Chief Rabbi’s ‘bubble-bursting’ global social responsibility scheme is relaunched

The Chief Rabbi has stressed the importance of young Jewish leaders tackling vital subjects such as climate change and addressing the refugee crisis as he unveiled a world-first, upgraded social responsibility programme.

Six years ago Chief Rabbi Mirvis launched a unique and ambitious project, Ben Azzai. It was aimed at puncturing the comfortable Jewish “bubble” in which so many students found themselves, by taking a select group for short visits to countries with high levels of poverty, such as India and Ghana.

But after four successive groups returned to the UK, ready to impart what they had learned to their own communities, Covid intervened. “We had our next cohort planned to go to a Third World country”, says the Chief Rabbi, “which would have taken place in 2020”.

It wasn’t possible, and nor was a trip in 2021. So with time to reassess, the Chief Rabbi has decided to re-launch Ben Azzai, which, with the help of the Tzedek charity and the Pears Foundation, will expand in two ways.

First, there will be more participants — around 20 rather than the previous 16. But Ben Azzai mark two will be very different: rather than a short visit, it will be a year-long programme, broken down into four key components. They are global public health, international development, the refugee crisis and climate change.

“We’re interested”, says the Chief Rabbi, “in producing new leadership for our community, for whom global social responsibility will be a key element”.

The plan is to run a series of lectures and visits over the year, starting in July — potential participants have until early April to apply — with site visits all over the UK and the Chief Rabbi himself taking a hands-on involvement in running the events, which will be bracketed with a Shabbaton weekend at the beginning and end of the course. It’s hoped that, pandemic rules permitting, there will also be a foreign trip during the year.

“By dwelling on these four areas we hope to open up opportunities for our participants — whom we want to be those with the potential to be the best of the best.” The programme is open to students and apprentices from across the religious spectrum.

As far as he is concerned, the Chief Rabbi says, “it’s really important that this is not just a Jewish community initiative. We see global social responsibility as being a religious imperative”. Ben Azzai, more than 2,000 years ago, taught that every human being was made in the image of God. Accordingly, Chief Rabbi Mirvis concludes: “We have a responsibility to care about everyone on earth”, and the programme is devised so that an accompanying rabbi (and sometimes a rebbetzin, too) will give a Torah-based commentary to the participants.

The staff of the Office of the Chief Rabbi believe Ben Azzai to be a unique programme, not replicated in any other Orthodox community. And, as a faith-based initiative, it is a trailblazer: no other religious denomination is doing anything like this.

Part of the legacy of Covid has been the necessity which became an opportunity, to secure international speakers through technology, and the Chief Rabbi hopes to continue that during the new Ben Azzai programme.

As an example, David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, and now chief executive of the International Rescue Committee in New York, gave “a wonderful and inspirational presentation to Ben Azzai alumni” in the past year, and it is hoped the new programme will offer similar high-profile speakers. (Miliband describes the refugee crisis as “global system failure” and Chief Rabbi Mirvis believes it to be one of the most compelling and urgent issues of our time).

He believes that the programme offers something of primary interest to young people today. The issues identified really resonate with the young people to whom the Chief Rabbi has spoken: “I am speaking to the converted”, he says.

“They are absolutely with me. So many people find it refreshing to discover that what they consider to be the key issues of our time, are actually covered in the Torah as the key issues of our faith”.

The Chief Rabbi is embarking on a three-day whistle stop tour of university campuses next month, during which time he hopes to “sell” the virtues of the Ben Azzai programme.

Past take-up suggests that he will be pushing at an open door, as the “creme de la creme” of UK Jewish students — our next community leaders — compete for a place on the course.