A multi-agency database recording information about rough sleepers and the wider street population in London (commissioned and funded by the Greater London Authority) has released data showing an alarming increase in street homelessness between 1st July and 30th September. 3,103 people were recorded as sleeping rough on the streets of London, a 17% increase on the same period in 2017 and 20% more than the period before.

This report can be accessed here, you can attend Barnet’s Housing and Homelessness & Rough Sleeping roadshow event here or comment on it here.

From our community in the London Borough of Barnet to your community in Squirrel Hill Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. We share your pain. Our hearts are filled with utter sadness and regret with what has happened to you while you were attacked in your place of worship. There was no justification, there was no sense to this, there was no mercy. We must collectively work together to address the horror and hatred we see growing in the hearts of a few. We no longer have an option to sit back and watch this poison spread. With all those who face discrimination in our world today, we stand together against every form of hatred that targets humanity today.

To those bereaving families we send the traditional Jewish blessing of wishing you “Long Life”

 Barnet Multi Faith Forum Executive 

Co Chairs 

Esmond Rosen 
Trevor Alexander 

Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, gave a deeply personal account of the almost endless anti-Semitic abuse she has suffered since her student days, during Tuesday’s discussion on anti-Semitism in the Commons.

Read the full article on the Jewish News On-line 

Punish A Muslim Day condemnation response from BMFF

The Barnet Multi Faith Forum condemns all acts and expressions of hate related rhetoric and violence which seeks to divide our faiths and our communities. Explicitly we condemn in the strongest terms the recent threats of violence and prejudice directed at British Muslims which undermine everything that it means to be British, and are totally abhorrent.

These perverse actions, reinforces, the need for all our different communities to come together and find practical ways of showing solidarity and support for one another. The BMFF will therefore continue in all our efforts to build bridges of trust and confidence based on greater understanding and knowledge of each other’s faiths, beliefs and customs and work together to engage in dialogue, events and actions which aims to promote social cohesion, oppose prejudice, injustice, and bigotry.

Esmond Rosen Chair of The Barnet Multi Faith Forum

Es Rosen and Trevor Alexander ( Chair and Vice Chair of the BMFF) were present at the invitation of the Vice Chancellor of Middlesex University and were privileged to hear the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.

He gave a brilliant address proclaiming the particularity and the universality of Judaism which, whilst safeguarding the richness of preserving a Jewish way of life, stressed the essential elements of being a valuable participator to the worldly developments of engaging positively in the wider society. This should be a important model for those people of all faiths to possess  the confidence in one’s own history, traditions, faith and beliefs to be able to play a substantial role of what we aim to achieve for the benefit of the greater community.

Es Rosen Chair of the BMFF