Hermann Adler: The King's Chief Rabbi 1912676451, 9781912676453

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Yet today Hermann Adler, called ‘My Chief Rabbi’ by Edward VII, is largely forgotten. The man who. kept the community Orthodox, who helped the country absorb some 300,000 Jewish refugees from pogroms in Europe, who gave over 2,000 sermons and addresses in a 30-year career as Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi, is hardly known. In this new biography Derek Taylor has researched his life and proved that, far from the view of Adler as subject to the community’s lay leaders, he was, in fact, a Rothschild on his mother’s side and very much his own man.

Derek Taylor, OBE, has a history degree from Cambridge University and was for many years a main board director of Grand Metropolitan, the tenth largest company in the country in his time. He has published many books including Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler (2019); Defenders of the Faith (2017); Chief Rabbi Hertz (2014); ‘Thank You for Your Business’ (2012); Solomon Schonfeld: A Purpose in Life (2009); Jewish Parliamentarians (2008); Don Pacifico (2008) and British Chief Rabbis: 1664–2006 (2006).

The King’s Chief Rabbi

With a foreword by Lord Jacob Rothschild, a fascinating life unfolds of a man who fought his many opponents to a standstill, and tackled successfully the greatest challenges the community had faced since the Restoration.

Hermann Adler:

When Chief Rabbi Adler died in 1911, his friend, Sir Adolph Tuck wrote: ‘The fame of Dr. Hermann Adler will be handed down to posterity and the great place occupied by him, widely recognised as it is already in our generation, will loom still more vividly in the future, when a broader view of his achievements will be possible.’ Even King George V sent his condolences.

Hermann Adler The King’s Chief Rabbi

Cover image: Caricature of Rabbi Dr Hermann Adler CVO, 1904

Catalyst House 720 Centennial Court Centennial Park Elstree WD6 3SY, UK VALLENTINE MITCHELL

814 N. Franklin Street Chicago IL 60610 USA

ISBN 978 191 2676 45 3

Derek Taylor

VA L L E N T I N E M I T C H E L L

Derek Taylor Foreword by

Lord Jacob Rothschild OM

www.vmbooks.com VALLENTINE MITCHELL

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Hermann Adler The King’s Chief Rabbi

Derek Taylor

VALLENTINE MITCHELL LONDON • CHICAGO, IL

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First published in 2021 by Vallentine Mitchell Catalyst House, 720 Centennial Court, Centennial Park, Elstree WD6 3SY, UK

814 N. Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois, IL 60610 USA

www.vmbooks.com Copyright © 2021 Derek Taylor

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

ISBN 978 1 912676 45 3 (Cloth) ISBN 978 1 912676 46 0 (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 Foreword by Lord Jacob Rothschild OM

v

Preface and Acknowledgements

vi

1. The Story So Far

1

2. The Early Days

19

3. Setting Down Roots

37

4. The Path to the Chief Rabbinate

57

5. The Eastern Question

77

6. The Federation

96

7. Chief Rabbi, As Planned

115

8. The Ablest Preacher

134

9. The Supporting Cast

155

10. The Member of the Establishment

176

11. Liberals and Socialists

196

12. Zionism: The Egregious Blunder

215

13. Protecting Shechita

234

14. The Public Figure

252

15. Conclusion

271

Appendices A to E

283

Bibliography

299

Index

301

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For Simon, who had the idea in the first place.

Also by Derek Taylor British Chief Rabbis, 1664–2006 Don Pacifico, The Acceptable Face of Gunboat Diplomacy Jewish Parliamentarians Solomon Schonfeld The Sunderland Beth Hamedresh Thank You For Your Business Hillel House – A Lesson in Tolerance Hertz – The Wars of the Lord Jews’ College, 1855–2016 Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler: The Forgotten Founder Jewish Nobel Prize Winners: From Albert Einstein to Bob Dylan

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Foreword The history of the Adler’s and the Rothschilds’ relationship began in the Frankfurt ghetto in the eighteenth century. Some 100 years later Hermann Adler was elected Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Empire by the United Synagogue Council, whose president was Nathaniel Rothschild, later the first Lord Rothschild. As this book recounts, their cooperation was important over the next 30 years as they did everything in their power to cope with the enormous influx of impoverished refugee Jews, who had fled Russia and for the most part had found their way to the East End of London. The Rothschilds had established themselves with great success as merchant bankers, but the family always remembered that charity is one of the redeeming features praised in the annual Yom Kippur service. In this context, Hermann Adler contributed enormously as Chief Rabbi to the Jewish community in the UK and beyond. It is, therefore, highly appropriate that this book should tell the story of this remarkable and dedicated man, a great spiritual leader. There is a family relationship, for Hermann Adler was a Rothschild on his mother’s side. After many years, when he has been almost forgotten, it gives me particular pleasure to write this foreword and for the story of his life to be told. Lord Jacob Rothschild OM

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Preface and Acknowledgements When Hermann Adler died in 1911, the new King George V’s secretary wrote to the United Synagogue: As the King does not know the Chief Rabbi’s family well, will you please convey to them His Majesty’s sincere regret at the death of Dr Adler, who His Majesty had known for many years and had always regarded with esteem and respect. The King deeply empathises with Dr Adler’s family and with the whole Jewish community in their great loss. So how does a Chief Rabbi of that eminence get forgotten? Because, apart from the prayer for all the Chief Rabbis on Yom Kippur, you seldom hear of Hermann Adler today. Looking back in 2020 there have, of course, been some massive changes in the community. The East End Jews have practically disappeared into Edgware and Stanmore, though Stamford Hill remains. The poverty of the sweatshops is a thing of the past. Yet some things haven’t altered. The community remains largely Orthodox and middle-of-the-road. This isn’t true of many countries overseas. What is true is that much of the modern Jewish community in Britain is still the result of Hermann Adler’s work and this biography is much overdue. I would like to thank Lord Rothschild for being kind enough to write the Foreword. The community owes a great deal to the Rothschilds. As far as the photographs are concerned, while every effort has been made to locate images that are in the public domain and have a creative commons licence, it may be that in some instances authorship of images has not been found or is incorrect. If this is the case I apologize and will make every effort to correct any mistakes in future editions. This book has been very much improved by the help I have received from Rabbi Raymond Apple, the Emeritus Rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, Australia. Rabbi Apple is just as fascinated by Hermann Adler

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Bibliography

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as I am, and we have tried to piece together what was an important life for the Jewish community in Britain. I would also like to thank Elkan Levy, Karen Robson and the University of Southampton Archive Library and Michael Roodyn, Erla Zimmels and the Jews College Library, The Jewish Chronicle archive is, as always, invaluable. Where there are still errors, they are, of course, entirely my fault.

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1 The Story So Far

Hermann Adler was probably the most criticized of British Chief Rabbis. He was the second son of Nathan Marcus Adler, and was born in 1839 in Hanover in Germany, where his father was Chief Rabbi He succeeded him in 1890 as the British and Empire Chief Rabbi on the death of the patriarch, who had been elected to the post in 1845. Because of his father’s ill health he was appointed Delegate Chief Rabbi by the United Synagogue council a decade earlier in 1879 when he was only 40 years old. Nathan Marcus Adler came to Britain after serving as Chief Rabbi of Hanover for more than ten years. He was the first German Rabbi to earn a Ph.D and his father was also a Rabbi; Mordecai Adler, originally from Frankfurt. Although the election has been characterized as democratic because any synagogue could vote for the candidate they wanted, there was a proviso which made it anything but deserving that description. To get a vote, the congregation had to contribute £5 a year to the maintenance of the Chief Rabbi’s office. That financial constraint restricted most congregations to one or two votes, because they couldn’t afford more. By contrast, the wealthy Great Synagogue in London had 50 votes and, in addition, their senior warden was related to Adler. The three major London Synagogues actually had 95 votes out of 141. As a candidate for the chief rabbinate, Adler had also been recommended for the post by the former governor general of Hanover, the Duke of Cambridge. The Duke represented William IV of England in that role as the two countries had the same king. This was because when Queen Anne died in 1714, the heir presumptive was a Catholic of the House of Stuart. George of Hanover was 45th in line of succession to Anne, but he was the first Protestant and, as such, was the choice of the government. And this is why both countries had the same king for over 120 years. The Duke of Cambridge was a great supporter of Adler because he felt deeply indebted to him. When his wife was very ill during pregnancy, Adler had conducted prayers for her recovery in the Hanover Synagogue. Her

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doctors had despaired of her survival but she had recovered and, in gratitude, Cambridge supported Adler for the rest of his life. So Adler had friends at the top of the Jewish community in Britain and friends at court. Sir Moses Montefiore, the lay leader of the British community, was another supporter. He appreciated Adler’s sermons, when good sermons were a rarity in British synagogues. Ministers were, at most, expected to address their congregations twice a year, on the Sabbaths preceding Passover and Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. The addresses on those occasions were, traditionally, more droches (lessons) than sermons. In addition Montefiore was grateful for Adler’s support in Hanover for one of his charities. But while Adler had all the social qualifications needed for his new post, there was also a hidden agenda. Adler’s main objective during his ministry was to ensure that the majority of the British Jewish community remained in the Orthodox camp. Where the Reform movement was making considerable progress back in Germany, Adler set out to try to ensure that it attracted little support in Britain. There is a misunderstanding among many Jews and non-Jews about the role of a Chief Rabbi. So it’s important to recognize that in Judaism the word ‘Rabbi’ means ‘teacher’. A Chief Rabbi is, therefore, a head teacher. The job specification of a head teacher is to see that his flock are taught correctly; that they know that 2+2=4 and not 5. It is perfectly possible that the pupils might prefer to see the effect of it equalling 5. They may decide that, in their view, it does equal 5. They may feel that equalling 5 is more impressive and modern. The Orthodox teacher, however, can’t change his mind to suit the pupils; as far as the Orthodox Rabbis are concerned, 2+2 will always equal 4. It was the same principle with Orthodox Judaism in Britain when the Adlers were the Chief Rabbis. The rules were laid down in the sixth-century Talmud. They are based on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, which Orthodox Jews believe were given to Moses by the Almighty on Mount Sinai; the rules are known as the Written Law. The laws may well be considered restrictive; Orthodox Jews might decide to try eating bacon, but they know it’s against the rules. If every member of an Orthodox congregation suddenly decided he would like bacon to be made kosher, the Orthodox Rabbi could do nothing about it. Bacon is forbidden, the Rabbi is a teacher and he’s there to state the rules, whether the congregation like them or not. This mission statement is fundamental to understanding the life of Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler. He was taught the rules by the father he loved and by many other Talmudic experts. He believed the rules were G-d given

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and all his life he was determined to explain and defend them. If there was opposition, so be it; he wasn’t deserting his post. Many writers approaching the life of Hermann Adler choose to ignore this basic fact. He is accused of not having been flexible, as if 2+2, if not equalling 5, might as a compromise be agreed to total 4 and a half. Adler has been called ‘conservative’ which is a loaded word like ‘radical’. There is nothing wrong with something which has stood the test of time. Britain has been a parliamentary democracy for centuries, and it’s still wrong to hit old ladies over the head and steal their handbags. As Hermann Adler was the Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi for 32 years, it is only to be expected that his life is regularly judged by its theocratic implications and its religious context. To make an accurate judgment, however, it is also necessary to consider the more human side of the story. Hermann Adler, perhaps first and foremost, was the last of the family of Adler Rabbis, which went back to the thirteenth century in Germany, and probably beyond in Mediterranean countries. As the oldest earldom in Britain, the Earl of Arundel, only dates from 1136, Adler’s patrimony was pretty impressive. In Frankfurt, they had led the community on many occasions over the centuries, and their neighbours in the Frankfurt ghetto had been such famous Jewish families as the Schiffs and the Rothschilds. When a particularly unpleasant antisemite in Frankfurt had at last been overthrown in the seventeenth century, the head of the family had led the procession through the city which celebrated the event, and he carried the emblem of the principality which was the Reichsadler, the black eagle. At that point they changed the family name from Kahn to Adler. One Frankfurt ruler had, however, crowded the Jews into a small area of the city, known as the ghetto, and this community was persecuted at regular intervals. They weren’t even allowed to leave the ghetto on a Sunday, for fear of insulting the populous by their very presence. The Jews’ insistence on not accepting Christianity was considered an affront to the other inhabitants of the city and punishable by discriminatory legislation. During the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the community had to provide the state with 1,000 shirts, 2,000 sheets, one thaler (a coin containing an ounce of silver), per head, and 10 per cent of their personal property. Little tolerance was shown over the centuries. When the Jews, hopelessly overcrowded in the ghetto, had asked permission to live elsewhere in 1769, the town council turned them down and had responded that this was ‘an example of the unbounded arrogance of the people who

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expand every effort to take all opportunities to set themselves up as equals to the Christian citizens’. A similar attitude was typical of all the states in Germany. That was the world Hermann Adler’s grandfather had grown up in. When the family moved to Hanover, so that Rabbi Mordecai could study at a seminary set up by a Jewish banker, the situation improved very little. As spokesmen for the Jewish community, Chief Rabbis have always had to deal with antisemitism. It is known as the longest hatred, but its cause and effect need to be understood. Its effect has been the almost continual persecution of Jews somewhere in the world throughout the centuries. Its cause goes back to primitive nature. When a baby is born, nature provides it with certain attributes. The ability to suckle, which enables it to get nourishment; an immune system it gets from its mother for a short time which fights disease, and an inherent fear of strangers, which peaks from six to twelve months and keeps it close to the protective family; that fear seldom disappears altogether. Jews have many of the attributes of strangers. They belong to an ancient religion which, until the creation of Israel, made them a minority wherever they lived. The Orthodox Jews could be recognized as such because they covered their heads and, as refugees in the East End of London in Adler’s time, often wore the clothing which was fashionable in Poland a century before. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, and their prayers were in Hebrew. The retroussé nose was not normally a feature of their appearance. They were strangers. Today, in a multi-cultural society, the solution to the problem has been found. Other cultures are better understood, mixing more reassures people that strangers are normally harmless and may well have many stellar qualities. This was not the world in which Hermann Adler worked. Religion was more important in the nation’s culture and the last legal elements of discrimination were only abolished in his lifetime. The length of Hermann Adler’s ministry was exceptional. He was, effectively, the Orthodox Jewish CEO in Britain for those 32 years and few CEOs last for that long, although Chief Rabbi Hertz managed 34 years after him. Vanity Fair magazine called him ‘the greatest Jew divine in the world’ and the contemporary Hebrew essayist, A’Had Ha’am, ‘the most influential Rabbi in all Judaism’. Adler was too much of a realist to be taken in by the publicity, but he earned a lot of respect through his own efforts and not just because he was his father’s son. The Adlers were Rabbis, as some families are farmers, some sailors and some doctors. It was in the bones, a family tradition, a profession and a

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living. Indeed, when Hermann Adler was appointed Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, it was the top Rabbinic job in the world. The basic £2,000 salary is no less than £200,000 in present-day money, plus a home and an office. In addition, it was customary for the families involved to send the Chief Rabbi a present if he officiated at an event like a wedding or a barmitzvah. He would have additional financial support from friends, like Sir Moses Montefiore, and was even left legacies by members of the community. In 1887 Lionel Louis Cohen, the first president of the United Synagogue, left him £100 in his will, which is worth £10,000 today. Financially, becoming the British and Empire Chief Rabbi was the gold medal. Hermann Adler worked hard all his life to deserve it. At the same time, Hermann Adler can definitely lay claim to being the most criticized Chief Rabbi since Jews were allowed back into Britain in Stuart times. He faced criticism in his lifetime from Jews and non-Jews from many quarters. By ritual reformers among the older settled parts of the Jewish community, who aspired to the formality and dignity of church services. By the more Orthodox, though poverty-stricken, emigrants who poured into the East End of London after the pogroms in Russia and were used to the customs of the communities they had left behind. But then, as Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons in 1941: ‘I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.’ A great deal of the criticism Adler suffered had parted with reality. He was also criticized by the members of the Reform Synagogues and the new Liberal movement, who considered much of traditional Judaism to be oldfashioned and outdated. The new Socialists were also critics and they were very often atheists and secular. Conversionists and Christian theologians also took issue with him as they were still trying to bring the Jews round to their way of thinking. He wasn’t popular with very Orthodox communities in the East End such as Machzikei Hadath, who rejected the concept of a Chief Rabbi under any circumstances. He was even criticized by many mohalim, who perform circumcisions, and by a number of kosher butchers, because he insisted on their compliance with the laws of the Talmud. Now it’s a free country and everybody is entitled to their own views. Equally, however, it is perfectly legitimate to produce evidence which contradicts criticism. The same applies to Anglo-Jewish history writers. Many have criticized Adler as being a theological lightweight. They provide no convincing evidence, however, to back up this contention. The only

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rabbinic exam you can take is semichah, the rabbinical diploma and, as a young man, Adler had passed that with flying colours at the feet of distinguished Rabbis in Prague. In his day few of his religious critics in the old established British Jewish congregations had managed to obtain semicha. It takes years of study. Furthermore, many Anglo-Jewish historians choose to ignore the fact that, as Adler was Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi for all those years, he had little time to devote to theological study; his job specification was to carry out the duties of his office efficiently and he was never short of challenges. Even so, he left a list of no less than 2,000 sermons and papers he had delivered during his ministry and, originally, three eminent Continental Rabbis had given him his semicha, In addition the distinguished Russian Rabbi, Yitzchak Spector, had called him a Posek (a reliable expert) which was high praise in the Rabbinic world. In his time he contributed to a new Haggadah (prayer book) for Passover, the 1906 Jewish Encyclopaedia and the set of Festival prayer books, known as the Routledge Machzorim. He also did a lot of historical research on the relationship between the Crown and the community before the expulsion in 1290; the status of the Episcopos Omnium Judaeorum. He took up theological cudgels to counteract Christian critics like Bishop Colenso and Professor Godwin Smith. If his Talmudic expertise was questioned by the right wing and the non-Orthodox, nobody ever suggested that Adler wasn’t a hard worker. Today over a million Jews are very Orthodox and are described as Charedim. In their communities the Rabbi is very much in charge of a wide range of decisions in the lives of the congregants. This process started in the eighteenth century but it developed very slowly. It did have a limited effect in the British Jewish community, among the refugees from the pogroms in Hermann Adler’s time, but it hardly affected his own decisions. The only exception was a major argument over Shechita, the humane way of slaughtering animals for food, which soured relations with the very Orthodox in the East End for years. Not because he was too rigid in his judgment, but because he was accused of not being strict enough. Other writers have suggested that Adler should have accepted fundamental changes, such as having far more prayers in synagogue services in English, rather than Hebrew. The rationale is that most of the member of the congregations, for which he was the spiritual authority, couldn’t translate the Hebrew prayers they were reading. This is still true within many Jewish congregations today, but the alternative solution to the problem is, of course, to learn Hebrew.

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It’s the same as Catholic prayers being in Latin. It would, admittedly, involve a considerable effort on the part of the worshipper, but a lot of people do speak more than one language; a large number of Indians speak English. The old joke was that if people didn’t understand English, it was necessary to speak up! It was a joke though. Did it matter? Well, the Israelis only speak Hebrew today because enough Orthodox Jews, after being expelled from the Holy Land by the Romans, kept the language alive for over 1,500 years. They believed it did matter and with sufficient effort and determination, they proved it was possible for Hebrew to survive. The size of the task is easily understood by those devoted to maintaining Gaelic and Welsh, not to mention the almost total disappearance of Latin as a spoken or written language in ordinary life. There are plenty of dead languages but, amazingly, Hebrew isn’t among them. This achievement tends to be taken for granted nowadays, but it is, in fact, absolutely remarkable. It is also true that where Adler could legitimately be flexible, he was; for instance, he allowed the prayer for the Royal Family to be read in English, as well as introducing English Bible readings on festivals. He also agreed to have services start later on the Sabbath morning, and to a reduction in the number of penitential prayers. Orthodox Judaism is a difficult faith to follow anyway. The Sabbath morning services last two and a half hours, there are three services every day, there are restrictions to what you can eat and even wear. In all there are over 600 laws to observe. Very few, even Orthodox Jews, can find the willpower to obey them all. And that is if they even know them all. All of which leads many to have worrying guilt complexes at falling down on the task of obeying the instructions of the Almighty. When the help of the Almighty would be particularly beneficial in times of trouble, they can find this very stressful. When a non-Orthodox segment of the faith abolishes the rules and holds that its members can make up their own minds which laws in the Talmud to observe and which to ignore, a side effect can be that this helps to assuage the guilt complexes. This is often described as ‘modernization’, although the religion has usually been kept up to date in scientific matters over the centuries, and a number of rules in the Talmud were a millennia or more ahead of their time. To take just one law, after a child is circumcised, the mohel (surgeon) has to suck the wound. The ignorant would consider this a barbaric ritual and some modern writers have condemned the practice as such. But the

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medical reason, as we now know, is that saliva is a powerful anaesthetic. Yet that procedure was laid down in the Talmud in the sixth century. Most civilizations in Biblical times thought that disease was the penalty of the gods and there was nothing that could be done about it. This was not the Jewish approach, and it is one reason why so many rulers over the years had Jewish doctors, including Queen Elizabeth I. It probably also accounted for so many Jewish Nobel Prize winners in the twentieth century. The value of cleanliness is a very modern concept, but there are a large number of laws in the Bible dealing with the importance of hygiene. For example, every Biblical soldier was given a spade to deal with his effluent. The Talmud is a remarkable set of laws; the financial crisis of a few years ago could have been avoided if the perpetrators had learned the lesson in 2 Kings, Chapter 12, 4:8. ‘Where the king had given the temple priests tax money to repair structural damage to the temple.’ When the king had been on the throne for 23 years, the repairs still hadn’t been made. There is also good advice in Ecclesiastes 4:5: ‘Better is it that thou shouldn’t not vow than that one should vow and not pay.’ It would be quite wrong, of course, to suggest that those who belong to the non-Orthodox segments of Jewry aren’t 100 per cent sincere, and just as devout and hygienic as the Orthodox. One’s religion is the ultimate personal decision. One minister with whom Hermann Adler would come into serious dispute was Rev Morris Joseph, whom Adler would refuse permission to serve a congregation for which, as Chief Rabbi, he was responsible; in this case the Hampstead. They disagreed on many subjects but Joseph did acknowledge with Adler that faith was a subject on which people had to make up their own minds. There were attempts to offer alternatives to the Chief Rabbi’s orthodoxy. In Hermann Adler’s time a new branch of the faith was launched by two members of important Jewish families; Claude Montefiore and Lily Montagu. They called it the Jewish Religious Union and later the Liberal Synagogue. When Joseph became a Reform minister, he converted Montefiore’s second wife. Being a free country everybody is entitled to follow – or not follow – any kind of religion they choose. It is necessary, however, for the outsider to decide whether Claude Montefiore, in advocating the adoption of his version of Judaism, was competent to know what Judaism should be, better than all his religious antecedent authorities. Was his version better than the laws in the Pentateuch, and those which emerged later from the Oral Law, in which famous Talmudists had expounded on its meaning in depth? Was he a better brain than all those

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who had contributed to the Oral Law? Better, for instance, than such towering traditional intellects as Rashi, Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon? The Oral Law was meticulously built up, piece by piece, by learned men over many centuries and its fundamentals haven’t changed as far as the Orthodox Jews are concerned. It is also important to realize that, even if Hermann Adler had wanted to compromise with Claude Montefiore, he had no authority to do so. He was only the head teacher; not a monarch. Changing Orthodox Judaism requires million of people to agree to the alterations. For example, if one Orthodox community wants it to be permissible to play an organ in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, there is no way that this can be made to be automatically accepted by Orthodox Jews all over the world. There is no Sanhedrin; no supreme court. If Hermann Adler wanted the British community to remain within the international ranks of Orthodox Jews, he couldn’t agree to any law being fundamentally changed. As a result of the number and complexity of the rules in the Talmud, over the centuries countless Jews have found the laws too restrictive and have left the faith. For a 3,000 year old religion to only have about 15 million adherents worldwide today, is hardly a sign of popular evangelical success, and millions of those aren’t Orthodox. As Orthodox Jews don’t proselytize and indeed make it very difficult for non-Jews to convert to the faith, the odds are stacked against them even more. The interesting, question for the uncommitted is why didn’t Judaism disappear in total failure? Why didn’t it vanish altogether? Plenty of other religions did. For the remaining Orthodox the answer is simple. In the book of Deuteronomy in the Bible, Moses relayed the words of the Almighty, who warned of terrible persecution falling on those who disobeyed His commandments. At the same time there was a promise that the Jews would never be destroyed. That promise is still intact, long after the Sumerian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Holy Roman and many other empires have passed into history. On the basis of that promise, there was no need for the Orthodox to change the religion, to make it easier to practice and thus prevent disaffiliation. There might be terrible losses, of which the Holocaust has been the worst, but Judaism would survive. Montefiore and Montagu weren’t sure. It would be the objective of the Jewish Religious Union to appeal to the previously disaffected and indifferent Jews and bring them back to the faith. To Montefiore’s great regret the new movement had only very limited success; because religious belief comes from within, not from

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special offers. It also didn’t work in Edwardian times because of Hermann Adler. During his ministry, Hermann Adler’s British community was multiplied ten times by the arrival of many tens of thousands of immigrants from Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Germany. Most came from families who had been persecuted for 1,500 years, but who had not given up on their faith. They were the remnants who had resisted intermarriage, proferred citizenship and voting rights, the tolerance that usually comes from being in a majority, the fearsome Inquisition, and periodic pogroms. In many countries, Jews had been burnt at the stake by the Inquisition, and thousands had seen their sons forced into the Russian army for years on end. The family often never saw them again. The death toll from massacres totalled millions as the centuries passed. When the Russians passed the May Laws in the 1880s, instituting still more discrimination against the Jews, millions finally decided to emigrate. At that point, in the East End of London in Adler’s time, many thousands became refugees again, mostly penniless and in a foreign country. They still weren’t giving up, but their community structure in London differed from the existing British approach. For example, abroad, a country’s senior Rabbi was the official representative of the Jewish community and the government insisted that every Jew had to be a congregant. The Rabbi was often made the official tax collector. In Britain, if a Jew wanted to join a Jewish organization, that was his decision. There was no official relationship between a Jewish community and the government except the elected Jewish Board of Deputies of British Jews, who spoke up if there was a specific problem. There was no call for Jewish tax collectors. In Adler’s time the Board of Deputies was already 100 years old. It had been formed to offer George III the community’s good wishes on his coming to the throne. By Victorian times it was the Jewish body to whom the government automatically turned. If you last 100 years in Britain you become part of the establishment. The new immigrants, however, questioned Hermann Adler’s spiritual authority over the British Jewish community and that was a problem he had to address as well. Britain is a country made up of immigrants. The original Britons were forced into the eastern side of the country by the invasion of the AngloSaxons in the fifth century. Over the following millennium and a half there have been waves of Norman, Flemish, Huguenot, Irish, Jewish, Indian, Polish, West Indian, Chinese and Moslem immigrants.

