Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces: Captains of the Souls of Men 1892-2021 1803710187, 9781803710181

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Rabbi Reuben Livingstone, Senior Jewish Chaplain to Her Majesty's Armed Forces

This accomplished and moving study brings the work of Jewish chaplains in the two world wars to life as, often working in challenging and difficult situations, they comforted the bereaved, helped sustain morale and provided a precious link with home for Jewish soldiers. A fascinating history of Jewish chaplaincy in the British armed forces. Heather Jones, Professor of Modern and Contemporary European History, UCL

Michael Snape, Michael Ramsey Professor of Anglican Studies, Durham University. In this ground-breaking work based upon years of research in Victorian archives, military records and family papers, Dr Jonathan Lewis reveals the colourful and untold story of the British Jewish ministry at war, as well as of its military service in peacetime. Jonathan Lewis studied Law at Cambridge and practised as a Solicitor in the City of London and as a Judge. He has a doctorate in Jewish history from UCL. He and his wife have two sons and two granddaughters. Front cover: An open air service of the 40th Battalion of the Jewish Legion in Egypt or Palestine between 1918 and 1921, courtesy of the Adrian Andrusier Image Collection. Back cover: Some of the Jewish Chaplains of the Second World War, probably at their conference in Britain in April 1941.

Jonathan Lewis

As the first full-length history of Jewish chaplaincy in Britain's armed forces, this is a landmark study in the historiography of Judaism in Great Britain and in the growing literature on British religion and the two World Wars. Insightful, humane, and comprehensively researched, it is indispensable reading for the student of British religion and twentieth-century conflict.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

In this august work with its exhaustive underpinning research Dr Jonathan Lewis has done a great service to the history of military chaplaincy in the UK, and also to the Jewish story, in wartime and peace, of this unique rabbinical specialism and calling.

VA L L E N T I N E M I T C H E L L Catalyst House 720 Centennial Court Centennial Park Elstree, WD6 3SY, UK VALLENTINE MITCHELL

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814 N. Franklin Street Chicago IL 60610 USA

VALLENTINE MITCHELL

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces Captains of the Souls of Men 1892–2021

Jonathan Lewis

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JEWISH CHAPLAINCY IN THE BRITISH ARMED FORCES

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JEWISH CHAPLAINCY IN THE BRITISH ARMED FORCES CAPTAINS OF THE SOULS OF MEN 1892 - 2021

JONATHAN M. LEWIS

VALLENTINE MITCHELL LONDON • CHICAGO

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First published in 2022 by Vallentine Mitchell Catalyst House, 720 Centennial Court, Centennial Park, Elstree WD6 3SY, UK

814 N. Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610 USA

www.vmbooks.com Copyright © 2022 Jonathan M. Lewis Jonathan M. Lewis has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: An entry can be found on request

ISBN 978 1 80371 018 1 (Cloth) ISBN 978 1 80371 019 8 (Ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data: An entry can be found on request

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, reading or otherwise, without the prior permission of Vallentine Mitchell & Co. Ltd.

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CONTENTS In Appreciation Foreword by the Senior Jewish Chaplain to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces

vii x

1. An Introduction

1

2. The Nature of Jewish Chaplaincy

6

3. The Genesis of British Jewish Chaplaincy: 1892–1914

14

4. The First World War: Britain and Europe

39

5. The First World War: Australian Chaplaincy and Institutional Control of Chaplaincy

100

6. The First World War: Individual Chaplains

127

7. The First World War: the Middle East

179

8. The Interwar Period

205

9. The Second World War: Britain

218

10. The Second World War: the Middle East, North Africa and Italy

256

11. The Second World War: Asia

304

12. The Second World War: Europe

332

13. National Service and Voluntary Service

366

14. In Conclusion

388

Bibliography

390

Acknowledgements

407

Abbreviations

409

Index

412

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

In the Second World War an Australian Presbyterian Army Chaplain, Rev. Hugh Cunningham, came eventually to be treated with a certain deference by his Japanese captors, and was made to wear an armband inscribed with green Japanese characters. He survived, and when he returned home the inscription was translated for him as “Captain of the Souls of Men”.1 ........ On 21 September 1940 as Britain faced the threat of invasion Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz delivered a sermon at his Hampstead Synagogue in London. He described his experiences of the previous twelve months as an army chaplain: I must confess that it was with a feeling of doubt and unreality that I gave up my civilian vocation and embarked on an army career. …….. But today I stand here after 12 months of this work and I say that I have not yet recovered from the spiritual thrill, the quivering excitement of my religious experiences. In permanent synagogue and church hut, in barrack room and Naafi hut, in tent and in billets I have brought the word of God to British soldiers of the Jewish Faith, and their souls have gone forth to meet mine. I have found more satisfaction in a simple talk to these soldiers than in an inspired oration to a thousand civilians, because I have felt the spirit of God in our midst. I say not cynically that it is the fear of death which makes them come to pray. There is no fear of death in the army, not because we are all brave, but because, as you will find if the raids continue, when death becomes familiar it loses its terrors. Why then do they respond? Because their hearts are open to receive, their ears to hear, the word of God. A new life commences for them and in that life there is a place for Him.2 1. 2.

Michael Gladwin, Captains of the Soul. A history of Australian Army chaplains (Newport, NSW, Australia: Big Sky Publishing, 2013), p. xiii. LMA, ACC/2712/13/45: From L. Rabinowitz, C.F, writing from c/o A.C.G, Scottish Command, Edinburgh, to Mr P. Burgen, United Synagogue.

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IN APPRECIATION In Harrow-on-the-Hill in north-west London – famous for Harrow School, whose pupils included Winston Churchill – there existed in the 1930s a small Jewish community. In the Second World War they lost ten of their members serving in the Army and the RAF. One of them was Captain Simmon Latutin. Serving in Mogadishu in the former Italian Somaliland in 1944 he took it upon himself to seek out Jewish servicemen in the locality and to entertain them on Friday nights. His wife described this as “keeping the Jewish boys together in some way by inviting them to his house”. In this book I have described initiatives like this as unofficial chaplaincy. In December 1944 a store of captured Italian ammunition in a stone hut exploded. Standing nearby, with his leg in plaster from medical treatment and still walking with a stick, Simmon rushed into the hut to try to save the three people who were inside from the inferno. He was posthumously awarded the George Cross.1 The Harrow Jewish community fashioned a memorial board for its ten lost members and mounted it on the wall of its little synagogue. Then in February 1946 the sad news came through that the minister of the community, Reverend Solly Hooker, who was serving as a Jewish Chaplain in India, had died. His name was squeezed in at the foot of the board. Demography determines the growth of Jewish communities, and their decline. In Preston Road, two stations along the line from Harrow-on-the-Hill in Poet Laureate John Betjeman’s Metroland, a community began to develop in the 1950s. So did another, two stations along in the other direction, in Pinner. The Harrow community shrank, and eventually in the 1960s it closed. The memorial board and the community’s records and artefacts were entrusted to members for safe keeping and were forgotten. In 2012 the Harrow memorial board and other artefacts were discovered in the deepest recesses of an understairs cupboard in Pinner Synagogue. A group of us, one a professional genealogist, embarked upon a search for the families of the eleven servicemen of Harrow and found them all. On Remembrance Sunday of 2012 we held a memorial meeting at Pinner Synagogue and paid tribute to the Jewish servicemen of Harrow in the presence of their families. The Harrow memorial board has been restored to a place of honour there.

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

At that time I was planning for my retirement and considering possible topics for a doctorate within the field of British Jewish history. As I learned more about Rev. Hooker, Jewish chaplaincy began to take shape in my mind. The human interest won out over other topics. It proved to be a good decision. One of Rev. Hooker’s two daughters, who lives in New Zealand, told me that somewhere the family had her father’s copy of the Second World War group photo of Jewish chaplains which is on the back cover to this book, and that he had recorded the names of everybody in the photo. They could not find it, but would look for it. One day, much later, after several emails essentially saying “still looking”, came an email announcing “we found it!”. I discovered that material on Jewish chaplaincy was in no single location, but everywhere and anywhere. There was not even a complete list of – on my count – the fifty-six Jewish chaplains of the Second World War. Documents in one archive would lead to documents in another. There were some eureka moments. In large Victorian leather-bound volumes held together by a strap I read the manuscript records, some in copperplate script and some in the innovation of typewriting, of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue, which oversaw Jewish chaplaincy from its inception in 1892. I discovered the records of the communal Jewish War Services Committee which was established in the First World War. Tantalisingly the records of the corresponding committee of the Second World War had been retrieved by the depositors from an archive and not returned and I could not trace them. Amongst the papers of Lance-Corporal Cyril Wernick, who had survived Japanese captivity but died after liberation of malnutrition, I found an original hand-coloured invitation, its colours still bright, to the remarkable dedication of a synagogue in a prisoner of war camp in 1944. I listened to sound recordings of the experiences of the first two Jewish chaplains, Revs. Leslie Hardman and Isaac Levy, to enter the liberated Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp in April 1945. Knowing my way around the Jewish community helped. From the First World War I discovered the diary and letters home of Rev. David Hirsch and the record of what Rev. John Geffen had told his family of his experiences. From the Second World War I had access to the diaries and letters home of Rev. Isaac Levy, who served in North Africa and then in Europe, and the letters home from North Africa of Rev. Harry Bornstein. I met with eight post-war National Servicemen with memories of chaplaincy and the widow of another. I was privileged to meet with two chaplains of the Second World War. Captain Dr David Arkush was a prisoner of the Japanese for three and a half years. As well as being a dental officer he assumed the role of a chaplain to the Jewish prisoners. When I met with him he was 98 and in perfect clarity of mind; he passed away at the age of 100. Rev. Avraham Greenbaum served for eighteen months as a civilian chaplain at Bergen Belsen and married a survivor. When I met with him at his home in Jerusalem he was 92, in poor health but also in

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In Appreciation

ix

perfect clarity of mind. He passed away twelve days later, and at his family’s request I sent my notes for his shiva – prayers of mourning. I am deeply appreciative of the invaluable help over a long period of my volunteer research assistant, Corinne White. As well as much archival research in London, she visited a military museum called Bet Hagedudim – the House of the Brigades – in the moshav of Avichail near Netanya in Israel. Waiting at the reception desk there, she chanced to overhear one side of a telephone conversation in English about Jewish chaplaincy. Corinne introduced herself to the staff member whom she had heard speaking and explained. The conversation proved to have been with the family in Australia of Rev. Leib Falk, who served for three years from 1918 as the regimental chaplain with the Jewish Legion in Egypt and Palestine. Thus I discovered his family, who have shared much material with me. The cover photograph of this book is of the Jewish Legion. Throughout my research I have been privileged to enjoy the enthusiastic support and provision of material by very many people and institutions. Listed in the Acknowledgements, they include serving and retired chaplains, members of the families of chaplains of both world wars and of national service, people with memories of chaplains and people knowledgeable about chaplaincy. The experience and expertise of the members of an interest group on military chaplaincy have been of inestimable assistance to me. Foremost amongst them are former Army chaplain Revd Dr Peter Howson, who has reviewed my work from a military perspective, and Mr David Blake, who as the curator of the Museum of Army Chaplaincy, with its invaluable records of the service of the chaplains of the Second World War, has been a constant support. I have been outstandingly guided by my doctoral supervisor in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, Professor Michael Berkowitz. The assistance of the team at Vallentine Mitchell has been invaluable. I am immeasurably indebted to them all. Commenced in 2014, my doctoral research and this book became in 2016 the preoccupation of my ostensible retirement from a legal and judicial career. I could not have carried them through without my wife of fifty years, Rosemary, whose devotion to facilitating them has been without limit. I stand in Rosemary’s debt, and in that of my ever-supportive family. This book is dedicated to them and to the blessed memory of my dear parents René and Harold Lewis. Jonathan Lewis London, 2022 1.

Martin Sugarman, Fighting Back. British Jewry’s Military Contribution in the Second World War (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010), pp. 325-346.

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FOREWORD BY THE SENIOR JEWISH CHAPLAIN TO HER MAJESTY’S ARMED FORCES Dr Jonathan Lewis has done a great service to the history of military chaplaincy in the UK – and also to the Jewish story, in wartime and peace, of this unique rabbinical specialism and calling. The wider Jewish community knows little of this vital dimension of chaplaincy owing to the bulk of lived experience having been during the two World Wars and now finally slipping away from memory. But for this august work and its exhaustive underpinning research – often from disparate and difficult to access source material – the vital dramatis personae from 1892 until the aftermath of the Second World War, who truly pioneered this ministry, would largely have been forgotten. Although Jewish military chaplaincy has continued in the decades since that War, its smaller scale and limited numbers of serving chaplains and personnel have added to its obscurity. During my tenure over the past ten years it has played a vital pastoral, religious and educational role in peace and wartime, but one often profoundly hidden from the Jewish mainstream – if indeed known and understood within the Armed Forces. This lack of awareness does a disservice to the community and to those Jews who continue to serve and sacrifice for Queen and Country in the British Armed Forces; whose numbers may be small, but whose impact is significant – and who remain largely unsung in the wider Jewish community. The Israel Defence Forces, which rightly often capture and hold the Jewish imagination, tend to overshadow our own significant loyal service past and present in the UK.  The ongoing relevance of Jewish military chaplaincy owes much to those earlier pioneers discussed meticulously in this book who were heroic in their courageous trailblazing. By their personal commitment and sacrifice they shaped, against the odds, an effective and highly regarded ministry within a minority faith community – often in the midst of high-tempo wartime conditions. Recently, the importance of this endeavour has been highlighted by events in Ukraine which has involved numbers of Jews – both in military and civilian roles. The UK has supported that sub-community in part by providing faith-specific guidance and material under the aegis of our chaplaincy.

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Foreword

xi

For modern practitioners of this front-line military religious role, the knowledge of the pivotal early history will be both inspirational and of particular practical utility. The challenges for recognition and provision continue despite the generous availability of kosher food, prayer rooms and religious support. In an age of diversity, given our history and success (and distinct Army cap-badge!), we are often viewed erroneously as part of the faith ‘establishment’ – when in truth we still need to advocate robustly for our religious requirements in an increasingly diversified and even underfunded space. Thus, we can take succour from the example of predecessor chaplains who effectively created their ministry ex-nihilo by defying gravity and convention. Those military chaplains were heroic even as their successors remain steadfast in their commitment to serving Jews and Judaism. As we go forward with a new generation of military chaplains and leaders, we can do no better than to hold tightly to the inspirational and instructional example of our illustrious forebears. Thank you Dr Lewis for creating, through your groundbreaking volume, this very possibility and by that honouring the Torah and Jewish tradition. Rabbi Reuben Livingstone CF LLM Senior Jewish Chaplain to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces  Horse Guards, Whitehall, London

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1 AN INTRODUCTION In Britain in the nineteenth century soldiers1 were listed in British Army records as Church of England, Nonconformists or “Other Religions”. During that century Roman Catholicism came to be recognised and Roman Catholic chaplains were appointed.2 In 1886 Queen’s Regulations specified for the first time that Judaism was recognised for the purposes of public worship in the armed forces and that Jews were permitted to be classified separately as a distinct religious body. Religious ministration to Jews was initiated in 1892 by Rev. Francis Lyon Cohen (1862-1934), with weekly Jewish services at Aldershot Camp and from 1893 annual Chanukah services in London. During the AngloBoer War of 1899-1902 Cohen conducted from London a large correspondence with serving Jewish soldiers and their families. Cohen remained a civilian. In 1905 he left for Australia, and his role was assumed by Rev. Michael Adler (1868-1944), who with the creation of a new Territorial Force became in 1909 the first commissioned British Jewish chaplain. Jewish chaplaincy established itself within the longstanding chaplaincy structure of the Army Chaplains’ Department (from 1919 the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department) of the British Army and operated within that structure during both world wars. That Department, whose cap badge is based upon a Cross, created and retains to this day a cap badge for Jews incorporating the Jewish emblem of a Magen David or Shield of David.

e Jewish chaplaincy cap badge. It seems to have changed slightly over time; this version was adopted in 1940. Courtesy of e National Archives.

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2

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

In August 1914 Michael Adler remained the sole Jewish chaplain in the British Army. He pressed to serve on the western front and did so for most of the First World War. He innovated and to an extent directed the development of Jewish chaplaincy in the field. By the end of the war there were the nineteen British and, under effective British chaplaincy direction, three Australian Jewish chaplains, as well as one locally engaged Rabbi in Alexandria, between them serving at the Dardanelles, in Egypt and Palestine and on the Western, Italian and Salonika fronts. None was killed, although one was injured and hospitalised. An evangelist for the British and Imperial Jewish contribution to the war effort, Adler recorded and memorialised it in vast detail in the monumental British Jewry Book of Honour, in which he included an account of his own experiences as a Jewish chaplain on the western front.3 British Jewish chaplaincy in the field was essentially Adler’s creation. In his obituary in 1944 his successor as Senior Jewish Chaplain on the western front, Rev. Arthur Barnett, described Adler’s achievement as a creatio ex nihilo.4 During the interwar period there were continuing arrangements for Jewish chaplaincy. Formed in 1918, the Royal Air Force had little historical tradition and a more egalitarian culture than the other services. Many Jews volunteered for it in the Second World War, and Jewish chaplaincy was incorporated into its chaplaincy structure. During that war fifty-six (according to the author’s researches) Jewish chaplains, including twelve locally recruited within the British mandate of Palestine, served in the British Army and the Royal Air Force in numerous theatres around the world. Three Jewish chaplains died whilst serving, although none through enemy action: Rev. Wolf Morein in hospital in Britain in September 1941, Rev. Harry Bornstein in Tripoli in North Africa in November 1943 and Rev. Solly Hooker in hospital in India in February 1946. Another, Rev. Isaac Levy (1910-2005), was briefly captured in North Africa by the Germans but escaped. Proud of its strong historical tradition as the Senior Service, the Royal Navy was traditionally intolerant of religious dissent and limited entry, at least officially, to those of British nationality whose parents had been born in Britain. In the nineteenth century “Any Jew who found himself in the Royal Navy hid his religion; if revealed, it would be treated with contempt, suspicion, aversion.”5 The Royal Navy has always had fewer Jews than the other services; of some fifty thousand British Jews who served in the First World War, for example, only about one thousand served in the Royal Navy.6 Royal Navy chaplaincy was always the preserve of the Church of England, and until at least the start of the First World War no commissions were given to clergy from other churches.7 In 1944 the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean sought a Jewish chaplain, but without success.8 To this day the Royal Navy has had no Jewish chaplain. Large numbers of Jews served in both world wars and performed national service after the Second World War. There were Army and RAF chaplains in

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An Introduction

3

the days of national service and then in the present era of voluntary service. Currently there are estimated to be several hundred Jews in the British armed forces, those who identify participating in the Armed Forces Jewish Community, and there are several Jewish chaplains. Within the armed forces ministers of religion commissioned as chaplains are referred to as “chaplain” or “padre”. For Jews the normative term is “Jewish chaplain”. The work of commissioned chaplains has long been supplemented by a network of civilian “officiating clergymen” throughout the UK appointed by the authorities to minister to troops of their denomination who are stationed in their local area. During both world wars there were Jewish civilian officiating clergymen. The terminology of chaplaincy can be confusing as, especially during the Second World War, civilian ministers were often referred to as “officiating chaplains”. Francis Cohen, although a civilian, seems to have been described on his appointment in 1892 as the Jewish Officiating Chaplain to the Forces and Chaplain to the Volunteer Force and from 1903 as an Officiating Jewish Chaplain and simply as a Jewish Chaplain. Francis Cohen, Michael Adler and many of the Jewish chaplains who were to follow them were self-motivated men who, with scant guidance, intuited and created the reality of Jewish chaplaincy. The First World War model of British field chaplaincy, with commissioned military chaplains accompanying the troops everywhere and sharing in their privations, became and has remained the paradigm for Jewish chaplaincy within the English-speaking world of Britain, the Commonwealth and the United States.9 Jews entered Britain in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066, were expelled from the realm by Edward I in 1290 and were effectively readmitted with the support of Oliver Cromwell in the late 1650s. They came, initially in small numbers, from many lands in western and eastern Europe in several waves of immigration, of which the largest were from Czarist Russia and eastern Europe between 1882 and 1914 and from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939. Their integration into British life was gradual and undramatic. This is the basic thesis of leading contemporary historians of British Jewry, Todd Endelman and David Feldman. Endelman speaks of “the lack of surface drama in English Jewish history – trials, riots, violence, ideological clashes, cultural ferment.” “At any point between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, it was easier to be a Jew in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.”10 Feldman’s work “attempts to take a broad view of the history of the Jewish presence in England. It strives to draw together the institutional, social and economic history of the Jews with the political, religious and social history of England between 1840-1914. Its intention is to bring Jewish history and English history to bear on each other in illuminating exchanges.”11 The development of Jewish military service and of Jewish military chaplaincy in Britain accords with the Endelman thesis of gradualism and the Feldman thesis of integrated analysis.

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4

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

This study considers the source of the initiative for the creation and development of Jewish chaplaincy in the British military. It finds that at various key points the initiative derived mainly, although not invariably, from the British Jewish community through its representative bodies and indeed from individuals, with the military and governmental authorities in a generally supportive but essentially reactive role. The study also addresses what might be termed unofficial chaplaincy. In both World Wars there were never remotely enough Jewish chaplains for numerous and vast theatres of war, nor from the small British Jewish community could there ever have been. So soldiers who were conscious of their Judaism were largely left to their own spiritual resources, with sometimes one Jewish soldier facilitating spiritual support and religious observance for others as well as for himself. Whilst there is no measure for evaluating it qualitatively or quantitively alongside official chaplaincy by commissioned chaplains who were ordained ministers of religion, such unofficial chaplaincy was frequently the only form which was available and was of real significance. Samuel Butler (1835-1902) memorably said that “God cannot alter the past, though historians can.” However hyperbolic, this is a salutary caution that those who attempt to write history, especially of a subject previously unresearched, bear a heavy responsibility: to research the past with diligence and rigour, to record it with accuracy and balance and to analyse it with judgement and justice. To these challenging goals the author has mindfully aspired.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

To avoid endless repetition the term “soldiers” is used to include all those in any of the numerous branches of the armed forces and the term “servicemen” to include servicewomen. Michael Snape, The Royal Army Chaplains’ Department 1796-1953 Clergy under Fire (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 66-7, 359-60. Michael Adler (ed.), British Jewry Book of Honour (London: Caxton, 1922) (henceforth “BJBH”), including pp. 33-58. Before this Adler published The Jews of the Empire and the Great War (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, for the Jewish War Services Committee, 1919). Jewish Historical Studies (formerly Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England) (“JHS”), vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 191-4 (Memorial Addresses in Honour of Past Presidents), The Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O, S.C.F, B.A. (1868-1944) by Rev. Arthur Barnett, H.C.F, B.A. Geoffrey L. Green, The Royal Navy and Anglo-Jewry 1740-1820. Traders and those who served (London: Geoffrey Green and The Self Publishing Association, 1989), p. 52, and England Expects …:British Jews under the white ensign from HMS Victory to the loss of HMS Hood in 1941 in JHS, vol.41 (2007), pp.63-97. One could “find oneself ” in the Royal Navy through being press-ganged. Green, Royal Navy, pp. 8, 52, 54. Peter Howson, Muddling Through, The Organisation of British Army Chaplaincy in World War One (Solihull, West Midlands: Helion & Company, 2013), pp. 69, 96. Vol. 3 of the Diaries of Rev. Isaac Levy (henceforth “LD3”; so also LD1, LD2, LD4), p. 104.

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An Introduction

9.

5

See Chaplain Major Philip A Kramer, The Proximity Principle: Army Chaplains in the Fighting Line in Doctrine and History (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2015). 10. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656-2000 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 2, 9, 257. 11. David Feldman, Englishmen and Jews. Social Relations and Political Culture 1840-1914 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 17; also pp. 1-17, 387-8.

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2 THE NATURE OF JEWISH CHAPLAINCY Rabbis and Reverends Rabbis are teachers, not priests. Some happen to be members of the priestly caste of the Cohanim (sing. Cohen), whose status is hereditary through the male line, but that is unrelated to their Rabbinical role. Communal Rabbis habitually perform functions of religious communal leadership, but essentially through the prism of teaching, not of priesthood. By contrast with Christianity and thus Christian chaplaincy there are no functions reserved to Rabbis which other religiously observant adult (meaning from the age of thirteen) male Jews cannot perform. Thus any religiously observant adult male Jew may conduct a religious service, a wedding and a funeral.1 In wartime this fact greatly facilitated unofficial chaplaincy. It is a singular feature of the history of the British Jewish community that it contained very few Rabbis. In 18552 Jews’ College, now known as the London School of Jewish Studies, was established in order to train students for the British Jewish ministry. Predominantly English born, they graduated not as Rabbis but with the Anglican and non-Jewish term “Reverend”, attired in Anglican clerical collars. The grant of Rabbinic status – “Semicha” – by another Rabbi confers the right and the duty to give binding decisions on matters of Jewish Law, which governs all aspects of the life of the religiously observant Jew. In the face of the predominantly lax standards of religious observance which prevailed within British Jewry, successive Chief Rabbis sought in the nineteenth century to institutionalise Orthodox religious practice in Britain by retaining to themselves exclusive Rabbinic status and authority and to avoid the risk of potential Rabbinic challenge by denying that status to other ministers. For their own self-respect some ministers, believed to have included Rev. Michael Adler3, obtained Rabbinic status secretly, and some, such as Rev. David Freedman from Australia, took the opportunity whilst serving abroad as chaplains to obtain it from a foreign Rabbi. Only in the 1960s were ministers of the United Synagogue permitted to become Rabbis. Thus, unlike some of the chaplains locally recruited in Palestine by the British authorities during the North African campaign of the Second World

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e Nature of Jewish Chaplaincy

7

War and unlike the chaplains of the United States, the vast majority of the chaplains of Britain and the Empire were not Rabbis but “Reverends”.4 Some unordained religious leaders, such as Sonnie Bloch in the Second World War and Moshe Davis after it, adopted the term “Reverend” as a title convenient and expected within the armed forces. This did not affect the performance of their chaplaincy, and few Jewish servicemen understood or would have had any concern about this nuance.

e Denominational Nature of Jewish Chaplaincy Whilst Orthodoxy is itself a broad spectrum, a significant part of the British Jewish community adhered, and still does, to a tradition of religious observance which may be described as centrist or, in Jonathan Sacks’ phrase, “inclusive Orthodoxy”.5 In both world wars the vast majority of the Jewish ministers of Britain and the Empire who became chaplains adhered to this tradition. This explains the respect in an age of deference of some of the chaplains, mindful of their dependence upon the Orthodox authorities for their post-war careers, to rulings of the Chief Rabbi and of the Beth Din – the religious court – which operates under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi and of the United Synagogue. In Britain that Beth Din is more authoritative than its counterparts in some other countries. The chaplains of Palestine and the United States had no comparable point of authority. Institutionally Jewish military chaplaincy also adhered to the Orthodox tradition. It was controlled from the outset by the centrist Orthodox body of British Jewry, the United Synagogue, of which most of the chaplains were ministers, through its Visitation Committee. During the First World War a number of “authorised” pocket sized prayer and similar books were compiled for Jewish soldiers under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi and based upon the Orthodox tradition. The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth (formerly of the British Empire) has itself always been “authorised”, and so remains, today with an edition for Jewish Members of H. M. Forces augmented by some prayers specifically appropriate to them. The position is different in the United States, where Orthodoxy is only one among a number of denominational movements, the majority of Jewish chaplains were ordained in other traditions and there was and is no single official denominational basis of chaplaincy. With only one significant exception, which was the important matter of the selection of a new Senior Jewish Chaplain when the incumbent became ill in 1943, British Jewish chaplaincy has given rise to remarkably little inter-denominational friction between Orthodoxy and the other streams of Judaism which are today broadly encapsulated as the Progressive Movement. Since 1945 all but one (who served from 1951 until 1954) of the ministers who have served as chaplains have been

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Orthodox, so issues concerning chaplaincy by non-Orthodox ministers have hardly arisen. Nor therefore have those of female chaplains, as the Rabbinic ordination of women occurs in the Progressive Movement but not in Orthodoxy.

Jewish Life From its foundational text, the Torah – the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses –Judaism has developed over the millennia a vast corpus of learning, sufficient for a person to immerse himself for his whole life, as some do. For many Jews, however, including the vast majority in Britain in the twentieth century, Judaism was neither a theology nor a source of study but an inherited ethno-religious identity and lifestyle which blended the observance of the synagogue with the rituals of the home. So when Jewish military chaplaincy engaged with that observance and those rituals it could create a powerful spiritual and emotional connection with home and loved ones far away. It also facilitated the opportunity for Jewish servicemen, often religiously isolated with few if any other Jews in their unit and sometimes encountering prejudice, to recreate something of the intimacy of the synagogue and of their home, to engage emotionally if remotely with their families, to afford and derive mutual moral support from fellow Jews and if necessary to appropriately inter and mourn fallen Jewish comrades. Jewish Law requires Jews to adhere to a diet which is kosher. Kashrut is the system for preparing and consuming foods which are acceptable for kosher consumption. It is observed by different people in any number of gradations. At the least it is the avoidance of prohibited foods such as bacon, pork, ham and shellfish and of consuming meat and milk dishes in the same meal. At the most it requires one to eat only in a kosher home or restaurant. On active military service the observance of kashrut is inevitably challenging. In both world wars some Jews did not make the attempt, some abstained from prohibited meats whilst accepting other meat which could not be kosher because it had not been prepared in a kosher manner and some existed on a diet of vegetables, bread and biscuits. In the Second World War fortnightly kosher food packages were sometimes available for observant Jews. Today sophisticated kosher ration packs are available. Chaplains did their best to help soldiers who wished to do so to observe kashrut, and to do so themselves. Generally the military authorities went far beyond the call of duty to accommodate Jewish soldiers. In so doing, they reflected the culture of attempting to accommodate the dietary requirements of non-Christian soldiers which had been established by the military authorities in South Asia in the years after the Indian Mutiny. When a Jewish chaplain was visiting an officers’ mess, the menu of the day for everybody might

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be something acceptable to him to spare any embarrassment. In conditions of malnutrition in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, the British cookhouse maintained a separate set of utensils for Captain David Arkush, found acceptable foodstuffs for him and somehow produced suitable foods to enable the Jewish soldiers to hold a Pesach Seder service. There are a number of key rituals of the Jewish week and year. The Jewish day begins in the evening, and the Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday evening with a service. In the nature of military life, it was often easier for Jewish personnel to meet for a short service on a Friday evening than for a longer one on a Saturday morning. If this was able to be followed by some approximation to a traditional Sabbath evening meal, the experience could be therapeutic. Reflecting the Biblical narrative of the seventh phase of creation6, various forms of actual and Rabbinically interpreted creative activity, including speaking on a telephone and travelling in a vehicle, are forbidden on the Sabbath. Sabbath restrictions do however give place to the saving of life, which to some extent facilitated for observant Jews the inevitable difficulties of Sabbath observance on active military service. The Jewish year begins with the High Holydays. The first is the two-day festival of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, which with its synagogue services normally falls in September. Eight days later is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is a day of synagogue services beginning with the service in the evening known by the name of the prayer with which it begins, Kol Nidrei, meaning “all of our vows”. Jews fast on Yom Kippur, and many who may perhaps observe little else regard eating on that day as the final taboo. Thus many soldiers attempted whilst on active service to observe the Fast, which could conflict with the imperative to maintain their strength in the interests of the military efficacy of the unit. “On Rosh Hashanah the divine decree is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: …. [in the coming year] who shall live and who shall die, who at the measure of man’s days and who before it; who by fire and who by water, who by the sword …”. To soldiers on active service this section of the High Holyday liturgy and the haunting notes of the shofar – a ram’s horn sounded during the services – were profoundly poignant. Rosh Hashanah initiates a cycle of twelve days of Jewish festivals spread over a period of twenty-three days. The First World War began some seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah. For Jewish soldiers of all of the armies, even if they were quite detached from Jewish observance, mobilisation from August 1914 profoundly disrupted the rhythms of Jewish life.7 The Second World War began in Britain eleven days before Rosh Hashanah of 1939, with mobilisation for some in the ensuing weeks and similar disruption to Jewish life. The eight-day festival of Chanukah, normally falling in December, commemorates amongst other events the victory of the Jewish fighting force,

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the Maccabees, over the Seleucid Greeks in Palestine in the mid-second century BCE. It is not difficult to celebrate ritually, essentially with the lighting of one candle on the first night, two on the second and so on until the eighth, accompanied by the singing of the traditional hymn which is called Mo’at Tsur. It has long had a military connotation, which led Rev. Francis Cohen to link the annual military service which he instituted in 1893 to Chanukah. More challenging to observe ritually is the eight-day festival of Passover or Pesach, which normally falls over March and April. It commemorates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, traditionally dated to 1230 BCE; departing in haste they did not have time for the dough in their bread to leaven, and so ate unleavened bread.8 Thus for the whole of the festival Jews, including many who perhaps observe little else, eat only unleavened bread, known as matzo, and abjure any foodstuff, known as chametz, which contains yeast. The festival begins with a narration in the home of the story of the Exodus, set out in a text called the Haggadah – which means the story –with a meal at the mid-point. This is known as the Seder service, “seder” meaning sequence or order. It takes place on the first two evenings of the festival, focusses upon engaging the interest of the children and so for many represents a powerful childhood memory. Pesach represented a major challenge for Jewish chaplains. Preparations had to begin months ahead to try to obtain sufficient supplies of matzo, which in wartime conditions was often extremely difficult, and to hold Seder services, which involved securing an appropriate venue, arranging for the preparation of a meal, obtaining copies of the Haggadah and numerous other requisites. It also involved securing the attendance of sometimes far-flung Jewish soldiers serving in units which were sometimes constantly mobile. Pesach was, for example, a major preoccupation of Rev. Isaac Levy in North Africa and the Middle East during the Second World War, as he sought to obtain supplies from bakeries and suppliers in Palestine. There are innumerable accounts, poignant to Jews, of improvised Seder services, held in the First World War in trenches on the western front and, ironically, in the Egyptian desert and in the Second World War in the Burmese jungle with matzo air-dropped for Jewish soldiers and in Japanese prisoner of war camps. Jewish chaplains devoted limitless effort to attempting to arrange services: for the Sabbath on Friday evenings even if it was not possible on Saturday mornings; for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, at least for Kol Nidrei; Passover Seder services; and during Chanukah brief gatherings of servicemen around dusk to light the candles and to sing Mo’at Tsur. If this study may appear to devote disproportionate attention to the holding of services on those festivals, it indicates their centrality within Jewish chaplaincy for soldiers who, in a more institutionally religious age than that of today, could not engage in the religious services held in their unit on Sundays and Christian festivals and who might

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otherwise rarely, if ever, be able to access any source of Jewish spiritual sustenance.

Characteristics of Jewish Chaplaincy As the first form of non-Christian chaplaincy, Jewish chaplaincy presented its own challenges. Like all forms of military chaplaincy, Jewish chaplaincy involves every form of religious and spiritual support: counselling and supporting soldiers, corresponding with them and their families, comforting the afflicted, visiting the sick and injured, conducting funerals and consecrating places of worship and cemeteries. In the same way as their Christian counterparts, Jewish chaplains could have, even in normally inevitably short encounters, a profound influence upon the spiritual and moral welfare of a soldier. Jewish soldiers were frequently isolated from other Jews, so that, perhaps more than was sometimes possible within the larger denominational ministries, Jewish chaplaincy focussed upon the personal welfare of a Jewish soldier and forging a personal relationship with him. Jewish soldiers were sometimes few enough in number to become known to their chaplains individually, and sometimes already knew them through their peacetime Jewish communities. Conversely Jewish soldiers who wished to see a chaplain were more likely than their Christian colleagues to lack a visit from one and thus more likely to feel neglected. Jewish chaplaincy also comprised holding services wherever and whenever possible, facilitating to whatever degree possible the observance of the Sabbath and festivals and trying to create opportunities for Jewish soldiers to spend time together for mutual moral support among fellow Jews with whom they could empathise about their families and their Jewish identity. Whilst prayer can be individual and offered at any time, Jewish communal prayers, recited three times a day and more on Sabbaths and festivals, require a quorum or “minyan” of ten adult male Jews, which chaplains often struggled to assemble. This is particularly important to enable somebody to fulfil the obligation, which many take very seriously, to recite the traditional prayer, known as the Kaddish, on the anniversary of the death of a relative, known as a yahrzeit. Unlike their Christian colleagues, who were often attached to a unit or to a hospital or medical unit and ministered to its members or patients, Jewish chaplains have almost always had first to find Jewish soldiers. In both world wars Jewish soldiers were often scattered as sole individuals or in small groups throughout numerous far- flung units in inaccessible locations. To reach them chaplains had sometimes to travel vast distances. In the Second World War they were more often provided with transport. In the First they had to hop on and off lorries, to cycle, those who could to ride horses and otherwise to walk. Rev. Louis Morris observed in 1918 that the Prophet Jeremiah, who was active

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in the four decades before the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE and afterwards, had as an army chaplain experienced the same problem. Especially in the Second World War, complaints by Jewish soldiers that they rarely if ever saw a Jewish chaplain were frequent. There were never remotely enough Jewish chaplains in either world war, nor could there ever have been. The British Jewish community, of perhaps some 250,000–300,000 people in 1914 and some 350,000 in 1939, was too small and had too few ministers to be able to produce enough chaplains, especially for the global reach of British forces in the Second World War. For a lone Jewish soldier or two, perhaps in an isolated location and whose unit was always liable to be relocated without warning, the distances which a chaplain had sometimes to travel to reach him made a chaplaincy visit a rarity.9 Hence the significance of unofficial chaplaincy. The issue of antisemitism within the military is beyond the scope of this study. Historian Tony Kushner has written that levels of antisemitism within the British armed forces in the Second World War were similar to those in wider society. By way of example there are memoirs of Jews initially encountering generalised or personalised antisemitism but coming to be accepted, sometimes by an antisemitic sergeant who grew to respect the individual Jewish soldier in his unit; one soldier was disbelieved when he said that he was Jewish because his fellow soldiers thought that there were no Jews in the army, and another was so overwhelmed by the number of antisemites in his unit that he had to ask to be released.10 The author would only summarise his research by saying that he has encountered in both world wars some individual instances of antisemitism within the military and a great deal of evidence, throughout the pages of this book, of support and facilitation at both official and individual levels for Jewish religious practice and Jewish chaplaincy.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

Statements in this book about Jewish Law and practice reflect denominational Orthodoxy and may not be entirely true of other Jewish denominational movements. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, p. 119; Feldman, Englishmen and Jews, p. 61. Derek Anderson, All the A’s – A history of the Abrahams, Adler, Ansbacher and Asher families in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, p. 3. The graduates of Jews’ College are listed in Taylor, Defenders of the Faith. The History of Jews’ College and the London School of Jewish Studies (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2016) at pp. 299-301. Jonathan Sacks, Community of Faith (London: Peter Halban, 1995), pp. 109-110. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, pp. 12-13, 119-120, 267-9. Bereshit/Genesis, ch. 2, vv. 1-3. Shemot/Exodus, ch. 20, vv. 8-11. Devarim/ Deuteronomy, ch. 5, vv. 12-15. Michael Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914-1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 16.

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8. 9.

13

Shemot/Exodus. Roman Catholic soldiers also complained of religious neglect: see, e.g., James Hagerty, No Ordinary Shepherds, Catholic Chaplains to the British Forces in the Second World War (Leominster: Gracewing, 2020), pp. 186-7. 10. Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice. Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989), pp. 123-6.

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3 THE GENESIS OF BRITISH JEWISH CHAPLAINCY: 1892 – 1914

In Antiquity In Judaism the military chaplain is not a modern concept. Journeying in the desert after the exodus from Egypt the Israelites were obliged to create an army in order to defend themselves against attackers. The armies of Biblical Israel were accompanied by the Cohen le’Milchamah – the priest for war: When you go to battle against your enemies, and see horses, war chariots and an army larger than yours, do not be afraid of them, since God your Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, is with you. When you approach the place of battle, the priest shall step forward and speak to the people. He shall say to them, “Listen, Israel, today you are about to wage war against your enemies. Do not be faint-hearted, do not be afraid, do not panic, and do not break ranks before them. God your Lord is the One who is going with you. He will fight for you against your enemies, and He will deliver you.” 1

Background to Jews in the British Military In Britain the Test Act of 1673 required any person holding any commission, civil or military, under the Crown, to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. Subsequent Test and Corporation Acts required grantees of a commission to make a declaration “upon the true faith of a Christian”. Over the centuries some significant Jewish names occur amongst those of naval and army officers, some from Jewish military dynasties, clearly making such accommodation with their ancestral religion as they might.2 The Test Acts did not apply to private soldiers, but no religion other than Christianity was recognised within the military. A number of Jewish soldiers are recorded, some of whom contrived to retain their identity as Jews. The Test and Corporation Acts were repealed in 1829, when it became legally possible

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for Jews to obtain a commission in the military (below the ranks of rear admiral and major general) without making a declaration “upon the true faith of a Christian”, and some did so. There were Jews in the navy and the army during the Napoleonic Wars and in the nineteenth century. Many were far removed from Judaism, including boys from orphanages and industrial training schools. There was no nineteenth century cadre of professional Jewish officers in Britain such as existed in France, whom Derek Penslar3 describes as uniformed career civil servants. Soldiers were listed in British Army records as Church of England, Nonconformists or “Other Religions”. Colonel Albert Goldsmid, a colourful figure who discovered only in later life that he was Jewish, worked when he became a member of the headquarters staff for the recognition of Judaism in the official list of denominations which could be recorded on attestation. So, at the other end of the military hierarchy, did Private Woolf Cohen of the Fifth Lancers, who with a group of other Jewish soldiers insisted upon reporting themselves as Jews. In 1886 Queen’s Regulations were changed to specify for the first time that Judaism was recognised for the purposes of public worship in the armed forces and that Jews were permitted to be classified separately as a distinct religious body.4 Only nineteen men chose to give their religion as Jewish, whilst many more did not do so. Although Christian chaplaincy was by then well established in the army, there was no facility for the appointment of Jewish Chaplains.5 In 1883 and again in 1884 the London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews (later to become the Board of Deputies of British Jews) secured from the War Office dispensation for Jewish soldiers to observe the week of Passover and the other Jewish Holy Days.6

e Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue A year after its creation in 1870, the United Synagogue formed in May 1871 a Visitation Committee for “the visitation and religious supervision of Jewish inmates of Workhouses, Asylums, Hospitals, Reformatories, Prisons, etc.” 7 The “visitors” were largely the Jewish ministers in London who were then performing visitation work. Over time the work of the Visitation Committee came to embrace schools, infirmaries, convalescent homes, reformatories, boys’ training schools, industrial schools for boys and for girls, parochial district schools, discharged prisoners and lunatics as well as the military. A concept of noblesse oblige, sometimes patronising to contemporary sensitivities, underpins the work of the Committee. The emphasis throughout is upon the Jewish community being seen to be able and willing to undertake the responsibilities of good citizenship. It is the background against which the initiative for Jewish chaplaincy derived from the Jewish community.

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Rev. Francis Lyon Cohen (14 November 1862 - 26 April 1934) Hard lessons learned by the British Army during the Crimean War led to the establishment in 1855 of a vast army camp with adequate training facilities near the village of Aldershot. The needs of its military population could not be met by the village, so the realisation of this business opportunity soon attracted a few Jewish families “of the humbler class” such as shopkeepers, who came to constitute a Jewish community. One of its eight founder members in 1858 was Woolf Henry Cohen, whose family had come from a village near Vilnius in Lithuania and who is variously described as a dealer, marine store dealer, rag merchant, pawnbroker, general merchant and tobacco manufacturer. Another was the Phillips family, who originated from Warsaw and had moved from Portsmouth to Aldershot in 1855. Woolf Cohen was to marry Harriett Phillips. In time the community established a synagogue and a burial ground. At its height, in 1896, it numbered, including women and children but excluding soldiers, fifty-four people.8 Working class Jews of Dutch and German origin joined the army in sufficient numbers that, with the encouragement of the small Jewish community in Aldershot and the initiative of the Board of Deputies, commanding officers in Aldershot were instructed in divisional orders “to facilitate the attendance of men of this persuasion” at Saturday and Holy Day services at the local civilian synagogue. In the 1880s arrangements came to be made for Jewish soldiers to have leave on the Jewish Holy Days, and the few Jewish families living in Aldershot probably took an interest in the welfare of those who attended.9 Attendance at services was voluntary, and so sometimes “reached the vanishing point” until in 1891 the commanding officer of the 1st Scottish Rifles (the Cameronians) stationed at Aldershot, Colonel Laye, made it compulsory, as it was for men of other denominations: There being in this smart regiment several promising young Jews, they are paraded every Sabbath morning and marched, under the command of a non-commissioned officer, to the local services, which are held at the residence of the senior Jewish townsman. Thus a ‘synagogue parade’, in the honourable military sense of the expression, has at length become an institution in England, as well as in some continental countries.10 Woolf and Harriett Cohen had a son, Francis Lyon. Born on 14 November 1862 and later described as “one of the oldest natives in the town of Aldershot”11, Francis Lyon Cohen developed from an impressionable early age a fascination for matters military. In 1910 he was to write: I had noticed, in my boyhood near Aldershot Camp, that Jewish soldiers and sailors almost invariably concealed their origin because of outside

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prejudices, and still more through our 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.12 From the creation of the Aldershot camp, churches had been built there for the troops with accommodation for their incumbent chaplains. Prevalent alcoholism and the lack of suitable amenities for soldiers led religious and other groups to establish soldiers’ institutes and homes in garrison towns in the 1880s.13 It was against this background that Jewish chaplaincy developed in Aldershot. Emerging from Jews’ College as a Reverend, Cohen served as the minister in South Hackney in London from 1883 to 1885 and then for a year in Dublin before in 1886 taking up an appointment at the Borough New Synagogue in South London.14 He occasionally visited his family in Aldershot, and no doubt discovered Jewish soldiers.15 Lord Rothschild was the President of the United Synagogue from 1879 until his death in 1915 and was regarded as the lay head of the Jewish community in Britain.16 He gave Cohen a letter of introduction to General Sir Evelyn Wood, commanding the military camp at Aldershot, and in 1892 the War Office approved Cohen’s appointment as a civilian Jewish Officiating Chaplain to the Forces and Chaplain to the Volunteer Force.17 Writing in the Jewish Chronicle some twelve years later in 1904 on Jews in the Army and Militia, Cohen summarised the history of Jews in the army up to the formal recognition of Judaism as a denomination in 1886. He then narrated how and, reflecting the contemporary Jewish imperative of demonstrating communal civic duty, why he had initiated military chaplaincy: Then their numbers began soon to increase. In 1892 my attention was drawn to the, as yet, unprecedented fact that there were six Jews serving in one regiment, that shall be nameless, then stationed in Aldershot. These young fellows, however, had no one of their own community to look to as a guide, philosopher and friend, and, unhappily, made a lamentable exhibition of themselves, for, one after the other, they deserted. This disgraceful conduct suggested to me the desirability of endeavouring to establish touch between Jewish soldiers and their community, with a view to the augmentation of their self-respect, and the consequent credit accruing to the communal name. The public-spirit of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue and of the handful of Jews then living in Aldershot enabled an arrangement of a modest character to be inaugurated; and the great augmentation alike in the number of Jews serving and in their reputation as soldiers, which very soon ensued, and has since continued, has well repaid any efforts put

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forth with these aims. The first official communication I received, in October 1892, informed me of my recognition as Jewish Officiating Chaplain; the second came from the officer commanding the regiment previously alluded to, who wrote that “at present I have no men of your religion in my battalion – the last one I had deserted about a week ago.” I accordingly began with a military congregation of one solitary Jewish regular, by an interesting coincidence one who had come from the neighbourhood of my own synagogue in London, and had been known to me as a pupil in the local Jewish Schools. In the passage of years I have since then come into contact with several hundreds, soldiers in every way a credit to their uniform.18 Assisted by the small local Jewish community amongst whom he had grown up, Cohen sought out and befriended Jewish soldiers. He wrote a letter to the Jewish Chronicle asking relatives of serving Jewish soldiers to contact him with information about them so that those soldiers could, as far as possible, share in the arrangements for their religious welfare.19 Starting on Sunday 30 October 1892, he conducted services for them which were scheduled in Divisional Orders for the same time as the army Church of England service. These Sunday services continued until 1899, when it became possible to move them to Saturdays. With his own Borough community to minister to, Cohen arranged for senior students from Jews’ College in London, where he had studied, to go to Aldershot for the Sabbath to conduct services. In September 1892 Rev. Simeon Singer replied in the Jewish Chronicle to an enquiry whether young men could observe Judaism if they joined the army. Explaining that Judaism enjoins patriotism as well as for other religious reasons, he encouraged them to do so.20 This triggered a spirited correspondence over several months, with letters from ministers, serving and retired soldiers and anonymous correspondents.21 Cohen urged the Jewish community to be worthily represented in the armed forces. He noted that there were presently only nineteen declared Jewish soldiers and maybe as many again undeclared, whereas proportionate to the population of the UK there should be four hundred and twenty.22 Cohen realised that many of the Jewish soldiers preferred to “follow the big drum” by attending the general Church of England parades. One of the Christian Ritualist Guilds of the mid-Victorian period, the Guild of the Holy Standard, had been operating in Aldershot since 1873, and held an annual “festival service” at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which had become a fixture in the Guild calendar.23 So it may have been that, soon after his chaplaincy appointment, this event led Cohen towards the idea of an annual Chanukah Military Service in London for Jewish soldiers. Or the idea may have been that of Major William Schonfield, a career officer who commanded

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the 3/19th Battalion, London Regiment, joined the Reserve in 1911 and was recalled to service during the First World War. “The idea of holding annual Chanucah parades is due to him, and was conceived for the purpose of attracting the Jewish youth to the Colours”.24 In any event a lively correspondence in numerous issues of the Jewish Chronicle between July and December of 1893 on religious observance by Jewish soldiers led to the suggestion of a Chanukah service and to criticism by those who felt that religion should remain a private matter and not become a militarily institutionalised one. A Chanukah service was held on 10 December 1893 in Cohen’s own Borough Synagogue. It was for Jewish Volunteers, and almost one hundred attended. The volunteers paraded before entering the synagogue on a bugle call. Cohen conducted the service, and his wife acted as accompanist on the pianoforte. In his sermon Cohen referred to the weekly services which he had been holding for Jewish soldiers at Aldershot. Refreshments were served after the service.25 The Jewish Chronicle reported the event fully, referred to the difficulties and obstacles which Cohen had encountered including those raised by some Jewish volunteer officers, reproduced his sermon and in a long editorial applauded the event.26 Not all Jewish soldiers welcomed the gathering. When Cohen invited the senior Jewish officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis A. Lucas, who was the Supply and Transport Officer of the South London Volunteer Brigade, to command the parade that was to be held prior to the service, he declined on the ground that he had a strong objection to mixing up religion with military matters. This view did not however prevail, and the Chanukah service became institutionalised as an annual event.

Military and Naval Visitation The first engagement of the Visitation Committee with the military appears in the record of the Annual Conference of the Visitation Committee to review its work during 1892, which was held on Monday 13 February 1893 at the Central Synagogue Chambers in the West End of London. This was to become the synagogue of Rev. Michael Adler, who was present at this meeting and who was later to play the key role in Jewish military chaplaincy. Having been a visitor for the Visitation Committee for three years or more, Cohen must have decided to bring military visitation within the ambit of the Committee’s work. According to the record of the conference: The Rev. Francis L. Cohen spoke on the new branch of work he had undertaken in connection with looking after Jewish soldiers. He informed the meeting that instances of insults offered to some Jewish soldiers by their Christian comrades had been severely punished, and

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that the request made by a Jewish soldier for transfer to a select corps at Aldershot was at once granted by the Duke of Cambridge, although transfers generally took a considerable time and involved much trouble. A good impression had also been caused by arrangements made between Jewish and Christian soldiers for exchanges of duty on their respective Sabbaths. Mr Cohen acknowledged the ready sympathy and assistance his efforts had received from the few Jewish families residing at Aldershot.27 The topic of military chaplaincy was pursued at subsequent annual conferences of the Visitation Committee. Between 1894 and 1897 Cohen paid between twenty-five and forty visits a year to troops at Aldershot and conducted services. Over that period the number of avowed Jews in the Army increased from twelve to fifty-one.28 Through Cohen’s commitment the chaplaincy visitation at Aldershot had become established. An agreement was entered into on 8 November 1897 between the Visitation Committee and the Aldershot Hebrew Congregation recording arrangements for the temporary synagogue situated at No.1 Barrack Road in Aldershot and the Chaplain’s room within the building to be maintained and held available for service whenever required by the Visitation Committee or the Officiating Chaplain, for services to be held on festivals and for ground to be made available for the burial of any soldiers dying within a radius of ten miles of Aldershot. The Committee agreed to make an annual subsidy to the Aldershot congregation.29 It was in character that Cohen was also among the first people to moot the idea of the organisation which became the Jewish Lads’ Brigade. In April 1891 he wrote a letter to the Jewish Chronicle entitled But what about the Boys? calling for the creation of a Jewish youth group modelled on the Boys’ Brigade “to utilise drill and a quasi-military organisation”. “Call these boys boys, which they are, and ask them to sit up in a Sunday School, and no power on earth will make them do it; but put a five penny cap on them and call them soldiers, which they are not, and you can order them about till midnight. The genius who discovered this astounding and inexplicable psychological fact ought to rank with Sir Isaac Newton.”30 Cohen continued his advocacy of a quasi-military organisation for Jewish boys,31 until in 1895 the Jewish Lads’ Brigade was founded. Modelled on the Boys’ Brigade, its goal was famously expressed as being to “iron out the ghetto bend” in narrow-chested Jewish boys from the slums in order to transform them into straight-backed Englishmen. Cohen became the Brigade Staff Chaplain. During the years of the Anglo-Boer War the Jewish Lads’ Brigade came to assume a more military aspect, and many of those who had passed through it were to serve as officers in the First World War.32

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e Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 The Anglo-Boer War unleashed an outpouring of chauvinism, in which British Jews were caught up. At a time when barely two hundred Jews were serving in the army and the militia, many Jews volunteered to fight in South Africa. Estimates of the numbers of Jewish volunteers varied between something over one thousand and up to four thousand, and one hundred and fourteen Jewish soldiers lost their lives. These numbers were seen as a huge contribution and sacrifice by the Jewish community.33 Leading ministers spoke out in support of the war, and the Anglo-Jewish press covered it exhaustively. Jews fought on both sides in the war, although far more for the British than for the Boers, giving rise to the issue of their differing national allegiances which had already arisen in wars in Europe and was to become familiar in the First World War.34 Rabbi Dr Joseph Hertz, then ministering in Johannesburg and later to become the British Chief Rabbi, visited the front and conducted services. Rev. Lewis Phillips (17 September 1881–9 May 1977), who was born in Portsmouth, went to South Africa, serving for seventeen years as a minister in Port Elizabeth and then in Pretoria. He may have served as a chaplain during the Anglo-Boer War in the Roberts Heights area. He returned to Britain, where he may have served as chaplain to the garrison in Aldershot.35 In 1900 the Board of Deputies applied to the Admiralty to permit Jews to observe Sabbaths and Holy Days, and orders were given that as far as possible they should be given facilities for the practice of their religion.36 A Haggadah with a shortened form in English of the Passover Seder service was produced for Jewish soldiers serving in the Boer War. Thanksgiving services on the cessation of hostilities and for peace were held in synagogues on Wednesday 11 June 1902, which was the first day of the festival of Shavuot.37 The concept of Jewish Chaplains serving in the field (unless Rev. Lewis Phillips actually served in the Anglo-Boer War) was not to reach its time until the First World War. During the years of the Anglo-Boer War Francis Cohen assumed what Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz later termed an indefatigable chaplaincy responsibility for Jewish soldiers, compiling nominal rolls of them and keeping in contact by correspondence with them and with their relatives at home.38 This was the beginning of chaplaincy by correspondence, which was to become a significant aspect of Jewish chaplaincy in wartime.

1900 – 1906 Through the early 1900s the Visitation Committee continued to monitor chaplaincy. It arranged for Rev. Cohen to make weekly visits to the training ship Exmouth moored off Grays in Essex to instruct three Jewish trainees in Hebrew and religion and for Rev. Dr M. Berlin of Plymouth to do so for two

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Jewish trainees on the training ship Impregnable moored at Devonport. Francis Cohen and Michael Adler made numerous visits to Aldershot Camp and to various hospitals and infirmaries including the Aldershot Military Hospital and the Royal Marine Infirmary at Deal. A succession of senior students from Jews’ College including Reuben Tribich were accommodated by the Jewish community at Aldershot over the Sabbath and conducted services, although the numbers of soldiers attending services were small. The Chaplain’s Room in the temporary synagogue was intended to promote a wholesome feeling of brotherhood among the Jewish soldiers at Aldershot, with a “friendly gathering” every Saturday evening with refreshments and the Jewish newspapers. Cohen visited Aldershot on Sundays when his duties within his own community in Borough allowed.39 Rev. Reuben Tribich served as the minister of the Reading Congregation from 1902 to 1903 and as the Sometime Assistant Chaplain of the British Army at Aldershot.40 In 1900 the Visitation Committee and the Board of Deputies, itself pressurised by Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler for having decided to request leave for only the first and not the second days of festivals nor for Sabbaths, approached the Navy for leave for Jewish sailors. Alderman Emanuel of Portsmouth reported to the Board that “he believed that there was a considerable number of Jews in the Navy, but in the majority of cases they did not disclose the fact that they were Jews”. The Board’s letter said that since 1884 Jews in the Army had enjoyed certain privileges to observe Sabbaths and festivals, which were accordingly requested. The Admiralty replied that, whilst desirous of affording so far as practicable religious facilities, the nature and conditions of service on board H.M. Ships would render this impracticable.41 In its report in 1901 the Visitation Committee noted that: While on this point of Jewish lads leaving public institutions to don the King’s uniform, it is specially gratifying to mention that two boys entered the Army from the Netherton Reformatory during the year, one joining the 10th Battery Field Artillery as a Bombardier and the other enlisting as a private in the D Company of the Durham Light Infantry. In addition to the above instances, one of the boys from the Hayes Industrial School enlisted in the Royal Lancasters, 1st Battalion King’s Own, during the year, and the Visitation Committee have every reason to be proud of the result of their efforts to induce the poorer representatives of Jewish youth to enter the King’s service.42 One may observe that this says everything about the attitudes and aspirations of the established part of the Jewish community. During a period of unprecedented Jewish immigration about which it felt increasingly

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uncomfortable, it offered up “the poorer representatives of Jewish youth” as its tokens of loyalty, integration and good citizenship.43 An article by Francis Cohen in the Jewish Chronicle of 22 April 1904 reviewed the subject of Jews in the Army since 1854. Perhaps the first comprehensive survey of the subject, it listed the numbers of known or “avowed” Jews by military role and corps and explained that there were not yet enough Jews serving at any one station to necessitate the appointment of an Acting Chaplain to devote the whole of his time to them and to draw capitation pay accordingly.44 Cohen provided annual statistics for the Jewish Year Book of Jewish officers and men serving in every branch of the forces in Britain and in the Dominions and Colonies. He wrote that “It is notorious 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, which is favoured by fully 70 per cent of the men serving”. He estimated the numbers of Jews serving, including in Colonial Forces, as 1,740 in 1903/04 and 1,550 in 1904/05.45 In the 1903/04 edition of the Jewish Year Book Cohen was referred to as the Officiating Jewish Chaplain of the 1st Army Corps Command, so he may by then have received this official appointment. The 1904/05 edition stated that he was now also the Officiating Jewish Chaplain of the Aldershot Command. At some point he was also appointed the Jewish Chaplain to the Volunteer Force, which was in 1909 to form the core of the new Territorial Force. In 1904 Cohen accepted appointment as the Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, which was the leading community in Australia. The Visitation Committee sought a successor. In a four-page handwritten letter of 18 November 1904 for his successor entitled “The Visitation of Jewish Soldiers” Cohen set out a detailed prescription for a comprehensive structure for Jewish military chaplaincy in England, acquired through thirteen years’ familiarity with the military structure.46 Early in 1905 three ministers, Revs. Aaron Asher Green of Hampstead Synagogue, Michael Adler of the Central Synagogue and S. Alfred Adler of Hammersmith Synagogue, were approached with a view to assuming the military chaplaincy appointment, and all declined.47 Michael Adler later wrote that his knowledge of military matters was painfully small and that he had heard of the countless difficulties and obstacles which Cohen had faced. In the autumn Adler was approached again. The overriding sense of duty which was yet to shape his life must have prevailed. Reluctant to allow the Chanukah services which Cohen had created to lapse, he accepted.48 On 1 November 1905 the Visitation Committee resolved: THAT the Officer Commanding the Home District be recommended to appoint the Rev. Michael Adler, B.A., Minister of the Central Synagogue, as Jewish Chaplain to H.M. Forces.49

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The committee also approved the appointment of Mr J.K. Levin as Visiting Minister to Aldershot, the vice, Mr D. Manchewsky having resigned.50 Levin conducted Sabbath and festival services there, and he and Revs. L. Mendelsohn and S.P. Van Raalte made visits to the Exmouth Training Ship and the Ventnor Hospital.51 At the meeting of the Visitation Committee on 20 March 1906 there was reported the “appointment of Rev. Michael Adler by the Authorities as Chaplain to the Jewish Soldiers of His Majesty’s Forces and to the Jewish Seamen and Marines of the Royal Navy”.52 The minute book does not record how Adler’s naval appointment came about; presumably it was suggested by the military authorities. As Cohen’s authoritative letter written a year previously remains in the minute book, it seems unlikely that anybody thought to pass it to Adler to help him to familiarise himself with the complexity of the task which he was undertaking. Adler was to prove to be a formidable correspondent, and had he known would doubtless have written to the numerous military commands and Jewish communities recommended by Cohen and have told the Visitation Committee, whom he was to keep informed about his work, that he was doing so.

Rev. Cohen in Australia To enable him to sit on the Sydney Beth Din Cohen had to study in London for almost a year for a Rabbinical diploma. In March 1905 he took and passed the examination. No successor had been secured when, now as Rabbi Cohen, he set sail on the S.S. Salamis on 2 May 1905 with his wife and their two sons and a daughter for Australia. On 17 June they reached Sydney, where on 25 June he was inducted into office as Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue. He joined the Australian National Defence League and later helped to found the New South Wales Jewish War Memorial in Darlinghurst. On 25 January 1909 he was appointed Jewish Chaplain to the Australian Military Forces, Eastern Command, and held this position until his death in 1934. He was the second commissioned Australian Jewish chaplain, the first, in 1908, having been Rev. Jacob Danglow of Melbourne. In Sydney he replicated the annual Chanukah Military Service which he had initiated in London, until it lapsed at the start of the First World War.53 As a passionate British patriot Cohen strongly supported enlistment into the Australian militias. In the First World War he was the Vice-President of the Universal Service League, campaigned for conscription and preached in support of the war. He wanted to go overseas and volunteered to go as a chaplain to the Dardanelles, but his congregation would not release him and at fifty-two he would probably not have been accepted. Like other ministers he did pastoral work among the families of serving soldiers, especially bereaved

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families.54 His two sons served overseas with the Australian Imperial Force. In 1929 he was promoted to the equivalent rank of colonel and awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Officers’ Decoration. He opposed Zionism.55 He died on 26 April 1934 at the age of 71.56 Francis Lyon Cohen was, largely through his own self-motivated efforts, the seminal figure in British and indeed Empire Jewish Military Chaplaincy. As Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz wrote in 1936, “Altogether, as the first Jewish Chaplain to H.M. Forces, he established a precedent of high devotion to one’s duty, which was worthily upheld by his successors … .”57

Rev. Michael Adler, B. A. (27 July 1868 – 30 September 1944) Rev. Michael Adler was to become the leading figure in British Jewish military chaplaincy, in the years from 1905 to 1914 and throughout and after the First World War. He was the first chaplain to be granted commissioned rank. His father Joseph was from Russia and his mother Elizabeth (née van der Poorten) from Holland. The family was not the same family as father and son Chief Rabbis Nathan and Hermann Adler. Born in London, Adler’s birth certificate describes his father as a journeyman tailor, meaning that he had constantly to find work from others, and shows his mother to have been illiterate. The younger of two sons, the older of whom, Sidney, emigrated to South Africa, Michael Adler was educated at the Jews’ Free School, Jews’ College and London University and ordained in 1890 at the age of twenty-two. He served for thirteen years as the first minister of the newly established Hammersmith Synagogue in London, taught Hebrew at the Jews’ Free School and published three Hebrew grammar textbooks. In 1900 he became a chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, succeeding Cohen in 1906 as its Staff Chaplain. On 31 May 1903 he took up what was to become an appointment of thirty-one years, until his retirement in 1934, as the minister at the Central Synagogue in London.58 Cohen and Adler were the pioneers of Jewish military chaplaincy. Both were from a working-class background with probably a hand to mouth existence. In Britain ministers were generally from a middle-class background, facilitating their education to higher levels. As far as the author can ascertain, of the nineteen British Jewish chaplains of the First World War ten were born in Britain, most into middle-class families; of the three Australian chaplains, one was born in Britain, one in Australia and one elsewhere. Soldiers were predominantly drawn from the lower classes, which may be why Cohen and Adler were drawn to serving them. Over the period of only a few months since his decision to accept the appointment Adler must have made considerable efforts to familiarise himself with the involvement of Jews in the military. In March 1906 he reported to the

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Visitation Committee that the Stationery Department of the War Office intended supplying Jewish soldiers in the Army “(viz – in 116 different Sections)” with a Prayer Book and an Old Testament for each man.59 In May 1906 the Jewish Chronicle published the proceedings of a conference of the visitors of the Visitation Committee, including an address by Adler about Jews in the Navy and the Army. It noted that “the work of keeping in touch with our military co-religionists [was] somewhat more difficult than it would be if they were grouped in larger numbers in a few regiments. This scattered condition of our men naturally increases the task of organising the parades for divine service that are a part of a Chaplain’s duties”.60 On 24 May 1906 the Council of the United Synagogue wrote to the Secretary of the War Office with a comprehensive list of Adler’s duties and applied for a grant of remuneration for him. It stated that there were some two hundred Jewish individuals distributed among some one hundred and thirty units of HM Forces, both at Home and in the Colonies. Mr Adler maintained a regular correspondence with regiments and men and with the Jewish authorities at the Colonial Stations upon all matters relating to the religious life of Jewish soldiers. He had written to some one hundred and thirty commanding officers about the distribution of Jewish Prayer Books and Old Testaments to the men in accordance with paragraph 1319 of King’s Regulations. He had visited and arranged the visitation of men at military hospitals, detention barracks, Aldershot and elsewhere. He supervised regular services at Aldershot. He had arranged three Special Services in London on 24 December 1905 (which was the Chanukah Service) and 10 and 18 April 1906 (which were for Passover) and intended to make these annual fixtures and to add to them whenever occasion should present itself. Upon retirement or discharge of men he actively cooperated with the National Association in endeavouring to find employment for them.61 The War Office replied in a letter dated August 1906. Declining a further grant of remuneration, they wrote that they were not undervaluing Rev. Adler’s efforts for which he was recognised by the Department as Officiating Minister to the Jewish troops, but there was no reason to depart from the tradition already laid down that no extra expense was thereby to fall on the public funds.62 The military service on the first day of Passover of 1906, which was 10 April, was held at Adler’s Central Synagogue. It was attended by two sailors and twenty-six soldiers representing sixteen regiments, and a dinner was provided for them.63 Also in 1906 the Visitation Committee recorded a maximum of five attendees at Aldershot.64 In 1907 Rev. (later Rabbi) I. Livingstone from Jews’ College replaced Mr. J.K. Levin as the minister to the Aldershot congregation and chaplain to the army garrison.65 With a civilian congregation by then of principally two families, Phillips (Rev. Cohen’s mother’s family) and Lazareck, his duties were mainly as a garrison chaplain.66

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e Chanukah Military Service Initiated by Cohen in 1893, the annual Chanukah Military Service gradually grew. With the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899, its size increased dramatically. In 1902 it was attended by the acting Commander-in-Chief of the British army, Lord Roberts. His presence, believed to be the first in an official capacity by a Commander-in-Chief at a military function of exclusively regular soldiers and volunteers in the auxiliary forces who were “members of the Judaic community”, was understood to be intended to mark his satisfaction with the conduct of Jewish troops during the South African War.67 Held in various London synagogues and conducted by Cohen and then by Adler, the Chanukah Military Service became, as full page illustrations in the Jewish Chronicle show, a well-attended and colourful affair. By 1903 it was attracting several hundred servicemen and guests.68 In 1905 it was widely acclaimed as “an annual feature of Jewish communal life in London”.69 Adler retained responsibility for the Chanukah Military Services, liaising with the Visitation Committee, which sometimes made a financial contribution.70 The service became an event at which the members of the Visitation Committee wished to be seen. It had always to be held on the Sunday

The Military Service at the Central Synagogue. Jewish Chronicle, 2/1/1903, p. 12. Courtesy of the Hartley Library, University of Southampton.

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within the eight-day festival of Chanukah, which in 1910 fell on 25 December. When Adler arranged for it to be held on that day, the chairman of the Visitation Committee reported with a commendable sense of priorities that he “had authorised a letter to be written to him indicating the inconvenient day, Christmas Day, which would necessarily preclude the attendance of many members of the Visitation Committee”. The minutes of the ensuing meeting, on 15 May 1911, record that a letter had been received from Adler intimating that the military service held on 25 December was a success in every way, but do not record whether members of the Committee had compromised their principles in order to attend.71 In an extended article in 1910 in the Jewish World entitled “Some Reminiscences”, Adler wrote of his own initial lack of military knowledge and his reluctance to assume the honorary military chaplaincy. Some serving Jews, he wrote, objected to a Chanukah service and some to attending a synagogue at all. “It is a well known and deplorable fact that for every Jew who acknowledges himself as such there are five or six who attempt to disguise their religion. Many such a crypto-Jew has been attracted to the [Chanukah] Service and afterwards asked me to arrange for his correct religious denomination to be entered in the books of the navy or army.” The authorities had always lent their support to the Chanukah service.72 Over the years the Chanukah service came to assume a status of its own. The Royal Navy, Royal Marines and numerous Army regiments were represented, as were the Militia, Army Cadets, Yeomanry, British Red Cross, St. John Ambulance and the Metropolitan Police. Veterans of past campaigns attended. The order of the day was “Dress as for Church Parade”, which meant helmet and side arms. Every unit was in “Full Dress”, filling the synagogue with varied coloured uniforms and all kinds of head-dress including bearskins, busbies, shakos73 and helmets. The service was attended by the Chief Rabbi, senior representatives of the armed services, including the Chaplain General and senior members of the Army Chaplains’ Department, and the Honorary Officers of the United Synagogue. It was followed by refreshments and, over time, by a dinner.74

1907 – 1914 In 1908 there was issued a Notice from Rev Michael Adler, B.A. to Jewish Sailors and Soldiers. It encouraged them to correspond with Adler, to send him details of Jewish sailors and soldiers, to report to him if a sailor left English waters or a soldier left London or Aldershot, to apply on recruitment for an Old Testament and a Hebrew and English Prayer Book, to attend the Passover and Chanukah parades in London and to send photos of themselves in uniform. It informed them that they were entitled to rights of membership

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to the West Central Jewish Working Men’s Club in Tottenham Court Road in London.75 In April 1908 the Territorial Force came into being. Consisting largely of the Volunteer Force which had been raised in 1859 in response to fears of a French invasion, its primary role was home defence. By 1913 it was to comprise nearly a quarter of a million men organised into fourteen regional infantry divisions and fourteen regional cavalry brigades. The creation of the Territorial Force was accompanied by the inauguration of its own Chaplains’ Department. An Army Order of 14 January 1909 stated that “Clergymen of all denominations may be appointed to this department as chaplains to the Territorial Force, being attached for duty to units.”76 This was an innovation, as chaplains in the regular army were commissioned only from amongst Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian clergy. There was also created a new Advisory Committee on Territorial Force Chaplains. Appointed by the War Office, it consisted of representative clergymen, one from each denomination, to advise the Secretary of State on matters connected with the Territorial Chaplains’ Department. The Advisory Committee appointed Adler and Colonel D. de L. Cohen VD as its Jewish members and the Chief Rabbi as its denominational point of contact. The reorganisation allowed newly represented groups including Jews to seek chaplaincy commissions for the first time. On 22 June 1909 Michael Adler was accordingly commissioned as a Territorial “Fourth Class Chaplain (Jewish)”.77 In the Army List he appeared as one of a small number of “unattached” (meaning unattached to any unit) chaplains in the Territorial Force, although it was apparently understood that he would do duty with the London Regiment.78 The first commissioned Jewish chaplain in Britain, Adler attended Windsor Castle on 19 June 1909 as the representative of their Jewish members when the King presented the Colours to the Territorial Forces.79 Each year Adler wrote letters to officers commanding ships and regiments – thirtyfour in 1910 – to enable sailors and soldiers to obtain leave for Passover and arranged for them to go to their parents or to local Jewish communities, including in Dublin, Cork, Gibraltar and Aden. Many in London attended services at Adler’s Central Synagogue. Having in 1906 declined Adler’s request to do so, in 1910 the Visitation Committee made a request to the Army Council for leave for Jewish soldiers to observe the festivals during the year. The Army Council replied that provided that the exigencies of service permitted the necessary leave orders would be issued.80 Adler attended the annual Territorial Force camps and conducted services.81 Rev. L. Mendelsohn made five visits to the two sailors serving on the Exmouth training ship in 1910 and nine in 1911, and was still visiting the ship in 1913.82 In 1911 Adler was awarded the Coronation Medal by the King, and was appointed, as the only Jewish member, to two War Office committees

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Rev. Michael Adler.

dealing with affairs relating respectively to regular soldiers and to territorials, the role of one of them being “to advise the Army Council in all matters affecting the spiritual and moral welfare of the Army”.83 Adler continued to serve on the Territorial Chaplains’ Advisory Committee.84 Continuing the arrangements initiated by Francis Cohen, a succession of students from Jews’ College including Mr (later Rev.) M. Braun, B.A. and Mr (later Rev.) A. Plaskow continued to visit Aldershot regularly to conduct services, which were generally attended by not more than six men, and Adler continued to visit from time to time.85 In 1911 after prolonged negotiations the War Office granted the use of a hut situated at Hospital Hill within the lines of the Army Barracks at Aldershot, to be converted into a synagogue to serve both soldiers and civilians. The cost of repairs was defrayed from army funds, and other expenses were met by the Visitation Committee and by benefactors. The cost of annual maintenance was shared between the Visitation Committee and the few Jewish families living in Aldershot, who provided a visiting reader and teacher with board and lodging in return for the use of the synagogue and his teaching their children.86 In 1912 the War Office offered another hut situated near Solano Range within the lines of the Army Barracks at Aldershot and made a contribution

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to its conversion into a synagogue to replace the existing one. Adler and the Visitation Committee raised funds for the internal fittings and the Aldershot community provided furnishings.87 A consecration ceremony took place on Sunday 24 March 1912. The opening ceremony was performed by LieutenantColonel Sir Matthew Nathan GCMG. Officiating, Adler thanked the Aldershot headquarters staff for the generous manner in which this commodious building had been placed at their disposal in place of the small room in which for many years past the Aldershot community had been housed. He acknowledged the generosity of a benefactor for the memorial board, which was a replica of that at the Central Synagogue, with the names of “114 officers, non-commissioned officers and men of our faith belonging to every branch of the Imperial Forces who gave their lives in the service of the Empire during the South African Campaign.” He spoke of patriotism, righteousness and virtues. “Recognising all this, what wonder is it that we are prepared, both in days of peace and of war, to contribute our full quota towards the fighting forces of His Majesty the King.” As a speech delivered in March 1912, this has a prophetic ring. Full reports of the service including the text of Adler’s address appeared in the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish World and an Aldershot newspaper.88 Services continued at Aldershot.89 The service on Yom Kippur of 1912 was attended by “a good number of civilians, two or three of whom had tramped about a dozen miles”, and only one soldier, Private Samuel Marks, RAMC. During his ensuing six months at Aldershot, Marks attended the Saturday morning service almost every week, “being paraded at the guard room by the Sergeant-Major to see that I was a credit to the regiment”. In 1915, recovering from injury suffered in France, Marks returned there between 11 March and 25 April to find that Saturday services were being conducted in the afternoons by Rev. Plaskow. He met Adler, in his chaplain’s uniform with his badges of twinned triangles, who “gave us a short, straightforward talk, the text of which exhorted us to be of good courage and not to be afraid”.90 In March 1916 Saturday afternoon services were still being held there by Plaskow.91 In October 1912 the Visitation Committee acceded to a suggestion by Adler that application again be made to the Navy for furlough for Jewish sailors and marines on the High Festivals.92 Arrangements were made for Rev. M. Fenton, the Minister of the Chatham Congregation, to visit the Military Detention and Naval Hospitals at Chatham, the Naval and Military Barracks at Rochester and the Training Ship Acteron.93 In January 1914 the War Office acceded to Adler’s application that in conformity with King’s Regulations a Jewish Bible and Prayer Book be supplied at the public expense to every soldier on joining unless he declined them, and might be retained by him on discharge.94 By that time the War Office and the Admiralty were repeating their familiar respective responses to annual requests for furlough for Jewish soldiers and sailors during the Holy Days, the Army issuing appropriate orders subject

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to the exigencies of service and the Navy declining to do so, but communicating the dates to captains of ships in home waters in case circumstances should permit Jews to be afforded facilities for observance.95

Conclusion on the Genesis of British Jewish Chaplaincy In 1914 Britain had one commissioned Jewish chaplain, in the Territorial Force. Adler had visited and organised services and festival leave for Jewish soldiers, attended peacetime Territorial camps and sat on War Office committees. There were visits by ministers to sailors on training ships and to men in hospitals. Unlike its Christian counterpart, Jewish military chaplaincy remained in its infancy, without any experience of operating in the field. Such was the scale of the challenge which at the outbreak of war in August 1914 faced the leadership of the British Jewish community, and specifically Adler and the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue. Yet, although perhaps not then fully apparent, something of real significance had been achieved. Exemplifying the thesis of historians Todd Endelman and David Feldman of the gradual and undramatic integration of Jews into the ways of British life, Jewish chaplaincy had been accepted as a concept and was already incorporated into the military establishment. Without this history, the leadership of the British Jewish community would undoubtedly have initiated a proposal for Jewish chaplaincy at the outbreak of the First World War. They were anxious, as were the Jewish communities of all of the western combatant nations, to seize this uniquely visible opportunity of loyalty and good citizenship of what they viewed as their adoptive countries. A fierce debate might then have ensued, as had happened over Wesleyan claims to chaplaincy recognition in 1862.96 A proposal for Jewish chaplaincy would have been more far reaching, raising the question whether an axiomatically Christian military chaplaincy could accommodate this degree of diversity politically, militarily or perhaps even theologically. Similar questions had arisen during the long nineteenth century struggle for Parliamentary emancipation for Jews.97 In 1914 the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, a staunch High Anglican, forcefully opposed in cabinet the recognition of Nonconformist Christian denominations in the army, although under pressure he relented.98 With a degree of prejudice against Jews within the British establishment, he might not have been so circumvented over Jewish chaplaincy. In Germany Jewish chaplains were to continue to stand, at least officially, outside the military establishment throughout the First World War. As it was, a Jewish chaplaincy integrated into the military structure in the unobjectionable person of a single scholarly, cultured and Anglicised minister was in Britain a foregone conclusion which under the pressures of preparing for war exercised nobody.

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This was all but entirely due to the initiative of Francis Cohen and to the Jewish military contribution in the Anglo-Boer War. The efforts of Colonel Albert Goldsmid and Private Woolf Cohen to achieve official recognition of Jewish status in the army had laid the ground. Providence placed Cohen’s parents in Aldershot, where in his youth he absorbed the military ethos. The initiative of chaplaincy in 1892 was his alone. Whilst a serving minister with his own community he sought and obtained permission to visit Aldershot to conduct services and arranged for others to do so. He conceived the Chanukah service, an event which, supported by the authorities, assumed an increasingly high profile, annually enhancing the visibility of Jewish military and naval service. During the Anglo-Boer War he initiated chaplaincy by correspondence. This was to become a hallmark of Jewish chaplaincy in the First World War, not only, as it was for all chaplains, following the death of a soldier but to remain in contact with a soldier and to assure his family that he was well. Jews played their distinguished part in the Anglo-Boer War, publicly acknowledged by the attendance of the acting Commander-in-Chief at the Chanukah service in 1902. These services, held in Michael Adler’s Central Synagogue since at least 1901, exposed Adler to this ethos. Even so Adler declined military visitation the first time that it was offered to him before accepting it the second time. That any minister, least of all Adler, a man of scholastic inclination ministering to a well-to-do community in the fashionable West End of London, would in 1905 have conceived of his own initiative of the marginal calling of military chaplaincy without this induction is all but unimaginable. As he later wrote, “I was the least likely person to undertake such a task.” 99 Without the recognition of the ministerial record of Cohen and Adler and of the Jewish military role in the Anglo-Boer War, Adler, still a civilian, might not have been permitted to step into uniform and a chaplaincy commission when the Territorial Force was granted its own chaplains in 1909. Jewish chaplaincy might then have developed along a different path, perhaps akin to that in Germany. Nor might Adler have been granted the privilege, prized within the British Army, of a cap badge, unique to him, in the form of a Magen David, as an indicator of the identity and acceptance of Jewish chaplaincy. As it was, the Chaplain General, Bishop Taylor Smith, readily approved of this100, and Jewish chaplaincy was subsumed into the structure and operations of the Army Chaplains’ Department. More than some and perhaps all of the combatant nations of the First World War, Jewish military chaplaincy developed in Britain through the initiative of the Jewish community, essentially through the successive efforts of two ministers, Cohen and Adler, and the support, both practical and financial, of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue. At every stage the role of the authorities was supportive but reactive.

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Notes 1.

Devarim/Deuteronomy, ch. 20, vv. 1-9. Snape, God and the British Soldier. Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2005), p. 94. 2. JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp.1-29, Cecil Roth, Jews in the Defence of Britain – Thirteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Roth records that one of these dynasties, the Gompertz family, did so to the point of producing a chaplain – meaning a Christian chaplain – who may perhaps be whimsically regarded as the first “Jewish” chaplain in the British army. E. Rubin, 140 Jewish Marshals, Generals & Admirals (London: De Vero Books, 1952), pp. 223-244. 3. Derek J Penslar, Jews and the Military (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), ch.3. 4. The year of formal recognition of Judaism in Queen’s Regulations is given as 1886 by Rev. F.L. Cohen, Jews in the Army and Militia in the Jewish Chronicle (“JC”) 22/4/1904, p.10 (p. 17 above with n. 18); by Roth, Jews in the Defence of Britain in JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 1-29 at 26; by Sharman Kadish, “A Good Jew and a Good Englishman”: The Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade 1895-1995 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1995), pp. 3, 57-58; and by Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 66 (citing Kadish, p. 280 n. 90), 86. However the year is given as 1889 by Brigadier The Rt. Hon. Sir John Smyth, Bt, VC, MC, in In this Sign Conquer. The Story of the Army Chaplains (London: Mowbray, 1968), pp. 214-6; by L. Rabinowitz, The First Jewish Chaplain to the Forces in JRAChD, January 1936, vol. V, no. 41, pp. 199-202 (“Rabinowitz re Cohen”); by Henry Morris in The Ajex Chronicles. The Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women: A Brief History (London: Ajex, 1999), at p. 107; and by Rabbi Raymond Apple in http://www.oztorah.com/2010/09/francis-l-cohen-britains-first-jewishchaplain/ (“Oztorah, Apple”). Rev. Cohen, who states 1886, was perhaps best placed to know. 5. JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp.1-29, Roth, Jews in the Defence of Britain. Snape, Clergy under Fire, generally and including p. 201. 6. Harold Pollins, Economic History of the Jews in England (London, Toronto and East Brunswick, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1982), pp. 142, 279 n.2. Charles H. L. Emanuel, A Century and a Half of Jewish History, Extracted from the Minute Books of the London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews (London: George Routledge, 1910), pp. 117, 119. 7. Aubrey Newman, The United Synagogue 1870-1980 (London, Henley and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), p.81. LMA, ACC/2712/01/079, p. 1 (VC/1/1). The eight successive minute books of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue from 1871 until 1959, numbered 1, 1A, 2, 3, 3A, 4, 5 and 6, are designated at the London Metropolitan Archives (“LMA”) as ACC/2712/01/079-086. For ease of reference they are referred to respectively as VC/1, VC/1A, VC/2, etc., and e.g. pages 1-2 of VC/1 as VC/1/1-2. 8. Pollins, Economic History, p. 88. Malcolm Slowe, The Foundation of Aldershot Synagogue in Provincial Jewry in Victorian Britain, Conference of the Jewish Historical Society of England held at University College London on 6 July 1975, papers prepared by Dr Aubrey Newman. Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal (“AJHS”), 1995, vol. 12, part 4, Francis Lyon Cohen: The Passionate Patriot, incl. ch. 4, Military Chaplain, by Rabbi Raymond Apple (“AJHS, 1995, Apple”), pp. 666-7. 9. Pollins, Economic History, p. 142. Slowe, The Foundation of Aldershot Synagogue. JC 8/9/1882, p. 13; 15/9/1882, p. 4; 18/9/1885, p. 12; 13/3/1891, p. 5. 10. JC 13/3/1891, p. 5: an article under the heading Notes of the Week, the first sentence impliedly citing Colonel Laye. 11. JC 13/3/1891, p. 5.

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12. AJHS, 1995, Apple, p. 667. Although a Jewish aversion to uniforms and military service was widely believed, it may not be historically correct: see. e.g., Penslar, Jews and the Military. 13. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 101, 118, 142. 14. On Francis Lyon Cohen, see generally: Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 5, column 670; Rabinowitz re Cohen; http://geoffreyshisler.com/biographies-2/francis-lyon-cohen/ (“Shisler”); AJHS, 1995, Apple, esp. pp. 666-8, 672-3, 677-680, 683, 697-9; Oztorah, Apple; Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8, p. 52 by Suzanne D. Rutland, and http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cohen-francis-lyon-5710/text9655; Smyth, In this Sign Conquer, pp. 214-6; Penslar, Jews and the Military, p. 66; Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englishman, p. 58; Morris, The Ajex Chronicles, p. 107; M. Rosenbaum, The History of The Borough Synagogue (London: The United Synagogue, 1917), pp. 22-3, 30; Michael Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton (London: Jolles Publications, 1996). 15. JC, 13/3/1891, p. 5. 16. See, e.g. Newman, The United Synagogue, generally, and Sacks, Community of Faith, p. 34. 17. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 201, 390 n. 211, based on Rabinowitz re Cohen. AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 677-680, 737 n. 70. Smyth, In this Sign Conquer, p. 215. 18. JC 22/4/1904, p.10. 19. JC 4/11/1892, p. 9. 20. JC 2/9/1892, p. 12. 21. JC 2/9/1892, p. 12; 9/9/1892, p. 7; 16/9/1892, pp. 12-13; 23/9/1892, p. 7; 30/9/1892, p. 8; 7/10/1892, p. 6; 21/10/1892, p. 8; 4/11/1892, pp. 9-10; 11/11/1892, p. 17; 18/11/1892, p. 8; 25/11/1892, p. 8; 16/12/1892, pp. 15-16. 22. JC 9/9/1892, p. 7. 23. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 143. 24. JC, 11/6/1915, p. 10. 25. JC, 15/12/1893, pp. 4-5, 11-13. Penslar seems not to be correct in stating in Jews and the Military at p. 78 that this first Chanukah service took place at the Central Synagogue and was attended by about fifty soldiers in uniform. 26. JC 15/12/1893, pp. 4-5. 27. VC/1/147. The Duke of Cambridge was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. In 1862 together with the Secretary of State for War, Sir George Lewis, he had agreed under pressure from Wesleyans to add a fourth military classification of “Other Protestants” to those of Episcopalians, Roman Catholics and Presbyterians. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 120. 28. VC/1/149, 154, 162, 166, 174. 29. VC/1/166. 30. JC 3/4/1891, p. 7. 31. e.g. JC 27/5/1892, p. 12; 10/6/1892, p. 7. 32. Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englismman, pp. 2, 11-12, 21, 96ff, 107. Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 79-80, 282-3 nn. 131-2. AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 672-3. JC 22/2/1895, p. 14. 33. VC/1A/284. Minute Book and material of the Glasgow Jewish Volunteer Association at the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. JHS, vol. 5 (1902) pp. xiii, 57ff. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 201, 390 n. 211. Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englishman, p. 59. Richard Mendelsohn and Milton Shain, The Jews in South Africa, An Illustrated History (Johannesburg and Cape Town: Jonathan Bell Publishers, 2008), p. 56. Rabinowitz re Cohen. Peter Donaldson, Remembering the South African War. Britain and the Memory of the Anglo-Boer War, from 1899 to the present (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 122-3, 126-9. JC 24/3/1905, pp. 10-11. Elsewhere the figures are put at one hundred and twenty-seven, with forty-two being mentioned in despatches: Roth, Jews in the Defence of Britain in JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 1-29 at 26.

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34. VC/1A/284. Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 77-9, 282-3 nn. 122-130; 86-87, 284 nn. 8-9; 128, 290 nn. 22-24. 35. JC 13/5/1977, p. 24 (obituary). Menorah magazine, issue 22/2, September 1973, pp. 26-32; issue 26/2, Autumn 1977, p. 46. 36. Pollins, Economic History, pp. 142, 279 n. 2. Emanuel, A Century and a Half of Jewish History, p. 150. 37. Items 32 - 37 of part 1 of a catalogue of Jewish Militaria of January 2016 by Fishburn Books. Sometimes referred to as Pentecost, Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai in 1230 BCE and falls seven weeks from the start of Pesach, normally in June. 38. Rabinowitz re Cohen. 39. VC/1/185, 191-202. JC 29/3/1901, pp. 20-22; 11/4/1902, pp. 22-23. 40. Isidore Harris, Jews’ College Jubilee Volume (London: Luzac, 1906), p. CXCI. 41. LMA, ACC/3121/B/04/NA/022. (A draft of the Board’s letter dated 2 April 1900, other drafts and what seems to be the final version survive.) JC 23/3/1900, p. 19. Todd M. Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History 1656-1945 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 104. 42. VC/1/198, 201 (page 12). Netherton North Eastern Reformatory was at Netherton near Morpeth, according to its letterhead at VC/1/79. 43. The Royal Commission on Alien Immigration was announced in March 1902 and reported in 1903: Report of Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index and Analysis to Minutes of Evidence (Cd 1742, 1741-I and 1743, 1903, respectively). The report led to the Aliens Act 1905. 44. JC 22/4/1904, p. 10. VC/1A/220. Endelman Radical Assimilation, p.104. 45. Jewish Year Book 5664, 22 September 1903 - 9 September 1904, pp. 244-50, and 5665, 10 September 1904 - 29 September 1905, pp. 264-70. Rabinowitz re Cohen. 46. VC/1A/219-224. JC 10/6/1904, p. 31. 47. VC/1A/228. 48. JW 30/12/1910, p. 12. 49. VC/IA/230. 50. VC/IA/230. 51. VC/IA/235-236. 52. VC/1A/235. 53. Mark Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, Jews in the Australian Military (Sydney: New South Publishing, 2017), pp. 51-52. Rodney Gouttman, In Their Merit. Australian Jewry and WW1 (Xlibris, 2015), pp. 17-18. 54. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow. The Uncrowned Monarch of Australian Jews (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), p. 85. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 22-25, 97. 55. Born in the late nineteenth century, the political movement seeking the return of Jews to the Land of Israel was contentious amongst Jews until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and for some even after it. 56. AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 683, 697-9. AJHS 1969, vol. 6, part 6, pp. 344-55 at 352, Rabbi Dr A. Fabian, The Jewish Chaplaincy in Australia (henceforth “AJHS, 1969, Fabian”). 57. Rabinowitz re Cohen. Oztorah, Apple. Shisler. Raymond Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia in A Portion of Praise: A Festschriff to Honour John S. Levi (Melbourne, 1997), p. 239. 58. Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1972, vol. 2, col. 283. Anderson, All the A’s. Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englishman, pp. 96, 183 n. 3. The Times, 2/10/1944 (obituary). JC 6/10/1944, p.6 (obituary). JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 191-4 (Memorial Addresses in Honour of Past Presidents), The Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O, S.C.F, B.A. (1868-1944) by Rev. Arthur Barnett, H.C.F, B.A. (who served as a chaplain with Adler on the western front, where he succeeded

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59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

37

him as Senior Jewish Chaplain, and was later the minister of the Western Synagogue in London). VC/1A/236. VC/1A/240. JC 25/5/1906, pp.10-13. VC/1A/244. VC/1A/244, 247- 248. VC/1A/244. VC/1A/236, p.11. VC/1A/253. Slowe, The Foundation of Aldershot Synagogue. Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 78, 283 n. 125. Oztorah, Apple. AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 678-9. David Englander, A Documentary History of Jewish Immigrants in Britain, 1840-1920 (Leicester, London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1994), pp. 342-5, citing The Spectator of 3/1/1903. JC 2/1/1903, p. 12. Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 78, 283 n. 125. JC 18/12/1903, p. 12. LMA, ACC/2712/ 13/45 (1904 programme). AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 680, 738 n. 78. VC/1A/230, 244. JC 29/12/1905, pp. 9-11. Unidentified newspaper report in Jewish Museum, London (“JM”), box ORT/03/01/04, file 2014.77. VC/1A/235, 257-8, 265-6. VC/1A/273, 275A, chairman’s report, para 3. Jewish World (“JW”) 30/12/1910, pp. 10-13. JW 30/12/1910, pp. 12-13. Cylindrical peaked military hats with an upright plume. VC/1A/278, 288, 291-292, 301. JC 26/12/1913, pp. 21-22. US 2014, p. 16. VC/1A/257. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 28-29. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 102. There was and remains a military chaplaincy hierarchy. The Chaplain General held the relative rank of major-general; chaplains of the First Class that of colonel; of the Second Class, lieutenant-colonel; of the Third Class, major; and of the Fourth Class, captain. The London Gazette, July 13, 1909, p. 5388. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 181-2, 202, 390 n. 215, noting Army List, July 1915, 1796a. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 19, 31-34, 207. Peter Howson, Ministry to Saturday Night Soldiers: The Formation of a Chaplains’ Department for the New Territorial Army of 1907, J.H. Shakespeare Memorial Paper 2015, United Board History Project 2016, pp. 5, 15, 17-18, 20. VC/1A/262. VC/1A/273, 275B-C, 277. VC/1A/273, 278, 301-302. VC/1A/276, 278, 302. Interestingly the Exmouth was still in use as a training ship in January 1939, when it had three young Jewish boys: JC 27/1/1939, p. 37. VC/1A/278. Howson, Muddling Through, p. 46. JC 6/10/1944 (obituary), reproduced in Anderson, All the A’s, p. 7. VC/1A/264, 276, 278, 302. Menorah magazine, issue 22/2, September 1973, pp. 26-32. JM, box 126. Slowe, The Foundation of Aldershot Synagogue. VC/1A/278. VC/1A/279-280. JM, box 126 and file 2011.74. VC/1A/283-284, 290. JM, box 126, file 2009.210.1. JC 29/3/1912, pp. 9-10, 16. VC/1A/292. JC 7/5/1915, p. 20.

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91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

JC 17/3/1916, p. 20. VC/1A/289. VC/1A/292. VC/1A/304. VC/1A/296, 305. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 173. M. C. N. Salbstein, The Emancipation of the Jews in Britain: The Question of the Admission of the Jews to Parliament, 1828-1860 (London, Toronto and East Brunswick, New Jersey; Farleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1982). 98. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 187, 199. Michael Snape and Edward Madigan, (eds.), The Clergy in Khaki. New Perspectives on British Army Chaplaincy in the First World War (Farnham and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Studies in First World War History, Ashgate Publishing, 2013), per Dr J. H. Thompson, p. 22. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 44-45. 99. JW 30/12/1910, p. 12. 100. Albeit in a personal capacity, as discussed on p. 43 and n. 47 (on p. 94) below.

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4 THE FIRST WORLD WAR: BRITAIN AND EUROPE

e British Jewish Community A largely native-born British Jewish community in 1881 of some 50,000, an immigrant community from then until 1914 of around 120,000–150,000 and a generation of the children of both of them, produced by 1914 a Jewish population in Britain of some 250,000–300,000 people.1 The native-born community were well-integrated into British life, and the children of the immigrants were growing up more integrated than their parents. Michael Adler stated Jewish population figures of 275,000 for Britain and 145,000 for the Dominions, totalling 420,000. Of these some 50,000, most of them listed in the British Jewry Book of Honour, served in the armed forces during the First World War. Some 2,500 were killed and 6,500 wounded.2 For the Jewish communities of the western combatant nations the First World War represented a dramatic opportunity to repudiate allegations of disloyalty to their “host” countries by rallying to the national cause and colours. Jews were generally integrated into society in the countries of western Europe in which they lived, felt and expressed loyalty to those countries and were often over-represented in their national armies in proportion to their numbers. Yet in Britain antisemitism existed at all levels of society, public opinion often created an association with the enemy and the loyalty of Jews was questioned, the more so even after the war.3 At the start of the war the Chief Rabbi (whose communities were Ashkenazi, meaning of German and Eastern European origin) and the Haham (the spiritual leader of the Sephardi communities of Iberian origin) issued a special prayer in Hebrew and English for all of the synagogues of the Empire.4 In a full-page editorial in August 1914 after the German invasion of Belgium the Jewish Chronicle wrote that war with Germany was Britain’s moral responsibility: Britain has taken her fate into her hands, and is face to face with destiny. … We know but a single cause, a single passionate desire. Our cause is the cause of England, our desire is the triumph of England with all that

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she has stood and stands for, so that she may overcome her enemies, and come forth from the crowning ordeal as free, great, and mighty as ever. That in this horrible struggle Jew will be pitted against Jew, that brothers in faith will be mortal enemies, is, indeed, a saddening thought. To brush that thought aside like every other which in the remotest may impinge upon the singleness of our devotion to our country, is a sacrifice that the conditions and the circumstances of the moment demand of us. It is a sacrifice which will be made without reserve and without equivocation, because England has been all she could be to Jews, and Jews must be all they can be to England.5 The Jewish Chronicle hung a large banner with these last nineteen words outside its offices.6

To the Colours Under the heading The Crisis and Jewish Loyalty the Jewish Chronicle published a letter from Michael Adler as Chaplain to H.M. Forces inviting Jewish young men to enlist in any force they wished and concluding: “Now is our time to prove the genuine loyalty and patriotism of the English Jew, and may the community rise worthily to the height of the occasion!”7 It carried a list provided by Adler of Jews serving with the Expeditionary Force.8 It also published a letter from a Jewish sergeant in the Royal Munster Fusiliers agreeing with Adler’s sermons that every Jewish family should send at least one able-bodied man to fight for his country and suggesting that military and naval service would when the war was over bring together those whom God may have guarded, watched over and spared to fight again, “to show the English nation that we have done our duty to her although we may have been fighting against men of our own religion in other countries”.9 The War Office authorised “special religious ministrations” for regiments containing enough Jewish soldiers in Britain. However, the only channel for religious support for Jewish soldiers in the field was through correspondence with Adler. Complaints soon appeared in the press that there were no Jewish chaplains at the front to offer spiritual comfort to the wounded or to conduct burial services.10 The Jewish Chronicle recognised the profound religious significance of Rosh Hashanah for some of the Jewish soldiers in the field.11 Long before conscription was introduced in 1916, the leadership of the British Jewish community encouraged young Jewish men to enlist. This was motivated by genuine patriotism, born of the belief that Jews were better accepted and treated in England than elsewhere, and by the wish to show the Jewish community in a positive light. A full-page recruiting poster was published in the Jewish press, in English and Hebrew:

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Since the days of Oliver Cromwell Great Britain has meted out the fairest treatment politically, socially and in every way to Jews. Now is the time for Jews to reciprocate and show the old spirit of the Maccabees is not dead. Every Able Bodied Unmarried Jew Between 19 and 45 should join the British Army. Join as Jews and Be Proud of Your Race. God Save the King.12 Adler also disseminated the message in the non-Jewish press. The Jewish Chronicle published his letter, which had been printed in The Standard on 6 September 1914, detailing at length Jewish participation in the Armed Forces and concluding: I shall be very pleased to furnish any further information upon this subject, as it is most desirable that Englishmen should realise that their comrades of the Jewish faith are fully determined to do their duty to King and country.13 From the first days of enlistment, recruitment centres were requested to advise Adler of every Jewish enlistment. By November 1914 he reported a total of four thousand.14 After visiting training camps in Newbury and Aldershot in 1914, he reported that a considerable number of Jewish soldiers were concealing their religion.15 The First World War began with roughly one hundred and twenty British chaplains and ended four years later with nearly three thousand five hundred. It is believed that one hundred and two chaplains (fortuitously not including any of the Jewish chaplains) died through enemy action. British Chaplains were volunteers, appointed on contracts for generally one or sometimes two years, and were then free to renew them or to leave the army. Under Articles 1-3 of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field of August 1864 chaplains were classified as noncombatants and as ambulance personnel, and if captured were eligible for repatriation. With insufficient chaplains at the start of the war they were generally attached to field ambulances at brigade level and so were less visible at battalion level. It therefore came to be believed that chaplains had been barred from the front line. In fact there was no such policy. Chaplains served at Gallipoli and in the retreat from Mons. Christian military chaplaincy had the benefit of long field experience, which Jewish military chaplaincy did not. In December 1915 Sir John French was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force by Sir Douglas Haig, who greatly valued chaplains. By that time more chaplains were available, some serving partially in the front line.16 Writing after the war, Rev. Arthur Barnett, who in 1918 succeeded Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain on the western front, described Jewish chaplaincy

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in the First World War as a creatio ex nihilo. He attributed this creation to Adler, and was indubitably right to do so. But it is also attributable in varying degrees to the other Jewish chaplains. By the end of the war there were nineteen Jewish chaplains in the British Army. They were commissioned as officers in the Army Chaplains’ Department, initially, as all chaplains were and still are, in the relative rank of captain. A twentieth chaplain, a civilian Rabbi in Egypt, acted as honorary chaplain to the Zion Mule Corps. With scant guidance these chaplains had largely to chart their own course. Adler was the first and the senior Jewish chaplain on the western front, where he served for the greater part of the war. He maintained a diary throughout and left a much fuller account of his experiences than any of the other chaplains. He essentially personifies the development of British Jewish chaplaincy in the First World War, which is therefore initially considered through his experiences. Serving between them on the Western, Italian and Salerno Fronts, in Egypt and the Canal Zone and with the Jewish Legion in Egypt and Palestine, the other chaplains exemplify that development. Australian Jewish chaplaincy, with two successive chaplains and a YMCA appointee who effectively served as a chaplain, was initially for all practical purposes subordinated to British Jewish chaplaincy and is therefore also considered. There were always large numbers of troops in Britain, and chaplaincy services were provided to Jewish troops by chaplains of the Home Command and by a network throughout the country of civilian officiating clergymen. The established British Jewish community sought to oversee Jewish chaplaincy, initially through the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue and increasingly through the Jewish War Services Committee. The pattern of Jewish chaplaincy appointments was slow. 1915 saw the appointment of Revs. Adler and Simmons in France, Rev. Lipson to the Home Command and Rabbi Della Pergola and Rev. Grajewsky in Egypt. 1916 brought two further appointments, Revs. Barnett and Morris, in France. 1917 saw seven appointments (one in Egypt) and 1918 six, the last two as late as October and November. Rev. Falk served with the Jewish Legion in Palestine from January 1918 until January 1921. The Jewish Legion was an all but entirely Jewish unit, so chaplaincy within it differed from Jewish chaplaincy to soldiers scattered throughout innumerable units of the British and other armies. Jewish chaplains were based at and alternated between field hospitals, casualty clearing stations, army bases, army field headquarters and accommodation in French towns. Whilst each Jewish chaplain’s experiences were his own, a clear and similar pattern runs through their activity. They performed the duties of all chaplains, including visiting wounded and sick soldiers in hospital and conducting funerals. Their specifically Jewish roles included locating Jewish soldiers and keeping lists of them, maintaining contact by visits and correspondence with them and their families and arranging for

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their graves to be designated as Jewish. They liaised with the military authorities to authorise and publish in orders the holding of services on Sabbaths and festivals, arranged and conducted services, often at short notice and in improvised locations, with services having sometimes to be cancelled at short notice for military exigency, and generally provided such support as they could for Jewish soldiers. Jewish chaplains were often invited to meetings of chaplains and Revs. Adler, Levy and Geffen delivered addresses to their fellow chaplains on aspects of Jewish life.17 The British Army had always comprised numerous regionally raised and specialist units. So uniform badges have long been important as an indicator of unit identity. Exactly when a separate badge for Jewish chaplains was first adopted is not clear. Bishop Taylor Smith was the Chaplain General from 1901 until 1925. Whilst he may have approved of the badge, it required War Office approval, which it seems may not actually have been given.18 The issue may have arisen when Adler was commissioned into the Territorial Force in 1909, or early in the First World War. By January 1915 Adler was wearing the badge.19

A Jewish Battalion? Very early in the war, and influenced by official encouragement of local recruitment and “Pals’ Battalions”, the suggestion emerged within the Jewish community of the creation of a Jewish unit. This would enable Jews to serve with their co-religionists, facilitate religious observance of the Sabbath and festivals and the provision of kosher food and within the dislocation of army life provide a supportive Jewish environment. Many leading figures within the community opposed the proposal, fearing both the suggestion of some form of preferential treatment and Jews becoming insufficiently integrated and marginalised in the war effort. These included Adler, although not on religious or chaplaincy grounds. On 28 October 1914 he wrote to the War Office: I hope you will not mind my troubling with you with the following matter, and that you will take any action necessary to carry out my views. It has come to my knowledge that certain Jewish gentlemen have written to the War Office suggesting the formation of a so-called ‘Jewish’ Battalion. I therefore desire to make it perfectly clear to the authorities of the War Office that this movement is totally irresponsible, and has received no countenance whatever from any influential member of the Jewish community. The matter has been very carefully considered both by the military and civilian representatives of our community, and they are practically unanimous in deciding that no such Battalion is desirable or necessary.

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The War Office responded on 1 November that it has been decided not to sanction the formation of a ‘Jewish’ Battalion. Adler created the opportunity to reinforce his position in a response the following day: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of November 1st. I wish to tender my most cordial acknowledgements to the Army Council for the action they have taken in declining to sanction the formation of a ‘Jewish’ Battalion. I desire again to assure them that this proposal was entirely opposed to the wishes and views of every representative member of the Jewish community. At the same time, may I be allowed to point out the facts to date as regards enlistment on the part of English Jews. In proportion to the general population, the members of the Jewish faith ought to contribute from 3,000 to 3,200 men to the various branches of H.M. Forces. Up to the present time, names of over 4,000 men have been returned to me, and additional names are pouring in day by day. I hope later on to send full details of the exact number of enlistments of the part of English Jews as far as they are made known to me.20 Within the Jewish community the issue became explosive, with prominent advertisements in the Jewish press and public meetings. The Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World criticised Adler for his opposition to the proposed Jewish Battalion as transcending the role of the chaplain: A curious course seems to have been taken by the Rev. Michael Adler, who appears to think that because he is Jewish Chaplain to the Forces he holds in disposition the Jewish Military Force of the country …. Nor again does he tell us how the matter is in any sense the business of a Jewish chaplain or a chaplain, as such, of any other denomination, nor why his letter to the War Office is not a piece of sharp practice in employing his office to enforce his personal views, and hence altogether impertinent. ….it is no business of anyone save those who wish to form the Battalion – assuredly not of the Jewish Chaplain, who only has to look after the spiritual needs of the Battalion when it comes into being. 21 A Jewish chaplain might have been expected to prioritise the availability of religious facilities and a Jewish ethos within a Jewish unit, as some Jewish chaplains did when the issue resurfaced in 1917, with a different outcome, in

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Jewish World, 30 December 1914.

relation to the Jewish Legion, which again Adler vigorously opposed. Adler’s position represented that of much of the British Jewish establishment, which feared the perception of an “alien battalion” or a “ghetto regiment”, craved recognition of its own genuine patriotism and wished to assert that of the British Jewish community, uncomfortably transformed from its integrated and anglicised character by thirty years of numerically overwhelming immigration since 1882 from eastern Europe.22 The issue of a Jewish unit had wider ramifications than communal disagreement. In opposing the creation of a Jewish unit Adler was supported by the War Office liaison officer with the Jewish community, Edward Sebag Montefiore, and the chief recruiting agent of London Jewry, Denzil Myer.23 At this brief pivotal moment in the early months of the war, Adler and Sebag

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Montefiore were probably alone regarded as the main conduit between the Jewish community and a War Office overwhelmed with the unprecedented demands of the war. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in going so far as to approach the War Office to reject the proposal, Adler, as the single Jewish chaplain, exaggerated his case and utilised the privileged access of his position to take too much upon himself. Had he supported the creation of a Jewish unit, his influence and the demands of recruitment, then voluntary, might have led to one being formed. One can only speculate how this might have affected the role of Jews in the military and the development of Jewish chaplaincy.

e Early Months of the War In August 1914 Adler created a pocket-sized Soldiers’ Prayer Book. It was issued in September 1914 and, as the Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers, enlarged by the Chief Rabbi in June and in December 1916 – and again in April and August 1917 – incorporating material suggested by Adler and by chaplains Solomon Lipson and Australian David Freedman. Including messages from the King and from Lord Kitchener, it was issued by H.M. Stationery Office with the Authority of the Chief Rabbi, and over one hundred thousand copies were eventually printed. The War Office agreed for it to be issued to every Jewish soldier in the Army, and similar arrangements were made for the Navy.24 It came to serve as a model for the American Military Prayer Book, and was to be reissued in the Second World War.25 The Chief Rabbi also selected and arranged A Book of Jewish Thoughts. In issue by at least 1917 and similarly pocket-sized, it was enlarged and revised in 1918, and reissued in the Second World War. Pocket-sized Jewish Versions of the Psalms and Prayers for Trench and Base and the Festival Machzor26 were also produced. In November 1914 Adler issued circulars to Jewish soldiers and sailors respectively: To All Jewish Soldiers/ Sailors. The Chaplain sends his warmest greetings to his friends at the Front/in the Royal Navy upholding the honour of England, and wishes them speedy success and all good luck. He would be happy to receive letters from them, telling him how they are, and will be glad to answer. The God of Israel keep you all and bring you safely home with victory!27 Identifying what was to become one of the dilemmas of Jewish chaplaincy throughout the war, the Jewish World criticised the last sentence of this message:

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For one thing there are more Jews fighting in the German and Austrian armies than in the English, and they too expect ‘the God of Israel’ to keep them all and bring them safely home to victory. ‘The God of Israel’ is best left out where the Children of Israel cannot be at one.28 The issue of Jews fighting on both sides had arisen during nineteenth century European wars and was an inevitable concern throughout the First World War. Soldiers may have raised it with chaplains, for whom it must have been challenging. Jews are historically and ethnically a people, globally dispersed for almost nineteen hundred years yet preserving a sense of peoplehood. In the First World War some Jews were conscious that they might be fighting fellow Jews, and some had relatives living in enemy countries and perhaps fighting for them. There are apocryphal stories, impossible to verify, of Jews crying out amidst the intensity of combat and fellow Jews realising that they were Jews and sparing their lives. Also in November 1914 Adler issued a notice inviting men in the Navy and Army who had not received a copy of the Prayer Book to notify him.29 During 1916 he was again to circulate letters to soldiers and sailors offering to send a Soldiers’ or Sailors’ Prayer Book to anybody who did not have one. The letter to soldiers informed them that Revs. V.G. Simmons and A. Barnett (who had been appointed in August 1915 and March 1916 respectively) were additional chaplains in France, and asked for the names and details of any other Jewish soldiers whom they knew. The letter to sailors regretted that Adler was unable to visit them.30 Adler visited wounded Jewish soldiers, including in King’s College Hospital in London.31 From the start of the war hospitals were instructed by the Chaplain General to forward to Adler the names of Jewish wounded.32 At Millbank Hospital in London the wounded were grouped under different coloured codes according to their religion, green being for Jews.33 In a pro forma letter Adler requested hospitals to notify him of the arrival of any Jewish soldiers; if a man should die to notify the Jewish minister in the town or, if there was none, Adler; and to apply for a number of the new prayer books which the War Office had just authorised for the use of any Jewish patients. In a counterpart pro forma letter Adler requested Jewish ministers to find and visit Jewish patients in local hospitals and to keep him informed. In towns where there was no minister Adler was asking any local Jewish resident whom he knew to do this. He wrote that there were a considerable number of Jewish sailors and soldiers scattered throughout the different military hospitals in the country and he was very anxious to organise a system by which every one of them was visited by one of the Jewish ministers. Letters should also be written for them to their relatives. Adler issued in total 5,200 letters, initially (although reimbursed) at his own expense.34 He conducted a large correspondence with

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Jewish soldiers at the front and in Britain, on which, even with secretarial and volunteer help, he had to spend more than half of each day. With the permission of the War Office he appointed nine officiating clergymen around the country.35 From early in the war regular Saturday morning services took place at Aldershot, which Adler visited monthly. Regular Sunday morning services, coinciding with church parade, were arranged at numerous venues including army camps and at Rev. Lipson’s Hammersmith Synagogue. Adler visited the Canadian Expeditionary Force on Salisbury Plain, where he conducted a service and addressed the troops.36 Adler wrote to the Chief Rabbi of France, Grand Rabbin Alfred Levy of Paris, to try to arrange for British Jewish soldiers to join French troops at religious services. The Chief Rabbi replied that had given instructions for services to be held in the field if a minyan could be collected; nearly all of the members of the French rabbinate were serving as chaplains or as soldiers and the Chief Rabbi of Lyons had been killed.37 Adler also initiated correspondence with him about the distribution of the new Soldiers’ Prayer Books by French Jewish Chaplains amongst both British and French Jewish soldiers. The Chief Rabbi responded that his chaplains “were delighted to receive your books, which are remarkable for their conciseness and practical arrangement” and asking for a quantity of the Prayer Books to be sent.38 Although Adler had initially decided that there should not be a Chanukah Military Service that year, the twenty-second Annual Chanukah Military Service did take place, at Hammersmith Synagogue, on Sunday 13 December 1914, conducted by Adler and Lipson. It was announced that Adler was going to the Front, he was wished success, and the gathering sang “for he’s a jolly good fellow”. Chanukah services took place at other locations including Aldershot, Birmingham, Colchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. Adler announced that “The Chaplain would feel grateful to officers and N.C.O’s at various centres if they would be good enough to institute such services in their districts, as the services are very much appreciated by the men concerned, and the new Prayer Books are now in the hands of all the men”. By the end of 1914 the Prayer Book was being widely distributed. A Service of Intercession took place in synagogues on the Sabbath of 2 January 1915 with a prayer composed by the Chief Rabbi.39

Adler’s Visit to France With his experience as a Territorial Chaplain, Adler suggested early in the war that he go to France. He might otherwise have felt constrained from pressing to serve in the field, but his wife Sophie, by whom he had a son and two daughters, had died on 22 December 1912.40 The War Office could find no

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precedent for a Jewish chaplain being attached to an army in the field, and declined. Through the good offices of a Jewish Member of Parliament, Sir Charles Henry, Bart.,41 it was decided that Adler should be allowed to pay a visit to the troops in order to ascertain whether there was any scope for religious work among the Jewish soldiers scattered in all parts of the front.42 The Council of his Central Synagogue granted him leave of absence, and the Chaplain General, Bishop Taylor Smith, again supported him.43 The Jewish World applauded: To the Front. The community will learn with gratification of the decision of the Rev. Michael Adler to go to the Front as Jewish Chaplain to the Forces. This is the first time in history that a Minister has been with the British troops in the field, and is evidence of the zeal and devotion with which Mr. Adler is performing his very onerous duties. We have had our differences lately with the Jewish Chaplain …. But throughout the controversy we have not been oblivious of the good work among the soldiers which Mr. Adler has done and is doing, work so excellent as to make all the more regrettable what we cannot help regarding as his faux pas at the War Office. We wish him the best of good luck at the Front, and trust he may be enabled to be of good service to Jews in the fighting line, returning unharmed from his mission.44 Accompanied by his orderly, Private R. Friedlander, Adler set off on Monday 25 January 1915 on his exploratory visit to the Front. He was seen off by numerous people on the platform at Waterloo Station. During his absence Rev. Solomon Lipson assumed his duties at home.45 He landed at Havre, where the Principal Chaplain of the British Expeditionary Force, the Rev. Dr J.M. Simms, met him at the dock and accompanied him to report to Base Headquarters at Havre.46 Within an hour of his having landed a soldier noticed Adler’s Magen David badge, saluted him and asked him if he was the Jewish chaplain. So from the outset, Adler wrote, the badge proved its value.47 Adler spent a week in Havre, visiting all of the camps and twice visiting each of the eight hospitals. He arranged services, on Friday 29 January in the YMCA Hut at Harfleur Reinforcement Camp and on Saturday 30 in the Synagogue in Havre, where, he wrote to Mr. Ornstien of the Visitation Committee, “I have found a Synagogue & a Rabbi (aged 999)”.48 Nominal rolls of Jews in the area had been obtained, notices were published in base orders, and invitations were sent to all officers and men in Havre, with, Adler wrote, successful results.49 Adler moved from 1 to 15 February to Rouen, where he conducted a number of services and visited No. 1 General Hospital and every local

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concentration of troops.50 On 4 February he wrote from Rouen to the wife of a soldier called Lewis Nathan: “I saw your husband today in one of the local hospitals. He has been wounded, but is now making excellent progress, and I expect will soon be well again.” At Le Touquet he arranged for the grave of Private Maurice W. Fuchsbalg of the Honourable Artillery Company, who had been buried the previous day, to be suitably marked. Sergeant Sol Harris of the Army Cyclists Corps wrote to his sister Katie from Rouen on 11 February: I met Rev. Michael Adler here last night in Shool, and I can assure you I was very pleased to make his acquaintance. After the service, which was given in three languages, we sat down to a very nice spread. Mr. Adler, during his address, stated that the meeting there of so many different nations under one religion was a unique event in the history

Letter from Michael Adler to Mrs Nathan reporting on the recovery of her husband Lewis Nathan in hospital. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London/Jewish Military Museum.

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of the world. I would not have missed it for any money! … I am going to see Mr. Adler again on Sunday if I can get away. I think he then leaves for another town …51 In Rouen Simms showed Adler a letter from the Army Council directing that he “was not to venture beyond the lines of communication on the chance of meeting with the adherents of my Faith”. This instruction seems to have been specific to Adler, perhaps as his role as a Jewish chaplain was experimental. Realising that this would considerably limit his utility, Simms intervened to enable Adler to receive permission to visit general headquarters and to meet the principal authorities there and thus, Adler wrote, successfully to lay the foundations of his future work.52 From Rouen Adler travelled to Paris and Versailles. He spent the Sabbath with Grand Rabbin Levy, with whom he discussed arrangements for Passover and for burials. He then travelled to Rouen, Abbeville, Boulogne, St. Omer, Hazebrouck and Boulogne, returning to Britain on 10 March. From the outset the absence of transport to cover a large area emerged as a serious difficulty. The YMCA office at Havre were able to lend Adler a small

British Jewry Book of Honour.Rev. Michael Adler with troops at Rouen, 19 May 1915.

