Anglo-jewry’s Festival Celebration: Britain Was Not First Country to Emancipate Jews but Was First C

When, sixty years ago, the United Synagogue came into existence, it was hailed in responsible quarters, as the most important event in Anglo-Jewry since the resettlement. That was a correct estimate, the Chief Rabbi, Dr. J. H. Hertz, said speaking to-night at the joint festival dinner held here in celebration of the 75th. anniversary of Jews’ College, the 70th. anniversary of the United Synagogue and the 60th. anniversary of the Jewish Religious Education Board.

Mr. Lionel de Rothschild, the President of the United Synagogue, was in the chair. Mr. J. H. Thomas, the Secretary of State for the Dominions, was the principal speaker, and other speakers were the Chief Rabbi of France, Dr. Israel Levi, Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, Vice-President of the United Synagogue, Sir Francis Montefiore, the President of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, and Mr. S. Japhet, the President of Jews’ College.

The coming of the United Synagogue has indeed changed the whole current of Anglo-Jewish history, the Chief Rabbi declared.

As to Jewish Religious Education, the Chief Rabbi went on, anthropologists tell us that the child is the key to the understanding of the race; and conversely, that one can never fully understand a child except through the race from which it is sprung; and that we can never bring out what is best in a child, unless its development is planned along the ethnic lines of those whose blood flows in its veins.

Jews’ College, he pursued, fulfilled an absolutely vital function in British Jewry. In the modern world, a religion was rightly judged by its guides, its teachers and interpreters. There was also a patriotic reason why it should receive the support of every British Jew. Britain was not the first country to emancipate the Jew; but it was not so generally known that Britain was the first country that emancipated Jewish learning. It was in a British University – the University of Cambridge – that for the first time, a half-century ago, full and fair recognition was given to Rabbinic studies. In time, other Universities on both sides of the Atlantic followed the splendid example of Cambridge. But it was Britain that led the way in this act of justice, broadmindedness, and true humanist culture.

THE FESTIVAL SERVICE

Earlier in the day a festival service was held at the Great Synagogue, attended by the Lord Mayor of London and the Sheriffs in their regalia. The congregation included the Naham Dr. Woses Gaster, Lord Swaythling, Sir Leonard L. Cohen, the President of the Ica, Sir Robert Waley-Cohen, Mr. Norman Bentwich, Mr. Elkan N. Adler, Sir Edward Stern, Major Isidore Salmon, M. P., Sir Albert Levy, Mr. Otto M. Schiff, Mr. Ernst Schiff, Rabbi Dr. Rattuck, and Mr. Nahum Sokolov.

The Ark was opened by Mr. Lionel de Rothschild, President of the United Synagogue and Warden of the Great Synagogue, and by the Chief Rabbi of France, and the Chief Rabbi recited the prayer for the Royal Family. The El Mole Rachamim was then recited for the founders and departed leaders of Jews College, the Jewish Religious Education Board and the United Synagogue.

One of the individual congregations incorporated in the United Synagogue sixty years ago – the Great Synagogue – goes back to the seventeenth century, the Chief Rabbi said in his sermon. For nearly two centuries, the ecclesiastical heads of this Synagogue largely controlled Jewish religious life not only in Great Britain, but throughout the Empire and beyond. Its lay administrators were among the principal champions in the fight for civic emancipation; they were in the forefront of every movement for the advancement and organisation of the Anglo-Jewish Community; and, at the same time, they had taken their full share in every civic and humanitarian endeavour. The five synagogues that in 1870 became incorporated, largely through the influence of Sir Anthony Rothschild, as “The United Synagogue” had new grown to 34 Constituent and Associate Synagogues. By its example and influence, the United Synagogue had made Progressive Conservatism, i.e. advance without loss of traditional Jewish value and without estrangement from the collective consciousness of the House of Israel – the Anglo-Jewish position in theology.

They also commemorated that day, he continued, the establishment, seventy-five years ago, of Jews’ College, the theological Seminary of British Jewry. Its founders were Sir Moses Montefiore, the foremost Jewish world figure of that day, and the erudite and universally revered Chief Rabbi Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler. It had sent forth generations of earnest and gifted ministers for the congregations both at home and overseas.