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There has always been some anti-immigrant feeling – it’s the fear of strangers again – and as the old waves of newcomers became acculturated, many of their descendants, in their turn, wondered, ironically, if immigrants were a good thing for the country. What was good for their ancestors’ goose was questioned, as possibly not being good for today’s gander. Yet it is only necessary now to read the obituaries in the Times newspaper to see, for example, how much the country benefited from German and Eastern Europe refugee scientists during the Second World War. The atom bomb was just the most notable contribution. The Victorian Jews were considered oddballs and, of course, they weren’t Christian. It was, therefore, a major objective on Hermann Adler’s agenda to continue to prove that the Jewish community in Britain, in spite of its different religious beliefs, was totally loyal to the country. It had always been faithful to the nation since their readmission to England in Stuart times, but there was an unofficial campaign to keep maintaining the truth of it. A degree of antisemitism has always existed in Britain, but then not all the Welsh and Scots like the English! Nevertheless, since the Jews were allowed back into the country by Charles II in 1661, it has never been a serious problem. Once again, Jewish law had, in fact, provided the right answer. As far back as the invasion of the Stuart Old Pretender in 1715, the question had arisen of who should the small Jewish community support; the Stuart Old Pretender, who was popular and had by far the best claim, or George of Hanover who was German and 45th in line, but the first Protestant and the choice of the government. David Nieto was the Haham when the crisis occurred, the Chief Rabbi of the predominant Sephardi (originally Spanish and Portuguese) Jewish community. He didn’t give his opinion; that wasn’t his role. He told the Sephardim what was the Jewish law. It was laid down in the third century; Dina de-malchuta dina – the Jews are to obey the law of the land in which they live. So the Jews in the Sephardi mahamad (the ruling body) voted overwhelmingly to support the government, and when the Old Pretender failed in his invasion, any future British government could be reassured that the Jewish community had proven itself loyal. Hermann Adler still had to persuade the doubters though, over 150 years later. Within any Jewish community, like so many others, there will be differing opinions on almost every subject. There will be special pleading, hidden agendas, behind-the-scenes advocacy and strategic objectives. Unless there is a particularly contentious subject, however, the average

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Jewish congregant will leave the three Honorary Officers and the Board of Management to get on with running their Synagogue. Subject to the ultimate authority of the Chief Rabbi, normally the Honorary Officers will conduct day-to-day business with the Synagogue secretary, and religious services will be left to the minister. When, therefore, the subject of ritual changes came up in Adler’s time, very few of the congregants in the acculturated congregations were particularly interested. They would only attend Synagogue services infrequently, and probably only for the central part of the service. Whether a particular psalm was included, as was the tradition, or left out at the request of the Honorary Officers and the Board of Management, would be of little interest to them. Discussions on the subject might take place at the regular Board of Management meetings, but the whole congregation would normally only be invited to attend and make its views known at the Annual General Meeting. Why then did the non-observant join the Synagogue in the first place? For many it was because it could provide a grave at the end of their days and it enabled them to belong among their co-religionists. It was the ultimate Friendly Society. It is within that background that Hermann Adler’s arguments with congregations, over such topics as alterations to the ritual in services, need to be assessed. If there were to be alterations, only a comparatively small number of the West End Synagogue congregants would take much interest. The East End immigrant congregations, giving far more authority to their Rabbi, would abide by his rulings, and those would normally be dead against any changes at all. When, therefore, Adler agreed to any alterations, he was always likely to be roundly criticized by the East End Rabbis. Their view was that the content of the traditional services was sacrosanct and even minor amendments were likely to lead to far more fundamental and even more undesirable changes. It was a different world from today. When speaking of ritual reform, one United Synagogue minister at the time said that his views on changes in the prayers: ‘accurately expresses the feeling of the majority of the metropolitan clergy on the ritual question’.1 Another said that of the compact band of regular attendants ‘…an overwhelming majority feel that the present liturgy needs very considerable modification’.2 It was the majority of the clergy and the minority, the compact band of committed members. Were the Metropolitan clergy though Talmudically competent to advocate the modifications they wanted, and to get general approval around the Jewish world? In Adler’s time almost all of the United

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Synagogue ministers were young and inexperienced graduates of Jews’ College and were not even capable of achieving Semichah. Even less convincing, how large was the ‘compact band’, and did they possess the necessary Talmudic knowledge to give approval to their recommendations? The training of British Rabbis was a long process, starting from a very low base. In principle it was agreed to be desirable, but their actions did not speak louder than words in this instance. Another minister pointed to the situation at the Bayswater Synagogue, where Adler was appointed Lecturer in 1863. He recalled that a lot of the congregation didn’t choose to attend on the Sabbath if Adler wasn’t going to be there to give a sermon. This was an age, however, before radio, television, cinema or, in a great many cases, literacy. Among the East End refugees there was, however, one major social attraction; the Maggid, an itinerant preacher, of whom the most popular visiting Britain was the Russian Rabbi Chaim Zundel Maccoby (1857-1916), known as the Kamenitzer Rebbe, who came from Kamenitz in Belarus. He was particularly valuable in countering the atheistic views of the new Socialists, even if he had to be persuaded over the years to speak in English rather than Yiddish. He had been brought over by a new organization centred on small communities in the East End of London, called the Federation of Minor Synagogues. As a storyteller, he attracted very large audiences. The same is true of other similar societies; for example, itinerant storytellers were very popular on the North West frontier of India.3 Maccoby was also satisfied that it was possible to be Orthodox and a Zionist, which was not a widely held belief. Adler was a good enough preacher to be equally as popular as Maccoby. It was a very important attribute. The attitude of the majority of the congregants reflected the culture of the time, and the fact was that most of the members of the congregation wouldn’t take the trouble to learn Hebrew. If there was a lingua franca it was still Yiddish, a polyglot German and Hebrew mixture. Yiddish, though, was considered an indication of class, because it was the language of poorer immigrant Jews and, therefore, it was roundly condemned as common by those who had lived in Britain for years and become acculturated. As a consequence, when well delivered, the sermon became the high spot of the Sabbath Synagogue service. For many years, though, the use of English in the Synagogue service was a cause of considerable contention in very Orthodox congregations. Compared to Yiddish, it was considered a foreign language.

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A great deal was made of arguments about ritual reform and Adler certainly had to stand his ground, as had his father had before him. Nevertheless, it is significant that there were no conferences specifically on the subject between 1892 and just before Adler died some 20 years later. There were plenty of individual grumbles, but there was no organized movement or agreed programme of changes. One reason, of course, was that the main religious body, the United Synagogue, only consisted of London synagogues. What went on in the provinces was not in the United Synagogue’s remit. It was the responsibility of the Chief Rabbi, and Hermann Adler ruled that not even the London Beth Din – his legal court – would have any authority to settle religious questions outside the capital. He would be the only national authority, and that was generally agreed. He might delegate provincial visits to his Dayanim as he grew older, but decisions remained his sole prerogative. It is suggested that this was a mild form of megalomania on the part of the Adlers. That, however, ignores the main concern of both father and son; the Reform movement – the modernizers as they believed – was growing in Europe and America, and the Adlers did not want to see their views grow in popularity in Britain. By retaining their ultimate authority, the Adlers could resist change more easily. The Adlers’ attention was dedicated to protecting Orthodoxy. The court of the Chief Rabbi is called the Beth Din. It was created by Moses in the Bible on the advice of his father-in-law, Jethro. It reduced the judicial pressure on Moses, and Adler reminded a congregation that William of Malmesbury (c.1095-1143) believed that King Alfred had adopted the system by the introduction of Tithings and Hundreds.4 Most people consider the period before their birth as the olden days. Orthodox Judaism looks back to the Bible and the Talmud as if they were contemporary. Within London, the Great Synagogue was the most important community because the Chief Rabbi was its traditional minister. It also had Rothschilds as Wardens and it was a very grand building. In addition it was highly committed to Orthodoxy and, even when Adler approved some changes at the request of some West End synagogues, the Great retained its traditional order of service. There was only a very small Jewish community in Britain when Nathan Marcus Adler was appointed; perhaps 35,000. In London they lived, mostly, in the City, near the main Sephardi Synagogue, Bevis Marks, and the principal Ashkenazi Synagogue, the Great. As the Chief Rabbi was always

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the minister at the Great, he lived in the district, and Hermann was brought up there, hard by the docks where immigrants normally settled when they first came to the country. When some of the Jews in London became wealthy enough to move to the West End, there was no Synagogue to attend. Sir Moses Montefiore would walk from Park Lane to Bevis Marks every Sabbath, which is a very long trek. Only in the 1850s did Adler approve the building of the first synagogue in the West End, which was the Central by Regents Park. This was followed by the Bayswater and the New West End. The Hambro’ Synagogue was another ancient synagogue in the East End, and the Great and the Hambro’ were both fiercely independent of each other, until they finally agreed to the formation of the United Synagogue organisation. The process took several years of patient negotiation, over which Nathan Marcus Adler kept a watching brief. There was also the New Synagogue, founded in Leadenhall Street in 1751, which moved to Great St Helens in 1837 and then to Egerton Road in 1915. The attitude of the Great and the Hambro’ was not typical of all the Synagogues outside the East End. The Ritual Reform conference in 1891 was largely concerned with recommendations which had come from the New West End Synagogue near Hyde Park. The Central Synagogue had its own views and the Western Synagogue remained independent of the United Synagogue, though still Orthodox. Hermann Adler had to umpire, adjudicate and hold the fort, all at the same time. It was good practice for becoming the most experienced spiritual diplomat in the community. People change over their lifetimes and the longer Hermann Adler remained in office, the more confident he became. Many writers have suggested that he was under the thumb of lay leaders, but the evidence is against this. If someone is browbeaten, their likely reaction is to watch every word they say and to keep a low profile. Adler, as the years went by, occupied the limelight more and more. To take just one example, in 1896 he was addressing the Jewish Historical Society of England, of which he was the new president. It was an influential audience but a society which had financial difficulties. Adler talked of the JHSE members and subscribers: In the case of our Society, strangely enough, the terms ‘members’ and ‘subscribers’ are not exactly synonymous. The glowing desire, characteristic of other societies, to pay their subscriptions the moment they become due, is not, I have been told, a distinguishing feature of our society.

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Those who are browbeaten are generally too careful of the possible consequences of being witty. It is also important to try to identify just who were those lay leaders, supposed to have Adler under their thumbs. To a great extent the community’s lay leaders during his ministry were very good friends of his, and often relatives. The head of the United Synagogue throughout his Chief Rabbinate was Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild, ennobled as Lord Rothschild. The chair of the Jews’ Free School, a very important cog in Jewish education, was Sir Anthony Rothschild. The Rothschilds also provided a Warden at the Great Synagogue. There is no doubt that Hermann’s father did not always see eye-to-eye with Lord Rothschild and argued with Sir Anthony about the religious curriculum at the school. The fact remains that Hermann Adler was a Rothschild, himself. Baron Lionel Rothschild, Nathaniel’s father, had a sister, Jeanette von Rothschild (1771-1859). Jeanette was the mother of Nathan Marcus Adler’s first wife, Henrietta. Therefore, she was Hermann’s maternal grandmother. Which made both Lord Rothschild and Sir Anthony his cousins. The future Lord Rothschild was 18 months younger than Hermann. This is relevant when establishing the initial relationship of children. The Rothschilds had lobbied hard for Nathan Marcus Adler to be elected Chief Rabbi in 1845, and there was no way that the future Lord Rothschild was going to allow the authority of his son, Hermann, to be undermined when he took on the role. The main communal body was the Board of Deputies and, within its constitution, the authority of the Chief Rabbi in all spiritual matters was clearly set down and never seriously questioned. After Sir Moses Montefiore died, his first three successors as presidents were all his nephews, of which the most notable was Arthur Cohen, QC, who was head of the Board from 1880-1895. In his private life Cohen was not particularly Orthodox but he never left the United Synagogue. The main charitable organization was the Board of Guardians and its president from 1887-1900 was Sir Benjamin Cohen, who was five years younger than Hermann, a neighbour of his childhood and a stalwart supporter. Cohen’s time in office coincided with the first ten years of Hermann’s incumbency as Chief Rabbi. As far as the Synagogues were concerned, the Great remained the ‘Cathedral’ Synagogue during Hermann’s time, and the Great was run by the Rothschilds. On occasion it was even more traditional than Hermann allowed other congregations to be. There were pinpricks from other synagogues, but when Adler made a

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decision, it was invariably loyally accepted. The only exception was on the question of mixed choirs. The original administrative lay leaders of the United Synagogue might have challenged the status of the Chief Rabbi, but the first United Synagogue vice-president, Lionel Louis Cohen, died in 1887 and the dominant secretary, Asher Asher in 1889. Both were gone just before Hermann was elected Chief Rabbi. From 1870-1942 the presidency was honorary and except for a three-year period, between 1876-1879, was always held by a Rothschild. The real influence was held by vice-presidents who normally chaired the meetings. The Reform leadership was nothing like as radical as their compatriots on the continent. They were also in no mood to give Adler any major difficulties. Their main concern was to be accepted as traditional Jews by the majority Orthodox communities. It is still a major bone of contention. Which left the other bodies – Samuel Montagu with the new Federation of Synagogues, and Claude Montefiore and Lily Montagu with the Liberal movement. Montagu was certainly a strong character, capable of harassing the Chief Rabbi, but he had enough problems keeping his own flock in line without taking on the United Synagogue. He was also president of the United Synagogue Board of Shechita, ensuring the supply of kosher meat to the community. So he had a foot in both camps. Samuel Montagu, indeed, successfully advocated that Adler should be appointed the religious head of the Federation as well. Claude Montefiore was twenty years younger than Adler, a radical innovative thinker, but no competition for the Chief Rabbi in building congregations. He remained friendly with Adler in spite of their serious religious differences. It is, therefore, difficult to see where these powerful lay leaders were supposed to be coming from, making the Chief Rabbi’s life difficult. There were, of course, differences of opinion and there were ambitious laymen, but the Chief Rabbi’s authority was never seriously at risk. There were certainly those who were against the institution itself in the East End, but they lacked any power to upset a system with which those powerful in the community concurred. In his authorised history of the United Synagogue, Professor Aubrey Newman said of the Adlers: ‘Their deliberate policy was one of assertion of their own authority, over both their ecclesiastical and lay colleagues, achieving both these ends through their close association with the lay leaders of the United Synagogue.’ It is expected that there will be close association with the family and, at the end of the day, the spiritual side of the community remained firmly in 5

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the hands of the Chief Rabbi. There would be other candidates; the Board of Deputies, the United Synagogue, the Jewish Chronicle and the Machzikei Hadath but, for all their public statements, they were powerless if Adler wanted to put his foot down. For Adler’s unspoken secret weapon was his ability to resign on religious grounds if he was contradicted. The scandal and disgrace the community would have had to face if that happened could never be tolerated by any of the other power blocs. If it came to the crunch, they would have to give in. What was more, the older he got, the more the Chief Rabbi’s public image became indispensable to the community. In Adler’s time that threat was never necessary. When there were advocates of a committee to share decision making with the Chief Rabbi, Lord Rothschild, as head of the United Synagogue, would immediately denounce the idea in no uncertain terms and threaten his own resignation if the idea wasn’t dropped. That ended the discussion. So how did Hermann Adler grow up to be the logical candidate to succeed his father as Chief Rabbi?

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Persoff, Meir, Faith Against Reason (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2008), p.106. Ibid. Menen, Aubrey, A Prevalence of Witches (Harmondworth: Penguin, 1957). Bacon, Nathaniel, A History of the Laws of the English Government, 1760. Newman, Aubrey, The United Synagogue (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p.55.

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2 Early Days Hermann Adler’s grandfather, Rabbi Mordecai, had moved to Hanover at the end of the eighteenth century to study at the Michael Davidsche Foundation. This was a Beth Hamedresh, (house of learning) financed, as often happened, by a Jewish banker, Michael David, to enable three Jewish scholars to live in his house and spend their days studying the Talmud. It enabled Marcus Baer to become a Rabbinic sage and his even more illustrious son, Nathan Marcus Adler, to become Chief Rabbi of Hanover for more than a decade. Nathan Marcus Adler’s fifth child was Hermann. Britain didn’t have Rabbinic dynasties at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In fact, they had hardly any Rabbis at all, except for Solomon Hirschell, who was the Chief Rabbi from 1802 and had also been brought in from Germany. Hirschell did come from a Rabbinic family, as his father was Hart Lyon, again recruited from Germany. He had been the British Chief Rabbi for a few years in the eighteenth century. Hirschell, however, concentrated on the community in London and the Empire, and provincial congregations largely went their own ways. Most of the provincial Jewish communities had been founded by refugees from Europe who had seen commercial opportunities in Britain in the towns built up by the Industrial Revolution. They also recognized Britain as a safe haven. They had often chosen to settle in the ports where their mastery of languages was particularly useful in trading with the ships in harbour. The early congregations were usually young and Orthodox Ashkenazim. They were widely spread around the country and when Herschell died in 1842, Nathan Marcus Adler (1803-1890), took over a diffuse community which badly needed organizing. Hermann was born in 1839, so he was six years old when his father moved to London. His great grand-uncle was David Tevele Schiff, the eighteenth-century Chief Rabbi in Britain. On his mother’s side he was the cousin of the future Lord Rothschild and Henry de Worms, 1st Baron Pirbright. So he had one foot in the Orthodox Rabbinical family camp and the other would be in the House of Lords. From his youth he was also very friendly with the Rothschilds, which wasn’t surprising as, apart from his

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maternal grandmother, his maternal great uncle was the great banker, Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836). Back in Frankfurt the Rothschilds had even bought the home of one of the Adler family in the ghetto. It had a red door – hence ‘Rothschild’. Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the firm, thought so highly of Mordecai that when he visited Hanover he would call on the Rabbi, even in the middle of the night, for his blessing. The friendship between the two families was a very strong influence on his children as well. Long after Amschel’s death the sons still followed their father’s teachings and the relationship between the Rothschilds and the Adlers in Britain remained very close. Until 1837 Hanover and England had the same king. George Louis of Hanover had been crowned George I of England in 1715 after Queen Anne died. This affiliation ended in 1837 when Victoria came to the British throne and the Duke of Cumberland, George III’s oldest surviving son, became King of Hanover. Hermann would have to become naturalized after he reached his majority. It would be, in fact, in 1866, when he was 27 years old, when he got round to doing the necessary paperwork.1 As Chair and CEO of British Jews, the community’s mission statement was carefully worked out by Hermann’s father. Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler knew exactly what he wanted to achieve for the community, and his son, Hermann, was to have the appropriate upbringing. He was: …raised in the house of one of the outstanding Jewish scholars of western Europe, Nathan Adler, whose religious opinion was sought by leading Rabbis throughout Europe and even North America, and whose writings were published in the great centres of Eastern European Jewish scholarship.2 There were a number of Jewish scholars in Britain. They had also been brought up abroad, but none of them attained the eminence of the new Chief Rabbi. Considering the religious turmoil he had left behind in Germany, Nathan Marcus Adler always saw his primary task as keeping the British community in the Orthodox camp. The threat to Orthodoxy of the new Reform movement in Germany and America may have been far more serious than in Britain, but the new Chief Rabbi considered it was very likely to spread if it wasn’t effectively opposed. Hermann would take the same view. The Adlers found that the non-Orthodox bodies had a considerable number of distinguished lay members in London, but their religious thinking did not gain the adherence of the majority of the community. In

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addition, for some years their community had been subject to a Herem, which was a form of banishment from the community. The Reform congregation was called Secessionist for half a century and did not grow appreciably for nearly 100 years. Hermann Adler’s main objective when he became Chief Rabbi was to ensure that the Din, the Jewish law, remained sacrosanct with his community. The Chief Rabbis were there to expound the rules in Judaism. True, Hermann Adler and his father were on occasions under pressure from laymen and some of their own clergy to make changes. They gave way only very seldom and in unimportant areas. They didn’t mind agreeing that the Biblical King David might not have written all the psalms, but they weren’t going to change the wording of the marriage contract. Hermann recalled that he had found the journey from Hanover very boring, but that he had been impressed by the row of carriages drawn up to greet his father when they disembarked in Dover; the Jewish Board of Deputies and the wardens of the main London synagogues had turned out in force. Governments recognized the Deputies as representing the whole Jewish community in Britain and, for their part, the Board gave its full support to the Chief Rabbi. Hermann needed his parents to explain what was going on as, naturally, he only spoke German and his accent never entirely left him throughout his life. The welcome party could speak Yiddish though – the Ashkenazi Jews’ polyglot language – which was a mixture of Hebrew and German. Hermann also had the support of his older brother, Marcus, and his three sisters, Sarah, Jeanette and Minna. Like all young children Hermann had little difficulty in picking up his new language, even if his parents initially spoke Yiddish or German at home. One of the conditions of Nathan Marcus Adler’s appointment was that he would learn English in two years, but he managed it in one. Hermann could eventually communicate in eleven languages which made him a remarkable linguist. Of the two sons, it was Hermann who showed more interest in studying the Talmud, and the Chief Rabbi soon decided that it would be Hermann who was most likely to step into his shoes and continue the 600 year-old family tradition. Marcus was destined to become vice-president of the Institute of Actuaries and a founder of the Royal Statistical and London Mathematical Societies. Two of Nathan Marcus’ brothers would become Rabbis in Germany, but the Chief Rabbi would have wanted to continue the Rabbinic line within his own branch of the family, rather than leave it as an objective for his siblings.

