Jewish Business Ethics 20 Deaths Myrtle Stone on 23Rd June Sayings of the Rabbis 21 David Harari on 30Th August
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ESTMINSTER Volume IX No.4 UARTERLY October 2018 John Rodker by David Bomberg Ben Uri Gallery John Rodker - Poet & Publisher The Jews of Egypt Fish, Beef & Chicken Lifecycle events Westminster Welcomes Inside this issue its New Members From the Rabbi 3 Tommaso Greenbaum & Alicia de la Serna Saenz The Jews of Egypt 4 Solly Judah & Jacqui Jason Sarah Forman Fish, Beef & Chicken 6 Adam & Alexis Granite Hebrew Corner 7 Rebecca Bossick & James Cooper Alina Genkel Livia Gollancz - Publisher 8 Niklas von Mehren More Jewish customs 9 Rosalind Franklin 10 Births Book Review 11 Raphael & Nathan Krancenblum - twin sons for David & Caroline on 15th March A Nation of Philistines? 12 Sadeh - A Jewish Farm 13 Bat Mitzvah John Rodker - Poet 14 Rebecca Vitman-Astaix on 1st September Poetry Page 15 Marriage Blessings John Traske - Judaiser 16 David & Antoni Snower on 27th August The Jewish Museum 17 Marriages Amusement Arcade 17 Melissa Serter & Daniel Murray on 13th May Rachel Hotchkiss & Joshua Blackburn on 27th May 18 The Ten Lost Tribes Jacqui Jason & Solly Juday on 29th July Emma Weleminsky-Smith & Carter Speedy on 28th August A Musical Family 19 Jewish Business Ethics 20 Deaths Myrtle Stone on 23rd June Sayings of the Rabbis 21 David Harari on 30th August Editorial 22 Condolences Education Report 23 We offer sincere condolences to Gillian Catto & Gwenneth Stone on the death of their mother & mother-in-law 2 From the Rabbi hospital, or become bar or bat mitzvah, Meaningful Conversations, how people or been married, or been supported by want still more adult learning, social Thomas, was asked to stand up. In a care, social action, musical engagement, larger room those standing would have and chances to come together with stretched even further, beyond our line of others. It is now our collective task to vision. Warmth, pastoral excellence, and bring these aspirations to the heart of support and celebration from birth what we do, to articulate and enable such onwards: these are all the qualities that a vision. Watch this space - or even step we must maintain at the heart of this into it. Synagogue. We also showed how We have all just celebrated Rosh exceptionally well we do large cultural Hashanah, and Yom Kippur together, events, with the screening of Denial, and and I hope we each have found the Q&A with both Richard Rampton and something to celebrate in our lives and Tom Wilkinson, on Holocaust Memorial also something to change. We find in Day. That was an entertaining and community the thrill of new possibilities topically important evening. As you read this, I have almost and the support to realise them: we can completed my first year as Rabbi of this There have been countless highlights, find this thrill whenever we reflect in wonderful community. We have had a and I have cherished some of our smaller prayer, or encounter an interesting tremendous Sixtieth Anniversary year, gatherings. In February we had an Oneg teaching, or sit down for a real and I hope you are feeling as chuffed and Shabbat, a Lunch and Learn on How conversation. I hope that we will never excited as I am by all that this Can I Pray What I Don’t Believe? Forty lose that sense of encountering life and community has been, is, and could be. of our members sat together eating each other anew, even as we develop and Shabbat lunch, discussing their doubts grow together. On my first day in this job, at the end of and hopes, and learning Jewish text. If you would like to be part of this October, I realised that I must contribute There is an eager appetite for both a emerging vision, and want to sit down for an article to this Quarterly. In that piece I quality of learning and relationship in a conversation, or bring together a group shared with you how I used to read my this community. We have seen sizeable of people, or discuss a particular English essays to my late father, Jack groups getting together to learn and talk potential initiative then please do not Stanley (may his memory be a blessing), before, during and after services, as well hesitate to get in touch with me. and how in that regular ritual of thinking, as before work in the City, through a reading, arguing and bonding, I found a range of volunteer-led, and Wishing you a Shanah Tovah; a good desire for a combination of learning and professionally supported, initiatives. year ahead. love that I have met most profoundly and frequently in the Jewish community and Torah. My first year here has My first year here has been full of been full of memories memories of my father. Essentially I of my father. would like to dedicate my hard work over the last year to