We had the pleasure of Dame Louise Ellman (“call me Louise”) joining us for our pre-Shavuot Zoom event.
Louise lived in Crumpsall, Manchester during her early childhood and knew some of our residents, as well as having visited St Anne’s and the Shul on many previous occasions.
Rebbitzen Anna started our evening with a run down on the meaning and origin of Shavuot,
before giving an informative demonstration of cheesecake bake – the result of which LOOKS DELICIOUS.
(Sadly, we only get to see it, not taste it, but that’s for another day 🙂 )
Louise started her talk by saying Jeremy Corbyn hated Israel, and went on to say, as we had all heard in the news last year, that she couldn’t countenance being in a party that would enable Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister.
Some 35 people attended and were enthralled to hear Louise’s details of her recent party experience, and as one participant to the Zoom meeting remarked, it was fascinating to hear the back story from the inside.
The party meetings used to have 500 members, but during Corbyn’s reign, this expanded to 2700, most of whom tabled questions which were obviously anti-semitic and aggressive.
The reports Louise made to Corbyn were largely ignored and it was apparent that anti-semitism was being allowed to run rampant through the party especially since the influx of many many new members since Corbyn became leader. The situation culminated in’ a motion of no confidence’ in Louise being scheduled for Yom Kippur ! Following this, Louise resigned as MP for Liverpool Riverside and from the Labour Party.
Louise said Luciana Berger, MP for the neighbouring Liverpool Wavertree constituency was also hounded out.
Louise decided against standing as a Labour Independent, although she still is a great believer in Labour principles, but for now is waiting to see what happens and if Keir Starmer is going to make any inroads into tackling the anti-semitism, although it will be a massive task.
After Louise’s talk and vote of thanks by Robert Pincus, along with the hope that Louise would visit again soon (Covid allowing), we were entertained with Yiddish songs by Michael Frankel, accompanied by Rabbi Danny on his guitar.
Personally, hearing the Yiddish took me straight back to my childhood when my parents (themselves both children of Russian immigrants) spoke Yiddish over my head when they didn’t want me to know what they were saying. Little did they know this constant hearing Yiddish (I was probably a handful and needed to be discussed often) gave me a smattering of understanding of the language, thus defeating the object of their ploy.
- https://shulbythesea.co.uk/10-yiddish-words-to-get-you-through-quarantine/
- https://shulbythesea.co.uk/were-all-yiddish/
After the Yiddish songs, Rabbi Danny gave us a guitar accompanied set of popular Israeli songs.
I’m sure all who attended will agree that our Pre-Shavuot Event was a great success and was very welcome at a time when we’re all stuck in captivity !
Please feel free to leave your comments or thoughts below.