The Jewish Religious Education Board was originally known as the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. In arming thousands and thousands of the children of the poor against the moral dangers of life, by teaching them reverence and unquestioned obedience to higher things, and thus emancipating them from the tyranny of low instincts and sordid ambitions, the Board had been rendering a service to the community that could not be over-estimated. It was to the stubborn and unbreakable loyalty of the poor and lowly that Israel’s victorious survival was largely due.

The story of these three institutions, the Chief Rabbi concluded, disclosed a record of Jewish enthusiasm and Jewish achievement of which any Jewry could well be proud. It told of men of light and leading who faced and conquered the spiritual perils of prosperity; who fearlessly championed the cause of oppressed Israel everywhere, and deemed the name Israelite the highest of human titles.

MR. THOMAS’ PRESENCE SHOWS PRESENT GOVERNMENT EQUALLY WITH PREVIOUS GOVERNMENTS DESIRES TO MAINTAIN GREAT TRADITION OF FREEDOM FOR RELIGIOUS THOUGHT: JEWISH PEOPLE NEVER LOST THEIR SOUL MR. THOMAS SAYS: THROUGH TRIALS TRIBULATIONS AND HARDSHIPS THEY HELD ON: BALFOUR DECLARATION WAS MESSAGE TO WORLD THAT AT LAST JEWRY HAD PREVAILED: IN LABOUR GOVERNMENT’S RE-DECLARATION OF BALFOUR DECLARATION HE SAW JEWS GIVEN OPPORTUNITY TO SHOW GENIUS OF THEIR PEOPLE ABLE TO LIVE SIDE BY SIDE WITH OTHERS.

The presence of Mr. J. H. Thomas with them that night, r. Lionel de Rothachild said in presiding at the festival dinner that followed, showed that the present Government equally with other Governments that went before it, desired to maintain the great tradition of freedom for religious thought.

It had been intended, Mr. de Rothschild explained, to start an appeal which was to help in building the Jewish Communal Centre and rebuilding Jews’ College within it, so that the College should have a home, but they had decided that the present moment was not opportune. He hoped that sooner or later they would receive the £60,000 to £100,000 that was necessary for the building. As the Communal Centre of Jewish life in the British Empire a building costing that money was nothing. They hoped that when they had the new building they would not only be able to train ministers from England but to obtain students from overseas. £1,860 had been given as an amount already subscribed for the Memorial to the late Mrs. Hertz, if a hall in the new Centre was named after her.

The Jewish people, Mr. Thomas said in his speech, through their trials, tribulations and hardships had never lost their soul. When the history of the nations is written, he went on, when the history of the peoples is truly recorded, no grander page will be written than that which describes a people hunted, hounded, mistrusted and illtreated, but keeping clearly in mind with a great faith: “What does it profit a man that he gain the whole world and lose his soul”. Although treated as outcasts, he said, they held on to a faith, a hope and a belief that says “hold fast and you will triumph. There will come a day when our cause will be recognised. There will come a time when like all other people we will be able to call somewhere our home. There will come an opportunity when we will not apologise for our faith or be ashamed of our language”.

With that inspiration and with that guiding force they worked, they argued, and they broke down prejudice.

There was a time, Mr. Thomas continued, when a message went forth to the world that at last Jewry had triumphed. At last they could teach their own language, their own faith, and be able to pass on their own ideal. There was not a Jew in the world who was not proud and happy when that Declaration came. Let me, he said, as one who was in the first Labour Government, and who was proud and privileged to be associated in the re-declaration of what was called the Balfour Declaration, say that I never believed and I don’t believe to-day that there was any Jew who accepted that message merely as an indication that he was going to supplant anyone else. He did not intend and never intended to supersede anyone else. That would have been foreign to his beliefs. It would have betrayed all the sacrifices that had been made in the past. The Jew said that here was an opportunity to show the genius of his people to the world, that he could live side by side with others and make contributions to all that was best in the world. Looking at the history of Palestine to-day, Mr. Thomas concluded, who can deny that that hope had been justified?