him. However, this is also Essentially I would a forward-looking dedication, for like to dedicate my Rabbi Benji Stanley whenever I see and feel the potential in hard work over the this community for learning and love, I think of him. last year to him. There have been so many highlights over I have also attended a sequence of the year, due to our outstanding Sixtieth Anniversary Team, Events Committee, gatherings, dinner parties, cocktails, and Professional Team, and, of course, to brunches, to get to know you all, and to you, our supportive community. The focus on what you want. We have heard how this Synagogue has welcomed birthday party for our Emeritus Rabbi, Thomas, was full of laughter and tears. It people who never knew they could find a celebrated the centrality of humour and home in Judaism, how it has made the family, and one particular family, the impossible possible, forging such a diverse, international and engaged Salamons, in our community. There were moments during the evening when community, across all generations. We anybody who had been visited in have also heard, through these 3 Around the World motion an extraordinary new system of Jewish life in medieval times has survived The Jews of Egypt belief and morality. These distant events in the geniza of the Ben Ezra synagogue remain important as they have evolved in Old Cairo and the largest part is held in into the world’s present concepts of law Cambridge University, where it can be and justice. It is because of them that our visited and where it is being made civilisation is what it is, good or bad. available on line. When the first Temple fell in Jerusalem Exactly 500 years ago the Ottoman 1,000 years later, not everyone was Turks, under Selim the Grim, conquered transported to Babylon, as many Jews - Egypt and although they accepted the including the prophet Jeremiah - had Jews together with other trading nations, Shaar Hashamayim, the ‘Grand found refuge in Egypt. the country quietly stagnated until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the Temple’ in Adly Street, Cairo The lack of physical evidence of the takeover by Britain fifteen years later. Exodus as well as of much of the Biblical I was asked, not long ago, to give a talk story had helped those who prefer to Improved economic conditions, stability about our life in Egypt and our expulsion deny the presence of the our people in the and security ensued, attracting migrants from what was our native land. I spoke region. They were caught off balance from all over Europe and the Middle East about our charmed existence but said however, by the discovery of material including Jews, who turned the area of that anxiety about the future had led to documenting the existence of an active the canal, Cairo and Alexandria into an my siblings and me being sent to Europe Jewish military colony at Elephantine extraordinary commercial and cultural to complete our education and how, in (Aswan), in the south of Egypt, when it hub with a unique quality of life where 1954, my parents too had left Cairo for was part of the Persian empire. There literally everyone from the richest Pasha Khartoum in the Sudan, where my father may well have been more settlements to the poorest fellah had benefited in one could resume the family textile business elsewhere in the country and, after the way or another. which he had been prevented from conquest of Egypt by Alexander the pursuing in Cairo. My father’s parents and the Sassoons, my Great, a Jewish population of more than mother’s family, were part of a group of His assets melted away in the turmoil 100,000 seems to have thrived in the new merchants who had come to Egypt from that followed but the process had been Greek city of Alexandria alone. That is a Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, taking relatively painless for me and we had all huge concentration, considering that the advantage of the trade unleashed by the done so well in England that my story total population of the country in the Suez Canal’s opening and contributing had sounded more like an adventure than third century BCE was probably little vastly to the economy of the region. With persecution. My cousin, sitting at the more than five million. There is evidence the passing of British rule after World back of the hall, put up her hand and of large decorated synagogues, the Bible War II, that era came to an end after less pointed out that I was one of a tiny group was translated into Greek - spoken widely than a century and since then the foreign of lucky people, as she and her family had by Jews - and references exist to a residents and their descendants have been rescued, airlifted by the UN and General Hillel commanding an Egyptian gone, some brutally expelled like the dumped on an English airfield.