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 Lifecycle events Westminster Welcomes its New Members Inside this issue Bella Gavin Joshua & Micah Siva Nick & Magda Kling From the Rabbi 3 Shari Landa Jews in the City 4 Samah Bushra Roxane Barsky Amusement Arcade 5 Maria Pastore Abigail Cohen & Graysen Wright 6 David Bomberg Jemimah Steinfeld & Simon Reynolds Charlotte Nichols Hebrew Corner 7 Laura Rowland The Spanish Inquisition 8 Paul Ainsworth-Taylor Shawn & Ebba Wexler Hidden Jews of Mallorca 10 Gregory Lassman & Romina Richardson Patrick Skipworth The Salamons in Barbados 12 Births Lingfield House 14 Atlas George Fogelman – a son for Leigh & Amy on 7th February Ori Rasin – a daughter for Wendy & Guy on 15th February Beatriz Nuñez 15 Arden Maccabee Doeh – a son for Max & Melis on 25th March Infant Blessings Starvation Farm 16 Ari Doeh on 25th April From the Third Floor 17 Ori Rasin on 26th April Zephaniah Steinfeld - Reynolds on 12th May 18 The B’nei B’rith Bar Mitzvah Poetry Page 19 Max Rosenfeld on 25th May Marriages & Blessings Dr. Louis Loewe 20 Steven Mandel & Maria Goryaeva on 16th February in Miami Rebecca Bossick & James Cooper on 5th May A Bar Mitzvah in New York 21 Vikki Scott & Jonathan Humble on 12th May Editorial 22 Deaths Sara Pinto on 17th February 23 Norman Moss on 23rd March Condolences th We offer sincere condolences to Geoffrey Charatan on 13 April th nd Angela Charatan and family on the Bernard Asher on 15 April (Memorial Service on 2 May) death of Geoffrey Daniel & Amelie Linsey on 21st April Batia Asher and family on the death Robert Berg on 22nd May of Bernard David Sieff on 27th May The Linsey family on the deaths of Daniel & Amelie Gillian Berg on the death of her Corrections to last edition - with humble apologies to husband Robert Philippa Samii-Rosenschein & Ivan Rosenschein Jeni Sieff and family on the death of David Mc Donald (Don) Valledor 2 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.