewish councillor, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and former governor of a Jewish school, I have experienced the two ends of the need for kosher and Kedassia meals.”

With this in mind, Greenspan set up a cross-party group of councillors, teachers, officers and parents to find solutions to the crisis. The collaboration was particularly timely in light of the mayor of London’s mandatory free school meals policy for the following academic year, to ensure that no child would go hungry.

“The mayor recently announced that children with specific and religious dietary requirements will be getting £3.50 to alleviate the high cost of providing these much-needed meals. This still leaves some monies to raise to help our schools meet this demand. Myself, council colleagues and the affected schools are actively finding avenues and solutions to provide these meals for our young people.”

Over a period of some 30 years Cllr Greenspan was a governor of five schools and was committed to providing quality education for all students.

In the wake of October 7, Cllr Greenspan became an outspoken advocate of the need to protect the Jewish community from the wave of Palestinian protest marches and the apprehension they sparked. She could also be a fervent critic.

In April, 2024 she challenged the mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police on their approach and questioned the mayor over how seriously he took the concerns of the Jewish community regarding the frequency of the London weekend protest marches. “Many of us have consistently said that these marchers and the chants uttered by the protesters make us uneasy walking through central London,” she said.

Eva Greenspan was born in Poland after the Second World War but said she felt close enough to experience “the gut-wrenching effect the Holocaust had on many – including my family”.

Some 2,800,000 Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, representing 85 per cent of Poland’s Jewish population. “At the time of my birth, Jewish survivors had begun their aliyah to Israel as their place of birth was no longer what they knew, and Israel became that place of refuge for a people who had been near exterminated.”

In her role as a Barnet councillor, Greenspan reaffirmed her support for Jewish residents in Barnet, but admitted to having seen many changes. One thing, however, remained constant: “It’s a place where the Jew in Britain would feel somewhat at home and unafraid. That was until the events following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.

“I’ve never seen this amount of anxiety and fear within our community in all my years of being a councillor; parents having to fetch their children from school gates to prevent them from facing swathes of abuse in their own neighbourhoods, men having to wear baseball caps to hide their kippahs and worst of all, schools being closed because of the fear of some antisemite masking as a Palestinian sympathiser attacking our young.

“This is a horrific situation, a situation we, who have lived and survived, never thought we’d see again.”

Empathising with Barnet residents with family in Israel, she described how “the worst of scenarios are popping into our heads”. But for Greenspan and others born in the aftermath of the war who had to leave Europe, “it feels as if we can never find peace wherever we go”.

She said she had been impressed by the support given to the Jewish community both by Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer. In the case of the latter, she retained misgivings as whether the party had fully redeemed itself over the antisemitism that had clouded it in the past, but supported Starmer’s “approach and language” in dealing with this issue.

Leading tributes to Eva Greenspan, mayor of Barnet Tony Vourou praised her remarkable legacy, “serving our community with unwavering dedication. As a councillor and former mayor, Cllr Eva Greenspan was a beacon of leadership, integrity, and compassion, leaving an indelible mark on our borough.

“Beyond her professional achievements, Eva was known for her kindness and approachability. She took the time to listen to the concerns of local residents, always striving to find solutions that benefited all.”

Conservative group leader Peter Zinkin described her as a fiercely dedicated stalwart of Barnet Council. “Since her first election in 1990, Eva has served the residents of her wards and the wider Barnet community unstintingly,” he said.

Barnet council leader and leader of the Barnet Labour group Barry Rawlings regarded her as a “formidable member of the council and a strong voice for her residents and the community, serving them with tenacity and vigour.

“She will be sorely missed.”

Former Finchley and Golders Green MP Mike Freer said: “Eva was a truly wonderful colleague. Warm, supportive with a sharp intellect. Her many charitable endeavours went unrecognised and her support will be hard to replace.”

Eva Greenspan is survived by her children Natalie, Stephanie and Jason, as well as several grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Eva Greenspan: born July 1947. Died Jan 11, 2025

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