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Ford car driven by a young curate. On his return to the UK Adler published an appeal for the YMCA, which had made a room available for him to meet Jewish soldiers and had enabled him to make many of his visits.53 The Jewish World welcomed Adler back from France. “All [of the religious bodies] work together in perfect harmony. At the front there is a fusion of creeds.”, it wrote.54 The Times reported on Adler’s role in France: Jews in the Fight. The Rev Michael Adler, who is the first Jewish chaplain to accompany a British force in the field, has just returned to England after spending some weeks in France. As chaplain to the Jewish sailors and soldiers, Mr Adler is the shepherd of a flock which is scattered over the five continents and the seven seas. His duties took him to all the hospitals and the base towns, and enabled him to judge the organisation and the spirit which inform our Army. ‘I found (said Mr Adler) that I had considerably underestimated the number of Jews who are with the British forces. I have compiled a list of many thousands, and everywhere I went I found Jewish officers and men of whom I had no previous record. Wherever possible I held services and organized the officers and men so that they might hold services for themselves. What gave me much pleasure was the way in which Jews would tramp for miles along the worst of roads in order to join us in prayer. ‘On my field cap I wear a badge which is unique in the Army – the interlaced triangles, the Shield of David – and everywhere Jewish soldiers recognized it and made themselves known to me. I held services everywhere, consecrated burial grounds and ministered to the wounded and the dying. Whenever I met a Jewish soldier I made a point of writing to his people at home.… ‘So much about the men of my own faith. I should like to put on record my gratitude to the YMCA and the Red Cross, which have given me every possible help in my work. I was deeply impressed by the wholehearted unanimity with which the different religious bodies are working. Church of England, Presbyterian, Methodist, all work together in perfect harmony.55 In a letter of 17 March 1915, Adler reported positively to Simms on his visit. It had lasted close to seven weeks. He had visited eleven towns and cities

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and conducted numerous services in synagogues and camps. He had distributed the Soldiers’ Prayer Book, visited some fifty hospitals and made arrangements for continuous hospital visitation. He had arranged for sections of local military cemeteries to be consecrated for Jewish burials. He had enlisted the help of local Jewish communities. He had consulted the military authorities upon many matters of religious welfare, so that difficulties should not arise in the future. Jewish soldiers everywhere had been very gratified to see him. The military authorities had given him every assistance. So had colleagues in the Chaplains Department, as they had done to Jewish soldiers. He expressed his thanks to Simms for his many kindnesses towards him.56 Adler delivered a similarly positive report to the War Office.57 In consequence he was informed that he could return to the front for as long as necessary. On Monday 26 April 1915, at the age of 46, again accompanied by Private Friedlander, he did so.58 Through his own efforts he had created Jewish wartime chaplaincy in the field. He later wrote that for the first time Jewish chaplains formed part of the British Army on active service, and that the demand for them to be at the front with their men had become apparent in the early days of the war in order to minister to “the large Jewish Community serving in the field”, as Field Marshal Lord French described them in a dispatch.59 With short home leaves, Adler was to spend, including his first visit, three and a half years on the western front, until 15 July 1918. The Council of his Central Synagogue periodically renewed his leave of absence, and Adler periodically corresponded with them and with Mr. Ornstien of the Visitation Committee about the consequential financial arrangements, dedicating a large part of his salary to pay for a minister for his community.60 He kept four successive pocket books which he entitled “Diary of Work at the Front”.61 In them, in a report and in correspondence with the Chief Rabbi62 he recorded his eleven periods of time in France. Successively based within the Fourth, First, Second, Fourth, Third and First Army Areas, his principal locations were: 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

25 January - 10 March 1915. Initial visit. Various, including Rouen. 26 April - 8 July 1915. St. Omer; Rouen; then various. 27 July - 11 October 1915. North Midland Casualty Clearing Station (“CCS”) in a monastery at Mont des Cats, near the battle line and ten miles from Ypres; then no. 9 CCS. 24 October 1915 - 19 January 1916. 4th Army Area: North Midland CCS, Mont des Cats; then, from 16 December 1915, no. 4 CCS, Beauval, living in a stately chateau.63 31 January - 16 April 1916. At GHQ; then from 10 February in 1st Army Area, at no. 9 CCS, Lillers; then from 9 March in 2nd Army Area, at North Midland CCS, Mont des Cats.

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27 April - 16 August 1916. In 2nd Army Area, handing over to Rev. Vivian Simmons; then from 2 May in 4th Army Area at no. 4 CCS, Beauval, with frequent visits to 3rd Army Area; then from 13 June in 3rd Army Area at no. 42 CCS, Aubigny, with frequent visits to 1st Army Area; then from 3 July at no. 21 CCS, close to Albert. 7. 26 August - 18 December 1916. No. 42 CCS, Aubigny; then no. 9 CCS, Contay. 8. 3 January - 5 April 1917. No. 9 CCS, Contay; then no. 49 CCS; then no. 42 CCS, Aubigny. 9. 12 April (before his leave expired, as the Battle of Arras had commenced on 9 April) - 29 July 1917. No. 42 CCS, Aubigny. 10. 8 August - 13 December 1917. No. 49 CCS, Achiet le Grand, living in an Armstrong hut made of canvas stretched on wood.64 11. 7 January (after leave extended through ill health) - 15 July 1918. No. 49 CCS, which in the retreat moved eighty miles from Achiet le Grand (which was captured by the enemy three days after the CCS had left it) to St. Riquier near Abbeville.65 6.

In February 1915 Rev. Solomon Lipson was appointed Jewish Chaplain to the Home Command, to minister, along with a number of officiating clergymen, to soldiers in Britain. Also in February 1915, the Jewish World reported about Private Labofski of Leeds, who had been at the front for five months. He wore his tefillin – phylacteries – all the time that he was fighting, had not received a scratch and said that it was general among Jewish soldiers to wear them “at all times of peril in battle”.66

Adler in France in 1915 Adler organised a series of services along the whole front, which then extended from Ypres in the North to Bethune in the South, and sent out printed postcards completed with the details of each service. He kept in touch with the widely scattered camps and medical units of the forward districts. Initially the YMCA loaned him a motor car. Then, with the help of Simms and GHQ, a motor car was placed at his disposal by the army’s Adjutant General. This, he wrote, was an exceptional privilege, and indispensable for his work over the huge area under his charge. He had a Magen David badge affixed to the bonnet. In his first two weeks the car registered having travelled 1,015 miles. In October 1915 the authorities agreed that the car be “permanently attached” to him. In March 1916 the Army acceded to his request for a car for the second Jewish chaplain, Simmonds, although it is not clear that the car actually materialised.67 For Passover of 1915 Adler prepared a booklet including an abridged Haggadah entitled Prayers for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers on Active Service for

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Invitation to soldiers to attend a Jewish service.

the Feast of Passover 5675–1915. It was issued with the sanction of the Chief Rabbi, who composed for it a Prayer Before a Battle. Adler arranged leave for troops in the UK and Passover services. He appealed to the Jewish community to contribute to a Passover Military Fund to send a small box of provisions, principally matzos, to serving soldiers and sailors. The Jewish World supported the appeal, and by the end of March the community had raised almost the whole of the estimated amount required of one hundred pounds. In Paris Adler arranged for matzos to be forwarded to some twelve hundred men, of whom he supplied a list. Contrary to his instructions the matzos were sent in large crates to the main depot at Havre, where they remained unopened, as Adler

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learned to his annoyance when he received an official letter about three months after Passover asking him what he wished to be done with the special food that was awaiting distribution. No further attempt to supply matzo to soldiers in the field was made until 1919, after the Armistice, when the Chief Rabbi was able to forward large supplies to France. In Britain offers of home hospitality over Passover for Canadian soldiers exceeded the number of men seeking it.68 In May 1915 Trooper Abe Weingott wrote to Adler from Egypt; thanking him for the Pesach prayer book, he wrote that the hospitality shown to the men by the Jews in Egypt was beyond all praise, and the poorest man invited a Jewish soldier to spend Pesach at his house.69 Writing from recollection in 1979 at the age of eighty-seven, Major Henry Myer, who was later to serve with the Jewish Legion and to chronicle his experiences, wrote, seemingly of around May 1915 after the battle of Festubert that month: The first Padre to visit our Front Line was the Rev. Michael Adler. He was the Jewish Chaplain to the Forces and was serving with the B.E.F. He was a most unmilitary looking man with a neat auburn beard and a rather corpulent figure, but he was placid and not only did we have a very pleasant chat, but he talked to the men manning the breastworks in an unhurried way and from time to time after he had left, members of my Company came to tell me their favourable impressions of him.70 Adler was also corresponding with Jewish sailors. He received a letter from a sailor called Woolf Bandall, a private in the Royal Marines Light Infantry serving on HMS Princess Royal of the 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron.71 His reply on 9 February 1915 reflects the spirit and the propaganda of the time: Your letter about your glorious victory was splendid. You have every reason to be proud of what your grand ship and your others did on that day when the Baby Killers were taught a lesson they will never forget.72 God bless our Fleet – we all pray every day! I am over here now working among our brave soldiers. How I wish I could be also among my sailors & marines, but unhappily, it is not possible. When this War ends – in our great Victory – I hope we shall all meet to rejoice. Glad you liked the Prayer Book. How are Simmons & Magnus? Write to me often.

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The Jewish World published two letters to Adler from sailors.73 One, from CPO L. Franks on HMS Vanguard, expressed thanks for Passover gifts.74 The other was from Woolf Bandall: Rev. Sir. ‘A Guten Yomtiff!’ I am writing to let you know that I and Stoker Simmons tried to get leave to proceed, he to London, and I to Birmingham, but without any success; for as the great Sir David75 himself (we were taken before the Admiral) pointed out to us ‘It is the price we pay for the privilege of serving in the first line of defence’ …. We (I and Simmons) have received the abridged Hagadahs, and as far as I am concerned will, if the Almighty spare me, keep the soldier’s Prayer Book with the Pesachdicker one, among their Gracious Majesty’s gifts. …. Once again, to you and Rev. Lipson and the other assistant Chaplains, may you all live long to enjoy many and many a Pesach to come ….. To set this in context, by July 1915 many of the sailors in the Fleet had not had any leave since the start of the war.76 It seems remarkable that, even in wartime, a request, even if unprecedented, from two low ranking sailors for leave for a Jewish religious festival was escalated to Admiral Beatty, and that the sailors were taken before him. Working as the sole Jewish chaplain on the western front, Adler enlisted the support of the Jewish communities of Havre, Rouen and Boulogne to help with the religious needs of Jewish soldiers in their areas, including arrangements for burials.77 He wrote in the press about French Jews and the war: French Rabbis were attached to field ambulances; Rabbis A. Bloch and W. Wexler had died, one of pneumonia contracted in the trenches and one whilst holding a crucifix to a dying soldier; Rabbi M. Boris of Luneville Synagogue had been serving in an infantry regiment and was presumed to have fallen; and the Chazan – the synagogue cantor – of Luneville and his sixteen year old daughter had seemingly been left to be burned to death in a synagogue burned out by the Germans.78 It sometimes fell to French ministers to conduct funerals of British soldiers. That of Private Sandys, who died in hospital in Boulogne, was conducted in Wimereaux by Rev. M. Weill on 17 May 1915.79 Adler arranged for regular Saturday afternoon services conducted by one of the Canadian soldiers to be held in a large YMCA Hut in the north of France.80 At the invitation of the local managers of the YMCA he gave a series of addresses in various camps on the subject of “The Jews in Fiction and in Fact”.81 Private J.H. Bernstock of the 4th Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) in France wrote to Adler about his welfare, and concluded: I would like to say how pleased I was in seeing you in Rouen, although it was for only a short time. I still have recollections of your lecture on

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Jews, in the Y.M.C.A., which I think was very good and must have been greatly appreciated by the whole audience. Also I must thank you ever so much for writing to my people, as they had written and told me how pleased they were to have heard from somebody who knew me in France.82

e Chief Rabbi Visits the Front From 1915 onwards there were many ecclesiastical visits to the western front by leaders of different Christian denominations, all being received at general headquarters.83 From 24 June until 8 July 1915 the British Chief Rabbi, Dr Joseph Herman Hertz (25 September 1872 – 14 January 1946), made such a visit.84 Accompanied by Adler he toured the front; conducted religious services, one in the open air close behind the firing line amid the noise of a heavy cannonade; visited units, hospitals, a cemetery and general headquarters; and met with Field Marshal Sir John French and General Sir Nevil Macready, the Adjutant General. A service and reception for Jewish men was held at a soldiers’ club, at which Hertz delivered an address, saying that fifteen years earlier he had been engaged in a similar mission to the Jewish troops in the South African War. Upon his return Hertz submitted a report to the Visitation Committee about his visit, mentioning that it had been reported in The Times on 30 June and 6 July 1915. Two years later another visit by the Chief Rabbi was planned for 1 to 7 November 1917, including visits to Dominion and American troops. Adler attended planning meetings for it, but it had to be cancelled because of unforeseen circumstances, which included, Adler recorded inscrutably, the French authorities raising difficulties about his passport.85

Chaplaincy Duties Having encountered several soldiers named Cohen, Levy, Isaacs and Solomons who were Christians, Adler learned to be cautious about accepting any man as a Jew unless certain that he was. In around August 191586 a Christian chaplain, Rev. Williams, sent Adler a nominal roll of Jews in the division to which Williams was attached. Visiting him and lunching with a group of chaplains of different denominations, when he was asked to recite the Grace in Hebrew, Adler learned that there would be no objection to his receiving nominal rolls of Jewish soldiers. Thenceforth he received these returns two or three times a year, a privilege, he wrote, conceded to Jewish chaplains alone and of enormous help in the organisation of their work.87 Before a Jewish service could be conducted arrangements were made through divisional headquarters for a convenient day, hour and place. Secret information was given about the location of troops and when they would not

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actually be in the front line. At GHQ Adler was allowed to visit the O.B. (Order of Battle) Department and learn all that was necessary for his work. Staff officers were amused seeing him write down the information about the troops and movements in Hebrew, expressing the hope that no German who understood this language would capture his notebooks. Orders were issued in divisional orders about Jewish services, and Adler sent printed postcards to every Jewish officer and soldier with details of services. A typical postcard from 1916, with the details completed (here in italics), reads: From REV. MICHAEL ADLER, C.F., G.H.Q., BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, FRANCE. 3rd Canadian Division. The Senior Chaplain would be pleased to meet you at a SERVICE for Jewish Soldiers to be held on SUNDAY MARCH 19th at THE MONASTERY ON MONT des CATS at 11.a.m. precisely. Notice of the Service has been published in Orders. Please ask permission to attend. M.A. The cards were distributed by divisional headquarters, and notices of services were put up in YMCA huts. Adler would travel between often widely dispersed units, after arranging by telegram to have the Jewish soldiers assembled for him. He conducted services every Sunday and frequently in the week. He wrote that men were eager to attend services, sometimes under the most difficult conditions and after long journeys.88 Services took place in the open air, YMCA or Church Army huts, barns or ruined buildings, disused churches, village town halls, orderly rooms, once in a marquee erected for the purpose by divisional headquarters and once at a famous hospice.89 On one occasion the YMCA offered its “quiet room” for Adler to hold a service and then supplied all of the Jewish soldiers with tea, as many had come from long distances.90 As soon as Adler heard that a Jewish soldier had arrived in France he sent him a postcard to initiate a correspondence. He asked every Jewish soldier whom he met at services or elsewhere for details of his family and wrote to them.91 In this way he became known to many Jewish families in Britain who had a soldier serving on the western front, and acted as a key channel of communication between them and the army. He came to fulfil a similar role at the institutional level of the community, attending whilst on leave some of the meetings of the Visitation Committee and of the Jewish War Services Committee. By the summer of 1916 Adler was receiving an average of thirty letters a day. His heavy postbag was a standing joke at the local Army post office and in his mess. He told soldiers that the address “Jewish chaplain, France” was sufficient to find him. One soldier directed his letter to the “Commander in Chief of the Jewish Army in France”. He was also given the title “O. C. [Officer

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Commanding] Jews”.92 In October 1917 he received an anonymous postcard, addressing him as “The Chief Rabbi of the Jews serving in the British Imperial Army in France”. Signed “An Englishman”, its message was: “Sir, Good luck to you and your brethren serving in the British Imperial Army.”93 From the Jewish Chaplains’ Office at Adler’s Central Synagogue, Rev. S. Lipson, who had been appointed to the Home Command, issued a notice to Jewish soldiers proceeding to the front, inviting them to contact Adler on leaving the base towns in France and Simmons if they were stationed in the Boulogne area. Rev. Vivian Simmons arrived in Boulogne in August 1915, and prepared a pro forma notice inviting men of the Jewish faith to meet him, at a date, time and place which he would complete.94

1915 continues Adler’s diaries list his activities. These included meeting with new chaplains as they arrived and subsequently; innumerable religious services on Sabbaths and festivals; visits to front line trenches and to units; visits to hospitals and casualty clearing stations; conducting funerals; visits to graves and cemeteries; visits to prisoner of war cages and camps; meetings with army authorities; and chaplaincy meetings. On occasion these duties extended to imperial troops; Adler conducted funerals of South African and Canadian soldiers and of one from Australia. On Sabbaths he walked to the places that he visited, as Jewish Law required. Christian chaplains and commanding officers sometimes wrote to him asking him to arrange Jewish services. He had often to travel long distances to do so but was rewarded, he wrote, by the large number of men who attended. Living close to the Belgian frontier at a military hospital he visited all of the camps and billets for many miles around and arranged services for men of the Canadian Division. In August 1915 the Principal Chaplain instructed him to style himself henceforth “Senior Jewish Chaplain”.95 For the High Holydays of 1915 the Office of the Chief Rabbi published a booklet entitled Prayers for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers on Active Service, and services and receptions for Jewish soldiers on furlough were held at various synagogues in London and at army camps in Britain.96 The Adjutant-General acceded to Adler’s request that any Jewish soldier be permitted to select his days of ordinary leave over a period of two months, including two days for the Day of Atonement, and Adler issued a notice to Jewish soldiers to that effect. With the cooperation of the authorities he held as many services as he could during New Year and the Day of Atonement in 1915, attended by British and Canadian soldiers. He and Vivian Simmons separately held services at Boulogne, the soldiers’ club at General Headquarters and locations within three miles of the firing line. Adler took to the services a Scroll of the Law in a box which served as an Ark and which had been lent to him by the Boulogne Synagogue.97

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For the Day of Atonement, Adler stayed at a village close to the firing line. Some two hundred men attended the first of several services which Adler conducted during the day, which lasted for three hours. At headquarters the Presbyterian chaplain prepared the tent of the officers’ mess for the purpose. Many of the men who came had been serving since the outbreak of the war. Men marched in fully equipped straight from the lines. Many came from long distances, some from divisions within ten miles around, including Canadians from many units. “… hearty cheers for the Senior Chaplain was given before the gatherings dispersed.” A large number of the men were under immediate orders to proceed to the trenches. “… the knowledge that a fierce struggle was shortly about to take place seemed to add an air of solemnity to our prayers which no words of mine could adequately depict”, Adler wrote. Two men who had promised to attend were killed by shrapnel on the evening of the Day of Atonement. Many of the officers and men who had attended the Day of Atonement services in France fell in action a week later on Saturday 25 September when the Army “went over the top” at the Battle of Loos. During the battle, in September–October 1915, Adler made daily visits to field ambulances, dressing stations and casualty clearing stations and saw for the first time the dreadful sight of thousands of wounded and dying men being brought in. He frequently acted as interpreter with German wounded, several of whom were Jews, and found many opportunities to be of help in the work of attending to the patients who poured into the three casualty clearing stations in the area. He called at every battalion headquarters to learn what Jewish casualties had occurred. He learned that a Jewish soldier from Russia who had enlisted in Glasgow and spoke very imperfect English had called out to the German trenches during the advance “Kim Arois”, meaning in Yiddish “come out”, and the Germans had understood him.98 On 19 November 1915 the Jewish Chronicle published a War Number, with pages of photographs, including “Ministers Gazetted for Chaplain Service”. These were Revs. Lipson, Adler and Simmons, together with Rev. A. A. Gelar.99 In Britain the twenty-third Annual Chanukah Military Service took place at the Central Synagogue. Drawn from almost every branch of the services, more men attended than at probably any of the pre-war Chanukah services, as did several nurses in uniform. Rev. E. Spero officiated, Rev. Lipson delivered an address invoking the heroism of the Maccabees and Sergeant Issy Smith V.C. who was Jewish also spoke.100 Services took place on the same day elsewhere in Britain.101 On Sunday 5 December 1915 Adler conducted a Chanukah military service for about a hundred men in the theatre at Lillers, followed by a tea. On 29 December he recorded that he saw an aeroplane fight. On 31 December he wrote to Mr. Valentine of the United Synagogue thanking him for the parcels

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of canned food which he had sent him. “In spite of the incessant rain and the consequent mud through which I wade day by day – I manage to keep fit – though I am getting very tired of this constant activity”, he wrote.102 Soldiers and sailors wrote to the Jewish Chronicle with their experiences of attending Adler’s services. One wrote that seventeen men had attended a service conducted by Rev. M. Adler in a Catholic monastery; most had travelled ten to fifteen miles from the firing line and were covered in mud from head to foot.103 Adler’s correspondence extended beyond the UK and the western front. Chief Petty Officer M. Coevorden, the Chief Writer aboard HMS Ophir, wrote that he was the only Jew on board his ship; he treasured the prayer book which he had received from Rev. M. Adler, and had received correspondence from Rev. S. Lipson; when his ship was at its base port during Chanukah he had gone to shul and the Chazan had asked him home for supper; and he had been slightly wounded in the ankles through the bursting of a shrapnel shell.104 Private L. Staale of the 4th Hampshire Regiment wrote to Adler from Kut-alAmara in Mesopotamia to say that he had found a synagogue and attended services as often as he could; he was the only British Jewish soldier whom they had ever seen; there were about a thousand Jews there; people treated him as only Jewish people could; and he hoped to read the service at the synagogue the following Saturday.105 Rev. Shimon Grajewsky was appointed in December 1915 as a Jewish chaplain in Egypt and in March 1916 as visiting chaplain to the Jewish wounded in Alexandria.106

e Year 1916 The first Military Service Act was passed on 5 January 1916, providing for conscription for single men. It was followed by a second Military Service Act on 3 May 1916 extending conscription to married men. The upper age limit was 41, raised in April 1918 to 51.107 Arrangements were made for Jewish men who had been called upon to report between 15 and 25 April 1916 to do so on 26 April, to enable them to observe Passover.108 In February 1916 the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World both published a fulsome tribute to Rev. Adler from Sergeant A. Jacobs of the Royal Engineers Motor Cycle Section, who had been serving on the western front for eighteen months.109 The Jewish Chronicle commented: As the writer points out, the work of a Jewish Chaplain differs very much from that of his Christian colleagues. The latter are stationed at a particular point to administer to their co-religionists at that point; whereas the Jewish Chaplain ‘has to be continually on the move to visit

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the men of his religion, who in threes or fours may be split up over a radius of a hundred miles’. The work of Mr Adler, says Sergt Jacobs, beggars description; and if we may add to that tribute we should say that it is distinguished by its resonance and profound considerateness. It is only fair that, while so many eyes are turned to the soldiers in the firing line, the self-sacrificing labours of the Minister at the Front should also be borne in grateful memory. In March 1916 the Jewish World published a similar tribute to Adler from Lance Corporal Joseph Lion Felix, who, writing from the front, noted that “Mr. Adler tells us that we as Jewish soldiers have two duties to perform, one to our country and one to Israel, and no one feels that more than I do.” 110 On 27 March 1916 Adler encountered the Australian Seventh Brigade, recently arrived from Egypt and awaiting inspection from the Commanderin-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. With them were two chaplains, one Church of England and one Catholic. Whilst Adler was talking with them Haig arrived, attended by his private secretary, Sir Philip Sassoon. The three chaplains took up position at the end of the inspection line. When he reached them, Haig leaned over from his horse, shook hands with them, asked their names and forms of religion and said to them: “I am glad to see how you chaplains of different denominations are working in so friendly a spirit together. You can help us very much in our difficult work by teaching the men the sacred cause for which we are fighting.”111 Haig, who became the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in December 1915, spoke frequently of the justice of the Allied cause. In January 1916 he told a conference of army commanders, and recorded in his diary that they agreed, that “We must have large minded, sympathetic men as Parsons, who realise the Great Cause for which we are fighting, and can imbue their hearers with enthusiasm. Any clergyman who is not fit for this work must be sent home.”112 At the end of April 1916 Adler together with Rev. Vivian Simmons conducted under fire a service for Australian and South African troops.113 Adler, Simmons and Rev. Arthur Barnett organised regular services, including in a church hospice which was used as a field ambulance and in several Belgian towns and villages. Adler issued a notice stating that the army had permitted Jewish soldiers who would in ordinary course be granted leave during March and April 1916 to select their days including 17 and 18 April, the dates of Passover. He conducted services at the celebratory festival of Purim at the Mont des Cats monastery where he was living, where men of the Canadian Divisions attended in large numbers, and in a YMCA Hut within two miles of the trenches, and at the festival of Shavuot on 7 June at the YMCA.114 Private Henry J. Nathan of the BEF in France wrote:

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My sole reason for writing is to show the Jewish community the very great work our Jewish Chaplains are doing out here. I, a Jewish lad, was to my shame never very religious, but I had occasion to visit Shool one Sunday morning at ….., and I never offered up such a heartfelt prayer as I did then. When the service was over I felt as happy as a king. It is mainly owing to the great efforts of our very hard worked Jewish Chaplains that all Jewish boys are kept in touch with each other when

Notice to soldiers about Passover leave, 1916.

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possible. Please God, when a glorious peace is restored, then shall we young Jewish lads show our deep gratitude to them.115 In July 1916 divisions were passing through Adler’s area on their way to the Somme. Adler hastily organised meetings of Jewish soldiers including South Africans. Many of the men gave him messages for their families should they not return. During July he made many visits to casualty clearing stations to be near the Somme fighting.116 He used the press to seek information about soldiers who were missing, such as Private H. Shilling of the London Regiment, who had been reported wounded on 21 May 1916.117 Rev. Michael Stanhope Walker was the rector of a country parish in Lincolnshire. Serving on the Somme at no. 21 CCS near Corbie, at the junction of the Rivers Somme and Ancre, he recorded the horrific numbers of casualties. “No one could ever forget the lesson those men taught one, half blown to pieces, and they suffered in silence.” On 3 July 1916 he wrote in his diary, “Now 4 a.m, the Jewish chief rabbi has joined us”. On 7 July he wrote that: Chief Rabbi Adler is quite an interesting man to have in the mess and is quite as much at home quoting and discussing from the Gospel or Saint Paul as the Old Testament. He has an officer son. On occasion stress was relieved by horse play. At dinner on 21 July water was being emptied and sprayed at people, and “the Interpreter and the Rabbi got a good soaking”.118 Rev. Vivian Simmons ministered to Australian troops until the arrival of their chaplain, Rev. David Freedman, in July 1916.119 By that time Revs. Michael Adler, Vivian Simmons and David Freedman had been stationed on the western front and Rev. Arthur Barnett, who had been appointed in March 1916, was in charge of the base towns.120 In August 1916 the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World published: Notice to Jewish Soldiers Proceeding to France. All soldiers upon landing in France are asked to write at once to the Senior Jewish Chaplain, the Rev. Michael Adler, G.H.Q., B.E.F. They should give full particulars of their units, and Mr. Adler will inform them of the Chaplain nearest to them. The Jewish Chaplains in France in addition to Mr. Adler are Rev. V.G. Simmons, 2nd Army, Rev. A. Barnett, A.P.O., Boulogne, Rev. D. I. Freedman, Australian Corps.121 In August 1916 Rev. Solomon Lipson met with the War Office at their request to confirm that an order was about to be issued for leave to be granted for the High Holydays.122 On the western front however it was not to be. Adler wrote:

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Chaplaincy notice to Jewish Soldiers, around August 1916. Reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of e Rothschild Archive.

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Notice to Jewish Soldiers about the High Holydays, 1916. Reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of The Rothschild Archive.

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The Rev. Michael Adler, S. C. F., notifies to the Jewish soldiers at the Front: ‘It is greatly regretted that, owing to the present condition of military operations, no leave can be arranged for the New Year and the Day of Atonement for soldiers on active service. Every effort will be made to organise services in the field, of which due notice will be given to the men concerned.’ We understand that the four Chaplains will be living close up to the front and will arrange services for the sacred days.123 In September 1916 the Jewish Chronicle published an article on the work of the Jewish War Services Committee (JWSC) by its Vice Chairman, Major Lionel de Rothschild MP. Under the heading “Work of Jewish Chaplains”, he wrote: I have already touched on the work which is performed by the Jewish chaplains in France; scattered as the Jews are among all the British regiments, their work is severe and arduous. The Senior Chaplain has to motor many miles in a day to get through the round of duty, another chaplain is on horse-back from morning until night, visiting soldiers in the front line. The other chaplains at the base and hospitals have less distance to cover, but equally long hours to work. I cannot finish without remarking how very kind the clergy of other denominations have been, and the great assistance which has been rendered by one and all to the Jewish chaplains in France. Christian chaplains possess the Jewish Prayer Books, which have been issued to every Jew in the British Army, and when no Jewish chaplain has been available they have often rendered comfort from these books to the dying and have performed the last rites to those of the Jewish Faith who have fallen.124 A fifth Jewish chaplain, Rev. Louis Morris, was appointed in September 1916 to serve on the western front.125 For the New Year of 1916 Adler held a service on the first day, Thursday 28 September, at 10.00 a.m. in Acq, in the Arras sector, in a cinema theatre. The soldiers termed such places Adler’s “cinema-gogues”. After a two-hour journey in his car, taking his Ark and Sefer Torah126, Adler held a second service at 3.00.p.m.in an area near Doullens, in a Royal Flying Corps hangar. Army and RFC men attended, including 2nd Air Mechanic W. Warshawski, who wrote to the Jewish World about it.127 On the morning of the second day Adler held a service in Senlis, near to Albert, in a YMCA building, which was filled with men who had come directly from the trenches. They begged Adler to come again on the Day of Atonement on

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Saturday 7 October. This he did, officiating at 10.00 a.m. to about three hundred and fifty men in the cinema theatre at Acq, and at 3.00 p.m. to three hundred men in the one at Albert, about fifty miles away, arriving over an hour late as the roads were choked with marching troops and guns. Other men whom he had hoped would attend the afternoon service had gone “over the top” that morning. For these services divisional headquarters suggested allotting a number of lorries to each unit, meeting the men behind the trenches and bringing them to the services to save them the fatigue of a long tramp; thenceforth this was done on every important holiday, largely increasing the numbers of men attending.128 On 16 October 1916 Adler wrote a report to the Chief Rabbi on services held for the High Holydays. Ten New Year services were conducted: two by Simmons, two by Barnett, two by Freedman, one by Morris and three by Adler. That conducted by Morris was at Etaples, and attended by over one hundred men; the others were held within a few miles of the front line. On the Day of Atonement twenty services were held. Many of the services were held in YMCA huts; others in numerous localities were conducted by Jewish officers or men. In Boulogne, Havre and Rouen there were facilities for Jewish soldiers to attend local services. On the Day of Atonement an order was issued by base commandants for all Jewish soldiers to be exempt from duty for the whole day.129 Noting that there were now five Jewish chaplains, the Jewish World commented: Let us add, however, a word of tribute to the labours of the Jewish Chaplains. They have brought spiritual comfort to the men at the front and to their relatives at home and have performed with zeal and discretion service of the utmost value.130 Adler had to cover such huge distances that he became known in France as the “Wandering Jew”; in August 1916, for example, he expended petrol for 1,670 miles.131 During 1916 he unsuccessfully sought the temporary and local rank of lieutenant-colonel (two ranks above that of captain). In November 1916 he was promoted to that of major (one rank above).132 The Jewish World eulogised his achievements: Major the Rev. Michael Adler. Congratulations to the Senior Chaplain, the Rev. Michael Adler, upon his promotion to the rank of Major. Mr. Adler has had a hard task. He has created a great new piece of machinery of which the community had previously no experience. But he has done it with conspicuous success, so that the machine runs smoothly and without hitch, the admiration alike of Jew and non-Jew. In this connection we may note the appointment of a Jewish Chaplain in Egypt

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(the Rev. S. Grajewsky). This, in addition to a Jewish Acting Chaplain at Alexandria. Of all the history of the Hebrews in Egypt – a long and epoch-making one – few chapters are more picturesque or more remarkable than that which is being written at this time under the British flag.133 On one occasion in the winter of 1916 at Beaumont Hamel Adler was suspected by a zealous officer who did not recognise his chaplaincy badge of being a spy, and escaped arrest only through the intervention of the local Town Major.134 As the army had restricted Christmas leave, the annual Chanukah Military Service in London was not held in 1916, although services were held at Manchester, Norwich, Westgate and elsewhere.135

e Year 1917 In January 1917 Adler was mentioned in despatches. The Jewish Chronicle applauded: Much satisfaction will be felt in the community at the fact that the Senior Jewish Chaplain, Major the Rev. M. Adler, was mentioned in General Haig’s last despatch. The honour is thoroughly well deserved. At the outbreak of the war Mr Adler had to organise practically a new branch of communal work – a branch of which the community had practically no experience – and to do so under the stress of an unexampled emergency. He has carried out the task with signal ability and success, and the whole community owes him a deep debt of gratitude. At the same time, however, the honour he has received from the distinguished Commander of the British Forces in France is a welcome recognition of the status and the work of the large number of Jewish soldiers on the various fronts.136 1917 saw the largest expansion of Jewish chaplaincy. Six chaplains were appointed to the western front: Revs. Benjamin Lieberman in January, Marks Gollop in March, Ephraim Levy in June, John Geffen in July, David Hirsch in August and Harris Price in October. By the time of the High Holyday services there was a Jewish chaplain in each of the five Army areas and three at the bases. In Egypt Rabbi Yitzhak Frankenthal was appointed in June.137 On 14 June Adler had an interview with Major General John Monash of the Third Australian Division, who was the most senior soldier of the Jewish faith to serve in British and Imperial forces in the First World War.138 Bapaume had been captured by the Australians, who had patched up a cinema which they dubbed the “Fair Dinkum Theatre”. For the New Year and

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Day of Atonement services on 17 and 26 September 1917, an Australian Jewish sergeant took charge of arrangements, fitting up a reading desk with electric lights. The vast congregations – twelve hundred and fifteen hundred respectively, Adler recorded – included American engineers attached to the British Army, a party of Egyptian Jews with a Labour Company and men from all the parts of the Empire. The shofar was blown by a soldier of the 4th London Regiment who had been a bugler in the Jewish Lads’ Brigade. LieutenantColonel F.D. Samuel read part of the service on the Day of Atonement, and the town mayor served out extra rations for a large number of men.139 In October 1917 the Jewish Chronicle published several graphic accounts of the services. An anonymous soldier wrote that “When I arrived I was surprised to see the number there, anything between one and two thousand. It was the largest attended service I’ve been to out here; indeed the Rev. Michael Adler said it was the biggest he had held. The service, as you may imagine, was very impressive, and it was delightful to hear and join in these familiar tunes of ours. I wish it could have lasted longer. Mr. Adler delivered a very inspiring sermon, which went home to us all. A few yards from me was a boy sobbing his heart out. Yes, that sermon did us a lot of good. For it was patriotic and British, and yet lost nothing in Jewishness if I may so express it.” An officer who was an old Rugby boy and a member of the well-to-do community of Berkeley Street Synagogue in London wrote to his parents that “Adler, who is a fine chap, made all feel at home. It was so informal, so lovely, that there were not many of us who were not profoundly moved. It was a scene I shall never forget. The service was partly in English and partly in Hebrew; the songs were beautifully rendered, everyone sang. The Rabbi had the most perfect voice a man could wish to hear, and spoke with such feeling. It was immensely impressive, the guns booming and men of the old Jewish faith singing the centuries-old sings. … I have seen a lot, but such wonderful belief and spirit displayed shows that Judaism is still alive, and that not even the hell fires of the line can destroy the old, old faith. …. We had the Kaddish and the old prayers, and a sermon which was spoken to men who know what life and death means. I am proud to have been among these men.” Corporal E. Raperport of the 4th London Regiment who had been in France since 1 December 1914 and was the only surviving Jewish soldier in his battalion wrote from: “ …. somewhere on the Somme …. Now not a wall remains standing, yet among all this came about 1,000 Jewish soldiers, some straight from the line, with rifle and pack, etc., such as ourselves, while others travelled about thirty miles to attend on this all-solemn day. Can you picture to yourself what it was like? Brother met brother, and friend met friend; it was one grand meeting of proud Jews, proud of being Jews and glad to be spared to be at the service. The Rev. Michael Adler, C.F., officiated and well did he do it. … Are the Jews doing their bit? Those who doubt it ought to have been present at the service to see these gallant men.”140

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On 28 October 1917 a service at Barastre for the 62nd Division had to be cancelled at the last moment, as the battalion had been rushed to the trenches that morning to resist an attack. At the second Battle of Cambrai in November 1917 Adler was called to bury two soldiers, one a German. Due to a German counter-attack field hospitals and casualty clearing stations were being evacuated. Seeing the cavalry galloping up to drive back the Germans, it was necessary to escape as quickly as possible. Adler wrote that his faithful chauffeur Corporal Macintosh, who was with him for three years, sent the car flying along the road.141

e Year 1918 1918 saw the appointment of six Jewish chaplains. Four were appointed to the western front: Revs. Israel Brodie in January, Nehemiah Goldston in February, Nathan Levine in July and Henry Silverman in November. In January Rev. Leib Falk was appointed to the Jewish Legion, which was departing for Palestine. In October Rev. Walter Levin was appointed, serving in Italy and then in Egypt. In the New Year Honours List of 1918 Adler was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).142 Returning to France after a leave extended through ill-health on 7 January 1918, he spent the severe winter at the casualty clearing station at Achiet-le-Grand living in an Armstrong hut made of canvas stretched on wood. He wrote that he was fortunate to meet there a body of medical men with a keen interest in Judaism and Jewish history and he delivered several lectures on these subjects to officers, nurses and men. As a rule, he and his fellow chaplains found it most convenient for their work to be attached to medical units, both at the front and at the bases, and found many friends among the doctors and surgeons. He noted that German aviators did not tend to attack British hospitals, although there were exceptions, sometimes because they were near railway lines or dumps or camps. Adler was called upon to bury a Jewish sergeant of the USA infantry who had died of wounds received during his first tour of instruction in the British trenches, and had to conduct the ceremony under continuous shellfire with everybody wearing tin hats. In February 1918 Adler was again mentioned in despatches.143 In March 1918 during the Ludendorff Offensive and the resumption of a war of movement Adler was caught up in the great retreat in which Bapaume, Achiet-le-Grand and Albert fell. The Passover services which had been arranged for Bapaume and Arras could not take place, and Adler conducted a Passover Seder service in a tent with a few members of the unit. During the meal which consisted of bully and a few matzos which he had managed to save from the loss of much of his property he recited the Seder service from the Soldiers’ Prayer Book by the light of a candle, reading it aloud in English to his

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brother officers who were deeply interested in the coincidence of their flight with that of the Exodus from Egypt. The second night he and a Jewish soldier whom he met observed the Seder together with some fragments of matzo in the orderly room of the man’s unit.144 April 1918 saw an extension of the terms of the Military Service Act raising the military service age from forty-one to fifty-one and in a national emergency to fifty-five. As a Bill it included a provision extending the obligation of military service to ministers of religion. Perhaps because of opposition from nonconformist ministers in Wales and perhaps fearing an Irish rebellion if Roman Catholic priests were conscripted, the Government withdrew this provision, stating that inclusion of clergymen would curtail religious ministrations and would make only a slight addition to manpower.145

Troops from the United States On the western front American troops were arriving into the British camps. The 77th Division, consisting largely of Jewish soldiers from New York City, was training in Adler’s area. Without their own Jewish chaplain, the American staff readily accepted Adler’s proposal to act as their chaplain and, he wrote, the men welcomed him very warmly. It was a considerable time before any number of American Jewish chaplains came to France; until then the British Jewish chaplains on the western front did what they could to minister to the Americans. One service which Adler held in a barn was attended by about one hundred and fifty American and the same number of British troops and a group of tall New Zealanders. Adler received grateful acknowledgements in reply to his letters to the parents of New York soldiers. On 8 June 1918, an American chaplain, Rabbi D. Tannenbaum, visited Adler “and began that work of cooperation which bound English and American chaplains in the common bond of interest”.146 American Rabbi Lee J. Levinger arrived in France in the autumn of 1918. He recorded that the British Jewish Chaplains were well-equipped with suitable prayer books and other material, and that whilst he was on the British front at Boulogne he obtained from British chaplain Geffen a large number of army prayer books. He met Barnett, who had succeeded Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain. A group of about forty American soldiers told him of the Holy Day services which had been conducted by a British Jewish Chaplain. He noted that the lack of transport made it impossible for the British Jewish Chaplains completely to fulfil their duties. He followed the widespread practice of travelling on passing British lorries, sometimes using as many as a dozen in one day, until in January 1919 he collected in Paris one of the Ford cars which the Jewish Welfare Board in America had sent for each of the American Jewish Chaplains.147

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Adler’s Return to Britain In May 1918 Adler informed the JWSC that he had decided to relinquish his position in France and asked for the appointment of a successor. He seems not to have had a chaplaincy contract, and the decision seems to have been his own, taken before his health worsened. From 24–27 May Arthur Barnett visited Adler, who recorded that this was “re my proposed resignation”. On 15 June Adler again saw Sir John Monash, by then the GOC of the Anzac Corps, probably to take his leave.148 On 1 July a service which had previously been arranged was taken by Barnett. In July, immediately before the final Allied counter-offensive, Adler’s health broke down, and he was hospitalised with neurasthenia. With, he wrote, the deepest regret he was obliged to leave France, and on 15 July, declared “fit for home duty only”, he returned permanently to Britain. He later wrote that he was invalided home.149 The term neurasthenia was applied to officers, whilst for other ranks the same condition was described as shell shock. After more than three years continuous service at the front, with only some home leaves, Adler’s diagnosis of neurasthenia may or may not have been a mental breakdown, for which this term was sometimes a euphemism. The Australian Rev. Jacob Danglow arrived in London in July 1918, and met with Adler, whom he had known in London some fifteen years previously. “He was horrified to see that his contemporary, the senior English Jewish chaplain Michael Adler, appeared to be a ‘broken man’. It had been four years since he had last seen him and the stress of savage trench war had left its mark.”150 Danglow had not yet been to the front and Adler may have been the first person with long service there whom he encountered. The War Office gave Adler two months leave, and he was declared fit for home duties only. In October he succeeded Rev. Solomon Lipson as the Senior Jewish Chaplain in the Home Command. He visited the Aldershot Command with Rev. Vivian Simmons, preached and addressed the many Jewish soldiers over tea at their club in Aldershot. At a fortnightly meeting of chaplains of all denominations he spoke for over an hour on his experiences, especially from a religious point of view, at the front. He gave a lecture to a crowded audience on “A Chaplain’s Life in France 1914-1918”.151 The Jewish Chronicle in its review of the Jewish year congratulated Adler on his excellent work as Senior Chaplain in France.152 In October 1918 it wrote: The number of chaplains with the fighting forces has to be doubled, and Mr Adler is conducting a fight with synagogue wardens to obtain their best ministers for a period of service at the front. As the Chief Rabbi’s appeal to his fellow-ministers to volunteer for combatant service153 has so far fallen upon deaf ears, the least one would expect is that there

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would be no shortage of suitable aspirants for chaplaincies. Even before General Allenby completed his occupation of Palestine there was an urgent need of a competent Jewish chaplain in the Holy Land; that need has now become greater and more imperative.154 The last statement was wrong, for Rev. Leib Falk was with the Jewish Legion in Palestine and Rev. Shimon Grajewsky and Rabbis Yitzhak Frankenthal and Raffaelo Della Pergola were serving in Egypt and Palestine. In 1922 Michael Adler reflected: My principal sources of satisfaction in looking back at my varied war experiences are afforded by two considerations, of which the first is that I found ample opportunities to perform useful work, and the second that the reputation of the Jewish soldier on the Western front stood very high and reflected the fullest credit upon the good name of AngloJewry.155 This seems to express Adler’s considered reflection upon his service and that of the British Jewish chaplains. If as a highly intelligent man he was troubled by the phenomenon of Jews fighting and killing fellow Jews, he did not record it. The duty of soldiers to kill inevitably troubled many chaplains, even without the additional dimension of Jews killing Jews, and each had to deal with it as best he might. But one doubts whether in 1922 Adler would have referred to the Germans, as he had done in February 1915 following the German raids on the east coast of Britain, as “babykillers”.

Adler’s Correspondence with Chief Rabbi Hertz Throughout the war Adler maintained a regular correspondence with Chief Rabbi Hertz in London.156 The correspondence is wide-ranging and covers, amongst other matters, Adler’s first visit to France in 1915; arrangements for the Chief Rabbi’s visit in 1915 and his later aborted visit in 1917; services; leave for festivals; hospital visitation; the prayer book produced for soldiers and sailors and later its revised edition; the booklet produced for Passover; the burial service; the Book of Jewish Thoughts; the consecration of a cemetery in 1915 (for which the Chief Rabbi gave the order of service); and arrangements for officiating clergymen. In September 1914 Hertz reproached Adler for the appointment of the Reform minister Rev. J. Phillips as chaplain to Jewish soldiers at Manchester: …..the appointment of a Reform minister to such a post may give rise to unpleasant criticism and cause unnecessary friction in the

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Community ….. I am sorry that you did not consult me unofficially before making the appointment …. In September 1915 Adler wrote “I have witnessed terrible sights since Saturday – the aftermath of an awful battle which is still raging not far away. I have buried one Jewish officer already, a nephew of Mr Albert Woolf.” In March 1916 Hertz vetoed until after the war a suggestion by Adler for a memorial service for the fallen. The Chief Rabbi became a member of a commission for the re-internment of soldiers killed in action, accompanied by religious services.157

Other Chaplaincy Issues Jewish soldiers were asked to fill in and immediately return a postcard requesting their regiment number, rank, full name, unit, location of unit, married or single, full name of nearest relative, address of nearest relative, “Have you a Prayer Book?” and date. Another postcard, pre-addressed to the JWSC for men admitted to hospital in the UK, asked for their regimental number, rank, name in full, unit and the name and address of the hospital. The records of the JWSC also contain an undated unaddressed pro forma letter, with the printed date “…… 1916” to be completed, from “Rev. Michael Adler, Senior Jewish Chaplain British Expeditionary Force, France”, which reads: Dear Sir, I was very pleased to meet your son at the Front yesterday. He is perfectly well. I hope to see him often. Yrs sincerely Michael Adler During the First World War a number of people convicted of espionage were executed in the Tower of London. One was Albert Meyer, believed to be either a German or a Turkish citizen, whose letters addressed to a known German spy bureau in the Hague were intercepted by British Postal Censorship. Described in accounts in 1920 and 1922 as “a little Jew” and “an insignificantlooking little Jew”, he was court martialled on 5-6 November and sentenced to death, to be carried out on Saturday 27 November, later deferred to Thursday 2 December, 1915.158 On Thursday 25 November 1915 Rev. A. A. Green wrote to Mr P. Ornstien, the secretary of the Visitation Committee, to say that the War Office had called upon him to attend a Jew condemned for espionage who was to be executed at the Tower of London very early on Saturday morning. Green had been to see him today and was sleeping at the Tower tomorrow night. As he would have

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to spend Sabbath in the City for this purpose there would be a charge (as small as he could make it) for his meals and he would submit a memo about this. On 8 December 1915 Mr Ornstien wrote to the War Office to say that the Visitation Committee had learned that a spy of the Jewish religion had recently been ordered to be shot on a Saturday and a Jewish minister had been requested to afford him religious consolation on this solemn occasion. There had been a respite and the execution had been carried out on a Thursday. The Committee requested that in such an event the execution should not be fixed for a Jewish Sabbath or Festival, in the interests of both the condemned man and the feelings of the Jewish minister who might be called upon for duty on such an occasion. Three days later the War Office replied saying that effect would be given to the request should the necessity arise.159 Several courts-martial of Jewish soldiers were brought to Adler’s notice. On four occasions when men appealed to him for assistance Adler engaged the services of Jewish officers who belonged to the legal profession with, he wrote, satisfactory results. On 2 October 1915 he attended the court martial of Rifleman J. Landsberg at GHQ. On 29 September 1917 he attended the court martial of Private L. H. Jacobs of 235 Machine Gun Company at Schram Barracks at Arras. Jacobs, who had asked to see Adler, was acquitted on a charge of cowardice. On 2 October 1917 a court martial at Thilloy was postponed. On 6 July 1918, as no legally qualified officer was available, Adler acted as prisoner’s friend at the court martial at 21 Casualty Clearing Station of Private D. Bennett of the RAMC, who had been rude to his NCO and disobeyed orders. Adler did his best to defend him, but without success. Throughout the whole war Adler heard of only one case of a Jewish soldier being shot for cowardice, and the man was entered in his battalion as a member of the Church of England.160 On 20 February 1918 a conference of Jewish chaplains and officiating clergymen was held in Birmingham. As the Senior Chaplain on the home front, Rev. Solomon Lipson took the chair. Papers were read, and the discussions embraced issues of religious observance.161 On 3 September 1918 a conference of Jewish War Workers, including Revs. Adler and Lipson and the Australian Harold Boas, was held in London.162 Whilst on active service abroad many Jewish soldiers made great efforts to attend religious services. In Britain, however, attendance at services was a perennial issue. On occasion, especially on the High Holydays, services were attended by large numbers of soldiers. However Jewish chaplains frequently reported low attendances at regular religious services, in contrast to Anglicans whose attendance at Sunday church parade was compulsory. Rev. Walter Levin, then an officiating clergyman and later to become a chaplain, noted at the chaplaincy conference that at a particular service only twenty-three out of the one hundred and sixty Jewish soldiers in the garrison attended.

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Commanding officers often offered premises for Jewish services if requested. This was sometimes abused by Jewish soldiers, who used them for smoking and playing cards, which chaplains feared threatened the continuation of services and brought Judaism into disrepute. The chaplains’ conference discussed whether services should be made compulsory, and reached a consensus that they should be, in the interests of the soldiers themselves. Rev. Vivian Simmons, a minister of the Reform denomination, dissented; Saturday afternoon was the only free time when men were allowed to go out, and in a tense correspondence in April and May 1918 with Chief Rabbi Hertz he said so. In Britain, he wrote, it might have been possible to make services compulsory; abroad, Jewish soldiers were so widely dispersed that it would have been wholly impractical. Services would therefore have to take place on Sunday mornings. Hertz responded that Sunday services must not be regarded as a substitute for Saturday services; Simmons countered that the Sunday services were not, as Hertz had suggested, devoid of religious significance. In the event services did not become compulsory. Another issue was the absence of officers from services, upon which soldiers would comment adversely. “The one thing about the services that appears bad to me is that I have never seen any officers attend, although there must be a considerable number of Jewish officers”, wrote Private Lelyveld. Jewish chaplains criticised absentee officers for being “conspicuous in their anxiety not to be recognised as Jews, or at least not to be identified with their religious practices”. At the chaplains’ conference Levin spoke of the lack of support which he had received from Jewish officers: “a want of communal spirit which was in most cases prompted by pure moral cowardice. To disguise his Judaism, the Jewish officer frequently marched with his men to church, or where he did not do lip service to the church he declared himself a fire worshipper.”163

e Young Men’s Christian Association “Of all the civilian organisations which plunged into army work in 1914-18, none attained the size, prominence or level of organisational efficiency achieved by the YMCA.”164 Instantly identifiable by its famous Red Triangle logo, the YMCA developed an infrastructure of hundreds of centres, some close to the front line. In January 1916 it took a full front-page advertisement, illustrated by soldiers queueing at a YMCA hut, in the Jewish World inviting donations for YMCA huts.165 The members of Adler’s Central Synagogue in the fashionable West End of London raised the cost of a YMCA hut, and the Jews living around the Mile End Road in the impoverished east end of London of another. Fullpage fundraising advertisements under Adler’s name, similarly illustrated, appeared in the Jewish Chronicle in November 1916 and June 1917.166

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Appeal for Y.M.C.A. accomodation. Jewish Chronicle 15 June 1917.

Conducting Services without a Chaplain Religious services were conducted for Jewish soldiers in numerous locations throughout Britain. The Jewish Chronicle regularly published long lists of the locations and times of services, for the Friday evenings and Saturday mornings and sometimes afternoons of the Sabbath and for festivals, and the Jewish World

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sometimes did so. These listed the officiants, who were chaplains, officiating clergymen, civilians and soldiers of all ranks from officers to privates.167 At periods when they were stationed in French towns behind the line chaplains held services in the synagogue in conjunction with the local Rabbi.

Jewish Chronicle 27 July 1917, p. 14. Similar lists appeared regularly in the Jewish Chronicle and sometimes in the Jewish World throughout the First World War.

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Generally the chaplains had to find locations for services, especially for the High Holydays and Passover. Sometimes for festivals they had to try to arrange several services at different distant locations. They therefore tried to find men who were willing and able to conduct services, and to arrange for services to be held. From his first exploratory visit to France in 1915, Adler wherever possible organised officers and men so that they might hold services for themselves. Sometimes groups of men came together spontaneously to hold a service. A well-documented example appeared in the Jewish Chronicle on 22 October 1915. Headed Service on Yom Kippur near the trenches, it is a letter to Adler from Staff Sergeant J. Canton, RAMC, who was running an advanced dressing station and with the permission of his major held a service in its marquee: …. Sorry I couldn’t send you that report down sooner, but like yourself, sir, I am nearing the battle line, and have been ever since a few days after Yom Kippur. I’m running an advanced dressing station, consequently you can guess I’m having rather a hot and busy time of it, and haven’t had much leisure for writing purposes, so hope you will excuse the delay. Thanks to your valuable aid, I was quite astonished to find that twentythree men came down for the service, which far exceeded the number I anticipated getting down to our camp. Below you will find a list of their names ….. and of course, myself who, as requested by you, conducted the service. I remember it was a hot, burning morning, the sun was beating down mercilessly, one could hardly breathe, and yet the poor boys came straggling in by two’s and three’s, most of them carrying all their ‘packs,’ rifles, etc., looking hot, dusty and weary, their boots and puttees covered with dust. Many of them had obtained leave from their C.O.’s and came right down from the trenches a distance of three to five miles; not one of them having breakfasted, and all told me they were determined to keep up the Fast. Needless to state, I got them to sit down in the marquee (which our Major kindly lent me for the service) and after a few minutes’ rest we commenced. I conducted the service, as regulated by you, in the special Prayer Book issued to the Jewish troops for Yom Kippur, at the termination of which they all deemed it a success. I’m afraid I didn’t do so ‘great’ though – being an amateur Chazan for the first time in one’s existence is not exactly as easy as it seems. After the service we all had a chat about old times, many of us having met before at the Tabernacle in Aldershot, where the Rev. Mr. Plaskow conducts the services on Shabbos. It was quite good to talk over the old times. Many of us were still in England last year, and were lucky enough to get passes to our homes for Rosh Hoshana and Yom Kippur. We dwelt on the elaborate dinners we had had last year, before fasting, among our

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own people, but we jolly soon got off that subject, as it made our mouths ‘water’ too much; you cannot talk of ‘elaborate dinners’ and fast well at the same time. I know previous to fasting I ‘dined’ on some bread and cheese, but it doesn’t do to grumble on active service. I made up for it when the fast was over. Went to a neighbouring cottage and bought some ‘café-au-lait,’ a couple of eggs, etc., rather a ‘spread’ in these days. But I’m afraid I have got off the subject. All things come to an end, and so did our gathering. As the day was rapidly waning, and many of the chaps had to get back to the trenches, so we bid each other ‘good luck’ and ‘guten Yomtov168,’ shook hands all round, and all of us departed our various ways, taking with us memories which, I’m sure, most of us will never forget of a pleasant, though earnest, Yom Kippur service held on ‘active service’ by British Jews serving in His Majesty’s Army.169 Adler recorded that this service was held in the Second Army area near Poperinghe. Canton was killed less than a year later, on 14 July 1916. A notice of his death was published in the Jewish Chronicle, followed by tributes by Revs. Adler and Plaskow. From these it emerges that Canton was the son of Rev. and Mrs. L. Cohen of Cheetham, Manchester and that he was committed to his Judaism. He is variously referred to as Canton and Cantor, so he may have assumed either more anglicised name in the army. Adler wrote “I shall never forget how he conducted the Yom Kippur service for the local Jewish soldiers last year, and how delighted the men were with him…. The burial service was read by a Jewish soldier who was with him at the time.” On 19 October 1916 Adler visited his and other graves at Carnoy, and on 21 January 1918 he went to army headquarters in connection with the consecration of a new memorial to him.170 Another service is recorded: On 3 September [1916] a service was held behind the firing line “somewhere in France” by twenty-one Jewish boys of the Bucks. As no Jewish chaplain was available the service was conducted by Lance Corporal A. Jacobs assisted by Private M. Jacobs. The service concluded with “God Save the King”.171 In a report of 16 October 1916 to the Chief Rabbi on the services held on the High Holydays, Adler wrote that in addition to those conducted by chaplains other services were conducted in numerous locations by Jewish officers or men.172 In September 1918 the Jewish Chronicle reported that Major Schonfield, who was now in camp, conducted services on both days of Rosh Hashanah for the Corps of Salonika Jews, a shofar was provided and one of the buglers proved himself to be expert at blowing it.173 Describing a service on

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Yom Kippur in 1918, Sapper I. Rosenthal of the Royal Engineers Signallers wrote that he and others set out at half past seven in a lorry and began the service at half past ten. As they could not find an unoccupied building anywhere they held the service in a field. Numbering about twenty, the prayers were read by an officer in the Machine Gun Corps and a comrade in the kilted uniform of the Black Watch. The rendering of the service caused much wonderment to passers-by. At the close they marched about seven kilometres to an inn where they broke their fast on eggs and potatoes followed by tinned fruit.174 It was not only Jewish chaplains who could not be everywhere. On occasion Anglican officers led religious services in the absence of commissioned chaplains.175

Making Do Throughout the war Jewish soldiers complained of the lack of Jewish chaplains, especially when compared with the religious support given to Christian comrades. As Rev. Walter Levin wrote to the Jewish Chronicle: “Our Jew soldiers see what is being done for their Christian comrades; ought we to do less for them?” In Britain too ministers could be scarce. Private Ludski, who spent fifteen months at Beckett’s Park Hospital in Leeds, where there were over sixty Jewish patients, complained that none received a single visit from a Jewish minister; and other patients and lady visitors reported similarly.176 Soldiers had to manage to observe their Judaism as best they might. There is a poignant letter in May 1915 from an unnamed Jewish soldier at the front: …. About 10. o’clock we reached our destination, fortunately without a single casualty, although we had been under fire part of the way up, and my platoon has been in the dug-outs as reserve to the firing line, and about 100 yards to the rear of it. This pleased me greatly; it seems more fitting on this night of nights to be here at rest than to be up there firing perhaps at someone who is thinking much as I am – who knows? As soon as we got settled in this dug-out I managed to get a fire going and made some cocoa, this with a biscuit, making my ‘Seder Night’, and I said the Blessing for Wine over it, and drank a toast to those at home in response to the toast they will certainly drink to me tonight. So I finished my little Seder and then read some of the Psalms from my soldier’s prayer-book. We are eleven in this dug-out, and afterwards I talked to the boys of the Passover, seeing in it all wonders I’ve never seen before, and the deeper significance of it came home to me. They are fine boys, these, gentlemen all, who would share their last crumb with me if I wanted it, and they just sat in silence, listening carefully to all I said,

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and when I had finished dear old Dick said: ‘It’s alright, old man, we understand.’ Just that and no more. Now they are all asleep, and I write this by candle light to the accompaniment of the ‘crack, crack’ as the bullets hit the bank overhead …. Good night and good Yomtov all, my dear ones, my thoughts are with you all.177 In January 1916 Private Jack Baker RAMC wrote that he always attends the weekly service at the Synagogue in Aldershot. When he reads his evening prayers, his non-Jewish chums cluster round him, and all of them read the beautiful night prayer before lights out.178 In March 1916 Private Leonard Baronowitsch of the 5th Worcestershire Regiment wrote to Rev. A. Plaskow: ….. There are three other Jewish lads in our dug-out, and our Christian pals gave it the nickname of the ‘Kosher House’. I didn’t remain long in the Kosher House before I was wounded, and I think you will be able to find the house Kosher still with a Mezuza179 which I fixed on the outside.180 In letters to his family Lieutenant Marcus Segal (5 December 1896 – 19 June 1917) of the 13th Battalion King’s Liverpool Regiment wrote of his efforts to follow his faith in the trenches, arranging and encouraging attendance at services. He helped to bury several Jews: “… when I read on one chap’s prayer book – A small Bar – mitzvah present from his dear granda (sic) – I can tell you I was crying like a baby.” “A strange thing happened. One of the Scots took a prisoner who had a teffilin in his pockets and he rushed to Hdquts thinking he had found some new signalling device. I did laugh.” “I had my last dug-out full of leaves on top in honour of Succah but I dare not put any fruit hanging as fruit would not hang very long here.” He was killed at the age of 20.181

Funerals Designating Jewish graves was an issue from the outset. Sometimes a standard Cross was erected over a Jewish grave. On other occasions the unit to which a deceased Jewish soldier belonged would make its own pattern of the Shield of David or would erect a plain board rather than a Cross. In June 1915 Michael Adler obtained the approval of the Graves’ Registration Commission at the front for every Cross which had been erected over a Jewish grave to be replaced, initially by a plain board bearing the man’s name and ultimately by a standard Magen David erected over all Jewish graves, both English and German, and a wooden Magen David inscribed with the word Shalom – peace, or farewell – over graves in cemeteries. Initially the first two of these memorials were carved

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The gravestone of Second Lieutenant Marcus Segal.

by Adler’s orderly, Private R. Friedlander, and others by a Christian staffsergeant of the Royal Engineers who offered his services for the purpose, saying “there is nothing too much I would do for any soldier of any religion who has given his life for his King and Country.” By August 1915 the erection of Magen David memorials over the graves of Jewish soldiers which Adler had arranged

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was being rapidly carried out, and several of the graves were named, including that of Lieutenant Frank A. De Pass, V.C., the first Jewish soldier in the war to win the Victoria Cross. By 1916 the Graves Registration Commission was erecting Jewish memorials over Jewish graves and sending Adler photographs for transmission to relatives. The issue was a constant cause of concern to Adler, and led on occasion to reburials.182 The first funeral which Adler conducted, he wrote, was that of a French Jewish soldier who was a Zouave from Algiers. It took place in Rouen, and Adler officiated in the absence of the local Rabbi who was on active service near Verdun as a chaplain and stretcher bearer. The second was in May 1915, when Adler arranged for a German prisoner, a young law student, who had died to be buried in a row allotted for Jews in a cemetery at Le Treport and conducted his funeral. In the cemetery he discovered the grave of a young British Jewish soldier from London whom he had met at a service a month before and who had been killed and buried under a Cross. At his request the senior medical officer of the district gave permission for the soldier to be disinterred, which was very unusual, and he was reburied alongside the German soldier. The same Royal Engineers staff-sergeant made a Magen David for the British soldier, but for the German was willing only to set up a simple board with an inscription. Messages asking chaplains to officiate at funerals often led to their making long journeys; Adler recorded instances of four and six-hour journeys, and of travelling one hundred and sixty miles there and back on Wednesday 18 August 1915 to officiate at the funeral of Captain E. C. Simon of the 2–5th Lancashire Fusiliers.183 The funeral service was included in the pocket prayer book issued to Jewish soldiers. The chances of any Jewish chaplain being able to reach the location of a Jewish funeral on the western front were small. So, as with Staff Sergeant Canton184, a Jewish funeral was sometimes conducted by another Jewish soldier. Reporting on the arrangements which Adler had made with the military authorities for the burial of Jewish soldiers, the Jewish Chronicle reported that “The Chaplain desires it be known that in every case where there is no local Rabbi, a Jewish soldier had been appointed to conduct the burial service”.185 What this meant is not entirely clear, as nobody could guarantee the availability of a Jewish soldier at all, let alone one willing and able to perform this task. Perhaps it referred to arrangements such as that about which Lieutenant Sydney Frankenburg of the 1/8th Manchester Regiment wrote in June 1915 to his wife: I went over to GHQ to a Jewish service, the Chief Rabbi was there …. I am to be appointed a sort of Jewish chaplain, that is they have approached me to read the burial service over such Jewish soldiers who die in the hospitals and field ambulances in this area.186

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June 1915 was when the Chief Rabbi made his visit to France, so Adler must have taken advantage of his presence and authority to formalise burial procedures with the army. Adler arranged for a short form of the Jewish Burial Service in English to be printed and widely distributed among Christian chaplains to enable them to conduct a Jewish Burial Service in English for Jewish soldiers.187 Many chaplains themselves made the rough form of the Shield of David in order to mark a Jewish grave. One officer later told Adler that as he lay seriously wounded in a casualty clearing station the padre had sought to comfort him by telling him, with the best intention in the world, that if he died the Jewish Service would be read over his body if Adler was not within reach.188 Private Samuel Marks, RAMC wrote that on the fifth day of the war he was out in France doing his “little bit”. He met three Jews, and wrote of the third: The next Jew I met in our hospital in Belgium. That was not a happy meeting, for he was sorely wounded and dying. He was too weak to speak. I officiated at his funeral, reading the burial service from the Prayer Book issued to Jewish soldiers on active service. That event was to me the most awesome and saddening experience of all my life. For there was a Jew dead in the midst of strangers, although of the same army, and only one other Jew to see him on the way to solve the greatest of mysteries.189 In May 1915 Private Charles Rosenthal of the 4th London Regiment was taken, seriously wounded, to Rouen, where he died. Privates J. Sidney and R. Simmons, RAMC performed Tahara – preparing the body for burial – in the hospital, assisted by the local beadle, Mr Jacobson. The funeral took place in the military cemetery of St. Seven, in a section that had been consecrated by Adler in February 1915. The Chief Rabbi of Rouen, M. Nathan Levy, who had just returned from the front where he had been serving as chaplain to the 3rd Army Corps since September 1914, officiated. Adler arrived in Rouen the following day, and visited the grave.190 Private Israel Jackson of the 7th Durham Light Infantry, who was killed on 15 May 1915, was buried by four other Jewish men of the same battalion who were all his school fellows from Sunderland.191 Having conducted a religious service in England in December 1914 for men of his 17th (County of London) Battalion, the London Regiment (Poplar and Stepney Rifles), Lieutenant Arthur Baraf Walters, the Jewish officer in the regiment, conducted, together with Rifleman Abraham Louis Strauss, a Jewish funeral for Sergeant Morris Gordon, who was killed on 16 May 1915. One of the bearers was Rifleman M. Davis of the 12th Platoon, who wrote to Gordon’s parents of the continual boom of

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guns in the distance. Rifleman Strauss was himself killed on 23 May 1915 by a sniper, and the letter which he had written to the mother of Sergeant Morris was found on him. Lieutenant Walters also conducted other Jewish funerals.192 In June 1915 the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World reported the death of a soldier called Reginald (Reggie) Lehmann. Both published this letter written to his mother.193 My Dear Mrs Lehmann. – It is with the deepest distress that I write to you about your son – for I know what grievous sorrow the news must mean to you. He was carried down to the Doctor’s dressing station last night from the trenches – but it was too late – he passed away before anything could be done for him. His wounds had, of course, been dressed in the trenches – but they were very severe, his leg being seriously injured. This morning Mr MacFarlane, the Presbyterian chaplain, and myself, Church of England chaplain, attached to the 1/6 Seaforths, laid him reverently to rest beside others of his Regiment in a quiet green little orchard, which we have chosen as a resting place for them. We were at first in doubt whether you would care for us to hold any service at the grave – but when we found among his possessions a little book containing a service for the burial of the dead, we felt we should do right in using the beautiful prayer that you will find there. I hope this will be what you would wish. We read, too, the Ninetieth Psalm. It was a very beautiful little service, and we were glad to be able to use his own book of prayers. I am told that he had been reading the daily portion of the Psalms in the morning in the trenches. His religion, as I know from a talk we had not long ago, meant much to him, and, as with all of us, the difficult experiences we have been going through together have added depth and reality to our faith. He was anxious to find out whether the Jewish Chaplain was anywhere in the neighbourhood, so that he might attend his service. I greatly wish his wish could have been gratified, but it has not been possible. We may be sure that all is well with him, and I can only pray that you may be given comfort and peace – peace in the thought of his peace, peace with honour, his sacrifice complete, his victory won – and may his sacrifice and yours bring to you its own reward. You may be sure that you have whole-hearted sympathy of his friends here – they were many, and they sorrow for you and with you. Others will tell you of the affection and respect in which he was held by his

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officers and comrades. Major Gain has been speaking of him to me this morning in terms that would make you proud to hear. There are a few precious little possessions of his which were in his pockets. I am sending you these separately. Please accept my deepest sympathy and believe me, Yours most sincerely J. McLeod Campbell Chaplain 1/6 Seaforths. June 16th. The use of the word “little” four times contributes to the humanity of this poignant letter. The Jewish World described the chaplain as a true Christian. The Jewish Chronicle entitled its report “Christian Chaplain’s Noble Act”. It commented: Who, reading this fine communication Christian in the very best sense of the word, religious in the truest meaning of the term, will not feel the force of the prophet’s explanation: ‘Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?’ In July 1915 the Jewish Chronicle published (opposite a tribute to Reginald Lehmann) a letter from Sergeant Major V. Rathbone of the King Edward’s Horse to his brother, Mr. M. Rathbone: I was up and down the trenches for twenty-four hours, with one hour’s rest. We captured a German officer, Lieut. Max Seller, of a Bavarian Cavalry Regiment. He and about fifty men were attacking us with hand bombs and the officer was bayonetted on the parapet. I helped to bury him with our own casualties. He was a Jew so I had the services altered by the Chaplain. Possibly his people might be glad to know, and if you asked the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World to mention it they might learn of it. He was a plucky chap and our fellows could not help expressing admiration of his effort to bomb us.194 On 13 August 1915 Mr Leopold Frank of 49 Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park in London wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz about the shortage of Jewish Chaplains (of whom there were then only two, Adler and Simmons, on the western front):

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The gravestone in the British Hyde Park Corner Cemetery of German Lieutenant Max Seller.

I would like to give you a little instance how considerate Christian Clergymen are towards our people. The Chaplain of the 19th London came to my son [Captain. J. L. Frank] some time ago and told him that a wounded Jewish soldier had died, and asked my boy if he would bury him. My son took an escort of 20 men and had the body carried to the Guards’ Cemetery at Givenchy, but whilst reading the Jewish Burial Service, the Germans shelled the Cemetery. …. 195

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In July 1916 the Jewish Chronicle reported: The Late Rifleman Aubrey Frazer [sic]. Touching letter from a German Rabbiner. Rifleman Aubrey Fraser (the second son of Mr I. Fraser, member of the Board of Management of the St. John’s Wood Synagogue, and Mrs Fraser) who was reported wounded and missing in our last issue, died from the effects of his wounds on July 9th. Mr Fraser has received the following letter, in German, from Rabbi Dr Ludwig Rosenthal, of Cologne. Dear Sir, - It is my sad duty to inform you that your son Aubrey, of the London Rifle Brigade, who was brought here severely wounded and taken to the hospital, succumbed to his wounds on the 9th July. I was with him at the time of his death, 2 a.m., and the last conscious words of your dying son were of his father and mother. A religious service was held in the hospital, after which he was interred in the Jewish cemetery. Full military honours were accorded him. May God comfort you and endow you with strength to submit to the words recited by me at the burial: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.’196 Warm tributes followed from Revs. E. Levene and H.L. Price, both of whom had known Aubrey Fraser well. They wrote that he was aged 18 and had served in France for about three months. The Jewish World praised the letter to Fraser’s parents as “light in the gloom”.197 In September 1918 Rev. David Hirsch arranged the funeral of Private B. Samuels of the Northumberland Fusiliers. Unable to conduct the funeral personally, he arranged for Private S. Jacobson of the same regiment to do so and for a Magen David to be erected over the grave. Private Jacobson wrote to Private Samuels’ father mentioning that the Church of England chaplain had afforded him every facility to carry out the funeral.198 British-born Australian Private Samuel Bishop (c.1892-1918) served at the Dardanelles and then on the western front. A sequence of letters sent to his family illustrates the workings of Jewish chaplaincy in dealing with a death. Australian Jewish chaplain Rev. Jacob Danglow visited Bishop in a casualty clearing station in 1918 and British Jewish chaplain Harris Price was with him when he died there of his wounds. As Bishop was Australian, Danglow came to conduct his funeral, and wrote to his parents; had he not been available Price

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would undoubtedly done so. Then, in the absence of a Jewish chaplain, a Church of England chaplain replied to the letter from Bishop’s father to the casualty clearing station which had communicated with him, reporting that the funeral had taken place and giving the cemetery details. Quite soon afterwards the British Senior Jewish Chaplain, Rev. Arthur Barnett, through the clerk who conducted much of his voluminous correspondence, checked that a Jewish memorial was appropriate. The grave was marked by a Magen David and the word Shalom, and at some stage a photograph of the grave with its Magen David and Shalom, set amidst a field of crosses, was sent to Bishop’s parents. Inevitably amidst the vicissitudes of war, the system for dealing with the death of a Jewish soldier did not always work as it should have done; in the case of Samuel Bishop it did.199 Jewish chaplains could be called upon to conduct funerals of non-Jews if no other chaplain was available. In June 1917 Australian Jewish chaplain Rev. David Freedman recorded: To Pont Nieppe. Place bombarded. Casualties in 42nd Battalion. Fires burning in village. Was called on by Sergeant of 42nd Battalion, who said that two Christian soldiers were awaiting burial. Some trouble in getting two chaplains to go; was sent to me by Brigade to know if I would take the funerals. Consented to go; buried the men, with the approval of the Colonel of the 42nd Battalion.200 Anything could happen. The Jewish Chronicle reported: Catholic priest reads Jewish prayer. A Hungarian Catholic priest relates that on finding in the field a dying Jewish soldier he immediately assumed the duty of a Jewish chaplain and recited a Hebrew prayer.201

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

Endelman, The Jews of Britain, p. 130. Gilbert, Jewish History Atlas (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson,1985 (3rd ed.)), p. 81. BJBH, p.4. Paula Kitching, Britain’s Jews in the First World War (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2019), pp. 242, 263. Jay Winter, (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), vol. 3, Civil Society: Panikos Panayi, Minorities, pp. 216-241 at 222, 229, 231, 239, 240; Adrian Gregory, Beliefs and Religion, pp. 418-444 at 434-5. JC 14/8/1914, p. 6; 9/10/1914, p. 16. JC 7/8/1914, p. 5. Edward Madigan and Gideon Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience of the First World War, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019): Madigan, Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, Mother England, pp. 307-333. JW 19/8/1914, p. 7. JC 14/8/1914, p. 14.

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8. JC 14/8/1914, p. 10. 9. JC 14/8/1914, p. 13. 10. Anne Patricia Lloyd, Jews under Fire: the Jewish Community and Military Service in World War 1 Britain (PhD dissertation, University of Southampton, Faculty of Law, Arts & Social Sciences, School of Humanities, 2009), p. 95, nn. 337-8. JC 4/9/14, p. 10. 11. JC 18/9/1914, p. 9. Berkowitz, Western Jewry, p. 16. 12. JC 2/10/1914, p. 13. JW 7/10/1914, p. 7. 13. JC 11/9/1914 p. 13. 14. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 73, n. 240. JC 14/8/1914, p. 10; 6/11/1914, p. 24. 15. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 73, n. 242. JC 6/11/1914, p. 26. 16. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 168, 217-220, 225-6, 238, 255, 259-260, 316, 385 n. 447. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 70-71, 80-81, 123-141, 167. Edward Madigan, Faith Under Fire. Anglican Army Chaplains and the Great War (Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), p. 120. 17. BJBH, p. 45. US 2014, pp. 12-19. The Times History of the War (1914-1921) (London, 1921), vol. VIII, pp. 350-2. 18. It seems that early records of the Army Chaplains’ Department were lost in a fire at the Public Records Office during the Second World War. 19. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 175, 265. 20. Adler’s correspondence was with Mr. B. B. Cubitt, who rose to become Sir B. B. Cubitt (or Cubbitt), a Principal Assistant-Secretary in the War Office: Howson, Muddling Through, p. 190. 21. JC 6/11/1914, pp. 5, 24, 25; 13/11/1914, pp. 10 - 11; 27/11/1914, pp. 12 - 13; 4/12/1914, p. 6; 11/12/1914, p. 20; 1/1/1915, p. 13; 8/1/1915, p. 21. JW 14/10/1914, pp. 7-8; 28/10/1914, p. 23; 4/11/1914, pp. 9, 28-29; 11/11/1914, pp. 5-6 (extract above), 16; 2/12/1914, pp. 5-6, 21; 9/12/1914, pp. 7, 15; 16/12/1914, p. 25; 23/12/1914, p. 11; 30/12/1914, p. 1; 6/1/1915, p. 13; 27/1/1915, p. 12; 17/3/1915, p. 10. 22. David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841-1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 118. 23. Ibid., p. 118. 24. JW 28/10/1914, p. 17. 25. BJBH, p. 38. 26. Festival prayer book. 27. JC 20/11/1914, p. 21. JW 18/11/1914, p. 23. VC/2/7. 28. JW 18/11/1914, p. 15. 29. JC 20/11/1914, p. 20. 30. JM, file 2011.74. 31. JW 6/1/1915, p. 15. 32. JC 11/9/1914, p. 10. 33. JW 28/10/1914, p. 9. 34. VC/2/7. 35. JM, file 2011.74. 36. JC 13/11/1914, pp. 14, 21; 20/11/1914, p. 15. JW 16/9/1914, p. 20; 4/11/1914, pp. 27-28; 18/11/1914, p. 22; 9/12/1914, p. 21; 5/5/1915, p. 18. 37. JC 2/10/1914, p. 11. JW 7/10/1914, p. 11; 21/10/1914, p. 14. 38. JW 25/11/1914, pp. 19-20. 39. JC 13/11/1914, pp. 14, 21; 20/11/1914, p. 15; 11/12/1914, p. 16; 18/12/1914, p. 23; 25/12/1914, p. 20. JW 4/11/1914, p. 22; 18/11/1914, p. 22; 2/12/1914, p. 19; 9/12/1914, p. 21; 16/12/1914, pp. 19, 23; 23/12/1914, p. 18; 6/1/1915, p. 20. 40. VC/1A/295.

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41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

The death of whose son, Lieutenant Cyril Henry, Adler noted in his diary on 1 May 1916. BJBH, p.33. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 95. JM, file 2011.74. JC 18/12/1914, p. 23. JW 9/12/1914, p. 8; 20/1/1915, p. 12. JW 27/1/1915, p. 18. There were four main bases: Havre, Rouen, Etaples and Boulogne. Howson, Muddling Through, p. 100. BJBH, pp. 33-4. John Simms, an Irish Presbyterian, was the Principal Chaplain of the B.E.F. Madigan, Faith Under Fire, pp. 48-54, 112, n. 258. Snape and Madigan (eds.), The Clergy in Khaki, per David Coulter, pp. 83-4. Simms was therefore the administrative head of chaplaincy, including Jewish chaplaincy, in the B.E.F. and Adler’s chain of command ran through Simms to the War Office. In July 1915 the Church of England unilaterally created a separate chain of chaplaincy command, dividing the unified organisational structure within the AChD into a dual one. Bishop John Taylor Smith, an evangelical Anglican, held the office of Chaplain General which despite its title conferred authority only over Anglican chaplains and not over Jewish or other chaplains. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 20, 35, 37, 57, 8593, 194. On Taylor Smith’s death in 1938, Adler wrote to The Times that he had always been most welcoming of Adler and supportive of his work. “This broadminded kindliness was shown also in the spirit of cordiality with which he welcomed me when I became the first commissioned Chaplain (T. F.) in spiritual charge of the Jewish soldiers. ….When the War Office attached me to the Expeditionary Force …. in bidding me farewell he bestowed upon me the Priestly Blessing, like a father on his son. All the Jewish Chaplains retain a warm affection for his memory as a man of exalted spiritual character, who knew no difference of creed, but inspired all under his command with enthusiasm for their work.” Maurice Whitlow, J. Taylor Smith, K.C.B., C.V.O., D.D., Everybody’s Bishop (London: Lutterworth Press, 1938), pp. 100-101. Snape and Madigan (eds.), The Clergy in Khaki, per Dr Alan Robinson, p. 201. Sic. In case not apparent, the age 999 was a jest. JM, file 2011.74. JM, file 2011.74. JC 5/3/1915, p. 12. BJBH, illustrations, p. 116 (photograph of Harris in group photograph with Adler in Rouen on 19 May 1915). BJBH, pp. 34-5. Rev. Arthur Barnett, The Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O., S.C.F., B.A. (1868-1944), in JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 191-4. JC 5/3/1915, p. 12. JM, correspondence in box 1007. BJBH, p. 34. JW 10/2/1915, p. 22. JW 17/3/1915, p. 10. The Times 13/3/1915, p. 11; reproduced on its centenary on 13/3/2015. The Times had published Adler’s letter on The YMCA and Jewish Soldiers on 9/2/1915 at p. 9. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 193, 388 n. 130. Madigan and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Sarah Panter, Between Inclusion and Exclusion, pp. 159-181. Adler’s Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916 in JM, file 2011.74. JM, file 2011.74. JW 21/4/1915, p. 23. Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain on the Western front (1915-1918), published in the Jewish Guardian, in the Lewes Press in 1920 and in BJBH, pp. 33-58. Madigan and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Panter, Between Inclusion and Exclusion, pp. 159-181. JM, file 2011.74. They are essentially concise records of his activities rather than narratives. In this study they are drawn on without repetitive attribution. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001 and 011. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916.

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63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

86.

87.

95

BJBH, p. 47. BJBH, p. 52. BJBH, pp. 56-7. JW 10/2/1915, p. 14. BJBH, pp. 34-5; illustrations, p. 249. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916 and correspondence in JM, file 2011.74. BJBH, p.35. JC 5/3/1915, p. 13; 19/3/1915, p. 28; 2/4/1915, p. 13. JW 17/3/1915, pp. 10, 2223; 24/3/1915, p. 23. JW 26/5/1915, p. 16. Henry D. Myer, Soldiering of Sorts (manuscript, c. 1979), p. 45. Born on 6 April 1881 as Jack Wolfe Cohen, Bandall enlisted in the navy on 5 September 1899 under the not obviously Jewish name of Woolf Bandall. Enrolled at Ostend in 1914 as a private in the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Marines Light Infantry, he served on HMS Princess Royal at the Battle of Jutland of 31 May 1916, suffering burns to his face, arms and hands. He survived the war and served on various ships and shore establishments until being discharged on 4 September 1923, and died on 26 October 1966. Forces War Records. BJBH, p. 189. University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS 387, 3/1, Papers of Jeffrey Green (Bandall’s nephew) re Bandal (sic). In December 1914 the German navy bombarded Scarborough and Hartlepool on the east coast of Britain, killing civilians including children and babies. Winston Churchill referred to the German Navy as “the baby killers of Scarborough”. In January 1915 the Daily Mail reported the Battle of Dogger Bank, in which one of the German battle cruisers which had shelled the east coast was sunk, as “Rout of the Babykillers”. Adrian Gregory, The Last Great War, British Society and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 57, 61, 69, 311 n. 65, 315 n. 99. JW 21/4/1915, p. 23. On 9 July 1917 HMS Vanguard blew up at her moorings in Scapa Flow, and all but two of her crew of 845 perished. Admiral Sir David Beatty. The Times, 28/7/1917, p. 7. BJBH, p. 34. JC 7/5/1915, p. 20. JW 5/5/1915, pp. 20-21. JC 28/5/1915, p. 15. JW 21/4/1915, pp. 24-25. JW 9/6/1915, p. 21. JC 18/6/1915, p. 19. JW 2/6/1915, p. 16. JC 28/5/1914, pp. 14-15. JC, 18/6/1915, p. 21. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 227-8, 272 n.144. Born in Hungary and educated and ordained in New York, Hertz ministered in New York and from 1898 until 1911 in Johannesburg, then returning to New York. During the AngloBoer War President Paul Kruger attempted to deport him because of his pro-British views. With Lord Rothschild as his sponsor he became Chief Rabbi in 1913. He became a British citizen in March 1915, renouncing his American citizenship. Derek Taylor, British Chief Rabbis 1664-2006 (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), pp. 347-9. BJBH, p. 36; illustrations, p. 249. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. VC/2/14-18. JM, file 2011.74. JC 2/7/1915, p. 12; 9/7/1915, p. 14. JW 31/3/1915, pp. 9-10; 30/6/1915, p. 20; 14/7/1915, p. 19; 3/11/1915, p. 20. LI 30/7/1915, p. 469. Adler wrote that he received a letter from Rev. Williams with this nominal roll shortly after he had taken up residence in the monastery at Mont des Cats, which was the location of the North Midland CCS. Adler first stayed there from 27 July until 11 October 1915. BJBH, pp. 36-7.

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88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

BJBH, p. 38. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916. BJBH, pp. 38-9. JC 18/6/1915, p. 19. BJBH, p. 39. BJBH, pp. 39-40. JC 5/10/1017, p. 14. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916. JM, file 2011.74. BJBH, pp. 39-40. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916. JC 27/8/1915, p. 14; 22/10/1915, p. 14. JW 25/8/1915, p. 22. In December 1915 Simms as Principal Chaplain selected one chaplain to head each of the four major chaplaincy groupings for which he was responsible, namely Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Wesleyan and United Board (Baptist, Congregational, Primitive Methodist and United Methodist) and instructed them to use the title ‘Senior (Presbyterian, etc.) Chaplain’. Hence his instruction to Adler. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 44-8, 101. BJBH, pp. 40-2. JC 13/8/1915, p. 15; 17/9/1915, pp. 21, 23; 1/10/1915, p. 11; 15/10/1915, p. 17. JW 15/9/1915, p. 14; 22/9/1915, p. 17. JM, file 2011.74. BJBH, p. 42. JW 22/9/1915, p. 17. JC 19/11/1915, p. XI. Of Rev. A. A. Gelar no trace has been found; perhaps this was a mistake for Rev. A. A. Green, who had hoped to become a chaplain but became an officiating clergyman. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/006. BJBH, pp. 45-6. JM, file 2011.74. JC 10/12/1915, pp. 21, 23. JW 8/12/1915, pp. 16-17. JM, file 2011.74. JC 10/12/1915, p. 20; 31/12/1915, p. 15. JW 8/12/1915, pp. 15-16; 12/1/1916, p. 22. JC 24/12/1915, p. 14. JW 25/8/1915, pp. 22-23; 29/9/1915, p. 13; 22/12/1915, p. 19. JC 10/12/1915, p. 20. JC 31/3/1916, p. 14. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, pp. 69 n. 223, 86-7. JW 12/4/1916, p. 17. JM, file 2011.74. JC 18/2/1916, p. 5. JW 16/2/1916, p. 18. JW 1/3/1916, p. 11. Harold Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A. with the Jewish Soldier of the Australian Imperial Force, together with a General Survey of the Operation of the Australian Jewish Chaplaincy Department and the English Jewish War Services (London: privately published, 1919), p. 167. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 219-221. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 168, with chronology identified by reference to Adler’s diary. JM, file 2011.74. JC 31/3/1916, p. 14. JW 12/4/1916, p. 17. JC 18/8/1916, p. 12. JW 16/8/1916, p. 14. BJBH, p. 47. JW 26/7/1916, p. 9. Michael Moynihan (ed.), People at War 1914-1918 (first published 1973; Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1988), pp. 69-84, esp. 69-70, 73-4, 77. BJBH, p. 47. JC 7/7/1916, p. 18. JW 12/7/1916, p. 15. JC 18/8/1916, p. 12. JW 16/8/1916, p. 14; 13/9/1916, p. 10. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/021. JC 15/9/1916, pp. 6, 11. JW 13/9/1916, p. 14. JC 15/9/1916, p. 13.

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125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145.

146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

157. 158.

97

JC 6/10/1916, p. 18. Scroll of the Law, the Pentateuch, read in synagogue services. JW 18/10/1916, p. 14. BJBH, pp. 49-50. University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS 125, Papers of Michael Adler. BJBH, pp. 49-50. LMA, ACC/2805/04/05/008. JW 11/10/1916, p. 9; 18/10/1916, p. 14. JW 11/10/1916, p. 9. BJBH, p. 47. VC/2/31-34. Visitation Committee correspondence at JM, box 1005. JC 10/11/1916, p. 13. LI 8/12/1916, p. 258. JW 15/11/1916, pp. 6-7, 15. A military rank conferring overall responsibility for off duty troops in a specific area behind the lines. BJBH, p. 50. JC 15/12/1916, p. 16. JW 13/12/1916, p. 13. JC 12/1/1917, p. 7. BJBH, p. 50. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 170. BJBH, p. 52. University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS 125, Papers of Michael Adler. JC 5/10/1917, p. 10 (although said to be continued on p. 14, it is not). BJBH, pp. 52-3. London Gazette 28/12/1917, 30450, p. 17. The DSO was awarded for service rather than for gallantry. BJBH, pp. 51-52, 55-56. JC 7/12/1917, p. 17; 1/3/1918, p. 10. Kitching, Britain’s Jews in the First World War, p. 161. BJBH, pp. 56-7. Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Granta, 1998), p. 280. The Times, 17 and 19/4/1918, reproduced on its centenary in The Times, 17 and 19/4/2018, p. 28. BJBH, pp. 57-8. Lee J. Levinger, A Jewish Chaplain in France (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1922), pp. 10-12, 28, 32-3, 61, 66, 82. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 170. Adler later placed this meeting during the critical days of April 1918, but his diary records it as 15 June. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 170. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, pp. 96-7. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 96. JC 4/10/1918, p. 8. JC 6/9/1918, p. 8. The author has not been able to ascertain anything about this. JC 25/10/1918, p. 15. BJBH, p. 58. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. Adler’s correspondence is lost, probably when his library was destroyed, together with the records of his Central Synagogue, during the bombing in the Second World War, but Hertz’s correspondence survives. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/005. Sidney Theodore Felstead, German Spies at Bay, Being an Actual Record of the German Espionage in Great Britain during the years 1914-1918, Compiled from Official Sources (London: Hutchinson, 1920), pp. 156-8. Basil Thomson, Queer People (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922), pp. 160-1. Leonard Sellers, Shot in the Tower (London: Lee Cooper, 1997), pp. 158-163. James Morton, Spies of the First World War (Kew, Richmond, Surrey:

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165. 166. 167.

168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177.

178. 179. 180. 181. 182.

183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190.

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The National Archives, 2010), pp. 118-120. National Archives files WO/141/83; WO 94/103, docs. S, T, ZH, ZJ. JM, file 2011.74. BJBH, p. 45. JC 1/3/1918, pp. 6, 14; 8/3/1918, pp. 7, 14. JC 6/9/1918, p. 26. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, pp. 99-101. JC 23/2/1917, p. 18; 14/9/17, p. 28; 1/3/18, pp. 6, 14; 15/3/1918, p. 10; 22/3/1918, p. 8. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 207-215, 221-6 at 208; The Back Parts of War: The YMCA Memoirs and Letters of Barclay Baron, 1915 to 1919 (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press, 2009), pp. 17-98. JW 26/1/1916, p. 1. JC 17/11/1916, p. 11; 15/6/1917, p. 9. BJBH, p. 13 and illustrations, pp. 14, 167, 201 (group photograph of Home Service chaplains and officiating clergymen in England in 1917), 242, 266, 299. JC, e.g. 25/5/1917, p. 19; 27/7/1917, p. 14; 14/9/1917, p. 25; 25/1/1918, p. 21; 8/2/1918, p. 17; 1/3/1918, p. 15. JW, e.g. 3/3/1915, p. 22. The name for Jewish Festivals. JC 22/10/1915, p. 14. JW 21/7/1915, p. 12 (photo); 20/10/1915, p. 18. BJBH, p. 42. Adler Diary. JC 18/8/1916, p. 12; 25/8/1916, p. 13; 15/9/1916, p. 11. JW 23/8/1916, pp. 11 (photo), 15; 20/9/1916, p. 14. JC 15/9/1916, p. 12. JW 13/9/1916, p. 14. LMA, ACC/2805/04/05/008. JC 20/9/1918, p. 13. JC 11/10/1918, p. 18. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 148-9. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, pp.101-102. JC 3/5/1918, p. 24; 6/12/1918, p. 23. JW 5/5/1915, p. 19. The soldier has been identified as Private Izzy Epstein of the 6th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. Born in Cardiff in 1892 and later living in Liverpool, he was married with a daughter. He died in 1922 in Vevey in Switzerland, where he had gone for treatment for respiratory injuries from mustard gas: British Jews in the First World War: We Were There Too. JW 12/1/1916, p. 22. Small box affixed to the doorposts of a Jewish house containing extracts from Scripture written on parchment. JW 15/3/1916 p. 18. JM, file 2009.153. BJBH, pp. 39-40, 43-4. Report of Work at the Front from Jan. to June 1916. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 151, 263 n. 73. JC 2/4/1915, p. 12; 18/6/1915, p. 19; 27/8/1915, p. 14; 22/10/1915, p. 14. JW 25/8/1915, p. 22. BJBH, p. 43. LMA, ACC/ 2805/04/04/001. JM, file 2011.74. JC 27/8/1915, p. 14. JW 25/8/1915, p. 22. Discussed on pages 81-82 above. JC 18/6/1915, p. 19. BJBH, pp. 44-5. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 151, 263 n. 74. This practice was followed amongst Australian chaplains in the Second World War: Gladwin, Captains of the Soul, p. 125. BJBH, pp. 44-5. JC 7/5/1915, p. 20. JW 5/5/1915, p. 18. JW 19/5/1915, p. 17.

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191. JW 2/6/1915, p. 15. 192. Harold Pollins, The Poplar boy who became an army major in The Cable, issue 28, 2016, pp. 16-21. JW 26/5/1915, p. 16; 9/6/1915, p. 20. 193. JC 25/6/1915, pp. 7, 16-17. JW 14/10/1914, p. 13; 23/6/1915, pp. 5, 9-10, 15-17; 30/6/1915, p. 19. 194. JC 2/7/1915, p. 13, cited by Penslar, Jews and the Military, pp. 158-9, 295 n. 103. Lieutenant Seller was later buried in the British Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) Cemetery outside Ploegsteert near Ypres. A century later, in 2016, through the efforts of a German historian, Robin Schäfer, a Magen David was carved into his headstone: JC 13/10/2017, p. 42. On a visit in April 2017 the author discovered this headstone, an AJEX tribute was performed and British Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Major Reuben Livingstone recited the Memorial Prayer. 195. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. Rifleman Lionel Goldston, the son of Rev. Nehemiah Goldston, who was later to become a chaplain, had been killed on 30 May 1915. 196. JC 28/7/1916, p. 19. 197. JW 26/7/1916 p. 4; 2/8/1916 pp. 9, 15. 198. JC 13/9/1918, p. 16. 199. Documents in the possession of descendants of Samuel Bishop. 200. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp.125, 129. 201. JC 22/1/1915, p. 18. Report of same incident in JW 20/1/1915, p. 21.

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5 THE FIRST WORLD WAR: AUSTRALIAN CHAPLAINCY AND INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL OF CHAPLAINCY Anzac Chaplaincy Australian Jewish chaplaincy is significant, both in its own right and for its integration into and perspective on British Jewish chaplaincy, to which it became to some extent subordinated. Conscription was not introduced in Australia, so everybody who served did so voluntarily.1 Chanukah military services took place in Australia in 1914, conducted by Chaplains Rev. Jacob Danglow in Melbourne and Rabbi Francis Cohen in Sydney. Attending the service in Melbourne was Colonel John Monash, commanding the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade.2 Over 1,500 Jews from Australia, and some 150 from New Zealand, were to serve in the First World War.3 From England Rev. Adler sent a message to “my Jewish comrades from Australia and New Zealand” in Egypt. “… I had hoped to welcome you in person in England, as I have been privileged to do with our Canadian brethren …”.4 Rev. I. A. Bernstein was a chaplain to the New Zealand forces. In the summer of 1915 he was released by his congregation in Christchurch and went to Sydney, where he offered his services as a chaplain to the Jewish members of the Expeditionary Force. His offer was accepted.5 Yet he does not appear to be referred to anywhere else, so what happened to him afterwards is obscure. No Jewish chaplains were appointed for service abroad with the New Zealand, Indian, Canadian or Newfoundland troops. Within Canada Rabbi Herman Abramovitz served as a chaplain. Two South African Jewish chaplains were appointed. Australian and New Zealand troops travelled to Egypt for the Gallipoli campaign. The first Australian Jewish Chaplain with the AIF, who served at Gallipoli, in the Middle East and on the western front, was Rev. David Isaac Freedman. He became over time the “Anzac” chaplain to the New Zealand as well as the Australian troops. He was succeeded on the western front by Rev. Jacob (Jack) Danglow. The interregnum of some seven months between them was filled by the English chaplain Rev. David Hirsch. The work of Lieutenant

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Harold Boas, representing the Australian YMCA, also formed a part of Australian Jewish chaplaincy. When British Jewish chaplains were in Australian areas they rendered chaplaincy services. For most of the war there was considerable confusion whether British Principal Chaplains possessed any authority over Australian chaplains; only in October 1918 was it decided that they did not.6 Jewish soldiers from abroad nominally came under the British chaplaincy whilst serving with the British Expeditionary Force. When the Australian Corps arrived on the western front the Australian Jewish chaplaincy came effectively under the control of the British Jewish chaplaincy. After the events of Passover 1917 this ended and it was placed under the Senior Chaplain for Other Protestant Denominations (colloquially OPD or “other poor devils”) of the AIF, Chaplain the Rev. F. J. Miles, DSO, OBE, CF, who, Boas wrote, maintained excellent relationships with the Jewish chaplains.7

Rev. David Isaac Freedman B. A. (17 April 1874 – 24 June 1939) Born in Budapest in Hungary and taken to London in 1876, Rev. (later Rabbi) David Freedman was educated at Jews’ College and University College London and naturalised in 1889. In 1897 he travelled on the S. S. Ophir to Australia to become the minister in Perth. In December of 1897 he married Anne Florence (Mollie) Cohen, who was also from London, and they had two sons.8 Intensely patriotic, he gave a farewell in 1900 to the first Jewish officer, Samuel Harris, to depart for the Anglo-Boer War.9 On 1 October 1915 Freedman was appointed Jewish chaplain to the Australian Imperial Force.10 With the assistance of the Senior Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Australia, Rabbi Dr Abrahams of Melbourne, he obtained permission from the Australian military authorities to exchange a Magen David badge for the conventional chaplaincy Maltese Cross. His experiences similar to Adler’s, he was to write from the Dardanelles that: The Magen David badges I am wearing on my tunic and cap are answering their purpose splendidly. In many instances I have been stopped by soldiers to whom I was a perfect stranger who were attracted by the badge and who introduced themselves to me as Jews. One of them was good enough to say it was like a ray of sunshine to him.11 Enlisting on 6 October 1915 at the age of 41 for continuous service, Freedman left Melbourne on 27 October 1915 on HMAS Ulysses. Passing through Cairo en route to the Dardanelles, he wrote for advice to Michael Adler, whom he knew from his Jews’ College days, who replied. Adler had already raised the issues of the absence of a Jewish chaplain in the Dardanelles and the need to arrange for Jewish graves there to be appropriately marked.12

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When Adler heard from Freedman he asked the Australian High Commission in London to authorise Freedman to minister to British as well as Anzac troops, to which the High Commission assented.13 Attached to the Second Division headquarters, Freedman landed at Gallipoli on 9 December 1915. He spent several “rippingly rough times” there and lived on sardines and biscuits. He did voluntary sentry duty at night, later writing that he had preferred walking to sleeping. He sought out Jewish soldiers and conducted services, one of which was attended by men of the Zion Mule Corps. The Gallipoli evacuation was commencing, and on 16 December Freedman was evacuated and transferred to Mudros, the harbour on the island of Lemnos where Allied troops had assembled. There he located Anzac and British Jewish soldiers, met men of the Zion Mule Corps, visited the six hospitals and the military cemetery which had been established and conducted Sabbath services. In hospital at Mudros, British Private I. Freedman attended one of his services with a large number of soldiers, mostly Australian.14 On 8 January 1916 Freedman arrived in Egypt. On 10 February the British War Office appointed him chaplain to all of the men of the Jewish Faith serving in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. With the assent of the Australian High Commission in London and after correspondence with the United Synagogue, it empowered him to officiate to British as well as Colonial forces.15 His work covered three army corps in Egypt and the Canal Zone. Basing himself in Ismailia, for six months he travelled widely between there and Alexandria, Tel-el-Kebir, Moascar and Cairo by many means including horse and truck and, in the desert, by camel and on foot. “As I wander daily, on the burning sands, from camp to camp, weighed with haversack & water bottle – for mostly I have to carry with me lunch & dinner – with the steaming perspiration pouring from me, I am forgiving more & more the murmurings of our brave ancestors in the desert, and am beginning to understand better their thirsting for the cool cucumbers of Goshen.” He located Jewish soldiers, conducted services, visited units and the numerous hospitals and the military cemeteries in Alexandria and Cairo, attempted to secure the erection of the Star of David on Jewish graves and visited Jewish prisoners of war in the “concentration camp”. Freedman made it his policy, then and throughout his service, to write to the family of every Jewish soldier whom he met. In Alexandria the Jewish Soldiers’ Recreation Club provided refreshments for the soldiers after each soldiers’ service; each man was given a packet of bonbons and Freedman was given a large parcel of cigarettes, which he distributed to the men as he met them in the field or the trenches. Similar post-service hospitality was provided in Cairo. On Saturday 11 March 1916 Freedman conducted a service at Tel-el-Kebir attended by about fifty Jews including General Monash.16 Men sometimes walked long distances to services; on 1 April four men walked ten miles each way with their equipment and rifles to attend a service in the line of one of the

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British units. The military authorities were always supportive, providing a tent or hut for services, often with a sentry with a fixed bayonet outside, with his audible measured tread up and down, until Freedman told them that this was not necessary. Prayer books were in short supply. The Chief Rabbi and Rev. Lipson wrote to Freedman to say that consignments had been sent out to Alexandria for him; however it seemed that they had been lost, perhaps, Freedman surmised, on a ship which had gone down.17 Freedman arranged with the military authorities and the Jewish communities for Jewish soldiers to be granted leave and to receive hospitality for Passover of 1916 in Alexandria, Cairo and Port Said, including requesting free railway passes as some of the men would not be able to pay the fares, and made similar arrangements for Jewish soldiers in Salonika. He conducted services on the first days of Passover in Alexandria and the last days in Cairo. The Jewish communities provided personal and communal hospitality and accommodation throughout the festival. In Alexandria, where Freedman witnessed the arrangements, “I was glad to notice that the only disappointed ones were the representatives of families who were left with no soldier to take home.” In Egypt Freedman took the opportunity, not available to him in Britain or Australia, to obtain Rabbinic ordination – Semicha – from Rabbi Kleizer of Cairo. In Cairo the Jewish community were so impressed by this friendly little Rabbi in the uniform of a British officer that they gave him a superb miniature Sefer Torah in an eastern style flat bottomed wooden case “to take into battle”. Freedman used it for the first time on the following Shabbat Mincha – afternoon – service in a spot in the desert not far from where the Children of Israel had encamped after crossing the Red Sea; for the boys to be “called up” to read it and to recite the blessings gave them immense pleasure. Later he used it in England.18 Freedman left Egypt on 21 June 1916 on the Caledonia with the last infantry units to go to Britain and thence to France. There, with the consent of the Australian military authorities, he placed himself under the directions of Michael Adler as the Senior British Jewish Chaplain. In the opinion of a future Senior Rabbi to the Australian Defence Force, Rabbi Raymond Apple, this was virtually automatic at a time when Australia viewed itself as very much a colony of the mother country.19 In his diary Adler recorded and numbered the arrival of each new chaplain. On Wednesday 5 July 1916 he recorded the arrival of Rev. D. I Freedman, CF, Anzac Corps, from Egypt, as the fourth Jewish chaplain, after himself, Simmons and Barnett; when Rev. L. Morris arrived in September 1916, Adler numbered him as the fifth chaplain. From his diary Adler plainly regarded Freedman as under his authority in the same way as the British Jewish chaplains. Freedman took over part of the line on the Somme in the forward area, including many non-Australian units.20

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Freedman was posted to Etaples with the 5th Australian Division. On 17 July 1916 Adler went there to meet with him. Freedman’s arrival in France coincided with the Somme offensive. The hospitals were full of wounded and in nine weeks he paid two hundred and fifty-eight visits to hospitals. He sent weekly reports about patients in hospital to Adler and regular lists of Jewish casualties to Rev. Solomon Lipson in London. He conducted services at hospitals and elsewhere, and New Year services at Reninghelst in Belgium. Throughout the rest of 1916 he travelled widely, visiting units, hospitals, dressing stations and casualty clearing stations. In January 1917 he conducted the funeral of a Christian soldier as no other chaplain was available. At one point his billet was shattered by shelling during his absence.21 He wrote: Each week I have held a Service – prayers in Hebrew and English – our meeting place is crowded out with men standing in the corridors …. I stood watching a whole convoy of wounded brought in. Strict silence was observed. No one spoke except the sergeant in charge. I heard no regrets from our wounded men, not even from those who were desperately hurt and had their whole limbs shattered.22 In December 1916 and February 1917 Adler recorded having met with Freedman at Becordel. In February 1917 Freedman saw several senior Australian officers on the subject of leave for Passover for Anzac Jewish soldiers, and all were supportive. He went to Paris and made arrangements with the leadership of the Jewish community for invitations to be extended to every Anzac soldier to celebrate Passover there in a private home. On his return he reported these arrangements to Corps Headquarters and was authorised to circularise all Anzac Jewish troops about them.23 This he did, in an “Important Notice” from “Rev. D. I. Freedman Jewish Chaplain Anzac Corps” issued on 19 February 1917 from “France c/o 7th Australian Field Ambulance In the Field” to “Officers, N.C.O’s & men of the Jewish Faith in the A. I. F”. It stated that in response to Freedman’s application Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood would do all in his power to help the Jewish Soldiers in Anzac celebrate the Feast of Passover and that if the tactical situation at the time permitted three days leave would be granted on 6, 7 and 8 April in Paris, where the heads of the Jewish Community had given Freedman to understand that they would offer our boys a cordial welcome and would afford them facilities for observing the seder in private homes. Each officer and soldier should inform Freedman at the earliest possible moment of his intention to avail himself of the privilege so that satisfactory arrangements might be made for him. On 2 March 1917 Freedman wrote, on his printed letterhead of “Rev. D. I. Freedman, Jewish Chaplain, Anzac Corps, British Expeditionary Force, France, ….1916”, to Chief Rabbi Hertz in London. Enclosing a copy of his circular

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about Passover leave for the Anzacs, he praised the support of the majorgenerals of all of the Australian Divisions and of Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood. “Orders are already out that our men are to have five days leave - three clear days in Paris - a day to go & a day to return. …. A vast amount of detail has still to be attended to & I am just now very busy with it.” He added, obliquely: “I should mention that at the present moment correspondence is proceeding between Mr Adler & myself on this subject but about which, at this stage, I shall say nothing at all.” The Chief Rabbi replied on 12 March that “I am also very glad to hear that your efforts on behalf of the Anzacs to procure for them facilities to celebrate the Passover have been so well received by the authorities, and that arrangements have been made for them in Paris.”24 Harold Boas summarised: “At this juncture the Rev. M. Adler, the Senior Jewish Chaplain of the British Forces, intervened, strongly opposing the leave being given, and the whole scheme was cancelled.”25 About this incident Adler wrote that there was only one matter upon which he and Chaplain Freedman did not agree. Without consulting him Freedman had arranged for the Australian Jewish soldiers to go to Paris to observe Passover in 1917. When he learned this Adler pointed out to Freedman, who was then living a few miles away, that he regretted that he could not see any reason why any distinction should be made as to the facilities for Passover between Jewish soldiers from one part of the world or another. Adler could not agree to what Freedman had done as it would lead to very serious complaints on the part of the other troops who had also come from beyond the seas. Adler had already received a number of letters from men who had come from South America, South Africa and other parts asking why the same arrangements could not be made for them as for the Australians. As they could not see each other’s point of view Adler suggested to Freedman, who approved, that they submit the difficulty to the GOC of the AIF, Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, whose decision should be final. Adler laid the matter before Birdwood, who asked whether it was possible for all Jewish troops in France to go to Paris. When Adler pointed out that this was not practicable, Birdwood decided that the arrangements should be cancelled.26 Both Freedman and Adler corresponded with the Chief Rabbi about Passover leave for the Anzacs. Inevitably the matter came before the JWSC in London. Against a background of developing tension between the JWSC and Adler, the JWSC expressed strong disapproval of Adler’s action, and when he was on leave met with him to convey it. After and doubtless in part because of the events of Passover 1917, Australian Jewish chaplaincy was removed from the nominal control of its British counterpart and placed under the Senior Chaplain for Other Protestant Denominations of the AIF.27

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Adler’s diary, which records his meetings with each of the Jewish chaplains, contains only one further reference to meeting Freedman, on 14 June 1917. During August 1917 Freedman buried a Jewish soldier in a British unit, the British chaplain being absent on leave.28 He conducted New Year services for Australian, New Zealand and British soldiers. On 7 November 1917 he gave a farewell address to Australian Jewish soldiers in London, and later wrote a farewell letter to them. In December 1917 he was mentioned in despatches.29 In December 1917 he resigned his position and returned to the UK. His clerk, Private Laurie Isaacs, promoted to sergeant, was transferred for duty to the Chaplaincy Department of the AIF Administration Headquarters in London to take charge of Jewish records and to assist Harold Boas.30 Adler, doubtless stung by the strictures of the JWSC, did not record Freedman’s departure. By then their relationship must have been fragile. With Freedman’s resignation, the Australian Adjutant General asked Dr Joseph Abrahams as the Senior Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Australia to send to France a “Hebrew Chaplain under 40 years of age” to replace him. Early in 1918 Rev. Jacob Danglow was appointed to succeed Freedman. He communicated with Freedman for advice. Freedman replied that conditions on the front line were changing so rapidly that he could not and would not help, and Danglow would have to make his own decisions when he arrived in the field.31 Freedman had two years of invaluable field experience which he could have shared with Danglow. But he had come to loathe the war and its carnage. On 19 January 1918 he preached at the West London Synagogue: There was a time when I believed in man. I had faith in humanity. Today the idol is shattered. Man alone is responsible. The free will given to him to keep his soul pure and spotless he has abused. As a Jew I hate war. We blaspheme God with a horrible blasphemy when we ask Him to help us in pouring our venom, treachery or slaughter. To associate God with the slaying of millions, with pouring out liquid fires on man, with blowing poison gases on poor women and children, so that their flesh writhes in agony as I have seen it writhe – to bring the name of God into this is to me an infamous outrage on the Holy Spirit.32 In London Freedman met with the Chief Rabbi. As a tribute to his work Rev. Solomon Lipson publicly presented him with an inscribed cup for Kiddush – the ceremony of sanctification – and on 6 March bade him farewell at the station. Sailing on the Prince George to Alexandria, Freedman spent two months in the Middle East, joining the Anzac mounted division outside Jericho. He witnessed the first of three attempts by General Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force, including the Jewish Legion, to cross to the east bank of the Jordan River against staunch Turkish resistance.33 He travelled to Cairo and

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Jerusalem and in May 1918 departed for Australia on the Port Sydney.34 Senior Chaplain Miles described him as “a great little man…great in mental capacity, in his breadth of vision, in his love for and desire to serve the boys”.35 Addressing Jewish troops in November 1917 Freedman stated that he had not come across one case of discrimination against a Jewish soldier on account of his faith. This may however have been for the sake of their morale for, once back in Australia in July 1918, he wrote: I have found instance after instance in which sons of Israel camouflaged their identity both in the Australian and in the British Army. Why have they done so? One of our Jewish V.C.’s had originally enlisted as a member of another denomination. It was only after he had won the Victoria Cross that he declared himself as belonging to the Jewish faith. But most of those who have hidden their identity have done so because they feared they would be subjected to prejudice and not have a fair deal.36 In 1920 Freedman was offered promotion to Sydney but his community in Perth protested so vigorously that he declined it and remained with them from 1897 until his death in 1939. He was active in the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia, becoming its State President in 1924, the Soldiers’ Children Scholarship Trust and the Jewish Returned Soldiers’ Circle. He made the Jewish Anzac Day Service in Perth a public event. Freedman was awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Volunteer Officers Decoration (VD), the OBE for social welfare service in 1936 and the King George VI Coronation Medal in 1937. He died in June 1939 at the age of 65; two thousand people attended his funeral.37

e British Jewish Chaplains and the Australian Forces With only a single Australian Jewish chaplain at any one time, the British Jewish chaplains inevitably assumed a role in relation to the Australians. Based for six months in Etaples, Rev. Louis Morris organised services for Jewish soldiers from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada and a sprinkling from Egypt and Palestine. In 1917 he went to the Ypres salient. He wrote of the Australian chaplains: It was on the Ypres salient that I was once making my way on foot, trying to find an infantry brigade for which I had arranged a service. I was feeling tired and ‘fed-up’, when I saw another road-worn individual plodding heavily along. His clothes were caked with handsome quantities of the choicest Flanders mud and his face was wreathed in

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smiles. That was Freedman, the Anzac Jewish Chaplain! It was our first meeting, which rapidly developed into a warm but all too short friendship. Freedman had a voracious appetite for work, which he carried out regardless of risk. With it all he had a calm, gentle unassuming manner that made him everybody’s friend. Then came Danglow, my former college friend. I knew his fine record from of old. He very rapidly set to work with characteristic keenness and enthusiasm. What a pity conditions did not permit him to join Freedman in the early part of the war.38 In the interval between Freedman’s departure in December 1917 and Danglow’s arrival in August 1918, chaplaincy services for the Australians were provided by Rev. David Hirsch. Boas furnished Hirsch and Adler with records of Australian Jewish troops, and they him. Senior Chaplain Miles wrote to Hirsch: Evidently you did not spare yourself or you could not have covered so much Australian work in addition to that which is your lot with the B.E.F. Kindly accept my thanks and congratulations.39 Rev. Arthur Barnett, who was stationed from April 1916 at Etaples and then from July 1916 at Rouen, introduced Freedman and later Danglow to their duties when they arrived, and met many Australian troops.40

Harold Boas (27 September 1883 – 17 September 1980) Harold Boas was the seventh of ten children of Rabbi Abraham Tobias Boas, the minister of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation and his wife Elizabeth Solomon. An architect and town planner, Boas settled in Perth where on 29 March 1911 he married Sarah (Sadie) Cohen. They had two daughters.41 Rejected for military service for poor eyesight, in September 1916 Boas approached the executive director of the YMCA who was on a fundraising visit to Perth, asking to be appointed the Jewish YMCA Secretary. This was rapidly approved by the Australian YMCA headquarters in London, and Boas was appointed as the Australian YMCA Jewish representative of the Australian Imperial Force. Having sent his wife and daughter to live with his family in Adelaide, Boas set sail from Australia on 29 December 1916 as a civilian on the troopship Orontes. Sailing for part of the voyage in a naval convoy of troopships, the ship travelled via Cape Town and Sierra Leone and then made a long detour across the South Atlantic to avoid a German warship. The convoy reached Plymouth in February 1917 with a captured German submarine in tow. The commanding

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officer of the troopship had to deliver a consignment of gold from Australia, and invited Boas and the Roman Catholic padre to accompany him with it on a special train to London, which they did. Boas was based initially at the YMCA Hut at Durrington Camp at Larkhill and then at the YMCA Hut at Bhurtphore Camp at Tidworth, both on Salisbury Plain. He divided his time between Salisbury Plain and London, where he contacted the JWSC and the Jewish Naval and Military Association. Boas wrote that he had established contact and what he regarded as a very satisfactory basis of cooperation with Revs. Lipson (as the senior Jewish home chaplain) and Adler and Chief Rabbi Hertz, and had placed himself unreservedly in the hands of the Chief Rabbi and official London Jewry to use him in any way they thought fit in the interests of the Jewish men. He subsequently called upon the Chief Rabbi, kept him in touch with his work, cooperated with him in connection with the production and distribution of Jewish literature to the troops and wrote that at all times he received from him a genuine interest in and sympathy with his work amongst the Jewish troops.42 To facilitate his work and to establish his bona fides, authority was secured in September 1917 from General Birdwood, commanding the AIF, in terms of an order which was promulgated: Approval is given for Mr Harold Boas, the Hebrew secretary of the YMCA, to be the accredited representative in the A.I.F. depots in the United Kingdom, of the Australian Jewish chaplain.43 Australian troops – colloquially known as “diggers” – were stationed at numerous bases in the south of England. Boas spent twenty-one months on Salisbury Plain driving between camps in a car provided by the Australian YMCA, learning in the army the art of “wangling” petrol, which, he wrote, was then scarcer than gold. With the financial assistance of Jewish well-wishers in the UK and the Australian YMCA he was eventually able to purchase a motor car. He met Freedman and later Danglow when they made their official tours and organised their itineraries.44 Boas served for all practical purposes as a chaplain. He conducted a large correspondence on many aspects of soldiers’ welfare, arranged private hospitality in London with Jewish families for the High Festivals and worked with Jewish individuals from Weymouth and Edinburgh who took it upon themselves to attend to the needs of Jewish soldiers. As each new man arrived in England from Australia or France, Boas immediately wrote to him and then to his family, advising the man of any reply. Whenever he met a Jewish soldier he sent a card to his family in Australia; these cards, thousands in number, formed a link between his work, the men and their families. He encouraged men to write home regularly. He prepared circular letters urging men to keep

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in touch with him, with the Jewish chaplain and with their families. He obtained and distributed Jewish and general literature, arranged marriages, organised loans and made gifts of money and goods sent by people in Australia and by the YMCA. He also monitored casualties, visited soldiers in hospital, took them gifts and wrote to their families, arranged and conducted funerals and corresponded where possible with Australian Jewish soldiers who had been taken prisoner. He tried to compile a roll of Australian Jewish soldiers and gathered 2,175 names, of whom some 300 were killed. With the assistance of the Australian, New Zealand and British military authorities, he was supplied about every three months with nominal rolls of all Jewish men in units throughout the UK and was kept advised by hospitals throughout Salisbury Plain of any Jewish patients who were admitted.45 Boas wrote that “In all my hospital work there is but one black chapter dealing with the admission of troops to the Dermatological Hospital as the victims of the moral scourge. I am glad to be able to report, however, that in my more than two years’ operations, Jewish men formed an infinitesimal proportion of the inmates, far below their percentage in the force. This I attribute mainly to their sobriety and to the fact that so many of our Jewish men had friends and relatives to whom they could go whilst on leave instead of wandering in the streets of the great cities.”46 Boas ministered to dying men in the UK, including Gunner Frank Michaelis, who died of meningitis. “His was one of the many sacrifices made, not on the battlefield, but in the same cause, and as nobly made: victims, not of the enemy shell, but of the ravages of war organization and its weaknesses. The tragedy of the winter of 1916 – 1917 on Salisbury Plain must never be written, and Frank Michaelis’s life was one of those which were given so that others who might follow could find the way easier.” Boas recited prayers at his death bed and arranged for him to be conveyed by train, accompanied by a military firing party, from Tidworth for a military funeral conducted by Rev. Danglow at Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London. Boas and Danglow together conducted two other funerals with full military honours.47 Wherever he was, Boas arranged “fellowship meetings” with the troops. The opportunity was taken to form a minyan for anybody who wished to say Kaddish on the anniversary of the death of a relative. A family relationship developed between the Australian Jewish soldiers, which Boas fostered by keeping them in touch with the whereabouts of comrades in arms and helping them to stay in touch with family and friends in Australia.48 Jewish services were held on Salisbury Plain on Sunday afternoons, conducted by the officiating clergyman for the area, Rev. Dr J. Abelson of Portsmouth. Lieutenant Ellenborgen RAMC undertook to be responsible for weekly services at Bulford Camp, and Sergeant Goldberg of the 47th Training Brigade arranged services on Saturday afternoons at various camps on Salisbury Plain. The YMCA always

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made their huts available for Jewish gatherings, and services were held on Saturday mornings and Saturday afternoons in various locations. On one occasion the Senior Jewish Chaplain and the officiating clergyman for the area conducted services attended by nearly two hundred men in a YMCA hut. During Rev. Nehemiah Goldston’s tenure at Southern Command a fine quiet room at Greenhill House, a magnificent residence at Sutton Veny which had been taken over by the Australian YMCA for their headquarters, was allocated for Jewish services every Saturday afternoon through the courtesy of the officer in charge, and troops came from far afield to attend. Services were sometimes held in rooms in YMCA or Nonconformist huts with a Christian cross or altar.49 The authorities granted leave whenever possible for the New Year, the Day of Atonement and Passover. In February 1917 the War Office reluctantly refused the request of the JWSC for leave for Passover because of transport difficulties, but relented at the earnest request of the Senior Jewish Chaplain and the Chief Rabbi. Home hospitality was arranged for some men for Passover and leave was granted for the New Year period of 1917 for troops stationed on Salisbury Plain. Boas approached the authorities to grant leave for the Australian soldiers for long enough for them to accept offers of home hospitality or accommodation in the Jewish Naval and Military Club in London and appropriate orders were issued. Leave was similarly obtained for Australian and New Zealand Jewish soldiers for Passover and the New Year of 1918.50 On 20 February 1918 Boas attended the conference of Jewish chaplains and officiating clergymen in the UK.51 In September 1918 he was mentioned in despatches and granted a commission in the AIF with the honorary relative rank of First Lieutenant.52 He had left Australia intending to go to France. However, no-one in Australia had realised the extent of the AIF operations in the United Kingdom so, after consultation with his headquarters and with David Freedman, it was decided that Boas should remain in the United Kingdom, leaving Freedman to confine his activities to service in the field. Still wanting to go to France, Boas made plans towards the end of 1918 to do so. Because of the suddenness of the collapse of the German offensive and the coming of the Armistice in November 1918, however, he spent only a few weeks there in January and February 1919, including a visit to Paris and Brussels on YMCA business.53 In London two Seder services arranged by Boas took place in 1919 at the Jewish Naval and Military Club. Another, held in the Jewish Hut in the Strand, was attended by large numbers of soldiers from England, Australia, South Africa, Canada and the USA. It was led by Rev. H. Goodman, an officiating clergyman, whose little daughter Lilian Joyce recited the Ma’nishtana, a section of the Seder service comprising four questions traditionally asked by the youngest person, normally a child, who is present.54 In January 1920 Boas

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returned to Australia, travelling on the same ship on which he had arrived, the Orontes. Senior Chaplain Miles wrote of him: “Right worthily has he served us: I have never known a more energetic fellow.”55 Boas published in August 1919 The Australian YMCA. With the Jewish Soldier of the Australian Imperial Force, and in 1923 the Australian Jewry Book of Honour. He calculated that at least one thousand five hundred Australian Jews had voluntarily enlisted and served abroad, over two hundred had been killed and a very large percentage wounded.56 Current research has tended to confirm those figures. Under the influence of his wartime service he moved from the religious Orthodoxy of his upbringing to the Liberal movement. In Perth he resumed his profession as an architect. In the Second World War he served within the Central Cargo Control Committee, which sought to coordinate and speed up the turnaround of shipping in Australian ports, and wrote its history. In 1969 he was awarded the OBE for his work in architecture and town planning. He died in September 1980, ten days short of his 97th birthday.57

Rev. Jacob (Jack) Danglow B. A., M. A. (18 (or 28 or 29) November 1880 – 21 May 1962) Rev. Jacob (Jack) Danglow was the third (or second) and the oldest son of ten (or nine) children of Michael Danglowitz, a glazier from Cracow in Galicia, and his wife Jessie Loufer. Born in London, he studied at Jews’ College, for whose entrance exam Michael Adler was one of his teachers, and at University College London and lectured at Toynbee Hall in London. In 1905 he was appointed the minister of the congregation of St. Kilda in Melbourne in Australia, arriving there on 15 September and being inducted into office five days later. On 24 November 1909 he married May Henrietta Baruch, by whom he had three children. He took a B.A. degree in 1908 and an M.A. in 1911 at the University of Melbourne, and became in 1911 a member of the Melbourne Beth Din. Danglow enlisted on 1 May 1908 and was commissioned as a military chaplain on 30 November 1908, becoming the first commissioned Jewish chaplain to Commonwealth Military Forces in Australia. Danglow was to hold his commission for fifty-two years until 1960. He attended camps of the Citizen Military Force, meeting Major John Monash and attending meetings of military chaplains. The first Chanukah military service in St Kilda took place in 1911. During the First World War Danglow ministered to Jewish troops in Australia and served, as did John Monash at the start of the war, on the military censorship staff. At the Chanukah military service at St. Kilda in 1917 he encouraged the Australian Jewish community to even greater sacrifices.58 From early in the war he repeatedly requested his community to release him for

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service, but it was reluctant to do so. Eventually in 1918 he was appointed to succeed David Freedman as the Australian Jewish chaplain in France. In May 1918 he set sail for Britain on the ship Osterley in the 39th Troop Convoy; on board he had an exact minyan of ten men for services.59 Danglow spent three weeks in the UK, attending a chaplaincy training course, on which his special (doubtless meaning Jewish) instructor was Rev. Vivian Simmons. He removed his beard, in order, as he wrote to his wife, to look “less foreign, less ‘fearsome’, less exclusive and less old”. Simmons, whom he described as “a jolly fine fellow”, presented him with a beautiful shaving brush, “a most appropriate gift from a Reform Minister”. Without his beard, an officer who had met the bearded Rev. Danglow in St. Kilda assumed that this had been his father. At Simmons’ invitation Danglow preached at Simmons’ West London Reform Synagogue, but did not enjoy the experience. Michael Adler gave him some valuable hints, including that his life was precious and he should take care of it. Covering over a thousand miles, Danglow toured military depots in the south of England with Harold Boas, met Australian Jewish soldiers, visited hospitals and participated in religious services. He took his first “air flip” in an Avro aeroplane and thought it one of the most exciting experiences of his life. He sent a letter to all Australian Jewish soldiers in France and the UK introducing himself, offering his services and encouraging them to write to him and to attend his services at the Front.60 Accompanied by his clerk, Private Fred Jacobs, Danglow arrived in Boulogne on 16 August 1918. Arthur Barnett, by that time the acting Senior Jewish Chaplain, sent his car to meet him. Danglow’s official reports in France from then until April 1919 are full and detailed. He attended the anti-gas school at St Martin. He stayed for a period at a casualty clearing station with Barnett, who spent some days with him, visiting all of the Jewish chaplains in the several front areas and helping him to learn the nature of the work. He met with British chaplains John Geffen, David Hirsch, Harris Price and Louis Morris and took over the AIF records and papers of his predecessor, David Freedman. Directed to attach himself to Brigade Headquarters, he arranged and conducted services wherever he could, conducted the funeral of a Jewish soldier and assisted Christian soldiers, more than once holding a Cross before a dying Christian soldier.61 Danglow met with General Monash, and benefitted from Monash’s support for him as it gradually became known. Monash told him that he would be able to conduct New Year services less than three weeks hence in Bussy and Day of Atonement services in Bray, although these places were at that time still occupied by the enemy. The New Year services were attended by more than seventy Jewish soldiers including some English troops, some coming straight from the line wearing their steel helmets. Monash had promised to do his best to attend, but was prevented from doing so. At the services Danglow was

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shaken and much affected to learn that his wife’s favourite cousin, Lieutenant Dalbert Hallenstein, whom he had met in London, had been killed a few days earlier. “I can tell you I felt the solemnity of the occasion especially when we all recited the prayer to be said by soldiers before going into battle”, he wrote to his wife.62 On the Day of Atonement Danglow conducted services, including a Kol Nidrei evening service in his tent for four men and a daytime service for fifty men; again several came straight from the front line with their steel helmets. Monash had again communicated his intention to attend, but was once more prevented through military exigencies from doing so and sent an apologetic message. On the night after the Day of Atonement there was a violent storm and a huge tree two metres in front of Danglow’s tent was struck by lightning and crashed to the ground. “Somebody certainly is looking after the Jewish padre”, one officer said. During the festival of Succot Danglow conducted four services.63 He dispatched letters to all Australian Jewish soldiers about the Jewish Solemn Days services, and wrote to the families of all of the soldiers, some two hundred, whom he met at his services and elsewhere. Danglow travelled widely in France and Belgium, and after the Armistice in Germany, visiting units, depots and hospitals and conducting services. Without transport he was compelled to travel by bicycle, on horseback, by “lorry-hopping” and on foot. Even General Monash, with whom he was able to discuss the matter, was unable to arrange transport for him. To overcome the problem he adopted the plan of becoming attached to different divisions in turn, from which he worked through brigades and battalions, at the same time doing all that he could to make personal contact with Jewish members of the other divisions. On two or three afternoons he was fortunate enough to secure the loan of a bicycle from another officer, and for a period in November 1918 a bicycle was placed at his disposal by the 5th Australian Division, which enabled him to travel widely to units, headquarters and hospitals. He was assigned a batman, and wore an Australian slouch hat: I am now wearing my slouch hat and they tell me that I look like a real Australian and that the boys like to see a Padre thus attired. I get on well with the boys …. I am feeling splendid. I am glad I roughed it at the last place as it was a fine experience. The life suits me and I am more glad than ever that I came. Danglow arranged with several casualty clearing stations in the forward areas to be kept regularly informed about Australian Jewish casualties. He maintained contact with Arthur Barnett, who in a letter to him of 6 October 1918 complained that the War Graves Department “constantly question the religion of men we know perfectly well to have been of the Jewish Faith”. He spent time with the “Russian Labour Battalion”, comprising hundreds of eastern European Jews from

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the East End of London who had not been naturalised and had been conscripted to work at the front. He was unamused at being told by a soldier whose name was on his list, and whom he had travelled a great distance to see, that the man was not a Jew and that just for a joke he had stated that he was.64 Following the news of the signing of the Armistice in November 1918 Danglow held a special thanksgiving serving at Oisement on the afternoon of Saturday 16 November. The following day at the invitation of his brother chaplains he read the Old Testament lesson at the Divisional Thanksgiving Services. In Amiens he participated in five interdenominational thanksgiving services at different brigades.65 In December 1918 he wrote to his wife: The numbers of the English Jewish Chaplains at the Front have always been ridiculously inadequate …. I am rather annoyed that our boys in England should have been handed over to the tender mercies of the Anglo-Jewish Chaplains who don’t seem to understand our boys a bit and invariably rub them up the wrong way.66 This was a harsh judgement, especially as the English Jewish chaplains were doing their best to compensate for the even more inadequate number of their Australian counterparts. Returning to England, Danglow visited soldiers in hospital, conducted services including at the Australian YMCA houses in Weymouth and Sutton Veny and at the YMCA Jewish Hut in the Strand in London. He officiated at weddings and conducted funerals and tombstone consecrations. A communal dinner was held in honour of General Monash, at which Danglow pronounced the grace after meals.67 For Passover 1919 elaborate arrangements were made by the British and Australian chaplains with the authorities for leave for Jewish soldiers for the whole of Passover and hospitality for them in Paris and London. In Paris services were arranged for all Jewish soldiers throughout France. There was a detailed timetable for the first three days with services at the synagogue, Seder services, breakfasts at the Hotel Windsor, and dinner there on the third evening, followed by the theatre. Solomon Lipson having undertaken to minister to the Australian Jewish troops of Southern Command during his absence, Danglow travelled from Britain to Paris to conduct the Seder services. These were attended by over seven hundred American, Australian and other Jewish soldiers, and the guests included General Foch, the Chief of Staff of the French Army and by then the Generalissimo of the Allied Armies. Senior Chaplain Miles, who attended both Seder services, proposed three Australian “cooees”, which were heartily given by the Australian soldiers, for the Jewish Welfare Board of America. This organisation, which had representatives in England and France, had invited the Australian Jewish troops to the Seder services and no doubt paid for them.68

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Before his departure Danglow sent a farewell letter to Australian Jewish soldiers who were still abroad. On 12 May the Chief Rabbi hosted a large farewell gathering for him; General Monash attended and spoke in the highest terms of Danglow’s admirable service and Danglow was presented with a handsome silver goblet. At the end of June Danglow sailed for Australia on the SS Bremen, arriving on 9 August 1919. Senior Chaplain Miles wrote of him: He was indefatigable in his energetic labours for the men; no office or service was too small … Somebody, referring to his handsome appearance and intellectual ability, jocularly referred to him as “of the Rolls-Royce type”, but I have known him on occasion travel in a Ford and frequently ride hard on shanks’s pony for the purpose of helping the boys.69 Danglow served again as a chaplain during the Second World War, travelling to training camps in Australia. He visited the internment camps at Hay and Tatura; later he assumed responsibility for chaplaincy at Tatura and Rev. Leib Falk at Hay. The camps held refugees from Nazi Germany, some of whom had arrived in September 1940 after a brutal voyage on the SS Dunera. Reflecting a negative aspect of his character, Danglow was initially insensitive and hostile to the internees, although later he came to support them, holding a Chanukah service in 1942 for the men of one of the new Employment Companies – no. 6 – into which the Jewish refugees had been recruited for labouring work. After the death in December 1942 at the age of 83 of the incumbent, Rev. S. M. Solomon, who had held that position since before the First World War, Danglow became on 7 December 1942 the Senior Hebrew Chaplain for the Commonwealth with the rank of colonel. He convened a conference of Australian Jewish Chaplains and initiated the production of a pocket-sized prayer book and Passover Haggadah. Controversially he agreed that Jewish soldiers could be buried in non-denominational cemeteries rather than in separate ones. In March 1943 the army summoned him to serve for four days a week. In June 1943, at the age of 62, he undertook a tour lasting three and a half months of army bases in Central Australia, the Northern Territory, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. This involved his travelling fifteen thousand kilometres with seven flights and a truck ride through the desert, and almost killed him. After the war he assembled statistics on the Australian Jewish war effort, was in Tokyo in 1945 and was one of a group which investigated the morale of occupation troops in Japan. Danglow’s wife May died in September 1948, and in August 1949 he married a widow and childhood friend, Diana (Dinah) Rosen (nee Heftel or Hestel) in London. In 1956 he retired from his community in St. Kilda which he had served since 1905, although he continued to preach until his successor

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arrived in 1959. He was awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Volunteer Officers Decoration (VD), in 1937 the King George VI Coronation Medal, in 1950 the OBE and in July 1956 became a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG). He retired in 1960 from the military chaplaincy, in which he had served since 1908. In September 1961 he visited London and attended the annual Ajex Parade in November. The British War Office invited him to visit the chaplains and troops of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), and provided him with a car and a driver, so for the second time in his life he saw Germany under Allied occupation. Tall, imposing and every inch the army officer, Danglow was proud to say that he wore the same Sam Browne military dress belt in the Second World War as he had worn in the First. He died in May 1962 at the age of 81, and more than eleven hundred people attended his funeral. Sir Zelman Cowen wrote that “He seemed an immense and powerful figure”. Rabbi Raymond Apple recalled as a child viewing Danglow as a virtual deity. Danglow’s biographer, John Levi, termed him the Uncrowned Monarch of Australian Jews.70

Conclusion on Anzac Chaplaincy The issue whether Australian military chaplains operated under British chaplaincy authority was unclear for virtually the whole of the war, so it was natural for the miniscule number of Jewish chaplains to regard themselves as effectively interchangeable. David Freedman and Jacob Danglow were both moulded in Britain, with the same conventional British ministerial education, through which they had both come to know Michael Adler. Failing to secure a British Jewish chaplain for the Dardanelles, the natural alternative for Adler was to arrange for Freedman to minister to British as well as Anzac troops there. It was equally natural for the British War Office to authorise Freedman in February and March 1916 to serve as chaplain to all Jews in the Middle East Force. On the western front Adler probably gave little thought in June 1916 to treating Freedman as under his authority, nor Freedman to placing Australian Jewish chaplaincy under British control, to which the Australian military authorities consented. British chaplain Louis Morris ministered to Australian Jewish troops for six months, and in the interval of eight months between Freedman and Danglow British chaplain David Hirsch deputised. What called British control into question was the debacle of the Anzac Passover leave in 1917. Since December 1915 Freedman had acquired intensive field experience, at Gallipoli, in Egypt and on the western front. As well as Adler he had consulted Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, who, lacking the military awareness to anticipate Adler’s concerns, had understandably welcomed his proposal for Anzac Passover leave. Freedman was Adler’s contemporary and unlike the newly arriving British Jewish chaplains, some of them half his age,

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had little need of Adler’s guidance and still less of his humiliating undermining of Freedman’s authority. By the time that Freedman’s successor, Danglow, a forceful personality, arrived in August 1918, Adler had been succeeded as Senior British Jewish Chaplain by Arthur Barnett. Having observed Adler over a period of more than two years since March 1916, and benefiting from the chaplaincy infrastructure which Adler had created without Adler’s sense of ownership of it, Barnett, a less authoritarian figure, was able to forge a more egalitarian relationship with Danglow than Adler probably had with any of the chaplains. After the Passover of 1917 the Australian military brought its Jewish chaplaincy under its own control. Within Britain, Harold Boas necessarily remained effectively under British control until the end of the war. For the Australian authorities he was a civilian representative of the Australian YMCA, although in September 1917 he was appointed the accredited representative of the Australian Jewish chaplain, being granted a commission only in September 1918. But it was Passover in 1917 that marked the setting of the imperial sun over Anzac Jewish chaplaincy. The celebratory Passover in Paris in 1919 was a distinctly Anzac event. If Australia and New Zealand became nations at Gallipoli, the war initiated the weakening of British Jewish religious control over their Antipodean Jewish subjects.

