ESTMINSTER UARTERLY Volume IX No.3 July 2018
ESTMINSTER UARTERLY Volume IX No.3 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
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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
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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. When the procession arrived Then David the King decided to take it to
at the Jordan River, the Ark and its Jerusalem. On the way, the oxen bearers led the way, the waters falling stumbled and Uzziah, the son of away before them until they reached the Abinadab, put out his hand to prevent the
other side. Ark from falling. He was immediately struck down and died. Finally the However, the strange and often ominous Israelites reached Jerusalem with their power of the Ark continued to affect those precious burden where it remained until who came into contact with it. Aaron’s the construction of the First Temple by two sons, Nadav and Avihu, came to David's son Solomon. The Ark was finally perform a sacrifice before it in the placed in the newly built Temple, in the Tabernacle, but they were devoured by a most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, fire that emanated ‘from the Lord’. This and according to legend the golden tree baneful influence has pursued the decorations that adorned the walls legends of the Ark to modern times. blossomed with fruit that grew In the first battle to defeat the continuously until the Temple's
Canaanites, it was the Ark, the symbol of destruction by the Babylonians in 6 BCE. all that Israel stood for, that was carried At this point in its history the Ark was in procession around Jericho, once a day In B’nei Barak lost and the search to find it, in spite of for seven days, with the shofar sounding. the terrors known to accompany it, has When the seven days had passed, the The next appearance of the Ark is at Beth spawned innumerable stories that people shouted, the walls fell and Israel -Shemesh, a town in Judah. Set up in a
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continue to this day. These tales started the Scrolls themselves are dressed in from the moment the Temple fell. At first white silk. One of the world’s oldest is a the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar wooden Ark, decorated with original were accused of having captured it. They delicate gilt carvings. The shape of the Ark certainly took most of the treasures of the recalls the traditional representation of Temple, but the vessels they took are the facade of the Temple in Jerusalem; it clearly listed and the Ark is not among is designed like a building and features them. It was also alleged that Josiah, architectural elements such as columns King of the Israelites at the time, had and capitals. It comes from the Scuola The magnificent Venice Synagogue taken it into safe keeping, digging a hole Grande Synagogue in Mantua and was on the Temple Mount and burying it made in 1543. In 1956 the Ark was worshippers and adventurers alike a there. Maimonides suggested that brought to Jerusalem where it has been chance to see it.’ Solomon himself foresaw that his Temple placed in a new synagogue, under the Other suggested resting places have would fall and kept a safe place for it in a auspices of the Museum of Jewish Italian included the tomb of Tutankhamun, cave near the Dead Sea. Art. Chartres Cathedral (also placed there by Today the Holy Ark has a place in every The legends of the lost Ark continue. the Templars), in a cave in modern Jordan synagogue. No longer is it a golden box on Almost every nation in the world has laid or as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls find, poles, with the elaborate curtains, rings claim to it. The Knights Templar are with the Lemba tribe in South Africa, who and cherubim above. Originally the believed to have taken it from Jerusalem claim to be the ‘lost’ tribe of Israel. The golden lid of the Ark formed the kapporet, and brought it to England where they hid Lemba treat their Ark in accordance with usually translated as mercy seat, no longer it in their temple at Temple Herdewyke, a the religious tenets prescribed for the Ark, in use today. But Post-Biblical accounts village outside Stratford-on-Avon. carrying it on poles and avoiding any of the Ark show it still to be the repository physical contact with it. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo of the scrolls of the law. They are kept in a Church claims to possess the Ark of the Perhaps the most provocative attempt to closed cupboard, with doors or an outer Covenant, in Axum in the north of the locate the lost Ark is Stephen Spielberg’s curtain (parochet), opened at important country. It is currently kept under guard film Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which points of the service, and set on the in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Harrison Ford, as Professor Indiana eastern wall of the sanctuary, faced by the Mary of Zion. The story seems to have Jones, attempts to locate the Ark before it congregation. Each scroll bears two come from the association of the Queen of is found by the Nazis who wish to use it crowns (rimmonim) of silver, the Sheba with King Solomon. They had a for its evil powers. Conspiracy theories breastplate (ḥoshen mishpat), and the son, Menelik who became the first King of abound but Jews today still revere the Ark pointer (yad). Ethiopia. Years later Menelik travelled to in whichever synagogue they worship, as Jerusalem to see his father, who greeted the present day version of the Biblical him with joy and invited him to remain story. there to rule after his death. But Menelik
refused and decided to return home. Under cover of darkness he left the city - taking with him its most precious relic,
the Ark of the Covenant. He took it back to Axum, where it still resides today.
This mysterious legend may develop. In April of this year, the Daily Mail reported
the story. ‘No one has been allowed to see the holy object, described in scripture as The Ark at the North Western being made from acacia wood, plated with Reform Synagogue (Alyth Gardens) gold and topped with two golden angels, except one solitary elderly monk, who Many synagogue arks are very beautiful, must watch over the Ark for the usually constructed of decorated wood remainder of his life, and is never allowed and set in a prominent place before the to leave the chapel ground. But now the congregation. The black and gold one in Westminster Synagogue’s chapel - which was designed by the Children’s Ark regular use at Westminster Synagogue Ethiopian leader Emperor Hailie Selassie - was originally the fireplace in the dining has had to be covered in a tarpaulin to Philippa Bernard room of the house. A new one was stop rain getting in. The water damage designed and built for use in the North could mean the Ark will be moved for the Annexe on High Holydays, at which time first time in decades giving religious
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Anglo-Jewish History
Jewish Life in the of London Blitz Before the outbreak of World War II there were more than 100,000 Jews living in the East End of London. Almost every street had a small synagogue (165 are listed in the East End records), and although many Jews were living in poor conditions, strong family feelings and common ties of religion, background and tradition kept them together. Most spoke Yiddish but were proud of their British inheritance and the sanctuary that London offered them. Apart from the small workshops making clothes, furniture, glassware and other commodities, one of the principal employers of the area was the London Whole areas in Whitechapel, Hackney, London. But these city Jews were not Docks. It is thought that around a third of Shoreditch and Stepney were totally country folk and many were unhappy, all of Britain’s overseas industry passed obliterated. The streets were particularly children evacuated alone. through the London docks at this time, unrecognisable and on the first night of Unfamiliar with the language and habits of making it a logical target for the Germans the bombing, 430 civilians were killed and their hosts, they soon returned home, who wanted to close down the war efforts over 1500 wounded. Lord Haw-Haw, preferring Hitler’s bombs to cows and and supply chains. It was this which was broadcasting from Germany, predicted chickens. For some of these children almost to exterminate the Jews of the East that the Luftwaffe would ‘smash Stepney’. rationing was an improvement on their End. For on 7th September 1940 Hitler London was bombed every night for fifty- diet before the war. started his bombardment of London, seven days and the East End bore the aiming principally at the docks and It was not only the East End Jews who brunt of it. shipyards, a programme known ever suffered. The homes of many Jewish afterwards as the Blitzkrieg, the ‘lightning One of the worst disasters was not as a families living further west were damaged. strike’. But instead of the immediate result of the bombing at all. Through Wealthier parents sent their children to success that the Nazis hoped for, the much of the bombing, East Enders had relatives in America or Canada, or if they terrible onslaught lasted much longer, taken shelter on the underground tube could stay together as a family, settled destroying houses, factories, shops and platforms as air raid shelters filled up or happily in the home counties where they streets. It had little effect on Britain’s their homes were no longer habitable. On stayed on after the war, creating stable ability to continue the war, but 43,000 the night of 3rd March 1943, the sirens communities and retaining their Jewish British civilians were killed and another wailed out as usual. At Bethnal Green identity. 139,000 were wounded. The East End station a woman carrying a baby fell on Although the majority of the Jews of the changed for ever, and the Jewish the staircase, followed by others behind East End got on well with their Cockney community virtually disappeared. her. Quickly the crowds, alarmed by the neighbours, there were small pockets of noise of alarm bells and the screams anti-Semitism. One commentator quoted around them, panicked and, without a rumours that Jews were hoarding prime means of escape, either up or down, space in the shelters, and included a terrible scenes of crushed humanity, report that anti-Semitism arose ‘not so suffocation and terror followed. Many much on account of a marked difference Jews were among the casualties. The between Jews and Cockneys, but because government tried to keep the incident a the latter, seeking a scapegoat as an outlet secret, fearing it would fuel the enemy’s for emotional disturbances, pick on the determination to crush London, and might traditional and nearest one.’ lower morale. The plaque (above) situated
