ESTMINSTER Volume VIII No.3 July 2017 UARTERLY Leo Marks with a coded message on silk From the Rabbi script as is known today. It is therefore important at least to learn to read Hebrew, though of course So what about God’s language? I believe understanding it is also important. As we that God speaks other languages, and my have just celebrated Israel’s Birthday, reasoning is that the first word, ANOCHI and more recently remembered the - translated as ‘I’ in the Ten giving of the Ten Commandments - Commandments - is not Hebrew but an through the Festival of Shavuot - we are ancient Egyptian word. I learnt that the also, through Hebrew, reiterating our reason why He commenced with that links to our ancient land, its language, its word was to tell the Israelites that He history and the Bible itself. understood them, knew where they came from and would be prepared to guide Knowing a language means also knowing them to the Promised Land. We also the people better and connecting with know that some of our prayers are not in them through their culture and history. Hebrew but in Aramaic, a language The more languages we know, the closer spoken by Jews in the Persian Empire. we are to other people and nations. The Torah was translated into Aramaic Knowing more means less violence and Dear Friends, by Onkelos, a Roman national, who more understanding and gives us an I have been asked many times ‘Why do converted to Judaism and who lived in appreciation of who we are as individuals we need to learn Hebrew and where do the second Century CE. Also, the and as a people. So, when you go on your the script and language come from?’ ‘If Kaddish prayer, which we recite at travels this summer, try to learn about God only speaks Hebrew how does He funerals and on anniversaries of death the folk whose countries you visit, understand us?’ and ‘Why Hebrew?’ was written in Aramaic, and so we have connect with them and appreciate their indirectly been given permission to recite way of life. The truth of the matter is that I have no our prayers in the vernacular. Something definitive answers to any of those When we say in our prayers that God like 200 years ago, Reform Jews started questions. Asking rabbis, Google or knows all our secrets, whether they are in to pray in German, English and other Yahoo or any of the other search engines the open or hidden, we can assume that languages. For example, well before the would not or could not give me answers. God speaks our and other people’s so-called Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, languages and of course ‘God knows and By coincidence, something in which I do American Reform Jews were ready to understands’. I do not know why or how not believe, just this week I received my abandon Hebrew as the language of God spoke the Hebrew of our Bible, save friend and colleague Rabbi Jeremy prayer and to conduct services almost that perhaps the Hebrews heard him first Rosen’s Blog, in which he mentions and entirely in English, with English hymns and recorded His words in their recommends The Story of Hebrew by sung by the choir. language. Lewis Glinert. Whilst I have not yet read this book, I understand as Jeremy put it, when you go on your I wish you a pleasant summer holiday that it is ‘an interesting, brilliant, and I look forward to seeing you informative, readable and enjoyable travels this summer, refreshed and re-energised, romp through the history of Hebrew try to learn about the B’Shalom. from its earliest beginnings to the present day. It is a must-have for any folk whose countries thinking person's Jewish library.’ I will of you visit, connect with course get this book but in the meantime, them and appreciate let me share some of my thoughts on those questions. their way of life. We know from the Gezer Calendar (circa Fortunately, the eighteen rabbis who Rabbi Thomas 925 BCE) - Gezer being a town which was convened the Pittsburgh Conference, twenty miles west of Jerusalem - that the though it remained unofficial, still spoke original script may have been Phoenician of the importance of Hebrew. or paleo-Hebrew and slightly different from the square Assyrian script of the Whilst I am glad that we pray in Hebrew Babylonian Exile of 586 BCE which we and English I am also glad that we have not abandoned Hebrew, as that would use today. However, according to the Talmudic Tractate Megillah 2b, some of have severed our connection with the the letters may have been from well past - and of course Hebrew maintains a before that date, and that the carving of link with our fellow Jews in Israel and around the world. the Ten Commandments used the same 3 ANGLO-JEWISH HISTORY Unsung Jewish and wrongly assumed that Leo was problems with censorship, and certain related to Sir Simon Marks, the head of passages were cut out. However, it is a Heroes 3 the business, so meriting special very amusing account of his wartime Leo Marks (1920- 2001) treatment. His helpers were also experiences, and many of the participants provided with some of M & S’s special in SOE appear in its pages. Those who cakes. He was soon appointed as head of are familiar with stories of the resistance the Codes and Ciphers Department, will recognise such distinguished names tasked with keeping contact with Britain’s as Odette and Peter Churchill, ‘Tommy’ agents on the continent, whose messages Yeo-Thomas (the White Rabbit), Col. back to England were vital in the support Maurice Buckmaster who ran many of the of the work of the resistance movements. agents from London, Noor Inayat Khan, the Indian girl eventually killed at When Marks joined the department he Dachau, and many others. found the coding systems insecure and easily broken by the enemy. Agents used double transposition codes, usually based on a poem known to headquarters and to the men and women in the field. However, these poems were frequently We do not often connect Jews with the also familiar to the Germans and could glamorous, though very dangerous, world easily be unravelled, or in the worst of of counter espionage. One of the greatest cases revealed when agents were was undoubtedly Col. Ewen Montagu captured and tortured. Marks conceived who planned and executed the project the idea of writing his own poems for Violette Szabo for whom he later known as The Man Who Never Was. them which could not be known by the provided the poem Perhaps because of the Jewish penchant Germans. The most famous is one he for plots, puzzles and conspiracy – many wrote for the agent Violette Szabo, killed Leo Marks was too much of a Jews were involved in the cipher by the Gestapo, and it appears in the film nonconformist to knuckle down easily to headquarters at Bletchley Park – it is not about her, Carve Her Name with Pride. military command. He frequently found surprising that others played a vital part himself at odds with those superior to during World War II in protecting Britain him in rank (he was a 2nd Lieutenant from invasion and supporting her allies in The life that I have Is all that I have when he joined the service) and his the fight against Germany. And the life that I have Jewishness led to some suspicion as to One who is less known, though his work Is yours. where his loyalties lay. But he was a great was just as vital to the war effort, was Leo favourite with the girls working on Marks. He was the son of the antiquarian The love that I have decoding at SOE’s unit at Grendon bookseller Ben Marks, who achieved fame Of the life that I have Underwood, where Grendon Hall became as the owner of the bookshop at 84 Is yours and yours and yours. Station 53. The ‘Grendon Girls’, some of Charing Cross Road, when Helen Hanff them very young, were all recruited from published the wartime letters exchanged A sleep I shall have the FANY’s (First Aid Nursing between herself and the shop. Young Leo A rest I shall have Yeomanry); they were chosen for their loved to help out at the shop, where his Yet death will be but a pause. personality, their love of music and their father, like many booksellers, entered a ability to solve crosswords – Marks pricing code in his books, a code which For the peace of my years himself was often the composer of The Leo solved at the age of eight. He went to In the long green grass Times crossword. When he asked the St. Paul’s School, where he showed Will be yours and yours and girls to compose their own poems for the considerable intelligence but little yours. agents, they came up with something so attention to his studies. scurrilous that, as Marks puts it in his book, it was ‘a sample of hard-core Marks was called up in 1942 and took a This particular poem was written in pornography that Marks and Co. (his decoding course at Bedford. Instead of memory of Ruth, daughter of Sir Charles father’s shop) would have hidden in a going on to Bletchley Park, where most of Hambro, Head of SOE, who was killed in glass case on the fourth floor, surrounded his fellows coders were sent, his dislike an air accident.