Institutional Control of Chaplaincy: e Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue Throughout the war the leadership of the British Jewish community sought to oversee Jewish military matters, initially through the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue and from early in 1916 through the Jewish War Services Committee. Minute book 1A of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue ends with a meeting of 11 February 1914. The next meeting, with which minute book 2 resumes, did not take place, strangely, until 2 November 1914.71 Inevitably military matters gradually became a significant part of the work of the Visitation Committee, although other aspects of its visitation work continued throughout the war. At its meetings on 2 and 11 November 1914, the committee discussed the increased workload owing to the military chaplaincy. This included visiting wounded soldiers, visiting Jewish soldiers and arranging services, the issue and provision by the Admiralty and the War Office of the new prayer book compiled by Adler for Jewish sailors and soldiers and the provision of services and kosher meat in three prisoner of war camps.72 At three meetings during 1915 the committee discussed its correspondence with the War Office and the Admiralty about furlough for Passover and whether Jewish graves in the Dardanelles could be marked in the same way as

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those in France.73 Liaising with the authorities the committee arranged for officiating clergymen and on occasion chaplains to visit, supply prayer books and conduct services and on occasion funerals for Jewish prisoners of war and enemy aliens in various prisoner of war camps; in January 1915 the authorities arranged for the transfer of all Jewish prisoners of war to the Douglas Alien Camp in the Isle of Man.74 At three meetings during 1916 the Committee dealt with suggested officiating clergymen and the areas within the UK which they should cover, hospital visitation in the UK and correspondence about Jewish prisoners of war in both the UK and Germany. By this stage the initiative was passing to the Jewish War Services Committee, which effectively amalgamated with the Visitation Committee by incorporating two of its members.75 There was perhaps inevitable tension between Michael Adler, with his single-minded vision of what needed to be done and trying to do it in the field with next to no support, and the Visitation Committee in London trying to control chaplaincy in a managerial way and pressing Adler for reports. In a letter of 15 June 1916, the secretary of the Committee wrote that “A great deal of our trouble is due to Mr. Adler through acting without consultation in the first instance”, and that it was to be hoped that “our troubles will be mitigated” by the creation of the JWSC. Perhaps inevitably, this was not to be.

e Jewish War Services Committee In or shortly before December 1915 the War Office authorised the formation of a committee, initially named the Jewish Recruiting Committee or the Central Jewish Recruiting Committee, to advise on matters affecting the recruiting of Jews for the forces. Conscription had not yet been introduced and the need for men had become critical. Being accommodated at 8 New Court, St Swithin’s Lane, London E.C., the address of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, the committee became known colloquially within the Jewish community as “Rothschilds’ Recruiting Office”.76 The Committee first met on 5 December 1915. Mr Edward Sebag Montefiore became the chairman and Major Lionel de Rothschild MP the vice chairman and military recruiting officer. The committee met six times in December 1915 to discuss recruitment, its minutes reflecting the pressure upon the Jewish community to address the reluctance of some men to enlist. Adopting by agreement with the War Office the name the Jewish War Services Committee, it met during 1916 on twenty-four occasions. For some time recruitment remained the predominant topic. The committee also dealt with arrangements for services, including services at Aldershot, Passover leave and what had become the pressing issue of the enlistment into the British Army of the many non-naturalised Russian Jews who were living in Britain. It

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considered a request from Australian Rev. David Freedman for Jewish huts for Jewish soldiers on the YMCA principle and decided that these could not be provided. Rev. Louis Morris wrote asking for motor cars for chaplains in France. By November 1916 it was decided not to provide motor cars, the chairman having investigated the matter during a recent visit. How, in the light of the enormous difficulties of movement which Jewish chaplains faced, the chairman could have reached that view is not explained. The issue arose again several times at the request of chaplains during 1917, but without result. On 19 June 1916 Rev. Solomon Lipson and Mr P. Ornstien were delegated to form a sub-committee to carry on the work belonging to the Chaplains’ Department. On 5 July 1916 Ornstien submitted a confidential report from Michael Adler on the working of the Chaplains’ Department; the minute book does not preserve this or the documents to which it referred. As with the Visitation Committee, the minutes indicate a developing tension between the JWSC and Adler. There seems to have been some tension with Solomon Lipson too, because the secretary was instructed at the meeting on 21 November 1916 to write to him defining his duties and the position as the chief of the office staff (presumably of the Chaplains’ Office) of Major Schonfield.

Card to be completed by soldiers and returned to the Jewish War Services Committee. Reproduced with the permission of the Trustees of The Rothschild Archive.

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There was formed amongst the Christian churches an Interdenominational Committee on Ministration to the Troops, which had held its first meeting in August 1916. The JWSC learned of this and on 22 November 1916, following its meeting the previous day, its chairman wrote to the War Office. Explaining that questions of festivals, Sabbaths and other religious observances played a very great part in Jewish communal life, he requested Jewish representation on the committee and for this purpose nominated the Chief Rabbi. The War Office replied on 5 December 1916 declining the request. It stated that the object of the Interdenominational Committee was to bring the authorities of the denominations which were most largely represented in the Army into closer touch with one another and by constituting the committee an advisory body of the Army Council to avoid the risk of inequality of treatment between them. The Council were of the opinion that “the problems which arise in connection with ministration to Jewish soldiers are of a unique nature” and did not come within the scope of the committee, which existed for this purpose, so that a Jewish representative was unnecessary.77 The Jewish community was not to achieve representation on this committee until 1926.78 During 1917 the Committee met on ten occasions. On 30 January it discussed “the evasion of military service by Jews by underhand means”. On 2 April the explosive issue of the Anzac Passover leave reached the Committee: The Chief Rabbi informed the Committee that he had received a letter from the Chaplain of the Anzac Corps in France complaining that Rev. M. Adler had cancelled Passover leave granted to the Australian Jews, and he was of opinion that Rev. Adler had acted in a way which should meet with the strong disapproval of the Committee and that steps must be taken to ensure that such a thing could not occur again. The chairman moved that a sub-committee be appointed to meet Rev Adler for the purpose of:1) Discussing the matter of the Passover leave granted to the Australians & subsequently cancelled. 2) Defining Revd M. Adler’s duties as Senior Chaplain 3) Ensuring that the system of regular reports from the chaplains to the Committee should be recommenced and adhered to. The sub-committee was to comprise Edward Sebag Montefiore, the Chief Rabbi, Major Rothschild, Lord Swathling, Albert M. Woolf and Mr P. Ornstien. An application was to be made to the War Office for Major Schonfield to be allowed to go to France to coordinate the work of the Chaplains’ Department. It is plain that Adler had lost the confidence of the JWSC. On 11 April when

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he was on leave the JWSC discussed with him the cancellation of the Anzac Passover leave. Adler explained his reasons, his difficulties with Freedman and his system of working with his chaplains, and promised that in future when any question of policy arose the matter should be referred to the committee. Seven days later, at its meeting on 18 April, by which time Adler had returned to France, the chairman stated that reports received from chaplains were not satisfactory and that Adler had been informed. At its next meeting on 16 May the committee noted letters received from Adler and Freedman. Relationships between the JWSC and Adler remained tense. At the meeting on 30 July: Major Adler explained that he could not supply the Records asked for by the Committee as he had no facilities for obtaining assistance. He read a letter from the Adjutant-General declining to give him clerical assistance. After some discussion Major Adler promised to give any assistance he could to enable the Committee to get their Records as complete as possible. The chairman informed Major Adler that the appointment of Chaplains was in the hands of the Committee and that such appointments would always be made without reference to him. …. Major Rothschild said that Rev. Adler was wrong in criticising the chaplains appointed & that the Committee would continue to appoint the chaplains. Rev. Adler in reply said that he regretted the view taken by the Committee & promised to give the Chaplains every assistance to enable them to satisfactorily carry out their duties.79 During 1918 the JWSC met six times. When in May it became necessary for Adler to relinquish his post in France, Solomon Lipson asked to be appointed to succeed him. The committee decided that Lipson should continue his work in the UK and instructed the secretary to write to the War Office asking that Adler transfer to London to take charge there and that Arthur Barnett assume Adler’s position in France. In August the committee decided that a scheme should be drawn up by Adler and Lipson for the regulation and division of chaplains’ work, but the minutes do not give any indication that this happened. In October Lipson spoke of the predicament of various soldiers who had overstayed their leave during the recent High Holydays. In December the committee decided that it should carry out the arrangements for the demobilisation of chaplains and that the War Office should be informed. The JWSC met for the next and last time on 6 May 1919. The Visitation Committee met three times during 1917, twice in 1918 and three times in 1919, dealing amongst its other responsibilities with isolated

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war-related matters. When it met on 27 January 1920 it had a letter from the War Office, written in response to one from the United Synagogue, to the effect that upon the dissolution of the JWSC the Visitation Committee would represent the Jewish community in matters connected with the army, and decided that similar letters should be sent to the Admiralty and the Air Force. It also discussed the appointment of permanent Jewish chaplains.80

India There were Jewish soldiers stationed in India since at least 1914. Chaplaincy for British troops in India was the responsibility not of the War Office but of the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment, a body which comprised the principal Christian denominations and functioned as the de facto Indian counterpart to the AChD.81 The need for a Jewish chaplain in India was identified in May 1917, as a result of a civilian minister (of whom there were several in different cities in India) having to send detailed instructions for the conduct of the anticipated funeral of a Jewish soldier (who fortuitously recovered), but none was ever appointed.82 For Passover of 1917 the Jewish community in Calcutta, which had supported Jewish soldiers since the start of the war, afforded hospitality to the troops, and services were conducted for some fifty-seven

Passover Seder Service in Calcutta in India, March 1918. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London/Jewish Military Museum.

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soldiers by civilian ministers in the Magen David and Bethal Synagogues. In Umbala an outbreak of measles prevented travel to Calcutta, so Seder and festival services for eleven men were conducted in a tent by Private Morley Dainow.83 At some stage there was formed a Jewish War Services Committee for India. In March 1918 it produced in Calcutta a Haggadah for Passover, which stated that copies could be obtained free of charge from the Supervising Officer for the Jewish soldiers in India. In 1918 Passover services were held amongst other places in Bombay, and New Year services in Calcutta, and in 1920 Passover services were held in Bangalore.84

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

BJBH, p. 21. JW 27/1/1915, p. 18. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 142-4. JW 6/1/1915, p. 19. JC 2/7/1915, p. 13. Gladwin, Captains of the Soul, p. 87. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 90-2. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 35. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 239. Letter in the Jewish Herald 10/3/1916, in Joe Lederman, A tale of two ANZAC rabbis, in a magazine perhaps published in Sydney, 2003. Lieutenant Spielmann, the son of communal leader Sir Isidore Spielmann, had been killed there and his grave had initially been marked with a Cross, giving rise to anxious correspondence with his father. JW 1/12/1915, p. 10. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 99-101. JW 16/2/1916, p. 17. Dr William Ewing, who served as a chaplain at Gallipoli, published in 1918 a book entitled From Gallipoli to Baghdad, in which he paid tribute to the devotion and self-sacrifice of the English, Scottish and Palestinian Jewish soldiers whom he had met at Gallipoli: JC 15/3/1918, p. 14. JM, file 2011.74. JW 29/3/1916, p. 15. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/006. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 110-18. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 86. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 102-4, 115. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 91-102 and plate 16. Freedman’s reports to the Principal Chaplain of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (forwarded by the War Office to the United Synagogue) and to the Visitation Committee and correspondence in JM, file 2011.74. JC 31/3/1916, p. 14. Author’s interview with Rabbi Raymond Apple 1/1/2015. JC 7/7/1916, p. 18. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 118-125. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 105-9. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 113. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 86. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 125-6.

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

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LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/011. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 125 - 6. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 106-7. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 169. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 130. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 136. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 55. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 90. Ibid., pp. 89-90. Rodney Gouttman, I saw it my way: Rabbi L. A. Falk and the “Jewish Legion” of World War One in AJHS, vol. 23, part 2, June 2017, pp. 260-277 at 271. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 136. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 113-5. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 130-4. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 240. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, pp. 92, 353, nn. 106, 107. Gladwin, Captains of the Soul, p. 69. Suzanne D. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora. Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (Sydney: Collins, 2000), p. 110. Gouttman, I saw it my way, p. 145. Australian Dictionary of Biography, volume 8, pp. 581-2, by O. B. Toffler. ww1chaplains.gravesecrets.net. Jewish Herald, 26/7/1918, p. 8. JC 30/6/1939, p. 15 (obituary); 7/7/1939, pp. 15-16 (tribute by Adler). Letter in the Jewish Herald 10/3/1916, in Joe Lederman, A tale of two ANZAC rabbis, in a magazine perhaps published in Sydney, 2003. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 183-4. Ibid., pp. 108, 181-3. Ibid., pp. 167, 179 -184. JW 10/2/1915, p. 17. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 11-13, 165-6. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/011. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 54-5. Ibid., pp. 14-15, 42-4, 60-1, 170-7. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 17-34, 34-42, 47-50, 56. AJHS, vol. XXII, part 2, June 2015: Philip Moses, Harold Boas – A Man of Principle, pp. 184-210; Russell Stern, Finding the Jewish Diggers of the Great War (Part II), pp. 211-284 (“AJHS 2015”), p. 198. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 20 - 26. Ibid., pp. 26 - 27. Ibid., pp. 17-18, 22. Ibid., pp. 62-65, 176-179, 187. Ibid., pp. 65-79. Ibid., p. 165. BJBH, illustrations, p. 201, photograph dated 1917. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., p. 55. Ibid., pp. 15-17, 56. Ibid., pp. 79-89, 163. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 148 and plate 19. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 240. AJHS 2015, pp. 184-210. Harold Boas, Unpublished Autobiography. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 29-30, 126-7. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 27-30. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 142-4. AJHS 2015, pp. 184-210. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 239. Raymond Apple, Rabbi Jacob Danglow (“Apple paper”), pp. 4-5. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, pp. 14ff, 48-9, 60-1, 68, 75, 81, 83, 93. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 54-5. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 24, 97-8, 130. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 136-7. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 134-7. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, pp. 94-8. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 116-19.

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61. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 137-8, 140-164. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 240. Apple paper, p. 10. 62. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 139. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 120-2. 63. Succot, or Tabernacles, is a festival of seven days commencing five days after Yom Kippur, normally in September/October, in which Jews build a temporary booth or “succah” and as far as possible live in it. 64. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 102. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 144. 65. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 103. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 141. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 119-123. 66. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 105. 67. Apple, The Jewish military chaplaincy in Australia, p. 240. Apple paper, p. 5. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 108. 68. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 147-8. 69. Gouttman, In Their Merit, pp. 125-6. Apple, The Jewish Military Chaplaincy in Australia, p. 240. Apple paper, p. 5. 70. Forces War Records. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 79-89, 138, 140. 161-3, 206-7. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 220-1, 236. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, pp. 106-114, 224-298. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora, pp. 137, 300. Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8, p. 204, by J. S. Levi. Apple paper, pp. 7, 11. ww1chaplains.gravesecrets.net. Author’s interview with Rabbi Raymond Apple 1/1/2015. 71. VC/2/1. 72. VC/2/3, 4, 7. 73. VC/2/10-13, 19-21. JM, file 2011.74. Visitation Committee correspondence at JM, box 1005, file 2011.74 and folder 2013.311.11. 74. VC/2/10-13. JM, file 2011.74. JM, undated letter in folder re correspondence 1914-1916 in Box 1 re Jewish chaplains. BJBH, pp. 40-2. JC 6/11/1914, p. 26; 13/8/1915, p. 15; 17/9/1915, pp. 21, 23; 1/10/1915, p. 11; 15/10/1915, p. 17. JW 17/10/1914, p.11; 18/11/1914, p. 23; 5/9/1915, p. 14; 22/9/1915, p. 17; 18/10/1916, p. 10; 22/11/1916, p. 13. 75. VC/2/22-30. JM, file 2011.74 and folder 2013.311.12. 76. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 84. JWSC minute book and other documents. 77. National Archives, file WO/32/14826. 78. National Archives, file WO/32/14825. 79. The author has not located any evidence of criticism by Adler of individual chaplaincy appointments. 80. VC/2/35-43, 58-64. 81. Howson, Muddling Through, p. 152. Snape and Madigan (eds.), The Clergy in Khaki, per Snape, pp. 143-167. 82. JC 25/5/1917, p. 19. 83. JC 25/5/1917, p. 19. 84. BJBH, illustrations, pp. 14, 46, 146, 181, 208, 216, 253. JC 25/5/1917, p. 19. JM, box 1009. Israel National Library, Yaari, Hagadot, no. 1887.

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6 THE FIRST WORLD WAR: INDIVIDUAL CHAPLAINS

e Appointment of Further Chaplains Chaplaincy appointments were made by the War Office. In September 1914 Rev. Solomon Lipson applied to serve, and did so thenceforth in Britain. In February 1915 he was commissioned and, with Rev. Michael Adler away on his exploratory visit in France, continued to serve in the Home Command. The United Synagogue nominated Rev. Aaron Asher Green to serve as an additional chaplain in Britain, but the authorities declined to appoint him, seemingly because the proposal was that he should serve on a less than full time basis and perhaps because he was aged fifty-five. In May 1915 Adler wrote from France to Mr. Ornstien of the Visitation Committee seeking another chaplain for Boulogne and suggesting Lipson. In June 1915 Adler wrote to the Chief Rabbi: “The work is enormous, the War will last a considerable time yet, & it is absolutely essential for a second man to be at work out here.” Also in June 1915 the Visitation Committee applied for the appointment of Green to assist Adler in France, but the War Office declined to appoint a second Jewish chaplain. In July 1915 Adler pressed again. The United Synagogue urged the appointment of additional chaplains and nominated Rev. Vivian Simmons. After much discussion and correspondence between the Visitation Committee and the War Office Simmons was appointed in August 1915 as an additional chaplain to France, and joined Adler.1 The Visitation Committee corresponded about the appointment of officiating clergymen with the War Office and, in the light of its advice, with the regional military commands. It sought the appointment of a Jewish chaplain for the Dardanelles, but the War Office declined on the grounds that the Jews were scattered in various regiments over a large area and the Chief Rabbi of Alexandria was doing very good work.2 It also sought the appointment of a Jewish chaplain in eastern Europe, but none was appointed. An application was also made for an appointment of a Jewish chaplain to the Expeditionary Force in the Mediterranean.3 In January 1916 Adler wrote a long and reasoned case for the appointment of ideally two more Jewish chaplains in France. In

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February the United Synagogue relayed it to the War Office, requesting the urgent appointment of one if not two more Jewish chaplains for the British Expeditionary Force and of more officiating clergymen in Britain. In March 1916 a third Jewish chaplain, Rev. Arthur Barnett, was appointed to the western front.4 The initiative had by then passed from the Visitation Committee to the JWSC, which from 1916 regularly sought to identify ministers who might be suitable to become chaplains.5 In August 1916, with four Jewish chaplains serving (three in France and one in Britain), the JWSC decided to apply for two additional chaplains, one immediately and one at a later date. For the JWSC this would have made six in all; it may not then have known of Rabbi Shimon Grajewsky, who was by that time serving in Egypt. By September 1916 the War Office had made one appointment, of Rev. Louis Morris, to France, and decided that no further appointment could be authorised at present. In October 1916 the JWSC decided to apply to the War Office for the appointment of another chaplain, but it is not clear whether it did so. By April 1917 the War Office had approved an additional chaplain for France, Rev. Benjamin Lieberman. Thus by April 1917 there were still only six Jewish chaplains for the whole of the western front (Adler, Simmons, Barnett, the Australian Freedman, Morris and Lieberman). By December 1916 the War Office had sanctioned an appointment of a chaplain for Salonika, and in March 1917 Rev. Marks Gollop was appointed. The issue of appointing a chaplain for Mesopotamia was under discussion by the JWSC in December 1916; by June 1917 the JWSC had applied for an appointment, which in July 1917 the War Office declined to make. In June 1917 the War Office asked the JWSC to nominate two additional chaplains for France. In July 1917 Major Schonfield, in charge of administration for the JWSC, submitted an application to the War Office for six additional chaplains for Home Forces; perhaps he had not sufficiently consulted, as the JWSC decided to ask for only three. Between June 1917 and July 1918 a further eight chaplains were appointed: six to the western front (Revs. Ephraim Levy, John Geffen, David Hirsch, Harris Price, Israel Brodie and Nathan Levine), one to Britain (Rev. Nehemiah Goldston) and one to Egypt (Rabbi Yitzchak Frankenthal). Two were in response to the request from the War Office; at whose initiative the others were appointed is not recorded by the JWSC. The appointment of Rev. Leib Falk to the Jewish Legion in January 1918 involved its own politics and bypassed the establishment and anti-Zionist JWSC, which in November 1917 recorded its unanimous disapproval of a proposal received from Vladimir Jabotinsky for serving Jewish soldiers to be transferred into the Legion. In August 1918 the JWSC considered a letter from Arthur Barnett, who had succeeded Michael Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain, urging the need for more chaplains, and it was decided to create a sub-committee to arrange for

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more chaplains to be appointed. In October 1918 it considered another letter from Barnett explaining that six more chaplains were required at once. Rev. Walter Levin was appointed in October 1918 to Italy and Rev. Henry Silverman as late as November 1918 to France. Virtually throughout the war there was a continuing clamour for more Jewish chaplains. Letters were published in the press from soldiers about the shortage of Jewish chaplains and the vast areas which they had to cover without transport. Levin wrote that Jewish chaplains were so few in number that many Jewish soldiers never saw one. In May 1918 the Chief Rabbi called for more chaplains.6 Viewed through the prism of the records of the Visitation Committee and of the JWSC, the essential pattern throughout the war is of those communal bodies and of the United Synagogue not only, inevitably, identifying candidates for chaplaincy but also initiating requests to appoint them, and of the War Office, doubtless constrained by considerations of finance and of formulae for the ratio of chaplains to troops, adopting a responsive decision-making role. The only exception to this pattern is the period from the militarily critical summer of 1917 until the summer of 1918; the War Office requested two more chaplains for France in June 1917 and, albeit that the JWSC record is less complete, seems to have been more pro-active. In the First World War there was initially no training for chaplains. As the war went on some training courses were introduced for Anglicans and chaplaincy training schools were created at Ripon in Britain and St. Omer in France.7 Amongst the Jewish chaplains Lipson had assisted Adler whilst serving in the Home Command and Simmons received ten days’ guidance from Adler in Europe. On their arrival in Europe others of the Jewish chaplains similarly spent a week accompanying a more experienced colleague. In the summer of 1918 Danglow attended a brief chaplaincy training course in Britain, on which Simmons was his special instructor, before embarking for France.8 This appears to have been the totality of the training of any of the Jewish chaplains for so demanding a ministry. Adler, probably the chaplains in the Middle East and perhaps others of the Jewish chaplains received no training at all. The Jewish chaplains who served in the Home Command and on the Western, Italian and Salonika fronts are considered in the sequence of their appointments. February 1915. Rev. Solomon Lipson (1878 – 19 November 1959) was born in Sheffield, studied at Jews’ College and worked as a teacher. From 1903 he was the minister of the North West London Synagogue and from 1909 of the Hammersmith and West Kensington Synagogue. His wife Tilly was the daughter of Rev. H. Shandel of Ramsgate Synagogue. They had a son and a daughter. Early in September 1914 Lipson applied to the War Office to serve

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as a chaplain or interpreter, or in any other capacity, either at home or on foreign service. With the concept of Jewish chaplaincy in the field yet to emerge, the War Office considered that he would be of greater service at home, and he effectively became Michael Adler’s assistant chaplain. He conducted services for Jewish soldiers in Brighton and Colchester and, with Rev. G. Prince, for Jewish prisoners of war at their camp at Olympia in London. In November Adler inaugurated regular Sunday morning services for Jewish soldiers at Lipson’s Hammersmith Synagogue with a rota of preachers, and in December the annual Chanukah service was held there. In February 1915, at the age of about 36, Lipson was commissioned as a chaplain fourth class. He served in the Home Command and was termed its Senior Jewish Chaplain. Attending the meeting of the Visitation Committee on 1 February 1915, he said that he had been acting as Adler’s assistant for some months, was quite experienced in the work and felt perfectly fitted physically for its duties. It was decided that he should visit military camps in England to organise services and should endeavour to enlist Jewish ministers to do so in camps within their vicinity, and that the Chief Rabbi would probably accompany him on some of his visits. Lipson said that no necessity existed at the present moment for an assistant chaplain. Throughout 1915 and 1916, Lipson travelled widely within the UK conducting services. In June 1915 Gunner A. Harris wrote to him thanking him for the Bible and Prayer Book, which he read every day. In the same month Lipson accompanied Chief Rabbi Hertz on his visit to France. They arrived in Boulogne on a Thursday, and Adler, by then serving in France, joined them the next day. They visited several hospitals and the British cemetery in Boulogne. Lipson returned to the UK on the Monday afternoon, while the Chief Rabbi continued with the visit to headquarters and advanced stations at the front.9 During 1915 Lipson dealt with military correspondence at the Chaplains’ Office at 38 Hallam Street within Adler’s Central Synagogue, as did Rev. A. A. Green when Lipson was away. In a Visitation Committee report of November 1915, the Chairman, Mr Felix A. Davis, referred to the efficiency with which Lipson carried out his duties as Home Chaplain. At the annual Chanukah military service in December 1915, in Adler’s absence in France, Lipson delivered the address, which was full of patriotism and pride at the Jewish military contribution to the war. During 1915 and 1916 Lipson helped Adler to compile lists of Jews serving in the British Forces. In January 1916 he officiated at a tombstone setting in Bournemouth of Rifleman Isidore Morris, who had died of his wounds. In February 1916 he published a request for newly joined Jewish members of H. M. Forces to communicate with him. On 17 March 1916 he wrote to the Chief Rabbi and the Beth Din inviting them to issue a dispensation from eating kosher food for the period of the war to help those to whom the present state of affairs was very painful. No record of a reply

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has been traced, and no such dispensation was issued. In June 1916 he attended together with the Chief Rabbi a memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral for Lord Kitchener. Lipson’s approach to chaplaincy was criticised by Rev. A. A. Green. Resentful that his own application to become a chaplain had been refused, Green wrote on 13 June 1916 to Mr. Ornstien of the Visitation Committee. As well as complaining that Lipson was absent for days together from the Chaplains’ Office at Hallam Street, he exemplified one of the inherent dilemmas of chaplaincy: I send you, confidentially, 3 enclosures. Mr Adler’s letter is no surprise to me. It was a weak appointment from the start and never ought ot [sic] have been made. It is Mr Adler’s fault, as he ought to have gauged the work and should have called in the strongest man he could find. My own complaint about Mr Lipson is that not only is he generally inefficient but that his attitude towards the men is of the sickly sentimental kind and that he has, through this, encouraged a resort to the Chaplain and reference by the Chaplain to Commanding Officers that is unparalleled in other denominations and is a source of continual complaints by Jewish soldiers and irritation of officers. To put it crudely, there is largely represented now in the Army a type of Jewish soldier who wants stiffening up and not slobbering over. In July 1916 the United Synagogue approved a request which it had received from Hammersmith Synagogue for Lipson to be granted leave of absence. “The extraordinary zeal and ability, said Mr Jessel, which Mr Lipson had shown was deserving of the highest praise. He had come to the front and had shown himself most capable as a Chaplain to the Jewish Soldiers.” In November 1916 Lipson issued a circular to hospitals asking them to notify the JWSC of Jewish casualties, so that they could receive adequate religious ministration. To minister among the many troops stationed on Salisbury Plain, Lipson worked in conjunction with the Jewish Officiating Clergyman for the Salisbury area, Dr J. Abelson, and the Australian Harold Boas. Lipson supported the creation of the Jewish Legion. He attended a meeting in August 1917 of prominent Jewish people interested in its formation, was a member of the provisional executive committee established by Lord Rothschild to promote it and was an honorary member of its Care and Comforts Committee which supported the men enlisting at its recruiting depot in London. Michael Adler by contrast vigorously opposed the creation of the Legion, which must have led to tension between them. On Monday 4 February 1918 part of the 38th Battalion of the Jewish Legion marched through the City

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of London before departing for the Holy Land. A luncheon followed, attended by the Chief Rabbi, at which Lipson as the Senior Jewish Chaplain Home Forces recited the Grace after Meals. A Sefer Torah had been presented to the Legion by Captain and Mrs Israel Friedman, and Lipson formally presented it on their behalf. He said: Comrades: I give into your keeping this Book of the Law, to be in all circumstances and at all times your never failing guide. From time immemorial has the Torah been Israel’s most cherished possession. For its sake your fathers suffered persecution and death. For and by it may you, their children, live. In the remote past the Law went forth from Zion; happy are you that take it unto Zion, to establish in the Sacred Land the glories of our future. Be strong and of good courage, quit yourselves like men; and may Israel’s Guardian, accompany you on your way, uphold you and bring you back in safety with Zion’s Song to those whose thoughts will continuously be with you in loving remembrance.10 At the conference of Jewish chaplains and officiating clergymen on 20 February 1918 in Birmingham, Lipson presided. Several papers were presented and Lipson summed up the proceedings. A correspondence in the Jewish Chronicle in May 1918 about the need for more Jewish chaplains prompted a letter on 10 May from Private H. Steinberg of the 3rd (Res.) London Regiment, C Company, Maida Barracks in Aldershot in praise of Revs. Lipson and Simmons: …There were about thirty Jewish men stationed at Falmouth, about 300 miles from London, and we sent a letter to Rev. S. Lipson asking him to come there and arrange services for us, and within a few days the rev. gentleman came and held a service; and furthermore made necessary arrangements so that to this very day services are held there every week …. In October 1918 the Jewish Chronicle discussed the problems of welfare organisation, including the JWSC. One of its functions was to obtain leave or extensions of leave for Jews for, for example, the High Holydays, and for this the officer in charge was usually Rev. Lipson. Also in October 1918, by arrangement with the American Expeditionary Force, Lipson assumed charge of the religious welfare of American Jewish troops in England. In January 1919 the Jewish Chronicle published a letter of appreciation to him from the Senior Chaplain of American forces. In September 1918 Michael Adler, now returned from France, recorded in his diary that he had taken over the chaplaincy in England from Lipson. On 4

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November 1918 the Chaplains’ Department wrote to Lipson about the reorganisation of Jewish Chaplaincy Services. It had been decided in conjunction with the JWSC to select him (in succession to Rev. Nehemiah Goldston) for duty as Jewish Chaplain for the Salisbury Plain area responsible for religious ministrations for Jewish soldiers in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. For Lipson this was effectively a demotion. When the Australian Harold Boas left for France in January 1919, Lipson assumed official responsibility for the Australian troops within Southern Command. Lipson recorded his warm relations with Boas, the Australian chaplains David Freedman and Jacob Danglow and the Australian YMCA. Danglow described Lipson as “a very nice fellow, even though he was nervy, rather vain, anxious to impress in regard to his military importance, quite good looking (with a beard) and inclined to be very orthodox but all the same a good sort”. Lipson was mentioned in despatches. In June 1919 he took over the chaplaincy role of Rev. Vivian Simmons at Aldershot within the Southern Command. On 1 October 1919 he was demobilised, becoming an officiating clergyman for Southern Command and reverting to the rank of temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class. In October 1921 he was promoted to honorary chaplain to the forces third class. Solomon Lipson returned to Hammersmith and West Kensington Synagogue, and continued to minister there until 1938. He then served until 1954 as the Jewish Chaplain to mental health services. He died in November 1959 at the age of 82. On Sunday 20 December 1959 a service was held in his memory at Hammersmith and West Kensington Synagogue, the four officiating ministers including Arthur Barnett.11 August 1915. Rev. Vivian George Simmons (16 September 1886 – 4 January 1970) was the only British Jewish chaplain of the First World War who did not adhere to the Orthodox tradition. His father’s Rabbinical family had been in England for over two hundred years. Rev. Leonard M. Simmons, his father, was the minister of Manchester Reform Synagogue, and served in 1899 as a chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade. His mother, a noted artist, was the daughter of Reform Rabbi Professor Hertzberg, the Chief Rabbi of Brunswick, whose own father had also been a German Reform Rabbi. Born in Manchester, Vivian Simmons was educated at Manchester Grammar School (where the only things that he remembered were a prize for mathematics and a “first class flogging”), City of London School and University College London, where he graduated in classics. Between 1908 and 1914 he studied at seminaries in Berlin and Heidelberg. He revered the way that knowledge was imparted in German universities but disliked the German way of life and was not happy in Germany. In January 1914 he returned to England, was inducted as the junior minister at the West London Reform Synagogue and married Priscilla Whitehill, who was twenty years his senior, with whom he had one daughter.

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In August 1915 Simmons applied to become a Jewish Chaplain. He was assessed as medically fit, subject to having efficient dental treatment, and was accepted. On 6 August he signed, witnessed by Priscilla, the formal acceptance of his appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class in the rank of captain, and on 24 August he was commissioned. The Visitation Committee reported “the appointment (with the approval of the Chief Rabbi) of the Rev Vivian Simmons, of the Berkeley Street Synagogue, as Assistant Chaplain”. The Jewish World headed its news item Additional Jewish Chaplain: Interesting Appointment. Simmons landed on 23 August 1915 in Boulogne, where Michael Adler met him. Based there initially to learn “Army routine, military hierarchy and a Chaplain’s place and duties”, he received ten days’ guidance from Adler. He worked in the coastal area of Calais, Wimereux, Etaples, Camieres, Abbeville, Le Treport and Le Touquet. Over a period of three and a half months he visited over five hundred sick and wounded Jewish soldiers in the thirty-three British hospitals and convalescent camps in the area, wrote to the parents or relatives of each, in cases of dangerous illness by telegram, and visited about ten other camps or depots where soldiers were stationed. He conducted weekly services in Boulogne and Etaples, generally on Sunday afternoons. He conducted New Year services in both towns, and a service on the Day of Atonement attended by over sixty men, some of whom came from the front. On Sunday 5 September he and Adler, although of different religious denominations, conducted a service together, and did so again late in April 1916. From 11 December Simmons was based at Rouen, performing similar duties, visiting twelve hospitals and convalescent camps, holding services in the synagogue and addressing the men on sexual problems and the temptations of Rouen. From 15 January 1916 he was again based at Boulogne. On 30 March 1916 Simmons met Arthur Barnett on his arrival and spent four days initiating him into his duties. Barnett was to replace him in Boulogne, and on 4 April Simmons went to the front as the Jewish Chaplain attached to the Second Army, which contained around three thousand Jews and had a trench frontage of over thirty miles. He was attached to the North Midland Casualty Clearing Station, where he joined Adler, who had previously been based there for a period and was again based there from 8 March until 14 April 1916. Adler gave Simons ten days guidance on chaplaincy work at the front and then relocated to join the Third Army. The North Midland Casualty Clearing Station was housed in a Catholic monastery in Mont-Des-Cats, which stood on a steep hill near the Belgian border from which the ruins of Ypres and the whole line as far as Bethune were visible. It had twelve officers, eighty staff and anything between three hundred and six hundred patients. Simmons was one of four chaplains, the others being a Church of England vicar, a Roman Catholic Jesuit and a Non-Conformist

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minister. Adler recorded that one of them, Rev. Mr. Tate, had been trained in a Scottish school of theology and had a sound knowledge of Hebrew. “We all got on astonishingly well as we did with the other officers”, Simmons wrote. In command was Colonel W.P. Peake, RAMC, “a most charming but far too easygoing a leader”. Adler recorded that Colonel Peake had previously granted his request to base himself at the monastery, where he had lived in a tent in the monks’ garden and had used the colonel’s bedroom as his office. Simmons remained at the monastery for fifteen months until June 1917, visiting almost every part of the front and receiving “hundreds of letters from grateful patients”. Simmons wrote that at first chaplains were regarded as something of a nuisance: We all started with 3 pips on our shoulders.12 Bishop Taylor Smith, Chaplain-General at the War Office who interviewed all ‘recruits’ to this office, warned us (a) that we were non-combatants and could carry no arms of any sort, and (b) that we had a right to expect (on demand) the respect due to the rank. Gradually, the value and importance of the chaplain’s work became recognised and his influence highly regarded. Simmons visited more than two hundred field ambulances, dressing stations, casualty clearing stations and general hospitals. He found there a “universal spirit of cheerfulness”, and wrote that: There is no sphere of the present war …where you find a more splendid type or a greater quantity of pure heroism and human devotion than … among patients, doctors, nurses and orderlies, in hospitals of all kinds. The padre was a “jack-of-many-trades”. Simmons acted as an interpreter to wounded prisoners and as a stretcher bearer. After battles he helped in operating theatres: Men lay in long rows on stretchers, awaiting their turn, some halfconscious, some crying out for water, some tore off their bandages in their agony, some who died before their turn could come, and many who were so badly wounded that all they could say was ‘Give us a cigarette, Padre’. Simmons tried to contact every Jewish soldier in his area. He arranged and conducted services on Sundays, sometimes two in widely separated districts, and at Passover in three services in different villages along the front. He notified men of the services through printed postcards, made a point of talking with each of the men and wrote afterwards to their relatives. He kept records of sick

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and wounded. He conducted funerals; for occasions when the location was inaccessible to him, he arranged with the headquarters of each division for some Jewish officer or man in each unit to perform this duty. He gave copies of the Jewish Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Prayer Book to chaplains of other denominations whom he met to enable them to do so for Jewish soldiers, as was frequently necessary. He sometimes acted as an intermediary between Jewish soldiers and their commanding officers where difficulties or misunderstandings had arisen. He was always concerned to foster good relations between Jews and non-Jews, and was especially appreciative of the help of the YMCA in providing accommodation for services. In his addresses he impressed upon the men the unique opportunity to establish closer relations of fellowship and understanding between Jew and Gentile. Simmons was always impeded by the absence of transport, and for a period had the use of a car for two days a week. It was impossible for him to visit even half of the Jewish soldiers; most of them he saw only at services, and he had to tell them publicly that to his very great regret he could not visit many of them personally. A photograph shows Simmons and Adler in Adler’s car near Arras; another shows Simmons on horseback in September 1916 “somewhere in France”; and a third shows him and Barnett on horseback, and so was taken at some point after March 1916 when Barnett arrived. Simmons described other experiences: On one occasion, I had to go out on a stormy day into the trenches in front of Armentieres to bury a young Jewish officer. Desultory shelling was going on all the time, and there I met a C of E brother-chaplain bent on the same sad duty. Shells began dropping all round. I started reading the Burial Service, the poor battered remains were lowered … as slowly and as reverently as though it were a king going to his rest. Suddenly a shell dropped unpleasantly near, close enough to wound a man 20 yards away who had come to pay his last respects to his young Company officer. Suddenly every man Jack around us disappeared into prepared and as yet empty graves, and we two were left alone above ground. So I said to the other chaplain: I will stay with you while you do your job. His reply was: Certainly not. You do yours first: Your religion is older than mine! If that did not spell brotherhood rising above war, death and religious differences, I am a Dutchman! A Company Officer in a trench which was being badly shelled suddenly saw a dispatch rider crawling along the ground from a support trench, obviously at the gravest possible peril of his life. The officer, when the man got in, complimented him upon his devotion to duty in bringing in his despatch under such a hurricane of fire, and this was what the

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dispatch, for which the man had risked his life, contained: ‘Will you please inform me, immediately, how many Jewish prayer-books you have in your company’. The officer did not smile.13 On 7 June 1916 whilst on leave Simmons signed the agreement to renew his contract for twelve months, his signature again being witnessed by his wife. On 27 June his leave was extended until 17 July; why is not recorded. On 11 July 1916 he wrote a report on his ten months’ work, from 1 August 1915 until June 1916, as Jewish Chaplain to the British Expeditionary Force in France. On the Sabbath of 9 December 1916, whilst again on leave, Simmons delivered a sermon in his synagogue in London. It proved to generate profound controversy within the Jewish community, which is discussed below. A medical certificate of 11 December 1916 records that Simmons had an attack of influenza. He returned to France before Christmas. On Christmas Day 1916, as he later wrote, in the monastery which housed the casualty clearing station: The C of E Chaplain was away on leave, and the Colonel was worried about the sermon. He could not ask any of the other Christian Ministers who had each their own service. So he asked tentatively if I would preach! So what we had that memorable day was a Church of England service, in a Roman Catholic monastery, practically all the staff and many of the (walking) patients, Wesleyans, and the sermon preached by a Jew!14 On 23 June 1917, Simmons returned from France on ten days leave. Shortly afterwards the quarters which he had occupied next to the hospital were destroyed by German shelling. At some point Adler recommended Simmons for a mention in despatches, but the Chief Chaplain of the area disapproved of him – for what reason is not recorded – and opposed the citation. Simmons’ leave was extended for medical reasons, and a re-examination by a medical board was requested. The board sat at Eastbourne, and reported on 26 July 1917 that he had been exposed to the shock of shellfire. He had had very strenuous duties for many months previously, was in a nervous condition and did not materially recover during the extension of his leave which had been granted by the War Office; was nervous and subject to fits of exhaustion and mental depression; at present was only fit for home service in category III and would not be fit for general service for two months; this had been caused by active service conditions; he had served for a year and eleven months and was suffering from neurasthenia. Whilst in Britain Simmons regularly conducted services at Aldershot. On 13 August 1917 he signed the agreement to renew his contract for a further twelve months, again witnessed by Priscilla. He went back to France, but on

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22 October returned to Britain. After three successive medical boards he was assessed fit for general service and was appointed the Jewish chaplain to the Aldershot Command, where several thousand Jews were stationed. He spent a contented two years there with his wife and young daughter looking after the Jewish soldiers and the small Jewish community in the town. A photograph shows a very large group of men including Simmons in uniform at the hut of the Jewish Naval and Military Association in Aldershot in 1918. On 3 February 1918 Simmons gave an address to the West London Synagogue Association on My experiences as an army chaplain.15 In March 1918 he attended the conference of Jewish Chaplains in Birmingham. In April and May 1918 he had an uneasy exchange of correspondence with Chief Rabbi Hertz mentioned above about services on Sunday rather than Saturday mornings.16 Also during April and May 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published correspondence and an editorial about complaints by Jewish soldiers of the insufficient number of Jewish chaplains. On 10 May 1918 it published under the heading In Defence of the Chaplains a letter from Private H. Steinberg of the 3rd (Res.) London Regiment, C Company, Maida Barracks, Aldershot: Sir, - Having read in the JEWISH CHRONICLE several complaints made by Jewish soldiers of being neglected by the Jewish chaplains, I wish to say a few words in their defence. Just to prove that our chaplains are working with the utmost energy and looking after the welfare of the Jewish soldier, I would give two instances. There were about thirty Jewish men stationed at Falmouth about 300 miles from London and we sent a letter to the Rev S. Lipson asking him to come there and arrange services for us, and within a few days the rev gentleman came and held a service; and, furthermore, made necessary arrangements so that to this very day services are held there every week. Secondly: the chaplain of the Aldershot Command, the Rev Vivian Simmons, studies the men in the command as if they were his own sons. He visits every hospital at least once a week, and although they are scattered all over the place, causing a lot of extra work, he also visits the camps and attends the Jewish Club which he formed. I am sure to attend hospitals, camps, and to run a club for the benefit of Jewish soldiers is quite enough work for one man, and I am sure that every man in the Aldershot Command looks upon the Rev Mr Simmons with respect and much esteem.17 Simmons was discharged in June 1919. In August he relinquished his commission and was appointed an Honorary Chaplain to the Forces fourth class. He returned to his position at West London Synagogue, and was given to understand that the Synagogue Council “resented the fact that I have been away for four years!” He observed that “out of war will arise a better and more

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enduring peace, that we are lead to bow before the inscrutable decree which brings into our midst sorrow and destruction again. Why these overwhelming evils are necessary, or have been permitted to come about – that only God Himself can answer.” Simmons remained at West London Synagogue for twenty-six years until April 1940. He applied to be accepted again as an army chaplain but at the age of fifty-three he was “very rightly I suppose” rejected.18 He served at the North Western Reform Synagogue in London from 1940 and at the Birmingham Liberal Synagogue from 1943. His wife Priscilla died in 1948. Simmons moved that year to North London Progressive Synagogue, where he met and in January 1949 married Theresa Levay. In 1956 he moved to Wembley Liberal Synagogue in London where he remained until retirement in 1961 at the age of 75. He published several books, and began work on an autobiography, which remained unfinished. Vivian Simmons passed away in January 1970 at the age of 83, survived by his daughter and three grandchildren. A eulogy spoke of his “grave and noble spirit, an enquiring mind, an adventurous heart – a man of integrity”. Reverting to 1916, Simmons whilst on leave delivered a sermon at his own West London Synagogue on the Sabbath of 9 December. Entitled The Jewish Soldier’s Religion and published by the Jewish Chronicle on 15 December, it was to generate profound controversy. Simmons’ theme was that his fifteen months’ experience had taught him that men who have faced death, not once or twice, but have lived continually in the shadow of death, will require a different religious life: …the ethical teaching of Judaism must take a far more prominent position in Jewish education than it has ever occupied before. … Do you suppose that a man who was accustomed to lay tefillin before the war, and has come out and found himself a truer Jew and a more faithful servant of God, in spite of having to give up laying them, will be able to return home and lay them again? Do you imagine that men who have seen me sit down on Sabbath and help them to sing our ancient melodies by playing them on a piano, and glad of it, can possibly go back and allow their children to be taught that playing of a musical instrument on a Sabbath is a sin? … Do not be afraid; the larger things in Jewish life will never be swept away, but those things which have become worthless, because they have lost their meaning and their power to inspire, are going to be swept away fearlessly and mercilessly, when we come home …. we read a great deal of our services in France in English, and I have never yet had a protest from a single Jewish soldier – and obviously the majority are orthodox – against this practice. But more than this, I have been thanked on more than one occasion that I have omitted passages in our Prayer-Book which have obviously no reference

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to the religious needs of the men. … We have adapted our services at the Front to the needs of the men, and we shall have to do so too when they come home. Rigidity, prejudice, sentimental adherence to the obsolete and outworn – these things must go. The only standard for public worship in the future must be neither law nor tradition nor custom, but only the individual needs of the men who have realised the meaning of the Presence of God. … A Christian padre and I were standing together behind the trenches the other day performing the last rites, each of us, for a soldier of our respective faiths. The shells were flying overhead, and bursting unpleasantly near us, and we both felt the brotherhood of our common danger. We shook hands afterwards, and went our separate ways. Do you think it possible that we can ever regard each other, if we meet again, as strangers or aliens one to the other, because we worship God in different ways? Do you know that on many occasions a Christian officer, and often not a chaplain, has taken the Jewish Prayer-Book from the pocket of a fallen comrade, and has read the Jewish Burial Service? At a hospital, which is a Trappist Monastery, where one of my colleagues was stationed about a year ago, the Church of England chaplain was away; and so it came about that the Colonel conducted the service, and my colleague read the lessons and preached a sermon on brotherhood. Just think of it! A Church of England Service, in a Roman Catholic Chapel, most of the worshippers Nonconformists, and the sermon preached by a Jew! In referring to “one of my colleagues”, it is understandable that Simmons tempered the courage of his message with the discretion of anonymity. In December 1916, when he spoke, “about a year ago” was towards the end of 1915. At that time the only British Jewish chaplains in France were Simmons and Adler. Simmons was still based in Boulogne, and was not stationed at the monastery until April 1916. So he may have been speaking of Adler, who had been based at the Mont-Des-Cats monastery for periods during 1915 up to November and was still in France in December. There are two letters in the Jewish Chronicle, one on 31 December 1915 from a Canadian soldier who attended a Jewish service conducted by Adler in a convent about two miles behind the line and the other on 28 January 1916 from another Canadian soldier who attended what was probably the same Jewish service conducted by Adler in a Catholic monastery.19 If it was Adler who preached the sermon in the Church of England service, which might have been more religiously challenging for him as an Orthodox minister than for Simmons as a Reform one, it is understandable that he did not write about it. Alternatively Simmons

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may in December 1916 have been speaking of himself. Recently arrived at the monastery on 4 April 1916 and Adler, his senior, having left on leave on 14 April, perhaps Simmons was asked to give the sermon on Easter Sunday, which fell that year on 23 April. The circumstances which Simmons described were virtually identical to those in which, having returned to France after presumably recovering from influenza, he was, as he later wrote, shortly to be called upon to deliver the Christmas Day sermon on 25 December 1916. This suggests that the location was indeed the monastery where he had previously been and perhaps was again based. If he had already delivered a sermon once, some months before and perhaps at Easter, it would have been more natural for him to do so again on Christmas Day. The final theme of Simmons’ synagogue address was that: These are some of the ways in which religion is going to be altered after the war. Do not be afraid of revolution when that time comes. The revolution is going on now. The essentials of religion have become necessary to the vast majority of men who are fighting now, and you may be certain that the men will create the religion they need. … Cast out the stumbling-blocks, and sweep the paths clean, so that when this greatest of all adventures is a thing of the past, when this war has become history which, in spite of all our mistakes, we shall teach with pride and glory to our children, the new heavens and the new earth will be ours, and the mighty regeneration will have begun. ‘He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him’.20 Ventilated in the Jewish press, reaction from men who had served at the front, representatives of Orthodoxy and others was swift, forceful and contentious. “A more disappointing and disquieting message had never been delivered from a Jewish pulpit” wrote Rabbi Dr Salis Daiches.21 An anonymous correspondent referred to “the sensational address of the Rev Vivian Simmons”, and extracted from a letter written by one of the Jewish chaplains at the front some three weeks previously: “It is wonderful how the Jewish rites appeal to the lads. There is a mystic something in Jewish practice that they cling to under the most trying circumstances. There is very little indeed they can observe – I needn’t explain – but what is possible they keep without sham. They are grand lads – all of them. The more I see of them, the more I admire them. I am convinced of one thing. It is the ‘old Judaism,’ as some style it, that they want; no new-fangled mushroom growth of a Judaism.”22 Gunner J. Mendelowitch, R.F.A., B Battery, 354th Brigade, Blackpool wrote that: “….My experience of my Jewish comrades in the Army leads me to believe that those Jews who were orthodox in civilian life, when in the Army still continue to do their best to

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keep up the laws and customs of their religion. I know of hundreds of Jewish soldiers who have even succeeded in getting excused duty on Sabbaths, and go in large numbers regularly to divine services at the local synagogues. I even know of several young men who lay their Tephillin regularly and who would also not eat food that is not kosher. Surely it is not going to be maintained that these men will after the war drift away from Judaism. ….. I might add, in conclusion, that the Jewish soldiers who rigidly adhere to their faith are honoured and respected by their non-Jewish comrades. It is the Jew who has not sufficient courage to practice [sic] the laws and customs of his religion who is unpopular.” However, writing as he was from Blackpool, Mendelowitch’s letter partially missed Simmons’ point about the effect upon religious observance of active service at the front.23 The Jewish Chronicle devoted a full page to discussing the issue, which it concluded “must be carefully sifted”.24 Joining the correspondence, Michael Adler did not take Simmons’ “brilliant sermon which has aroused so much interest in the community” as a challenge to Orthodoxy. Rather he took a letter supportive of Orthodox practice and critical of Simmons from Lieutenant Loewe of the Royal Sussex Regiment, attached to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, who had served in France, as a challenge to his chaplains. Rallying to their defence, he wrote that at the front the standard daily, Sabbath and festival services had inevitably to be adapted. “Our one purpose in our work is to endeavour to keep alive the Jewish consciousness in the presence of so adverse circumstance. To this end our services are so framed that, whatever be the degree of knowledge of Hebrew possessed by the soldier, he may take a vivid interest in them throughout and feel the better for his devotional exercise in the midst of his life of hardship and danger.”25 The Jewish Chronicle reiterated its long-held advocacy of a voluntary exchange of preachers between the pulpits of Orthodox and Reform Synagogues and offered Simmons its columns to answer his critics, although he declined to do so. The controversy identified the challenge to religiosity which the war came to pose. It was never “openly and publicly” addressed as an issue of principle by “the elders of the community”, as one of the anonymous correspondents had advocated.26 Towards the end of the war Arthur Barnett was to lament the decline in religious observance of many Jewish soldiers.27 March 1916. Rev. Arthur Barnett B.A. (1888 - 3 December 1961) was born in London and attended Jews’ College and London University, becoming the Assistant Reader at Bayswater Synagogue in London. In March 1915 he was assisting Solomon Lipson in his chaplaincy duties within the St. Albans Command. The War Office approved on 30 March 1916 his appointment as the third Jewish chaplain on the western front, and his community granted him leave of absence. Michael Adler was pressing for his arrival, and on the

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same day, Thursday 30 March, he arrived in Boulogne. Vivian Simmons, whom he had arrived to replace, met him and spent four days initiating him into chaplaincy duties. Barnett was stationed from April to July 1916 at the base depot at Etaples and in the summer of 1916 at Rouen, in both places ministering to Australian as well as British troops. In June 1916 he welcomed the Australian Jewish chaplain, David Freedman, on his arrival in France. On 4 July 1916 at Bayswater Synagogue in London he married Jessie Joseph, the niece of Rev. Maurice Joseph. Barnett served for more than four years in France, Belgium and the UK. From September 1916 he was with the First Army, for some period based in Boulogne. In May 1917 Private Ralph Purvin, West Yorks, Leeds Rifles, wrote to his parents that he had attended an enjoyable service led by Rev. Barnett. In a report about his association with Australian Jewish troops Barnett especially commended from this period of his service Australian Nursing Sister Leah Rosenthal of Melbourne, who worked at a casualty clearing station in a town which was constantly subject to heavy bombardment for over a year. Sister Rosenthal wrote home of attending a Yom Kippur service in 1917: “The hall was packed with Jewish boys, and about six officers. I was the only woman present.” Still in France in 1918, she wrote that she was again the only woman at the British military Yom Kippur service, at which the minister had to improvise, using biscuit tins with a curtain in front of the Ark to hold the Sefer Torah.28 A photograph, describing them as being on active service, shows Revs. Barnett and Simmons together on horseback. Photographs show Barnett with the 1st Infantry Labour Company of the Middlesex Regiment in France and with a group of soldiers outside Lille Synagogue in 1918. Very formally arranged photographs show him with large numbers of Jewish soldiers in a street in Lille and outside a building in Douai, both in 1919. Another photograph shows him in 1919 inside the synagogue in Lille, which is filled with Jewish soldiers. Adler recorded in his diary that Barnett visited him from 24 to 27 May 1918 “re my proposed resignation”, and that on 1 July a service which had previously been arranged was taken by Barnett, implying that Adler had not been well enough to do so. Adler later wrote: It was with the deepest regret that I was obliged to leave France through a breakdown in health in July, 1918, immediately before the final counter-offensive by Marshall Foch which destroyed the power of the enemy. As one of my colleagues remarked, “After I left the front, all went well!” I knew that in the capable hands of the Rev A. Barnett, whom I had trained to be my successor, the work of ministering to the spiritual needs of our men would continue to flourish.29

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This limited source material does not afford a clear impression of Barnett until after the end of the war. At that stage a correspondence developed within the Jewish Chronicle on the need for post-war religious reconstruction. In the issue of 28 February 1919 Barnett contributed a lengthy letter entitled A Chaplain’s Suggestions: …. There has been much speculation during the War on the question of ‘the Soldiers’ Religion.’ Personally I have never been able to persuade myself that the experiences of War have brought any permanent religion to those who previously lived without it. There have been spasmodic appearances of what looks remarkably like a deeper spirituality in the fighting man, but on examination, I think it has proved to be founded rather on the fear of Death than on the love of God. It seemed to vanish in direct proportion to the distance from the front line. The religion of the Base was quite different to that of the Trench. …. Generally speaking, I believe the effect of war on the Jewish soldier will have been to make him less Jewish in life and outlook. Men who before had lived a fairly Jewish life, will now, after these years of de-Judaising tendencies and influences, find it difficult to recover their faded Jewish consciousness. Army life has produced a sort of Jewish anaesthesia. It has been impossible for the Jew in the Army, cut off, as he has been from practically all Jewish influence – living, working, playing, eating and sleeping, in intimate association at every hour of the day with his nonJewish comrades – it has been impossible for him to preserve his Jewish consciousness against the forces of his environment. The only correctives afforded him have been the efforts of the Chaplains and the distribution of suitable Jewish literature. Let me give an illustration of what has happened to one type of Jew in the Army. I have had a good deal to do recently with certain Labour Units consisting for the most part of Jews, the majority of whom come from the East End of London, and all of whom came originally from a country that is, or was, regarded as the home of Jewish orthodoxy. In one of these companies, where the Jews are about 500 strong, they were getting an issue of bacon and pork in their daily rations. I therefore applied to the Army Headquarters for some substitute to be provided, and the request was immediately granted. Imagine my surprise and disgust upon my next visit to their camp at hearing from their Commanding Officer that the men had protested in large bodies and practically threatened to refuse work unless the bacon ration was restored for their breakfast. Now I have no doubt that these men had

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never tasted bacon before entering the Army; yet, in spite of a comparatively favourable Jewish environment, a short period of Army life had so reduced their Jewish consciousness as to make them actually prefer and demand swine flesh when other food was offered them in its stead. The only reply I received upon remonstrating with them was: ‘It’s not so bad when you get used to it!’. In another similar company I applied for the same change of rations. The Army authorities again were perfectly willing to accede to my request, but informed me that the C.O. of the unit stated that the majority of the men did not desire any change. Only fifteen out of more than 400 Jewish men were found to be ‘objectors.’ Further, I have obtained Saturday as the day of rest for these Companies. Yet a large number prefer to lounge and smoke and play cards on the Sabbath rather than attend a voluntary service in the morning. … Happily, such conduct is by no means characteristic of all Jewish soldiers. The men who have fought, suffered, and endured bravely, though they have perforce forsaken a good deal in essential Jewish life and practice, will be found to have preserved and even strengthened their sense of honour and responsibility towards their People and Faith. It is through this attitude that they will be most accessible on their return to normal life. … And I ask myself whether men who have for so long faced life at close grips, who have so long stood at the brink of Eternity, who, if they have gained nothing else, have at all events learned something about the real and false values in Life – I ask whether such men are going placidly back to their pre-war synagogues, with all the shams, unrealities, and vulgarities still to be found there. Three years among them out here make me answer emphatically, ‘No.’ We shall have to simplify, purify, and elevate the synagogue if it is to have any attraction for, or influence upon, these men. By this, I do not mean ‘Christianizing’ the service. There is enough and to spare in our traditional Sabbath Liturgy, which if properly selected, and honestly and intelligently presented, will satisfy the needs of the most sincere and devout worshipper. If, however, the Synagogue cannot, or will not, reach out its hand to the returning soldier, then, unless we are willing to stand by and see him engulfed in the assimilative tendencies that the Army has taught him, some other institution must arise to do the work. Here I offer as a

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suggestion that an extensive Y.M.C.A. movement on Jewish lines be inaugurated throughout the country. … 30 This letter prompted a Mr. M. J. Landa to write the following week advocating, as he had previously done in 1909, the inauguration of a YMCA movement on Jewish lines. The theme of Arthur Barnett’s letter in February 1919 did not differ greatly from that of Vivian Simmons’ sermon in December 1916. Whilst Simmons’ sermon had provoked fierce communal controversy, Barnett’s letter prompted almost no response. It ended with the tangible suggestion of the creation of a secular YMCA type organisation, which may have deflected attention from his having advocated, in terms of Orthodoxy, such radical ideas of having to “simplify, purify, and elevate the synagogue”. Simmons was a minister of the Reform Movement, which was an anathema to traditionalists, whilst Barnett was an Orthodox minister. Barnett had expressed himself in a letter rather than a sermon. Two years had passed, the war had ended and people were relieved and trying to adjust to the challenges of peacetime, primarily for many that of earning a living. In the wake of the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 political Zionism continued to divide the Jewish community, and there was probably little appetite for another communal controversy. On 29 August 1919 the Jewish Chronicle reported that Barnett had been mentioned in despatches. It continued that “The Rev Arthur Barnett has now been appointed Jewish Chaplain for the Aldershot and Southern Commands, having relinquished his post as Senior Jewish Chaplain in France a few weeks ago. In that capacity Mr Barnett was a most hardworking, efficient and conscientious successor to the Rev Michael Adler D.S.O.” In December 1919 the annual military Chanukah service was resumed at Adler’s Central Synagogue, and Barnett was one of several chaplains who conducted it. He was demobilised on 31 August 1920. He served for several years as a staff chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, ministered to the Bristol Congregation for three years and in 1924 was appointed the minister at the Western Synagogue in London. During the Second World War he served again as an army chaplain, and was based at Aldershot. Arthur Barnett served the Western Synagogue for thirty years, retiring in 1954 and becoming its Emeritus Minister. He wrote its two hundred year history from 1761, but was unable through ill-health to attend its anniversary service in 1961. He passed away in December 1961 at the age of 73, survived by his wife.31 September 1916. Rev. Louis Morris B.A. (28 December 1886 – 19 July 1941) served for two years as the minister at the Garnethill Hebrew Congregation in Glasgow and for two years as a visiting minister at the East London Synagogue.

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He conducted services for Jewish soldiers at Aldershot and for Jewish prisoners of war at an internment camp at Frith Hill. On 12 February 1916 he wrote to the JWSC that he had just heard from Mr Michael Adler that he was seeking another chaplain to go to France; he had first offered his services to Mr Adler at the outbreak of the war and would have already joined as a combatant had not his only brother, who was now serving in a London regiment, forestalled him32; and he asked for his application to be considered. On 18 September 1916, at the age of 29, he submitted his application and formal offer to serve as a chaplain fourth class for twelve months or, if sooner, until his services were no longer required. He was appointed on Sunday 24 September, arrived the same day in France and was posted to Etaples. On 6 October 1916 the Jewish Chronicle announced that he had commenced his duties, and that there were now five Jewish chaplains in France. From September 1916 until June 1917 Morris served in Etaples, Boulogne, Calais, Abbeville and Le Treport. He officiated at synagogue services in Boulogne on Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah.33 At Etaples, where the Australians had their base depots, there were weekly Jewish services. Morris also organised week-night “smokers”, where Jewish soldiers from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, together with a sprinkling from Egypt and Palestine, could meet to smoke and chat. For some period spanning 11 November 1916 Morris was ill. He then went to the Ypres salient, serving until January 1918 with the Fifth Army. Adler recorded that on 5 July 1917 Morris moved to Lillers for a week’s instruction with Arthur Barnett. On 12 July he was posted to no. 17 CCS at Remy Siding outside Poperinghe in the Ypres area. Between 17 and 24 August Rev. David Hirsch joined him for his week of instruction. They were bombed every night, and Morris’ tent was perforated by pieces of shell. During the day they travelled widely. Morris again encountered and admired the Australians, and met and became friendly with their chaplain, David Freedman. Morris was still at no. 17 CCS on 2 September, when he wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz asking for a copy of the Book of Jewish Thoughts. In October 1917 whilst on leave he conducted services in Glasgow. In February 1918 Morris was sent to join the Italian Expeditionary Force, being based in April at no. 9 CCS. Private L. Hanreck of the RAMC wrote to the Jewish Chronicle that the soldiers had been able to hold a Seder service and that Chaplain Morris had forwarded a plentiful supply of matzos. In July or August 1918 Morris was transferred back to France. The principal chaplain with the Italian Expeditionary Force reported that he was in every way suitable for duty as an army chaplain and was an excellent organiser. Private L. Hyman of the RAMC wrote from the Italian front to the Jewish Chronicle, which published his letter on 30 August 1918, expressing his regret that Rev. Morris had been posted back to France without anyone coming to take his place to

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care for the needs of hundreds of Jewish soldiers over the coming Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: I cannot tell you in words how popular Chaplain Morris was here, and also among the Christians. He was just the right Chaplain in the right place. No one will ever be able to carry out the work better than he did here. On behalf of many Jewish boys and myself I hope, and wish, that he may be sent back here again. Back in France, at Bapaume, Morris served as the Jewish Chaplain to the Third Army from September 1918 until January 1919. Revealing his independent character, he wrote on 30 September 1918 to Jacob Danglow: So you too are without transport. You will realise then my position when I tell you this army, the largest, I believe, in the British Expeditionary Force, allows me absolutely no means of getting about. Not even when I am wanted to conduct a burial miles from Army Head Quarters. That practically settles me. You can consider me ‘snuffed’. I have been doing a lot of lorry hopping – so much of it in fact that the lorry drivers are beginning to look upon me as a fixture or mascot. I have thought out old problems in Biblical criticism. Alas, tell it not at the Beth Din, I cannot accept many of the old interpretations. For example turn to the third chapter of Lamentations. Have you turned? Well then, a mere glance will show you that poor old Jeremiah was an army chaplain and his lamentations were the result of him being refused transport. Speaking of Army H.Q. he says ‘He has pressed me about, that I cannot go forth’. That’s clear, isn’t it?34 On 11 October 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published a report from a correspondent about Yom Kippur at the Front. One thousand men attended the service in the YMCA Hut: ….Some of us have been in action since Rosh Hashana and there were boys we missed. We took it for granted that the Rev Louis Morris, our chaplain, would have his little Ark and Sepher. I met him on the road carrying his synagogue as one carries an attaché case …. The chaplain brought a few Tallisim …. My mitzvah was the opening of the Ark, and the chaplain whispered to me that I should take care not to upset it. In his address the chaplain spoke of the sacrifices we here and you at home were making as our Atonement offering. The American sergeant also addressed us. A short memorial service was held for the boys who had fallen in battle. We recited the Kaddish together. It was a great spectacle – this vast congregation at prayer .……

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On 25 October 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published the letter which Louis Morris had written to Rev. Edwin Collins of Richmond in London about his son, Private D.G. Collins of the Grenadier Guards, who at the age of nineteen had died of his wounds: Everything that was humanly possible was done for him; of that you may rest assured. I conducted the burial service according to our Jewish rites. I shall see that the Jewish memorial, in the form of the Magen David, is erected over the grave. Your son was one of the most popular men in the battalion, and his comrades have every reason to lament his loss. They and his officers join me in my expressions of deepest sympathy to you and all who mourn the loss of this son. In January 1919 the colonel formerly in command of no. 56 CCS, where Morris had been serving, reported that he was energetic, hardworking and tactful, spoke German well and was physically fit. The Director of Medical Services of the Third Army concurred. Also in January 1919 Morris became unwell, and was admitted to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Marylebone in London with bronchial asthma. He said that he had suffered attacks of bronchitis and asthma in February 1918 in Italy; these had continued all through 1918 and had got worse in December when he had been at Bapaume in France. He received a month’s sick leave, and was recommended for convalescence in a warm inland place. A medical board assessed him as permanently unfit for general service but fit for home service after two months, and in May 1919 a further medical board passed him fit for one month’s home service. In April 1919 Morris was one of the speakers at a symposium in London on the Jewish soldier and his religion. Morris left the ministry to become a solicitor. Living in West Hampstead in London, he practised as Louis Morris & Co at Norwich House, Southampton Place in Bloomsbury. In the 1930s he assisted refugees. He died on 19 July 1941 at the age of 54 as the result of a motor accident. The Jewish Chronicle wrote: On the outbreak of the last war, Mr. Morris served as Chaplain in France, where his equable temperament, his ready wit and cheerfulness under discouraging circumstances gained for him many staunch and lifelong friends.35 January 1917. Rev. Benjamin Benas Lieberman B. A., M. A. (5 February 1889 – late August 1976) was born in Leeds, studied at Jews’ College and took a B.A. with first class honours at London University and an M.A. at Oxford University. He ministered from August 1914 until August 1915 at the Higher Broughton Synagogue in Manchester and from August 1915 to the Brighton

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and Hove Congregation. On 1 December 1916 he wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz to say that he had been nominated to serve as a Jewish chaplain and had consented to nomination. On 23 December he formally accepted appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class for twelve months. His appointment commenced from 16 January 1917, and on that date he arrived in France and was posted to Rouen. He served in France, and is recorded to have been in Havre with Michael Adler on 1 November 1917. His appointment expired on 15 January 1918, and on 8 January 1918 Rev. Israel Brodie arrived in France to replace him. On 17 January 1918 he relinquished his commission. Benjamin Lieberman resumed his duties in Brighton. In November 1918 he preached a Sabbath sermon in Brighton expressing gratitude for the ending of the war. The Union Jack was displayed at the entrance of the Synagogue, the pulpit was veiled in the Jewish national colours and the congregation included a detachment of Jewish soldiers. Lieberman remained the minister in Brighton until 1930. Having qualified as a lawyer, he, like Louis Morris, then left the ministry and practised in London as a solicitor. He served on the Board of Deputies of British Jews for twenty-five years, including as Treasurer and as a Vice-President.36 March 1917. Rev. Marks Gollop B. A. (10 July 1888 – 4 August 1950) was born in Russia and brought to Britain at the age of 13. Educated at Jews’ College, he became the minister in Southend and Westcliff in 1913. In February and March 1917 he was conducting military services in Lowestoft and Chelmsford. In March a Masonic Lodge in Southend and Westcliff presented a cheque to him upon his leaving for service in Salonika in Greece. In April his appointment as a chaplain fourth class was gazetted. The Jewish Chronicle published on 20 July 1917 a report of 14 May 1917 by Major Harold Solomon about the situation of Jewish refugees in Salonika. It referred to a supplementary report in which Major Solomon stated that Rev. Gollop, Chaplain to the Jewish Forces at Salonika, had been added to the Salonika Committee. In October 1940 Gollop wrote that twenty-four years ago – in fact he had been there in 1917 – he had been in the front line in Macedonia. Marks Gollop and Israel Brodie were to serve in both world wars. A column in the Jewish Chronicle of 21 June 1918 headed Soldiers’ Tributes to Chaplains contains a tribute to each of them. Of Gollop, William Wollrauch of the Army Pay Corps wrote: Kindly allow me a few words on the daily self-sacrifice and the work of our chaplain the Rev M. Gollop, B. A. in Salonika. He is very highly respected by Jew and Gentile alike. His sterling qualities and charm of manner are very appealing when one is thousands of miles away from home. His visits to over twenty hospitals besides the numerous rest

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camps is only one small part of his strenuous weekly routine. When visiting the various divisions he takes every risk and is often under shell fire. Like all of us he roughs it and his strict observance of the Mosaic laws under active service conditions is admired by us all. Often after a heavy day, tired and weary, he has to set out to minister to one of our lads in some distant field ambulance, or again opens his mailbag to find dozens of letters from anxious parents and wives, enquiring after their dear ones in hospital. His day generally begins when others have retired at the respectable hour of 10 p.m. His work for the fire refugees should be written in golden letters. The Salonika Jews have found in him a real friend, and the Serbian refugees have now been placed in comfortable hutments through his energy. All the Jewish refugee camps come under his visitation. General Headquarters recognise his ability and we Jews, who number nearly a thousand, look forward to his visits as we would to one from our own brother. A catastrophic fire in Salonika in August 1917 rendered homeless some 72,000 people, including about 50,000 Jews, representing around a quarter of the population of the city. For his work in Salonika Gollop was mentioned in despatches in August 1919 for distinguished and gallant services between 1 October 1918 and 1 March 1919. In December 1918 the Jewish Chronicle referred to a report by driver G. Ruben in the Balkans that Rev. Gollop had had a long talk with him. On one occasion Rev. Leib Falk, serving with the Jewish Legion, acted as Gollop’s guide in Cairo. By May 1919 Gollop had returned to his congregation in Southend and Westcliff. Interviewed in June by the Southend Standard, he mentioned that besides Salonika he had visited Egypt, Palestine and Greece. He had been the only Jewish chaplain with the Salonika Force. He had found a spirit of good fellowship and tolerance between men of all religions. For over two years he had lived in camps with men of very differing types and creeds, but they had so much in common that this did not interfere with their friendship or work for one another. “Jew, Church of England, Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, all lived and worked together as brothers to uphold the honour and traditions of the British Empire.” Gollop had delivered many lectures to patients in hospitals. At the General Headquarters of the British Salonika Forces, Brigadier-General W. Stevenson Jaffray penned this testimonial: “The Rev M. Gollop has performed his duties to my entire satisfaction. He is a hard-working earnest man, with plenty of drive, and has shown great energy, enterprise, zeal, and ability, and in my opinion he is a very efficient and successful Chaplain.” Married with two sons, Gollop was commissioned in 1924 as a Territorial Army chaplain attached to the 47th London Division. When in 1926 Michael Adler stood down as Senior Jewish Chaplain, Gollop succeeded him in that

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office. In 1935 he also succeeded him as Chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, serving until 1938. At the War Office he served on the Interdenominational Advisory Committee on Chaplaincy Services. In London he served as the minister of Bayswater Synagogue from 1923 and Hampstead Synagogue from 1925 and became a Dayan (Judge) of the London Beth Din. During the Second World War he served as Senior Jewish Chaplain. His health broke down in October 1943 and he resigned from all of his duties early in 1944, being succeeded as Senior Jewish Chaplain by Israel Brodie.37 June 1917. Rev. Ephraim Moses Levy B. A. (c. 1891 - 1969) was brought to Britain as a child by his Russian-born parents Abraham and Sarah Levy. In 1904 his father became a naturalised British subject, and by 1917 his parents were living in Swansea. Levy studied Semitics at London University and law at Oxford, becoming a barrister. He also studied at Jews’ College, and gained rabbinical diplomas. He was ordained in October 1915, becoming the minister of the Llanelli Hebrew Congregation. In December 1916 Levy was appointed officiating chaplain to Jewish troops within the Aldershot command and began conducting services at Aldershot. On 21 May 1917, aged 26 and seemingly then living in London, he submitted an application for appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces, and on 4 June he formally accepted appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class for twelve months. On 26 June he arrived in France and was posted to Etaples. He served in France, where a photograph shows him with a group of eleven Jewish soldiers, one wearing an Australian bush hat. Michael Adler recorded that Levy was present when the hospitals in Etaples were bombed and attacked by machine gun fire, and that he delivered addresses to his brother chaplains on aspects of Jewish life. On 1 March 1918 Levy wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz to say that he was reluctant to sign on for another year if a suitable post was available at home. On 9 May 1918 he met with Adler in Abbeville, doubtless about his appointment, which expired on 25 or 26 June 1918. The principal chaplain to British armies in France, Dr J. M. Simms, reported that he was of good character and suitable for duty as a chaplain. On 25 June 1918 Levy arrived back in London and on the following day relinquished his commission. From 1924 Levy successfully served for eleven years in Durban in South Africa a traditional community which derived from Lithuania and eastern Europe. In June 1935 he went to Australia with his wife and three children and was inducted as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney in succession to Rabbi Francis Cohen, who had died in 1934, becoming the chief Jewish minister for New South Wales. In response to a request in May 1937 for duplicates of his certificate of appointment and his medals, which he had mislaid, the records branch of the War Office acknowledged that his record

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and services had been satisfactory and that nothing adverse had been recorded. A committed Zionist and a forceful personality, Levy spoke out strongly for Zionism, which offended the convictions of the grandees of the Sydney Jewish community, and his insistence on stricter religious observance was unwelcome to this more free-thinking and less observant community. His appointment ended in controversy, and in April 1938 he was forced to resign, leaving Sydney quietly with his wife in May after a farewell dinner with a number of friends. He returned to the UK, where in January 1940 he was appointed temporary minister of the Hammersmith and West Kensington Synagogue in London. In 1942 he went to Canada, where he ministered to communities in Montreal and Vancouver and then practised law. From August 1956 he served as a minister in Wellington in New Zealand. There were difficulties with his community, which in August 1958 did not renew his contract. Litigation ensued and continued until 1960. In 1961 Levy became the minister to a community at Chula Vista near San Diego in the United States. His wife died, and he returned to Vancouver in Canada, where his daughter lived and where he again practised law. Ephraim Levy remarried, and died in Vancouver in 1969.38 July 1917. Rev. John Lionel Geffen (25 March 1869 – 15 January 1924) was born in Vilkomir, later known as Uckmerge, in Lithuania, and received a traditional Jewish education. In 1890 at the age of 20 or 21 he arrived in London. He was a melodious Chazan and taught Chazanut – the melodies of the synagogue – at Jews’ College. He married Esther Spero in 1893, and they had five children. In 1894 he was appointed as the Reader (the second minister) of the New West End Synagogue in London, which was a bastion of the AngloJewish establishment. From at least 1910 Geffen served, initially assisting Michael Adler, as a chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, attending camps and conducting services. On 23 February 1914 he became a naturalised British subject. From the outset of the war he travelled to various army camps around the country to conduct services for Jewish soldiers. In August 1915 Geffen found himself in sole charge of the New West End Synagogue when its controversial principal minister, Rev. Dr Joseph Hockman, resigned from the ministry to join the army. The synagogue appointed another far younger principal minister, who was invited to enlist as an army chaplain but having five young children declined. So Major William Schonfield, a congregant and the member in charge of the administration of the JWSC, which was responsible for the appointment of Jewish chaplains, invited Geffen, at the age of forty-eight, to volunteer: Soon father was asked to become a chaplin [sic]. This was a distinction because up till now only the senior ministers had become army chaplins, and his work took him to various camps around the country.

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Father talked the whole matter over with mother and they decided that if he was needed, he must go. He must have been the most delightful and strange officer in the British army, for as a chaplin he had no military training. He had of course to get his uniform and I was with him the first day he wore it. I was terribly proud to be seen with him as we went to Parr’s bank in Notting Hill and we naturally met a number of the congregation who lived all round the neighbourhood. Off came father’s cap at every such meeting until one of his friends pointed out that he should salute and keep his hat on his head. Soon after a military policeman stopped him. “Permission to speak Sir?” he asked. “Of course my lad, what can I do for you?” “Sorry Sir” said the embarrassed man, “All officers must either wear or carry their gloves. Hope you don’t mind Sir”. Father thanked him for his help, told him that this was his first time out in uniform, and then much to the poor chap’s further embarrasment [sic], shook him firmly by the hand. We walked on quite forgetting until I reminded him that the offending gloves were still in his pocket. On 21 August 1917 Geffen arrived in France and was posted to the Boulogne area: While father was in France we had very many letters from soldiers who met him, and numbers of them coming through London would call on mother and talk about him. He was stationed in Boulogne but his territory ranged from Dunkirk to Calais which included the enormous military hospital at Wimeroux. One Christian soldier called out to him. It was obvious that the man was fatally wounded. Seeing father’s canonical collor [sic] he asked him for absolution. Father lifted the cross he found round the man’s neck and prayed with him until he lost consciousness and died. Father founded a ‘Chaplins’ Club’ in the north of France where they gave lectures on their own subjects and I saw the notes of father’s talk on ‘The Jewish aspect of Christ’ which Father Woodcock told mother was very well received. Father became friendly with many of the chaplins of various denominations in his area, the head Catholic chaplin being Father Woodcock, who after the war invited my parents to visit him and when they went to Scotland they stayed on the way with Colonel Adams, the head of the area.

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On the second day of the New Year, 18 September 1917, John Geffen and David Hirsch together ministered to fifty-three men in Dunkirk, Geffen conducting the service and Hirsch giving the address. On another occasion they conducted a service together at Malo. For periods in 1918 Geffen went after Mincha – the afternoon service – on the last Sunday of each month to Boulogne to teach a Torah text to British and American soldiers.39 Michael Adler recorded that Geffen delivered addresses to his brother chaplains on aspects of Jewish life. Geffen was sometimes able to offer men tea and a cigarette after a service. Adler viewed this as a bribe to attend services and forbad it; Geffen responded that the refreshments were hardly worth walking eight or ten miles for and would continue. Geffen was mentioned in despatches for tending to soldiers under fire and recommended for the DSO; Adler as his senior officer declined to authorise it as he himself had not yet received a decoration. At one point Adler sought out a certain private soldier whom he knew well and who was known to the Geffen family and visited him. After a long talk the soldier saw him to his car, they shook hands and Adler’s driver drove off, only to stop and reverse back. Adler called the soldier over and reprimanded him for having failed to salute him. Geffen’s second son Ernest served in France and then in Salonika, where chaplain Marks Gollop invited him to be his batman, but Ernest declined this as a safe post which should go to a married man. Ernest went on to Palestine where he was killed on 9 December 1917 near Jerusalem and was buried on the Mount of Olives.40 Geffen remained in the army as a chaplain until 1919. He conducted services in Boulogne in March–April 1919, one of which was attended by Private Solomon (Solly) Abrahams of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment. Abrahams had leave from 13 to 27 April covering the whole of Passover and attended a Seder service on 14 or 15 April.41 John Geffen returned to the office of Reader at the New West End Synagogue. Throughout his life he involved himself in relief for Jews in eastern Europe. About to set off on a relief mission to the Jews of Romania, he died suddenly in January 1924 at the age of 54.42 August 1917. Rev. David Isaac Hirsch (25 March 1884 – 19 January 1950) studied at Jews’ College, where his father, Dr S.A. Hirsch, was the Tutor in Theology and later an Emeritus Professor, and at University College London, where he took an Honours degree in Hebrew and Aramaic. For twelve years he worked as a social worker in East London. In 1913 he became the Assistant Visiting Minister for East London. He was a captain in the 1st London Cadet Battalion of the Jewish Lads’ Brigade. In 1915 he became an officiating clergyman at Aldershot; he appears, not in uniform, in a photograph of a large group of Jewish officers and men at Aldershot in 1915. On 4 September 1917

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he was commissioned with effect from 14 August as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class. This gave rise to a financial contribution from the JWSC, as he wrote on 11 August thanking the JWSC for its generous cheque for fifteen pounds. Hirsch began a diary, which he kept from 13 August until 7 November 1917. It records that he travelled on 14 August from Folkestone to Boulogne in company with two Christian chaplains. He attended for instruction at the Gas School (referred to elsewhere as being at St. Martin), where the instructing officer was “an excellent chap. I am sure he is a Jew”, and was issued with a gas mask. From 17 to 24 August Hirsch spent his week of instruction, which was customary for Jewish chaplains, accompanying Louis Morris at CCS 17 at Remy Siding outside Poperinghe in the Ypres area. They were bombed every night, and Morris’ tent was perforated by pieces of shell. “Bombed. Lucky and narrow escape. Trench coat holed”, Hirsch noted. During the day they travelled to various places. “Several funerals. The men are sewn in a blanket with string and two safety pins.” Hirsch was posted to the headquarters of the Fourth Army and was allowed two weeks rest at Calais before commencing duty. Meeting Michael Adler on 23 August, Hirsch spent the rest of August and much of September 1917 travelling widely between Calais, Malo, Dunkirk and casualty clearing stations, sometimes under bombardment. On 6 September he wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz of his activities as the Jewish Chaplain to the Fourth Army. He conducted New Year services on 17 September, attended by five officers and 283 men, at Glyvelde, and on 18 September, attended by 53 men, at Dunkirk, where John Geffen conducted the service and Hirsch gave the address. “Had lunch with Chazan & family. Very decent. First [?] good meal since I left England.” On 25/26 September he conducted Yom Kippur services in the evening at Dunkirk for 32 men – “Evening Air R[aid] and 40-50 shells. Very hot night. 7.30-11.30” – and during the next day at Glyvelde at 10.00 for 87 men, Chifon at 2.30 for 38 men and Dunkirk at 4.30 for 63 men. “Fasted wonderfully”. Hirsch continued to travel widely, including to hospitals and casualty clearing stations, sometimes under air raids. An entry on 27 September reads “Air R[ai]d at night. One Bosch plane caught in searchlights and peppered at on all sides from land and sea – a wonderful sight. Unfortunately he escaped.” On 30 September he wrote “New batman, H Weinberg. Last was rotten, an excited Spanish lunatic, name J [?] Benzavia.” On 1 October he noted “Succoth. Very strange Yomtov. Went to Dunkirk. Town Badly smashed. Night – very bad A. R. [air raid] 8 - 1.45 p.m. Bombs, shells, two fires and an explosion. 270 bombs dropped.” He arranged and conducted services including one in Malo with Geffen. The air raids he graded in intensity as “not very fruity”, “very fruity” or “v. v. fruity”. His diary ends on 7 November. “J’avais wangled la leave; hooray. Travelled to Boulogne.” When he returned to France he did not resume his diary.

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Men sometimes applied for leave for what they said was a Jewish festival. If the army were not sure whether this was in fact the case they would try to check with a Jewish chaplain. Hirsch was once asked by a colonel to see a man who had applied for such leave. He asked the man what festival it was, and he replied Rosh Chodesh. This is the name for the first day or first two days of each Jewish month; it is significant but is not a festival for which leave is required, and a Jewish person would not seek leave for it. Hirsch advised that the application be refused.43 On 12 February 1918 Hirsch wrote to his brother and sister-in-law, who lived in New York. His letter bears stamps of “Jewish Chaplain Fourth Army” and “53rd Casualty Clearing Station.” He wrote: I am still thank God well and cheery. I am now living at an advanced hospital and as you can guess see some distressing sights. But it is wonderful how cheery our soldiers are and how strong the determination to do their duty and beat the Hun is. In the evenings I often go into the operating theatre and watch and help. It does not affect me in the least. In fact, apart from the fact that it is poor fellow human beings suffering, it all interests me very much. Hirsch wrote that he was now in charge of a much larger area and had also voluntarily taken charge of the Anzacs as the Australian Rev. Freedman had gone home and the Australian Rev. Danglow would not be out for a few months. Sometimes he had to go right up the line for funerals and to visit troops. The organisation was wonderful. He could not say that he was in love with shells or bombs, but one had to take one’s chance. He had been in a number of the trenches and had had some very interesting experiences. There was plenty of everything for the Army, and in fact the nearer the line the better was the food. He wrote from the 2nd Army and the Australian Corps to the Jewish Chronicle about a Passover Seder service of seven men – three Australians and, including himself, four British – which he had held in a dugout somewhere in France, for which a friend had sent him a parcel with of all the necessary ingredients. In a letter to his family of 29 August 1918 Hirsch wrote “Isn’t the war news great and cheering. Old Bosch is getting it where the chicken got the chopper – in the neck.” There were large numbers of Australian troops on the western front and in southern England. Between the departure from France of Australian Jewish chaplain David Freedman in January 1918 and the arrival of his successor, Jacob Danglow, in August 1918, Michael Adler appointed Hirsch to carry on the Australian Jewish chaplaincy work. Harold Boas, the Australian YMCA representative in Britain, was in constant communication with Hirsch and distributed printed cards to the Australian Jewish troops to tell them of Boas’

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arrival. Hirsch continually forwarded to Boas up to date casualty lists and nominal rolls of Australian Jewish men with whom he came into contact; later he sent him printed postcards advising him of the men’s arrival in camp in the United Kingdom after their return from France. Boas recorded that Hirsch did admirable work and was highly spoken of by those with whom he came into contact. Hirsch received a letter of thanks from the Corps Commander, General Sir John Monash: I take the opportunity of thanking you most sincerely for your work among the Jewish members of the Australian troops, and am only sorry that your distant location has prevented my seeing more of you. I shall be very pleased if you will do your best to extend to Chaplain Danglow all possible assistance, by placing him in touch with your detailed knowledge of the work to be done. Rev. J. Miles, the Australian Senior Chaplain for “Other Protestant Denominations”, wrote to Hirsch: Evidently you did not spare yourself or you could not have covered so much Australian work in addition to that which is your lot with the B.E.F. Kindly accept my thanks and congratulations. Hirsch arranged a Passover Service in 1918 which would have been a great gathering of Australian Jewish soldiers, but the northern push of the Germans obliged it to be cancelled: I am glad to say that at the last moment I was able to hold a scratch Seder service. This I conducted in a dug-out near Bailleul. Altogether there were seven of us present, of whom four were Australians. I do not think that any of us will forget that Seder. I had managed to obtain 1lb. of small matzos, a bottle of Kosher wine, bitter herbs and parsley, and even cinnamon balls. We amused ourselves very much over the problem of grating our horse-radish, which we finally solved by punching holes with a nail in a piece of biscuit tin. This made an excellent grater and subsequently served for a long while as a soap dish. Hirsch was on leave when on 4 February 1918 the 38th Royal Fusiliers, one of several battalions within the Jewish Legion, marched through the East End of London before their departure for Palestine. He witnessed this event, and wrote to his brother and sister-in-law that they presented a fine soldierly appearance and ought to give a good account of themselves. He had a chat with

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their commanding officer, Colonel Patterson. The Jewish Regiment sang the English Anthem and Hatikvah44, which has practically become a Jewish national anthem here. “I tell you I felt stirred to the marrow of my bones. It was the ancient warrior spirit of Judaism ringing down through the ages and welling forth from hundreds of young Jewish hearts. I cannot possibly describe to you what it was like.” Hirsch wrote to his brother and sister-in-law on 29 August 1918, with the stamp of “Jewish Chaplain Second Army” and “Casualty Clearing Station” (not identifying which one). He wrote that it was some time since he had written but he was so dreadfully busy that often he was glad to tumble on to his stretcher and so day slipped by after day without his having written. He was well and cheery and very busy but that did him good. He was now in his eleventh home since 9 April, in an excellent place some few miles behind the line, situated in beautiful surroundings with a great forest nearby: The Colonel is an excellent fellow and everybody is most considerate. The other day they had a pork dinner and just before the Col. called me aside and said “I have arranged for beef to be put on your plate so that you can safely take what is put before you and won’t have to feel uncomfortable.” And their whole treatment of me is on a par. I have an excellent office built of old tin and duckboards and a camouflaged tent to live in which is most comfortable. I have a clerk and a batman (servant); the latter is one of my own London Club boys. The Jewish Chronicle published a report from a correspondent that during the High Holydays of 1918 Hirsch held services at five different centres in the field. 2,800 Jewish soldiers, representing over 230 different units, attended. Most of the services were held in YMCA Huts, which all proved inadequate for the numbers attending. The army authorities were most considerate and provided transport even from the front line trenches to enable soldiers to attend. In some cases where soldiers missed the transport they walked from the early hours of the morning, some as far as twenty-five kilometres, to be present. At the close of one of the Yom Kippur services a group of soldiers including Sapper I. Rosenthal of the R.E. Signallers marched seven kilometres to an inn to break their fast on eggs, potatoes and tinned fruit. Hirsch received numerous letters telling him how much the services had been enjoyed. In November 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published tributes by Hirsch as Jewish Chaplain 2nd Army, to Captain Sam L. Rozelaar and to Lance-Corporal Phillip Marcus Levy who had been killed. Hirsch wrote again to his brother and sister-in-law on 23 January 1919. He described his experiences during the big final push by the Allies, eventually reaching Brussels and later Cologne. On the final part of the

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journey, from Spa to Cologne, a journey of 95 miles, he was the only officer in charge of his convoy. He then obtained home leave. In April 1919 he conducted the funeral in Cologne of Rifleman J. Bentley, M.M., who had died of influenza. He arranged Passover services in Cologne; every Jewish soldier in the Army of the Rhine received an invitation, and over two hundred attended. One participant recorded that the food and the utensils were all kosher for Passover and that with the joyous singing of time-honoured songs there was such a happy atmosphere that when the chaplain came to the traditional search for the Afikomon – a piece of matzo hidden early in the service and searched for later by the children – it could not be found. The Jewish Chronicle reported: Sergnt. J. A. Jolley, Yorks & Lancs Regt, Army of Rhine. ‘I have been asked by the men to express their sincerest thanks to the Rev. David Hirsch, C.F., and his clerk, Pte. Cohan, for the kindness shown to us all, and for making the men feel as though they had been at home, instead of being in a strange land. ‘L.L.L.,’ writing to us on the same service, says: What deeply impressed me was the astonishing efficiency of the function. To those at home the holding of a Seder may not seem an affair of great labour, but to those who are familiar with such things as rations, indents, requisitions, very stringent food regulations, and difficulties of accommodation, the organisation of a ‘pukka’ Seder (not forgetting the four cups) for two hundred officers and men, scattered over a large area, was a triumph for our Padre and the result of long toil and trouble. On this account I salute him. Of the Seder itself, one cannot pay it a higher compliment than to say that it was no different from the Seder of one’s own home. Everything was there. The Padre provided the discourses and explanations proper to the service, which were varied and comprehensive enough to have appealed to all four types of ‘sons’. A Derasha [religious discourse] of another type came in the form of a sympathetic but soldierly address from Lieut.-Col. Levey, D.S.O., who was the senior officer present. And then the dinner. How Capt. Hirsch did it, I don’t know, but there it was. Speaking as a P.M.C. I give him best. But there was a glamour over all this Seder. It was not only different from all other nights, but from all Seder nights also, for this year we were surely ‘Bene Chorin’ [free men], at least in comparison to the last four years. From conversations with many of the N.C.O.’s and men I gathered that they realised this, and that the Seder in ‘Occupation’ left a deep and lasting impression on them. And if it had done nothing else, [as written in Hebrew] Dayenu.45

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Hirsch wrote again to his brother on 10 May 1919 from Cologne, where he was serving in the army of occupation. A letter from him about his expenses written on 30 May 1919 under the stamp of “Jewish Chaplain Headquarters, Army of the Rhine” survives in the records of the JWSC. Hirsch was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. Returning home, he conducted in August 1919 services at the Jewish Lads’ Brigade Camp at Deal. In December 1919 he was one of a number of chaplains, led by Michael Adler, who conducted the resumed annual Chanukah Military Service at the Central Synagogue in London. From 1922 until 1924 Hirsch served as a Territorial Army chaplain, on the active and then on the reserve list. In 1924 he married Bertha Levinstein at Dukes Place Synagogue in the City of London. They went that year to Australia to take up the position of minister to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. There were two warm letters of welcome from Rev. Jacob Danglow of the St. Kilda Hebrew Congregation in Melbourne. Hirsch became a Chaplain to the Commonwealth Forces, and a daughter was born. During the years of the Depression the community in Adelaide suffered financially and could no longer afford his salary, so that in 1931 Hirsch had to resign his post. He was offered a post in Wellington in New Zealand, but his wife did not want to go there, and they returned to the UK. After declining a position in Bristol, Hirsch took up one in Hull, where he remained for nineteen years until his death. During the Second World War David Hirsch was appointed an honorary chaplain. As the war went on, there were British, Australian, Canadian, American, Polish and Free French soldiers in the Hull area. Jewish soldiers were knocking on his door all the time and on occasion some slept at his home. His wife fried vast quantities of fish and for a long period the soldiers were welcomed to Sabbath lunches at their home or the Synagogue and given presents of cigarettes. David Hirsch published papers on various topics, and passed away in 1950.46 October 1917. Rev. Harris Lewis Price (10 October 1864 – 23 December 1935) was born in Vilna, one of six siblings and educated at Manchester Jews’ Schools and Owen’s College. Ordained in 1889, he served from 1889 as the minister in Swansea, and from 1891 as the junior and then as the senior minister at St John’s Wood Synagogue in London, where in February 1916 he attained twenty-five years’ service. His wife Minnie Lichtheim died in 1910, and in 1911 he married Julia Guttman. His son Lionel H. Price, who was a solicitor, was commissioned in July 1915 as a second lieutenant into the 18th Royal Welsh Fusiliers (2nd London Welsh) and later promoted to lieutenant. On the morning of Sunday 13 June 1915 Lionel commanded a detachment of men marching to Bangor Synagogue for a service for Jewish soldiers. In November 1916 he was invalided home with shell shock and resigned his

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commission, and in 1918 he deputised at the JWSC for Rev.Solomon Lipson when he was unavailable. On 19 September 1917, approaching his 53rd birthday, Rev. Harris Price submitted an application for appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces. At the request of the Board of Management of St John’s Wood Synagogue, the Council of the United Synagogue granted him leave of absence. Despite defective vision he passed the medical as fit for military service as a chaplain. On 4 October 1917 he was formally appointed, and on 8 October formally accepted the appointment, as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class for twenty-four months with the B.E.F. in France. Price arrived in France on 23 October 1917. He was posted to the Second Army at St. Ouen and was based at no. 50 CCS at Mont des Cats. He served in France, until 11 December 1917 with the Second Army; then until 30 January 1918 in the St. Omer area; then until 25 March 1918 with the Fifth Army, based at no. 34 CCS at Marchelepot near Peronne; then until 23 October 1918 with the Fourth Army, based for a period from 7 April at no. 34 CCS near Amiens; and thenceforth in Rouen. His last posting was attached to No. 10 General Hospital. A photograph shows him with a group of eleven soldiers in France, with a Magen David sign which bears the date 1918 and the initials F.H.R.O.A.E. The ‘F’ and ‘H’ may mean field hospital and the ‘R’ may mean Rouen. In October 1918 Price contracted colitis. His leave was extended to enable a change of air, and he seems to have spent it in Bournemouth. On Sunday 8 December 1918 he delivered the address at a thanksgiving service for the Armistice in Rouen. The service was attended by most of the Allied Jewish soldiers stationed there, conducted by the local chazan and followed by a concert. A report of 21 January 1919 said “A zealous and hardworking Jewish chaplain, Mr Price has covered wide areas with great success”. He was recommended for advancement. On 25 April 1919 he was demobilised. A report about him on 21 May 1919, under the signature of the Principal Chaplain of British Armies in France, Dr J. M. Simms, said that he was of good character; his physical fitness was poor and he was too old for active service; he was quite suitable for duty as an army chaplain except for the disadvantage of his age; and he had a perfect knowledge of the Yiddish language. His medical category was nevertheless recorded as ‘A’. It is interesting that as late as September 1917 the authorities were willing to accept a chaplain aged almost 53 with defective vision. That he was willing to volunteer says as much about his character as about the times. Harris Price returned to St. John’s Wood Synagogue, where he continued to serve until 1933, retiring after forty-two years of service there and passing away two years later.47 January 1918. Rev. Israel Brodie B.A., B. Litt., D. Phil. (10 May 1895 – 13 February 1979) was the second of five children of Aaron Brodie, who arrived

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in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from Kovno in Lithuania in around 1890 and survived as a pedlar selling sponges, and his wife Sheina. He was educated at Bath Lane School in Newcastle, Jews’ College, University College London and Balliol College, Oxford. In March 1916 Israel Brodie became the minister of the New Synagogue in Newcastle, and later served at Hammersmith Synagogue in London. In August 1917 Brodie was conducting military services at Aldershot. He was commissioned as a chaplain in January 1918 and arrived in France on 8 January to replace Benjamin Lieberman, whose appointment was coming to an end. He served in France and Belgium. On 21 June 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published two letters under the heading Soldiers’ Tributes to Chaplains. One related to Rev. Marks Gollop; the other, from Corporal F. Spicker, writing to his fiancée from France, to Brodie: I went to Shool last night, (Friday), and it was so nice to be amongst such a lot of Yiddisher48 boys. The Chaplain, the Rev I. Brodie, is the nicest Jewish Minister I have ever had the pleasure to meet. All he thinks about is the boys, and what he can do for any of them. He has got us a meeting place, so that we can all come together, and we have debates or an impromptu concert every week. I can assure you we all appreciate these things, as he takes a great interest in the boys, and comes round to our camps to see we are alright. The boys could do with a few more men like him out here. Where before the men would never make an effort to come to the services, they all try their utmost to come since he arrived, so I think it speaks well for him, and he really deserves to be praised. After demobilisation in 1919 Brodie returned to Balliol College, Oxford and did congregational and welfare work in the East End of London. In 1923 he received his Rabbinical Diploma from Jews’ College in order to go to Australia, where from 1923 until 1937 he ministered to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation. His sister Minnie accompanied him, acting as his rebbetzen – the wife and helpmate of a Rabbi – until she married a Mr Schenk. Returning to Britain he studied at Oxford for a D.Phil, worked in the East End of London and from 1939 until 1948 served as a tutor and lecturer at Jews’ College. From 1939 until 1945 he again served as a chaplain, in 1944 succeeding Dayan Marks Gollop as Senior Jewish Chaplain. On 30 June 1946 he married Fanny Levine; there were no children. Israel Brodie became the British Chief Rabbi in 1948, retired in 1965, was knighted in 1969 and died in 1979.49 February 1918. Rev. Nehemiah Goldston (2 December 1864 – 26 October 1944) was born in Great Yarmouth, and one of the nine children of Rev.