near the station commemorates the Many Jews who stayed in London joined tragedy. the fire service or the Home Guard, or became Air Raid wardens. They were A programme of evacuation for the women determined to do what they could to and children was put in place; sometimes preserve their homes. In some cases their whole families were uprooted and sent out The Jewish Soup Kitchen fellows in the civil defence showed anti-
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Jewish feelings. Some remember being Once the war was over, the task of made to do the most menial jobs or rehabilitation was enormous. In one six- deliberately served bacon for breakfast. month period during the Blitz 750,000 tons of bombsite rubble were transported However, the Jewish East End is no by railway to make runways on Bomber more. No longer is there a kosher Command airfields in East Anglia. Many restaurant or butcher. The famous sites of bombed buildings, when cleared Blooms of Whitechapel has gone, first of rubble, were cultivated to grow transferring to Golders Green, then vegetables to ease wartime food disappearing altogether. The Soup shortages and were known as victory Kitchen for the Jewish Poor managed to gardens. But once the war was over and continue until the 1990s though the rebuilding could begin, few Jews wanted fascia of the building is still there. A few to return. Now, however, regeneration of shops retain Jewish names above the areas such as Stepney and Shoreditch door, but are seldom now run by Jews. have welcomed back younger Jews Of the multitude of synagogues that working in the City. existed before the war only four now survive. The worst casualty was the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place, almost next door to that of Bevis Marks, the leading Sephardi Synagogue. The Great Synagogue had been built in 1690 for the Ashkenazi Jews coming into London, and it was indeed great, both in size and number of congregants. It was also the synagogue of the Chief Rabbi. But on the night of 10thMay 1941 German bombs destroyed it completely. Bevis Marks Synagogue
The story of the Jewish presence in Britain has seen much oppression and distress: riots, persecutions and banishment. But perhaps the greatest blow to the Jews of London was the Two views of the bombed-out wartime Blitz, though as in other times of Great Synagogue terror, they have risen above it to resume their lives and maintain their religious synagogue. As the Jewish population of inheritance. The Sandys Row Synagogue today the East End began to disappear, the synagogue’s fortunes waned, but in Philippa Bernard What is perhaps the most extraordinary recent years, as younger Jews have begun part of the tragedy is that the Bevis returning to East London, the Marks Synagogue, the first synagogue to congregation is growing. It holds be purpose-built in London after the lunchtime services for the office workers return of the Jews in 1655 - only a few nearby; it is an independent synagogue. yards away - was hardly touched, apart Another which survived the Blitz was the from one incendiary bomb, and is still Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Commercial fully active. Road. Sharman Kadish, in her book The beautiful Sandys Row Synagogue was The Synagogues of Great Britain, calls it damaged in the Blitz, but was rebuilt a ‘valuable and venerable relic of Anglo- after the war and is flourishing. Dutch Jewish social history’. It was the first
Jews had arrived in London in the 1840s, Mizrachi (religious Zionism) synagogue but were prosperous enough by 1867 to in Britain, founded in 1903. It is The Sons of Jacob Synagogue purchase a former chapel in Sandys Row independent, but with affiliations to the and the distinguished architect Nathan Federation of Synagogues, of which it
Solomon Joseph redesigned it as a was a member.
Jewish Musicians Variety Performance, and soon began turning to the more commercial side of playing dance music, much in demand at his empire. From his offices in Bond Geraldo weddings and parties. His signature Street he ran a booking agency providing tune was ‘Lady of Spain’, but this musicians and bands for cruise liners as changed to ‘I bring you sweet music’ and well as for hotels and the entertainment later when he was a constant feature on industry. The Cunard Line employed his the BBC to ‘Hello Again – We’re on the dance bands on their ships, the Queen Radio Again’. By now his fame was Mary, the Mauretania and the Queen
worldwide, the orchestra appearing in Elizabeth, as did Canadian Pacific. films; in the years leading up to World Geraldo’s ‘navy’ included many young War II, he had four orchestras, musicians making their careers, Johnny
employing more than two hundred Dankworth, Ronnie Scott and Benny musicians, many of whom went on to Green among them. form their own bands or starred as solo Geraldo was the first bandleader to musicians. appear on television when the medium Frances and Isaac Walcan-Bright lived in was revived after the war; he became a Islington with their five children, three director of Harlech Television and girls and twin boys. Both boys, Gerald musical director for a time of Scottish and Sidney, were musical and their Television. His own composition parents provided them with a musical Scotlandia was used as its theme music. training from an early age. By the time His twin brother, Sidney Bright, often he was five years old Gerald was playing played the piano in the orchestra, and the piano and went on to the Royal later carved out his own career becoming Academy of Music. At the age of sixteen the pianist at the Café Royal. He was he ran away from home and sailed off on also Choirmaster at the New London the HMS Cameronia, playing in the Synagogue, one of the few links the ship’s dance band to pay his passage to Bright twins had with the Jewish New York and back. Still in his teens he community. played the piano for silent films shown at a cinema in the Old Kent Road, and a few When war broke out in 1939, the Geraldo was married twice, firstly to years later he formed his first band to government formed ENSA Alice Plumb in 1848, and after his play at the Metropole in Blackpool. (Entertainments National Service divorce, to Manya Stockler - herself a Association) to entertain the troops, and pianist of some distinction. In 1974 Gerald’s style of music brought him many of the most famous actors, Manya and Gerald were holidaying in countrywide recognition and he became musicians, dancers and comedians Switzerland when he suffered a heart Musical Director of the Hotel Majestic at joined up to ‘do their bit’ for the war attack and died. He is buried in St. Anne’s-on-Sea, where his band soon effort. Geraldo was one of them. He was Willesden Jewish Cemetery. After his became the most popular in the north of appointed Supervisor of Bands and he death, she remarried and, as Manya England. But he was anxious to expand took his own orchestra abroad to battle Leigh, became a patron of institutions his knowledge of modern light music, zones across the world, having to crash and orchestras in England and Israel. and he gave up the band to go to South land in Italy and again in Gibraltar. America to experiment with Latin- When the BBC listed its top musical American rhythms. Coming back to numbers of 1944, it included Geraldo’s London in 1929 he formed a new band version of ‘McNamara’s Band’ and ‘That calling itself the Gaucho Tango Lovely Weekend’. The World Record Orchestra, and changed his stage name Club’s best songs of the war included to Geraldo, a name always to be several of Geraldo’s hits from the Savoy, associated with orchestral light music including ‘Over the Rainbow’, ‘Room and the big band sound. Five Hundred and Four’ and – in In 1930 Geraldo made his first acknowledgement of the Latin American recordings, and appeared with the style – ‘I came, I saw, I conga’d’! In 1940 orchestra at London’s Savoy Hotel, he was appointed Director of Dance broadcasting from there more than two Music at the BBC. thousand times. They called him the When the war ended, Geraldo widened ‘Tango King of England’, but Latin his orchestral career, some of the American music was beginning to wane orchestras comprising nearly a hundred and he became instead ‘Geraldo and his players, but his interests were now Sweet Music’. He appeared in the Royal
8 Jewish Culture
being translated into German for the first increasing horror and trepidation at each Book Review time. This English edition has been horrendous encounter and – despite the lovingly and sensitively translated by an fact that all senses pointed to the author NO PLACE TO Australian lawyer turned writer, Stephanie having obviously survived to tell the tale – LAY ONE’S Smee, who reveals the author as gentle and I worried for her safety through each HEAD feminine with an iron core of encounter with danger. determination and courage. by Frenkel's first weeks in Vichy France were
Françoise In 1933, Frenkel’s shop was already facing spent living in Avignon, after which she Frenkel an officially mandated boycott, but she moved on to Nice. Her book describes a kept it open. After 1935, practical Kafkaesque succession of encounters with Translated by problems increased, especially in respect demoralised and confused bureaucrats: Stephanie Smee of obtaining necessary French currency. each day she was called upon to obtain a There was intervention from the censors as new identity document or temporary Pushkin Press well as other political pressures and an residence permit. Information provided by absence of practical backing from the officials was never complete, regulatory French embassy. On the other hand, as she requirements changed every day, and the was a Polish Jewess running a high-profile overall experience was characterised by a Unfolding in Berlin, Paris and against the business in Berlin, it is amazing that the constantly changing mixture of acute romantic landscapes of Southern France, bookshop was able to operate at all. anxieties, hopes and disappointments. No Place to Lay One's Head is a heart- breaking tale of human cruelty and She made several attempts to escape to unending kindness; of a woman whose lust Switzerland and was twice caught and for life refuses to leave her, even in her The story is gripping imprisoned. However, she finally darkest hours. succeeded, crossing barbed wire at the and very hard to read frontier near Annecy (lacerating her skin Dr. Patrick Modiano, a French author who and ripping her clothes) and reaching won the 2014 Nobel prize for literature, without tears – it is safety. By then she was fifty-three years discovered a tattered copy of this book in a also hard to put down. old. She lived for another thirty years, flea market. In an interesting and dying in Nice in 1975. intriguing preface to its extraordinary It is haunting, subtle, story, he tells of his serendipitous find and atmospheric, tender There are many questions which, for me, of his efforts to trace the author who had and terrifying. remain unanswered; the one which piqued his curiosity. intrigues me most is how she had enough money to survive during the dreadful years The tale is told by Françoise Frenkel, a She was still in Berlin during of German