18 February 2016

Rabbi Charley Baginsky appeared on the six o’clock ITV News on 17 February speaking about Jewish education.

She was responding to the report released earlier that day, by the schools’ watchdog Ofsted, which criticised an ultra-Orthodox Jewish boys’ school, where pupils believe the role of women is to ‘clean the house and cook’ while men ‘go to work’.

The Ofsted report also found that younger pupils at the Yiddish-speaking Beis Aharon School, in Stamford Hill, had a poor grasp of English and that pictures of women in short sleeves, as well as the word ‘Christmas’, had been blanked out in books.

Charley said: “This is not about Judaism, this is about being stuck in the 19th century.

“The trouble with promoting attitudes like this is that they risk making religion irrelevant to how we live today and bringing Judaism into disrepute.

“The best Jewish schools are open, inclusive and modern. We must not forget to celebrate the role they can play in opening pupils’ eyes to the values, compassion and social action that could influence their lives.”