Letters to the editor: '‘Y’ are we still waiting?'

Y’ are we still waiting

Rosh Hashanah had just gone out when I took my season ticket seat in Tottenham’s Stadium for the Champions League tie between Tottenham and German champions
Bayern Munich.

As soon as I sat down, just before kick-off, Spurs fans in the South Stand and around the ground began their trademark chant at ear-piercing volume: “Being
a Yid, being a Yid, the thing I love most is being a Yid. We sang it in France and we sang it in Spain… They tried to stop us but look what it did, the thing I love most is being a Yid…”

How hard did Tottenham try to prosecute fans for using the Y-word? I bet not one of those fans is Jewish; that’s why they use the Y-word so overtly. Immediately after this chant came another: “Yids” with clapping.

It makes me feel sick, possibly more so than others because I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. Do the players also find these chants offensive to Jews? What if fans shouted the P word [Pakistani]? Would the directors turn a blind eye? I find Spurs fans’ obsession with chanting the Y-word over and above any other football chants offensive and insulting. Why did Tottenham run a second consultation on their fans’ use of the Y-word when they clearly plan to do nothing to put a stop to it?

William Mach, NW11

A lesson we should learn

I wish the Jewish School Awards had been around when I was a student.

I went to a Jewish secondary school in the 1980s. My teachers never received the credit or even respect they were due.

Many years ago I moved with my family to the United States, where my children were educated. The school system over there is all about celebrating academic achievement, being proud of your community and those who are supporting, inspiring and educating the next generation. Teachers are local heroes.

Your awards are a way for us to replicate some of the spirit and camaraderie that has been lacking in our education system for so long.

Dorit Daniels, Edgware

Thank you for special work

I’m an avid reader of Jewish News and should like to put on record my sincere thanks to all the Orthodox rabbis and rebbetzen who regularly write for your newspaper.

They write with their hearts and do a Kiddush Hashem. May Hashem bless them, and you, for this work.

S.I. Solomon, Hendon

Deluded and dangerous

I was dismayed to see Jemma Wayne’s article comparing mandatory vaccination to Nazi Germany (Jewish News, 4 October 2019). Comparing anything to the Holocaust is unacceptable.

She states the basis for any debate on the subject should begin with the basic fact that people have free choice over their bodies.

The government requires all parents to do minimal health care for their kids. The vaccination process is part of that.

If she says mandating a lack of neglect is the first stages of the Holocaust, ending her piece with ‘first they came for the socialists’ and peppering it with statements absorbed from the anti-vaccination movement (which has shifted arguments from vaccine contents to the concept of choice, knowing their fearmongering has no science basis) she is offering potentially dangerous advice.

Ilana Ordman-Mullings, By email

Read more: Dr Avi Korman: As a doctor, vaccination column shook me to my core

Editor’s reply:

We received numerous comments like the one above complaining about Jemma Wayne’s “anti-vaccination” column in last week’s Jewish News. Jemma’s piece was not an anti-vaccination column. Indeed, its key point was less about the rights and wrongs of vaccination than the limits of personal liberty, free choice and consent. My view is that refusing to vaccinate is neglectful, but Jemma’s column was the first I’ve read that made me think non-vaxxers shouldn’t be automatically charged with child abuse. As such it was brave, provocative, deeply controversial and, I felt, worthy of inclusion.