occupation, but this book is a Polish/Jewish bookseller who, in 1921 at Reichskristallnacht in November 1938. most moving and fascinating account of the age of thirty-two, established the only She experienced the officially sanctioned those years and I urge you to read it. French bookshop in Berlin. The bookshop, pogrom from the streets, from her La Maison du Livre Français, flourished. apartment in a Jewish quarter of Berlin, It attracted artists and diplomats, and then from the front step of her Claire Connick celebrities and poets and even the French book shop which, miraculously, was ambassador. She made many friends and spared. As war loomed she finally accepted her life was good. Then in 1939 that there was no future for her in everything changed. Germany, and eventually, she gave way to The story is gripping and very hard to read the ever more urgent entreaties of the without tears – it is also hard to put down. French consul in Berlin and escaped as a It is haunting, subtle, atmospheric, tender passenger on a special train to Paris which and terrifying. had been organised by the French Embassy. Shortly before June 1940, when This account of her adventures was the invading German army reached Paris, published (in French) in September 1945 she joined the thousands of Parisians by Verlag Jehebe, a Geneva publishing fleeing to the south of the country. house that has long since disappeared. Very few copies were produced and the From then on, this book tells of the many book was quickly forgotten. However, deprivations Françoise suffered but also of thirty-five years after the author's death in the astonishing kindnesses and amazing 1975, it was rediscovered in southern courage of so many decent French and France and was republished in 2015, also some Italian people. I read it with
9 Jewish Customs Ten Good Men: and gloom, gave a negative account of sanctuary. The Talmud does not the likelihood of conquering the comment on women being counted in a Origins of Minyan Promised Land, while Joshua and Caleb minyan; but neither does it say women kept faith with God’s promise to deliver cannot be included! It is Joseph Caro’s the Land to the Israelites. Shulchan Aruch, sixteenth century Code of Halacha, that mentions the So why does not a minyan number two ineligibility of women to be included in rather than ten? The concept of a minyanim. minyan and its function in ritual observance is rabbinic. Significantly, the Another tradition, associated with the abstruse Biblical verses make no mention belief that ten men constitute an of women being excluded from the assembly/congregation fit for public notion of a congregation. worship, is the idea of the Shechinah, the manifestation of God’s presence. Rabbi Some authorities, Adler and Dembitz, Halafta said when ten men study Torah, argue that the origins of minyan pre-date or act as judges, then the Divine synagogal worship. Moses was advised by Presence dwells among them. There is a Yitro to set up courts to hear disputes, question here that I believe we are forced the smallest unit of which comprised ten to ask: does God discriminate between heads of family (Exodus 18). The men and women; does He deny His Mishnah stipulates that many ritual presence to communities that can no practices cannot take place unless there longer muster a quorum of ten males? There are many differences between is a minimum of ten males in the When we sing Lecha Dodi on erev Orthodox and Progressive Judaism; one congregation. It is mandatory, in Shabbat, does the Sabbath Bride turn her of the most apparent, for those visiting a traditional Judaism, that a minyan be back on congregations that are fewer traditional Shul, is the exclusion of present in order to recite the Barechu, than ten, or a mixture of men, women women from active participation in conduct public Torah readings, recite and children? I think not! services, and this is to a large extent Kaddish, recite Kedusha, and recite the explained by the composition of a Priestly Blessing. There are other There is an increasing number of Jewish minyan, the quorum of ten Jewish males occasions when a minyan is not communities that are facing declining over the age of thirteen, who form what halachically required but is numbers of congregants, because of an is defined as a community entitled to recommended, viz : Brit Milah, Pidyon aging population and demographics, and conduct public worship, including Ha-ben, Yizkor, weddings, and the to guarantee ten men at any service is reading Torah. In the event of there recitation of prayers at the graveside. often a vain hope. being nine males, then a pre-bar mitzvah What Progressive Judaism does is face boy, holding a Tanakh, can complete the The Talmud does not the realities of modern life, and minyan. Such restrictions do not apply to challenge assumptions made by the non-Orthodox communities; but having comment on women Talmudic rabbis. Much wisdom is to be said that, the Masorti Movement, being counted in a found in the observations and rulings of although technically part of Progressive the Sages; but they were people of their Judaism, does not fully embrace minyan; but neither time and could not envisage the egalitarian minyanim. So, what are the does it say women enormous changes that have taken place origins of the minyan? cannot be included! since the rabbis pondered the rules that The word minyan is derived from the were to govern Jewish life. We have seen Hebrew root manah - meaning to Like everything Jewish, there are that the evidence for an exclusive male number, to count, and is based on variations to these customs, from very minyan does not have any substantial references in Vayikra (Leviticus) and strict observance to the principle of Biblical authority. Living as we do in an Bamidbar (Numbers). A careful reading minyan, to a far more liberal egalitarian society, it is fitting that of the three passages in Leviticus (22:32) interpretation. The Babylonian Talmud religious practice should reflect the value and Numbers (14:27, 16:21) does not gives weight to the account of the spies, of both sexes in celebrating God’s gifts. convince us of the Biblical authority for previously referenced in Torah. Services in Reform and Liberal Shuls the way minyan is interpreted in take place whether there is a minyan or Although women are permitted in all the Orthodox Judaism. There is a tenuous not. However, there are occasions when codes to take a defined active role in link to the idea of ten males constituting even Progressive Jews feel the need for a services - for instance reading parts of a congregation (Eydah) in the account in traditional minyan; this is often the case the weekly lesson - in practice, female Numbers, when a group of twelve spies when reciting Kaddish following the participation in Orthodoxy is confined to was sent by Moses to spy out the land of death of a loved one. activities outside the Canaan. Ten of them, filled with doom Peter Beyfus
10 Jewish Culture
Book Review resolutely refused to have the operation. visits Yad Vashem in a further attempt at ‘The world viewed me,’ she says, ‘ as healing. Alone in the museum she listens The Hidden obdurate and irresponsible.’ But to the names of the murdered children, Girl eventually she consented, likening the and weeps. ‘In those infinitely sad, slow procedure to the ‘wartime trauma of moving moments I began to reconnect The Journey of a Soul intrusion, terror, loss and grief.’ But after with my heritage, my untended Jewish her recovery she realised that the spirit roots.’ by Marika within her was an energy in itself, and that The author’s account of her dreams, Henriques she must use it to create order out of always a feature of Jungian therapy, is chaos. Part of her therapy lay in the graphic in its telling. ‘I dreamt of pushing drawings that helped her to overcome the Shepheard- at a heavy door with all my might, but depression that followed the operation. Walwyn when it opens my hands are only pushing She used them to overcome the terrible 2018 into dense fog.’ Once in a therapy session Holocaust experiences. These pictures, she is silent, full of fear. ‘No one keeps a mostly brightly coloured, not overly To reveal to the world most terrible secret as well as a child. Her survival representational, are an intrinsic part of circumstances, which lead to a troubled depended on silence, and I could not the book, perhaps the main part. Some of and sometimes tormented mind, is to persuade the frightened nine-year-old in the titles betray her terrors: The Bed of relive those events and the trauma which me to trust and speak out.’ Pain, Distress, The Chaos Dragon, The they brought in their wake. Marika Spiral Snake. Later she turned many of Henriques, at the age of nine, went into them into tapestries, finding the stitching, hiding in her native Hungary, denying her too, a help in her overall attempt to Jewishness and losing her family. This become a whole person. account of her harrowing journey out of darkness is a moving and at times distressing story. The healing process ‘In those infinitely sad, takes her to England, after escaping first from fascism and then from the slow moving moments communist regime which took over her I began to reconnect country. During the Hungarian uprising with my heritage, my The Bridge she crossed the border at the age of twenty-one, through minefields and bitter untended Jewish This is a beautifully produced – and cold, to find sanctuary here in London. roots.’ beautifully written - very personal, But her journey was not over. She felt account of a troubled soul attempting to that her vocation lay in helping others Some drawings are accompanied by short regain a balanced life. The account of her through psychotherapy to find inner peace poems, on the same theme. ‘Daydream’ is analysis, her dreams, and her subsequent and to do so she undertook long years of a picture of a girl lying in the sun. The life as a psychotherapist is one which no therapy when her drawings, poems and poem starts, one else can really experience, but we are tapestries helped her on her way. She privileged to share Marika’s moving story In a vast sky based her ideas on those of Jung, which in in the hope that she has found what she The orange moon turn she passed on, but her long struggle seeks, a peaceful mind. circles involved serious illness and much motionless. disturbance of mind and body. White deer graze Philippa Bernard in the whispering shadows the garden sighs …
At the end of the book the drawings, with their accompanying tapestries, are gathered together, a bright assembly of primitive outpourings of the artist’s thoughts and impressions. My Tree of Life Some readers may find it somewhat difficult to come to terms with what are Marika starts her book with an account of really private experiences, as one always her operation for cancer. At first she does with someone else’s beliefs. Marika
11 Around the World Chiune Sugihara this attack to his superiors in Berlin and end of the day, Mme. Sugihara would Tokyo. massage her husband’s weary hands.
