Reviewed by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple
Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney

After the Sacks Siddur, the Sacks Machzor was inevitable. That is no criticism – far from it. The scholarship, elegance and practicality of the Siddur needed to be continued in an edition of the festival liturgy, and the task has been performed with great success. I understand that a companion volume for Yom Kippur is under way and will appear in twelve months’ time, presumably to wide acclaim.

British Jewry’s only precedent is the Routledge Machzor, published just over a century ago, which long held sway in the synagogue without any real competition, at least until the arrival of ArtScroll. English-speaking Jewry never had much interest in spirituality or theology, despite the Jacobs controversy of nearly fifty years ago, but it did take its liturgical works seriously, and justified fame was enjoyed by the trilogy of the Routledge Machzor, the Singer Siddur and the Hertz Chumash. Now that Lord Sacks has more or less replaced the first two, the third will presumably soon attract his attention.

Compared to Routledge, the new Machzor is a delight to handle. Not that Routledge was unattractive in its time, but it was unwieldy – certainly too big for synagogue book-rests – and the layout of the material was rather unimaginative. Book design is an art form that is still developing, but Koren Publishers rightly pride themselves on the appearance of their works.

The typeface is clean and easy to follow, far better than the ArtScroll font with its unfortunate and unnecessary use of italics. But I cannot fathom the logic of having English on the right-hand pages with the Hebrew on the left. The more traditional approach – English on the left, Hebrew on the right – is better for books that open on the right and recognise that Hebrew runs from right to left. A strange concomitant of the new design is that the bottom-of-page commentary often begins on the left-hand side and continues on the right. It takes time and effort, for example, to work out the order of paragraphs in the commentary on Unetanneh (why transliterate it Untaneh? What about the sheva and the dagesh?) Tokef. It’s all rather confusing.

Lord Sacks’ translation utilises large swathes of material from his Siddur, which he is perfectly entitled to do. The special elements that represent Rosh HaShanah (is there some reason why Koren Publishers drop the Hebrew heh when transliterating words ending ah, e.g. Shana instead of Shanah, but keep it for words like Torah, Unetanneh – though the book renders it Untaneh – and Yavneh?) are beautifully rendered into English with Sacks’ trademark literary elegance. A translator has to have a feeling for both languages and the judgment to know whether and how to try to reproduce idiomatic expressions.

Here and there Routledge fell down in this respect and produced jingles that showed the cleverness of the versifying translators (Israel Zangwill and others) but made people grin rather than pray. ArtScroll translations present quite different problems – not stuffiness like the Routledge prose or rather cheap versification of the piyyutim, but generally lacking in English style and sophistication. I know they say they aim at greater literalness, but you can be more or less literal and still achieve a degree of literary power.

The Sacks book represents the current state of Minhag Anglia, the Anglo-Jewish Usage (Koren Publishers have also issued a non-Minhag Anglia edition of the Machzor largely for an American audience). Dayan Ivan Binstock of the London Beth Din was the advisor in this area and has brought into the book a number of liturgical changes that reflect the facts on the ground. It is quite legitimate to accept changes in usage even if it means the abandonment of cherished heirlooms, because that’s what customs are about. People’s customs arise and move as society evolves, and that has happened to Minhag Anglia too. An example in the Machzor is the procedure for the sounding of the shofar, which is now far more traditional than the old minhag because orthodox synagogues in English-speaking Jewry have unquestionably come closer to tradition in recent years. But it’s a pity that some of the historic Adler initiatives have as a result been consigned to history – for example the introductory prayer that placed teki’at shofar in a fine devotional setting. My own studies of Minhag Anglia lead me to think, however, that the Anglo-Jewish usage was never limited to prayer rites or synagogue ceremonies but was a philosophy, an ethos, that blended Jewish loyalties with British mores, and it would be interesting to get Lord Sacks’ take (and Dayan Binstock’s) on whether this approach has also changed.

It is good that Dayan Binstock was brought into the project. Actually there are other Anglo-Jewish scholars – at least a dozen of them – whose input might have been useful, and I hope it is not too late to involve them in the Yom Kippur volume.

As one would expect, the commentary is well worth reading – interesting enough to be studied carefully even if one does not feel motivated to pray. Again a comparison with ArtScroll is to the point. Where ArtScroll explains a prayer or concept it correctly draws attention to commentaries and gedolim, but it does not tackle theological issues with enough clarity and sometimes fails to admit the depth of a problem. Sacks is a renowned religious philosopher, and though he does not necessarily have final answers to many of the age-old agonies of religious thinking, he sounds relatively satisfying in his approach, though he too sometimes creates question marks.

As an example, he realises that Unetanneh Tokef is rather fatalistic (he could have said something about Islamic influences) but makes the crucial comment that there is a “great outburst of faith that defines Judaism as a religion of hope. No fate is final. Repentance, prayer and charity can avert the evil decree”. So our deeds determine our future. He could, however, have mentioned the famous distinction between the areas where God makes the decisions, e.g. whether we will be fat or thin, tall or short, and those where we are in control, namely our spiritual and ethical response to life’s events. When he comes to the culminating line about repentance, prayer and charity he does not say they “avert the evil decree”, though he has said precisely this a couple of pages earlier, but “avert the evil of the decree” – a fair statement probably justified by the Hebrew original – but he has to make up his mind: what is it that is averted, the decree itself or its evil?

His notes on Avinu Malkenu acknowledge that God is at one and the same time Our Father and Our King: we are both His subjects and His children. But he could have made more of the difference between a father and a king, between One who is near and one who is far – both alternatives are true, providing one more piece of evidence that there are necessary paradoxes in Jewish theology: a point that he does actually make towards the end of his notes on Unetanneh Tokef. He does touch on the issue in the Introduction, but it needs more fleshing out.

In a review of the Sacks Siddur I said that when I use it for davening I often find my attention distracted because of the quality and fascination of the commentary. I fear the same will be true of the Machzor. I intend to use it on Rosh HaShanah and I only hope that I will be able to daven as well as to read.

For over 200 years, from the time of the Resettlement until 1875, no proselyte was officially received into Judaism by the London Synagogue authorities, Sephardi or Ashkenazi.[1] John Mills, writing on “The British Jews” in 1853, was adamant that the Jewish rules and procedures of conversion “have had no exemplification in this kingdom in modem times”.[2] Conversions validly performed elsewhere were accepted, but no conversion could take place in England itself. In the words of a Minute of the London Beth Din in 1833, “It is not permissable (sic) in this country to convert any person.”[3]

The surprising thing is that it was not Jewish law but the law of the country that was cited in support of the ban. There are three theories as to the basis of this belief, the first two being more commonly held than the third:

1. Cromwell laid down a ban on Jewish proselytisation of Christians when he permitted the resettlement of Jews in 1656, reflecting the view, as James Parkes put it, that there was “one subject on which all Christian advocates of readmission were, perhaps naturally, united. Under no circumstances must a Jew convert a Christian to Judaism.”[4]

The belief that there was a Cromwellian ban is explicitly stated in an exchange of correspondence in 1751-2 between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi authorities. The wardens of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation spoke of a ban on conversion as an “express condition annexed to our first establishment here,” whilst the wardens of the Great Synagogue said that the “making of Proselites” (sic) was “contrary to the known laws of this Kingdom.”[5]

Supporting this view, Haham Benjamin Artom wrote in 1876:
When the learned Manasheh ben Israel applied personally to Oliver Cromwell for the re-admission of the Jews into England, the Protector reminded him of the three accusations that were constantly directed against the Jews. 1st. That they employed the blood of a Christian child in the performance of their Passover ceremonies. 2nd. That they impoverished by their usury the country in which they lived. 3rd. Their unremitting efforts to convert their countrymen to Judaism – The eloquent Rabbi easily proved the injustice and futility of the first accusation. He showed that the second grievance might be averted if all trades were freely opened to the Jews. He denied the third charge which is contrary to the views of our religion. But he promised that such things should never occur in England. The Jews were re-admitted by Act of Parliament on December 14, 1655, and from that time no Christian has been converted to Judaism in this country. That was, and still is the rule of the Chief Rabbis of England.”[6]

Hermann Adler, confirming that “from the time of our return to this realm, for a period of two hundred years, no proselytes were received into the synagogue”, ascribed this state of affairs to “the belief that a promise to this effect had been given to the Lord Protector”.[7] However, no evidence has been found, either for a condition imposed by Cromwell or a promise made by the Jews. Hermann Adler said he could find “no valid foundation whatever” for the traditional belief;[8] Picciotto suggested that a Cromwellian condition may have been “traditionally understood”.[9]

2. A condition was laid down by Charles II in 1664 when the Earl of Berkshire had tried to blackmail the Jews into paying protection money – whereupon the wardens of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation petitioned the king. The latter replied that
They may promise themselves the effects of the same favour as formerly they have had, so long as they demean themselves peaceably and quietly, with due obedience to his Maties Lawes and without scandall (sic) to his government (sic).[10]

The phrase, “without scandall to his governement” seems to have been taken as requiring that the Jews abstain from religious propaganda and from accepting converts.[11] “A report was current among the members of the Spanish and Portuguese community, ” wrote Cecil Roth, “that the toleration extended by Charles II was conditional upon nothing of this sort being attempted.”[12] But no clear evidence of any condition having been laid down has been found.

3. The Act for the More Effectual Suppressing of Blasphemy and Profaneness, 1698, provides that a Christian who denies the Trinity loses his legal rights and risks three years’ imprisonment.[13] The preamble runs:
Whereas many persons have of late openly avowed and published many blasphemous and impious opinions contrary to the doctrines and principles of the Christian religion, greatly tending to the dishonour of Almighty God and may prove destructive to the peace and welfare of this kingdom…

In a case in 1819 before the Court of King’s Bench, Mr Justice Best declared that “the Legislature, in passing this act, had not the punishment of blasphemy so much in view as the protecting the government of the country, by preventing infidels from getting into
places of trust.”[14]

The Act is primarily directed against Christians who commit the “detestable crime” of denying Christianity, but there is the implication that a Jew who converts a person from Christianity could be seen as instigating, aiding or abetting or being an accessory to such a misdemeanour. There is no known attempt to use the Act against conversion to Judaism, but the belief of English Jews that the acceptance of converts was unlawful could have been based on this Act.

To sum up the legal position, then, it seems that none of the three theories clearly or unambiguously arises out of any actual, tangible provision of English law. The truth may be that the small Anglo-Jewish community felt itself to be in a fragile and insecure position, and feared, with some justice, that it would be endangered if proselytes were accepted and the host society thus offended. James Parkes wrote:
This explains the vehemence of synagogal legislation on the subject for the next hundred and fifty years (after the resettlement); and there was, indeed, nothing which would create a more instantaneous panic among the Mahamad or Elders than the rumour that a Christian sought admission to the Jewish fold.[15]

But synagogal legislation would not have needed to be so vehement if there had not been cases or rumours of conversions, indicating that the official policy was not entirely effective. Indeed incidents did occur which necessitated congregational sanctions, amongst both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. A significant exchange of correspondence between the congregations took place in 1751-2: [16]

The Wardens of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, London, to those of the Great Synagogue.

London, 27th December 1751

Gentlemen,
Being persuaded that you will join with us in all things that tend to preserve the present happy toleration, we take this opportunity to acquaint you as worthy representatives of your congregation, of a growing evil among us, viz. that of permitting proselytes, for which end we have heard that two or three Christians have come hither from Norway with that intention, and lest these practices should extend to English proselytes, which is contrary to the express condition annexed to our first establishment here, we have thought proper to forbid in our Synagogue any from aiding and assisting them therein in any manner whatsoever, under the penalties as we send you enclosed. We do not doubt that you will also concur with us to endeavour to prevent the same from taking effect amongst you in the manner that may be judged most expedient. We pray God to preserve you for many years, and believe us to be, Gentlemen, your friends and humble servants,

A. de Castro
For the Congregation.

(Copy of the Resolution referred to Above)

It having been represented to us that some foreign Jews not inhabitants of England make it their practise to convert Christians to the Jewish faith in order to put a stop to so pernicious and unlawful Practices, we the aforesaid Presedents & Gentlemen of the Vestry come to the following Resolution, that in case any Person or persons shall attempt making of Proselites, he or they so offending shall be immediately expeld the Synagogues & also be deprived the Benefit of being burried in the Jewish Barren Grounds and to be deny’d all other privileges appertaining to the Jewish Religion. These Penalties are not to be understood as merely personable but even to extend to their Wives & children.

To the President & Gentlmen belonging to the Vestrys of Duke’s Place & Magpie Alley Synagogue.

THE REPLY

The Wardens of the Great Synagogue, London, to those of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue

London the 2nd Jan. 1752

The President and Gentlemen belonging to the Portuguese Vestry

Gentlemen,
We received your letter & have this evening met in order to take it in consideration & concur with you in Opinion that we ought to do Every thing in our power to prevent the ill consequences that may arise from making of Proselites, contrary to the known laws of this Kingdom, & here annexed you have the Resolutions we have taken upon that occasion. And in order to prevent their pleading ignorence we shall publish the same in our Synagogues. We shall always joyn with you in our Endeavours to check such unlawfull practices, we pray God to preserve you for many Years and believe us to be

Gentlemen
Your Friends & Humble Servants

M.L. Polack
For the Gentlemen Parnassim & Gabay of the Dutch Jews.

In 1760 the authorities of the Great Synagogue informed those of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation that a recently-arrived foreign Jew had made a proselyte, and in consequence had been expelled from their Synagogue. At the same time, they respectfully intimated that a member of the sister-community had recently been guilty of a similar offence.

In 1783, the Hambro’ Synagogue imposed sanctions arising out of another such incident as indicated by the following excerpt from its minutes:

November, 1783.

At a meeting of our vestry held this day it was made known to us that Phillip Nathan of Houndsditch did for a certain sum of money circumcise a Christian foreigner a Native of Flanders, which we hold contrary to the laws of this Country. We therefore have excommunicated him from our Society and also Excluded him from all the benefits which he has hitherto received.

