An Autobiographical Sketch

An Autobiographical Sketch My own personal concern for the relationship between human rights and religion stems from my upbringing and background. I was brought up in the Jewish tradition in Germany and became a refugee child in England at the age of three. My status as a refugee taught me that you can adapt to wherever you live, and in so doing experi- ence a breadth of human society which enriches you. is was made possible for me through the concerns and caring attitude of others. We kept the major Jewish holidays and went to synagogue, and although we were more liberal than orthodox, my father kept traditional values. Our family on my father’s side were partly of Sephardi origin. Sefarad is the old rabbinic word for Spain and Portugal, thus ‘Sephardi’ denotes those Jews whose ancestors hailed from Spain or Portugal and who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in (Spain) and (Portugal) respectively. Many of the merchant families found refuge in North- Western European cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London and Hamburg. In Hamburg, the Sephardi Jewish community was the first Jewish group to be allowed to settle within that city, partly because they successfully pretended to be Portuguese Catholic merchants. Yet the community was quickly allowed to practise Judaism and, unusually, given permission to establish a synagogue, a privilege that local German Jews would not be accorded until the second half of the seventeenth century. e two communities were separate from very early on. Some of my family were thus part of a long Sephardi history in the midst of the northern ‘Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg’ which itself had a longstanding tradition of trade and exchange all over the world, although my forefathers came from Copenhagen and Rendsburg, which was originally Danish before it became part of Prussia. Prior to the Danish-Prussian war they worked for the kings of Denmark as accountants, and the crown of the Danish king is engraved on their gravestones, to denote that they were crown-protected Jews of Denmark, until they moved on to Hamburg. e Reform Jewish movement was inaugurated at the Hamburg Temple in and was part of the Jewish community of Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek (known by its Hebrew acronym AHU), a federation of three communities on land that today is Greater Hamburg. By that time, the Jewish community of Altona in particular had developed into a centre of Jewish learning and spirituality renowned throughout the Jewish world. Clemens Nathan My father was proud of his Danish ancestry before his grandfather left for Ham- burg, which became an independent state after the Danish-Prussian war. He was a remarkable example of a person who adapted to his new environment as soon he came to England to escape the ird Reich – not only to find a way to earn his living, but to do voluntary and human rights work in his own way. e same was true of my mother. My father was active in the St John’s Ambulance and became a member of the Order of St John. He offered to read the Old Testament lessons at camps for children, and even did so in the church where they held the service for the St John’s Ambu- lance, which was his great love. He always said that the greatest gift from God was to hear children laughing at the camps that he and my mother voluntarily organised in Buckinghamshire where we lived. is brought - children together every year. My mother would help with the cooking while my father, together with groups of other volunteers of St John’s men and women, organised the camp. My mother’s family kept what could be called ‘middle-of-the-road Judaism’ in the Ashkenazi tradition. I was fortunate that my grandparents on my mother’s side also came to England with us, and my grandfather went to synagogue every Saturday. My mother was one of the first female students to receive a doctorate in political economics at Königsberg and Heidelberg University. She was an active young woman in Germany before meeting my father in Hamburg. After emigrating to England, she enjoyed doing voluntary work and even played the organ in a Baptist church in Chesham when they were short of an organist. She would cycle there on Sunday mornings. She was also extremely busy in our local synagogue, a mere hut in Amer- sham, Buckinghamshire, and helped to organise everything with my father. We used to walk to synagogue – a Jewish tradition – on Saturdays. e high holidays and Saturdays played an important role in my life, in a multi- faith way, especially during the war when we were in Amersham. ere were Jews who were extremely religious and others who were liberal, yet we all managed to work and co-operate together. My mother also ran the Amersham Woman’s Interna- tional Zionist Organisation (WIZO) in the early s, which collected money for a baby home in Jerusalem. Her sister was working on a kibbutz in Israel, and had a deep love for everything to do with Israel. My father was initially less enthusiastic, but after visiting the country realised what an important role it played for Jews worldwide. Nevertheless, my father concentrated on developing his roots in the UK. e social- ist background of the kibbutz appealed to him and this was what appealed to me, although more theologically. Jews needed to till the soil in order to create a spiritual society, I thought, rather than praying in synagogue. Later I realised how important both were, particularly after I married. My late father-in-law drew my attention to writings on Judaism by G. F. Moore, a Cambridge professor who, although not Jewish himself, wrote so clearly that many things became far more interesting for me. Per- haps it is at times easier for an English-educated child to comprehend the informed and educated explanation of his own faith by those educated in this country, even if the teacher is not Jewish! Since then, I have been reading constantly. Who was Mayor of Rendsburg..

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