Righteous Gentile Sugihara soon became aware of the He did not even stop to eat. His wife
plight of Polish emigrés to Lithuania, and supplied him with sandwiches. As the cooperated with Polish intelligence to family left Lithuania, Sugihara continued facilitate their escape from Nazi control, issuing documents from his train window
issuing them visas for transit through until the moment the train departed. As Japan in 1940. Lithuanian Jews found it it did so, he gave the consul visa stamp to difficult to credit the actions of the Nazis a refugee who was able use it to save even
against Poland, but in June 1940, more Jews. Lithuania was occupied by Soviet forces, accompanied by a wave of arrests by the Sugihara consulted his Soviet secret police. With western family. They had been Europe a war zone, the best way of escape for Jews in eastern Europe was brought up to obey
through Russia to Japan. authority implicitly
In July 1940, the Soviet authorities instructed all foreign embassy staff to As many as six thousand refugees made leave Kaunas. Almost all left their way to Japan, China and other immediately, but Chiune Sugihara countries. After the war Chiune Sugihara The only Japanese to be honoured as requested and received a twenty-day was dismissed from the Japanese ‘Righteous Among the Gentiles’, Chiune extension. On a summer morning in late Foreign Office, only able to earn a living Sugihara was born in 1900 into a middle- July, Consul Sugihara and his family first of all as an interpreter and then in a class family. His father wanted him to be awakened to a crowd of Polish Jewish commercial venture that had ties with a doctor, but Chiune (sometimes known refugees gathered outside the consulate. Russia. He visited Israel in 1968 and was as Sempo) deliberately failed his If Consul Sugihara would grant them welcomed by the Israeli government. In entrance exam by writing only his name Japanese transit visas, they could obtain 1984, Yad Vashem recognised him as on the examination papers. Instead, he Soviet exit visas and escape to possible Righteous Among the Nations. Sugihara entered Waseda University, reading freedom. was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife English, and graduated with honours. and youngest son Nobuki accepted the After his military service he studied honour on his behalf. He died in 1986. Russian, was recruited into the Japanese Foreign Ministry and sent to Harbin in Sometimes referred to as the ‘Japanese China, where he improved his Russian Schindler’ Sugihara is perhaps less and studied German. Here he married a celebrated than other heroes of the Russian girl in a Russian Orthodox Holocaust. But he saved more than six Church (he converted to Christianity), thousand Jews from Eastern Europe, at though he never became a practising considerable risk to himself and his Christian. family. A film about Sugihara, entitled Persona Non Grata, was premiered in The Japanese Foreign Ministry sent the United States on 31st January 2015, Chiune to Manchuria as Deputy Foreign during the Atlanta Jewish Films Festival. Minister, but in 1935, appalled at the Jewish refugees in Shanghai, then Japanese treatment of the local Chinese, under Japanese control, after their Several books have been written about he resigned his post, divorced his wife escape from Lithuania Sugihara, including A Special Fate: and returned to Japan. Here he married Chiune Sugihara, hero of the Holocaust again, this time to a Japanese woman. by Alison Leslie Gold and published in Sugihara did not have the authority to They had four sons. America by Scholastic issue hundreds of visas without in 2000. He later became an expert on Russian permission from the Foreign Ministry in affairs and in 1939 was sent by the Tokyo. Tokyo refused. Ministry as the Japanese Vice-Consul to Sugihara consulted his family. They had Kaunas in Lithuania, the first Japanese been brought up to obey authority diplomat to be attached to that country. implicitly, with little excuse for His duties included reporting on Soviet individual action. But for twenty-nine and German troop movements to find days the Sugiharas sat for endless hours out if Germany planned an attack on the writing and signing visas by hand. At the Soviets and, if so, to report the details of
12 Around The World
After the war many of the Jewish Russian Among these were the students of the Mir The Jews of Japan prisoners stayed to form in Kobe the Yeshiva. In Shanghai, Rabbi Meir largest community in Japan; some came Ashkenazi, who served as the spiritual from the Middle East and some from leader of the Jewish refugees, arranged for Until the nineteenth century there is no Germany, but by the 1930s Japan was the yeshiva to occupy the Beth Aharon indication that any Jews lived or worked in aware of the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Synagogue, built in 1920 by a prominent Japan. The country had been completely Germany. An urgent meeting of its ruling Jewish Shanghai businessman. The isolated, having little contact with the council officially refused to expel Jews yeshiva, the only European one to survive outside world. But in 1853 the Americans from the country, and in spite of Japan’s the Holocaust, eventually came to sent a fleet, under the command of alliance with Germany, the country was Jerusalem. Another Japanese diplomat Commodore Matthew Perry, to negotiate regarded as a safe haven for refugees. who helped to rescue many Jews was the with the Japanese to open up the ports to Throughout the war the Japanese Secretary of the Manchurian Legation in international shipping. The following year authorities refused to obey the Nazi Berlin. both nations signed the Treaty of commands to act against the Jews resident
Kanagawa, and Japan began its long there. The Foreign Minister Matsuoka journey to become a leading figure in Yosuke told the community, ‘I am the man world commerce, military power and responsible for the alliance with Hitler, social integration. but nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his anti-Semitic policies in
Japan. This is not simply my personal opinion, it is the opinion of Japan, and I have no compunction about announcing it
to the world.’ Those escaping from Poland were often forced to go through Lithuania, then neutral, and it was from here, thanks
to the efforts of the Japanese consul, that Beth Israel Synagogue, Nagasaki. they reached sanctuary in Japan. From the 1901-1906 Chiune Sugihara, cooperating with Polish
intelligence, helped some six thousand
Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to At the end of the war the majority of Jews Jacob Schiff them so that they could travel through still in Japan left to go to America or Japanese territory, risking his job and his Israel. The Israeli Embassy is in Tokyo, Several of those in the government family's lives. In 1985, the State of Israel where a small number of Jews live, with believed that much of America’s wealth lay honoured Sugihara as one of the others still in Kobe. Chabad run two in its Jewish entrepreneurs, especially Righteous Among the Nations for his houses and an official centre in the capital, Jacob Schiff the banker; Schiff lent a large actions. He is the only Japanese national but the majority of Japanese people have sum of money to the Japanese to have been so honoured. no knowledge, or much interest, in Jews. government, its first major flotation of Some of those Jews living there today Japanese bonds, enabling it to win the Some of those saved managed to get visas come from the American military who Russo-Japanese war. The Empire was to go on to Western Europe, America or occupied the country after the war. At the thus prepared to welcome the first Jewish Israel, but many were sent to the Shanghai US naval base at Yokosuka near Tokyo, for settlers in 1861, among whom was an Ghetto, then under Japanese control. instance, there is a small ‘chapel,’ American, Alexander Marks, who made complete with a Torah scroll, which is his fortune in Japan and later moved to used on the High Holy Days and on other Australia, where he acted as Consul- occasions. The Tokyo community has a General, the first to hold that official full time rabbi and kosher food is available position. The first Jewish community was in the city. established in Yokohama, where a synagogue was built, and then in There is a Holocaust Museum in Nagasaki. In 1894 the latter community Hiroshima and a Holocaust Resource built its own synagogue, the Beth Israel. Centre in Tokyo, as well as books and films However, the earthquake of 1923 forced about the Holocaust, and some Japanese the Yokohama Jews to move to Kobe. poetry comparing Hiroshima with Here they acquired Beth Israel’s Torah Auschwitz. Scroll after that community declined in the Russo-Japanese war. That synagogue was The Ark of the Synagogue of the damaged in the 1995 earthquake but has Congregation of Kansai in Kobe since been repaired.
