Reflecting on Judaism

          The three years from 1976 started very much as had the previous three years. Pressure from parents urging us to accept their children for the few available places continued unabated, a situation which left the Managers in the unenviable position of having to refuse many prospective pupils. The Authorities were having difficulty fitting our proposed second one-form entry school into their building programme and were seeking an existing building in the locality to transfer for use by us, but without success. They also considered allowing us to put temporary classrooms on the site until the overall problem was resolved. When, in due course, we were granted permission to extend the school, on its present site, the Chief Rabbi’s Jewish Educational Development Fund offered to fund the whole of the £40,000 project. The Managers, however, felt that they had a moral obligation to contribute towards the cost and repaid £10,000 over three years.

          My records show that, unfortunately, during this period the standards of Hebrew teaching were gradually declining. In order to rectify the situation we arranged for the teachers to receive intensive courses in spoken Hebrew during the school term and a summer scheme in Israel during August 1977 which was attended by six members of staff and three spouses, the costs being subsidised by the school.
          For several years, the Managers of the school had been pressing the Jewish Agency’s Torah Department to arrange an exchange scheme between our school and an appropriate one in Israel. In fact a meeting with them was arranged in Jerusalem in order to try to set up such an arrangement. We were informed by them that in no circumstances would they be responsible for taking primary school children on such a scheme. It was therefore by chance that during one of my visits to Israel I met Uri Gorodeisky, the Chairman of the Parents Association of a primary school in Rehovot, and discussed with him the possibility of an exchange visit between the pupils of our respective schools.
          In February 1978 Raymond Rudie wrote to Rehovot as follows. “Mr. Woolf Abrahams, Chairman of our Managers, has told me of your interest in a possible scheme to accommodate our 4th year pupils (11 years old) in homes in Rehovot, whilst we in Ilford would accommodate Rehovot youngsters, on an exchange basis. Should you really think that such a project is feasible, I should be delighted to make relevant enquiries locally. Thank you most sincerely for your interest in this important matter.”
          The exchange visit to Rehovot, however, went ahead in 1980 and on the whole went very well and was a great social success. It did, however, create some problems because promises made to Mr. Balkin the Headmaster and to me, as set out in a prior memorandum, were not kept and the reasons were subsequently set out in a letter to Uri Gorodeisky. The gist of the problem was that our school is committed to the teaching of Orthodox Judaism although many, if not most, of our pupils come from a non-Orthodox home environment. It was a precondition of the exchange that when our children arrived in Israel they would be placed in kosher homes and that Shabbat would be observed. These arrangements were honoured, mainly, in the breach.

          As a result of these arrangements we received complaints from the Jewish Agency, both before and after the visit, because the Rehovot school was not a religious one. We reminded them that it was they who refused to assist us find a school satisfactory to them and so they had poor grounds for complaint. There were two or three successful subsequent exchange visits but they were arranged with religious schools through their good offices. It was a pity that they did not co-operate earlier. I believe that these exchanges were of a pioneering nature for I know of no other primary school that had a similar scheme. If our first effort was not a great religious experience for our children it was probably a great Zionist experience and it would be interesting if one could contact the young participants and learn what effect the visits had on their later lives.

          On 5th June 1978, Chaim Wertheimer wrote to Raymond Rudie informing him that he had been appointed Director of Education to the town of Mevasserat Zion, near Jerusalem, and offering to accommodate our top class for a six months intensive course of Judaism and Hebrew language. As attractive as this offer was, we thought that it was too much for eleven-year-olds to be away from home for such a long period when they would also miss their normal education and so the offer was not taken up.
          On the 20th October 1978 Morton Creeger, Director of ORT, wrote to us saying that his organisation was moving to London and might be interested in becoming involved in promoting a Jewish secondary school in Ilford in conjunction with the Chief Rabbi’s Office. They carried out extensive research, published the results which were not very encouraging and so this initiative too petered out.

          Terrorism had become a subject to be taken seriously as long ago as 1978. On 21st September 1978 the Metropolitan Police wrote to Mr. Balkin setting out the security measures which needed, urgently, to be put into effect. The measures included securing the Perimeter Fencing; Entrances; Whistles for staff; Intruder Alarms; Manning the gates; Disuse of the school as a polling station. During an informal chat with a police officer we were advised that for absolute full security we also needed a machine gun on the roof.

          In January 1979, the school received an application from the ‘Teenage Centre’, comprising children aged 13+, requesting that they be allowed to use the school’s premises on Sunday mornings to continue their Jewish education. This was a difficult request to refuse but there were grounds for doing so. The Beehive Lane Synagogue’s senior classes had, for many years, used Highland Gardens School on a Sunday morning. This school’s classrooms were of a conventional nature, with doors that closed, but try as our headmaster would, he could not prevent our children disturbing the school’s equipment so complaints from the Local Authority were continuous. Our school was ‘Open Plan’ and all our equipment and books were open to the ‘elements’. Many of us feared that similar disturbances, or worse, would occur if our school was used by a group not supervised by our own staff and a heated debate took place among Managers. Finally a compromise was reached and the Teenage Centre was accommodated.
          Although the school had received permission to extend its premises somewhat, we still could not accept all those children who wanted places, not even all the siblings. The Local Authority placed the responsibility for this problem onto us, an allegation we could not accept. On 20th February 1979 we wrote to the Council reminding them that if ten years previously they had been open and informed us of the severe lack of places in the borough; if they had helped rather than hindered our Planning application for the second school and if they would speed up the transfer of a second school to us, something which had been under discussion for some time, the present problems might not have arisen. We asked for an urgent meeting with Councillors on the Local Authority’s Education Committee to discuss our difficulties.

Woolf Abrahams
May 2004