The Charity Commission has concluded four Orthodox Jewish charities carried out “misconduct and/or mismanagement” in their use of blank or open cheques.
Open cheques are cheques which are signed and a value is inserted, but the payee is left blank. The Charity Commission says it is usually mismanagement to use open cheques when regulated banking services are available.
This is because their use is “high risk and lacks the effective oversight of charitable spending that the regulator would expect from trustees”.
One of the four charities, Friends of Yeshiva Daas Sholem Shotz, has been removed from the register of charities.
Charities are legally required to act for the public benefit, and are entitled to generous income tax breaks.
Broader investigation
The findings are part of a broader ongoing Charity Commission investigation launched last year into 105 charities which had cashed cheques with a value of £22m.
Of the 105 charities, 32 have been named and most have ties to the Orthodox Jewish community.
The investigation was prompted by an unannounced HMRC visit to a company in Hackney, with which the 105 charities had cashed cheques between December 2021 and March 2023.
There are approximately 30,000 Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Hackney, largely concentrated in Stamford Hill.
Faith school charity: religious curriculum “non-negotiable”
One of the four charities runs an Orthodox Jewish faith school, Bnois Jerusalem Girls School, in Stamford Hill. It is registered under the charitable purpose ‘the advancement of religion’.
Ofsted has not judged the school to be of an acceptable standard since 2018, and in 2021 the Government issued a statutory notice after the school was found teaching creationism as science and refusing to enter pupils for GCSEs.
According to an Ofsted inspection report published earlier this year, the school refuses to teach aspects of science which do not “align” with its religious ethos. For example, the school does not teach reproduction to secondary pupils.
The curriculum does not cover statutory content around intimate relationships, including topics such as “consent”, “harassment” or “abuse”.
Pupils do not learn about people of different cultures, customs and traditions in “any detail” and “are not taught about religious festivals apart from their own”.
Ofsted said the curriculum is “narrowed in ways that could put pupils at increased risk of harm” and “limit the contribution to society that pupils are able to make”.
NSS: ‘Concerning to see widespread financial mismanagement at religious charities’
National Secular Society spokesperson Alejandro Sanchez said: “It is concerning to see widespread financial mismanagement at religious charities, especially when they are subsidised by the taxpayer. The commission is right to continue its broader investigation.”
“It is also disturbing to see a faith school, one with a long history of censoring subjects that don’t align with its fundamentalist religious views, implicated in this investigation. This should prompt serious questions as to whether this school can be trusted with the education and welfare of children.”