13 Around the World
Salonika and by the fourteenth century emerged as one of the most enlightened The Jews of Albania from Hungary. A century later they came countries during the Second World War from Spain escaping the Spanish as far as rescuing Jews is concerned. Inquisition. The story of Denmark which After the war ended Hoxha, who ruled rescued Jews is well known. The rescue of Albania under the communists, tried to This is the story of the Albanian Jews and the Albanian Jews is less known as the outlaw the code but did not succeed. the heroic bravery of the Albanian people communist regime tried to bury this During the spring and summer of 1944 during World War II. The management of chapter for many years. However, we the Kadin family opened their doors and the building where I live employs an must not forget that nearly all the Jews in sheltered a Jewish family. The Topani Albanian gardener called Agim who told Albania survived the war because of the family also sheltered Jews. The daughter me how the Albanians saved the Jews in heroic bravery of the Albanian of Sado Xhyheri hid four Jews. She kept their midst during the war. My curiosity population. them company and encouraged them to drove me to visit the Wiener Library to keep up their spirits. The gardener, Agim, find out more. told me about the highly inventive ways of
We start from the period when Albania hiding the Jews in their fields and homes. was invaded by Italy in 1939. King Zog Israel has not forgotten the noble and fled first to Greece and then to England. human conduct of the Albanians whose
He was not successful in his attempt to names are listed in the Righteous Gentiles create a government in exile. In 1943 the Programme which is operated by Yad Allies were contemplating invading Vashem. It honours those who were either
Albania but the situation changed when Christians or Muslims (in the case of the Italy capitulated. Albanians) for saving Jews. In 1993 the thirty four Albanians who became The Germans arrived in Albania in the Righteous Gentiles were invited to Israel same year, 1943 and replaced the Italian to be honoured. puppet regime with a regency of four men headed by Mehdi Frasheri, a former This is a high number of people who Albanian prime minster. The regency Lime Balla, an Albanian became Righteous Gentiles from a small
allowed free movement of the German Muslim named with her country such as Albania. The website of army across Albania. In return the husband as Righteous Gentiles Yad Vashem states: The assistance Germans did not interfere with the by Yad Vashem afforded to the Jews may have been
internal affairs. However, it did not deter grounded in the Albanian code of honour Albanian guerrillas from harassing the The Jews of Albania were all protected – the Besa. Only two cases took place Germans. Partisans attacked a German during the war even those who co- where Jews were deported. Mrs. Bachar convoy and killed sixty Germans and in operated with the Germans for one reason and her children were deported to return the Germans killed one hundred or another. They did not violate the Bergen-Belsen but survived. Yitzhak and seven Albanians including women Albanian code of honour. The code of Arditi was deported with his wife and four and children. In 1944 the National honour that the Albanians followed and children. Only the father survived. Liberation Army defeated the Germans, which is embedded in their culture, was
and Tirana the capital was liberated. the primary motive for rescuing the Jews. The code of honour asserts that there are Ilana Alexander He must offer him a no foreigners in the country, only guests. If an Albanian betrayed the one who bed, a pillow and a needed help he would betray the whole warm heart. community and disgrace his family and his village. As a result the home of the betrayer would be destroyed and his Legend has it that two thousand years ago family banished. The moral code was and a ship heading for Rome with a cargo of is part of the Book of Laws known as the Jewish slaves from Palestine was blown Kanum. It says: Every hour of the day off course and landed on the shore of and night a man must be ready to receive Albania. Archaeologists found remnants a guest with bread, salt and an open of a synagogue in Dardania, an ancient heart. He must offer him a bed, a pillow port from the first century of the Common and a warm heart. Era. In the fourth century Albania became part of the Byzantine Empire. In the early This small occupied country which lived middle ages Jews arrived in Albania from under harsh economic conditions
14 Poetry Page
TIME
A METAPHOR
I was trying to go upstream Time in my dream
Time as elusive as it is real
A river not mentioned on maps
Flowing from past to future Fighting against its preordained flow An energy jet bordering unexplored eternity Eternity where beginnings and ends merge With Infinity beyond the space of life
Infinity, the mind’s last frontier.
I will drown as I must
The waters will close back upon me Smooth, noiseless, no ripples, no traces Nothing, save a surfacing mystical residue The sum of my experiences, my emotions, my essence My soul in God’s image time does not affect The cosmic wind blows somewhere beyond Beyond eternity outlasting infinite time
Colette Littman
15 Anglo-Jewish History based Mirah, the Jewish heroine in This she patented with Bodichon’s help Hertha Ayrton George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, on her. and it was exhibited at the Exhibition of 1854-1923 Women’s Industries. Electrical Engineer At Girton, financed by Bodichon, Hertha studied mathematics, but her interests In 1884 Hertha returned to London and were wide. She founded the fire brigade, earned a meagre living teaching and
joined the choir and formed a taking in embroidery, taught by her Mathematical Society. She also published mother. She began attending classes in problems, with the answers, in electricity at Finsbury Technical College.
Mathematical Questions for the The classes were led by William Ayrton, a Educational Times. It was not possible distinguished engineer, and the following for a woman to gain a degree at year William and Hertha were married.
Cambridge, though she was later awarded William’s daughter Edith, by his first a Bachelor of Science degree at the marriage, married Israel Zangwill; University of London. Hertha herself was by now somewhat
distant from her Jewish ancestry, though Commemorating Hertha’s period of study she always acknowledged it. She too had at Girton, there is a handsome portrait of a daughter by William, whom she called her, painted in 1906. It is by the British Barbara Bodichon Ayrton, after her old artist Héléna Arsène Darmesteter, also friend. Jewish and a contemporary of Herta. In the nineteenth century it was most Héléna (née Hartog) was Hertha’s cousin, Hertha ‘s interest in women’s suffrage was unusual for a woman to attain distinction and attended the same school in London growing, and her daughter Barbara as an electrical engineer – for a Jewish run by her mother Marion, Hertha’s aunt. became organiser for the Women’s Social woman it was unknown. But Phoebe She studied in Paris under Gustave and Political Union; she was imprisoned Sarah Marks achieved just that. Known Courtois, and married Arsène in Holloway for smashing windows. She more usually as Hertha Ayrton, Sarah, Darmesteter. She exhibited at the Royal became a member of the National born in 1854, was the daughter of a Polish Academy and in Paris. The Hartogs were Executive Committee of the Labour Party Jewish watchmaker, Levi Marks, and his a distinguished family; Marion founded in 1929, and stood for Parliament on wife Alice Moss, a seamstress. They lived the first Jewish women’s periodical, several occasions before finally being in Portsea, in Hampshire, where Levi died entitled The Jewish Sabbath Journal: A elected for the newly created Hendon in 1861, leaving Alice with seven children Penny and Moral Magazine for the North constituency in 1945. Her son, and another on the way. She took in Young. Hertha’s grandson was the distinguished sewing to keep the family, but sent Sarah writer Michael Ayrton. to her aunt, Marion Hartog, who ran a Will Ayrton’s research papers were used school in the East End of London. Here She constructed a by a servant to light a fire and Hertha she was educated with her cousins, machine to record the studying subjects suitable for a future governess – as impoverished but pulse in arteries, a educated girls usually had to be – but she sphygmomanometer also benefited from her boy cousins’ instruction in Latin and mathematics. Helena’s younger sister Cécile was a To support her mother, Sarah began composer and pianist. Her older brother teaching, but it was soon clear that her Numa was the first Jewish Senior exceptional intelligence deserved Wrangler at the University of Cambridge, something more, and she took the while her younger brother Marcus was a Cambridge entrance examinations, professor of Natural History and Zoology, encouraged by her friend, Barbara and her other brother Philip became a Bodichon, who founded Girton College for chemist and educationalist. women, and whom she had met at Women’s Suffrage meetings. Another In her quest to advance her knowledge, friend started calling her Hertha – the Hertha turned to science and invention. Earth Goddess of Teutonic mythology, as She constructed a machine to record the evidenced in Swinburne’s poem, which pulse in arteries, a sphygmomanometer, criticised organised religion. Hertha was very similar to the familiar cuff used today also the heroine of a feminist novel by for measuring blood pressure. Her next Fredrika Bremer. The name stuck. She invention was a line divider used by was also supported by George Eliot, who artists as well as architects and engineers. Portrait by H A Darmesteter
16
helped him to reconstitute his findings. demonstrations, wearing university dress She was by now a formidable electrical forbidden to women. When the
Pankhursts were recovering from hunger engineer and had made an important strikes and ill treatment, they were discovery in the field of electric arcs (she nursed at Hertha’s home. She helped to solved the problem of the hiss and flicker found the International Federation of of street lighting) which led to University Women, and National Union publication in The Electrician in 1895. of Scientific Workers. Endowed by her This was followed by an invitation to friend Ottilie Hancock, there is still today membership of the Institute of Electrical the Hertha Ayrton Research Fellowship Engineers, the first woman to be elected. at Girton, and another, the Hertha Marks Her success led to appearances at Ayrton Fellowship inaugurated in 2009 scientific congresses at home and abroad, by the Panasonic Trust to promote the following which the British Association further education of under-represented for the Advancement of Science allowed groups in the engineering profession. women to serve on committees. The
Royal Society awarded her their Hughes Hertha Ayrton died in 1923 after Medal ‘in recognition of an original contracting septicaemia from an insect discovery in the physical sciences, bite. Although she never failed to particularly electricity and magnetism or acknowledge her Jewish ancestry, Hertha their applications’. But she was turned declared herself an agnostic. At the time One of our readers in Israel down as a Fellow by its committee, who of her marriage outside the faith, and sent this:- refused to admit married women, and with her family protesting, she wrote to her paper was read by another well- her mother, ‘You know how much I love known electrical engineer, John Perry. you, dear mother, and I would do She was however the first woman to read anything I could to make you happy, but a paper to the Society – The Origin and the one thing I could not do would be to Growth of Ripple Marks. give him up.’ Donald Trump is walking out of the White House and heading Hertha Ayrton was a close friend of In 2007 a Blue Plaque was set up outside toward his limo, when a Marie Curie, who often brought her Hertha’s home at 41 Norfolk Square in potential assassin steps forward children to stay with the Ayrtons on London, and another in 2018, unveiled and aims a gun at him. holiday. Marie’s work on radium was by the Queen, at her family home in attributed to her husband Pierre, and Queen Street, in Portsea. A Secret Service agent, new on Hertha fought for Marie’s recognition in the job, shouts, the press. Aware of just such a danger ‘MICKEY MOUSE!’ for a woman, Hertha made sure that all This startles the would-be her work was protected by patents, of assassin, and he is easily which she registered twenty-six. overpowered. When the First World War broke out in Later, the Secret Service 1914 one of the greatest dangers to agent’s superior takes him aside British troops was the use of poisonous and asks, ‘What in hell made gas by the enemy. Hertha had been you shout out "Mickey Mouse’? working on the formation of sand ripples by water oscillation and she was able to Blushing, the agent replies, ‘I put this to good use by using her got nervous. I meant to shout, discoveries in water to the movements in DONALD! DUCK!’ air. She invented a fan or flapper to push the poisonous gas out of the trenches. Her ideas were dismissed by the War Philippa Bernard Office, but eventually 104,000 Ayrton Fans were issued to the troops, helping to save many lives. She continued to work on the dispersal of such lethal air from mines and sewers.