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Hermann’s religious education started when his father began to teach him the Ten Commandments when he was only four years old. Every member of the Adler family was a hard worker and Hermann would be noted when Chief Rabbi for his intense application to his responsibilities. That Nathan Marcus Adler was eventually well pleased with his choice, was reflected in his will. He left his Rabbinical library to Hermann and wrote: ‘…in consideration of his having chosen the vocation of Rabbi and having filled to my satisfaction the arduous duties of my delegate’.3 At his own inauguration as Chief Rabbi in 1891, Hermann remembered his father’s installation: ‘It is just 46 years ago since I sat in yonder gallery, nestling close to my dear mother, gazing with childish wonder on the strange ceremonial that was being enacted below’. His Talmudic education was highly concentrated and continuous. He remembered his father had studied the Talmud with him ‘practically to the very last day of his life’, starting at the age of 10. The demands on the child shouldn’t be underestimated; the Talmud is very complex indeed. The Chief Rabbi enlisted a number of other tutors, such as Biblical commentator Dr Marcus Kalisch, the Sephardi Dayan, Barnett Abrahams, Dr David Asher when Hermann went to Leipzig University and Joseph Zedner, who joined the British Museum in the same year Adler was ordained, and discussed Maimonides with him. As Hermann later recalled: Several of our ministers have reason to look back with feelings of deep gratitude upon the hours spent in his [Zedner’s] company when he guided their studies in the sacred book of knowledge, or helped them lovingly to master the difficulties of some of our philosophical writings.4 ‘Philosophical writings’ from the age of ten! London was a long way from Hanover and the Chief Rabbi might have seemed isolated in a foreign city. It wasn’t the case. As head of the Beth Din he had Rabbinic colleagues who had been brought in from Poland because there had simply been nobody in Britain sufficiently au fait with Jewish law to serve on the court. Everybody on the Beth Din spoke Yiddish and they used a clubhouse for the East Enders for their meetings. There, on Monday and Thursday evenings, Nathan Marcus Adler created the Society for Talmudical Study and presided at its classes. When Hermann was old enough, he would have accompanied his father and extended his studies. Rabbis such a Dayan Azriel ben David Halevi Segal until 1861 and Dayan Aaron Levi (Reb Oran) until 1876, were faithful friends and

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colleagues. Hermann would be supported by Dayan Jacob Reinowitz (18181893) and Dayan Bernard Spiers (1835-1901). Just how wide were Hermann’s studies would be illustrated by a lecture he once gave on the first century Talmudic sage, Elisha ben Abuya. Adler quoted in support of his arguments, the Mishna, tractates of both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, the Midrash on Ecclesiastes and Ruth, and the Ethics of the Fathers. Such a wide selection of sources was not unusual for him, though he would quote Shakespeare and Milton with equal facility. Nathan Marcus Adler believed that modern knowledge could be beneficial, which was not always the view of other strictly Orthodox Jews. There was an explosion of new scientific knowledge after the Reformation which became known over the centuries as the Enlightenment. Any number of long-held beliefs came under scrutiny. The reaction within Jewry fell into two main groups; those who were prepared to adopt the best of the new technology and thinking, embraced the new secular studies. If the new thinking undermined the Halakhah, though, it remained outside the pale. The others were even more concerned that the new ideas might undermine the faith, and advocated withdrawing into communities, effectively cut off from the whole world of the Enlightenment. Nathan Marcus Adler’s father, Mordecai, came down on the side of those who believed that secular studies could be valuable. He sent the future Chief Rabbi to classes at more than one German university. Years later, Hermann’s secular education was not neglected either, though he didn’t start at a municipal school until he was thirteen years old. He learned a lot, of course, just by being part of the Chief Rabbi’s family. He was brought up in a home where the society in which his parents moved included all the leaders of the community. The very close relationship of Adler and Sir Moses Montefiore, the acknowledged lay leader, was evidenced by the many occasions when the two families gathered together for Sabbath evening dinners. These were reported to often go on beyond midnight. Hermann would have been introduced to all the guests and from an early age would have gained their approval for his participation. Being so close to his father, Hermann would have taken on board another field of knowledge, which was also vital for a successful Chief Rabbi. He would have learnt from Nathan Marcus Adler’s experience just how to handle rich and powerful laymen; those who were more accustomed to subservience than argument with their wishes. He would have absorbed the methods of achieving his own objectives and neutralising his opponents. He would have understood the importance of the urbanity and

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diplomacy which were typical of his father and always associated with his own character. It was his father’s experience as Chief Rabbi in Hanover for 15 years which produced the methodology. Germany had been antisemitic for centuries, from the Berlin toll gate restricted to Jews and cattle, to a ban on even living in many states, and the restriction on Jewish marriages to a dozen a year in many parts of the country, Hermann’s parents had to get permission from the government in Frankfurt to get married, as one of the quota. There are still a number of frescoes of Rabbis fornicating with pigs on the walls of some old German churches. The Jews also suffered from arson, discriminatory laws and special taxation. Father Mordecai Adler had fought the government on behalf of his community for years, but often with little success. Nathan Marcus learned patience and never to give up. Hermann in the future would show the same resolution, though Britain was very much more tolerant than Hanover. If British Jews were excluded from parliament by having to swear on the oath of a Christian, if they were not allowed to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge, and if the process of emancipation would not be completed until the 1880s, there was still no persecution and no special taxation. Father Adler was also a strong leader; and when Hermann gave a memorial sermon after his father died, he summed up Nathan Marcus Adler’s influence: If I were asked to indicate the keynote of my father’s career, the characteristic which has gained for him so many touching marks of reverence and affection, I would say that it was his tenacity of purpose, the consistency and firmness with which he persevered in the line of conduct he had struck out for himself.5 When his father was installed as Chief Rabbi in 1845 he inherited a community practically bereft of trained ministers, with no tradition of regular sermons from the pulpit, no overall body of synagogues, no common prayer book and a large number of poor and illiterate members. When he died a considerable number of ministerial graduates had emerged from his creation of the theological Jews’ College. Many more sermons were being given, the United Synagogue organization had been formed and there was a common prayer book, which came to be called the Singer prayer book after its editor. There was one additional factor; the hundreds of thousands of impoverished Orthodox Jews who came to

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Britain after the pogroms started in earnest in Eastern Europe in the 1880s. This would transform the community. On occasions, as a youngster, Hermann was detailed off to befriend important Jewish visitors from abroad. Abraham Sassoon (1840-1912) was one. The son of David Sassoon, one of the foremost Jewish merchants in India, he was sent to London by his father when he was 15 in 1855. Hermann was the same age and, obviously, a suitable lad to introduce Abraham to the Jewish youngsters in the capital. In future years when Sassoon had become a very successful banker and a friend to the future Edward VII, his early friendship with Adler would have been a sound basis for the considerable help he gave to the heir of the Chief Rabbi. David Sassoon was also well pleased. Abraham went to the new Jews’ College and on to University College London. As the Chief Rabbi reported to Sassoon: ‘I am pleased to state that his moral and religious conduct are very satisfactory.’ Another of Hermann’s closest friends was Benjamin Cohen (18441909), a grandson of Levi Barent Cohen, Nathan Mayer Rothschild’s uncle. Cohen would become a wealthy stockbroker, and was educated by James Wogan, whose son would teach English to Nathan Marcus in his early days as Chief Rabbi. In later life Cohen would become for many years a warden at Hermann’s Bayswater Synagogue, president of the Board of Guardians and one of the first members of the London County Council. He was knighted in 1905 and was typical of the men who supported Adler throughout his ministry. The choice of a future university for Hermann was not difficult, if very limited, as Jews were not allowed to take degrees at Oxford or Cambridge. In 1826, however, University College, London had been founded, where they could study. One of its main original supporters was Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a bullion broker who would become the first unconverted Jewish Baronet in 1841. To safeguard its religious tolerance, UCL was set up to be a totally secular university and no minister of religion was allowed to sit on its council. In 1830 it added the creation of the University College School. It was based at the site of the university in Gower Street in London’s West End, and taught Latin, French, Classical Greek, Maths, Chemistry, English and modern languages. UCL was special in many ways. It was unusual to teach science and even rarer to find a school teaching German, at which Hermann, when he went there, would naturally have excelled. The school was exceptional for abandoning corporal punishment and for possessing the first school gym in the country. Hermann attended the school from 1852-1854 and was made Head Grecian (Head Boy) in his last year.

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Greek and Latin were the classical languages and widely taught in the best schools and at Oxford and Cambridge. When discussing Biblical studies, the contrast between Judaism and the Hellenic civilization saw the supporters of the Greeks criticising many of the aspects of Judaism. Gladstone, the future prime minister, was the most committed Hellenist in public life and Adler would in future years be at the forefront of the Jewish defence against the proponents of Biblical criticism. He went on to the University at the very early age of fifteen and a half, in October 1854, and graduated in 1859 when he was nineteen. It was additional proof of his intellectual ability. His courses showed a wide range of interests: Latin, Greek and English in his first year and Latin, Greek, Comparative Grammar and Mathematics in the second. In October 1856 he turned to English and Philosophy of Mind and Logic, and in October 1857 the History of Moral Philosophy. In Mind and Logic he came equal top of his year with Farrer Herschell, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who would become Lord Chancellor. Adler put in time on Greek Extra in January 1858 and his last course in November 1858 was on Political Economy. In three of the subjects he got first-class honours. He could work in English, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Judendeutsch, Yiddish, German, Latin, French, Greek and Arabic. As a comparison, after many years in Britain, the most senior Rabbi in the new Federation of Synagogues would be unable to speak English when giving evidence in court. Adler’s time at University College School was sadly disrupted in 1853 when he was 14 and his mother died. She suffered from ulcers when there was no cure for the condition and her death was very sudden. The community mourned with the Chief Rabbi, but Nathan Marcus was a strong character and was very soon back at work. Hermann’s Rothschild grandmother, Jeanette, died at the age of 88 in 1859; the Rothschilds had looked after her financially for many years after her second husband had gambled away her dowry. But then the Rothschilds were intensely family minded. When admission to polite society in Germany was attracting many of the Jewish bankers to convert, the Rothschilds would have nothing to do with the idea, and remained steadfastly Jewish. The London house was equally committed. Although Hermann wasn’t employed by any synagogue and had no Rabbinical qualification, the Chief Rabbi still found a way of giving his son experience in the pulpit when he was only 20 years old. In September 1859 his father was due to officiate at the opening of a new synagogue in Swansea. When the time arrived, however, he found himself conveniently indisposed

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and sent Hermann to deputise for him. The report of Hermann’s efforts were glowing. He was described as: ‘A young man of considerable talent and ability, as proved by the fact that he had just taken his degree at the University of London with great honours.’6 The sermon ‘was delivered with great earnestness and fervour, as became so solemn an occasion. It was a highly interesting and instructive address.’ Hermann Adler struck a modest note at the outset. He quoted from Jeremiah: ‘Ah, Lord G-d, I cannot speak for I am just a lad. “Say not I am just a lad, for thou shalt do all I shall send thee, and whatsoever I counsel thee thou shalt speak.’ He spoke for a full hour and …while it displayed great ability and beauty as a composition, it was of a really practical and useful character and such as could not fail to be most acceptable to everyone who heard it, no matter to what creed and denomination he might belong. Hermann was learning early in his career to produce sermons which were geared to his audience, though it would be surprising if his father hadn’t contributed to the content. It would be another year before Hermann was asked to preach again, but in October 1860 the New Synagogue wardens in London asked him to address the congregation on Yom Kippur, which was a considerable accolade. Afterwards, the wardens took an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle to thank him for his eloquence, his depth of feeling and his wide knowledge of Jewish literature. Two years later, after studying for his semichah, he was invited to take part in the service in Ramsgate to mark the golden wedding of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore. On the Order of Service he wrote: ‘Had the honour to offer up this prayer at Sir Moses’ synagogue in Ramsgate on Sabbath. Hermann Adler.’ When it came to theological qualifications, there was no Yeshivah in Britain where youngsters could study for semichah. The Chief Rabbi had, however, worked hard to improve the situation by campaigning successfully to found a theological seminary. The result was Jews’ College, which opened its doors in November 1855. There were two streams of students; one which worked towards a degree at UCL, and the other attended a school within the college to start their Hebrew education. It was appreciated from the start that few students would have much Talmudic knowledge and it would be many years before they absorbed sufficient understanding of its complexity to be considered for semichah.

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It wasn’t just getting semichah though; it was also important from whom a candidate got it. The more famous the Rabbis who signed the document, the greater the prestige for the new Rabbi. For these reasons, if Hermann was to obtain semichah he would have to go abroad and, like his father, work for a doctorate on the continent as well. Furthermore, if Hermann was to succeed his father – and the Chief Rabbi was already exceeding the average expectation of life at the time – he would need a highly-regarded semichah. It wasn’t possible to predict the future, but the eventual competitors for the office would be likely to have good qualifications and, as Hermann was only a young man, he would need to be able to outdo the greater experience of, potentially, equally qualified candidates. There might be voices who queried Hermann going abroad rather than attending the Chief Rabbi’s new Jews’ College. There might also be others who would follow his example and go abroad to get their own semichah. The balance of opinion, however, was bound to be that it was only natural for the Chief Rabbi to want his son to follow in his footsteps. Hermann had been helping his father since he graduated from UCL, as well as being paid to teach the children of well-to-do families. It was one of the few ways in which Jews’ College students could support themselves financially. Now, in 1860, he travelled to one of the oldest centres of Judaism in Europe to sit at the feet of one of the most controversial Rabbinic scholars. The Chief Rabbi’s choice was Prague where he could study under Chief Rabbi, Solomon Rapoport. Prague was not London, Hermann was still a Hanoverian citizen and Jews could easily face trumped-up charges by the government. The Chief Rabbi had a word with Anthony Rothschild in London, and he wrote to Anselm Rothschild in Vienna to see that Hermann would be looked after. The family feeling was still very much intact. Anselm wrote to the Chief Rabbi the next day: ‘It gives me great pleasure that I am able to accede to your wishes, and accordingly I am enclosing a letter of recommendation. I hope that it will achieve its purpose.’ A business associate of Rothschild in Prague took on this responsibility. Rapoport and Nathan Marcus Adler had much in common. They were both vehemently against the Reform movement but in favour of learning from modern culture. This latter viewpoint was known as Wissenschaft des Judentums. Rapoport was attacked from both sides; by the right wing for his views on the value of new scientific knowledge, and by the Reformers for his adherence to traditional Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, he was recognized as a major writer and an acknowledged Talmudic expert. Adler could be

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satisfied that Hermann’s further education would be in accordance with his own views. If the politics were different from London’s, so was the religious set-up. The Reform movement was much stronger in Germany, and their Prague Rabbi, Dr S.J. Kaempf ‘came from a religious home, but had very little sympathy himself with the traditional concept of Judaism, or respect for the old and hallowed customs or the history of Prague.’7 Kaempf still held the post of Reader of Semitics at Prague University, so his arguments with the Orthodox Rabbis were fierce. There was a famous yeshiva at Breslau and a year before Hermann reached Prague, its head, Dr Zacharias Fraenkel, had written a work on the methodology of the Mishnah. Many of his views were controversial and the conflicting views were exacerbated by national considerations as well. Rapaport defended Fraenkel against ‘the attacks of a Rabbi in Frankfurt, who translated into German the Hebrew [attack] of a learned Hungarian’.8 Hermann reported all this to his father. They wrote to each other every week in Yiddish, although Hermann wrote to his new mother, Celestine Lehfeld, in English. The Chief Rabbi had married again in 1857. Where his letters to his father were usually formal, he joked with Celestine with whom he obviously got on very well. ‘I owe you many thanks that the Glycerine [sweetness] of your heart made you forget the pain of your hands and write such a long and sweet letter to me.9 He began the letter ‘My dearest Mama’ and ended it ‘Your very affectionate son, H.’ The affection he had for his father was illustrated in one letter he wrote in Hebrew where he expresses in very moving terms his heartfelt thanks for all that his beloved father is doing for him, ‘so that he may study at the feet of the sages in Prague relieved of all worries. It is his most fervent wish not to fail his father and to live unto the great expectations his pious parents expected of him – to learn and to do right by G-d and men is his aim.’10 He worried for his father, advising him to consider not staying up past midnight for services on the festival of Shevuot. The Chief Rabbi wrote to him about a sermon he was to give and Hermann regretted his absence: ‘what a pity that I am not at home to copy it out for you’. He kept in touch with other members of the family as well, particularly Minna, who was now in Berlin. Reporting on her comments on a formal dinner he recounted: ‘the only complaint was that there was too little food for the stomach, too much for the mind’.11 Hermann was in Prague from 1860-1862 and devoted himself to the Talmud and to Rabbinic responsa (Rabbinical replies to queries). During

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his time in Prague he wrote chiddushim (elucidations), on sections of the Talmud, which is the mark of a traditional Rabbinic scholar. He also went to Prague’s Charles University to listen to its professors there; Kaempf on Isaiah and Wessely on Hebrew Philosophy. In time he, himself, made contributions to Anglo-Jewish literature. Besides publishing a volume of his later addresses and sermons, he wrote many papers on Biblical and Anglo-Jewish subjects. Hermann stayed with Rabbi Simon Ausch in Prague and got his semicha in 1863 from three Rabbis; Rapaport, Ausch and Samuel Freund. They taught both Wissenschaft and the more traditional approach. Adler absorbed both. There are two levels of semicha. One is Yoreh Yoreh, which qualifies the recipient to teach. The other is Yadin Yadin, which also qualifies him to judge. He is, thenceforth known as a Posek. It says much for his competence that in later correspondence about shechita, the renowned Rabbi Spector referred to Hermann as a Posek. In view of the fact that Adler served on the Beth Din and became the Chief Rabbi, it is almost certain that he was Yadin Yadin. The higher degree was a reflection on his intellect, for Yadin Yadin involves a greater level of study. This his father would have fully appreciated. Hermann acknowledged the debt he owed Nathan Marcus Adler when he wrote to him: Words fail me to express my appreciation that you should have given so generously of your precious time to write to me weekly. Every word you have written is Torah; accordingly I acted upon your words…I am aware of how little I deserve the ‘Morenu’ [a Rabbinic accolade] however, it will be my ambition to be, by the Grace of G-d, really deserving of it.12 Adler also got his Ph.D from Leipzig University in 1862 for a thesis on Druidism. As Leipzig is 160 miles from Prague, it does not appear that he lived at the university. Germany doctorates at the time were easier to obtain than in Britain and living in the university was not essential, although supervision by a professor was. A German doctorate was more or less equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in Britain. When Nathan Marcus Adler was standing for Chief Rabbi in 1844, the rigour of his own doctorate was questioned in the press: At [Berlin] no student can obtain his Doctor’s degree unless he has been resident there during his course of studies, has submitted to a

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rigid examination and maintained a thesis or public disputation, whereas, both at Giesen and Erlangen, diplomas can be obtained by non-residents without either examination or thesis.13 Leipzig was founded in 1409 but its first Jewish lecturer was only appointed in 1839. It was even later, in 1847, when Jews were finally permitted to live in the town without restrictions. In Prague Jews weren’t released from the ghetto till 1849 and didn’t get full emancipation until 1867, so Hermann probably couldn’t have worked for a doctorate at Prague’s Charles University. In the Chief Rabbi’s plan to develop Hermann’s career, semichah was a sine qua non. A doctorate was more window dressing for the wider world. In the future it would always be Dr Adler, but the doctorate would not have been the result of equal levels of study. Even so, he was examined in classics, philology, philosophy, literature and semitic languages. Adler was offered the post of Chief Rabbi of Hanover, like his father before him, but preferred to go back to London. So the Chief Rabbi’s son returned to the capital as both a Rabbi and a Doctor. On his return to England his father also recommended that he continue to study under Dayan Jacob Reinowitz, (1818-1893), who was as Rabbinically erudite as the Chief Rabbi. Reinowitz had also been recruited for the London Beth Din from the continent. If Hermann had a hobby, it was study. When, 30 years later, he addressed the Jewish Historical Society of England, he said that ‘AngloJewish history has absolutely exercised a fascination upon me from my earliest youth.’ Learning from Reinowitz was a good opportunity to absorb more knowledge, and he also acted again as his father’s secretary for some months in 1863. Unfortunately there then occurred the very premature death of the principal of Jews’ College, Barnett Abrahams, at only 31 years of age from rheumatic fever. At the memorial meeting at the College it was Hermann, who had studied with Abrahams as well, who made the first spirited appeal for a subscription to be raised for the dead principal’s family. Eventually £2,000 was raised, which is about £170,000 in today’s money and Hermann was appointed a trustee of the fund. As his father’s secretary, Hermann would have seen at first hand all the problems a Chief Rabbi faced. Nathan Marcus Adler had just overcome the only real challenge to his national authority during his 45-year ministry. It ended with the departure of Rabbi Solomon Schiller-Szinessy from his Manchester post. Schiller-Szinessy had wanted to see the position of

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District Rabbi created, to transfer some of the power of the Chief Rabbi to the provincial spiritual leaders. The Orthodox element in Manchester, however, had been too large a proportion of the community to achieve this. Schiller-Szinessy ended his career as an academic at Cambridge and when he died Hermann showed no vindictiveness, but campaigned for a fund to be raised for his widow. Hermann’s career in London now started in earnest at this point. After Abraham’s death, his knowledge was by now sufficient for him to step into the breach. The Chief Rabbi made him temporary principal of Jews’ College until he could find a permanent replacement. Even so, at only 24, Hermann’s CV now included a senior Talmudic position at the college, which he held until 1865. The new young Rabbi stepped into Abrahams’ shoes with determination. One of the students at the time was the future Rev. Isidore Harris and he remembered: Our two principal teachers were Dr Friedländer and Dr Hermann Adler…[whose] range of subjects was also exceedingly wide, including, as it did, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch, [a code of laws], Homiletics [the art of preaching] English Language and Literature, and English History. And he gave us the full benefit of his varied reading in all the departments…The character of his teaching may be summed up in one word: it was inspiring. Dr Adler was full of a loving enthusiasm for knowledge, which it is to be hoped, he succeeded in imparting to his scholars.14 The Jews’ College Annual Report referred to his ‘profound learning’ and his thorough teaching by his father, but it would hardly have said anything else. It might also be the cynic’s case that a teacher only needs to be one lesson ahead of the class, but that doesn’t make him inspiring. That is an art, resulting from a great deal of practice. While critics have grumbled in general about Adler’s Talmudic knowledge, Isidore Harris could report firsthand on the beneficial effects of his teaching. It was to be expected that Adler’s sermons would come under close scrutiny. Although it was a comparatively new development in Britain, it is a valid criterion for judging a minister’s ability. A lot of critics who have written about Hermann Adler have said that his sermons lacked intellectual content, but while this could be an academic necessity, it fails to distinguish between a university lecturer and a preacher. The former can set the intellectual level at whatever height he chooses because the students are

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usually expected to attend, monitored that they do so and examined on the subject of the discourse. With a minister of religion there is no such mandatory discipline applied to the congregation. If congregants find the sermon too intellectual, they will simply nod off or eventually stay away. The inspirational effect of a sermon depends on the minister striking the right notes and appealing to as high a proportion of the congregation as possible. Hermann Adler gave sermons, lectures and addresses for over 50 years and the effect would have varied, with that 2,000 from which to choose. Contemporary comment varied as well, but there were plenty in the audiences who were highly impressed. Fortunately he produced two books of his sermons, and there is much to praise in them. They were very seldom esoteric analyses of obscure aspects of the Talmud. They were far more often simple appeals for appropriate action to help solve contemporary problems. One of these challenges was the efforts of conversionist societies, on whose activities Adler commented that ‘immense sums were spent, year after year, by societies for promoting Christianity among the Jews, in turning bad Jews into worse Christians’. When he was asked to give a more intellectual paper, he was still well equipped for the task. For example, it was natural that the Jewish graduates of University College should form an Old Boys club and it was known as the Literary and Philosophical Society. It had 65 members in 1865 and among them was a vice president, later Sir Philip Magnus, who would be a tower of strength for the Reform movement and, as his career progressed, a famous educationalist and parliamentarian. Adler took on the daunting task at one meeting of discussing Ibn Gabirol and his influence on Scholastic Philosophy. The eleventh-century sage had flourished in Moslem Spain and his work was highly admired. It was also very complicated and, as Adler told his audience at the beginning of his paper, ‘You must not entertain any fear that I shall ask at all of you to accompany me into the speculative labyrinth of Mediaeval philosophy.’15 It was to become the typical Hermann Adler style; an erudite approach, but light-hearted when it was appropriate to entertain as well as instruct. In 1869 he gave a lecture at Jews’ College which was reported in full in the Jewish Chronicle. It was on ‘The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud’ and its language was anything but dull: ‘This evening I invite you to walk with me in the gardens. To the beds of spices, to gather the lilies, the myrrh and the frankincense that bloom there in such luxuriance.’16