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Abraham Goldston, the minister at Sandys Row Synagogue in London, and his wife Amelia. He was educated at the Jews’ Free School, where he later taught Hebrew. In 1889 he was appointed the minister of the South-East London Synagogue in Pepys Road, New Cross. He married Florette Heckscher on 24 December 1890 at the New West End Synagogue in St. Petersburg Place in Bayswater in London. They had seven children – three boys and four girls. One of Goldston’s brothers was Rev. Isaac Goldston, the Reader of the New West End Synagogue. Goldston’s second son, Rifleman Lionel E. Goldston of the 21st County of London Regiment (First Surrey Rifles), was killed (after having been initially reported as missing in action) at the age of nineteen during the Battle of Festubert on 30 May 1915. His company commander, Captain C. W. Heslop, wrote to his parents to say that he would receive a Jewish burial. On 13 August 1915 Mr Leopold Frank of 49 Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park in London wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz about the shortage of Jewish Chaplains (of whom there were then only two, Adler and Simmons, on the Western Front). His son was Captain J. L. Frank. He wrote: If you should meet the Rev. Goldstone (sic) of New Cross, you might inform him that every honour was shown to his gallant boy and my son had a little sign with his name erected over that grave. If a Jewish Chaplain had been in the neighbourhood it would have been his privilege to attend. There must be a number of Jewish Soldiers who are buried without any Religious rites. Goldston’s first son, Julius (Jack) Israel, enlisted as a private with the 21st County of London Regiment (First Surrey Rifles). He was promoted, ultimately to the rank of captain. As a second lieutenant serving with the 15th Battalion, attached to the 7th Battalion, of the Royal Fusiliers, he wrote to Rev. Solomon Lipson in June 1915 to say that immediately on hearing of the death of his brother his commanding officer had granted him leave of absence to observe the necessary period of mourning. On 3 September 1915 Rev. Goldston and Rev. A. A. Green officiated at a memorial service for Lionel Goldston and for another Jewish soldier, Joseph S. Heron, at the South-East London Synagogue, at which two stained glass windows were consecrated in their memory. In March 1916 Goldston presented a Sefer Torah to the Synagogue in his son’s memory. In May 1916 the Synagogue made a presentation to him to mark his silver wedding and his twenty-five years in the ministry. From December 1916 Goldston regularly conducted services for soldiers at Bulford, Wimbledon Camp, Winchester and elsewhere. On 4 February 1918, at the remarkable age of 53, he was appointed a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class. Photographs of him in uniform show a figure of military

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bearing. He was appointed to serve on Salisbury Plain. A group photograph of Home Service chaplains and officiating clergymen showing him in uniform and identifying him as “Rev. N. Goldston, C.F., Salisbury Plain” is dated 1917. Goldston worked closely with the Australian Harold Boas in relation to religious services, hospital visitation and general service. Boas recorded Goldston’s continuous travelling day and night and the very inadequate support which he received from the chaplaincy authorities for lodgings, office accommodation and dealing with an enormous correspondence. The Australian YMCA provided him with an office at Salisbury Headquarters for some months. Boas assisted him in arranging religious services, which were held every Saturday afternoon at North Camp, Warminster, and then, when it opened, at the YMCA’s Greenhill House at Sutton Veny, and troops came to them from far afield. In December 1918 Goldston was transferred to Golden Hill Camp in Pembroke as chaplain to the 9th Russian Labour Battalion. On his transfer, referring to a special Chanukah service held at Greenhill House, Harold Boas wrote to him: I cannot let the opportunity go longer without expressing to you the very deep appreciation which I have felt, and which I know most of the Jewish boys on Salisbury Plain have felt, for the very splendid selfsacrificing work which you have performed during the last few months down here; indeed, wherever I have to attend meetings the boys have been lavish in their expression of their appreciation. Yesterday we had a very splendid service at Greenhill House. The Rev S. Lipson officiated, and both he and the boys referred in glowing terms to your work, and the regret which they felt that you had been removed from this area. I personally can place on record the fact of your untiring efforts, and that you never considered it a burden day and night to help to alleviate the conditions of the Jewish men stationed on Salisbury Plain, and indeed well beyond it. I trust this finds you well settled in your new sphere of activities. I shall always look back with pleasure on our cooperation in this war job. In May 1919 Goldston resumed his appointment at the South East London Synagogue. On 1 September 1921 he relinquished his commission and was appointed an honorary Chaplain to the Forces. In February 1922 a War Memorial Lamp to the memory of nine soldier sons of the South-East London Synagogue, including Lionel Goldston and Godfrey Levy, the son and nephew of Goldston, inscribed with their names and dates of death, was dedicated to their memory. Goldston served the South East London Synagogue for fortyfive years, retiring in 1934 on his 70th birthday, and passed away in 1944.50

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July 1918. Rev. Nathan Levine (10 July 1890 – 17 May 1958), was born in Swislotz in Russia, and brought to England as a child. His father, Rabbi Louis Levine, served in Liverpool and later at the synagogue in Little Alie Street in London. Nathan Levine proved to have a beautiful voice, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music and at Jews’ College. He served as the minister at Golders Green Synagogue in London, which was a young community, and then, under its chief minister, Rabbi Dr Sir Herman Gollancz, at Bayswater Synagogue in London. In 1918 Levine volunteered to become a chaplain and was so nominated by the JWSC. He passed the medical board as fit for general service at home and abroad, and on 4 July 1918 signed the formal offer to serve as a temporary chaplain fourth class for as long as might be required. On the same date the Army Chaplains’ Department wrote instructing him to board the boat train at 7.35 a.m. on 9 July at Victoria Station in London in order to embark at Folkestone. On 14 July he wrote from 24 General Hospital to Chief Rabbi Hertz to say that he had been appointed a chaplain to the BEF and that he had had to leave for France immediately because of the illness of Michael Adler and the resignation of Ephraim Levy (who had relinquished his commission on 26 June) and that he had met Adler and Arthur Barnett. In France Levine served from July 1918 until November 1919 with the 24th General Hospital and as Jewish Chaplain to units in the Etaples Area. At one point whilst visiting hospitals “up the line” an aerial torpedo landed on his tent, so that he became for a while a patient in the hospital at Abbeville.51 A photograph shows Levine with sixteen RAF men in France. In December 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published a letter from Corporal Maurice Fersht, Repair Park no. 2, Aero Supply Depot, Royal Air Force, France: I should like through your journal to show the appreciation by the Jewish boys of No.2, A.S.D., of the excellent work carried on by the Rev N. Levine, and also to thank him for the thoughtfulness in arranging a little convivial gathering, thus bringing the boys together. We spent a most pleasant evening, and we are all looking forward to his promised return. Good luck to him; may he enjoy the best of health to enable him to carry on his noble work! In April 1919 Lance-Corporal S.F. Phillips, M.T, A.S.C, wrote to the Jewish Chronicle that an interesting Seder Service was conducted in Abbeville on the second night of Passover by Rev. Levine; some of the lads travelled 36 kilometres to be present at what was the first Seder which they had enjoyed for the past two or three years; the service was admirably rendered by the Chaplain and thoroughly appreciated by the boys; and the next morning Rev. Levine conducted a service in the Wilkie Hut. In June Private M Gatoff, 13th Garrison

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Battalion, North Staffs, Boulogne, wrote to the Jewish Chronicle that Rev. Levine conducted a Shavuot (Pentecost) service in Boulogne Synagogue, which was followed by lunch, and that he was making arrangements to hold weekly gatherings of Jewish soldiers. In October 1919 Levine began coughing up blood. He reported sick two weeks later and was sent to a hospital in France. It appeared that he was anaemic and debilitated, with chronic laryngitis, all attributable to active service conditions. On 19 November a medical board assessed him as presently thirty per cent disabled and fit for duty in three months’ time. He was transferred sick to the UK, and sent to Cambridge Hospital in Aldershot. In December the Army Chaplains’ Department accordingly removed him from the strength of British troops in France and Flanders. His report, by a BrigadierGeneral for the Etaples Area, stated that “As chaplain to the Jews Mr Levine has to cover a very wide Area. During the six months he has been in Etaples he has done his utmost to respond to the many calls which have come to him.” On 10 December 1919 Levine was demobilised, his medical category stated to be C1. On 22 August 1922 he was appointed an Honorary Chaplain to the Forces fourth class. Levine took a holiday in Ramsgate, where he met Evelyn Shandel, the daughter of Rev. Herman Shandel, the minister at Ramsgate. They married, Levine thus becoming the brother-in-law of Rev. Solomon Lipson, who was married to Evelyn’s sister Tilly. Levine and his wife had daughters. He served for two and a half years as the minister to the young community in Walthamstow in London; then for three years at Port Elizabeth in South Africa; and then for eleven years in Brisbane in Australia, sometimes visiting congregants in a small aeroplane. He lectured in Hebrew at Queensland University, and was awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal. He spent a year in Tiberias in the Holy Land immersed in study. He returned to the UK to become in 1937 the minister of a new congregation in Highams Park and Chingford in London, and served there for twenty-one years until his death. For a period after the Second World War he acted as the legal guardian to hundreds of refugee children in London. During his last four years Levine was in failing health, and came to know that he was facing death. He passed away in May 1958 at the age of 67. A memorial service for him was held in his synagogue on 10 July 1958, which would have been his 68th birthday. Whilst he was in South Africa Levine was presented at a formal military gathering to the Prince of Wales, who was later to become the Duke of Windsor. Later, in the UK, he was an active member of the Association of Jewish ExServicemen (AJEX) and Branch Chaplain of the Epping Forest and District Branch, and attended the annual AJEX Remembrance Day Services in London. One year HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was inspecting the parade. He stopped and spoke with Levine, who was with the Chingford contingent, asking him

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about his medals and talking of France and Australia. Afterwards the men crowded around excitedly, asking what the Duke had said. Levine told them that “He was very anxious to know what it would cost him to join our Synagogue!” 52 October 1918. Rev. Walter Levin (25 November 1872 – 18 September 1943) served initially for some four months in Italy and was then posted to the Middle East. He is therefore considered below. November 1918. Rev. Henry Phillips Silverman B. A. (15 October 1894 – 1979) was born in Portsmouth, obtained an honours degree in oriental languages at Manchester University and was ordained in March 1916. He served for two and a half years at Oxford Road Orthodox Synagogue in Manchester. His grandfather, Rev. Isaac Phillips, and his mother, Jane Silverman, lived in Portsea in Portsmouth, and he often assisted at Portsea Synagogue and at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. He incorporated his grandfather’s name but went by his mother’s name. Nominated by the JWSC for service in France, Silverman applied on his 24th birthday on 15 October 1918 to serve as a chaplain. He wrote that he was single, had visited military hospitals and met many Jewish soldiers, had a good knowledge of French, could ride a bicycle and had been passed medically fit for general military service as an officer. As his next of kin he nominated his grandfather and his mother. He was accepted for service, and on 22 November formally accepted his appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class for twenty-four months. Instructions came for him to embark for France on Tuesday 26 November, the Jewish Chronicle reporting on 29 November that he would shortly proceed to France as a chaplain. By that time the war had ended. In France Silverman served within the area of the Third Army. There is a formal group photograph of him with a large group of Jewish soldiers in France in 1918. In January 1919 the Jewish Chronicle printed a letter from Corporal R. Herwald of the 1021st (Russian) Labour Company in France: I write these few lines on behalf of the Jews of this Company (of whom there are approximately 350) to express the admiration we feel for the work which the Rev. H.P. Silverman (Jewish Chaplain 3rd Army) is doing among us. Mr Silverman has, in the few weeks of our acquaintance with him, infused a spirit into us, such as we have not known heretofore. His cheery exhortations, sound advice, straight talk, unfailing good humour and optimism, his painstaking interest in everything appertaining to our welfare, and above all, his heroic attempts to reach us from his headquarters, some eighty kilometres distant, in the face of lack of

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transport and breakdowns, have excited our admiration to an extent which my poor phraseology is attempting in vain to describe adequately. Through his efforts we are brought once again into contact with the literary organs of Anglo-Jewry, JEWISH CHRONICLE and Jewish World, which put us in touch with the people at home and are appreciated by us to a very great extent. We hope to have him among us until we are finally dispersed. Our final parting will be full of regrets. Another member of the same unit wrote to the Jewish Chronicle about the Passover services which Silverman arranged: Lance-Corpl. J. Olswang, 1021st (Russia) Labour Co., writes to us from France. Well-attended services were arranged and conducted by the Chaplain, Third Army Area, the Rev. H. P. Silverman, at the Y.M.C.A. Cambrai on the first Seder night and the following morning. Men from all over the area attended, some coming from places seventy kilometres distant. The evening service was followed by the Seder ceremony, the effect of which was marred by the non-arrival of matzoth. In the morning we had a service in which the Torah was read, thanks to Mr. A. Aarons, of Manchester (lately demobilised from our company), who sent a Scroll of the Law to our Chaplain as a well-deserved token of appreciation and esteem in which we all hold him for the good work he is doing among us. An impressive address was delivered by the Chaplain. The men joined in the singing of the grand old melodies. Silverman arranged a dinner for Shavuot in June 1919. Serving in the army of occupation in Germany, his last posting was at no. 64 CCS. Having served for eleven months, he was demobilised on 28 October 1919. He was in medical category A and was reported to be generally suitable for duty as an army chaplain. On 3 December 1920 he relinquished his commission, and on 27 January 1921 was appointed an honorary chaplain to the forces fourth class. Silverman returned to his congregation in Manchester. In 1922 he went to the Reform Congregation Temple B’nai Israel in Elmira in New York State in the United States, and served there for thirteen years. In October 1934 the Elmira community wrote to the War Office stating that he claimed to have served as a chaplain in the British Army during the War to soldiers of the Jewish faith and asking when he served in that capacity, his position in the army and when he was discharged. The War Office replied that a Henry Phillips Silverman had served as a chaplain to the forces during the Great War, but could not state if he was the subject of the enquiry. This enquiry, made after Silverman had been with the community for more than twelve years, suggests difficulties in the relationship.

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The next year, 1935, Silverman went to Jamaica, where he served the United Congregation of Israelites in Kingston, Jamaica for thirty years. He wrote a history of Jamaican Jewry. He was in the UK for a visit in June/July 1939. Returning to the UK in 1965, he served the Maidenhead Reform Community for sixteen months, from June 1965 until after problems with his community he resigned in November 1966. He and his wife Cassie had at least one son. Silverman published two liturgical books, and his ministry was characterised by a spirit of fraternity with other religious denominations. He passed away in 1979.53

Officiating Clergymen The British Army had long supplemented its small cadre of commissioned chaplains by relying heavily on the services of civilian garrison chaplains and officiating clergymen. With the outbreak of the First World War, men began to be recruited and trained throughout the country, and so ministers of religion around the country were appointed as officiating clergymen, sometimes referred to as Assistant Chaplains. In September 1914 the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish World published a letter from the War Office of 4 September to commanding generals throughout the UK, listing the clergymen whom Reverend M. Adler had nominated to represent him in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow and Leeds.54 By March 1915, as the Visitation Committee reported, eight Jewish officiating clergymen had been appointed. Perhaps by oversight, Rev. A. A. Green, who as had been noted at a previous meeting on 18 October 1915 had been appointed for Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, was not included. The eight and their commands and areas were: Rev. S. Friedberg of Liverpool. Western Command. Western Lancashire, The Wirral, Flint, Denbigh and Carnarvon.55 Rev. Jacob Phillips of Manchester. Western Command. East Lancashire including Manchester, Cheshire (excepting The Wirral) and Shropshire.56 Rev. M. Abrahams of Leeds. Northern Command. Yorkshire excepting Sheffield. Rev. B.I. Cohen of Sheffield. Northern Command. City of Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham and Lincoln. Rev. A. Cohen of Birmingham. Northern Command. Staffordshire, and

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Southern Command covering Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Rev. H. Shandel of Ramsgate. Eastern Command. Kent, Sussex and Surrey.57 Rev. A. Plaskow. Aldershot Command. Aldershot area. In August 1916 he was also appointed as Jewish Chaplain to the military prisons in Hampshire.58 Rev. Dr J. Ableson of Portsea. Southern Command. Salisbury Area.59 As time went on other officiating clergymen were appointed. They were Revs. L. Geffen (London); H. Goodman (London); A. Gudansky (Dublin); H. Jerevitch (Cardiff); W. Levin (London); E. M. Levy (London); B. Paletz; E. P. Phillips (Scotland); D. Wasserzug (Eastern Command: Bedford, Northampton and Huntingdon); L. Woolfe (Reading)60; and Mr. D.L. Lipson61. A group photograph taken in 1917 shows thirteen of the Home Service chaplains and officiating clergymen, together with Lieutenant Harold Boas of Australia.62 Rev. Levy succeeded Rev. Plaskow as the officiating chaplain at Aldershot from December 1916 before becoming in June 1917 a commissioned chaplain. Revs. Geffen and Levin also became commissioned chaplains. Revs. Frampton (formerly Friedberg), Jerevitch and Woolfe attended the conference of chaplains in Birmingham on 20 February 1918. Rev. David Wasserzug, from 1901 the minister of Dalston Synagogue in London and an officiating clergyman, died on Monday 16 December 1918. His obituary records that, whilst ministering in Johannesburg, “During the South African War he proved of immense use to the poor Russian Jews in the Transvaal, acting as an intermediary between them and the Military Administration. Many of these Jews he saved from expulsion; for numerous others he obtained licences and permits to travel as hawkers, and in a hundred ways he used his influence with the military authorities to temper administrative rigour and to mitigate the hard lot of the aliens.” Rev. J. F. Stern wrote that “During the war he bravely and unselfishly stepped in to undertake additional work, involving much wear and tear which in his impaired condition of health he would have justifiably spared himself if he had been capable of giving the least thought to self-consideration.”63 Rev. J. F. Stern does not seem to have been an officiating clergyman; his son second lieutenant Leonard H. Stern of the 13th County of London Regiment was killed at the front in May 1915.64 Rev. Aaron Asher Green (1860-1933) of Hampstead Synagogue in London had, in 1905, declined the invitation to succeed Rev. Francis Cohen as the Jewish military chaplain. In the summer of 1915 he applied at the age of 55 to become

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a chaplain. Under pressure from Michael Adler for an additional chaplain the United Synagogue nominated him, but the authorities declined to appoint him. From October 1913 until September 1916 Green served as officiating clergyman to the Jewish Troops in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. In October 1915 he complained that he had found it difficult to obtain lists of Jewish soldiers in order to arrange services in Norwich. At some point Green was also appointed for London, and it fell to him in November 1915 to attend upon a Jew due to be executed in the Tower of London for espionage.65 On 7 April 1916 Green wrote to Mr P. Ornstien of the Visitation Committee that he was overwhelmed by work as an officiating clergyman. He was encountering difficulties through being outside the army chaplaincy, and so suggested consideration of his being appointed a temporary chaplain without a chaplain’s pay. This did not happen. On 11 April he wrote to Ornstien to say that it was better to hold Jewish services on a Sunday than on a Saturday, which was an off day in the army. In a further letter of 12 April to Orenstien, Green expounded upon some of the challenges faced by officiating clergymen: Re Visitation, I am much obliged. Re Chaplaincy, what cannot be, cannot be and there it ends, of course.66 I would like, one day, to give you and the Hony Officers some idea of the tact constantly required in dealing with this work. One had to be on guard all the time. There is a class of man in the Army now who gives no end of trouble and some of the Jewish Officers also require very delicate handling. It will interest you to know that not the least important part of my work is dealing with the Jewish question as it arises in the train in the course of my journeys. I travel with all classes of Christian Officers, including General Officers, and I always have to turn missionary in reference to the feeling of our people towards the Country. Of course I have long been used to this but I find that I could serve the community well only by travelling up & down at this juncture. It is work that cannot be ‘put into account’ but it is there all the same. I know that this is a point that will not be lost upon yourself. This is one of the reasons why the United Synagogue should make the most careful selection possible of men to come into touch with Army Officers just now. We want those who are able to say and do just the ‘Nothing more and nothing less’ as Mr Asquith has put it, in another connection. Last Sunday I met the Bishop of Chelmsford at Chelmsford. It was quite accidental. He asked me several questions and it ended in our travelling

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to London together when we talked out the whole question of Jews and England and Jews and Christians. He asked me to come to him when at Chelmsford another time, instead of going to a hotel and he asked for my address. Tonight I received the enclosed, which please return.67 I send it as an illustration of what I have referred to above. Finally, I have, officially, to report to you that I have received applications from more than one Jewish soldier in the Eastern Command to get them re-Judaised for Passover as they joined as Christians and want to keep Passover! In each case I have declined. I have pointed out that a Commanding Officer would be sure to think that Jews wanted Judaism when it meant a long furlough and that if they proffer their request to me after the Passover leave has expired, I shall be willing then to entertain it.68 Rev. H. Goodman, as Officiating Clergyman to the Jewish troops in the London District, together with Michael Adler, conducted the funeral of Staff Sister Dorah Bernstein of the South African Military Nursing Service. Born in around 1889 and so aged around twenty-nine or thirty, she had served since September 1914, and died on 6 November 1918 at the South African Military Hospital in Richmond Park in London of Spanish influenza. She was buried at Willesden Jewish Cemetery in London with full military honours and numerous floral tributes.69

Labour Battalions During the First World War nearly three quarters of a million men of many nationalities served in the Labour Corps of the British Army. Non-indigenous men, including non-white labour from overseas and Russian Jews, were widely considered of inferior military capability and more suited to employment in labour battalions. During the period of voluntary enlistment recruits were entitled to request non-combatant service. The 8th and 9th Labour Battalions were formed especially for all-Russian labour companies. The battalions were based in the UK and some of their companies served in France. In the summer of 1918 several hundred men of the 9th Battalion were stationed in Wales. The Jewish officiating clergyman in Cardiff, Rev. H. Jerevitch, wrote to the Jewish Chronicle. He explained that their training camp was isolated from any Jewish community; they lacked funds for leave travel and many appeared to have no relatives or friends in Britain nor to read English. He praised their Gentile commanding officer, Lt. Col. Morgan Jones, who had taken considerable interest in the men and arranged religious services for them, and appealed to the Jewish community to meet their needs as “they

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are loyally serving their King and Country and their importance to the State cannot be minimised”.70 In response to his appeal substantial sums of money were raised within the Jewish communities in Cardiff and Merthyr. By contrast, Russian Jews in the 8th Labour Battalion at Wilderness Camp in Sevenoaks complained to the Chief Rabbi that they were never visited by Jewish ministers and that “you, who have advocated our being in this position, ought to do more for us than simply preach patriotism”. They said that local Christians had given them more support than the Jewish community.71

Untraced Chaplains In September 1914 the Jewish World reported the appointment as additional chaplains of Rabbi Dr B. Salomon in Manchester and Rev. A. Schloss in Nottingham. However they are not referred to elsewhere as chaplains or officiating clergymen.72 The author has encountered the names of Rev. J. Dangton (although possibly a mistake for Danglow), Rev. Captain Leveson and Rev. A. Mischon of Brixton Synagogue as chaplains, but no evidence of any of them having been a chaplain or officiating clergyman has been found.

Ministers who served other than as chaplains In the First World War some British Christian ministers of religion elected to serve not as chaplains but as combatants. A number of Rabbis served in that way in the French and German armies. Within British forces the author has identified two. Rev. Dr Joseph Hockman of the New West End Synagogue in London offered in September 1914 to serve in the army as a private soldier. In August 1915 he resigned his position at the New West End Synagogue and enlisted as a trooper in the City of London Yeomanry, subsequently being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery. There is also a suggestion that he served in the Artists’ Rifles. Rabbi Joseph S. Conquy of Leraichi, Gibraltar, the son of Rabbi Shalom Conquy of Gibraltar and formerly the director of Jewish Schools there, travelled to England to enlist. By September 1915 he was in the RAMC and based at Aldershot, where on Saturday afternoon of 4 September 1915 he addressed the congregation. By December 1915 he was a quartermastersergeant in the RAMC. In the Second World War one British Jewish minister so served.73

Notes 1.

VC/2/14-21. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. JM, file 2011.74. BJBH, p.40. JC 9/7/1915, p. 14. JW 7/7/1915, p. 16.

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

175

In August 1915 Adler wrote to Hertz “re the Dardanelles. We certainly ought to have a man in that sphere of operations, by preference at Malta or Alexandria”. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. VC/2/14-21. Visitation Committee correspondence at JM, box 1005. JW 27/10/1915, p. 7. BJBH, p. 40. VC/2/22-30. JM, file 2011.74 and folder 2013.311.12. JC 10/3/1916, p. 11; 31/3/1916, p. 14. JW 15/3/1916, p. 18. JWSC minute book, 5 December 1915 to 6 May 1919. JC 3/5/1918, p. 24; 10/5/1918, p. 6; 11/10/1918, p. 18. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 204-9, 230-1. The author has not ascertained anything more about this course. JC 25/6/1915, p. 17; 2/7/1915, pp. 12 - 13. J. H. Patterson, With the Judeans in the Palestine Campaign (New York: The Macmillan Company, and London: Hutchinson,1922), p. 269. Martin Watts, The Jewish Legion during the First World War (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 104-6. JVL, Martin Sugarman, The March of the 38th Royal Fusiliers – When the Spirit of Judah Macabee Hovered over the Whitechapel Road. JC 8/2/1918, pp. 15-16. National Archives, file WO/374/42334 (weeded 1937); WO/372/18/71166. BJBH, illustrations, pp. 56, 64, 201, 257, 364. VC/2/10-13. LMA, ACC/2712/13/44; ACC/2805/04/04/010. Adler Diary. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 165, 170-8. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 109. Menorah magazine, issue 8/4, December 1959, p. 37. JC 11/9/1914, p. 15; 18/9/1914, p. 30; 25/9/1914, p. 6 ; 2/10/1914, p. 12; 20/11/1914, p. 15; 27/11/1914, p. 15; 12/2/1915, p. 6; 28/5/1915, pp. 14-15; 18/6/1915, p. 21; 26/11/1915, p. 12; 21/1/1916, p. 27; 28/1/1916, p. 27; 16/6/1916, p. 18; 28/7/1916, p. 11; 27/10/1916, p. 11; 3/11/1916, pp. 12, 19; 27/7/1917, pp. 10, 14; 7/9/1917, p. 14; 14/12/1917, p. 13; 15/2/1918, p. 17; 1/3/1918, pp. 6, 14; 8/3/1918, p. 14; 10/5/1918, p. 16; 4/10/1918, p. 8; 25/10/1918, pp. 14 - 15; 24/1/1919, p. 17; 2/8/1957, p. 16 (wife’s obituary); 27/11/1959, p. 15 (obituary). JW 16/9/1914, p. 19; 12/5/1915, p. 21; 16/6/1915, p. 16; 30/6/1915, p. 16; 18/8/1915, p. 13; 16/2/1916, p. 17; 8/11/1916, p. 14. The rank of Captain. Michael R. Goldberger, An Englishman and a Jew Reverend V.G. Simmons, ACD, in Medal News, December 1993, pp. 12-14. Also referred to in JC 15/12/1916, p. 14. Ibid. (Goldberger). Item 100 in part 1 of a catalogue of Jewish Militaria of Fishburn Books of January 2016. P. 78 above. The club was the Jewish Soldiers’ Club at the Aldershot Discharge Centre; Simmons delivered an address at its opening. Goldberger, An Englishman and a Jew. JC 31/12/1915, p. 15; 28/1/1916, p. 26. JC 15/12/1916, pp. 14, 18. JC 22/12/1916, pp. 16-17. JC 22/12/1916, p. 17. JC 22/12/1916, p. 17. JC 29/12/1916, p. 7. JC 26/1/1917, p. 17;16/2/1917, p. 15. JC 12/1/1917, pp. 14, 15. National Archives, file WO/339/120492 (weeded 1936). Report by Simmons of 11 July 1916 of 10 Months’ Work (1 August 1915 – June 1916) as Jewish Chaplain to the British Expeditionary Force in France in JM, box 2011.74. 1916 Important Notice from Rev. Adler to Jewish Soldiers proceeding to France. Adler Diary. BJBH, pp. 36-7, 40; illustrations, pp. 198, 201, 249 (two photographs), 329. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001; ACC/3529/01/035/3529/1. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 102. Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englishman, p. 96. Madigan

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28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

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and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Panter, Between Inclusion and Exclusion, pp. 1767. JC 26/11/1915, p. 12; 5/1/1917, pp. 9-10, 24; 16/3/1917, pp. 7-8; 3/5/1918, p. 24; 20/1/1939, p. 27; 26/4/1940, p. 21; 9/1/1970, p. 39 (obituary); 23/1/1970, p. 43. JW 11/8/1915, p. 18; 22/9/1915, p. 17; 6/12/1916, p. 13; 13/12/1916, pp. 8, 12. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 133-134. Gouttman, In Their Merit, p. 48. BJBH, p. 58. JC 28/2/1919, p. 22. VC/2/65-69. Adler Diary. Report by Simmons of 11 July 1916 of 10 Months’ Work (August 1915 – June 1916) as Jewish Chaplain to the British Expeditionary Force in France and correspondence in JM, box 2011.74. 1916 Important Notice from Rev. Adler to Jewish Soldiers proceeding to France. National Archives, file WO/372/2/5021. BJBH, pp. 40, 58; illustrations, pp. 129, 146, 215, 216, 249, 319, 321. Arthur Barnett, The Western Synagogue Through Two Centuries (1761-1961) (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1961), pp. XV, 248, 271-2, 278. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 179-181. Madigan and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Panter, Between Inclusion and Exclusion, pp. 159-181. JC 12/3/1915, p. 18; 10/3/1916, p. 11; 31/3/1916, p.14; 23/6/1916, p. 21; 7/7/1916, p. 26; 25/5/1917, p. 19; 13/9/1918, p. 18; 28/2/1919, p. 22; 7/3/1919, p. 20; 29/8/1919, p. 10; 26/12/1919, p. 12; 8/12/1961, p. 31. JW 15/3/1916, p. 18; 19/4/1916, p. 12. A photograph shows Rev. Morris with Rifleman A.B. Morris of the 1/12th London Regiment. The “Rejoicing of the Law” celebrates the joy of the Torah and its way of life and is the last festival of the sequence which begins with the High Holydays. Eichah/Lamentations, 3, 7. National Archives, files WO 374/48984, WO 372/14/102504. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. JWSC minute book. BJBH, p. 56; illustrations, p. 53. Adler Diary. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 183-184. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 102. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, p. 115. Researches of Mr Simon Ovens (who holds Morris’ war medal). JC 6/10/1916, p. 18; 26/10/1917, p. 19; 3/5/1918, p. 24; 30/8/1918, pp. 9, 11; 11/10/1918, p. 18; 25/10/1918, p. 20; 11/4/1919, p. 14; 1/8/1941, p. 5. LI 3/11/1916, p. 140; 8/12/1916, p. 258. National Archives, file WO/374/42115 (file weeded in 1937). LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. BJBH, illustrations, p. 109. Adler Diary. JC 25/1/1918, p. 25; 22/11/1918, p. 19; 3/9/1976, p. 17 (stating that he had died “last week”). National Archives, file WO/372/8/52879. BJBH, illustrations, p. 258. VC/2/100-101. VC/3/5. Falk Memoirs 27/9/1929. Kadish, A Good Jew and a Good Englishman, p. 110. Derek Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz. The Wars of the Lord (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2014), p. 228. JC 23/2/1917, p. 18; 9/3/1917, p. 19; 30/3/1917, p. 20; 20/4/1917, p. 16; 20/7/1917, p. 17; 21/6/1918, pp. 10, 13; 13/12/1918, p. 14; 23/5/1919, p. 18; 20/6/1919, p. 15; 29/8/1919, p. 10; 11/10/1940, p. 14; 6/7/1945, p. 11; 11/8/1950, p. 7. National Archives, files WO/374/41860, WO/372/12/70329. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. BJBH, pp. 45, 56; illustrations, pp. 31, 159. Adler Diary. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8 (MUP), 1981, re Rabbi Leib Falk. Australian Chaplains in WW1 in http://ww1chaplains.gravesecrets.net re Rabbi Leib Falk. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 210. Suzanne D. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora, pp. 296-7. Journal of the Great Synagogue Sydney, June 1995, pp. 8-9. JC 15/12/1916, p. 16; 22/12/1916, p. 18; 13/7/1917, p. 14; 27/1/1939, p. 30; 19/1/1940, p. 29; 28/6/1940, p. 11. JW 16/2/1916, p. 19. LI, 21/6/1918, p. 16. The following day Jerusalem was surrendered to General Allenby’s army. Diary of Solomon (Solly) Abrahams with We Were There Too. National Archives, files A24796 (certificate); HO/334/62/24796; WO/372/7/230427. BJBH, p. 45; illustrations, pp. 146, 161, 167, 223. Memoir of Vera Sharp (daughter of Rev. Geffen). Adler Diary. Diary of Rev. David Hirsch. Elkan D. Levy, The New West End Synagogue in

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46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

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the Great War and The New West End Synagogue 1879-2004, 11 July 2004 at www.newwestend.org.uk/docs/EDLlecture. JC 5/8/1910, p. 13; 12/8/1910, p. 16; 28/7/1911, p. 24; 18/8/1911, p. 25; 24/5/1912, p. 30; 17/7/1914, p. 19; 10/12/1915, p. 23; 29/6/1917, p. 18; 6/7/1917, p. 13; 13/7/1917, p. 14; 27/7/1917, pp. 9, 14; 28/12/1917, p. 2; 17/4/1942, p. 6. JW 9/9/1914, pp. 5-6; 11/8/1915, p. 15; 8/9/1915, p. 15. LI 21/6/1918, p. 16. Geffen developed an anglicised appearance and manner and a soldierly bearing, as appears in a photograph of him in uniform, four photographs of him with groups of soldiers in France including one taken at Passover 1919 and a portrait of him in his canonicals by Royal Academician Solomon J. Solomon. Recalled by Mrs Barbara Posner, the daughter of Rev. Hirsch. “The Hope”, now the national anthem of Israel. Dayenu means ‘it would have been enough for us’. It is a passage of the Seder service, sung to a rousing melody, listing successive Divine mercies, each of which alone would have been enough. National Archives, file WO/372/9/208888. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. VC/2/85-87, 97-99. Diary, letters and artefacts of Rev. David Hirsch. Adler Diary. BJBH, p. 56; illustrations, pp. 64, 160, 345. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 108, 181-183. Author’s interviews on 22/5/2014 and 3/7/2014 with Mrs Barbara Posner who in relation to his having helped in field hospitals said that her father had always been interested in medical matters. JC 10/3/1916, p. 11; 17/3/1916, p. 20; 3/8/1917, p. 6; 14/9/1917, p. 25; 16/4/1918, p. 16; 13/9/1918, p. 16; 11/10/1918, p. 18; 8/11/1918, p. 12; 22/11/1918, p. 24; 4/4/1919, p. 20; 25/4/1919, p. 9; 2/5/1919, p. 22; 29/8/1919, p. 10; 26/12/1919, p. 12; 25/4/1941, p. 7; 16/5/1941, p. 16; 20/1/1950, p. 22; 27/1/1950, p. 8. JW 23/2/1916, p.17. National Archives, file WO/374/55203 (file weeded in 1937). Adler Diary. BJBH, p. 54; illustrations, pp. 290, 337. JC 18/6/1915, p. 19; 23/7/1915, p. 13; 3/11/1916, p. 19; 25/10/1918, p. 14; 20/12/1918, p. 21; 3/1/1936, p. 29. JW 24/5/1916, p. 14. Colloquial for Jewish. National Archives, file WO/372/3/85117. VC/5/136-143. Adler Diary. BJBH, illustrations, p. 43. Taylor, British Chief Rabbis, pp. 370-373. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora, pp. 153-154. Author’s interviews with Israel Brodie’s relatives Stanley Brodie QC 24/11/2014 and 5/12/2014 and Michael Garston 19/10/2014. JC 17/3/1916, p. 28; 10/8/1917, p. 14; 21/6/1918, pp. 10, 13; 16/2/1979, p. 23. JW 23/2/1916, p. 14. National Archives, file WO/372/8/51695. BJBH, illustrations, p. 201. The London Gazette Supplement 21/2/1918 (2288); The London Gazette 11/10/1921. Boas, The Australian Y.M.C.A., pp. 178-9. LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/001. Research of Mrs Rosemary Wenzerul (great-niece). JC 18/9/1914, p. 22; 4/6/1915, pp. 10, 19; 11/6/1915, p. 2; 25/6/1915, p. 23; 3/9/1915, p. 30; 24/3/1916, p. 31; 19/5/1916, p. 16; 20/12/1918, p. 14; 16/5/1919, p. 14; 27/11/1942, p. 9; 3/11/1944, p. 11. JW 9/6/1915, pp. 11, 20-21; 16/6/1915, pp. 16, 21; 22/3/1916, p. 24. New York Times 1/8/1915. This is the only instance which the author has encountered of a Jewish chaplain being injured by enemy fire in the First World War. Rev. David Freedman was fortunate to be absent when his billet was shattered by shelling. National Archives, file WO/374/41851. LMA, ACC/ 2805/04/04/001; ACC/2793/02/04/01, refs 107/110, 167/78. BJBH, illustrations, pp. 160, 161. Adler Diary. A Memoir – the Reverend Nathan Levine H.C.F. A faithful pioneer in the Anglo-Jewish ministry who loved and served his fellow men with selfless devotion 1890 – 1958, esp. pp. 3 -7, 14, 18 - 19, 21, 33. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton. JC 6/9/1918, p. 26; 13/12/1918, pp. 14-15; 2/5/1919, p. 22; 20/6/1919, p. 15; 23/5/1958, p. 29. National Archives, file WO/374/62350. BJBH, illustrations, p. 304. Jonathan Romain, Royal Jews. A Thousand Years of Jewish Life in and around the Royal County of Berkshire

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58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

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(Maidenhead: Grenfell Publishing, 2013), pp. 231-5. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton. JC 29/11/1918, p. 20; 31/1/1919, p. 19; 2/5/1919, p. 22; 20/6/1919, p. 15; 7/7/1939, p. 24; 30/11/1979, p. 11. JC 11/9/1914, p. 13. JW 16/9/1914, p. 19. JW 3/5/1916, p. 19. In 1916 Friedberg later anglicised his name to Frampton. JW 3/5/1916, p. 19. BJBH, p. 13 and illustrations, pp. 14, 167, 201, 242, 266, 299: several group photographs with soldiers, including at Chatham and at Westgate in 1917 and Chanukah service at Ramsgate in 1918. Group photograph with men of regiments stationed nearby at a service in Margate. JC 10/12/1915, p. 23. JW 18/8/1915, p. 13; 15/3/1916, p. 18. JW 23/8/1916, p. 17. VC/2/13, 25. JW 15/3/1916, p. 18. In BJBH, p. 13, Wolfe. He served in Ireland, until 1919 in Reading, then until 1922 in Richmond and then until 1946 in Eastbourne, and died on 3 December 1966 at the age of at least ninety, survived by five sons and two daughters. JC 9/12/1966, p. 25. BJBH, p. 13. BJBH, illustrations, p. 201. JC 20/12/1918, p. 11. JC 21/5/1915, p. 10; 28/5/1915, pp. 14-15. JW 26/5/1915, pp. 3, 4, 14-15; 2/6/1915, p. 16. JM, file 2011.74. JC 8/9/1916, p. 16. JW 13/10/1915, p. 21; 3/11/1915, p. 13. pp. 76 - 77 above. For Green it did not end there. The rejection of his chaplaincy application continued to rankle with him. He resented the subsequent appointment of Rev. Arthur Barnett, suspecting that this was because Barnett was the minister at the Hammersmith Synagogue, which was presumably considered more prestigious than Green’s Hampstead Synagogue. In April 1916 Green requested appointment as a temporary chaplain even without a chaplain’s pay. JM, file 2011.74. JW 7/7/1915, p. 16. The enclosure is unknown. JM, file 2011.74. Research by Margaret Flood in https://southafricanmembers.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/ staff-sister-dorah-bernstein-1889-1918/#respond. Kitching, Britain’s Jews in the First World War, pp. 111-12. JC 23/8/1918, p.10. LMA, ACC /2805/4/4/12, Private Glassman, 8th Labour Battalion, to Chief Rabbi Hertz, 11/8/1918. Lloyd, Jews under Fire, pp. 215-221. JW 30/9/1914, p. 10. Elkan D. Levy, The New West End Synagogue in the Great War and The New West End Synagogue 1879-2004. 11 July 2004 at www.newwestend.org.uk/docs/EDLlecture. JW 8/9/1915, p. 22. JC 24/12/1915, p. 17.

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7 THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE MIDDLE EAST March 1915. Rabbi Raffaello Della Pergola (15 June 1877 – 24 August 1923) was born in Italy, and was one of four sons and three daughters of David Della Pergola, a cloth trader in Florence, and Rachel Orvieto. He studied and was the first graduate of the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano headed by Rabbi Shmuel Margulies. He married Alice Prister (1886–1968) in 1906 in Trieste, and they had three sons. Della Pergola was for seven years the rabbi of Gorizia. In 1910 he became the Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Alexandria, retaining his post almost until his death. At the start of the First World War about twelve thousand people fled or were expelled by the Turks from Palestine. Many went to refugee camps in Alexandria, where Della Pergola was amongst those who assisted them. A leading Zionist, Della Pergola was one of those on the platform at a meeting attended by about two hundred young people on 2 March 1915 which resolved “to form a Jewish Legion and to propose to England to make use of it in Palestine”.1 On 19 March 1915 Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson was appointed to command the Zion Mule Corps (which was originally known as the Assyrian Refugee Mule Corps). He recruited for the Corps in Cairo, meeting the Grand Rabbi of Cairo.2 He then travelled to Alexandria to recruit, and contacted leading members of the Jewish community including Della Pergola. Some five hundred Jews volunteered. Patterson wrote: On the 23rd March, 19153 the young Jewish volunteers were paraded for the purpose of being “sworn in” at the refugee camp at Gibbari. It was a most imposing ceremony; the Grand Rabbi, who officiated, stood in a commanding position overlooking the long rows of serious and intelligent-looking lads. He explained to them the meaning of an oath, and the importance of keeping it, and impressed upon them that the honour of Israel rested in their hands. He then asked them to repeat after him, word for word, the oath of military obedience to myself and such officers as should be appointed over them, and with great

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solemnity, and in perfect unison, the men, with uplifted hands, repeated the formula. The Grand Rabbi then delivered a stirring address to the new soldiers, in which he compared them to their forefathers, who had been led out of Egypt by Moses, and at the end he turned to me and presented me to them as their modern leader. This memorable and historic scene aroused the greatest enthusiasm among the throng of Jewish sympathizers who had come to witness this interesting ceremony. …. The Grand Rabbi of Alexandria, a most pious, earnest and learned man, was appointed our honorary chaplain.4 In his address Della Pergola referred to Patterson as a second Moses who would lead the Children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. He distributed to the soldiers a booklet which listed British favours to Jews, contained rules for behaviour towards officers and apt Biblical quotations and bade them be good soldiers.5 Some of the soldiers were Russian, and the Russian consul in Alexandria, Petrov, demanded that they be returned to Russia to serve in the Russian army, but Della Pergola and others foiled this.6 Patterson wrote: Among the N.C.O.’s and men I had every conceivable trade and calling; … Even a Rabbi was to be found in the ranks, who was able to administer consolation to the dying and burial rites to those who were struck down when death came amongst us before the enemy in Gallipoli.7 Patterson did not identify this Rabbi, nor refer to him again. Perhaps it was Sergeant H. L. Gordon, who is referred to below as having conducted graveside prayers. A few days before embarkation, Patterson attended the Passover Seder Service of Chief Rabbi Della Pergola, “who had his three handsome boys at his knees, the youngest a living image of one of Murillo’s cherubs”. “It seemed so strange that I should be partaking of the same Feast four thousand years later on the eve of my departure, with a number of the Children of Israel, to wander and suffer anew in another wilderness”, he wrote.8 His words were to foretell his journeying with the Jewish Legion in Palestine three years later. A couple of days before receiving orders to embark for Gallipoli:

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We had a last big parade, and marched from Wardian Camp for some three miles through the streets of Alexandria to the Synagogue, to receive the final blessing of the Grand Rabbi. The spacious Temple, in the street of the Prophet Daniel, was on this occasion filled to its utmost capacity. The Grand Rabbi exhorted the men to bear themselves like good soldiers and in times of difficulty and danger to call upon the Name of the Lord, who would deliver them out of their adversity. His final benediction was most solemn and impressive, and will never be forgotten by those who were privileged to be present.9 The cap badge of the Zion Mule Corps was a Shield of David.10 Setting sail on 17 April 1915, the Corps reached the island of Lemnos on 20 April, joining a gigantic army preparing for the assault on Gallipoli. It landed under fire on V Beach on 26 April. Although a mule corps it was a fighting unit, equipped with Mauser rifles perhaps captured from the Turks, bayonets and ammunition. Riding their mules, the muleteers soon became known as the “allies’ cavalry” or “Ally Sloper’s cavalry”. On several occasions they fought as infantry.11 Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. Parker, a New Zealander in charge of a supply dump at Gallipoli, recorded that the Zionists of the Zion Mule Corps refused in principle to carry sides of bacon from the jetty to this store, until a special dispensation arrived from the Chief Rabbi allowing them to eat and of course to carry bacon, at which point they applied unsuccessfully for the bacon rations which they had previously rejected. However Major Fred Waite DSO of the New Zealand Engineers recorded that the Russian Jews of the Zion Mule Corps carried their little bags of bacon to the cookhouse, replying to the accompanying ribald gibes from other soldiers that “It is the ration.”12 Rev. Dr D. M. Kay, the Professor of Hebrew at Aberdeen University, was a Christian chaplain at Gallipoli. In September 1915 he wrote to Michael Adler: …. Many thanks for the Prayer Books, which I have shown to the Chaplains, so that they may be able to supply them to any Jewish soldier they may meet in their Brigades. The Rev. J. Fails, C.F., Church of England, tells me he officiated at the burial of a Jewish private of the R.M.L.I. who was killed by a shell about May 20th. A Zion Transport Company is located near me and they give me a hearty welcome when I can give them a phrase from a patriarch or prophet. I gave their officer a copy of your Prayer Book. The men mostly have Russian books of their own. They talk Hebrew even to the mules! It was very cold in Flanders when we last met; it is very hot here at present…..13 More troops were later raised for the Gallipoli campaign. On the evening of Saturday 21 August 1915 the Synagogue in Rue Nabi Daniel (the Prophet

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Daniel) in Alexandria was packed for the presentation of a Torah Scroll to the new recruits, some one hundred and twenty in number. Colonel Patterson and his adjutant Captain Joseph Trumpeldor were present. Three troopers rose to receive the scroll from the Grand Rabbi, who said “May this Scroll of the Torah which has guarded us for thousands of years preserve and bring you back home safely. May our common cause triumph, and may it hasten the day of universal peace”.14 The Zion Mule Corps was evacuated from Gallipoli on 9 January 1916. Before the evacuation the muleteers paid formal tribute to their fourteen dead comrades, Sergeant H. L. Gordon leading prayers at their graves. The Corps also suffered fifty-five wounded.15 On 3 March 1916 a mausoleum was inaugurated in the Jewish Cemetery at Alexandria to the memory of the fallen members of the Corps, at which Rabbi Della Pergola officiated. In 1916 Della Pergola organised Saturday afternoon services for Jewish soldiers stationed in Alexandria at the beautiful Eliyahu Hanabi (Elijah the Prophet) Synagogue. He took a great interest in the welfare of the Jewish soldiers, and instructed that he was to be informed as soon as a Jewish death occurred. Two years later, in February 1918, Della Pergola officiated at a service attended by many notables in the Rue Nabi Daniel Synagogue in Alexandria to welcome the Jewish Legion on its arrival.16 In the same year he was amongst those who attended the formal laying of the cornerstone of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. He died in Faella Valdarno in Florence in 1923 at the age of 46.17 December 1915. Rev. Shimon (Simon) Grajewsky (1867/68 – c. 13 November 1942) was born in Klimczak in Poland into two rabbinical families. His father, Rabbi Eliezer Zalman Grojevsky, served as a Rabbi in Liverpool, being referred to in March 1916 as “late of Liverpool”. Shimon was educated in Liverpool and at the yeshiva – an institution of higher Jewish learning – at Volozin in Lithuania. From Zionist conviction he settled with his family in Jerusalem. As a British subject it seems that he represented immigrants from Britain to the Turkish authorities. At the outbreak of the First World War he was amongst the thousands who were expelled from Palestine by the Turks. There is some unclear suggestion that Grajewsky served with the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli, and the Jewish Chronicle reported that Captain Robert Sebag-Montefiore died in his arms. Service at Gallipoli is not however recorded in his War Office file, nor did Grajewsky invoke it when he later sought a pension for his service, both of which might have been expected. Grajewsky’s appointment as a temporary chaplain seems to have dated from 11 December 1915, when he was aged around 47. In March 1916 he was appointed visiting chaplain to the Jewish wounded in Alexandria. Announcing this, the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News described him as a thorough Talmudist18 and Hebraist, a refugee from Jerusalem and a passionate lover of

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Great Britain. On 26 August 1916 he was appointed a temporary chaplain fourth class for general service with Egypt Force for one year, and from 17 September 1916 as a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces Fourth Class and Principal Chaplain for Catholes19. On 19 September he signed the formal offer of appointment as a temporary chaplain fourth class for twelve months, which was accepted by the Principal Chaplain of the Egypt Expeditionary Force, Arthur V. C. Hornden, C.M.G. His army file noted that he was a protected British subject. In September or November 1916 Rabbi Yitzchak Frankenthal succeeded him as Acting Jewish Chaplain at Alexandria and, based in Cairo, Grajewsky became the chaplain to all of the Jewish troops in Egypt with his headquarters at 259, Abbas in Cairo, where the Jewish Chronicle reported that he was willing to give any information to relatives of soldiers. In July 1917 Grajewsky described in the Jewish Chronicle the programme of services and activities which had been held in Cairo over the festival of Pentecost and previously over that of Passover for some fifty Jewish soldiers, with leave arranged by Rev. Hornden and hospitality from the Jewish community.20 On 6 August 1917 Grajewsky signed an agreement to renew his contract of service for such period as required, which again was accepted by Hornden. There seems to have been some confusion, because the Jewish Chronicle stated in September 1917 that it had been requested by Grajewsky to state that he was the only Jewish chaplain appointed for Cairo, and giving his new address there as 5 Manchaet-el-Muhrani, Kasr-el-Nil. Australian soldier Sylvester Browne recorded that Jewish chaplains Grajewsky and Frankenthal were in Jerusalem for Passover of 1918.21 In June 1918 Grajewsky was mentioned in despatches. On 11 October 1918, amongst a group of letters about chaplains and New Year and the Day of Atonement services at the front, the Jewish Chronicle published from Mr Joseph Freedman junior of Cricklewood in London a letter headed A Tribute to the Chaplain in Egypt: Will you kindly allow me through the medium of your columns to express grateful thanks to the Rev J Grajewsky, chaplain to the Jewish Forces in Egypt. The boys deeply appreciate the way in which, unobtrusively, he looks after their welfare. In their relations with him, the Jewish boys know that they are dealing not only with a kindly and courteous personality, but with an earnest worker activated by a high standard of public duty as well as with a man of true and exalted Jewish sentiment. His is a task calling for no mean qualities, and his work is rendered more arduous and responsible by the fact that he is called upon to play a great part in the adjustment of the Jewish influx in their new environment. That Mr Grajewsky has succeeded so well in his work is the best of all tributes to his ability, and there will be none who will bear more kindly memories of him than the many Jew soldiers of various

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countries whose good fortune it has been to come under his care. Whatever I may say of him here is, so to speak, but an echo of what would be expressed by the bulk of the Jewish boys.22 In 10 December 1918 the JWSC in London decided not to recommend Grajewsky as chaplain to the forces in Egypt. The background to this decision is not recorded; Grajewsky was already serving in that role, so presumably this addressed the future. On 13 January 1919 the Principal Chaplain to the E.E.F., E.R. Day, wrote on Grajewsky’s report that “This chaplain ministers to the Jewish Soldiers east of the Canal. His visits are carried out regularly. I am not in a position to comment on his ministerial abilities.” Perhaps under the malign influence of a senior officer discussed below, Grajewsky’s military discharge was sanctioned on 11 April 1919, and on 10 June 1919 he was demobilised. He requested a pension on account of his bad health and overworking in doing his duty. Temporary chaplains were not entitled to pensions, and the response is not known. He also sought a position or a recommendation, which the War Office declined. Grajewsky seems to have remained in Jerusalem, principally occupied in study. A Zionist, he corresponded with influential people and bodies in Britain and accompanied a leading Rabbi, Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, to meetings with British government representatives. He died in Jerusalem in 1942 at the age of 75.23 October 1918. Rev. Walter Levin (25 November 1872 – 18 September 1943) was born in Portsmouth and educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and the Jewish residential Aria College in nearby Southsea, Jews’ College and University College London. Ordained in 1898, he served as the minister of North-West London Synagogue from 1899 and then of Muswell Hill North London Synagogue from 1903. From March 1917 until October 1918 he served as an officiating clergymen to Jewish troops in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk within the Army’s Eastern Command. A group photograph of chaplains and officiating clergymen includes Levin in uniform; although said to have been taken in 1917, it may have been taken at the conference of Jewish chaplains which took place on Wednesday 20 February 1918 in Birmingham. In a letter in March 1918 to the Jewish Chronicle, Levin wrote that he had held innumerable services; it was the exception for a Jewish officer to attend; men would not come to the services, and in one instance were found playing cards and smoking in the very hall they had been given by the authorities for religious purposes. On 1 October 1918 Levin applied at the age of 45 for an appointment as a temporary chaplain. He wrote that his father was British by naturalisation and he was British by birth; he had twenty years’ experience of congregational work; he could ride a horse and a bicycle; he had travelled much abroad; he had a

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knowledge of Hebrew, German and French; he was certified medically fit; he was recommended by the senior chaplain to the forces, Michael Adler; and unmarried, his next of kin were his sisters Jenny and Minnie, with whom he lived in London N5. The JWSC wrote to say that they had nominated Levin for service in Italy. There may have been some uncertainty over his desired posting, as they asked that their letter be substituted for one which they had written six days earlier, which was withdrawn. The Chaplains’ Department of the War Office wrote that Levin had been selected as a temporary chaplain with the Italian Expeditionary Force. On 12 October 1918 Levin signed the formal offer to serve as a temporary chaplain fourth class for twenty-four months, and his commission was dated 29 October 1918. On 4 December 1918 Levin was posted to no. 9 CCS in Italy. In a report of 2 January 1919 the RAMC lieutenant-colonel commanding no. 9 CCS wrote: Captain W. Levin has been attached to this CCS about one month. During that time I have formed a high opinion of his work. He is very energetic, tactful and nothing is too much trouble for him to do. He is very tireless in hunting for extra comforts for the patients no matter what denomination they belong to – he is greatly liked by both patients and staff. The chaplain serving as Assistant to the Principal Chaplain at GHQ of the Italian Expeditionary Force added on 5 January that Levin was “possessed of exceptional energy”. In April 1919 Levin was selected for duty with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and told to be prepared to embark from 19 April. In May he was promoted to temporary chaplain to the forces third class, in the rank of major, acting as a senior chaplain to the forces. He served in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. In August 1919 in Egypt he clashed strongly with Rev Yitzchak Frankenthal; this is discussed below. On 16 March 1920 he reverted to the rank of temporary chaplain to the forces fourth class, and he was recorded to be in medical category A1. In November 1920 he was appointed an honorary chaplain to the forces fourth class. Levin returned to the North London Synagogue and in February 1922, at the age of 49, he married Rose Forewood, who had been a VAD nurse in Britain during the war. In 1930 he moved to Bayswater Synagogue, retiring in 1938. He died on 18 September 1943, and on 26 September a memorial service for him was held at the New West End Synagogue, at which Rev. Ephraim Levine paid tribute to him.24 June 1917. Rabbi Yitzchak Uri Frankenthal (14 October 1881 – 17 December 1955) 25 was descended from a Rabbinic family in Russia, his great-

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grandfather having been Rabbi Moshe Magid Rivlin, and studied at various yeshivot in Jerusalem. At the age of 20 he became a Rabbi and went to South Africa where he ministered for eleven years to congregations in the Transvaal. On 14 July 1909 he became a naturalised British subject. He returned to Palestine, whence in 1916 the war obliged him to move to Alexandria. The Chief Rabbi of Alexandria, Professor Raffaelo Della Pergola, had arranged Saturday afternoon services for Jewish soldiers stationed in Alexandria at the Eliyahu Hanabi Synagogue, and Frankenthal was appointed to officiate at them and to preach in English. His printed letterhead read “Special Divine Services for Officers & Soldiers of the Jewish Faith. (Officiating Minister) Rev. I. Frankenthal. Alexandria ... 191.. ” The authorities had directed that communications to Anzac and British Jewish soldiers in Egypt were to be addressed to the Australian Jewish Chaplain, Rev. David Freedman. With Freedman’s departure for France, Frankenthal wrote on 21 July 1916 to Chief Rabbi Hertz in London seeking a recommendation for the vacancy which it had created. After seeking Freedman’s opinion, Hertz replied on 15 September that should he receive an application from the War Office he would be pleased to give it his favourable attention. From September 1916 Frankenthal served as acting Jewish Chaplain for British Forces to the Alexandria District and later, headquartered in Cairo, to all of the Jewish troops in Egypt, the Jewish Chronicle reporting that he was willing to give any information to their relatives. In April 1917 he submitted an application for appointment as a temporary chaplain to H.M. Forces. Writing that, aged 35, he had been the acting chaplain of the Alexandria District for seven months, he furnished references from the Jewish War Services Committee in London (who noted that it would be desirable for Frankenthal and the existing Jewish chaplain to coordinate in their work), Chief Rabbi of Alexandria Della Pergola and British Chief Rabbi Hertz. He submitted, for whatever reason, a further, undated, application, and passed two medicals. The Principal Chaplain of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, V.L. Hardrew, accepted his offer to serve as a chaplain, and his commission, dating from 11 June 1917, was granted. The Jewish Chronicle of 29 June 1917 referred to a letter from Frankenthal to Michael Adler in which he thanked the editor for the kind and regular supply of six copies, which at times proves an incredible relief, and reported that an isolated patient had written “I am no longer alone. The Chronicle has totally removed my loneliness.” On 28 February 1918 the 38th Battalion of the Jewish Legion, with its chaplain Rev. Leib Falk, arrived in Egypt from Britain en route to Palestine. The following day a service was held in the Great Synagogue in Alexandria, at which Frankenthal gave the address of welcome.26 An undated letter from Frankenthal to Jewish soldiers in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force advised them of arrangements for Passover services in Cairo and Alexandria and for

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soldiers in hospital to obtain matzo for Passover. One of the soldiers to whom Frankenthal wrote, on 27 February 1918, about arrangements for Passover in Jerusalem was Harry Moss. Moss was issued with a movement order of 26 March for himself and another man to go on the Kantara Military Railway from Ludd to Jerusalem to attend the Feast of Passover. Moss also had a card with the good wishes of the Jewish Chronicle for a speedy peace with honour, with a Jewish calendar for 1917 from the Rev. Michael Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain and with the stamp of Rev. I. Frankenthal as Jewish Chaplain Alexandria District. A photograph shows Frankenthal together with Chaplain Rev. Simon Grajewsky, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and many officers and others in Jerusalem for Passover in 1918; another undated photograph shows Frankenthal, Grajewsky and other officers in Palestine. On 22 April 1918 Frankenthal’s offer to renew his contract was accepted by the Assistant to the Principal Chaplain, Felix Courtusier. In November 1918 the Jewish Chronicle published a letter written on behalf of the Jewish lads in the Dorset Regiment from what was said to be a Palestinian desert by Private H. Lipkin: We ask your kindness to allow a little space in your valuable journal to register our warm appreciation of the splendid work of our Jewish Chaplain, the Rev. I. Frankenthal. His attention to our spiritual as well as our material needs knows no bounds. During the recent Jewish Holidays, he arranged for the accommodating and feeding of over two hundred and fifty officers and men. He is always thoughtful enough to arrange for baths for our lads coming in from the line. What a boon this was to us he and we well know. Here in the open field we offer our prayers to the Almighty for our Chaplain’s long life and health. May He protect and shield him from the dangers he is daily running on our behalf!27 In a report on Frankenthal of 13 January 1919, Principal Chaplain E. R. Day wrote: “This chaplain ministers to Jewish soldiers west of the Canal. His visits are carried out regularly. I am not qualified to speak of his abilities as a Rabbi. No adverse reports on him have been made to me.” A further report of 28 February 1919 records that he had served for two years and five months: from September 1916 until May 1918 with all units in the Alexandria District; from June 1917 until November 1918 in the Alexandria District and with all units east of the Canal and the front line; and from December until the present date with all units west of the Canal. His medical category was A1. He was fully qualified in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages, had a knowledge of French and understood Arabic and German. Countersigning the report, somebody, perhaps R.E. Boyle, wrote “Mr Frankenthal has been very energetic in the performance of his duties in this District.”

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In perhaps August 1919 Rev. Walter Levin, who had arrived in around May 1919, wrote a highly critical report on Frankenthal. The report did not reach Frankenthal’s army file, but Frankenthal’s reply did. Frankenthal had become ill – the illness is not recorded – and spent some time in Alexandria Military (Officers) Hospital. Written from the hospital at some point between August and November 1919 and undated, his letter, perhaps typed later from a manuscript letter, occupies more than eight closely typed large pages. In thirtythree numbered paragraphs it extracted from Levin’s report his criticisms of Frankenthal, and set out Frankenthal’s responses, in so doing narrating a lot about Frankenthal’s service. Levin’s criticisms were of a lack of training, recognised qualification or experience as a minister of religion; a failure to conduct services; insufficient visits to troops, hospitals, military prisons, field punishment compounds and prisoner of war camps; an absence of records of burials conducted; a disorganised office; a failure to provide returns and records requested by the JWSC in London; and an absence of financial records. Frankenthal’s responses were full, detailed and cogently argued. In response to an allegation that Colonel Samuels, in command of the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, had threatened him with disciplinary action for demanding money from a local civilian dramatic performance on behalf of a local comforts fund, Frankenthal wrote that Samuels, when in Cairo en route for the U.K., had summoned him to his hotel for a private interview and had threatened him with instant demobilisation if he was not to give up the scheme for opening the Jewish Soldiers’ Club in Cairo: The reason he gave for such opposition was that to his opinion it was high time for Jews to abandon their … beliefs and one (sic) for all assimilate with the rest of the world which he hoped they will one day be obliged to do. He also considered the upkeep of chaplains and particularly Jewish Chaplains – a waste of public funds … Mr Samuels concluded with assuring me that he would have me removed before long. 33. I may also point out that all personal dealings that passed between Mr Levin and myself consisted and (sic) 4 interviews of varying durations from three to 10 minutes. The last of these lasting about 10 minutes took place in Mr Piocotto’s office during which owing to my having forgotten to salute him, Mr Levin’s excitement rose to a high pitch, and the threats he used are best left unrepeated. Frankenthal’s letter concluded:

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Lieutenant Lissack, recently of the 40th Royal Fusiliers an intimate friend of Mr Levin, told me that Mr Levin liked very much to remain out here as chaplain to this Force, and that he asked him to write to his (Mr Lissack’s (sic) father, an influential member of the London community, enlisting his help towards that end. Generally, Mr Levin’s attitude gave the impression that he had not come out with intention of ‘investigating’ matters but to find means ‘somehow’ to carry out certain prearranged plans.28 Some support for this derives from Michael Adler, who when Levin died in 1943 wrote in his obituary: As a chaplain in the last war he served in Italy and in Palestine and won universal esteem. At my suggestion the War Office sent him to Palestine to clear up an awkward situation in the Chaplaincy work, which task he accomplished with such tact as to gain the highest commendation of the authorities.29 In August 1919 Frankenthal’s demobilisation was ordered. On 10 November 1919 the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force wrote to the War Office in London, which received his letter on 23 November: In continuation of my A.1/18427 dated the 27th August, 1919, I have the honour to forward herewith a letter received from the Reverend I. Frankenthal, Chaplain to the Forces (Jewish), in reply to the report of the Reverend W. Levin, Senior Chaplain to the Forces (Jewish). I consider that there is nothing in the reply which warrants my changing my previous decision that the Reverend I. Frankenthal should be demobilised, and orders for his demobilisation have been issued.30 Frankenthal relinquished his commission from 30 December 1919, and by an order of 10 January 1920 was invalided out of the army on the recommendation of a medical board. His army file noted that because his demobilisation had been ordered in August 1919, before he went sick, he was not to be gazetted out of the army on account of ill health. Approving his appointment in September 1921 as an Honorary Chaplain to the Forces fourth class, the Deputy Chaplain General noted that adverse reports were not to be applied. Doubtless this meant Levin’s report. Frankenthal moved to Jerusalem and later served as a Rabbi in Johannesburg. He married Sara Fradel (Fannie)

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Zalaznik, and they had four children. He was an officer and chaplain in the British Legion, secretary of the Etz Chaim (Tree of Life) Yeshiva and director of the V’ad Haklali Fund of Jerusalem. He was an inventor and specialised in inventions associated with Shabbat observance. He died in 1955.31

e Conflict between Levin and Frankenthal Levin and Frankenthal both received complimentary references from their superiors. Without Levin’s letter, it is difficult to evaluate the merits of his strictures and Frankenthal’s responses. English born, English educated and some ten years older than Frankenthal, who was traditionally educated in the yeshivot of Jerusalem, Levin may have been conscious of Frankenthal’s doubtless superior Jewish education and have had difficulty in relating to him. He may have been resentful that Frankenthal was a Rabbi, which Levin was not. When Levin arrived in Egypt as Frankenthal’s senior officer in around May 1919, Frankenthal had already been in post for some two years. If, as Frankenthal wrote, Levin had only four brief meetings with him, this seems hardly sufficient to have enabled him to fairly assess and devastatingly criticise Frankenthal’s performance over a two-year period when Levin had not been there. Read together with the comments of Lissack and Adler, this suggests that at Adler’s initiative Levin had come briefed to resolve a perceived chaplaincy problem and that he had opportunistically identified a way to remain in a posting which he found congenial by displacing Frankenthal. He was a single man living with his two sisters and so without domestic ties, with a doubtless unique and, at the age of 46, last opportunity whilst occupying a privileged status within the military hierarchy to enjoy something of the world. For the matter to have reached the War Office, as Adler wrote that it did, and a decision to have been made to despatch a chaplain from another front, the complaint must have emanated from a level of some military seniority. The impetus, or at least a contributory factor, may have been the malign influence of the anglicised Lieutenant Colonel F. D. Samuels. Samuels was an officer of the 3rd London Regiment of the Territorial Force, and the Commanding Office of the 40th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, which was one of the battalions of the Jewish Legion. Samuels had also encountered Rev. Grajewsky, who failed to impress him. Samuels refused to allow him to address the troops, saying that he could talk to individual soldiers who were off duty. Grajewsky wanted the meat eaten by the troops to be killed in accordance with Jewish Law, which was not practical. When invited to dine in the mess, he stipulated raw eggs and either brandy or whisky.32 Serving with the 40th Battalion of the Jewish Legion, Major Henry Myer had been reluctant to entertain Grajewsky and welcomed the arrival of

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Rev. Leib Falk with the 38th Battalion to substitute for him. He recorded that in September 1918: He [Grajewsky] had an interview with the Colonel [Samuels], during which the latter said that he had no use for Padres on active service and that if a man was fit to preach to men when they came out of the line he was fit to fight alongside them too. Just as he said this his chair overbalanced and he fell at full length on the ground. The padre bent over to pick him up and the Colonel said to him that he guessed his spill was the punishment for what he had said.33 On 15 March 1919 Samuels wrote, on the letterhead of Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo, to the Principal Chaplain of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force: “Mr Grajewsky appears to me to be totally unfitted for the duty of C.F. by reason of his manner and lack of any necessary qualifications and I do not consider that his retention in that capacity is advisable. The men do not respect him and he carries no weight.” Samuels strongly advised that Grajewsky be demobilised as soon as possible. This did not affect his personal character, and Samuels believed him to have been mentioned in despatches, “but as a Senior Jewish Officer and in view of my experience as a Commanding Officer I consider Mr Grajewsky quite unfitted for the post of Jewish C.F. in the British Army.” On 11 April 1919 Grajewsky’s release was sanctioned and on 10 June 1919 he was demobilised. Whether this was influenced by what Samuels had written is not recorded. Grajewsky had indeed been mentioned in despatches and, like Frankenthal, there is evidence that the men greatly respected him. Plainly Samuels had issues with Jewish identity in general and non-Anglicised Jewish chaplains in particular. The “awkward situation in the Chaplaincy work” must have referred to Grajewsky and Frankenthal. What it actually was is not clear. By the time that Levin arrived, in around May 1919, Grajewsky had gone. On the face of it, Frankenthal made a compelling justification for his activities, and identified inadequate enquiry by Levin and what may have been a selfish motive of Levin in disposing of Frankenthal in order himself to remain as the Jewish chaplain. In the event Levin was only able to do so for a few months until March 1920.

January 1918. Rev. Leib Aizack Falk (31 January 1889 – 6 May 1957) and the Jewish Legion In the First World War, every other British Jewish chaplain (excepting Raffaelo Della Pergola, who did not serve in the field) ministered to Jewish soldiers as a small minority scattered throughout numerous units of the British Army. The role of Rev. Leib Aizack Falk was different. At the age of 29 it fell to him to

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serve from 1918 until 1921 in Egypt and Palestine as the sole chaplain to what, albeit within the British Army, was an all but entirely Jewish fighting force, the Jewish Legion. Created in August 1917 it came to comprise the 38th, 39th and 40th battalions of the Royal Fusiliers.34 Falk served with the 38th battalion, which was commanded by Lt.-Col. John Henry Patterson, DSO (10 November 1867 – 18 June 1947), a fiery Irish Protestant, Boer War veteran, big game hunter, disciplinarian, philo-Semite and Zionist, who had commanded the Zion Mule Corps at Gallipoli in 1915.35 Patterson’s deputy was Joseph Trumpeldor. Unlike all of the other Jewish chaplains, Falk did not need to locate and maintain contact with the members of a widely scattered and ever mobile network of Jewish soldiers and to negotiate services and facilities for them, but he faced other unique challenges. Born in Bauska in Latvia, Rev. Leib Aizack Falk attended yeshivot at Kaunas (Kovno) and Telsaiai (Telz) in Lithuania. Fearing that he would be conscripted into the army, Falk’s mother sent him alone to Britain. In March 1911 he was ordained as a minister. He ministered to the small Scottish Jewish communities of Ayr, of Inverness and then, from 1912 until 1915, of Dundee. In May 1915 he married Fanny Rosen. The couple moved to Plymouth where in May 1915, on the first day of the festival of Shavuot, Falk was inducted as the minister. Two sons were born.36 From March 1917 Falk served as an officiating clergyman in Southern Command to Jewish troops in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. In August 1917 Patterson recruited him to become the battalion chaplain.37 Falk prepared and submitted the necessary application for naturalisation as a British subject,38 and Lieutenant Vladimir Jabotinsky, an activist in the politics which led to the creation of the Jewish Legion and who served with it throughout its campaign, sought for it to be accelerated.39 The application was granted, and on 27 December 1917 Falk became a naturalised British subject. On 4 January 1918 he submitted his application for appointment as a temporary chaplain to the forces. It stated that he was an ardent Zionist worker and spoke English, Yiddish, other European languages and Hebrew, which was essential for the large number of Hebrew speaking troops in the 38th Battalion. On 25 January 1918 Falk reported for duty at Crown Hill Barracks in Plymouth where the battalion was training and signed the formal offer to serve as a temporary chaplain fourth class for twenty-four months.40 One of the principal opponents of a Jewish unit was, as he had been in 1914, Rev. Michael Adler, who at a banquet in London in 1919 referred to the Jewish Legion by the demeaning name of the “Jordan Highlanders”, causing great resentment to the men of the Legion, who were still at war. Jabotinsky, who had proposed that Jewish soldiers be enabled to transfer into the Jewish Legion, criticised Adler for instructing all of the Jewish chaplains in France to “preach that it was a shameful act to Jews to serve in our regiment”, with the

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The 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers on parade at Crown Hill Barracks at Plymouth in 1916 or 1917.

result that instead of thousands of transfers into it there were only several hundred, so that it took over four months, rather than the few weeks which it should have taken, to form even one battalion.41 Falk later referred bitterly to Adler, commenting that “Like a gallant soldier he went forth to give battle to the protagonists of the Battalion. He sent a letter to the War Office where in strong terms he protested against the formation of the Jewish Units and even labelled the whole idea as ‘irresponsible’ ”.42 Adler nevertheless visited the Legion at Crown Hill in October 1918.43 To try to serve as spiritual mentor to the mainly Russian-born Jews as well as to the “happy-go-lucky” English types, Falk stressed the consistency between the goal of Jewish national revival and England’s war aims, which included the conquest of Palestine, defining both tasks as providential.44 Revolted by bayonet practice, from which “The struggle within me was intense”, he could not bring himself to preach to the men of their duties in time of war in the name of religion.45 Rather he constantly reminded them of their mission: In the remote past the Law went forth from Zion; happy are you that take it unto Zion, to establish in the Sacred Land the glories of our future. Be strong and of good courage, quit yourselves like men.46

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Space does not permit a narration of Falk’s role and experiences over three years. In summary, “Falk performed Sabbath and holiday prayers, cared for the supply of Kosher food, ordered from Jewish merchants in Alexandria and elsewhere religious artefacts such as candles on Hannuka and Matzot on Passover, saw to it that Hebrew speaking nurses be available to care for the wounded, established a library in Hebrew, Yiddish and English,47 served as guide to the soldiers when they visited the pyramids in Egypt, the city of Jerusalem, and other locations, composed letters for soldiers, contacted their families and communities when they did not receive notice from home, and took care of a variety of other spiritual and religious needs.” He had much correspondence with public and private Jewish agencies in England, Egypt and elsewhere, ordering kosher food, urging them to cater to soldiers’ well-being and making enquiries about the condition of soldiers’ families at home and was the censor for soldiers’ letters written in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian.48 He wrote that it had been his sad duty to bury nearly one hundred soldiers of the Jewish Battalions, whose graves were to be found in every military cemetery up and down the Holy Land from Deir el-Beileh to Mount Scopus.49 The 38th Battalion had a very difficult march through the Jordan Valley to Jericho, which was torrid and malaria infested. As Patterson described it, the heat was intense and the dust was a foot deep, choking the men and sucking their feet down: Those who did fall by the wayside were helped along by our Padre, the Rev L. A. Falk, who gave up his horse to the footsore and carried the pack and rifle of the weary, thus cheering them along into camp. This time it was the priest who proved the good Samaritan on the road to Jericho.50 Vladimir Jabotinsky wrote: The padre, Reverend Mr. Falk, held out bravely against the general attack of a whole regiment of skeptical [sic] lieutenants, who pleaded that being a Zionist had nothing to do with eating Kosher food. He stood like a rock by his principle. ‘It isn’t a question of eating. It is a principle that the Jew must always fight against all temptation, control and discipline himself at every step, and build a Zion of purity in his heart before building a Zion for his people’.51 …… the men come to him in trouble, and he is their confidant in all their sorrows. …. We, officers and men of the first Jewish battalion, saw Mr Falk in the front line many a time, by day and by night, both on the Nablous Road and in the Jordan Valley – and during bombardments,

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A service of the 40th Battalion of the Jewish Legion in camp in Egypt or Palestine between 1918 and 1921. Courtesy of the Adrian Andrusier Image Collection.

too. Once he went by day to Abweru – a village between our lines and the Turkish, which was held by one of our detachments, but with which communication was only allowed after nightfall, because the road to it was in full view of the enemy batteries. I must add that Mr Falk’s civic courage in upholding his opinions was by no means beneath the level of his soldierly pluck ….52 The authorities were satisfied with Falk’s performance of his duties. On 13 January 1919, after Falk had been in post for a year, the Principal Chaplain of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, E. R. Day, wrote in his report on him that “This Chaplain ministers to the 38th Royal Fusiliers and other Jewish battalions and I understand is diligent in his ministrations”. On 15 June 1920, by which time Falk’s two-year appointment had already expired, Day accepted Falk’s formal offer to renew his contract for up to twelve months. In October 1920 Falk was hospitalised in Lydd with pyrexia and clinical malaria53, whence on 6 November he was transferred to a hospital in Ismailia and thence to another in Kantara, from which he was discharged on 19 November. At some point Falk’s wife Fanny and their two children joined him in Palestine. On 10 January

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1921 the family embarked at Port Said for the UK, arriving on 25 January. Falk was released from the army with effect from that day, which was three years to the day from when he had reported for duty. For his service he was mentioned in despatches.54 On his return to Britain Falk sought a ministerial position but found only brief appointments as a relief minister. Partly because of his support for Zionism he was approached in 1922 by the Great Synagogue in Sydney in Australia to become the Second Reader to Rabbi Francis Lyon Cohen. He arrived there with his family on 19 September 1922 in time for Rosh Hashanah, and was inducted into office within days. Two more children, a son and a daughter, were born. Falk’s memoirs, written in London in 1921, were serialised in a Jewish journal, The Maccabean, in Australia in 1929. He was to serve the Sydney congregation until his death. During a period of leave of absence to study in Jerusalem he received his Rabbinical diploma from Rav Kook in 1936.55 On 7 June 1935 Falk was commissioned as a Chaplain to the Australian Forces. At the end of 1939 he became the Jewish chaplain to the Citizen Military Forces established for home defence. In 1942 he was appointed to the Eastern Command. In the Second World War his three sons all served in the Australian forces and all survived the war. A family photograph of Falk and his sons, all in uniform, is captioned “The Fighting Falks”.56 Falk also acted as chaplain to Jewish internees from Germany and Austria who from September 1940 were interned in Hay Camp in Australia.57 After the war he acted as a chaplain to the New South Wales Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and became well known for his Anzac Day addresses. He died in 1957 at the age of 68, and a thousand people attended his funeral in Sydney.

Conclusion on Jewish Chaplaincy in the First World War When their chaplaincy service began Freedman was aged 41, Levin 45, Adler 46, Grajewsky about 47, Geffen 48 and Goldston and Price 53. Goldston lost his son Lionel and Geffen his son Ernest in the war. Adler had a son, Sidney, who was wounded.58 The twenty British and the three Australian Jewish chaplains personified in microcosm some of the most contentious issues within British Jewry during the First World War. The one matter which did not become an issue was religiosity. In September 1914 Adler appointed the Reform minister Phillips as officiating clergyman to the Jewish soldiers in Manchester, without reference and to the irritation of the Chief Rabbi. Simmons was also a minister of the Reform denomination, whilst all of the other chaplains were Orthodox ministers. As Senior Jewish Chaplain Adler supported him throughout, conducted at least two joint services with him and recommended him for a mention in

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despatches. When Simmons was forcefully criticised by a seemingly Orthodox officer for leading men away from tradition, Adler, far from adopting an Orthodox position, defended him as one of his chaplains. Within the Jewish community at large, the response was different; Simmons was castigated for advocating in December 1916 a departure from tradition and an accommodation with modernity. Two years later, in February 1919, the Orthodox minister Barnett provoked virtually no response for publicly advocating much the same thing. The recruiting advertisements placed by the Jewish community encouraged Jews to join any unit of the Army. Very early in the war the idea emerged of all-Jewish unit. This issue became a wartime touchstone of Jewish integration into British life. There were various arguments in its favour, including facilitating religious observance of the Sabbath and festivals and of kashrut. An Orthodox minister might have been expected to be swayed by that argument. Not so Adler, then the only chaplain, who vigorously opposed the proposal, using and arguably abusing his position to take his arguments directly to the War Office. Three years later he was equally forthright in opposing the creation of the Jewish Legion, ridiculing it publicly and discouraging soldiers from taking the opportunity to apply to transfer into it. Perhaps with little option once it became a reality, he did however spend time in camp with it. By contrast the idea of an all-Jewish fighting force was strongly supported by the Lithuanian-born Falk and the English-born Lipson. Adler took a laudatory view of the virtual absence of antisemitism within the army and viewed the war as providing an opportunity for Jews to educate their fellows about the tenets of Judaism. No doubt reflecting his own experiences, he wrote: I have frequently been asked whether there were any signs of antiSemitism in the life of the great British Army, and I say without the slightest hesitation, that whatever indication of ill-feeling there was towards the Jew was so small as to be entirely negligible. The Christian soldier was warmly attached to his Jewish ‘pal’, and the relations between the soldiers of all denominations were remarkably cordial. I received frequent letters from Christian soldiers telling me about their Jewish friends in most affectionate terms, and, almost without exception, Jewish men spoke very highly of their treatment by their brothers-inarms.59 Adler was cast in the heroic mould of a heroic age. For him Jews demonstrated their loyalty to their “host” country by integrating into units within the Army, where antisemitism was all but unknown and not tolerated and Jews inevitably won respect for proudly affirming their Jewish identity.

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This Panglossian thinking contrasted with the more realistic assessment by Barnett of the Jewish anaesthesia which the war had induced, typified by the preference of Jewish soldiers for the prohibited food which many had never tasted at home and the consequent embarrassment which this caused to the Jewish chaplains, and with the observation by Freedman of many Jews within the Australian and British armies concealing their Jewish identity for fear of prejudice. Although not the subject of this study, the author has encountered overall relatively little evidence of antisemitism within the British armed forces. This contrasts with the position in the German Army, in which antisemitism was a constant presence, increasing significantly after 1916 as the fortunes of war turned. German Jews had more difficulty than others in gaining promotion, including to officer status, although Jewish soldiers were well treated in relation to religious services in the field and leave for Jewish festivals. Popular suspicion in Germany that Jews were serving in disproportionally small numbers and the traditional antisemitism of the Prussian officer corps within the Prussian War Ministry led to a census of Jews serving, the Judenzählung, of October 1916. When this census proved inconclusive it was not published, which facilitated the post-war perpetuation of the claim that Jews had been underrepresented in the military.60 There was never any analogous census in the Austro-Hungarian army. In Britain some harboured the same suspicion that Jews were under-represented in the army but, perhaps supporting the Endelman/Feldman thesis, the idea of such a census would have been unthinkable, even without by that stage the presence of several serving Jewish chaplains. The issue of Zionism was toxic. Like many within the British Jewish establishment, Adler was anti-Zionist, and it took a visit to Palestine in 1928 to change his mind. Falk, by contrast was a religiously inspired Zionist who rejected secular Zionism and grasped the epochal opportunity for a Jewish army to liberate and redeem the Land of Israel. Yet, with his own intense patriotism to his adoptive country of Britain, he differed from his Zionist mentor, Jabotinsky, in seeing this as integrated within the national identity of Jews as citizens of Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States, rather than as a separate Palestinian Jewish identity. Brodie and Levy supported Zionism, as did Chief Rabbi Hertz. Having lived in Jerusalem, Frankenthal was probably a religious Zionist and Grajewsky certainly was. Many of the chaplains were English born ministers cast in the English mould. They included Adler, Barnett, Brodie, Goldstone, Hirsch, Levin, Levine, Lieberman, Morris, Price and Silverman, as well as many of the officiating clergymen. To anglicised officers from the upper echelons of society with often limited Jewish knowledge and religious observance, these ministers were viewed as religious functionaries and did not pose a challenge. Other ministers,

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from a different background, did. Grajewsky, although partially educated in England, and Frankenthal, who never lived there, were not cast in the English mould and did not carry a patina of Englishness. Both were abusively castigated by the assimilated and anglicised Colonel Samuels, who felt embarrassed by them. Frankenthal was also vigorously and comprehensively criticised by the anglicised Levin. The criticisms were inevitably based upon hearsay, and Levin may have had a personal motive. For more independent spirits, Australia held an allure. Of the Australian chaplains, Freedman had gone there from Britain in 1897, Danglow in 1905 and Cohen in 1906. Brodie, Falk, Hirsch, Levine and Levy went there at different stages after the war. Probably their motives were a combination of limited ministerial opportunities in Britain and the chance to escape from the heavy-handed control of the Orthodox religious establishment in Britain to the virtual autonomy of an emerging, independently minded and far away Australia. The issue of Zionism remained divisive in Australia for many years, contributing to rifts between ministers. Cohen, Danglow and Boas opposed Zionism, although Danglow later embraced it, whilst Brodie, Falk and Levy supported it.61 After the war Silverman gravitated from Orthodoxy to the Reform movement and from Britain to New York and Jamaica. Levy, Liebermann and Morris left the ministry to become lawyers. Several of the ministers went on to serve in the Second World War as chaplains or officiating clergymen, Gollop and then Brodie as Senior Jewish Chaplain. British Jewish chaplaincy in the First World War largely centred upon Adler, who was the prime mover throughout. He fought to be allowed to serve in the field, opening the way for the gradual appointment of eighteen more Jewish field chaplains. Without his initiative, there might not have been British Jewish chaplains in the field at all; if there had been, they would probably have arrived later than the earlier appointees did, and might have remained civilians, as they did in Germany. Adler was single-minded in his convictions. In the early months of the war it plainly did not occur to him that he might be taking too much upon himself in seeking to speak effectively for the Jewish community in opposing the creation of a Jewish unit. He fought to be allowed to take his conception of chaplaincy to the battlefield and to the front. In 1917 he maintained his principled opposition to the creation of a Jewish unit. He refused to endorse the recommendation of Geffen for a decoration because he had not yet received one himself. He even undid the goodwill of a friendly conversation with a private soldier by returning in his car to insist upon a salute. For him the chaplaincy was everything, and he refused to allow it to be undermined by denominational considerations, supporting a Reform minister and even dissenting from the Chief Rabbi.

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On probably his most controversial decision, about the Australian Passover arrangements in 1917, Adler could not see Freedman’s position, nor did he consider drawing back from overriding Freedman’s authority. He said that he had received letters from other Jewish soldiers protesting the unfairness of the arrangements for the Anzacs alone; but these are unlikely to have been many and his conviction was clearly his own. To have taken the issue to the Australian commanding general must, whatever the outcome, have served to prejudice his relationship with Freedman and to undermine Freedman’s standing in the eyes of hundreds of Jewish soldiers from Australia and New Zealand, whose troops were characterised by a robust independence and a less than British deference to authority. Adler was hurt by the criticism in London of his decision, and was probably unable to understand it. From the age of 46 Adler spent more than three years on the western front, with only short home leaves. When on leave, with no wife to comfort and counsel him, he had to contend with committees who considered him accountable to them and of whose lack of understanding of the realities of existence in the field he must have despaired. Even if not in the front line for all of the time, he was never far from trauma, mutilation and death. Nobody returned from the war unmarked by their experiences. A product of his time, yet an innovator who, as Barnett recognised, made rather than investigated history, Adler transformed a single-minded vision into a reality. Barnett’s assessment of his achievement as a creatio ex nihilo was justified. Adler created a Jewish military field chaplaincy, which came to be emulated within the Empire and in the United States. Passing away in September 1944, he lived to see that by the time of the Second World War his vision of British Jewish chaplaincy in the field had become normative. Exemplifying the thesis of Endelman and Feldman of the gradualism of British Jewish integration, the development of Jewish chaplaincy was incremental and experimental. At various points the authorities declined to make appointments requested by the Jewish community. The only point at which they took the initiative was in the militarily critical summer of 1917, when they requested the appointment of two chaplains for France in June and may then have been more pro-active until the summer of 1918. That apart, the initiatives came entirely from the Jewish community: its establishment bodies and individuals, including Adler, the complaints by soldiers of the lack of chaplains and in the case of the Jewish Legion its Zionist supporters. Of these the seminal initiative was Adler’s at the outset of the war to serve in the field. “Unofficial chaplaincy”, conducted by people who were not commissioned chaplains or ministers of religion serving as officiating clergymen, cannot be assessed by any empirical measure. There were never enough ministers of religion, nor from the modestly sized Jewish community, with a large and still insufficiently anglicised immigrant element, could there possibly have been.

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There is much evidence of services regularly conducted at numerous locations within Britain by laymen, both civilians and officers and soldiers of all ranks, as well as by ministers of religion. Whilst stationed in Britain many soldiers were content to absent themselves from religious services. On active service abroad, however, many made enormous and sometimes courageous and exhausting efforts to attend services. Many rarely if ever encountered a Jewish chaplain. Some were content, even enthusiastic, to take the unprecedented opportunity to desist from Jewish practice and within the conformist military environment not to stand out from their fellow soldiers. Others made efforts, some of which may fairly be termed heroic, to do whatever they could, however modest, to adhere to their Judaism. Of unofficial chaplaincy the author has encountered numerous diverse instances. There must have been innumerable others, unrecorded and irretrievable. It seems fair to say that in the First World War the unofficial variant was a significant element of British Jewish military chaplaincy.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion (New York: Bernard Ackerman, 1945), pp. 34, 40. J. H. Patterson, With the Zionists in Gallipoli (London: Hutchinson, 1916), p. 235. Or on 31 March: Martin Sugarman, The Zion Muleteers at Gallipoli (March 1915-May 1916) in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139, at 116; or 1 April 1915: Watts, The Jewish Legion, p. 26. Patterson, Gallipoli, pp. 34-36. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, p. 18. JW 5/5/1915, p. 18. Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 116 and in JVL. Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 117. Patterson, Gallipoli, p. 37. Denis Brian, The Seven Lives of Colonel Patterson. How an Irish Lion Hunter Led the Jewish Legion to Victory (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008), p. 87 and generally. Patterson, Gallipoli, pp. 43-5. Patterson, Gallipoli, pp. 45-46. JVL. Watts, The Jewish Legion, p. 27. Patterson, Gallipoli, p. 40. Watts, The Jewish Legion, pp. 27, 46. Peter Liddle, Men of Gallipoli: the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Experience August 1914 to January 1916 (first published 1976; Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1988) (“Liddle 1”), pp. 161-2; The Gallipoli Experience Reconsidered (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2015) (“Liddle 2”), p. 123, citing Col. F. W. Parker as an unpublished source in recollections in manuscript, tape recorded recollections and photographs. Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 119-120. Fred Waite, The New Zealanders at Gallipoli (Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1919), p. 164. Cecil Bloom, Colonel Patterson, Soldier and Zionist in JHS, vol.31, 1988-1990, pp. 231-248 at 231. Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 123. JW 29/9/1915, p. 23.

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14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

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Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 131. Liddle 1 and 2. Sugarman, Zion Muleteers in JHS, vol.36, 1999-2000, pp. 113-139 at 133. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, p. 107. Alyson Pendlebury, Portraying ‘the Jew’ in First World War Britain (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006), pp. 124-5. Dr H. H. Ben-Sasson, The Zion Mule Corps at Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, jabotinsky.org, K1-28, pp. 10-11. Reports of Rev. D. I. Freedman in JM, file 2011.74. JC11/6/1915, p. 10; 11/2/1916, pp. 8, 18; 31/3/1916, p. 15. JW 8/9/1915, p. 22; 22/3/1916, p. 18; 29/3/1916, p. 15. Information provided by Professor Sergio Della Pergola (grandson). The Talmud is a vast work of commentaries and teachings on the Torah. Seemingly a place in Egypt. JC 20/7/1917, p. 17. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 120. JC 11/10/1918, p. 18. National Archives, files WO/374/28520, WO/372/24/25006. Myer, Soldiering of Sorts, pp. 125, 134. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 120. BJBH, illustrations, pp. 31, 234, 312. Encyclopaedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel (Touro College Libraries), vol.1, pp. 450-1. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, pp. 153-4. Reports of Rev. D. I. Freedman in JM, file 2011.74. JWSC minute book, 10/12/1918. JC 31/3/1916, p. 14; 10/11/1916, p. 13; 20/7/1917, p. 17; 14/9/1917, p. 25; 21/6/1918, p. 10; 11/10/1918, p. 18. JW 29/3/1916, pp. 15-16; 5/4/1916, p. 13; 15/11/1916, p. 15; 20/11/1942, p. 13 (obituary). National Archives, file WO/374/41850. BJBH, illustrations, p. 201. JC 8/3/1918, p. 7; 22/3/1918, p. 8; 3/5/1918, p. 24; 14/5/1920, p. 13; 17/2/1922, p. 8; 24/9/1943, p. 8; 1/10/1943, p. 9. Frankenthal was appointed some eight months before Levin, but is more conveniently addressed out of sequence. Falk Memoirs 7/6/1929. JC 15/11/1918, p. 16. National Archives, file WO 374/22512. JC 24/9/1943, p. 8. National Archives, file WO 374/22512. National Archives, files WO 374/22512 (Frankenthal); WO 374/41850 (Levin); WO/374/28520, WO/372/24/25006 (Grajewsky). LMA, ACC/ 2805/04/04/001. BJBH, illustrations, pp. 234, 312. Zalaznik family tree. Reports of Rev. D. I. Freedman in JM, file 2011.74. Documents in the possession of Barry (son of Harry) Moss and author’s interview with him 3/7/2014. JC 11/2/1916, pp. 8, 18; 28/4/1916, p. 14; 10/11/1916, p. 13; 29/6/1917, pp. 18-19; 15/11/1918, p. 16; 24/9/1943, p. 8 (Levin obituary). JW 9/2/1916, p. 20; 18/10/1916, pp. 10, 14; 15/11/1916, p. 15. On Principal Chaplain E. R. Day, see Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 53, 150. Myer, Soldiering of Sorts, pp. 125, 134. Ibid., p. 124. The term “Jewish Legion” was never in fact an official term: Casper, A Decade with South African Jewry, pp. 15-18. Its formation was reported in The Times of 8/8/1917, reproduced on its centenary in The Times of 8/8/2017, p. 24, as “The Jewish Corps”. Patrick Streeter, Mad for Zion. A Biography of Colonel J. H. Paterson (Harlow: The Matching Press, 2004), p. 89 n. 22. Brian, The Seven Lives of Colonel Patterson, p. 85. Shlomit Keren and Michael Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David: Reverend Leib Isaac Falk and the Jewish Legions, in Israel Affairs, vol. 14, issue 2, April 2008, pp. 184 - 201 at 186. David A. Gluck, A Tribute to my Great Grandfather Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk (educational project, 2004). University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 185, AJ 320 1/1, Papers

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37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

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of M.J.Landa. The Maccabean: 15, 22 February; 1, 8, 22 March; 5 April; 3, 10, 17 May; 7, 21 June; 5, 19 July; 2 August; 27 September; 4, 11, 18 October; 1, 8, 22 November, 1929: L. A. Falk, With the Jewish Battalions in Palestine. Memoirs of a Jewish Chaplain (“Falk Memoirs”), 15/2/1929. Journal of the Great Synagogue, Sydney: September 1977, p. 14: Louise Rosenberg, Rabbi’s Falk’s Four Years as Jewish Legion Chaplain. JM, photographs and documents in boxes 201, 202. JC 28/5/1915 p. 19; 14/9/1917, p. 25; 14/12/1917, pp. 12-13; 1/2/1918, p. 5; 8/2/1918, p. 16; 8/3/1918, pp. 6, 13; 6/9/1918, p. 16; 9/5/1919, p. 16; 16/5/1919, p. 17; 11/7/1919, p. 13; 18/7/1919, p. 18. JW 12/5/1915, p. 25; 2/6/1915, p. 13 (photograph). Patterson, With the Judeans, p.35. University of Cambridge, Special Collection ADD 8171, especially Box 4, Letters of Redcliffe Salaman, letter 7/10/1917. Jabotinsky Institute, at A1-2/7, 2712. National Archives: files HO/144/1485/351707, HO/334/81/2978 and naturalisation certificate A2978; War Office Officer’s File, WO/374/23512; Medal Card WO/372/7/12700. Michael Keren and Shlomit Keren, We Are Coming, Unafraid. The Jewish Legions and the Promised Land in the First World War (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010); chapter 7 deals with Falk. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, p. 101. Patterson, With the Judeans, p. 25. Watts, The Jewish Legion, pp. 117, 259. Elias Gilner, War and Hope. A History of the Jewish Legion (New York: Herzl Press, 1969), pp. 111-12. The Jewish Legion – Fiftieth Anniversary of the Jewish Battalions 1917-1967, Jabotinsky Institute, at K1-28, p. 3. Falk Memoirs, 15/2/1929. Keren and Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David, pp.187-8; We Are Coming, Unafraid, pp. 109-110. JC 25/10/1918, p. 21. Keren and Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David, p. 191; We Are Coming, Unafraid, p. 113. Falk Memoirs, 22/3/1929, 5/4/1929. Falk Memoirs, 5/4/1929. Keren and Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David, pp. 192, 195-6; We Are Coming, Unafraid, p. 115, sourced to Falk Private Papers, Israel Defence Force Archive. Falk Memoirs, 17/5/1929 have this as a section of a longer message along the same lines from the Senior Jewish Chaplain Home Forces, Rev. S. Lipson, which Falk was directed to read at a Sabbath service whilst the Battalion was travelling through Italy. JC 18/7/1919, p. 18. Falk Memoirs, 8/3/1929, 4/10/1929. Keren and Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David, pp. 188-9; We Are Coming, Unafraid, pp. 109, 111. Jabotinsky Institute, at K1-14. JM, boxes 201, 202. Gluck, A Tribute to my Great Grandfather, p. 12. Patterson, With the Judeans, pp. 86-7. Watts, The Jewish Legion, p. 186. Jabotinsky, The Story of the Jewish Legion, p. 106. JC 11/7/1919, p. 13. Forces War Records, citing National Archives file MH 106/788, records of no. 34 Combined Clearing Hospital, Jerusalem, from 5/6/1918 to 25/2/1919 (although this sub-file is not in the National Archives Discovery Catalogue). Falk family correspondence. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 151. Falk Memoirs. Falk family correspondence. Gluck, A Tribute to my Great Grandfather. AJHS, pp. 344-355 at pp. 352-3 (paper read on 31 July 1969), Rabbi Dr A. Fabian, The Jewish Chaplaincy in Australia, 1969. Apple, p. 240. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 161 and plates 26, 28. Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Chaplains in WW1. http://ww1chaplains. gravesecrets.net. Gluck, A Tribute to my Great Grandfather. Undated Falk family article.

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57. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora, p. 203. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 228. Information about Hay Camp (undated). 58. Sidney Michael Adler served in the 13th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (London Regiment), initially from 10 May 1914 and on active service from 14 April 1915, rising to the rank of captain. He was twice wounded, on 24 October 1915 and on 24 July 1916, and was commended for home war service. National Archives, medal card file WO372/1/25089. Forces War Records. 59. BJBH, pp. 44-46. 60. Madigan and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Gavin Wiens, A Mixed bag of Loyalties: Jewish Soldiers, Ethnic Minorities, and State-Based Contingents in the German Army, 19141918, pp. 137-158. Peter C Appelbaum, Loyal Sons: Jews in the German Army in the Great War (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2015), esp. pp. 296-300. 61. AJHS, 1995, Apple, pp. 723-730.

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Rev. Michael Adler The Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918. On 6 April 1919 a symposium was held in London on “The Jewish Soldier and His Religion”. Speakers included Revs. Levin, Lipson, Morris and Danglow and Lieutenant Boas. Having seen both great disregard of and great attachment to Jewish observances by Jewish soldiers, the chaplains challenged the view that Jewish soldiers had become apathetic towards organised religion and discussed the difficulties which they had faced of locating widely dispersed Jewish soldiers without having any transport facilities and their role as a link between soldiers and their homes.1 When Arthur Barnett was demobilised in August 1920 Michael Adler continued as the Acting Jewish Chaplain in the Territorial Force.2 In October 1920 there was a reunion of the Jewish chaplains. Ten of the eighteen attended, and tributes were paid to Adler.3 In November 1920 the Cenotaph in London was unveiled. Chief Rabbi Hertz was on a pastoral visitation to the Dominions, so Adler represented him at the unveiling.4 In June 1919 the JWSC published, at the price of one penny, a booklet written by Adler entitled The Jews of the Empire and the Great War. Introduced by a stirring poem of the patriotism of British Jews for Britain, it discussed enthusiastic voluntary enlistment, chaplains, the work of the JWSC and two hospitals, one opened for Jews and the other staffed by Jews. It described the courageous deeds of the five Jews who had been awarded the Victoria Cross and of others and the Jewish units – the Zion Mule Corps and the 38th, 39th and 40th Royal Fusiliers. Drawing a veil over his own subversion of the proposal, Adler wrote that: In the early part of the War, the War Office gave facilities for an attempt to be made to enlist Jews to serve together in units on the principle of ‘Pals’ Battalions which were so popular in some of the provincial cities, but the result was not a success. 5 As soon as the war ended Adler began work compiling a statement of the part played by British Jews during the war, and appealed for information and

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photographs.6 His monumental British Jewry Book of Honour, a vast compilation of British and Imperial Jewish endeavours in the Great War, was published in 1922. It provided irrefutable and powerful proof of the commitment and patriotism of British Jewry, which had been continually called into question during the war and continued to be questioned with even more malice after it.7 From wartime accusations of Jewish shirking, profiteering and want of patriotism, antisemitism assumed a more political aspect, challenging not only the loyalty and commitment of British Jewry but its very Englishness. Historian Gisela Lebzelter has written that latent prejudice against Jews surfaced after the First World War, subsided during the years of increasing stability and prosperity during the second half of the 1920s, reappeared during the crisis of the early 1930s and reached its climax in 1935–6 when it became the principal propaganda instrument of the British Union of Fascists; however antisemitism failed to become a relevant political force because of its lack of historical tradition in England and, with little ostentatious élitist support, its lack of respectability.8 Established in 1917, the Imperial War Graves Commission consulted Adler in 1919 about Jewish gravestones and created a design comprising a Magen David emblem bearing within it the four Hebrew letters which are traditional for a tombstone. As the work of laying out cemeteries in France and Belgium began, large numbers of bodies were exhumed from where they lay and reinterred in the new cemeteries. In April 1920 Adler suggested to the IWGC that the appropriate prayer from the burial service in the Jewish Prayer Book be distributed to relevant officers for use if no Jewish chaplain was available, and the IWGC duly passed this suggestion to the War Office.9 One of the decisions which fell to be made by the IWGC was that in war cemeteries Jewish soldiers would be buried not in separate Jewish sections but alongside everybody else. Adler was consulted on the debate which led to this decision, upon which there were some strong contrary views within the Jewish community.10 In November 1920 Adler initiated correspondence with the IWGC for him to tour the battlefields to report on Jewish graves and to read the burial service over bodies which were exhumed for reburial. In June 1921 the London Chevra Kadisha – burial society – appealed in the Jewish press for funds. This enabled Adler, at the age of 53, to tour the battlefield cemeteries. Published in October 1921, his report recorded that he motored hundreds of miles and lived amid the ruins of devastated areas. Of nearly two thousand cemeteries in France and Belgium, he visited one hundred and thirty which contained anything between a single grave and thirty-one Jewish graves. He also encountered many German Jewish graves. In every cemetery he held a brief memorial service. The cemeteries were being laid out and new tombstones being fashioned and erected. Some of the original grave memorials of Jewish soldiers had been

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destroyed or damaged, and Adler discovered that as bodies were brought in for reburial mistakes in identification were being made, of which he made a list for the IWGC. He re-erected some twenty original Jewish grave memorials pending the erection of tombstones, and from the inscription on one grave marker was able to identify a Jewish soldier whose grave had been marked as unknown.11 The religion of a soldier being laid to rest was not always clear. In April 1922 the IWGC agreed to accept a man as a Jew on the strength of Adler’s list of Jews who had served if the IWGC’s files did not show his religion.12 In 1922 a religiously observant father travelled from Australia to Britain in order to request that the Jewish name of his son, Captain Roy Hector Blashki, who had been mentioned in despatches and had been killed on 3 August 1917, appear in Hebrew characters on his tombstone. The Commission was resistant on pragmatic grounds, and invited Chief Rabbi Hertz to attend its meeting on Tuesday 23 May 1922 to present the case. Accepting the Commission’s position that on grounds of equality of treatment the Hebrew name could not appear above the Magen David, the Chief Rabbi argued for it to be within the text of the personal inscription, whose cost was usually borne by the next of kin. The Commission feared setting a precedent, and the Chief Rabbi said that if the application were granted he would not take any steps to make the decision generally known. The Commission acceded to the request.13 Other similar requests nevertheless followed, and the principle came to be accepted. In 1923 and 1924 the Office of the Chief Rabbi approved a number of requests for Hebrew names and inscriptions for Jewish graves and supplied full size drawings of them with, as was required, an exact translation. On occasion, as with Able Seaman H. Rosen in January 1923, it also arranged for the Cross which had been erected over a grave to be replaced by a Jewish Memorial.14 In 1922, being aged over 50, Michael Adler transferred at his own suggestion from the active to the reserve list of Territorial chaplains, although he retained charge of the work for the regular Army, Navy and Air Force.15 He retained the title of Senior Jewish Chaplain until 1926, when he resigned on 15 October, apparently because he had expected to serve on the Military Service Committee, although it seems that the committee did not include any chaplaincy representation. At his request he retained responsibility for matters relating to the IWGC. The Deputy-Chaplain General, Owen S. Watkins, wrote to him on 15 October 1926: It is with regret that your resignation is accepted. We all recognise the great service you have rendered during the past twenty-three years, especially during the dark days of the Great War. You have brought the Jewish Community into close touch with His Majesty’s Land Forces, as I believe to your advantage and ours. May I express, on behalf of the

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Chaplain General and the whole Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, our very sincere and heartfelt thanks.16 As fascism grew in the 1930s, Adler was called upon to continue his work of memorialising the contribution of Britain’s Jews in the Great War. He responded to an antisemitic article in a German newspaper with an article entitled The truth about the British Jews at the front in the Great War.17 Responding to hostile and fascist attacks, he worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews to reissue the pamphlet entitled The Jews of the Empire and the Great War.18 He was the author of an undated four page booklet, also produced in conjunction with the Board of Deputies, entitled What the Jews of the British Empire did in the Great War – Read and learn the True Facts. It stated: Here are the facts based upon official records, compiled and set forth in the ‘British Jewry Book of Honour’ by the Senior Jewish Chaplain to H. M. Forces, the Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O., and his brother Chaplains, who accompanied the Armies in France, Belgium, Italy, Gallipoli, Salonika, Palestine, East and West South Africa. These facts completely demolish the lies so assiduously spread by British Fascists as to British Jewry’s part in the war.19 Adler retired from the Central Synagogue in 1934 after thirty-one years’ service. H.M. Forces Committee had been formed in 1927 as a sub-committee of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue, with Adler as one of its members. In 1936 he decided to resign from it through ill health. The committee prevailed upon him to withdraw his resignation, on the basis that he need only attend meetings when his health permitted and, much touched by its wish, he agreed to do so.20 Adler died on 30 September 1944 at the age of 76. Rev. Arthur Barnett in a memorial address21 and chaplain Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz in a commemoration address22 spoke of his chaplaincy achievement. In 1946 Barnett wrote: If Michael Adler were, himself, asked what he considered to be the best work of his life he would have unhesitatingly replied: ‘The Army Chaplaincy’. And nobody who knew him as the Jewish Padre could but agree that no task that he ever attempted was better done than this. Again it was pioneer work. At the outbreak of the First World War he was the only Jewish Chaplain to have held His Majesty’s Commission in the Army. He was faced now with the tremendous task of organising an adequate Jewish Chaplaincy for work in the field as well as at home. The peculiar problems of the Jewish Servicemen scattered in almost

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every army unit were well-nigh insurmountable. In addition, the War Office was at a loss to know what to do with a Jewish Chaplain in the field and refused to allow Adler to go overseas. It was only his persistence and tenacity which finally overcame the objection, and in January 1915, for the first time in the history of the British Army, a Jewish Chaplain was ministering to Jewish troops in the field. But a disagreeable surprise awaited him. On arrival at the base Adler was confronted with a letter from the Army Council which ordered him ‘on no account to venture beyond the lines of communication’. Again it was only his indomitable will, his refusal to capitulate to frustration and obstruction, that enabled him to surmount disabilities. He was not the man to be content with the job of ‘carpet-chaplain’. He made his way to G.H.Q. – and the Army Council’s letter was torn up. That was how he began. It is not possible here to continue the story of how he built up the Jewish Chaplaincy during the War. Suffice it to say that it was a creatio ex nihilo. With no precedent to guide him, with nothing but his own forcefulness of purpose and growing experience, he organized the department with such efficiency that before the war was over he had received promotion in rank, a two-fold mention-in-despatches and the signal honour of the D.S.O. He was indefatigable in his energies, infectious in his enthusiasm, dynamic in his influence on his colleagues, and impressive in his devotion to the Jewish soldier’s well-being. Many thousands of Jews will remember him with gratitude and honour. During those tragic years he made Jewish history rather than investigated it.23 Barnett, whom Adler had selected and prepared as his successor, knew better than anybody of Adler’s endeavours. His assessment was accurate. He might have added that much of the memorialisation of the Jewish military contribution to the Allied war effort was attributable to the initiative of Adler.

e Interwar Years After the First World War Jewish communal responsibility for matters military reverted to the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue, and in 1920 the Admiralty and the Air Ministry wrote to it recognising its role. In May 1920 there were discussions with the War Office whether there should be a permanent Jewish chaplaincy or reliance upon officiating clergymen. In August 1920 the Visitation Committee advised the War Office that there were some 400 Jewish soldiers serving in the UK, as well as 25 in the RAF.24 War Office returns showed 293 known Jewish soldiers in 1920 and 270 in 1921. There proved to be too few Jewish solders at any one centre to merit payments for

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ministrations by officiating clergymen. At the beginning of every year orders were issued by each of the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry listing the dates throughout the year for which, subject to the exigencies of service, leave was to be granted on request for Jewish festivals, with remission of labour commencing at sunset on the previous day. The chaplain would then issue a corresponding annual circular letter headed “Granting of Leave for the Year 19..”.25 When in 1922 Michael Adler transferred from the active to the reserve list of Territorial chaplains, Rev. David Hirsch was appointed a Territorial chaplain on the active list, working under Adler’s general supervision. In 1923 he in turn transferred to the reserve list, and in 1924 he left Britain for an appointment in Australia. He was succeeded by Rabbi (as he had become) Marks Gollop, who was commissioned as a Territorial chaplain attached to the 47th (London) Division.26 On 1 November 1926 Gollop succeeded Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain, being promoted to chaplain third class. Although a Territorial chaplain, he was formally recognised by the three services as the Senior Jewish Chaplain to the Forces in January 1927.27 The Visitation Committee took this opportunity to request Jewish representation on the Inter-Denominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services. Established in 1916 as the Inter-Denominational Committee on Ministration to the Troops, it had at that time declined the request for Jewish representation.28 In response to the request the War Office file was minuted that “This application was discussed at the meeting of the Committee Wed 4 November and a recommended [sic] was made that all29 concessions should be given.” Without any hint that this was regarded as a concession, the War Office replied on 8 November 1926 accepting Gollop’s nomination as a member of the committee. Even then still viewed as a concession, despite the evidence of years of dedicated Jewish commitment forged in war without any previous wartime chaplaincy experience, the concept that parity of chaplaincy services extended to Jews had at last attained official recognition.30 Suspended during the war, the annual Chanukah Military Service was reinstated in 1918 in the Great Synagogue in London, with similar services elsewhere in the country.31 In 1919 the service was almost entirely conducted by chaplains: Michael Adler, who delivered the sermon, John Geffen, Vivian Simmons, Arthur Barnett and David Hirsch.32 Thenceforth the service fell into abeyance, until in 1926 there was a proposal to revive it. The Visitation Committee decided not to undertake its organisation but to subsidise the fares of attendees if it were arranged by an outside committee. The Chanukah Naval and Military Service Committee, an ad hoc committee of ten members including Marks Gollop, organised a Chanukah service. Perhaps inevitably, this encroached upon the role of the Visitation Committee, which decided

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henceforth to organise the Chanukah service itself, pointedly confining the chaplain’s duties solely to religious matters connected with the service. The service in 1926 was the twenty-third such service.33 Thenceforth the service was held every year up to 1938, alternating between various London synagogues and followed by a dinner dance for serving and retired soldiers. It was utilised to showcase Jewish military participation and was reported in the press. Marks Gollop’s chaplaincy correspondence constantly grew. Between 16 December 1926 and 23 May 1927 he wrote six hundred letters.34 Subsidising the cost of clerical assistance for him became over the years a regular responsibility of the Visitation Committee and the United Synagogue. In May 1927 Gollop reported to the Visitation Committee that a committee had been formed to keep in touch with Jewish soldiers in India, reception committees had been established at the principal military centres and an honorary chaplain had been appointed at Gibraltar.35 He hoped to make it possible for all Jewish members of H.M. Forces, no matter where they were stationed, to be kept in touch with their co-religionists, including by the appointment of honorary chaplains in various centres.36 In July 1927 he reported that returns of the number of Jewish soldiers from the Adjutant General in India were to hand

Annual Chanukah Service and Dinner, 1931 and 1932.

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for the first time. The Visitation Committee decided to make representations to the Admiralty and the Air Force for similar returns.37 In June 1928 Gollop reported that he had had difficulty getting a Jewish representative in Malta.38 The 1928 visitation statistics show visits by Rev. I. Aarons to the Exmouth Training Ship, by Michael Adler to six hospitals as well as to Wormwood Scrubs prison and by Gollop to six hospitals, four of which were military, and to Millbank (RAMC) barracks.39 On 8 August 1928 Gollop and Adler participated in a memorial service at the Menin Gate at Ypres, which was followed by a special Jewish Service of Consecration attended by about a hundred people.40 It was decided that Gollop should submit quarterly chaplaincy reports, and should draft a report to the Visitation Committee with a view to its being sent to the press. His first report was dated 29 February 1928. It gave the numbers of Jewish officers and men serving in the regular forces. It recorded that men had accepted offers to be put in touch with Jewish people in Belfast, Cardiff, Woolwich, Portsmouth, Preston, Shanghai, Calcutta, Gibraltar and Bingen in Germany. Men passing through London were encouraged to call on Gollop. He was attempting to obtain financial help to enable men to go home for the festivals, and in several cases he had been able to relieve strained relationships between Jewish men and their superior officers. One Jewish soldier had been relieved of work on the Sabbath through his intervention even though there was no synagogue near his camp. Gollop had dealt with all kinds of religious problems. His objective in correspondence was for men to feel that they could turn to him at any time and could form a bond of friendship. Over two months he had issued 490 letters. He included many extracts from appreciative letters which he had received.41 In his report for June to December 1928 he reported that he had effected introductions to Jewish people in Lucknow (India), Ismailia, Alexandria (Egypt), Singapore and (for sailors) Brazil. Several men who had enlisted as Church of England had been persuaded to revert to their Jewish faith. Machinery had been established to ensure visits by ministers to every Jewish patient in a Ministry of Pensions Hospital, and visitation to service hospitals was to be organised on the same lines.42 In October 1929 Gollop reported that the War Office had issued orders to military hospitals to advise him of all admissions, and that he would arrange for visitation.43 Gollop’s chaplaincy reports to the Visitation Committee settled into a pattern, and became annual. They included the numbers of self-declared Jews in the military, which between 1928 and 1937 fluctuated between 54 and 67 officers and 202 and 290 men in the regular forces and between 9 and 57 officers and 41 and 160 men in the territorial force. He emphasised that the true numbers were likely to be significantly higher, as a considerable number of men enlisted under a different denomination.44 The number of men who had communicated with him in each year fluctuated between 80 and 106, and the number of chaplaincy letters which he had written between 700 and 1,490.45

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Gollop’s reports also narrated his efforts to find employment for servicemen who had left the forces. Through the austerity of the 1920s and 1930s this became a continuing preoccupation, sometimes obliging men to rejoin the forces. The Visitation Committee and H.M. Forces Committee (HMFC), which had been formed in 1927 as a sub-committee of the Visitation Committee, sought to approach Jewish employers in the hope that they could offer employment, as some denominations including non-conformists did. In 1933 Gollop recorded that the Jewish Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Prayer Book and the Chief Rabbi’s A Book of Jewish Thoughts were distributed free to every Jewish man who enlisted.46 In 1935 he reported cases of non-Jews wishing to convert to Judaism; this was almost impossible, and they were referred back to the chaplain of their own religion, who usually dissuaded them. Early in 1930 Gollop was appointed an Assistant Dayan at the Beth Din. Rev. (who later in 1930 became Rabbi) Louis Rabinowitz of the South Hackney Synagogue accordingly agreed to assist him in the chaplaincy work and to relieve him of the detailed work. The War Office by special concession gave permission for Rabinowitz to be appointed an assistant chaplain fourth class, and for Gollop to be promoted to chaplain third class.47 Also in 1930 the War Office noticed that Jewish chaplains were not represented on the reserve of chaplains, and decided to create a reserve of Jewish chaplains to be called upon in case of emergency. HMFC submitted the names of Revs. Barnett, Levin, Lipson and Simmons, who had served as chaplains in the Great War.48 In 1930 Gollop wrote a six-page paper entitled The Jewish Chaplaincy Service and the Work of H.M. Forces Committee. It reported that Jewish servicemen were widely scattered. Every Jewish man “has the good name of Jewry in his keeping”. It reported upon the Chaplain’s correspondence; the annual Chanukah Military Service; the exceeding difficulty of visiting many camps, large and small, some with very few Jews; the visitation of hospitals, both Ministry of Pensions and military hospitals, where possible through a local civilian Jewish community or individual; the supply of Jewish literature; and, given the prevalence of unemployment, finding employment for discharged soldiers. It said that the chaplaincy service required donations of at least £500 per annum.49 With little amendment beyond the addition of a section about the temporary provision of a Jewish environment for a serviceman where possible with a local Jewish community or family, this paper became a booklet entitled The Work of H.M. Forces Committee, which sought donations towards the estimated chaplaincy costs of at least £700 per annum.50 At the annual chaplains’ conference of the London District and Eastern Command in February 1931 Gollop spoke about his work.51 In 1932 he wrote an article in the RAChD Journal entitled The Chaplains’ Department and the Jewish Soldier referring amongst other matters to his efforts to address the religious isolation of Jewish servicemen by establishing contact with Jewish leaders and families

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abroad, whether in Belfast or Shanghai, Gibraltar or Calcutta, Hong Kong or Jamaica, and in ports where the Royal Navy docked.52 In November 1929 an Armistice Service for Jewish soldiers was held at the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place in London. In his sermon Solomon Lipson said that “there was no Armistice so far as the Jew was concerned; for unjust and evil accusations of being faithless citizens and of not being wanted, were the Jewish lot and reward for bravery”.53 HMFC continued to meet through the 1930s.54 In November 1930 an Armistice Day and Remembrance Service for Jewish soldiers was held on the Sunday before Remembrance Day on Horse Guards Parade in London, and some two and a half thousand people attended. The event was repeated there each year up to 1938, with numbers reaching nearly five thousand in 1933. A wreath in the form of a Magen David was laid at the Cenotaph. From 1932 the BBC broadcast the service, which was followed by a reunion tea. The service was not under the aegis of the Visitation Committee or the Jewish Chaplaincy. As its numbers attending this service grew through the 1930s, those attending the Chanukah Military Service declined. The Visitation Committee discussed the possibility of amalgamating the two events but concluded that this was impractical.55 In June 1939 preparations were being made for a Chanukah Military Service on Sunday 10 December at the Great Synagogue. It was to be preceded by a march through the East End of London by Jewish regular, militia and territorial soldiers, at which many hundreds were expected. Also in June 1939 HMFC discussed reviving the Annual Passover Service, suggested for the second day of Passover, for serving members of H.M. Forces; Adler narrated the background to this service, which had last been held some years previously.56 Both events and the Annual Remembrance Service were overtaken by the outbreak of war.57

Shanghai Rev. Menahem Mendel Brown (23 May 1885 – 11 December 1949) was born in Poland and taken with his family to Britain at the age of eight. He became in 1932 the minister of the Sephardi Ohel Rachel (Tent of Rachel) Synagogue in Shanghai. He served as chaplain to the Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, a company formed in 1933 by Russian Jews and led by an English Jew, Captain Noel Jacobs. The Corps helped the municipal police to maintain order and provided assistance in August 1937 during the Sino-Japanese War, for which Brown received two medals from the Shanghai Municipal Council. Later he and the men of the Jewish Company worked to welcome refugees arriving from Europe and to help them to settle. Brown served as its chaplain until the Shanghai Volunteer Corps was disbanded early in 1942 after the Japanese occupied Shanghai. In March 1943

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many of the occupants of the international settlements were placed in internment camps, euphemistically termed “civilian assembly centres”. Because he had a heart condition Brown was exempted from internment until June 1944. In the camp he became the “official interpreter” of the daily news and worked hard to maintain morale. Released in August 1945, he returned to Britain, where he died in 1949.58

Conclusion on the Interwar Period In the interwar years the Jewish commissioned wartime chaplaincy adapted itself to peacetime conditions, and sought to serve former as well as current soldiers. In 1921 Adler was instrumental at his own arduous initiative in the preservation and proper designation on the former western front of numerous Jewish graves whose identity would otherwise have been lost. In 1926 the integration and parity of Jewish chaplaincy services received official recognition through the Inter-Denominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services. In the 1920s Adler weaponised the Jewish military contribution, including that of chaplains, in the British Jewry Book of Honour and in other ways, against resurgent antisemitism. In the 1930s he did so again against the growth of fascism. In 1930 and again in 1939 the authorities initiated the creation of a reserve of Jewish chaplains, to which the Jewish community responded. That apart, the development of chaplaincy was continued by the Jewish community and accommodated by the authorities.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

JC 11/4/1919, p. 14. VC/2/generally. JC 15/10/1920, p. 29. LMA, ACC/2805/04/05/016. Adler, The Jews of the Empire and the Great War. JC 29/11/1918, p. 20; 20/12/1918, p. 21. Adler, The Jews of the Empire and the Great War. BJBH. Madigan and Reuveni (eds.), The Jewish Experience: Madigan, Thou Hast Given Us Home and Freedom, pp. 307-333. Gisela C. Lebzelter, Political Anti-Semitism in England 1919-1939 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1978), pp. 172-4. CWGC/1/1/7/B/43 (also termed WG 1294/3 pt.2). CWGC/1/2/A/438 (also termed A/98). VC/2/generally. CWGC/1/1/5/31 (also termed WG66). JC 7/10/1921, pp. 17, 18. Jewish Guardian 7/10/1921, p. 22. CWGC/1/1/5/31 (also termed WG66). Minutes of Meeting of the Imperial War Graves Commission 23/5/1922. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 129-130, 362. LMA, ACC/2805/04/05/014. VC/2/generally.

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16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

JM, file 2011.74. LMA, ACC/2805/04/01/006. LMA, ACC/3121/B/04/A/006. LMA, ACC/3121/G/06/037. The author has not been able to identify any chaplaincy activity in South Africa. VC/5/40-45. Anderson, All the A’s. JC 6/10/1944, pp. 3, 6; 20/10/1944, p. 13. JC 3/11/1944, p. 5. The Rev. Michael Adler, D.S.O., S.C.F., B.A. (1868-1944) in JHS, vol. 15, 1939-1945, pp. 191194. JC 23/7/1943, p. 9. Obituaries: The Times 2/10/1944; JC 6/10/1944, p. 6. JM, box 2011.74. VC/2/generally. e.g. JC 3/3/1939, p. 46. VC/2/generally. VC/3/34. JM, file 2011.74. In January 1941 Gollop was placed on the RAF Active List of officers who had retired before the end of their expected service period but could still be called upon to serve: Forces War Records. National Archives, file WO/32/14826. Howson, Muddling Through, pp. 106-114, 146-7. The word is probably “all” but is difficult to read. National Archives, file WO/32/14825. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 290, 401 nn. 202-6. Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz, p. 228. JC 29/11/1918, p. 3. Lipson had also been due to attend, but the service at his own Hammersmith Synagogue had not concluded in time for him to do so. JC 26/12/1919, p. 12. Mark Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual. Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916-1939 (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press, 2002, 2015), p. 215. VC/3/48-49. VC/3/48-49. VC/3/48. VC/3/59. VC/3/90-91. VC/3/124. VC/3/98, 108, 116. LMA, ACC/3121/B/04/GL/036. VC/3/59-60, 98. VC/3/116. VC/3/131. VC/3/183-184. VC/ 3, 3A, 5, generally. LMA, ACC/3121/B/04/GL/036. VC/3/98, 116, 149-150. VC/3A/ 226-228, 272. VC/3/141-143, 147-150. VC/3/147-150, 161. VC/3/149-150, 183-184. The Work of H.M.Forces Committee (undated booklet, early 1930s). JRAChD, ed. 32, July 1931, p. 103. JRAChD, ed. 34, July 1932, pp. 205-7. Connelly, The Great War, p. 215. JC 15/11/1929, p. 21. VC/3, 3A, 5 generally. JC 31/3/1939, p. 47. Morris, The Ajex Chronicles, pp. 15-17, 157-9. Kitching, Britain’s Jews in the First World War, p. 260. Interestingly, there seems to be no other record of such a Passover service having been held.