Hertha continued to concern herself with women’s rights, marching on protest
17
Comment Until the mid-1960s in the West London ordinary, modernisers of the King James Poetry and Peter’s Synagogue, its first lines were sung by a Version explode its linguistic magic – soloist to a hauntingly beautiful melody – scriptural Taliban dynamiting literary Prayer for Rain a musical highlight of Saturday morning. statues. ‘You’ replaces ‘Thou’, an It was dropped for a brisker treatment Orwellian masterstroke dispensing with when the ministry changed, doubtless for the vestige of familiar and formal address, brevity since it covered only the first three thankfully persistent in other cultures like phrases of the long prayer. French. Yet the familiar form for God is affirmation of the covenant, and of His However, pace Maimonides, the slow ‘marriage’ with the people. Quintessential metre and melodic climax conveyed the is the repetition and assonance of greatness in the statement of belief with syllables, words, and phrases, but also of which those phrases end: min haolam meanings. The ‘tricolon’ (triple repetition) v’ad haolam atah el, ‘from eternity to in the Shema, ‘with all thy heart, and with eternity, Thou art God’; and at least for all thy soul, and with all thy might’, and at me, for the sake of a few minutes, the end of the Nishmat, ‘Who is like unto something more powerful than the music Synagogue services and yom tov Thee, who is equal unto Thee, who can be was compromised. ceremonies like Seder normally begin compared unto Thee?’, endures in the with pesukei d’zimrah, simple hymns that The poetry of Nishmat is manifest even in Gettysburg address: ‘we cannot dedicate, are standard in the modern liturgy but translation. Consider this extract which we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow not essential to the rite. Rather, they are a starts the second section – memorable this ground’. Lincoln’s conclusion, ‘that preamble, directing thoughts to the lines which do a measure of justice to the government of the people, by the people, Almighty by their inspired and poetic Hebrew poetry. The alliteration cannot be for the people shall not perish from the language before the major prayers like the heard of course, but the use of repetition, Earth’, shaped the grandiloquence of Shema, the Amidah, and the Torah parallelism and anaphora (repetition of every subsequent American orator, even readings. first words like Churchill’s: ‘…we shall Superman’s ‘truth, justice and the fight them on the beaches, we shall fight American way’ (technically, a hendiatris Maimonides cautioned that they should them on the landing grounds, we shall like ‘Veni, vidi, vici’, ‘Liberté, égalité, be recited slowly to bring us into the fight them in the fields etc.’) is inspiring fraternité’, ‘Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll’ – or appropriate frame of mind; but they are in English or Hebrew: F.D. Roosevelt’s advice to orators, ‘Be often abbreviated or omitted to avoid sincere, be brief, be seated’). testing the perseverance of the children ‘If our mouths were filled with song as and adults at table, or when time is short. the sea, our tongues with joyous cries Another poetic feature at the heart of the loud as the roaring billows, and our Nishmat is hyperbole, unconfined Those accustomed to including them will lips with praise as the boundless expressions of gratitude casting its recognise the opening Nishmat kol chai, firmament, if our eyes shone like the sublime quality. The Shema instructs us ‘The breath of all living’. It follows sun and the moon, our hands in memorable phrases that we may take Miriam’s ‘Song of the Sea’ rejoicing in extended like the eagle’s wings in the allegorically without any loss of their salvation from the pursuing Egyptians sky and our feet swift as the hind’s…’ compelling power. Nishmat speaks with and is followed by the Yishtabach excess that is not excessive, of resolution shimcha, concluding the pesukei. It is one Concentration of meaning distinguishes to thank the Lord with all our ‘inward of our oldest hymns, and if its origin is the poetic from the prosaic, especially in parts and reins’ in one attractive, debated, its poetic beauty remains Hebrew in which fewer words are needed outmoded translation. With no concrete undiminished. than in English; and translations may fall meaning, the unmoderated phrases yet jarringly short of excellent. ‘The roaring In Exodus 15, Miriam leads the Israelite convey complete trust in God, and evoke a billows’ overwhelm a ‘multitude of waves’ women with a timbrel (a tambourine) in a sense of our place in creation in a and the ‘boundless firmament’ is song of thanksgiving, the oldest metaphorical marriage with the Divine. gloriously vast compared with ‘endless description of the Exodus, in an archaic After the Red Sea crossing, three months space’, demonstrating how much may be Hebrew that would date it prior to the of doubt in the wilderness brought the lost at the stroke of an uninspired pen. monarchic period (if not a literary ‘bride’ to the mountain for the ‘wedding Even Nishmat kol chai is sometimes posture). With salvation as its subject, it ceremony’ of acceptance of the law. A prosaic when translated as ‘The soul of is also recited in the Christian Easter Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) hymn describing every living being’, poetry lost with ‘soul’ Vigil, and in triumphalist settings Pharaoh’s destruction in the Sea of Reeds, for ‘breath’, even though nishmah and exemplified by Schubert’s ‘Mirjams sung on the seventh day of Pesach, has a neshamah are obviously related and Siegesgesang’. However, the Nishmat is marriage contract in its title: the Ketubá preferred here to the alternative nefesh gentler, more universal (‘every knee shall del Seten Dia de Pesah. Traditional for ‘soul’. Armed with an arsenal of the bend’). Anglican wedding vows also retain a sense
18 of absolute commitment but have ceded part of Nishmat, beginning with thanks insisting that all had to adhere to Mosaic to a culture of personal rights, reducing for the rescue from Egypt, encodes the law until Paul won the argument in 58 CE the vow (and likely outcome) to acrostic practice which grew popular twenty-five years after Jesus’s death. This something lukewarm; a caution when we after the patriarchal names Isaac and led to a theory of his Christian apostasy consider re-wording our own prayers. Riv’ka – but tenth Century CE, so this as a mole for the Sanhedrin to undermine looks like a late interpolation. the separatists. There are other theories Poetic repetition is more familiar from revolving around the Toledot Yeshu, a the other end of the rite, when we sing More contentious is the legend that the polemical alternative biography of Jesus hymns like Ein keloheinu, Adir hu, Ki lo prayer was written by Simon Cephas in most versions offensive to Christians, na’eh, known as piyyutim. Piyyut has a (acrostics again). Cephas means ‘rock’ in from sources as contentiously dated as cognate in Greek, poiytys, which Aramaic, whence Simon whom Jesus the Nishmat. They add no clarity, and it becomes ‘poet’ in English. However, renamed Peter the ‘rock’ (Petrus in remains Peter’s prayer for those who like there is more than meets the eye, and for Greek) on whom he would build his it that way. those seeking elite knowledge, the church. The view was championed by piyyutim are fertile ground. In some the Rashi’s grandson Rabbenu Tam, in his The Meteorological Office has adopted stanzas begin with sequential letters of encyclopaedia of midrashim. Tam the term ‘precipitation’ for rain (and the alphabet, like Adir hu and Ki lo na’eh. describes Simon as a tzaddik (a righteous snow etc.) and had I followed suit, the Another acrostic spells out the author’s spiritual leader), a man of chochmah title of this article would have been more name: Mordechai in Ma’oz tzur; and a (knowledge and wisdom) who also wrote alliterative. However, the rainstorms blessing on Rabbi Meir bar Yitzhak in the Eten Tehillah for Yom Kippur to assist which dogged us all through the first half Shavuot hymn Akdamut milin. Acrostics the people after the loss of the second of 2017 were fatiguing, with a nod to suit the compactness of Hebrew, and temple. Support comes from a fifteenth gardeners with a different view, and if not textual cryptology is irresistible to the century note in an ancient Yemeni prayer so bad in 2018, Pesach was early enough Talmudic scholar burrowing in liturgical book, and the mysterious fast of the for us still to feel relief from dark, icy archaeology when authorship is Ninth of Tevet, the yahrzeit of Simon days, and be ready to tuck in. Even the unknown. The Yigdal hides the name Peter, recorded without explanation in best of poetry can exhaust our patience at Yechiel b’Rav Baruch. Since no one the late first millennium Scroll of Fasts. table, and reciting the Haggadah when knows who that was, we are left you are hungry can feel as daunting as The view was opposed by Rashi himself wondering if it owes more to the Joyce’s Ulysses at any time of year. So, as and his student Simhah, author of the decoder’s enthusiasm than the author’s. indicated at the start, we might be eleventh century compendium Machzor forgiven if we are tempted to abbreviate In the Talmud, the Nishmat is identified Vitry, a copy of which is in the British at least on the second night: ‘Thanks for as an ancient prayer for rain, to be recited Museum. It suggests the first century the beauty and poetry of the Nishmat; ‘from the time when the bridegroom goes BCE sage Shimon ben Shetach is thanks for the salvation from Egypt and out to meet the bride’, and in typical honoured by the fast. Nevertheless, the for the myriad of other favours; and fashion equates God’s ‘thousand, legend persisted. Peter was identified thanks for the rain, snow and ice; but thousand… myriad, myriad favours’ with with Simon HaQalphos in the sixteenth unless we are to build another ark, one per raindrop. With the Yishtabach, it century Code of Jewish Law, Shulchan schöen genuch! Bon appetit, and pass the is called the ‘Blessing of Song’, to be sung Aruch, and in the lost Sefer Zicharanot matza please!’ at Pesach according to third century attested to by the eighteenth century Rabbi Johanan; also part of the first Rabbi Aaron of Worms. Simon, devoutly Jonathan Footerrman complete Sabbath liturgy, the ninth Jewish, opposed Christianity as a century Siddur Rab Amram. The third separate sect (a fear shared by Judas),