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He could be authoritative when the occasion required. When Dayan Bernard Spiers of the London Beth Din published a Haggadah for Passover in 1877, Adler was considered knowledgeable enough to be asked for his comments in Hebrew. In addition, during his ministry as Chief Rabbi he was, of course, responsible for the Jewish communities in the Empire and was consulted by many overseas ministers. Inspiring sermons were one important attraction for the congregations. Some of the members of the established communities, however, also wanted a revised form of service which offered additional reverence and decorum; collective prayer, in unison and at a subdued decibel level. In essence they admired church services. That was one of the reasons for the Secessionists setting up their break-away congregation in 1840. It is also the case, however, that attending services in synagogue is the opportunity for an individual to pray to the Almighty. It isn’t supposed to be the equivalent of a choral concert. Members of the congregation can provide their own reverential approach, without looking to the service to provide more than the right setting. Judaism does not use the Rabbi as an intermediary with the Almighty. The word still means teacher, not ambassador. There was yet another reason for a less than satisfactory level of decorum. The older synagogues, in their architectural construction, had not considered the needs of female worshippers. Women were believed to distract the male worshippers, and so were seated on the upper floor of the synagogue and sometimes behind a curtain. Even the newer synagogues still seated them on a higher floor and, from the women’s gallery they often couldn’t see the bima (platform) from which the service was being conducted by the Hazan (reader) or, indeed, the preacher. When the women couldn’t see what was going on, it should have been no surprise that they chatted to their neighbours on occasions during the two and a half hour service. The major distraction was down to the architecture and the seating plan, rather than an inadequate reverential attitude by the worshippers, though it could hardly be expected that all the men and women upheld the decorum consistently. There was always room for improvement. As far as Nathan Marcus Adler was concerned, Plan A was progressing well. Still a young man, Hermann was a Rabbi with a Ph.D, he had deputized for his father in the pulpit of the Swansea Synagogue and now he was the temporary principal at Jews’ College. In addition, from respect and affection, Herman was, happily, very close to his father and was a good

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pupil when it came to learning how to deal with the bureaucratic problems of the office of Chief Rabbi. These had been much more demanding for his father in Germany. Nathan Marcus Adler came to Britain when he was 42 years old. As Chief Rabbi of Hanover, Adler had always had to be on his guard to stave off antisemitism and to try to ameliorate the adverse conditions under which Jews lived. By way of contrast, Hermann saw none of this in Britain. He could be perfectly relaxed in his relations with members of the general public and the British establishment. He didn’t have to watch every word, deal with the effects of antisemitic legislation or fear potential antisemitic riots. The emancipation of the Jews in Britain was part of the gradual emancipation of Catholics and non-conformists. His father was gratified that Britain was infinitely superior to Germany in this regard, but his adverse experiences had gone on all through his life in Germany, and the family history in Frankfurt had been studded with instances of official prejudice and worse. Refugees and emigrants find it hard to drop their guard. Hermann was going to have a much easier road to travel. He started to become better known when he was asked to give sermons. It was naturally a slow process for a young man, but after he was invited to speak at the New Synagogue in 1860 the Hambro’ asked him to preach in 1862. His father took him along on a pastoral visit to North Shields and Newcastle that year and in January 1863 he spoke at the Birmingham Synagogue to make an appeal from the pulpit for the General Hospital, which raised £100 (in today’s money at least £9,000). In December 1862 he had been at the New Synagogue again to appeal for the Lancashire Distress Fund. The cotton industry in Lancashire was very adversely affected by the American Civil War. Accompanying his father gave him ready recognition, as occurred at the Maiden Lane Synagogue in London that year when the president made an ‘expression of gratification at the eminently useful career now opening to the latter gentleman [Hermann] which was cordially responded to’. One of the late Barnett Abrahams’ initiatives had been the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. The idea came from the society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, whose antecedents went as far back as 1678 in Lincolns Inn. On Friday nights there would be a regular Scripture class and Hermann spoke at these as well. His efforts were rewarded by an invitation from the New to give a series of lectures at that synagogue. He was also prominent as the chair of the judges at Jews’ College for the award of scholarships.

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Nor was his name missing when there were general appeals. The Jews’ Free School had been founded in 1732 as the Great Synagogue’s Talmud Torah (religious school) for orphans, and its roll had now reached 1,800 pupils, 1,000 of whom were boys and 800 girls. When the list of school donors was published there were two guineas (£2.10) from the Chief Rabbi and a guinea (£1.05) from Hermann. That was a lot of money in 1863; about £180 and £90 today. Whenever there was an appeal, Nathan Marcus Adler’s name was always at the top of the list. It seems likely that Sir Moses Montefiore would have provided the necessary funds and included Hermann in his largesse. Montefiore did much to help the old Chief Rabbi. In the last years of his life he always sent him a present for Purim. One year the cheque was for £4,000! (£400,000 today).17 When Montefiore died, it was to universal regret. Hermann spoke at the service in his honour at Bevis Marks and said: ‘it was without parallel in the annals of Judaism that this same festive service is being held simultaneously…throughout the world’.

Notes 1. Ross, J.M., Jewish Historical Society of England Transactions, vol. XXIV, 1973, p.69. 2. Elton, Benjamin J., Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Charter of Anglo-Jewry 18801970 (Manchester University Press), p.73. 3. Jewish Chronicle, 5 June 1891, p.10. 4. Ibid. 5. Adler, Hermann, Anglo-Jewish Memories (George Routledge, 1909), p.68. 6. Jewish Chronicle, 7 October 1859, p.5. 7. Schischa Abraham, ‘Remember the Days’, Jewish Historical Society of England, 1966, p.244. 8. Jewish Chronicle 12 January 1912, p.14. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. The Voice of Jacob, 20 August 1844, p. 210. 14. Harris, Rev. Isidore, History of Jews’ College, 1855-1905 (London, Luzac & Co., 1906), p.xix. 15. Ibid., 28 July 1865, p.3. 16. Jewish Chronicle, 10 December 1869, p.5. 17. University of Southampton archive.

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3 Setting Down Roots The new Rabbi now needed a permanent post. An opportunity arose with the opening of a new synagogue in the West End of London, the Bayswater. The Central Synagogue was the first to be built in the West End in 1855, but it was not well located for those who had moved further out, nearer Hyde Park. So Bayswater was approved by the Chief Rabbi and opened in 1863 after Hermann had come home. It was decided to have three ministerial officials; Isaac Samuel was chosen as First Reader, Raphael Harris as Second Reader and the choice for a lecturer went to Hermann. This was perhaps surprising as the other candidate was already the minister in Birmingham and one of the first Jewish preachers to publish a collection of sermons in English. It was said that Bayswater wanted a good preacher, but it seems more likely that the fact that Hermann was the Chief Rabbi’s son, and had been awarded his semichah, may well have tipped the balance in his favour. One complaint about Rabbinic sermons was that they sometimes seemed to be rooted in events in the Biblical Wilderness. By contrast, Adler’s sermons would quote such non-Jewish luminaries as Shakespeare and Dante with great aplomb. He soon established a reputation as a fine preacher within his new community and, by 1867, he was referred to as the synagogue’s minister. So popular did his sermons become, in fact, that it was reported that the synagogue would have to be expanded to accommodate the growing congregation he attracted.1 The other part of his job specification was to supervise new Hebrew classes, for which he was obviously very well qualified. What he wasn’t appointed to do was conduct services, and in all his years at Bayswater he seldom did so. The ranks of able Rabbonim in Britain were strengthened in 1866 when the Sephardim finally appointed a successor to their last Haham, Raphael Meldola, who had died in 1828. This was the Italian Benjamin Artom, who was only four years older than Hermann. Artom was also a fine preacher and would work hard with Adler in charitable and educational endeavours. As evidence of his immediate seniority in the community, he would be

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found in 1868 consecrating the New Synagogue in Islington with the Chief Rabbi. It was in his early years at Bayswater that Hermann took his first step towards becoming a national figure, rather than just a lecturer for a small, although prestigious, community. The occasion was the publication of a book questioning whether the Pentateuch was G-d’s word given to Moses, or whether it had other authors. The writer was the Bishop of Natal, John Colenso, and his book, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined was an early example of nineteenth-century Biblical criticism. Colenso believed the Pentateuch was written by many people which, if his view was accepted, went far to undermine the Written Law. The whole question of Biblical criticism was a potential minefield for Adler and every other Rabbi. Criticism of the validity of the Bible dated back at least to the Reformation. The Protestants queried many of the interpretations of the Catholic church and, as one result, the loss of life in subsequent religious wars was horrific. For example, in three days in Paris in 1572, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre claimed 3,000 Protestant victims and 70,000 in France in all. It was one of many similar slaughters. Christian fanatics killed far more Christians than Jews. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), half a century later, was one of the worst religious wars. It resulted in the death of no less than two-thirds of the German population and many German Jewish communities were wiped out as well. It started, almost innocuously, when three Catholic bishops were thrown out of a window by the Protestants. They survived; the Catholics said their fall had been broken by angels holding onto their arms. The Protestants said they had fallen onto a dung heap. War broke out, and so devastating was the carnage that the cultural development of Germany hardly progressed for nearly 200 years after the guns fell silent. By the nineteenth century the Enlightenment led to a great deal of intellectual discussion on the Bible. Besides questioning aspects of the New Testament, the Jews and the Old Testament now came under attack again. Many Christian theologians called for what they described as the ‘deJudaization’ of Christianity. They held that Jesus had created a new movement which improved on Judaism; the contents in newlydiscovered ancient manuscripts provided alternative views to many traditions. Sometimes this could be embarrassing. In the middle of the nineteenth century a very early fourth-century copy of the New Testament was taken by a visitor from the St Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai and given to the Czar of Russia. It was sold by the Soviets to Britain in 1933. In the New

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Testament the story of the resurrection of Jesus is only to be found in the last part of St Matthew’s Gospel. In the St Catherine’s Bible it is missing. There are three kinds of Biblical criticism; that of the original text to see if the facts had been correctly understood; that of the language of the Testaments to see whether the grammar, vocabulary and style were correct for their time; and Historical Criticism to see if the events behind the text had been properly recorded. The arguments were far more contentious than would be found today. An 1861 book called Essays & Reviews found seven leading Christian thinkers trying to marry Christian traditions and the new Biblical criticism. In 1862 two were found guilty of heresy in the Church’s Court of Arches, though their subsequent appeal to the Privy Council was successful. If criticism was heresy, the total rejection of the divinity of Jesus by the Jews was still very hard to accept in evangelical circles. Even so, it had to be decided what was the Jewish response to the criticism. The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Abraham Benisch, decided to refute Colenso’s arguments when they appeared in 1863. He did this by dealing with them, point by point, over no less than fourteen editorials. Now Benisch also had the pragmatic task of getting out a paper every week. Furthermore, dealing with the criticism involved a great deal of Biblical knowledge. All of which he had to be sure was factually correct. The logical man to consult initially was the Chief Rabbi, only he would not have wanted to venture into Church politics and had a number of other priorities. The sensible answer for them both would have been to get Hermann, well armed with his semichah, to do the initial work. The Chief Rabbi could deal with any shortcomings before Benisch turned the result into editorials. Hermann was only a young Rabbi. In 1863 he was just 24 years old. There was really no justification for him to take up the cudgels to defend Orthodox beliefs, rather than a more senior figure, but he had the advantage that he could be relied upon to be totally discreet and trustworthy. It was a time when there was growing interest in the Bible, and there were many enthusiasts in societies still aiming to convert the Jews. One of the oldest was the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, which still exists as the Church Ministry among Jewish People. In 1891 at least 15 Conversionist societies were listed in the Encyclopaedia of Missions, including The Jewish Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England and the Jewish Mission of the Church of Scotland. Two centres in the East End were headquarters for the missionary societies; the Jews’ Chapel in Spitalfields and the Episcopal Jews Chapel in Bethnal Green.

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They were all intent upon achieving their long-term objective. At the same time, it was considered perfectly acceptable for counter-arguments to be advanced. If the followers of one faith wanted to defend their beliefs, there might be intellectual argument, but there was no threat of oppression. As Rev Polack, the founder of Polack’s Jewish Boarding House at Clifton College in Bristol, said in 1885: While it is imperative that no harsh thought should dwell in our minds and no offensive word escape our lips in regard to persons, I deem it absolutely essential…that principles which we reject should be frankly considered, and their inconclusive and irrational character, if necessary, clearly established. It was in that world that Hermann Adler decided to give a series of 12 sermons in the Bayswater Synagogue, in which he set out to contradict the arguments of the Christian theologians.2 As he said at the beginning of the book which recorded the sermons: These sermons have been committed to the Press in deference to the wishes expressed by a great number of my own Congregation, as well as by other members of the Jewish Community. But while complying with these wishes, I feel it my duty to repeat here emphatically what I have mentioned in the body of this little work – that it is intended for defence, and not for offence. It was not my purpose when I delivered these Discourses, nor is it my intention in now printing them, to attack the religion professed by the majority of our countrymen. My object is simply to acquaint my brethren in faith with the true meaning of the passages in the Bible, which are commonly cited by theologians in support of the dogmas of Christianity; and to expose the unsoundness of interpretations, which are disseminated among us by missionaries with a zeal as misguided in its motives, as it is barren in results. He also suggested that the missionaries might use ‘a translation compiled by a scholar thoroughly versed in the Hebrew tongue’. The twelve sermons were given between 25 April and 11 July 1868. As Adler was setting out to produce arguments contradicting a whole host of eminent Christian theologians, the points he made were extremely detailed. They involved the misinterpretation of single words in the Bible, Old Testament chronology which didn’t match up with the historical facts, and

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mistaken conclusions regarding the predictions of the future birth of the Christian Messiah, who Adler always referred to as the Nazarene. On the surface, the identification of the Christian saviour as the Nazarene was hardly contentious and in line with Adler’s wish to be defensive and not offensive. There was, however, a deeper message in the choice of names which would have been recognised by New Testament scholars. The word ‘Nazarene’ paints Jesus in a totally different light. The reference comes in Matthew 2:23 where we read: ‘And coming he dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was said by the prophets: that he shalt be called a Nazarene.’ The clear reference is to Nazareth – only the town of Nazareth doesn’t appear to have existed in the time of Jesus. It isn’t mentioned once in the Old Testament. Although 63 Galilean towns are mentioned in the Talmud, Nazareth isn’t. There are no ancient ruins dating back to Biblical times and St Paul doesn’t mention the town. What did exist in the time of Jesus was the Nazarenes, who were part of the Essenes, the very Orthodox Jews, and the original owners of the Dead Sea Scrolls. If, however, Jesus was simply a member of the Nazarenes, Adler was pointing out, by the use of the name, that he couldn’t have been the Messiah. The additional implication is that, in extremis, Adler might turn from defending the Old Testament to contradicting the New Testament. Adler acknowledged that he couldn’t cover all the Biblical references under discussion, but he did include comments and argument on passages in Numbers, Deuteronomy, Hosea, Micah, Zachariah, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah and Daniel. One of the simpler arguments concerned why Jesus had died on the cross: The doctrine is that of vicarious atonement. It is averred that by the sin of Adam all mankind incurred everlasting condemnation, and that for the purpose of saving them, the Nazarene suffered bodily and mental affliction on earth. In refutation, Adler posited that in Judaism nobody could take on the sins of others. He pointed out that when the children of Israel built the Golden Calf, as an idol to worship, Moses had pleaded with the Almighty not to destroy them but to let him die in their stead. This sacrifice the Almighty rejected, but spared the people. Adler then asked for an explanation from the theologians why the Almighty spared Moses but accepted the sacrifice of Jesus? Theological argument is nothing if not detailed.

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When it came to major disagreements, Adler refuted the concept of the Trinity. He quoted the shema prayer which says ‘The Lord is one.’ He tackled the misinterpretation of words. For example, the third word in the book of Genesis is Elohim, which means G-d. Christian theologists said that, as it had a plural ending, this meant that the concept of the Trinity could be justified. Adler rebutted the argument by pointing out that many words in Hebrew, which were definitely singular, had a plural ending; such as ‘face’, ‘life’ and ‘youth’. Other sermons concentrated on the books of Isaiah and Daniel. Both were believed to forecast the birth of Jesus in the future. Adler pointed out that the life of Jesus didn’t measure up to the prophecies. It was hardly likely that the Gospels had forgotten to mention them. The sermons discussing Christianity and Judaism were certainly not the kind of addresses normally delivered from a synagogue pulpit. One eminent non-Jewish historian has gone into them thoroughly and come to the conclusion that: ‘He does call out and seek to correct what he believes to be erroneous teaching by his Christian counterparts, but he does so without the animosity and strident tone we see in some of his critics.’3 For a young man to enter the fray so deliberately was another step on Adler’s road to becoming the future voice of the community. In this effort he found himself in full agreement with David Woolf Marks, the Secessionist minister, who had stated his position years before, that he was not going to criticise anybody else’s religion but if ‘genuine principles of religion are concerned...nothing ought to restrain us from adopting and defending them’. Adler and Marks often had very different views, but they were both always ready to defend Judaism. The Jewish Chronicle was delighted with the results of the book. It ‘achieved the remarkable success of attracting to itself a whole page in the British Museum catalogue wherein to describe the various replicas it invoked’.4 There was plenty of correspondence resulting from Adler’s comments on Colenso, including a laudatory article in the Bombay Gazette. The article was contentious though. When it didn’t appear in the New York Public Library catalogue, a note explained that it had been ‘suppressed by request of the British government’. The Church was divided on the whole subject. It was widely believed that Biblical criticism was a heretical approach; Colenso was even excommunicated by one of the African bishops. One side-effect of the Jewish Chronicle articles was that Adler’s letter might well have brought him to the notice of some of the elders of the Church of England. It was a good

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introduction to such controversy, which would be conducted even more vehemently in a few years time. It was also possible that clergy would be studying his sermons, and as early as 1869 he gave a series on Christian interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. In 1868 Adler was recorded as saying ‘no new dispensation has ever, can ever, come to supersede or abrogate the law given on Sinai’. He stressed that the Bible itself called the halakhah an ‘eternal statute….to be kept throughout your generations.5 Nevertheless, there was a constant reminder in the creation of the Secessionist Synagogue, that there was at least support for a more decorous form of service. Both Adlers were inclined to agree, but decorum comes from the congregation as a whole. The interest differed from congregation to congregation. The New West End Synagogue would be at the forefront in advocating change, but the Great Synagogue and the Bayswater showed little interest in alterations. Bayswater retained the mediaeval liturgical poems (piyyutim), the synagogue had its own ritual bath (mikvah) and there was a Talmud class, which was more normally to be found in the very observant immigrant communities. Adler was a major reason for the conservatism of the synagogue. The relevance of the Oral Law, developed from the earlier Written Law of the Pentateuch, was a crucial argument within Jewry. This was because the position of the Reform movement in Germany was that the Oral Law should be ‘modernized’, which meant changed, in many respects. They considered it old-fashioned and obsolete. Some of the regulations did go against nineteenth century thinking but the Orthodox believed that they had still not been improved upon. The relevance of the laws in the Talmud was defended vigorously by Adler all his life and, of course, discoveries today often validate what had appeared impossible to prove at the time. The cause of bubonic plague, for example, would only be identified well after Adler’s death, but it is clearly stated in the Book of Samuel where it is correctly attributed to muridae.6 As the century wore on, support for Biblical criticism within the Jewish community was one result of the growth of the Suffragette movement. In 1885 Constance Rothschild founded the Jewish Ladies Society for Preventive and Rescue Work Committee. One objective was to deal with white slavery and the committee finally became the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. Another objective, however, was to try to have a woman’s position in Judaism made more equal with men. It was to prove a lengthy battle.

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The education of Jewish youngsters was always a priority for the Adlers. At the end of July 1864 Hermann was invited to speak by the Stepney synagogue congregation, and made an appeal for the school they wanted to start. It was going to be a hard struggle to finance it, but the school did open with five pupils in the August. The Chief Rabbi concentrated throughout his ministry on encouraging the development of Jewish education and Hermann was equally committed in the wider community. When visiting provincial communities both Adlers always included in their programme a visit to the Jewish classes. Education was equally important to the immigrant communities. By 1895 the East End Talmud Torah had 500 pupils, but they were still taught in Yiddish. The strategy, by which Hermann Adler would become better known throughout the community, was steadily pursued. In 1864 the Chief Rabbi found himself unable to attend the prize-giving at the Jews’ Free School and once again it was Hermann who filled the gap, The Chair of the Governors, Sir Anthony Rothschild, presided and the family relationship between the Adlers and the Rothschilds was further cemented. Hermann addressed the children and reported on the progress of the school. The top mark for the major Scholarship had been won with 800 marks, compared with the previous year when it had been carried off with only 710. The child who came tenth in this year had the same marks as the one who came fourth the year before. It is often suggested that the Rothschilds considered the JFS to be one of their favourite charities and did not allow the Chief Rabbi to be in charge of the curriculum. This might have been the nominal position, but Hermann obviously was relied upon to work closely with the headmaster. It suggests that the cousins got on better than the older generation. The relations between Adler and the head were normally harmonious, for the long-time, iconic headmaster, Moses Angel, was devoted to the school and demanding of the children. He was not always realistic though; for example, he was highly critical of their parents for not ensuring their constant attendance, ignoring the fact that so often the children were needed to do odd jobs, to be able to contribute something to help feed the family with the pittance they were paid as a result. Angel knew very well the seamier side of life; his father had been a well-known receiver of stolen goods and had died in Tasmania after he was caught and sentenced to transportation. Angel could be tough and there was one occasion when the two fell out, though it was hardly Adler’s fault. In 1869 Adler was asked for his views on

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the suitability of a JFS master for a position as a teacher in Manchester. This was after Angel had been asked for his opinion and had personally guaranteed that the teacher was an excellent choice. The candidate had all the right qualifications and Angel rightly felt that his recommendation should have been sufficient for the Manchester governors. Adler was hardly as good a judge, but there is no evidence that the Manchester school had told him of Angel’s endorsement. Fences were mended after an exchange of letters. Another responsibility arose with the Jewish Orphan Society. This was a charity which looked after about 40 orphaned children. It had been started in 1830 when a family lost both parents in the cholera epidemic. Cholera killed 50,000 Londoners in the 1860s. A friend raised money to look after the surviving children in 1830, and in 1846 Nathan Marcus Adler laid the foundation stone of the Asylum’s first permanent home. The children were accepted from two to eleven years old and were then apprenticed. Now it fell to Hermann to examine them during the year to ensure that they were being properly educated and looked after. Hermann Adler did a good job as temporary principal of Jews’ College but it was only until a more experienced appointment could be made. In 1865 Michael Friedländer (1833-1910) was persuaded to transfer from the Talmud Association School in Berlin to take on the role. The extraordinary thing about Friedländer was the range of his abilities, for he was not only an expert Talmudist, but also a first-class mathematician and a Classical scholar. His thesis for his degree was a Latin work on the Persian kings – De Veteribus Persarum Regibus. Friedländer would spend the next 42 years developing the college. Hermann stayed on the college staff to teach Theology and to prepare the students for their English exams at the University of London. A combination of fluent English and semichah made him almost irreplaceable. He worked with Friedländer for 17 years and became the Chair of the Council in 1887. In an atmosphere like Jews’ College under Friedländer’s leadership, Hermann’s Talmudic knowledge would have increased still more. Hermann’s growth as a public figure continued. In December 1866 the Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Institute had celebrated its diamond jubilee. Its patrons were the Chief Rabbi and Sir Moses Montefiore, but at the dinner, in front of the Mayor and Alderman, it was Hermann who proposed the toast to the Institute and sat down ‘to loud cheers’.7 This was the extra ingredient that Adler brought to his addresses; the ability to inspire his audiences. It was what Harris had commented upon at Jews’ College.

