Why Jewish communities need to join London Citizens
Posted: January 11, 2012 | Author: yairlehrer | | Tags: limmud, london citizens, Martin Bright, Junaid Ahmed, Jewish community, British Jewry, Jewish Chronicle, Yair Stephen Lehrer |2 Comments »
by Yair Stephen Lehrer
London Citizens is the largest community alliance in United Kindgom. It brings different communities, groups and associations within a given area together in order to form an alliance, fighting for the things that are important to them as a collective. The types of things that are discussed in the local meetings can be anything from street crime and potholes in the local borough to bigger campaigns dealing with social issues such as jobs for the 2012 Olympics. London Citizens has not only been successful on local levels but also for bigger campaigns that started at the grassroots level. Examples include the Living Wage Campaign, which has fought for employers to pay a minimum pay, higher than the national minimum wage, that allows workers to adequately provide for their family with essentials, in London currently £8.30. Impressively, London Citizens has so far secured over £70 million of living wages, which has brought over 10,000 families out of poverty.
British Jewish Community and Civil Society Organisations have been providing services to Jews and the wider public for Hundreds of years. They function in every area of civil society – from education to elderly and disability care, through to religious institutions and university campuses. So why are the majority of the Jewish communities not members of London Citizens?
1. Lack of awareness– I have spoken to many Orthodox Jewish institutions who simply hadn’t heard of London Citizens, or if they had, only in connection to a bigger campaign but with no awareness of London Citizens on a local level.
Reason – London Citizens doesn’t reach out to different communities; it operates by referral or word of mouth. For example, a Church tells its neighbouring Mosque about this really important community meeting which is going on, which in turn tells the local bridge club and so on… The Orthodox community tends to be quite insular and its ties to other local instructions relatively weak, so while other institutions are getting together, discussing and cooperating on local issues that are important to everyone, the Orthodox community are not being represented. This is less so with non Orthodox Jewish communities who tend to have stronger connections with other communities in their local area.
2. Junaid Ahmed & Martin Bright– Ahmed, a trustee of London Citizens who is one of its Deputy Chairs expresses views about Israel and Hamas which are antithetical to the Jewish community. Views which make me personally squirm when I hear them and which I feel have no place in a country such as Britain.
Reason – Martin Bright, not Jewish himself, is the political editor of the Jewish Chronicle. I mention the fact that he is not Jewish since it is he who has waged a moral war with London Citizens on behalf of the Jewish community and lambasted those synagogues that have joined. Bright has taken it on himself to highlight the views of Ahmed, and as a result has made a moral judgement that London Citizens is by extension abhorrent, and any Jewish community that joins, supports Hamas.
With the above two factors in mind, the majority of the Jewish communities, especially Orthodox, are not members of London Citizens. However within London Citizens community alliances are cooperating and acting in their self-interest, and that of the wider community without a strong Jewish voice.
Having sat in on a number if these positive conversations I can see that these are genuinely good people, people that care about acting for the benefit of the community, and giving their time to come together and discuss their streets and their constituents. These people really care about doing what is best for their communities, and actually get things done.
Two thoughts have occurred to me during my interactions in these conversations. The first was how regrettable it was that Jewish organisations weren’t sitting at these meetings, o discuss the very issues WE care about as a community and issues they share with the wider society, in an effort to work together to improve them.
The second occurred to me as I sat in on a North London Citizens meeting. We were going around the room saying our names and something that concerns us that we would like to change. It came to a women sitting across from me who informed us that she is a teacher at a local secondary school. She had my attention. That particular secondary school is a school, from whose students many of my Jewish friends had had a lot of grief. What was it that concerned her? Many of her students feel threatened on the streets when they leave school! Wouldn’t it have been just be perfect if my former secondary school was also represented at that meeting? Representatives of both schools could discuss this common threat that their student’s felt, and try to come up with solutions to combat it.
A couple of weeks later I was speaking to a mother in another Jewish community who was in distress. A bus line that previously passed by the Jewish Free School (JFS) was changing its route, which meant that many of the school’s students would no longer have a bus to take to school. Alone the mothers weren’t enough to make a difference. If their synagogue or school were part of London Citizens they would have been!
So yes, one deputy chair of London Citizens has views about Israel that are concerning. If it was a group dealing with human rights, possibly boycott. If it was a group dealing with peace in the Middle East, possibly boycott. If it was a group to do with a political party and their foreign policy, possibly boycott.
But I care about my Jewish community here. I care about my streets. I care about low wages. I care about my surroundings. If we let the Middle East conflict and all that comes with it creep into our local community to the extent that we are so excluded from these type of crucial conversations, what we are doing is hurting ourselves more than anyone else.
In my month at London citizens not once was the word Israel spoken. Not once was the word Hamas spoken. Not once was even the word religion spoken.
What was spoken about was addressing the needs of our communities.
Let’s not let the views of one man really hurt us by removing us from the inter-community dialogue about our communities. It is causing us more harm than it does him.
Yair Lehrer blogs at http://thoughtsonisraelnationalism.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @Stephenlehrer