The head of the largest yeshiva in Europe has told the Orthodox community to leave the UK if proposals that change the status of yeshivas become law.
Gateshead Yeshiva’s Rabbi Avrohom Gurwicz warns the bill – which would leave the religious institutions subject to Ofsted inspections and government oversight -poses a “terrible danger” to the 75,000 strong Charedi group.
In a letter shared throughout the orthodox community, including Stamford Hill synagogue boards, Rabbi Gurwicz wrote: “In light of the terrible danger that a law might be enacted to mandate the education of our children without Torah and without faith – a law that would require anyone with sons or daughters of school age to uproot their residence from this state to another state that allows education according to the tradition passed down from generation to generation. It is our sacred duty to pray to the Almighty and do everything in our power to prevent this danger.”
The Yeshiva Liaison Committee (YLC) has been at the forefront of advocating against the Bill, which, in one section, seeks to redefine yeshivas as schools, thereby subjecting them to Ofsted inspections and government oversight that would completely dismantle them. Nearly 15,000 Charedi Jews have petitioned the secretary of state for education over a perceived attack on freedom of religion in the proposed Schools Bill.
Earlier this month, thousands of Charedi men and boys took part in a public display of prayer and fasting in Stamford Hill, in protest against aspects of the bill, currently in committee stage in the House of Commons. Demonstrators claim it “poses an unprecedented threat to the autonomy of yeshivas and the Torah upbringing of Jewish children”.
Shimon Cohen of Roath PR, a public relations and public affairs expert, told Jewish News of his concerns over “the huge amount of misinformation being spread about the Charedi community. Sadly, yeshivas are being unfairly targeted based on narratives that do not reflect their reality or the families they serve.”
Yehudis Fletcher, co-founder of Nahamu, which counters extremism within the Jewish community, has told Jewish News: “Yeshivahs, if registered, would be required to follow the independent school standards, which require basic secular education. The assertion that all boys should receive an exclusively yeshivah based education is at best a post-Holocaust innovation. It is ahistorical to characterise this system of recent vintage as a ‘centuries-old tradition”.