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The Bayswater congregation was always happy for him to help other communities and, as his popularity increased, Adler became known as Dr Hermann, rather than Dr Adler. The honorary officers at Bayswater were also content that their minister should be available to the Chief Rabbi. His father was in his sixties and it was helpful to him to have Hermann by his side when he visited provincial communities. In 1871 they visited Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin and, as the years went by, Hermann would consecrate new synagogues, induct ministers, arbitrate disputes and relieve his father of long journeys. At Bayswater he realized he had to find a way of pleasing both the very observant and the more lax. For example, the majority of a Jewish community would not be in synagogue on the Sabbath for the whole service, and even fewer would return to the synagogue for the Sabbath afternoon service. Thus Adler was more inclined to allow minor changes in those parts where the very Orthodox attended, rather than the central body of the service which he maintained in toto. Even then, Adler would need to have sound evidence that the changes could be accepted as part of the halakhah, the Jewish law, before he gave his approval. Adler was good at finding justifications for change. As an example, it was the wish of many congregants that English be used more during the service. Adler allowed the addition of English readings during the High Holydays. He justified this contentious alteration by pointing out that, in the Babylonian times of the prophet, Daniel, the Chaldee vernacular was used in services. The Chaldeans were eventually absorbed into Babylonia, but the precedent was established. As the Oral Law was developed over the centuries, a lot of the discussion centred on precedent. English readings, though, were the exceptions. In many ways Bayswater continued to strongly resist any move from the traditional path. If in the future there was going to be pressure for ritual change, it was very unlikely to come from Adler’s synagogue. Another problem at Bayswater had been the absence of children’s Hebrew classes and Adler had set out to repair this omission. He recognized, though, that it wasn’t enough for there to be classes to add to any normal school work. There had also to be competition and rewards. So in 1866 there occurred the first public Bayswater Synagogue Examinations, where parents and luminaries from other Synagogues could come to see the best of the pupils put through their paces. Adler also continued to give private lessons and his effect on the children was well summed up by one parent who wrote: ‘She has received benefits of far higher value than any which can be derived from lessons which merely touch the intellect.’ It was inspiration again.

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It was at one of the evening classes that Hermann met a young woman called Rachel Joseph (1836-1912). She came from a very distinguished Jewish family, which included the foremost synagogue architect in the country, Nathan Solomon Joseph. Nathan had been a supporter of the Chief Rabbi for many years and served as Honorary Secretary of Jews’ College from 1861-1869. Rachel’s father was involved in running the Great Synagogue and her uncle had founded Raphael’s Bank, which still exists. An uncle with a bank would be a useful support for Hermann’s charitable efforts in the future. In 1867 Hermann and Rachel married and lived happily together for the next 44 years. When Hermann had been Chief Rabbi for nearly 20 years in 1909, there was a celebratory dinner, and in his speech he said: It is related in the Talmud that when the great teacher, Rabbi Akiba, was welcomed by a vast throng of his disciples, he pointed to his wife, Rachel, and said ‘All that I have done and all that you have gained is due to her.’ I am under a deep obligation to my Rachel for having shed around my home the sunshine of calm and peace, a happy task joyously shared by our children.8 The marriage produced three offspring – Nettie (1868-1950) named after their grandmother, Henrietta, Ruth (1872-1952), and Solomon Alfred (18761910). Alfred, as he was known later, was the son on whom Hermann pinned his hopes for a continuation of the family Rabbinic tradition, and producing a son after nine years of marriage gave both parents great joy. Unfortunately Alfred was to suffer from chronic ill health, to which Hermann referred when he spoke at Alfred’s Barmitzvah in December 1889, the year before his grandfather, the Chief Rabbi, died. It was a gloomy prognosis: There is sunshine in your heart, as there is sunshine in Nature. But Nature will not always smile upon you as it does now. You have had some little experience of the difficulties that lie in your path. Rachel had been active in support of good causes for a number of years. She was involved with the Ladies Loan Society before the Board of Guardians tried to tackle the same problem. The necessity was to keep the poor out of the hands of loan sharks and a rota of ladies was created, who would organize the loans the poor needed, and collect the repayments. The cause was sufficiently highly regarded that the Baroness de Rothschild was happy to take her place on the rota.

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Nettie and Ruth were both keen educationalists, although they expressed their support in different ways. Ruth would marry Dr Alfred Eichholz (1869-1933) who was a famed academic and Ruth gave him her lifelong support. Eichholz was a Fellow and Tutor at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, when Jewish dons were considerable rarities. In later life he would be a senior inspector of schools. Between 1896 and 1906 Alfred and Ruth had three sons, Robert, Hubert and David. Nettie didn’t marry. When she was 26 years old she fell in love with a Jew from Liverpool, but Hermann didn’t approve of the prospective bridegroom. As a result the relationship ended and Nettie remained a spinster all her life. Relations with her father must have suffered initally. Adler was to be the minister at Bayswater for 27 years and he was regarded with great affection. It was said that a lady member of the congregation asked a minister from another community to visit her husband who had typhoid. When the minister in question suggested she should ask Adler instead, she explained ‘I am far too fond of Dr Adler to let him run any risks!’ On another Saturday Hermann passed the shop of a recently deceased, very Orthodox member and found it had been opened by his son on the Sabbath. Adler delayed his lunch after the service in order to visit the shop and remonstrate with the offspring for breaking the Sabbath. When the shop was shut as a consequence, the story went into Bayswater folklore. Of continuing concern was the education of the children and in 1870 the government’s Elementary Education Act was welcomed, which introduced compulsory education for children aged from 5-10. It was known as the Forster Act and while Christian education was an important part of the curriculum of these Board schools, parents were allowed to withdraw their children from those lessons if they so wished. A number of new schools in the East End had large numbers of Jewish children and Adler naturally took a great interest in them. One of the cooperative agreements reached with the local council was for Jewish lessons to be allowed in the evenings in the school buildings, but the quality of the teachers was often inadequate and Adler worked for Jewish faith schools to be created for the poor as an alternative. He arranged for the responsibility to be given to the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. He was far more than a figurehead though. For example he agreed to give the prizes at the Old Castle Street School in 1876, where the majority of the 1,000 pupils were Jewish. and his talk on that occasion was warmly received.

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In 1871, when Hermann and the Chief Rabbi went to Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow. the visit was covered in detail in the Jewish Chronicle. For Nathan Marcus Adler to take such a personal interest was highly welcomed by the four small communities. Hermann was always included in their thanks and the Chief Rabbi’s sermon in Dublin was even written up in the national media. The minor communities were often in need of encouragement and their lay leaders could always count on the enthusiastic support of the Adlers. In Belfast David Jaffe, a prominent industrialist, had built a synagogue and a house for the minister. In Edinburgh a tiny community had built a synagogue, a school room and also provided a house for the minister. Glasgow was the largest, with around 1,000 Jews by the 1870s. The knowledge that they all mattered to the Chief Rabbi was very welcome indeed. When he arrived in Edinburgh, almost the entire community came to the station to greet him. In 1872, there were further appeals to help small communities in the north of England. Newcastle was building a second synagogue, Hermann consecrated a new synagogue in West Hartlepool and the 45 Jewish families in Middlesborough were also supported in their need for financial aid, to enable them to have a synagogue building. The 1870s were a difficult decade for Britain economically. The importation of cheap food from America caused great hardship to the farmers in the countryside and in 1878 the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank ruined 1,000 of its shareholders because it wasn’t a limited company. The Chief Rabbi was ill at the time and there was a considerable increase in antisemitic incidents, due to trouble in the Balkans. In 1871 another entirely new organization had appeared and Adler became one of its vice presidents. The creation of the Anglo-Jewish Association was inspired by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in France some ten years before. Its objective was to encourage social, moral and intellectual progress among Jews but its main concern was to help Jewish communities which were suffering from persecution overseas. The Board of Deputies was not happy about the AJA, as it feared that it would usurp its position as the spokesman for the British community. In fact, the Board’s constitution specifically confined its attention to Britain and the Empire. If it acted on behalf of any other Jewish community, it was outside its remit. The AJA’s second president was Baron Henry de Worms, a close relative of the Adlers, which would have reassured Hermann that the AJA would become a worthy addition to Jewish communal bodies. Worms set out the aims of the AJA in 1878:

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The object of the Association is, in a word, the defence of the liberty of Jews when assailed…the defence of the civil liberty which accords to every man his post as a useful member of society; of that political liberty which gives him full scope for a legitimate ambition, and for a patriotic activity in the interests of the commonwealth; of that religious liberty which permits a full development of his moral aptitude, and gives him the right to worship the G-d of his fathers after the manner and rites of his fathers. There were, however, a number of other considerations to be taken into account. The members of the AJA were not elected, as were those of the Board of Deputies. Those who could pay the annual fee were normally accepted. Furthermore this opened the door of an important communal body to membership from the Secessionist community and, indeed, Claude Montefiore, the later creator of Liberal Judaism, would be the president of the AJA from 1895-1922. The AJA, however, was not involved in questions of spiritual authority and it did much good work for overseas Jewish communities in need. After the initial concerns had been well ventilated, the Board and the AJA set up a Conjoint Foreign Affairs committee in 1878, which would work together to try to ameliorate Jewish problems wherever they occurred around the world. By 1900 there would be 36 AJA branches including 14 in the British colonies. In 1875 Hermann lent his support to another charitable effort. Michael Henry, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, was involved in an office fire and died when he was only 45 years old. In his memory it was decided that the Jewish boys and girls throughout the country would raise money to buy a lifeboat for Newhaven where Henry had grown up. Adler was at the fore of the fund-raising campaign and the result was the creation of the Jewish Scholars Lifeboat Fund. £2,300 (over £200,000 today) was collected to pay for the Michael Henry, which was launched in 1877 and did sterling work, saving lives for many years. Following his attack on the views of Bishop Colenso, Hermann published a book of sermons in 1869 – Naphtulei Elohim – in which he, in his turn, rebutted aspects of Christian dogma in no uncertain terms. On the Trinity, for example, he said: ‘G-d is dragged down from heaven and likened unto man! The Supreme Being, (I shudder while I say it), is lowered to the level of one of those deities with which the mythology of Greece peopled their Olympus.’9

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He also referred to missionaries as ‘self-created dispensers of salvation’ and refuted the accusation of disloyalty to the country by insisting that Judaism was a religion and not a political party. When Zionism became a serious movement, this was going to lead to Adler’s disapproval of its own insistence that the Jews were a nation. How good were the sermons in Naphtalei Elohim? The opinion of Rabbi Raymond Apple. the former head of the Australian Beth Din and New Zealand Rabbinate, is: In English the book has the nondescript title of ‘A Course of Sermons’. The Hebrew Naphtalei Elohim means ‘Divine Struggles’. It is a collection of sermons which respond to and demolish Christian misinterpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is highly effective, scholarly and lucid. Besides theocratic argument, which aroused a great deal of discussion, a large amount of good charitable work was done behind the scenes at the United Synagogue, without most people knowing much about it. A typical hard-working body was the United Synagogue Visitation Committee, which had been set up early in its history in 1872. Hermann Adler served on it under the chairmanship of Nathan Joseph, the architect in Rachel’s family. The committee were all busy men, but they regularly visited lunatic asylums, hospitals, workhouses, prisons and reformatories, to see what could be done for the Jewish inmates. In three years they made nearly 900 visits, including over 100 to asylums and over 300 to hospitals. There were also just under 100 Jewish prisoners for whom it organized religious services and provided kosher food. Hermann Adler undertook responsibility for chaplaincy work at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington and also visited Bethnal Green and Hoxton lunatic asylums. When the Visitation Committee chair had delivered his report in 1875, it fell to Adler to offer the vote of thanks, even though more senior ministers and laymen were at the meeting. Officially, Adler was still only the minister at Bayswater. Hermann was also to be found helping charitable organizations on many occasions. He was at the annual dinner of the Philanthropic Society which had been founded in 1825 ‘For the Relief of Distressed Jewish Widows’. Initially only four unfortunates received weekly pensions, but by 1872 over 30 were being helped and Hermann was there to show the support of the clergy for another worthy cause.

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He continued to stand in for his father as his health deteriorated. In 1876 his brother-in-law, Rabbi Stern, who had married his sister Jeanette, had been the Chief Rabbi of Hamburg for 25 years. Hermann attended the service and was asked to give a sermon. There were 3,000 people in the congregation and Hermann was giving a sermon in German for the first time. He was totally unfazed by the challenge and it was reported that: Dr Hermann Adler’s address – delivered extraneously and in that talented gentleman’s happiest style, fairly electrified the vast congregation…it is no exaggeration to say that the minister of the Bayswater synagogue has won golden opinions. At home he had joined the Beth Din as a Dayan in 1876. A father and son cannot serve on the same case, but one of the Dayanim was blind and another needed to retire through old age. Suitable candidates from abroad had been the usual solution, but there was a strong feeling that British candidates would be preferred. The Chief Rabbi was ill for long periods in his seventies and in 1879, when he was 76, his doctors issued a stark warning. As he told the chair and the Council of the United Synagogue: During the period of my absence I endeavoured as far as lay within my power to prevent any of the religious interests of the community from suffering neglect…but I am earnestly warned by my medical advisers that the state of my health makes it imperative upon me to relinquish a portion of my public and outdoor functions, and renders it necessary that I should be absent from London during the inclement months of the year…I would ask you to recommend to the Council to take measures for enabling me to secure the proper discharge of those duties which I am unable to perform, so that the affairs of the community hitherto committed to my charge shall not suffer any neglect.10 The United Synagogue Council had no difficulty in dealing with the problem; they nominated Hermann as the Delegate Chief Rabbi. As they said: If Dr Hermann Adler were entirely unconnected with the Chief Rabbi by the near ties of relationship, his great learning and high abilities, his conciliatory disposition and the manner in which he has succeeded in gaining the affection of a large and important

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congregation, would designate him as eminently fitted for the discharge of the responsible duties from which Dr Adler is compelled to seek relief. In future Hermann would sanction marriages, attend the council of the Beth Hamedresh, oversee shechitah, and deal with most of the correspondence. The only United Synagogue condition was that the Chief Rabbi’s office should remain in the City. It was to be a more lavish setting than his father had enjoyed. When he eventually became Chief Rabbi, an old friend, Alfred Cohen, raised a subscription to improve it, which produced a cheque in 1891 for £2,545, which is a quarter of a million pounds today. As Hermann said at the time: Will you be good enough to convey my warm thanks to the donors for their kindness in aiding me to equip my City residence which, with the aid of earnest and wise fellow labourers, I hope, G-d willing, to render a centre of moral and spiritual activity and a rallying place for all who have the welfare of our East End brethren at heart. The choice of Hermann to take over some of his father’s responsibilities as Delegate Chief Rabbi met with the approval of the Jewish Chronicle, which was by now generally likely to reflect the views of the gentry of the community. It recorded the decision of the Council of the United Synagogue, and said of Hermann Adler that he was: Admirably qualified to perform the duties relinquished by the Chief Rabbi, one in whom practical devotion and sound religious knowledge go hand in hand with modern culture and enlightenment…He has long been his father’s right hand, his confident and assessor, and is intimately acquainted with every pending step in questions of religion and business…In his hands the dearest interests of the community will be safe, and it is fortunate that in nominating Dr Hermann Adler the council of the United Synagogue…selected a thoroughly qualified person.11 As far as his father was concerned, the paper continued, ‘it is the wish of all of us to please, by publicly showing the respect we bear for his religious and learned character and his affectionate and continuing care for the welfare of his flock’.

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There was another side to Hermann Adler, though, which was highly necessary for a public figure; he was very sophisticated; he knew his way around Victorian society. On the face of it, portrayed in the image of Queen Victoria and in contrast with the dissolute Regency period, Victorian society was composed of moral and religious leaders behaving impeccably in society. Both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi were perfect examples of Victorian standards. Adler, however, also had to bear in mind that many of the politicians who could have a marked effect on the Jewish community, did not behave in quite the approved way. Palmerston, who defended the Jews in the Don Pacifico affair, was heartily disliked by Queen Victoria for his dalliances. The career of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish leader, who could be a major influence on the treatment of the Jews in his country and held the balance of power in parliament, was ruined by an adulterous love affair. Gladstone himself was notorious for seeking at night to persuade prostitutes to give up their profession. Lloyd George, who would write the Zionist constitution, kept his secretary as his mistress for 30 years. Hannah de Rothschild had to put up with unattractive behaviour by her husband, Lord Rosebery, the Prime Minister. If, like Nelson, Adler had been left with only one eye, he would have had to put his moral telescope to the other in order to avoid any sort of judgment. This was particularly true of the Prince of Wales whose Bohemian behaviour gave a fillip to republican movements. The future Edward VII regularly overspent his civil list and was rescued from financial embarrassment on many occasions by Jewish bankers. As a result, although the Chief Rabbi might only be a figurehead in a Christian country, it was a useful precaution for the prince to have his unqualified support. When he returned safely from visiting India, Adler had a prayer of thanksgiving said in all the synagogues. In 1876 the Prince of Wales held a levée and both the Chief Rabbi and Hermann were invited. Nathan Marcus Adler introduced Hermann to the Prince and other guests included Hermann’s old childhood friend, Albert Sassoon, and his late mother’s relative, Henry de Worms. Adler is accused of hobnobbing with the aristocracy, but he devoted a lot of time to the poorest members of the community. In December 1877 he could be found at the Jewish Working Mens’ Club in the East End talking about the Talmud. He told his audience of the study of astronomy at the time, which resulted in the Jewish calendar. It has never had to be altered, but the Julien Calendar, initiated by Julius Caesar, was too short. It had to

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be replaced by the Gregorian calendar in Britain in 1752, when 2 September was followed the next day by 14 September. Adler also itemised other modern inventions in the Talmud, such as lightning conductors, the rotation of crops, the telescope, anaesthetics and false teeth. The accuracy and the modernity of the Talmud is underestimated by those who have never studied it, which is the majority of the Jewish population. The audience at the Jewish Working Mens’ Club were normally treated with contempt as mere workers by their employers, but Adler pointed out that Judaism took a totally different view of them than, say, the Greeks. Plato and Aristotle had advocated that workers shouldn’t be allowed to be citizens. In Biblical times, however, the great Hillel was a hewer of wood and other Talmudic authorities were cobblers, tanners, carpenters and blacksmiths. He emphasised the Biblical equality of the working man with the richest in the land. It predated socialism by 1,500 years, and when in later years Adler was accused of being unsympathetic to the new socialist movement, he could have referred his critics to what he had said a decade before. Adler was discreet and when he had to wrap some of his messages in the necessary sugar coating, he retained a ready wit and an impish sense of humour, At the opening of the Mocatta Jewish library at University College in 1906, he remembered that it was there ‘where I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life – of my ante-nuptial life’. He explained away the Jewish opposition to intermarriage by describing it as a self-denying ordinance and, in commenting on the complaints of Socialist workers’ about their conditions, he couldn’t resist quipping that he worked harder than all of them which, in spite of their terrible hours, was probably true, though he laboured in much more comfortable surroundings. Adler invariably generalised. He could certainly be a moral voice in society, but his criticisms only very rarely specified a responsible individual. As Hermann became the Delegate Chief Rabbi, the Sephardi community suffered a sad loss when Benjamin Artom, their Haham, died at the very early age of 44. He had become extremely popular throughout the community and Hermann delivered a well-deserved eulogy at the funeral.

Notes 1. 2.

The Porcupine, Liverpool, 8 May 1886. Adler, Hermann, ‘A course of sermons on The Biblical Passages adduced by Christian Theologians in Support of the Dogmas of their Faith’ (Trübner & Co., 1869).

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3. O’Day, Rosemary, Professor of Modern History at the Open University – The Jews of London: From Diaspora to Whitechapel. 4. Jewish Chronicle, 5 June 1891, p.11. 5. Elton, Benjamin J., Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Charter of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1970 (Manchester University Press), p. 80. 6. First Book of Samuel, chapter 6, verse 5. Muridae is the family of rats and mice. 7. Jewish Chronicle, 14 December 1866, p.4. 8. Ibid., 12 January 1912, p.14. 9. Adler, Hermann, Naphtulei Elohim (London, 1869). 10. London Metropolitan Archives, 13 October LMA/ACC/2805/01/02/002/001. 11. Jewish Chronicle, 8 November 1879, p. 8.

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1. With Rachel, when very young.

2. The Delegate Chief Rabbi.

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4 The Path to the Chief Rabbinate As the years went by, Hermann continued to deputise for his father when the Chief Rabbi was ill, and he became well known all over the country. His reputation for Talmudic knowledge was further enhanced when it was necessary to have a successor to Dayan Azriel ben David HaLevi Segal on the Beth Din. Nathan Marcus Adler appointed Hermann. The Beth Din had been formed by Solomon Herschell in 1805 but as there had been no British Talmudists competent to sit on it, Segal had been brought in from Poland by Herschell. He also recruited Aaron Levy, also from Poland, as the Board’s scribe. Nathan Marcus Adler became head of the Beth Din when he was installed as Chief Rabbi and continued the necessary policy of recruiting replacements from the Continent. This made Hermann the first Dayan to be recruited from the ranks of the British ministry. This promotion to Dayan was in the Chief Rabbi’s gift, but being considered as competent as the Chief Rabbi himself, who had chaired the court until he retired, and Dayan Bernard Spiers, another Polish Rabbi and an acknowledged expert, gave Hermann a greater public image. When the Chief Rabbi retired to Brighton in 1879, he remained the nominal Chair of the Court, but appointed Jacob Reinowitz, yet another Polish expert, as the ultimate authority in difficult cases. The head of Jews’ College reported that Reinowitz once answered 95 She’elot (ritual questions) in one day. Even in such illustrious company Hermann pulled his weight. Like so many of Nathan Marcus Adler’s long term objectives, Plan A for the succession was coming to a successful conclusion. Nathan Marcus Adler was certainly a brilliant politician. Many of his achievements were due to the unique way he had of disarming the opposition he often encountered. His secret was that he would always give the credit to someone else. He would destroy opposition with the gentle request that ‘Let there be peace for my sake’. This time it was the Council of the United Synagogue who would get the credit for Hermann’s appointment. Admittedly, there was the odd voice

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complaining that the Council on its own didn’t have the authority to make such a choice, but it was pointed out that the Chief Rabbi could hardly be expected to nominate his own son, even if he felt he was the best candidate. When Hermann took over as Delegate Chief Rabbi for his father, the old Chief Rabbi still liked to remain involved in anything which interested him. He worked well with his son, and there is evidence of this in an article written in November 1889 a year before he died. This was for a magazine called The World and the journalist recorded a visit he had paid to the old man in Brighton: Your host is expecting a visit from his son and assistant, Dr Hermann Adler, who had during the past ten years discharged his public duties in Finsbury Square. Although the Coadjutor Chief Rabbi has crossed swords polemically with Dr Colenso, Mr Goldwin Smith and Professor Max Muller [in The Times on the number of Jews in the world] he always consults his father on important points of business; and when he arrives Dr Adler will be able to illustrate the comprehensive character of their high office, which has a social and judicial aspect quite distinct from its purely religious attributes…The Chief Rabbi is explaining to you the exact functions of the Beth Din, or ecclesiastical court, over which he presided for so many years, when the arrival of his son with the week’s letters, puts an end to his narrative. A dozen abstruse points of ritual must now be discussed in detail. The wants of a congregation in the backwoods of British Columbia have to be duly considered; an earnest enquirer is most anxious to learn the precise rendering of that most perplexing text about a deceased wife’s sister in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, according to the new German version of the Pentateuch. Lord Salisbury has referred to the Chief Rabbi a petition addressed to the Queen by a Bessarabian Jew, to send back his son-in-law who is supposed to be in Montreal; and the questions concerning succession are scarcely less intricate than those relating to ceremonial. When the reports about new synagogues at Hammersmith, Hampstead, Nottingham and Northampton and the Jews’ College have been gone through, there will still be several decisions of the Hebrew Courts of Arches to revise; several epitaphs on deceased worthies have also to be drafted and there are equally large bundles of correspondence relating to the propriety of Lord Mayor Isaacs using his state coach on Saturday, and the progress of

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the Russian refugee students at Geneva. Dr Adler and his son have a great deal to settle before nightfall. The problem with Sir Henry Isaacs was that he didn’t want to use the Lord Mayor’s coach when he led the Lord Mayor’s Show procession on a Saturday, but the city fathers wouldn’t make an exception to the tradition. So Isaacs reluctantly agreed to break the Sabbath. It is an interesting question whether the City fathers would have questioned the validity of the election if Isaacs had stood his ground. The question arose again on future occasions. Behind the scenes the Chief Rabbi was less placid. In some of his letters to Hermann he would criticise someone referred to by the two Hebrew letters, Resh Shin. This undoubtedly was shorthand for the president of the United Synagogue, Lord Rothschild. The Rothschilds and the Adlers remained good friends, however, in spite of occasional differences of opinion. The next generation would also be on excellent terms. For example, in 1882 Hannah Rothschild sent Hermann a note, asking him to call on her at her home, specifically at 11 o’clock at night, as she had a serious problem.1 Hannah had married out of the faith and her husband was the future Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. She was politically minded and it was probably her money which financed Gladstone’s Midlothian campaign and brought him back to power. Hannah didn’t give up her Judaism though. She kept her seat at the Central Synagogue and when she died of typhoid in 1890 when she was only 39 years old, she left instructions that she was to be buried in Willesden Jewish cemetery. This was in spite of the fact that her husband had hoped she would consent to be interred in the family vault in Scotland. Hannah had two children in 1882; one in January, Albert, and one in December, Neil. What her problem was is not known; Rosebery was subject to many rumours about his sexuality and Hannah might have felt isolated, as marrying out was anathema to the Rothschilds and none of the male members of the family would come to the wedding. It was the ultimate family sin. The Jewish Chronicle was also incensed on behalf of the community, particularly as it was a church wedding. Disraeli, the old Prime Minister, gave Hannah away and the Prince of Wales arrived for the ceremony. He had also been at the Central Synagogue in 1881 for the wedding of Leopold de Rothschild and Marie Perugia. In the years they were married, though, Hannah was a fine political hostess for her husband and very charitable, notably raising funds for poor Jewish women.

