*^" •'•"JSBfc''""^.' •'' '"'V^f' f'7"''^^?!CT 1 AJR Information Volume XLV No. 1 January 1990 £3 (to non-members) Don't miss £4m needed to extend the Homes Back to the future P-3 AJR residential care appeal Sir Sigmund Sternberg visits Help us to meet the challenge Day Centre p. 8 he AJR together with CBF Residendal Care and Housing Association have risen to the challenge AJR Residential of the 1990s and beyond with the preparadon of a five year plan for extending and refurbishing Care Appeal - the homes, whose history now goes back more than thirty years. The plan provides for: How to T contribute . * 21 new sheltered accommodation units P-9 * 13 new rooms with toilet facilities * 102 rooms to be provided with toilet facilides * 15 rooms to offer nursing facilities The AJR through its AJR Charitable Trust has undertaken responsibility for mounnng the appeal to raise the funds for this project. Moreover, in order to permit an immediate start on the implementation of the plan the Trust has underwritten the first £500 000 of the cost. Thus work has already started on the first phase. Higher expectations Our homes offer sheltered accommodation, residendal care and full nursing care for about 250 people, a considerable number, but not enough to meet current needs. They have been shining examples of their kind, comparing favourably with others around the country. But higher standards are now expected, which means that new rooms must be built with private toilets and showers, and these facilities must be added to existing rooms. Residents are now older at the time of admission and average age in the homes has risen to 85. Consequently they are physically, and sometimes mentally, weaker than before. These changing circumstances call for a greater degree of care, more and better qualified staff, and more sophisticated and expensive equipment. Your chance to play a part We cannot ignore these factors if we wish to maintain the homes in accordance with today's standards and provide residents with the level of care and comfort they and their fairdlies expect and are entitled to expect. The result is obvious: the existing premises cannot cope, costs increase whilst funds are lacking - we must appeal to the community. We must unite in opening our hearts - and our pockets - to ensure that care for the elderly among us shall connnue, now and well into the next century. Charity has been a great and wonderful Jewish tradition throughout the generations Everyone of us will surely wish to demonstrate its maintenance in our time by generously supporting this appeal. Details of ways of making your contribution will be found on page 9. A AJR Hc\ut Office, H:wihih Kciniiiiiski House. form for the purpose is enclosed - use it now. D AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 1990 \ them, those big black eyes that wept for Shylock in a black wig Shylock.' Heine does not say that the actor was n 26 January 1814 an actor of 'He seems the depository of the Kean. But Heine was in London in 1827, small parts at the Drury Lane vengeance of his race; and though the and that was the year when Kean made a OTheatre was given his first big long habit of brooding over daily insults triumphant comeback, playing all his big chance. In the fashion of those days, the and injuries has crusted over his temper roles at Drury Lane, after a tour of company held only one complete with inveterate misanthropy, and America. It can only have been Kean's rehearsal. It cannot have been a full dress hardened him against the contempt of performance that inspired Heine to his rehearsal, for the actors and stage manager mankind, this adds but little to the denunciation of Christian society as were aghast when, a few minutes before the triumphant pretensions of his enemies. depicted by Shakespeare, and of Jessica's curtain rose, Edmund Kean put on a black There is a strong, quick and deep sense of treachery in becoming a part of it. wig and a black beard to play Shylock. justice mixed up with the gall and While Kean was moving these great He was breaking with a tradinon which bitterness of his resentment. The constant men to look at Shakespeare with new went back to Richard Burbage. Actors apprehension of being burnt alive, eyes, while he was blazing the trail i always played Shylock in a red wig and plundered, banished, reviled and trampled followed afterwards by Henry Irving and red beard. The tradition had its roots in on, might be supposed to sour the most Laurence Olivier, what went on in his centuries of Christian