The ban on proselytes was, however, not total. Children of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers were apparently accepted into Judaism by the authorities, as the London Beth Din minute book indicates. Apart from zealous individuals who occasionally accepted proselytes in defiance of the ban, it was not unknown for a provincial congregation or its leaders to act in this way.[17] Thus at the end of the eighteenth century Lord George Gordon applied to the then Chief Rabbi, David Tevele Schiff, for acceptance into Judaism, but was refused; he went to Amsterdam but for some reason returned still unconverted, and was subsequently received into Judaism in Birmingham under the auspices of a Rabbi Jacob.[18]

The general procedure was that applicants viewed sympathetically by the London authorities were advised to proceed to a continental rabbinate, and their conversions were registered in London on their return to England. Usually it was Holland to which they went (“accompanied by a trustworthy person”) – to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague or Elburg; sometimes to Germany; and on at least two occasions to Paris. The applicant would bring back a certificate of conversion but would frequently have to undergo immersion in the Mikvah (ritual bath) a second time in London to validate the conversion proceedings.[19]

The total numbers of converts were small. Thus, from resettlement up to the accession of Queen Victoria, 41 converts (37 of them women) were married under the auspices of the Sephardi congregation. John Mills wrote, not quite accurately, in 1853, “We are not aware of any male proselyte in this Kingdom; but several females have embraced the Jewish faith, generally upon being married to Jews.”[20]

An interesting piece of evidence, which also illustrates the traditional reluctance to accept proselytes, comes in a letter sent by Nathan Marcus Adler in 1873 to the leaders of the Sydney Jewish community, advising against the formation of a local Beth Din:
“I beg to state that my long experience has taught me that in general these mixed marriages, even if the woman becomes a convert, prove unhappy. It is not whether in Cromwell’s time a condition had been made that we must admit no proselytes into our faith, but this I must say, that even were such not the case we ought ourselves to act as if it were and do all in our power to prevent them. For this reason we postpone them six months, and afterwards, as you know, we send all these cases if unpreventible to Holland. Under these circumstances I must call your attention that you must not regard having a Beth Din in Sydney a boon but quite the reverse, as it will only induce young men to such marriages having every facility in their way and you would afterwards reproach yourself having asked for it.”[21]

Both the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi authorities, apparently independently, altered the existing usage in the 1870s. By 1875, Hermann Adler, clearly with the knowledge and sanction of his father, “had come to the conclusion that no valid foundation whatever existed for this abstention” (from accepting proselytes locally).[22] His view was probably that there now remained no danger to Anglo-Jewry or to its secure position in English society if the ban were to be removed. (Both the ban and its removal thus reflected the special features of the climate of opinion at the relevant time.) Thus, from 1875 onwards, the London Beth Din dealt with candidates for proselytisation locally and openly, applying the requirements of Jewish law without recourse to any real or imagined considerations of civil law, and in 1877 Benjamin Artom, Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, accepted the first official convert under Sephardi auspices – Esther, daughter of Angelo Paris.[23]

NOTES
1. Hermann Adler. “A Survey of Anglo-Jewish History”, Jewish Historical Society oj England Transactions, vol. 3 (1899), pp. 13-14.
2. John Mills, The British Jews, London, 1853, p. 254.
3. London Beth Din Minute Book, Adler MS no. 2257; cf. HJ Zimmels, “Decisions and Responsa of Solomon Hirchel’s Beth Din”, Tiferet Yisrael (Israel Brodie Festschrift), Heb. vol., 1966, pp. 219-242.
4. James Parkes, “Jewish-Christian Relations in England”, Three Centuries oj Anglo-Jewisn History, ed. VD Lipman, 1961, pp. 156-7.
5. Takkanah Book oj the Great Synagogue, London, no. 1, reproduced in Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters, 1938, pp. 126-7.
6. Benjamin Artom, Sermons, 1876, p. 275, note.
7. Loc. cit., p. 13.
8. Ibid.
9. James Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History, ed. I Finestein, 1956, p. 74.
10. LD Barnett, Bevis Marks Records, vol. 1, 1940, pp. 8-9.
11. Edgar R Samuel, “The First Fifty Years”, Three Centuries, p. 43, note 32.
12. Cecil Roth, The Great Synagogue, London, 1690-1940, 1950, p. 89.
13. HSQ Henriques, The Jews and the English Law, 1908, pp. 13-18; Charles Duschinsky, The Rabbinate of the Great Synagogue, 1921, pp. 119-120.
14. R v. Richard Carlile, (1819) 3 B. & Ald. 161.
15. Loc cit. p. 156.
16. Cecil Roth, Anglo-Jewish Letters, 1938, pp. 126-7; cf. idem, The Great Synagogue, 1950, p. 90.
17. Great Synagogue, pp. 90–93.
18. Israel Solomons, “Lord George Gordon’s Conversion to Judaism”, JHSE Transactions, vol. 7 (1915), pp. 222-271.
19. Mills, loc. cit.; Jewish Chronicle, 20 August, 1869; Beth Din Minute Book; Duschinsky, loc. cit.; Adler, loc. cit.; Picciotto, loc. cit., p. 179; Zimmels, loco cit., p. 221.
20. Loc. cit., p. 252.
21. Cited by Moshe Davis, Beit Yisrael b’America, 1970. p. 334.
22. Loc cit., p. 13.
23. Albert M Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, 1951, p. 358.

This article originally appeared in the festschrift, “Yismach Yisrael: Historical Essays to Honour Rabbi Dr Israel Porush, OBE, on his 80th Birthday”, published by the Australian Jewish Historical Society, Sydney, 1988.

One might fittingly paraphrase these words and say, if a community has come under the influence of a memorable rabbi, that community, even years later, still savours his personality, his presence, indeed his ta’am.

What was the ta’am of Rabbi Sir Israel Brodie?

He was a man destined from his youth for the rabbinate and for greatness. The son of a pious couple from Newcastle-upon-Tyne who struggled to ensure that he could be learned in the ways of Kovno and educated in the approach of Oxford. A young man who at Jews’ College was already spoken of as a future Chief Rabbi, who went to serve as a chaplain in the First World War and as a social welfare worker in the immediate post-war period.

A minister who recognised that distant Australia would give him experience and maturity and stretch his thinking – who knew that Melbourne was a spiritual challenge where very few people spoke his language.

If anyone worked to inject Jewish quality into Melbourne it was he.

His youth club – the members are known still as “Rabbi Brodie’s boys” – his impressive, classical-style preaching, his mellifluous conduct of services, his tolerant understanding of people, his fascinating public lectures (more than once the Synagogue hall was too small for the crowds that came, and the lectures were moved into the Synagogue itself), his passionate loyalty to tradition (he would sit and “learn” with the old-timers at the Montefiore Home to maintain his own rabbinic studies), his determined advocacy of the Zionist cause… to these were added his masonic and public relations work, especially at the critical moment when Nazism arose and he proved a consummately effective ambassador of our people.

My own parents were among his great admirers and he was good enough when he inducted me at Hampstead to recall that he had known me and my family for many years and had watched me prepare myself for the ministry.

He left Melbourne in 1937 pessimistic about the survival of Australian Jewry. Events proved him wrong and he was delighted to see the great positive advances that the Australian community made in more recent decades.

He returned to the academic life but was soon needed again for war service. His uniform was not always too tidy but he had a remarkable relationship with the men. He kept up morale and attracted affection wherever he went.

After the war, there was another brief period of academic life and then he became Chief Rabbi.

As one of his ministers I was immensely proud of the Chief’s special ta’am. He had a presence, quiet, courtly, with a mildly episcopal dignity. Our elocution lecturer at College rightly regarded him as one of the finest preachers in England, with a sonorous voice, an elegant, measured, Biblical turn of phrase, and a wonderful way with a Midrash.

His failing was perhaps that he was too much a scholar and a gentleman for the rough and tumble of communal politics. He would not exploit his own position for cheap, unedifying self-aggrandisement, nor could he take the belittling, the undermining, or the impudence, of some who brought little honour to the community. He would passionately but politely defend the right as he saw it, but he suffered from the harshness of communal conflict and in the end his health was affected.

Then, when the heat of battle was finally done and he retired, at the age of 70, he returned to what he called “the still waters of academic tranquility”. He inducted his successor in a moving ceremony. As the years of his retirement went on he became more and more secure in the affections of a grateful community in England and abroad, especially in Australia which he revisited from time to time.

He loved to entertain Australians in London. He remained good company to the end. I saw him last in November, 1978; he was rather frail, but the humour, the humanity, the understanding, the sound wisdom, the remarkable memory, all were vibrant. He had a soft spot for Sydney – in fact he had warmly encouraged my wife and me to come here – and both he and Lady Brodie asked after many dear friends here.

He died in February 1979. He had served his Maker and his people well.

The above article originally appeared in print in 1980.

Reviewed by Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple
Emeritus rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney

The title of this book sounds highly academic and indeed it is a solidly-researched and careful analysis. But when you read the book it is dynamite, made especially topical by the announcement that Lord Sacks will retire as Britain’s chief rabbi in two years’ time.

An Anglo-Jewish historian once wrote a hard-hitting article headed “The Chief Rabbinate – a most peculiar practice”. Actually there is something peculiar and British about the chief rabbinate. It more or less came into being by default at the beginning of the 19th century when the rabbi of the Great Synagogue in the City of London was deferred to by congregations that had no rabbi and even by some that did.

But if the office of chief rabbi did not exist someone would have needed to invent it. The 19th century anglicisation process made it necessary to create institutions modelled on British ways. If London had its “Times”, the Jews had to have a “Jewish Chronicle”. If Christians had an Archbishop of Canterbury, the Jews had to have a chief rabbi.

Yet despite the façade the chief rabbinate never commanded the total adherence of Anglo-Jewry. The story is told in an even larger book by Meir Persoff, Faith Against Reason: Religious Reform and the British Chief Rabbinate, 1840-1990 (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008).

Nonetheless the lengthy incumbency of Nathan Marcus Adler in the 19th century gave the office stability and authority to such an extent that when he died there were suggestions that the reform movement should join in electing a successor.

Throughout the 20th century there were eruptions of antagonism to the chief rabbinate, but now they are harder to overcome because the community no longer has most of its strength concentrated in centrist orthodoxy. Once the community was like a cigar with its bulk in the middle whilst the two ends were narrow; now it is a dumbbell with the centre narrow and the two ends more solid.

In this context Persoff shows the paradox that is Jonathan Sacks. Highly influential amongst the gentiles, he is highly controversial amongst the Jews. He preaches tolerance of varying points of view and dialogue with dissent, but he is in constant hot water with his intemperate attacks on the non-orthodox.

It is all here – the Hugo Gryn affair in which he pleased nobody, the Masorti controversy, the peculiar episodes involving the Jewish Continuity movement and the Women in the Community project, issues surrounding conversion, and most recently the JFS enrolment problem.

He has two jobs in one – titular head of orthodoxy and Jewish ambassador to the gentiles. Once upon a time they more or less worked together, but then there were chief rabbis who did not preach such love and inclusiveness and make everyone feel let down when words and actions did not tally.

The president of the United Synagogue is adamant that there will be another chief rabbi. Persoff is adamant that the existing model cannot work.

There is a good case for separating the chief rabbinic roles – a salaried head of the rabbinate of the United Synagogue (with the addition of such other congregations that decide to join in), and a more freewheeling Jewish contribution to the marketplace of ideas that will not necessarily come from a salaried appointment or even from a person who holds any office in the community at all.

Sacks is a gifted communicator, a thinker, writer, speaker, inspirer. He is British Jewry’s best example of a great mind with much to offer as a leader of thought. After he retires he will obviously continue in this role, and in time others will arise to succeed him.

But whether this needs to or can be combined with the headship of the United Synagogue is a matter for doubt. And whether it will harm the community if there is no Jewish Archbishop of Canterbury is a matter for thought.

Persoff has given the community the material on which to base its judgment.

Now that it was possible for there to be Jewish chaplains, the United Synagogue Visitation Committee in London applied to the War Office with a view to such appointments. Eventually, in 1892, the Rev. Francis Lyon Cohen became Officiating Chaplain to the Forces and Lord Rothschild gave him a letter of introduction to General Sir Evelyn Wood, who was in charge of the military camp at Aldershot.

For Cohen, Aldershot was already familiar territory: he was born there on 14 November 1862. The military camp had been set up in 1855 and its uniforms, pageantry and martial music must have had an impact upon an impressionable Jewish boy. His family must have taken an interest in the Jewish soldiers and he soon saw a Jew in the army had problems of his own.

Years later he wrote: “I had noticed, in my boyhood near Aldershot Camp, that Jewish soldiers and sailors almost invariably concealed their origin because of outside prejudices, and still more through their own people’s feeling about the difficulties in observing certain religious duties, and the dislike of all uniforms so natural in our people who had come to England from countries where authority condones such cruel oppression.”

Though Cohen’s ministerial career took him to South Hackney, Dublin, and then the Borough Synagogue in South London, he occasionally visited Aldershot and must have noticed Jewish men among the troops. Hence he had a special sense of satisfaction when the War Office approved his chaplaincy appointment. Now, assisted by the local Jewish community, he sought out and befriended Jewish members of the garrison, and as from Sunday 30 October 1892, he conducted services for them at the same time as the official church services for Christian personnel. Later he involved senior students of Jews’ College (the Jewish theological seminary) in conducting the services, which were eventually transferred to Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

The existence of these services, reinforced by a letter in the “Jewish Chronicle” asking relatives of Jewish serving men to contact him, persuaded a number of Jewish soldiers to come out of the woodwork and declare their true religion.

Cohen now embarked upon a further campaign to encourage Jewish enlistment in the forces. Disturbed by allegations that Jews were unpatriotic, he believed that enlistment in the forces would be the best evidence of Jewish loyalty to Britain.

By 1895 he could report: “About thirty-two Jewish regulars and militia-men at Aldershot, and twenty-eight at other stations, have come under my notice during two years of officiation, quite fifty of whom are at present serving in the army. Some ten or eleven Jewish recruits joined the troops at Aldershot during 1894. It would appear that between sixty and seventy Jews enlisted during the year. I estimate that there are not quite two hundred Jews in the Army, and that by the end of the century the number will reach and perhaps exceed four hundred.”

Yet he remained aware that “many of the Jews, as in the case of the other smaller religious bodies, prefer to ‘follow the big drum’, i.e. attend the general C of E parade”. It is this and not a lack of patriotism that explains why, despite this success in attracting enlistments, one in 188 English Jews was recorded as a soldier in 1904 according to his estimates, as against one in 148 people in the general population.

Cohen hit upon a dramatic method of drawing attention to the Jewish military presence when, just over a year after his chaplaincy appointment, he inaugurated an annual Chanukah military service at a London Synagogue. The first such service took place in his own Borough Synagogue on 10 December 1893; by the time of the Boer War these services had reached a peak of impressiveness and spectacle, as this report in the “Daily Chronicle” amply indicates:

“With all the solemnity and impressiveness of Jewish liturgy, the ninth annual special military Chanukah service was held yesterday at the Central Synagogue, Great Portland Street. The Lord Mayor was present in state, accompanied by the Lady Mayoress and Mr Alderman Sheriff Bell and Mrs Bell. They were accommodated with seats on the left of the Ark, the Chief Rabbi being seated immediately opposite the civic party. The pulpit was gracefully draped with Union Jacks, and the space between it and the Almemor or platform where the service is conducted was occupied by soldiers of the Jewish faith in uniform.

“An appropriate sermon was preached by the Rev. FL Cohen. After pointing out that Jews were to be found serving in the Navy, Militia, Regulars, Yeomanry, Volunteers and Colonial irregular corps, he went on to say that the present war had, and was, exacting its full tribute of blood and tears from Jew and Gentile alike. Nearly 100 Jewish soldiers slept on the field of honour side by side with the many thousands of their comrades of other faiths, for all of whom their hearts were bleeding and their eyes welling full.”

By 1905, the military services were acclaimed as an annual feature of Jewish communal life in London. After Cohen left for Australia in 1905, his successor as chaplain, the Rev. Michael Adler, continued the services and Cohen himself imitated them in Sydney where they continued until the First World War.