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At the beginning of Hermann Adler’s Delegate Chief Rabbinate in 1879, the Jewish community’s carefully constructed English image began to change for the worse. It had already been questioned by Disraeli’s handing of the Eastern Question in the Balkans. Now, because of trouble with Russia, following the assassination of the Czar, a mass of new immigrants started to flee to Britain and were prepared to work for lower wages than their English counterparts in the few industries, such as tailoring and furnituremaking, which they had in common. Although it was true that the problem was confined almost entirely to the East End, antisemites would generalise from the particular, and accuse the immigrants of forcing down wages generally, even though there were any number of industries in which Jews had no interest, such as mining, agriculture, the steel industry, etc. It was one of the earliest challenges Hermann Adler faced as Delegate Chief Rabbi. There was, however, a desperate need to help the Russian Jews to leave the country. The massive change in the composition of the British Jewish community had its origins in 1879 when a revolutionary group was formed in Russia called The People’s Will. They wanted a democratic constitution and were quite prepared to use assassination as a method of achieving their objective. After a number of failed attempts, in March 1881 they killed Czar Alexander II with a bomb. The members of The People’s Will were almost all atheists, though there was a one woman who was born Jewish. When the Czar was murdered, however, it was the Jews who were blamed and over 200 brutal pogroms occurred in the next three years. The new ruler also passed what were called the May Laws which discriminated against the Jews in many new ways. Some of the laws dictated where they were allowed to live, what jobs they were allowed to fill, and a demand that a family provide a son to serve in the army for a period which could be as much as 25 years. As a result of this repression and the pogroms there came about a massive wave of emigration. The newcomers were not welcome though by bodies like the United Synagogue Council. One US officer wrote some years later: Its members were always paupers and useless parasites in their own country… if accepted as immigrants in England, they remain paupers and parasites and live or starve on the pittance that the Russo-Jewish Committee and the Board of Guardians successively bestow on them, to the detriment of the more deserving because more improvable cases.2

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So it was Adler, with his father on the sidelines, who had to deal with this unprecedented flood of new Jewish immigrants. Year after year they poured into Britain, mostly destitute, unable to speak English and jobless. The 1880 Jewish community of probably 60,000 had to do its best to succour probably a further 150,000 co-religionists over the next 35 years. There are no reliable statistics because, unlike countries on the continent, in Britain there were at the time no passports and no immigration controls. Other continental Jewish communities wanted to give somebody else the problem. Synagogues in Holland, for example, would bribe steamer masters to take the refugees on to Britain where the Jewish community was well known for its humanity. At the peak about 100,000 a week would journey from Rotterdam, Hamburg and Bremen to the ports of London, Hull and Grimsby. Most would soon be on their way to America. There were waves from Russia in 1881 and 1882, from Prussia in 1886 and from Moscow and Kiev in 1890 and 1891. Show business titan, Lew Grade, recalled after the Second World War: ‘My father was away for three months before he finally sent for us. I later found out that he had insisted that my mother learn to speak Yiddish when he was away, because without any English we’d be lost in the East End of London. At home, you see, we spoke only Yiddish.’ If all this wasn’t enough, Adler also had the massive task of dealing with many of the side-effects of the influx of the refugees; everything from circumcision to cemeteries. In addition, he had the desperately important duty of trying to maintain the financial viability of a considerable number of charitable institutions. He was always being asked to help the poor and the sick, the elderly and the disabled. With that workload, if it was properly appreciated, any criticism of the paucity of his Talmudic writings could properly be categorized as sour grapes. Admittedly, there was much help on hand through the United Synagogue, the lay leadership, some very generous individuals, such as Nathaniel Rothschild, and the existing foundations – medical, educational, geriatric and emotional – for which much of the credit went to his father, but keeping each of the elements afloat still involved the Delegate Chief Rabbi to a greater or lesser extent. He often told the story of the Scottish clergyman who advertised for a horse to do the work of a minister. There would be some long-term compensations, though; in 1899 he would receive an honorary degree from St Andrews University in Scotland; the community was delighted. He soon supported the creation of a new bursary at the university.

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In 1882, the Lord Mayor of London formed the Mansion House Trust for the relief of Russian-Jewish refugees. The precedent was a committee set up by the Lord Mayor of Dublin to deal with the famine conditions in Ireland following some disastrous harvests in the 1870s. It became known as the Russo-Jewish Relief Fund and when news of the scale of the pogroms was absorbed, it sent a stiff protest to the new Czar, Alexander III. The ruler treated with contempt what he considered interference in the internal affairs of Russia, and refused even to accept the document, returning it to London through the Foreign Office. The reports of the pogroms had been horrendous and in the first year alone over £100,000 was donated to help the victims and those still in danger. (£10 million in today’s money). There was major support from the Rothschilds as usual, and a very substantial contribution came from Christians. The Mansion House Committee was first convened on 11 January 1882 and, among the 38 public figures who asked for it, were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Catholic Cardinal Manning, Charles Darwin and eighteen MPs. Adler was asked to sit on the Trust committee which had two main objectives; to help the refugees get away from their intolerant homelands, and to help them get away to somewhere other than Britain. Large parts of the fund were spent on settling the refugees in America and Canada, where their arrival was considered likely to be less disruptive. Among other innovations which were tried were agricultural settlements, set up in Canada, North Dakota and New Jersey. These didn’t last long, but at least the refugees involved found somewhere safe to live. The Chief Rabbi was a willing supporter of the fund. He also became a Vice President of the Mansion House Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, a large number of whom were East End Jewish immigrants. The problems were enormous. In a world before council housing, where were the immigrants going to live? There were many bad Jewish landlords, charging the earth for totally inadequate accommodation. Adler recalled one of the luckier immigrants who told him: ‘Thank G-d, I live under a Christian landlord.’ It could be worse though. When there was no social security, how were they going to eat? If they died – and child mortality was very high – who was even going to bury them? A hundred years before a poor Jew had dropped dead in a London street and was just left there. The Sephardi Mahamad identified him as Ashkenazi, and dragged out the Wardens of the nearby Great Synagogue

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in the middle of the night to deal with the problem. The official bodies of Jewry never neglected their responsibilities to their poor. Of course, there was always an alternative. The impoverished could be allowed to be sent to the Workhouse and a small number were. To make anyone a burden on the state had, however, never been the Jewish way. Furthermore, everybody knew that the conditions in the Workhouses were not likely to keep Jewish children within the fold; these were strictly Christian institutions and the conditions in them were designed to be so unpleasant that the wretched inhabitants would seek work, simply to get away. With the support of the Chief Rabbi, trying to ameliorate the worst of the poverty was now the responsibility of the Jewish Board of Guardians. This was an 1859 amalgamation of a number of charities; it was a very positive effort to improve the handling of the problems, but the Board was overwhelmed by the sheer number of deserving cases. They were helped by a member of the Mocatta banking family, who set up the Poor Jews Temporary Centre in the East End to, at least, give the newcomers somewhere to stay for the night when they arrived by the docks, and to help in finding them a job. To try to stem the flood, the Board paid for an advertising campaign in Europe, the theme of which was ‘Don’t come to Britain!’ In his old age, the Chief Rabbi had agreed to write to his European Rabbinic colleagues in 1888 along the same lines. He asked them to tell their members: not to come to the land of Britain ‘for such ascent is a descent’. The Board of Guardians even made a decision to refuse to give any charity to immigrants until they had survived six months in Britain. Where they could, the Board even went out of its way to repatriate them. Between 1880 and 1914 they paid for some 50,000 Jews to go back to the continent. In 1903, out of 450 who asked for help, 80 per cent were sent home – if you could call it ‘home’. During Adler’s ministry, however, they dealt with settling as many as 10,000 immigrants in London. It was an ideal opportunity for the Christian missionary societies to step into the breach. The per capita cost of conversions should have been very reasonable but not many Jews succumbed to the temptation. It was, however, practical but pathetic that generous Jewish benefactors needed to set up soup kitchens in the East End. From 1881-1884 there were hundreds of pogroms and destruction in many parts of Eastern Europe. In Warsaw, for example, in December 1881, it wasn’t just the physical attacks; over 1,000 families were financially devastated as their homes and businesses were destroyed by the mobs.

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The working-class immigrants in the East End. created other problems. They needed somewhere to live. The immigrants swamped several districts and they didn’t always mix easily with the local population. Of more moment to the government, the migrants had very good cause to hate the Czar, even though he was the Prince of Wales’ nephew. Where there is poverty, there is also a greater temptation to commit crime and as the Jewish immigrants were almost universally poor, they included a number of criminals. Some were part of the despicable White Slave trade in prostitution: the Yellow Peril. Indeed, those who set out to distort the facts always insisted that the Jews were at the root of almost any problem. Of course, the bad publicity didn’t just affect the immigrants in the East End. To their discomfort, the richer Jews in the West End could see all too clearly the strong likelihood of being tarred with the same brush as their poor co-religionists. When caught, a Jewish criminal was identified as such, though the religious identity of Baptists, Hindus and Buddhists did not appear to be equally worthy of mention. The patriotic image of Jews, constructed over 200 years, as good British citizens was threatened by all these events. If you add outside factors such as the political and economic turmoil during Adler’s ministry, the trouble in the Balkans, the constitutional crisis with the House of Lords, a four year economic slump in the 90s, assassinations in pursuit of Home Rule for Ireland and industrial strikes so fierce that the navy had to send warships up the Mersey to defend Liverpool, it was only a slight exaggeration for Winston Churchill to remember ‘a nation torn by the fiercest political strife and even…drawing near to the verge of civil war’. It also has to be recognised that the fight to dismantle the Jewish disabilities had been ongoing for 200 years. After fighting for a cause for that long, it is very difficult for those still involved to demobilize. The thinking is that the war may have been won, but the enemy could always regroup. After all, the final emancipation of the Jews had only come about with the passing of the Parliamentary Oaths Act in 1866. For membership of the House of Lords, the barrier of having to take the oath as a Christian remained in force until 1885, when Queen Victoria agreed to award Nathaniel Rothschild a peerage. Jews still couldn’t declare their faith when enlisting in the army or navy. The approach for a large majority of the community, therefore, was to stay on its guard, to check and recheck its defences and not to offer hostages to fortune. The influx of the poor immigrants could easily become such hostages.

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It was with the problems of the immigrants in mind that Adler went to Berlin in 1882 with Sir Julian Goldsmid, to the international conference called to consider such difficulties. What could not be foreseen was the sheer number who would flee to countries all over the world in the coming years; a final figure which ran into millions. Although America was the major destination, the Jewish communities in Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand grew considerably as well. The international reaction to the pogroms saw the Berlin conference attracting delegates from Germany, the Alliance Israélite Universelle based in Paris, Britain and an American committee. The main purpose was to coordinate the approach of the several groupings and they struggled with the problem from 9pm to1am on a Saturday night after the Sabbath ended and for many hours on the Sunday and Monday. Out of deference to the serious nature of the discussions, it was decided not to hold a conference banquet, but an informal soirée saw Adler, the Delegate Chief Rabbi, responding to the speech of welcome to the delegates. The conclusion was that the emigrants should initially be the responsibility of the Berlin committee, who would pass them on to London. There they would be organized to take ships for the United States, where the American committee would endeavour to settle them in their new country. It wasn’t just in Eastern Europe that antisemitism was growing. Adler was very concerned about the worsening situation in France, which would have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair. In 1881 a newspaper called L’ Anti Juif had been founded and Adler launched an attack on the French the following year, saying it was ‘a country that boasts of its Enlightenment and super intelligence...waving the white banner of culture and learning while spreading malice and ill-will’. Even so, Adler made considerable efforts to prevent economic immigrants coming to Britain. It was a pragmatic approach for which he was much criticized in the East End. He totally recognized that those fleeing persecution needed refuge, but those seeking a better life were likely to increase the level of unemployment in the East End and might well find a better life unobtainable. They would also add to the antisemitism in the area and increase the possibility of an Aliens Act. In 1895, in the Jewish Chronicle, Adler wrote that the administrators of Jewish charities: …use every available means to discourage the migration to these shores of all who are not victims of persecution…I endeavoured to second these efforts in my communications to the various Rabbis in Russia and Poland.

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One problem was that my grandfather, like so many ancestors of today’s community, couldn’t read the Jewish Chronicle because he couldn’t speak English and he came anyway. Adler also represented the Russo-Jewish community at the conference in Paris in 1890. He wanted the safety of Britain to remain available to the refugees, but over the years, a growing tide of public opinion continued to insist the level of immigration had to be reduced, even though we now know that the problem was very much exaggerated. Proportionately, more Huguenots had been absorbed in Britain after the seventeenth century Revocation of the Edict of Nantes than fled the pogroms. In 1885 Hermann also went to Egypt and the Holy Land to study the settlements created by some of the Russian refugees. He was armed with funds from the trustees of the Mansion House Fund to aid the colonists, and returned to give a warmly sympathetic sermon on the progress which had been made. He also gave his blessing to a Maccabean Society pilgrimage to Palestine in 1887 and endorsed the work of the Zionist charity, Chovevei Zion, in 1890. In 1898 he went as far as to say that ‘every believing and conforming Israelite must be a Zionist’, but with the controversial proviso that the Jews would only return to rule in the Promised Land when the Messiah came. In such circumstances the obligation to help their co-religionists had always been there. It was enshrined in the prayers on Yom Kippur, when charity was quoted as one of the ways to avoid the next twelve months being distinctly unpleasant. The influx of refugees was an ongoing problem for Adler. They came at a time which almost exactly covered Adler’s period in office as Delegate Chief Rabbi, and then Chief Rabbi in his own right. Adler did care for his poor and he tried to get them every kind of support. As early in his ministry as 1875 he had addressed an audience at the East End Jewish Working Mens’ Club in Yiddish, advising them to take English lessons. Many charitable settlements were created in the East End and Adler tried to recruit helpers for them from all walks of Jewish life. On occasions he used very subtle diplomacy to help the impoverished. In the Central Synagogue in 1884 he spoke at a memorial service for Charlotte de Rothschild, one of the most generous of an exceedingly philanthropic family. He told the congregation how felicitous it was that he had been told by a ‘dear relative’ that the good lady’s last words were ‘Remember the poor’. At the end of the panegyric Adler homed in: ‘I can conceive nothing more affecting, nought more solemn, than the

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admonition which her dying words and acts convey to those who were supremely dear to her in life.’ Any professional fund-raiser worth his or her salt would have to give that appeal a standing ovation. The Rothschilds would have gone on being generous anyway, but the idea that this would be a suitable memorial to Charlotte was, unquestionably, a beautifully crafted argument. Adler often used the sermon as a potent way of making the case for projects which he felt were badly needed. Hermann Gollancz, a distinguished Rabbi in his own right, but no acolyte of Adler, said that they ‘Frequently set in motion those new departures in communal action which have now become hallowed by time and usefulness.’ Organizing relief measures within the British Jewish congregations wasn’t easy, though. The idea that the original community didn’t quarrel among themselves in Nathan Marcus Adler’s day was strictly wishful thinking. Liverpool and Manchester, as only two examples, had arguments which went on for years. In Hermann Adler’s time, however, absorbing the new immigrants involved two very specific problems. One fundamental point was that the new wave of immigrants didn’t want, and weren’t accustomed to, a Chief Rabbi in the first place. It was a uniquely British institution. Instead the immigrants wanted their own Rabbi to be in sole spiritual charge of their communities. They also sought to maintain their total independence. It was a last link with the homes they had escaped from on the continent. Another problem was that Adler was, without doubt, a member of the old West End community. He was related to them by birth and marriage, he was a minister at one of their synagogues and he was entirely acceptable in their ranks. As such, when it came to sweat shops, he was wrongly accused of being a supporter of the exploiting masters, rather than the downtrodden workers. Besides the institution of a Chief Rabbi, though, there were also major differences between Jewish and British law which affected the immigrants in the East End. This was particularly the case with problems of marriage and divorce, where many of the newcomers would rely on decisions by Continental rabbis rather than by the law of their new land. For instance, in Jewish law a niece can marry her uncle, but not by British law at the time. There were even a certain number of polygamous marriages within the community, sanctified abroad, which the din also allowed. The core problem with divorce was that if the British courts granted a civil divorce, that did not automatically enable an Orthodox Jewish woman to be remarried in Synagogue, or for any future children she

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might have, to be considered legitimate in Orthodox Jewish law. For this the husband had to give his wife a Jewish divorce called a get. If he failed to do so, the marriage remained intact as far as the Orthodox were concerned. There were a few exceptions where the behaviour of the husband could be shown to be morally unacceptable, but it was certainly not a level playing field between husband and wife. Generally the man was in a far stronger position. Towards the end of his life Adler explained this dilemma to the Royal Commission on Divorce which was set up in Edwardian times. He didn’t excuse the situation. He just stated the facts. There was little he could do about them himself, except to bring whatever pressure he could to bear on the recalcitrant husband. Unfortunately, the Jewish law remains that a civil divorce does not qualify a woman for an Orthodox Jewish divorce, though, almost 100 years later, pre-nuptial agreements were introduced to contract a husband to give his wife get if the situation arose. Engaged couples, however, are hardly likely to look kindly on procedures applicable if their marriage breaks down. Adler did his best. He appealed to the Commission to legislate to make a husband give a get or be held to have committed contempt of court, but the Commission declined to do so. Adler had provided a chapter on the Jewish laws of marriage and divorce for the authoritative work on the subject, Hammick’s Marriage Laws of England, as long ago as 1887. In the book Hammick had identified one practice which reflected badly on a number of synagogues. Where the wife was not a member of the husband’s synagogue, she was often made to join it at an exorbitant fee. Adler was criticized for not fudging the issue of the get with the Royal Commission when giving evidence. One of the lecturers at Jews’ College, Samuel Daiches, insisted that he should have declared that Jewish law was superior to British law, an argument which would have been very difficult to sustain in this instance. Adler was, however, stoutly defended in The Jewish World: He stood up as a brave man and he presented things as they are. And the logical outcome of his evidence was his request for legislation that would punish those who flout the laws of this country and encourage moral wrong in the name of Judaism…as a matter of fact, Dr Adler was as decent and as temperate as he could have been under the circumstances.3

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One of the other differences between British and Jewish law on marriage was the question of whether a man could marry a dead wife’s sister. It was forbidden in British law and permitted by Jewish law, as Nathan Marcus Adler had confirmed to a Royal Commission many years before. It was estimated that many such marriages had taken place in Britain, contrary to the law, but it was not until 1907 that the law was changed and British law caught up with the Talmud. There were other factors affecting the 40 or so small synagogues in the East End. Where the congregations came from the same village or small urban area in Russia and Poland, their Rabbi was accustomed to their inherited customs. They were not major differences but it was difficult for every congregation to have precisely the same procedures which might not always be practised elsewhere, including Britain. Also, for the immigrants, catapulted by the pogroms into a strange country of refuge, the synagogue wasn’t just a place to pray. It was a body from which they could seek help in an emergency. Outside organizations, imposed upon them against their wishes, were not neighbours from the old home and were looked upon with suspicion. The best analysis of the inhabitants of London at the time was undertaken by Charles Booth, who financed it from his profits as a steam shipping line owner and did a lot to bring about old age pensions. Beatrice Potter helped him with his analysis of the community in the East End. She wrote: ‘The chevras…combine the functions of a benefit club for death, sickness and the solemn rites of mourning, with that of public worship and the study of the Talmud.’ In 1891, with the installation of a younger man, with Lord Rothschild as the head of the United Synagogue, and the Chief Rabbi’s spiritual leadership a comparatively unknown quantity, those who wanted changes sensed that they, at last, had a chance to achieve their objectives. If only they had known, the odds were still heavily stacked against them. To make his relations with the East End communities even more difficult, Hermann Adler could not expect to have the same degree of automatic authority which had been earned by his revered father. When a team like Adler and Montefiore had been in charge for the best part of half a century, opposition to their decisions was very likely to be fruitless and readily abandoned. There was another area of contention. In the East End the way the immigrant synagogue services were conducted was different from the Establishment congregations, where the proceedings were more formal and decorous. In a church the service would be conducted by the vicar and the

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choirmaster and the congregation would follow their lead. In a traditional immigrant synagogue, the members of the congregation would pray in their own way; some with the choir, if there was one, some in silence, some appealing quite loudly to the Almighty. There was often a hubbub, and the acoustics weren’t improved by this lack of uniformity. As people age, their hearing deteriorates and following the service becomes more difficult. A hubbub is the last thing they want and the elders of the community would often come into that category. The Jewish Establishment wanted propriety and church-like dignity, though actually the pre-Adler era had little of it and the past, as often occurs, was seen through rose-tinted glasses. So a considerable proportion of the acculturated members of the communities, those who had been in the country for some or many years, hankered after the atmosphere of the church service. They deplored the hubbub but, in fact, very little had changed over the centuries; Samuel Pepys, the Stuart diarist, went to the synagogue in Creechurch Lane on a day during the festival of Succot, two hundred years before, when the rejoicing of the festival led to a great deal of noise. Pepys recorded that he was appalled; the joy of Simchas Torah at Succot found constables called to keep order in the synagogue. It is still a joyous, if unconventional service today. The new synagogue buildings were similar to small cathedrals. They were architecturally dignified, mostly slightly Gothic and Romanesque and were appropriate settings for decorous services. So it was not surprising that even when the congregations disappeared, as they would in different parts of the country as the years passed, the buildings remain with Preservation Orders to ensure that they continue to be part of the British heritage. There was even a proposal in 1883 to knock down Bevis Marks, as many of the congregation had moved their homes nearer to a new synagogue in Maida Vale. Only sustained opposition prevented this from happening. Adler, of course, also wanted the services to be conducted with dignity and decorum. He didn’t feel at home with noisy, untidy piety. He considered the East End Jews to be uncultured and even uncivilized because they were less concerned with what was going on around them than with their own prayers. When Adler called the migrants illiterate, it wasn’t really an inability to read or write which was thought to take away their respectability; it was an inability to speak ‘nicely’ which meant they talked with an accent and often spoke Yiddish rather than English. Yiddish was so popular in the East End that there was also a flourishing Yiddish theatre.

