Rabbis criticise budget over failure to tackle child poverty

Almost 40 rabbis have co-signed a letter of concern after provisions for tackling child poverty were left out of the Chancellor’s budget.

The letter, sent to the Guardian and Jewish News and signed by high-profile Progressive leaders including rabbis Sylvia Rothschild, Miriam Berger, Aaron Goldstein, Mark Goldsmith and Jonathan Wittenberg, states: “We view with great concern the fact that for the third year running the issue of child poverty has been absent from the proposals contained in the Budget, and a misleading claim made that the rates of child poverty have gone down.

“We feel that it is absolutely essential that any discussion of Britain’s economic well-being also considers the 4 million children – equivalent to nine in every classroom of thirty children – who are growing up in hardship. This should shame us all.

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“Soon Jewish people throughout the world will be celebrating the festival of Passover. We will eat “the bread of poverty” and consider how to transform it into the ‘bread of freedom’.  Freedom from poverty is a basic freedom – one which should be part of the birthright of every child in Britain.”