Cohen’s lifetime interest in matters military was paralleled by his remarkable immersion in Jewish musicology, as joint editor of the choral music of the United Synagogue, music editor of the Jewish Encyclopaedia, and solid scholar, researcher, writer and lecturer.

None of this interrupted his dedication to his Synagogue and congregation. But he had an insatiable hunger for new challenges and in 1904 accepted appointment as chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, the mother congregation of Australian Jewry.

He had to attain full rabbinical qualifications in order to be equipped to head the Sydney Beth Din (the ecclesiastical court) but he found obstacles in his way. Perhaps it was jealousy of Cohen’s high profile; possibly it was suspicion (not entirely unfounded) that in some things he was not a strict traditionalist. Finally Cohen gained his rabbinical diploma and set sail for Australia. Here he resumed his military interests and became a chaplain in the Australian army; he urged enlistment in the Australian militias and, as a passionate patriot, he strongly supported conscription in the First World War.

1802 saw the appointment of Solomon Hirschel as rabbi of the Great Synagogue, London. He was a kindly person, but history does not view him too kindly. A certain “Anglo-Judaeus” wrote in the Jewish Chronicle in 1947 that only one chief rabbi up to that date had been born in England – i.e. Hirschel – “and that one of the least ‘English’ of all”.[1]

Hirschel (the son of Hirschel Levin, sometimes called Hart Lyon) held office for forty years, but was not one of the great or influential names in the history of the rabbinate. Cecil Roth’s assessment in the Encyclopaedia Judaica takes two uncomplimentary sentences: “He was basically a European rabbi of the old type, with an imperfect knowledge of English and out of touch with the new currents beginning to permeate the community. He preached in Yiddish, opposed even mild reform, and his literary production was virtually nothing”.[2]

His predecessor, David Tevele Schiff, had died in 1791. Conditions in Europe were too unsettled to bring a new rabbi from the continent, and the congregation had no money to pay one. In the interim, they deferred to Moses Myers of the New Synagogue. The first endeavours to find a rabbi for the Great Synagogue took place in 1794. In 1801 advertisements were placed in continental periodicals. There were three candidates: Solomon Hirschel (sometimes called Hirschell, Herschel or Herschell) gained 62 votes, Rabbi Aryeh of Rotterdam gained 18, and Rabbi Zevi Hirsch of Krotoschin 13. Hirschel had also been a candidate in 1794, though there is a popular view – unlikely to be correct – that his controversial brother Saul Berlin had been offered the position.

Hirschel once informed the postal authorities that he had been chief rabbi of Poland,[3] but this was far from the case; he had merely been rabbi of Prenzlau in Prussia for nine years, not that this was an unworthy office to hold.

He also made claims about his lineage, telling the European Magazine in 1811 that he was a direct descendant of the royal dynasty of David, but his critic, Solomon Bennett, ridiculed this claim with the remark that if it were true, then Hirschel’s pedigree must compensate for his lack of attainments.[4] A contemporary handwritten document, found among the EN Adler papers in New York, calls Hirschel “this reverend and truly pious gentleman” whose “family can boast of a long genealogy of learned Rebbis {sic) and trace the generations up to Rabbi Meyer of Padua, a renowned Rabbi who, in the preface of one of his celebrated printed works speaks of Rabbi Haai Geon (sic) as his progenitor. This Rab. Haai (sic) was the last of the primates of the dispersed Israelites who died in 1038; and all the primates and princes of the captivity were deemed the genuine produce of King David’s stock.” The authorship of this document is not recorded.

But it was not its ancient lineage but the family’s English connection that was probably the deciding factor in Hirschel’s appointment, since he was born in London in 1761 during the incumbency of his father. Bennett, whose insulting comments on Hirschel would be amusing if they were not so wounding, may be right when he says that what brought Hirschel to London was the sponsorship of leading families like the Goldsmids, Keysers, Samuel Joseph and others.[5] Presumably such families would have remembered Hart Lyon and liked the idea of bringing his son back to England.

Some contemporary sources call Hirschel “the Rev. Dr Solomon Hart”; one can understand the Hart, but he was no doctor. The title “doctor” was a mere courtesy on the part of the public, and an affectation when Hirschel himself used it.

He was also styled “High Priest of the Jews” (or of the Jewish Nation) or some similar title; not because “the Jewish Nation” as a whole had appointed him, but when the rabbis of other congregations were not replaced – Hirschel “outlived every co­ordinate authority”, said the Jewish Chronicle [6] – “he, the survivor, became the natural heir to their jurisdiction and authority”.

In 1804, Hirschel, following a conference to devise a means of union between the three City Synagogues of London, the Great, the Hambro’ and the New, was accepted as the spiritual head of the three. The Voice of Jacob said that it was “not from design or system, but from inevitable necessity that the late Rabbi was recognised as the spiritual head of most Jews claiming British origin”.[7] In addition, some of the immigrants knew or had heard of him, and it was natural for them to acknowledge him as their rabbi. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported his salary as four thousand pounds a year (in fact it was two hundred and fifty pounds, though even this is not unimpressive for the time), and said, “The new High Priest was born within the City of London, and the German Jewish Nation here in London must surely profit by his return”.[8]

There was indeed some profit. Early on he helped to unify the community and influenced the treaties between the congregations; there had been such tension that a body lay unburied for days whilst the synagogues squabbled over who should pay for the funeral. He tried to raise the standard of Hebrew education in the Talmud Torah, forerunner of the Jews’ Free School, complaining that Talmudic studies were being neglected. He boldly countered the conversionist movement that had begun targeting Jews in general and their children in particular. He helped to unify the shechitah system. In his old age he joined in excluding the so-called Seceders (the early Reform leaders) from the official community. But the intellectual challenges of modernity were beyond his ken, and he believed that the answer to everything was the safe way of traditional custom and usage.

He was the last of the old-type Ashkenazi chief rabbis: the Sephardi Hahamim were much more modern. Hirschel had had a Talmudic education, and he possessed a fine rabbinic library, possibly inherited from his father. This library was acquired after his death by the Beth Hamidrash, an ecclesiastical and educational institution; as recently as 1999, some of his books were put on sale by the United Synagogue.

Bennett believed that the rabbi maintained an impressive library in order to conceal his meagre learning.[9] The library included twenty medieval manuscripts and seventy-seven kabbalistic works.[10]

Though he was not known for scholarship, Hirschel’s Hebrew style was said to be correct and pure.[11] He had. however, no formal secular education. He was not “a lofty genius” like Mendelssohn, said the Voice of Jacob,[12] and he never overcame his cultural deficiencies, though he did show some interest in mathematics. He had no knowledge of music. Someone complained to him about a chazzan using an air from “Don Giovanni” for the Sabbath eve service. Hirschel, however, had never heard of either Don Juan or the opera, and was indignant that a man of such a character should be introduced into a synagogue.[13]

His concept of the rabbinate was circumscribed. He supervised shechitah (ritual slaughter of animals) and carefully tested shochtim; he regarded this as an important outcome of the fact that “it has pleased God to take me from afar and place me hither to guard the vineyard”.[14] Most of the agenda of his Beth Din related to conversion and divorce, including gittin (religious divorces) for convicts about to be transported to Australia.[15] He left no published responsa, though the decisions of his Beth Din are recorded in manuscript form in the Beth Din minute book extant in the Elkan Adler collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Bennett says that people consulted him about minor matters of ritual but preferred the general courts when they had civil disputes.[16] Even an 1818 dispute over a twenty-pound seat rental at the Westminster Synagogue went to the civil courts. “Every dispute, even between brother and brother,” said Bennett, “comes before the Magistrate and Law courts.”[17]

Hirschel was shocked at the low standards of religious observance in the London community, but Bennett, who called him “a proud, savage and tyrannical Pontiff,” blamed the laxity on Hirschel himself: “Our pious grand Rabbi never rebukes the generality or any individuals…. because it would not answer so well his purpose, or because his followers would look upon him with a frown”.[18] Hirschel adhered to strict standards of personal piety, though decades later the community was still debating whether he used a sedan chair on the Sabbath and whether this was an infringement of the law against travel on Shabbat.[19] He would not allow any liturgical concessions. His discourses prior to Passover and Yom Kippur, and on some Sabbaths were in Yiddish. He encouraged a few promising young pupils at the Jews’ Free School, including David Woolf Marks, who later shocked him by spearheading the emergent Reform movement. Despite Bennett, the evidence is that Hirschel was kindly in attitude, generally accessible to the public, and on good terms with Sir Moses Montefiore and the lay leadership of the community, but he could not cope with change, challenge and new movements. The open revolt of the early 1840′s shattered his world.

Broader concerns were largely beyond him. Yet he had an acquaintance with some public figures; the handwritten document which has been quoted in relation to Hirschel’s lineage says, “He has gained the respect of all the highest orders of this kingdom with whom he has had any communication.”

A gentile writer, William Hamilton Reid, noted that Hirschel’s sermons “frequently dwelt on the duties of the universal toleration”.[20] Nonetheless, Hirschel was never a Jewish ambassador to the gentiles; he saw Jews, as indeed many Jews saw themselves, as a separate nation. He took no initiatives to provide guidance and religious facilities for overseas communities, though he arranged gittin (religious divorces) in order to free the wives of Jews about to be transported to Australia. He showed little concern for the Jewish convict group in Australia, though he gave a free settler, Phillip Joseph Cohen, authority to conduct marriages there, despite the latter’s relative incompetence in Hebrew. True, Rabbi Aaron Levy, Hirschel’s dayyan, did visit New South Wales, but not because of any initiative taken by Hirschel. In 1840, at the time of the Damascus Affair – a notorious blood libel in which Jews were accused of murdering a Capuchin friar and his Moslem servant in order to use their blood for Passover wine – Hirschel put his name to a statement in The Times denouncing the ritual murder accusation, but the statement was written for him by Morris Raphall, a well-read, articulate minister who soon moved to the United States, and one is uncertain whether Hirschel was fully aware of the politics of the problem. He did not understand the Haskalah, the Enlightenment movement with which his brother Saul had been affiliated. He was shocked that his enemy Solomon Bennett, though learned, was religiously unobservant – an intellectual who did not see the need for full observance of the tradition though he criticised others’ laxity. Hirschel was also shocked at the Reform movement, though it is said that he was reluctant to pronounce a ban against it. A younger, more vigorous rabbinical leader might have handled the crisis differently, but no self-respecting orthodox rabbi could have ignored a full-frontal attack on the Oral Law.

Historians are exercised over the issue of whether Hirschel was competent in English. Solomon Bennett is scathing on the subject. He said, “Of one thing you may be assured, Hirschell (sic) could only have known my English publications at second hand because he could not even understand them in the original language, of which his knowledge is so slender”.[21] Hirschel could certainly conduct a conversation in English, though he was not a master of the language. He attended meetings conducted in English: for instance a Board of Deputies meeting in March, 1836, at which proposed marriage legislation was under consideration. However, advancing years diminished his ability to handle such problems: Israel Finestein writes diplomatically, “The declining years of Hirschel’s Chief Rabbinate were not the most propitious in which to pursue these matters”.[22] He wrote occasional English letters, but only with the assistance of secretaries. Hebrew was the language of his official communications with his synagogue wardens, who must have had enough Hebraic education to understand (and write) Hebrew letters.

He very rarely preached in English, though Cecil Roth calls him a “learned and eloquent preacher”.[23] Roth’s Magna Bibliotheca lists only three printed sermons by Hirschel.[24] One marks the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and was translated for publication – the first Great Synagogue sermon to be published – by Joshua van Oven. An anti-conversionist sermon, warning parents not to send children to a missionary school, was also given in Yiddish and translated for publication. A nine-page address at the laying of the foundation stone of the New Synagogue in 1837,[25] beginning with an apology for its brevity (the result of the preacher’s “age and infirmities”) was probably delivered in English, though the text must have been crafted by others. This was presumably also the case with an English eulogy for Nathan Mayer Rothschild, given in the presence of gentile dignitaries in 1836. Concerning Hirschel’s eulogy for the Sephardi Haham, Raphael Meldola, the press noted that his address was “in English instead of his native Yiddish with which he is more familiar”.[26] Meldola himself was equally ill at ease in English, and though the two had a good relationship, it is not certain what language they spoke to each other – possibly Hebrew, maybe with different pronunciations: the one Ashkenazi, the other Sephardi.

In his later years Hirschel recognised that he had an increasingly native-born community, and unlike some continental rabbis he did not actively oppose vernacular sermons by others. In this respect he was more flexible and realistic than some of the continental orthodox rabbis who remained highly suspicious of sermons in the language of the country, despite the ancient and medieval precedents. He encouraged HN Solomon to speak in English at the Jews’ Free School, and at the Great Synagogue. He would not, however, allow the historian Isaac Marcus Jost to preach in English at the Great Synagogue, not out of “hostility to English lectures; (he had himself) preached in English (and) encouraged others to do so”,[27] but because he feared that Jost’s ideas were too radical. Hirschel’s apprehensions were well founded; lost was a Reform sympathiser, to whom the English Reformers turned for advice about a rabbi for their congregation.

Hirschel was certainly aware of national events. At the time of the Napoleonic wars he encouraged Jews to enlist. It was said that “The High Priest… expressed his highest concurrence in their taking the oath of fidelity and allegiance to our King and country”.[28] He secured permission for Jews to stay away from church parades and to be “sworn upon the Book of Leviticus instead of the New Testament”, though it was probably the whole Torah, not merely Leviticus, which he had in mind.[29] He had a special feeling for England. His New Synagogue address expressed gratitude that “providence permitted me to return to this my beloved native Land”.[30] But though he had occasional contacts with non-Jews, he was highly reluctant to enter into correspondence with Christians on religious issues or indeed to engage in open polemics of any kind.

The one major exception to this rule was his energetic “counteraction of the dishonest activity of the conversionists: as exhibited in their attempts to entrap the poor and ignorant of his flock, by free schools and gifts of various kinds (even including Passover cakes) and the like”.[31] As a constructive response to the conversionists, he strongly supported the Jews’ Free School and visited it from time to time.

The conversionist problem had become acute in the early years of the century, largely spearheaded by former Jews. Rev. Moses Margoliouth, a former Jew who had joined the established church, reports Hirschel’s serious concern that the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews had “robbed the synagogues of many able and learned members”.[32] How far the statistics bear out this contention is not certain. Margoliouth calls the rabbi “a most virulent enemy” of Christianity and claims to have seen a manuscript by Hirschel “which the late Rabbi took the trouble of making ‘with his own fingers’, (consisting) of the most blasphemous and inimical works that was ever penned (by) Hebrew hands, against Christianity. The work is entitled ‘Climath Hagoyim ‘ (The Reproach of the Gentiles). Some parts of that MS. are of so horrible a nature, that even well educated Jews must shrink from uttering them.”[33] Whether such a manuscript actually existed and what became of it we do not know. It is conceivable that it was Hirschel’s own private notes, put together to help him in formulating an answer to the conversionists. But Margoliouth himself admits that the rabbi had “a particular antipathy to public polemics”[34] and we presume Hirschel had no intention of publishing his notes.