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Indeed, Yiddish was so prevalent that a number of policemen in the East End were taught to speak the language. Respectability involved speaking ‘Oxford English’ for many more years. A Liverpool accent would only become respectable when the Beatles emerged more than half a century later. Dropping ones ‘H’s was another sign of the ultimate cultural drawback – being ‘common’. One criteria motivating Adler and the communal gentry, was to avoid this label being applied to the Jewish community. It didn’t worry the East End immigrants so strongly because they had bigger problems with which to contend. It was, however, a matter of great importance to the West End communities and, of course, it resulted in the immigrants moving to more salubrious London suburbs when they could afford to do so. Adler encouraged them in that ambition. Initially, Adler and the immigrants inhabited different worlds. At the same time Adler knew very well that the immigrants were devoted to Judaism, often to a greater degree than their West End co-religionists. He wasn’t accustomed to the right wing approach, but he appreciated the depth of their faith. Difficulties like these did not result in the local communities ceasing to squabble among themselves. Although the old Chief Rabbi had brought a unity of approach to many aspects of the British community, there were still differences in aspects of synagogue services up and down the country. Hermann wrote to his stepmother about the pressure for change: My own affairs do not look so bright as I could have wished. A certain section of the community would wish me to give pledges regarding Reforms, and this I look on as Simony [selling church offices]4 When Adler was interviewed by the Christian Commonwealth in 1891, the journalist wrote: ‘Though a learned rabbi, he is not a hermit but a man of business and a busy man.’He asked Adler to detail his responsibilities, and he: …partially indicated the various duties belonging to that office… They comprise the spiritual supervision of all the Hebrew congregations under my pastorate; all matters relating to divine worship and to synagogue discipline; all the ministers and other officials whom the congregations elect must be appointed with my sanction; watching that the various laws enacted by our religion shall

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be observed, regarding prohibited food, the partaking of unleavened bread on the Passover; the supervision of the various educational institutions for religious instruction; the Presidency of the Beth Din…consecration of synagogues; the officiating at the opening of new charitable institutions and homes; the issuing of authorisations for marriages…also preaching regularly…also regular visitations of the provinces for the same purposes.5 What was also needed was a common prayer book to unify the various congregations and the old Chief Rabbi set about having one produced as his last major initiative in office. Someone had to do the donkey work and the problem was that Hermann didn’t have the time, with his responsibilities as Delegate Chief Rabbi. It was also essential that the result would be acceptable to the wide range of Orthodox congregations. The ministers, however, were divided; some belonging to Establishment synagogues and others to the highly traditional new immigrant communities in the East End. There was one notable clergyman, though, who was acceptable to both streams; Rev Simeon Singer had been the minister of the Borough Synagogue in the East End and was now at the New West End Synagogue near Hyde Park. He had also taken himself abroad to obtain his semicha in 1890 from Rabbi Weiss in Vienna. Adler had even taken the trouble to go to Austria to satisfy himself that the semicha had been properly earned. He knew that Singer was an amiable and well-liked character. At the New West End his work for charities earned him the title of ‘champion beggar’. He had even been recommended to put himself forward as Chief Rabbi, but he rejected the idea. It was Singer whom Nathan Marcus Adler persuaded to put together a new prayer book. While every prayer was carefully scrutinised by the old Chief Rabbi and stated to have been approved by him, the credit for the donkey work went to Singer. Many of the small differences in the services of provincial synagogues were subsumed into a standard format. Once again, Nathan Marcus Adler’s opponents had the perfect excuse for the alterations, which was that they had only agreed to change their traditional procedures for the sake of peace in the community. What is now known as the Singer Prayer Book was really the Adler Prayer Book. Furthermore, its original edition looked exactly like the Book of Common Prayer, used throughout the Church of England. It was even printed with the same blue cover. Singer wasn’t the only minister who travelled abroad for his semicha. Dr Hermann Gollancz was awarded his ordination certificate in 1897 by

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Rabbi Saul Horowitz, Chief of the Rabbinate in Tysmienitz in the Ukraine. The Globe commented: By subjecting himself abroad, in the very stronghold of rabbinical learning and orthodoxy, to the severest tests of old-world Rabbinism, according to the methods in vogue for centuries, at a time when the avenues of progress were practically closed by the system which obtained here, Dr Gollancz has deserved well, not only of the students and teachers of Jews’ College and others, but the community generally. More knowledgable ministers were an important objective, but for the community to survive, Hermann Adler knew there had to be whole new generations who would follow the ancient faith. This meant teaching them Judaism and getting them to find it sufficiently attractive that they would reject other alternatives, both religious and secular. It had to be accepted, of course, that this ambition was never going to be entirely successful. Not only were the secular alternatives going to win adherents, but the temptation that conversion offered of instant social acceptance, continued to be, for many, a powerful incentive. Adler also saw the need to move the community forward into British life as a whole. The legal disabilities may have been abolished comparatively recently, but considerable pockets of antisemitism remained and they would be inflamed by the effects of the mass immigration. No change there then. Happily, Jews could now sit in both Houses of Parliament, attend any university and belong to any profession or occupation, but that didn’t make them universally popular. For example, innkeepers in the East End disliked them intensely, as they didn’t frequent pubs like their neighbours. Many publicans went bankrupt in Jewish districts. In addition, there were plenty of public schools which had quotas for Jewish pupils, golf clubs that didn’t accept Jews as members and hotels and restaurants which were ‘full’ if your name was Cohen. Through the years there would only ever be four Jewish boarding houses attached to public schools; Harrow for a few years, Cheltenham for longer, The Perse in Cambridge for 40 years and Clifton for nearly a century. A typical attitude by the governors of other public schools was to insist on the Jewish pupils attending chapel, and to refuse to allow them to have any Jewish education. At least one public school, late in the twentieth century, would consider itself very tolerant when it allowed the Jewish pupils to take off either the New Year or Yom Kippur!

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There were also chambers and colleges, London clubs and major commercial companies, who said they had no objections to taking Jews but only seemed to have vacancies on the rarest of occasions. Antisemitism remained, and would only diminish slowly over the next century, as other, even darker hued, scapegoat communities emerged with which to frighten the children. Nevertheless, by 1891, when Hermann succeeded his father, British Jews had achieved great deal. It was necessary. The antisemites started to get better organised with the creation of the British Brothers League which was determined to get an Aliens Act passed. The Chief Rabbi also wanted to plan for the future of the community. The younger generation were a particular concern to both Adlers. The children at public schools were often subject to antisemitism and the best way to avoid it was to deny their heritage. This would continue to be the situation for another hundred years. One of the ways in which Hermann Adler approached the problem of educating the community was by supporting the creation of the AngloJewish Historical Exhibition from April to June 1887 at the Royal Albert Hall. Anglo-Jewish history was not seriously studied until Myer Davis adopted it as a hobby and wrote of his work in 1869. Davis was the headmaster of the Shaare Tikvah Sephardi School. It had been suggested, as far back as 1859 in the Jewish Chronicle, that there be formed a Jewish historical society, but nothing had come of it. Now Sir Isidore Spielman, from a banking family, who would be involved in many international exhibitions in the future, proposed a Jewish one. His mother was Samuel Montagu’s sister. The idea of the exhibition did not please those who preferred the community to maintain a low profile. Adler dealt with this viewpoint: Is it wise for our community thus to thrust itself upon public notice? Do not our strength and our wisdom lie in a dignified reserve and in the absence of all ostentation?…Our purpose has not been to put in evidence proofs of the Hebrew’s wealth, evidences of his superior skill and intelligence…the main object of the collection…is educational and instructive.6 It was impossible not to be fascinated by exhibits like the original boundary stone of Gezer, one of the Biblical cities. There was also a comprehensive collection of historic Jewish coins and many relics of the time of the Jews in Britain before their expulsion in 1290. It was an

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opportunity to point out that, with the patents awarded to the Jews at the time, the high priest was described as Dilectus et familiaris noster – our well-beloved and our friend. There was also an ancient poem by Meir ben Elias of Norwich, which had been copied from a manuscript in the Vatican, and many mementoes of the Bene Israel community in India. The exhibition was very popular and the next year it was decided to continue the educational effort by creating the Jewish Historical Society which, in 1893, became the Jewish Historical Society of England. Plan A, on which Nathan Marcus Adler had worked almost since Hermann’s birth, was coming to fruition. Like so many of Nathan Marcus Adler’s objectives, it had been achieved through meticulous planning, great diplomatic skill and by the benefit of his own impeccable reputation. There were many occasions when the ministers and the lay leaders of synagogues did not see eye to eye, but this did not seem to be the situation at Bayswater. When Adler finally gave up the post on becoming Chief Rabbi, he wrote a perfectly genuine eulogy to the members: My official connection with your Synagogue has been to me a source of unqualified satisfaction. It has proved to me a well-spring of spiritual joy and mental comfort, more especially during the last twelve years, when the anxieties caused by the discharge of the duties of the Rabbinate began to press upon me. Pray be assured that I shall ever treasure as the sunniest memories of my life, the considerable indulgence, the warm appreciation, the loyal friendship which has been evinced towards me by every worshipper at our beloved Synagogue. It would be extraordinary if there had been no differences of opinion at the Bayswater Synagogue over more than 25 years, but at the end of the day there was warm affection on both sides. To address all the various problems of the older Jewish community, Hermann Adler had become the absolutely perfect choice for Chief Rabbi to succeed his illustrious and popular father. Acceptable nationally, as well as within the community, as a very good speaker, he was always recognised by, and attracted, large congregations. Apart from that, he ‘turned visitation into a fine art’. As Chief Rabbi he would visit the provincial communities on a large number of occasions. The community was going to be in safe hands.

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The note is in the University of Southampton archive. Adler, Hermann, Anglo-Jewish Memories (George Routledge, 1909), p.55. The Jewish World, 1909. Simony is buying spiritual change. Adler was suggesting that lay leaders were using the importance of their financial contributions to get him to make changes. Christian Commonwealth, 1891. Jewish Chronicle, April 1891.

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5 The Eastern Question By 1875 Nathan Marcus Adler had been in office for 30 years. He was over 70 and not in good health. It was natural, therefore, that he should rely on Hermann’s help in what, on the face of it, should have been a fairly quiet time. The Universities’ Tests Act in 1871 had abolished one of the last areas in British public life where religious tests had been applied, and now Jews could take their degrees at Oxford and Cambridge like anybody else. In government, George Jessel, as Solicitor General, had become the first Jewish minister. On the face of it, an increase in antisemitism did not seem very likely, although that didn’t mean it didn’t exist at all. Disraeli, the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, and a converted Jew, was always subject to it. The one outstanding piece of discriminatory legislation that remained was that a Jew would still have to take an oath as a Christian if he wanted to enter the House of Lords. If he had been prepared to do so, which he wasn’t anyway, in 1873 Queen Victoria had refused to approve a peerage for Lionel de Rothschild because of his Judaism. The first Jewish peerage would not be granted for more than a decade. In the 1870s, however, there was one peer who had Jewish ancestry, and whose origins he was never allowed to forget; Benjamin Disraeli, later Lord Beaconsfield, had become the Conservative Prime Minister and was in office from 1874 to 1880. The family had been originally senior members of Bevis Marks Synagogue, but Benjamin had been baptized after his father had a row with the Mahamad, when the boy was thirteen years old. They wanted the father, Isaac Disraeli, to take a senior office at the synagogue and when he refused they fined him, which was, in fairness, according to their rules. Isaac refused to pay and left the community. Although this officially made Benjamin a Christian, Disraeli’s critics would always assert that his policies were founded on his earlier Jewish background. The Church Times would often refer to him as the ‘Jew Premier’. By the time he won the 1874 election, he had given ample proof of his feelings towards the Jews. Nearly twenty years before, when his Conservative Party under Lord Derby was very much against allowing Jews

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to take their place in parliament without swearing a Christian Oath, Disraeli had voted for the measure which finally made it unnecessary. Unlike the Jewish community Disraeli was not overly worried about his popularity. When he wrote his many popular novels, the Jewish characters in them were often depicted as belonging to a superior race. Hermann Adler was, himself, a Conservative and, therefore, a supporter of Disraeli, but the last thing he wanted was to have Jews portrayed in this way. In seeking full emancipation, Adler took the natural view that to boast of some kind of superiority was very counter-productive. It was a claim that was bound to be resented; boasting was not a British trait and Christians naturally believed that in not recognizing Jesus, the Jews had made the ultimate error and had not established some form of superiority. As far as Disraeli’s own religious convictions were concerned, however, he described himself as the blank page between the Old and the New Testaments, which was a witticism which took his critics and supporters no further. So for much of the 1870s decade Disraeli was Prime Minister and, with great satisfaction, he said he had climbed to the top of the greasy pole. He dominated the House of Commons and had strong support from bankers such as the Rothschilds. When 44 per cent of the Egyptian shares in the Suez Canal came on the market in 1875, it was Rothschilds who provided the £4 million Disraeli needed to buy them in a hurry. It was famously said that Rothschild asked who the guarantor for the loan was, and was assured that it was the British government. Rothschilds immediately came up with the money, which was considered highly patriotic. It was a profitable investment by Disraeli, as the shares increased markedly in value over the years. In the business world it does no harm to be the only game in town and Rothschilds were one of the only available sources for the capital which Disraeli needed immediately. The government cleared the debt within five months. It was said by his critics that the Prime Minister was dismissive on any number of political topics, but he was always deadly serious when it came to matters affecting the Jewish community. He once said in Parliament that his ancestors were sacrificing to the Most High when London was a marsh! Adler would have winced. Disraeli was the ultimate individualist, but by the time he was Prime Minister, he was an old, sick man, with his sleep disturbed by arthritis and gout. A grasp of detail had also never been one of his abilities and he was primarily concerned with maintaining and enhancing the status of Britain internationally. Disraeli was fascinated by royalty and the glamour of foreign affairs. He much preferred to act in that arena, where he was not constrained by

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the views of his cabinet who preferred on most foreign affairs matters to sit on the sidelines. The balance of power in Europe was changing, however, and after Germany had defeated France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, a new grouping of European powers was created; Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary were soon known as the Dreikaiserbund. One of Disraeli’s main aims in office was to reduce the Dreikaiserbund’s influence and give the British point of view more prominence in Europe The defeat of France by Germany had also given the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, a far greater importance in international affairs than before, and Disraeli was intent on countering this by maintaining Britain’s reputation as a major mover and shaker whenever the opportunity occurred. In the middle of the decade, however, Disraeli had to deal with another outbreak of the same accusation of favouring the Jews over the Christians. The foreign policy flash-point this time was Turkey and its behaviour in controlling the Balkan part of its immense empire. The Balkans were Christian, of course, and Turkey was Moslem. It was also corrupt, inefficient and known as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’. The collapse of its large empire was always confidently expected, although the day wouldn’t dawn for many more years. There was a lot of religious intolerance throughout the Turkish empire. Typically, Crete, a tiny part of it, had a new constitution in 1876 and elected a Jewish member to their new assembly. So the Christian members threatened not to attend. Officially, though, there was complete equality. Christians were deported for Islamaphobia and Moslems for anti-Christian activities. The non-Turks complained about the harshness of tax collection, the peculations of the Turkish Pashas and the dishonesty of the Turkish administration. Turkey was not a Western democracy, but it was a British ally. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, considered the North West Frontier of their empire, there had been an uprising against the Turks in the same year, and Serbia and Montenegro had declared war. The Turks had fought back fiercely; it was said that 25,000 Christians had been slaughtered, although the probable figure was a dreadful enough 10,000. The Draikaiserbund tried to act as mediators but negotiations came to a halt when the Turks deposed their sultan, Abdul Aziz. The new sultan was Murad Effendi and he was an unknown quantity. The best judgment was based on the recollection that the promises of Turkish sultans had, historically, often been suspect. The Jews in Britain didn’t need to be involved in any way, except that their Balkan communities were suffering pogroms by Christian mobs. Such

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depredations were always well publicized. In the Jewish Chronicle every week there was a column headed ‘Our Brethren Abroad’. The community still worried about Jews in trouble anywhere. They worried about Christian victims as well. The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris, a Jewish charity, appealed in the paper for funds to be raised to help the Christians in the Balkans and the Jewish Chronicle condemned both the Russians and the Turks for their inhumanity. The Turkish ambassador in London, Musurus Pasha, said publicly in 1876 that everybody in Turkey was equal, but the Jewish Chronicle was very much on the Liberal leader Gladstone’s side, as he castigated the contestants in a famous speech at Greenwich in the September of that year. When the Turks were massacring Christians, the British government was, naturally, expected by many to protest. The problem for any Prime Minister, however, was that Turkey was the bastion preventing Russia from extending its influence beyond the Dardanelles, as that was seen as potentially threatening British control of India. The facts of the matter were quite different to those understood by Disraeli, but they were ignored; British foreign policy was often based on idées fixe. The truth was that Russia never had any intention of threatening India by blocking the new Suez Canal, as it was many hundreds of miles from the Dardanelles. Disraeli’s knowledge of geography was, however, sadly inadequate. Two more complicating factors were that the Russians wanted to protect the members of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Balkans, and the British had fought the Crimean War to further its anti-Russian foreign policy. Choosing between supporting the Balkan Christians or the Russians was a real problem. As far as the Jewish community in Britain was concerned, when it came to Turkey, the caveat was that the Balkan Christians, when not otherwise engaged in fleeing the murderous Bashi Bazouk Turkish irregulars, were often attacking Jewish communities; whereas the Turks, for 400 years, had treated the Jews with far greater tolerance than the average Christian European country. As the Jewish Chronicle reported when Abdul Aziz was overthrown, ‘to his Jewish subjects he was undoubtedly considerate’. After the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, at least 20,000 Jews took refuge in Turkey, as the then Sultan hoped that they would help the development of his overseas trade. Both sides were pleased with the results. It was now suggested, particularly by the Liberal opposition in Parliament, that the consequent benevolent attitude of the Ottoman Empire rulers over many centuries towards the Jews, accounted for Disraeli’s support for the

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Turks. That he was still putting the interests of the Jews before that of the Christians. This was the view put forward by Gladstone, the Liberal leader. It could either be described as a political manoeuvre to embarrass the government, or a proper defence of the Balkan Christians, depending on the political viewpoint. Gladstone told the Duke of Argyll: ‘I have a strong suspicion that Dizzie’s crypto-Judaism has had to do with this policy. The Jews in the East bitterly hate the Christians, who have not always used them well.’ When Disraeli won the 1874 general election, Gladstone had decided to retire as leader of the Liberals. He was 65 years old, so it was a perfectly reasonable decision, but he found that retirement really didn’t suit him. The Bulgarian atrocities offered him a rationale to return to his political office and Gladstone took advantage of the opportunity. Labelling Disraeli as motivated by his Jewish origins was also, of course, the view of the Balkan countries. Balkan historians today still consider Disraeli the eminence grise in the Eastern Question. They ignore the relevance of British foreign policy and the slaughter of Jews in their own countries; facts can be very inconvenient. Most nations were, naturally, primarily interested in defending their own citizens. This was fair enough, but when their co-religionists were being persecuted in other countries, there was a serious moral dilemma. Sometimes there were religious wars. Sometimes there were only verbal protests. Britain hadn’t been successfully invaded since 1066. It would fight to protect its empire in the nineteenth century, but it was less concerned about the fate of fellow Christians unless it was unusually aroused. The Eastern Question did, however, create large and conflicting concerns. For the Jews it had always been different. They had a long history of trying to come to the aid of their co-religionists when they were in trouble. Funds were traditionally raised to ransom prisoners of pirates in the Mediterranean in medieval times, to rebuild destroyed synagogues in Europe on many occasions over the centuries, and to absorb Jewish refugees expelled or fleeing from the lands of their birth. There were no Jewish national interests per se. British Jews were loyal to the country in which they lived, but they were also concerned to help their brethren anywhere in the world. If the interests of Britain clashed with the persecution of Christians, the interests of the nation would come first with the government. If it was Jews who were being persecuted, for the Jews it was as if members of the family were in danger. A large number of Jews in the Balkans had to flee to Turkey to save their lives. To support them there were two Turkish Sufferers Funds

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started by the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association in 1877. The first alone raised £4,500 (half a million pounds today). The Jews would devoutly hope that their two concerns – for Britain and for other Jews – wouldn’t arise at the same time and be in conflict. In Britain, after the Restoration, they never have, although supporting Russia in the First World War was anathema to a lot of the former persecuted refugees. Even so, there was a great deal of media coverage of the Balkans and many eminent academics wrote about the likelihood of Jews having dual loyalties. They ignored the fact, for example, that in Serbia the 300 Jewish families were confined to Belgrade and not allowed to live anywhere else. The government refused to abandon this ghetto law. By various treaties, parts of the Balkans also moved from Moslem to Christian control and this boded ill for the Jews as well. Gladstone, in opposition, was a powerful voice. As such, he was asked by one correspondent to try to get the Balkan countries to treat their Jewish communities better. Gladstone replied publicly that it wasn’t possible to do so as long as the Jews supported the Conservative government. Furthermore, he insisted the German Jews were supporting the Turks. He added that the Jews in Vienna were against the Turks giving the Christians in the Balkans equality. Gladstone’s comments raised the question of dual loyalty again. Were all the German Jews of one mind? Were the Jews in Vienna acting as a single group? John Simon, the Jewish Liberal member for Dewsbury, protested that, like anybody else, Jews supported the political party who reflected their views. To talk about the Jews of Germany and the Jews of Vienna, as single units, was quite impossible and totally untrue. The whole subject of the Eastern Question created more bitterness than anything since the repeal of the Corn Laws 30 years before. One of the main arenas for argument were conducted through letters to The Times. Typically, Simon was reduced to the plaintive comment: ‘Is all sympathy reserved for the subject races [of the Turks] and none to spare for the unhappy Jewish people?’ Where there was growing criticism of the support Jewish leaders gave to their co-religionists in the Balkans, Hermann Adler was not slow to make the position of the Jewish clergy clear. In an address at the Jews’ Free School Dinner in 1875 he said: It was true that they did not seek to make their influence felt by means of sensational appeals and clap-trap announcements; they did not come forward with protestations of infallibility or supernatural

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powers over men’s consciences. The Jewish clergy were anxious to labour humbly in their respective spheres, the Synagogue and the school, in the homes of the poor and the afflicted, without their action being heralded by the trumpet of fame. Practising what he preached, Adler was to be found in 1875 giving sermons the congregations found inspiring, addressing school prize-givings, visiting hospitals, opening the new Children’s Wing at the Jewish Convalescent Home, examining pupils at Jews’ College and even visiting congregations in Holland. He also decided to become involved in public argument, as he had with Colenso. He entered into a dispute with a major polemicist, Professor William Goldwin Smith, who had accused the Jews of lacking loyalty to the country, and brotherly feeling for their fellow man. Years before, when Disraeli had been at daggers drawn with the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, Goldwin Smith had attacked the young MP in the press. Now it was Adler’s aggressive response that illustrated his growing role as the spokesman for his community. Goldwin Smith had been a distinguished academic at Oxford, a Professor at Cornell and a well-read writer and editor in Toronto. He produced anti-Jewish material for publications across the globe. In the Nineteenth Century magazine the Professor addressed the subject of whether Jews could be patriots and claimed they could not. The appeal of the Nineteenth Century was to those who welcomed intellectual argument on contentious topics, and articles by Goldwin Smith with stern rebuttals by Adler went on for years. Goldwin Smith reflected a change in the targets of antisemites at the time. Where previously their venom had concentrated on the Jews rejecting Jesus, now with increasing secularization, they accused the Jews of being inherently evil, suggesting that baptism would not alter this. The fault was seen as caused by genetics rather than theology. There was as little evidence for the latter as there had been for the former, but generalizations are more difficult to counter and it is less necessary to produce supporting facts. Goldwin Smith was, by no means, the only intellectual antisemite. Edward Freeman, Regius Professor at Oxford, wrote to a friend: ‘I don’t want to wallop anybody, even Jews. The best thing is to kick them out together like King Edward of blessed memory.’1 When the Queen went to lunch at Disraeli’s country house, which was almost unprecedented, Freeman described her as ‘going ostentatiously to eat with Disraeli in his ghetto’.