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57. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. VC/5/144-147, 162. 58. Pam Guang (ed.), The Jews in Shanghai (Shanghai: Shanghai Pictorial Publishing House, 1995). David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis and Jews. The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-1945 (Hoboken, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 1976), pp. 51, 94-5, 108 n. 55. Maisie J. Meyer, Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews. A Collection of Biographical Reflections (Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books, 2015), pp. 13, 14, 92. Sugarman, Fighting Back, pp. 3, 9; Hagedud Ha-Sini: The Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps 1932-42 in JHS, vol. 41, 2007, pp. 183-208 at 189, 196. Henrietta Reifler (compiler) (Brown’s oldest daughter), Seattle Jews from China. Oral Histories (Seattle, Washington: Auspices of The Washington State Jewish Historical Society, 1989), introduction, photographs, Henrietta Reifler biography. Points East Newsletter, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 4-5, Memories of My Father, Rev. Mendel Brown, by Henrietta Reifler. Information from Brown’s grand-daughter Victoria Bricker (daughter of Henrietta Reifler). New Israel Messenger, 359, May-June 1999, Bulletin Igud Yotzei Sin, Reverend Mendel Brown - Rabbi and Educator (author not stated). JC 16/12/1949, p. 6 (obituary). LMA, ACC/2805/04/04/010 (draft letter stating that Brown had acted for some years as the minister of the East London Synagogue in Rectory Square, E.).

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9 THE SECOND WORLD WAR: BRITAIN

e British Jewish Community By 1939 the British Jewish community numbered perhaps some 350,000 people. The grinding poverty of the immigrants had eased and after living through the years of the Depression they were engaged in a range of businesses and occupations. Their children and grandchildren had been brought up and educated in Britain. The Second World War threw together Jews of military age from both the established and the immigrant communities and accelerated the coalescence of the two communities. The 1930s saw the arrival of some 55,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, including some 10,000 unaccompanied children on the Kindertransport.1 Insofar as they were a community at all they were a separate one. Many were interned as enemy aliens soon after the outbreak of war. Later many of military age were permitted to enlist in the armed forces, initially only in the non-combatant Pioneer Corps and later in fighting units. In the Second World War some one million Jews served in Allied armies, nearly half of them in the USSR. Of the approximately 350,000 Jewish people, including children and the elderly, living in Britain, some 65,000 (1 in 5.4) served in the armed forces in the Second World War. Some 3,000 (1 in 21.6 of those serving) lost their lives, 1,900 in the Army, 900 in the RAF and 200 in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy. Some 500,000 Jews, including children and the elderly, lived under the British mandate in Palestine, of whom some 70,000 (1 in 7) volunteered to serve, some 30,000 served and some 700 (1 in 43 of those serving) lost their lives. Jews served in every theatre of the Second World War, in very many formations and in virtually every major engagement. Three Victoria Crosses and three George Crosses were awarded to Jews.2 Historian Michael Snape considers that against a backdrop of religious decline, especially in formal religious practice, British Jewry, in common with the British churches, made gigantic, even heroic, efforts in the Second World War, as in the First, to provide for the spiritual, moral, mental, physical and medical needs of the British soldier.3

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e Gathering Storm During the Sudetenland crisis a small British military force was due to be despatched in the autumn of 1938 to Czechoslovakia. In response to a suggestion from Alliance Israelite Universelle, Senior Jewish Chaplain Marks Gollop and the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Neville Laski, agreed that it was not appropriate to ask the War Office to attach a Jewish chaplain to it.4 Early in 1939 the War Office expressed the desire that all religious denominations should create a reserve of chaplains. H.M. Forces Committee (HMFC), itself a sub-committee of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue, recommended the creation of a Chaplaincy Sub-Committee, which met for the first time in May 1939. It identified twelve potential chaplains, nine in London and three in the provinces. Marks Gollop first approached each of them unofficially. One, Eli Cashdan, proved to be an American citizen and so ineligible, although he later served. Four said that they were unable to serve for different reasons, although two of them, Leslie Edgar and Wolf Morein, also went on to serve. In one afternoon HMFC interviewed the other seven and decided to recommend four: Isaac Chait, Abraham da Souza Pimontel, Israel Brodie (who had served in the Great War) and Arthur Super. Assuming that their communities (and in Brodie’s case, Jews’ College, where he was a lecturer) were agreeable, the Visitation Committee would be asked to recommend them to the War Office for commissions in the Reserve of Officers. One of those whom HMFC did not recommend, Isaac Levy, subsequently served with great distinction.5 The Military Training Act required recruits to register on Saturday 3 June 1939. Marks Gollop and the Secretary of the Board of Deputies, A. G. Brotman, called upon the authorities, who assured them entirely unofficially and confidentially that men would be given a few days’ grace without enquiry into the circumstances. Gollop included this in a circular to synagogue ministers, which would enable it to become known to men who did not wish to register on the Sabbath. Intentionally he did not publish it in the Jewish press, for fear of its appearing to people of ill will, who were already saying that Jews were shirking service on spurious medical grounds, to be a further concession to Jewish recruits.6 In August 1939 Gollop liaised with the authorities to postpone the call-up of militia men which was due on the second day of Rosh Hashanah on Friday 15 September.7 On Sunday 10 September 1939, one week after the outbreak of war, Rev. Maurice Lew of Highgate Synagogue in London, who was later to become a chaplain, wrote to his community about the forthcoming festival services. Reflecting wartime regulations and the instructions of the Chief Rabbi, evening

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services were to conclude at least thirty minutes before it became dark, and daytime services were to be of limited duration: I am glad to state that some of the Honorary Officers are Air-RaidWardens, and all advice will be given in case of an air raid warning during the Service. Please bring your gas mask. It is sincerely hoped that all members will be inconspicuously dressed. For the duration of the war top hats should not be worn for Synagogue.8 At the outbreak of war there were two commissioned Jewish chaplains, Senior Jewish Chaplain Marks Gollop and Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz. Both had served with the Territorials and were therefore immediately called up, Gollop on 24 August 1939.9 The number of British Jewish chaplains gradually increased, ultimately to fifty-six.10 Of these, fifty, including eleven locally recruited in Palestine, were in the Army and six, including one recruited in Palestine, in the RAF. In 1944 the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean sought a Jewish chaplain, but without success. Three Jewish chaplains died, although none through enemy action: Rev. Wolf Morein in hospital in Britain in September 1941, Rev. Harry Bornstein in Tripoli in North Africa in November 1943 and Rev. Solly Hooker in hospital in India after an operation in February 1946. The British born chaplains were mostly from the Orthodox sector of Judaism, and two were ministers of the Liberal denomination. It was not possible entirely to coordinate the release of ministers into the armed forces, although the Jewish War Services Committee (JWSC) which came into being in the Second World War attempted to do so. Individual ministers volunteered, and their community would then try to find a replacement.11 Jewish chaplains, like many Jews, were also motivated by a profound sense of the threat that Nazism posed to the Jewish People. Rev. Isaac Levy explained he was not motivated by a general sense of patriotism but rather that he viewed Nazism as a threat to democracy and his own people. Over time twelve Rabbis and others living in Palestine were locally commissioned as chaplains. For them as for many Palestinian Jews the Zionist motivation to create a Jewish state after the war was also a factor.12 For the Jews of Palestine the struggle was existential, for had the Axis triumphed in North Africa they would have had to fight to the last man and woman, and were preparing to do so, rather than submit to extermination.

e Royal Army Chaplains’ Department By 1939 the role of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD) had been forged in war, as had the role of Jewish chaplaincy within it. The mobilisation of chaplains went smoothly, with a clear sense of their wartime role.13 Military

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chaplains remained volunteers. Unlike in the First World War, they were not appointed on fixed term contracts. Although nearly eighty per cent received what were termed emergency commissions, chaplains were expected to serve for the duration of the war, so that if able-bodied their earlier release was exceptional. In the course of the Second World War some 3,700 chaplains of all denominations served, and one hundred lost their lives.14 In December 1939 the RAChD raised the issue of conforming its Jewish badge to the standard pattern, with a Star of David in place of the Cross and omitting the motto enjoining chaplains to work in that Sign. Research elicited that since 1914 Jewish chaplains had worn a badge of the Star of David surmounted by a Crown but that no record of the formal approval of the badge could be traced, and that when the existing badge of the RAChD had been approved in 1930 nothing had been settled as regards Jews. So Jewish cap and collar badges were designed of a Star of David surmounted by the Imperial Crown embellished with a wreath of laurel and oak leaves and with a central ornamental button bearing a quatrefoil. The badge was approved by the War Office and in May 1940 by the King and dyes for the badge were commissioned.15 The army organised chaplaincy training courses lasting some fourteen days, from June 1940 in Chester and from late in 1942 at Tidworth in Wiltshire. Chaplains who had been appointed earlier and the Jewish chaplains appointed in Palestine did not receive this training. Successive groups of chaplains were instructed in drill, anti-gas drill, army organisation, army welfare, moral welfare, first aid, map reading, security, military law, the history of the RAChD, chaplaincy duties, sermons, the padre’s hour and final instructions. The invariable group course photographs show eager and sometimes nervous and predominantly young men. Twenty-seven Jewish chaplains attended the courses. Those at Chester were attended in 1940 by Myer Berman; in 1941 by Amias, da Souza Pimontel and Weintrobe, who were together on the same course; Super; Isaacs; Morein; Joseph; Cosgrove; Chait and Lew, together; Fabricant and Myerson, together; Bornstein; and in 1942 by Hardman. At Tidworth they were attended in 1943 by Jaffe; Abraham Berman; in 1944 by Rapaport; Richards; Elton; Wagner; and in 1945 by Greenberg; and Margulies. The courses were also attended by Casper, Shapiro, Sebastian (Sonnie) Bloch and (at Chester) Solly Hooker, although the records do not show the dates of their courses. There was a course report on each of the participants. Among the Jewish chaplains, one report survives, of 23 July 1945 on Rev. Sigmund Margulies. It records: “Jew. Fitted in very well and was generally liked. Intelligent and co-operative. Should do well.”16

Officiating Clergymen By November 1939 twenty-six Jewish officiating clergymen had been

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appointed; by May 1940 there were sixteen more, totalling forty-two. They seem often to have been referred to as officiating chaplains. Two (Cherrick and Levy) had by then been commissioned as chaplains, and others went on to be commissioned. They were (with the location of their Synagogues rather than their areas of military responsibility): Rev. H. L. Alexander (Hendon) (officiating at Aldershot), Rev. A. Barnett (West London)17, Rev. M. Berman (Wembley), E. Berry (Llandudno), Rev. C. M. Bloch (Portsmouth), Rev. B. Cherrick (New Synagogue, London) (commissioned in April 1940 as a chaplain), Rev. Dr A. Cohen (Birmingham), Rabbi B. I. Cohen (Sheffield), Rev. P. Cohen (Central Synagogue, London) (officiating chaplain for Norfolk and Suffolk), Rev. Dr I. K. Cosgrove (Glasgow) (officiating chaplain to the Scottish Command), Rabbi Dr S. Daiches (Edinburgh), Rev. E. Drukker (Newcastle), I. Dvorkin (Reading), Rev. L. I. Edgar (Liberal Synagogue, London) (officiating chaplain for Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire), Rev. I. N. Fabricant (Brighton), Rabbi Dr M. Ginsberg (Richmond), Rev. Dr S. Goldman (Nottingham), Rabbi C. L. Heilpern (Bournemouth), Rev. D. Hirsch J.P. (Hull)18, Rev. S. Isaacs (South-East London Associate Synagogue)19, Rev. J. Israelstam (Bradford), Rev. Dr B. Joseph (Hackney), Rev. E. Kahan (Harrogate), Rabbi Dr S. M. Lehrman (Liverpool), Rev. I. Levy (Bayswater Synagogue, London) (officiating at Aldershot and commissioned in February 1940 as a chaplain), Rev. I. Livingstone (Golders Green), B. N. Michaelson (London), Rev. W. Morein (North London Synagogue) (officiating chaplain for Essex), Rev. A. da Souza Pimontel (Manchester), A. Plaskow (Southend-onSea), Rev. B. Rodrigues-Pereira (Ramsgate), Rabbi K. Rosen (Manchester), Rev. L.M. Sanker (Bristol), Rabbi J. Schachter (Belfast), Rabbi Dr A. E. Silverstone (Southport), Rev. S. I. Solomons (Birmingham), Rev. A. S. Super (Leeds), Rev. H. Swift (St. John’s Wood), B. Unterman (Leicester), M. Unterman (Cardiff), Rev. J. Weintrobe (Swansea), W. Wolfson (Plymouth).20 Other officiating chaplains were later appointed. In 1939/1940, Rev. S. Kleeman of Hampstead Synagogue in rotation with ministers of other denominations conducted Sunday morning services of an interdenominational character for the whole personnel of an A.R.P post in London.21 During 1940 Rev. J. Weinberg was appointed an officiating minister for Oxford and District.22 He and others conducted services at Aldershot on Yom Kippur for two hundred and fifty soldiers from the UK, Canada, Palestine and France.23 The Ministry of Home Security granted selected Jewish ministers, including Rev. Eli Kahan of Harrogate, the freedom of the streets during air raids in order to minister to casualties of the Jewish faith. They wore an armlet, issued by the JWSC, with the letters A.R.P. in red and a Magen David in white on an Air Force blue background.24 Rev. Emanuel Goodman of Plymouth Synagogue was appointed officiating chaplain for the South West of England; in 1943-44 in the build up to D-Day he ministered to troops from various Allied nations.25

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Armlet issued to Jewish Air Raid Precautions Wardens. This was that of Rev. Eli Kahan of Harrogate.

Officiating Chaplain Rev. Emanuel Goodman of Plymouth ministering to British men and women of the three services and to American soldiers ahead of D-Day.

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Rev. Reuben Restan, originally from Blackpool, served as an officiating clergyman in Derby.26 Rev. Laurence Glickman was an honorary Jewish chaplain for the North West area.27 In October 1945 the War Office wrote to the JWSC to express its appreciation of the work of officiating chaplains in the United Kingdom during the war.28

e Jewish War Services Committee At the outbreak of war, meetings of the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue were suspended.29 There was communal pressure to revive the Jewish War Services Committee of the First World War.30 As early as 8 September 1939 Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz wrote to the Army Council, the Air Council and the Board of Admiralty stating that he was constituting a small committee of the lay leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community, proposed to be known as the Jewish Religious War Services Committee, to assist him in connection with a large number of problems affecting members of the Jewish Faith serving in H.M. Forces. He was inviting to serve as its members Lionel de Rothschild, Esq., O.B.E. (Chairman), Sir Robert Waley Cohen, K.B.E. (Vice Chairman), the Marquis of Reading, Neville Laski K.C., Prof. Charles Myers, Louis Gluckstein M.P., Frank Samuel, Owen Mocatta and Dr Bernard Homa, and requested official recognition of the Committee.31 The War Office recognised the committee as the body with which the Army Council would correspond about questions affecting the spiritual needs of members of the Jewish Faith serving in the Army except in cases where the Chief Rabbi saw fit to address the Army Council himself.32 The Committee became known (omitting the Chief Rabbi’s suggested word “Religious”) as the Jewish War Services Committee. All of its members were selected by the Chief Rabbi at his own discretion. On 7 December 1939 its Chairman, Lionel de Rothschild, wrote to the United Synagogue: With the approval of the War Office this Committee has been set up as a representative Committee similar to that which functioned in the last war, to deal with the many problems affecting members of the Jewish Faith serving in His Majesty’s Forces. Its objects are to provide chaplaincy services carried out under the Senior Chaplain and a secretarial department; to provide for the arrangement of Divine Services for as many men as regularly as possible; the provision of literature of a religious or devotional character; visits to camps and hospitals; maintaining contact by correspondence with serving Jews in isolated positions; helping and advising the relatives of soldiers; keeping accurate records of all serving

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Jews in His Majesty’s Forces; arranging for soldiers on leave to receive hospitality from their co-religionists: and, in general, by maintaining personal contact with the soldier and gaining his confidence, to provide him with the best means of preserving his moral sanctions and religious loyalty. An Appointments and Finance Sub-Committee of the JWSC was designated to deal primarily with the appointment of chaplains in consultation with the Senior Jewish Chaplain. The absence of the records of the JWSC limits understanding of the basis for the appointment of chaplains.33 The JWSC also sought local officiating clergymen, arranged hospitality within Jewish communities for servicemen on leave and for Passover and the High Holydays, including inviting Canadian servicemen to Passover Seder services, and planned to open a “chaplain’s welcome room” at its headquarters at Woburn House for anybody wishing to see a chaplain. Most of the funding for the JWSC came from the United Synagogue, which also provided office facilities. Other sources of income included the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, provincial synagogues and public donations. When a United Synagogue minister became a chaplain, his salary from the United Synagogue was to be reduced by the amount of his army pay and allowances. In his letter to Dr Bernard Homa of 7 September 1939 inviting him to serve on the JWSC, Chief Rabbi Hertz wrote that it was proposed that there should be joint secretaries, one a serving army chaplain and the other a layman with experience in dealing with government departments. This did not happen, and in around December 1939 the secretary became Mr Henry Isaac. In February 1940 he had to resign through ill health and was succeeded by Mr William Hurwitz. Travelling to America on the liner City of Benares, Hurwitz perished when it was torpedoed and sunk in October 1940.34 He was succeeded as secretary in November 1940 by Mr Donald H. Cohen.35 Subsequently Mr Eddie Coffer, became the secretary; by 1946 he had been in the service of the United Synagogue for twenty years. When Lionel de Rothschild died he was succeeded in March 1942 as chairman of the committee by the vice-chairman, Sir Robert Waley Cohen.36 The Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue did not meet again until October 1945, when it discussed the arrangements for a Yom Kippur service at Beltane Internment Camp on Wimbledon Common in London. The nominated officiant had walked seven miles to get there, only to be met by a person who appeared to be the spokesman of the Jewish inmates and had said that they did not desire to attend any services and were not observing the Fast day.37 Thenceforth the activities of the Visitation Committee were largely concerned with prison visiting and from 1946 not at all with military chaplaincy.38

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e British Expeditionary Force By December 1939 the British Expeditionary Force of some two hundred thousand men was in France. It was somehow ascertained and published that it included 243 Jews.39 Jews who were serving were urged to register with a Jewish chaplain to maintain contact and to refute the charge being made in some quarters at the beginning of the war that Jews were not “doing their bit”. Army regulations provided for one chaplain for every eleven hundred men of any denomination. However there was immediate pressure, including from First World War chaplain Rev. Michael Adler, in letters and editorials in the Jewish Chronicle and at the Board of Deputies and a question in Parliament in February 1940, to despatch one or more Jewish chaplains to join it.40 In January 1940 arrangements were discussed with the War Office for Senior Jewish Chaplain Marks Gollop to visit units in France, travelling in company with the Deputy Chaplain General in the latter’s car, but those arrangements did not materialise. Gollop did however visit the B.E.F. from 7 to 28 February 1940. He travelled to all of the important centres where British troops were stationed, in base areas and the front line, and conducted many religious services, to some of which soldiers travelled very long distances. The Chaplain’s Office had been in touch with thousands of Jewish men and women of all ranks, and Gollop wrote to the relatives of every Jewish soldier whom he had seen each day. He also took part in a BBC Saturday night broadcast by chaplains of all denominations with the B.E.F. Attempts were made to supply kosher food to Jewish soldiers.41 The Jewish Chronicle reported that there was a great demand among the soldiers in France for tefillin and that the Senior Jewish Chaplain was asking for offers of them.42 Captain J. Reynolds, RAMC, from New Zealand, who was awarded the MC for his work moving and treating the wounded at Dunkirk, always donned his tallit – prayer shawl – and tefillin.43 As a result of his experiences Gollop was able to convince the authorities in the B.E.F. that a Jewish Chaplain was absolutely necessary.44 Two Jewish Chaplains, Rabbi Israel Brodie and Rev. Bernard Cherrick, were despatched to the B.E.F. The Jewish Chronicle applauded this, and recorded that chaplains Gollop, Rabinowitz and Levy were also functioning among Jewish troops at home. “Time alone can say whether that figure [of five] will need to be augmented.”45 Rabbi Israel Brodie (10 May 1895 – 13 February 1979), who had served as a chaplain in the First World War, was a tutor and lecturer at Jews’ College. His presidential address to the Jews’ College Union Society on 27 March 1939 was on “Judaism and War”.46 Released from the college in December 1939, he

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rejoined the army as a chaplain.47 He preached a farewell sermon at Leazes Park Road Synagogue in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and said that twenty-five48 years ago he had given a farewell sermon from the same pulpit under similar circumstances.49 Embarking for the continent on 2 April 1940, he attempted to arrange Passover Seder services for the troops, including a possible large one for two to three hundred men of the Pioneer Companies. To that end he circularised all known Jewish soldiers and arranged for the Chief Rabbi of France to circularise his communities to extend hospitality to Jewish soldiers in their area. He tried to supply Jewish soldiers with matzo for Passover, although this was extremely difficult. Through the JWSC large amounts of matzo, meat and chocolate were despatched to the B.E.F.50 Brodie was on the beaches at Dunkirk for four days, dive-bombed by Stukas before arriving back in the UK on 29 May 1940.51 In a shattered state of mind he went to stay with his brother Abraham in Yorkshire to recuperate. Having lost all of his possessions in France his brother sent him to his tailor in Leeds for two new suits. Brodie then served as a chaplain within Southern Command at Aldershot and then within Scottish Command. On 10 December 1940 he was “translated” into the RAF as its first Jewish chaplain with the relative rank of Squadron Leader and was appointed as the Jewish chaplain in RAF Middle East. Before his departure a lunch was held in his honour in Glasgow. He served in the Western Desert, later becoming Senior Jewish Chaplain in RAF Middle East.52 Rev. Bernard Cherrick M. A. (1914 – 22 December 1988), whose parents were from Lithuania, was born in Dublin and educated at a yeshiva, the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester, where he gained a master’s degree in Semitics. In 1938 he was appointed the minister of the New Synagogue in Stamford Hill in London. In April 1940 he was commissioned as a chaplain, and his synagogue held a farewell reception for him.53 Within the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps were Palestinian companies of seven hundred volunteers from Palestine, of whom nearly six hundred were Jews, and Cherrick was attached to these companies as a chaplain. He was evacuated from St. Malo.54 In July 1940 he conducted the funeral at Streatham Cemetery in London of Lance Corporal Jack Cohen of the Dorset Regiment, who had died as a result of a car accident.55 Cherrick’s health deteriorated and he was invalided out of the Army. Unable to continue with his ministerial duties, from which he had to resign, he became the headmaster of a school in Scotland and then the chief organiser for the Jewish National Fund for Great Britain and Ireland.56 In 1947 he settled in, as it became, Israel, where he worked in public relations and fundraising for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Chaplaincy Organisation The status of the Senior Jewish Chaplain was unique because, while he held a commission in the Army, he was recognised by the other two services in a similar capacity. During the course of the war the War Office consented to the appointment of Senior Jewish Chaplains with local acting third class rank in the Middle East Force, the Central Mediterranean Force and British Army of the Rhine. Jewish personnel were scattered throughout every arm of the services. So, unlike Christian chaplains, who were attached to regiments, divisions and base hospitals, Jewish chaplains had to be attached to area commands and to be supplied with nominal rolls of Jewish personnel. Throughout the war this demanded a great deal of travelling, often in difficult conditions. Sometimes a chaplain would arrive at a given destination only to discover that the unit he sought had moved on.57 In September 1939 SJC Marks Gollop appealed for particulars of people serving in the fighting services. He repeated the appeal in September 1940, both generally and specifically to enable Jewish members of the Local Defence Volunteers (later known as the Home Guard) to come in an emergency under the spiritual care of Jewish chaplains in their area. By this time there were eight commissioned Jewish chaplains ministering to Home Forces, with every Command having its chaplain and the Command Chaplains assisted by civilian ministers as officiating chaplains and visiting ministers. There were nine Jewish clubs in London open to troops.58 In January 1940 Gollop reported to the Board of Deputies that there were two commissioned Jewish chaplains, that thirty-six59 Jewish ministers had been appointed by the military authorities as officiating chaplains to various stations and districts throughout the country and that there were twelve visiting ministers to Jewish troops stationed within easy access of their congregations. Whilst religious ministration was available to troops stationed in almost every part of the country, there were very small scattered units up and down the country far removed from Jewish communities which were almost inaccessible and visits to their stations were almost impossible. Contact with known serving Jews was maintained by correspondence from the Chaplain’s Office. The public were urged to report to the Chaplain’s Office the names and particulars of all serving Jews whom they knew.60 Gollop was formally attached to 1st Anti-Aircraft Group. In November 1940 he wrote to the Deputy Chaplain General, L. Gethin Hughes, suggesting a reorganisation of the work of Southern Command and the appointment of an additional Jewish chaplain, which in December 1940 was approved.61 Also in November 1940 he discussed privately with the War Office whether to publish the number of Jews serving in HM Forces, which it was felt inadvisable to do.62 He arranged with the Imperial War Graves Commission for temporary wooden

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grave markers with a Shield of David emblem to be erected over Jewish graves pending the later erection of headstones.63 The chaplaincy established a card index system, with a card for each Jewish serviceman in Britain recording each occasion upon which they received a visit

The Chaplaincy Card of Corporal Harold Lewis, RAF (the author’s father) recording chaplaincy visits by Revs. Chait and Joseph at RAF Bicester and RAF Hanwell and books (History of the Jews, Bible and History, Roth) given to him. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London/Jewish Military Museum.

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from a chaplain or any of the books produced for Jewish personnel.64 The Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers which had been issued in the First World War was reissued, its title extended to airmen, in 1940, as was Mr. B. L. Q. Henriques’ Prayers for Trench and Base. The Chief Rabbi’s A Book of Jewish Thoughts was reprinted many times, including in 1940 and 1941 and in Cairo in June 1943, and was to be reissued in 1952.65 Readings from the Holy Scriptures for Jewish Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen, selected by the Chief Rabbi, was issued in 1940 and, renamed in 1942 Readings from Holy Scripture for the Jewish Members of His Majesty’s Forces. These books were pocket-sized, and were distributed through the Chief Rabbi’s Literature Fund. To provide for the religious welfare of the troops there was established the Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council, which supplied religious requisites including sets of tefillin to soldiers. Throughout the war the Senior Jewish Chaplain arranged for orders to be issued by the War Office, the Admiralty and the Air Ministry for leave to be granted to personnel on application to commanding officers for the New Year and the Day of Atonement and for Passover if the exigencies of service permitted. This was always publicised in the Jewish Chronicle.66 Gollop sought particulars of High Holyday services in districts around the country where there were no synagogues in order to pass this information to service personnel in those areas.67 Sometimes commanding officers or non-Jewish chaplains of their own initiative facilitated Jewish services or Jewish personnel being excused duty on Saturdays.68 Jewish personnel sometimes encountered difficulties in obtaining festival leave, and on occasion wrote to the press about it.69 Army Council Instruction no. 1,000 of 1941 authorised an alternative diet to be provided for conscientiously Orthodox Jews.70 In March 1941 the Chief Rabbi’s Emergency Council, presided over by Gollop, discussed organising kosher food parcel services for personnel who wanted it.71 With the help of the Ministry of Food every observant Jew in the forces received a fortnightly kosher food parcel. After the invasion of Europe the kosher food parcel service was not available there for some months, but was resumed in December 1944.72 In March 1945 Craftsman Robert Cramer, REME, wrote to say that his fortnightly parcels of food and religious requisites had arrived regularly since 1940.73 Under Army Council Instruction NOJ02 of 1942 and Air Ministry Order 991 of 1943 permission was given to appoint lay leaders and lay preachers from among members of H.M. Forces to assist chaplains and officiating chaplains. Their duties were primarily to consist of conducting religious services and looking after the spiritual and welfare interests of personnel of their religion in their unit.74 Some are mentioned in this study. Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz broadcast to the Jewish community and the nation twice a year during the war, on Passover and the New Year.75 In 1941 he

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broadcast to the Jews in Europe.76 In September 1943 Hertz and Gollop broadcast to mark the New Year. So, from Britain, did Rabbi Rabinowitz, speaking about the Jews fighting in the Allied Armies in the Mediterranean campaign, and, during the festivals, French chaplain Rabbi M. Arruas.77 In 1944 Hertz broadcast, no doubt on Forces Radio, to the forces in various theatres, and issued instructions for the blackout for Kol Nidrei services on Yom Kippur.78 Rabbi Israel Brodie, who had by then succeeded Gollop as Senior Jewish Chaplain, broadcast to H.M. Forces on 6 December 1944 on the theme of comradeship between Jews and Christians. In March 1945 Hertz broadcast a Passover message.79 The question arose of the fear of ill-treatment of Jews in H.M. Forces taken prisoner by the Germans, and the consequent possibility of Jews enlisting under another religious denomination. When the issue reached the Jewish Chronicle Gollop and Rabinowitz stated publicly the reasons why Jews should not do so, and Rev. Hyman L. Alexander and an anonymous soldier who had served at the front in the previous war supported them.80 The issue periodically resurfaced with letters to the press from soldiers discouraging the practice.81 In March 1944 the JWSC appealed for used copies of the Jewish Chronicle, as chaplains were constantly being asked for them.82 Eleven Jewish soldiers wrote to express their thanks for copies of the Jewish Chronicle sent to the Jewish Services Club.83 Subsequently arrangements were worked out with the Chaplain’s Office and the Jewish Hospitality Committee (JHC) for used copies to be provided to members of the forces.84 In June 1944 a Jewish soldier was court martialled for refusing to fulfil military duties on the Sabbath. Perhaps in consequence SJC Brodie sought a ruling on this issue from the London Beth Din. It responded in August 1944 that as the war would seem to be drawing to its close the few cases likely to occur could be dealt with as they arose. Courteously dissenting from this wishful and impractical thinking, Brodie issued a ruling that Jewish personnel should make every effort to be freed from their duties on the Sabbath provided that they offered to perform extra duties and fatigues during weekdays, but that where the exigencies of service required duties to be carried out on the Sabbath day this would not involve its desecration.85 From at least 1942 until 1947 miscellaneous wartime religious enquiries reached the London Beth Din: about cases of divorce (gittin) and women who found themselves “chained” (agunot) to a husband who had disappeared and so were unable to remarry; a negotiated postponement of one day for an RAF recruit instructed to report on the day in 1942 which was Yom Kippur; festival leave for individual servicemen, for which the Beth Din wrote to the Army or the War Office; and an enquiry in 1944 by an observant American serviceman about Sabbath observance and the times when he could pray and don his tefillin.86

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In May or June 1945 a military service was held at Singer’s Hill Synagogue in Birmingham, conducted by SJC Brodie, Chaplain Berman and other ministers. Brodie spoke about his visits to two concentration camps in Germany.87 On Sunday 13 May 1945 Services of Thanksgiving were held in synagogues throughout the country. At St. John’s Wood Synagogue in London a service was held for all Jewish personnel of the Allied Armed Forces, at which London based chaplains officiated.88 In 1945 High Holyday services were held by British, American and Canadian chaplains in Britain (including at the Aldershot Military Synagogue), Germany and Holland. There were seven Canadian Jewish military chaplains, including the Senior Canadian Jewish Chaplain, Rabbi Major S. Gershon Levi of Montreal, and Squadron Leader Jacob Eisen of Edmonton.89 On Sunday 11 November 1945 SJC Brodie represented the Chief Rabbi at a Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London. On the following day he represented him at a conference with the authorities to discuss a suitable date on which to commemorate in future years the dead of both world wars.90

e Diversity of Chaplaincy A selection of reports affords some indication of the diversity of Jewish chaplaincy throughout the Second World War. In England a service was held in March or April 1940 in a location some fifty or sixty miles from the nearest Jewish community, and it was decided to hold a regular weekly service there.91 Rabbi K. Rosen, an officiating chaplain for Manchester, heard how a Jewish soldier had mentioned to a visiting Christian padre his need for a minyan to observe a Yahrzeit. Managing to find only four Jewish soldiers in the vicinity, the padre had contacted the nearest Jewish community in a small provincial town and insisted that six people be sent over to the army camp on the due date. His virtual orders were obeyed, and the soldier duly recited Kaddish with a minyan.92 In December 1940 a small Jewish congregation “somewhere in the country” entertained to a special Chanukah service over four hundred and fifty Jewish officers and other ranks in one of the Allied armies in England, and the Jewish chaplain of this army appealed to Jewish families for hospitality.93 In March 1941 there was a special service for Jewish members of H. M. Forces in Liverpool, followed by tea and an address by Rabbi L. I. Edgar94; in Wallasey there were similar services for men in the Wirral area in November or December 194195. In August 1941 there was an enquiry for a minister suitable to act as Jewish chaplain to the Free French Forces.96 In September 1941 Sapper T. H. Williams wrote from Bangor in North Wales to the Jewish Chronicle requesting Jewish hymn tunes, words and music for his 855 Company Male Voice Choir, to which readers responded.97 In November 1941 Chief

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Rabbi Hertz addressed a service for Jewish soldiers from many units, including Canadians.98 Posted to a large RAF station, a Jewish WAAF seeking the Jewish chaplain encountered a Christian chaplain in 1943 who was so indignant at the government’s failure to give effect to its declaration to help the victims of Nazi atrocities that within half an hour he had gathered a thousand signatures to a petition.99 In May 1943 Rabbi Israel Brodie and RAF chaplain Rev. Eli Cashdan, together with the Jewish Chaplain of the Fighting French Forces, Rabbi M. Arruas, conducted a service in St. John’s Wood Synagogue in London.100 In August 1943 SJC Gollop visited troops in each of the Faroe Islands, prompting letters of appreciation.101 In the autumn of 1943 Revs. Isaac Fabricant and Eli Kahan conducted a military service in Harrogate Synagogue.102 Under the aegis of the Chanukah Military Services Committee formed by the major communal organisations, military services for British and Allied troops were held in December 1943 in numerous places in Britain, and many ministers and chaplains, including American, Canadian, French and Czech chaplains, participated.103 In the navy Jewish chaplaincy was near impossible; Petty Officer Joe Simons served from 1943 until 1946 on an aircraft carrier, on which there were about ten Jewish sailors, but there were never any arrangements for Jewish services or chaplaincy.104 In February 1944 the Isle of Man Jewish Community arranged a gathering for Jewish members of the forces, including a service at which Rev. Leslie Hardman spoke.105 In March 1944 the East London Jewish Centre for Forces of the United Nations organised the Wedgewood Services Club in Aldgate in London, which was consecrated by SJC Brodie assisted by American, Canadian and British chaplains and ministers.106 In June 1944 SJC Brodie, Rev. Isaac Cosgrove and two American Jewish chaplains conducted a service for the forces in Cardiff.107 In August 1944 Lieutenant Samuel Steinberg of Liverpool was reported killed in Normandy, and his family observed a week of shiva – mourning – for him. At the end of the week a letter arrived from Steinberg saying that he was wounded, making a good recovery in hospital and hoped to return to Britain soon.108 An unnamed Jewish chaplain wrote to the Jewish Chronicle to relate how two non-Jewish Highland soldiers on a train had asked him to pray with them, and how three Jewish soldiers had asked him to do so before their unit was sent on a perilous journey far from home.109 In September 1944 Mr Joseph Moss of Bolton in Lancashire wrote to the Jewish Chronicle requesting that letters from Jewish chaplains should be not marked “On His Majesty’s Service”; his sister-in-law had recently received such a letter from a chaplain saying that he had seen her son, who was looking fit and well, but had initially feared from the envelope that the letter bore bad news.110 It is believed that on Rosh Hashanah of 1944 a Jewish chaplain sang prayers with a group of Jewish soldiers on an airfield before

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they took off for Arnhem in the knowledge that their chances of survival were slim.111

Chaplaincy Conferences In April 1941 a conference was held in London to discuss permanent cooperation among the Jewish chaplains of the Continental Allied Forces. Many thousands of Jews were now serving in those forces, the majority cut off from their homes and in need of support from Jewish chaplains. Participants included Jewish chaplains Major Melzer and Captain Klepfisz of the Polish Army and Lieutenant Krausz of the Czechoslovak Army.112 A group photograph of twenty-one British Jewish chaplains and one Jewish chaplain from Canada was taken either at that conference or at a conference held not later than the summer of 1943 (when some of those present began to go abroad). On Monday 8 May 1944 there was a conference of British Jewish chaplains, which was also attended by members of the London Beth Din.113 From 12 to 14 November 1944 the Jewish Chaplains of the United States Eighth Air Force held a conference at the West London Reform Synagogue. Rev. Solomon Lipson, who had been a chaplain in the First World War, and Rabbi Leslie Edgar, participated.114 Speakers at this non-Orthodox venue included Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, perhaps an indication under the influence of wartime of at least a limited religious diversity. The majority of the Jewish chaplains from the United States were not Orthodox, and Hertz may have identified the opportunity to introduce an Orthodox perspective into their conference. A further conference of American Jewish Chaplains lasting for six days took place in the same venue in June 1945, and was addressed by various speakers including British Orthodox chaplains Isaac Chait and Isaac Levy.115

Shortage of Chaplains In an editorial at the time of the New Year in 1942 the Jewish Chronicle recognised the difficulties facing the Jewish chaplaincy and applauded its work.116 Inevitably there were never enough Jewish chaplains. Soldiers sometimes wrote to the press to say this, and the shortage of chaplains became a recurrent issue. In March 1940 a Mr. B. Rappaport wrote to the Jewish Chronicle regretting the absence of a chaplain at the funeral at Willesden Jewish Cemetery of a young Jewish soldier who had been killed following an accident near Sheffield.117 In February 1944 Rifleman E. Cohen, who had served in Libya and Italy, felt it keenly when his younger brother was killed in Italy and he had received a letter from a Church of England chaplain to say that he had buried him as no Jewish chaplain had been available.118 Sergeant H. R. Oskotsky RAOC suggested in March 1944 that there were numbers of suitable men inside

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Jewish Chaplains in the Second World War.Taken on what seems like a rooftop, the photograph may have been taken at the chaplaincy conference held in Britain in April 1941. If not, it was taken not later than the summer of 1943, when some of those present began to go abroad. Left to right, back row: M. Jaffe, M. Lew, H. Bornstein, B Joseph, I. Chait, J. Weintrobe, L. Hardman, I.K. Cosgrove, S da Pimontel, I. Fabricant, B. Casper, A. Myerson, S. (perhaps M.) Berman, S. Amias, C.M. Bloch, S. Hooker; front row: P. Cohen, A. Barnett, M. Gollop, S. Gershon Levi (Canada), L. Edgar, A.S. Super. The back of the photo also recorded the absence of I. Brodie, E. Cashdan, L. Rabinowitz, H. Levy, M. Berman, S. Isaacs and J. Israelstam, most of whom were serving abroad.

and outside the armed forces who would be attracted by the chaplaincy.119 Major William Schonfield, the Army Welfare Officer for No. 8 District, who had been in charge of the administrative work of the JWSC in the First World War, suggested in May 1944 that, as had happened then, suitable laymen be appointed and temporarily ordained, on the basis of their promise to complete their studies after the war.120 1944 was a critical year and, for the Christian churches too, it was becoming increasingly difficult to fill all available vacancies for chaplains. An anonymous soldier repeated the complaint in June 1944 of the shortage of chaplains. In an editorial entitled Not Enough Jewish Chaplains the Jewish Chronicle supported him, writing that “Chaplaincy on the fighting front demands immense vigour and vitality, such as only the young and very fit can command. It also demands very special qualities of mind and character, tact and understanding of men.” It chastised synagogues for their unwillingness to

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part with ministers.121 Lieutenant-Commander J. Freedman, RN, echoed the complaint, suggesting that hospitality invitations and transport tickets be sent to Jewish men and women serving in isolated districts.122 Corporal Edward J. Landau of the Parachute Brigade, BLA, complained that after the return of his unit from Normandy after D-Day and again from Arnhem there were no Rosh Hashanah services nor, alone among all the denominations, Jewish memorial services for fallen comrades.123

Chaplains in the Home Command Chaplains could not be conscripted, nor if they enlisted could they be sent abroad against their will. Thirteen Jewish chaplains served wholly or predominantly in Britain, eleven in the army and two in the RAF. In the sequence of their appointments, they were these. Rev. Hyman L. Alexander of Portsmouth and then of Hendon Synagogue in London was appointed a chaplain and had taken up his duties by October 1940. Based in Scotland, he travelled widely to visit groups of men stationed in or near large towns and solitary Jews serving at outposts miles from any habitation. When in 1942 Sergeant Moses Lewis Usher of the RAF died on service in the Shetland Islands the army provided a plane to fly Alexander, as the only passenger, the five hundred and fifty miles from Edinburgh, a journey which by train and steamer would normally have taken about thirty-six hours, to conduct the funeral, which was attended by sixteen Jewish and a large number of non-Jewish service personnel. In the summer of 1942 Alexander together with Rev. Solly Hooker conducted a service in Glasgow for about a hundred British and Allied troops.124 Rev. Alexander Saul Amias, MBE (9 March 1907 – 1 December 2002) or Rev Saul (as he was always known) was born in London and was the minister of its Edgware Synagogue. Commissioned on 27 January 1941 he served throughout the war in various Commands within Britain, including at army camps near Amersham and Bovingdon. Between 21 March and 25 April 1946 he travelled to the Central Mediterranean Force to officiate at Passover, and was released from the army on 4 July 1946. He continued to serve for many years as the minister of Edgware Synagogue, receiving the MBE in 1973 and retiring in 1975.125 Rev. J. Weintrobe (b. 28 March 1904) was the minister at Swansea Synagogue. Commissioned on 28 January 1941 he served in various postings in Southern Command and then from April 1945 in Eastern Command. With Rev. Michael Adler he officiated in 1941 at the funeral of Pilot Officer Hyam David Abrams

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RCAF who died of injuries received in a flying accident. He was released from the army on 7 March 1946.126 Rev. Arthur Barnett (1888 – 3 December 1961) of the Western Synagogue in London had served as a chaplain in the First World War. From 8 April 1941 he served again as a chaplain and was based at Aldershot. He was also the Honorary Staff Chaplain to the Jewish Lads’ Brigade.127 Rev. Aaron Shapiro (b. 27 June 1913) lived in Llandudno and then served as the minister of Brondesbury Synagogue in London. Enlisting in May 1941 he served in Eastern Command until resigning his commission on 6 May 1942.128 Rev. Wolf Morein, B.A. (28 February 1908 – 18 September 1941) grew up in Gateshead and attended Gateshead Elementary School, Skerry’s College in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Jews’ College and University College London. In 1932 he married Gertrude Kutchinsky, and they had a son and a daughter. He served from 1929 at Becontree and District Synagogue in Essex and from 1931 at the North London Synagogue in Islington. After service as an officiating chaplain for Essex he was commissioned on 11 June 1941 as a chaplain, his synagogue making a presentation to him to mark the event. Morein trained for three months with Southern Command at Devizes in Wiltshire. On 17 September 1941 he officiated at a Pidyan Ha’ Ben ceremony – the ceremonial “redemption” of a first-born son. Hospitalised with stomach pains, he proved to have a ruptured appendix and to have contracted peritonitis, and died the following day. He was buried on Sunday 21 September at Willesden Jewish Cemetery.129 At his funeral SJC Gollop said that he “finished his life suddenly in the midst of a task in the army which no man could have done better. In the few months he served as a Chaplain he showed remarkable zeal, organising ability and self sacrifice.” At the graveside Rev. Dr J. Rabinowitz spoke of his devotion to duty. A memorial service was held for him at his synagogue the following Sunday, 28 September, at which the Chief Rabbi gave the address. In obituaries Gollop wrote of Wolf Morein that “He soon won the affection of the men under his charge and the esteem of all Christian officers with whom his duties brought him into contact”; Rev. Rabinowitz that “As a Chaplain to the Forces he gave services which it will be difficult to excel”; and Rev. Dr M. Lew that “The Jewish soldiers to whom he ministered during the past few months speak of him in terms of veneration”.130 Rev. Dr Barnett Joseph, B. A., PhD (b. 31 October 1908) was educated at Stepney Jewish School, Central Foundation, Owen’s School in Islington, Jews’ College and London University, graduating with honours in Semitics and being awarded a doctorate on the responsa of Rabbi Benjamin ben Mattathias as a

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source for the life of Jewry in south east Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He ministered in London, from September 1934 at the South Hackney Synagogue and from 1936 at the New Hackney Synagogue. After service from 1939 as an officiating clergyman he was appointed a chaplain in June 1941, serving from 25 June 1941 until 29 May 1946 as a chaplain in Northern, Western and Southern Commands. In March 1946 he became the chaplain to the Maccabean Branch of the British Legion.131 Rev. Dr Isaac Kenneth Cosgrove, D.L., J.P., B.A., PhD (5 July 1902 – 30 November 1972) was born in Tonypandy in Wales. He was married to Dorothy, had two children and was the minister of the Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow. He served initially as the Officiating Chaplain to Scottish Command. Jews serving in West Scotland were invited to contact him in Glasgow, where they would be welcomed. Enlisting as a chaplain, he served from 16 July 1941 in Western and Scottish Commands in England, Scotland, South Wales and Northern Ireland. In December 1941 he suffered shock and multiple bruises in an accident whilst travelling on duty and was confined to bed. In an article published in 1946 on Some Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain Cosgrove wrote that whilst Jewish communities were invariably hospitable to Jewish troops based in their vicinity, some troops were stationed in remote locations. One such location was a previously uninhabited small island off the Atlantic coast. Taken there in a small boat to visit Jewish soldiers, Cosgrove had a steep climb up a narrow ladder; on his return he had to jump down into the boat bobbing in the waves. He wrote also of the Alien Companies of the Pioneer Corps, one of which had received orders to move camp on a day which was Yom Kippur. Their non-Jewish commanding officer had taken it upon himself to postpone the departure until the following day, and Cosgrove had conducted traditional Yom Kippur services.132 On 28 August 1945 Cosgrove departed for temporary duty in Norway where, assisted by Lance-Bombardier Max of the Royal Artillery, he conducted Rosh Hashanah services in Tromso. Men came from many outposts and from Narvik, one hundred and seventy miles away, in a truck provided by the army. The sole Jewish resident of Tromso provided hospitality, and the men decided upon a return visit to Narvik for Yom Kippur. Whilst on leave on 1 October 1945 (after the ensuing festival of Succot), Cosgrove spoke at a public meeting in Britain (which was mainly about the situation of Jewish survivors in Germany) on the position of Jews in Norway. Cosgrove concluded his service as Senior Jewish Chaplain to the Scottish Command in the relative rank of major based in Edinburgh, and left the army on 5 January 1946.133 Rev. Isaac Chait (14 October 1906 – 1973) was born in Boston in Lincolnshire, and educated at Bayswater Jewish School and Birkbeck College and at a yeshiva.

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He served as a minister for ten years in Pontypridd in South Wales and then in Bayswater and at Palmers Green and Southgate District Synagogue in London. Married with one son, he was appointed a chaplain on 6 August 1941. He served in Southern Command and London District. As Jewish chaplain for the London area he gave a lecture in July 1945 on Jews in the forces, in which he said that there were thirty-seven Jewish chaplains in the Army and five in the RAF. He left the army in February 1946, becoming the minister of the Sheffield United Hebrew Congregation.134 Rev. Jacob Israelstam, B.A. (1 September 1893 – 1974) was born in London and attended London University. He served as the minister of the Merthyr Tydfil Congregation and then from 1920 of the Bradford Hebrew Congregation. After serving as an officiating clergyman in the Bradford area he enlisted in April 1943 at the age of 49 and was commissioned on 20 July 1943. When Rev. Solly Hooker left for North Africa Israelstam succeeded him as Jewish chaplain in Western Scottish Command. Israelstam was released from the army on 29 August 1945. He returned to his community in Bradford, remaining there until he retired in 1961.135 Rev. Abraham Berman, B.A. (1914 – December 1991) was born in Llanelli and educated at Yeshivah Etz Chaim and at Jews’ College, where he took a first class degree in Semitics. He served as minister to Jewish evacuees in the Egham and Staines district and then at Hendon Synagogue in London when its Rev. Hyman Alexander became a chaplain in October 1940. He was commissioned as a chaplain on 29 November 1943 and after chaplaincy training served in Scottish Command. In May 1944 he officiated at the funeral of Staff Sergeant Jack Needleman of Glasgow of the Glider Pilot Regiment. An anonymous correspondent to the Jewish Chronicle was impressed by the services which he conducted in Glasgow. He was discharged from the army in 1945. He became the clerk and then the secretary to the Manchester Jewish Board of Guardians, later known as Manchester Jewish Social Services, and served them for fortyseven years, passing away a month before his intended retirement.136 Rev. (from 1957, Rabbi) Jacob Ferber (July 1909 – 13 April 1998) was born in Riga in Latvia and brought to England at the age of three months by his father, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ferber. He lived in Manchester and then in London, studied in Etz Chaim Yeshiva and became a mohel (circumciser). He ministered to an evacuee community in Marlow in 1941/42 and then in Cheltenham. He became an RAF chaplain, based at West Drayton. He was married to Sylvia Herman and they had a daughter. After the war he served communities in Hounslow, East Ham and Manor Park and Wanstead and Woodford, retiring in 1974.137

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Rev. Ruben Abenson (b. 1910) was appointed an RAF chaplain with effect from 24 July 1944.138 Rabbi Eliezer Rabinowitz chose to serve not as a chaplain but as a private soldier and served in an anti-aircraft unit.139 Rev. Meyer Fine (2 December 1919 – 8 October 1996) served in the Welsh Guards from July 1940 until August 1946 in Britain and Europe, and entered the ministry in 1954.140 Rabbi Harry Jacobi, MBE (19 October 1925 – 24 April 2019) escaped from Europe and served for three years in H.M. Forces, including with the Jewish Brigade. He was later ordained within the Liberal Movement, and was regularly amongst the clergy at the annual Ajex Remembrance Parade.141

Passover In 1941 the Chief Rabbi’s Emergency Council sent thousands of Passover food parcels to Jews serving with British, Dutch, Czechoslovak and Polish forces.142 In 1942 food was supplied for Passover to British, Canadian and American soldiers.143 Inevitably supplies of matzo for Passover did not reach every Jewish soldier who wanted them, and on occasions soldiers wrote to the press to complain.144 In 1943 thousands of Passover food parcels were supplied, including to American and Canadian troops.145 In 1944 the JWSC despatched 25,000 pounds (by weight) of matzo, 500 pounds (by weight) of meat, 15,000 pints of wine and 5,000 Haggadot (texts).146 For Passover of 1945 a convoy of lorries took seventy-five large cases of Passover supplies to Jewish soldiers serving in the British Liberation Army in North West Europe.147 In 1943 Passover Seder services were organised for Jewish servicemen of many nations in many parts of Britain, including in a field by a railway cutting in an area within Southern Command conducted by SJC Gollop and in the hospitality of hundreds of Jewish homes. Thousands of Passover food parcels were supplied, and the American and Canadian Jewish chaplains wrote to the press to convey their appreciation.148 In the Orkney Islands the first ever Passover Seder service, attended by servicemen and women, nurses and some civilians, was conducted by chaplain Leslie Edgar. Some men made a two-day journey from the Shetlands to attend. After the service the Senior Chaplain (the Rev. J. A. Williamson) showed films of Palestine which he had taken in 1936. The Forces’ newspaper, the Orkney Blast, announced that there was a Jewish service every Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Church of Scotland Canteen (Kirkwall) conducted by Private Cohen to which all Jewish servicemen and women were cordially invited.149 In 1944 hospitality and Seder services were arranged for more than eighty thousand Jewish troops of the British and Allied Forces, some led by British, American and Canadian chaplains, including Rev. Isaac Fabricant in the

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Orkney Islands and Rev. Jacob Israelstam in the Shetlands, where “charming little seven-year old Miss Ethel Greenwald, of Lerwick, asked the four questions”.150 In 1945 Seder services took place around Britain for British and Allied troops, including Norwegian sailors and Palestinian submarine crews, conducted by British and Allied chaplains. Vast quantities of Passover supplies were despatched around the UK, to the BLA in Europe and to the Middle East, Nigeria, West Africa, East Africa and the Gold Coast (where the Seder was conducted by Chaplain Arnold A. Lasker151).152 Every year there were numerous letters of appreciation.153

Festival Services and Hospitality Many Jewish families were willing to offer hospitality to Jewish soldiers, especially for festivals, and numerous hospitality committees and schemes were formed around the country.154 There were still complaints of a lack of hospitality, particularly for colonials and Palestinians in London.155 Attempts were made in 1942 to establish a Jewish social centre in London for serving men and women similar to that which had existed in the First World War.156 The Balfour Services Club at 41 Portland Place, London W.1. was formed, as was in 1943 the National Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces (NJHC or JHC). In 1943 Chief Rabbi Hertz, SJC Gollop, the JWSC and French Army Chaplain Arruas appealed for hospitality for the High Holy Days.157 The NJHC arranged hospitality widely throughout the UK and, in conjunction with Rabbi Myer Berman, for troops in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Malta and Gibraltar. Services were held throughout the UK, attended by troops of many Allied nations, some conducted or addressed by American and Canadian chaplains. American servicemen were present at over a hundred locations; in Norwich, for example, some two hundred American and one hundred British troops joined the local community of twenty families for a service in a church hall followed by a catered lunch.158 For the High Holy Days of 1944 the JHC arranged hospitality at over two hundred hospitality centres in Britain.159 It sent its representatives Mr Sigmund Gestetner and the Secretary of the JHC, Mr Sam Ansell, to France on welfare missions to spend the High Holydays with Jewish soldiers; on the second day of the New Year they attended a front-line service in Belgium conducted by Rabbi L. Rabinowitz.160 The JHC was in contact with Jewish chaplains in Italy and assisted Jewish Forces’ Clubs in Italy, North Africa, West Africa, Malta, Gibraltar and Egypt.161 SJC Brodie and Rev. Jacob Israelstam toured the north of Scotland, conducting services in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and the Outer Hebrides. They also visited Lerwick and Kirkwall, and paid tributes to residents who had afforded hospitality and facilities for services and socials to Jewish personnel.162

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In March 1945 the Jewish Forces Club in Bournemouth through Rev. C. L. Heilpern issued a pamphlet about its three years’ work for the Forces. With a logo of “hands across the sea” between Britain and North America, it bore the words in Hebrew “Shalom Aleichem (peace to you)”.163 American Jewish chaplains repeatedly expressed appreciation for hospitality and assistance.164 American troops presented plaques of appreciation to a number of communities including Birmingham, Bristol, Portsmouth and Reading165, as did the chaplain of the Czechoslovak forces on his departure from Britain after five years.166

Synagogues at RAF Stations and Army Garrisons Between April 1944 and November 1945 synagogues were opened and consecrated at five RAF stations by SJC Brodie together with other chaplains including on two occasions the Chief Rabbi. They were RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk167, Cranwell in Lincolnshire168, Henlow in Bedfordshire169 and Sealand170 and Kirkham171 in Lancashire. At some of the stations there were regular services, Jewish educational courses and Jewish clubs. At Mildenhall Flight Lieutenant Julian Misell held regular weekly services, Leading Aircraftman Shone conducted them and Leading Aircraftwoman M. Sefton became the “mother of the congregation”. On the first anniversary of the opening of the synagogue at Mildenhall in May 1945 a thanksgiving service was held. At Sealand there were literary and social evenings on Mondays, and the president of the “congregation”, Corporal Abe Grabman, started the first official RAF language course in modern Hebrew, with eighteen airmen and women attending the opening lecture. At the outbreak of the war there was only one Army garrison synagogue, at Aldershot. Two others were consecrated by SJC Brodie and other chaplains: in October 1944 at Colchester in Essex172 and in August 1945 at Catterick in Yorkshire.173 The synagogue at Catterick was built by German prisoners of war, which was, said SJC Brodie, poetic justice for the number of Jewish sanctuaries which the barbarians had destroyed. Flight Lieutenant Cyril Galkoff, a dental officer who was a lay reader and the liaison officer for Jewish matters at his RAF station in England, organised and conducted regular Friday evening services there. He presented a portable Ark and silk curtain to house the Sefer Torah; Rev. Saul Amias took it to camp services and he and SJC Brodie attended the formal presentation.174 Men of the U.S. Eighth Air Force made their own miniature ark and appurtenances for holding services at their service command station.175 At an RAF station two aircrew were detailed on the morning of Yom Kippur of 1944 for an operational mission. They forewent the special operational meals to which they were entitled, carried out their mission and returned to the Yom Kippur service.176

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Services on Troopships and around the World Services were held on troopships. In December 1940 a Chanukah service was held on a troopship by fifteen Jewish officers and men shown in a group photo, conducted by a soldier who before the war had been training as a Rabbi. Other services on the voyage, which appears to have been to the Middle East, were held through the efforts of Private J. Lever and with the co-operation of padres of other denominations aboard ship.177 In 1941 aboard a British troopship “going out East”, the Senior Jewish Chaplain, Middle East Forces, Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz, organised with the cooperation of the ship’s officers and with matzo baked by the ship’s baker a complete Passover Seder service, with readings in Hebrew and English by assigned personnel, and daily services for the whole of the festival, and issued a circular notice setting out all of the arrangements.178 At the same time in 1941 two Jewish soldiers on another troopship organised with the cooperation of the ship’s chaplain an improvised service for Passover with Orthodox and Progressive influences for about ten Jewish soldiers.179 In, probably, 1942, RAF Pilot Officer Philip Smulian organised services on a troopship every Saturday morning attended by so many officers and men that the room allocated to them was packed at each service.180 In an editorial in April 1943 lauding the religious tolerance and respect which characterised the British Army, the Jewish Chronicle cited an occasion upon which a troopship was delayed to enable a Jewish private to land and join his coreligionists in festival prayers.181 In December 1941 the Jewish Chronicle published accounts which it had received of Sabbath and festival services held around the world. In Abyssinia some twenty South African soldiers held Holy Day services with the eight poor but very hospitable Jewish families in the small town of Diredawa. In Egypt Kol Nidrei and Yom Kippur services were conducted by Rev. Levy and Rabbi Brodie for two to three hundred people. In Iceland some fifty American soldiers made a collection on order to hire a hall, and nearly two hundred people attended festival services, including British soldiers and sailors and three German refugee families who had settled there. In Iraq some fifty British soldiers and airmen, together with Palestinian soldiers of all European nationalities, were hosted by the Baghdad Jewish Community. In Papua Australian soldiers and airmen improvised a Rosh Hashanah service and hoped to muster a minyan for Yom Kippur. In Syria some sixty to seventy British and Imperial troops gathered to celebrate the festival amidst the warmest Oriental hospitality. In Freetown in Sierra Leone in West Africa some fifteen British, South African and Rhodesian soldiers, sailors and airmen and some civilians gathered in a private house for Rosh Hashanah services and Kiddush and for Yom Kippur services and a communal meal, everybody signing copies of a souvenir of the occasion. On a troopship two NCOs organised two Friday

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evening services, one attended by a Church of England padre, enabling people who wished to do so to say Kaddish. “I was struck by the great response these services had, (continues the Sergeant). More so when some men freely confessed having entered the Army under a different religious denomination, they suddenly realised that they had been better served for their peace of mind had they entered as Jews. Now we all look forward to Friday evening as an event in the week, and one which we hope will be of lasting value to all those participating.”182

Iceland On 9 May 1940 Britain sent troops to Iceland to deny Germany its use as a potential submarine base and to create forward airfields to enable aircraft to narrow the “air gap” between Britain and North America and protect the convoys for as far out into the Atlantic as possible. As a Nordic island race Iceland had its Nazi sympathisers and not everybody welcomed the arrival of the Allies, which some viewed as an occupation. A handful of German Jewish refugees had somehow reached and managed to remain in Iceland; one woman, Henny Goldstein Rosenthal, avoided expulsion for herself, her son and her mother by marrying an Icelandic man, Hendrik Ottóson. The Jewish High Holyday services of 1940 were the first non-Christian religious services to be held in Iceland since the Icelanders embraced Christianity in 1000 C.E. Held in a rented hall in Reykjavik, they were attended by about twenty-five British, Scottish and Canadian soldiers and eight German refugees. One of the British soldiers, Maurice Kay, had been court martialled for hitting a soldier in the face for making antisemitic remarks and had been sent to Iceland as a punishment. The services were led by an NCO, Alfred Cohen183 from Leeds, who acted as the cantor, including for the Kol Nidrei service which opens Yom Kippur. It seems that services were also led from a Jewish prayer book by a Church of England chaplain, Rev. Canon John Charles Fulton Hood, M.A., B.D., a Territorial Army chaplain who had served as a chaplain in the First World War and later wrote a history of the Church in Iceland. Yom Kippur was a full day of fasting and services, followed by a meal in a nearby hotel. In 1941 Seder and Passover services were held for over thirty British soldiers. From 1941 American troops began to arrive in Iceland, gradually replacing the British garrison. A photograph shows thirty-three of the people, including Americans, who attended the High Holyday services in September 1941. On leave in December 1941, Private A. Miller reported that in the absence of a chaplain the Jewish soldiers had organised themselves into a community, had collected money to hire a hall and held services regularly on Friday nights and on festivals. He wrote that the festival services were attended

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by nearly two hundred people including personnel from H.M. ships and American troops; whenever one of the soldiers had a yahrzeit a minyan was obtained to enable him to say Kaddish; and notices of the services were published in the English and American newspapers. Lance Corporal N. Kamenoff wrote that services were enthusiastically organised and conducted by Corporal Balkind from Glasgow, that every facility was given to attend the services and that on Yom Kippur an address was given by a Free Church minister from Glasgow, Captain Robertson. As the war went on, American Rabbis were flown to Iceland for brief visits for the major Jewish festivals.184

e Dearth of Chaplains Inevitably many Jewish soldiers rarely if ever encountered a Jewish chaplain throughout the war, and were therefore thrown back upon their own spiritual resources. Simon Kritz (17 September 1919 – 8 March 2005) served in the 13th Light Field Ambulance of the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached for a period to the 7th Armoured Brigade – the “Desert Rats”. He served from 3 October 1939 until 1 July 1946 in various hospitals and medical units in Britain (1939), Egypt (1939-1940), the Western Desert of North Africa (1940-1941), Burma and India (1942), Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon (1942-1944), Italy (1944), various hospital postings in Britain, some with German prisoners of war, including a posting by the War Office to a camp in Douglas in the Isle of Man “to do a special job of work” (1944-1945) and Antwerp in Belgium (1946). Throughout his service Kritz wrote dozens of letters to his parents and grandparents. They provide a paradigm of the efforts which had to be made by a soldier in the Second World War who was conscious of his Judaism to adhere to his faith. In 1942 he wrote from Rangoon in Burma: I think you will find me a bit changed in my outlook and ideas. I really believe, I am more religious now than I have ever been, although I can not practice my religion. I have more than once believed that the Almighty was holding his hand over me. In the midst of battle I have been able to comfort men who I feel sure are braver than I, but thank G-d somehow when ever danger has been close at hand, something inside me makes me calm and collected. I have never spoken of this before because it is something I can not explain. From Italy he wrote in 1944: Another thing I have to right [sic] about is the question of religion. I just wonder how many ministers are in the army. All the time I have been abroad no one has ever visited my formation and yet all other

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denomination has a padre who visits them, now can you tell me why this is? Do you think going abroad is too hard for them or maybe they do not wish to leave a lucrative position. You wonder why I am bitter on this subject, well before the war, I heard very patriotic speeches given by our various leaders but surely actions speak louder than words.185 In July 1942 the minister of the traditionally Orthodox Sunderland Jewish Community, Rev. S. P. Toperoff, took it upon himself to produce a monthly bulletin and to send it to every Jewish serviceman from Sunderland who was serving anywhere in the world. The Bulletin for the Forces contained local news and letters from servicemen and women. It was issued every month until January 1946, when the final issue included a tribute from SJC Brodie.186 It is a vivid record of the situations, hopes and apprehensions of some one hundred and thirty servicemen and women from Sunderland, five of whom lost their lives, and reflects the spectrum of their experiences at different stages of the war in North Africa, Sicily, India and Europe. Recurrent themes are the shortage of chaplains and religious provision for British Jewish soldiers and the warmth of the Americans, more numerous and better equipped with chaplains and religious requisites, in welcoming the British to High Holyday and Passover services and events.

Rabbi Dr Louis Rabinowitz, PhD (24 May 1906 – 7 August 1984) Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz, who was born in Edinburgh, and his wife Tania, who was the daughter of the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Amiel, had three children. Rabinowitz served as the Rabbi of a number of London synagogues, latterly at Walm Lane in Cricklewood, and worked to rescue children from Nazi Germany. In around May 1937 he was awarded a PhD on the social life of Jews in Northern France in the 12th to 14th centuries, about which he published a book.187 He was an erudite scholar, a fiery orator and in terms of Zionist politics a right-wing Revisionist. Having been commissioned as a Territorial Army chaplain in 1929, Rabinowitz was called up on 26 October 1939. Initially attached to a field ambulance, he served in the Eastern Command in Bedfordshire and then in the Scottish Command in the Edinburgh area.188 In June 1940 he officiated at the funeral at Streatham Jewish Cemetery of Rifleman David Cohen, who had been killed in a shooting accident.189 On occasion he ministered to the Jewish community in Northampton.190 On 21 September 1940, as part of a “Recall to the Synagogue” campaign, Rabinowitz described in a sermon his experiences as an army chaplain.191 Throughout his military career Rabinowitz periodically wrote to the press about his work. The Jewish Chronicle of 29 March 1940 published a long article

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under the title Some Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain about some of his more extraordinary and whimsical experiences among the wide range of Jews whom a Jewish chaplain encountered. They included instances of men who maintained their Judaism even if normally unobservant, men who concealed it and men who arranged services for themselves in the absence of a chaplain. The newspaper commented that Jews in the Army were a sort of microcosmos of the Jewish community.192 In August 1940 Rabinowitz wrote to the Jewish Chronicle that he had received from the former headquarters of a regiment now stationed on the coast which had apparently previously been used as a refugee hostel a Sefer Torah, tefillin, prayer books and Bibles and would restore them to their owners if they communicated.193 In March 1941 the Jewish Chronicle published another long article by Rabinowitz entitled More Experiences of a Jewish Padre. He narrated “stalwart representatives of muscular Judaism” serving in the crack Brigade of Guards and dancing a Hora in the Guards’ Barracks; Jews who enlisted under a false religious denomination (of whom Rabinowitz kept his own secret “black nominal roll”); antisemitism in the army, which was “so insignificant as to be negligible”; Christian chaplains who facilitated religious observance by Jewish soldiers, one of whom had arranged a minyan for a soldier who had a Yahrzeit; groups of Jewish soldiers who voluntarily arranged their own Friday evening and Sunday morning services; a Jewish sergeant-gunner in a bomber who, having made thirty-eight landings, feared he would not make many more, with whom Rabinowitz talked and prayed before, on the following day, he went out on a raid and did not return; soldiers who had rejected their religious upbringing; the consideration with which Rabinowitz’s dietary requirements were met, sometimes by a whole officers’ mess taking the same meal with him; transmitting messages between Jewish soldiers in different units; and the differing attitudes, positive and negative, of men in small isolated units and locations such as searchlight batteries. Rabinowitz concluded: When I realise that I have been chosen to minister to these men and keep that spirit alive despite all the difficulties and anxieties which the work entails, despite the grievous separation from family on the one hand and the bonds of affection of one’s civilian congregation on the other, in the words of R[abbi]. Nebunyak b[en]. Hakaney: ‘I render thanks for my portion.’ 194 In an editorial the Jewish Chronicle echoed Rabinowitz’s theme that if the new found and positive wartime spirit could be harnessed after the war to the work of reconstruction of Jewish communal life there would be no need to despair of the future of Anglo-Jewry.195

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In September 1941 Rabinowitz, by then in the Middle East, wrote to the Jewish Chronicle to describe how, in an attempt to find a synagogue in a small town on the Great North Road which a commanding officer wished the three Jews in his unit to attend, he came upon an ultra-observant Chassidic community which had journeyed from Poland through Vienna. Having been bombed out in London they had been told of three houses in this town, where they had settled.196 Rabinowitz was appointed a chaplain to Jewish personnel serving in the Middle East, and embarked on 20 March 1941. At a farewell gathering for him in Glasgow he spoke of the splendid co-operation which Jewish chaplains received from their non-Jewish chaplaincy colleagues.197 His friend Rev. James Parkes wrote of his service in England: One concluding word about the author. “Rab” and I are old friends who have worked together for many years in many other fields than those of war. Before he went out to the Middle East, it so happened that my home was just inside the area of his work as Jewish chaplain, and his familiar car, battered and dusty, was apt to arrive at any hour of day or night for Rab to pick up a few hours’ sleep – or a few apples – before going off to look for another Jewish soldier he had heard of in some remote searchlight unit or elsewhere. I don’t think he ever stopped working for his men, and the work of a Jewish chaplain is almost invariably more exacting than any other, for he has to cover so vast an area to minister to his scattered flock. So I saw bits and pieces of what he was doing, and I cannot more fitly conclude than by saying that if I were a Jewish soldier in the present war there is nothing better that I could ask for than to have Rab, with his deep religious inspiration, his unfailing cheerfulness and his inexhaustible resourcefulness, as my chaplain. And, since there are many women in the forces to-day, I might add that my wife shares my opinion!198

Rev. Isaac Levy B.A., PhD (14 September 1910 – 31 March 2005) Rev. Isaac (who became universally known as “Harry”) Levy was born in Paddington in London and attended St. Augustine’s LCC School, Jews’ College and Yeshiva Etz Chaim. He took a first degree at University College London with a first-class distinction in Greek and a doctorate in Rabbinical History at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Married in 1937 to Tonie Landau and with a son (another son and a daughter being born after the war), he served in London, from 1936 as the first full time minister at Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue and then from 1938 at Bayswater Synagogue. For two years

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before the start of the war he served as chaplain to the Jewish Lads Brigade, learning something of soldiering.199 Isaac Levy was the first Jewish minister to volunteer, in September 1939, for war service. Awaiting his commission, he served as a civilian officiating chaplain, spending three days a week at Aldershot and conducting three services a week in different centres within the Aldershot Command, three days at the instance of the JWSC assisting SJC Gollop in his office and the Sabbath with his congregation at the Bayswater Synagogue.200 Throughout his military service Levy maintained full diaries and wrote regularly to his wife, numbering his letters from the Middle East and Europe so that she would know if any had not arrived. Levy’s commission arrived in February 1940, and he was assigned to No 3 Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps Centre at Kitchener Camp, Richborough near Sandwich on the Kent coast. His “flock” were refugees from Germany and Austria, many highly qualified and some released from Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, who had been drafted into the Pioneer Corps. He organised services for them, together with refugee Rabbi Werner Van der Zyl, and conducted a Seder service for six hundred and fifty men.201 Levy was posted on 12 May 1940 to 3rd AMPC Training Centre at Westward Ho, on 20 August to Bulford and Porton Camp on Salisbury Plain as a chaplain to the Southern Command and on 31 August to the 2nd Middlesex Training Battalion RASC at Bulford. With his wife and young son he lodged with a pious churchgoing woman, with whom a lifelong friendship developed. He was constantly on the road, driving his antediluvian Austin Seven from camp to camp and unit to unit throughout the south of England to meet widely scattered Jewish personnel. Levy recorded that generally the army behaved superbly well to Jews. From Christian colleagues and commanding officers he invariably met only goodwill and respect for the dietary and other requirements of Orthodox Jewish soldiers, for whom kosher sausages were supplied. It was not uncommon for him to be invited to lunch in an officers’ mess and to discover that every officer had been given a meatless menu in order that as the Jewish padre he should not feel embarrassed at being the “odd man out”. Levy never encountered any antisemitism from officers; when on occasion it was reported by soldiers, he went to their commanding officer. The facility was available for Jews with German names to anglicise them. Levy spent Rosh Hashanah of 1940 with a company of “non-British” members of the AMPC – perhaps the Palestinian companies who had served with the BEF in Europe and been evacuated. In the adjacent field was encamped a battalion of British infantry which included two Jews. When its commanding officer learned during the first day of the festival of the special New Year services held in a nearby hall, he provided his military band on the second day to march the Jewish soldiers to the service and back.

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“If any good omen is needed for the commencement of a New Year in military service this wonderful gesture is not a little encouraging”, Levy wrote.202 On 1 February 1941 Levy was posted to the headquarters of the Jewish Chaplain, Military Headquarters. He arranged and conducted two Seder services, as well as Passover morning services, for some seven hundred men at a training camp near Sandwich in Kent.203 On 2 July 1941 he was posted to the 8th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, Midland Area. In August 1941 he sailed for North Africa.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

Turner, Barry, …And The Policeman Smiled (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990). Endelman, The Jews of Britain, pp. 215, 231. JHS, vol. 51, 2019, generally. Henry Morris and Martin Sugarman, A Record of the Jews who died in the Armed Forces of the Crown from 1939 (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011), pp. xxxii, xxxix, liv, 3-5. Louis Rabinowitz, Far East Mission (Doorfontein, Johannesburg: Eagle Press, 1952), pp. 7-9. Michael Greisman, Jews in Uniform (Aster Publishing, 2018), pp. 4-5. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 239, 241-2. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. VC/5/136-137, 142-143. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. JC 4/8/1939, p. 10; 11/8/1939, p. 16. Traditionally the lay leaders of synagogue communities, known as the wardens, wore top hats at services. Oddly, the only order about dress which General Montgomery was to give in North Africa, after seeing a man wearing a top hat, was that top hats were not to be worn in the 8th Army. JC 17/11/1939, p. 8. Forces War Records. This number is based upon the author’s research. It omits the civilian chaplains who served at Bergen Belsen concentration camp discussed in chapter 12 and the officiating clergymen now discussed. Alan Robinson, Chaplains at War. The Role of Clergymen During World War II. International Library of War Studies 11. (London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2008), pp. 96-7. Ibid., pp. 102-3. Snape and Madigan (eds.), The Clergy in Khaki, per Dr Alan Robinson, p. 211. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 280, 336, 339-340. National Archives, file WO/32/9455. JC 16/8/1940, p. 16. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 293-4. Training records at the Museum of Army Chaplaincy. Rev. Arthur Barnett had served as a chaplain in the First World War. Rev. David Hirsch had served as a chaplain in the First World War. The brother of Rev. S. Isaacs, Gunner Israel Isaacs, R.A., 1st Airborne Division, was wounded at Arnhem: JC 13/10/1944, p. 1. JC 24/11/1939, p. 25; 22/3/1940, p. 19; 5/4/1940, p. 35; 24/5/1940, p. 16. LMA, ACC/2712/15/2075. The author has been unable to ascertain whether those not designated Rabbi or Rev. held those titles. JC 5/1/1940, p. 23. JC 11/10/1940, p. 17. JC 25/10/1940, p. 10. JC 20/9/1940, p. 11.

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25. Information and photographs from Stuart Goodman (son) 26. Author’s interview with Patricia Restan (relative) 10/6/2018. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton, p. 73. 27. Information from Michael Jolles 18/9/2014. 28. JC 26/10/1945, p. 18. 29. VC/5/166. 30. JC 29/9/1939, p. 15; 6/10/1939, p. 12; 13/10/1939, p. 9; 20/10/1939, pp. 9, 15; 27/10/1939, pp. 9, 14. 31. LMA, ACC/2712/15/2075. 32. National Archives, file WO/32/12467. Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz, pp. 227-8. 33. Noted in the Bibliography by reference to the London Metropolitan Archives. 34. JC 1/3/1940, p. 7; 4/10/1940, p.11; 11/10/1940, p. 14. 35. JC 6/2/1942, p. 10. 36. LMA, ACC/2712/15/2075. National Archives, file WO/32/12467. Robinson, Chaplains at War, pp. 70-71 and n. 34. 37. VC/5/191, 200. By the summer of 1946 the camp had been closed. 38. VC/5/191, 200. 39. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. 40. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 286. JC 20/10/1939, pp. 9, 15; 3/11/1939, p. 17; 10/11/1939, p. 15; 17/11/1939, p. 18; 1/12/1939, p. 17; 8/12/1939, p. 15; 5/1/1940, pp. 16, 24; 19/1/1940, p. 26; 26/1/1940, pp. 6, 14; 23/2/1940, p. 8. 41. Gollop ACC. JC 9/2/1940, p. 10; 16/2/1940, pp. 1, 27; 1/3/1940, p. 7; 15/3/1940, p. 1. 42. JC 19/4/1940, p. 8. 43. JC 5/7/1940, p. 1. 44. JC 15/3/1940, p. 1. 45. JC 29/3/1940, p. 20. 46. VC/5/136-143. JC 31/3/1939, p. 12; 28/4/1939, p. 10. 47. JC 29/12/1939, p. 17. 48. Actually twenty-two. 49. JC 12/4/1940, p. 29. 50. JC 12/4/1940, p. 13; 19/4/1940, p. 8. 51. JC 28/6/1940, p. 11; 23/8/1940, p. 5. 52. JC 28/6/1940, p. 11; 15/11/1940, p. 13; 13/12/1940, p. 1. Forces War Records. Author’s interviews with Israel Brodie’s relatives Stanley Brodie QC 24/11/2014 and 5/12/2014 and Michael Garston 19/10/2014. 53. JC 5/4/1940, p. 32. 54. JC 21/6/1940, p. 13; 23/8/1940, p. 5; 14/2/1941, p. 15. 55. JC 19/7/1940, p. 7. 56. LMA, ACC/2712/15/2075. JC 30/5/1941, p. 6; 13/2/1942, p. 8. 57. Henry Morris and Martin Sugarman, We Will Remember Them. A Record of the Jews Who Died in the Armed Forces of the Crown 1939 – 1945 (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011 (second ed.)), pp. 27-30, per Rev. Isaac Levy. 58. JC 29/9/1939, p. 7; 16/8/1940, p. 13; 6/9/1940, pp. 11, 15. 59. Probably an error for twenty-six. 60. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. JC 26/1/1940, p. 6. 61. National Archives, file WO/32/12467. 62. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. 63. JC 28/11/1941, p. 13 (photo). 64. Many of these cards, including that of the author’s father, survive at the Jewish Museum in London.

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65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

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JC 6/9/1940, p. 15; 19/9/1941, p. 31; 25/6/1943, p. 7. E.g. JC 6/9/1940, p. 1; 14/3/1941, p. 23; 22/8/1941, p. 1; 30/1/1942, p. 15; 14/8/1942, p. 9; 19/2/1943, p. 1; 13/8/1943, p. 11; 27/8/1943, p. 11 (appealing for machzorim and tallesim for members of the Forces of the United Nations); 11/2/1944, p. 6; 25/8/1944, p. 7; 16/2/1945, pp. 5, 14; 17/8/1945, p. 11; 8/3/1946, p. 5. JC 5/9/1941, p. 7. E.g. JC 15/8/1941, p. 17. E.g. JC 8/8/1941, p. 7. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. JC 14/3/1941, pp. 1, 6. JC 5/1/1945, p. 17. Derek Taylor, Solomon Schonfeld. A Purpose in Life (London and Portland, Oregon: Valentine Mitchell, 2009), p. 82. JC 16/3/1945, p. 12. Menorah magazine, issue 1/2, July 1948. Chief Rabbi Hertz retained a sense of humour. According to parliamentary diarist “Chips” Channon, Hertz was asked his views when he met King George VI in 1940. Hertz assured the King that the Allies would eventually prevail, but added, “All the same, Sir, I would put some of the colonies in your wife’s name!” Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz, p. 225. Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz, p. 239; British Chief Rabbis, pp. 365-6. JC 24/9/1943, p. 11; 8/10/1943, p. 11; 29/10/1943, p. 18. JC 15/9/1944, p. 1; 22/9/1944, p. 11. JC 23/3/1945, p. 6. JC 22/12/1939, p. 20; 29/12/1939, p. 9. E.g. JC 6/8/1943, p. 13. JC 3/3/1944, p. 1. JC 1/9/1944, p. 16. JC 26/1/1945, p. 10. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041; ACC/3400/02/01/038, file 3, item 90. JC 8/6/1945, p. 12. JC 11/5/1945, pp. 1, 8; 18/5/1945, p. 1. Information from Ellin Besser 10/9/2020. JC 16/11/1945, p. 18. JC 19/4/1940, p. 8. JC 26/4/1940, p. 16. JC 10/1/1941, p. 19. JC 21/3/1941, p. 18. JC 12/12/1941, p. 17. LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. JC 5/9/1941, p. 21; 17/10/1941, p. 19. JC 28/11/1941, p. 19. JC 5/2/1943, p. 18. JC 28/5/1943, p. 19. JC 13/8/1943, p. 1; 24/9/1943, p. 16. JC 26/11/1943, p. 13. JC 31/12/1943, p. 1, 5. Information 15/9/2018 from Stacey Simons (daughter-in-law). JC 25/2/1944, p. 12. JC 31/3/1944, p. 5. JC 16/6/1944, p. 13.

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108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

126. 127.

128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136.

137. 138. 139.

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JC 25/8/1944, p. 11. JC 8/9/1944, p. 5. JC 1/9/1944, p. 17. Sugarman, Fighting Back, pp. 364, 370. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, p. 5. JC 11/4/1941, p. 1. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. JC 17/11/1944, pp. 1, 8; 24/11/1944, pp. 6, 13. University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS 60/18/9, folders 1,3. JC 29/6/1945, p. 5; 6/7/1945, p. 17. JC 25/9/1942, pp. 8, 9. JC 29/3/1940, p. 32. JC 11/2/1944, p. 13. JC 3/3/1944, p. 13. JC 19/5/1944, p. 13. JC 30/6/1944, pp. 8, 12. JC 28/7/1944, p. 12. JC 26/1/1945, p. 14. JC 11/10/1940, p. 11; 22/11/1940, pp. 9, 12-13; 23/5/1941, p. 15; 5/6/1942, p. 12; 17/7/1942, p. 10. ACC. Vivien and Deborah Samson, The Rabbi in the Green Jacket, Memories of Jewish Buckinghamshire 1939-1945 (Leicester: Troubador Publishing (Matador), 2015), pp. 139, 313. Sugarman, Fighting Back, p. 150. Morris, The Ajex Chronicles, p. 67. JC 24/1/1941, p. 13; 16/5/1941, p. 20; 13/12/2002, p. 20 (obituary). Forces War Records. ACC. JC 24/1/1941, p. 13; 1/8/1941, p. 19 (photo); 15/8/1941, p. 17. Forces War Records. R. N. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory. A Series of Jewish Contributions on Moral Leadership (Addresses and lectures delivered at the first two RAF Moral Leadership Courses) (London: Standard Art Publishing, 1948), p. 84. JC 4/7/1941, p. 13. ACC. JC 6/6/1941, p. 13; 19/6/1942, p. 13. Grave reference QX.1.1. ACC. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. 114. JC 13/6/1941, p. 13; 20/6/1941, p. 24; 1/8/1941, p. 19 (photo); 26/9/1941, pp. 3, 4, 6 (photo and obituary); 3/10/1941, p. 4; 10/10/1941, p. 6. Author’s interviews with David Morein (son), 26/6/2014 and 21/4/2017. ACC. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, pp. 30, 40. JC 27/6/1941, p. 15; 5/12/1941, p. 18 (photo); 3/4/1942, p. 16 (photo). Some Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain in Young Jewry, published by the Joint Emergency Committee for Jewish Religious Education in Great Britain, 1946, pp. 13-14. ACC. JC 2/8/1940, p.15; 23/5/1941, p. 15; 18/7/1941, pp. 13, 15; 2/1/1942, p. 13; 5/10/1945, p. 5. Undated and unidentified newspaper article. Information provided by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. Menorah magazine, issue 23/1, April 1974, p. 23. ACC. VC/5/142-143. JC 8/8/1941, p. 11; 27/7/1945, p. 5. Menorah magazine, issue 22/1, April 1973, p. 13. ACC. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 94. JC 23/7/1943, p. 9; 6/8/1943, p. 10. Menorah magazine, issue 23/1, April 1974, p. 23. ACC. Channah Hirsch, My Llanelli, The Gateshead of Wales (Golders Green, London: selfpublished, 2008), pp. 87-90. JC 17/1/1941, p. 18; 6/11/1942, p. 9; 14/1/1944, p. 14; 12/5/1944, p. 6; 18/8/1944, p. 12. Romain, Royal Jews, pp. 161-2. JC 29/4/1941, p. 11; 22/5/1998, p. 23 (obituary). JC 28/7/1944, p. 9. JM, file 2011.85.

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140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182.

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Author’s interview with Rabbi Yisroel Fine (son) 15/5/2017. JC 25/10/1996, p. 21 (obituary). JC 3/5/2019, pp. 30, 38; 30/8/2019, p. 47. JC 25/4/1941, p. 17. JC 13/3/1942, p. 19. JC 24/4/1942, p. 17. JC 30/4/1943, pp. 1, 9; 14/5/1943, p. 5. Taylor, Chief Rabbi Hertz, p. 228. Taylor, Solomon Schonfeld, p. 82. JC 23/3/1945, p. 1 (photo). JC 30/4/1943, pp. 1, 9; 14/5/1943, p. 5. JC 14/5/1943, p. 5. A role performed by the youngest person present. JC 14/4/1944, pp. 1, 11; 21/4/1944, pp. 1, 5, 15. Of whom the author has found no trace. JC 2/3/1945, pp. 9, 11; 9/3/1945, pp. 9, 12, 15; 16/3/1945, p. 10; 6/4/1945, pp. 1, 11; 13/4/1945, p. 18. JM, file 2011.80. E.g. JC 13/4/1945, pp. 14, 15; 20/4/1945, p. 12; 22/6/1945, p. 14. JC 17/10/1941, p. 19; 30/1/1942, p. 12; 6/8/1943, p. 10; 8/10/1943, pp. 1, 5; 10/3/1944, p. 12; 1/9/1944, p. 12. JC 17/11/1939, p. 8; 1/3/1940, p. 7; 15/3/1940, p. 34; 29/3/1940, p. 1; 9/8/1940, p. 8; 22/8/1941, p. 8; 6/2/1942, p. 10; 7/8/1942, p. 5. JC 27/2/1942, p. 7; 28/8/1942, p. 8; 4/9/1942, p. 15; 18/9/1942, p. 13. JC 27/8/1943, p. 11; 3/9/1943, pp. 9, 13; 10/9/1943, p. 1; 17/9/1943, p. 13. JC 8/10/1943, pp. 1, 5; 15/10/1943, p. 9; 29/10/1943, p. 13; 26/11/1943, p. 18. JHC Newsletter 29/9/1944 and Secretary’s Report October 1944. JC 6/10/1944, p. 18. JC 8/9/1944, p. 13; 15/9/1944, p. 1; 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14; 13/10/1944, p. 5; 20/10/1944, p. 5. JHC Secretary’s Report October 1944 and Secretary’s letter 18/10/1944 to Polish chaplain Klepfisz. JHC Secretary’s Report October 1944. JC 23/2/1945, p. 14. JC 23/3/1945, p. 17. JC 6/10/1944, p. 18; 17/11/1944, p. 19; 15/12/1944, p. 14. JC 30/3/1945, p. 10; 8/6/1945, p. 12; 17/8/1945, p. 12. JC 27/7/1945, p. 14. JC 7/4/1944, p. 6; 14/4/1944, pp. 1, 11 (photo); 2/6/1944, p. 12 (photo); 21/7/1944, p. 11 (photo); 10/11/1944, p. 17; 18/5/1945, p. 12. JHC Secretary’s Report October 1944. JC 20/10/1944, p. 1. JM, file 2011.74. JHC Secretary’s Report October 1944. JC 19/1/1945, p. 1; 2/3/1945, pp. 1, 13; 30/3/1945, p. 13. JC 2/3/1945, pp. 1, 13; 4/5/1945, p. 12. JC 7/12/1945, p. 12. JC 3/11/1944, p. 5. JC 10/8/1945, p. 18. JM, file 2011.74. JC 21/7/1944, p. 11 (photo). JC 7/7/1944, p. 13 (photo). JC 13/10/1944, p. 12. JC 6/6/1941, p. 6. JC 4/7/1941, p. 8. JC 25/7/1941, p. 25; 22/8/1941, p. 17. JC 26/2/1943, p. 6; 5/3/1943, p. 15. JC 30/4/1943, p. 8. JC 26/12/1941, pp. 1, 5, 15.

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183. Later, severely traumatised by the war, Alfred Cohen changed his name to Alf Conway and settled in Canada. 184 Jewish Political Studies Review, 16:3-4 (Fall 2004): Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, Iceland, the Jews and Anti-Semitism, 1625-2004. fornleifor.blog.is/entry 1791178. https://ellinbesser.com/2014/05. John C. F. Hood, Icelandic Church Saga (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1946). JC 8/11/1940, p. 1; 6/12/1940, p. 17 (photo); 16/5/1941, p. 21; 10/10/1941, p. 13 (photo); 26/12/1941, pp. 1, 5, 15. 185. Letters of Simon Kritz to his family, October 1939 – March 1946. JC 24/11/2017, p. 38. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, pp. 112-13. 186. Harold A. Davis (ed.), Sunderland Jewry at War, Sunderland Jewish Community, Bulletin for the Forces (1942-1946) (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: Arima Publishing, 2009), p. 316. 187. VC/5/82. JC 19/1/1939, supplement p. 9; 21/7/1939, p. 29. 188. VC/5/ 82. JC 17/11/1939, p. 8; 16/8/1940, p. 13; 22/9/1944, p. 5. 189. JC 14/6/1940, p. 5. 190. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton, p. 73. 191. LMA, ACC/2712/13/45: From L. Rabinowitz, C.F, writing from c/o A.C.G, Scottish Command, Edinburgh, to Mr P. Burgen, United Synagogue. An extract is set out at the start of this book. 192. JC 29/3/1940, pp. 7-8, 21. 193. JC 30/8/1940, p. 15. 194. JC 28/3/1941, pp. 8, 9, 28. 195. JC 28/3/1941, p. 16. 196. JC 19/9/1941, pp. 15, 16. 197. JC 7/3/1941, p. 15; 4/4/1941, p. 13. 198. Louis Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea. Palestinian Jewish Units in the Middle East 19411943 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944), p. 9. 199. IWM 11572 (Levy, sound). Everything in the Garden, Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue 1934-2009 (London: United Synagogue, 2009), pp. 11, 13. VC/5/136-143. LD3 pp. 146-148. JC 25/8/1944, p. 15; 15/4/2005, p.41 (obituary). 200. JC 9/2/1940, p. 23. Menorah magazine, issue 15/2, September 1966, pp. 11-14. LMA, ACC/2712/15/2075. 201. Letter of Rev. Isaac Levy (henceforth “LL”) 7/4/1940, 1/5/1940. Menorah magazine, issue 22/1, April 1973, pp. 14-16. JC 29/3/1940, p. 28 (photograph of Levy with soldiers and members of the women’s ATS outside a camp synagogue); 30/8/1940, p. 13. 202. JC 1/11/1940, p. 11. 203. LL 25/4/1941.

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10 THE SECOND WORLD WAR: THE MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA AND ITALY Jewish Chaplains served with British and Imperial Forces in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy.

Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz On his arrival in the Middle East in 1941, Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz assumed the title of “Senior Jewish Chaplain, Middle East Forces”, and the local administration confirmed him in that role.1 Initially the only Jewish chaplain in the Middle East, he served there from May 1941 until July 1943, successively in the Canal area, the Alexandria area, Palestine, the Alexandria area again and the Tripoli area. He wrote that he spent one Rosh Hashanah at Alamein, one Yom Kippur in Cyprus, one Chanukah on the outskirts of Tobruk attended by a thousand Palestinian soldiers and a score of officers, one Purim and Passover at Tripoli and one Shavuot in the grilling heat of Qena in Upper Egypt and the next in Malta.2 In 1941 he convened a conference in Cairo to discuss arrangements for the High Holydays, which the South African Chaplain Simon Weinstein attended.3 Tobruk was besieged by the Axis from April until December 1941. There were some seven hundred Jews there: three hundred Palestinians, three hundred Poles and one hundred from Czech, Australian, British and South African units. Speaking in Jerusalem in February 1942 about the part played by Jewish soldiers of various nationalities in the defence of Tobruk, Rabinowitz said that after the siege was lifted early in December he and his driver were the first to reach Tobruk and the first to lead a convoy into Halfaya. Rabinowitz conducted Sabbath services in the old Synagogue of Tobruk.4 In 1942 Rabinowitz conducted Seder services in Tobruk and Mersah Metruh, as well as for Palestinian units. He also conducted a Seder service in Alexandria for some three hundred and fifty soldiers, followed by a service the following day for over two hundred.5 Jewish families provided Passover hospitality to Jewish servicemen and women of many nationalities. In Palestine

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Jewish Soldiers’ Day was marked by an impressive parade in Tel Aviv and a military service in its Great Synagogue conducted by Rabinowitz and Palestinian Rabbi Raffalovich, South African chaplain Brody and Palestinian chaplain Jacob L. Goldman.6 In around August 1942 Rabinowitz, “whose chaplaincy in the Eighth Army has won the admiration and respect of Jew and non-Jew alike”, was promoted to acting major.7 He conducted a Chanukah service in 1942 for some 1,500 Palestinian officers and men and gave a stirring address about the part played by the Palestinian units and the work of liberation which lay ahead, including the liberation of the Jewish population of North Africa.8 Another service, probably also for Chanukah, in Alexandria in 1942 was attended by seven hundred Jewish servicemen of numerous nationalities and of all military formations. The chaplain conducting it rose and asked that any man who had at any time been in danger in front line action and been spared and wished to thank the Almighty for his deliverance rise and recite the Shehechiyanu Blessing (“Who has kept us alive and has preserved us and has enabled us to reach this time”), which is recited on the occasion of significant events. Several hundred men rose to recite the blessing in a mighty chorus, followed by the words always recited towards the end of the Passover Seder service, “Next year in Jerusalem”.9 Whilst in Tripoli in 1942 Rabinowitz encouraged Zionist activity, for which he was reported to the military authorities. He explained that what might otherwise appear political activity was an essential part of Judaism.10 At some point in 1942 Rabinowitz and the Australian chaplain Rabbi Lazarus Morris Goldman led a group of men to pray at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which finished with the singing of the Zionist anthem Hatikva. This was understood as a political gesture, and Rabinowitz received a severe reprimand.11 Having been besieged for much of 1941 Tobruk fell to the Axis on 21 June 1942, and was not to be recaptured by the Allies until 11 November 1942. On 30 January 1943 Rabinowitz organised a synagogue parade and thanksgiving service. At the parade the salute was taken by Brigadier Frederick. H. Kisch, the chief engineer of the 8th Army, who was Jewish. The Jewish community of Tripoli, led by the Chief Rabbi of Tripolitania, gave fervent thanks for their deliverance from their fate decreed by the Nazis of deportation for forced labour.12 Several soldiers wrote to the press to acknowledge the untiring efforts of Rabinowitz in arranging the service and the parade and to record his personal courage in having sought out soldiers under shell fire on the front line.13 Soldiers wrote to the press in 1943 to report that they attended the weekly Saturday services at the military Synagogue – the location of course not being stated – conducted by Major Rabinowitz, of having made up a minyan for a soldier who was in mourning, of having been invited to an Italian Jewish home for Seder and of the Seder services held within the battalion.14 In 1943

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Rabinowitz arranged four separate Seder services in Tripoli on the first evening of Pesach for 1,250, and the following day a synagogue parade service for six hundred, Palestinian, British, American, Canadian and South African troops. The Army provided kosher meat for the whole eight days of Passover. For the second Seder service Rabinowitz arranged for the local Jewish community to extend personal hospitality, and some three hundred civilians whisked off over six hundred soldiers to their homes. The intermediate Sabbath of the festival Rabinowitz spent with an Arab tribe of fanatically religious Jews living in the mountains, who on the Saturday night killed and roasted a lamb in his honour. On the last day of the festival Rabinowitz invited the head of the Military Government, Brigadier M. S. Lush, MC, CBE, to visit the Jewish quarter of Tripoli, where he was mobbed with joy. In a special service in the oldest synagogue in Tripoli the Brigadier was blessed by an aged blind Rabbi and, very moved, replied in Hebrew. A traditional reception followed. The event also served to engage the authorities of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration in various problems including those of the Jewish community.15 In Algiers British and American Jewish officers and men of all three services attended Passover synagogue services in 1943 conducted by various of their number including an American Rabbi.16 On 15 May 1943 Rabinowitz conducted in the Great Synagogue of Tunis, which had been desecrated by the Germans, a service of thanksgiving and rededication attended by some four hundred soldiers of many nationalities. A march to a reception after the service was cancelled at the last moment because outside there were some twenty thousand delirious Jews – one third of the Jewish community of Tunis, which had suffered grievously under the Germans – and the soldiers would not have been able to proceed anywhere.17 Several soldiers wrote to the press about their attendance at this service and their emotional reaction, the warm hospitality which they had received from Jews in Tunis and their appreciation of the untiring services of Rabinowitz and Rev. Isaac Levy. One wrote that whilst in a forward area before the fall of Tunis he had been visited by Rabinowitz, who had brought him a parcel of kosher wursht as he had discovered that he did not partake of other meat supplied by the authorities.18 In a letter to Rev. Isaac Levy early in 1943 Rabinowitz reported that he had been presented to General Montgomery, had discussed the Jewish chaplaincy problems with him and had his full support.19 The son of a bishop, Montgomery valued chaplains; at a briefing conference he famously declared that: The most important people in the Army are the Nursing Sisters and the Padres - the Sisters because they tell the men they matter to us - and the Padres because they tell the men they matter to God. And it is the men who matter.20

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Soon after he took command of the 8th Army in August 1942, Montgomery had replaced the Assistant Chaplain General with a chaplain more vigorous than his predecessor. Frederick Llewelyn Hughes was a former infantry officer who had won the M.C. in 1916, and he and Montgomery developed a highprofile partnership.21 Rabinowitz was a powerful and forthright personality, and his style was probably likewise to Montgomery’s taste. On 20 May 1943 Rabinowitz and Levy participated in a memorial service in Alexandria for Brigadier Frederick H. Kisch, CB, CBE, DSO, the chief engineer of the 8th Army. A Palestinian Jew and the Chairman of the Palestinian Zionist Executive, Kisch had rejoined the Royal Engineers in Egypt in 1939 as a lieutenant-colonel and had been killed clearing a minefield at Wadi Akarit.22

Palestinian Units From early in the war some seventy-five thousand young Jewish men and women in Palestine registered for service in British Forces. Palestinian companies of the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps served in the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1939/1940, and some were captured. In September 1940 fifteen battalions of Palestinians, numbering almost twenty thousand men, all of whom were volunteers, were incorporated into the British Army and sent to join the defence of Egypt against German and Italian attack. In August 1942, with Allied forces forced back deep into Egypt, there were calls throughout Palestine for Jewish and Arab volunteers for a Palestine Regiment, and enough volunteers came forward to form one Arab and three Jewish battalions. For the Jews the threat was existential, and preparations were made with British support for a final stand on Mount Carmel overlooking the port city of Haifa in Palestine. In total some thirty thousand Palestinian Jews served in British Forces in the Second World War, some four to five thousand of them in the 8th Army, and some seven hundred lost their lives.23 Rabbi Rabinowitz ministered to Palestinian units in Baghdad, Transjordan, the Gehenna of Upper Egypt, on the Turkish-Syrian border, from Tripoli in Syria to Tripoli in Libya and beyond to Tunis and in Cyprus and Malta.24 The Palestinians of the New Pioneer Company 606 (the members of the previous one having been captured in Greece) were dock labourers. They also served as infantry, and in 1941 Rabinowitz visited them in Famagusta in Cyprus for Yom Kippur.25 Many of the members of the Palestinian Pioneer Companies had professional skills and qualifications, and in December 1941 Rabinowitz took a list of the qualifications of thirty seven of the forty members of two platoons of Palestinian Pioneer Company 601 to the military authorities, as also did the Jewish Agency. Eventually the skilled personnel of 601 and 609 Companies were redeployed to appropriate units.26

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On 30 January 1942 Rabinowitz attended at the British base at Sarafand in Palestine the first course for Palestinian women serving with British forces in the A.T.S. The women soldiers of the A.T.S. always inaugurated Shabbat on Friday evenings in their billets; Rabinowitz wrote that women imported a traditional feel to the occasion of Shabbat, and that the High Holydays provided them with a chance for “spiritual and national renewal”. Jewish chaplains, including Louis Rabinowitz, Isaac Levy, Israel Brodie, Yaakov Lipschitz and some of the locally recruited chaplains, engaged with service women, visiting them in their camps, organising services and counselling them on personal matters. On 4 or 5 May 1942 Rabinowitz found himself by chance participating and speaking at an ecstatic gathering of about twenty Palestinian soldiers and about sixty A.T.S. girls in front of one of the pyramids near Cairo to mark the joyous day of Lag B’Omer.27 In the last week of August 1942 Rabinowitz conducted a consecration service for the colours of Major Wellesley Aron’s No. 5. M.T. Company, RASC, which was running an army transport service between Palestine and North Africa; later he joined this company at Mersah Metruh en route to Tripoli.28 Educated at the Perse School in Cambridge and at Cambridge University, Wellesley Aron had founded the Habonim Zionist youth movement and had settled in Palestine in 1926. Serving in 1939 in the Royal Army Service Corps in Palestine, he encouraged the formation of Palestinian Jewish units and was the first Jewish officer to command one of them.29 In around August 1942 Rabinowitz spent a weekend at Akaba with the Palestinians of 1039 Port Operating Company of the Royal Engineers, with a service, a concert of a very high standard and sailing in the harbour. From 23 January 1943 he spent ten days with them in newly liberated Tripoli, which they were the first Jewish unit to enter.30 In Malta Passover synagogue services for Jewish servicemen had been held in April 1942 in Valetta.31 In June 1943 Rabinowitz spent Shavuot in Malta with the Palestinian 178 G.T. Company RASC.32 After he had addressed them, one of the soldiers asked him what their attitude should be to the Arch of Titus when they got to Rome. Traditionally Jews do not walk through that arch, which was erected to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. “ ‘March through it’, Rabinowitz said. ‘March through it with flags flying and bands playing if you can get them. March through it proudly with heads erect, for you have wiped out that defeat.’ And with tears more of pride and joy than of sorrow welling into my eyes, I [Rabinowitz] sat down.”33 On 3 October 1943 Rabinowitz broadcast on the BBC Home Service on Jewish Troops in the Middle East. He spoke about the Palestinian units which had served in France and those which had been captured during the fall of Greece and Crete. More than twenty thousand Jews were now serving in the armed forces in numerous roles; one unit had been lost on its way to Malta;

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the men came from every country of the world, spoke Hebrew and had Friday evening and Sabbath services; theirs was the spirit of the Maccabees, and their story was one of long endurance.34 During 1943 Rev. Isaac Levy visited various Palestinian companies: 179 General Transportation Company; 1st Camouflage Company, which erected dummy planes on aerodromes; 743 Artisan Works Company R.E., which renovated and rebuilt buildings and harbours; 544 Electrical and Mechanical Company; no. 405 Water Tank Company; no.148 (previously no. 5) Water Tank Company; and no. 462 General Transportation Company on their arrival in Palestine after having been bombed and torpedoed in a convoy en route from Alexandria to Malta and losing some of their number.35 He also visited a Palestinian construction unit of men who as kibbutzniks had learned to drive the heavy tractors which they now used to build mountain roads, and the following day conducted the funeral of one of them who had been killed in a road accident.36 In January 1944 the Jewish Chronicle reported that Palestinians, many of them originally refugees from Germany, manning an RAF transport centre in the Western Desert had built a synagogue from petrol tins and tent canvas and held services regularly. A Sefer Torah had recently been presented to them on the first birthday of the station.37

Rabbi Rabinowitz and the Press Throughout his service in Britain, North Africa and later in Europe, Rabinowitz wrote regularly to the Jewish press. In April 1942 he described the humanity shown by Jewish doctors to German patients in hospitals and by Jewish officers to German prisoners of war.38 In May 1942 he described the Seder services conducted by himself and by Levy, whom he greatly praised.39 In July 1942 he wrote in praise of the “mighty man of war”, South African chaplain Simon (“Sammy”) Weinstein.40 In August 1942 he described having conducted the funeral of Gunner Ruben Clyne, whose body, ten weeks after he had been torpedoed and lost at sea three hundred miles away, had drifted ashore near Alexandria, from which his ship had sailed.41 In December 1942 he described how General Montgomery had visited a forward base supply depot and congratulated the first officer whom he had found, Lieutenant Harry Schwab, on the excellent way in which supplies were going forward.42 In the same issue in December 1942, he described how on the evening before Yom Kippur he had joined a group of men in a dugout. One of them had asked him if he had heard the broadcast the previous night by the Chief Rabbi, which Rabinowitz had not. “Now we know what we are fighting for”, the man had said to him. Rabinowitz wondered whether the Chief Rabbi had ever thought that his voice “crying out in the wilderness” would find such attentive ears among men about to enter the great battles of the Eighth Army.43

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In January 1943 Rabinowitz narrated in a long article entitled The Sea Dogs of Palestine how he had held a service in the port of Derna soon after it had been evacuated by the enemy. One of the participants, a seaman, then escorted him on a perilous journey to his ship, the S.S. Aliza of the Palestinian Merchant Navy, where he was warmly welcomed by its crew of twenty, most of them Jews, from many nations.44 In the same issue Rabinowitz wrote of his visits to the Jewish units within the Eighth Army as it moved forward through Tripolitania to tackle the enemy’s last African strongholds, and of how in the western desert he had come to meet a mixed race Papuan Jewish pearl-diver and copra-planter who was serving as a lance-corporal in an English county regiment and, a few days later, his brother, whose whereabouts the lance-corporal had not known, who was serving in the Australian Army.45 In April 1943 Rabinowitz wrote to the press about historic Jewish communities which he had encountered which had survived German oppression, and to pay tribute to Brigadier Frederick Kisch.46 In May 1943 he described at length the Seder Services and Passover arrangements which he had made in Tripoli. “In all the Synagogues of Tripoli during Pesach they made ‘Mi-Sheberachs’47 for Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin – and Major Rabinowitz!” In an editorial the Jewish Chronicle applauded the army.48 In November 1943 Rabinowitz wrote to the press about the Hebrew school for the children of the Jewish community in Benghazi which had been established by a Palestinian unit.49 In December 1943 he recorded how he had redeemed his promise to officiate at the wedding of Gunner Victor Cohen when they were both sheltering from shelling at El Alamein.50 In February 1944 he published extracts from his forthcoming book Soldiers from Judea. Palestinian Jewish Units in the Middle East 1941-1943.51 In June 1944 he wrote a long and moving account entitled To The Rescue, The Forces of Israel about the relief work – physical, educational, spiritual, cultural, financial – for liberated Jewish communities in North Africa and for refugee Jews there and in Italy which was being carried out by Palestinian Jewish units.52 In July 1944 Rabinowitz wrote about Jewish refugees from Germany who had joined first the Pioneer Corps and then fighting units. Rabinowitz had encountered seventy of them in an armoured division training for the invasion of Europe, and admired their fighting spirit. He named five who had been killed. For their own safety in case captured all had adopted Anglicised names. Only one had parents in England to mourn him, so all of the others were unmourned by any surviving family except the Jewish People.53 The Jewish Chronicle wrote that, as Rev. Michael Adler had done in the First World War, Rabinowitz wrote home a brief note to the family of every Jewish soldier whom he encountered.54 Not all soldiers welcomed Rabinowitz’s publicity and self-publicity. Rev. Isaac Levy recorded that one Palestinian had once said to Rabinowitz that “You

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seek glory at the expense of Jewry’s life blood.”55 Serving under him, Levy had a tense relationship with Rabinowitz. Levy was well organised and managerial, and he resented what he considered Rabinowitz’s poor administration, bombast, self-promotion and, to Levy’s knowledge, exaggeration to the press and in lectures of his own role. He considered that Rabinowitz was constantly seeking personal publicity, ignoring orders not to communicate with the press: “ ‘Major R. in a special communication to the J.C. informs us that ….’ I have asked myself several times whether he is a chaplain to the Forces or a press correspondent, a second Reuter, who is always first with the news.”56

Rev. Isaac Levy On 2 August 1941 Levy sailed from Gourock on the Clyde on the Greek owned vessel Nea Hellas in a convoy escorted by destroyers, sharing a cabin with a Church of England padre with whom he had formed a close friendship in Salisbury. The voyage lasted eight and a half weeks, constantly zigzagging across the Atlantic, almost to Newfoundland and then back to the coast of West Africa. Levy conducted services for the Sabbath and, on 22 September, for Rosh Hashanah. Docking at Freetown, Durban and Aden, the voyage continued through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, within sight of the Sinai Peninsula. Disembarking at Suez, Levy travelled by train to Cairo.57 He was initially posted to Moascar in the Canal Area to minister to the whole of the Base region, his responsibilities covering the whole length of the Suez Canal northwards to Port Said, southwards to Suez and westwards almost as far as Cairo. For almost three years until July 1944 Levy served across North Africa and in Egypt, Palestine, Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria. After a time he obtained a vehicle. The RASC workshops designed a radiator badge of a Magen David with a laurel wreath surmounted by a crown, which frequently attracted enthusiastic attention, including from Palestinian units.58 Levy did much hospital visiting, including psychiatric patients. In October 1941 he contracted scabies from hospital visitation and was placed in isolation in hospital for three days59; in December 1941 he was hospitalised once more with lymphangitis when a mosquito bite turned sceptic.60 He conducted 1941 Chanukah celebrations, travelling over the first four days of the festival in a lorry loaded with food and good things to different Palestinian and British units. He recorded that because of the association of the festival with military heroism the behaviour of the Palestinian troops was exuberant whilst that of the British was reserved and remote.61 In April 1942 Levy conducted Passover Seder services for two hundred and fifty men, mainly Palestinians and some British, in Cairo, and for some three hundred and fifty in Ismailia.62 On 27 May 1942, travelling with his driver in search of British forces, Levy followed the directions of the Divisional Commander, which proved to lead

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into an area occupied by the Germans, who “bagged” him and the driver. Within a few minutes Levy tore up some of the records which he had of the names of Jewish men and of their units and allowed them to flutter away. Joining a group of captured British soldiers, they were driven some distance eastwards. Levy’s “chaplain” flash on his arm was understood to mean, as a German officer said, “preacher”, but the Magen David on his cap badge was not noticed. As evening was drawing on the prisoners, some three hundred in number, were told to sit on the ground. Suddenly shelling and gunfire started. The Germans and their prisoners scattered in all directions, Levy and a South African officer into an isolated slit trench. The Germans withdrew southwards into the desert. Levy shouted “Who wants breakfast with the British?” and heads bobbed up from all directions. They organised themselves into a party and began to walk northwards for some hours during the night to bring them to the coastal road. They were picked up and transported eastwards by successive passing convoys of British vehicles, men dropping off as they were reunited with their units. At one point Levy conducted a non-denominational burial service for the driver of a severely damaged lorry who had been killed. He encountered the Senior Chaplain to 13 Corps, who took him to main army headquarters. Levy’s driver had arrived there before him, with the result that Levy had been posted as missing presumed a POW. He was debriefed and became known for a while as the Rommel Rabbi: It was indeed a virtual homecoming. The officers’ mess extended the warmest possible welcome and eagerly listened to my account of this three day adventure told without embellishments and with a minimum of dramatic presentation. The fact that, as a Jew, I had been in German hands and escaped was sufficiently impressive, and I could express and share the relief which all of us felt. That night I slept on the floor of the A.C.G.’s tent wrapped in a blanket, peaceful and content, conscious that I was safely restored to my own people and no longer apprehensive as to my uncharted fate. 63 On another occasion on a drive of several hours through the Western Desert Levy was directed to a unit which was based right off the beaten track. This proved to be the “S.I.G.” or Himmelfahrtscommando, a virtually entirely Jewish and highly trained Palestinian commando unit under British command which passed as German, had German uniforms and equipment and spoke only German. If caught they would have been shot out of hand. Several of the men confided to Levy their suspicion that two of their number were not Jews but Nazi agents. Levy conveyed this to the non-Jewish commanding officer, who rejected it. Later, at the cost of the lives of many of the men, it proved to be true.64

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In around May 1942 Levy conducted a service in the synagogue at Tobruk, which had been badly damaged during the siege, attended by fifty Jews from various armies.65 When Tobruk fell in June and the army retreated eastwards Levy met and spent a few days with the Jewish chaplain of a South African unit, Simon Weinstein, who had escaped from Tobruk. A schoolmaster aged only 23, he had volunteered to serve as a private in a field ambulance unit and when the need for chaplains was recognised had agreed to be commissioned as one. Universally known as “Simy” (or, according to Rabinowitz “Sammy”66), he had been in every major action in Abyssinia and the desert campaign including the battle at Sidi Rezegh and was highly respected by everybody, to the point that even non-Jews came to him and his services rather than to their own. For the High Holydays of 1941 Weinstein had had a congregation of some one thousand Palestinians, South Africans and British at Mersa Matruh.67 Levy organised and conducted 1942 New Year services in Alexandria on 12 and 13 September, followed on both days by a lunch arranged by the Jewish community, for some two hundred men – British, Palestinian, Czechs, Poles, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders.68 Rabinowitz sent a signal that he would be present to officiate on Yom Kippur, so Levy decided to search out several Palestinian units stationed in the desert and to organise Yom Kippur services for them. He conducted an open-air Kol Nidre service on 20 September, lasting nearly an hour and a half, for three adjacent Palestinian units, illuminated by the headlights of their lorries drawn up in a large semicircle.69 Preparations for the attack at Alamein were almost complete, and during the night the company with which Levy was staying received orders to move.70 Levy awoke the following morning to see the sky. Unwilling to disturb him whilst he was asleep and fasting, the men had removed his tent from over his head, and he had to walk to the neighbouring No. 5 W. T. Company. Thirty members of the company who were religious applied for permission to remain and, forming a rear party, attended Yom Kippur services with Levy.71 Australian Rabbi Lazarus Morris Goldman from Melbourne had conducted a Passover Seder service on a troopship in 1940 for seven other Australian soldiers and three British members of the ship’s company.72 On 21 September 1942 he conducted a Yom Kippur service at El Alamein, close to the battlefield, for fifty Australian, Palestinian and English soldiers.73 As news filtered through of an imminent battle, Levy travelled, against the advice of army headquarters, to El Alamein in October 1942 and toured the forward positions, seeking out Jewish soldiers, meeting the South African chaplain Yesorsky, diving into trenches and dips in the ground as enemy aircraft flew overhead and bombs fell and observing incessant grave digging and funerals as a new cemetery was created.74 Transferred to Alexandria, he attended Succot services there.75 As the battle was still raging he gave up an authorised leave in Palestine and in November returned to the troops in the desert.76

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An RAF chaplain visited in hospital a soldier who was the only survivor when his scout car was blown up. It had been flying a Shield of David flag which he had bought when on leave in Tel Aviv. The flag was undamaged, and the man regarded it as his talisman.77 On 3 February 1943 Levy flew from Lydda near Tel Aviv to Nicosia in Cyprus. He travelled around the island visiting troops. In a remote village called Pethulas he came upon a community of Jews of some fifty men and one hundred and thirty women and children. They had fled Romania and sailed to Turkey, where their unseaworthy boat had disintegrated. Forced to leave Turkey and with the help of a collection organised by a local Rabbi they had in November 1942 reached Cyprus, where they had been effectively interned in this village.78 Returning to Palestine, Levy attempted to arrange for the production and supply of matzos for the Passover of 1943. He encountered huge problems negotiating between the Food Controller, the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council), Rabinowitz and various bakeries.79 Levy conducted the first Seder service at an ATS billet in Jerusalem for some forty girls and sixty men, and the second the following evening for some two hundred British and American soldiers at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem.80 In February 1943 Rabinowitz sought a posting to Tripoli whilst seeking to retain responsibility for all Jewish chaplaincy services in the Middle East, leaving Levy to perform them in Palestine.81 In March 1943 the Deputy Chaplain General told Levy that the position was highly unsatisfactory and that Rabinowitz could not administer the whole Middle East Force from Tripoli; he must either stay in the Middle East and send somebody else forward or transfer that role to Levy.82 Rabinowitz made the decision to stay with 8th Army, and served from 30 April 1943 with 30 Corps of 8th Army on what are recorded as “special duties”.83 On 10 September 1943 he arrived back in the UK.84 Major Wellesley Owen published a fulsome tribute to him: It is far too early to reminisce, but there are certain memories which we Desert Rats cherish. One of them, I doubt not, is the cloud of dust from which emerged, in such often unexpected but very pertinent moments, the familiar overladen Staff car (mechanically maintained rather by faith than by works, let us admit) containing, besides innumerable packages of amenities for the troops, our tired but cheery purveyor of sustenance spiritual as well as of comforts physical – the Jewish Chaplain to the Eighth Army.85 After protracted administrative confusion Levy was promoted in March 1943 to Senior Jewish Chaplain Middle East in the acting local rank of major.86 He assumed a vast military parish. Bounded by Tunisia to the west and Turkey to the north, it included Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Syria,

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Lebanon, Transjordan, Malta and Cyprus and contained some thirty-five thousand Jews.87 Levy also became a virtual liaison between the Jewish Agency in Palestine and the British military authorities.

Palestinian Chaplains Jews in the Palestinian contingents outnumbered British Jewish personnel by at least seven to one. Twelve (on the author’s count) chaplains were locally appointed in Palestine and served in the Middle East, one in the R.A.F. and the others in the Army. To enable him to administer them, the Assistant Chaplain General accorded Levy the title of Senior Jewish Chaplain.88 Levy recorded that many of the Palestinian chaplains were unreliable, did not accept discipline or team working, prioritised Palestinian over British soldiers and engaged in Zionist activity which the British authorities considered political and whose aims they could have achieved more subtly.89 “They do not feel the call to service and think mainly of their own honour. Imagine a chaplain refuses to take a service with the boys because only 15 turned up, so he stood in the hall and smoked a cigarette and let one of the men take the service himself. Has such a thing ever been heard of. And I cannot report an incident like this to the Deputy Chaplain General. We do not wash our dirty linen in public.”90 Rabbi Isaiah Raffalovich (26 April 1870 – 29 May 1956) was born in Bogopol in Podolia in Ukraine and was taken by his parents to Palestine in 1882. He studied in Berlin and London and ministered to communities in Manchester, Wales and Liverpool. In 1923 he settled in Brazil, serving as a Rabbi and educator and publishing books. In 1935 he returned to Palestine. In July 1940 at the age of 70 Raffalovich was appointed by Force Headquarters in Jerusalem as the Jewish Chaplain to H.M. Forces in Palestine91, including by April 1942 the Palestinian Jewish units.92 Raffalovitch instituted services in the Garrison Synagogue at Sarafand; in 1942 between six hundred and one thousand troops would attend, so the services were held in the garrison cinema.93 Rabbi B. Epstein B. A. (b. 12 March 1911) was born in Liverpool and went at an early age to Palestine. Ultra-orthodox, he studied in Tel Aviv, at a yeshiva in Hebron and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He then studied, in Britain at London University and Jews’ College, obtaining a B.A. degree with first class honours, and then at a yeshiva in Lithuania, where he obtained his Rabbinical diploma. He returned to Palestine, and was appointed a chaplain on 1 February 1942.94 Over several years he served with the Middle East Force and then the Central Mediterranean Force in Egypt, the Canal Area, Cyrenaica and Palestine.

