Lingfield House at Prague Airport, Where Nine British Home Was Strictly Kosher)
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ESTMINSTER Volume X No.3 UARTERLY July 2019 Ghetto Theatre by David Bomberg (Ben Uri Collection) The Spanish Inquisition David Bomberg The Salamons in Barbados A Bar Mitzvah in New York From the Rabbi help our professional team set up for the easy answers. We must recognise this evening. He loved animals and was and offer to be together in times of always keen to help people. He had trouble. Indeed, after Achrei Mot comes volunteered in an orphanage in Ethiopia. Parshat Kedoshim, the section on He had worked especially hard to go to Holiness, and our tradition teaches us university and was looking forward to that sanctity existswhen we come this prospect. together. Amelie celebrated her Bat Mitzvah a year I am grateful to this community. I am and a half ago, reading from one of our grateful for all your letters of support to Czech Scrolls and giving her thoughts on the family, and for your encouragement We create moments together that we will the Torah portion. She did so with great and support of me and our team. I am remember for the rest of our lives and insight, poise, and maturity. As I got to grateful for your genuine care and love. I that will echo across generations. In know her, she talked to me about her am grateful for the way members have services, and in learning, through baby love of her family and her love of reading, supported the family, bringing their blessings and B’nei Mitzvah, we bring especially of history, and how she valued expertise to specific requests the family families closer together, and we bring the logic and perspective that reading can made. I am grateful for the way lay families closer to the rest of our give you. She was a sharp thinker and leaders have stepped up to create a space community. We bring people closer to was willing to challenge herself and in which our older children could ask themselves, as they reflect on who they others on issues that matter, including questions in confronting this. I are and what’s important, enabling discrimination and animal rights. appreciate having such a dedicated growth and self-realisation. Our professional team and Executive here community offers an oasis of this that we prioritised and shared everything closeness in the wonderful, though also Never has the that needed to be done. I am most of all disconnected and hectic, metropolis of community been so full of admiration for the courage of London. Never has our community been Angelina, Matthew, David and Ethan in so important. important facing what has happened, and living We recently experienced exceptional with the beautiful memories of Amelie and Daniel. difficulty. Above all, the Linsey family, Amelie and Daniel were both beloved members of our community, enthusiastic members of the community, Never has community been so important. have faced, and are facing this extreme and most of all, loving, thoughtful, In the face of such brutality and hurt, our difficulty. Amelie Linsey, fifteen years supportive family members- children and values are all the more needed. We must old, and Daniel Linsey, nineteen years siblings. They epitomised the value that truly and authentically believe that love, old, were killed along with more than Aaron and his descendants are said to care, peace, and community will prevail. 250 other innocent people in the attacks have brought to the world. Hillel says: Be We must stand together and gather in Sri Lanka on Sunday 21st April. Their among the disciples of Aaron, loving others in the world to stand for these father Matthew returned home himself peace and pursuing peace, loving people values too. This community has never from Sri Lanka the day afterwards to his and bringing them close to Torah (Pirkei been so important. We support each wife Angelina and their two other Avot 1:12). It is their qualities that we other during joyful and difficult times. As children, David, who is twenty-one, and need in the world and in our lives more El Male Rachamim, the ancient prayer Ethan who is twelve. On your behalf as a than ever right now, and that we, as a for the deceased says, ‘let their souls be community, I have spent much time with community, will bring in their honour. woven into the weave of life’, bitzror them, guiding them through these ha’chayim. For anyone still wanting to It was poignant that the first Shabbat extraordinarily difficult grieving rituals, contribute to the foundation set up in after their loss brought the annual Torah and we continue to support them, memory of Amelie and Daniel to help reading Acharey Mot, meaning ‘after helping them with whatever they need, families whose lives have been death’ that the Torah portion takes and simply being present and available. overturned in Sri Lanka you