Most parents are keen to cultivate their own cultural traditions in different ways amongst their children as well as young generation.
This perhaps is a universal phenomenon. I can speak as a British Indian. By all accounts we as a community are performing comparatively well in Britain. Thanks to the British society, its willingness not only to tolerate but to accept positive traditions of the Indian culture going back over centuries, the British Indians feel at ease by and large.
The results are for all of us to see and rejoice. The educational excellence, pursuit of professional qualifications, developing enterprising skills, integration with the society in general with respect to the law of the land and especially their peaceful attitude of co-existence. Inspite of several challenges we have been able to play our rightful role in the society.
Contribution of the age old wisdom of our culture and traditions played an important part in this happy situation. Nevertheless many times parents and the community leaders are concerned how to retain good aspects of our culture in Britain today.
The Jewish activism and experience perhaps has a message. I am happy that Michael Whine (Government and International Affairs Director at the Community Security Trust, and a founding member of the Indian Jewish Association) has spent a special column which is published this week.
- Editor
Staying Jewish
By Michael Whine
During the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945 over 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. This represented over one third the total number of Jews at the time, and it has taken over 70 years for world Jewry to regain its pre War size.
Jewry not only lost all those people, it also lost the centuries-old academies of Jewish learning which had flourished in northern Europe, particularly in Lithuania and Poland. In the years following the Second World War, the imperative was to rebuild shattered Jewish lives and re-establish communities, as well as support the birth and development of Israel. Then in the early 1970s and 1980s it dawned on some far- sighted Jewish leaders that if Judaism was to continue in Europe it needed to reignite the Jewish thirst for religious knowledge and culture. But now this had to be allied with schools that offered first class secular education and attractive modern facilities. In Britain this led to the founding of Jewish Continuity, established by the then Chief Rabbi, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, which sought to build and fund secondary schools designed to equal of the best of British schools, so that parents would want to send their children to them. Gerald Ronson, the property magnate, has also endowed two major schools in North London in this spirit, Immanuel College and the Jewish Cross Community School. The result now is that 60 percent of Jewish children in Britain attend Jewish schools. And they do so because their parents want them to have a Jewish education, but also because these schools offer the highest quality education.
Ronald Lauder, a former US Ambassador and son of Estee Lauder, who founded the cosmetics company, endowed a chain of primary and high schools in former Soviet states where all Jewish education had been absent since the Nazi era. These too are flourishing.
Another series of successful ventures have been to do with promoting secular Jewish culture and the arts. Some of these initiatives have achieved world class stature. Limmud, begun 20 years ago as a small residential conference for Jewish educators over the Christmas period, is now a firmly a highlight in the Jewish calendar. Over 2000 people now attend a week long residential annual festival of Jewish arts, culture, and religious learning, which attracts speakers, performers and participants from around the world. It has spawned offshoots recently in Russia, Israel, the USA, South Africa and Australia.
The Jewish Film Festival has also grown from small beginnings, to be a week-long celebration of films of Jewish interest from around the world, and occupying commercial cinemas in London and elsewhere. Jewish Book Week, likewise has grown from small beginnings to a major cultural event on the London scene, attracting Jews and non-Jews to major London venues. It is accompanied by readings, lectures and public discussions by prominent and famous writers and critics.
The Jewish Music Festival is yet another cultural fixture, with performances in concerts halls and in one of London’s parks.
Some of these initiatives have been replicated elsewhere in Europe, even in countries where there are virtually no Jews left, but where they once constituted a significant minority. Jews were up to one third of the populations of Warsaw and Cracow before the Holocaust. Now, less than 10,000 Jews live in Poland, and the community is ageing, and therefore dying. However, the Cracow Music Festival has become a major event celebrating Jewish music in recent years, and there are other music and literary festivals in Poland, which attract participants from all over the world. Recent government grants in other central European states, such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, are leading to the renovation of ancient synagogues left partly ruined by the Nazis and then the Communists. They no longer support large local Jewish communities, because they were mostly murdered by the Nazis, but they are starting to attract the young descendants of the survivors, as well as tourists from Israel, the USA and the UK. But they also attract non-Jews, for whom it is now ‘cool’ to celebrate Jewish music and culture.
In these and other ways, today’s Jews are successfully combating the consequences of contemporary secularity, by combining a modern approach to religious teaching with the best of modern culture, in such a way that young people are keen to lear about their heritage. A unique example of this marriage is JW3, in Hampstead, and the result of a merger between the London Jewish Cultural Centre and JW3 itself. An attractive contemporary building hosting academic lectures, film shows, concerts, evening classes, gymnasia, cooking lessons and numerous events for kids and young people as well as a restaurant described by a national newspaper restaurant critic, as among the best of its kind in London, it is modelled on the successful Upper West Side Jewish Community Centre in New York. That in turn is similar to other Jewish community centres in, for example, Mexico City, which attract old and young to its libraries, cultural events and religious services housed in a magnificent parkland containing sports pitches and swimming pools.
Now Jewish successes at ensuring our cultural and religious survival is being recognised beyond the community. Lithuanian government representatives have sought out British Jewish activists who can help them ensure the survival of that country’s culture among its widespread youthful diaspora.
The author is Government and International Affairs Director at the Community Security Trust, and a founding member of the Indian Jewish Association.