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Epstein objected to Levy’s title of Senior Jewish Chaplain, repeatedly informing Levy that he did not accept his authority as Levy was a product of Jews College and not a Rabbi. In July 1943 Epstein complained about Levy to the Senior Chaplain to the Forces and others. He used an army vehicle to make an unauthorised visit claiming to be going to conduct a religious service, for which the Senior Chaplain to the Forces protected him from what could have been a court martial.95 In January 1944 Levy forbad Epstein from going as he wished to Palestine, for which there was no need, and from illegally using army transport to do so.96 Palestinian troops based in Benghazi and elsewhere were helping the liberated North African Jewish communities, repairing synagogues, establishing schools and teaching the children, who had not been receiving any education.97 They had a Zionist motivation, which the British Military Administration identified and countered by forbidding the creation of Jewish schools, licensing teachers and insisting on Arabic, which was the local vernacular, as the language of school instruction.98 Palestinian soldiers teaching a Zionist curriculum in Hebrew were arrested for breaking the law. On 30 January 1944 Levy forbad Epstein from approaching a general at GHQ about the prohibition on opening Jewish schools in Benghazi. On 6 February 1944 the Deputy Chaplain General relayed to Levy a complaint which he had received about Epstein’s interference in the issue of teaching in the schools. Levy explained the position to him and wrote a letter of reprimand to Epstein. That evening Levy learned that Epstein had already taken the matter to the area commander, a brigadier, who in annoyance had referred him to GHQ in Cairo.99 Levy visited the head of the Political Department of the Civil Affairs Branch to discuss schools in Benghazi and had to accept the legality of the position which had been adopted. Levy felt that the Palestinians ought to change their methods by training teachers privately. However “The local Chaplain too is not the man to guide them since he has no political or diplomatic sense. He urges the men on in their efforts and does not attempt to curb them or to guide them on the right channels.”100 On 27 February 1946 Epstein arrived in the UK and was temporarily attached to Western Command. He left the UK on 6 May 1946 and returned to Palestine, where he was discharged from the army on 5 October 1946.101 Rabbi Dr Ephraim Elimelech Urbach (26 May 1912 – 3 July 1991) was born in Bialystok in Poland into a Chassidic family. He studied in Rome and in Breslau, where he received his Rabbinic ordination, and settled in Palestine in 1937 or 1938. He served in the British Army, from 18 December 1941 in the ranks and then from 16 June 1942 as a chaplain.102 Rabinowitz wrote of him as “the chaplain whom I had taken from the ranks, and who had more than justified the utmost confidence I had placed in him”.103 Urbach served as a

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chaplain in the Middle East until January 1946 in numerous postings including Haifa, Tripoli in Libya and the Canal, with the Palestinian No. 148 Water Company and from May to July 1943 on “special duties”. On 5 June 1943 Urbach preached in Hebrew and Rabinowitz in English at a service conducted by Levy for some two hundred men, mainly from 56 Division, in a specially adapted military synagogue in Tripoli. Complaints were levelled against him for political activities in Tripoli.104 From North Africa Urbach was posted to Sicily, where he conducted High Holyday services for Allied troops of various nationalities and for Yugoslav refugees who had found their way there.105 By October 1943 he was in Italy.106 Rabbi Dr Yaakov Lipschitz (later known as Jacob Gill) M.A., PhD (b. 8 December 1907) was born in Palestine and was appointed a chaplain in Palestine on 8 August 1942.107 He served within the Middle East Force in various areas of Palestine, including from at least November 1942 as the chaplain at Sarafand.108 In November 1944 he joined the Jewish Infantry Brigade within the Central Mediterranean Force.109 Chaplain Auerbach was a Palestinian Chaplain who held a service for Palestinians in the desert on the evening of Rosh Hashonah in 1942. The scene illuminated by the headlamps of a wide circle of four hundred trucks, Chaplain Auerbach spoke of the bleeding Jewish diaspora and the gallant contribution of Palestinian Jewry. A service was held in the same place the next morning.110 Rabbi B. Lucki (or Lutzky) (b. 18 September 1914) served as a private in the Pioneer Corps and then from 27 January 1941 until 19 December 1942 as a sergeant in the Palestine Buffs. Whilst serving in Greece with the Palestinian 1039 Port Operations Company, which comprised stevedores from Haifa and Tel Aviv, he was captured by the Germans. He managed to escape, jumping from a train and spending four and a half months in hiding.111 From 31 December 1942 until 31 October 1944 Lucki served as a chaplain in the Palestine Regiment in Palestine, Egypt and the Canal Area. Levy found that he devoted more attention to Palestinian than to British troops and that he loathed visiting hospitals, passing this task off on to local chaplain F. G. Nathan.112 When Levy followed up in August and again in October 1943 on a letter from Rabinowitz reporting very adversely upon Lucki for having openly neglected British Jews in favour of Palestinians, he found Lucki to be lazy, inefficient and unforthcoming.113 In January 1944 Levy officiated at Lucki’s wedding.114 From 2 November 1944 until perhaps 31 May 1945 Lucki served with the Jewish Infantry Brigade. He then reverted to the Middle East Force, based in Egypt, before being released from the army on 19 June 1946 and returning to Tel Aviv.115

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Rabbi F. G. (or perhaps S.) Nathan (or perhaps Natas) (d. 1977) was from Jerusalem and served for some time in the RAF before being appointed in around May 1943 as the third RAF Jewish Chaplain in the Middle East Forces.116 After the war he became a leading figure in tourism in Israel, served in the Prime Minister’s office and was active in the Israeli branch of the Royal Air Force Association.117 Rabbi Jacob L. Goldman (30 August 1906 – 21 July 1986) was born in New York, where he studied, and was ordained in Jerusalem, where he served as the private secretary to Chief Rabbi Hertzog. The first American born Rabbi to be appointed a British Army chaplain, he served with the Middle East Force from 10 May 1943 until 5 March 1946. He was released from the army on 27 March 1946, and settled in Jerusalem.118 There he had occasion to visit two Jews who had been sentenced to death by the British. With explosives smuggled in to them they had planned to blow up themselves and everybody present at the time of their execution, but as Rev. Goldman had insisted on being present they found another way to take their lives.119 Rabbi Dr Aaron Zev Aescoly (25 September 1901 – 3 December 1948) was born into a Chassidic family in Lodz in Poland as Aaron Zev Weintraub. He studied in Europe and settled in Palestine in the late 1920s. A historian, ethnologist and author of some ten scholarly works, he spoke many languages and was an authority on Abyssinia.120 From 14 August 1942 until 22 August 1943 Aescoly served as a private in no. 22 Company of the Palestine Buffs. Whilst at Sarafand Camp he applied to become a chaplain. Levy and the commanding officer at Sarafand recommended him121, and on 23 August 1943 he was appointed a chaplain.122 In September 1943 Levy sent him to Tobruk for the New Year period.123 He had only a small attendance from the Palestinian troops for the Rosh Hashanah services, and so to Levy’s dismay returned to Cairo fearing that he would not obtain a minyan for Yom Kippur, which had no national significance and in the eyes of many Palestinian Jews was not a holy day.124 Levy found him neglectful of his duties and particularly of the British Jewish soldiers.125 In the summer of 1944 Aescoly was appointed Jewish chaplain to the forces stationed in Syria and Cyprus and was based in Beirut.126 He continued to serve in different areas of the Middle East and Palestine within the Central Mediterranean and Middle East Forces. Rev. A.E. Rivlin served as a sergeant in the Palestinian Buffs from 7 September 1942 until 27 May 1945. He was then appointed as a chaplain to the Middle East Force and served, including from 30 September 1945 with the Jewish Brigade and then from 31 May 1946 in the Canal Zone. He left the Middle East Force for Palestine on 27 June 1946 and was released from the army on 27 August 1946.127

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Rabbi Ernst T. Hamburger (b. 4 January 1911) served from 12 August 1945 with the Middle East Force in Haifa and then from 17 December 1945 until 9 July 1946 with the Jewish Brigade in Europe. He left the army on 15 November 1946.128 Chaplain Patashnick held a personal grudge against Levy and “refuses to have anything to do with me”. This impeded the arrangements which were being made for Passover in 1944, but Levy drew back from reporting that two Jewish chaplains did not wish to work together.129

British Chaplains Several other British chaplains served in North Africa, Rabbi Israel Brodie. Having returned with the British Expeditionary Force,

Brodie was “translated” from the army into the RAF on 10 December 1940. He went to the Middle East as a chaplain with the relative rank of Squadron Leader, served in the Western Desert and subsequently became the Senior Jewish RAF Chaplain in the Middle East. In 1941 he visited the Palestinian 51 (Middle East) Commando, which took part in the capture of key strongholds of Keren, Amba-Alagi and Gondar in the campaign against the Italians in Abyssinia/ Eritrea.130 One night towards the end of June 1941 Brodie arrived on a destroyer at Tobruk, which was under siege. He spent seven days with Major Wellesley Aron’s Palestinian No.5 M.T. Company. Despite air strikes and shelling Brodie toured the perimeter of Tobruk to visit Jewish soldiers. He conducted a Friday evening service in a wadi attended by Palestinian, British, Anzac and other Jewish soldiers, a couple of naval ratings and some civilians, whilst steel helmeted soldiers kept guard overhead as artillery roared and Stukas dive bombed. The service ended with a fervent rendering of the Jewish anthem Hatikvah, before every man departed immersed in his own thoughts. On 22 July Brodie was evacuated together with No. 5 M.T. Company by the Australian destroyer HMAS Stuart.131 In September 1941 Brodie preached at a Rosh Hashanah service in Cairo for three hundred and fifty to four hundred Jewish soldiers from all parts of the Empire. Cecil David Super from Australia, who had known Brodie there, wrote that “He gave us a rousing sermon, one of his usual dramatic and eloquent speeches, full of fire and magnificent language. It was worth the whole journey through the desert to hear that one service.”132 The ensuing Yom Kippur services in Cairo were well attended by Army and RAF personnel. Brodie and Isaac Levy officiated; Brodie gave a rousing sermon, and the services were especially poignant as they reached the prayer “who shall live

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and who shall die” in the coming year.133 In 1943 following the liberation of Benghazi Brodie arrived there from Cairo and conducted a service in the synagogue, which was attended by four hundred military personnel and civilians and was the first service of the war to be held in the presence of a liberated Jewish community.134 For the High Holydays of 1943 Brodie and three Egyptian Rabbis conducted a service in the Ismailia Synagogue in Cairo.135 In the autumn of 1943 Brodie returned to London, agreeing with Levy that Levy should co-ordinate the chaplaincy work of the three services and that Brodie would suggest this to the RAF authorities.136 He was mentioned in despatches, apparently for his service at Tobruk.137 Rev. Eli Cashdan, B. A., M.A. (1 June 1905 – 14 November 1998) was one of five children born in Minsk to Rabbi Joseph Cashdan and his wife Bessie and was brought to Britain at the age of three months. He was educated at Liverpool Hebrew Higher Grade School, Liverpool Yeshiva where he obtained his Rabbinic certificate, Jews’ College where he studied Semitics and London University where he studied the English, Jewish and Roman legal systems. He married Minnie Cohen and they had two children. He qualified in 1933 as a barrister and practised from Lincoln’s Inn in London, leaving the bar in 1938 to become an education officer. In December 1941 Cashdan applied to serve. He was appointed on 8 June 1942 to fill a vacancy for an RAF chaplain in the Middle East with the relative rank of squadron leader.138 Whilst Israel Brodie had been transferred into the RAF from the Army, Cashdan was the first Jewish chaplain to be commissioned directly into the RAF. He travelled to the Middle East around the Cape, spending Yom Kippur aboard ship off Kenya, and was in the Middle East by November 1942. He spent time with Isaac Levy in Palestine.139 His service included Amman in Transjordan, Cairo, Tehran, Saudi Arabia and Persia. He encountered thousands of Palestinian soldiers, and conducted Seder and High Holyday services for over a thousand troops. In Cairo he raised funds to enable the Chief Rabbi’s Book of Jewish Thoughts to be translated into French and published. On Brodie’s return to London in the autumn of 1943 Cashdan became with effect from Simchat Torah the Senior Jewish Chaplain to the RAF in the Middle East in the relative rank of wing commander.140 He remained in the Middle East until at least April 1946, and left the RAF in that year.141 He worked for the publishing house Soncino Press and as a tutor and lecturer in Bible at Jews’ College, retiring in 1975.142 Rabbi Myer Berman (2 January 1909 – 7 May 1985) was the brother of chaplain Rev. Abraham Berman and of another brother, Rev. Harry Berman of the Stockton-on-Tees Synagogue. He attended yeshivot and Jews’ College,

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taking an honours degree in Semitics. He was the minister of Wembley Synagogue in London and served as an officiating clergyman. From 4 December 1940 he served as a chaplain within the Eastern Command in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire areas and based at 2nd Corps Headquarters. Married to Judith, he wrote regularly to her in London whilst he was abroad. On 12 April 1943 Berman embarked for North Africa. He brought supplies for two Passover Seder Services, which were facilitated by the authorities on the troopship and were attended by another Jewish officer and thirteen men (a fourteenth being unwell but having later recovered). Berman served with First Army in North Africa, organising in July 1943 its first Jewish service there.143 His arrival was welcomed by Captain S. Tomback, RAMC, whose letter to the press in September 1943 described a Jewish service in North Africa and lamented that no Jewish padre had been available to the few thousand Jews in the First Army until Berman came at the end of the fighting.144 Promoted major, Berman then served in Italy.145 Rev. Harry Bornstein B.A. (2 August 1908 - 28 November 1943) was born in London and educated at Hackney Downs Secondary School, Emmanuel College Cambridge, Etz Chaim Yeshiva and Jews’ College, taking a first class honours degree in history in 1928 and a first class in the Oriental Tripos in 1932. He served the Becontree Hebrew Congregation from 1929, the North West London Synagogue from 1932, the South-East London Synagogue in New Cross from 1934 and from 3 April 1938 Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue in London. He and his wife Miriam, née Woolf, had two daughters. Commissioned as a chaplain on 8 October 1941, Bornstein served within Eastern Command, based at 2nd Corps Headquarters and from 29 May 1943 at the Headquarters of the Norfolk and Cambridge District. He conducted services in Northampton, in January 1942 assisted by Pilot Officer M. Lytten and in August 1942 at the soldiers’ canteen, which served British and American servicemen.146 After a farewell reception at his synagogue Bornstein embarked on 16 July 1943 for the Middle East, arriving on 31 July 1943.147 Levy posted him to Tripoli, where he served from 23 August 1943 in the Tripolitania District, as well as in Tunisia and Malta.148 He had a truck with Magen David insignia. He needed a clerk, and wrote that “I get adequate sympathy from the DACG who I understand has written a eulogism of my work to Cairo, heaven knows why!” At one point he stayed with Major Wellesley Aron’s Palestinian M. T. Company. He wrote virtually daily to his family, illustrating his letters with small pictures for his children. Bornstein discovered and visited a Jewish community in Libya called the Troglodytes, which means cave dwellers. More than three hundred in number, they were descended from refugees, perhaps from the time of the

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Roman emperor Titus and certainly from that of the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Rather than renounce their faith and remain in Spain they had travelled to the arid heart of Africa with their Sifrei Torah and mezuzot. In the village of Tigrinna south of Tripoli they had bored caves into the rock to serve as their homes and synagogues. The ancient customs of the Troglodytes included pidyon chamor, the redemption of the first born of an ass, which was presented to the community. The little animal would be clad in a white garment and decked with lovely silver ornaments. The ceremony had to be performed by a Cohen; at one such ceremony Eli Cashdan, who was a Cohen, obliged, and Bornstein accompanied him. In 1950 the Troglodytes went to Israel.149 In October 1943 Bornstein was living in a flat in Tripoli with other Jewish officers. He wrote that there was sometimes a spontaneous minyan of Jewish soldiers on Friday evenings and Shabbat mornings. That year the High Holyday services, for Rosh Hashanah on 30 September and 1 October and for Yom Kippur on 8 and 9 October, were held in a large hall and attended by many hundreds of British, American and Palestinian soldiers, sailors and airmen. Bornstein and two other chaplains officiated; Bornstein blew the shofar, and Lieutenant Commander Ashe Lincoln called out the shofar notes for him. After the Rosh Hashanah services five hundred people sat down to dine. The Americans invited Bornstein to an early morning service of Selichot – Penitential Prayers – for which he had to rise at 4.40 a.m. For the festival of Succot from 14 October Bornstein travelled to Malta to conduct services for the troops who were based there.150 He stayed at the local Jewish Club and took his meals with the Mizrachi family. He gave a lecture to a Palestinian unit about Anglo-Jewry, for which, he wrote to his family, the Palestinians had an undisguised contempt, thinking that Anglo-Jewry ought all to pack up and go to Palestine. Having returned from Malta, he recorded that Harry Levy had arrived; Levy had had a very tough time with “Rab” – Rabinowitz – who was extremely overbearing, and Levy still had an extremely difficult and delicate task. Bornstein persuaded the Jewish community in Tripoli to establish a Jewish Services Club for the Jewish soldiers, and the club was due to be opened on Sunday 28 November. That morning Bornstein’s batman found him dead in his room. Bornstein was laid to rest the following day with full military honours in the Tripoli Military Cemetery in Libya.151 In Britain memorial services were held for him, on 12 December 1943 at the Forces Centre in Cambridge and on 23 January 1944 at his own Hampstead Garden Synagogue.152 An agricultural laboratory at the Bachad Fellowship Training Farm at Thaxted was named after him. Tension ensued between the Hampstead Garden Suburb community, who wanted Bornstein’s wife Miriam and the children to be able to remain in their

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house, which was owned by the community, and its parent body, the United Synagogue, which needed it for Bornstein’s successor. Eventually a compromise was reached, but not before the United Synagogue had put managers into the community. Miriam became the first head of the Kerem House Junior School attached to the Synagogue. She remarried in around 1965, and died in 2007.153 Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) Yaffe (Jaffe) (13 April 1917 – 1988) was born in Salford and was the minister of the North Manchester Synagogue.154 As a firewatcher in Manchester he was severely burned in January 1941.155 Yaffe enlisted as a chaplain on 29 March 1943 and served in the Western and Scottish Commands.156 He embarked for the Middle East on 16 July 1943, conducting large seaboard Sabbath services and landing in Algiers on 31 August. On the evening of probably Friday 10 September he and Harry Bornstein conducted a large Sabbath evening service in the desert.157 A member of the Torah v’Avodah Movement, his ambition was to settle in Palestine as a chaplain. Isaac Levy posted him to Syria and he served for a year in Syria, Lebanon and Cyprus.158 Through his efforts a new Jewish Services Club was opened at Chanukah 1943 in Beirut.159 Levy recorded that Yaffe “is very sincere and enthusiastic and worked like a slave for the men.”160 On 3 August 1944 Yaffe embarked at Suez for Bombay in India.161 Rev. Solomon (Solly) Hooker B. A. (31 January 1915 – 12 February 1946) was born in London, and was with his twin sister the third of eleven children. His parents who were from Vilnius in Lithuania ran laundry and dry-cleaning shops. From the LCC School in Shoreditch Hooker won a Jewish War Memorial Scholarship to attend Portsmouth Grammar School, whilst receiving his Jewish education at the residential Aria College in nearby Southsea. He then attended Jews’ College and University College London, taking a first class honours degree in Semitics (Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac). After student and temporary ministerial appointments at the Central Synagogue and at Stamford Hill and South Tottenham Hebrew Congregations in London, he was appointed in November 1939 as the minister and secretary of Harrow (Kenton and District) Hebrew Congregation in London. On 19 May 1938 at the Central Synagogue he married Frieda Hausman.162 Hooker was commissioned as a chaplain on 5 June 1942, and attended the chaplaincy training course at Chester.163 He served from 18 June 1942 with Western Scottish Command based in Glasgow where, together with Rev. Hyman Alexander, he conducted soon afterwards a service for about a hundred British and Allied troops.164 Jewish chaplains could not be compelled to go abroad, and married with a small daughter and with his wife expecting another child, Hooker was not enthusiastic to do so. But in August 1943 SJC Marks Gollop told him that three other ministers had declined for personal reasons

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to go abroad and asked him to consider going. Viewing this as his duty, he did so. Together with his successor in Western Scottish Command, Rev. Jacob Israelstam, Hooker conducted on 1 August 1943 a service for members of the forces in Glasgow, which was followed by a farewell reception at which fulsome tributes were paid to him.165 Days after Hooker reported in London, his second daughter was born in Glasgow. On 13 August 1943 he embarked in London for North Africa. His ship docked at Glasgow, and he applied to visit his wife and newly born daughter in hospital there, which was refused. Security was everything and the whereabouts of Jewish chaplains was a closely guarded secret, as it was known that with relatively few Jewish troops Jewish chaplains would only be posted to large troop formations. Arriving in North Africa, Hooker was posted on 31 August 1943 to the Tunisia District. He served with the 8th Army, in Egypt and with responsibility for Tunisia and then, from 23 November 1943 until 19 January 1944, for the whole of Tunisia and Algeria. In January 1944 he accompanied the 8th Army to Italy.166 Rev. Dr Isaac Rapaport M.Phil., PhD (b. 29 December 1909) was born in Poland and obtained an M. Phil. degree in Rabbinics at Warsaw University. He moved to London in around 1936, mastered English, obtained a doctorate from Kings College, University of London, in 1939 on slavery in ancient Mesopotamia and its bearings on the Old Testament and in 1940 graduated from Jews’ College. In August 1940 he was appointed the minister of the Amersham and District community and served communities in Buckinghamshire of people who had left London to escape the bombing, including in Amersham and High Wycombe.167 Upon his departure to serve as a chaplain, the community made a farewell reception for him.168 Rapaport was appointed an army chaplain on 19 January 1944. He embarked on 12 March 1944 for North Africa, arriving on 21 March. He served with the Central Mediterranean Force in Algiers, in 1944 in Taranto in Italy and perhaps in Greece. He returned to Britain on 20 October 1946, served in Eastern Command and was released from the army on 13 July 1947. In 1946 he married Minnie Simons. He became a Rabbi and served for twenty-five years as the Rabbi of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in Australia, retiring with his family to Israel.169 Rev. Abraham da Souza Pimontel B.A., M.A. (6 July 1908 – 25 November 1971) was born in Amsterdam to Dutch parents and settled in the late 1920s in the UK. He was educated at the Amsterdam Jewish Seminary, Manchester High School of Commerce and Manchester University. He and Gertrude Devons married on 13 August 1933 and had two daughters. Pimontel served as minister to the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in Manchester. After

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service as an officiating clergyman for Manchester and as a deputy head A.R.P. warden and instructor he enlisted in January 1941 and served in Southern Command. On his departure his community made a presentation to him, and its former minister, Rev. B. R. Pereira, who was living in Ramsgate, returned to the community. Like Rev. Rapaport, Pimontel sailed for North Africa on 12 March and arrived on 21 March 1944, serving there and then in Italy.170 Rev. Isaac N. Fabricant (b. 2 February 1906) was the minister to the Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation. Commissioned in September 1940, he served in Yorkshire and Scotland before embarking on 17 July 1944 for the Middle East. Arriving in Cairo he served from 2 August 1944 in the Middle East Force as its Senior Jewish Chaplain, from 11 June 1945 in the acting relative rank of major. In November 1944 Isaac Levy, who was then serving in Europe, received letters from his former clerk in Cairo and from the sergeant who ran a soldiers’ concert party which Levy had formed in Egypt, both suggesting that Fabricant, who had replaced Levy, was doing well and was popular among the troops.171 In the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv many Jewish servicemen and women attended the ceremony of kindling the first light of Chanukah on the evening of Sunday 10 December 1944. A Sefer Torah was handed over to the Jewish Brigade, and Fabricant announced that it would be presented to the first Jewish community in Europe to be liberated by the Brigade.172 Fabricant returned to the UK by air on 4 December 1945, served in Eastern Command and left the army on 26 May 1946.173

Chaplaincy Responsibilities There were several conferences of the Jewish chaplains of the MEF: in July 1941 in Cairo174, on 21 January 1942 in Cairo175, 2 April 1943176, 30 June 1943 in Jerusalem177 and 31 January 1944178. At the 1944 conference “Full details of the arrangements were discussed in detail and each chaplain was given to understand what were his duties. It now remains to be seen whether they will carry out their instructions. Problems such as literature for troops, the specific problems of the A.T.S., questions of conversion to Judaism for the purpose of marriage with a Jewish girl, and the political issues in the areas recently reoccupied by the Allies were discussed in great detail and the discussions were most fruitful. And withal an atmosphere of sincerity reigned throughout.” An American chaplain Freedman179 who attended “admitted that such a conference could never have been held in America without there being a hopeless row, nor did he imagine that we had so many problems facing us as were discussed that day. His work assumed a new light in comparison with the matters which were raised by us.” On 25 August 1943 all of the American Jewish chaplains in North Africa and Sicily met in Algiers to work out a programme for coordinating

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their numerous activities and to integrate into their work the services of the British Army chaplains in the area.180 In August 1943 Isaac Levy facilitated two marriages of soldiers. In one case he secured an extension of leave. The other required him to expedite the complex authorisations for the wedding of a couple who might not meet again until after the war: The Rabbinate agree to the wedding on Wednesday, 25th and the party are in seventh heaven. The look on their faces of sheer joy and amazement was worth all the trouble and the hearts of two people are gladdened in war time. If this is not worth all the trouble in the world, then nothing is.181 Levy’s letters to his wife indicate the breadth of his duties. Again In August 1943 he wrote: Today I have had nothing but a host of callers. From 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. and again from 3.30 until now. It is too much. One has a husband who is a little goofy and the wife wants me to try and get him out of the army or arrange his discharge, another fellow comes to see me and he wants to be a chaplain, another is the fellow who helps me in the arrangements for a kosher kitchen in one of the big camps and he is in trouble and needs help. Someone else wants information about a relative who is a prisoner of war in Germany. What a host of things can happen in one day and when someone says ‘these chaplains just sit and do nothing’ I just wish that they were right and that I could have a little peace and quiet. Never in my life have I had to deal with so varied a host of people and with such a collection of cases of all types. I wish you were here to see what goes on and the types of letters that have to be written in one day. I could open and run an information bureau with the greatest of ease and run it from an armchair for the knowledge I have accumulated in the M.E. Not a branch of the service or the merest side light of the soldier’s life is not dealt with and one has to be able to switch from topic to topic without warning or preparation. And there are some folks who think that they can be chaplains, by that they mean that all we have to do is to take a service and have a chat with the boys and bid them cheerio until the next time. How wrong they are, these good folks.182 …. The men turn to me not to the paid officials [of the soldiers’ welfare committees], not even to the officers whose job it is to help them. Always

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to me and I do what I can but darling I am tired, very tired. I feel the strain and shall drop one of these days from sheer exhaustion. What can I do. I have what a Christian colleague called ‘an outworn old fashioned conscience.’ I cannot rest as long as I know that the men are not being cared for.183 …. My God I am hot and exasperated. I have been trying to cope with my work without a clerk and really it is impossible. You know that half yearly we call for a return of all Jewish personnel, i.e. each unit has to submit a nominal role of all Jewish members of the companies and regiments and they are coming in fast and furious. All these names have to be checked against my card index and they run into thousands. Sheets are piling upon sheets and I dare not even touch them. I am in correspondence with hundreds of men and their letters have to be answered, the phone rings and people want something, people are beginning to discover the whereabouts of my office and they call on me and when I am up to my eyes in work and it is nearing 8 p.m. an officer may come in for a chat and accompany me to supper and instead of being able to go home and relax and read a book or write a letter to my wife as I would like I am stuck with him until some ungodly hour of the night. Any wonder that I grow desperate and want to shoot people or tear paper.184 With the end of the campaign in North Africa, Levy wrote in September 1943 from Cairo to SJC Marks Gollop asking for a transfer “to the Sicilian and Italian show”. On 23 September 1943 he received a reply from Gollop stating that he could not be spared from the Middle East Force because of his knowledge and experience and so stood very little chance of a transfer to Europe. In his diary he wrote: “It looks as though I shall remain a Base Wallah for the rest of the war”, dealing with “misfits and complaints and lead swingers” and Palestinians who just wanted what a chaplain can get for them. To his wife he wrote: “So I suppose as far as the war is concerned and the sight of active service it is all over for me. I am the Base Wallah par excellence and so shall remain until the armistice. They had better make it quickly or I shall go crackers here.”185 Levy could not know how wrong he was to prove to be. Throughout his time in North Africa, Levy had a vehicle at his disposal: first a small two-seater car, then a heavy desert worthy lorry, then a smaller type of lorry and then a sort of combination car and truck which was very comfortable. In November 1943 he was able to arrange for all of his chaplains to have cars placed at their disposal. “Tell it not in Gath”, he wrote to his wife.

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“This is quite unheard of in England but here if one pulls the right strings one gets a number of things.”186 In December 1943 Levy assisted with the revival of Jewish Clubs in Tripoli and Cairo.187 On the first night of Chanukah on 21 December he attended upon three units, chasing from one to the next. On the evening of 26 December a Chanukah service was held in the Great Synagogue in Cairo. Some seven hundred troops attended, and sang lustily: British Army, Navy and RAF, Americans, New Zealanders, Palestinians, Greeks, ATS, WAAS and WAAF. A reception followed, which had been catered for four hundred; the seven hundred fell upon it like locusts and soon all the food was consumed.188 On 31 December 1943 there was a visit by two American Reform Rabbis, Senior Jewish Chaplain Major Aryeh Lev and Rabbi Brickner, on a mission around the world. Their meeting with Isaac Levy and Israel Brodie culminated in the inevitable group photograph, after a “slap-up” non-kosher meal at which Levy and Brodie ordered fish and the two American Rabbis ordered beefsteak.189 In February 1944 Levy had his first experience with the Royal Navy, whose staff officers were exceedingly helpful over attempts to arrange for the supply of matzo for Pesach and over an outbreak of hostility towards Palestinian sailors. He recorded that: Shertok190 informed me that the Navy have asked for the appointment of a chaplain. This would be desirable but the tragedy is that there is no one in Palestine who is suited for the post. He would have to speak English perfectly and have the right sense of approach to so traditional a service. If we cannot find the right type for the army how much more difficult for the navy. But should such incidents occur it would be advisable that some effort be made to find the right person. His job would be an enviable one since the Navy on the whole are a delightful set of people to work with.191 On 1 March 1944 Levy issued a Passover message to Jewish members of H.M. Forces. “It [Passover] is the Jewish festival of hope and optimism … May this year see the end of your exile and next year see the reunion with wife and child and dear ones at the table whose memory is still so familiar.” From Palestine he supervised the despatch of consignments of matzo by sea and road to Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Egypt and Baghdad. “It has been a backbreaking job so far but the satisfaction is great when one sees the job completed.”192 From 4 to 13 April 1944 there was a visit from two members of the Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces, Mr. L.G. Montefiore and Captain Simon R. Jacobs MC, to investigate local arrangements for hospitality for Jewish troops.193 On 7 April 1944 two large Seder services were held in Cairo under the auspices of the two soldiers’ clubs, one for Palestinians, attended by about

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five hundred troops, and the other for British and Allied troops, attended by about four hundred. The next day a special Pesach service was held in the Great Synagogue.194 Montefiore and Jacobs went on to Italy, returning to Britain in May.195 Levy had found his calling. In May 1944 he wrote to his wife: “I feel that if I leave the M. E. now all my work and energy will be wasted. No one else will carry on in the same manner and with the same devotion, I know it.” By this time he was torn between returning to Britain and remaining in the Middle East, hoping that his wife would be able join him with their young son, in order to settle with an uncertain future in Palestine. Despite a secure position in London with a reliable salary, “I feel that life there will be almost impossible for me after the war. I feel that to go back to the kind of life I have led till now is almost out of the question. It will be empty and valueless and the problems and the communal life will be but a veneer of the real me. I have found myself here in the Middle East and I have found the thing which I have been looking for. I want to serve in one specific spot of the globe even if it means struggling and even if it involves you in a certain amount of hardship financially…… But all this [security] seems worthless compared with the reality that I cannot put my heart into my old job now that I have tasted a different life.”196 Levy wrote to his wife again: “I look to you for my stability and although I can help so many others to solve their personal problems I find that I cannot solve my own.” “People here have remarked about my evil mood and so many have asked me why I have returned looking so miserable. I am fed up and I cannot help if people notice it. I have good reason to be.”197 Chaplains too were disorientated and disheartened by the war. By 23 July 1944 Levy’s orders had come through. On 24 July a farewell reception was held for him. On 26 July he travelled by train to Port Said, and embarked that day, sharing a cabin with four other officers, on a ship very overcrowded with soldiers and civilians. He arranged a Shabbat service, a programme of entertainment and a series of talks which he termed “the ship’s university”. On Friday 11 August the shores of Britain came in sight, although the ship was not able to dock until Monday 14 August.198

Chaplaincy Assistance In January 1945 Rabbi Myer Berman, described in the press as Senior Jewish Chaplain, Allied Command, appointed Lieutenant Raphael D. de Sola RNVR as Acting Jewish Chaplain and Welfare Officer for the Algiers District. De Sola was also appointed an extra chazan of the Algiers Jewish Community, and officiated regularly at different synagogues in Algiers.199 The Jewish community of Algiers extended Passover hospitality through de Sola to Jewish troops.200 When they could, chaplains identified men able to conduct services in their

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unit; driver Wolfe Morris, RASC, who was born in 1906 and called up in 1941, did so whilst serving in North Africa as a driver and interpreter.201 In April 1946 the Eastern District of the Imperial War Graves Commission in Egypt received a request – from whom is not recorded – that all Jewish graves of H.M. Forces, seemingly throughout the world, should be concentrated in Palestine. Reporting to the IWGC in the UK, the Deputy Controller of the Eastern District, a major general, wrote that “On the face of it, I would turn it down, but you know the persistency of this race.”202

West Africa Dr Bernard Homa (23 January 1900 – 26 September 1991) was commissioned into the RAMC on 18 March 1940 and attached to 28th General Hospital. He served in several places in the UK, including from January 1941 for over a year at the Shaftesbury Military Hospital in Dorset as registrar in the rank of major, and arranged study circles with a few Jewish men stationed there. He was approached by a non-Jewish soldier, Guido Morris, the son of a clergyman, to teach him to read Hebrew, which he did; after the war Guido Morris set up the Latin Press in St. Ives in Cornwall. Homa performed the brit milah – circumcision – in Gillingham in Dorset for a baby born to Rev. I. K. Cosgrove, the Jewish chaplain in the area. Homa applied for a posting to the Middle East in order to be in or near the Holy Land, but was posted in May 1942 to Lagos in Nigeria. On the troopship out he arranged a Shavuot service attended by well over fifty men, to whom he gave a short address. Disembarking at Freetown in Sierra Leone to await transport to Lagos, he was asked by the local military headquarters to officiate the next day at the burial of a Jewish airman named Marder from Manchester who had been killed that day in an air crash. With only tropical gear he was embarrassed at having to officiate in shorts at a very formal military ceremony with everyone else including a whole regiment of the RAF in full dress uniform. Homa seems to have been regarded as an unofficial Jewish chaplain for West Africa. Several weeks after his arrival in Nigeria he was approached by the Chaplaincy Office in West Africa about a Kroo-boy in Accra who was refusing to work on Saturdays and was therefore assumed to be Jewish; on investigation the boy turned out to be a Seventh Day Adventist. In Lagos Homa arranged study circles. He advertised in the local newspaper for Jewish personnel in the area and secured a church army hut for the High Holyday services. For the two days of Rosh Hashana in 1942 the services were for men stationed in Lagos. For Yom Kippur he obtained official permission for all Jewish servicemen throughout Nigeria to obtain special leave to come to Lagos and for the use of army premises for their accommodation and for the services,

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which he conducted. Some thirty men including several medical officers, one named Baker from Leeds, attended, as well as Captain Mordaunt Cohen from Sunderland, who together with Homa wrote out from memory the complex text of the Kol Nidre prayer for Yom Kippur. Major Sadie from London also helped, and later wrote to the Jewish Chronicle in appreciation of Homa’s efforts. Towards the end of 1942 Homa travelled to Kano in Northern Nigeria. There he met a wealthy Egyptian Jew who agreed to cover the cost of any arrangements which he was able to make for the Jewish servicemen in Nigeria to celebrate Passover in Kano. Later, in 1944 and 1945, Corporal I. Shindler of the West African Force organised Seder services for Jewish personnel in Nigeria, which were attended by seventeen people.203 In February 1943 Homa had to travel to the United States, and so deputed the Passover arrangements to Lieutenant Hertz, the son of Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, who was stationed in Nigeria. On his return to Britain he served with medical units. A member of the Jewish War Services Committee, he participated in its deliberations in December 1943 about the selection of a new Senior Jewish Chaplain. He later served in Europe in command of no. 46 Ambulance Train. In Antwerp he had a miraculous escape when a V2 rocket exploded at a spot where a tram car in which he was travelling had crossed a few seconds previously. After the war he returned to medical practice.204

Italy: Chaplains From North Africa chaplains Urbach, Hooker, da Souza Pimontel, Aescoly, Auerbach and Berman accompanied or followed the army to Italy. In April 1944 Rev. Hooker recorded that there were thirteen Jewish chaplains serving in Italy, including with the Jewish Brigade: four British, two South African, two Polish and five American.205 Rabbi Ephraim Elimelech Urbach spent much time in the camps which were established by the British and by Palestinian Jewish units for thousands of Jews who had escaped from Europe or had been liberated and had reached Italy. In 1943 he conducted Yom Kippur services in Taranto for troops and for liberated Jewish refugees, some from Yugoslavia. In around December 1944 Urbach was in Rome.206 He was released from the army on 19 April 1946.207 He then served on behalf of the Central Committee of the Organisation of Jewish Refugees in displaced persons’ camps in Italy run by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), perhaps until 1947208, and in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. In Israel he became a distinguished scholar of Judaism, Professor of Talmud at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and was in 1973 a candidate for the Presidency of Israel.

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Rev. Solly Hooker arranged Seder Services at Bari in 1944 for an estimated six thousand people, many of them refugees.209 He conducted services on Rosh Hashanah and, probably in Rimini, on Yom Kippur, ran a Jewish Services Club and met with Jewish communities. Over time Hooker found himself drawn away from the Orthodox observance of his youth and education and towards the Liberal wing of Judaism. He wrote regularly to his wife, numbering his letters so that she would know if any did not arrive. In April 1944 he confided to her that the services which he conducted were a cross between Orthodox and Reform, and so probably did not satisfy either group of participants. In August 1945 he returned to Britain, meeting his daughter Judith for the first time for her second birthday, before in September 1945 embarking for India.210 Rev. Abraham da Souza Pimontel conducted High Holyday services in 1944 in the small town of Arezzo. Although himself Sephardi – of Iberian heritage – most of the soldiers were Ashkenazi – of German and eastern European

Rev. Solly Hooker conducting a Seder service for Allied troops and refugees in Italy in 1944 or 1945.

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heritage – so he did so in that style, assisted by soldiers. Corporal David Hudaly, RAOC, wrote of his magnificent organisation of the services.211 In the autumn of 1945 Pimontel wrote to the Jewish press appealing for clothing and blankets for refugees.212 He conducted an eleven-day Jewish leadership course in Venice for a hundred men, at which chaplains Berman and Rapaport and American chaplains also spoke.213 Pimontel returned to Britain on 26 January 1946 and was released from the army on 16 March 1946. Moving to North America, Pimontel served from 1946 to 1948 as the Rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal, from 1948 to 1955 as the director of Hillel at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ohio and from 1955 until his death in November 1971 as the head of the Hillel Foundation of the University of Missouri and as a communal Rabbi. He was active in civil rights and anti-poverty campaigns.214 Rabbi Dr Aaron Zev Aescoly and American Chaplain Samuel Teitlebaum conducted Rosh Hashanah services in September 1944 in Naples, each attended by over two thousand servicemen and women of numerous nationalities, including Corporal Isidore Green.215 On 24 May 1946 Aescoly relinquished his commission and returned to his home in Jerusalem.216 Chaplain Auerbach was in Italy in 1944 and reached Rome.217 Rabbi Myer Berman conducted a service on the Anzio beach-head which was interrupted by shell fire, causing the congregation to disperse hurriedly into slit trenches. During a visit to North Africa and Italy in the spring of 1944 Messrs L. G. Montefiore and S. Jacobs of the Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces attended a short service, half in Hebrew and half in English, held in a tent near Cassino and visited Jewish clubs in Bari and Naples. Back in London Montefiore reported in June 1944 on their visit, extolling the work of Chaplains Levy and Berman and enumerating the numerous accomplishments which Jewish chaplains needed: A chaplain has to win influence more by what he does than by what he says, and a chaplain who shares the troops’ hardships and dangers is more highly thought of usually than he who can preach an eloquent sermon, though that is appreciated also on occasion.218 Myer Berman became Senior Jewish Chaplain to the 8th Army and the Central Mediterranean Force. Together with Solly Hooker he opened the club for Jewish troops in a town on the Adriatic coast, probably Rimini.219 With the full cooperation of the military and with great difficulty Berman organised a Passover Seder service in 1944 for over five hundred or seven hundred men

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(both figures were reported) of many Allied nations just south of Cassino, only a few miles from where a bitter struggle was taking place and within sound of the guns. Soldiers were brought out of the front line to participate.220 Private H. Lewis RASC, CMF, wrote: As the Chaplain said in his address to us, it was a unique occasion, considering the circumstances in which it was taking place – a Seder on a battlefield. We were all Jews, and as we sat at the tables laden with all good things and listened to the Chaplain, many eyes filled with tears, tears of pride and joy that we were Jews, and no matter what we go through, no matter how hard Hitler and his gang have tried to exterminate us, for no other reason than that we are Jews, there will always be that pride in us. It won’t be long now before Hitler’s day of reckoning comes. I have often thought ‘What am I doing out here, and thousands of others with me? What am I fighting for?’ The answer came to me again that night – to avenge the cruel slaughter and torture of our people and to prevent the same thing happening to you all at home. In short, because I am a Jew, and very proud of it.221 As well as Berman’s Seder at Cassino, another Passover Seder service took place in 1944 somewhere in Italy attended by more than a thousand Jewish troops and nurses of the Fifth Army. General Mark W. Clark, the Commander in Chief, was present, and Air Marshall Sir Keith Park published a Passover message in La Tribune Juive in Cairo.222 The first Jewish chaplain to enter Rome, in June 1944, and to go to its synagogue, Berman was mobbed by hundreds of Jews in the ghetto when they saw the chaplain’s badge painted on the front of his car.223 In Rome he ran a Jewish club. In the summer of 1944 he was hospitalised with typhoid, despite having been inoculated against it, and made a full recovery. Together with American chaplain Captain Jacob Hochman he conducted High Holyday services in 1944 in a theatre in Rome for over seven hundred soldiers of many nationalities and Jewish refugees. The soldiers included Major M. Featherman of A.D. Corps, Captain E.L. de Rothschild, R.A., H. Levene and Sergeant Abraham (Bob) Minkoff of London, who estimated the numbers as exceeding the one thousand seats of the theatre with lots of people standing around the sides. The commanding general of the Rome Allied Area Command, BrigadierGeneral Thorburn K. Brown, spoke. Many of the soldiers had travelled long distances to attend and had to return immediately, and so they much appreciated a cup of hot coffee and a packet of food after the service supplied by the Allied Jewish Clubs run by the chaplains.224 General Oliver Leese sent a

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message on the occasion of the Jewish New Year to all Jewish soldiers in the British, Dominion and Allied formations of the 8th Army.225 Together with the renowned Rabbi Shloime Halberstam, known as the Bobover Rebbe, who had survived the war, Berman worked in Rome to alleviate the plight of survivors in displaced persons’ camps. A group photo taken in Rome shows Rabbis and students of the first post-war generation of the Yeshiva Meor Hagolah (“Light of the Exile”) from Kovno in Lithuania together with Berman and two British army officers.226 For his service with the 8th Army in Italy Berman was awarded the MBE, gazetted on 21 December 1944, for “gallant and distinguished services in Italy”.227 The recommendation from the Assistant Chaplain General of the 8th Army on 13 May 1944 read: Mr Berman, as Senior Jewish Chaplain, has done magnificent work for his Jewish Troops in a period of adverse weather conditions, journeying many hundreds of miles in a week to contact all units. For some while he was the only Jewish Chaplain in Eighth Army, but in addition to specific Chaplaincy duties he has given valuable help with the Jewish refugee problem. He has won the admiration and esteem of his people in all the sectors of the fighting in Italy from the Adriatic side to the Anzio Bridgehead.228 Promoted major on 10 January 1945, Myer Berman left the army on 2 October 1946.229 Married to Josie (Judith), he had two sons and served as the minister at Wembley Synagogue in London for forty years, retiring in 1974.230

Chaplaincy duties With shortages of paper for newspapers, the Jewish Hospitality Committee introduced a system of weekly newsletters which were sent to chaplains to share with Jewish soldiers with whom they came into contact.231 American Chaplain Morris N. Kertzer held Sabbath morning services with an atmosphere of informality at Anzio’s “city hall” for American and British troops. The British came in streams of trucks directly from the front lines. Normally Kertzer called up four British and three American soldiers to the Reading of the Law, using a miniature Sefer Torah which was really a souvenir. When they were called up the British soldiers dropped their rifles onto the floor; most of them knew the call-up blessings from memory.232 In May 1944 Fusilier H. Tabizel wrote that whereas in the Tunisian campaign he had been fortunate to have two visits from Rabbi Rabinowitz, in Italy he had gone through the campaign from Salerno to the beachhead at Anzio without seeing a Jewish chaplain:

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If only we had had a Jewish chaplain to visit us whilst in the forward areas just as there were R.C. and C. of E. padres visiting their people during the time when the fighting was fiercest, it would have given us the feeling that we were not entirely forgotten by our own people. If you had seen our boys dying and longing for a word from a Jewish chaplain, a wish so promptly and easily fulfilled in the Christian’s case but practically an impossibility in ours, then you would realise how urgent this matter is. … Those who know the vast area one division can at times cover, will realise what a thankless task these few and far between Jewish chaplains have.233 In July 1944 Private I.J. Miller of “G” Branch Intelligence wrote that, having been in Italy for almost a year, he had met a Jewish chaplain only twice; Revs. Berman and Hooker, who had not been able to visit him in hospital, were not enough, nor was there enough support from the Jewish community in Britain.234 In January 1945 Corporal A. Summers, RAMC, wrote that having been in Italy for eleven months he was disgusted to have seen only two Jewish chaplains for interview times totalling five and a quarter minutes.235 Serving with the Jewish Brigade Group, Major Edmund de Rothschild TD was with the first Division to enter Rome and was the first British officer to have a private audience with Pope Pius XII. He informed the Pope about the concentration camps, and the Pope twice said “We must see that this never happens again”.236 In the autumn of 1944 the Pope received representatives of refugees who had survived the Nazi concentration and death camps.237 During an inspection of Allied troops the Pope approached a soldier and asked him where he was from. When the soldier replied that he was a Jew from Palestine the Pope blessed him with the Priestly Blessing in Hebrew.238 On another occasion a group of Allied troops was received in audience by the Pope. Asked in English where he came from, Menahem Miller of Tel Aviv said that he was a Jew from Palestine and that his family were in Poland and their fate was unknown. The Pope comforted him, counselled him not to despair and blessed him in Hebrew.239 In February or March 1944 there was a large gathering of all of the Palestinian Jewish Companies to discuss the future of the soldiers and help for the refugees.240 One of the Jewish chaplains arranged a conference of Jewish soldiers, at which the shortage of Jewish chaplains and welfare bodies in Italy was discussed.241 In around December 1944 a meeting of all of the Jewish chaplains took place in Rome to discuss welfare matters which were common to all units. The chaplains were British, American, Free French, Poles, Yugoslavs and Palestinian Rabbi Ephraim Urbach.242 For Passover of 1945 supplies and funds were sent from Britain to the Central Mediterranean Force

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and the Middle East Force. The British Jewish Chaplains arranged their distribution, including to the Jewish Brigade, to the South African chaplain and to two Polish chaplains and for Greece. Seder services for at least forty thousand Allied troops were held at the front line in Rome and in Palestine. Senior Jewish Chaplain Israel Brodie travelled from London to spend Passover with troops of the 8th Army in Italy, and on 21 March 1945 visited the Jewish Brigade at its headquarters in Faenza.243 Yom Kippur services took place in Naples in 1945, conducted by a chaplain and attended by Corporal David Hudaly, RAOC.244

Chief Rabbi Israele Zolli Helped by the Italian underground and by the former Archbishop of Trieste, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Rabbi Israele Zolli, survived the war in hiding, in Rome and the Vatican City. At a Jewish service of thanksgiving in Rome in the summer of 1944 he blessed the Jewish soldiers of many nationalities. By that time there were Jewish chaplains in Italy from Britain, the United States, Palestine, Poland, South Africa and Canada. Arriving in Rome, several of them, including Rabbi Myer Berman, Rev. Bernard Casper serving with the Jewish Brigade and American chaplain Hochman, found Zolli and his family impoverished and dispirited and assisted them with money, gifts and weekly food parcels. On 11 June 1944 American chaplain Morris Kertzer wrote to Chief Rabbi Hertz, who forwarded the letter to SJC Brodie, about Zolli’s plight and the stress that existed between him and the Rome Jewish community. On 13 July 1944 Rabbi Urbach wrote to SJC Brodie about this, mentioning also tensions between himself and Kertzer. On 1 February 1945, at the age of 64, Zolli resigned his position as Chief Rabbi of Rome. On 13 February he and his second wife and daughter were baptised and received into the Catholic Church. This event stunned the Jewish world and angered many Jewish soldiers serving in Italy. On hearing the news late at night, Rabbi Berman telephoned the family and spoke with Zolli’s daughter. Zolli’s motives were the subject of much speculation, including by the Allied Jewish chaplains, who were inevitably caught up in this unimaginable event and discussed it together. Berman and Hochman spoke at a spontaneous meeting of thousands of Jews at the Great Synagogue in Rome. On 25 February 1945 Berman, writing as SJC of the Central Mediterranean Force, wrote a long letter to SJC Brodie reporting on events and discussing Zolli’s motives. Rev. Casper published an open letter in the Jewish newspaper Israel referring to the storm of indignation among Jewish troops at this event, coming as it did after so much Jewish suffering under Nazi slavery.245

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e Jewish Brigade Generally known as the Jewish Brigade, the Jewish Independent Infantry Brigade Group was formed in 1944 and served in Italy and Europe. It was known in Hebrew as Chativah Yehudith Lochemeth – the Jewish Fighting Force – or from its Hebrew initials as Chayil, meaning Valour.246 Commanded by Brigadier Ernest Frank Benjamin and composed of men of some fifty-seven nationalities, the Brigade comprised three battalions, each with its own Jewish chaplain.247 A soldier writing as “A. O.” wrote in July 1945 that during the three months that he had served within the Artillery section of the Jewish Brigade he had seen a Jewish chaplain only once and had attended only one service, on V. E. Day.248 Rev. Bernard Moses Casper (22 October 1917 - 18 December 1988) was born in London, and studied at Raine’s Foundation School, Jews’ College, Trinity College Cambridge, obtaining Honours in the English Tripos, and the London Jewish Higher Education Centre. He was appointed in 1939 to the Higher Broughton Hebrew Congregation in Salford in Lancashire, and in October 1939 became engaged to Miss Kathryn (Kitty) Harris of Edinburgh. In January 1940 he was appointed Honorary Officiating Chaplain to the R.A.F. in Lancashire. He was appointed a chaplain on 4 December 1941 and served with Southern Command on Salisbury Plain and at Winchester, then with Western Command in Oswestry and Chester and then with Eastern Command in Norfolk.249 On 20 August 1944 Casper embarked for the Middle East Force. He was stationed with the First (Jewish) Battalion of the Palestine Regiment in the Egyptian desert. On the morning after Rosh Hashanah 1944 news came through of the announcement by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on 28 September of the creation of a Jewish Infantry Brigade. The next day Casper was called to GHQ and told that he was the Brigade’s Senior Chaplain.250 On the next Shabbat in the Yeshurun Synagogue in Jerusalem he was called to the Reading of the Torah. The entire huge congregation rose and stood in silence as the chazan recited a special Mi-Sheberach to bless “Chayalenu – our soldiers, the men of the Jewish Fighting Force”. Afterwards Casper received on behalf of the Brigade a Sefer Torah which was to accompany the Brigade on all of its journeyings, as the Ark of the Lord had accompanied the Israelite armies in the days of the Judges.251 Casper was Rav-Tz’vai, the Brigade Chaplain.252 During the Brigade’s training period in Italy Casper taught its commander, Brigadier Benjamin, Hebrew every day.253 Whilst in Fiuggi the Brigade established a synagogue.254 A carpenter in the army made Casper a folding table, which he carried around and used as a mobile prayer desk.255 Shabbat

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was observed, with services, Kiddush and the men sitting down to a festive evening of food, education and entertainment.256 Chanukah was observed.257 On Purim the Brigade was on its way to the front, but in accordance with custom the Book of Esther was read in the evening.258 In Italy the Brigade was placed in the line in the sector of Brissighela north of Faenza, its units spread over a large area, facing the Germans who were on the other side of the narrow River Senio. For Passover enough matzo was available for the whole of the festival, with wine from Rishon le Zion in Palestine and Haggadahs printed on a Roneo duplicator. Numerous Seder services were held, although quietly to avoid alerting the enemy. Although the Palestinian soldiers normally observed only one Seder night, services on both nights enabled those on duty on one night to attend on the other. Casper and two other chaplains conducted three Seder services on the first night, and the cooks provided a first class hot kosher meal. Among those attending was Moshe Davis, later to become a chaplain in the British Army.259 On 3 April 1945 there took place the official ceremony of raising the Brigade colours, the blue and white Jewish flag with a gold Star of David, over Brigade headquarters. Moshe Shertok (Sharrett), the head of the political

Group photograph taken during the visit in March 1945 of SJC Rabbi Israel Brodie, who is standing, wearing a cap, to the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group in Italy. At the extreme right,wearing a cap, is one of the Brigade chaplains, Rev. Bernard Casper. Photo provided by Kenny Miller, whose father, Isaac Miller, with the moustache is the second from Brodie’s left.

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department of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, handed over the flag to Brigadier Benjamin and addressed the Brigade. Casper recited a specially composed prayer, ending with a blessing.260 Casper established a Jewish military cemetery at Mezzano, a small village two miles north of Ravenna, where he conducted a total of thirty-five funerals, many during the week of Passover, which was the worst week for casualties.261 As more areas became occupied by the Allies, Casper organised a voluntary cut in the soldiers’ rations in order to accumulate a store of food in anticipation of finding refugees.262 Soon after the liberation of Bologna Casper with members of the Brigade organised the re-consecration of the synagogue and the start of the re-establishment of the Bologna Jewish Community. A Catholic man brought to Casper the five Sifrei Torah of the community which he had hidden for three years in a secret cupboard in his house, and asked only to be permitted to attend the service of re-consecration. The service was attended by some three hundred Jews who had somehow survived in hiding and by many members of the Brigade. Many of those present wept.263 In conjunction with the American Joint Distribution Committee the Brigade participated in re-establishing the Jewish communities of Modena, Ferrara, Venice and Milan, organising feeding centres and religious services, opening schools and providing teachers.264 Its members cared for many thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe who, seeking to reach Palestine, had managed to get to Italy, and established a well-equipped Brigade Refugee Camp, the Beth Olim (meaning a home for those seeking to settle in the Land of Israel).265 In Rome Casper was caught up, as mentioned, in the Zolli affair in February 1945. From Italy Casper travelled with the Brigade to Austria, where he found a group of about one hundred Hungarian Jews and then, in Klagenfurt, thousands of refugees of many nationalities including a large group of Hungarian Jews, and held services of thanksgiving for them. Many of the men in the Brigade originated from Hungary, and a search bureau was established.266 Casper participated in the relief work of the Brigade in Belgium, Germany, France and Holland.267 A Brigade concert party performed music in various places and went on tour to Bergen Belsen.268 Holy Days and festivals were observed with great care although not always in conformity with strict Orthodox practice. Shabbat and festivals had a special character. In Casper’s view the men were religious although not necessarily in a conventional sense. They loved the Bible and often discussed it.269 There was a strict policy of nonfraternisation, so weddings required sanction. Casper forwarded to the War Office in London an application by a soldier from Palestine, Yehuda Sharlin, to marry a survivor called Ruth. Perhaps it was their wedding, of a Brigade soldier to a Dutch Jewish woman, at which a Brigade chaplain, perhaps Casper, officiated.270

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Casper was mentioned in despatches. In 1947 he published With the Jewish Brigade. The book was introduced by Brigadier Benjamin: I am very pleased to hear that Rev. B. M. Casper is writing a book to record the work of the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group. He was the senior chaplain of the Brigade from its formation until he returned to civil life at the end of 1945, so that he is well qualified to recount the Brigade’s activities. The great importance of the chaplaincy service in the army is universally recognized and every Commander largely relies upon his chaplains to keep him in touch with the state of morale in his unit or formation. I was very fortunate in having Rev. Casper as my senior chaplain and I always had complete confidence in his judgment and advice. He lived with Brigade Headquarters and paid constant visits to every unit in the Brigade, and he thus had an unrivalled knowledge of what the officers and men were doing and thinking. …. 271 Casper left the army on 14 February 1946. Speaking on 28 January 1965 at a memorial service for Winston Churchill, he said: I had the honour to serve as Senior Chaplain to the Jewish Brigade, and I therefore know well how much it meant for the morale not only of the Palestinian troops but also of all Palestinian Jewry, and, even more, of the remnant of our people whom we found in Europe. The “Magen David” (Star of David) which had been imposed on them by the Nazis as a badge of shame was now carried to them (by the Jewish units who wore it as their official emblem) as a badge of honour.272 Casper served as a Rabbi and educator in Britain and then from 1954 in Israel. He then served in South Africa, from 1963 as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Johannesburg and from 1964 as the Chief Rabbi of the Federation of Synagogues of South Africa. In the 1960s he entered into a “concordat” with Senior Reform Rabbi Arthur Saul Super to reduce Orthodox-Reform tensions in South Africa, providing amongst other matters for Reform as well as Orthodox military chaplaincy, but it did not become effective. He retired in 1987 to Israel and passed away the following year.273 Rabbi Dr Yaakov Lipschitz (Jacob Gill) joined the Jewish Brigade on 4 November 1944 and served with them in Italy and Europe. In 1947 he published Sefer Habrigada Hayehudit – a History of the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group.274 Dedicated to The Fallen, it too was introduced by Brigadier Benjamin:

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Dr Lipschitz served as Chaplain with the Brigade from the time of its formation, so he is well qualified to write this book. He was well known throughout the Brigade for his enthusiasm and determination to do everything possible to help all ranks whatever the effort involved, and he was always a familiar figure among the outposts while the Brigade was in action. After the fighting came to an end, Dr Lipschitz was equally indefatigable in his efforts to assist and alleviate the lot of European Jewry.275 Rabbi Lipschitz wrote: I accompanied these soldiers step by step from the first day of the creation of the Brigade and their field training, from their missions for saving European Jews to their cultural work and their social work. I was in their lives and was a first hand witness of all of these things. Slowly, slowly I wrote these things for this book, story by story, in those hours when I was alone after midnight in the offices or in a field tent, in a vehicle while travelling or in the field when the gunshots had quieted. … As a Rabbi of the army I was involved in every aspect of the Brigade, every level, every kind of job, and I paid attention to their day to day work, to their thoughts and to their feelings and I have attempted to write that here.276 The religious soldiers in the Brigade did not feel that belief alone was enough for them. They also embraced their souls through prayers on Shabbat and the weekend and through learning Torah. In the synagogues that were created in the large army tents there were soldiers who kept tradition who would gather on the Sabbath. They would pray and recite the Sabbath prayers and the group of worshippers would say the prayers that were known to them, very sweetly and in a nice order. The army Rabbis would deliver in the Synagogue classes on the Bible and on the weekly Torah portion. On weekdays too when the work of the army was not too much the religious men would gather in the evenings in the Synagogue, where they would pray together and listen to a class in Talmud by the army Rabbi.277 Within liberated Jewish communities Lipschitz helped to organise classes for children conducted by soldiers who were teachers.278 A photo dated 1945 shows him together with soldiers of the Jewish Brigade and civilians carrying a rescued Sefer Torah into the Sephardi Synagogue in Venice.279 Lipschitz returned to the Middle East in November 1945, serving in the Alexandria

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district. In 1946 he was mentioned in despatches280, and left the army on 2 July 1946.281 Rev. E. Walter Evans, MBE. Some twenty per cent of the Jewish Brigade were not Jewish, including the whole of the Field Ambulance RAMC which had been transferred into it from 168 Brigade in 56 (London) Division. Nearly all of these men were of the Church of England, so as well as its Jewish chaplains the Jewish Brigade also had a Church of England chaplain. Rev. E. Walter Evans was the only non-Jewish chaplain to minister within a Jewish unit in the Second World War, and the Assistant Chaplain General, Rev. Victor Pike, always greeted him as “Hebrew Evans”. Evans wrote that on Saturdays, when religious services were held for Orthodox Jews, there were no brigade orders and no mail. There was much tension and harsh treatment of German prisoners of war, which was understandable if not excusable, and much anguish and despair about relatives of soldiers in concentration camps.282 Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) Yaffe (Jaffe) served in India and Burma from August 1944 until February 1946. Returning to Britain he was temporarily attached to Western Command before joining the Jewish Brigade within BAOR in Germany. He wrote that Brigadier Benjamin appointed him to the role of Head Army Rabbi for the Jewish Brigade.283 In a section of his book headed “The Train of Jews to Bergen-Belsen”, Yaffe wrote: The Days of Awe (Yomim Noraim) arrived, in September 1946. It was the responsibility of the head Rabbi to organise prayers in many different places, and especially in the camp of Bergen-Belsen. Brigadier Benjamin agreed that 400 Jewish soldiers would pray for three days at BergenBelsen. In an interview later, Moshe Yaffe said: “Who can describe moments like that, when the sound of a train approaching the station in BergenBelsen, to the exact station where the trains would take Jews to their deaths, but in these trains were hundreds of Jewish soldiers, singing together “Havenu Shalom Aleichem, We have brought peace upon you”. Major Yaffe felt that at that moment a new beginning was rising, one of the redemption of Israel. This dawn was one of hope, which gave him hope for another operation and another. He described Kol Nidrei, which was recited from the lips of thousands of survivors and soldiers together, as the most important prayer of his life.284

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Two soldiers who had been with Rabbi Yaffe wrote: “He helped the refugees of Europe. His shofar blowing for the Jewish Infantry Brigade on Rosh Hashana will stay imprinted in our minds until the day we die”.285 In 1946 the Jewish Brigade was disbanded, many of its soldiers returning to Palestine. Attached to BAOR Headquarters, Yaffe remained a chaplain in Germany until being discharged from the Army on 21 March 1947. He helped Holocaust survivors, especially children, to reach Palestine. On the creation of Israel in 1948 he settled there, becoming the President of the Union of Israel Synagogues, and passed away in 1988.286

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

JC 4/7/1941, p. 8. LD1 p. 15. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, p. 70. JC 17/7/1942, p. 1. JC 13/2/1942, p. 1; 17/4/1942, p. 7. LD1 p. 41. JC 29/5/1942, p. 14. JC 10/4/1942, p. 1. JC 7/8/1942, p. 9. LD2 p. 58. Wellesley Aron, Wheels in the Storm: the Genesis of the Israeli Defence Forces (Canberra: Roebuck Series, 1974), p. 102. JC 19/2/1943, p. 1. Gerald Mazabow, To Reach for the Moon, The South African Rabbinate of Rabbi Dr L I Rabinowitz as reflected in his Public addresses, Sermons and Writings (Johannesburg: privately published, 1999), p. 122. LD3 pp. 51-52. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 116. JC 19/2/1943, p. 13; 5/3/1943, p. 8. JC 5/3/1943, p. 17. JC 14/5/1943, p. 5. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, pp. 112-14. JC 14/5/1943, pp. 1, 5, 10. JC 28/5/1943, p. 14. JC 4/6/1943, p. 1. JC 6/8/1943, p. 6. LL 15/2/1943. Snape, God and the British Soldier, pp. 124-6. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 306. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 306-9, 340. JC 17/11/1939, p. 12; 16/4/1943, p. 1; 23/4/1943, p. 9; 7/5/1943, p. 13; 28/5/1943, p. 11. LD3 pp. 17, 19-21. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, p. 8. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 20-21. Rubin, 140 Jewish Marshals, Generals & Admirals, pp. 245-7. Martin Gilbert, Second World War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989), p. 337; Churchill and the Jews (London: Simon & Schuster, 2008), pp. 163, 176, 191, 218. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 191-214. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 7-9. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 12-13. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., pp. 20-21. British Jewry in Battle and Blitz (booklet, 1944), p. 4.

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27. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 54-61. Anat Granit-Hacohen (trans. Ora Cummings), Hebrew Women Join the Forces: Jewish Women from Palestine in The British Forces During the Second World War (Elstree and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2017), pp. 90, 3045, 307, 314, 323. 28. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, pp. 62, 99. 29. JC 17/11/1939, p. 12. 30. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 42-8. 31. JC 17/4/1942, p. 19. 32. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 64-5. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 126. 33. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 75-6. 34. Louis Rabinowitz, Jewish Troops in the Middle East (booklet, text of broadcast on BBC Home Service, 3 October 1943). 35. LD3 pp. 21-27, 35-37. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 151-153. 36. LD3 pp. 43- 49. 37. JC 21/1/1944, p. 15. 38. JC 10/4/1942, pp. 1, 12. 39. JC 29/5/1942, p. 14. 40. JC 10/7/1942, p. 1; 17/7/1942, p. 1. 41. JC 14/8/1942, p. 1. 42. JC 25/12/1942, p. 1. 43. JC 25/12/1942, p. 6. 44. JC 1/1/1943, pp. 1, 16. 45. JC 1/1/1943, pp. 5, 19. 46. JC 16/4/1943, p. 1; 30/4/1943, p. 6. 47. Blessings. 48. JC 14/5/1943, pp. 1, 5, 10. 49. JC 5/11/1943, p. 11. 50. JC 31/12/1943, p. 13. 51. JC 18/2/1944, p. 6; 1/12/1944, p. 6 (book review). Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 327-9. 52. JC 23/6/1944, pp. 6, 7. 53. JC 21/7/1944, pp. 1, 11. 54. JC 21/7/1944, p. 16. 55. LL 9/11/1944. 56. LL 11/1/1943. LD1 p. 41. LD2 pp.137-138. 57. LD1 pp. 4, 11. 58. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 84. LD2 p. 84. LL 3/11/1942. 59. LL 28/10/1941. 60. LL 28/12/1941. 61. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 35. 62. Ibid., p. 47. LD1 pp. 59, 60, 64. 63. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 59-65. JC 3/7/1942, p. 9. 64. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 49-50. JHS, vol. 35 (1996-1998), Martin Sugarman, The S.I.G: behind the lines with Jewish commandos, pp. 287-307 at 288-289. Sugarman, Fighting Back, pp. 155-6. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 245-6. 65. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 180. 66. JC 17/7/1942, p. 1. 67. LD2 pp. 46-7. JC 16/5/1941, p. 20; 10/7/1942, p. 1; 17/7/1942, p. 1; 30/4/1943, p. 15. 68. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 75. LD2 p. 67. LL 13/9/1942.

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69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 76-7. LD2 p. 71. LL 22/9/1942. LD2 p. 71. LL 22/9/1942. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 36-7. LD2 p. 71. LL 22/9/1942. JC 7/6/1940, p. 17. Forces War Records. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 215. Goldman later conducted services in 1943 for Purim in Palestine and in 1944 for Rosh Hashanah at Lae with the New Guinea Force: ibid., pp. 169, 184 and plate 29. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 79. LD2 pp. 81-2. LL 5, 6, 7, 8 and 14/10/1942. LD2 pp. 73-5. LL 30/10/1942. JC 19/2/1943, p. 1. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 111-14. LD2 pp. 128-135. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 117-120. LD2 pp.139-145. LD3 p.5. LD3 pp. 11-12. LD2 p. 137. LL 21/2/1943, 1/3/1943. LD2 p. 141. ACC. ACC. JC 24/9/1943, p. 11. JC 29/10/1943, p. 7. LL 18/3/1943. JC 2/4/1943, p. 15. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 122. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 122-3. LD3 p. 2. LD2 pp. 107, 143. LD3 p. 1. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 124. LL 27/7/1943. JC 19/7/1940, p. 11. JC 10/4/1942, p. 1. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, pp. 56-61. The last reference to Raffalovich’s military service found by the author is at Passover 1942. JC 29/5/1942, p. 12; 5/6/1942, p. 11. LD3 pp. 48-9. LD3 pp. 102-3. JC 23/4/1943, p. 15. LD3 p. 96. LD3 pp. 102-3. LD3 pp. 98-100. ACC. JC 7/8/1942, p. 9. JC 23/6/1944, pp. 6, 7. LD3 pp. 29-30. JC 5/11/1943, p. 7. ACC. JC 7/8/1942, p. 9. LD2 p. 92. LD3 pp. 7, 17. ACC. JC 16/10/1942, p. 15. JC 2/7/1943, p. 1; 6/8/1943, p. 1. LD3 pp. 8, 18. LD3 pp. 49-50, 67. LD3 pp. 94-95.

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115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153.

299

ACC. JC 28/5/1943, p. 19. Menorah magazine, issue 26/2, Autumn 1977, p. 46. JC 21/5/1943, p. 15. ACC. Bernard Hooker, Rabbis Are Human (Ledbury, Herefordshire: privately published, 1997), p. 26. LD3 p. 59. LD3 pp. 39, 42. JC 24/9/1943, p. 11. LD3 p. 61. LD3 pp. 62-3. LD3 pp. 92,105. JC 25/8/1944, p. 15. ACC. JC 15/6/1945, p. 11. ACC. JC 27/7/1945, p. 11. LD3 p. 95. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, p. 22. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, pp. 45-6. Morris Beckman, The Jewish Brigade. An Army with Two Masters 1944-45 (Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount, and New York: Sarpedon, 1998), p. 23. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 180. Rabinowitz, Soldiers from Judea, p. 69. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 189. LD1 p. 15. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 189. JC 26/12/1941, p. 1. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 109. ACC. JC 29/10/1943, p. 16 (photo). LD3 p. 103. LL 8/2/1944. The London Gazette, 2 June 1944, p. 2615, col. 2; 13 June 1944, p. 2876, col. 2 (correcting the first entry which stated that he was deceased). JC 5/6/1942, p. 11. JM, correspondence re. Cashdan. LD2 p. 98. LD3 p. 1. LL 30/11/1942. Letters of Rev. Harry Bornstein. Movement order 4/10/1945, extended on 10/4/1946 for six months, in JM, Cashdan box. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, pp. 142-3. Menorah magazine, issue 20/2, September 1971, pp. 6-10; issue 39/1, Spring 1999, p. 12. JM, file 2011.91. JC 13/12/1940, p. 11; 7/5/1943, p. 13; 28/5/1943, p. 14; 14/1/1944, p. 14. JC 17/9/1943, p. 15. ACC. Hirsch, My Llanelli, pp. 76-85. LMA, ACC/2805/07/01/037, memorandum c. May 1968. JC 26/1/1945, p.1. Forces War Records. JC 10/10/1941, p. 13; 17/10/1941, p. 20; 13/2/1942, p. 20 (photo). JC 6/8/1943, p. 15. LL 1/9/1943. JRAChD, ed. 54, March 1953, pp. 405-7, “The Jewish Troglodytes of Tripolitania”, by C. W. H. Story, who visited the place where they had lived. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 126. British Military section, plot 6, row A, grave 9. LD3 pp. 76-9. JC 10/12/1943, pp. 6 (photo), 11. JC 17/12/1943, p. 11; 28/1/1944, p. 13; 11/2/1944, p. 10. ACC. Everything in the Garden, pp. 14, 15, 25, 92, 144. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 155-158. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, generally. Henry Morris, We Will Remember Them. A Record of the Jews Who Died in the Armed Forces of the Crown 1939 – 1945, Gerald Smith (ed.), (London, Oxford, etc: Brassey’s (UK) (Maxwell Pergamon Publishing Corporation), 1989),

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154.

155.

156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170.

171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179.

180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

p. 66. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton. Letters of Rev. Harry Bornstein. LD3, pp. 77-9. JC 30/6/1944, p. 5. Author’s interview with Mrs Ruth Lever (daughter) 1/11/ 2017. Ze’ev Yaffe (son of Rabbi Maurice Yaffe), “The Major” - the Life and Actions of Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) Yaffe (Hebrew, privately printed, 2013, 25 years after the death of Rabbi Yaffe) describes Rabbi Yaffe’s childhood in Manchester, his discovery of his goal in life as a Rabbi and his Second World War service in Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, India and Burma. Martin Sugarman, Jewish Participation in the Fire Service in the Second World War. Last Voices (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2016), p. 243. JC 10/1/1941, p.12. JC 9/4/1943, p. 9. Chayenu Magazine, September 1945, p. 16. LD3 p. 57. LL 1/9/1943. JC 25/2/1944, p. 11; 21/9/1945, p. 10. Yaffe, “The Major”, p. 15. LD3 pp.143-4. ACC. JC 29/3/1940, p. 37. JC 5/6/1942, p. 11. JC 17/7/1942, p. 10. JC 6/8/1943, p. 10. ACC. Hooker family papers. JC 15/11/1940, p. 12. Reported in the Bucks Examiner newspaper, undated extract. Samson and Samson, The Rabbi in the Green Jacket, pp. 132-134, 310-312. Romain, Royal Jews, pp. 154, 158-9. ACC. JC 21/1/1944, p. 11. ACC. LMA, ACC/2712/01/085. Edward Michael Cohen, Ancestry of Abraham Pimontel 1908 - 1971 (and related families) (1998), pp. 1, 190-1, 280. JC 24/1/1941, p. 13; 7/2/1941, p. 12; 16/5/1941, p. 20. LL 5/11/1944, 12/12/1944. JC 15/12/1944, p. 17. ACC. JC 29/8/1941, p. 11; 25/8/1944, p. 15. JC 17/7/1942, p. 1. LD1 p. 41. LD3 pp. 7, 17. LD3 pp. 37-8. LL 3/7/1943, 5/7/1943. LD3 pp. 96-7. The American chaplain could have been Charles S. or Joseph H. Freedman: Philip S. Bernstein, Rabbis at War: The CANRA Story (Waltham, Mass: American Jewish Historical Society, 1971), Appendix 5, p. 2. Bernstein, Rabbis at War: The CANRA Story, pp. 12-13. LD3 pp. 54-5. LL 15/8/1943 from H.Q. Palestine. LL 26/8/1943 from H.Q. Palestine. LL 16/9/1943 from H.Q. 17 Area, M.E.F. LD3 pp. 33-5, 61. LL 25/9/1943, from H.Q 17 Area M.E.F. LL 17/11/1943, 19/11/1943. LD3 pp. 79-81. LD3 pp. 82-3. Levy, Now I Can Tell, pp. 129-130. LD3 pp. 84-5. LL 31/12/1943.

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190. A prominent figure in the Jewish leadership in Palestine, later becoming known as Moshe Sharrett, he served as Israel’s first Foreign Minister from 1948 and second Prime Minister from 1954. 191. LD3 p. 104 (between 7 and 11 February 1944). 192. LD3 pp. 113-18). LL 17/3/1944. 193. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 129. LD3 pp. 113, 121-4. 194. LD3 p. 123. 195. LMA, ACC/3121/E/02/021, ACC/3121/E/02/096. JC 19/5/1944, p. 9. 196. LL 7/5/1944. 197. LL 7/5/1944, 13/5/1944. 198. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 173. LL 23/7/1944. LD3 pp. 146-8. IWM 11572. Everything in the Garden, pp. 11, 13. JC 25/8/1944, p. 15. 199. JC 19/1/1945, p. 9. 200. JC 9/3/1945, p. 6. 201. Forum, Magazine of Bushey Synagogue, Pesach 2006. 202. CWGC/1/2/A/438 (also termed A/98). 203. JC 20/4/1945, p. 6. 204. Bernard Homa, Footprints on the Sands of Time (self-published: Beaver Press and Antony Rowe, 1990), pp. 1-2, 57, 104-117, 196-214. JC 5/4/1940, p. 8; 31/1/1941, p. 11. 205. The South African chaplains were Hickman, who was British born, and Ittamar Rom: Mendelsohn and Shain, The Jews in South Africa, p. 119. 206. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, pp. 170-1. 207. ACC. 208. USHMM, doc. 2016.186.4. 209. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. 264 (photo). An American Haggadah, signed by many of the attendees, survives: JC 26/4/2019, p. 25. 210. ACC. Hooker, Rabbis Are Human, pp. 82-4. Hooker family papers. 211. JC 8/12/1944, p. 5; 28/9/1945, p. 15. 212. JC 5/10/1945, p. 1. 213. JC 7/12/1945, p. 9. 214. ACC. LMA, ACC/2712/01/085. Cohen, Ancestry of Abraham Pimontel, pp. 1, 190-1, 280. JC 24/1/1941, p. 13; 7/2/1941, p. 12; 16/5/1941, p. 20. 215. JC 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14. 216. ACC. Forces War Records. 217. JM, files 2011.82, 2011.87. 218. LMA, ACC/3121/E/02/096. 219. JC 3/3/1944, p. 1. 220. JC 16/6/1944, p. 8 (photo); 14/7/1944, p. 7. 221. JC 21/4/1944, p. 1. 222. JC 14/4/1944, p. 14. It may have been this Seder service for which a card with photographs was produced for “Eighth Army C. M. F. Seder Service Passover 5704” (which is the Jewish year corresponding to 1944): JM, 1989.354. 223. JC 14/7/1944, p. 7. 224. JC 13/10/1944, p. 12; 27/10/1944, p. 17; 8/12/1944, p. 5. 225. JC 8/12/1944, p. 5. 226. USHMM, photo 75665. 227. JC 26/1/1945, p. 1. 228. National Archives, file WO/373/72/138: Recommendation for Award for Berman, Myer, Chaplain to the Forces Fourth Class. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. 280.

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229. ACC. LMA, ACC/2805/07/01/037 (memorandum c. May 1968); ACC/3121/E/02/096. Hooker, Rabbis Are Human, pp. 82-3. 230. Hirsch, My Llanelli, pp. 76-85. JC 10/5/1985, p. 17. 231. LMA, ACC/3121/E/02/021; ACC/3121/E/02/096. 232. Morris N. Kertzer, With an H on my Dog Tag (New York: Behrman House, 1947), pp. 23-24. 233. JC 5/5/1944, p. 12. 234. JC 11/8/1944, p. 5. 235. JC 12/1/1945, p. 12. 236. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. xlvi. 237. Robert G. Weisbord and Wallace P. Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope and the Holocaust. An Era in Vatican - Jewish Relations (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992); (Abingdon, Oxon. and New York: Routledge (Taylor and Francis), 2017), pp. 5, 129130. 238. JC 28/7/1944, p. 11. 239. JC 9/2/1945, p. 9. 240. JC 23/6/1944, pp. 6, 7. 241. JC 12/5/1944, p. 16. 242. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, pp. 170-1. 243. Bernard Moses Casper, With the Jewish Brigade (London: Edward Goldston, 1947), facing p. 54, undated photo with Casper and group of men from England. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p.179 and photo 38 facing p. 167. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p. 79. JC 9/3/1945, p. 15; 6/4/1945, pp. 1, 11. 244. JC 28/9/1945, p. 15. 245. Weisbord and Sillanpoa, The Chief Rabbi, the Pope and the Holocaust, pp. 132, 137-8, 141, 151-4. JM, files 2011.82, 2011.87. 246. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, p. 34. Bernard Moses Casper, A Decade with South African Jewry (Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1972), pp.15-18. 247. JC 17/11/1944, p. 1 (photo of Brigadier Benjamin taking the Brigade salute). 248. JC 20/7/1945, p. 14. 249. London Gazette, Supplement 23 December 1941, p. 7241. JC 31/3/1939, p. 34; 7/7/1939, p. 33; 27/10/1939, p. 15; 19/1/1940, p. 18; 27/9/1940, p. 26; 5/12/1941, p. 13. 250. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 17-18. 251. Ibid., pp. 18-19. 252. Ibid., p. 128. 253. Ibid., p. 28. 254. Ibid., p. 32. 255. Leonard Sanitt, On Parade: Memoirs of a Jewish Sergeant-Major in World War II (Stevenage, Hertfordshire: Spa Books, 1990), p. 236. 256. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 30-32. 257. Ibid., pp. 32-3. 258. Ibid., pp. 33-4. 259. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 40-6. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 178. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p. 63. Sanitt, On Parade, p. 239. Menorah magazine, issue 23/1, April 1974, pp. 15, 16, 25. 260. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, pp. 63-4. Aron, Wheels in the Storm, p. 180. JC 13/4/1945, p. 1. 261. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 49-50. 262. Sanitt, On Parade, p. 237. 263. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 52-8. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, pp. 107-9. 264. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 59-61. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p. 82.

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265. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 70-90. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p. 109. 266. Sanitt, On Parade, pp. 248-9. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 64-70. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, pp. 116, 119-120. 267. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 91-106. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, pp. 122, 131, 134-5. 268. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, p. 109. 269. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 109-111. 270. Sanitt, On Parade, pp. 268-9. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. 263 (photo). 271. Casper, With the Jewish Brigade, pp. 6-7. 272. Casper, A Decade with South African Jewry, p. 56. 273. Mendelsohn and Shain, The Jews in South Africa, pp. 166-7. 274. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p.149. 275. Yaakov (Jacob) Lipschitz, Sefer Habrigada Hayehudit – a History of the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group (Tel Aviv: Yavne, 1947, two Hebrew editions and possibly a third edition not in Hebrew), p.13. 276. Ibid., pp. 15-16. 277. Ibid., p. 109. 278. Beckman, The Jewish Brigade, p. 131. 279. USHMM, photo 10409A. 280. London Gazette, issue 37575, supplement p. 2469, 23/5/1946. 281. ACC. 282. Rev. E.W. Evans, ‘Evans Above …. !! The Life and Times of an Army Chaplain 1942-1981 (Dyfed: privately published, 1996), pp. 47-54. The Jewish Prayer Book issued to Rev. Evans as Church of England Chaplain to the Jewish Brigade is exhibit 2001.009 at the Museum of Army Chaplaincy. 283. Moshe Yaffe, A Volunteer for the Nation. (Hebrew, details unrecorded), pp. 31-2. 284. Ibid., page unnumbered. 285. Ibid., page unnumbered. 286. Ibid., p. 44. ACC.

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11 THE SECOND WORLD WAR: ASIA

Shortage of Chaplains Until the autumn of 1943 there were no British Jewish chaplains in India, Ceylon or Burma. Before that and, because of the vast distances, for long afterwards, Jewish servicemen had to manage, with help from local Jewish communities and some American chaplains. In 1943 the Jewish communities in Calcutta and Bombay provided Passover hospitality to British and American troops. In Calcutta, where there were over one hundred Jewish troops, services were led by Private Morris of Barrow-in-Furness, Aircraftsman Rosenburg, RAF of Leeds and Aircraftsman Biron, RAF of Manchester, who also delivered a sermon. In Bombay two traditional Seder services and evening and morning services were held. Overall about one thousand five hundred men were accommodated in eight centres in India. Captain Henry S. Lunzer organised hospitality centres in many towns and the distribution through GHQ of requisites for Passover. The Army authorities were extremely supportive in providing food and accommodation, and at the request of Captain Lunzer and of the Jewish Relief Association of All India granted the men eight days leave for the festival.1 Gunner R. Demmy, R.A., reported that for Yom Kippur of 1943 seven soldier “founder” members had formed a “soldiers’ own” congregation, and that by Chanukah their number had risen to nineteen. The services, conducted on United Synagogue lines, were led as a chazan by a soldier who was a former choirboy of the Great Synagogue in London.2 In January 1944 the Jewish Chronicle published an extract from a letter from an officer who had been stationed in India for three years. He had written that the local Sephardi services were unintelligible, and that with no chaplain he and another officer had held services on the High Holydays for Jewish soldiers in their area. He asked for a chaplain to be sent at once to minister to the needs of the many Jewish boys in India.3 In Bangalore in Southern India services were held at the Jewish Garrison Club on Friday nights and festivals for the four years up to 1944. In that year High Holyday services were attended by nearly one hundred British and

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American servicemen. They were led by Corporal S. Wilsack (the secretary of Hendon Synagogue in London), Sub-Lieutenant Edward Levine (the son of Rev. Ephraim Levine of the New West End Synagogue in London) and Captain M. Dobkin of Leeds, together with an American soldier and a local resident.4 In Calcutta services on the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 1944 for three hundred and fifty American and one hundred British troops, including Sergeant Joseph Elman, RAF of London and High Wycombe and his fellow townsman Harry Brown, were conducted by American Chaplain Seligson. On the second day services were led by Lieutenant (later Captain) Lunzer, the British boys forming an unofficial choir.5 Soldiers wrote from India about the shortage of chaplains. An anonymous soldier suggested in April 1944 that it be addressed by giving quasi-chaplaincy powers to Orthodox Jewish officers. The Jewish Chronicle commented that this was a suggestion worth consideration, and it was to some extent later adopted.6 In October 1944 Private D. Black from Salford complained of the shortage of chaplains and of the poor welcome which he and others had received in Bombay when they had gone there for the High Holydays.7 Chaplain Rev. M. Lew, by that time in India, responded, repudiating the complaint.8 In December 1944 Mr H. Young wrote that his brother, Corporal Alfred Young, RAF had written to him about the dearth of Jewish chaplaincy and welfare services in India and Burma.9 Corporal G. Sequerra of RAF India sprang to the defence of Rev. Lew and of the Bombay community, pointing out that in less than a year Lew had travelled some eighty thousand miles and that Private Black had been twice contacted by Lew in Bombay during the Holy Days.10 In February 1945 the Jewish Chronicle published a long letter from Sergeant Rupert A. Harris, Indian Army Ordnance Corps, O.C.F. India Command. He wrote that having served since the outbreak of the war in France, Libya, the Far East and India, he did not remember having ever had more than a flying visit from a Jewish chaplain. In France he had held regular weekly Sabbath services in the synagogue for English soldiers. On the boat to Libya he had held Rosh Hashanah services in the ship’s library. On that Yom Kippur, the day after arriving, he had brought together six men who had prayed in the desert – the “midbar” which Moses had traversed. In India he had held services when he could for English soldiers, including last Yom Kippur. Now there were Chaplain Lew of India Command, covering an area from Bombay to Calcutta and from the Himalayas to Ceylon – how well he was doing – and Chaplain Jaffe of South East Asia Command, covering the whole of the fighting front in Burma. But there were ministers on the Home Front who could be spared to serve in India and Burma, where many men were still condemned to several years’ service in the jungle. There were many men eminently suited for chaplaincy work, including Lieutenant Lunzer who had earned the thanks of many men for having organised services and welfare before the arrival of the chaplains. Harris

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was grateful to the Jewish Welfare Board of America with its vast resources including chaplaincy, the supply of matzos and food and a hostel and canteen in Calcutta.11 In April 1945 Fusilier D. C. Gamse wrote from his camp in India about a Friday evening service. “We had 14 men present and the room had been specially set aside for us … We started the service with each of us reading in turn; there was a bit of stumbling, of course, as the lads were getting a bit rusty, but we managed very well on the whole …. We got a bit mixed up in the end between the tunes of ‘Yigdal’ and ‘Adon Olam’ [traditional hymns] but it worked out all right and everybody felt very happy…” Then they went to the canteen and bought three tins of American chicken noodle soup (lokshen soup), which the canteen heated up, and for three hours they swapped gossip. For the next week they were bringing some wine through the Jewish padre for Kiddush on Sabbath Eve, and had arranged a standing order for Friday night lokshen soup.12 From the autumn of 1943 several Jewish chaplains served within India and South East Asia Commands. Rev. Simeon Isaacs B. A. (31 December 1912 – 19 May 1954) was the first to arrive. Born in London to Polish born parents, he attended Berner Street Elementary School, Yeshiva Etz Chaim, Jews’ College and University College London. He served as the minister of the South East London Associate Synagogue and as a welfare officer in Boys’ Clubs under the auspices of the United Synagogue. A single man, he was appointed a chaplain on 14 May 1941 and served in Western Command. On 16 June 1943 he sailed for India via Cape Town, arriving on 15 August 1943. His health proved unsuited to a tropical climate, and after four months he was repatriated from India in December 1943, arriving back in Britain on 5 January 1944. He then served with Eastern and Southern Commands, and from January to May 1946 with the Central Mediterranean Force, at some point serving in Rome. After serving in London District he was released from the Army on 14 February 1947 in the temporary relative rank of major. He served as the minister at the Central Synagogue in London until his death in 1954. Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie addressed a memorial service for him.13 Rev. Maurice Abram Lew (18 November 1909 – 26 June 1989) grew up in Poland, where he studied at the yeshiva in Siedlce. In 1923 he went to Britain where he attended Jews’ College and Yeshiva Etz Chaim, becoming the junior minister at the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place and then the minister at Highgate Synagogue in London. In February 1937 he married Rachel Segalov and they had two sons. Appointed a chaplain on 6 August 1941, Lew served in Western Command, including at Blackpool.14 On 25 October 1943 he embarked for North Africa,

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disembarking on 6 November 1943. He spent three weeks in Italy with 8th Army and returned to North Africa, where he met with Rev. Isaac Levy on 17 January 1944.15 Whilst on leave in North Africa he took the opportunity to visit Jerusalem. He continued on to India, reaching Bombay on 10 March 1944. From an aerodrome in India LAC Sidney Davidson contacted him. Lew visited the station and met with the many Jews serving there. With Lew’s guidance and with prayer books and religious requisites which he later supplied, Davidson furnished a room and conducted regular Friday evening services, followed by an adjournment to the canteen.16 As the Jewish chaplain within India Command, Lew arranged Passover observance and accommodation for Jewish troops in 1944. In Bombay the army supplied a field kitchen and Lew conducted two Seder nights attended by four hundred and eighty troops. Services were held during the whole week of Passover, together with social functions. In Calcutta American Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Seligson conducted Seder services for about four hundred British and American troops. After Passover Lew undertook a tour around India of more than three thousand miles to find many men who had not been able to get into a town for months nor to get to a service for Passover who, he said, welcomed him like a long lost brother. He arranged services for the men, who quickly found among themselves one or two to take charge and organise the services when he left. He also established a Jewish Forces Club in Bombay, and a similar club was established in Calcutta.17 One soldier wrote to the Jewish Chronicle in September 1944 to express his appreciation of Rev. Lew, who had travelled forty-five thousand miles around his vast “parish” since he arrived in India. In 1944 regular Friday evening services were held in the American Chaplain’s headquarters in New Delhi attended by American and at least six British servicemen. One of them, Lance Corporal Lionel Altman of London, wrote that Rev. Lew had travelled all the way from Bombay to visit the Jewish servicemen in New Delhi, where a historic service had been attended by both British and American chaplains and some fifty people; after the service and an address by Rev. Lew some of the servicemen had met and decided to put together to buy their own Sefer Torah, which they hoped to receive in time for the coming High Festivals.18 In Colombo in Ceylon regular Friday evening services were held. High Holyday services were conducted there in 1944 by British and American officiants in a YMCA gymnasium and were attended by nearly three hundred troops from eight nations. On Rosh Hashanah the three families who comprised the Jewish community of Colombo arranged a lunch for all of the servicemen and women at the Grand Oriental Hotel. Lew had already flown forty thousand miles before arriving in Colombo to officiate on Yom Kippur.19 In Bombay High Holyday services were held in 1944, together with social functions, and some eight hundred private invitations from residents were

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distributed among the men. By mistake the Indian Army contractor offered breakfast on the fast day of Yom Kippur, for which he was reprimanded.20 Early in 1945 Lew responded in the Jewish Chronicle to the frequent criticisms of the dearth of Jewish chaplaincy services in India and the Far East, for which some correspondents seemed to hold him responsible. He wrote that India was far larger than the whole of Europe. Over ten months he had travelled eighty thousand miles by air and land for weeks on end, from one end of India to the other. In September Rev. Jaffe had joined him and taken over part of the territory, also travelling a great deal. If every unit was to be visited once in three months a further six or eight chaplains would be needed. The Jewish communities in India were not well organised, but had opened their hearts and homes to Jewish troops.21 Lew arranged for a printed booklet for Jewish personnel listing the arrangements made for Passover in 1945 in numerous locations throughout India and in Colombo in Ceylon. Entitled A Passover Message and General Information from the Jewish Chaplain, India, it mentioned that in Jhansi and Meerut the men themselves had organised a synagogue and services and that regular services were held at the RAF station at Cawnpore.22 It listed literature and religious items which were available for free distribution on request, invited people to write to the chaplain on any subject on which he could be of help and ended with a warm Passover greeting. In Calcutta and Bombay the Jewish Hospitality Clubs provided Passover facilities and hospitality in 1945.23 Every Jew in South East Asia Command received matzot, a Haggada and a gift parcel.24 A card of Passover Greetings from India for 1945, the work of a local artist, was distributed in five thousand copies by Chaplains Lew and Jaffe.25 Passover services were held in Colombo, conducted by Rev. Jaffe and five Palestinian soldiers; New Delhi, conducted by American Chaplain Samuel Horowitz; Calcutta conducted by Rev. C. M. Bloch and American Chaplain Seligson; and Bombay conducted by Rev. Lew.26 Donald Salinger had been working since 1936 in Hong Kong, where he learned Cantonese. In 1941 in Rangoon he received an immediate commission into what became 204 British Military Mission in China, a special forces unit assisting Nationalist Chinese forces in their war against Japan. As Major Donald Salinger he was on his way back to Britain in 1945 for his first home leave in nine years. Passing through Bombay at the time of Passover he attended a Seder service conducted by a Jewish Chaplain (who was therefore probably Rev. Lew) and preserved the Haggadah printed by the Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces which many of those present signed. It was his first contact with anything Jewish since 1936.27 Maurice Lew returned to Britain towards the end of 1945, again taking the opportunity to visit Jerusalem en route. He served in London District, visiting Germany for nine days in April 1946 to conduct Passover Seder Services within

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BAOR and going to Bergen Belsen. He was released from the army in the relative rank of major on 10 August 1946.28 From 1947 until 1963 he served as a minister in South Africa, obtaining his Rabbinical degree in Jerusalem in around 1950. Returning to Britain, he served as the minister of the Dean Street Synagogue in the West End of London, retiring in 1979, and died in 1989.29 Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) Yaffe (Jaffe) served under the name Morris Jaffe from 15 August 1944 until February 1946 as Jewish Chaplain to the 14th Army in India and Burma within South East Asia Command and then with the 12th Army. He officiated at High Holyday services in the autumn of 1944, one of the men being carried into the services on a stretcher.30 He wrote to the press asking people to send the Jewish Chronicle and other periodicals for the soldiers.31 During Chanukah of 1944 he travelled widely on foot and driving along sand tracks through the jungle to reach Jewish soldiers scattered over large areas in order to hold a service on each day of the festival, on one occasion singing the traditional Chanukah hymn Mo’at Tsur as Allied guns pounded the Japanese position a few miles away. Having set off one day at eight in the morning he had to wait seven hours for the tide to rise so that the small ferry barge could take his car across a river, and eventually reached his destination at midnight.32 From within South East Asia Command Private S. Spillman, Signalman A. Specterman and Sergeant Harry Rose of Divisional Signals each wrote to the press to say that they had not seen a Jewish chaplain for two or three years. With others Spillman had held services as often as possible with just the two prayer books which he and another man had brought out from England. Now they were joyous to see Rev. Jaffe, who had held services in forward areas in mid-Burma and had brought them books, calendars, mezuzot and cigarettes. “I appreciate the work that the Chaplain does without a grumble, and he seems to be untiring in his work. I take a great pleasure in mentioning the name of a man who is a man – you have no idea how appreciated he is by us and every soldier out here. His name is Rev. M.A. Jaffe, C.F.” “The Rev. M. A. Jaffe is doing a fine job and I and the other lads wish him the very best of luck. He goes into areas and is immediately liked by Jew and gentile, my burra salaams to him!”33 Signalman Stanley Goldberg, South East Asia Command, wrote to say that he and three other men had been provided with transport to travel ten miles to see Rev. Jaffe, who had conducted an inspiring service for just the four of them. Jaffe had arranged Passover leave in Calcutta, which Goldberg had accepted although the two other Jewish men in his unit had not. If a Jewish soldier wished to contact a Jewish chaplain he always could. Writing from an area very recently won back from the Japanese, in which Jaffe had kept in contact with him, Goldberg knew from personal experience that the soldier

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would receive a reply and would be duly visited.34 Jaffe was in a place called Mongwa on the day that it fell, and held a service that evening for many battleweary Jewish soldiers. He had a narrow escape when some grenades were thrown at him. A sermon which he gave inspired a Jewish sergeant in the RAF, and prompted an American soldier to say “He’s a little stick of dynamite”.35 In March 1945 Jaffe wrote to the press thanking people who had responded to the advertisement to send copies of the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish gramophone records. He wrote that from the beginning the military authorities had supplied him with a composite station wagon with collapsible tables and electric lights in which he could sleep, work and travel for a whole month at a time when visiting the forward areas, together with a portable typewriter and portable gramophone. The authorities had recently repacked the Passover matzos so that they could be airdropped without being broken (the men therefore receiving “manna dropped from heaven”) and had during the last few days allotted him a small private plane to take him round to the various outposts to make final arrangements for the festival. “So once again my very grateful thanks for giving the boys out here joy and happiness the extent of which you could never appreciate.” He wrote that Sir David and Lady Ezra in Calcutta did so much for the men who went there on leave, and mentioned the American Chaplain Seligson, who was able to produce tins of “Gefilta fish”. He signed himself Senior Jewish Chaplain, Allied Land Forces, South East Asia.36 In 1945 the Army and the RAF allowed aircraft to fly over advanced bases in Burma to drop Passover supplies for Jews serving in remote units. Corporal C. Berenbaum of Manchester and Privates Birnbaum and Cashefsky of London and Glasser of Liverpool, battle-weary in the evening and refused Passover leave for operational reasons, were stunned to receive an air dropped Passover parcel for Jewish personnel from the American Jewish Welfare Board. They sat around two candles under a bush and took their seder on matzo and wine, praying for their loved ones at home, before their unit set out at 11.00 p.m. on an eighteen-mile march in pursuit of the Japanese.37 Lou Berzon, who also served in Burma, later said: “I will say one thing. The army chiefs did try and look after the Jewish lot. Would you believe it, they even airlifted Matza in one day.”38 In Rangoon prison Private Len Berkovitch was very religious and prayed from his British army issue Jewish prayer book every night. The other men sat quietly and respectfully as he put on his bush hat and faced Jerusalem. An RAAF flight sergeant would always call out “Quiet everybody, a man’s saying his prayers”. Remarkably Berkovitch fasted on Yom Kippur and gave his food to his friend Leon Frank from London who was ill. Both were Chindits who had been captured in the first Chindit expedition in 1943.39 With five Palestinian soldiers Jaffe conducted Passover services in Colombo in 1945.40 He issued to each Jewish soldier a special message, a gift

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contributed by the JHC in England and the Jewish Soldiers’ Welfare Committee in Palestine and an airmail letter form for sending home bearing in the place of a stamp or cancellation a circular logo with a Magen David encircled by the words “5705 Passover Greetings 1945, Zeman Herotenu”.41 Jaffe encountered Jewish civilians who had been liberated from the Japanese. After the liberation of Rangoon on 2 May 1945 he flew there on 17 May to organise services for the festival of Shavuot and a service of thanksgiving.42 Leon Frank had been flown to Kamilla Forward Base Hospital in Burma, where he met Jaffe, who told him he had nothing wrong with him that good Jewish chicken soup would not cure and that he should write to his mother at once. Jaffe wrote to Frank’s family, and Frank kept the letter all his life.43 On his way home after liberation, Israel (Jack) Caplan’s plane landed in Rangoon, and Captain Saffer RAMC invited Caplan to go with him to the Rangoon Synagogue for Rosh Hashanah services.44 In May 1945 Captain Lunzer wrote to the Jewish press in praise of the two Jewish chaplains. Their task was almost insuperable, and they were doing superlative work. They needed assistance with the welfare side of their duties, perhaps from civilian welfare officers. “During the time that Major Jaffe – now Senior Jewish Chaplain in this Command – held the fort on his own, he was always to be found where the battle was thickest and yet always managed to visit resting and rear units and formations at frequent intervals.”45 On leave in the summer of 1945, Jaffe spoke at a meeting in Manchester about his experiences in the Middle East and the high morale of Palestinian soldiers.46 In September 1945 he wrote: In Burma, too, the men flock to a Chaplain who shares their hardships and goes through the same dangers. I would never have wielded half the influence and done half as much for Judaism had I conducted Services – as I could had I wished – only in Calcutta and issued orders from there to the men at the front. I have always held that to conduct a Service for ten men in the jungle and near the front is far better than to hold one for 100 men in a spacious Synagogue in Calcutta.47 On 15 February 1946 Jaffe arrived back in the UK, where he was temporarily attached to Western Command before joining the Jewish Infantry Brigade in Germany.48 In October 1946 he was serving in Hamburg.49 Sebastian Morton (“Sonnie”) Bloch (21 March 1919 – 6 October 1979) was the second of seven children – five boys and two girls. His paternal family was of a long Rabbinic line; his grandfather was the first Rabbi in Sunderland, to which the whole Jewish community of Kretingen in Lithuania migrated in the late nineteenth century. His father, George Getzel Bloch, died young; his

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mother was Leah (Lolla), née Jung (formerly Junger). The Amersham Hebrew Congregation was one of a number of Jewish communities which came into being amongst people who had sought the relative safety of the home counties during the Second World War. At different stages it had three Jewish ministers. One of them was Sonnie Bloch who, although he had not been ordained as a minister, served for four years. Bloch rode a motorbike and was remembered as “the motorbike Rev” and “the Rabbi in the green jacket”. Bloch was appointed an RAF chaplain with effect from 24 July 1944.50 In August 1944 the community made a farewell reception for him, reported in the local Bucks Examiner Newspaper. Chaplain Saul Amias welcomed Bloch as a new colleague, and the new minister of the Amersham Jewish Community, Rev. Jonah Indech, said that Bloch’s conscience had convinced him that he could do more for his people at that moment in the chaplaincy sphere than in Amersham. Although not ordained, Bloch was accorded within the RAF the courtesy title of “Reverend”. He served with the 12th Army, South East Asia Command as an RAF chaplain from August 1944, ultimately in the relative rank of Wing Commander, until 1948.51 One evening in Burma Bloch’s unit camped out in tents with the Japanese army close by. Bloch was so tired that he told his batman not to wake him in the morning. When he awoke he was dismayed to find himself alone and the camp deserted. Suddenly a jeep came roaring into the camp. With a big grin, his batman asked him “did you have a good sleep, sir?” He never gave such an order again. On another occasion Bloch was on a plane transporting military personnel in the Far East. The plane had already started moving down the runway when the pilot apologised that they had to await an urgent parcel for Wing Commander Bloch. A motorbike approached and delivered the parcel. As the plane took off, everybody was intrigued to know what parcel could have been so urgent as to delay a troop transport. Opening it, Bloch was embarrassed to discover a knitted woolly bear made by his mother to maintain his spirits. Good humoured banter accompanied him for the rest of the flight. Bloch was with Allied forces when they entered Japan, soon after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He entertained to dinner Signalman M. Mendoza of Tottenham and Gunner M. Segal of Stamford Hill, both in London, who had been prisoners of the Japanese for three and a half years.52 Bloch’s post war visiting card described him as “Jewish Chaplain Far East and India”, based at the RAF base at Singapore. He conducted Passover Seder services in India and the Far East. One year with the help of the local Jewish community and a lady called Mummy Knowles he was able to obtain enough suitable Passover food for everyone. In 1948 there was a party to celebrate the creation of the State of Israel. Because this marked the end of the unhappy British mandate, Bloch was ordered not to use the word “Israel”, which proved challenging.

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Released from the RAF and returning to Britain towards the end of 1948, Sonnie Bloch met and married Phyllis Wix. To the end of her days she would never speak of the highly secret work which she had done during the war. They had three sons and a daughter. Bloch worked in Israel in the cigarette manufacturing business of his father-in-law and then returned to Britain to work in the Soncino Press publishing business which his grandfather had purchased. He served as a mohel and a prison chaplain and was prominent in the communal life of Stanmore Synagogue in London.53 He died of leukaemia in 1979 at the age of 60; whether that was related to having been in Japan after Hiroshima cannot be known.54 Rev. Cecil Maurice Bloch B. A., M. A. (17 February 1908 – 18 July 1986) was the first cousin of Sonnie Bloch. He was born in Londonderry and educated at Manchester University and Manchester Yeshiva. He ministered to communities in Swansea and then in Portsmouth and Southsea, where he served as an air raid warden.55 Appointed a chaplain in June 1942, he served in Britain until 5 February 1945 when he embarked for India, becoming a Jewish chaplain to the 12th Army and serving in that and the 14th Army. In 1945 the Jewish Hospitality Clubs in Calcutta and Bombay provided Passover facilities and hospitality, in Calcutta for twelve hundred Jewish servicemen. Rev. Bloch and American Chaplain Samuel Horowitz conducted Passover services in Calcutta.56 Bloch also served in Rangoon in Burma. Cecil Bloch returned to Britain in June 1946 and was released from the army on 30 August 1946. He then ministered to the community in New Cross in London. In 1947 he married Esther Isaacs, and they had three sons. In 1949 he emigrated to South Africa, serving four successive communities. He took another B.A. and an M.A. at the University of South Africa and retired in 1984.57 Rev. Solly Hooker embarked at Liverpool on 12 September 1945 for Bombay in India, following a short period of home leave on his return from Italy. Almost fifty years later, in a letter to the family of 31 January 1993, Bernard Oberman, who had been with him on the troopship, wrote to the family: He was very good at his job and even after nearly 50 years his kindness and helpfulness and maasim tovim – good deeds – were such that he is remembered kindly by the several Jewish fellows on that ship. From Bombay Hooker was posted to Delhi.58 He began to show symptoms of illness. On 8 January 1946 he had a fall in his office, reported sick and was admitted to hospital in Delhi. On 2 February he was transferred to the British military hospital at Secunderabad with a diagnosed cerebral tumour. The Army informed his wife. On 9 February SJC Brodie, cabled:

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Reverend Greenberg Jewish Chaplain HQ 108 Bombay Area ABPO India Command. Just received distressing news Hooker DI59 list in 126 Indian Base General Hospital British Troops Trimulgherry India stop. Please visit immediately and signal report. Brodie. Rev. Greenberg visited Hooker and doubtless reported to Brodie. Although the tumour itself was inaccessible, a British army neuro-surgeon carried out a decompression operation in the hope that Hooker could then be transferred back to the UK. However Hooker died at 1.00 p.m on 12 February at the age of 31. The funeral took place that day. Rev. Greenberg was elsewhere, so Corporal Farbey of the RAF conducted the service. Six other Jewish soldiers were in

Signal from SJC Rabbi Israel Brodie on 9 February 1946 to Rev. Barry Greenberg in India about Rev. Solly Hooker. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London/Jewish Military Museum.

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attendance, together with the unit padre and other personnel. Hooker was buried in a military cemetery in India; later he was reburied in the Madras War Cemetery in Chennai.60 His headstone reads: Chaplain to the Forces the Rev S. Hooker B.A. Royal Army Chaplains Department. He walked blamelessly, worked righteously and spoke truth in his heart. Hooker had resigned his position with the Harrow Hebrew Congregation, intending on his return to take up a position with the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. On Sunday 18 November 1945 the Harrow and Kenton Congregation, as it became known, consecrated a new synagogue building and inducted a new minister into office.61 On Sunday 10 March 1946 the community held a memorial service for Hooker, at which SJC Brodie spoke. Brodie wrote of Hooker: He was a man of saintly character, sincere and devoted in all that he did and thought. Jewish servicemen of the Eighth Army with whom he served in Italy will particularly mourn his passing. He was with them during their strenuous campaign and went everywhere including the forward areas to bring cheer and a religious message of fortitude and encouragement to our boys. After a brief period of leave he was posted to the Far East, where he again displayed his readiness to serve in the cause of Judaism. Unfortunately, a fatal illness overtook him.62 Solly Hooker’s daughters settled abroad, one in New Zealand and the other in Israel. His wife Frieda went to live in New Zealand, remarrying in 1965; her husband died in 1969 and she in 1998.63 Rev. Baruch (Barry) Greenberg (4 February 1911 – 1966) studied at Jews’ College, was married to Freda and was the minister of Peterborough Synagogue. Appointed a chaplain with effect from 21 January 1945, he embarked on 29 March 1945 for the Central Mediterranean Force and served with it from 10 April 1945, returning to Britain on 23 September 1945. He then embarked on 3 December 1945 for India where he served from 22 December 1945 for a year, returning to Britain on 11 December 1946. In January 1947 he was due to join BAOR, but the posting was cancelled. He retired from the army on 28 May 1947.64 Rev. Sigmund Margulies (b. 5 March 1916) went to Britain as a refugee from Poland and studied at Manchester Talmudical College and Manchester University. He volunteered to join the army as a private soldier but was rejected.

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He served as the Administrative Officer of the Evacuation Committee of the Council of Manchester and Salford Jews, liaising with numerous local authorities. A single man, he was appointed a chaplain with effect from 23 May 1945 and served in London District and with Scottish Command.65 He served in Germany, including at Dachau concentration camp. He spent many weeks in France with hundreds of Jewish children who had been rescued and liberated from Buchenwald and other camps and reported on their psychological problems.66 On 28 May 1946 Margulies embarked for India, where he served as a chaplain. In January 1947 he was already due to hand over to RAF chaplain Sonnie Bloch when, in uniform at a social event, he railed against British policy in Palestine, saying that the only way to get the British out of Palestine was to bomb them out. This led to a report to the army. In the light of Margulies having apparently previously issued what was termed an indiscreet circular, a decision was made, communicated under the heading “subversive activity” to the Chaplain General and the Senior Jewish Chaplain in London, that he should return to Britain, which he did on 11 March 1947. He served in Western Command, and was released from the army on 22 June 1947.67

Acting Chaplains in India and Burma By the end of the war there were many thousands of British troops in India. Passover and High Holyday services were held in Bombay for Jewish personnel stationed throughout the country. Private Leonard Sober (17 March 1923 – 3 July 2005) of the Essex Regiment was born in London and attended Coopers Grammar Scholl and Etz Chaim Yeshiva. Joining the army on 20 April 1944 he served as a clerk attached to the Chaplains’ Branch at the headquarters of Burma Command. He maintained lists of Jewish personnel and functioned as an assistant to the chaplains, conducting and facilitating festival services in Burma and Passover services in 1947 in Kandy in Ceylon. An undated testimonial from the Deputy Assistant Chaplain General of Burma Command, Rev. W. P. B. Pitt, stated that Sober’s work had been in looking after all of the men of the Jewish faith in Burma; he held services in the synagogue in Rangoon and travelled all over Burma visiting men of his faith; and he was most efficient and capable, in his quiet and pleasant way got things done, was obviously keen to do all that he could for men of his faith in Burma and had a friendly and pleasant manner. Leaving the army in 1947, Sober studied at Jews’ College to become Rev. Sober and served communities in Barking and Becontree from 1957, Ilford from 1968 and Southend and Westcliff from 1979. He and his wife Fay (née Marcus) had two daughters and a son.68

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Towards the end of 1946 Rev. Barry Greenberg was due to return to the UK. Looking out for Jewish soldiers who might to some extent be able to perform chaplaincy duties, he identified two NCOs: Shlomo Fishman, who may have been the son of an Honorary Officer of the United Synagogue, and Johny Levy (later Lyndon) who remembered having previously attended lectures which Greenberg had given. Explaining that he was due to return to the UK and would not be replaced, Greenberg discussed with them whether they could arrange services for Jewish personnel in India for Passover and for the High Holydays. If so he would empower them to do so, with the title of Acting Chaplains, and would inform GHQ of this arrangement. Alert to the ways of the Army, they requested letters of authorisation. These were duly produced, from (Levy could not remember which) Greenberg or the United Synagogue. Levy’s letter said that Sergeant J. Levy had authority to act as an Acting Jewish Chaplain and that any help which he could be given would be appreciated. Levy never had to produce the letter, save to travel frequently to Bombay to make arrangements.69 Programmes for Passover and the High Holydays were organised in conjunction with the Jewish community in Bombay, where a team of ladies led by Mrs Porter, who was married to the owner of the largest hotel in the city, undertook the catering. The Army authorities throughout India were very cooperative, posting up notices of forthcoming Jewish services and granting leave of absence to Jewish soldiers to attend them. In 1946 and 1947 arrangements for the services and for a programme of entertainment for the week of Passover were made by Johny Levy and Joe Bronkhurst. They ascertained the numbers of people expected to attend the Seder services so that appropriate quantities of food could be purchased, and organised the seating in the gymnasium of the Colaba holiday camp where the Seder services took place. Stocks of provisions and Haggadahs arrived from London. Always pleased to be there, Jewish servicemen arrived from all over India, returning to their bases at the end of Passover, and similar arrangements were made for the High Holydays. The religious services were conducted by Shlomo Fishman and Sidney Black. Over two years Fishman conducted the four Seder services. In 1946 some two hundred Jewish personnel attended the Passover Seder services, and in 1947 some one hundred. Some local Jewish people were invited to attend. Chaplain Sonnie Bloch, who was based in Singapore, arrived for the last days of Passover and conducted the religious services. The arrangements were under the direction of a Jewish officer, Major S. Corder. Bloch and Corder dressed as civilians and used their own and the soldiers’ first names when talking with them. Levy and Fishman edited a magazine for Jewish soldiers in India called Shalom. As a serving soldier Fishman risked getting into trouble for writing in the magazine attacking Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin over his Palestine policy, but the matter blew over.70

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e Far East Like the campaign itself, Jewish chaplaincy in the Far East during the Second World War became multi-national. So chaplaincy for British forces cannot be considered in isolation. In Port Moreseby in New Guinea in 1941 nine Australians held a Yom Kippur service, fashioning a shofar from a ram’s horn and sounding the ritual notes. Under the leadership of Australian Staff Sergeant Dick Diamond a congregation of Australian and a few American servicemen came to meet regularly on Friday evenings, with Gunner David Falk, the son of Australian Rabbi Leib Falk (who had been a British chaplain in the First World War), acting as the chazan. In 1943 Rev. Louis Rubin-Zacks of Perth Hebrew Congregation arrived in Port Moresby. He conducted services for Australian and American servicemen, including in 1943 on Rosh Hashanah for five hundred men and on Kol Nidrei night on Yom Kippur, the last few minutes in darkness because of an air raid warning, for five hundred and fifty. In 1944 Rubin-Zacks returned sick to Australia, and was succeeded by Rabbi Lazarus Morris Goldman of Melbourne, who ministered to Australian Jewish troops throughout the Far East until the end of the war.71 Sergeant Denzil Levy RAF of London was one of three British servicemen seconded to the 1st Australian Army. Probably as he thought the only British Jew in New Guinea, he received the gift of the Jewish Prayer Book for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for Australian Fighting Forces inscribed to him on 23 July 1945 by Chaplain Goldman.72 There is a graphic account by an unnamed attendee of an American Seder service in the Philippines in 1945. It was held around a huge racetrack in an unidentified city which had been liberated from the Japanese. Parts of the grandstand buildings were serving as a military hospital. All of the other parts were occupied to overflowing by more than three thousand troops and civilians. The Seder was led by US chaplains Robert Kahn from Houston Texas and Albert A. Gordon from Detroit Michigan and by the Rabbi with his wife and the chazan of the city. Transport brought soldiers in from many places, including at least one direct from the front line, and there were some reunions. People received wine and food for the Seder as they arrived and a meal was served by the army. Yom Kippur services in 1945 for Australians and Americans were held in Manila, the Kol Nidrei sermon being delivered by Canadian Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, who had briefly served as the Rabbi of Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne.73

Prisoners of War in the Far East After the fall of Singapore in February 1942 prisoners of war were concentrated in the Changi district and several attempts made to organise

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Jewish meetings. Abraham (Abe) Aaron, an Orthodox soldier from Liverpool, contacted Jewish soldiers in the 18th Division Area and Friday evening services were held. A more central meeting place proved to be needed and Corporal L. Brodie obtained permission to hold services on Saturday afternoons, which were conducted by Private H. Taylor, in the Palladium Theatre Hospital Area. Captain Dr Harry Silman RAMC from Leeds obtained permission for holidays for members of the Jewish faith on the New Year and the Day of Atonement 1942. In December 1942 Australian Warrant Officer 2 Victor Blashki, who had been captured in Malaya and who came from an illustrious military family whose members had served in both World Wars, became the official representative of the Jewish faith, organised Jewish meetings and initiated a fund for the Jewish sick. Two Jews who died during this period were buried according to Jewish rites, with Privates Egalnick and Taylor officiating.74 Rabbi Chaim Nussbaum (b. 1909) was born in Poland. His family had moved to Holland, where he studied mathematical physics as well as studying at Telshe Yeshiva in Lithuania. He became a Rabbi, Talmudist, educator and mathematical physicist and headed a training institute for Palestine. In September 1940 with his wife Rachel and their two children he fled eastwards, through Vladivostok and Tokyo, ultimately reaching the Dutch colony of Java. Whilst awaiting departure to Canada or to the Dutch colony of Curacao, he served as a Rabbi and teacher and volunteered for the Home Guard in Jakarta and to serve as a chaplain to the troops. As the Japanese closed in duty led him to decline the opportunity to leave hastily with his family for Australia. When Java fell in March 1942 he and his wife were interned, their third child being born days afterwards.75 Nussbaum served as a Jewish chaplain in several camps, visiting and encouraging the sick, conducting funerals with full military rites and conducting Seder services. He and Dutch Private Yits Lisser, who had been the honorary cantor of the Batavia (Jakarta) Jewish community, led services and assisted with welfare work for the Jewish prisoners. In 1943 the Japanese authorised a festive meeting for Purim. A Pesach service was held, but as Nussbaum was in hospital there was no Seder night. In April–May 1943 most of the Jewish POWs including Nussbaum left Changi jail for Thailand. Lisser was sent to the “Railway of Death” in Thailand, and died on the way to Tamarkan camp.76 Driver Jack Joseph Greenberg, RASC, BEM, from London got to know Nussbaum in Changi, and said that he gave the Jewish men much hope and inspiration. On 24 April 1943 before Greenberg left on a transport to go up country Nussbaum said a Hebrew blessing over him. Many of the nonJewish men around them who were waiting in the line watched, took off their hats in respect for this moment and gave a loud Amen to the prayer; none of

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them knew what lay in store for them on what they surmised was the terrible Burma Railway. Greenberg was sure that this blessing saved his life.77 Throughout 1943 Nussbaum tried to maintain contact with Jews in different hospitals and working camps along the railroad. Conditions were very bad, with outbreaks of cholera and dysentery. From July until the end of September in Tamarkan Bridge camp Nussbaum held Friday evening services and lessons on Judaism and Jewish history. Contact was made with British Captain David Arkush in Chungkai camp, who had organised Friday evening services and tried to maintain contact with Jews in other hospital and working camps. Just before Rosh Hashanah of 1943 Nussbaum was moved to one of the Kanchanaburi hospital camps. Conditions were terrible, with several Jewish patients dangerously ill. Nussbaum held a Yom Kippur service beside the bodies of the recently dead on stretchers and amid a stench of tropical ulcers. A Jewish welfare fund was set up and weekly services were held. Several Jews, including British Private Alf Levy and Michael Lewis Singer, died and were buried by Nussbaum according to Jewish rites. News was received that Warrant Officer Blashki, who had organised services in Changi, had died in a working camp along the railroad.78 Transferred to Sime Road camp, Nussbaum held services in the wing of the only church, which was that of the Church of England. Festival meetings were organised on Chanukah, the New Year for Trees and Purim. Through the cooperation of the camp commander and the canteen, a Seder evening was organised on Passover 1944. Matzot and wine were obtained with much difficulty as food and ingredients were scarce, and a welfare fund operated. In May 1944 the prisoners in the Selarang and Sime Road camps including Nussbaum were transferred to Changi jail and its immediate surroundings. In Changi jail two Jewish prisoners, Lance Corporal Cyril Wernick and Private Egalnick, had taken the initiative over Jewish activities. With the cooperation of the Assistant Chaplain General, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Bryan, who put the church building in Changi jail at the disposal of the Jewish prisoners, services were organised there and in the YMCA Hut and a service was organised at Pesach. From Nussbaum’s arrival services were held in Changi jail and elsewhere every Friday evening. Following a discussion between Nussbaum and the ACG a decision was taken to build a synagogue within Changi. Scottish soldiers of the Royal Engineers built a small building with space for about fifty people and some Jewish artists contributed to its interior, including a representation of the two Tablets with the Ten Commandments and a suitably decorated curtain in front of an imaginary ark. It was the largest religious building within Changi. On Saturday evening 26 August 1944 (the Hebrew date being 7 Elul 5704) an official dedication service of the Ohel Yaakov (Tent of Jacob) Synagogue was held. Individual invitations to the service were hand drawn and coloured. Jewish soldiers from Britain, America,

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Holland, India and Australia attended, together with the ACG, the British representative officer and many other camp leaders. Nussbaum conducted the service and gave a discourse on the ego and the psyche, and Joe Bernstein, a “soft souled young man from Glasgow”, sang beautifully.79 The Ohel Yaakov became the “one place like home” of most Jews, of quiet and rest from the life which they endured. Nussbaum conducted regular

Original hand drawn and coloured invitation to the dedication service of the Ohel Yaakov (Tent of Jacob) Synagogue in Changi Gaol on 26 August 1944. This was within the papers of LanceCorporal Cyril Wernick who survived the war but died after liberation of malnutrition. Courtesy of the Hartley Library, University of Southampton.