can do so places after Aaron loses two of his here, https://www.justgiving.com/ We will always remember Amelie and children in a cruel and violent way. crowdfunding/amelieanddaniel Daniel and aspire to live by the light of Aaron’s immediate response is silence. their examples. Daniel at age nineteen The Kotzer Rebbe in the nineteenth was enthusiastically learning, developing century taught that ‘nothing screams out and helping others. Just last Purim he like silence’ and indeed this silence in the came in during the day, before the middle of The Five Books shouts out to evening of the service and celebration, to us. It speaks of inexpressible shock, grief, Rabbi Benji Stanley ask me questions based on his research loss - and love. The Torah acknowledges of the festival and to read about festivals that extreme difficulty comes without in our library. He was then very keen to 3 Anglo-Jewish History 1 Shell for whom he later became Managing was later to lead to many confrontations Jews in the City Director. He was knighted in 1920, after with those opposed to hunting and blood Bernard Waley-Cohen Shell had played an important part in the sports, the Press joining in avidly with war. He bought for his growing family the unflattering portraits and accounts of his (1914-1991) large house in Hampstead, neighbouring business transactions. Kenwood House, Caen Wood Towers, and Not long after he had resumed his city life, later a country home near Exmoor. Bernard was appointed vice-chairman of After Clifton, Bernard went to Magdalene the Palestine Corporation and the Union College, Cambridge, reading Modern Bank of Israel. His distinction as a City History, and then joined Lloyds, becoming servant led to his election as Alderman of an underwriter. He was a broad- the Portsoken Ward and then at the early shouldered, athletic young man, with age of thirty-five, as a lieutenant for the aspirations to join the Navy, but an eye City of London, leading to his accident while out riding put an end to appointment as Sheriff. He referred that. Instead he had to earn a living, in proudly to his ancestor Sir David spite of his family wealth. Unable to enlist Salomon, the first Jewish Lord Mayor, because of the injury, when war broke out following in Sir David’s footsteps when he he became an executive officer attached to too was created first KBE and then Lord the Port of London Emergency Service Mayor himself, the seventh Jew and the and also Commander of the Exmoor second youngest individual to hold the Patrol of the Home Guard. He was one of post. During his term of office, he The two families from whom Sir Bernard the few descendants of the Cohen dynasty introduced a Midsummer Banquet, now Waley-Cohen took his name were among to marry within the faith – the Rev. an important and enjoyable part of the the prominent long-standing Anglo- Ephraim Levine later recalled that his City calendar. Jewish families often known as The father was overjoyed; ‘he came dancing Cousinhood. Nathaniel Cohen had into the room to tell me the news, and to married Julia Waley, and his son Robert see Sir Robert dancing was quite a was the first to put the two names spectacle’. He married Joyce Nathan, together, though Robert’s son, Bernard, daughter of Major Nathan, a senior added the hyphen. In his book partner in a city law firm; she was a The Cousinhood, Chaim Bermant wrote, highly intelligent woman, went to St Felix speaking of Robert who was, he said, not School, Southwold, and Girton College, an observant Jew but liked to say the Cambridge, and then worked at the Priestly Blessing, ‘with his Prayer Shawl Ministry of Fuel and Power, where over his head and arms outstretched, he Bernard was also employed alongside looked like some dark avenging angel, Harold Wilson. They had met at London except that angels in Jewish lore were parties before she went to Cambridge and created to receive orders, whereas Cohen his friends said he wooed her until she Lady Waley-Cohen believed he was born to give them. He was old enough to receive his proposal. (1920-2013) was nature’s own managing director.’ Robert was educated at Clifton College, in Bernard was appointed Joyce Waley-Cohen proved herself to be Polack’s House - founded by his great- one of the most distinctive Lady uncle Lionel Cohen - to which he later sent vice-chairman of the Mayoresses, holding elegant parties at both his sons; he had married Alice Mansion House, always beautifully Beddington of the wealthy Moses family. Palestine Corporation dressed and a most gracious hostess. She Alice was a keen horsewoman, an interest and the Union Bank of coped efficiently with her duties in the of both families and their descendants, City, her home in Somerset and that in but according to the biographer of her Israel London, while bringing up their four husband, Robert Henriques, ‘had no children.