Hirschel gave two anti-conversionist Sabbath sermons in 1807, on 3 and 10 January. His warnings against sending children to missionary schools were summarised in a message in Yiddish and English, sent all over England. He also arranged or approved “an indignant deputation”, in J Rumyaneck’s words,[35] to the treasurer of the conversionist society. Not that the delegation was really necessary, says Rumyaneck: the conversionists were achieving very little. Yet Hirschel continued to warn against missionary activities and rebuked Jews who attended conversionist meetings.

The conversionists had to admit that “notwithstanding the Gospel has been preached three years and is now preached four times a week professedly to the Jews, and yet there are not five or six of them that attend regularly, and though a free school has been opened for nearly two years, there are only six children that receive instruction.”[36] The writer of this passage was Samuel Christian Frederick Frey, “a converted Jew of dubious past, reluctant to go to darkest Africa, whither he had been sent, (who) had recourse to a prophetic dream in which a mysterious providence appointed him to remain in London and convert the equally barbarous Jew”.[37]

Frey began with the Missionary Society and then, from 1807, ran the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. Few Jews allended his sermons: nor did other missionaries fare better.

When the Rev. John Cooper “was imprudent enough to attempt a harangue in Duke’s Place (outside, not inside the synagogue), the children of Israel rose upon him, tore him from his pulpit, and it was with difficulty that he escaped.[38] Nonetheless, Hirschel gravely warned “every one of our nation not to send any of their Children to the newly-established Free School, instituted by a society of persons, who are not of our religion; until we had, by a proper investigation, determined if it be compleatly (sic) free from many possible harm to the welfare of our religion… Now having since been fully convinced… that the whole purpose of this seeming kind exertion, is but an inviting snare, a decoying experiment to undermine the props of our religion; and the sole intent of this Institution is, at bottom, only to entice innocent Jewish Children, during their early and unsuspecting years, from the observance of the Law of Moses; and to eradicate the religion of their fathers and forefathers.

“On this account, I feel myself necessitated to caution the Congregation in general, that no one do send, or allow to be sent, any Child, whether male or female, to this, or any such School established by strangers to our religion; not likewise into any Sunday School of that nature.

“All such persons, therefore, who … act contrary to this prohibition, whether male or female, will be considered as if they had themselves forsaken their religion, and been baptised; and shall lose all title to the name of Jews, and forfeit all claims on the Congregation both in life and death.”[39]

“On Anglo-Jewry,” said Rumyaneck, “the formation of the London Society had a strengthening and cleansing effect. The threat to its unity compelled the community to concentrate on urgent problems of communal and religious reform. The free schools opened by the London Society led to the establishment of Jewish schools. In 1811 the Westminster Jews’ Free School was opened and in 1817 the Jews’ Free School. In 1820 was opened the Western Institute for Clothing and Apprenticing Indigent Jewish Boys. And in 1824 the Society for the Relief of Indigent Poor began allowances of five shillings per week to necessitous widows. The widespread poverty and the lack of industrial openings for Jews were investigated and reforms were suggested. The Synagogues agreed on treaties of co­operation when dealing with the poor, and the Jews’ Hospital, among other objectives, apprenticed boys and girls to useful trades. With the awakening of a greater consciousness in communal life no other result but failure was to be expected of the conversionist menace”.[40]

Hirschel not only stirred himself to oppose the conversionists. He could act promptly to restrain Jews from acting inappropriately in public places. In 1812 the press reported, “The Rev. Solomon Herschell, high priest of the Jewish Synagogue, has caused one hundred itinerant Jews to be struck off the charity list for six months, for making a noise at Covent Garden Theatre. He has also warned them of excommunication in case they should be guilty of the like again.”[41] Had he really excommunicated the miscreants, however, it would probably have sent them straight into the hands of the conversionists.

He was tall, with “an exceedingly high forehead, and a searching eye; and his countenance was both benignant and intellectual. His appearance abroad, in the Polish costume to which he restricted himself, commanded the reverence of the rudest hind (sic: should this be ‘kind’?) that walked the streets; and there were few but touched their hats, and made way for ‘the High Priest of the Jews’.[42] Among gentiles he cut a fascinating and impressive figure.[43] It must have been dramatic when the London Sessions heard in January, 1809, the case of three Jews accused of assaulting a synagogue beadle, and “the Jewish High Priest dressed in his robes, attended by several of the Elders, sat on the Bench”.[44]

Within the Jewish community Hirschel had critics other than Solomon Bennett, as well as firm admirers and champions. The printer, Levi Alexander, for example, published a leaflet, which attacked “the ignorance and Superstition evident in the character of the Rev. S Hirschell”. There was rivalry between Alexander and the family of another printer, David Levi, who had published prayer books containing various errors. But Alexander’s prayer books also had their defects. Hirschel criticised Alexander’s work but did not mention Levi’s errors. In the Yom Kippur volume Alexander included critical comments about the rabbi, who kept his peace but persuaded the Spanish and Portuguese congregation not to give Alexander any more work. Hyman A Simons draws the reader’s attention to the fact that, “as a result of the printer’s bizarre campaign, on the Sabbath of Sabbaths many Great Synagogue worshipers had the unprecedented experience of hearing their Chief Rabbi preach and recite the Ne’ilah (concluding) service while at the same time utilising a prayer-book containing envenomed attacks on him.”[45]

Simons may be right that Hirschel actually officiated from the controversial prayer book, but knowing how rarely Hirschel preached it is unlikely that he gave a Ne’ilah sermon then or at any other time.

Hirschel’s fiercest enemy as we have seen was Solomon Bennett, a colourful and talented eccentric, Hebrew scholar, author, artist and engraver, who had lived in many parts of Europe, studied a number of languages and produced many literary and artistic works, especially portraits. He arrived in London at about the end of 1799. His long campaign against Hirschel [46] seems to have commenced with an engraving of the rabbi, made in about 1816-1818 and the subject of legal proceedings. Ostensibly the polemics began with Hirschel’s official endorsement of a catechism, Shor’shei Emunah (Elements of Faith), written by Salom ben Jacob Cohen and translated by Joshua van Oven, and criticised for inaccuracies by Solomon Bennett. Bennett’s weaponry included a 66-page pamphlet, “The present Reign of the Synagogue in Duke’s Place”, in which the rabbi is called “a proud, savage, and tyrannical Pontiff… in his orthodox piety on the one hand, and his ignorant malice on the other”.

This time the rabbi did not hold back, but neither did he act openly. His reply was ostensibly penned by Myer M Rintel, whose son Moses was later a minister and schoolmaster in Australia. Bennett alleged, among other things, that Hirschel was indifferent to his flock and condoned their transgressions.

Why, he asked, was the rabbi “so indifferent to the bulk of his Synagogue, the followers of his standard? – Seeing that the Royal Exchange, the Stock-exchange and the coffee-houses are all filled with Jew merchants transacting business on Sabbaths and Holy Days, quite public!”[47] Rev. Arthur Barnett’s telling of the controversy may err in the direction of bias for Bennett,[48] but it clearly shows the contrast between the worldly-wise critic and the more culturally limited rabbi.

Jewish religious and intellectual restlessness on the Continent hardly penetrated Hirschel’s consciousness. With some delicacy the Voice of Jacob wrote, “Wholly occupied by discharge of those duties which, according to the notions of the old school to which he belonged, he but seldom found leisure to take an active part in those movements which were meanwhile agitating the Rabbins of the continent… (Yet) a younger generation had grown up, sprung up, imbued with views disagreeing from his own, which represented rather the spirit of a bygone age. Considerable dissatisfaction, principally with liturgical forms, manifested itself. Had this happened a few years earlier, the pious, prudent, and energetic man might have seized the movement, and given to it a turn widely different from what it subsequently assumed; but now, broken in body and mind, only a shadow of what he had been, he was unequal to the emergency.”[49]

One is reluctant to take issue with such gracious writing, but the fact is that the ferment went far beyond the liturgy. The Reform minister, DW Marks (Hirschel’s former pupil), had a radical theological agenda that gravely challenged the tradition, and Hirschel would have been unequipped to debate or respond to the issues on an intellectual level. Hirschel’s successor Nathan Marcus Adler was able to do so. In that contrast we see the end of one era and the beginning of the next.

Both the Jewish Chronicle and the Voice of Jacob offered evaluations of Hirschel, the Chronicle in 1844 [50] and the Voice of Jacob at the time of his death in 1842.[51] Neither paper, however, makes reference to the tradition current many decades later that “when Rabbi Solomon Hirschel was buried certain papers were buried with him in accordance with instructions he had left to that effect”,[52] or to other stories that were apparently told about him for generations. If such papers actually existed, did they have anything to do with the various conflicts in which Hirschel had been involved, with Saul Berlin or other family matters, or with Hirschel’s financial affairs which included English stocks and shares and foreign railway bonds? We shall probably never know.

The Jewish Chronicle was thorough and blunt in its assessment of Hirschel.[53] It said he was a lesser figure in the rabbinic world in both learning and reputation. His jurisdiction had widened by reason of circumstances and was not necessarily good for Judaism; the lack of rabbinic rivals impoverished the community spiritually. Hirschel was well-intentioned and honourable but unequal to the needs of the times. He left no works of learning, charitable foundations or public institutions (a not entirely accurate assertion). He had hoped for peace in the community but saw schisms which he could neither constrain nor contain. His administration was not a model for the future, and his successor should be as unlike him as possible.

The Voice of Jacob [54] acknowledged his firmness of character, prudence, ready wit and perception of character, but said he was limited by “the notions of the old school to which he belonged”. He took no part in wider movements, except in countering the conversionists. When schism erupted in his old age he was already physically and mentally impaired: it was “a crisis for which the decayed powers of Dr Hirschel were no longer equal”. He had an impressive personal appearance and innate dignity, but the community now needed a different kind of rabbinic leadership. History’s verdict is similar. He was a child of his time. In 1802 the Great Synagogue was not looking for a “modern” rabbi, nor did they get one. But history moves on. Forty years later, it was not a Hirschel who was needed, but an Adler.

The contrast could not be greater. Nathan Marcus Adler held office from 1845 to 1890, though in his latter years he was represented by his son Hermann as delegate chief rabbi. Adler was university-trained, had experience as a vernacular preacher and ecclesiastical administrator in Germany, and thoroughly organised the Anglo-Jewish community and its synagogue life; no Jewish or general movement escaped his ken and though his successors were more visible public figures than he was, Adler founded the English rabbinic tradition of full participation in national debate.

From 1891 the chief rabbi was Hermann Adler, urbane, civilised, at ease with the aristocracy and royalty, one of the “gilded gentry”, thoroughly involved in the intellectual, moral and social issues of the time: indeed a vigorous controversialist ready to cross literary swords when necessary. He presided over a well-organised Anglo-Jewish ministry that in most ways was thoroughly English. Because of the Adlers, the chief rabbinate underwent a thorough sea-change.

1. Jewish Chronicle (subsequently “JC”), 28 March, 1947.
2. Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 8, cols. 520-1.
3. Letter 18 Nov., 1827, to Francis Freely of the Post Office Board, cited by HA Simons, “Forty Years a Chief Rabbi: The Life and Times of Solomon Hirschell”, 1980, pp. 89-91.
4. Arthur Barnett, “Solomon Bennett, 1761-1838: Artist, Hebraist and Controversialist”, Trans. Jewish Hist. Soc. of England (subsequently TJHSE), vol. 17 (1951-52), p. 106.
5. Barnett, op. cit., p. 106.
6. JC 13 Oct., 1844.
7. Voice of Jacob, (subsequently “VJ”), 11 Nov., 1842.
8. VJ, 11 Nov., 1842.
9. Barnett, op. cit, p. 105.
10. JC 28 May, 1999.
11. VJ 11 Nov., 1842.
12. Ibid.
13. One of many stories that circulated after his death.
14. Letter cited by AM Hyamson, “The London Board for Shechitah, 1804-1954″, 1954.
15. Beth Din minutes, 1805-36, held at Leeds University (HJ Zimmels, in HJ Zimmels, J Rabbinowitz & I Finestein (eds), (“Sefer HaYovel Tiferet Yisrael: Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie”, vol. 2, 1966; minutes 1833-45 are at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Adlers MS 2257).
16. Barnett, op. cit., p. 106.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Another long-cherished story about Hirschel.
20. Cited by Cecil Roth, “The History of the Great Synagogue, London, 1690-1940″, 1950, p. 186.
21. Barnett, loc. cit.
22. Israel Finestein, “Jewish Society in Victorian England”, 1993, p. 65.
23. Roth, op. cit., p. 185.
24. Cecil Roth, “Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica: A Bibliographical Guide to Anglo-Jewish History”, 1937, p. 325 (nos. 29-30), p. 327 (no. 42).
25. The title page calls him “The Rev. Dr Solomon Hirschel, Chief Rabbi of the German Jews in Great Britain”.
26. Sunday Herald, 3 June, 1828.
27. VJ 29 Oct., 1841.
28. Simons, op. cit., pp. 33-34; Roth, TJHSE, Vol. 15 (1939-45), p. 14.
29. Simons, op. cit., p. 33; Geoffrey Green, “The Royal Navy and Anglo-Jewry”, 1989, pp. 92-95.
30. But see P 1, note 1 supra.
31. VJ, 11 Nov., 1842.
32. M Margoliouth, “The History of the Jews in Great Britain”, 3 vols., 1851, p. 194.
33. Op. cit, pp. 192-93.
34. Op. cit., p 193.
35. Jewish Guardian, 29 May, 1931.
36. 13th Report of London Missionary Society, 1807.
37. Jewish Guardian, loc. cit.
38. J Hughson, “London… and its Neighbourhood”, 1809, cited by WS Samuel, Jewish Guardian, 19 June, 1931.
39. “Abstract of an Exhortation delivered by the Rev. Solomon Hirschel…”, 1807.
40. J Rumyaneck in Jewish Guardian, 29 May, 1931.
41. The News, Oct., 1812, cited in Jewish Guardian, 27 March, 1931.
42. VJ 11 Nov., 1842: cf. A Rubens, Anglo-Jewish Portraits, 1935, pp. 53, 57, 67, 171, 176.
43. The News, 15 Jan., 1809, cited in Jewish Guardian, 27 March, 1931.
44. Simons, op, cit, pp. 80-82.
45. Barnett, op. cit, pp. 91-111.
46. Barnett, op. cit., p. 105.
47. Barnett, op. cit, pp. 109–111.
48. JC 18 Oct, 1844.
49. JC 18 Oct, 1844.
50. VJ, 11 Nov, 1812.
51. “Israel”, Vol. 4 (1900), p 14.
52. Roth, “A History of the Jews in England”, 3rd ed., 1964, p 478.
53. JC 18 Oct, 1844.
54. VJ 11 Nov., 1842.

