ESTMINSTER Volume IX No.3 UARTERLY July 2018 The Ark of the Ashkenazi Synagogue of Istanbul The Ark Through The Ages Ten Good Men Poetry and Peter’s Prayer for Rain The Jews of Japan Lifecycle events Inside this issue Westminster Welcomes its New Members Mark & Masha Maislish Tessa Clarfelt-Gayner From the Rabbi 3 Emma Weleminsky Smith & Carter Speedy The Ark Through the Ages 4 Debbi Antebi & Orkun Sahmali David Barnett & Safa Chaoudhury Jewish Life in the Blitz 6 Charlotte Dent Katerina Pjaskovova Jewish Musicians 8 Yakov Arnopolin & Juliana Polastri Book Review 9 Malcolm & Jane Samuels Marion Pritchard Ten Good Men 10 Steven Mandel & Maria Goryaeva Book Review 11 Births Chiune Sugihara 12 Theodore Hugh Joseph Laurence - a son for Robert & Christiane on 18th January The Jews of Japan 13 Jacob Dylan Marcus - a son for Jason & Anjhe on 13th February Emilia Hammerson - a daughter for Katia & Julien on 21st February The Jews of Albania 14 Poetry Page 15 Infant Blessings Alexander Mackay on 2oth April Hertha Ayrton - Engineer 16 Zero Howie on 18th May Amusement Arcade 17 B’nei Mitzvah Amelie Linsey on 3rd March Peter’s Prayer for Rain 18 James Christie on 14th April Conscientious Objectors 20 Marco Rabin on 21st April Eve Datnow on 12th May Hebrew Corner 21 Joshua O’Donnell on 19th May Violet Tchenguiz on 9th June Editorial 22 Rachel Leon on 16th June Letters to the Editor 22 Zachary Wulfsohn on 23rd June Alexander Feldman on 30th June Education Report 23 Deaths Shirley Black on 7th March Condolences We offer sincere condolences to Don Black and family on the death of their wife, mother, grandmother, sister-in-law and aunt Bernard Stanbury on the death of his sister 2 From the Rabbi busy-ness, and to lose any real sense of building is home to the Czech Scrolls self or community. Museum, an endeavour that over years has seen around 1500 Torah Scrolls, Secondly, everyone who comes to from Bohemia and Moravia - Scrolls that Westminster Synagogue talks about were almost destroyed by the Nazis, and how warm, and non-judgemental the then discarded by the Communists - community is. taken in, meticulously repaired, and then I am delighted to be the Rabbi here used in synagogues around the world because this is a community full of including this one. people brave enough to be constantly Torah is at the heart of this community. coming closer to their Judaism and to In the middle of this metropolis we people, amidst perennial growing pains gather to hear and understand it. Nobody and sorrys. A man, coming towards has done more to gather all these people retirement, with grown up children, than Rabbi Thomas and Renée. Over the recently shared, in a synagogue get- last twenty years, numbers have doubled; Getting to Know Westminster together, that whenever he reads a line of a vibrant Hebrew school has grown. Synagogue the liturgy he struggles not to cry; I Jewish identities have been saved, recently met a woman in her mid- developed, re-found and formed here. So twenties, who has lived in London for Over the last nine months I have been many people, returning to the best they years but now realises that one can feel getting to know our wonderful might become - over and over again. It lost in London, and she wants to explore community. So, whereas in the last can be intimidating following a Rabbi as Judaism; in the last couple of weeks, couple of Quarterlys, I have tried to cool and charming as Thomas. I am several people have cried in front of me, share something of myself, this time I relieved that he will be here as my because this building and our sacred will share something of my sense of mentor and our Rabbi Emeritus. Renée Westminster Synagogue, and I will do so has been a Rebbetzin, Chief Executive, by returning to some of the words that I and Community Director par excellence, spoke at my Induction. ‘I’m sorry I’m not much and has encouraged so many people to be Firstly, this is a very polite community. part of this community, with seemingly Over the last several months, more of a shul-goer’ is boundless love. people have apologised to me, as Rabbi definitely the most This community, with wisdom and of Westminster Synagogue, than in the common thing I hear… people at its heart, and with an excellent rest of the thirty-five years of my life put professional team, can deepen and grow together. ‘I’m sorry I’m not much of a at shul. even further. We can add care-and- shul-goer’ is definitely the most common bereavement teams to visit folk, Torah thing I hear… at shul. words remind them of someone they and adult