OPINION: Connecting the generations: Why Sunday’s AJEX parade is crucial

As a community and nation, this poignant time of year has a unique feeling and meaning for so many. Remembrance is recognised and respected in a diverse number of ways across the country including sporting events, places of work and most importantly, schools.

Schools play a fundamental part in ensuring the events and stories of the past, are communicated and delivered to the next generation to ensure Remembrance is protected and honoured. JFS, plays a crucial part in this responsibility by being a key figurehead in The Cadet Expansion Programme (CEP), that was introduced by the Department for Education (DfE).

This week JFS was fortunate to listen to historian Tim Barringer, who delivered a fascinating assembly to 300 of the school’s Year 9 students.

He covered the importance of remembrance and combined with the assistance of the school archives, was able to tell the first-hand stories of JFS students of the past. I stood in awe listening to the accounts of people who had fought and died for their country having only months earlier, in place of their rank, worn the same school badge as the students sat around me.

Of those students spoken of, one of the most memorable was Private Joseph Rosenbloom. At the same age as those hearing of his life, at just 13 years old, he signed up and marched to war. Volunteering for the front line, experiencing the horrors of the trenches and fighting for King and country is almost a fiction for a student in 2022.

Examples such as Private Rosenbloom’s are sadly all too common, even if his age was not and I could forgive a student for failing to understand the gravitas of the situation he had faced.

These are stories from textbooks and exam questions and so gratefully a far cry from the lives of young people today. Our students have the privilege of a direct link to the past. Recorded in the editions of the Jews Free School magazine and in the stories of their families passed down for over a century, they have a tangible link to those they learn about.

Since its inception, the CEP has expanded from independent school-based Combined Cadet Forces to State Schools in recent years. By April 2024, the DfE aims to grow the total number of cadets in the country to 60,000.

JFS was one of the few schools nationally who were chosen to start the expansion programme and the only school to be given the honour of badging to the Household Cavalry.

That link transcends the archives and is brought to life by our students parading with AJEX at the Cenotaph for many years. When I discuss the event with other CCF officers, they are amazed that we have the unique opportunity to march and remember in Whitehall each year. The existence of this parade is one that should be appreciated by all the Jewish community and marked with the utmost respect.

For our cadets, it is as much a privilege as a responsibility as well as our Ceremonial Duty and the focus of months of practice amid the knowledge that they have an opportunity that no other contingent in the country has. The school badge proudly shows our founding year and as we approach our tricentenary, war and Remembrance and our students, be they cadets or serving soldiers, are embedded in the story of the school’s past.

Our cadets have chosen to take on the uniform of the JFS CCF and The Household Cavalry and, whilst these are times of peace for our country, they will be doing their duty on November 20th, remembering Joseph Rosenbloom and seeking to emulate his courage in their every endeavour.

Come Support the Cadets and all the marchers this Sunday. All ages are welcome to spectate at this Jewish Remembrance Parade and Service starting at 2pm on Sunday at The Cenotaph, Whitehall, London, SW1. Please allow enough time to enter the event, as there is a high level of security provided by CST and the Police to witness this annual, historic moment