The Crossing of the Red Sea by James Tissot (1836-1902) 19 Anglo-Jewish History distaste as did the rest of the population. outrages committed in the name of The Home Secretary, Herbert Samuel, a patriotism. Harris seemed an eminently Jewish Jew himself, was contemptuous. English minister of the Jewish religion. He Conscientious had been born in London and educated in He believed that ‘Everything that is England. He even had a dog (Der Reb mit Objectors Jewish . . . points the finger of scorn, der Hund), and his attitude towards derision and contempt at the Jewish The treatment of those who objected to conscientious objection was perhaps more Conscientious Objector.’ Lily Montagu, serving in both world wars as a matter of that of an Englishman than a Jew. He was however, wrote to the Jewish Chronicle, ‘A principle was in many cases a disgrace. quoted in the press as saying that ‘in the Jewish Conscientious Objector believes in Anyone who refused to fight on moral or opinion of the Conscientious Objector, the sanctity of life which prepares man for religious grounds had to face a tribunal, Jewish or otherwise, and in my own the experience of a life beyond. He dares often composed of military men. Many opinion, all war is wrong. My reading of my not interrupt the fulfilment of another objectors were Quakers who were pacifists, religion does not prevent me from holding man’s days by taking his life.’ and were often prepared to drive that view. It strengthens me therein.’ ambulances or take on other work to help The majority of British Jews were against English Jews also expressed concern about the soldiers. If their applications were war in principle; the Jewish Peace Society the problems facing Jews serving in the turned down by the tribunal and they had been formed in 1914 and many rabbis forces, such as the provision of kosher refused military service, they were sent to played an important part in it including food, facilities for worship and burial rites, prison. If they did go to the front and Rabbi Harold Reinhart. But the history of but these were matters which could be disobeyed orders or refused to fight, they the Jews through the ages showed that overcome with goodwill and efficiency could be shot. At home they and their they could not stand by and let a terrible from those in command. Matters of relatives were sent white feathers, the sign enemy ride roughshod over the country conscience could not. of cowardice, and some were abused in the which had given so many of them streets. Many newspapers wrote sanctuary. Few officially applied for contemptuous articles on the subject, and exemption on grounds of conscience and cartoons and caricatures showed the religion, and many were lost on the objectors as camp, limp-wristed battlefields of France. dilettantes. In Tavistock Square there is a handsome slate stone monument raised to the memory of the Conscientious Objectors ...the Rev. John Harris of the two World Wars; the inscription of Liverpool’s Princes reads: To all those who have established Road Synagogue… was and are maintaining the right to one of the earliest refuse to kill. Their foresight and ministers to raise the courage give us hope. questions of Jewish John Rodker When the First World War broke out the One of the most noted Jewish Jews too felt themselves in considerable objection to war conscientious objectors of the First World difficulty. The legal grounds for valid War was the artist John Rodker. He was The case of the Rev. John Harris of refusal to fight lay in religious belief, and one of several East End Jewish artists and Liverpool’s Princes Road synagogue made those who claimed exemption needed a poets – the Whitechapel Boys – children of the national press. He was one of the testimonial from a minister of religion East European immigrants who met at the earliest ministers to raise the question of before such a request could be considered. Whitechapel Art Gallery. Isaac Rosenberg, Jewish objection to war, maintaining that The Chief Rabbi in 1914 was Joseph Mark Gertler and David Bomberg were Jews should have the same rights to Hermann Hertz. He showed his solidarity among the most distinguished of the set. abstain from service as any other with his country by going to France to Rodker was already beginning to make a Englishmen. As a result his motives were encourage and assist the Jews fighting in name for himself as a poet and writer by questioned and he was dismissed from his the trenches. One problem was the the time war broke out. He was post by his congregation. However, the tradition that Cohanim could not approach Manchester born but came to London as a Chief Rabbi intervened and he was a dead body, but Hertz ruled that this child, his family settling, as did so many reinstated, on condition that he should not could not apply on the battlefield. others, in the East End. He later started try to influence others with his views. He However his opinion was that there were the Ovid Press, which published some of had trained boys for Bar Mitzvah and no specific grounds for conscientious the early works of T.S. Eliot and Ezra often later spoke on their behalf at objection by Jews. Pound, as well as drawings by Gaudier- tribunals, where anti-German feeling was Brzeska and Wyndham Lewis. Rodker Most Jews agreed with him, and many often expressed as anti-Semitic and the refused to fight and went on the run with regarded the ‘conchies’ with the same police were sometimes slow to act against
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the poet R.C. Trevelyan, father of the disputes. The majority of objectors artist Julian. They were caught and sent joined the ambulance or transport
הבּרוּ קוֹרנר .to prison spending the rest of the war in services, or even bomb disposal units the Home Office Work Centre at Jews were treated no differently from Dartmoor. others and doctors and nurses were often Hebrew Corner found on the battle field where their Another Jew who was a forceful objector, courage under fire was a tribute to their undergoing appalling treatment by the consciences and their religion. authorities, was Emanuel Ribeiro. He The State of Israel was created in 1948 came from Portugal and lived in and this year we celebrated the Manchester with his large family. He was seventieth anniversary. a silver engraver and when war broke out What is the meaning of the word ‘Israel’ he refused active service or any and how did it become the name of the participation in the war effort. He was country? imprisoned by the military authorities in Bury and went on hunger strike. As The Biblical story tells us that a happened to the suffragettes, he was force mysterious man fought Jacob. After the fed in the cruellest of circumstances, confrontation Jacob was told: ‘Thy writing to his wife, ‘they force a gag into name shall be called no more Jacob, my mouth which causes terrible but Israel, for you have striven with punishment, then a tube was put in the beings divine and human and have mouth and forced into the stomach…. with prevailed’. six men holding me down from moving.’ The first part of the name Israel in He needed and received hospital Hebrew means Yashar – straight. The treatment and a court martial was held at second part is el which was borrowed his bedside; he was sent to Wormwood from the Canaanites whose chief god Scrubs. Letters to Parliament about his was called El. Some Biblical linguists barbarous treatment finally achieved his connect the word Yashar to the Hebrew release. He weighed seven stone. Ribeiro The only known photograph of Emanuel Ribeiro root shin, resh, resh, which make up and his wife Bella opened a shop in the words: ‘have dominion over’. God is Manchester and Ribeiro, who died in the master, the ruler. Others interpret it 1953, was buried in the Sephardi section as righteous God, drawing it from the of Urmston Jewish Cemetery. Philippa Bernard same root. Jacob therefore was honoured by receiving this name after In World War II conditions for objectors he was tested by God, and prevailed. were much less harsh. Tribunals were again in force but it was usually enough to In the nineteenth century, Herzl and declare that an applicant was opposed to the Zionist movement named the war as a means of settling international country ‘The Jewish State’. At the end of the British Mandate in Palestine on 12th May 1948, the National Executive, with Ben-Gurion at the head, thought of calling the country ‘Yehuda’. This was rejected because, at that time, the name applied to the whole of the country including parts which might in the future be included in the partition plan - what we call today the two states solution. The Arabs rejected this idea in 1947. There were other suggestions for naming the country, for example ‘Zion’. In the end the name ‘Israel’ got the majority vote.