Further, the list, preserved by the Great Synagogue and subsequently printed in the Adler/Davis Service of the Synagogue (the “Routledge Machzor”), with “some eliminations” made “on historical grounds” by Dr Cecil Roth, has curious omissions and additions. The original list and Roth’s amended version both omit the first rabbi of the congregation, Judah Loeb ben Ephraim Anschel HaCohen. Both enumerate some rabbis purely out of courtesy, such as Aryeh Leib (the father of Hirschel Levin), who never held office at the Great Synagogue. Of the courtesy list, the most colourful name was Saul Berlin, a scandalous character who was a famous heretic and literary forger. One cannot rationally defend the inclusion of his name in the august company of the rabbis of the Great Synagogue, though there is a view that at the end of his life he recanted and the office was within his grasp, but he died first. Yet in his own way even Berlin the heretic and forger may have influenced the nature and history of the chief rabbinate, and the story deserves to be told.

First some background. There was an Ashkenazi presence in London from about 1659. In 1690, when the Great Synagogue was founded, there were no more than four hundred or so Ashkenazim in London. In contrast to the aristocratic and often worldly Sephardim, the Ashkenazim had few men of affairs, and more artisans and small traders. Many of the Sephardi Hahamim such as the philosopher David Nieto, Haham from 1701-1728, generally had a degree of general culture and urbanity, whilst the Ashkenazim tended to look for Talmudists, though as the 18 century progressed they had several rabbis with broader horizons.

Amongst the latter must be numbered Zvi Hirsch (or Hirschel) Levin (or Lewin), also known as Hart Lyon or Hirsch Loebel, who held office at the Great Synagogue for seven or eight years from 1756. Born in Galicia in 1721, he was the son of Rabbi Aryeh Leib Loewenstamm, rabbi of Glogau and previously of Lemberg. Rabbi Aryeh Leib figures in major 18 century controversies as a stern opponent of the messianic claimant Shabbatai Zvi and a supporter of his own brother-in-law, the anti-Sabbatean Jacob Emden, against Jonathan Eybeschutz. Aryeh Leib’s son Hirschel gained an early mastery of Talmud but also, unusually, learned Hebrew grammar, and at 16 was already writing on the subject.

He was one of a handful of rabbis of the time to study history and even philosophy, physics and geometry. He had continued his studies after marrying Golda, daughter of the lay leader of the Glogau community. He was offered a post in Dubno but preferred London, where his ministry coincided with the Seven Years’ War.
He had distinguished ancestry. A handwritten document in the Adler papers at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America says the family “can boast of a long genealogy of learned Rebbis (sic) and trace the generations up to Rabbi Meyer of Padua, a renowned Rabbi who, in the preface of one of his celebrated printed works speaks of Rabbi Haai Geon (sic) as his progenitor. This Rab, Haai (sic) was the last of the primates of the dispersed Israelites who died in 1038; & all the primates & princes of the captivity were deemed the genuine produce of King David’s stock”. There may also be a connection with Rabbi Solomon Luria and Don Isaac Abravanel. These claims may be valid; rabbinic families are generally careful to preserve their genealogical traditions.

Levin was at first a friend of Mendelssohn. In 1778 he wrote an approbation for Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation of the Bible, though others criticised him for apparently siding with “modernisers”. He asked Mendelssohn for a German exposition of Jewish civil matrimonial law. Later he regretted his association with Mendelssohn and attacked the educational views of the latter’s friend Naphtali Herz Wessely. Wessely’s work, “Divrei Shalom V’Emet”, 1782, had a sensational impact as the touchstone of the practical Haskalah. It mocked the traditional cheder and advocated better organised schools that emphasised Torat HaAdam, human knowledge. Levin sought to prevent Wessely’s writings being published and even wanted to have him banned from Berlin.

His London sermons clearly position him as a scholar aware of the events of the time. Preserved in manuscript at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, they include addresses at intercession services commanded by the king; he urges his listeners to appreciate the piety of the king and the liberty that Jews enjoy in England. Speaking about the morality of war he turns to the microcosm and says human beings must wage war on their own sins. He enumerates sins that he sees in his own community and warns that disregard for the Sabbath, dietary laws, modest dress and personal morality will result in unpleasant consequences. He is shocked to find Jewish women wearing decollete dresses, Jews eating in non-Jewish homes, and Jewish families even having Christmas puddings. Indeed he thinks a group of Jews who perished by drowning at Portsmouth in 1758 may have brought their fate on themselves.

His sermons use Maimonidean philosophical arguments, but he insists that philosophy cannot replace religious faith or observance. This marks him out as a rabbi wise in the ways of the world. But London did not appreciate his talents; he says that in London he had only one pupil, his own son Saul. He returned to the Continent, first to Halberstadt, then Mannheim and, from 1772-1800, to Berlin. However, he later said, “In London I had money but no Jews, in Mannheim Jews but no money, in Berlin no money and no Jews.”

Levin had three sons and three daughters from his first wife Golda, who died in Berlin in 1794. The three daughters all married rabbis; at least one daughter was herself learned in Talmud. Of Levin’s sons, the oldest, Saul Berlin, was widely read like his father, whilst the youngest, Solomon Hirschel, who later became chief rabbi in London, does not appear to have had a general education at all. True, Solomon Hirschel was probably no intellectual, but was this what the London Jewish press meant when it wrote in an obituary that he was no Mendelssohn? Arthur Barnett depicted his “complete unconsciousness of what was going on beyond the comfortable seclusion of his rabbinic library”. The middle son, David Tevele, called Berliner, may have had some secular education; he was a merchant who spent hours every day in rabbinic study and was offered, but refused, various rabbinic posts.

If Hirschel Levin introduced Saul, born in Glogau in 1740, to general education, which led to his becoming a sophisticate, why did he apparently limit Solomon Hirschel, born in London 21 years later, to a traditional education bounded by straight and narrow Talmudism? Did the father feel responsible for what happened to Saul Berlin and want to protect his younger son from spiritual harm? It is possible, but not entirely likely. However, before we look at Saul Berlin and his career, a brief note about the family’s different surnames. Until the imperial edicts at the end of the 18th century, European Jewish families often resorted to patronymics and lacked fixed surnames. Hirschel Levin, son of Aryeh Leib, was Levin because he was Leiv’s son. In England he was Hart Lyon; Lyon is a translation of Leib or Loewe. His son Solomon was known as Hirschel because he was the son of Hirschel Levin. Saul Berlin was also known as Saul Hirschel; the name Berlin reflects the father’s eventual position as rabbi of Berlin.

Saul Berlin was ordained as a rabbi at 20. By 1768, aged 28, he had a rabbinic post in Frankfort-on-the-Oder in the Prussian province of Brandenburg. He married Sarah, the daughter of Rabbi Joseph Jonas Fraenkel of Breslau. A considerable Talmudist, Berlin frequented rabbinic circles, but also associated with maskilim, proponents of the movement for enlightenment and modernism in Judaism. When he became more and more convinced by the Haskalah, he found himself in a dilemma. He could not repudiate his rabbinic background or cause an open breach with his father and family, but he needed to articulate the thinking of his new-found philosophy. This he now proceeded to do by embarking upon a series of anti-Talmudical writings, at times anonymously but generally under a pseudonym.

One was a pamphlet in defence of Wessely’s “Divrei Shalom V’Emet” against the strictures of the orthodox rabbis, among them Berlin’s own father. This pamphlet, issued anonymously in 1794, was called “K’tav Yosher”. It takes the form of a dialogue between an old-fashioned orthodox rabbi and a modern youth. He produced another polemic, a book of objections to the Birkei Yosef, or Chayyim Yosef David Azulai (1772), leading Azulai to write a rejoinder.

In 1789 he wrote another small book, “Mitzpeh Yekuti’el”, accusing the respected Rabbi Raphael Cohen of Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbeck of inaccurate scholarship and erroneous decisions in his halachic work, “Torat Yekuti’el”, published in Berlin in 1772. The name “Yekuti’el” was in honour of Cohen’s father, Yekuti’el Susskind Cohen. Berlin’s strictures were ascribed to one Rabbi Ovadiah ben Baruch, “A Man of Poland”. Shocked by this attack, Hirschel Levin was about to sign a ban against the author when someone whispered to him that the real author was Saul, the rabbi’s own son.

Levin did not proceed with the proposed ban. He probably thought Saul had become insane. But he subsequently stated that it was not personal reasons which prompted him to desist but the honour of the Torah and the wish to prevent strife in Israel. In what appears a somewhat half-hearted defence of his son, Levin did, however, acknowledge that the author of “Mitzpeh Yekuti’el” studied Torah day and night and was sincere in his belief that Raphael Cohen had made mistakes.

Embarked upon a path of modernism, Saul kept going. He published in Berlin in 1793 a volume of 392 responsa entitled “Besamim Rosh”, attributing the material to great figures such as Rabbi Asher ben Yechi’el, the famous “Rosh”, who died in 1327. The name “Besamim Rosh” (“Chief Spices”) derives from Ex. 30:23, though the word Rosh alludes to Asher ben Yechi’el; Besamim has the numerical value of 392. The work appeared with notes and additions “by Saul, son of Zvi Hirsch, Chief Rabbi of this City”. No longer hiding behind anonymity, Saul was now openly embarrassing his family because the book was widely denounced as a forgery and the author deemed to be an atheist.

Saul claimed that he was bringing to public attention a manuscript he had acquired in Italy in 1784 and all he had added were his own notes. Hirschel Levin, trying to preserve his son’s credibility, stated that he knew of the manuscript and a copy had been made by his son Solomon. The critics were not appeased and turned their wrath on Levin. They alleged that the responsa in the book could not be by the Rosh and other great rabbis, were a total forgery, and attributed views to the Rosh which he could not have held.

Examples are the following:
1. One must say a blessing over food even if it is non-kosher.
2. Commandments may be ignored if they upset one’s mind.
3. The sages often distort the plain meaning of Biblical texts.
4. The Book of Esther need not be taken too seriously.
5. Jewish beliefs can change.

18 century events are taken for granted in “Besamim Rosh” as if they had happened in the Middle Ages, and Mendelssohnian ideas are ascribed to the Rosh. Saul was using a well known literary device to give his own modernism the appearance of credibility. One has to admire his scholarship and industry, but his honesty is clearly in question.

Now that his identity was openly revealed it was not possible to remain in an orthodox pulpit. At some point in the 1780s he lost his position in Frankfort-on-the-Oder – or he resigned – and moved to Berlin. His orthodox friends abandoned him. He mixed with maskilim and wrote further essays. But by now his state of health was precarious and in Halle en route to England he made a will. He arrived in London in 1794. Whether he intended to remain there as a private scholar or had hopes of a rabbinical position is not certain; there is a view that the Great Synagogue thought of appointing him, in succession to David Tevele Schiff, as its rabbi. His scholarship and lineage might have fitted him for the post, but there remains the question of his views. It is possible that he was sufficiently penitent for the rabbinical world, including his own father, to endorse him without placing the London congregation under a stigma. We cannot be certain, though when his will was discovered it seemed to express an attitude of contrition.

But events overtook the question; within a few months of arriving in London he died and the London Ashkenazim gave him rabbinic honours at his burial. His tombstone calls him harav hagadol hamefursam, “the great and renowned rabbi”, showing that the community was not vindictive despite all the scandals. It was not until later that it was found that in his will he had asked to be buried in his clothes, away from the graves of other people, in a forest somewhere – a mark of humility and contrition.

Regardless of his suitability or otherwise for the London rabbinic post, the congregation appears to have been short of money and apparently postponed any appointment for reasons of finance. It was not until eight years later that Saul’s brother Solomon became rabbi of the Great Synagogue (outsiders often called him “High Priest of the Jewish Nation”) and held office for forty years. It was during this long incumbency that the eminence of the Great Synagogue was firmly established and its rabbi recognised as chief rabbi of the Ashkenazi community.

But Solomon Hirschel was no modernist. It is not even certain how fluent he was in English; his English correspondence was the work of a secretary. By the time he was old the community had changed. New thinking was about, but not as drastic as on the Continent. It was liturgical reform that was advocated. With his limited horizons, Solomon’s answer was to insist on the old ways and to excommunicate the reformers.

It is tempting to argue that it was because Saul Berlin tasted the waters of modernism that Solomon Hirschel was denied a broad education. The argument would run like this: Hirschel Levin must have felt that he had given Saul too much leeway and would not let himself make a second mistake, so he limited Solomon to a traditional Talmudical education. Hence though Solomon was a pleasant and pious religious leader, he was more old-fashioned than his brother and even more conservative than his father. There is some point to this argument, but it was not necessarily Levin who was responsible for what became of Saul Berlin, nor did any decision about Solomon Hirschel’s education automatically dictate the nature of Hirschel’s career and mould his London incumbency.

Had Levin remained in London, Solomon, born in 1761, might have become more English and come under broader cultural influences. At that time, though English Jews were still far away from political emancipation, some were socially integrated and a few of the more affluent had fine houses adorned with works of art. But when Solomon was still a very small child, though by now Saul, 21 years older, was fully adult, the family returned to the Continent. From now onwards they probably lived within traditional bounds and Solomon was brought up in the world of the bet midrash and yeshivah. There the study of so-called secular subjects was deemed unnecessary. The Talmud provided with a broad range of studies including mathematics, medicine and astronomy. If anyone was interested, Maimonides and the great medieval thinkers provided philosophy. The emphasis was Talmudic and the rabbinic role model was the talmid chacham. Solomon Hirschel does not seem to have shown an interest in general culture and probably found himself sufficiently stimulated by rabbinic texts and halachic reasoning. The new school of orthodox rabbis, recognising the possibility of some bisociation, was still a thing of the future.

Solomon was 41 when he took up office in London. He did not purport to be anything other than he was – a good solid traditional rabbinic figure. He played a role in some public and community issues, e.g, in countering missionary campaigns that targeted Jewish children, but he could not be expected to understand and find a modus vivendi with movements which he felt were inimical to traditional Judaism.

But this does not mean that he dismissed out of hand the new knowledge of the time. In an obituary, the Voice of Jacob acknowledged that “in his after life” he had made “efforts… to acquire other sciences, which his earlier training had not comprehended. Mathematics is said to have been the principal of these pursuits.” Whatever the effect of his upbringing and education, Hirschel thus eventually endeavoured to become a modern person. Whether, without the thought of his wayward brother Saul, he would ever have become more modern, remains a question. The likelihood is that he would still have been more or less what he was.

One final question. What do we know about Saul Berlin’s immediate family? He and his wife Sarah had a son, Aryeh Yehudah Levin/Lewin or Loebusch, named after Saul’s paternal grandfather, Hirschel Levin’s father. Born in 1765, Aryeh Yehudah studied with both grandfathers and eventually succeeded his maternal grandfather as chief rabbi of Silesia. His community knew him as Levi Saul Shaulsohn or Fraenkel. He was a sound Talmudist but like his father Saul he had modernistic tendencies. He was well read in philosophy and other secular subjects, but like Saul he was influenced by the Haskalah and his views diverged from the norm. When Napoleon’s Sanhedrin came into being he began praising the emperor and urged the unification of all religions. His grandfather Hirschel Levin was ashamed and told him not to visit. Before long Aryeh Yehudah left Judaism and by 1809 he was a Christian. Like Cain, he lived the life of a fugitive and a wanderer, before dying in poverty in 1815 in the Jewish hospital in Frankfort-am-Main.

