PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT
MANAGEMENT BOARD MEETING TUESDAY 31ST MAY 2011
Honorary Consul of Israel in Scotland
Stanley Lovatt is being honoured on 31st May 2011 with a Civic Reception courtesy of the Lord Provost of Glasgow where he will be formally appointed by the Israeli Ambassador. This is a tremendous honour for Stanley and I will be sending him a formal letter of Congratulations on behalf of the Council.
Year Book
The Year Book is currently being printed and will be available at the AGM. My thanks to Yifat, Alan Hecht, Jeffrey Jesner and Fiona Brodie for their help in producing this year’s Year Book.
The Year Book income this year is just over £2K which is a little down on last year.
Nostra Aetate
A discussion forum will take place at GNHC on 13th September 2011. The subject matter will be the four elements of The Scottish Mace namely wisdom, compassion, integrity and justice. The event will be co-sponsored by GJRC, GNHC, CCJ, SCOJEC and The Scottish Bishops Conference. Speakers are currently being sought for the Event and GJRC will produce a leaflet by the end of June.
The Event will be a public meeting but initially invites will be sent to those who were invited to the Nostra Aetate Seminar last year.
Photographs in the JC
As you will be aware I received a complaint that the Jewish Telegraph were publishing photographs of children taken at Events in the Community, without the consent of their parents.
The greatest concern of the complainant was that the photographs were appearing online and a number of these photographs named the children and that the JT were charging for photographs. There were several issues to consider here and I decided after consultation with my office bearers to obtain legal advice from our Honorary Solicitor. I believe that you have seen that advice. Following on that advice and further email communications with the complainant I communicated with Kenny Davidson who was one of the Organisers of the Yom Hatzmaut Event and advised him of the nature of the complaint and suggested that a Notice appear at the Event (too late to put anything in Pre-Event Publicity) that photographs may be taken for publication at the event and that the JT may charge for them. I believe that this Notice did appear.
Subsequently I wrote to all our Constituent Organisations advising them of the issue in question.
I have also contacted Strathclyde Police and the Child Law Centre both of whom advised me that the JT were not doing anything illegal. I have informally spoken Sharon Mail about the issue and the response I received was that the JT do not consider that they are doing anything wrong and have no proposals to change their practice.
I do think that there is a child protection issue here to consider and that the JT as a minimum requirement should remove the names of the children that they publish on their online Gallery section. I don’t think it is our concern whether or not they charge for photographs. This is however a matter for discussion.
My proposal is that I raise the issue at the AGM and advise the Community what the JT have been doing effectively leaving it up to the parents to decide whether or not they wish to approach the JT to have any photographs of children removed if they do not wish them to appear there and/or advise Organisers and the JT at future Events that they do not wish their children to be photographed.
The other question is whether I formally approach the JT on the issue.
Calderwood Lodge
As I had received no communication from East Renfrewshire Council as to when they intend to hold the first meeting of the New Advisory Board on Jewish Education I emailed the Council last week. I received an immediate response to say that they intended to hold the meeting before the end of the school term.
Concerns were expressed at the last Delegate Meeting that the school was no longer being labelled as a “Jewish School” but a “non-denominational” school with a “Jewish Ethos”. The latter was the definition used in the recent HMI Report. The issue is more a legal issue than a practical issue and reference has to be made to the legislation under which the school was set up.
As it so happens on examination of the Scottish Government Website there is one Jewish School in Scotland which is labelled as a “denominational school” i.e. Calderwood Lodge.
One Member of our Management Board has communicated with East Renfrewshire Council on this issue and a response is awaited.
Website
You will have seen Philip Mendelsohn’s Report. Our new website will be launched at this year’s AGM. I wish to express my thanks to Dr Walter Sneader for all his hard work in managing our “old” website and to Philip for his work to date with the new site.
Henry Tankel and Judith Tankel Memorial Lecture
I have spoken to Dr Jeremy Tankel, Henry and Judith’s son, who has confirmed the agreement of the Tankel family for us to hold a Memorial Lecture next year (date time and place to be confirmed) in honour of his late parents.
I will consult with the Tankel family on an appropriate Speaker.
Henry made a generous donation to the Council in his Will of £1K. The cheque has been received and I have sent a letter of thanks to the Tankel family via the solicitors handling the estate.
Shaare Zedek
I attended the Shaare Zedek Event earlier this month held in memory of Henry Tankel. Regrettably the guest speaker Stephen Pollard the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle was unable to attend the Event due to illness.
Malcolm Livingstone stepped into his shoes and gave an informative talk on the work of the Community Trust. Mrs Ida Caplan spoke warmly and passionately about her companion Henry with whom she shared many happy times in the last few years of his life.
AGM
This will take place next Monday evening at Newton Mearns Hebrew Congregation. The Event is kindly being sponsored by the Alma and Leslie Wolfson Charitable Trust to the tune of £600. They have been thanked for their generous donation. The Award Winners have been informed.
The music will again be provided by the Cosgrove Music Group.
The Council are recognising the milestone anniversaries of Cosgrove Care and Newton Mearns Hebrew Congregation at the AGM. They have invited Speakers from both Organisations.
In addition Richard Simon of MDA will also speak at the AGM. I am meeting with Richard beforehand.
Hustings Meeting
This was held at GRS on 28th April 2011. The candidates from the Labour Party, Conservative Party and Scottish National Party turned up. No one was there to represent the Liberal Democrats. They sent an email apology on the day of the Event saying their candidate had to be elsewhere and couldn’t find a replacement. The Event however I believe was successful nonetheless.
Yom Hashoah
The Event on Sunday 1st May 2011 was an outstanding success. The audience was the largest I can recall at any YH Event. I have already sent my thanks to the co-chairs of the Yom Hashoah Committee Paula Cowen and Jane Tobias and the rest of their Committee. As Paula Cowen is stepping down as co-chair of the Committee Jane Tobias has agreed to lead the Communitee on her own next year.
Community Future
You will all have seen Paul Morron’s updated Report. It is my intention to launch this Report at the AGM and to seek the views of the Community by various means.
It is considered necessary to employ a Project Leader to manage the Consultation Process. I have circulated for discussion the draft Job Specification produced by Nicola Livingstone (after consultation with Paul Morron). I think we need to be disseminating the Report to the Community. If the Management Board agree we can delegate the task of moving this forward to the Project Group Nicola in her email I circulated suggested its composition (to be considered). Funding would have to be raised before we could advertise the post of Project Leader.
Kosher Catering
As you know Doreen Cohen has announced her intention to retire at the end of this year. I was invited to attend a recent meeting of the Kashrout Commission when the issue of a successor to Doreen was discussed. There appeared to be a couple of options (i) her Head Chef Peter taking over the current operation at Arklet supplying food to the residents at Barrland. This would be dependent on Peter being afforded the Supply Contract and use of the kitchens. Peter apparently would be willing to continue with functions within the Community i.e. in current community facilities but would not be prepared to cater at outside establishments e.g. hotels. The possibility of the Commission approaching a few hotels and seeing if they would be willing to provide their own food under supervision was discussed (ii) Chaim Jacobs has indicated his willingness to cater for certain functions within the Community. Discussions are ongoing.
The possibility of improving facilities at GNHC and NMHC to make them suitable for catering functions was also discussed. Discussions on all fronts are continuing. I will be contacting Arklet to express the Community’s interest in the current situation.