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services there on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. Captain Silman regularly attended the services, using his army Jewish prayer book. There were lectures on Sunday afternoons, and many non-Jews attended Nussbaum’s lectures on Judaism. As time went by many of the non-religious or antireligious Jews came to attend services as well as cultural meetings. Some Jews who out of fear had concealed their Jewish identity relented, formally or informally. There developed a well-structured Jewish congregation with regular services, lectures, lessons and visitation of the sick. A camp magazine called Habeemah: the Changi Jewish Forum, edited by Dutch Sergeant Loet/Lou Velmans from Amsterdam, was very popular among all of the POWs.80 At least one other POW synagogue existed.81 On New Year’s Day and the Day of Atonement 1944 the Japanese authorities granted a holiday to all Jewish personnel. With the assistance of the ACG special services were held. On the evening of the Day of Atonement the chazan intoned the Kol Nidrei prayer with Captain Silman as the senior POW standing alongside him. Nussbaum conducted the service and gave a short sermon in English. Remarkably twenty-five congregants chose to fast for the whole twenty-four hours, although people could not be advised to fast as food rations were very low. Captain Silman was recovering from dysentery and so did not fast. The cookhouse cooperated in providing a late mess after the fast.82 Festival meetings were held on Succot and Simchat Torah and parties on Chanukah of 1944 and on Purim of 1945. In November 1944 Nussbaum conducted the funeral of his friend, Dutch Lieutenant Elze, an engineer, which was attended by all of the Jewish prisoners and over one hundred Dutch officers.83 On Pesach 1945 a Seder service was attended by almost the whole Jewish community. Nussbaum made matzo from sago flour, wine from fermented rice, charoset (symbolising mortar) from grated coconut, maror (bitter herbs) from mint leaves and coffee from burnt rice, with spinach serving as boiled eggs. The traditional “Next year in Jerusalem” was sung with special gusto. On Shavuot and Tisha B’Av 84 of 1945 special services were held.85 A few American prayer books and a few damaged and incomplete copies of Chief Rabbi Hertz’s Book of Jewish Thoughts were found and used. In the camp libraries were also a number of novels and books dealing with Jewish subjects. From the summer of 1945 Nussbaum gave Captain Silman weekly lessons in Ivrit (modern Hebrew) and gave him an inscribed prayer book and Bible. Nussbaum had a loyal assistant, a Dutch soldier called Moishe, who was also very protective of a Sergeant Loet – perhaps Sergeant Loet Velmans. On 7 August 1945 came news of the bombing of Hiroshima. Loet recalled Nussbaum facing the wall of his cell towards Jerusalem covered with his tallith intoning his prayers. The next day the Japanese disappeared.86 A Jewish officer from Australia arrived, to tell Nussbaum’s congregation about the Holocaust. Hardened veterans of the Japanese camps, who thought that they had seen and

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lived through the worst, were filled with rage and tears. That Friday evening the Jewish service was one of mourning, with the Dutch troops fearing for their families.87 On 29 August 1945 a special thanksgiving service was held. Senior British Jewish Chaplain Israel Brodie undertook a tour of India and Burma, visiting Rangoon, Pegu, Toungoo and Neiktila and conducting services over the High Holydays. At Pegu he stated in his discourse that the older and younger generations of their faith were drawn closer together as a result of their war experiences.88 Nussbaum gave Brodie a report on the activities of Jewish POWs and civilian internees in Singapore and Thailand, which was summarised at length in the Jewish Chronicle.89 In response Captain Silman wrote in tribute to Nussbaum that “His untiring efforts on behalf of the Jewish P.O.W.s earned him the respect and admiration of Jew and Gentile alike.”90 Nussbaum wrote that in Changi he received the fullest cooperation from the authorities and that the camp as a whole showed a sympathetic interest in Jewish activities; antisemitic feelings were shown only very rarely and the Japanese granted most requests on behalf of the Jewish group. Nussbaum returned with his family to Holland, and later settled with his wife and ultimately seven children in Toronto in Canada, where he became a teacher and congregational Rabbi. In his book Chaplain on the River Kwai: Story of a Prisoner of War in 1988, he wrote about various people whom he had encountered, including Captain David Arkush, of whom he included a water colour portrait which had been done in Chungkai camp. He wrote that Arkush had organised the first religious services in Changi which had been available to all Jewish prisoners from 1942 until their liberation. Captain David Arkush RADC (8 June 1914 - 4 February 2015) grew up in Blackpool where his father, Rev. Samuel Arkush, was the minister to the Jewish community. He studied at Blackpool Grammar School and Liverpool University and became a dentist. At the start of the war he volunteered and was commissioned on 1 February 1940 as a lieutenant in the Royal Army Dental Corps, promoted on 1 February 1941 to captain.91 Somebody decided that, being Jewish, he would be at greater risk were he sent to fight the Germans and captured, and that he should therefore be sent to Singapore. This he was, as part of a draft of nine or ten dental officers. Initially this was a very agreeable posting in what was believed to be the impregnable fortress of Singapore.92 After the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 Arkush was initially reported missing in Malaya, before being reported to be a prisoner of war.93 He was sent to Changi Camp, where prisoners worked building the Burma Railway.94 On 25 May he began a diary, of which two pages survive. He attended a Friday night Jewish service conducted by Captain Silman, and arranged with the Assistant Chaplain General for Saturday morning services, which he conducted with Corporal J. Brodie. One of the Jewish prisoners who met him

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there and later in Chungkai camp was Sergeant Maurice Hillel Minchom (Mincovitch), MiD, TD, RA.95 Arkush was then sent to a camp at Ban Pong, where he spent some three months. He was able to hold Friday night, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services with the eleven other Jewish POWs, who included Lieutenant Martin Finegold and Gunner Robert Dykes RA from Glasgow.96 Arkush was then sent to Chungkai, a large work camp and a base camp for the Burma Railway project, where he spent some three years. With no Jewish Chaplain there he assumed that role, holding services on Friday nights and on festivals. Allied prisoners sometimes passed through the camps before being sent to other camps. Every prisoner who declared that he was Jewish was referred to Arkush, and a Catholic padre lent Arkush the use of his church. Arkush did whatever he could to minister to the Jewish prisoners. When somebody had a Yahrzeit he tried to assemble a minyan so that the person could say Kaddish. Staff Sergeant Charles Henry Lyons RAMC and Signalman Aubrey Lichman RCOS, both from London, were part of Arkush’s small minyan of Jewish soldiers; Lichman later made up a burial party for a Jewish soldier at Takanun camp.97 Arkush conducted three Jewish funerals. At one of them, for Gunner Lionel Basco, RA, he led the cortege to the cemetery. The Japanese camp commandant attended the funeral. As the coffin was lowered into the grave the commandant stopped the funeral, saluted, and said “You have fought for your country and died. I send my condolences to your family”. Arkush said that the commandant was a good guy who at the beginning just wanted to be friends. Some of the Japanese were railway engineers, and the brutality came from them more than from the ordinary guards. Being Jewish meant nothing and made no difference to the Japanese. In Chungkai they distributed on behalf of the Red Cross to Jewish prisoners working on the Burma Railway a book of Jewish scriptural readings issued by the United States Army for Jewish servicemen. They allowed the Jewish soldiers to hold Friday evening services, although these were very perfunctory. At Passover the Japanese allowed the Jewish prisoners to hold one small Seder service. In 1942 in Changi Private Leonard Goldfarb from London assisted Arkush by organising extra food from the Japanese officers for a Seder night meal.98 In 1943 in Chungkai the Seder was attended by over fifty men, including many brought on stretchers. With the co-operation of the cookhouse there was, as Arkush put it, a posh nosh up, with rice cakes, grated coconut, mint and spinach leaves, rice wine and bananas. Conducting it, Arkush drew a parallel with Pharaoh. He said that the Seder was the anniversary of the release of the Jewish people from slavery. At that time the Emperor was Pharaoh. With God’s help and against all of the odds the Jewish people survived that slavery. Today’s Pharaoh was the Japanese Emperor. With God’s help they would survive that

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slavery too. They should be of good cheer; the war would not go on for ever and they would go home one day. For Passover in April 1944 in Chungkai several Jewish POWs sat in a circle on the ground between one of the sleeping huts and the bamboo fence and conducted a Seder service, with burnt scrapings of congealed rice to serve as matzo and tea coloured water as wine. They included Arkush, Captain Clifford Moss Beck, RIASC, a Dutch POW called Stockfish, Private David Leonard Wince from London, two Gordon Highlanders from Glasgow, together perhaps with Signalman Israel/Jack Caplan, RCOS from Glasgow and Joe Cohen.99 Dutch Private Davids acted as the chazan at services. For Yom Kippur in 1944 Davids wrote out from memory in Hebrew the complex Kol Nidrei prayer, almost entirely correctly.100 Friday evening services were attended by Private Jack Berner of Salford, who reported that they were conducted at Kanchanaburi camp in Thailand by Arkush and by a private from Manchester and were attended by twenty men. The dates of festivals were calculated from the last date which could be remembered. Left at a camp in Manila when he fell ill and liberated by American troops, Berner was sent to the United States. Returning to Britain on an American troop carrier in April 1945, he attended a Passover Seder service with three hundred Jewish soldiers and preserved the menu card signed by seven Jewish chaplains.101 From the camp one could see hills in the distance. Arkush said to the Jewish prisoners, in the words of Psalm 121, Esau einai al hechorim, ma’ayin yovo ezri – I shall lift up my eyes unto the hills, whence will come my help. He told the men that, just as help came to our ancestors, so will it come to us. One day it did, when American B52 bombers flew over. Arkush had a German siddur - prayer book - with a black cover. All books had to be handed in for censorship, and came back with a Japanese stamp. There was a Jewish calendar in the back of the siddur, just for one year. Somebody had a Boots diary, which had the Jewish festival dates for one year. After that year Arkush had to try to work out and guess the dates of the festivals. Arkush had his tefillin with him, but was not able to use them. He avoided eating treif, so he had to live on a lot of eggs. The cookhouse had his own frying pan reserved for him, and his own frying oil, which became known as “Arkie’s frying oil”. Word came through that a man with a Jewish name had been buried as a Christian. Arkush arranged for the cross at his grave to be removed so that just his name remained. After the war the War Graves Commission erected a tombstone for him with a Magen David. The man’s brother in Leeds phoned and thanked Arkush for what he had done for his brother. A fellow prisoner, Leo Lavender, was ill. Arkush got him extra food. He told him that he must fight. If he gave up he would be lost; he had a wife and children at home and would go home to them if he kept up the fight. He

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arranged for the other Jewish prisoners to visit him every day; this they did, and all of them told him the same thing. Leo Lavender survived, went home and lived until 1984. He always said that David Arkush and the other Jewish prisoners had given him an extra forty years of life. Arkush tried to encourage a sick Jewish soldier from Liverpool, Abe Aaron, to keep hope. But he died, grasping Arkush’s hand. Arkush wrote to his parents, who told him after the war that this was how they learned of his death. He returned Abe Aaron’s siddur, which he had used for Jewish services throughout the war, to the family, who were very grateful and wrote to the Jewish Chronicle expressing their gratitude to him.102 In June 1945 Chungkai was evacuated and Arkush was moved to Tamuang camp and then to Kaoren camp. After the Japanese surrender he contrived to get to Bangkok for Rosh Hashanah. He found a service in progress in the little synagogue conducted by Dr Jacobson, a German Jewish eye specialist who had managed to reach Bangkok. Two weeks later, and still before his camp could be reached overland, a British officer, Captain Ross, was parachuted into the camp. He told Arkush of the Holocaust, of which Arkush knew nothing. Arkush went to his room and wept bitterly. After the War Arkush was flown from Bangkok to Rangoon en route home. In Rangoon he found the British Jewish Chaplain, Cecil Bloch, who entertained him and other Jewish officers to dinner on the Friday evening. He gave Arkush four back issues of the Jewish Chronicle, from which Arkush learned that his sister-in-law had had a child six months earlier and derived reassurance that despite everything Jewish life was continuing as normal in Britain. Arkush called this the best present which he had ever received in his life. In September 1945 Arkush was reported to be safe.103 David Arkush returned to Britain, married Shirley, had two children and practised as a dentist. With his family he returned twice to his wartime locations. In 1986 he wrote to Chaim Nussbaum to say that he had had a luach – a Jewish calendar – for 1942 and 1943, and that either Nussbaum or Private Lisser had then sent him a luach for 1943-45 written on a packet of cigarette papers.104 He considered that he had survived because he had been able to remain at the base camp at Chungkai where conditions were better; the further up river people were sent, the worse were the conditions. David Arkush passed away in 2015 at the age of 100.105 ACG Lewis Bryan was the Assistant Chaplain General Far East and the Senior Camp Chaplain in Changi camp. In a report after the war he recorded that before the war he wrote to the Chief Rabbi for a ruling whether in the absence of coreligionists a Church of England minister could officiate at a Jewish funeral, but before a reply arrived the war broke out. Bryan gave orders that each division should keep on file with their senior chaplain a nominal roll of

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all Jews who were qualified to take funerals.106 Within the prison camp, Bryan arranged for the Jewish community to have the use of Holy Trinity Church on alternate Fridays with the YMCA hut for their services. The Jews said that they wanted the YMCA hut as some were against the use of a church.107 Later a report on Jewish Community work was handed to the Chief Rabbi who was passing through Bangalore when Bryan was in hospital there.108 Bryan wrote that the chaplains in the New Gaol Area included the Jewish Representative, the Dutch Dr Nussbaum. “I have been invited to attend the opening of the Jewish Synagogue in the camp. The invitation itself must have taken some considerable time to produce! (I am preserving it) and as I have interested myself throughout to get all I could for these people, I am going to be present.”109 “Friday Sept 15th [1944] Saw Col. Newey today and got permission for all Jews to be off parade for their New Year’s Day (17th) and Day of Atonement (27th). It only affects about 100 in all ranks.”110 “5/7/1945. I was given today a copy of the Jewish Scriptures and Prayer Book by their Minister who added a note thanking me for what I had done ‘for their community’. It is rather nice to receive those tokens of appreciation from those outside religious bodies. It shows at any rate that they are grateful for what I have been able to do for them. It hasn’t been much I am afraid.”111 In 1948, on the fourth anniversary of the founding of the Ohel Jacob Synagogue in Changi, Bryan, by then the Rector of Broughton, wrote of it in an article in the Jewish Chronicle.112

Other People On 27 September 1944 in Tamarkan camp in Thailand Australian signaller Mark Hayman had a proxy Barmitzvah service, followed by a social gathering, for his thirteen year old son Leon Jacob. He borrowed the siddur of fellow Australian signaller Neville Milston, who carried it with him everywhere and maintained a diary throughout his captivity, but was at the time too sick with malaria to attend. Negotiations about the service with suspicious Japanese senior officers extended for four days before approval was given. The event was attended by Australian, American, British, Canadian and Dutch POWs and, at Japanese insistence, by a Japanese military interpreter named Matsuyama, who made a speech expressing the hope that father and son would be speedily reunited. A document in Hebrew and English prepared to mark the event was signed by about sixty POWs including some who were not Jewish and by the Japanese interpreter. The event became known as the Barmitzvah on the Kwai. Hayman and Milston survived to return to Australia, and Leon Hayman grew up to be a barrister.113 Born in Lithuania, Flight Lieutenant Dr Basil Stoll was the son of a minister in Hackney in London. Captured in Java, he was held at various locations in the Dutch East Indies, including in 1945 in Cycle Camp in Batavia

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(Jakarta). There he wrote from memory prayers and songs for services for Jewish POWs in 1945. One of these documents has ten signatures of the participants, including four in Hebrew of Palestinian Jews who were captured with him.114 Lance Corporal Cyril Wernick of the 4th Norfolk Regiment (13 June 1917 – 21 September 1945) was one of the leaders of Jewish activity in Changi. He contracted diphtheria and tuberculosis. After liberation he was transferred on Wednesday 19 September 1945 to 112 British General Hospital in Avadi in India, where Sergeant Harry Sherling, the non-commissioned officer who was officially in charge of Jewish welfare in the area, visited and talked with him. Very ill with extreme malnutrition, Wernick died on the afternoon of Friday 21 September. Sherling and Corporal Macks, both of whom were Jewish, washed and prepared his body for burial in accordance with Jewish ritual, and his funeral took place on Monday 24 September. In the absence of the Jewish chaplain for India, Rev. Lew, Sherling officiated, and all the Jewish men in the area, some thirty in number, attended. Wernick was buried under a Magen David in the Jewish Cemetery in Kasimode, Madras, and Sherling said Kaddish over his grave. Sherling wrote a full and poignant letter to his family. Among Wernick’s papers were a photo of his father taken in November 1941, the text of the Shabbat evening service, which he had written out by hand on 7 June 1941 in Singapore, and an original hand-drawn and coloured invitation to the dedication service of the Ohel Jacob Synagogue in Changi. His tombstone reads: “For Ever in the Hearts of his Loving Wife, Mother, Sister and Brother in Law”. His parents were Harry and Annie and his wife Ann. Wernick wrote literary poetry, and some of his poems survive.115

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

JC 28/5/1943, pp. 1, 14; 21/4/1944, p. 16. JC 21/4/1944, p. 8 (photo). JC 28/1/1944, p. 15. JC 27/10/1944, p. 17. JC 13/10/1944, p. 12. JC 21/4/1944, p. 16. JC 20/10/1944, p. 15. JC 15/12/1944, p. 14. JC 8/12/1944, p. 13. JC 23/3/1945, p. 14. JC 9/2/1945, p. 17. JC 27/4/1945, p. 15. ACC. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 20. LMA, ACC/2712/01/085. JC 23/5/1941, p. 13; 2/3/1945, p. 7. JM, file 2011.93 and box re Rev. Cashdan. 14. JC 8/8/1941, p. 11; 5/12/1941, p. 18 (photo). 15. LL 18/1/1943.

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16. JC 23/3/1945, p. 14. 17. Morris, The Ajex Chronicles, p. 50. JC 14/4/1944, p. 14; 28/4/1944, p. 17; 9/6/1944, p. 12; 15/12/1944, p. 14; 19/1/1945, p. 11. AJR Journal, May 2011, p. 3. 18. JC 29/9/1944, p. 14. 19. JC 27/10/1944, p. 17. 20. JC 15/12/1944, p. 14. 21. JC 2/3/1945, p. 7. 22. This was probably the community established by Sidney Davidson mentioned above. 23. JC 2/3/1945, p. 11. 24. JC 6/4/1945, pp. 1, 11. 25. JC 9/2/1945, p. 20 (picture). 26. JC 20/4/1945, p. 6; 4/5/1945, p. 14. 27. Donald Paiba Salinger, Memoirs of an Old China Hand (privately printed, 2005), esp. p. 42. Author’s interview with Janice Kirby (daughter) 3/7/2014. 28. ACC. 29. Author’s interview with Julian Lew (son) 26/3/2019. 30. JC 24/11/1944, p. 11 (photo). 31. JC 1/12/1944, p. 13. 32. JC 5/1/1945, p. 5. 33. JC 16/2/1945, p. 14. 34. JC 23/3/1945, p. 14. 35. JC 16/3/1945, p. 1. 36. JC 30/3/1945, p. 5. 37. JC 20/4/1945, p. 6. 38. JC 7/12/2018, p. 71 (obituary). 39. Martin Sugarman Under the Heel of the Bushido – Last Voices of the Jewish POWs of the Japanese in the Second World War (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2014), pp. 172-4. 40. JC 20/4/1945, p. 6. 41. JC 23/3/1945, p. 17. 5705 was the Jewish year corresponding to 1945. Zeman Herotenu means the Season of our Freedom and is one of the names of the Festival of Passover. 42. JC 8/6/1945, p. 9. 43. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 172-4. 44. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, p. 133. 45. JC 11/5/1945, p. 13. 46. JC 31/8/1945, p. 12. 47. Chayenu Magazine, 1945 September, p. 16. 48. ACC. 49. Wiener Library, Lady Rose Henriques Archive, MF Doc. 52, HA7/4-15/24, Report on work in Hamburg 9-19 October 1946 by A. Carlebach. 50. JC 28/7/1944, p. 9. 51. Sugarman, Fighting Back, p. 150. Romain, Royal Jews, p. 154. A photograph shows Bloch in uniform with a clerical collar. 52. JC 5/10/1945, p. 17. 53. The author grew up there and has boyhood memories of him. 54. Samson and Samson, The Rabbi in the Green Jacket, pp. 5-6, 34, 67-8, 130, 175, 221-3, 305, 313-4. Romain, Royal Jews, p. 154. Sugarman, Fighting Back, p. 150. JC 20/9/1940, p. 13. Author’s interviews with Mervyn Bloch (son) 29/12/2016 and 5/6/2017. 55. JC 5/6/1942, p. 11. 56. JC 2/3/1945, p. 11; 20/4/1945, p. 6.

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57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

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ACC. Information from Selwyn Bloch (son). There is a photo of men with Sifrei Torah and a shofar. Dangerously ill. Grave reference 5.C.10. JC 23/11/1945, p. 18. JC 1/3/1946, p. 19. ACC. Morris, We Will Remember Them, p. 104. JC 22/2/1946, pp. 3, 13; 1/3/1946, p. 19. Hooker family papers. ACC. JC 26/1/1945, p. 11. Menorah magazine, issue 15/2, September 1966, p. 4. JC 1/6/1945, p. 9 (photo). JC 17/8/1945, p. 5. ACC. JM, file 2014.80.17, including photographs. Information from Merrill Dresner (daughter). Corporal Leonard Finkle, RAMC, whom the author interviewed on 12/2/2019, remembered Sober and his having arranged services. Jewish Servicemen Spend Passover in Bombay in The Jewish Advocate magazine, April 1947. Author’s interview 23/7/2015 with Johnny Lyndon, who remembered with affection his period in India as an Acting Jewish Chaplain. The Jewish Advocate magazine, April 1947, Jewish Servicemen Spend Passover in Bombay. Author’s interview 23/7/2015 with Johny Lyndon. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 205, 235-236. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 116/101 re Levy. A different person from Rabbi Chaim Nussbaum. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 244-245. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 245. Chaim Nussbaum, Chaplain on the River Kwai: Story of a Prisoner of War (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988), generally, esp. pp. 225-6, 235, 262-3, 282-3. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 359-371. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, p. 367. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 221, 366. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 245. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 9, 367. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 9, 367, 370, 413, 534. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, p. 199. Gladwin, Captains of the Soul, p. 132. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 367, 535. Ibid., p. 368. Fast day marking the destruction of both of the Temples in Biblical Israel and numerous other tragedies in Jewish history (including e.g. the outbreak of the First World War in 1914). Ibid., p. 413. Ibid., pp. 541-2, 568-9. Ibid., p. 569. JC 5/10/1945, p. 14. JC 2/11/1945, pp. 1, 14. JC 2/11/1945, pp. 1, 14; 16/11/1945, p. 15. Forces War Records. JC 17/5/1940, p. 13. JC 21/5/1943, p. 9. JC 21/5/1943, p. 9. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, p. 333. Ibid., p. 154.

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97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115.

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Ibid., pp. 289-290, 295. Ibid., pp. 209-210. Ibid., pp. 78, 129, 571-6. Ibid., pp. 10, 55-6. Ibid., pp. 59, 578-9. JC 20/4/1945, p. 6. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, p. 61. JC 21/9/1945, p. 11. JM, files ORT/02/04/04 and 06; ORT/01/02/01 and 02 (censored siddur, pages of diary, Kol Nidrei prayer, spike from Burma-Siam railway). Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, p. 56. Author’s interview with David Arkush, then aged 98, 13/1/2013. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 10, 45-67. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 39-41, 361- 382. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, pp. 216-7. JM, files ORT 01/02/01 and 02, ORT/02/04/04 and 06. Rev. J.N. Lewis Bryan, Assistant Chaplain General, Assistant Chaplain General’s Report on Chaplaincy Services during captivity in Malaya, Part I (the period from 15 February 1942 until June 1944), p. 10. Hagerty, No Ordinary Shepherds, p. 296. Ibid., Part I, p. 25, 1/3/1944. Ibid., Part I, Index. This was the report by Rabbi Nussbaum: JC 2/11/1945, pp. 1, 14. Ibid., Part II, p. 4. Ibid., Part II, p. 8. Ibid., Part II, p. 30. JC 24/9/1948, pp. 6, 11. Dapin, Jewish Anzacs, pp. 196-197, 202, 245. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. 5, 8, 9. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, p. 601. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 116/2, Papers of Cyril Wernick. Sugarman, Under the Heel of the Bushido, pp. vii, 368, 370.

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12 THE SECOND WORLD WAR: EUROPE

e Invasion of Europe Paul Hamilton, who had been born Paul Herschan into a prosperous Jewish family in Vienna, was serving with the Headquarters Company of the 12th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (12 Para), which was tasked with jumping as pathfinders and taking and holding a bridge on the Caen canal. Just before the planes took off on 5 June 1944 the Christian chaplain of the battalion gathered the Jewish soldiers together and reassured them that he had memorised the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish. All knew that the risks were high. Hamilton survived.1 Gunter Behrendt also served in the Parachute Regiment, as Gene O’Brian. As D-Day approached men were held in vast closed camps. He wrote: Many chaplains came to conduct services, amongst them a rabbi who called us for prayers. Most of us went because it was a parade and an order, but then we slipped away like sand between the fingers. We knew that no prayer would help us do what we had to do, no angel from above and no rabbi from down here. Our rabbi must have done his homework overnight because he admitted that his approach the day before had not been a success with us since it seemed that praying was not our favourite pastime. Therefore he had loaded his Jeep with ‘goodies’ such as chocolate, sweets and cigarettes. He also brought a booklet for each of us called A Book of Jewish Thoughts. Behrendt survived and settled in Israel, changing his name again to Gideon Behrendt.2 During the invasion of Europe a Jewish officer struggling to unload his trucks full of ammunition from a landing craft onto the beach at night and under fire recited Psalm 91 – “The Lord, who is my refuge and my fortress” – to himself in Hebrew and then to his men in English.3 Three Jewish soldiers named Brodie, Rottenberg and Simpson landed on D-Day. Driver Brodie,

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A.S.C., was blown up that day by a mine. Corporal Rottenberg, aged twentyone, of a field dressing station, dressed and washed his body with due regard to Jewish ritual observance and made a basic Magen David for the grave. Later Sapper Israel Simpson, R.E., B.L.A., who had landed with a beach group, arranged for a more elaborate Magen David for the grave, and told Rabbi Rabinowitz about it at his Yom Kippur service.4 Simpson was the first Jew to enter the Synagogue at Elbeuf and, finding it disordered, set it to rights. He then visited in hospital the only Jew left in Elbeuf, who had hidden all of the silver appurtenances from the synagogue and was now intending to return them.5 On the Sabbath of 25 June 1944 the first large service for Jewish personnel was conducted by a Jewish chaplain in Bayeux.6 On 18 and 27 September 1944 Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for American soldiers were held on the beaches as men and material poured ashore. Americans later participated in services in numerous synagogues in Paris and Marseilles. At one poor Polish synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Paris, American soldiers were deeply shocked to see the starved haunted faces of survivors, many of whom had been in hiding in cellars for years.7 High Holyday services were held in Rouen; in Brussels, attended on Rosh Hashanah by some two or three hundred soldiers and on Yom Kippur followed by a meal for some eighty; in an unnamed town in Belgium, attended by several hundred soldiers including Private K. Yurman of the B.L.A. and perhaps a thousand liberated Belgian Jews, followed by a communal dinner for all of the soldiers; and at another unnamed location attended by Sapper Ernest C. Sterne, B.L.A. and soldiers of various nationalities. At a location in France, to which the roads were signposted by the Military Police “Jewish Holy-day Services”, nearly two hundred men including Craftsman H. Newman attended services in a church hall on the first evening and some sixty were given lunch the next day; through the unforeseen and last-minute recall to England of the chaplain, Rev. A.S. Super, the services were conducted impromptu by Lance Corporal Laurance, R.E.M.E., of London, and Sergeant Freeman of Liverpool. In a port thousands of miles from England Sub-Lieutenant H. Fisch, RN, attended Rosh Hashanah services at an American Army camp and leyned – read from the Law – although only from a Chumash (a printed book of the Torah) and not, as normally required, from a Sefer Torah.8 The first Jewish service of Allied troops in Germany was held by Americans soldiers and conducted by an American Jewish chaplain amidst the anti-tank fortifications of the Siegfried Line.9

Jewish Chaplains Nine British chaplains, eight Army and one RAF, served in the British Liberation Army in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany in 1944 and 1945, with Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz and then Rev. Isaac Levy as Senior Jewish

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Chaplain. Complaints were inevitably voiced about the shortage of chaplains.10 Several conferences of chaplains, some attended by American chaplains, were held in Brussels. Rev. Arthur Saul Super (1 July 1908 – July 1979) was born in Great Yarmouth to Latvian born parents and grew up in Melbourne in Australia, attending Melbourne High School. Returning to Britain, he attended Jews’ College and Cambridge University and took a diploma in Oriental Studies. He served from 1933 until 1936 as the minister of the Shaar Hashamaim (Gate of Heaven) Congregation in Montreal and from 1937 until 1940 as the Senior Minister of the United Hebrew Congregation of Leeds and Registrar of the Leeds Beth Din. In Leeds he served as an officiating clergyman. At the request of the JWSC he was released for military service, although the Council of Leeds United Hebrew Congregation later strongly criticised the decision of its Executive to release him. Super gave a farewell sermon and enlisted on 14 August 1940.11 He served in Southern, Western, Eastern and South Eastern Commands and was attached to Q.A.M. Hospital in London District. From 15 June until 25 September 1944 Super served as a chaplain in North West Europe. Lance Corporal Edward J. Landau of the Parachute Brigade, B.L.A., wrote that within three weeks of D-Day his unit was visited in the front line by Rev. A. S. Super, who conducted a service standing alongside a hedgerow to avoid the risk of mortar fire in the open, using a small hole in the hedge as an Ark for a miniature Sefer Torah, and that Landau had the honour of being called up for the Reading of the Law. Since then Super had written a very nice letter to Landau’s wife in London. “As other correspondents have pointed out, we sometimes have to go long periods before we can meet a Jewish Padre – due to the very large number of units they have to cover. Therefore you can imagine our pleasure at getting a service so soon after the opening of the battle, under the most difficult circumstances and by a most sincere Minister.”12 In August 1944 in Normandy Rev. Super was loaned by the British Army to the Canadian Army pending the arrival of the Canadian Jewish Chaplain.13 He seems to have been recalled unexpectedly to England in September 1944.14 He held Yom Kippur services in Maidstone in Kent. Speaking at the New Synagogue in Chapeltown in Leeds, he spoke of the deep longing of all Jewish personnel for Jewish association and for the opportunity for sincere religious expression.15 In November 1944 Louis Rabinowitz paid public tribute to him.16 Super then served in Northern Command before relinquishing his commission in December 1945.17 Arthur Super served as the minister of Bayswater Synagogue in London, and then in the 1950s worked in Israel as a journalist. In 1960 he went to South Africa where, ordained as a Reform Rabbi, he became the Chief Minister of

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the Johannesburg Progressive Congregation. As the senior Reform Rabbi in South Africa, he entered into a concordat with Chief Rabbi Bernard Moses Casper to reduce Orthodox-Reform tensions in South Africa in the 1960s, stipulating amongst other matters that it provide for Reform as well as Orthodox Jewish military chaplaincy; but it did not take effect.18 Rev. Abraham (Alec) Myerson (26 August 1908 - 1964) from Birkenhead was commissioned in April 1941 and served in South Eastern Command before going to Europe in July 1944.19 On 27 September Myerson conducted a Yom Kippur service in a hall with a Sefer Torah for some four hundred men, including Lieutenant J. Lapidus of Manchester. The men improvised an Ark and candlesticks and had to share eighteen machzorim which they had received from the Emergency Committee. Some of the men hitchhiked a hundred miles to attend, and some slept in the hall. At Yizkor – the memorial service for the dead – the names of all of those Jewish personnel known to have been killed were read out and everybody said Kaddish for them. Everybody stood for the concluding Ne’ilah service, which was followed by a cup of tea and a Naafi cake.20 Rev. Philip Cohen (b. 6 July 1907) from Manchester studied at Jews’ College and was the minister of the Central Synagogue in Great Portland Street in the west end of London. Married to Bobbi and with a daughter, he was commissioned in July 1940 and assumed his duties on 5 July. He served in Northern Command and North Midland District before going to Europe in September 1944.21

e Succession to Senior Jewish Chaplain Rabbi Dr Leslie Edgar (24 (or 20) September 1905 – 21 February 1984) of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue grew up in in London and studied Oriental Languages at Cambridge University and Rabbinics at Kings College, University of London. Late in 1939 or early in 1940 he was invited by Senior Jewish Chaplain Marks Gollop to become a Jewish chaplain. He declined, fearing that, with still so much prejudice against Liberal Jews, his appointment might lead to undesirable controversy, which the War Office might be drawn into. Some months later he was asked to see Gollop again, to be told by Gollop and a lay member of the JWSC that to their great pleasure and somewhat to their surprise the War Office had authorised a substantial increase in the number of Jewish chaplains, and that they were having considerable difficulty finding sufficient suitable Jewish ministers. He wrote: I said that, in the circumstances, I felt I would have to reconsider. But, I pointed out to Dayan Gollop, I was much concerned about one religious

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problem. I realised, of course, that as a Chaplain I would have to do my best for each Jewish man or woman according to their ‘background and the way they were brought up’ – if they came from an Orthodox background to do my best to encourage them in that form of Jewish loyalty and so forth – but I found it very difficult to know what to do about religious services since there were Orthodox prayers which I could not conscientiously use. I was very deeply impressed by Dayan Gollop’s answer. Taking a small khaki - covered book from the left-hand drawer of his desk, he said: ‘Edgar, I would have to ask you to promise me that you would not use any other prayer-book than this, which is the prayerbook officially authorised for use by Jewish service-men and women. But I leave it to your judgement entirely which parts of the book you do or do not use’. Inwardly I thought this is the kind of man I would be proud to serve under, and although I did not give my decision to enter the Chaplaincy until a few weeks later, and after much thought, I think I had really decided at that moment.22 Appointed a chaplain from 1 July 1940, Edgar served in the Western Command, based at Oswestry and then at Chester. Then appointed to the Scottish Command headquartered in Edinburgh, he spent most of his time in the remoter parts of Scotland, visiting gun sites and airfields, including isolated units in the Orkneys and Shetlands and the even more isolated small islands and the ships which came into Scapa Flow. He found that the army authorities were always very helpful, and that being a Liberal Jew caused him no difficulty. At a chaplaincy conference an Orthodox chaplain said to him: “You know, Edgar, you are a positive menace. Orthodox Jews come to me after they have been in your Command, and I find that you have got concessions for them which I couldn’t get for them and wouldn’t if I could!” Edgar explained to him that he well knew that he often got for them more than was their strict due under the service regulations. But he would not have any Orthodox Jew feeling that he had been prejudiced by being under a Jewish chaplain who was Liberal Jew. He would explain to commanding officers that, just as within Christianity, there were religious distinctions within Judaism, and it would not do for an Orthodox Jew to feel that he was being prejudiced by having a Liberal Jew as a chaplain, so would the CO do as much as he possibly could under the regulations. The innate sense of justice and respect for religion felt universally by officers always resulted in a very generous response. In January 1941 SJC Marks Gollop was listed in the RAF list.23 In April 1941 he was appointed to the Interdenominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services.24 In February 1942 the Advisory Committee on Naval Chaplaincy Services appointed him as the army chaplain in charge of Jewish interests in the Royal Navy.25 In October 1942 Gollop was promoted to

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Chaplain to the Forces Second Class, with the equivalent rank of LieutenantColonel.26 In November 1942 he was awarded the Efficiency Decoration.27 A reference to him by rank in the press led him to point out that British chaplains should not be so referred to as their ranks were purely relative.28 In the autumn of 1943 Gollop became seriously ill.29 Asked to call upon Gollop at his home in London, Leslie Edgar was shocked to find him in bed and obviously very ill. Gollop said that he believed that he would get better and wanted to keep his position open so that he could take it up again. Meanwhile he wanted to recommend to the War Office that Edgar be appointed as his deputy. Edgar begged Gollop not to do this; Gollop had so many Orthodox chaplains to choose from, and it was bound to cause great trouble and controversy within the Jewish community. Gollop was adamant: “ ‘I want you to do it’, he said, ‘because I trust you and my mind will be at ease’.” With considerable misgivings, Edgar acceded, and was posted to work in the Senior Chaplain’s Office.30 The controversy was not long in coming. On 10 November 1943, Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz wrote to the War Office. The chairman of the JWSC, he wrote, had without the Chief Rabbi’s knowledge appointed a locum tenens who was quite unacceptable to him. The Chief Rabbi had a clear duty to undertake reconstruction of the JWSC unless they were prepared to respect his decisions in religious matters like the appointment of a senior Jewish chaplain or his deputy. On 29 November 1943 he wrote to the secretary of the JWSC, Donald H. Cohen: “The appointment of a Liberal Minister to act for Dayan Gollop during his illness cannot be recognised by me, and calls for a solemn protest on my part.” He went on that there were eighteen Orthodox chaplains then in England, among them men eminently suited for the work, like Major Rabinowitz and Rev. A. S. Super; Orthodox Jewry furnished 97% of the Jewish men in H.M. Forces and the senior chaplain in control of army religious activities should be Orthodox; the appointment had been made without the knowledge of the Chief Rabbi; and if, as was suggested, Dayan Gollop had named Rev. Edgar for the post, he had had no right to do so. Cohen replied on 1 December that the Committee at its meeting the previous day had received the Chief Rabbi’s letter with very deep distress. Dayan Gollop had felt it necessary to ask someone to carry on his work during his absence and was entirely within his military rights to make his own selection and arrangements. However before doing so and after he had been ordered to bed with his heart attack he had asked the chairman and Mr Cohen to visit him in order to explain his intention and to ask for their concurrence. This they had given, and the Committee had ratified their decision. Any protest by the Chief Rabbi to the Army Council would be very unfair to Gollop and prejudicial to the community. Edgar would not give any decision on matters regarding Orthodox ritual or religion without first consulting an Orthodox authority.

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On 14 December 1943 the Deputy Chaplain General, L. Gethin Hughes, minuted the War Office file that the letter from the Chief Rabbi of 10 November might cause a certain amount of difficulty. Rev. L. I. Edgar, who at Dayan Gollop’s suggestion and with the approval of the RAChD was acting in Gollop’s absence, was “a man of pronounced ability and great personal charm who is probably one of the most effective of the Jewish chaplains. So far as we are concerned he has already shown that he is a most efficient deputy for Dayan Gollop. Mr Edgar is however a Liberal Jew and a Modernist, which may account for the Chief Rabbi’s objection.” Hughes anticipated that Gollop’s place would be taken by the next most senior Jewish chaplain, Rabbi L. Rabinowitz. This he considered should be opposed, for reasons discussed below. In a letter of 20 December 1943, Hertz nominated First World War chaplain Rev. Arthur Barnett, who was again serving as a chaplain, to be Gollop’s locum tenens until his recovery, to which on 22 December the Army Council agreed. The controversy escalated, and over several weeks an increasing number of servicemen wrote to the press, some to support and some to oppose Edgar’s appointment.31 The JWSC met urgently on Wednesday 29 December. In a lengthy meeting Hertz and Dr Bernard Homa gradually carried the day against the view of the majority. As Homa wrote, “Edgar had to go”. As it would have been highly offensive to dismiss him the very next day, the change was to be made during January. Seriously ill, Gollop spent some months in hospital. In January 1944 he was assessed permanently unfit for service. Released from hospital in February 1944 to convalesce, he was obliged to resign as Senior Jewish Chaplain and as minister of the Hampstead Synagogue.32 The Jewish Chronicle applauded his conscientious service, and the Deputy Chaplain General conveyed thanks for his services.33 On 14 March 1944 Gollop relinquished his commission through ill-health, retiring as the first Jewish chaplain to attain the status of chaplain second class with the equivalent rank of lieutenant-colonel. As Gollop’s successor the JWSC proposed, with the approval of the Chief Rabbi and the President of the United Synagogue, Rabbi Israel Brodie. Brodie had first served as a chaplain on the western front in the First World War. After being evacuated with the B.E.F. in 1940 he had served within Southern Command at Aldershot and then within Scottish Command. On 10 December 1940 he was “translated” into the RAF as its first Jewish chaplain, with the relative rank of Squadron Leader, and was appointed as the Jewish chaplain in RAF Middle East. He served in the Western Desert, later becoming Senior Jewish Chaplain in RAF Middle East and being mentioned in despatches.34 On 15 March 1944 he was duly “translated” back into the army to become the Senior Jewish Chaplain, in the acting rank of chaplain third class and the local rank of chaplain second class, which Gollop had held, with the equivalent rank of lieutenant-colonel (but on the pay of a chaplain third class). He was

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correspondingly appointed the army chaplain in charge of Jewish interests in the Air Force and took Gollop’s place on the Interdenominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services. The controversy over, Edgar stood down and applied for the next available overseas posting, which was granted after the invasion of Europe.35 In August 1944 Brodie had an operation, for which he was on sick leave.36 As Senior Jewish Chaplain he visited troops, in November 1944 in Europe, in March 1945 in Italy, in August 1945 in the Far East and from probably 16 September until 8 October 1945 in Germany. Following the death of Joseph Hertz in 1946 Brodie became Chief Rabbi in 1948, standing down as Senior Jewish Chaplain and leaving the army in June 1948 and retiring in 1965.37

Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz Israel Brodie was not the automatic appointee as Senior Jewish Chaplain. After SJC Marks Gollop the most senior Jewish chaplain was Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz. A powerful and forthright personality with both supporters and opponents, Rabinowitz was an obvious candidate. In North Africa he had succeeded in upsetting both Gollop, to whom he had sent “snorters”, and the Staff Chaplain at GHQ in North Africa, Edlin, neither of whom liked him.38 On 11 June 1943 Rev. Isaac Levy had seen Edlin, to be told that Rabinowitz had made a nuisance of himself in the MEF, that there was no desire to have him back, that he would stay with 8th Army and that Levy should continue to keep in touch with Edlin on all matters. Levy gathered that Rabinowitz seemed to have well and truly blotted his copy book in the office of the DCG. Rabinowitz had gone to Cairo in order to attempt to obtain a month’s leave to fly to South Africa about a potential appointment there to succeed the late Chief Rabbi of Johannesburg, but this had not been granted.39 Levy heard that the DCG may have reached the stage of wanting him out of the way, and in July 1943 Rabinowitz was recalled to the UK by a cable from the War Office, arriving back on 10 September.40 On 27 September 1943 Levy wrote to his wife: One more spot of news. Brodie received a letter from Rab41 addressed from his home in Cricklewood. On his first Shabbas back he preached in his shule and in his letter to Brodie he informs him that he has been recalled in disgrace. That he will be sent either to Northern Ireland or to Scotland and that if he behaves himself he may go over to some European front when the time comes. I saw the letter it is written in the most bitter of terms and I must say I feel sorry for him in a way. He has blown his balloon so big and now he himself pricks it and the burst is a furious one. O that pride of man which blinds him to the truth. He sought to soar heavenward in the vain search for glory and he has been

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sent back under such a cloud of ill favour. G[ollop] apparently told him that the War Office was informed of his disloyalty to G[ollop] and that the D.C.G., M.E.F. preferred his room to his company. The latter is the biggest blow of all and Rab cannot [but] realise that this is the case. I know it to be a fact since that gentleman told me so. Does it not seem a shame that such a thing should have happened. Noone realises more than I how capable Rab is at his job. Blessed with an overdose of energy that man is capable of working ceaselessly and tirelessly. He drove and spoke and wrote and never stopped working, and had time to enjoy life and make the most of himself and his opportunities, and a large number of men liked him.42 On 5 October 1943 Rabinowitz went to Northern Ireland. Doubtless there were Jewish troops in Northern Ireland, and doubtless their religious needs were able to be met by the Belfast Jewish community, whose Rabbi Jacob Schachter was an officiating clergyman. So this posting may indeed have been intended to see whether he could “behave himself ”. When the issue of a successor to Gollop arose, Leslie Edgar was interviewed on 9 December 1943 by DCG Gethin Hughes and a War Office official, Mr Bedford. An undated and anonymous document classified as “very secret” and headed with Rabinowitz’s name stated that Rabinowitz’s request had been rejected for an immediate interview with the DCG, whom he could see when he was next on leave. It continued: But Mr. Bedford told Mr. Edgar that, should Rabinowitz ever be nominated for the post of Senior Jewish Chaplain, the War Office would, despite Rabinowitz’s claim as the Territorial Chaplain, oppose that nomination. The D.C.G. concurred in this view. They did, however, intimate that this might cause the War Office difficulties, since they feared that Rabinowitz had a certain amount of political influence which would lead to pressure from political quarters, but they implied that they would simply take their stand on the records they have of Rabinowitz’s service. Anticipating the nomination of Rabinowitz as the next most senior Jewish chaplain, Gethin Hughes minuted the War Office file on 14 December: Unfortunately Rabinowitch [sic] had been recalled by us from the Middle East, at Dayan Gollop’s request, because he had consistently ignored Dayan Gollop’s instructions on Jewish chaplaincy matters. Moreover you may remember that there was a somewhat disturbing matter concerning Rabinowitch in connection with his conduct on the

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voyage home. This was reported to Dayan Gollop who took the gravest view of the situation, but you considered after consulting D. P. S., that no disciplinary action could be taken – I enclose the file.43 …. Dayan Gollop considered however, and we agreed with him, that Rabinowitch would be most unsuitable to act as his deputy even in a temporary capacity. I do not know how the Chief Rabbi proposes to solve this problem but if he should contemplate appointing Rabinowitch vice Edgar we must, I feel, object to the suggestion for the reasons I have already stated. It may be of course that he will propose something entirely different.44 In North Africa Rabinowitz had been presented to General Montgomery in around January 1943. He had taken the opportunity to say that three more Jewish chaplains were needed, prompting a stiff letter from Montgomery to GHQ, which had irritated the senior chaplaincy in North Africa.45 There is a suggestion, impossible to verify, that after the death of Joseph Hertz in January 1946 Montgomery had written to the Prime Minister saying that, despite having been recalled from North Africa in some disgrace, Rabinowitz should be considered for the position of Chief Rabbi.46 So in December 1943, and again in January 1946, Rabinowitz’s political patron may have been Montgomery. This is plausible; the son of a bishop, Montgomery valued his army chaplains and had lobbied hard and successfully in 1942 for the appointment as Chaplain General of his protégé, Frederick Llewelyn Hughes.47 From Northern Ireland Rabinowitz went in 1944, probably in January48, to the Eastern Command in the Norfolk/Cambridgeshire District. On 10 May he was posted to 21st Army Group and to the Headquarters of the 2nd Army. In June he accepted appointment as the minister of the Great Synagogue in Johannesburg in South Africa. The Jewish Chronicle wrote: “Rabbi Rabinowitz won fame as the Jewish Chaplain of the Eighth Army, with which body he went all through the North African campaign. He was subsequently recalled to this country for important services in pending operations.”49 On 17 June Rabinowitz embarked with the Headquarters of the 2nd Army within 21st Army Group for North West Europe.50 He conducted many services. Signalman M. Newman of a yeomanry regiment was one of about twenty men who attended one of them; held in a comparatively quiet spot under a tree against the noise of gunfire, Rabinowitz conducted it holding a Sefer Torah and wearing his tallit, which he had embellished with an Italian colonel’s silk hat band, a souvenir of the western desert campaign.51 In

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Normandy Rabinowitz spent a week in the front line visiting soldiers and holding services where opportunity arose. His first eve of battle service was with an armoured brigade and was held in an open field under a tree, with men called up to the Reading of the Law. He conducted the funeral of Private Lerner, the first Jewish soldier to fall in Normandy.52 At a Friday evening service over three hundred officers and men sang as though inspired and listened attentively to Rabinowitz’s address; he then blessed them before they departed to their forward units.53 A soldier called Newman, R.A.C., B.W.E.F., wrote how, fighting in a forward area, a Church of England padre sought him out and directed him to a Friday night service – probably the one described – in a half-ruined building in a half shattered village. There were at least a hundred Jewish “[o]fficers and men mixed in splendid comradeship, all accoutred with rifles or revolvers or stens”, straight from the line. “After the service we chatted and swopped experiences …. At last we said goodbye, and back we go with lighter, happier hearts, strengthened and immensely encouraged by having been among our own folk, if only for a very little while.” Newman went on to lament that Jews could not fight under their own Jewish flag.54 Rabinowitz conducted another Friday evening service in a small French village not many miles from the front line, the congregation overflowing into the narrow street outside. In the home the blessing over the Shabbat candles is traditionally recited by the woman of the house; here it was recited by a girl in khaki standing alongside Rabinowitz. Staff Sergeant L. Graham, R.E.M.E., B.L.A., was deeply moved.55 Based at Rear HQ, Second Army, Rabinowitz was responsible for 8 and 30 Corps and Army Troops. Rev. Arthur Super was responsible for 1 and 12 Corps, Rev. Alec Myerson for Line of Communication/Control (L of C) troops and Rabbi Gershon Levi of the Canadian Army for 1 Canadian Army (less 1 Corps). In September 1944 Rabinowitz wrote a lengthy article in the Jewish Chronicle entitled “they were also there” listing numerous Jews who had served, and in some cases been killed, in the numerous units which participated in D-Day.56 In a letter to the troops Rabinowitz invited them to indicate which of the services on 17-19 September for Rosh Hashanah and on 26-27 September for Yom Kippur they wished to attend, and whether they would need billeting. Should they desire to trace relatives in liberated territory they were advised to communicate with the United Kingdom Search Bureau in London. He wrote that “I am assured by the Military Authorities that every possible facility will be granted to Jewish personnel desirous of attending Services on these Sacred Days. It will be realised, however, that everything is subject to the over-riding considerations of the exigencies of military service, especially during these vital days.” On Rosh Hashanah Rabinowitz conducted a service in a marquee in Belgium not far from the front line. Afterwards there was a scratch meal, mainly of fruit, laid out on odd yards of muslin.57 On Yom Kippur with a voice

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full of emotion Rabinowitz recited the Memorial Prayer and read the names of those who had fallen. The Army sent a jeep to take two soldiers, one from London named Gardner, over fifty miles to attend Rabinowitz’s services.58 In his “High Festival Message” to the troops in 1944 Rabinowitz wrote that he had been granted his release from the army from the morrow of the Day of Atonement (which fell on Wednesday 27 September) to take up an important post in South Africa. On return to Britain he was temporarily attached to London District Headquarters and resigned his commission on 14 October.59 Preaching in his synagogue in Cricklewood on the first day of Succot, which was 2 October, he said that he had been with forward units of the Army which had been temporarily cut off by German counter-attacks on the flanks during the frantic efforts to reach the Airborne troops at Arnhem, and that at the Nijmegen bridgehead he had conducted well attended Holy Day services in the synagogue in Nijmegen after it had been cleared of stored German loot.60 In a talk entitled “I seek my brethren” in November 1944 Rabinowitz said that in Bayeux he had obtained information about the fate of Jews in Paris; in Antwerp he had found the synagogues in ruins; in Brussels he had found the synagogue untouched and functioning; and that he had visited the horrific concentration camp at Breendonk (which was near Mechelen in Belgium, between Brussels and Antwerp).61 At a meeting in London to support a recruiting campaign for the Jewish Brigade Group Rabinowitz praised the Palestinian units among whom he had served.62 At a reception in November to bid farewell to Rabinowitz on his departure to Johannesburg, tributes were paid to him by the Chief Rabbi, the Deputy Chaplain General, Rev. Dr James Parkes and others.63 He arrived in Johannesburg in February 1945 to become the Chief Minister of the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation.64 After three weeks in Britain Rev. Isaac Levy was posted to Europe as the Senior Jewish Chaplain in the British 2nd Army in Europe.65 On 21 September 1944 he left London for a camp in Hampshire.66 On 30 September he set off with a draft of chaplains and crossed the Channel in an uncomfortable infantry landing craft. The following day he travelled by train to Amiens and thence by road to Brussels, where he stayed for five days before a truck collected him and took him to join the 2nd Army.67 On 6 October Levy learned that in order to get his promotion – what promotion is not stated – Rabinowitz had informed “A” Branch that as Senior Chaplain he was not subject to the administration of the Chaplains’ Department but came directly under “A” Branch, and had therefore asked for recognition of his own status. Meanwhile he had been arranging with London for his departure from the service. This had naturally left a very unpleasant impression in the Office of the Deputy Chaplain General. “It appears that everyone was thoroughly fed up with him and heaved a sigh of relief when he

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departed.”68 Chaplaincy, however, was the purview of the RAChD, whose senior echelon in the Middle East Rabinowitz had antagonised. So liaison with “A” Branch over his status may have been an attempt by Rabinowitz to circumvent the authority of the RAChD and to assert his independence of it. In this he may have seen a precedent in Roman Catholic chaplaincy, which in 1940 had reasserted its separatism from the unified system of army chaplaincy, fracturing the unity of the RAChD throughout the war.69 In an otherwise unrelated book published in 1952 (about a mission to the Far East which he had undertaken at some point after 1948, several years after he had left the army) Rabinowitz gave an account of the circumstances of his departure from Europe.70 He wrote that having gone through the North African campaign from Alamein to Tunis he had been recalled in 194471 in order to be appointed Senior Jewish Chaplain to the British Liberation Army. He had landed on the Normandy beaches on D + 672 and had been present at the Battles of the Beachhead and the Bulge and then the liberation of North France, Belgium and Holland. Just when his feet trod the accursed soil of Germany73 and he had been looking forward to being in “at the kill”, he had received his discharge from the Army. This had been engineered by the Chief Rabbi of England in response to an urgent request from Johannesburg that he be enabled to take up his new appointment there at the earliest possible moment. The application had been made over his head, and he had had no redress. It had always rankled in his mind that it had not been given to him to “finish the job” and to play whatever part he might be called upon or might come his way to help in the rescue of survivors of the Nazi holocaust74. Rabinowitz’s explanation of his involuntary discharge from the army raises questions. It contradicted his own contemporary acknowledgement to Brodie that he had been recalled from the Middle East in disgrace, and glossed over his period in Northern Ireland and the reason for it. By June 1944 he had the offer of the post in Johannesburg. Everything was subordinated to the war effort, and the community there would have had to wait for him. Even if they did request Chief Rabbi Hertz to release him as soon as he could, Hertz would have had to consult SJC Brodie, who had served alongside Rabinowitz in the Middle East and well knew his strengths and weaknesses. With still a desperate shortage of Jewish chaplains, Brodie had no apparent operational reason to release so experienced a chaplain unless perhaps he had concluded that Rabinowitz was more trouble than he was worth. This is possible but probably unlikely, as nobody doubted Rabinowitz’s energy and rapport with the troops. Perhaps with foresight Brodie saw an opportunity to accelerate the departure from Britain of a man whom he may have considered unsuitable to succeed Hertz, who was then aged 72, as Chief Rabbi. Brodie may indeed have viewed himself as a candidate and Rabinowitz as a potential rival for the post. Hertz

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died in 1946, and was indeed succeeded in 1948 by Brodie. So the initiative for Rabinowitz to leave the army may, as Levy learned at the time, have been that of Rabinowitz himself, later to be rationalised as external and involuntary. After the war during a speech at a public meeting in protest at Britain’s Palestine policy Rabinowitz publicly tore off his medals, a gesture which may have cost him the office of Chief Rabbi. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Transvaal and the Orange Free State and as the Professor of Hebrew at Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg. He publicly opposed apartheid and supported Zionism. In 1962 he settled in Jerusalem, becoming the deputy editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Judaica. He entered politics for Israel’s right wing political parties, Herut and Likud, and was often critical of the religious establishment in Israel for its total concern with issues of ritual. Louis Rabinowitz died on 7 August 1984 (which was Tisha B’Av) at the age of 78.75

Rev. Isaac Levy On 9 October 1944, which was the festival of Shemini Atzeret76, Levy reported to Rear Headquarters, 2nd Army. On arrival he found that masses of papers in his office had to be examined, and he did not feel any too elated at having to clear up the mess of papers and records which had been left by Rabinowitz.77 On 13 October Levy was informed that his promotion had gone through and that his status as SJC had been recognised. On that date he transferred from the Rear to the Main Headquarters of 2nd Army, which were in Holland.78 He had a Jewish clerk and a 15-cwt. truck with a Jewish driver.79 He converted his room into a little synagogue with his Sefer Torah and two candles and on Shabbat held an evening service. It created a very nice atmosphere and the men asked for regular services. Levy and his clerk sat down to a Shabbat meal of two tins of kosher food heated up.80 On 16 October Levy went to 8 Corps and was billeted for a period with a Dutch family in a village. Battles were raging nearby in Holland, so it was difficult to organise any services.81 On 17 October he managed to arrange a gathering and a short service with about sixty men of the 15th Scottish Militia.82 On 18 October he toured one of the three Corps of 2nd Army. He visited two casualty clearing stations and field dressing stations. “An air of seriousness and industry is felt everywhere. An inspiring sight, but passing round the wards one sees the real horrors of war. … Here no one sees that the worst enemy of all, the angel of death, is being combatted day and night and many a stronghold of his has been captured by the devoted service of doctors, nurses & orderlies.”83 On 23 October Levy travelled to 30 Corps.84 On 24 October he visited various divisional and brigade headquarters in search of Jewish soldiers, but

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navigation was very difficult because of the battle raging nearby. At one point he was nearly blown out of his truck when a battery of heavy guns fired without warning. In Nijmegen he found the synagogue, which was very badly damaged and full of the property of Jews who had been deported, which the Germans had not had time to take to Germany to relieve distressed areas there.85 On 26 October he had the happy experience of meeting a number of men whom he had known in the Middle East. He had not known what had happened to them and he was able to sit and talk over old times with them.86 On 27 October Levy was able to hold a service in a large hall in the other ranks’ club in Nijmegen. About two hundred and fifty men turned up from the whole of 30 Corps including a few boys who had been sent down from the line. “It was so pleasant to see boys meeting their pals & exchanging experiences. I almost had to drag them away in order to have tea let alone to come in to the service. This centralisation of services certainly is worth while even if for nothing else but to get the boys together & let them meet each other. Here too the boys were full of their contacts with civilians & they gladly responded to my request for information so that I can collate all of the information.” In the village of Veghal Levy found the small synagogue and met the one family who had survived out of eight Jewish families.87 On 30 October Levy attended a conference in Brussels of the Jewish chaplains, including Cohen and Myerson.88 Everybody agreed Levy’s suggestion that Cohen should go to the British Corps of the Canadian Army and Myerson to the whole of the line of control area.89 On 31 October the staff chaplain agreed that Cohen should go to 1st Corps and that Christian padres should be instructed about the Jewish order of service and to inform Levy when Jewish boys were buried. The colonel in charge of Graves Registration readily agreed that all Graves Units should inform Levy as soon as Jewish graves were registered. Twenty-six sites had been selected for permanent cemeteries; each would have a special Jewish plot and Jewish graves would be brought in from a radius of fifty miles if necessary.90 On 1 November Levy together with a Christian chaplain visited the concentration camp at Breendonk in Belgium. Now controlled by a Canadian unit, the sergeant major showed them around the grisly and sadistic place.91 Levy visited another concentration camp near the town of Vurgt in Holland, and on another occasion took SJC Brodie and an RAF chaplain – perhaps Rev. Louis Sanker – there.92 On 4 November together with a Church of England chaplain and the local Roman Catholic priest Levy conducted a funeral in a churchyard in the Dutch village of Erp for the eight crew members of a bomber which had been shot down.93 On 5 November he received a letter from the sergeant who had run the soldiers’ concert party which Levy had formed in Egypt and which was now on its way from the Middle East to Italy to entertain the Palestinian troops there. This caused him to reflect:

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I often think over the vast difference there is between the work here and that back there. I must say from the view point of variety there is little to choose. I see a great deal here and am constantly on the move and do not get the frequent requests for “protexia” which I had there. English boys are so more easy going and do not complain so much. I do not have to wangle with G.H.Q. to get a boy a special favour and therefore I do not break the law so often. Here I have to find men and talk to them and give them something to think about. There they found me and gave me something to worry about. What a difference. There I melted with heat, here I freeze with cold. There I could eat ice cream and here I long for a hot cup of tea, etc etc. I could go on for ages. But I am quite happy with the job here and that is all that matters. I have more than enough for one man and provided that people co-operate as they are doing now I shall have no reason for complaint. Except home leave.94 On 6 November Levy located in Eindhoven a building which was suitable for him to meet the troops, as well as the badly damaged synagogue. Two Sifrei Torah had been kept concealed in Eindhoven and had now been returned. Thence he went to Tilburg, which had been liberated by the Canadians, where the synagogue was being repaired in readiness for a thanksgiving service. Of the eighty to ninety Jewish families in Tilburg only fifteen had survived.95 Levy went on to the largest concentration camp in Holland, near the town of Vurght, which was another place of horror.96 On 7 November he visited medical establishments and made contact with Jewish personnel.97 On 9 November he held a service in Eindhoven to which some forty men turned up.98 The following day he went to Brussels to meet SJC Brodie who, formally attached to London District Command, had flown over for a consultation and a tour of certain sectors of the front in North West Europe.99 On 15 November Levy participated in the funeral of six members of the Belgian brigade, one of whom, the RSM, was Jewish.100 Brodie had also come to investigate a complaint that Rev. Alec Myerson was unpleasantly familiar with everyone, disorganised and not putting himself out too much. He spent several days with Myerson in the back areas, was most adversely impressed and considered sending him to India and sending Edgar out from England.101 Then from 19 November Brodie spent several days with Levy, who put him up in his room in army headquarters.102 On 20 November a service was held in the camp cinema for the men of one particular corps. The men seemed to roll in in waves, some straight from the line, dirty and bedraggled, others carrying their firearms. Brodie addressed them and made a good impression.103 In Tilburg Rev. Philip Cohen conducted in the synagogue on 17 November the first Jewish wedding to take place in the liberated south of Holland. The couple were Max Hené, aged 36 and Hilde Mayer, aged 27, who had fled

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Rev. Philip Cohen officiating at the wedding on 17 November 1944 in Tilburg in Holland of Max Hené and Hilde Mayer, who had been hidden on one floor of a house in Tilburg together with seven other family members since 27 August 1942.

Germany to Holland and survived there in hiding with seven other family members on one floor of a house in Tilburg since 27 August 1942. During this time Hené’s mother had died and been buried in the garden.104 On 25 November SJC Brodie together with Rev. Cohen and Rabbi Samuel Cass of the 1st Canadian Army who was from Montreal conducted the first military service in the restored synagogue in Tilburg. The community was presented with a Prayer Book for Jewish Members of H. M. Forces signed by nine British and Canadian servicemen who were present, including Brodie, Cohen and Cass.105 The same three ministers also conducted a service of reconsecration of the synagogue in Amiens.106 On 21 November Brodie and Levy conducted a service in a theatre hall in Helmond for several hundred troops of another corps and Brodie addressed

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the troops. Rev. Leslie Hardman, who was attached to that corps, had arrived on 16 November and Levy introduced him. Hardman “made quite a hit. He has a good Yiddishe sense of humour which goes down well.”107 On 23 November Levy took Brodie to 1st Corps HQ and handed him over to Rev. Cohen.108 Rev. Dr Louis Morris Sanker B.A., PhD, (b. 1909), the minister of the Bristol Hebrew Congregation, was appointed a Jewish Chaplain in the RAF with effect from 1 September 1944.109 In September 1943 he had been the subject of a complaint; its substance is not recorded but it was concluded that he was entitled to an apology.110 On 17 November 1944 he was appointed the Senior Jewish Chaplain to the 2nd Tactical Airforce Rear in the relative rank of squadron leader. On 27 November Levy had again to go to Brussels to confer with Brodie during the final days of his visit.111 He took Brodie and Sanker to the former concentration camp in the vicinity. When Levy had previously visited it, it had been occupied by troops; now it was entirely empty and so seemed even more gruesome. “Eery and ghostly it all was.”112 On 28 November Levy visited the new club which had been opened in Brussels for Jewish troops on leave.113 It included a small synagogue and a room for chaplains to hold interviews with men. “It has been well planned and is a great credit to Ansell (the Secretary of the JHC), who has been working ceaselessly on it ever since he arrived some fortnight ago.”114 Brodie left on 29 November.115 During this visit or on another occasion he visited a second concentration camp.116 In the inevitable absence of chaplains, services were sometimes conducted by soldiers. Levy wrote: And then to crown everything I get a letter from some fond wife complaining that the chaplains are neglecting her husband. Apparently he attended some place where a service was to take place and it was conducted by one of the men on the spot in healthy layman fashion. He wrote to her and she wrote to Brodie and he handed me the epistle. I wrote to her this morning and gave her a piece of my mind .. nicely of course, but suggested to her that she should ascertain under what conditions we have to live and work before any criticism is levelled against us. I had to get it off my chest.117 The other chaplains were meant to submit monthly reports to Levy. Brodie relaxed this, with the result that “our dear colleagues now behave abominably and report comparatively nothing. Both Myerson and Cohen have sent me the most disgraceful of reports and since I have to render a full report to G.H.Q. I have little to work on.”118

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On 5 December Levy drove from Holland into Germany. Within the front-line sector of the Guards’ Armoured Division he visited two hospitals. He had hoped to have been able to arrange a Chanukah service but within a war zone this proved impossible.119 He was pleased to receive appreciative letters from parents of soldiers to whom he had written, one containing pads, pencils and envelopes for the soldiers and one saying that they were sending cigarettes to their son and to Levy.120 He arranged five services for Chanukah, although he could not arrange any in locations which were within range of shell fire.121 On 10 December he lit the first candle of Chanukah for an audience of soldiers on the Belgian-Dutch border not very far from Germany. Sitting among them was the only surviving Jew from the village, a man originally from Poland who having lived in the area for a long time had been in hiding for over two years. Levy spoke to the men about what the light of Chanukah meant to a man who had been living in the darkness for so long, and who had only known that it was Yom Kippur when a Catholic priest had told him the following day. Levy conducted the service in a cinema, and had arranged for a mobile canteen to call afterwards to serve tea. “Here too I met an old acquaintance from my student days. A fellow who has been holding services for the troops when stationed back in the L of C. And a number of men whom I have known for some time and who loyally turn up whenever anything Jewish is available.”122 On 11 December Levy held two Chanukah services for troops who had come out of the line to attend, some managing to slip away from duty, one man by hitchhiking. One of the services was in the little village of Brunssum about one and a half kilometres from the German border. Some civilians for whom this was the first Chanukah of freedom were present, including the secretary of the newly formed local Jewish community and the former professor of surgery from Berlin University. Levy learned that in the vicinity were some three hundred and fifty Jews of all ages who had been brought there by the Dutch underground movement, which was maintaining them. Some had been employed by the Nazis in factories under false identity cards which had been supplied to them by the underground. Levy learned of the problem of children who had been temporarily adopted by local Catholics and Catholic clergy, among whom cases of conversion had appeared, and the consequent attempts to organise some form of Jewish religious instruction for the children. The soldiers wanted nothing more than to talk, with each other and with Levy, but their army transport was waiting and Levy had to rush off.123 Rev. Sanker, together with the local Rabbi, held a Chanukah service in Eindhoven for service personnel and the local Jewish community.124 On 13 December Levy converted the surviving small chapel of a former military barracks which was now used as a convalescent depot into a place

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whose atmosphere lent itself to the successful service which he held.125 On 17 December Levy and Myerson conducted a Chanukah service in the club in Brussels. Ansell who had done a wonderful job with the club, accompanied the service on the piano, and Mo’at Tsur was played by a small orchestra supplied by one of the Alien Companies of the Pioneer Corps. The men tucked in, like schoolboys at a treat, to the tea which followed and then danced with the young ladies who had been specially invited and handpicked. Many old acquaintances from Levy’s army service whom he had not seen for years greeted him with pleasure, as did his first batman of the war, Fuchs, who was now named Fox.126 Driver M. Inglis, RE, wrote in appreciation of the Chanukah party, and the JHC in appreciation of the club.127 On 18 December there was another conference of Jewish chaplains at Brussels. The same number attended as the previous conference, together with two who had recently arrived. Levy was irritated that the RAF chaplain, Louis Sanker, was not willing to participate for his men in the Pesach arrangements. The Canadian chaplain was also unwilling to participate in the arrangements for receiving matzo for Passover, and made difficulties that Jewish dead were being concentrated in British cemeteries with their own Jewish section and not in Canadian cemeteries. An American chaplain blew in and out, disturbing the whole meeting before Levy could catch his breath; later in the evening Levy tried to talk business with him but could not tie him down to anything. “We are blessed with a queer type amongst the chaplains and at times one wishes that one could be relieved of the burden of working with them and just continue one’s own way without interference.” “I have never been blessed with really good colleagues.” Levy believed that Myerson and Cohen had both found lady friends.128 During December Levy sent a letter to over a thousand men who according to his records had not been contacted by a chaplain. He received a variety of replies, some appreciative and some critical that chaplains had not contacted them or did not visit the front line troops. Levy reacted: We have room for 10 more chaplains and yet cannot find them. Who supplies them if not the community? I think that were I in B[rodie]’s place I would certainly not remain silent. There is a War Services Committee and a Hospitality Committee and yet who writes or says a word about us? … I wonder what the folks would say if they knew that we are so disinterested in the welfare of our men that I have already made tentative arrangements for Pesach and have today arranged a number of things with the Brigadier in charge of administration to the army, I had tea with him and arranged what I wanted. I can almost say that the sedarim are fixed. Don’t you think that we ought to yell our heads off and tell them to go to h..l?129

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On 26 December Levy visited three hospitals and then visited two Jewish lads in one of the forward punishment centres. One lad, who was stateless and serving with the British Army, had fallen into bad company and given tins of War Department petrol to a civilian who had befriended him, for which he had received a sentence of six months. The other was serving a sentence of one year for overcharging men in the NAAFI and pocketing the proceeds; he suffered from nerves and said that he was perfectly innocent and had been frightened into signing a confession. The brigadier in charge told Levy that every effort was made to release men back to their units in order to make good and to give them another chance.130 On 31 December Levy held another conference of Jewish chaplains in Brussels to discuss arrangements for Passover. The Canadian chaplain continued to be difficult, wanting the Canadians to be a separate entity. He had never yet informed Levy of his having met a British Jewish soldier, yet whenever the British chaplains met a Canadian soldier Levy always forwarded the details. The RAF chaplain Sanker again refused to cooperate in arrangements for a Seder saying that he must be with the greatest number of RAF men. Levy recorded that in Brussels Sanker had sought to establish himself as a sort of a saviour of Belgian Jewry, suggesting the evacuation of children in response to a slight breakthrough by the Germans. He noted that were this to become known to the authorities it would result in a serious reprimand but he was unable to intervene as the RAF was not his concern. He considered that Gollop had been right to refuse to have Sanker commissioned despite the desperate shortage of chaplains.131 At the conference Levy met the senior American chaplain, Judah Nadich. Levy found that he really knew his stuff and was capable of organising, and Levy could talk business with him and come to arrangements which would make the work much easier.132 On 17 January 1945 Levy again met with him in Paris, before returning to Brussels.133 On 16 January 1945 Levy attended a conference of British and American chaplains at Versailles near Paris on the subject of “non-fraternisation” with Germans. American Major-General Barker who presided was emphatic that all German civilians should be treated alike, was unable to understand that surviving German Jews were not ordinary members of the German population and “was impartial to a degree of painfulness”. There was a risk that the Nazis would use the “J” and the “Jew” to disguise their own agents. It was however agreed that should a German civilian approach a chaplain for religious guidance and ministration he would not be refused, which enabled Jewish chaplains to engage with German Jews.134 A conference of Jewish chaplains serving with the 1st Canadian Army, who included Philip Cohen, took place in Tilburg on 22 January.135 Learning in a letter from Craftsman H. Newman of the pitiable state of some Jewish survivors whom he had encountered, Levy

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immediately sent instructions to a committee in Brussels seeking help for them.136 The JHC sent to Levy a substantial consignment of Passover supplies for onward distribution to British, Canadian, Polish and Czech chaplains.137 Passover Seder services conducted by Allied chaplains were held in 1945 in numerous locations in France, Belgium and Germany; in a Passover letter to the troops Levy as SJC 21 Army Group listed eighteen.138 One Seder in Germany was attended by more than a thousand men. Levy conducted another in Goch, between the Meuse and the Rhine, for six hundred and fifty men. A brigadier whom Levy had known in the Middle East seconded his Corps Catering Officer to supervise the menu and the catering facilities and requested new cooking utensils, and kosher meat arrived from England. In Brussels Seder services were conducted by Rev. Myerson and Lance Corporal Berliner for one thousand three hundred men on the first night and eight hundred and fifty on the second, and the Jewish Hospitality Club provided meals for the whole of Passover for some one thousand five hundred men.139 During the week of Passover the army crossed the Rhine. As Levy’s Jewish driver crossed the border into Germany, he stopped the vehicle and spat on the ground.140 Levy’s diary, which he had maintained since 1941, ends on 11 April 1945, lamenting the widespread looting and wilful destruction of property by British troops.141 Rev. Leslie Hardman, B.A., M.A. (18 February 1913 - 6 October 2008) was born in Neath in South Wales and grew up in Manchester and Liverpool. He studied at a yeshiva in Manchester, took a B.A. and then an M.A. in English at Leeds University and ministered to the community in St. Anne’s on Sea and then to the Chapeltown Hebrew Congregation in Leeds. He married Josi in 1936, and they had two daughters. He pressed to join the army as a chaplain, and was initially refused because, with Isaac Levy having been taken on earlier, there were insufficient Jewish soldiers by the early part of 1940 to justify another Jewish chaplain. Early in 1942 he was accepted. He needed the consent of his community, which was not forthcoming. He told them that if they did not give him permission he would go anyway; when he did so, they made him a farewell reception but wrote to him to say that they were no longer responsible for his wife and children.142 Hardman joined the army on 30 July 1942.143 He went to London to see the Senior Jewish Chaplain, who spoke with him about his duties, and attended the chaplaincy training centre at Chester College for two weeks from 1 August 1942. He was then appointed the Jewish chaplain to the East Central District of Eastern Command, covering the five home counties, responsible also for RAF personnel and for the Americans until their own chaplains arrived. Based in Dunstable, he was billeted with a Catholic family. Interviewed, as were all

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new arriving officers, by a general, he requested a car and a typewriter, which the general instructed. With an ATS driver he travelled widely, as far east as Yarmouth. He arranged monthly services and a dinner for all of the Jewish communities and soldiers in the area. Keeping kosher was very difficult, but he found every commanding officer whom he encountered very helpful. From Dunstable he was posted to Cambridge. An airman whom he visited wrote to Hardman to thank him for bringing him back from his mental wretchedness to the Jewish way of life.144 On 11 November 1944 Hardman embarked at Southampton for Ostend, but his ship turned back in the Channel as the ship ahead was attacked by the Luftwaffe. Eventually reaching Dieppe, he was one of six chaplains sent to the headquarters of 21 Army Group in Brussels, whence he was sent to 8 Corps Rear of the Second Army in Holland. Billeted near Eindhoven, he was summoned late on a Friday night to a badly wounded Jewish soldier in hospital who was calling for a Jewish chaplain. He met Jewish children who had been trained to deny that they were Jewish. He met a Jewish family who had survived in hiding; it was the time of Chanukah and they cried as they lit the Chanukah candles, which they had not been able to do for two years. An old man made a hole in a potato, put oil in it and lit it for Chanukah, as he had done in hiding for two and a half years. The man had buried his possessions in different places; Hardman took some Jewish soldiers and a truck and went from one directed house to another, and the man’s possessions were dug up and returned to him. Hardman later learned that the man’s son had died in Auschwitz. In Holland he met with Jews who had survived in hiding, and wrote poignantly of these experiences.145 By 1945 Hardman was the Jewish Chaplain to 8 Corps of the British Second Army.146 Rabbi Leslie Edgar had asked, after his reluctant role in the events leading to the selection of a new Senior Jewish Chaplain, to be considered for the first overseas posting. Following a short embarkation leave he arrived in France on 15 February 1945 to become the Jewish Chaplain to 12 Line of Communication of the British Liberation Army. He encountered two moments of real danger: the ship bringing him to France ran into a minefield, and on one occasion he was taken on the wrong road almost into a German flame thrower tank. Edgar served in France, Belgium and Holland. Following the liberation of Holland he was the first Jewish chaplain to enter the Hague and Amsterdam, where it was a great satisfaction, mingled with much sadness, for him to make contact with the surviving remnants of the Jewish community. He was the first Jewish officer to enter the renowned and beautiful Sephardi synagogue in Amsterdam, which to his delight he found to be completely untouched. Nobody knew why, especially as the nearby Ashkenazi synagogue had been used by the Nazis as a depository and was in a shocking state. Yehudi Menuhin

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flew in to give a concert; Edgar was able to attend and it was a marvellous experience. Not long afterwards came the excitement of Liberation Day in Northern Holland, which was unforgettable. With the permission of the army authorities Edgar sought out Jewish children who had been hidden. Some he was able to reunite with parents and relatives; others had to be taken to Jewish orphanages. “The care with which the children have been looked after in the North was an immense tribute to those who - at no inconsiderable danger to themselves - had hidden and protected them.” Edgar was released from the Army on 18 October 1945 and returned to the synagogue at St John’s Wood, becoming the Senior Minister in 1948. When his father-in-law Rabbi Israel Mattuck became unwell and passed away in 1954, Edgar succeeded him. He was active in the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He was interested in Jewish-Christian relationships and active in interfaith work, including the Council of Christians and Jews. He partially retired due to illness in June 1961, becoming the Emeritus Minister of the synagogue, and retired fully in October 1965. He passed away on 21 February 1984, and a memorial service for him was held at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue on 1 March 1984.147 Rev. Philip Cohen returned to the UK in May 1945 and served in the North Western District until his discharge in January 1946. Until 1958 he served the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and then the North West Reform Synagogue in London.148 Rev. Maurice Wagner, M.A. (b. 24 June 1908) was educated at Yeshiva Etz Chaim, Jews’ College and University College London, where he took an M.A. in Classics. He was married with two daughters and was the headmaster at the Avigdor Secondary School in Stoke Newington in London. He served from 5 March 1942 in the Royal Corps of Signals and from 1944 as a sergeant in the Army Education Corps. Commissioned as a chaplain on 2 December 1944, Wagner served in the UK until 1 September 1945 when he crossed to Europe. He served with the BLA, which became BAOR, becoming in October 1945 its senior Jewish chaplain in the rank of major. He returned to Britain on 18 July, and was released from the Army on 24 September, 1946. He became the secretary of the United Jewish Educational and Cultural Organisation, which was established to assist the reconstruction of Jewish communities in Europe. He moved to Southern Rhodesia and then to South Africa.149 Rev. Abraham (Alec) Myerson wrote to SJC Brodie in January 1946 about the difficulties of Jewish burials in the field, offering after his demobilisation to survey the Jewish graves on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission to ensure that they were marked with the correct emblem and if needed to

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conduct a service. Brodie passed this to the IWGC, who declined as their policy was to contact relatives to do this if they wished.150 Myerson returned from Germany to the UK in September 1946 and was discharged from the army in November 1946.151

Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp On 15 April 1945 the British Army entered Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Even if British Intelligence knew of the camp, the British Army appears not to have known about it until they came upon it, and the Battle Log of 8 Corps does not contain any suggestion that this was anticipated. Rev. Leslie Hardman arrived there on the second day of liberation and Rev. Isaac Levy, directed there because the authorities were worried about the stress on Hardman, on the eighth. Hardman spent some two months there until Levy posted him to a less stressful posting. Levy, with wider responsibilities as SJC, came and went over a period until at least August 1945. Both later recorded orally and published books on their traumatic experiences.152 Three other British Jewish chaplains also served there for varying periods: Rev. Louis Sanker; Rev. Isaac Richards who, born on 23 September 1913, married and the minister of Bolton Hebrew Congregation, won Levy’s particular praise for his efforts at Belsen; and Rev. Michael Elton. Born on 10 September 1911 in Hungary, Elton was married and was the minister of the Finsbury Park Synagogue in London. Commissioned as an army chaplain on 31 October 1944, he served in the south of England and then from 8 May 1945 in Germany, including with Jewish Relief Units. At Belsen Levy had to dissuade him from paying disproportionate attention to survivors from his native Hungary.153 At least thirty British Christian chaplains served at Belsen for varying periods154, as did some Canadian chaplains and some Rabbis from different countries. As the scale of the task facing the British Army at Bergen Belsen became clearer Chief Rabbi Hertz was authorised to send four chaplains to work there.155 Rabbis Schlomo Baumgarten, Dr E. Munk and Moshe Vilensky arrived in the civilian uniform of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad. The fourth, from Jews’ College, was the newly ordained Rev. Avraham Greenbaum (2 November 1922 – 16 January 2015); also a civilian, he served at Belsen with home leaves for some eighteen months and married a survivor.156 The ordeal which confronted the British chaplains at Bergen Belsen and their American counterparts at Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen and their satellite camps was like no other. Large numbers of people from many countries, many barely alive, starving, sick and traumatised, who against all odds had survived unimaginable persecution, were a new and unanticipated category of victims of war. Without any preparation or training, thousands of

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Allied troops found themselves in the role of their liberators, rescuers and carers. At the outset chaplains and others tried to provide food and basic medical care before the military bureaucracies were able to start to do so. At Belsen Leslie Hardman found and brought in food from the countryside and established with three others the first improvised camp hospital. From the outset Jewish chaplains pressed the military authorities, national officials and national and international Jewish organisations for further chaplains, relief teams and supplies for survivors. Some of the British chaplains used their periods of home leave to do so and to speak about the horrors which they had found in the camps. Realising the imperative need to try to reunite survivors with each other and with family and friends abroad, from the first days of liberation chaplains collected the names of survivors and information about them, published lists of them and, sometimes in breach of regulations about the use of military post, facilitated survivors writing letters to relatives and friends around the world. They acted as intercessors and advocates for the survivors to the military authorities and assisted the survivors’ organisations which emerged. Within a world of military conformity, chaplains were individualists accountable to their calling and their consciences as well as to worldly authority. The tasks which they assumed far transcended their official role and did not sit easily with their military duties. There was a continuing tension between their imperative care for survivors and their continuing chaplaincy responsibilities to the troops, which in varying degrees they were obliged to neglect, leading to complaints from soldiers. Chaplaincy became a form of unprecedented activism, at times bringing chaplains into conflict and even disciplinary encounters with the military authorities. Rabbi Moshe Vilensky became a disruptive influence among the inmates and was placed under house arrest for his own safety before being removed from Belsen157, and Rev. Avraham Greenbaum was court martialled for refusing to accept the orders of the camp guards.158 Faced with the desperation of survivors, chaplains sometimes acted in ways which effectively circumvented the policy of the British government of severely restricting immigration to Palestine. “The rabbis were thus not only religious functionaries but also rescuers in the broad sense, providing crucial moral support in the early days when conditions were at their worst, but also strengthening the hand of German Jews seeking to build new communities – Greenbaum and Munk in Hamburg and Celle, Goldfinger in Brunswick, and so on.”159 Confronted by the indescribable reality of the camps, some of the Jewish chaplains at Belsen performed with physical resilience, moral courage and extraordinary achievement, sometimes at medical and disciplinary peril to themselves. Some proved unequal to the task, and some brought to it an inappropriate denominational religious focus.

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Rev. Leslie Hardman (centre) together with Rabbi H. Helfgott of Yugoslavia and Rabbi B. Goldfinger of Poland conducting a Shavuot service at Bergen Belsen in May 1945. © IWM BU 6591

Leslie Hardman thought of a poem: If all of the sky were paper, and all of the trees were pens, and all of the waters were ink, there would still not be enough material to describe the sufferings at the hands of the Nazis.160 Bergen Belsen must have been the worst experience which British Jewish chaplains were ever called upon to endure.161 Leslie Hardman was later billeted at Plön, a submarine base in the Baltic. He reported on radio and film about Belsen. He returned to the UK on compassionate grounds on 11 October 1945, and was attached to Northern Command until he left the army on 6 November 1946. He served for many years as the minister of Hendon Synagogue in London, retiring in 1981. He

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and his wife had four daughters. He was awarded the MBE in 1998 for his services to Holocaust education. His wife Josi died in 2007, and he at the age of 95 on 6 October 2008.162 Isaac Levy spent seven months in and out of Belsen, and was still serving there in August 1945.163 He returned to London on 30 October 1945, having been away from home in total for nearly four and a half years. He served as the minister of Hampstead Synagogue in London and later as the national director of the Jewish National Fund and as Senior Jewish Chaplain. Louis Sanker arranged and officiated in May 1945 at a Service of Praise and Thanksgiving for the Victories of the Allied Nations in Brussels. After RAF service in Europe and then in Gloucester he left the RAF on 30 April 1947.164 In 1950 he was serving as the minister of the United Hebrew Congregation in Leeds.165 Isaac Richards returned to the UK on 14 October 1946 and left the army on 7 December 1946.166 He settled in South Africa, and is commemorated by the Rabbi Isaac Richards Memorial Library in Durban. Michael Elton returned to the UK on 8 August 1945 with a view to a posting to the Far East. Avoiding embarkation for India in October 1945 on compassionate grounds, he embarked on 26 November 1945 for service with the Central Mediterranean Force. He arrived back in the UK on 9 May 1947 and was released from the army on 25 July 1947.167 He served a Reform community in Scotland and as the librarian at Jews’ College. Avraham Greenbaum and his wife went to Mexico, to which members of her family had escaped, and lived there for seventeen years. They moved to London and then in 1978 to Israel. Greenbaum became the Deputy Director-General of Bar-Ilan University, and retired in 1995, passing away on 16 January 2015.168 Jewish chaplains Rabbi Major H. Melcer169 and Rabbi Major Dr Heszel Klepfisz (1 March 1910 - 20 March 2004)170 served with Polish forces and Rabbi Lieutenant Dr Hanus Rebenwurzel (Rezek) (22 January 1902 – 21 December 1948)171 with Czech forces based in Britain.

Conclusion on Jewish Chaplaincy in the Second World War By 1939 the operation of chaplaincy, including Jewish chaplaincy, was well established. Essentially the Second World War consolidated that experience. There was a working ratio of chaplains to soldiers of 1:1,100, which in 1942 was revised to 1:1,250.172 A paper written by SJC Israel Brodie in May 1946 stated that the establishment of Jewish chaplains was based on one chaplain to 1,250 men.173 These ratios postulated the collocation of soldiers, and so bore inappropriately on dispersed Jewish soldiers.174 Without the records of the JWSC it is more difficult to know where the initiatives lay for the recruitment of chaplains, and to what extent the ratios of chaplains to soldiers were applied. The relationship between the authorities

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and the Jewish community seems to have developed pragmatically. During 1940 the authorities agreed to SJC Marks Gollop’s requests to appoint two chaplains to the B.E.F. and in December to appoint another and also authorised a substantial increase in the number of Jewish chaplains, for which there was difficulty in finding appointees. These appointments cannot have been on a capitation basis. Yet Rev. Leslie Hardman wanted to enlist early in 1940 but it was considered that there were too few Jewish soldiers and he was not accepted until early in 1942. Amongst the thirty thousand Jews living in Palestine who were recruited by Britain, twelve served as chaplains. In December 1943 the authorities left the appointment of a new Senior Jewish Chaplain in principle to the Jewish community, although they were prepared to intervene to prevent the appointment of a chaplain, however experienced and well connected, whose record in their view rendered him unsuitable. In 1944 the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean sought a Jewish chaplain, but without success. The Royal Air Force seems to have handled the appointment of chaplains, including Jewish chaplain Louis Sanker, independently, but cooperated in the “translation” of Rabbi Israel Brodie into the RAF and his “retranslation” out of it. Already a chaplain in the Home Command, Rabbi Leslie Edgar had to await a vacancy abroad for almost a year from March 1944 and through the invasion of Europe until February 1945. In April 1945 the authorities, faced with the nightmare of coping at Bergen Belsen, requested four civilian ministers. Some ministers, including Leslie Hardman, faced resistance from their communities to enlisting, which with an eye to their post-war careers must have been a concern. Army Council Instruction NOJ02 of 1942 and Air Ministry Order 991 of 1943 authorised the appointment of lay leaders and preachers from among members of H.M. Forces to assist chaplains and officiating chaplains. Their duties were primarily to consist of conducting religious services and looking after the spiritual and welfare interests of personnel of their religion in their unit.175 In January 1945 Senior Jewish Chaplain Myer Berman appointed a naval officer as Acting Jewish Chaplain and welfare officer for the Algiers District. Within Burma Command the chaplaincy authorities appointed a Jewish chaplaincy assistant from 1945 until 1947. In 1945 at the 112 British General Hospital in Avadi in India there was a non-commissioned officer who was officially in charge of Jewish welfare in the area and who took responsibility for the funeral of a Jewish soldier. Within India Command Rev. Barry Greenberg on his own initiative appointed two Acting Jewish Chaplains from 1946 to 1947. With the inevitable scarcity of Jewish chaplains and the global dispersion of British forces unofficial Jewish chaplaincy was widespread in the Second World War, with numerous recorded instances and doubtless innumerable which will remain for ever unrecorded.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

Helen Fry, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens, Germans who Fought for Britain in the Second World War (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2007), pp. 172-7. Fry, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens, pp. 180-184. JC 28/7/1944, p. 5. JC 22/9/1944, pp. 5, 14; 27/10/1944, p. 14. JC 22/9/1944, p. 14. JC 30/6/1944, p. 1. JC 29/9/1944, p. 7. JC 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14. JC 22/12/1944, p. 1 (photo). JC 13/4/1945, p. 15. JC 9/8/1940, p. 11; 30/8/1940, p. 12; 20/9/1940, pp. 10, 14 (photo); 19/9/1941, p.24; 12/5/1944, p. 12. Forces War Records. JC 4/8/1944, p. 15. JC 25/8/1944, p. 15. JC 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14. JC 13/10/1944, p. 10. JC 10/11/1944, p. 11. ACC. VC/5/136-137, 142-143. Mendelsohn and Shain, The Jews in South Africa, pp. 166-7. Levi, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, p. 251. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 122. JC 29/8/1941, p. 11. Forces War Records. JC 27/10/1944, p. 17. JC 5/7/1940, p. 11. Leslie I. Edgar, Some Memories of My Ministry (London: Liberal Jewish Synagogue, 1985), p. 21. Forces War Records. Forces War Records. Forces War Records. JC 16/10/1942, p. 9. JC 27/11/1942, p. 13. JC 19/2/1943, p. 1; 26/2/1943, p. 12. JC 29/10/1943, p. 11; 24/12/1943, p. 11. JC 26/11/1943, p. 13. JC 10/12/1943, pp. 8, 9; 17/12/1943, p. 14; 24/12/1943, p. 15; 31/12/1943, p. 13; 14/1/1944, p. 13; 21/1/1944, p. 15. JC 18/2/1944, p. 1. JC 18/2/1944, p. 10; 25/2/1944, p. 7. JC 28/6/1940, p. 11; 15/11/1940, p. 13; 13/12/1940, p. 1. National Archives, file WO/32/12467. Homa, Footprints on the Sands of Time, pp. 1-2, 57, 104-117, 196-214. Richard Bolchover, British Jewry and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; with new preface, Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), p. 40. Edgar, Some Memories of My Ministry, pp. 2-4, 20-27. Robinson, Chaplains at War, pp. 70-71. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 334, 407 nn. 497- 9. JC 24/3/1944, p. 1. Forces War Records. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. Morris, The Ajex Chronicles, p. 81. Author’s interviews with Israel Brodie’s nephews Stanley Brodie QC 24/11/2014 and 5/12/2014 and Michael Garston 19/10/1914.

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38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

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LD3 p. 28. LD3 pp. 33-35. LL 4/6/1943, 5/6/1943. ACC. LD3 pp. 36, 40-41. LL 15/6/1943, 5/7/1943, 12/7/1943. JC 24/9/1943, p. 11. Rabinowitz’s nickname. LL 27/9/1943. The file referred to does not survive, and the disturbing matter cannot be identified. National Archives, file WO/32/12467. LD3 p. 28. Information 31/5/2018 from Ian Rabinowitz (nephew) relaying what he had been told by a former serviceman (an officer, he believed) some twenty years previously. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 308-9, 340. The Army Chaplaincy Card is difficult to read. JC 2/6/1944, p. 1. ACC. JC 21/7/1944, p. 18. JC 11/8/1944, p. 5. JC 11/8/1944, p. 5. JC 4/8/1944, p. 14. JC 18/8/1944, p. 12. JC 22/9/1944, p. 5. JC 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14. JC 13/12/1944, p.13; 23/8/2019, pp. 8-9. ACC. JC 29/9/1944, p. 3; 6/10/1944, p. 1. JC 10/11/1944, p. 11. JC 10/11/1944, p. 17. JC 17/11/1944, p. 6. JC 16/2/1945, p. 9. Levy, Now I Can Tell, p. 174. LL 22/9/1944. LD4 pp. 1-2. LL 11/10/1944. LD4 p. 7. “A”, the Adjutant-General’s, Branch of the Army, dealt with personnel matters. The other Branches were G, which dealt with operations, and Q, with material. Snape, Clergy under Fire, pp. 291-2, 334, 340. Hagerty, No Ordinary Shepherds, pp. xxx, 1-8, 16-18, 124-5, 147-9, 233. Rabinowitz, Far East Mission, p. 183. An error for 1943. An error if his Army Chaplaincy Card is correct in recording him to have landed on D+11. Which the Western Allies first entered on 15 September 1944. A generic term which had not then assumed its present significance. Mendelsohn and Shain, The Jews in South Africa, pp. 145, 154, 164. Jerusalem Post, obituary August 1984 and letter from Marga Goren (Gothelf) c. 24/8/1984. The “Eighth Day of Assembly”, a one day festival falling immediately after that of Succot. LD4 p. 9. LD4 p. 10. LL 21/10/1944, 9/11/1944. LD4 pp. 10-11. LD4 pp. 11-12. LD4 pp. 12-13.

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83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

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LD4 pp. 13-14. LL 21/10/1944. LD4 p. 16. LD4 pp. 17-18. LL 25/10/1944, 28/10/1944. LD4 p. 18. LD4 pp. 19-20. LL 2/11/1944. LD4 pp. 20-21. LD4 pp. 21-22. LD4 pp. 22-23. LL 1/11/1944. JC 10/11/1944, p. 11. LD4, pp. 22-23, 25-26. LL 1/11/1944, 28/11/1944 (2 letters). LD4 p. 23. LL 5/11/1944. LD4 p. 25. LD4 pp. 25-26. LD4 p. 27. LD4 p. 27. JC 24/11/1944, p. 9. LD4 pp. 28, 30. LD4 p. 29. LD4 p. 28. LL 13/11/1944, 19/11/1944. LD4 p. 30. LL 18/11/1944, 19/11/1944. LD4 pp. 30-31. JC 12/1/1945, p. 16 (photo). Dutch newspaper report. Research by James Cohen (not a relative of Rev. Cohen). Photograph of signatures and inscriptions in the Prayer Book, and research by Ellin Bessner. JC 15/12/1944, p. 15. LD4 p. 30-32. LL 16/11/1944, 21/11/1944, 23/11/1944, 8/12/1944, 11/12/1944. LD4 p. 32. LL 22/11/1944, 23/11/1944. JC 8/9/1944, p. 9. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. LD4 p. 33. LLs (2) 28/11/1944. JC 20/10/1944, p. 5. LD4 p. 33. LL 29/11/1944. JC 8/6/1945, p. 12. LL 1/12/1944. LL 2/12/1944. LD4 pp. 34-35. LL 5/12/1944. LL 6/12/1944. LL 7/12/1944. LD4 p. 37. LL 10/12/1944. JC 5/1/1945, p. 5. LD4 p. 38. LL 11/12/1944. JC 5/1/1945, p. 5. JC 5/1/1945, p. 5. LD4 p. 39. LD4 p. 39. LL 17/12/1944. JC 5/1/1945, p. 8; 2/3/1945, p. 6. LD4 p. 40. LL 18/12/1944. LL 24/12/1944. LD4 p. 41. LL 26/12/1944.

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131. LD4 pp. 42-3. LL 28/12/1944. If that is right, it may be why Sanker had presumably applied to the RAF. 132. LD4 p. 43. 133. LD4 p. 47. 134. LD4 pp. 45-6. 135. Invitation letter 18/1/1945. 136. JC 9/3/1945, p. 14. 137. Letter 4/3/1945 from JHC Secretary to Levy. 138. Letter from Levy March 1945. 139. JC 2/3/1945, p. 11; 6/4/1945, pp. 1, 11; 13/4/1945, p. 14. 140. LD4 pp. 48-9. IWM 11572. 141 LD4 pp. 50-51. 142. JC 28/8/1942, p. 10. Menorah magazine, issue 45/2, Summer 2009, p. 19. 143. JC 7/8/1942, p. 9. 144. JC 29/9/1944, p. 14. 145. JC 9/3/1945, p. 1. 146. IWM 17636 and 19577 (Hardman, sound). Hazel Verbov (daughter) email to author 20/10/2014. Ben Shephard, After Daybreak, The Liberation of Belsen, 1945 (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005 and Random House, 2006), p. 68. 147. ACC. Edgar, Some Memories of My Ministry, esp. pp. 20-31. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 50. LMA, ACC/3529/01/035/3529/1. JC 28/6/1940, p. 11; 30/8/1940, p. 13; 24/2/1984 p. 1; 20/7/1984 p. 9. The Times 1/3/1984 (obituary). 148. ACC. Research by James Cohen. 149. ACC. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 204. JC 8/12/1944, p. 9. 150. CWCG/1/2/A/438 (also termed A98). 151. ACC. Menorah magazine, issue 13/1, March 1964, p. 2. 152. IWM 17636, 19577, 30528 (Hardman), 11572 (Levy). Hardman and Goodman, The Survivors. Levy, Witness to Evil. 153. Reilly, Liberation, p. 125. ACC. 154. Hagerty, No Ordinary Shepherds, pp. 256-259. Unpublished M.A. thesis by Robert Thompson of the University of Southampton of October 2019 entitled “The true physicians are the padres.” British Christian Army Chaplains and the Liberation of Bergen Belsen, pp. 6, 25-26. 155. LMA, ACC/2805/06/05/001. 156. Author’s interview with Avraham Greenbaum on 4/1/2015 (twelve days before he died). Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, who was also involved in relief work, was not a chaplain and so is not discussed here. 157. Levy, pp. 31, 81-4. Reilly, Belsen, The Liberation of a Concentration Camp, pp. 138-142. 158. Author’s interview with Avraham Greenbaum 4/1/2015. 159. Lavsky, New Beginnings, p. 93. 160. IWM 19577. 161. This large subject is more fully developed by the author in JHS, vol. 53 (2022), pp. 57-82; the second part of the article is due to appear in vol. 54 (2023). 162. IWM 17636, 19577. ACC. Reilly, History and Memory, pp. 225-233. Daily Telegraph 7/10/2008 (Hardman obituary). Menorah magazine, issue 45/2, Summer 2009, p. 19. 163. LL 11/8/1945. 164. RAF Museum, chaplaincy box 50. Order of Service, item 17 in Fishburn Books Judaica List, October 2018. 165. The Jewish Year Book, 1950, p. 160. 166. ACC.

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167. 168. 169. 170. 171.

172. 173. 174. 175.

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ACC. Author’s interview with Avraham Greenbaum 4/1/2015. JC 25/4/1941, p. 15; 30/4/1943, p. 1; 5/11/1943, p. 16. JC 25/4/1941, p. 15; 6/10/1944, pp. 1, 14; 20/10/1944, p. 5. Collins, Poles and Jews, generally. Jolles, A Short History of the Jews of Northampton, pp. 58, 73. JC 22/6/1945, p. 6. In August 1940 and April 1941 there was also reference to a Czech Jewish chaplain called Springer: LMA, ACC/3121/E/03/065. Snape, Clergy under Fire, p. 286. JM, file 2011.74. In the United States when it entered the war the ratio was initially 1:1,200; later it was revised to 1: 1,100. Bernstein, Rabbis at War: The CANRA Story, p. 27. Menorah magazine, Vol. 1, ed. 2, July 1948.

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13 NATIONAL SERVICE AND VOLUNTARY SERVICE Chaplaincy Very few Jews who had served had been regular soldiers. Most regarded themselves, like most other soldiers, as civilians enlisted for the duration of the war and wished to return to civilian life as soon as they could. Chaplains wished to revert from military to civilian ministry, regarding both as the same calling. Their concerns were to secure ministerial positions and to reconstruct their communities from the wartime disruption of Jewish life. Street fascism re-emerged after the war and was confronted by groups of Jewish ex-servicemen.1 Antisemitism increased as British troops were caught up in the turbulent events in Palestine which reached their climax with the British withdrawal and the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948. Wartime conscription gave way to National Service, which from 1949 required men aged between 17 and 21, with some exempt categories, to serve in the armed forces for eighteen months, extended in 1950 because of the Korean War to two years. Large numbers of troops, naturally including Jews, served in the British Army of the Rhine in Germany, in the Korean War in the early 1950s and in garrisons around the world. When National Service ended on 31 December 1960 enlistment in the regular and territorial forces became and has remained voluntary.2

e Jewish Committee for H M Forces (JCHMF) On Sunday 22 December 1946 a Chanukah service was held at the historic Bevis Marks Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in London, under the auspices of the JWSC, the United Synagogue, the Jewish Hospitality Committee and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen. British chaplains Simeon Isaacs and Isaac Rapaport and Polish chaplain M. Steinberg officiated.3 When H.M. Forces Committee of the Visitation Committee met on 26 June 1946 the chairman said that it might be necessary to form a new committee to take over various duties connected with Jewish personnel in or leaving H.M. Forces. On 12 March 1947 Secretary Donald Cohen wrote to the members of

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the Jewish War Services Committee informing them of its replacement by the Jewish Committee for H.M. Forces (JCHMF) and thanking them for their services on the wartime committee.4 For its meeting in May 1947 the agenda recorded that the chairman stated that a special committee had been set up by the United Synagogue to deal with all matters relating to Jewish personnel in or leaving H.M. Forces; in peacetime Jewish members of H.M. Forces had been looked after by a sub-committee of the Visitation Committee, but the special conscription arrangements had altered the position.5 Thenceforth military chaplaincy ceased to be within the purview of the Visitation Committee. The Jewish Hospitality Committee, which had functioned during the Second World War, was formally ended in December 1949, its activities passing to the JCHMF. Unlike the wartime JWSC, which had consisted of individuals selected by the Chief Rabbi, albeit including some who were not Orthodox, the JCHMF was to be representative of every section of the community. The London Beth Din was concerned that the committee should remain under the leadership of the Chief Rabbi (or at that time his deputy). The United Synagogue stated in February 1947 that “the position of the new Committee vis-a-vis the military authorities will be exactly the same as the position of the Jewish War Services Committee”. The JCHMF was chaired for many years by Mr Donald Samuel, then by Mr Westbury and then by Colonel Peter Davis.6 In January 1947 SJC Brodie issued a circular letter to men and women joining H.M. Forces about applications for Sabbath observance and the availability, dating back to 1941, of an alternative diet for conscientious Orthodox Jews. To facilitate contact with him and Jewish religious observance and to obviate the need for general instructions to commanding officers, the War Office arranged for the Senior Jewish Chaplain to be supplied monthly from March 1947 with nominal rolls of Jewish personnel enlisted into the Army and the Territorial Army.7 In 1948 Rabbi Israel Brodie became Chief Rabbi. He was succeeded as Senior Jewish Chaplain by Rev. Isaac Levy, who was accorded the status of chaplain second class in the relative rank of lieutenant-colonel, his appointment being recognised by the Royal Navy and the RAF. He served as the Jewish representative on the Interdenominational Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence.8 He was awarded the OBE in the Coronation Honours List in 1953 and the Territorial Decoration in 1964 and retired as Senior Jewish Chaplain in 1966. Married for 67 years to Tonie Landau, who died in 2004, Levy died on 31 March 2005 at the age of 94.9

Chaplains during National Service Rabbi Dr Maurice Gaguine, B.A., PhD (9 March 1919 – 3 March 1990) was born in Cairo into a Sephardi Rabbinic family with a lineage of seven hundred

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years. He studied Ethiopics, obtaining a PhD from Manchester University on the Falasha version of the Testaments of the Patriarchs. Married in 1945 to Alma and with two daughters, he was the minister of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Withington in Manchester, temporarily from 1941 and permanently from 1946, retiring in 1983. A group photograph shows him, together with Rev. Isaac Levy and others, at RAF Wilmslow in 1945.10 In December 1949 he was an RAF officiating chaplain at Padgate.11 The Jewish chaplains who had served in the Second World War were gradually demobilised. In a memorandum of 23 May 1946 SJC Israel Brodie reviewed the history of Jewish chaplaincy and recommended the appointment of Jewish chaplains on permanent or short-term regular commissions.12 In March 1947 the JCHMF sought suitable candidates to serve as chaplains for the many Jewish national servicemen. By that time there were two short service commissioned Jewish chaplains, Bernard Hooker and Solomon Brown.13 Rabbi Bernard Hooker, B.A. (4 February 1922 – 1999), the seventh of eleven children, was born in the East End of London to parents from Vilnius in Lithuania who had laundry and dry-cleaning shops. Like his older brother Solly he won a scholarship to attend Portsmouth Grammar School, receiving his Jewish education at the residential Aria College in nearby Southsea. He attended Jews’ College and Birkbeck College, University of London, obtaining a B.A. Honours degree in Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac. He served as a fire warden in London and conducted Sabbath services for Jewish children who had been evacuated to Sidcup in Kent. Although in the reserved occupation of a theology student, Hooker joined the army. Below the minimum age of 25 for a Jewish chaplain, which he wanted to be, he served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps before being sent in the summer of 1945 to Cairo. He applied for a course in Palestine to become a sergeant instructor in the Royal Army Education Corps and, having passed, was sent back to Cairo to mark and report on army education courses in Africa. Bernard and his brother Solly, who was serving as an army chaplain, both found themselves drawn from their Orthodox background towards the Liberal wing of Judaism and corresponded about this. In February 1946 Solly died in India and Bernard returned to Britain on compassionate leave. The War Office made an exception for his age, which was still 24, and in March 1946 he was commissioned as a Jewish chaplain. He served in Southern Command and then from 22 July 1946 until 14 January 1947 with BAOR as the Jewish Chaplain to No. 1 Corps covering the North Rhine/Westphalia region together with France, Belgium and Holland. He organised moral leadership courses and visited Bergen Belsen, where many former inmates were still living. From 10 February until 16 November 1947 Bernard Hooker served as a chaplain within the vast region covered by Middle East Land Forces. In order

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to make Passover arrangements he travelled to Palestine, where as a British officer he had to move with circumspection because of the political unrest. He conducted a large Passover Seder service in Ismailia in Egypt. He travelled widely to visit Jewish personnel, and visited Jews who had been intercepted in their attempt to reach Palestine and detained in camps on Cyprus. He was appointed Senior Jewish Chaplain Middle East Land Forces and promoted major. In November 1947 he returned to Britain, and was released from the army on 2 February 1948. Hooker ministered from 1948 at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in Birmingham and then from 1961 at Wembley and District Liberal Synagogue in London. In December 1954 he married Eileen. From 1965 until 1974 they lived in Jamaica, where Hooker ministered to the Jewish community. On their return he took up an appointment at the North London Progressive Synagogue. He retired in 1988 but continued to assist communities without full time ministers, including Herefordshire Jewish Community, particularly over the High Holydays.14 Rev. Solomon Brown (b. 25 August 1921) served as a chaplain from 10 January 1947 until 10 February 1950 and was reported in Menorah magazine to have been the first Jewish chaplain to have been commissioned into the Regular (as distinct from the Territorial) Army. He served initially in London District; from 25 March 1947 in succession to Bernard Hooker as Senior Jewish Chaplain, based at the headquarters of BAOR 1 and serving in Germany, Austria and Trieste; from 25 October 1949 in Eastern District of the UK; and from 8 November 1949 again in London District. In Germany he was replaced by Rabbi R. Wittler. After his discharge Brown served as the minister to the United Hebrew Congregation in Leeds.15 Rev. Alec Ginsburg (21 August 1920 – 7 January 2005) was born in Aberavon in South Wales. Alec and his twin brother Sydney Samuel Ginsburg were the ninth and tenth of eleven children of Benjamin Ginsburg, a cabinet maker from Lithuania, and his wife Rachel. By the time that the twins became Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13 their mother was seriously ill, so their father sent them to Gateshead Yeshiva, where Alec remained for seven years until 1940, completing his Semicha although not taking the title of Rabbi. In 1940 Alec Ginsburg became the junior minister at St. Anne’s Hebrew Congregation near Blackpool, where he spent the war years and trained to become a mohel. He then became the minister at the Bayswater Synagogue in London. Approached by SJC Brodie to serve as a chaplain, Ginsburg did officer training from July 1946 until February 1947 and was commissioned on 6 June 1947 as a full-time chaplain in the regular army. In March 1947 he sailed for Trieste, where in April 1947 he organised Passover Seder services. In July 1947

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he embarked to join the headquarters of Middle East Land Forces at Cairo. Together with his assistant, E. Wexler, he travelled widely throughout the Middle East, including Tripoli, Libya and the Canal Zone. In 1946 and 1947 there were internment camps in Cyprus and Salonika for Jewish refugees seeking to reach Palestine. The Jewish community of Salonika asked Ginsburg to undertake Brit Milah for the children of internees and to examine the validity of the Brit Milah performed by their own mohel. In order to do so Ginsburg undertook several trips to Salonika via Akrotiri in Cyprus. RAF Transport Command obliged, with some of the journeys having to be made in the oxygen supplied stretcher compartment within the bomb bay of an RAF Mosquito two-seater fighter bomber. The Jewish communities of Cairo, Alexandria and Ismailia afforded hospitality to British Jewish personnel. The British Army had strict rules on fraternisation with the local populace, but inevitably relationships developed. Marriage requests involved significant administration and bureaucracy for unit commanders, so eventually the military authorities decided that for Jewish marriages the paperwork should be handled by the Jewish chaplain. Ginsburg visited the families to verify their Jewish status and the validity of the marriage of the parents of the Egyptian brides. Corporal Hackenbroch, an RAF fitter, wished to marry one of these girls, and Ginsburg visited and “approved” her. Ginsburg became a beneficiary of this arrangement when on 7 December 1949 he married the girl’s sister, Rose Naim, in Ismailia. Ginsburg arranged Passover Seder services in Egypt, in 1948 at the army garrison base at Moascar in the Canal Zone and in other years at locations including RAF Kabrit near Kabrit Point on the Little Bitter Lake, which was thought to be where the Israelites had left Egypt and was where the Special Air Service was first formed in the Second World War. Although the borders were closed he obtained kosher wine from Israel, which was brought in by the RAF from Cyprus. Dr Morris Schwartz, RAMC, attended the service at Moascar on 23 April 1948, and recorded that it was beautifully organised with plenty of food.16 Dr John Marks recalled that the Army provided regular transport to Friday night services conducted by Ginsberg, who was followed everywhere by the Egyptian secret police, and the supreme irony of a Passover service at which participants were served by very unhappy Egyptian servants.17 The birth of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 provoked turmoil in the Middle East. During its War of Independence British Jewish personnel contrived to assist Israel in various clandestine ways, of some of which Ginsburg was aware. On 3 October 1948 Ginsburg was issued with a revolver and ammunition for a day, doubtless for his personal protection. In June 1950 there was an attempt on his life when a hand grenade was thrown into his wannah hut (a wooden sided hut with a canvas roof used as offices and

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accommodation) in Fayid in Egypt. The bomb destroyed his office, but fortuitously Ginsburg was not there. The next day the army flew him back via Cyprus and Italy to the UK. Rose had to follow by sea, arriving in Liverpool on 25 June 1950 on the SS Empress of Australia as a member of a large group of service civilians. By that time Ginsburg had been posted to West Germany where, stationed at BAOR Headquarters in Bad Oeynhausen, he visited troops stationed throughout the British Zone. He arranged moral leadership courses for Passover and the High Holydays. The Jewish communities of Cairo and Alexandria donated to BAOR a vehicle which doubled as a mobile synagogue and an ambulance, and Ginsburg used it in Germany. In 1953 Ginsburg was in the chaplains’ contingent in the Coronation Parade, when a whisper went around that Everest had been conquered. In 1955 Ginsburg returned to the UK. Thence until 1962 he visited serving Jewish personnel throughout the UK. Living in Southgate in London, where he assisted the Jewish community in conducting services, he was always away from home during Passover and the High Holydays conducting moral leadership courses in Cyprus and elsewhere. For Passover 1957 he did so in a leave camp 5,600 feet up in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus guarded by Royal Marine Commandos because of the EOKA terrorist campaign. The United Synagogue provided him with a clerk, Mr Eddie Coffer. The longest serving

A Seder Service of National Servicemen. Courtesy of Dr. R. Ginsburg and Family.

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Rev. Alec Ginsburg leading a service and a class for National Servicemen.The photograph of the service has on the back 8 Sep 1951. HQ BAOR. Courtesy of Dr. R. Ginsburg and Family.

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The synagogue/ambulance vehicle presented by the Jewish community of Cairo to the British Army of the Rhine. The Hebrew reads The Holy Congregation of the Jewish People. Peace Unto You. Courtesy of Dr. R. Ginsburg and Family.

employee of the United Synagogue, from the age of about 14 until 70, Coffer was to serve five Senior Jewish Chaplains before retiring in April 1973 after forty-seven years’ service.18 With the ending of national service Ginsburg was demobilised in late 1962 in the rank of major. With sixteen years’ service he was the longest serving full-time Jewish chaplain in British Forces. He maintained his links to the armed forces, and often led the annual Ajex parades. He and his wife had two sons and a daughter. After briefly serving the Jewish community in Ruislip in London, Ginsburg served from September 1965 until 1973 in Plymouth, where members of his family including his brother Sydney and their sister Leah Caplan lived. He then served in Terenure in Dublin from 1973 until 1976, at Holland Road Synagogue in Brighton until 1985 and then briefly in a locum position at Princes Road Synagogue in Liverpool. Ill health forced his retirement, and in 1986 he settled in Hove.19 Rev. (from 1955 Rabbi) Isaac Newman (3 April 1924 – 20 July 2011) was born into a Rabbinic family in London and attended Jews’ College. He was married to Rita (Henrietta) Rubin and they had four children. He served from

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21 June 1950 as an RAF chaplain, initially in Britain, where in 1951 he visited RAF Padgate weekly. In 1951 he travelled to the Canal Zone and Cyprus to conduct High Holyday services. Newman was then sent to the Middle East to reorganise Jewish services for the Middle East Land Forces and Middle East Air Force and served in Egypt, the Canal Zone, Cyprus and perhaps Iraq. On one occasion he was allowed the use of a small plane to take Jewish soldiers from Alexandria to Israel for Rosh Hashanah. Leaving the RAF in 1956 he served communities in Kingsbury and then St. Albans from 1956, Dalston from 1958 and Barnet from 1969 until retirement (all except St. Albans being in London). He was from 1972 until 1989 a Professor of Religion at Middlesex Polytechnic, and retired in 1989 to Jerusalem.20 Rev. Alan W. Miller, M.A. (b. 1 October 1926), an adherent of the Reform Movement, served as a chaplain on a short service commission from 1 August 1951 until 1 August 1954. He served in Eastern Command in the UK and from 3 March 1952 in Middle East Land Forces. Rev. Moshe E. (Eric Michael) Davis (19 June 1926 – May 1987) was born near Doncaster and grew up in Leeds. He joined the army in 1943 and transferred in 1945 to the Jewish Brigade in Italy. He then served with the Cameron Highlanders in Bombay in India, arranging several joint functions with the local Jewish community, and in the British Army of Occupation in Japan. He was demobilised in 1948 in the substantive rank of sergeant, having been a sergeant-major. He was married to Lola and had two daughters. After working for the Zionist youth movement Bnai Akiva/Bachad and then in business, Davis rejoined the army in 1954 as a chaplain. He was appointed on a short service commission, subsequently extended, from 10 May 1954 in London District and from 19 October 1955 in BAOR in Germany based at Munchen-Gladbach. A charismatic figure, he conducted moral leadership courses for Middle East Land Forces, including the last one to be held in the Canal Zone, and High Holyday services. He organised Seder services in the garrison in Moascar; when everything required for the Seder had arrived except the essential matzo, Davis approached the small Jewish community in Ismailia and each family gave some of their own matzo. The Seder took place looking over to Sinai and within sight of Lake Timsah, where many authorities held that the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea. Davis wrote in December 1955 that in the past eighteen months he had travelled fifty thousand miles. Leaving the army on 10 May 1960, Davis worked as the Director of Education of the Jewish National Fund and from 1973 until 1984 as the Executive Director of the Office of the Chief Rabbi, and wrote books and poetry.21

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e 1950s The system of appointing lay leaders and preachers to assist chaplains continued after the war. In October 1948 there were Jewish lay readers at Army bases at Aldershot and Ellesmere and at RAF Credenhall, Debden, Mildenhall, Padgate, Pembroke Dock, Stafford and Upwood. At RAF Stafford a small room had by March 1949 been equipped as a synagogue; some fifteen men came to services every Friday night and A/C Beckerman acted as chazan. At RAF Yatesbury this role was performed by A/C Crème and Corporal Flaum and after their demobilisation in around December 1949 by A/C Roth and Corporal Pintoff. At RAF Henlow Flying Officer S. Schiller officiated until the spring of 1951 when he was posted to Germany. In 1951 J.M. Lerner RAOC was appointed an official lay reader in Floriana in Malta. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s Menorah magazine carried regular reports about Jewish activities at numerous Army and RAF districts and bases around Britain and abroad. These were led by a combination of officiating chaplains, visiting ministers and serving personnel acting as lay readers. In 1951 in Western Command alone, covering the north west of Britain and north Wales, there were fifteen, some of them former chaplains.22 In 1950 Rev. I. Chazan served as an officiating chaplain in the Oxford area; when he left the area in 1951 Private H. D. Ewig was appointed a lay reader for the area. In 1951 Rev. M. I. Fabritz was appointed minister to Darlington Hebrew Congregation and officiating Jewish chaplain to the army garrison at Catterick. The issue of Menorah for December 1951 listed twenty-five locations in Britain, at two of which services were led by serving lay readers: Aldershot District (for which Rev. Simeon Isaacs also officiated in 1950) by Lieutenant R. O. Librowicz and 16 Maintenance Unit Staffordshire by Corporal M. B. Phillips. RAF Stafford had successive lay leaders: A/C Cyril Fleishman, LAC Johnie Ingram and from August 1950 Corporal M. B. Phillips, together with the services of Sephardi Chazan Maurice Mesri. Station synagogues were consecrated, in 1952 at RAF Stafford and RAF Yatesbury and in 1953, together with a club room, at RAF Hednesford. In 1954 there were RAF Synagogue Clubs at RAF Hednesford, Yatesbury and Cardington. To ease their integration all RAF national service conscripts who were Jewish were posted in the 1950s initially to RAF Hednesford in Staffordshire and then when it closed in 1957 to RAF Bridgnorth near Birmingham. At times there could be eighty or ninety Jews, and a synagogue and club room were opened at RAF Bridgnorth in 1957. Rev. Reuben Brookes of Birmingham visited RAF Hednesford and later travelled every Thursday evening to RAF Bridgnorth as an officiating chaplain. If not otherwise required, Jews who wished to attend synagogue on a Saturday morning were permitted to do so; some did, whilst others took unauthorised advantage to go elsewhere.23 RAF

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Bridgnorth closed in 1963, and all of the Jewish books and religious appurtenances were transferred to its successor training camp for recruits, RAF Innsworth. Flying Officer Gerald Rapport did National Service from December 1959 to December 1961. After officer training and training as a station education officer he was appointed in April 1960 the station education officer at RAF Bridgnorth because it had a synagogue and he was religiously observant. He was appointed to be the officer in charge of Jewish personnel and was regarded as an acting chaplain, in which capacity he shared a hut with the Protestant and Roman Catholic padres. National Service was drawing to a close, so in his twenty-one months there he encountered only one Jewish conscript as well as about fifty regular servicemen on officer training courses.24 At RAF Abayd in the Canal Zone Friday evening services were conducted in 1951 by Flight Lieutenant Bornstein and Lieutenant Wartski. In 1953 there were reports of High Holyday services in Malaya, Tripoli and Gibraltar. In Germany a synagogue and meeting room were opened at Bad Oeynhausen towards the end of 1948 and Friday evening services were held there through the 1950s. Harry Sherman (1915 – 1990) served from the 1950s as a lay chaplain in Germany. Born in Leeds, Sherman had worked as a journalist and had spent the war in the Intelligence Corps in numerous locations around the world, attaining the rank of staff sergeant. From 1946 he worked as a civilian Senior Executive Officer in the British Services Security Organisation in Dusseldorf. Married with three sons, he and his wife Renee maintained regular contact with Jewish personnel in BAOR, ensuring that they could attend services, especially on Passover and the High Holydays. Passover Seder services were regularly held in Germany, in 1964 in thirteen locations. In 1968 Sherman was posted from Dusseldorf to Berlin, and Rev. Malcolm Weisman reorganised chaplaincy facilities in Germany. From 1974 Sherman lectured to newly commissioned naval officers about Judaism. He retired in 1981 after over thirty years of service as the lay leader of the Jewish military community in Germany, settling in London. He was succeeded in that role by Squadron Leader Stephen Griffiths, and then in 1984 by Sherman’s nephew, Rodney Cousin.25

Chaplains aer National Service The ending of National Service in the early 1960s saw a lull in Jewish chaplaincy appointments. To enable Isaac Levy to guide his successor as Senior Jewish Chaplain, Cyril Harris, into chaplaincy work, his Territorial Army commission was extended for a year until 14 September 1966, and he retired in November 1966. In his farewell message he praised the unique atmosphere of brotherhood and mutual respect which existed in the services.26

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Rev. (from 1968 Rabbi) Cyril S. Z. K. Harris, B.A. (19 September 1936 – 13 September 2005) was born in Glasgow and educated at Jews’ College. Rabbi Harris served communities in Kenton, Edgware and St. John’s Wood in London. He was appointed a Territorial Army chaplain on 17 August 1965 and served in Eastern Command in the UK, for administrative purposes attached to 257 General Hospital, RAMC. He succeeded Isaac Levy as Senior Jewish Chaplain towards the end of 1966. Promoted major on 17 August 1971, he stood down on 31 January 1972 to become the National Director of the B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation, and resigned his commission on 31 December 1987. From 1987 until 2004 he served as Chief Rabbi of the Union of Orthodox Synagogues of South Africa.27 From 1968 until 1970 there were two Auxiliary Chaplains. Rev. Dr Isaac Kenneth Cosgrove of Glasgow, who had served as an officiating clergyman and then as a chaplain in the Second World War, was the Jewish Chaplain to the United States air base in Prestwick and its naval base on the Clyde.28 Rabbi Michael J. Goulston (d. 1972) of Pinner in London acted as an Auxiliary Chaplain for the National Jewish Welfare Board of America for USAF personnel stationed at Ruislip near London.29 Rev. Malcolm Weisman OBE (b. December 1930) read law at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford and the London School of Economics. Married to Rosalie, he practised as a barrister in London, sat as a Recorder and an Immigration Judge and served as a parliamentary boundary commissioner. When in the summer of 1956 Rabbi Isaac Newman was retiring as a chaplain Weisman selected the RAF as his service and was commissioned as a chaplain. In the 1960s he served as a part time officiating chaplain to RAF stations in the UK and ministered to army and navy personnel.30 He also served as the minister to the numerous small Jewish communities in Britain and the Commonwealth, numbering over one hundred, helping some to become established communities, and as the Jewish chaplain of various universities. Nominated by HMJFC, he became Senior Jewish Chaplain in succession to Cyril Harris in February 1972 and was commissioned into the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve as a chaplain fourth class on 8 August 1972.31 He attained the respective relative ranks of squadron leader and major. As successive Senior Jewish Chaplains, Harris and subsequently Weisman were also listed in the Navy List as Officiating Chaplains for the Royal Navy.32 In the 1970s Weisman travelled some twelve to fifteen thousand miles a year, sometimes including a thousand miles a week, on chaplaincy duties. He conducted numerous moral leadership courses around the world and prided himself on being the only person to have visited every British military base of all of the armed services around the world. On 8 September 1974 he officiated at the consecration at Aldershot Military Cemetery of the tombstone of Second

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Lieutenant Lindsay Dobbie, RAOC, who was killed in Northern Ireland.33 During 1977 he established a Hebrew class at RAF Cranwell.34 Editions of the handbook for RAF Chaplains of 1987 and 2001 required chaplains to report the names of all Jewish personnel arriving in their unit to him.35 In 1997 Weisman was awarded the OBE for services to the Jewish community. Weisman attended conferences of the North American and European Chiefs of Chaplains, which included Lithuania and Estonia, and of the Allied Air Forces Chiefs of Chaplains Consultative Committee, later serving for eleven years as its Secretary General and then as its honorary life President.36 He served as a Member of the Advisory Panel on the Chaplaincy Services37 and as a member of the Consultative Committee of Senior Allied Air Force Chaplains38 and participated at conferences of the Jewish Welfare Board Jewish Chaplains Council in the United States39. The JCHMF continued to meet, generally annually. Chaplains submitted annual reports and generally attended its meetings: Levy attended that in 1966, Harris those from 1967 until 1972 and Weisman those from 1972 until 1977 and (after a gap in the records) in 1999.40 The JCHMF, under the aegis of the Chief Rabbi, became and remains the “endorsing authority” approving candidates for Jewish chaplaincy appointments.41 From 1956 until 1987 a charity called The Friends of Jewish Servicemen raised funds for the JCHMF for the benefit of Jewish servicemen and women. Its committee met annually until at least 1986, its meetings attended from 1958 until 1966 by Levy, from 1967 until 1970 by Harris and from 1972 until 1981 by Weisman.42

Moral Leadership Courses Moral leadership courses, as they ultimately became known, originated in the RAF. Proposed in 1941 because of concern about the state of religious welfare in the RAF, there were experimental courses in 1942. Known as Courses in Religious Training or Courses of Instruction and held under the auspices of religious denominations, the first courses were held by RAF Mediterranean and Middle East Commands from August 1944 in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Ismailia. The courses were treated as an authorised activity additional to normal leave entitlement.43 The first course for Jewish personnel, in the RAF and the Air Forces of other Allied Nations, was held in August 1944 at Kfar Hanoar Hadati in Palestine and lasted for a week.44 In Britain a series of moral leadership courses for Jewish members of the RAF and WAAFs was initiated in November 1944 by SJC Brodie in conjunction with the Jewish War Services Committee and the Jewish Hospitality Committee. The courses lasted seven days and comprised religious services, lectures, visits and social activities. At least four courses were held in London and Manchester in 1944 and 1945.45 Conducted by SJC Brodie and Rev. Dr B.