In September, 1897, Hermann Gollancz, preacher of the Bayswater Synagogue, came back to England from Galicia with rabbinical diplomas issued by great scholars. The community was in uproar because he had been unable to become a rabbi in England itself. He tells the story in a book published in 1928, “Personalia: The Story of a Professional Man’s Career told in Certificates, Testimonials, Congratulatory Messages, Letters and Addresses, Reports and Presentations, &c.” He comments:

“The acquisition of these ‘Certificates of Competence’, known as Hattarat Horaah, from … outstanding ecclesiastical authorities abroad, gave rise to a storm in the hierarchical Chair which practically ended an anomalous and unsatisfactory state of affairs – there was no system – in the Jewish community here, and in reality revolutionised the entire status of the Jewish Ministry in England. Once and for all there were defined, by means of a clear-cut Syllabus, the requirements in Hebrew and Rabbinics necessary to obtain the Diploma of Rabbi in this country, which had hitherto not been granted – a stronger term might be used – to any student or scholar, however competent. Those interested in the subject are referred to the letters of ‘Historicus’ who championed the cause in those days. Are they not written in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle?” (pages 23-25).

Up to the mid-19th century Anglo-Jewry had derived its rabbis from abroad. There were a few learned laymen, though few were born in England. The only English-born rabbi was Solomon Hirschell, who spent his youth on the Continent and returned as chief rabbi, but forty years in London did not make him into an Englishman. Synagogue functionaries had little Hebrew knowledge, and few were able to preach at any level or in any language.

But by the 1840s the community was sufficiently anglicised to keep its records in English, and the Jewish press resounded with calls for “lecturers”, i.e. preachers. Jewish knowledge was at a low ebb, missionaries were enticing some Jews into Christianity, and there was no orthodox answer to the reform minister David Woolf Marks, who was developing a powerful pulpit.

Sermons were also believed to be necessary to the movement for political emancipation. The respectability of Anglo-Jewry would continue to be at stake whilst synagogue services were chaotic and when Jewish ministers could not expound the Scriptures to their English-speaking congregants.

Some officiants possessed Talmudic knowledge brought from across the Channel, but they lacked English education. A few who spoke reasonable English picked up a smattering of rabbinic learning. But none was able or encouraged to seek ordination, and some were simply not interested. There were exceptions – often self-taught – such as Tobias Goodman, Morris Raphall, Henry Abraham Henry, Abraham Pereira Mendes, David Aaron de Sola and Asher Levy Green, but most congregations were uninterested in having a scholarly functionary. Even after 1855 when Jews’ College began training ministers, many students could not afford to spend long years in study. DW Marks had been Solomon Hirschell’s protégé and even read the Mishnah to Mrs Hirschell when her sight failed. But when Marks publicly attacked rabbinic tradition, Hirschell regarded him as a traitor and would have been aghast had he sought a rabbinic title.

Hirschell’s successor, Nathan Marcus Adler, turned the ministry into a profession, but rabbinic ordination was not even on the agenda. The ministers – even members of the Beth Din such as Aaron Levy, Jacob Reinowitz, Susman Cohen and Bernard Spiers – were all styled “Reverend”.

This led communal wits to remark that the chief rabbi had no rabbis over whom to be chief: one writer called him a general without an army. The “Reverend” title was part of the Anglicanisation of the synagogue: k’lei kodesh were clergy, chazzanim were precentors, parnasim were wardens, and shammashim beadles or sextons. Minhag Anglia, “The English Usage”, believed that Jews were not only in England but of England. Everything English was their model. When Sir Moses Montefiore set off on his journeys with the blessing of his sovereign, Jews in less emancipated countries were lost in awe. It almost seemed out of character for the British queen to decline to make him a peer or for anyone to argue against having Jews in parliament.

Nathan Marcus Adler did not create Minhag Anglia, but he seemed to. He also appeared to be the father of the Anglo-Jewish pulpit, though vernacular preaching began before his incumbency, and he was also credited with fashioning the United Synagogue and other leading institutions and standardising the English Ashkenazi liturgy. By the end of his long reign, however, Minhag Anglia was already under challenge, and his son and successor Hermann Adler could not always handle the attacks.

Both the Adlers had been ordained in the traditional halachic manner and the father in particular maintained constant correspondence and other contacts with rabbinic figures on the Continent. He was certainly equipped to bestow rabbinic ordination, and there might have been a handful of candidates, but he never chose to do so. According to his son Elkan, he held back from ordaining anyone out of modesty, presumably fearing that he might grant the rabbinic title to unworthy candidates. A less charitable view regarded the Adler policy as a means of maintaining his grip on power.

Yet in his last years Adler was not unscathed. A particular issue was the status of immigrant rabbis and maggidim (preachers). Adler decreed that anyone who wished to exercise religious functions needed his sanction. When the “Polish Maggid” (the nickname later changed to “Russian Maggid”), Zvi Hirsch Dainow, began to function in the East End of London in 1874, Adler insisted that he place himself under the rabbinate’s authority. Dainow objected, and the “Jewish World” (10 July, 1874) observed, “It is surprising with what pertinacity this gentleman defies the charge of the Rev. the Chief Rabbi that he not be permitted to preach under ecclesiastical sanction… The Maggid is represented to us as being a man of portly and noble presence, a king among men, eloquent, impressive in his didactic teachings, and a person of the greatest intelligence and mental capacity. His influence among his countrymen is extraordinary.”

Then the paper changed its tune and said, “The action of the Chief Rabbi with respect to this individual appears to us inexplicable. It has aroused among Poles of the East End of London a large amount of antagonism…” It must be said that Dainow had been a controversial figure in Russia, where it was alleged that under the guise of a maggid he had been promoting untraditional doctrines. Adler eventually relented to some extent and allowed Dainow to preach, though not in synagogues under his direct control. However, the misgivings were not universal. Some of the official ministers were impressed by Dainow’s oratory, several of the anglicised lay leaders contributed to his upkeep, and the Maggid’s death in London in 1877 was deeply mourned.

The immigrant population in the East End was still relatively small at this stage, and Adler and the official community were sure of themselves. But by the 1890s there was a new and more complicated situation. The immigration wave had grown and brought many strictly orthodox Jews to Britain. Anglo-Jewry was no longer a relatively homogeneous community, and having only one rabbi was no longer an option.

The immigrants included Continental rabbis who challenged the religious standards of the establishment. The Machzikei HaDath congregation arose out of this culture of defiance and set up its own kashrut system. The orthodox complained that there was no-one in England to whom they could bring a religious question. They were used to rabbis, not “ministers” who dressed, acted and spoke like Christian preachers and often lacked Talmudic knowledge, who had neither the erudition of the Talmudist nor the charisma of the maggid (JC, 6 May, 1932). A Yiddish weekly, “Hatzophe”, was sure that a cheder boy knew more than a “Reverend” (though it also kept an eye on the “real” rabbis in case of religious backsliding).

Still there were some strange alliances, such as the friendship between the Kamenitzer Maggid, Chaim Zundel Maccoby, and the anglicised minister of the Hampstead Synagogue, Rev Aaron Asher Green. A champion of Minhag Anglia, Hyman A Simons, said that “The old-fashioned ministers may not have been the greatest of Talmudists – though some undoubtedly were – but they were men of wide learning, breadth of vision, humanity and above all were imbued with a sense of service” (JC Supplement, 28 September, 1977).

Those ministers who possessed rabbinic learning, such as Simeon Singer of the New West End Synagogue (previously minister of the Borough Synagogue), realised they had to go abroad for ordination. Singer had begun rabbinical studies with Dayan Jacob Reinowitz of the London Beth Din in 1879, and obtained his rabbinical diploma in 1890 from Isaac Hirsch Weiss of Vienna, author of “Dor Dor V’Dor’shav”. He had followed a demanding three-year course of study with Weiss and underwent a series of written and oral examinations. Singer had feared that Anglo-Jewish ministers were becoming indifferent to traditional learning and believed that the community would suffer in the long run. (One might, however, ask how Singer, despite his orthodox affiliation and ideology, could support the liberal Jewish Religious Union.)

Nonetheless Singer did not seek personal aggrandisement and continued to call himself “Reverend”. Hermann Gollancz was more confrontationist and would not acquiesce in an anomaly. He insisted that his rabbinic title be recognised, and he would abandon his Bayswater pulpit every Shavu’ot and go to Leeds, where he could be called to the Torah as HaRav. Gollancz’s brother Israel was the great champion of change in the system; he may have been the “Historicus” to whom his brother alluded. (They were the sons of Rabbi – known in England as Rev – Samuel Marcus Gollancz, minister of the Hambro’ Synagogue; both were knighted for services to scholarship.)

Yet years before, people were already calling for local facilities for rabbinic ordination: a Jewish Chronicle writer asked, “Must a man go to Breslau to learn to be a rabbi?” (JC, 12 Jan, 1872). The teachers at the Breslau seminary, established a year before Jews’ College, included some of the great names in Jewish scholarship, and no-one seems to have argued that the title “Rabbiner” harmed German-speaking Jewry – though there was a bon mot that said that when the rabbis became doctors, Judaism became sick.

The Sephardi Haham, Moses Gaster, a holder of Continental ordination, saw no reason to support a policy which he thought limiting and demeaning. He was a strong character who did not always see eye to eye with the Adlers. At Montefiore College, Ramsgate, he began by ordaining two former Jews’ College students (Henry Barnstein and William Greenburg) in 1895, but when both became reform rabbis in the USA, he had to desist, though he later ordained a United Synagogue minister, Harris Cohen (who had first been examined by Gollancz), against the strong protests of the chief rabbinate.

At Jews’ College the original scheme of studies had not envisaged ordaining rabbis. What changed the policy was a strange set of circumstances. In order to affiliate with London University, a new academic structure had to be formulated in 1883. This envisaged a three-level course that in theory would lead up to ordination, though students who passed the “third examination” and earned the title of Fellow of Jews’ College, were to receive their rabbinic authorisation from the chief rabbi and not the college.

Nonetheless, the new structure was not activated for some years. The first to pass the “third examination” were Solomon Levy (1896), Asher Feldman and Abraham Wolf (1898), BN Michelson (1899), Michael Adler (1900) and Maurice Simon (1901). None used the title of rabbi; all continued to be styled “Rev”.

Even when Feldman joined the London Beth Din he was known as “The Rev Dayan Feldman”. Wolf was kept on the list of rabbinical graduates even when he became minister of the Manchester Reform Synagogue in 1901 – a strange anomaly when two later graduates were stripped of the rabbinic title after they left orthodoxy. It must be said, however, that by this stage the bitterness toward the London Reform Synagogue had waned, and in Manchester orthodox and reform ministers occasionally occupied each other’s pulpits.

Some United Synagogue ministers including Simeon Singer had an early association with the emergent Liberal movement, though Hermann Adler insisted they withdraw. Of the other names on the College list, Maurice Simon never practised as a minister but wrote and edited scholarly works.

Under pressure from Israel Gollancz, the College decided in 1900 to provide an internal course of study for rabbinic ordination so long as the candidate also had a university degree. The College Council resolved, “That Jews’ College, in pursuance of its objects as a Training College for Jewish Rabbis, shall take the necessary measures to obtain the Rabbinical Diploma, as the result of the Examination conducted within the College for students who are worthy of the same, by reason of their religious and moral life and of their learning”. Yet not until 1908 were such students called “Rabbi”: the first were Barnet Isaac Cohen of Sheffield (1908) and Harris M. Lazarus of Brondesbury (1909). Lazarus was later a member of the London Beth Din.

In 1905 Francis Lyon Cohen of the Borough Synagogue was ordained by the Chief Rabbi. Appointed to the Great Synagogue, Sydney, he was required to gain ordination, though Hermann Adler and some of the dayanim doubted the orthodoxy of his views. Cohen had been a Jews’ College student and was now a part-time lecturer at the College. Like others of his colleagues, his orthodoxy appears to have been somewhat elastic, and later in his career he was prepared to endorse changes in halachah which even his own lay leaders suspected would not meet the favour of the chief rabbi.

Cohen’s rabbinical diploma was regarded as essential to the functioning of the Sydney Beth Din, which hitherto had lacked an ordained chairman, necessitating the referral of most issues to London or at least to Melbourne, where the head of the Beth Din, Dr Joseph Abrahams – also known as “Rev” – had a Continental rabbinical diploma.

On the other hand, in 1899 Adler bestowed rabbinical status on a scholarly orthodox minister, Moses Hyamson, a former student of the College. Like Feldman, Hyamson became a dayan of the Beth Din. He was acting Chief Rabbi from 1911 until the appointment of Joseph Herman Hertz in 1913. Disappointed that his own candidature was unsuccessful, Hyamson went to New York and became rabbi of Orach Chayyim Congregation, the synagogue from which Hertz had come to London. He was also professor of Codes at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the institution which had ordained Hertz.

The ordination of both Feldman and Hyamson had been conditional on not exercising rabbinical authority other than under the supervision of the chief rabbi, but many in the College Council and the community felt that Adler was allowing personal feelings to intrude upon matters which should be governed by evident objectivity.

The first Jewish Year Book, issued in 1899, recorded 49 ministers (there actually were at least double that number since the list generally omits the leaders of the immigrant chevrot). More than half were not English-born: only 20 had studied at Jews’ College and 12 had university degrees. Six were named as rabbis; the May and June, 1899, issues of the magazine “Israel” listed the following rabbis, all ordained on the Continent:

Dr Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi
Dr Moses Gaster, Haham
Dayan Bernard Spiers
Dayan Susman Cohen
Rabbi Simeon Singer (the only one born in England)
Rabbi Samuel Marcus Gollancz
Rabbi Hermann Gollancz
Rabbi Joseph Kohn Zedek
Rabbi Abraham Werner
Rabbi Moses Avigdor Chaikin
Rabbi Dr Joseph Strauss (incumbent of a reform pulpit)
Rabbi Dr Berendt Salomon
Rabbi Moses Hyamson
Rabbi N Lipman, chief shochet

There is no mention of the early rabbinical graduates of Jews’ College, Solomon Levy (1896), Asher Feldman (1898) or Abraham Wolf (1898).

The “foreign” rabbis functioned mostly in the East End and were often in conflict with the chief rabbi (even those he most respected such as Dayan Moses Avigdor Chaikin had to be known as “Reverend”). Adler was seen as so aloof from the immigrant community that there were suggestions that he appoint a rabbi to represent him in the East End.

The “foreigners” objected to the Jews’ College rabbis: H Jerevitch wrote in the JC that nothing would “induce the foreign Jew to recognise the rule of English-manufactured rabbis”. To Adler’s credit his message to the community before his death in 1911 was to find a successor who would be acceptable both to the East and the West.

Was there any common ground between the Reverends and the “foreign” rabbis? Were the Reverends – whom a later principal of Jews’ College, Adolph Buechler, called “half-baked products of unsuccessful training imposed upon a helpless congregation” – really satisfied with their lot as pastors and functionaries? Some must have been; but a different perspective is provided by Solomon Schechter, a trenchant critic of the Anglo-Jewish scene.