education teams to continue to ‘Rabbi, I’m sorry, I’m not really very have so loved, and lost, and in coming work towards Rabbi Reinhart’s vision - a religious’, is generally said quietly, here they find both grief and joy. vision that is somehow thousands of because if anyone else in the room were years old - with people gathering in the It is Westminster Synagogue’s Sixtieth to hear, they might feel the need to share middle of the city, with joy and sorrys, birthday this year. As Jonathan Golden the apology too. ‘Rabbi, I’m sorry, I need looking to come closer to Torah and to said at our special Sixtieth Anniversary to work on my Hebrew’. Anglo-Jewry the people around them. Service: ‘To Rabbi Reinhart and the brings together Jewish guilt and English synagogue’s founding members, it was politeness to produce an unrivalled fundamental that the community be number of sorrys. empowered, that its members know or However, a sorry, though often learn how to take services, read the unnecessary, may not be a bad thing. Torah and give sermons; that Jewish This is a community in which many of us teachings be available to all, not just a step in wanting to step up, aware that we priestly caste’. have much to learn and to contribute to After Rabbi Reinhart there was Rabbi others. As long as our sorrys help us, Rabbi Benji Stanley Albert Friedlander, the warmest, rather than hinder us, in returning to brightest, funniest man in the room. He self-reflection, growth and our attitudes was also the Dean of the Rabbinical towards other people, then Westminster School, Leo Baeck College, and part of Synagogue will always be an invaluable his legacy is the centrality of warm oasis in the middle of London - where it learning here. The top floor of this would be so easy to retreat into 3 Jewish History The Ark Through The entered the city in triumph. After various field, the local inhabitants offered occasions when the Ark again played an sacrifices to it, but when some of them Ages important part in the life of the nation, it gazed at the Ark itself, they were struck came to Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli down, and their companions asked to the priest, cared for it. have it removed. It was taken to the house of Abinadab, father of Eleazar the However the confrontation between the priest. There it stayed in the town of Israelites and the Philistines led to a Kirjat-jearim for some twenty years. violent battle at Eben-Ezer, the Israelites According to Ha-aretz, the Israeli were defeated and the Ark, which had newspaper, archaeologists are currently been taken into the fighting, was excavating there. They do not expect to captured. Eli’s two sons, Phineas and We are told in the book of Exodus the find the Ark, but ‘they have made Hophni, were killed and the news taken very precise details of how the Aron discoveries that shed new light on the to their father at Shiloh. When he heard Kodesh (the Holy Ark) was to be built: history of the ancient Israelites and the what had happened the old man fell down the curtains, of blue and red and purple, birth of Judaism itself’. dead. Phineas’s wife died too giving birth the rings that held them in place, the to a son whom she named Ichabod, shittim wood and the whole gilded edifice understood as ‘the glory has departed surmounted by cherubim and from Israel’. transported by poles. Why then do we today think of the Ark in our synagogues The Philistines’ possession of the Ark led as a permanent structure shut in by doors to nothing but tragedy. Everywhere they with curtains on the outside? What took it they met with disaster. At Ashdod happened to the golden box of former a statue in the Temple was struck down times? and the people suffered tumours and an infestation of mice. Each time the Ark The Ark is the most holy possession of the was removed, plagues struck the Jews. It contains the Scrolls bearing the inhabitants, and eventually the Pentateuch, the written covenant of God Philistines decided to return it to its with His people. Wherever the early original owners. With it they sent an Israelites went they took with them the offering of golden images of the Ark; when they crossed the desert or visitations they had suffered, and a went into battle or confronted an enemy, legend says that the oxen carrying it the Ark was always there. It was the broke into song as they neared their privilege of the Levites to carry the Ark, destination. In the Paradesi Synagogue, and to place it, when the camping sites Kerala, India were reached, in a special tent, the Tabernacle.