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Top British private Jewish school closing amid funding challenges
(JTA) — Immanuel College, a top-ranked Jewish private day school in the outskirts of London, announced on Tuesday that it will close its doors at the end of this year amid financial pressures and declining enrollment.
“This is an incredibly difficult and painful moment,” Daniel Levy, the chair of governors for the school, said in a statement. “Immanuel College has been a cornerstone of education and community life for more than 35 years, and we know how deeply this news will be felt by all those connected to it.”
The Modern Orthodox Jewish day school, which was ranked the U.K.’s top-performing Jewish school in The Sunday Times Parent Power Guide in 2025, is one of a small number of independent Jewish schools in the London area.
Founded in 1990 by Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, the former Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, the school serves roughly 360 pupils ages 10-18. Last year, Immanuel College’s prep school also shut down due to “unprecedented financial pressures.”
The school sits alongside a much larger network of state-funded Jewish schools, including the prestigious JFS (formerly Jews’ Free School) and the Jewish Community Secondary School.
Levy said that the school was “committed to ensuring that every pupil is guided to the right next step,” and was working with schools across the Jewish and independent school landscape to find placements for its students. (Independent schools in the U.K. are fee-paying private schools, while state schools are government-funded and free to attend.)
A press release pinned the closure on a litany of factors, including “the introduction of VAT on independent school fees, rising operational costs driven by inflation and increased National Insurance contributions, and a decline in pupil numbers.”
VAT, or the U.K.’s value added tax, was applied to private schools in the country last year after they were previously exempted from it.
In the release, the school also said the decline in enrollment “reflects a broader trend across the sector, with a growing number of independent schools closing in recent years.”
“Additionally, changing dynamics within the Jewish education landscape, including the increased popularity of Jewish state schools, have contributed to reduced enrolment,” the release continued, adding that Immanuel faced ongoing annual losses exceeding £2 million, or $2.3 million.
Oliver Dowden, a British lawmaker and member of the Conservative Party, lamented the closure in a post on X, writing that it was “yet another victim of Labour’s VAT raid on private schools.”
“Very sad to learn of closure of the brilliant Immanuel College at the end of the current academic year. A real blow to Bushey and the Jewish community,” Dowden wrote, referring to the Hertfordshire village where Immanuel is located.
Writer and political analyst Arieh Kovler described the school as an “oddity” in the British Jewish educational landscape, writing in a post on X that it was “not religious enough for ‘black hat’ type modern Orthodox, not prestigious enough for parents who want excellent private schools, and parents who just want a Jewish school for their kids have many free state options now.”
According to Britain’s Institute for Jewish Policy Research, of the Jewish children enrolled in Jewish schools, 60 percent attend haredi (or “strictly”) Orthodox schools, a figure that does not include haredi Orthodox teenagers studying in yeshivot and seminaries not included in government data. In the 1990s, only 46 percent of Jewish students attended haredi schools.
For many parents and members of the British Jewish community, the loss of the school cut deep.
“At a time when our children’s strength in their own identity is so essential, it feels doubly tragic for a school that instills that Jewish pride to close,” Naomi Greenaway, an Immanuel College parent and journalist, wrote in an op-ed in The Jewish Chronicle. “But this tragedy is one that the Immanuel College community of parents, pupils, teachers, trustees, governors and alumni will have to mourn together.”
Rabbi Alex Chapper, the leader of the Borehamwood & Elstree United Synagogue in England, wrote in a post on Facebook that the closure served as a reminder of “just how important Jewish education is for our community.”
“It must never be taken for granted, outsourced, or undervalued,” Chapper wrote. “Instead, we should redouble our commitment to supporting the education of the next generation, so they can build a proud, knowledgeable, and confident Jewish future.”
The Hertfordshire Friends of Israel also mourned the closure in a post on Facebook, writing, “This is more than just a school closure story, it’s about a community, a legacy and the growing pressures on Jewish education across the UK.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Top British private Jewish school closing amid funding challenges appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
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