He blames the system, with the power it vested in the petty tyrants who often became synagogue wardens. In his “Four Epistles to the Jews of England” (1901, pages 11-15), Schechter calls the minister “the most hard-worked m(a)n… labouring under a cruel system, reducing man to a mere plaything of politico-economic forces, … rapidly losing touch with the venerable Rabbi of Jewish tradition, whose chief office was to teach and to learn Torah. With us the duty of learning… seems to be of the least moment in the life of the minister. As long as he is in statu pupillari, most of his energies are directed towards acquiring the amount of secular learning necessary for the obtaining of a University degree, whilst in his capacity as full Reverend, he is expected to divide his time between the offices of cantor, prayer, preacher, book-keeper, debt-collector, almoner, and social agitator. No leisure is left to him to enable him to increase his scanty stock of Hebrew knowledge acquired in his undergraduate days. Occasionally rumour spreads anent some minister, that he neglects his duty to his congregation, through his being strictly addicted to Jewish learning. But such rumours often turn out to be sheer malice…”

It took another forty-odd years for Jews’ College under Rabbi Dr Isidore Epstein to open a full rabbinical faculty with Rabbi Kopel Kahana in charge. In the meantime the College continued to produce ministers with the title “Reverend”, though in Buechler’s time many students with a BA degree took synagogue posts without completing the minister’s diploma. Not all College students entered the ministry; a number became synagogue wardens and did not always give their ministers an easy time. In time, many ministers upgraded their qualifications to become rabbis. Some received the title “rabbi” honoris causa in recognition of long service to the community.

In the meantime, whilst the reign of the Reverends continued, unqualified officiants secured positions against the protests of both the chief rabbinate and the real Reverends. There were even poultry sealers and minyan men who assumed the title of Reverend and started wearing the clerical collar which most of the ministers used. The communal wits even said of certain ministers that they did not even remove their collars in bed at night.

A century after Gollancz’s storm, hardly any Reverends were left. In the orthodox community almost every minister was a rabbi, many having studied at yeshivot – not only in Britain, but in Israel, USA and other places. In recent years Jews’ College, after changing its name to the London School of Jewish Studies, ceased publishing the list of men who had passed the minister’s diploma, and enumerated only its rabbinical graduates. Eventually the College closed its rabbinic department altogether, to the dismay of alumni who remembered with affection and admiration the scholars and chochmat yisra’el which they encountered at the College.

The role of the British rabbi is now much more traditional, and halachic knowledge and observance are much more highly esteemed. Hyman A Simons wrote, “The Anglo-Jewish minister was a peculiarly British phenomenon who flourished in the 19th century… The congregational rabbi…is an entirely different figure” (JC Supplement, 28 Sep., 1977). It is a new world.

At Jews’ College. Chief Rabbi Hertz himself soon saw the young man’s potential and encouraged him to gain the professional growth that came from an overseas posting. But first, Brodie served as a chaplain in the First World War and gained further experience as a people person doing welfare work in the East End.

His rabbinical diploma in 1923 was followed by fourteen years at the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation as rabbi, chazan and Av Beth Din.

A bachelor rabbi was a good catch but he fended off Melbourne mothers who dreamed of shidduchim with their daughters. Young, energetic and imaginative, his youth club (known colloquially as Rabbi Brodie’s boys) replicated in Australia the Jewish youth clubs of London’s East End.

His mellifluous diction and classical type of preaching were widely admired, though they failed to stem the contemporary tide of out-marriage and assimilation threatening Australian Jewry.

But he did not lack triumphs. He gave public lectures on Jewish topics, and often the synagogue hall was too small for the numbers. He recognised, though, that Melbourne was not a place – at least in those days; things have changed radically since then – for shiurim for the layman. So he had to be contented with sitting and “learning” with Rabbi Dr Joseph Abrahams, Rabbi JL Gurewitz of Carlton and also a few old-timers at the Montefiore Homes, in order to maintain his own Talmudic studies.

Always a passionate advocate of the Zionist cause, he was a dynamic president of the Australian Zionist Federation and did not hesitate to criticise the British agovernment at the time of the Wailing Wall incident of the late 1920s, nor did he flinch from attacking the anti-Zionist views of his Empire-patriot colleagues, Francis Lyon Cohen of Sydney and Jacob Danglow of Melbourne. In his recently published history of interwar Australian Zionism, Eliyahu Honig has highlighted Rabbi Brodie’s contribution to the cause.

To all this must be added his masonic and public relations work. When Nazism arose, as an ambassador for his people he skilfully rebutted the allegations of anti-semites, explaining the Jewish position with firmness and tact.

He left Melbourne in 1937 pessimistic about the future of Australian Jewry. Events proved him wrong, and he said so when he later came back as Chief Rabbi and saw a community transformed.

He returned to academic life on the staff of Jews’ College, and expected to complete a doctorate. The war interrupted both. He lost his greatcoat and Ph.D. notes at Dunkirk, but his chaplaincy work brought him a remarkable relationship with serving men and women. As Senior Jewish Chaplain his uniform was not always too tidy, but he kept up morale and attracted affection wherever he went.

After the war he returned to Jews’ College and finally married; his wife, Fanny Levine, was a teacher whom he had known for many years. His British birth, Oxford education, overseas experience and chaplaincy reputation all helped to secure him election as Chief Rabbi. Following upon the often turbulent years of the aggressive Dr Hertz, the electoral college now went for quietness and urbanity.

As Chief Rabbi he had at first two powerful guides – Dayan Abramsky and Sir Robert Waley Cohen – but as time went on it was clear he was uncomfortable with the rough and tumble of communal politics.

The rabbinic principle that one should not be hasty in issuing rulings was part of his nature, but it cost him dearly when some felt he only acted against Rabbi Louis Jacobs under pressure from the right wing.

Attempts were made to persuade him to modify his stance and to keep Jacobs within the establishment. He declined to accept this advice, assuring his colleagues that his decision was his own. He believed Jacobs had placed himself outside orthodoxy. History will judge him as a Chief Rabbi who looked outward and saw that Anglo-Jewry needed to take the lead in salvaging whatever it could from the ruins of European Jewish life. It was largely Brodie’s achievement to create the Conference of European Rabbis and to build a rabbinic structure in postwar Europe.

Another achievement was the purpose-built West End home for Jews’ College. That Montagu Place building was his pride and joy; he, who had no children of his own, saw the student body as his metaphorical offspring. After Rabbi Dr Isidore Epstein retired, Brodie became acting principal of the College.

Brodie’s ministers were immensely proud of their Chief. He had a courtly presence with a mildly episcopal dignity. Our elocution lecturer at Jews’ College rightly regarded him as one of the finest preachers in England, with a sonorous voice, an elegant, measured, Biblical turn of phrase, and a wonderful way with a Midrash.

Mid-1965 saw his retirement at age 70; I was the last minister to be inducted into office by him as Chief Rabbi when, in May, 1965, I moved from Bayswater to Hampstead. He recalled on that occasion that he had known my parents in Melbourne and had watched me prepare for the ministry.

He returned to what he called “the still waters of academic tranquillity”. He spent much of his time working in the College library. He inducted his successor, Lord Jakobovits, in a moving ceremony; his brief address was Brodie at his finest.

In his retirement he travelled much, and loved to revisit Australia. During his last few months he was rather frail but lacked none of his humour, humanity, sound wisdom and remarkable memory. He did not produce nearly as much writing as his predecessor or successors, but he wrote volumes on the hearts of human beings. He served his Maker and his people well.

This article was first published in 1998.

In the whole of the recorded history of the Anglo-Jewish community there was hardly ever a decade of greater transition than the 1890s and there was certainly never a decade of greater significance in the development of the religious life of Anglo-Jewry.

The 1890s witnessed the death of Nathan Marcus Adler and his son, Hermann’s, peaceful and uneventful succession to the Chief Rabbinate. The community over which Hermann Adler now assumed responsibility was however a different one from that which his father had led and served. For coinciding with the change in the Chief Rabbinate there came a change in the old order of things.

Dr. Bernard Homa writes in his history of the Machzikei Hadath community, “By the time Dr. Hermann Adler was elected Chief Rabbi, in June 1891 (following his father’s death), there were already the rumblings of revolt”. What Dr. Homa was specifically referring to was the revolt of the newly-emergent right-wing against the Chief Rabbinate, but his observation is, remarkably, equally true of every section of the community at that period: the right, the left, and the centre.

The nature of the community in the latter part of the nineteenth century is well-known. The old rivalry between Ashkenazim and Sefardim had waned, the bitterness surrounding the establishment of the West London (Reform) Synagogue had died down, and the community was mostly long-settled and homogeneous, enjoying political and social emancipation and considerable material prosperity. Nathan Marcus Adler had been in office for forty-five years, and his policy of strong centralised religious government had brought into being institutions like Jews’ College and the United Synagogue, which — with the Board of Deputies and the Board of Guardians — were at the peak of their strength and fame.

First Stirrings of Dissent

But as the 1880s gave way to the 90s, “rumblings of revolt” were becoming more and more audible. Israel Zangwill, writing in Children of the Ghetto, published in 1892, tells us that the rabbinate was experiencing “grave difficulties in reconciling all parties to its rule” and “could scarcely do aught else than emit sonorous platitudes and remain in office”.

From which quarters was the revolt coming? The answer is symbolised by three significant events:
(a) Hermann Adler’s argument over Kashrut with the new Machzikei Hadath Synagogue;
(b) the agitation for liturgical reform associated with the opening of the Hampstead Synagogue; and
(c) the consequences of the Hibbert Lectures given by Claude Goldsmid Montefiore in 1892.

Together, they challenged the Chief Rabbinate on three basic fronts of Jewish life: (a) observance, (b) worship and (c) theology.

The Machzikei Hadath controversy stemmed from the arrival in England of a group of strictly Orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe. The establishment was too compromising for them. How, for example, could someone used to the strict standards of Eastern European Jewish learning and observance be satisfied with ministers in western clerical garb who were called “the Reverend” and who lacked full rabbinic status — some because they did not seek it, others because Anglo-Jewish ministers were deliberately denied the opportunity to obtain the rabbinical diploma and if they ventured abroad to gain it, were denied the right to call themselves “rabbi”.

It is true that some of the old established Anglo-Jewish families had maintained high standards of Orthodox observance, but it was only the aftermath of the Russian pogroms from 1880 onwards that brought this influx of Eastern European Jews, who set up little chevras all over the East End, leading to the formation of the Federation of Synagogues by the first Lord Swaythling (then Samuel Montagu) in 1887. The purposes for which the Federation was established included the provision of “Orthodox rabbis, ministers of dayanim” as well as “to assist in the maintenance of Orthodox religious instruction in Talmud Torahs and Yeshivoth” and “to obtain and maintain Kashruth”. Some saw it as a movement of revolt against the existing standards of ministers, of education and of kashrut.

From 1886-1909 Samuel Montagu, the founder of the Federation, was also President of the London Board for Shechita. This made it difficult for those elements in the Federation who were dissatisfied with the communal facilities for kashrut to strike a blow for the right to set up independent facilities. But in 1891 a society was formed which, for the time being at least remained outside all synagogal organisations, and from it now emanated full-scale revolt.

Origins of Machzikei Hadath

This society was known as Chevrath Machzikei Hadath, “The Society of Strengthened of the Faith”. It was not as yet a synagogue, but a pressure-group consisting mostly of members of the North London Beth Hamedrash (established in 1889 in Stoke Newington) and the synagogue in the East End of the Machzikei Shomrei Shabbath, “The Strengthened of Sabbath Observance”, set up in 1890. The Machzikei Hadath set themselves one primary aim, and towards it they commenced active campaigning. Their aim was to persuade the Chief Rabbi and the community that serious infringements of the laws of kashrut were taking place and to make sure that their agitation led to improvements.

Kashrut Laxity

They claimed that those responsible for the administration of kashrut were not carrying out their responsibility properly:
(a) in seeing that shochtim and butchers and others under their control were religiously above reproach and observed the Sabbath properly;
(b) in selling hindquarter meat only if it had been purged;
(c) in ensuring that no forbidden fat, such as kidney suet, was sold;
(d) in controlling the slaughter of poultry so that there could be no question of stall-holders in Petticoat Lane dealing in poultry which had not had proper shechitah; and
(e) in requiring that butchers should not retain meat for more than seventy-two hours unless it had been kashered or poured over with cold water (begiessen).

Representatives of the Machzikei Hadath went to see Hermann Adler on several occasions. He, however, would not concede that there were grounds for serious objection to the kashrut administered by the London Board for Shechita. It has been suggested (by Dr. Homa) that Adler could have persuaded the lay leaders of the community that some laxity was prevalent, and he might have been able to effect some improvement. It is hard to explain his refusal to entertain the objections of the Machzikei Hadath, which in themselves were not unreasonable. But there were personal reasons as well as differences of background which made it difficult for the two sides to understand each other fully.

Incompatibility

With all his diplomacy, he could not avoid calling them “uncultivated and uncivilised” and they could not forget their distrust of a Chief Rabbinate and Bet Din in which they felt there to be “almost no-one of whom to ask any question in Jewish law”.

At first Adfer told them that “we should have no objection to grant licences to butchers of their own choice, they exercising the most rigorous supervision”. Not completely satisfied, the Machzikei Hadath then said they would also want their own shochtim acting under the supervision of their newly-appointed rabbi, Abraham Abba Werner. What they wanted was clearly an independent shechita. This both the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Shechita would not countenance. The Board feared it would interfere with unified communal provision of and control over kashrut. The Chief Rabbi feared that these “uncultivated and uncivilised” people might not observe sufficient precautions to prevent the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stepping in and having shechita banned altogether. A similar problem faced the Chief Rabbi in relation to certain religious marriage ceremonies, or Shtille Chuppahs, which the Machzikei Hadath carried out without complying with the statutory requirements of civil registration laid down by law in 1836.

Separate Shechita

The Board of Shechita discussed the matter at length without reaching agreement about possible action. The Machzikei Hadath promptly inaugurated their own shechita. Shochetim were appointed by them and they had to comply with stringent conditions, working under the supervision of Rabbi Werner. The butchers likewise were subject to strict control, and a poultry yard was opened and all poultry was marked with a special seal of kashrut.

Samuel Montagu, at a meeting of the Board of the Federation of Synagogues, castigated this separatism as “intolerable”; the leaders of the United Synagogue regarded it as a tiresome nuisance which would best be removed by being ignored. The Jewish World said that Dr. Adler’s assurances that official kashrut was above reproach were “not quite convincing” and added, “Until these questions are satisfactorily answered it is useless to condemn the Chevrath Machzikei Hadath as an attempt at schism”. To expect the Chief Rabbi publicly to capitulate was too much; but without great publicity certain steps were now taken by the Chief Rabbi and Shechita Board to tighten up on each of the main points which had originally been the subject of the demands of the Machzikei Hadath. The latter took note of the changed situation but were adamant that too many loopholes still remained, and proceeded with their opposition shechita.

