PR Initiative For Britain’s Chareidi Communities Commemorates Communal Activist Rabbi Avrohom Pinter

LONDON (VINnews) — A new organization designed to represent Britain’s chareidi communities to the media has been established in memory of communal activist Rabbi Avrohom Pinter who died of COVID in 2020.

The organization, named the Pinter Trust, is set to represent five different chareidi communities in Britain, which are situated in London, Manchester, Gateshead and on Canvey Island, a small chareidi community in Essex. The trust is hosted by the Interlink Foundation and will serve as the media face of all the chareidi communities in England.

Rabbi Pinter, who was a city councillor for Labor and principal of Yesodei Hatorah girls school, served as an unofficial spokesperson for the burgeoning community. His death left a void which the new trust hopes to fill.

The Pinter Trust’s chairman Rabbi Avroham Sugarman, who last year received an MBE from the queen for his work with special children,  said that the trust would “seek to tell the story of the Charedi community in the words of the community itself” and “give people a greater understanding of who we are and our way of life”.

In September 2019, Interlink, an umbrella organization for orthodox Jewish initiatives,  established a Public Affairs Committee to “develop and deliver a strategic communications strategy for the Orthodox Jewish community”. Late last year, this was rebranded as the Pinter Trust in memory of his sterling activism for the Jewish community.

The steering committee is comprised of “leaders of communal organisations”, but the identities of its members has not been made public, a point picked up on by Yehudis Fletcher, founder of Nahamu, which campaigns against extremism in UK Jewry. “We hope to see the leadership and accountability that go along with representation,” she said.

“There are many challenges that members of the Charedi community face, in particular unregistered schools and low academic achievements, with the corresponding high levels of poverty and welfare dependency. We look forward to this organisation playing a positive and creative role in identifying solutions.”

The Trust said it would “build meaningful partnerships” with the media, local authorities, and national governments. One of its main communal supporters described its role as “promoting the story of the Charedi community in the UK” and “acting as a point of contact with a reliable voice”.

Joel Friedman, a founder of the Canvey Island community and a protege of Pinter, is the Trust’s director of public affairs. Friedman described his vision of the trusts’ goal in the Guardian newspaper:

“The Charedi community is growing,” he said, “but it doesn’t have a proactive voice telling our story to the outside world. Traditionally it has been an insular community.

“But there are a lot of misconceptions out there, and if the community is represented in a bad light to the wider population, that has a negative impact.”

Rabbinical authorities, including the Gateshead Kehilla, the Federation of Synagogues, the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC), the Machzikei Hadass Communities of Manchester and the Manchester Beth Din, have endorsed the trust.

Rabbi Yehuda Baumgarten of the UOHC said: “The Pinter Trust will act as a credible and respected voice on matters concerning Anglo Charedi Jewry, under the guidance and leadership of respected community rabbis from across the UK.”

The trust has also received letters of support from Jewish Community Council Gateshead, emergency ambulance charity Hatzolah North London, and mental health charity Bikur Cholim D’Satmar London, whose chief executive Yocheved Eiger said Pinter’s death was “a loss from which we as a community have not yet recovered”.

Other communal groups who have committed support include Agudas Israel Housing Association and Interlink, both led by Chaya Spitz, along with Chinuch UK, an Interlink educational advocacy project  established in April 2021.