Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 24, 2015

Rabbi Miriam Berger, London: We spend a huge part of the synagogues budget on security. Thats ludicrous. We do what every Jewish organisation does. Nobody is going to be the one to say, No, we shouldnt do that.

The guard opens the gate to the grounds of the Finchley Reform Synagogue on Fallow Lane and greets Rabbi Miriam Berger and her three-year-old son, Ben.

The guard is a permanent presence, typical of the kind of security that has long become the norm at Jewish institutions though since the Paris attacks armed police patrols can be seen occasionally in the Barnet borough.

We spend a huge part of the synagogues budget on security. Thats ludicrous. We do what every Jewish organisation does. Nobody is going to be the one to say, No, we shouldnt do that. I would love to be the rabbi who says I dont want to spend money like that, Berger says.

Last week, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism reported that Britains 260,000 Jews 0.5 per cent of the population are feeling increasingly threatened in the wake of the Paris supermarket attack, and a general rise in anti-Semitic feeling in Britain.

Britain is at a tipping point: unless anti-Semitism is met with zero tolerance, it will continue to grow and British Jews may increasingly question their place in their own country, it warned.

However, the reality on the ground in north London is more complicated, and far more nuanced. The local police in Finchley have been in touch with the synagogue; so, too, has local Conservative, Mike Freer.

It is amazing that they are taking things so seriously but it also perpetuates the cycle of fear, says Berger, after her son skips into the kindergarten downstairs.

Its quite admirable and very kind but it all feeds the perception that the police must know something that we dont.

The home secretarys speech amplified the sense of threat, she says.

Read the rest here:

Jewish leaders wary of accelerating cycle of fear in Britain

Category: Synagogue
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