The next move came from the Chief Rabbi and Bet Din, who sought to quell the revolt in a simple, unambiguous way, by issuing a public statement saying that Machzikei Hadath meat was treifa and forbidden to be eaten by Jews. The Machzikei Hadath were unmoved. Now Dr. Adler resorted to a bold stroke. On 20 November, 1891, he wrote to one of the most renowned rabbis of the time, the Kovner Rav, Isaac Elchanan Spektor, and five days later there came a reply approving of Dr. Adler’s ban on Machzikei Hadath meat.

Rabbis At Odds — Settlement

The Machzikei Hadath, in the belief that the Rav of Kovno could not have been given all the facts of the case, now entered into its own correspondence with great rabbinical figures, and gained the support of Salomon Breuer of Frankfort-am-Main and others. Before long each side had collected a sheaf of letters in its support from eminent continental rabbis, and handbills and posters containing accusations and counter-accusations were circulating throughout the East End. Pickets were posted outside the butcher shops of the Machzikei Hadath and it was even alleged that a customer of one of the shops was refused a charity grant. The Jewish World called it all a scandal and said that the religious authorities had no right to crush opposition by force.

After a few months the battle quietened down a little. Little by little the Machzikei Hadath accumulated further rabbinical support, notably from the saintly Chafetz Chayyim, who however anxiously advised the Chevra to continue to seek peace with the Chief Rabbi. And at the same time they developed from a pressure-group into a pulsating Orthodox congregation and by 1898 became the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. But the dispute dragged on for fourteen years until both parties were in financial difficulties and there were threats to shechita from outside, due to a libel case involving a provincial community and also a report from an Admiralty Committee which was unfavourable toward shechita. In 1904 the two parties came together for negotiations. The result was that the Machzikei Hadath retained religious control over their own shechita but administrative control passed to the Board of Shechita, and religious officials appointed by the congregation became subject to the Chief Rabbi’s approval. And at the same time the congregation joined the Federation of Synagogues.

Clash of Cultures

This kind of controversy, with its overtones of civil war, could obviously not have been a pleasant thing for either side. But it was not just a battle over meat and butcher shops. It was the clash of an old community and a group of new immigrants; it was the clash of two cultures which the Jewish Chronicle described in 1899: “In the East End there is encamped a large and ever increasing foreign element; to the North and West has gravitated a great section of English-born Jews, separated from their East End brethren by a gulf which widens rather than contracts.”

Dr Adler did, one must add, find an increasingly cordial reception in the East End as the years went on. The Rev. B. Schewzik was certainly exaggerating when he said, at a Memorial Service for the Chief Rabbi held in 1911 at the Great Assembly Hall, Mile End, that Dr. Adler was to the East End Jews “a father, a leader, a benefactor… Dr Adler had worked 16 hours a day of which he devoted fifteen to the interests of the foreign Jews.” But the Jewish Chronicle was not exaggerating when it wrote, at the same period, of “the markedly reverent reception accorded the departed ‘Rav’ when visiting a place of worship that had in the past been somewhat of a thorn in the body ecclesiastic”… shades of the Machzikei Hadath! And in a message left for the community after his death Dr Adler advised them to appoint a new Chief Rabbi as soon as possible, saying: “He must be a strong personality, strong in piety and learning, one who will be equally acceptable to the East and the West, the native and the immigrant.”

Liturgical Reform — Revolt from the Centre

The second controversy of the period, now that we have dealt with the revolt from the right, is the revolt from the centre, that is, from the established community. Here there was no sign of what Zangwill called “rabid zealots, yearning for the piety of the good old times”. Here there was a complacent respectability, and insofar as religious movements could arouse their passion, they were not deep movements concerned with religious observance or with matters of theology, but instead superficial, involving mainly rationalisation of the synagogue service and ritual procedure.

Throughout the last part of Nathan Marcus Adler’s long term of office he had been urged to sanction minor alterations to the synagogue services, and in fact in earlier years he had taken the initiative in order to iron out the chaotic lack of organisation in many synagogues. In 1879 a conference of representatives of many congregations formulated a comprehensive list of requests for the omission or amendment of some of the poetry and prose of the prayer-book, and for the reconsideration of parts of synagogue ritual which were felt to be out of keeping with contemporary taste. To some of these proposals the Chief Rabbi acceded, though with the utmost reluctance.

But the movement for change was only temporarily defeated. It gained decided momentum towards the end of the 1880s through a combination of circumstances. Jews were moving into West Hampstead and Kilburn in large numbers, and these included not only many of the intelligentsia of the community but also a number of those who had been campaigning for ritual reform. In 1889 a group of them met to plan for the establishment of a synagogue in the Hampstead district — not an ordinary synagogue, but one which would be sui generis, combining the best features of Orthodox and Reform, Ashkenazi and Sefardi alike.

Chief Rabbi’s Stand

They worked out a scheme of services and placed it before the Chief Rabbi. Apart from a few minor points, he would not countenance any of the more far-reaching proposals. He would not allow the repetition of the Amidot to be omitted on Sabbaths, nor the abolition of the duchaning ceremony. The reading of the ten commandments was not to be part of the Sabbath service. No English prayers were to be permitted except the Prayer for the Royal Family and certain supplementary Bible readings. He would also clearly have rejected the introduction of the organ and the alteration of the traditional scheme of Torah readings, which the committee had discussed and decided not to press at the moment.

The consequence of the Chief Rabbi’s reply was that half the Hampstead committee, those with more radical views, severed their association with the embryo congregation. In an attempt at saving the situation, a delegation from Hampstead went to see the Chief Rabbi’s son, Hermann Adler, who was by now exercising most of the functions of the office on his father’s behalf. Hermann Adler could not explicitly contradict his father’s ruling, but conceded that the repetition of the Amidah was not utterly vital to Judaism, and that once the synagogue was actually established it was in the power of the committee to make alterations in the way in which the priestly blessing was recited, subject to an appeal from any member of the congregation to the Chief Rabbi.

Modified Minchah

But this did not bring the dissentients back. Most of them were in fact already busily engaged in organising a more radical movement in the district, a Sabbath afternoon service “so framed as to meet the wants of those who are not en rapport with the present form of public worship.” The plan was for a modified Mincha service in Hebrew, together with a scriptural reading, a psalm and a prayer in English. The preacher would be the Rev. Morris Joseph, or on occasion Israel Abrahams, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore or Oswald John Simon. There would be an organ and a mixed choir.

Morris Joseph had previously been the minister at North London and in Liverpool but had returned to London for a long rest after a breakdown in health and was now living in St. John’s Wood. He was the most frequent preacher at the Sabbath afternoon services, which continued for three or four years in local town halls. He later published a selection of these addresses; most were non-controversial but in a few cases he expressed views which did not completely accord with Orthodox teaching. In particular he attacked prayers for the restoration of sacrifices, saying that “the sooner such outworn, misused elements are eliminated from religion, the better it will be for religion”.

In 1892 these views, and Joseph’s insistence on his freedom to express them, became the ground for another bitter controversy. The proposed Hampstead Synagogue was by this stage almost ready to open its doors. The synagogue committee approached Morris Joseph and invited him to become their first minister. Joseph agreed; but the Chief Rabbi refused to sanction the proposed appointment on the basis that Joseph’s religious views were “not in accord with the teachings of traditional Judaism”.

The Storm Breaks

The Jewish press now resounded with the noise of the supporters of each side. Joseph himself wrote that the Chief Rabbi’s decision meant that “the religious needs of a progressive congregation are to be ignored and its spiritual life starved, in obedience to a rigid system”. Solomon Schechter, Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge, wrote bitterly that the Chief Rabbi was employing the wrong criterion. If adherence to Orthodox doctrine were to be the test of a minister, then some of the greatest names in Jewish scholarship and some of the greatest Jewish preachers on the Continent would never be allowed to enter a United Synagogue pulpit. An appeal to doctrine “will only breed cant and hypocrisy”, Schechter argued: “If a test there be, and it is most desirable that there should be one, let it be a thorough knowledge of the Bible and of the Talmud as well as the Poskim, a thorough acquaintance with Jewish history and a sound secular education.”

But the Chief Rabbi’s ruling stood, and Morris Joseph withdrew his acceptance of the position at Hampstead. His Sabbath afternoon services kept going, but when in 1893 he became senior minister of the Reform Synagogue they lapsed. It deserves to be added that Hampstead did not maintain the peak of its early radicalism, but these controversies left their mark in the independent spirit that has characterised the congregation ever since.

A last remark on the subject of the Hampstead controversies. Hermann Adler called a conference of ministers in 1892 to consider requests for further modification of the synagogue ritual, and the opportunity was taken by Hampstead and some other congregations to put proposals before the conference. Some were eventually accepted, and in particular explicit permission was now given for the non-repetition of the Musaf Amidah with its reference to the restoration of the Temple sacrifices. Morris Joseph was not alone in the wish to discontinue these prayers. What then was his offence? Did it perhaps lie in the embarrassment caused by his clear, unambiguous public expression of views to which others gave only tacit assent? The answer must be left to the verdict of history.

Revolt from the Left

Let me now finally turn to the third great religious controversy of the decade. We have considered a revolt from the right on matters of religious observance, and one from the centre on matters of ritual and synagogue service. The third controversy, which centred round the views of Claude Goldsmid Montefiore, was a theological dispute going far beyond both of the others.

First some background about Claude Montefiore. Zangwill, whose clever pen was at its pointed best at this time, called him “an angel — with a revenue”. Montefiore was born in London in 1858, the year of Jewish political emancipation in England. His father was a Montefiore, his mother a Goldsmid — both from wealthy, distinguished Anglo-Jewish aristocratic families. At Balliol College, Oxford, he studied classics and came under the sway of Benjamin Jowett; in Berlin, he learnt rabbinics and came under the spell of Solomon Schechter whom he persuaded to come to England as his private tutor. Well endowed financially, Montefiore was now able to devote his life to scholarship and philanthropy.

Claude Montefiore’s Theology

Benjamin Jowett invited him to deliver the Hibbert Lectures for 1892. Montefiore took as his subject “The Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews”. His theme was that religions did not drop down, ready-made, from Heaven but were the result of long processes of development and evolution. Their elements did not derive from one pure source, but were drawn from the the usages and ways of a variety of peoples. Judaism, in common with other religions, did not descend in toto from Mount Sinai, but was influenced by the ancient tribes in whose midst the Israelites lived and it developed gradually throughout the Biblical period.

In 1892 these views scandalised many in Anglo-Jewry, but throughout the decade, in addresses at the Hampstead Sabbath afternoon services and elsewhere, and in his writings, he continued to develop his “progressive” philosophy. It was soon apparent that this approach, taken to its logical conclusion, would have far-reaching effects on traditional Jewish wor¬ship and observance.

In 1901 the Hon. Lily Montagu wrote an article on “The Spiritual Possibilities of Judaism Today” in the Jewish Quarterly Review, edited by Montefiore and Israel Abrahams; the latter soon afterwards succeeded Schechter at Cambridge. Lily Montagu’s intention was not specifically to propagate a new theology but to win back for Judaism those who were drifting away from it.

Incipient Liberal Judaism

As an outcome of this article, a small group was set up, with Montefiore’s encouragement and assistance, to consider ways of putting the ideas of Miss Montagu, which in turn owed much to Montefiore’s own teaching, into effect. Special services, both for children and adults, were planned, and at first the idea was that these would be supplementary to, and would not compete with, the existing synagogue services. There was some support, but the movement was not taken too seriously. Among those who associated themselves with it were three United Synagogue ministers — AA Green of Hampstead, Simeon Singer of the New West End, and JF Stern of East London.

The tolerant amusement with which the group was received was short-lived. A manifesto, a statement of principles, was produced, which made it obvious that this was not simply one more tiresome attempt at toying with the externalities of synagogue worship, but a challenge to the very basis on which the traditional synagogue was founded. The literal interpretation of the Bible was rejected: as Montefiore put it, “The Bible contains the highest truth, but not every word of the Bible is true.” The scriptural account of the giving of the Ten Commandments was denied. It was claimed that the Law of Moses was of less moment than the ethics of the Prophets. Judaism had to become less tribalisticand more universalistic, and should not hesitate to re-examine and revise its attitude towards Christianity and other faiths.

The group assumed the name “Jewish Religious Union” and approached the Chief Rabbi for permission to use United Synagogue premises for its services. Hermann Adler refused to entertain the request, explaining his attitude in a famous sermon called “The Old Paths”. He and other influential leaders of the Orthodox community also expressed disapproval of the continued participation of Orthodox ministers in the Union’s services, and before long Green, followed by Singer and Stern, withdrew their support.

The Jewish Religious Union asked the Reform Synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street if their services could be held there. The Berkeley Street authorities agreed if nine conditions, e.g. separation of the sexes, the key prayers in Hebrew, etc., were accepted. To this the JRU could not promise to conform.

The movement now embarked upon an independent path, under the leadership of Montefiore, Abrahams and Miss Montagu, and developed into the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. This caused deep disquiet to Montefiore’s former tutor, Solomon Schechter. The views of the two had gradually diverged so widely that it has been suggested that Schechter’s distress at the formation of the Liberal movement was one of the factors responsible for his decision to leave England and accept the post of President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. “For what the whole thing means”, said Schechter of the new movement, “is not liberal Judaism, but liberal Christianity.”

‘A Judaism Fit For Westerners’

Montefiore, one need hardly state, assessed his movement very differently. In his book The Old Testament and Afler he wrote: “Liberal Judaism has nothing to fear… Liberal Judaism has taken up again, on distinctly Jewish lines, the teachings of the Prophets. It has, we may truly say, put Prophets and Law in a new position and relation to each other. It has religiously emancipated women, and in this respect, as in some other respects, it has become a religion suited to, and fitted for, the western world. It has attempted to denationalise Judaism and to universalise it. It has fashioned or adopted new ideas of much moment and significance concerning revelation and inspiration, as well as new ideas concerning authority and freedom. It has boldly and openly faced the new conclusions of history and criticism, and sought to find new adjustments to them. It has attempted to fashion a Judaism which can look Science in the face without flinching, which is independent of the dates and authorships of the Biblical books and of the miracles recorded in them. It has sought to free Judaism from obsolete priestly conceptions…”

This then was the revolt of the left. Once the 1890s were over, Anglo-Jewry was no longer a single, middle-of-the-road community. From right, left and centre came challenges to the authority and strength of the established ecclesiastical order. It was not Hermann Adler’s fault that he could not prevent challenges arising: nor was it simply that new, unforeseen issues of these kinds caught unawares a Chief Rabbi whom Cecil Roth has called “a typical product of the placid Victorian era in Western Europe”. The fact that such controversies could rage indicates that by the close of the nineteenth century the firm centralised policy dubbed by its detractors “Adlerism”, was already out of date, and it was with understanding insight of these events that monolithic policy gave way in the next generation of the Chief Rabbinate to the famous concept of the umbrella under which could shelter all who rendered substantial loyalty to the tradition of Judaism.