Sarah Kaiser and Abigail Morris are two rising names to watch out for in the community. Sarah is the director of the Rene Cassin human rights organisation, while Abigail runs ResponsAbility, a cross-communal organisation that provides a bridge between the Jewish and secular worlds. They have already collaborated to publish a Jewish response to the government's proposed Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.
For their Limmud session, they persuaded a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice to drop in on his way up north so that they could present him with a contribution to the bill's statement of values that would combine elements of both British and Jewish values. First they asked Rafael Zarum of the London School of Jewish Studies and Jonathan Boyd,acting director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, to spell out their view of values and then divided their audience into two to elicit a wider view.
There were suggestions that one would expect such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to demonstrate, freedom of thought, care and welfare, community and so on. Sarah and Abigail will be formulating them into a proper statement as, unfortunately, they ran out of time to do it on the day. The Ministry of Justice man, Rob Linham, was delighted with the response.