Ilana Alexander
The monument in Tavistock Square
21 Editorial
Jeffrey Ohrenstein Chairman of the Memorial Scrolls Trust, has asked us to bring to your attention the fact that the Trust now
has a magnificent website. This can be accessed by clicking on http://www.memorialscrollstrust.org/ . There is also a Facebook page. As part of its 60th Anniversary celebrations, the Synagogue has published From Our Table, a delightful cookery book containing recipes contributed by Members of the congregation. It is available from the Synagogue office and is priced £25. Please contact [email protected] .
Congratulations to Daniel Adler, son of WS member David, who reached the semi-finals of Radio 4s Brain of Britain 2018. He has previously been a contestant on BBCs Mastermind.
From Edward Glover
In the review of 1957 events in the January 2018 edition of the WS Quarterly, Stirling Moss’ victory in the British Grand Prix of that year was mentioned and I thought that readers might be interested to see this photo of two members of the community – my dear parents – with him. The fourth person in the picture is Stirling’s then manager Ken Gregory, who died in 2013, when the photo featured in the latter’s obituary in Motorsport.
Unfortunately we do not know when the photo was taken. However a reasonable guess would be 1956 when Stirling won the Glover Trophy, a race for Formula 1 cars run at Goodwood for which my father – or perhaps more accurately the company he ran – provided sponsorship. Stirling raced for the Glover Trophy a number of times. In 1957 it appears that he ‘retired’ having been placed in pole position but he won it again in 1959, beating Sir Jack Brabham into second place. Less happily, the 1962 race for the Trophy was the last competitive one of Stirling’s career when a very serious crash left him in a coma. I was present at that race with my parents.
Of course this letter would be incomplete without mentioning that Sir Stirling is of Jewish heritage on his father’s side. I understand that a number of his family were members of West London Synagogue.
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We must apologise to Hugh Sassoon regarding the article on Siegfried Sassoon in our April issue. Hugh writes:-
I have no quarrel with what you write about Siegfried Sassoon, my first cousin once removed, except about his ancestors. His grandfather was Sassoon David Sassoon and his grandmother was Flora nee Reuben. They were my great-grandparents.
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Community Matters
the first Shavuot-inspired Westminster Netzer. Lunch included freshly-cooked Education Chai. As an educational event without falafel by Sass Zecharia and family! The precedent in our Synagogue (at least in CST ran a krav maga demonstration to a by terms of its scale), we were unsure of how packed Friedlander Room; Solutions not
Nick people would respond. It was, by all Sides presented the grass-roots accounts, a great success and we were perspectives from Palestinian and Israeli Young delighted to have had 125 people with us peace activists; Rabbi Debbie Young-
Head of that day. We began with a Shavuot Somers presented tools and tips on Education service in the Sanctuary, followed by four Jewish parenting; Shai Grosskopf ran time slots of different sessions across the two intensive Hebrew language taster
day with an interlude for a bagel lunch. sessions; Tally Koren sang us through
Sessions were presented by our lunchtime; master-chef Kristof Steiner Imagine a day of learning at Westminster members, including Chris Rees on led us through the rise of vegan cuisine in
Synagogue bringing the whole Jewish Business Ethics, Valery Rees who Tel-Aviv and globally; and the community together with more than spoke about angels in our prayer book, effervescent Robin Moss of UJIA twenty speakers and facilitators running and Avi Jager who addressed the returned to present the Story of Israel in sessions on a range of topics of Jewish obstacles for peace in the Israeli/ Eighteen Objects. Among our members interest - from culture, to religion, to Palestinian conflict. leading the groups were Philippa Bernard history, to Israel and beyond. Imagine all teaching a session marking the 100th We also held a cookery session, Dairy of this, accompanied by activities for all anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Delights with Aviva Elias, Yoga with ages - from children and teenagers and photographer John Offenbach Shelley Keilar, a session on cockney through to adults - as well as sharing his collection based on images of Yiddish music hall and we showed the refreshments commensurate with the Jews around the World. All of this was in film, Woman in Gold, followed by a Q&A occasion. If you can picture that, then addition to text study sessions with Rabbi with the director and producer among you come close to imagining Thomas and Student Rabbi Igor Zinkov. others. Further notable speakers Westminster Chai which will take place included Rabbi Deborah Kahn Harris, Amongst the responses was the following this year on Sunday 30th.September. Principal of the Leo Baeck College, and, from a member, ‘Congratulations to the The genesis for the idea came in the in keeping with the Shavuot theme, whole team on the organisation, autumn of 2015 in the run-up to the Rabbi Ron Berry came from Bristol to logistics and hospitality. It was
Limmud conference. We know that demonstrate the craft of the sofer stam wonderful to see the house humming education is a centrepiece of Judaism along with tours of our Czech Scrolls with so many Jewish activities for all and given the success of Limmud and its Museum on offer throughout the day. ages and interests.’ many spin-offs, bringing together Jews of Our lunchtime was accompanied by How can we follow the last two years? different denominations for learning, the musician Judith Silver who also ran an Save the date of the afternoon of Sunday Events team at WS, led by Jon Zecharia, afternoon session. 30th September and come and find out. thought that this was the perfect occasion It was a wonderful occasion - the main Chai 2018 will happen on the festival of to provide something similar at Kent ‘criticism’ being that with so many Simchat Torah when we mark House for our community. fascinating options it was hard for people completing the cycle of reading the We decided upon Shavuot 2016 for our to choose which sessions to attend and Torah, and starting again, which is launch. Shavuot is the time when we which ones to miss! A non-member entirely apposite, given that this will be celebrate receiving Torah, known as the provided the following feedback: the final event of our Sixtieth ‘tree of life’, so we settled on the name ‘Everything about the day was Anniversary year and we look forward to Westminster Chai, with Chai meaning AMAZING - I loved every session and our future. ‘life’ as we thought that a vibrant am so happy that I came….It made my Watch for advertisements showing our educational gathering would be the Shavuot very meaningful. I hope that speakers and programme which, like last perfect reflection and inspiration for our you do it again next year (if not before)!’ year, will be for the whole family. We community here. Shavuot also lent itself With encouragement like that, we held hope that you will be able to join us and to the event because of the custom of our second Chai on Sunday 7th May 2017 bring guests too! If you have any tikkun leyl (night of study), the idea of around Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s questions, then please email me at staying up all night to study to make sure Independence Day). People now had a [email protected]. I look that we are ready for the arrival of Torah. better idea of what to expect and our forward to seeing you at Chai. Well, we decided that we were going to guests numbered 175 of all ages. Among create a tikkun yom, or day of study the enhancements that we made was a instead! full programme for children aged from So, after much preparation, on Sunday three to thirteen, led by our Or Shabbat 12th June 2016 we opened our doors for teachers and the youth leaders of LJY-
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WESTMINSTER SYNAGOGUE Kent House, Rutland Gardens, London SW7 1BX
Planning Your Diary Contacting the Synagogue
RABBI Rabbi Benji Stanley [email protected] T: 020 7052 9712 Selichot Jeffrey Ohrenstein [email protected] Saturday 1st September CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE
Erev Rosh Hashana EXECUTIVE Gary Sakol [email protected] DIRECTOR T: 020 7052 9713 Sunday 9th September
EDUCATION Nick Young [email protected] Rosh Hashana T: 020 7052 9714 EVENTS & th Jon Zecharia [email protected] Monday 10 September COMMUNICATIONS T: 020 7052 9711 MANAGER
Kol Nidre MITZVOT & Hilary Ashleigh [email protected] KIDDUSHIM T: 020 7052 9717 Tuesday 18th September
MEMBERSHIP David Connick [email protected] Yom Kippur LIFECYCLE Melissa Hamilton [email protected] Wednesday 19th September ENQUIRIES PA to the Rabbinic T: 020 7052 9701 Team
Erev Succot CZECH SCROLLS Jeffrey Ohrenstein [email protected] MUSEUM T: 020 7584 3740 Sunday 23rd September GENERAL Nivi Chatterjee Duari [email protected] ENQUIRIES T: 020 7584 3953/020 7052 9700 Succot
th Monday 24 September EMERGENCIES Monday to Friday: In the first instance, please call the Synagogue Office: 020 7052 9710 Erev Simchat Torah Evenings and weekends: please e-mail Rabbi Benji Stanley Sunday 30th September [email protected]
Simchat Torah Please send letters, articles, photographs or other items of interest for Monday 1st October publication in the Westminster Synagogue Quarterly directly to the Synagogue office or e-mail to [email protected]
WESTMINSTER SYNAGOGUE Kent House Rutland Gardens London SW7 1BX