Breaking Down Walls
Walls have been a main feature of the past year in lockdown, and have come to symbolize both our protection and safety from the virus, but also our hesitancy and discomfort with slowly emerging from our isolation.
Some walls are important and significant, they hold up our homes and are direct links to the past. But other walls are damaging and excluding. The worst walls are the ones we don’t even know are there. It can be relieving, or painful to break them down, but this weekend is one of those times where we have the chance to discover the walls that have been invisible to us as individuals and as a community. The LJ Biennial Weekend has a multitude of sessions on breaking down walls; on radical inclusivity and whether it is Jewish (and does that even matter), Combatants for peace - Israeli and Palestinian ex-combatants working towards peace together, creating British Jewish community outside 'the establishment', something that we can recognise.
One of the most poignant sessions will be with Stephen Bush, the political editor of the New Statesman who led the Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community, which was set up by the Board of Deputies of British Jews after the murder of George Floyd last year. The commission makes more than 100 recommendations after hearing from witnesses from different backgrounds, traditions and political views.
“Jews have widely different views on what it means to ‘be’ Jewish, or to ‘act’ Jewish; but there is no comprehensive means to ‘look’ Jewish. Racial diversity should never be a reason for exclusion.”
His recommendations were intended to “enhance communal life for black Jews, Jews of colour and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews”.
In the past year we have been looking at how to become more inclusive as a community, which, due to the pandemic, has mainly focused on education - actively embracing history and diversity in how we teach, both in Chaverim but also in adult education sessions, and when we come back together physically, to make sure that security guards do not use racial profiling.
The report offers more than 100 recommendations, and we are establishing a working group to make recommendations on how CEC can become a more inclusive community. We would like to hear from you, either with your recommendations or stories, or if you would like to be part of the group that helps us break down the walls that we can see and the pens that we are not even aware of.