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Joseph, the Manchester course in January 1945 was attended by some fifty airmen and women, who were accommodated in private homes by the Manchester Hospitality Committee.46 A young Jewish WAAF attended one of the courses, which lasted a week, and greatly appreciated it; although brought up in the Reform tradition, she learned a new respect for the Orthodox point of view.47 In the summer of 1945 the courses were extended to the Army.48 In Palestine Chaplain Eli Cashdan organised in the summer of 1945 a Jewish moral leadership course for twenty five airmen at Rehovot and, together with Palestinian Chaplain F.G. Nathan a course for British and Palestinian airmen in Haifa.49 In Italy Rev. Abraham da Souza Pimontel conducted an eleven day Jewish leadership course in Venice for a hundred men, at which chaplains Berman and Rapaport and American chaplains also spoke.50 Between 1944 and 1948 Jewish courses were also held in Brussels, Nieberg, Trieste, Graz, Bombay and Rangoon. Participants had to be specially recommended by a chaplain and approved by their commanding officer as people likely to exercise an uplifting influence on their comrades in their daily life and especially in times of danger. The courses were extended to Army personnel, were attended by a total of nearly two thousand people, were addressed by chaplains, ministers and communal leaders and were considered an outstanding success.51 The courses became residential, some lasting for eight or nine days over the festival of Pesach or for parts of the ten-day period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. They were held under the auspices of the Senior Jewish Chaplain, were maintained initially by the Jewish Hospitality Committee and catered for the needs of large numbers of young Jewish national servicemen, many away from home for the first time. Courses were held from around 1950 until 1961 in Cyprus, until 1955 in Egypt and the Canal Zone, until 1973 in London, until 1991 within BAOR in Germany and on occasion by Malcolm Weisman in Aden, Hong Kong and Singapore. In some years there were several courses in different locations. With the ending of National Service they were not held between 1964 and 1968 because of a fall in the numbers of participants. They were revived by Weisman in 1969, becoming courses of two or three days, generally over a Shabbat and weekend. The weekend courses always sought to create the atmosphere of a traditional Shabbat, which some participants had not previously experienced.52 Moral leadership courses were conducted by chaplains: from the 1940s until 1947 by various chaplains, until 1956 by Isaac Newman, until 1961 by Alec Ginsberg and until 1969 by Isaac Levy. They were also conducted from 1955 until 1980 by Moshe Davis, from 1956 until 2009 by Malcolm Weisman, from 1969 until 1972 by Cyril Harris and since 2012 by Rabbi Reuben Livingstone. American personnel and chaplains based in Britain participated in some of the courses, and recent courses have been attended by a Dutch Jewish chaplain. From 1975 the courses were held at what was the RAF

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Chaplains’ School and became the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre at Amport House near Andover in Hampshire. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, courses have been addressed by ministers and visiting speakers including diplomats and military personnel from Israel. Courses have accommodated a Brit Milah ceremony, Bar Mitzvah ceremonies, including of servicemen themselves who had not had a Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen, and a wedding.53 Since the ending of National Service the numbers of serving Jewish personnel have been estimated to be in the low hundreds. Cyril Harris estimated in 1969 that there were some 375 Jewish regular servicemen.54 In 1974 the JCHMF estimated that there were four to five hundred families, making a total of some 750-800 people, connected with the Services.55 In 1977 Malcolm Weisman estimated that there were some three to four hundred Jewish personnel in H.M. Forces, so that together with civilians on service bases, Israeli, American and other overseas personnel, Territorials and family members, he was involved with some 800-900 people. Many service bases were far distant from Jewish communities, and for many service personnel the chaplain was their only link with Judaism and the British Jewish community.56 In 2021 some 170 regulars and reservists declared themselves to be Jewish. Disclosure is voluntary, so the true figure is higher. The current chaplain, Rabbi Reuben Livingstone, has engaged with some 300 Jewish personnel, about half of whom constitute a committed core. All serving Jewish personnel are indigenous British, unlike serving Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists.57

ose who Served Europe A/C1 Ralph Levy from London attended what may have been the first moral leadership course in Germany in April 1947. Held in a building in Brunswick which had been acquired by the Jewish Hospitality Committee in London as a centre for Jewish personnel, the course lasted for a week and was oversubscribed, with morning services every day and lectures. In 1948 he attended another moral leadership course over Passover at the same centre.58 A national serviceman in the Royal Army Service Corps in 1955 and 1956, Alan Field from Hull contacted the Senior Jewish Chaplain, Rev. Isaac Levy. As he observed kashrut the chaplain provided him with a letter addressed ‘to whom it might concern’, requesting the provision of suitable food. Field produced the letter to successive messing officers, who always made whatever arrangements they could to help him. Posted to SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe) headquarters in Paris, where many American personnel were serving, Field went to their services, conducted on

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Tuesday evenings by an American Jewish chaplain who visited weekly. Some of the Americans were married, and their wives arrived after the service with food from kosher shops in Paris for a meal for everybody. One day Field received a phone call from a lieutenant-colonel, inviting him to step across the base into his office for a cup of tea. This officer of august rank explained that he had just been posted to SHAPE as the Anglican Chaplain. Before coming out he had spoken with Rev. Isaac Levy, who had asked him to give any help which he could to the Jewish personnel. He asked Field if he could do anything for him. Field replied that if it were possible he would like to go for Passover to Germany to join other Jewish soldiers at Church House in Verden, where Jewish Chaplain Moshe Davis would be in charge. Field had first met Chaplain Davis at the garrison synagogue in Aldershot, before Davis was posted to Germany. In Army terms, this required a transfer between commands, from Dover Command (within which, oddly, Paris fell) to Germany Command. It proved to require great effort on the part of the Anglican Chaplain. He persevered, and eventually Field received permission and a free travel warrant to Germany. Moshe Davis later told him that this had generated a file an inch thick at the War Office. The Moral Leadership Course lasted for the whole of Passover. Seder services were conducted by Moshe Davis, who was accompanied by his wife and their daughter aged three. The tables were set in a horseshoe shape with Davis at the head, his chair placed atop an ammunition box so that he could be better heard around the room. Whenever more wine was needed, Davis would lift his chair and reach deep into the ammunition box to produce another bottle.59 Michael Lansman, whose father had won the Military Medal at Passchendaele in 1917, did national service from 1956 to 1958 as a sergeant in the Army Education Corps. Stationed at Sennelager near Luneberg Heath in Germany, he attended at least two Jewish moral leadership courses over the High Holydays and Passover, including Passover of 1958. Conducted by chaplain Moshe Davis, they comprised Shabbat and festival services and educational courses. There were visits, including to the site of Bergen Belsen. The military hospital in Sennelager was run by Colonel Nathan, a regular army officer who had served in the Western Desert, where he had been blown out of a tank, damaging his spine, and in Aden, West Africa and Germany. Colonel Nathan and his wife acted as parent figures to the Jewish soldiers stationed in the locality and would ask them to their home for weekends.60

Korea No British Jewish chaplain served in Korea. In his message for the Jewish New Year for 1951, SJC Levy expressed the hope that Jewish soldiers would be able to attend services with the Americans, who had a number of Jewish chaplains

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there. A national serviceman from 1953 to 1955, Captain Henry Engelsman, RADC from London conducted religious services in Korea. Granted rest and recreation (R & R) in 1954 he took a group of Jewish soldiers for Yom Kippur to Tokyo, where they were invited to break their Fast in the home of a wealthy Iranian Jewish family.61 Craftsman Louis Rapaport, REME, from Manchester, served in Korea with the Durham Light Infantry, and was the only Jew in the regiment. In March 1953 an invitation arrived for Jewish soldiers to attend the Passover Seder service with the American I Corps, and the Chaplain arranged for Rapaport to attend. He “was kitted in clean clothing specially swapped for the occasion from several chaps in the tent” and was one of ten British soldiers who participated. Some one hundred and fifty men sat down to the Seder service conducted by the American Chaplain Rabbi First Lieutenant Herbert D. Teitelbaum. At the end everybody was given a big package of matzo, kosher food and goodies. Rapaport was also given a personalised letter addressed to his father from Chaplain Teitelbaum of the Office of the Chaplain, United States Army, telling his father that his son had been one of the participants at the Passover services and Seder and describing this inspirational experience. Rapaport arrived back at his camp just before lights out, “after a very enjoyable day which seemed so disconnected from the normal life in Korea”.62

Cyprus David Lang from London started his national service in the RAF in September 1955. Basic training was at RAF Hednesford, where Rev. Reuben Brookes was the Jewish officiating chaplain. In December 1955 Lang was posted to the RAF base at Habbaniya in Iraq on the banks of the Euphrates River, reputedly the site of the Garden of Eden, within the RAF Middle East Air Force Command Area. For Passover of 1956 he attended a moral leadership course near Famagusta in Cyprus led by RAF Chaplain Rabbi Isaac Newman, comprising Seder and other religious services and educational and recreational activities. In July 1956 Egypt seized the Suez Canal. When the war with Egypt, codenamed Operation Musketeer, began on 31 October 1956 British personnel were placed on active service. A moral leadership course which was due for Rosh Hashanah had to be cancelled as the accommodation was required for arriving troops. The RAF and civil aircraft which brought them from Britain were returning empty. With leave due and RAF air movement authority forms in hand, Lang and another Jewish airman sought out and smartly saluted the captain of one of the civil aircraft and returned on his Airwork Handley Page Hermes aircraft, with a full crew to look after just the two of them on a tenhour flight, to spend the High Holydays with their families.

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For a period in the early part of 1957 Lang and others organised Friday evening services and discussions for Jewish personnel in Nicosia. Lang attended the Passover moral leadership course conducted by Chaplain Alec Ginsburg in a leave camp 5,600 feet up in the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus guarded by Royal Marine Commandos. The programme was similar to the previous year, and there was a guest day for visitors from Israel and France. Israel had previously been out of bounds to British personnel, but in June 1957 over the festival of Shavuot Lang and others were able to organise a memorable two-week group visit there. They flew from Nicosia to Haifa and back in a Cyprus Airways Dakota, and stayed in army hostels, on a kibbutz and with relatives. Lang’s experience was that often no Jewish chaplain was available. If necessary, Jewish personnel then went to the Church of England chaplain, who would do whatever was called for, including contacting a Jewish chaplain.63 Corporal David Adler of the Royal Engineers did his national service from 1956 to 1958. In 1957 he attended the moral leadership course conducted by Rev. Malcolm Weisman in Kyrenia in Cyprus over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. A chapel in Church House was converted into a synagogue, and David Adler turned an ammunition box into an Ark for the Sefer Torah. Troops had to carry arms, including sten guns, at the services.64 No British Jewish chaplain served in theatre during the operations in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Gulf or Afghanistan. A substantial quantity of kosher ration packs was despatched for a small number of Jewish soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Current Chaplains Rabbi Arnold Saunders of Manchester served as a Civilian Chaplain to the Military and then from 2009 to 2010 as a chaplain to the Army Cadet Force, including a visit in February 2010 to Germany, which included Bergen Belsen.65 Rabbi Reuben Livingstone is the current (2022) Senior Jewish Chaplain to H.M. Forces. Born in Johannesburg in South Africa and educated at yeshivot in Canada, the United States, Britain and Israel with four Rabbinic ordinations, Rabbi Livingstone received master’s degrees in law and Jewish studies and a diploma in counselling psychology and lectured at Jews’ College. He practised as barrister and then as a solicitor, and as a mediator. He and his wife Esther have three children. He served as a Rabbi in Sale in Manchester, then at Ilford Federation Synagogue in London and then from 1999 until 2010 at Hampstead Garden Synagogue in London.66 Commissioned in 2009 as a List B (Army Cadets) chaplain, he trained at Sandhurst, receiving his full List A commission in December 2012. He served as chaplain to 151 Regiment, Royal Logistics

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Corps, which is a diverse reserve regiment based around London, and is currently attached to HQ London District. The Geneva Conventions treat chaplains as non-combatants but do not prohibit them from carrying weapons. In Britain they do not do so, although they receive weapons training in normal safe procedures (NSPs) and may in extreme conditions become combatants. The Army trains professionally qualified officers (PQOs), including chaplains, as officers. Chaplains train in the field as infantry commanders and at the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre within the Defence Academy at Shrivenham in Oxfordshire as chaplains. There is then continuing professional development (CPD) education. The Royal Navy and the RAF are more relaxed, and their training is more about the integrity of the chaplain as a religious figure and less as a soldier officer. Rabbi Livingstone explains that Jewish chaplains symbolise the Jewish presence in the British armed forces. Cap badges are prized within the Army, so the Jewish chaplaincy cap badge of the RAChD is psychologically significant. Service life is an isolated life in which comradeship and companionship are key. Servicemen and women need special moral, emotional and spiritual support. Many are young, which is a time of development and change in their lives. A Jewish chaplain provides them and their families with pastoral support, a de facto faith community with a forum on social media and advocacy at policy and operational level for Jewish interests and practice. The Army and RAF have the ‘Triple P’ – prayer, presence and proclamation. Chaplains can advertise all religious services in Part One Orders issued to every unit. Defence Instruction Notices (DINs) are issued to all units on many topics, including the Jewish religious requirements of the Sabbath, festivals and kashrut, and provide that every Army base must have a prayer room with Jewish religious appurtenances. Soldiers who require them have to indent for the vacuum-packed 24-hour kosher ration packs which are supervised in a separate military facility and are also available in all officers’ messes in all three services. For a soldier deploying overseas for several months a crate of kosher ration packs will be delivered. The Ministry of Defence says that British forces operate in eighty-two countries. Coalition deployments are multinational and British Jewish chaplains operate with those of other countries, supporting Jewish personnel across the world and participating in the NATO Chaplaincy Conclave in Paris. Military chaplaincy is now viewed as All Souls chaplaincy. All faiths except Christianity are regarded as world faiths, so that Jewish chaplains are now world faith chaplains. Rabbi Livingstone considers military chaplaincy to be the apex of Rabbinical ministry, requiring courage and persistence within a supportive but hierarchical structure to advocate for separate treatment when it is necessary on religious grounds. Judaism was until recently the only world faith

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with its own commissioned chaplain, but there are now (2022) Muslim and Sikh commissioned chaplains.67 Rabbi Simon Taylor of London and New York has served from 2013 as a chaplain to the Middlesex and North West London Army Cadet Force and from 2018 as a List B chaplain. Rabbi Ariel Abel  (b. 1974) served with the Israel Defence Forces and ministered to Jewish communities in Radlett in Hertfordshire and then in Liverpool. He was commissioned in 2017 into the Territorial Army (later changed to an Army Cadet commission) for any of the thirty-two detachments of the North West Region Army Cadet Force on Merseyside. Rabbi Abel is expected to serve for up to two weeks a year at cadet camp and to fulfil a representative role as a Jewish chaplain not limited to the North West Region. Within the spirit of All Souls Chaplaincy Rabbi Abel is expected to provide religious and pastoral support for any young or adult cadet. He has accordingly prayed with non-Jewish cadets for reflection and consolation when they have been in a state of distress and have needed to pray with a chaplain.68 Rabbi Nir Nadav, B.Eng (Hons) (b.19 November 1973) studied at Yeshiva and served in the Israel Defence Forces. He studied Electronic Engineering with Computer Science at UCL, followed by a career in Systems Engineering. He undertook rabbinical studies in London and was ordained in 2009. He has served as a Rabbi in London and Manchester and was commissioned as an Army chaplain in May 2022. Rabbi Samuel de Beck Spitzer, PGDip., PPRNCM (b. 29 December 1972) received his general and musical education in London, attended Yeshivot in Israel and the USA and was ordained in 2001. He has served communities in Lisbon in Portugal and in Hove in the UK, and at the time of writing is undergoing Reserve Officer Training within the RAF Chaplaincy Branch.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Morris Beckman, The 43 Group (London: Centerprise Publications, 1993). Daniel Sonabend, We Fight Fascists: The 43 Group and their Forgotten Battle for Post-War Britain (New York: Verso, 2019). Menorah, the magazine for Jewish members of the armed forces, is a source of material throughout this section. JM, files 2011.74, 2014.77. VC/6/167. VC/5/199, 208, 212. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041. Homa, Footprints on the Sands of Time, pp. 196-214. LMA, ACC/3400/02/05/041.

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8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

University of Southampton, Special Collection MS169/A12. Levy, pp. 13, 105-11, 131-3. IWM 11572. Levy ACC. Induction Address 29/6/1946. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, pp. 184-5. Menorah magazine, issue 15/2, September 1966, pp. 11-14. JC 17/9/1971, p.16; 15/4/2005, p. 41 (Levy obituary). The Independent, 19/5/2005 (Levy obituary). Everything in the Garden, pp. 11, 13. Greater Manchester County Record Office, photograph 2231/1. JC 9/3/1990, pp. 10, 23, 32 (obituary), 36; 16/3/1990, p. 34. JM, file 2011.74. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 141, Papers of Dr Bernard Homa, docs. 57-60 re JWSC. ACC. Hooker, Rabbis Are Human, pp. 1-31 and generally. LMA, ACC/3529/01/035/3529/1. Hooker family papers. Menorah magazine, issue 39/1, Spring 1999, p. 12. ACC. CWGC/1/2/A/438 (also termed A98). Diary of Dr Morris Schwartz. Order of Service for Seder Services at Moascar in 1948. John Marks, The NHS: Beginning, Middle and End? The Autobiography of Dr John Marks (Oxford and New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2008), p. 29. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 169/A62. ACC. Helen Fry, The Jews of Plymouth. An Illustrated History (Wellington, Somerset: Halsgrave, 2014), pp. 26, 30, 49-51, 114. Author’s interview with Dr Robert Ginsburg (son) 23/10/2014. Lecture by Dr Robert Ginsburg 7/1/2018. Author’s interview with Michelle Cooperman (daughter) 18/12/2020. Documents and photographs of Ginsburg. Author’s interview with David Lang 7/8/2018. Author’s interview 2/11/2016 with and information from Professor David Newman (son). JC 20/7/2011, p. 19. ACC. LMA, ACC/2999/F/05/002. JC 15/5/1987, pp. 17 (obituary), 20. William D. Rubinstein, Michael A. Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein (eds.), The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 202. Menorah magazine, issue 5/5, December 1955, pp. 5-6; issue 23/1, April 1974, pp. 15, 16, 25; issue 30/3, Autumn 1987, pp. 5-6. JM, file 2014.77. Author’s interviews with Rev. Malcolm Weisman (note 39 below). Letters from Gerald Rapport 23/10/2014, 31/7/2015. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 169/A63. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. Menorah magazine, issue 26/1, Spring 1977, pp. 32-4; issue 30/3, Autumn 1987, pp. 14-15; issue 31/4, Summer 1990, pp. 24-26. ACC. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004; ACC/2999/E/06/001; ACC/2999/E/06/005. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS169/A12, papers of Rev. Malcolm Weisman. Menorah magazine, issue 15/2, September 1966, pp. 1-2; issue 22/1, April 1973, pp. 14-16. Everything in the Garden, pp. 11, 13, 144. Greisman, Jews in Uniform, pp. 184-185. JC 15/4/2005, pp. 15, 33, 41 (obituary). ACC. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004; ACC/2999/E/06/005; ACC/2805/07/01/037 (Memorandum c. May 1968). University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 169/A12. LMA, ACC/2999/E/06/003. Information provided by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. Menorah magazine, issue 23/1, April 1974, p. 23. ACC. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/06/005. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004.

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35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

387

RAF Museum, chaplaincy box 25. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/005. LMA, ACC/2999/E/06/001. LMA, ACC/2999/E/06/005. LMA, ACC/2999/F/05/002. Menorah magazine, issue 30/3, Autumn 1987, p. 15. RAF Museum, chaplaincy box 25. Author’s interviews with Rev. Malcolm Weisman 8/5/2014 and 6/6/2019. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004, 005. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS169/A12, A62, minutes of JCHMF 15/3/1966 and 7/3/1973 respectively. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004, 005. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS169/A12, A62, minutes of JCHMF 15/3/1966 and 7/3/1973 respectively. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/003. Hagerty, No Ordinary Shepherds, pp. 323-5, 368-370, 405. RAF Museum, draft history of RAF Chaplaincy in chaplaincy boxes 8, 64. JC 18/8/1944, p. 6. JC 27/10/1944, p. 16. University of Southampton, Special Collections, MS 60/18/9, folders 1,3. JC 12/1/1945, p. 10. JC 16/2/1945, p. 18. In 1948 a number of the addresses and lectures delivered at these first two moral leadership courses were published under the title Wherein I Glory. A Series of Jewish Contributions to Moral Leadership: Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory. Letter 27/6/1945 from SJC Brodie to the Secretary of the Jewish Historical Society saying that a course in London from 20 to 26 July was expected to be attended by about forty-five personnel. JC 15/6/1945, p. 8; 10/8/1945, p. 14. JC 7/12/1945, p. 9. Carvalho (ed.), Wherein I Glory, p. 5. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. University of Southampton, Special Collection MS 169, A11, A12, A62-66. Menorah magazine generally. LMA, ACC/2805/07/01/037; ACC/2999/E/01/003, 004; ACC/2999/E/05/001-025. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/004. LMA, ACC/2999/E/01/003, 004. Author’s interviews with Rabbi Reuben Livingstone 16/1/2015, 5/4/2017, 13/8/2017 and 24/5/2020. Not all of these personnel are Jewish in terms of Jewish Law, as the armed forces accept at face value the wish of any serviceman to be considered Jewish. Author’s interview with Ralph Levy 1/3/2019. Author’s interview with Alan Field 31/7/2015. Author’s interview with Michael Lansman 14/11/2017. Author’s interview with Mrs Shirley Engelsman (widow) 7/3/2017. Author’s interview with Louis Rapaport 9/4/2017. American Seder booklet and papers and Rapaport’s letters to his family. Author’s interview with David Lang 7/8/2018. Author’s interview with David Adler 10/10/2017. J RAChD, vol. 49 (2010), pp. 74-5. Everything in the Garden, pp. 57, 68, 74-6, 144. Author’s interviews with Rabbi Reuben Livingstone 16/1/2015, 5/4/2017, 13/8/2017 and 24/5/2020. Author’s interviews with Rabbi Moshe Ariel Abel 21/8/2018 and 13/1/2019.

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14 IN CONCLUSION The period from 1892 until 1939 was that of the innovation of British Jewish military chaplaincy: in origin, in wartime and then in peacetime. That from 1939 until the present day may be viewed as that of its consolidation: in wartime and then in peacetime, the latter punctuated by some specific military operations and conflicts. The development from the nineteenth century of a Jewish role within the British military was incremental, each progression being earned through contribution and sacrifice. The creation and development of British Jewish chaplaincy was built upon it and was similarly incremental. Whilst not entirely unilateral, the initiative for Jewish chaplaincy derived for the most part from the British Jewish community and from individuals within it. The role of the authorities was generally reactive and supportive, although at points restrictive, through criteria which bore inappropriately upon Jews of ratios of chaplains to troops and of chaplaincy vacancies. Despite some tensions inevitable in all human affairs, the authorities always knew that they were engaging with a patriotic, responsible and supportive Jewish communal leadership. Within Jewish chaplaincy there was an almost total absence of denominational religious tension. Inevitably there were never remotely enough Jewish chaplains. Jewish servicemen had in wartime largely to fend for themselves as Jews, spiritually, socially and in terms of mutual support. From the totality of the evidence researched by the author it seems fair to conclude that in wartime the “unofficial” variant of chaplaincy ranked significantly alongside the “official” form. In his annual report for 1930 Dayan Marks Gollop summarised the role of Jewish chaplaincy. Approaching a century later his words remain equally true today: We share the sorrows as well as the joys of our flock, and by means of correspondence, I try to enter into the lives of the men who cannot be reached by personal contact. And perhaps we may claim the unique experience of ministering to a congregation, whose members, although widely scattered over many parts of the globe on sea and land, yet receive most of, if not all, the privileges and services to which any member of an organised Jewish community is entitled.1

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In 1989 Rev. Isaac Levy summarised the role of Jewish chaplains in the Second World War: Thus the role of the Chaplain was as varied as were the circumstances in which he found himself. He was a friend to the Servicemen and women, a counsellor who would deal with personal problems, an officiant at services, an intermediary with the authorities when required, a bearer of good tidings to people and communities who had previously been forced to live under the heel of the enemy. It was, indeed a unique role, which though sometimes fraught with logistical problems, was one which fell to the privileged few.2 Perhaps the significance of Jewish chaplaincy was best exemplified by Rabbi Leslie Edgar: Many times since the war, Jewish men and women have come up to me with their faces lit up with pleasure as they recognised their former Chaplain. Indeed, sometimes the encounters take on a comic aspect. One day, after lunching with a friend at the Great Russell Hotel, I was standing on the hotel steps chatting to him before saying farewell. A taxi drew up, and to my surprise, the driver got down from his seat taking no notice of the four people in the taxi. He rushed up the steps of the hotel, almost embraced me, and when it was obvious I didn’t recognise him, said, his face registering great disappointment: ‘But you were my Chaplain in the army!’ The sense of friendly relationship was so great that the fact that he was only one of thousands of men to whom I was Chaplain did not occur to him at all.3

Notes 1. 2. 3.

LMA, ACC/2712/01/082, pp. 183-4. Morris and Sugarman, We Will Remember Them, pp. 27-30. Edgar, Some Memories of My Ministry, p. 30.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY ARCHIVAL MATERIAL Bishopsgate Institute P 1995, box 76. British Jewry in Battle and Blitz (booklet cited in Other Material). British Library Jewish World 1914-1919. Cambridge University Library Jewish Chronicle. Special Collections, ADD 8171, Box 4, Papers of Redcliffe Salaman. Commonwealth War Graves Commission CWCG/1/1/5/31 or WG 66. Jewish graves, general file, 1920 - 1953. CWCG 1/1/5/53 or WG 290. Rulings including re headstones and crosses in military badges. CWCG/1/1/7/B/43 or WG 1294/3 pt.2. Exhumation in France and Belgium 1919-1920. CWCG/1/2/A/438 or A/98. Marking Jewish graves in World War 2. 1943-1960. CWGC/8/7/1. Wooden grave marker of 2nd Lt. Marcus Segal. Great Synagogue, Sydney Uncatalogued material. Imperial War Museum, Sound Archive, Film and Video Archive Sound 11572. Levy, Harry, Oral history re military service. (This is Rev. Isaac Levy.) Sound 15625. Dearden, Elizabeth Townley, Bergen Belsen. Sound 15626. Levy, Jane Eleanor, Bergen Belsen. Sound 17636. Hardman, Leslie, Oral history re military service. Sound 19577. BBC Radio 4 1999 re Bergen Belsen. Sound 30528. Hardman, Leslie, Service at Bergen Belsen. A70 515/01-05. Film, Memory of the Camps. 1945. A70 308/1, 2. Film re Bergen Belsen. A70 337/1, 2, 3. Film re Bergen Belsen. BU 6591. Photos re Bergen Belsen. Film 7481/2, 3. Army film re Bergen Belsen. MGH 6431. Interviews including Rev. Leslie Hardman re Bergen Belsen.

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Jabotinsky Institute, Israel. jabotinsky.org. A1-2/22/1, 1552; A1-2/7, 2712; K1-K28: all re Rev. Leib Isaac Falk. Jewish Museum London / Jewish Military Museum Files 2009.210.1; 2011.10; 2011.80; 2011.82; 2011.85; 2011.87; 2011.104; 2013.311.1112; 2015.64.1-2. File 2011.74 re chaplaincy including file 2014.80.17. Box ORT/03/01/04, file 2014.77. Chaplaincy Boxes. Boxes 126, 201, 202, 1005, 1007, 1009. Menorah magazine. Papers of Captain David Arkush. Chaplaincy cards of Jewish servicemen visited by chaplains. London Metropolitan Archives1 ACC/2712/01/079-086. Visitation Committee Minute Books vols. 1, 1A, 2, 3, 3A, 4, 5, 6. ACC/2712/13/44. Hammersmith and West Kensington Synagogue (re Rev. Solomon Lipson). ACC/2712/13/45. Hampstead Synagogue (1904 Chanukah Military Service programme; Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz). ACC/2712/15/2075. United Synagogue file re JWSC 1939-1947. ACC/2793/01/10/05. Request by Rev. E. Cashdan at HQ RAF MEF for contribution to cost of matzas for Pesach. ACC/2793/02/01/18. Central British Fund. Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad. Survey of Educational Work in Bergen Belsen. ACC/2793/02/01/25. Survey of Educational Work in Bergen Belsen July 30-September 10, 1946. ACC/2793/02/04/01, refs 107/110, 167/78. Board of Guardians 1949-1953 (including re Rev. Ephraim Levine serving as legal guardian to refugee children in 1950). ACC/2793/03/03/37-38. Jewish Refugee Committee pay records re ministers including Rev. A. Greenbaum. ACC/2805/04/01/006. Correspondence with individuals with initial letter A: miscellaneous. ACC/2805/04/04/001. Chief Rabbi Hertz’s correspondence re chaplains 1914-1918. ACC/2805/04/04/005. Chief Rabbi’s correspondence with Home Office re services for Jewish soldiers, exhumation and reinternment, German POWs, including with Prime Minister and Chief Rabbi of France, 1914-1916. ACC/2805/04/04/006. Recruitment, Jewish Regiment, Jewish Recruiting Committee, JWSC 1916-1918. ACC/2805/04/04/010. Chief Rabbi’s correspondence re furlough for New Year and Day of Atonement 1915 and 1918. 1.

ACC/2999/E/01/001: JWSC minute book, sub-committee minutes, memorandum on chaplaincy services, and ACC/2999/E/01/002, February 1947-June 1986: JCHMF minute book, etc., were borrowed by the depositor on 8 May 1998 and not returned.

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Thomson, Basil, Queer People (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922). Times History of the War, The (1914-1921) (London, 1921). Turner, Barry, …And The Policeman Smiled (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990). van der Zyl, Nikki, For Your Ears Only (Brighton: Indepenpress Publishing, 2013). van der Zyl, Werner, Master Builder (London: The Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, 1994). Waite, Fred, The New Zealanders at Gallipoli (Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1919). Watts, Martin, The Jewish Legion during the First World War (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Weisbord, Robert G. and Sillanpoa, Wallace P., The Chief Rabbi, the Pope and the Holocaust. An Era in Vatican - Jewish Relations (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992); (Abingdon, Oxon. and New York: Routledge (Taylor and Francis), 2017). Whitlow, Maurice, J. Taylor Smith, K.C.B., C.V.O., D.D., Everybody’s Bishop (London: Lutterworth Press, 1938). Winter, Jay (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Yaffe, Moshe, A Volunteer for the Nation. (Hebrew. Details unrecorded.). Yaffe Ze’ev, “The Major” - the Life and Actions of Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) Yaffe (Hebrew, privately printed, 2013). THESES Lloyd, Anne Patricia, Jews under Fire: the Jewish Community and Military Service in World War 1 Britain. PhD dissertation, University of Southampton, Faculty of Law, Arts & Social Sciences, School of Humanities, 2009. Robinson, Alan Charles, The Role of British Army Chaplains during World War 2. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool, 1999. Stahl, Ronit Yael, God, War and Politics: The American Military Chaplaincy and the Making of a Multi-Religious Nation. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 2014. Thompson, Robert, “The true physicians are the padres.” British Christian Army Chaplains and the Liberation of Bergen Belsen. M.A. thesis, University of Southampton, 2019. JOURNALS, NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS AJR Journal (of the Association of Jewish Refugees). Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal 1969, vol. 6, part 6, pp.344-55: Rabbi Dr A. Fabian, The Jewish Chaplaincy in Australia. 1995, vol. 12, part 4, pp. 661-747: Rabbi Raymond Apple, Francis Lyon Cohen: The Passionate Patriot, including chapter 4, Military Chaplain. Cable, The (the magazine of the Jewish East End Celebration Society), issue 28, 2016, pp. 16-21: Harold Pollins, The Poplar boy who became an army major. Chayenu (the magazine of Bachad).

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Ethnic and Racial Studies 4:4 (October 1981), 375: Anthony Smith, War and ethnicity: the role of warfare in the formation, self-images and cohesion of ethnic communities. European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, vol. 48, no.1 (Spring 2015), pp. 3346: Marc Saperstein, Morris Joseph and the West London Synagogue in the First World War. Galitzianer, The, The Quarterly Research Journal of Gesher Galicia, September 2018, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 7-13: Alex Feller, The Jewish Military Chaplaincy. Israel Affairs (Routledge), vol. 14, issue 2, April 2008: Shlomit Keren and Michael Keren, Chaplain with a Star of David: Reverend Leib Isaac Falk and the Jewish Legions. Jewish Chronicle. Jewish Historical Studies (formerly Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England). Jewish Political Studies Review, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 16:3-4 (Fall 2004): Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson, Iceland, the Jews and Anti-Semitism, 1625-2004. Jewish Social Studies: New Series, vol. 11, no. 1 (Autumn 2004), pp. 52-92: Todd M. Endelman, Anglo-Jewish Scientists and the Science of Race. Jewish World. Journal of the Great Synagogue, Sydney: September 1977, p. 14: Louise Rosenberg, Rabbi’s Falk’s Four Years as Jewish Legion Chaplain. L’Universe Israélite. Medal News, December 1993, pp. 12-14: Michael R. Goldberger, An Englishman and a Jew Reverend V. G. Simmons, ACD. Menorah (the magazine of the Armed Forces Jewish Community). Points East Newsletter, a publication of the Sino-Judaic Institute, November 2001, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 4-5: Henrietta Reifler, Memories of My Father, Rev. Mendel Brown. Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Journal edition 32, July 1931, p.103 (SJC Mark Gollop spoke of his work at the annual chaplains’ conference of the London District and Eastern Command in February 1931). edition 34, July 1932, pp. 205-7: Mark Gollop, The Chaplains’ Department and the Jewish Soldier. vol. V, no. 41, January 1936, pp.199-202, L. Rabinowitz, The First Jewish Chaplain to the Forces. Shemot (“Names”) (the magazine of the Jewish Genealogical Society), June 2014, issue 242: David Cesarani: Jews in Britain During the First World War. The Jewish Year Book (annual). The London Gazette. OTHER MATERIAL A Memoir – the Reverend Nathan Levine H.C.F. A faithful pioneer in the Anglo-Jewish ministry who loved and served his fellow men with selfless devotion 1890 – 1958. Anderson, Derek, All the A’s – A history of the Abrahams, Adler, Ansbacher and Asher families in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Apple, Raymond, Rabbi Jacob Danglow. Paper 2001.

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Australian Chaplains in WW1. http://ww1chaplains.gravesecrets.net. Battle Log of 8 Corps Rhine to Baltic. 1945. Held at Museum of Army Chaplaincy. BBC Radio, 13 April 1975, You Don’t Have to be Jewish, with Leslie Hardman and Gena and Norman Turgel. Besser, Ellen. https://ellinbesser.com/2014/05. British Jewry in Battle and Blitz. Undated third edition, after 16/3/1944. Printed by The Cardinal Press, Wheat Street, Leicester. Held at Bishopsgate Institute. British Jews in the First World War. We Were There Too. Documenting and commemorating the contribution British Jews made during the First World War. Website. Cohen, Edward Michael, Ancestry of Abraham Pimontel 1908 - 1971 (and related families) (1998). Collins, Dr Kenneth, Poles and Jews at the Polish School of Medicine at Edinburgh University 1941 to 1949. Conference paper 2017, at the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. Falk, Rabbi L.A., Jewish Legion Reminiscences (undated, between 1948 and 1957). Rev. L. A, With the Jewish Battalions in Palestine. Memoirs of a Jewish Chaplain in The Maccabean: 15, 22 February; 1, 8, 22 March; 5 April; 3, 10, 17 May; 7, 21 June; 5, 19 July; 2 August; 27 September; 4, 11, 18 October; 1, 8, 22 November 1929. Forces War Records. www.forces-war-records.co.uk Gluck, David, A Tribute to my Great Grandfather Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk (educational project, 2004). Howson, Peter, Revd. Dr, Ministry to Saturday Night Soldiers: The Formation of a Chaplains’ Department for the New Territorial Army of 1907. J.H. Shakespeare Memorial Paper 2015. United Board History Project 2016. Jewish Virtual Library (“JVL”). www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/gallipoli. Jewish Year Book, The (of the United Kingdom, published annually, most recently by Vallentine Mitchell of London and Portland, Oregon). Lederman, Joe, A tale of two Anzac rabbis, in a magazine, perhaps published in Sydney, 2003. Levy, Elkan D, The New West End Synagogue in the Great War. The New West End Synagogue 1879-2004. 11 July 2004 at www.newwestend.org.uk/ docs/EDLlecture. Myer, Henry D, Major, Soldiering of Sorts (typed manuscript, written c. 1979 at age 87). Rabinowitz, Louis, Jewish Troops in the Middle East. Booklet, text of broadcast on BBC Home Service, 3 October 1943. Rapport, Gerald, letter 23/10/2014 and email 6/8/2015 re his National Service. Report of Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix and Index and Analysis to Minutes of Evidence (Cd 1742, 1741-I and 1743, 1903, respectively). Salinger, Major Donald Paiba, Memoirs of an Old China Hand (privately printed, 2005). Sharit Ha-Platah (“The Saving Remnant”), (compiler Abraham J. Klausner; Bavaria, 1945) now in Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Libraries. Reprinted by Schoen Books, South Deerfield, Massachusetts, 2021.

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The United Synagogue, 100 Years Ago … Remembering World War One (2014). The Work of H.M.Forces Committee (undated booklet, early 1930s). Welchman, Rev. H.H., Memorandum on visit to Belsen Concentration Camp, in RAChD Archive (Roman Catholic) Bulford Camp.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Families of the Late: Rev. Hyman Alexander Rabbi Myer Berman Rev. Cecil Bloch Rev. Sonnie Bloch Rev. Harry Bornstein Rabbi Israel Brodie Rev. Mendel Brown Rev. Dr Isaac Kenneth Cosgrove Rabbi Raffaelo Della Pergola Captain Dr Henry Engelsman Rabbi Leib Falk Rev. Meyer Fine Rabbi Yitzchak Frankenthal Rev. John Geffen Rev. Alec Ginsburg Rev. Nehemiah Goldston Rev. Emanuel Goodman Rev. Leslie Hardman Rev. David Hirsch Rev. Solly Hooker Mr Simon Kritz Rev. Dr Isaac Levy Rabbi Maurice Lew Rev. Wolf Morein Mr Wolfe Morris Mr Harry Moss Rabbi Isaac Newman Rabbi Abraham da Souza Pimontel Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz Major Donald Salinger Rev. Leonard Sober Captain Dr Joseph Stone Rabbi Werner van der Zyl

Individuals Rabbi Ariel Abel Ms Hester Abrams Mr David Adler Professor Peter Appelbaum Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple Mr Daniel Appleby The late Captain Dr David Arkush and family Ms Anat Ben-Dor Mr Charles Beresford Rabbi Daniel Bergson Professor Michael Berkowitz Mr Michael Boodyn Mrs Sandra Clark Mr Alan Cohen Mr David Cohen Mr James Cohen Mr Henry Cohn Dr Kenneth Collins Rabbi Samuel de Beck Spitzer Aumôniere Israélite des Armées Veronique Dubois (France) Mr Alan Field Mrs Norma Goldstone The late Rev. Avraham Greenbaum and family Professor François Guesnet Mr Richard Hacker Dr Mayer Hillman Revd Dr Peter Howson Revd Paul Hulyer Dr Michael Jolles Ms Marion Koebner

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Rabbi Daniella Kolodny Mr David Lang Mr Michael Lansman Mr Lionel Leventhal Mr Elkan Levy Mr Ralph Levy Rabbi Major Reuben Livingstone Dr Anne Lloyd Mr Johny Lyndon Mr David Manning Mr Astor Mendelson Mr Kenny Miller Rabbi Nir Nadav Mr Peter Noons Mr Simon Ovens Mr Harold Pollins Mr Louis Rapaport Ms Sarah Reay Mrs Kayla Rothman-Zecher Professor Suzanne Rutland Rabbi Meir Salasnik Professor Mark Saperstein Professor Colin Shindler Professor Michael Snape Ms Verity Steele Mrs Ruth Stuber Mr Martin Sugarman Mr Derek Taylor Rev. Squadron Leader Malcolm Weisman Mrs Corinne White Revd David Youngson Organisations Association of Jewish ExServicemen and Women (AJEX) Australian Jewish Historical Society and Mr Philip Moses

Bet Hagedudim, Avichail, Israel Bishopsgate Institute British Library Cambridge University Library Commonwealth War Graves Commission Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives Great Synagogue, Sydney Hartley Library, University of Southampton Imperial War Museum Jewish Genealogical Society Jewish Historical Society Jewish Museum London / Jewish Military Museum London Jews in the First World War: We Were There Too. London Metropolitan Archives London School of Jewish Studies and Mr Michael Boodyn Museum of Army Chaplaincy, Trustees of, and Mr David Blake National Archives Pinner United Synagogue, and some fifty of its members who together created the memorial meeting in 2012 of which I have written. Rothschild Archive London Royal Air Force Museum Scottish Jewish Archives Centre Sydney Jewish Museum United States Holocaust Memorial Museum University College London Wiener Holocaust Library

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ABBREVIATIONS A/C A/C1 ACC ACG AChD ADC AIF AJEX AJHS AMPC ARP ATS BAOR BCE BEF BJBH BLA CCM CCS CE CF CMF CO Col. CWGC DACG DCG DSO GHQ GOC HMAS HMFC

Aircraftsman Aircraftsman First Class Army Chaplaincy Card on an individual chaplain, maintained at the Museum of Army Chaplaincy Assistant Chaplain General Army Chaplains’ Department Aide de Camp Australian Imperial Force Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps Air Raid Precautions Auxiliary Territorial Service British Army of the Rhine Before the Common Era (for dates, equivalent to BC) British Expeditionary Force British Jewry Book of Honour British Liberation Army Civilian Chaplain to the Military Casualty Clearing Station Common Era (for dates, equivalent to AD) Chaplain to the Forces Central Mediterranean Force Commanding Officer Colonel Commonwealth War Graves Commission Deputy Assistant Chaplain General Deputy Chaplain General Distinguished Service Order General Headquarters General Officer Commanding His Majesty’s Australian Ship H.M. Forces Committee

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HMS HQ IEF IWGC IWM JC JHC JHS JHSE JM JRAChD JW JWSC LAC LCC LCI LD LI LL LMA L of C Lt./Lieut. Lt.-Col. MC NAAFI NCO NJHC OBE OCM POW RA RAAF RAChD RADC RAF RAMC RAOC RASC RCOS

Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

His Majesty’s Ship Headquarters Italian Expeditionary Force Imperial War Graves Commission Imperial War Museum Jewish Chronicle Jewish Hospitality Committee Jewish Historical Studies, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England Jewish Historical Society of England, The Jewish Museum London / Jewish Military Museum Journal of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Jewish World Jewish War Services Committee Leading Aircraftsman London County Council Landing Craft Infantry Diary of Rev. Isaac Levy. LD1 is volume 1 of his diaries; so also LD2, LD3 and LD4. L’Universe Israélite Letter of Rev. Isaac Levy London Metropolitan Archives Line of Communication / Control (army designated area) Lieutenant Lieutenant-Colonel Military Cross Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes Non-Commissioned Officer National Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces (sometimes without the word “National”, JHC) Order of the British Empire Officiating Chaplain to the Military Prisoner of War Royal Artillery Royal Australian Air Force Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Royal Army Dental Corps Royal Air Force Royal Army Medical Corps Royal Army Ordnance Corps Royal Army Service Corps Royal Corps of Signals

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Abbreviations

RE Royal Engineers Rev. Reverend RIASC Royal Indian Army Service Corps RN Royal Navy SCF Senior Chaplain to the Forces SJC Senior Jewish Chaplain SS Sailing Ship TD Territorial Decoration USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum VAD Voluntary Aid Detachment V/C Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue VC/1, VC/1A, VC/2 etc. The successive minute books of the Visitation Committee WAAF Women’s Auxiliary Air Force WAAS Women’s Auxiliary Air Service

411

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INDEX Note: Page numbers in italics are illustrations.

Aaron, Abraham (Abe) 319, 326 Aarons, Rev. I. 212 Abel, Rabbi Ariel 385 Abelson, Rev. Dr J. 110, 131 Abenson, Rev. Ruben 240 Ableson, Rev. Dr J. 171 Abraham, Pte. L. 51 Abrahams, Private Solomon (Solly) 155 Abrahams, Rabbi Dr Joseph 101, 106 Abrahams, Rev. M. 170 Abramovitz, Rabbi Herman 100 Abrams, Hyam David 236–7 Abyssinia 243 Acteron (ship) 31 acting chaplains 316–17 Adler, Chief Rabbi Hermann 22 Adler, Corporal David 383 Adler, Rev. Michael 1, 19, 24, 25–6, 27–30, 30, 32, 199–200 in 1914 sole Jewish chaplain 2 accepted military chaplaincy aer second request 23, 33 on antisemitism 197 anti-Zionist 198 and Anzac Passover leave 121–2 appointed the Reform ministers 196–7 arranged Magen David memorials 84–6 awarded Distinguished Service Order 72 and Barnett 142, 143 and Boas 109 British Jewry Book of Honour 205–6 chaplaincy training 129 conducted funerals 86–7, 173 correspondence with soldiers during First World War 47–8 e Crisis and Jewish Loyalty 40 and Danglow 113

decided to relinquish his position in France 74–5 delivered addresses to fellow chaplains on aspects of Jewish life 43 did not want Jewish Battalion 43–6 on duty to enlist in First World War 41 and Ephraim Moses Levy 152 in First World War on the western front 41–2, 48–62, 63–70, 71–3 and Freedman 101–2, 103, 104, 105, 106, 117–18 and Geffen 153, 155 helped Jewish soldiers who were courtmartialed. 77 helped preserve Jewish war graves 215 helped raise funds for a synagaogue at Aldershot 31 and Hirsch 156, 157 inaugurated regular Sunday morning services for Jewish soldiers at Hammersmith Synagogue 130 on Jewish population figures 39 and JWSC 120 letter to to Mrs Nathan about her husband 50, 50 on Levin 189 and Lipson 130 at memorial service at the Menin Gate, Ypres 212 message to comrades from Australia and New Zealand 100 and Morris 147 nominated officiating clergymen to represent him 170 Notice from Rev Michael Adler, B.A. to Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 28–9 opposed Jewish Legion 131, 192, 193, 197

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Index

organised officers and men to hold religious services themselves 81–2 pictured with troops at Rouen, 19 May 1915 51 pressure from for more chaplains 226 regular correspondence with Chief Rabbi 75–6 religious support for through correspondence 40 responded to fascist attacks 208 and Rev. Dr D. M. Kay 181 Soldiers’ Prayer Book, 1914 46–7 sought another chaplain for Boulogne and suggested Lipson 127 took over over chaplaincy in England from Lipson 132 toured battlefield cemeteries 206–7 Visitation Committee, tension with 119 visited Aldershot numerous times 22 and Vivian Simmons 134, 140–1, 142 and Weintrobe 236 resigned as Senior Jewish Chaplain in 1926 207–8 Gollop succeeded him as Senior Jewish Chaplain 151–2, 210 died on 30 September 1944 at the age of 76 208 Adler, Rev. S. Alfred 23 Admiralty 21, 22 furlough for Jewish sailors and marines on the High Festivals declined 32 Advisory Committee on Territorial Force Chaplains 29 Advisory Panel on the Chaplaincy Services 378 Aescoly, Rabbi Dr Aaron Zev 270, 285 Afghanistan 383 Africa, West 282–3 Air Ministry Order 991, 1943 230, 360 Air Raid Precautions Wardens, Jewish, armlet issued to 222, 223 Aldershot development of chaplaincy 16–17 during First World War 48 hut converted into a synagogue 30–1 visited by Adler 22, 74 and Vivian Simmons 138 Aldershot Hebrew Congregation 20 Alexander, Rev. Hyman L. 231, 236, 275 Algiers 258, 277, 281, 360 Alliance Israelite Universelle 219 All Souls chaplaincy 384, 385

413

Althusen, Pte. M. 51 American Jewish chaplains 277–8, 285, 287, 289, 305, 307 American Jewish Welfare Board 310 American troops in England 1918 132 in England 1943 241 in England 1945 242 in Europe 1944 333 in Iceland, 1944 244 on the western front 1918 73 Amias, Rev. Alexander Saul 221, 235, 236, 242, 312 Anglo-Boer War 1, 20, 21, 27, 33, 101 Ansell, Mr Sam 241 antisemitism 12, 39, 198, 206, 366 and Adler 197, 215 and Isaac Levy 249 and Louis Rabinowitz 247 Anzac Day Service 107 Anzac Passover leave 105, 117, 121–2 Apple, Rabbi Raymond 103, 117 Arkush, Captain David 9, 320, 323–6 Armistice Day and Remembrance Service for Jewish soldiers, 1930-1938 214 Armistice Service for Jewish soldiers, 1929 214 armlet issued to Jewish Air Raid Precautions Wardens 222, 223 Army agreed to furlough for Jewish soldiers on the High Festivals 31–2 allowed observance of Sabbaths and festivals 22 chaplaincy training 384 fiy chaplains in Second World War 220 Francis Cohen on numbers of Jewish soldiers serving in 23 issue of Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 46 Army Chaplains’ Department see Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD) Army Council granted leave for Jewish festivals, 1910 29 Instruction no. 1,000, 1941 230 Instruction NOJ02, 1942 230, 360 Army garrison synagogues 242 Aron, Major Wellesley 260 Arruas, Rabbi M. 231, 233 Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen (AJEX) 167–8 Auerbach, Chaplain 269, 285

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Australian Jewish chaplaincy 42, 100–18, 157–8, 196, 199 Australian Jewry Book of Honour (Boas) 112 Australian National Defence League 24 Australian troops 1,500 Jews served in First World War 100 Jewish soldiers and airmen in Papua 1941 243 Jews in First World War in France ministered by Barnett 143 Jews in Southern Command, 1919, Lipson assumed responsibility for 133 Vivian Simmons ministered to 65 e Australian YMCA. With the Jewish Soldier of the Australian Imperial Force (Boas) 112 Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth 7 Auxiliary Chaplains 377 Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps 227 badge for Jewish chaplains see Star of David badge Bad Oeynhausen 376 Baghdad Jewish Community 243 Baker, Private Jack 84 Balfour Services Club 241 Balkind, Corporal 245 Bandall, Woolf 56 Bangalore 304–5 Barker, Major-General 352 Barmitzvah on the Kwai 327 Barnett, Rev. Arthur 47, 63, 65, 74, 92, 142– 6, 197, 198, 235 on Adler 2, 200, 208–9 appointed to the western front 128 on chaplaincy in First World War 41–2 conducted High Holyday services, 1916 69 and Danglow 113, 114, 118 demobolised in August 1920 205 met Australian troops 108 and Morris 147 nominated by Hertz as deputy to Gollop 338 served in both World Wars 237 succeeded Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain 73, 122 urged the need for more chaplains 128–9 and Vivian Simmons 134 Baronowitsch, Private Leonard 84 Basco, Gunner Lionel 324

Battle of Cambrai 72 Battle of Loos 61 Baumgarten, Rabbi Schlomo 356 Beatty, Admiral Sir David 57 Beck, Captain Clifford Moss 325 Beckerman, A/C 375 Behrendt, Gunter (Gideon) (Gene O’Brian) 332 Beltane Internment Camp 225 Benghazi, Jewish schools 268 Benjamin, Brigadier Ernest Frank 290, 292, 293–4, 295 Bennett, Private D. 77 Berenbaum, Corporal C. 310 Bergen Belsen concentration camp 295, 356– 9, 358 Berkovitch, Private Len 310 Berlin, Rev. Dr M. 21 Berliner, Lance Corporal 353 Berman, Rabbi Myer 232, 235, 241, 272–3, 285–7, 288, 360 on chaplaincy training course 221 Senior Jewish Chaplain, Allied Command 281 spoke at leadership course in Venice 379 on Zolli 289 Berman, Rev. Abraham 221, 235, 239 Berner, Private Jack 325 Bernstein, Joe 321 Bernstein, Rev. I. A. 100 Bernstein, Staff Sister Dorah 173 Bernstock, Private J. H. 57–8 Bernstock, Pte. J. H. 51 Berzon, Lou 310 Beth Din 7, 231 Beth Olim 292 Bevis Marks Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Chanukah service 1946 366 Bibles, Jewish, supplied to soldiers, 1914 31 Birdwood, Lieutenant-General Sir William 104, 105, 109 Birnbaum, Private 310 Biron, Aircrasman, RAF, of Manchester 304 Bishop, Private Samuel 91–2 Black, Private D. 305 Black, Sidney 317 Blashki, Captain Roy Hector 207 Blashki, Victor 319, 320 Bloch, Rabbi A. 57 Bloch, Rev. Cecil Maurice 235, 313, 326 Bloch, Sebastian Morton (“Sonnie”) 7, 221, 308, 311–13, 317

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Index

Blush, Pte. L. 51 Board of Deputies 21, 22 Boas, Lieutenant Harold 100–1, 105, 106, 108 –12, 118, 131 and Danglow 113 and Goldston 165 and Hirsch 157–8 opposed Zionism 199 Boer War 1, 20, 21, 27, 33, 101 Bologna Jewish Community 292 Bombay 304, 307–8, 313 A Book of Jewish oughts (Hertz) 46, 75, 147, 213, 230, 322 Boris, Rabbi M. 57 Bornstein, Flight Lieutenant 376 Bornstein, Rev. Harry 2, 220, 221, 235, 273–5 Boys’ Brigade 20 Brickner, Rabbi 280 British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) 117, 366, 376, 381 synagogue/ambulance vehicle presented by the Jewish community of Cairo to 373 British Expeditionary Force 226–7 British Jewry Book of Honour/BJBH (Adler) 2, 39, 206, 215 British Legion, Maccabean Branch 238 British Mandate, Palestine 218 British War Medal 161 Brodie, Corporal J. 323 Brodie, Corporal L. 319 Brodie, Rev. (later Rabbi) Israel 162–3, 198, 199, 233, 271–2, 291, 347 appointed to western front, 1918 72 broadcast to H. M. Forces on comradeship between Jews and Christians 231 conducted moral leadership courses 378– 9 conducted services in the north of Scotland 241 conducted the first military service in the restored synagogue in Tilburg 348–9 conducted Yom Kippur services in Egypt 243 consecrated synagogues at five RAF stations 242 despatched to the British Expeditionary Force 226–7 and Ginsburg 369 and Isaac Levy 347 and Louis Rabinowitz 344–5

415

proposed by JWSC as Gollop’s successor 152, 338–9 in the RAF 360 recommended for Reserve of Officers 219 recommended the appointment of Jewish chaplains on permanent or short-term regular commissions 368 replaced Lieberman in 1918 150 represented Chief Rabbi 232 on Solly Hooker 313–14, 315 spent Passover with troops of the 8th Army in Italy, 1945 289 stated the establishment of Jewish chaplains based on one chaplain to 1,250 men 359 toured India and Burma 323 and visit by two American Reform Rabbis 280 wrote tribute in final issue of Bulletin for the Forces 246 became Chief Rabbi in 1948 367 Brodie A.S.C., Driver 332–3 Bronkhurst, Joe 317 Brookes, Rev. Reuben 375, 382 Brown, Brigadier-General orburn K. 286 Brown, Harry 305 Brown, Rev. Menahem Mendel 214–15 Brown, Rev. Solomon 369 Browne, Sylvester 183 Bryan, ACG Lieutenant Colonel Lewis 320, 326–7 Bulletin for the Forces 246 Burma 310, 311, 312, 316, 360 Burma Railway 320, 323, 324 Butler, Samuel 4 Calcutta 304, 305, 307, 308, 313 Cambrai, Battle of 72 Canadian chaplains 100, 232, 240, 241, 351, 352, 356 Canadian Expeditionary Force 48 Canton, Staff Sergeant J. 81–2 cap badge, Jewish chaplaincy see Star of David badge Caplan, Signalman Israel/Jack 325 Carlish, Pte. A. 51 cars for chaplains in France 54, 68, 120 Cashdan, Rev. Eli 219, 233, 272, 274, 379 Cashefsky, Private 310 Casper, Rev. Bernard Moses (later Chief Rabbi, South Africa) 221, 235, 289, 290–3, 291, 335

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Cass, Rabbi Samuel 348 cemeteries, battlefield, First World War 206 see also graves Central Cargo Control Committee 112 Central Jewish Recruiting Committee 119 Central Synagogue, Military Service, 1903 27 Ceylon 307, 310, 316 Chait, Rev. Isaac 219, 221, 235, 238–9 Changi jail 320–4 Chanukah Bevis Marks Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, 1946 366 in Changi jail 322 in Europe 1944 350, 351, 354 in India 309 in the Middle East, Second World War 263, 280 Chanukah military services 18–19, 27–8, 33 1914 48, 130 1915 61 1919 146, 161 Annual Chanukah Service and Dinner, 1931 and 1932 211 in Australia 24, 100, 112 Francis Cohen initiated 9–10 reinstated in 1918 210–11 Chanukah Naval and Military Service Committee 210 Chaplaincy Sub-Committee 219 Chaplain on the River Kwai: Story of a Prisoner of War (Nussbaum) 323 e Chaplains’ Department and the Jewish Soldier (Gollop) 213–14 “A Chaplain’s Life in France 1914-1918” (Adler) 74 A Chaplain’s Suggestions (Barnett) 144–6 Chazan, Rev. I. 375 Cherrick, Rev. Bernard 226, 227 Chief Rabbi of Britain Dr Joseph Herman Hertz see Hertz, Dr Joseph Herman, Chief Rabbi Chief Rabbi of France Grand Rabbin Alfred Levy of Paris 48, 51 Chief Rabbi of Rouen M. Nathan Levy 87 Christian Ritualist Guilds 18 Chungkai camp 323–6 Clark, General Mark W. 286 Clyne, Gunner Ruben 261 Coevorden, Chief Petty Officer M. 62 Coffer, Mr Eddie 225, 370, 373 Cohen, Alfred 244 Cohen, Captain Mordaunt 283

Cohen, Colonel D. de L. 29 Cohen, Donald H. 225, 337, 366–7 Cohen, Gunner Victor 262 Cohen, Joe 325 Cohen, Lance Corporal Jack 227 Cohen, Private Woolf 15, 33 Cohen, Rev. A. 170–1 Cohen, Rev. B. I. 170 Cohen, Rev. (later Rabbi) Francis Lyon 3, 16– 20, 21, 22, 33, 100, 171 and Chanukah military services 10, 27 Chief Minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney 24–5 on numbers of Jews in the Army 23 opposed Zionism 199 succeeded in Sydney by Rev. Ephraim Moses Levy 152 Cohen, Rev. Philip 235, 335, 346, 349, 351, 355 officiating at the wedding of Max Hené and Hilde Mayer 347–8, 348 Cohen, Rifleman David 246 Cohen, Rifleman E. 234 Cohen, Rin. D. 51 Cohen, Sir Robert Waley 225 Cohen, Woolf Henry 16 Cohen le’Milchamah 14 Collins, Private D. G. 149 Collins, Rev. Edwin 149 Colombo 307, 308, 310 Colonial Auxiliary Forces Officers’ Decoration 25 Colonial Auxiliary Volunteer Officers Decoration 107, 117 Command Chaplains 228 Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George 117 concentration camps 232, 295, 346, 347, 349, 356–9, 358 conferences, chaplaincy 234, 277, 288, 346, 351, 352, 378 Conquy, Rabbi Joseph S. 174 Constad, Pte. H. 51 Consultative Committee of Senior Allied Air Force Chaplains 378 Continental Allied Forces 234 Corder, Major S. 317 Coronation Medal, awarded to Adler 29 Corporation Act 14–15 correspondence, and chaplaincy 21, 59–60 Cosgrove, Rev. Dr Isaac Kenneth 221, 235, 238, 377

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courts-martial 77, 231 Cousin, Rodney 376 Cowen, Sir Zelman 117 Cramer, Crasman Robert 230 Crème, A/C 375 e Crisis and Jewish Loyalty (Adler) 40 Cyprus 382–3 Czechoslovakia 218, 219 Daiches, Rabbi Dr Salis 141 Dainow, Private Morley 124 Danglow, Rev. Jacob (Jack) 24, 74, 91, 108, 112–17 attended a brief chaplaincy training course in Britain 129 and Barnett 118 conducted Chanukah military services 100 on Lipson 133 met Boas 109, 110 and Morris 148 succeeded Freedman 100, 106 and Zionism 199 Dardanelles 101, 102, 118–19 Davids, Dutch Private 325 Davidson, Sidney 307 Davis, Chaplain Moshe 7, 291, 379, 381 Davis, Colonel Peter 367 Davis, Mr Felix A. 130 Davis, Rev. Moshe E. (Eric Michael) 374 Day, E. R. 184, 187, 195 Day of Atonement see Yom Kippur Defence Instruction Notices (DINs) 384 Della Pergola, Rabbi Raffaello 42, 75, 179–82 Demmy, Gunner R. 304 De Pass, Lieutenant Frank A. 86 de Rothschild, Captain E. L. see Rothschild, Captain E. L. de de Rothschild, Major Edmund see Rothschild, Major Lionel de de Rothschild, Major Lionel see Rothschild, Major Lionel de Diamond, Staff Sergeant Dick 318 “Diary of Work at the Front” (Adler) 53 divorce 231 Dobbie, Second Lieutenant Lindsay 377–8 Dobkin, Captain M. 305 Douglas Alien Camp, Isle of Man 119 Dykes, Gunner Robert 324 East London Jewish Centre for Forces of the United Nation 233

417

Edgar, Rabbi Dr Leslie 219, 232, 234, 235, 335–9, 340, 354–5, 360 conducted first ever Seder service in Orkney Islands 240 on the significance of Jewish chaplaincy 389 Edinburgh, Duke 167–8 Edlin, Staff Chaplain 339 Efficiency Decoration 337 Egalnick, Private 319, 320 Egypt and Frankenthal 186, 189 and Freedman 102–3 and Ginsburg 370 and Grajewsky 182–4 Suez crisis 382 Eisen, Squadron Leader Jacob 232 El Alamein 265 Ellenborgen, Lieutenant 110 Elton, Rev. Michael 221, 356, 359 Elze, Dutch Lieutenant 322 Emanuel of Portsmouth, Alderman 22 Emergency Council, Chief Rabbi’s 240 Endelman, Todd 3 Engelsman, Captain Henry 382 Englishmen and Jews. Social Relations and Political Culture 1840-1914 (Feldman) 3 Epstein, Rabbi B. 267–8 espionage 76–7, 172 Evans, Rev. E. Walter 295 Ewig, Private H. D. 375 Exmouth (ship) 21, 24, 29 Ezra, Lady 310 Ezra, Sir David 310 Fabricant, Rev. Isaac N. 221, 233, 235, 240, 277 Fabritz, Rev. M. I. 375 Falk, Gunner David 318 Falk, Rev. Leib Aizack 116, 151, 191–6, 198, 199 served with the Jewish Legion 42, 72, 75, 128, 197 Far East 312, 318–28 fascism 208, 215, 366 Featherman, Major M. 286 Feldman, David 3 Felix, Lance Corporal Joseph Lion 63 Fenton, Rev. M. 31 Ferber, Rev. (from 1957, Rabbi) Jacob 239 Fersht, Corporal Maurice 166 Festival Machzor 46

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Field, Alan 380–1 Fine, Rev. Meyer 240 Finegold, Lieutenant Martin 324 First World War 2, 42–3, 76–8, 196–201 additional chaplains needed 127–9 Adler in France 48–62, 63–70, 71–3 Adler returned to Britain 74–5 Australian Jewish chaplaincy 100–16, 117–18 “authorised” pocket sized prayer and similar books for Jewish soldiers 7 began seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah and disrupted Jewish life 9 chaplaincy notice to Jewish Soldiers, around August 1916 66 Della Pergola, Rabbi Raffaello 42, 75, 179–82 duty of British Jews to enlist 39–41 Frankenthal, Rabbi Yitzhak Uri 70, 75, 183, 185–90, 198, 199 funerals 86–92 Geffen, Rev. John Lionel 43, 73, 113, 153– 5, 156, 171 Goldston, Rev. Nehemiah 72, 111, 163–5 India 123–4 Jewish Battalion proposed 43–6 Jewish casualties 39 Jewish Chronicle article 39–40 Jews fighting on both sides 47 JWSC 119–23 labour battalions 173–4 Levine, Rev. Nathan 72, 166–8 Lieberman, Rev. Benjamin Benas 70, 128, 149–50, 199 Military Service Act 62–3 model of British field chaplaincy established 3 officiating clergymen 170–3 Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers issued 46 Price, Rev. Harris Lewis 70, 91, 113, 161–2 religious services 79–84 Royal Navy 2 Seder services 10, 111, 115, 158, 166 Silverman, Rev. Henry Phillips 72, 129, 168–70, 199 transport, to visit soldiers 11, 54, 109, 136, 148 Visitation Committee 118–19, 122–3 YMCA 78–9 see also Barnett, Rev. Arthur; Brodie, Rev. (later Rabbi) Israel; Falk, Rev. Leib

Aizack; Gollop, Rev. (later Rabbi) Marks; Grajewsky, Rev. Shimon (Simon); Hirsch, Rev. David Isaac; Levin, Rev. Walter; Lipson, Rev. Solomon; Morris, Rev. Louis; Passover; Simmons, Rev. Vivian George; Yom Kippur Fisch, Sub-Lieutenant H. 333 Fishman, Shlomo 317 Flaum, Corporal 375 Fleishman, A/C Cyril 375 Foch, General 115 Frampton, Rev. (formerly Friedberg) 171 Frank, Leon 310 Frank, Mr Leopold 89–90, 164 Frankenburg, Lieutenant Sydney 86 Frankenthal, Rabbi Yitzchak Uri 70, 75, 183, 185–90, 191, 198, 199 Franks, CPO L. 57 Frazer, Rifleman Aubrey 91 Freedman, Lieutenant-Commander J. 236 Freedman, Mr Joseph junior 183–4 Freedman, Private I. 102 Freedman, Rev. (later Rabbi) David Isaac 6, 46, 65, 69, 100, 101–7, 108, 111 and Adler 122, 200 Anzac Passover leave 117–18, 121–2 and Barnett 143 buried Christian soldiers 92 Frankenthal asked to replace him in Egypt 186 and JWSC 120 met Boas 109 and Morris 147 observed many soldiers concealed Jewish identity for fear of prejudice 198 went to Australia in 1897 199 Free French Forces, Jewish chaplain for 232 Freeman, Sergeant 333 French, Field Marshal Sir John 41, 53, 58 French Rabbis 48, 51, 57, 87 Friedberg, Rev. S. 170 Friedlander, Private R. 49, 53, 85 Friedlander, Pte. R. 51 e Friends of Jewish Servicemen 378 Fuchsbalg, Private Maurice W. 50 funerals 86–92, 173, 227, 236, 239, 346 in Changi jail 322, 324 conducted by Casper 292 conducted by Falk 194 conducted by Hirsch 160 conducted by Louis Rabinowitz 261, 342

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conducted by Vivian Simmons 136 El Alamein 265 in the Far East 328 in prisoner of war camps 119 Gaguine, Rabbi Dr Maurice 367–8 Galkoff, Flight Lieutenant Cyril 242 Gallipoli 100, 181–2 Gamse, Fusilier D. C. 306 Gatoff, Private M 166–7 Gavscin, Pte. M. 51 Geffen, Ernest 155 Geffen, Rev. John Lionel 43, 73, 113, 153–5, 156, 171 Gelar, Rev. A. A. 61 Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field, August 1864 41 George Cross 218 German Army, First World War, and antisemitism 198 Germany BAOR 117, 376, 381 Bergen Belsen concentration camp 295, 356–9, 358 refugees from, in Australia 116 Gestetner, Mr Sigmund 241 Ginsburg, Rev. Alec 369–73, 379, 383 Glasser, Private 310 Glickman, Rev. Laurence 224 Goldberg, Sergeant 110 Goldberg, Signalman Stanley 309–10 Goldfarb, Private Leonard 324 Goldfinger, Rabbi B. 358 Goldman, Pte. A. 51 Goldman, Rabbi Jacob L. 257, 270 Goldman, Rabbi Lazarus Morris 257, 318 Goldsmid, Colonel Albert 15, 33 Goldston, Rev. Nehemiah 72, 111, 163–5 Goldston, Rifleman Lionel E. 164, 165 Goldstuck, Pte. N. 51 Gollop, Rev. (later Rabbi) Marks 150–2, 155, 163, 211–14, 219, 235, 360 appointed to Salonika in March 1917 70, 128 broadcast to mark the New Year, 1943 231 called up on 24 August 1939 220 on chaplains for Home Forces 228–9 conducted Seder service in a field by a railway cutting 240 and Edgar 335–8

419

and Isaac Levy 249, 279 and Louis Rabinowitz 339 on Morein 237 on role of Jewish chaplaincy 388 and Solly Hooker 275–6 succeeded Adler as Senior Jewish Chaplain 199, 210 visited British Expeditionary Force 226 visited troops in each of the Faroe Islands 233 on why Jews should not enlist under another religious denomination 231 Goodman, Pte. R. 51 Goodman, Rev. Emanuel 222 ministering to British men and women of the three services and to American soldiers ahead of D-Day 223 Goodman, Rev. H. 111, 173 Gordon, Albert A. 318 Gordon, Sergeant H. L. 180 Goulston, Rabbi Michael J. 377 Grabman, Corporal Abe 242 Graham, Staff Sergeant L. 342 Grajewsky, Rev. Shimon (Simon) 42, 75, 128, 182–4, 190–1 appointed to Egypt in 1915 62 not cast in the English mould 199 Zionist 198 graves 84–6, 118–19, 206–7, 215, 325, 355–6 gravestone of German Lieutenant Max Seller, British Hyde Park Corner Cemetery 90 gravestone of Lieutenant Marcus Segal 85 Graves Registration Commission 84, 86 Green, Corporal Isidore 285 Green, Geoffrey L. 2 Green, Rev. Aaron Asher 23, 76–7, 127, 130, 131, 170, 171–3 Greenbaum, Rev. Avraham 356, 357, 359 Greenberg, Jack Joseph 319 Greenberg, Rev. Baruch (Barry) 221, 314, 315, 317, 360 Griffiths, Squadron Leader Stephen 376 Guild of the Holy Standard 18 Habeemah: the Changi Jewish Forum 322 Hackenbroch, Corporal 370 Haggadahs Danglow initiated production of 116 for Jewish soldiers in India 124

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for Jewish soldiers serving in the Boer War 21 for soldiers in France, 1915 54–5 Haham 39 Haig, Sir Douglas 41, 63 Halberstam, Rabbi Shloime 287 Hallenstein, Lieutenant Dalbert 114 Hamburger, Rabbi Ernst T. 271 Hamilton (Herschan), Paul 332 Hammersmith Synagogue, annual Chanukah military service 48, 130 Hanreck, Private L. 147 Hardman, Rev. Leslie 221, 233, 235, 349, 353–4, 360 at Bergen Belsen 356, 357, 358–9, 358 Hardrew, V. L. 186 Harfleur Reinforcement Camp 49 Harris, Gunner A. 130 Harris, Rev. (from 1968 Rabbi) Cyril S. Z. K. 376, 377, 378, 379, 380 Harris, Samuel 101 Harris, Sergeant Rupert A. 305–6 Harris, Sergeant Sol 50–1 Harris, Sergt. J. 51 Hayman, Leon Jacob 327 Hayman, Mark 327 Heilpern, Rev. C. L. 242 Helfgott, Rabbi H. 358 Hené, Max 347, 348 Henriques, Mr. B. L. Q. 230 Henry, Sir Charles 49 Hepstone, Pte. J. 51 Hershman, Dvr. J. 51 Hertz, Dr Joseph Herman, Chief Rabbi addressed a service for Jewish soldiers, 1941 232–3 Adler maintained a regular correspondence with 75–6, 127 on appointment of Edgar as Gollop’s deputy 337–8 authorised to send four chaplains to Bergen Belsen 356 and Boas 109 A Book of Jewish oughts 46, 230 broadcast to the Jewish community and the nation 230–1 called for more chaplains 129 on compulsory services 78 at conference of Jewish chaplains of the United States Eighth Air Force 234 and Frankenthal 186 and Freedman 104–5, 106

on Hebrew names on graves 207 and Hirsch 156 hosted a large farewell gathering for Danglow 116 issued a special prayer at start of First World War 39 on Jewish War Services Committee 224, 225 and Morris 147 Prayer Before a Battle 55 and Russian Jews 174 succeeded by Brodie in 1948 339, 344–5 supported Zionism 198 visit to France, 1915 58, 87, 130 and Vivian Simmons 138 Hertz, Lieutenant 283 Herwald, Corporal R. 168–9 High Holydays in Britain and Europe 1944 241 in Britain and Europe 1945 232 in India, Second World War 304–5, 307– 8, 309, 317 in Italy 1944 284–5, 286–7 in the Middle East, 1943 274 in West Africa, Second World War 282–3 on the western front 1915 60–1 on the western front 1916 65, 67, 68–9 see also Rosh Hashanah; Yom Kippur Himmelfahrtscommando 264 Hirsch, Rev. David Isaac 70, 91, 100, 108, 113, 117, 155–61 appointed a Territorial chaplain on the active list, 1922 210 appointed to the front, August 1917 70 and Geffen 155 and Morris 147 H. M. Forces Committee (HMFC) 208, 213, 214, 219, 366–7 Hochman, Captain Jacob 286, 289 Hockman, Rev. Dr Joseph 174 Homa, Dr Bernard 225, 282–3, 338 Home Command 42, 54, 74, 127, 236–40 Home Forces 128, 228 Hood, Rev. Canon John Charles Fulton 244 Hooker, Rabbi Bernard 368–9, 369 Hooker, Rev. Solomon (Solly) 2, 220, 235, 236, 239, 275–6, 368 in India 313–15 in Italy 283, 284, 284, 288 and Myer Berman 285 signal about 314 at training course 221

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Hornden, Rev. 183 Horowitz, Samuel 308, 313 hospitals, war, instructed to forward names of Jewish wounded to Adler 47 Hudaly, Corporal David 285, 289 Hughes, Deputy Chaplain General L. Gethin 228, 338, 340–1 Hughes, Frederick Llewelyn 259, 341 Hungarian Jews 292 Hurwitz, Mr William 225 Hyman, Private L. 147–8 Iceland 243, 244–55 immigration, Jewish, to Britain 3, 22–3, 45 Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) 206, 207, 228–9, 282, 355–6 Impregnable (ship) 22 inclusive Orthodoxy 7 Indech, Rev. Jonah 312 India 123–4, 123, 304–10, 312, 313–15, 316– 17, 360 Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment 123 Ingram, LAC Johnie 375 Interdenominational Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Defence 367 Inter-Denominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services 152, 210, 215 Interdenominational Committee on Ministration to the Troops 121, 210 Iraq 243 Isaac, Mr Henry 225 Isaacs, Private Laurie 106 Isaacs, Rev. Simeon 221, 306, 366 “I seek my brethren” (Rabinowitz) 343 Isle of Man Jewish Community 233 Israel, Julius (Jack) 164 Israelstam, Rev. Jacob 239, 240–1, 276 Italian Expeditionary Force 147, 185 Italy 257, 283–7, 288, 289 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 128, 192, 194–5 Jackson, Private Israel 87 Jacobi, Rabbi Harry 240 Jacobs, Captain Simon R. 280, 281 Jacobs, Private Fred 113 Jacobs, Private L. H. 77 Jacobs, S. 285 Jacobs, Sergeant A. 62 Jacobson, Mr 87 Jacobson, Private S. 91 Jaffe, Rev. (Rabbi) Morris see Yaffe (Jaffe), Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris)

421

Jaffray, Brigadier-General W. Stevenson 151 Japan 116, 308, 312, 374 Japanese prisoner of war camps 9, 10, 319–23 Jeremiah, prophet 11–12 Jerevitch, Rev. H. 171, 173–4 Jewish Anzac Day Service 107 Jewish Battalion, proposed for First World War 43–6 Jewish Brigade 277, 289, 290–6, 291 With the Jewish Brigade (Casper) 293 Jewish Burial Service, short form in English for Christian chaplains 87 e Jewish Chaplaincy Service and the Work of H. M. Forces Committee. (Gollop) 213 Jewish Chronicle about Yom Kippur at the Front 71, 148 address by Adler about Jews in the Navy and the Army 26 on Adler 62–3, 70, 74–5 applauded the army 262 Barnett mentioned in despatches 146 on Berman, Abraham 239 on Catholic priest reading Jewish prayer to dying soldier 92 A Chaplain’s Suggestions 144–6 In Defence of the Chaplains 138 on First World War 39–40, 41 on Frankenthal 186, 187 on funerals 86 on Gollop 338 on Grajewsky 182–4 on Hirsch 159, 160 on Homa 283 India, on chaplaincy in 304, 305, 308 on Jewish Battalion 44 on Jewish chaplaincy, 1942 234 on Jewish refugees in Salonika 150 e Jewish Soldier’s Religion 138, 142 on the JWSC 132 JWSC appealed for used copies of Jewish Chronicle 231 on labour battalions 173–4 on Lehmann, Reginald (Reggie)’s death 88–9 Levin, Walter, letter from 184 on Levine, Nathan 166–7 on Lew 307 More Experiences of a Jewish Padre 247 on Morris 147, 149 Morris’s letter to Rev. Edwin Collins 149 Not Enough Jewish Chaplains 235–6

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

notice for soldiers going to France, August 1916 65 on number of chaplains 226 on officiating clergymen 170 on Ohel Jacob (Yaakov) Synagogue in Changi 327 on Palestinian soldiers building a synagaogue in the Western Desert 261 on POWs and civilian internees in Singapore and ailand 323 on Rabinowitz , Louis 262, 341, 342 Rathbone, Sergeant Major V.’s letter 89 on religious observance by Jewish soldiers 17–18, 19 religious services’ lists 79, 80 Rosenthal, Rabbi Dr Ludwig’s letter 91 on Sabbath and festival services held around the world 243 Service on Yom Kippur near the trenches 81 on Silverman 168–9 Soldiers’ Tributes to Chaplains 150–1, 163 Some Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain 246–7 tefillin, great demand for from soldiers in France 226 War Number 61 “Work of Jewish Chaplains” 68 YMCA fundraising advertisements 78–9, 79 Jewish Committee for H. M. Forces (JCHMF) 367, 368, 378, 380 Jewish Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps 214 Jewish Forces Clubs Bombay and Calcutta 307 Bournemouth 242 Jewish Hospitality Clubs Bombay and Calcutta 308, 313 Brussels 353 Jewish Hospitality Committee (JHC) 231, 241, 287, 353, 367 Jewish Hut in the Strand 111 Jewish Lads’ Brigade 20, 25, 133, 152, 153 and Barnett 146, 237 and Isaac Levy 249 Jewish Legion 131–2, 158–9, 182, 192–5, 200 40th Battalion 195 and Falk 42, 72, 75, 128 and Frankenthal 186 opposed by Adler 45, 197

Royal Fusiliers, 38th Battalion, Crown Hill Barracks 193 Jewish Naval and Military Association 109 Jewish Naval and Military Club, London 111 Jewish News, on Grajewsky 182–3 Jewish prisoners of war 119, 130, 231, 318–27 Jewish Recruiting Committee 119 Jewish Relief Association of All India 304 Jewish Returned Soldiers’ Circle 107 Jewish Services Club 231 “e Jewish Soldier and His Religion” symposium, 1919 205 Jewish Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Prayer Book 136, 213 Jewish Soldiers’ Day 257 Jewish Soldiers’ Recreation Club, Alexandria 102 e Jewish Soldier’s Religion (Vivian Simmons) 139–42 Jewish Troops in the Middle East (Louis Rabinowitz) 260–1 Jewish Versions of the Psalms 46 Jewish War Services Committee (JWSC) 42, 76, 118, 119–23, 224–5, 367 appealed for used copies of the Jewish Chronicle 231 applied for additional chaplains 128–9 on appointment of Edgar as Gollop’s deputy 337, 338 and Boas 109 card to be completed by soldiers 120 decided not to recommend Grajewsky as chaplain to forces in Egypt 184 had function to obtain leave or extensions of leave for Jews 132 on Passover leave for Anzacs 105, 106 in the Second World War 220 supplied food for Passover 240 and War Office on officiating chaplains 224–5 “Work of Jewish Chaplains” 68 Jewish War Services Committee for India 124 Jewish Welfare Board of America 115 Jewish World on Adler 44, 49, 52, 63, 70 appointment of chaplains 174 on issue of Jews fighting on both sides in First World War 46–7 on Labofski, Private of Leeds 54 on Lehmann, Reginald (Reggie)’s death 88–9

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notice for soldiers going to France, August 1916 65 on officiating clergymen 170 religious services’ lists 79–80 Rosenthal, Rabbi Dr Ludwig’s letter 91 sailors’ letters to Adler 57 on Simmons, Vivian 134 Special Jewish Unit 45 supported Passover Military Fund 55 YMCA fundraising advertisement 78 Jewish Year Book 23 Jews’ College 6, 22 Jews’ Free School 25 “e Jews in Fiction and in Fact” (Adler) 57 Jews in the Army and Militia (Francis Lyon Cohen) 17–18 e Jews of Britain 1656-2000 (Endelman) 3 e Jews of the Empire and the Great War (Adler) 205, 208 Joseph, Capt. M. 51 Joseph, Rev. Dr Barnett 221, 235, 237–8, 378–9 Judenzählung 198 JWSC see Jewish War Services Committee (JWSC) Kaddish 11, 232, 244, 245, 332, 335 and Arkush 324 and Boas 110 Kahan, Rev. Eli 222, 233 Kahn, Robert 318 Kamenoff, Lance Corporal N. 245 kashrut/kosher food 8–9, 197, 380, 384 dispensation from eating for the period of the war, requested by Lipson 130–1 parcel service 230 Kay, Maurice 244 Kay, Rev. Dr D. M. 181 Kertzer, Morris N., American Chaplain 287, 289 Kindertransport 218 King George VI Coronation Medal 107, 117 Kisch, Brigadier Frederick. H. 257, 259, 262 Kitchener, Lord 32, 131 Kleeman, Rev. S. 222 Kleizer, Rabbi of Cairo 103 Klepfisz, Rabbi Major Dr Heszel 359 Kol Nidrei 9, 10, 114, 231 in Bergen Belsen 1946 295 in Changi jail 1944 322 in Egypt 1941 243 in Egypt 1942 265

423

in Far East 1943 318 in Iceland 1940 244 Korea 381–2 Korean War 366 Kritz, Simon 245–6 Kushner, Tony 12 Labofski of Leeds, Private 54 labour battalions 173–4 Lance Corporal Lionel Altman 307 Landa, Mr. M. J. 146 Landau, Lance Corporal Edward J. 236, 334 Landsberg, Rifleman J. 77 Lang, David 382–3 Lansman, Michael 381 Laski, Neville 219 Laurance, Lance Corporal 333 Lavender, Leo 325–6 Laye, Colonel 16 lay leaders 230, 360, 375 lay preachers 230, 360, 375 leave for Jewish festivals 60, 210, 230, 231, 310, 319, 322 agreed to by Army in First World War 31–2 Anzac Passover leave 105, 117, 121–2 Army Council granted in 1910 29 declined by Admiralty 22, 32 granted if possible for Yom Kippur in the First World War 111 and JWSC 132 and London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews 15 notice to soldiers for Passover 1916 64 Lebzelter, Gisela 206 Leese, General Oliver 286–7 Lehmann, Reginald (Reggie) 88–9 Lelyveld, Private 78 Lerner, J. M. 375 Lerner, Private 342 Lev, Major Aryeh 280 Levene, H. 286 Levene, Rev. E. 91 Lever, Private J. 243 Levi, John 117 Levi, Rabbi Major S. Gershon 232, 235, 342 Levin, Mr J. K. 24 Levin, Rev. Walter 77, 83, 129, 168, 171, 184– 5 on Frankenthal 188–9, 190, 191, 199 Levine, Rev. Ephraim 185 Levine, Rev. Nathan 72, 166–8

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

Levine, Sub-Lieutenant Edward 305 Levinger, Rabbi Lee J. 73 Levy, A/C1 Ralph 380 Levy, Chief Rabbi of Rouen M. Nathan 87 Levy, E. M., Rev. 171 Levy , Grand Rabbin of Paris Alfred 48, 51 Levy, Private Alf 320 Levy, Pte. L. 51 Levy, Pte. M. 51 Levy, Rev. Ephraim Moses 70, 152–3, 198, 199 Levy, Rev. Isaac (known as Harry) 10, 43, 220, 226, 248–50, 262–7, 278–81 at Bergen Belsen concentration camp 356, 359 and Bornstein 274 and Brodie 272, 367 captured by the Germans 2 conducted moral leadership courses 379 and Epstein 268 and Fabricant 277 held Yom Kippur service in Egypt 1941 243 and JCHMF 378 on Korea 381–2 and Louis Rabinowitz 258, 259, 261, 262– 3, 339–40, 345 on Lucki 269 and Montefiore 285 not initially recommended by HMFC 219 and Patashnick 271 provided letter for Alan Field to obtain kosher food 380 on role of Jewish chaplains in the Second World War 389 Senior Jewish Chaplain in the British 2nd Army in Europe 333, 343, 345–9, 350–3 and Urbach 269 visited various Palestinian companies 261 on Yaffe 275 retired in November 1966 376 Levy, Sergeant Denzil 318 Levy, Sergeant Johny (later Lyndon) 317 Lew, Rev. Maurice Abram 219–20, 221, 235, 237, 305, 306–9 Lewis, Corporal Harold, Chaplaincy Card 229 Lewis, Private H. 286 Liberal Jewish Synagogue, provided funding for JWSC 225 Librowicz, Lieutenant R. O. 375 Lichman, Signalman Aubrey 324

Lieberman, Rev. Benjamin Benas 70, 128, 149–50, 199 Lincoln, Lieutenant Commander Ashe 274 Lipkin, Private H. 187 Lipschitz, Rabbi Dr Yaakov (later known as Jacob Gill) 269, 293–5 Lipson, Rev. Solomon 49, 60, 62, 65, 74–5, 104, 129–33 and Boas 109 conducted Annual Chanukah Military Service 48, 61 at conference of Jewish chaplains of the United States Eighth Air Force 234 contributed to Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 46 and Danglow 115 and JWSC 120, 122 Nathan Levine became brother-in-law 167 presented Freedman with an inscribed cup for Kiddush 106 sermon at Armistice Service for Jewish soldiers, 1929 214 served in the Home Command 42, 54, 127 supported Jewish Legion 197 Lisser, Dutch Private Yits 319 Literature Fund, Chief Rabbi’s 230 Livingstone, Rabbi Reuben 379, 380, 383–4 Livingstone, Rev. (later Rabbi) I. 26 London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews, in 1883 and 1884 secured festival leave for Jewish soldiers 15 Loos, Battle of 61 Lucas, Lieutenant-Colonel Francis A. 19 Lucki, Rabbi B. (or Lutzky) 269 Ludendorff Offensive 72 Ludski, Private 83 Lunzer, Captain Henry S. 304, 305, 311 Lush, Brigadier M. S. 258 Lussman, Pte. S. 51 Lyons, L.-Cpl. B. 51 Lyons, Staff Sergeant Charles Henry 324 Maccabean Branch of the British Legion 238 Macks, Corporal 328 Macready, General Sir Nevil 58 Magen David badge see Star of David badge Malta 260 Manchewsky, Mr D. 24 Margulies, Rev. Sigmund 221, 315–16 Marks, Dr John 370

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Marks, Private Samuel 31, 87 marriages 370, 380 Max Hené and Hilde Mayer 347–8, 348 matzo 10, 187, 227, 374 Adler’s appeal for 55–6 airdropped over bases in Burma 310 in Changi jail 320, 322 despatched by JWSC 240 Frankenthal obtained for Egyptian Expeditionary Force 187 Isaac Levy tries to arrange supply 266, 280 Morris supplied for Italian Expeditionary Force 147 Max, Lance-Bombardier 238 Mayer, Hilde 347–8, 348 Melce, Rabbi Major H. 359 Mendelowitch, Gunner J. 141–2 Mendelsohn, Rev. L. 24, 29 Mendoza, Signalman M. 312 Menin Gate, Ypres, memorial service 212 Menorah on activities at Army and RAF districts and bases in Britain and abroad 375 on Solomon Brown 369 Menuhin, Yehudi 354–5 Michaelis, Gunner Frank 110 Miles, Australian Senior Chaplain F. J. 101, 107, 108, 112, 115, 116, 158 Military Service Act 62–3, 73 military services at the Central Synagogue, 1903 27 December 1943 233 see also Chanukah military services Military Training Act 219 Millbank Hospital, London 47 Miller, Isaac 291 Miller, Menahem 288 Miller, Private A. 244–5 Miller, Private I. J. 288 Miller, Rev. Alan W. 374 Milston, Neville 327 Minchom (Mincovitch), Sergeant Maurice Hillel 324 Minkoff, Sergeant Abraham (Bob) 286 minyan 11, 48, 113, 257, 274 in Chungkai 324 to observe Yahrzeit 110, 232, 245, 247 Misell, Flight Lieutenant Julian 242 Monash, General Sir John 102, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 158 and Adler 70, 74 at Chanukah military service, 1914 100

425

Montefiore, L. G. 280, 281, 285 Montgomery, General 258–9, 261, 341 moral and spiritual welfare see spiritual and moral welfare moral leadership courses 378–80, 381, 382, 383 moral welfare 30, 221 Morein, Rev. Wolf 2, 219, 220, 221, 237 Morris, Guido 282 Morris, Private of Barrow-in-Furness 304 Morris, Rev. Louis 11–12, 69, 113, 117, 146–9 appointed to France in September 1916 42, 68, 128 asked JWSC for motor cars for chaplains in France 120 on Freedman 107–8 and Hirsch 156 Morris, Rifleman Isidore 130 Morris, Wolfe 282 Moss, Harry 187 Moss, Mr Joseph 233 motor cars for chaplains in France 54, 68, 120 Munk, Rabbi Dr E. 356 Myer, Denzil 45 Myer, Major Henry 56, 190–1 Myerson, Rev. Abraham (Alec) 221, 235, 335, 342, 346, 355–6 and Brodie 347 conducted Chanukah service in Brussels 351 conducted Seder service in Brussels 353 My experiences as an army chaplain (Vivian Simmons) 138 Nadav, Rabbi Nir 385 Nadich, Judah 352 Nathan, Colonel 381 Nathan, Lewis 50, 50 Nathan, Lieutenant- Colonel Sir Matthew 31 Nathan, Private Henry J. 63–4 Nathan, Rabbi F. G. (or perhaps S.) (or perhaps Natas) 270, 379 Nathan, Sgr. L. 51 National Jewish Hospitality Committee for British and Allied Forces (NJHC or JHC) 231, 241, 287, 353, 367 National Service 366, 367–76 National Servicemen, BAOR, service and a class led by Ginsburg 372 National Servicemen pictured at a Seder service 371

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

NATO Chaplaincy Conclave 384 Navy 2, 56–7, 233, 377 Adler appointed chaplain 24 chaplaincy training 384 and Isaac Levy 280 issue of Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 46 leave for festivals for sailors declined 22, 31–2 in the Mediterranean sought a Jewish chaplain without success 220, 360 Nazi Germany, refugees from, in Australia 116 Nazism 220 Needle, Pte. M. 51 Needleman, Staff Sergeant Jack 239 neurasthenia 74, 137, 161 Newman, Crasman H. 352 Newman, Rev. (from 1955 Rabbi) Isaac 373– 4, 379, 382 Newman, Signalman M. 341 New South Wales Association of Jewish ExServicemen 196 New South Wales Jewish War Memorial 24 New Year, Jewish see Rosh Hashanah New Zealand 100 Nussbaum, Rabbi Chaim 319–23, 326, 327 Nussbaum, Rabbi Perry 318 Occupied Enemy Territory Administration 258 officiating chaplains 3, 224–5, 228, 232, 375 officiating clergymen 170–3, 221–4, 225 Ohel Yaakov (Tent of Jacob) Synagogue 320– 2, 327, 328 invitation to the dedication service 321 Old Testaments 26, 28–9 Operation Musketeer 382 Orkney Islands, first ever Seder 240 Ornstien, Mr P. 120, 127, 172–3 Orthodoxy 7, 8 Oskotsky, Sergeant H. R. 234–5 Owen, Major Wellesley 266 Palestine 218, 256–7, 266, 289 Palestinian chaplains 220, 267–71 Palestinian units 256, 259–61 Papua 243 Park, Air Marshall Sir Keith 286 Parker, Lieutenant-Colonel F. W. 181 Parkes, Rev. James 248 Passover 10, 15, 26, 111, 118, 243

Anzac leave 1917 121–2 in Britain 1944 240–1 in Central Mediterranean and Middle East 1945 288–9 in Changi jail 1942 324 in Colombo 1945 310–11 in Cyprus 1956 382 in Cyprus 1957 383 in Egypt 1916 103 in Egypt 1918 186–7 in Egypt 1944 280–1 in Egypt 1947 369 in Egypt 1948 370 in Europe 1945 353 in Far East 1945 312 in France 1915 54–6 in France 1917 104–5 in France 1940 227 in Germany at BAOR 376, 381 in India 1917, 1918 123–4, 123 in India 1943 304 in India 1944 307 in India 1945 308, 312, 313 in India 1946, 1947 317 in Italy 1944 285–6 with Jewish Brigade 291 in Korea 382 leave 1916 64 leave 1917 117 service during Ludendorff Offensive 72–3 supplies dropped over bases in Burma 310 in West Africa, Second World War 283 western front 1918 158 western front 1919 115, 118, 160, 166, 169 A Passover Message and General Information from the Jewish Chaplain, India 308 Passover Military Fund 55 Patashnick, Chaplain 271 Patterson, Lt. Col. John Henry 179–81, 182, 192, 194 Peake, Colonel W. P. 135 Penslar, Derek 15 Pesach see Passover Philippines 318 Phillips, Corporal M. B. 375 Phillips, Harriett 16 Phillips, Lance-Corporal S.F. 166 Phillips, Rev. Jacob 75–6, 170, 196 Phillips, Rev. Lewis 21 Phillips family 16

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phylacteries 54, 226, 230 pidyon chamor 274 Pike, Rev. Victor 295 Pimontel, Rev. Abraham da Souza 219, 221, 235, 276–7, 284–5, 379 Pintoff, Corporal 375 Pioneer Corps 218 Pitt, Rev. W. P. B. 316 Pius XII, Pope 288 Plaskow, Rev. A. 82, 84, 171 Pollock, Sergt. M. M. 51 Prayer Before a Battle 55 prayer books 26, 28, 31, 46, 103, 116 Jewish Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Prayer Book 136, 213 Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 46, 230 Prayers for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers on Active Service, 1915 60 Prayers for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers on Active Service for the Feast of Passover 5675–1915 54–5 Prayers for Trench and Base (Henriques) 46, 230 Soldiers’ Prayer Book, 1914 46 and Visitation Committee 118, 119 Price, Lionel H. 161–2 Price, Rev. Harris Lewis 70, 91, 113, 161–2 Prince, Rev. G. 130 prisoner of war camps 9, 10, 319–23 prisoners of war 119, 130, 231, 318–27 Progressive Movement 7, 8 Purim 63, 256, 291, 319, 320, 322 Purvin, Private Ralph 143 Queen’s Regulations, 1886 15 Rabbinic status, explanation 6 Rabinowitz, Rabbi Eliezer 240 Rabinowitz, Rev. Dr J. 237 Rabinowitz, Rev. (later Rabbi) Louis 208, 213, 226, 246–8, 256–63, 333, 339–45 broadcast about Jews fighting in the Allied Armies in the Mediterranean 231 called up at beginning of Second World War 220 conducted service on Rosh Hashanah in Belgium 241 on Francis Cohen 25 and involuntary discharge 344–5 organised Passover Seder service on troopship 243

427

sought a posting to Tripoli 266 on Super 334 and Urbach 268, 269 on why Jews should not enlist under another religious denomination 231 RAF 2, 360 and Brodie 227, 360 chaplaincy training 384 moral leadership courses 378 six chaplains in Second World War 220 RAF Abayd, Canal Zone 376 RAF Bridgnorth 375–6 RAF Hednesford 375 RAF Mildenhall 242 RAF Sealand 242 RAF stations, synagogues 242 RAF Synagogue Clubs 375 Raffalovich, Rabbi Isaiah 257, 267 Rapaport, Crasman Louis 382 Rapaport, Rev. Dr Isaac 221, 276, 285, 366, 379 Raperport, Corporal E. 71 Rappaport, Mr. B. 234 Rapport, Flying Officer Gerald 376 Rathbone, Sergeant Major V. 89 Readings from Holy Scripture for the Jewish Members of His Majesty’s Forces 230 Readings from the Holy Scriptures for Jewish Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen 230 Rebenwurzel (Rezek), Rabbi Lieutenant Dr Hanus 359 recruitment, military, First World War 119 refugees 116, 218, 292 Religious Emergency Council, Chief Rabbi’s 230 religious services 40th Battalion of the Jewish Brigade 195 in Aldershot 1880s 16 conducted by Isaac Levy 263 in Egypt 102–3 importance of 11 invitation to soldiers to attend, First World War 55 and JWSC 119 military, December 1943 233 in Second World War 243–5, 256–8, 265, 274 for soldiers on active service 77–8, 79–84, 113–14 see also High Holydays; Passover; Rosh Hashanah; Yom Kippur

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph, 11 November 1945 232 To e Rescue, e Forces of Israel (Louis Rabinowitz) 262 Restan, Rev. Reuben 224 Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia 107 Reverends, explanation of status 6–7 Reynolds, Captain J. 226 Richards, Rev. Isaac 221, 356, 359 Rivlin, Rev. A.E. 270 Roberts, Lord 27 Robertson, Captain 245 Rose, Sergeant Harry 309 Rosen, Able Seaman H. 207 Rosen, Rabbi K. 232 Rosenburg, Aircrasman, RAF of Leeds 304 Rosenthal, Henny Goldstein 244 Rosenthal, Private Charles 87 Rosenthal, Rabbi Dr Ludwig 91 Rosenthal, Sapper I. 83 Rosenthal, Sister Leah 143 Rosh Hashanah 9, 10, 40, 60, 111, 243 in Belgium 1944 241, 342 in Ceylon 1944 307 in Changi jail 1944 322 in Cyprus 1957 383 in Europe 1944 333 in India 1918, 1920 124 in India 1944 305 in Italy 1944 284, 285 in the Middle East, Second World War 265, 271, 274 in West Africa 1942 282 Ross, Captain 326 Roth, A/C 375 Rothschild, Captain E. L. de 286 Rothschild, Lord 17 Rothschild, Major Edmund de 288 Rothschild, Major Lionel de 68, 119, 224–5 “Rothschilds’ Recruiting Office” 119 Rottenberg, Corporal 332–3 Royal Army Chaplains’ Department (RAChD) 1, 28, 33, 220–1, 338, 344 chaplains commissioned as officers in 42 and Levine 166, 167 Royal Fusiliers, 38th Battalion, Crown Hill Barracks 193 Royal Navy see Navy Ruben, G. 151 Rubin-Zacks, Rev. Louis 318 Russian Jews 119, 171, 173–4, 181

“Russian Labour Battalion” 114–15 Sabbath 9, 10, 11, 21, 22, 231 avoiding recruitment on 219 Defence Instruction Notices 384 and Jewish Battalion 43 Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World published lists of services 79–80 Jewish Chronicle published accounts of 243 soldier court martialled for refusing to work on 231 Sacks, Chief Rabbi Jonathan 7 Sadie, Major 283 sailors and Adler 28, 46, 47, 56–7 leave for Jewish festivals 22, 31 Palestinian 280 Salinger, Donald 308 Salmon, Pte. B. 51 Salomon, Rabbi Dr B. 174 Salonika 150–1, 370 Samuel, Mr Donald 367 Samuels, Lieutenant-Colonel F. D. 72, 188, 190, 199 Samuels, Private B. 91 Sandys, Private 57 Sanker, Rev. Dr Louis Morris 349, 350, 351, 352, 356, 359, 360 Saunders, Rabbi Arnold 383 Schiller, Flying Officer S. 375 Schloss, Rev. A. 174 Schonfield, Major William 18–19, 82, 121, 128, 153, 235 Schwab, Lieutenant Harry 261 Schwartz, Dr Morris 370 Schweitzer, Dvr. S. 51 e Sea Dogs of Palestine (Louis Rabinowitz) 262 Sebag Montefiore, Edward 45–6, 119 Second World War 277–82, 284–5, 287–9, 360 Aescoly, Rabbi Dr Aaron Zev 270, 285 Auerbach, Chaplain 269, 285 Bornstein, Rev. Harry 2, 220, 221, 273–5 in Britain, 65,000 served in the armed forces 218 British Expeditionary Force 226–7 Burma 310, 311, 312, 316 Cashdan, Rev. Eli 219, 233, 272, 274, 379 chaplaincy conferences 233 chaplaincy organisation 228–36

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chaplains in Europe 333–5, 341–3, 344, 345–59 Europe, invasion of 332–5 Fabricant, Rev. Isaac N. 221, 233, 240, 277 Far East 318–28 Gollop served as Senior Jewish Chaplain 152, 199 Homa, Dr Bernard 225, 282–3, 338 Home Command 236–40 hospitality to Jewish soldiers 241–2 Iceland 243, 244–55 India 304–10, 317 Jewish Brigade 290–6 Jewish chaplains, group photograph 235 JWSC 224–5 kosher food packages 8 officiating clergymen 221–4 one million Jews served in Allied armies 218 Palestinian chaplains 220, 267–71 Palestinian units 256, 259–61 Pimontel, Rev. Abraham da Souza 219, 221, 276–7, 284–5, 379 RAF 2 Rapaport, Rev. Dr Isaac 221, 276, 285, 366, 379 Royal Army Chaplains’ Department 220– 1 services on troopships 243–4 shortage of chaplains 234–6 synagogues at RAF stations and Army garrisons 242 transport, to visit soldiers 11, 12 Urbach, Rabbi Dr Ephraim Elimelech 268–9, 283, 288, 289 Yaffe (Jaffe), Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) 221, 275, 295–6, 308, 309–11 see also Barnett, Rev. Arthur; Berman, Rabbi Myer; Brodie, Rev. (later Rabbi) Israel; Danglow, Rev. Jacob (Jack); Hirsch, Rev. David Isaac; Hooker, Rev. Solomon (Solly); Levy, Rev. Isaac (known as Harry); Passover; Rabinowitz, Rev. (later Rabbi) Louis; Rosh Hashanah; Seder services Seder services 10, 111, 115, 158, 166, 240–1, 243 in Changi jail 1945 322, 324–5 in Egypt 1944 280–1 in Egypt 1947 369 in Egypt 1948 370 in Egypt 1955 374

429

in Europe 1940 227 in Europe 1945 353 in India 1918 123 in India 1944 307 in India 1946, 1947 317 in Italy 1943 257 in Italy 1944, 1945 284, 285–6, 289 with Jewish Brigade 291 in Korea 1953 382 for National Servicemen 371 for National Servicemen, BAOR 376, 381 in Palestine 1943 266 in Palestine 1945 289 in the Philippines 1945 318 in Sime Road camp 1944 320 in West Africa 1944, 1945 283 Sefer Habrigada Hayehudit – a History of the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group (Lipschitz) 293–4 Seon, Leading Aircrawoman M. 242 Segal, Gunner M. 312 Segal, Lieutenant Marcus 84, 85 Seligson, Rabbi 305, 307, 308, 310 Seller, Lieutenant Max 89, 90 Sequerra, Corporal G. 305 Service of Intercession, 2 January 1915 48 Shandel, Rev. H. 171 Shanghai Volunteer Corps 214 Shapiro, Rev. Aaron 221, 237 Sharlin, Yehuda 292 Shavuot 167, 169 at Bergen Belsen 358 shell shock 74, 137, 161 Sherling, Sergeant Harry 328 Sherman, Harry 376 Shertok (Sharrett), Moshe 291–2 Shetlands 240–1 Shilling, Private H. 65 Shindler, Corporal I. 283 Shone, Leading Aircraman 242 Sidney, Private J. 87 Sierra Leone 243 signal from SJC Rabbi Israel Brodie on 9 February 1946 to Rev. Barry Greenberg 314 Silman, Captain Dr Harry 319, 322, 323 Silver Jubilee Medal 167 Silverman, Rev. Henry Phillips 72, 129, 168– 70, 199 Simchat Torah 322 Sime Road camp 320 Simmons, Pte. R. 51, 87 Simmons, Rev. Leonard M. 133

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Jewish Chaplaincy in the British Armed Forces

Simmons, Rev. Vivian George 60, 61, 63, 74, 78, 133–42 Adler defended him 196–7 appointed as additional chaplain in France 42, 47, 127 and Barnett 143 and Danglow 113 ministered to Australian troops 65 My experiences as an army chaplain 146 received ten days’ guidance from Adler in Europe 129 Simms, Rev. Dr J. M. 49, 51, 52–3, 152 Simon, Captain E. C. 86 Simpson, Sapper Israel 332–3 Singer, Private Michael Lewis 320 Singer, Rev. Simeon 18 Smith, Bishop Taylor 43, 49 Smith, Sergeant Issy 61 “smokers” 147 Snape, Michael 218 Sober, Private Leonard 316 Sola, Lieutenant Raphael D. de 281 Soldiers’ Children Scholarship Trust 107 Soldiers from Judea. Palestinian Jewish Units in the Middle East 1941-1943 (Louis Rabinowitz) 262 Soldiers’ Prayer Book, 1914 46 Solomon, Major Harold 150 Solomon, Rev. S. M. 116 Some Experiences of a Jewish Chaplain (Cosgrove) 238 “Some Reminiscences” (Adler) 28 Somme 65, 104 South African chaplains 100, 256, 257, 261, 265, 289 Southend Standard 151 Southern Command and Bernard Hooker 368 and Brodie 227, 338 and Casper 290 and Chait 239 and Falk 192 and Gollop 228 and Isaac Levy 248 and Isaacs 306 and Joseph 238 and Lipson 133 and Morein 237 and Pimontel 277 and Seder servicea 240 and Weintrobe 236 Specterman, Signalman A. 309

Spero, Pte. J. 51 Spero, Rev. E. 61 Spicker, Corporal F. 163 Spicker, Pte. F. 51 Spillman, Private S. 309 spiritual and moral welfare 11, 30, 218, 221, 224, 230 and lay leaders and preachers 360 and Livingstone 384 Spitzer, Rabbi Samuel de Beck 385 Staale, Private L. 62 Star of David badge 1, 1, 43, 101, 221 and Adler 33, 52 Zion Mule Corps 181 Steinberg, Lieutenant Samuel 233 Steinberg, M., Polish chaplain 366 Steinberg, Private H. 132, 138 Stern, Leonard H. 171 Stern, Rev. J. F. 171 Sterne, Sapper Ernest C. 333 St. John’s Wood Synagogue, service for Jewish personnel of Allied Armed Forces 1945 232 Stoll, Flight Lieutenant Dr Basil 327–8 Succot 114, 274, 322 Sudetenland crisis 219 Suez crisis 382 Summers, Corporal A. 288 Super, Cecil David 271 Super, Rev. (later Rabbi) Arthur Saul 219, 221, 235, 293, 334–5, 342 synagogue/ambulance vehicle presented by the Jewish community of Cairo to BAOR 373 Syria 243, 275 Tabizel, Fusilier H. 287–8 Tannenbaum, Rabbi D. 73 Tate, Rev. Mr. 135 Taylor, Private H. 319 Taylor, Rabbi Simon 385 Taylor Smith, Bishop 33 tefillin 54, 226, 230 Teitelbaum, Rabbi First Lieutenant Herbert D. 382 Teitlebaum, Samuel 285 Tel-el-Kebir 102 Territorial Decoration 367 Territorial Force 1, 23, 33, 212, 366 and Adler 29, 32, 43, 205 Test Act, 1673 14–15 anksgiving Services, 13 May 1945 232 e Times, on Adler’s role in France 52

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Tobruk 256, 257, 265 Tomback, Captain S. 273 Toperoff, Rev. S. P. 246 training courses, chaplaincy 221, 275, 384 training schools, chaplaincy 129, 384 “e Train of Jews to Bergen-Belsen” (Yaffe) 295 transport, to visit soldiers 11–12, 54, 109, 136, 148, 279, 309 Tribich, Rev. Reuben 22 Tripoli 258, 260, 262, 266, 274 Troglodytes 273–4 troopships, services 243–4 Trumpeldor, Captain Joseph 182, 192 e truth about the British Jews at the front in the Great War (Adler) 208 Tunis 258 United States Eighth Air Force, Jewish chaplains 234 United Synagogue applied for a grant of remuneration for Adler from War Office 26 asked for the appointment of more chaplains in France 128 Jewish Committee for H. M. Forces 367 Jewish military chaplaincy controlled by 7 and JWSC 225 nominated Vivian Simmons as chaplain in France 127 only in the 1960s were ministers permitted to become Rabbis 6 see also Visitation Committee Universal Service League 24 unofficial chaplaincy 4, 6, 200–1 Urbach, Rabbi Dr Ephraim Elimelech 268–9, 283, 288, 289 Usher, Sergeant Moses Lewis 236 Van Raalte, Rev. S. P. 24 Velmans, Dutch Sergeant Loet/Lou 322 Ventnor Hospital, chaplaincy visits 24 Victoria Cross 218 Victory Medal 161 Vilensky, Rabbi Moshe 356, 357 Visitation Committee 7, 15, 19–20, 21–2, 26, 42, 118–19 from 1946 no longer concerned with military chaplaincy 225 applied for the appointment of additional chaplains 127

431

and Chanukah Military Service 27, 28 Chaplaincy Sub-Committee 219 contributed to maintenance of a synagaogue at Aldershot 30–1 and Gollop 212–13 H. M. Forces Committee 366–7 and Inter-Denominational Advisory Committee on Army Chaplaincy Services 210–11 on officiating clergymen 170 recommended appointment of Michael Adler as Jewish Chaplain 23–4 replaced JWSC 122–3 requested leave from the Army Council for Jewish soldiers to observe the festivals 29 responsible for matters military aer First World War 209 on Vivian Simmons 134 “e Visitation of Jewish Soldiers” (Francis Lyon Cohen) 23 Volunteer Force 23, 29 Wagner, Rev. Maurice 221, 355 Waite, Major Fred 181 Walker, Rev. Michael Stanhope 65 War Graves Department 114 War Office agreed to issue of Prayer Book for Jewish Sailors and Soldiers 46 agreed to supply soldiers with a Jewish Bible and Prayer Book 31 appointed additional chaplains 128 authorised “special religious ministrations” in First World War 40 decided to create a reserve of Jewish chaplains 213, 215 declined Jewish representation on Interdenominational Committee on Ministration to the Troops 121 declined then agreed to appoint a second Jewish chaplain in France, 1915 127 did not sanction Jewish Battalion 44–6 granted the use of a hut at Aldershot to be converted into a synagogue 30–1 and leave for Jewish festivals 15 recognised Jewish Religious War Services Committee 224 United Synagogue applied to for a grant of remuneration for Adler 26 on the work of officiating chaplains 224 Warshawski, W., 2nd Air Mechanic 68

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Wartski, Lieutenant 376 Wasserzug, Rev. David 171 Watkins, Owen S. 207–8 weddings 370, 380 Max Hené and Hilde Mayer 347–8, 348 Wedgewood Services Club 233 Weill, Rev. M. 57 Weinberg, Rev. J. 222 Weingott, Trooper Abe 56 Weinstein, Simon (“Sammy”) 256, 261, 265 Weintrobe, Rev. J. 221, 235, 236–7 Weisman, Rev. Malcolm 376, 377, 378, 379, 380, 383 welfare see spiritual and moral welfare Wernick, Lance Corporal Cyril 320, 328 West Africa 282–3 Westbury, Mr 367 West Central Jewish Working Men’s Club 29 Western Synagogue, two hundred year history 1761-1961 146 Wexler, Rabbi W. 57 What the Jews of the British Empire did in the Great War – Read and learn the True Facts (Adler) 208 Williams, Rev. 58 Williams, Sapper T. H. 232 Wilsack, Corporal S. 305 Wince, Private David Leonard 325 Wittler, Rabbi R. 369 Wollrauch, William 150–1 women soldiers 260 Wood, General Sir Evelyn 17 Woolfe, Rev. L. 171 working class Jews, joined the army in the 1880s 16 e Work of H. M. Forces Committee 213 world faith chaplains 384–5

Yaffe (Jaffe), Rabbi Dr Moshe Avraham (Morris) 221, 235, 275, 295–6, 308, 309–11 Yahrzeit 11, 110, 232, 245, 247, 324 YMCA 51–2, 57, 58, 69, 78 appeal for accommodation 79 and Barnett 146 and Boas 108, 109, 111 huts 110–11, 120 and Vivian Simmons 136 Yom Kippur 9, 10, 243 in Belgium 1944 342–3 in Changi jail 1944 322 in Cyprus 1957 383 in Europe 1944 333, 335 in India 1943 304 in Italy 1944 284 in Italy 1945 289 leave granted if possible 111 in the Middle East, Second World War 265, 271–2, 274 in the Philippines 1945 318 at RAF station 1944 242 in West Africa 1942 282–3 on the western front 1915 60, 61, 81–2 on the western front 1916 68–9 on the western front 1917 71 on the western front 1918 83, 113, 114, 148, 159 Young, Corporal Alfred 305 Zionism 25, 153, 196, 198, 199, 220 and Louis Rabinowitz 257, 345 Zion Mule Corps 42, 102, 179–82 Zolli, Rabbi Israele 289 Zyl, Rabbi Werner Van der 249