ESTMINSTER UARTERLY Volume IX No.1 January 2018
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ESTMINSTER Volume IX No.1 UARTERLY January 2018 Luis de Torres - contemporary engraving Luis de Torres - Explorer Two-Gun Cohen Queen Alexandra Salome The Jews of Luxembourg From the Rabbi In my first piece in this wonderful process of building the Tabernacle, one Westminster Quarterly, I want to to which everyone contributes a unique introduce myself as the Rabbi of this talent. community. The story above may be a I want each of us to contribute to making risky introduction. After all, your new this community one in which we grow Rabbi is only in his mid-thirties and has together, forming meaningful the rather informal name Benji and now relationships; a community to which we he introduces himself with a teenage can bring our full selves - forming an story! extended family, sharing in each others’ joys, pain and questions. How many of Let me explain why. Those conversations you have formed friendships for life with my father were, without my through this community? How many of knowing, the introduction to what I you have found in one or all of our deeply value in the Jewish community - Rabbis Reinhart, Friedlander, Salamon the capacity to grow up by working and our outgoing Chief Executive Renee together, both to share and to shape each Salamon, the pillars of an extended others’ lives. Those conversations family, warm and supportive ? showed me the power of grappling When does a person grow up? With the introduction of a new Rabbi and simultaneously with words and people a new Chief Executive, the family is I remember starting at St Paul’s at age that you care about - and is that not the thirteen, schlepping across town from changing, but the commitment to warm business of Westminster Synagogue? and transformative relationships will be Belsize Park and feeling nervous and Reading together was crucial to the as strong as ever. I will endeavour within inadequate - not very grown up at all. relationship I had with my father. my first year to have conversations with Everyone in my class seemed so clever! I Learning together is the way I met my each of you and to help you to have began to enjoy English Literature - my wife, Rabbi Leah Jordan, now a Chaplain important conversations with each other. outstanding teacher, Ms McClaren, for University Students across the If you would like to bring eight or so introduced me to the play Pygmalion - country. The buzz of getting to know members or potential members of the and to feel that literature might help me people across the generations through community together to eat, learn and to reflect, listen and express myself Judaism at Westminster Synagogue, is talk, then please count me in! We’ll find a date that works. If you would like a one- amidst my nerves. the way in which more than two hundred on-one conversation just email me at of us this year enjoyed our new learning In my enthusiasm (partly to be good at [email protected] day, Chai. These conversations are the something) I would read the first draft of or call Kent House. I look forward to my essay - creative or critical - to my heart of our community. growing together with you all. father, Jack Stanley, whenever I had an I could introduce myself more along the assignment. He came from the States to lines of a CV (grew up at Belsize Square London as the creative director of an Synagogue; St Pauls; English at Oxford; advertising firm and had a talent for gap year in Israel with Reform Judaism; linguistic clarity. As I read, he sat on the Director of Youth at Westminster sofa, patiently listening and frequently Synagogue; Leo Baeck College; a year of Rabbi Benji Stanley asking: ‘Sorry, Benji, read that bit again; training in Israel and then New York; a what do you mean by that? Can’t you say Rabbi at West London Synagogue; Rabbi it more clearly?’. for Young Adults at Reform Judaism. My Although I always initiated this father- passions include film, literature, travel son ritual, I almost always got angry, as I and Tottenham Hotspur). Yet I suspect that growing up means not clinging to felt increasingly criticised, and would often shout some of my own criticism modest achievements but becoming back before possibly storming out. Yet I more open and more honest, recognising would then quietly recognise my father’s that we work on ourselves perennially and miss and need others. Moses Our wisdom and get back to work on the essay before reading it to him again, to Teacher - never again will there be a his great pride. He helped me to get prophet like him - what marks him out? much better marks, but far more than His self-doubt, his impetuousness and his profound commitment to that, my father, who passed away almost exactly a year ago, gave us this invaluable relationships with Ultimacy and people. time together, sharing a love of words. I In the book of Exodus which is read at miss him. this time of year, Moses oversees the 3 ANGLO-JEWISH HISTORY Two-Gun Cohen Harry the Ganef (Yiddish for thief). In Sen’s anti-Manchu 0rganisation. He soon April 1900 however, Cohen was arrested became an advocate for the Chinese. for pickpocketing and he was sent to an The first World War saw him fighting institution called the Hayes Industrial with the Canadian Railway Troops where School, a school to train and care for he supervised Chinese labourers, as well wayward Jewish boys. He remained there as seeing action on the Western Front. for five years. After the War he returned to Canada but, When he was released his parents because the economy had declined, in borrowed money from relatives and sent 1922 he headed to China intending to him to Canada hoping that he would work as a railway developer. However, change his ways. He ended up in a place after arriving in Shanghai, he had an called Whitewood in Saskatchewan, interview with Sun’s English language where he stayed for a year working on a Secretary, Eugene Chen, and was hired. Morris Cohen (1887-1970) farm. There he learned to shoot a gun In Shanghai and Canton he trained Sun’s with either hand and to play cards well. small armed force to box and shoot and He left the farm and wandered through I often wonder how many people read the Western Provinces making a living a skilled boxer, fighting obituaries in newspapers. I do, but not doing various things including being a because I am looking to read about the carnival barker and professional gambler. under the names of Fat death of someone I know but because the One of his favourite pastimes on a Moisha or The Cockney people that are written about in these Saturday night was to eat in a Chinese columns have, in the main, led Cohen restaurant and then go to the rear and fascinating lives. gamble. One night in Saskatoon he went he told people that he was an acting Some little while ago I was reading the into his regular restaurant and found the colonel in Sun’s army. He soon became obituary of an ‘old fashioned general Chinese owner being held up. He sidled one of Sun’s main protectors, shadowing reporter’ called Brian Cashinella. He up to the robber and hit him on the head, Sun at conferences and in war zones. In provided various stories to three national disarmed him, and threw him out of the addition he lived at Sun’s house at 29 Rue newspapers and after his retirement from restaurant. Moliere. the Daily Express he tried to sell a film At that time, anti-Asiatic (Chinese, Cohen could only speak a few words of script about ‘Two-Gun’ Cohen, a lad from Japanese, Korean) feeling in Canada was Chinese - he spoke a pidgin form of London’s East End who ended up even greater than its anti-Semitism. He Cantonese at best - but this was not a becoming a general in the army of Sun became a hero in the Chinese community problem since Sun’s wife, Soong Ching- Yat Sen in China and lived out his days in and was the only white man admitted to ling, and many of their associates were Manchester. There were only a few lines the ranks of the secret Tong-Sun Yat, Western-educated and spoke English. about this in the article but I was so intrigued that I had to learn more. Morris ‘Two-Gun’ Cohen was born in Poland in 1887. Shortly after his birth his parents fled the pogroms of that country, came to England and settled in the East End. Although he was eventually enrolled at the Jews Free School, he preferred the local streets – and fighting. He was a stocky boy with a rather large head and at the age of eight, when taunted by Christian boys, he knocked out a twelve-year old. By the time he himself was twelve he was a skilled boxer, fighting under the names of ‘Fat Moisha’ or ‘The Cockney Cohen’. He never fought on a Friday night because he feared the wrath of his father who was not averse to meting out a thrashing. Cohen was also a fairly skilled pickpocket, Morris Cohen, on the right in the white suit, with Chinese recruited by and working for a man called President Sun Yat Sen and future President Chiang Kai-Shek 4 Cohen’s colleagues started calling him Ma The session on language (very Kun (‘clenched fist’).