art. Judas was forbearing nature . .' own mind? He read the ecstatic notices, always represented as a redhead. An A critic even more famous than Hazlitt the morning after his first great triumph, ordinary Jew, such as one might meet, bore witness to the transformation Kean and did not (so far as we know) say: 'I would of course have black or brown brought about in the attitude of his have revived Shakespearian scholarship'. hair. But the Jew as false friend, the Jew audience. Heinrich Heine wrote: Or: 'I have struck a blow for racial as betrayer, the Jew as menace could only 'When I saw this play in Drury Lane, equality'. He is recorded only as having be red-headed. there stood behind me in the box a told his wife that she should ride in her Kean's audience was startled; then, beautiful pale British girl, who, at the end own carriage, and that their son should go suddenly, enthusiasdc. 'I felt I had them of the fourth act, wept copiously and to Eton. with me', he said afterwards. several times cried out The poor man is Few actors can theorise about their own One of the dramanc crincs present was wronged! This was a face of the noblest performances. The late George Devine, William Hazlitt. Next morning his paper Grecian outline; the eyes were big and when he was artistic director of the Royal carried his glowing report of Kean's black. I have never been able to forget Court Theatre, said in my hearing 'When genius. But he questioned whether the you direct a play, you take the leading actor had not given too much lightness actor to the pub and you talk to him. You and variety to what should have been a try to explain the meaning of the play, sombre portrayal of a man with one idea. and why you want to do it. And after an A year later, Hazlitt very handsomely hour of that he says: "Yes, but should I admitted his mistake. 'When we first went wear a dark wig or a blond one?" And to see Mr. Kean in Shylock, we expected you think: Oh, actors! But then you have to see, what we had been used to see, a to remember that he hasn't got any decrepit old man, bent with age and ugly instrument to work with, except his own with mental deformity, grinning with body. So it's natural that he should be deadly malice, with the venom of his heart BELSIZE SQUARE SYNAGOGUE obsessed with it'. congealed in the expression of his Edmund Kean, short and insignificant 51 BELSIZE SQUARE, NW3 countenance, sullen, morose, gloomy, in appearance off the stage, considered inflexible, brooding over one idea, that of half mad by his fellow actors, slighted by We offer a traditional style of his hatred, and fixed on one unalterable his employers, haunted by the memory of religious service with Cantor, purpose, that of his revenge. We were a child who had died (as he thought) Choir and Organ disappointed, because we had taken our because of his poverty, could probably idea from other actors, not from the play not have put into words what he was . That he has but one idea, is not true; Further details can be obtained doing, the first time he stepped on to the he has more ideas than any other person from our synagogue secretary stage as Shylock. He used the actor's in the piece; and if he is intense and immemorial, instinctive language. He put inveterate in the pursuit of his purpose, he Telephone 794-3949 on a black wig. shows the utmost elasticity, vigour and D Alison Macleod presence of mind, in the means of Minister: Rabbi Rodney J. Mariner attaining it. But so rooted was our Cantor: Rev Lawrence H. Fine habitual impression of the part from Regular services; Friday evenings at 6.30 pm, Annely Juda Fine Art seeing it caricatured in the representation, Saturday mornings at 11 am 11 Tottenham Mews, London W1P 9PJ that it was only from a careful perusal of Religion school: Sundays at 10 am to 1 pm 01-637 5517/8 the play itself that we saw our error . .' CONTEMPORARY PAINTING Earlier in this essay, which is part of his Space donated by Pafra Limited AND SCULPTURE book Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, Mon-Fri: 10 am-6 pm Sat: 10 am-1 pm Hazlitt writes of Shylock: I AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 1990 4 and Stateless Jews being hunted all over Back to the future Belgium, they founded a group: Notre Dame de Sion, Oeuvre d'Assistance aux here can be no doubt in anybody's will flock to Germany. I imagine that the Israelites. It was an 'overground' network. mind that 1989 was a red letter Jewish community in Germany, which The escape route ran from the vicarage Tdate in history.