Consulting Jewish stakeholders

JVL Introduction

Labour’s Action Plan includes in its summary of key actions: “Consultation with the Jewish community will be built into all aspects of the Action Plan. With immediate effect, we will establish a high-level Advisory Board and a Reference Group to work closely with the Labour Party and act as a sounding board.”

It talks repeatedly of consultation with “Jewish stakeholders”.

But nothing in the Plan suggests how that Advisory Board and Reference Group will be constituted and there was no call – still has been no call – for suggestions as to who might be consulted.

Regarding ourselves as one of the Jewish stakeholders needing to be consulted we wrote to Keir Starmer and nominated a member of our Committee, Adam Hurst, as a suitable member of any such advisory or reference group.

To date, almost three weeks later, our email has not been acknowledged.

Here is our email to Keir Starmer

31 December 2020, sent by email

Dear Sir Keir

We welcome the recommendation of the EHRC Report that all Jewish stakeholders should be consulted and involved, a point clearly taken up in the Labour Party’s Action Plan.

We are writing to you, on behalf of Jewish Voice for Labour, to nominate Councillor Adam Hirst to the Reference and/or Stakeholder Group.  We attach Adam’s biography and ask you to note that, like many of our members, he is an observant Jew, with views representative of a broad swathe of our members and many younger people within the wider Jewish community.  He is also a respected Sheffield City Councillor.

We also wish to stress two broader points

1. The Board of Deputies of British Jews may well speak for those it represents, but it is not representative of all Jews in Britain, being largely composed of members from affiliated synagogues. In particular, it speaks neither for the substantial and growing proportion of religious Jews who are strictly observant, nor by and large for secular Jews who constitute anything up to half the Jewish population. It is substantially Conservative in its political outlook, like the majority of the Jewish voters since at least 2015 and moving in that direction long before.

2. Of course it should play an important role in any consultations but this cannot be at the exclusion of the diversity of Jewish voices which need to be heard – especially those on the left, particularly those committed to the Labour Party, where there are vibrant debates, engagements and dissent from the views of those expressed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The Jewish Labour Movement is based on and only open to those who accept the centrality of Israel to Jewish life. We in Jewish Voice for Labour do not claim to speak for all Jews on the left but, with over a thousand members a third of whom are Jewish Party members, we speak with confidence on behalf of a significant section of Jewish members of the Labour Party. We are one of those stakeholder groups referred to in the EHRC Report, demanding that our voice, too, should be heard.

We look forward to hearing from you and to meeting with you soon and, along with everyone else, here is hoping and working for a better 2021 than 2020.

Yours sincerely

Leah D. Levane and Jenny Manson
Co Chairs, JVL

Adam Hurst biography

Born in 1958 to an Orthodox Jewish family in Leeds, My parents joined the Leeds Reform Jewish congregation in 1961 and I attended Cheder and had my Bar Mitzvah in 1971. I now attend my local Reform Synagogue. I was a member of the DROR (Labour Zionist youth movement) and through them spent time on a Kibbutz in 1975. However, I did not feel particularly connected to Israel and considered myself a non- Zionist Jew when I left Leeds to study in Newcastle and then Edinburgh. In 1982, I attended a Yom Kippur service at an Orthodox synagogue with some relatives where the Rabbi spoke in support of the IDF which had taken no action to stop the recent massacres at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps. I thought his support of the IDF to be inappropriate at a time when Jews are supposed to reflect on their behaviour and seeking forgiveness.

My feelings on this led me to recommit to my Jewish values and on my return to Leeds I joined the Sinai synagogue as an adult member and have been a member of either the Leeds or Sheffield Reform Congregations ever since. I attend synagogue where possible and believe as a Jewish person it is important to condemn actions carried out in the name of Jewish nationalism which are contrary to internationally recognised standards of justice. As a Sheffield City Councillor, I was therefore proud to speak in support of the motion recently passed by the council that committed Sheffield City Council to recognise the state of Palestine

Links to all JVL statements and other articles on the EHRC report