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The language reached a level of vindictiveness which would be illegal in the twenty-first century. Disraeli was circumspect about his rival in public but wrote privately to the Foreign Secretary: Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstone extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy, and superstition; and with one commanding characteristic – whether Prime Minister or Leader of Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying or scribbling – never a gentleman!2 In 1878 Adler also went on the attack. He wrote of Goldwin Smith: ‘Each sentence is a barbed arrow, each barb is tipped with venom.’3 Three years before he had insisted: The time was when on being reproached and reviled, we had no alternative but to muffle our faces in our gaberdines and meekly to hold our peace. Those times, it is to be hoped, have gone for ever. The interests of truth, the sacred cause of civil and religious freedom, demand that we should repel with indignation charges against our faith and our race – charges which. I cannot characterize otherwise than as cruel and gratuitous calumnies.4 Goldwin Smith had written about the Jewish attitude to Turkey: Jews are voters but they can’t be patriots: their only country is their race. Their monotheism is unreal because their G-d is the deity of the chosen race. The Jewish law and morality are great but tribal.5 Adler replied: The Hebrew Bible expressly denies Professor Goldwin Smith’s claims. Judaism has a real belief in universalism and loyalty to the country of a Jew’s residence. Professor Goldwin Smith substitutes sensational fiction for inexorable fact.6 Goldwin Smith responded: The ruling motives of the Jew are not English but ‘plutopolitan’. Jewish influence is strong in the financial and press world and is a political danger. A Jew is not an Englishman; he is a Jew; the rest of

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mankind are aliens in blood. Jews do have civil and social qualities but it is tribal and not universal.7 Adler responded in the next edition of the magazine: The Pentateuch contains laws that apply to the Jewish race only, but, without a state and political organization of our own, we have the same relationship to our countrymen as any other religion. Judaism has no political bearing. No Jewish law conflicts with an English law. Our interests are those of our country. Judaism is not a tribal but a universal religion.8 There was another exchange in October 1881. This time Goldwin Smith wrote: Jews want to push us into wars which we don’t need. They are a separate race with tribal objects; their enmities must not sway the councils of England. Jews like Montefiore serve the national interest but, on the whole, Jews make an idol of their own tribe. A disease they cause is the perversion of public opinion. Their mischief is not in their creed but their character, especially their tribal exclusiveness. Jewish numbers are in inverse proportion to national wellbeing.9 To which Adler replied: We do not make an idol of our tribe. We regard all men as brethren. We are loyal to the country where we dwell. We hope for a messianic age of universal brotherhood. The Jew is not a parasite but contributes to the world, especially through the Bible. No town in Germany lacks its Jewish physician; no university is without its Jewish teachers. Jews do not deserve to be called pariahs and insulted. Justice is one of England’s noblest qualities.10 So it was, and loyalty to the country where they lived and its ruler, had been part of the Jewish law for millennia. The prayer for the Royal Family was said in synagogue on every Sabbath and the Victorian wording had been little altered since Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel introduced it to Cromwell when he came to London to plead for the Jews to be readmitted in 1655. The Board of Deputies consistently affirmed its loyalty to the Crown and it

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is still one of the few privileged bodies permitted to offer a Loyal Address to the Queen on important occasions. In 1895 Adler did make a minor change to the prayer for the Queen. Where the former prayer had asked for compassion for the Jews, it now asked for wisdom and understanding for her counsellors. The prayer is naturally said all over the Commonwealth, but it’s also said in America. The Declaration of Independence only resulted in the prayer for George III being replaced by the same plea to the Almighty for the President. Nothing else was necessary; their loyalty was to the ruler of the country where they lived. When Chief Rabbi Jakobovits met with President Johnson, he pointed out that there had been no other change. The importance of the study of the Talmud was safe in the hands of Rabbis wherever there was a Jewish community. There were, however, very few like Adler to make the case for Judaism with the general public, even though Adler encouraged his ministers to address Christian organizations whenever possible. Adler even received praise from Gladstone for his efforts. Gladstone’s attacks on Disraeli’s Jewish origins did not extend to a general dislike of the Jewish community in Britain, but the use antisemites made of it was an unfortunate by-product. His views of German and Viennese Jews were also part of a very widely-held viewpoint. There was international interest in the Adler/Goldwin Smith controversy and Adler got complimentary letters from as far away as Canada. After the arguments subsided, the Rabbi was readily acknowledged as a major apologist for the community, both in Europe and in America. Goldwin Smith denied that he was antisemitic at all, but his secretary, writing his memoirs in later years, said that Goldwin Smith had never recanted his anti-Judaism, adding that once launched on his diatribes there was no possibility of controlling him. He had also denounced parts of the Bible as barbaric. In defending its contemporary validity, Adler said: The ritual ordinances of the Bible were…primarily intended for the Jewish race. But the sublime religious and moral principles which the book enunciates are applicable to the whole of mankind and have beyond a doubt become, by their having formed the foundation of both Christianity and Islam, the great dynamic agent of modern civilization.11 While supporting Adler’s defence of the Jews, Gladstone, in opposition in Parliament was, very naturally, on the side of the Christian victims in the Balkans. He wasn’t responsible for the nation while out of office, but the

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government had to take the realpolitik into account. Even so, meetings were organized and held in many parts of the country to protest at the government’s lack of action, and on occasions as many as 1,000 attendees thronged the halls. Disraeli took it all in his stride. He was one of the great wits of the age and wits dislike missing an opportunity to exercise their craft. At a dinner during the height of the Balkan crisis, he was asked by a fellow guest what, as Prime Minister, he was waiting for. He replied that he was waiting for the potatoes! Where the language of Goldwin Smith and Adler was often vituperative, Disraeli still relied more on the use of wit to disarm his critics. In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations there are 120 Disraeli comments. For example, he dismissed a pamphlet of Gladstone at this time as ‘ill written. Indeed of that respect, of all the Balkan horrors, perhaps the greatest’. As a speaker, he called Gladstone ‘a sophistical rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity’. The Conservatives in the Commons lapped up Disraeli’s witticisms and Gladstone, during the Eastern crisis, was still furious with Disraeli. The main cause was the recent occasion when Disraeli had been successful in getting a Whig measure to extend the franchise passed as a Tory measure, by the minority Conservative government in 1867. In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Gladstone only gets ten mentions but, in fairness, in 1876, his pamphlet, ‘The Bulgarian Horror and the Question of the East’, sold 200,000 copies, even though it had only taken him three days to write when he was in bed with lumbago. To Disraeli’s benefit, however, when the Russian threat to Constantinople became more urgent, the mood in the country changed tack and Gladstone’s second pamphlet on the subject was not a success. The Jews were on the side of the Turks, and the majority of the country eventually turned against the Russians. This was particularly the case with Queen Victoria who wrote to Disraeli: This mawkish sentimentality for people who hardly deserve the name of real Christians…and forgetting the great interests of this great country, is really incomprehensible. Only say if the Queen can do anything.12 Disraeli handled the often irascible Queen with enormous tact and flattered her shamelessly. He never contradicted her but, as he said, he understood and accepted her views, but sometimes forgot to carry them

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out. The core problem with the Eastern Question remained that Gladstone was portraying it as a moral issue concerning the treatment of minorities, and Disraeli, for the government, was looking at it from the point of view of the best interests of the British Empire. The Queen was particularly aggravated that Gladstone was ignoring the interests of the country and her dislike for him never changed after this. Balancing human rights and the need for allies continues to be a constant problem with foreign affairs. To complicate matters still further, the Russians in supporting the Balkan Christians in 1877, threatened to send in their army to help the Serbs fight the Turks. This would also have, potentially, undermined British policy on the Dardanelles. The Russian objective was to occupy Constantinople and to attempt to get revenge for their defeat in the Crimean War. Defeats rankle and can affect the foreign policy of the losers for many years after. There was no way Disraeli could allow the Turkish capital to fall to its old enemy. Disraeli, therefore, threatened to declare war on Russia if Constantinople remained in danger. Parliament was recalled in January 1878 and the budget for the armed forces was substantially increased. Nevertheless, in April 1878 Russia declared war on Turkey, though an armistice was soon arranged. Both countries were financially embarrassed by the cost of war and neither was able to field an effective army. The Turkish treasury was empty, but the Sultan had refused to allow international representatives to oversee reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1877. For their part Russia had neutralized Austria by agreeing to partition between them any territorial gains which came about as a result of the war. It ended, however, with the Treaty of San Stefano which gave independence to Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro, autonomy to Bulgaria and reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The problem now was that none of the great powers liked the treaty and they wanted it revised. Harold Wilson once said that a week is a long time in politics. The same often applied to treaties involving Turkey. From Disraeli’s point of view, he was anxious to play a major role in settling the Eastern Question, as it offered an opportunity for Britain to act alongside the Draikaiserbund. It happened to suit Bismarck for Disraeli to handle the revision of the treaty, as the Chancellor was suffering from shingles and was happy to let the British Prime Minister make the running. Disraeli had problems at home as well as abroad. Throughout the Eastern crisis he had to gain the support of the cabinet for his policies. The

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Foreign Secretary was Lord Derby and Derby wanted Britain to intervene as little as possible. His normal policy was to consider all the options involving an issue for a long time, and then decide to do nothing. Sometimes this meant keeping the Prime Minister in the dark about what was really going on. The Foreign Office men on the spot were not always honest in their reports either. Disraeli could have dismissed them, but that would just have increased the opposition to his views. The cabinet was not a happy team. Not much change there then either. Disraeli was, of course, Prime Minister of a country with a great empire and he had recently persuaded Queen Victoria to adopt the title of Empress of India. The country had been divided politically by the effects of the second Reform Bill which had given a considerable number of the lowermiddle classes the vote. The aristocracy and the lower-middle classes (advertising agency researchers now call the latter the C2s and Ds) were now allied as Conservatives, and the middle classes were, mostly, Liberals. It was the Tory measure that so annoyed Gladstone. It was said at the time that the Conservatives had caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes. The Jewish Chronicle editor during the Eastern Question, Abraham Benisch, was particularly concerned at Gladstone’s attitude. During a byelection campaign in Sheffield, the former Prime Minister had said publicly that the Jewish community in Britain was at fault. After meeting with Benisch he wrote to him in 1877: I cannot disguise from myself the fact that of the Jews, apparently a large majority are among the supporters of Turkey and the opponents of effectual relief to Christians.The Christians will be delivered and at no very distant date…if I am alive and in politics, I shall strongly plead for their allowing free equality of civil rights to the Jews. But I cannot do this upon the grounds that the conduct of the Jews has deserved their gratitude.13 It was still portrayed as a moral issue and not realpolitik. Gladstone, however, was not in power and Disraeli did not intend to allow the Russians to undermine Britain’s policy in the Balkans, no matter how badly the Turks were behaving. Disraeli was a consummate politician and he went so far as to use the Indian treasury to pay for 8,000 Indian troops to be moved to Malta, as if he was prepared for war. The objective was to frighten the Russians and the use of the Indian Treasury avoided the need to get the approval of Parliament for the expenditure.

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British imperialism even flourished in the music halls where a popular song went: We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too. From which comes Jingoism. It gave Robert Browning, the famous poet and playwright, the opportunity to say: I don’t want to fight. But by Jingo if I do. The man whose head I’d like to punch is Beaconsfield, the Jew.14 There was now some real danger of a war breaking out between Britain and Russia A further meeting was called and it took Disraeli’s considerable diplomatic skill at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to resolve the problem. It was really Disraeli’s last hurrah. Berlin was chosen in deference to Bismarck and the sick Disraeli insisted on attending himself, though he was ailing. After lengthy negotiations Britain got Cyprus, as another base in the Mediterranean, the Turks were left to run their empire and the Russians backed off. The community was delighted. At Bevis Marks, they even held a thanksgiving service to record the ‘restoration of peace and religious liberty’ in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania; which was a trifle more than optimistic. In Romania the Jews still couldn’t be citizens of the country in which they were born. Disraeli was greeted back home as a great hero. He had solved the Eastern Question at least for the time being. On the other hand he had still left antisemites with a stick to use against the Jewish community in Britain. Thomas O’Connor was only just over 30 years old when he wrote the first biography of Disraeli, which went to eight editions. An Irish nationalist, he voiced the views of many antisemites when he covered the Prime Minister’s return from the Congress of Berlin. Disraeli had been met in London by Sir Moses Montefiore, and O’Connor wrote: By that small scene the meaning of the apotheosis of Lord Beaconsfield by a Christian people is written in letters of light. That day represented the triumph, not of England, not of an English policy, not of an Englishman. It was the triumph of Judea, a Jewish policy, a Jew. The Hebrew, who drove through these crowds to Downing Street, was dragging the whole of Christendom behind the

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juggernaut car over the rights of Turkish Christians, of which he was the charioteer.15 The Foreign Office would not have seen it that way and by now, as the Delegate Chief Rabbi, Adler defended the patriotism of his community by making the logical historical parallel: Granted that 1,800 years ago our ancestors dwelt amid the vine-clad hills of Judaea, is that any reason why we should be less solicitous for the glory and interest of the empire we now inhabit? He insisted that the Jewish position was not that it was Turkophile but that it was Russophobe. Which, for the unbiased, was a reasonable enough stance considering the behaviour of the Russians. When the general election was called in 1880, Gladstone, substantially financed by Hannah Rothschild, triumphantly regained office by his 1880 Midlothian campaign, stumping the country and condemning the Turks for massacring the Christians. Disraeli died in 1881. Both men had thoroughly disliked each other and Gladstone’s favourable reputation within the Jewish community had been tarnished by his support for the people in the Balkans. The Adlers dealt with the relations between Jews and Christians on a number of different levels. In the city and in religious circles, there was harmony; the Archbishop of Canterbury went to stay with Nathan Marcus Adler in Brighton and they cooperated in many charitable efforts. The lay leaders, the Rothschilds and Samuel Montagu, the future Lord Swaythling, were considerable powers in the city, though with very different viewpoints. Rothschilds favoured Disraeli and Montagu the Liberals. They didn’t always agree on communal matters either, but they realized they needed to work together for the benefit of the community. The Rothschilds continued to be valuable to both the government, its ministers and members of the royal family. One area of behind-the-scenes contention, however, was between the wealthier element of the Jewish community and the aristocracy. Fourteen per cent of the non-land owning millionaires in Britain by this time were Jewish but the Jews were still very often looked at askance in aristocratic society. The upper class at the time was extremely snobbish and also very powerful. As could have been expected, however, the more many of the richer Jews were excluded from polite society, the more they wanted to be

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allowed into the magic circle. It was, therefore, a powerful benefit to be gained from conversion, as it had been for hundreds of years. Antisemitism raised its ugly head again in the long forgotten case of Samuel Fountain. The boy had a Jewish mother and was circumcised when he was born. His mother then deserted him and he was found in a block called Fountains Court. He was then handed over to the local workhouse and baptized. Seven year later, in 1876, the Visitation Committee of the United Synagogue found out about him and asked the Guardians of the City of London, who now had responsibility for the boy, to have him returned to the Jewish community. The Board of Guardians even offered to pay for his support. At a meeting to consider the case, the City Guardians voted by 23-18 not to give the boy back. It was just like the infamous Mortara case in Rome some twenty years before, when the Pope gave the same ruling. The city fathers based their decision on his baptism, although they didn’t deny that, as he had been circumcized, he was certainly Jewish by birth. One of the city fathers pointed out that by law, in a case of bigamy, the second marriage was disregarded and if that was the law with bigamy, why was it not with unauthorized baptism after circumcision. Young Fountain remained in the workhouse. The decision was denounced in many papers and received a lot of publicity, but nothing changed. There was a better result when a Jewish mother in Swansea deserted her two boys, who also finished up in the local workhouse. When Nathan Marcus Adler found out about this, he instructed the wardens of the community to place the boys in the home of the local minister and to maintain them. Hermann would have ensured that this resulted in their Jewish upbringing. Gladstone could have pointed to his speech in the House of Commons as long ago as 1851 in the Don Pacifico debate, when he declared: I say fearlessly, whatever may be the differences of opinion in this House as to the admission of Jews to political privilege, that no person could dare to stand up among us and allege his religion as a ground for mistrust or for the denial of justice, without drawing down upon himself, from all quarters of the House alike, universal scorn and indignation.16 He also supported the 1858 Oath Bill, which finally enabled Jewish MPs to take the oath of allegiance on the Old Testament without saying anything about Christianity.

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Gladstone made his own position clear when he wrote a widely published letter on the subject: I have always had occasion to admire the conduct of English Jews in the discharge of their civil duties, but I deeply deplore the manner in which what I may call Judaic sympathies, beyond as well as within a circle of professed Judaism, are now acting on the question of the East. Gladstone totally failed to give sufficient weight to the crucial difference between the Jewish and Christian approach to the international persecution of their co-religionists. The Jews came to the aid of their people automatically. Within Christianity there had been any number of religious wars, but there was no such automatic fellow-feeling within Christian communities in Victorian times. There had been exceptions, of course; that example in 1685, for instance, when 100,000 Protestant Huguenots had fled to Britain from France when Louis XIV revoked the tolerant Edict of Nantes. The concept of the nation in late Victorian times was, however, now becoming more important than religion. Both attitudes were completely understandable, but they led democrats like Gladstone to underestimate the Jewish concerns. There was another difference from today; the legacy of the Greek and Roman empires was a far more intense area of study in Victorian times. Very large numbers of undergraduates read Classics and Gladstone was the foremost public Hellenist. One intellectual argument was whether Greek or Jewish cultural norms were superior, and Gladstone was on the side of the Greeks. Adler found a great deal to say against Greek culture. As if the Eastern Question and the Hellenists weren’t difficult enough to combat, Adler also had to deal with the conversionist societies who still hoped to convert the community. He referred to conversionists as ‘selfcreated dispensers of salvation’ and continued to refute the accusation of dual loyalties by insisting that Judaism was a religion and not a political party. When Zionism became a serious movement, this was going to lead to Adler’s disapproval of its philosophy. There would be yet another problem, fastened on by antisemites. Gladstone’s ministry was hardly underway before trouble broke out in South Africa. The Boers wanted the province where they lived, the Transvaal, to be independent of Britain. The British wanted a confederation of colonies to be formed as the British Empire. The dispute led to the First

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Boer War. The British underestimated the skills of the Boer farmers and suffered some humiliating defeats. When peace was agreed, the Transvaal was allowed to be independent, but the British hankered after revenge for their substantial casualties. There was no Jewish community of any importance in South Africa for some years thereafter and there was no way to associate them with disasters like the battle of Majuba Hill in 1881. The situation changed, however, when gold was discovered in the Transvaal in 1886. At this point refugee Jews from Europe started to pour in and a number of them were successful enough to build large mining companies. Britain needed the gold and the Boers wanted control of it for themselves. The Boer government would not accept the immigrants as citizens with the right to vote until they had been in the country for 14 years and they imposed other restrictions on them as well. The fight for control came down to a conflict between the non-Jewish Cecil Rhodes, who was based in the Cape Colony, and Paul Kruger for the Boers in the Transvaal. It ended with the outbreak of the Second Boer War between 1899 and 1902, which the Boers, outnumbered militarily by 500,000 to 55,000, lost. As there were very substantial British casualties again, the search for scapegoats for the war was intense. Many blamed the Jewish mining magnates, though the long-term British foreign policy was the true 20 yearold cause. It was another accusation against the Jews, which antisemites would use in their efforts to get an Aliens Act passed. The 1870s should have been a quiet time for British Jews and Adler. It certainly wasn’t, although the Jewish Chronicle tried to put a gloss on events. They reviewed the last year every Rosh Hashonah, and compared Britain favourably with other countries on the continent. In 1877, for instance, the Foreign Office, the House of Commons and the press were all praised for their treatment of Jewish issues. Nathan Marcus Adler had been a first-class Chief Rabbi since 1845, but he now needed substantial backing up. Helping him was both timeconsuming and demanding. Antisemites, the effect on the public of the Eastern Question, the carping of critics, the stories in the press, the cases before the Beth Din, and a multitude of bureaucratic minutiae, were all grist to the Chief Rabbi’s daily mill. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Hermann’s father wouldn’t survive much longer unless he retired. So, in 1880, Adler was asked to take over as Delegate Chief Rabbi. The Jews were then in danger of falling out with the new Liberal government. The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle and the Prime Minister had more words on the subject and Gladstone would

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have known Adler’s views. Even so, Gladstone had written at the time to Arthur Cohen, one of the Jewish Liberal MPs, to insist that he had always been on the side of the Jews.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Finestein, Israel, Jewish Society in Victorian England (Vallentine Mitchell, 1993), p.71. Buckle & Moneypenny, Disraeli, vi, (Macmillan), p.67. Nineteenth Century, December 1881. Ibid., April 1878. Ibid., February 1878. Ibid., April 1878. Ibid., April 1878. Ibid., July 1878. Ibid., October 1881 Ibid. December 1881. Adler, Hermann, ‘Jews and Judaism’, Nineteenth Century, July 1878. pp.139-140. Hurd, Douglas and Young, Edward, Disraeli (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2013), p.218. Ibid. Ibid., p.221. O’Connor, Thomas, Lord Beaconsfield (T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p.672. Taylor, Derek, Don Pacifico (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008).

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6 The Federation The Jewish community in Britain was transformed after 1881. The influx of refugees from Eastern Europe, after the assassination of the Czar in 1881, created a wide variety of major problems for the Chief Rabbi and the community as a whole. The Jews had, totally unfairly, been held responsible for the monarch’s death and devastating pogroms broke out all over Russia. The word pogrom means to wreak havoc, which they did. The first modern recorded pogrom, killing the innocents and ruining homes and businesses, had come in Odessa as early as 1821. They had been a regular feature of Russian history in medieval times and now there were over 200 between 1881 and 1884 with thousands of casualties. There were new discriminatory laws as well. Among other restrictive legislation, the Jews were driven from the countryside and excluded from being employed in education and public service. So the first necessity, once again, was for other Jewish communities to try to enable persecuted Jews to escape the discrimination by helping them flee to a safe refuge. If they could manage that, which was difficult enough, the next problem was to help them survive financially in the strange country where they landed up. What was worse, these new refugee problems were larger than British Jews had ever had to tackle before. The immigrants had to become acculturated, although it was hoped that they would not be assimilated. It wasn’t easy to change their habits; as just one example, to get any reliable results, it had to be agreed to print the British 1901 national census form in Yiddish for the Jews in the East End. They also needed to meld into – or at least live with – the existing Jewish community, and their children needed a Jewish education if they were not to be lost to the faith. The chevras (small synagogues) in Eastern Europe were more observant in their orthodoxy than the majority of the old communities in Britain, but the lifestyle of the new country made many of them consider a very different religious approach as well. So another vital objective for Adler was to make sure that as few as possible decided on a fresh start as members of

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the Reform movement, as they substantially did eventually when the majority escaped to America. It only took a couple of generations to undermine the viability of many chevras and as the growing socialist movement was determinedly secular in its outlook, there was yet another threat that the immigrant Jews would leave the faith and take up the new Marxist philosophy. The other perceived major problem continued to be the increase in the work of the Christian conversion societies. They had been part of the Christian church for centuries, but they had been reinvigorated by the philosophies of the French Revolution. The London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews was established in 1809 and in the next 50 years spent £850,000 on its efforts to convert the recalcitrant Hebrews. Well financed, the societies could now offer destitute immigrants food, financial support and medical care. All three were desperately needed in the 1880s by thousands of the Jewish poor. In extreme cases, starvation was a real possibility and malnutrition was common. All that was asked to get support from one of the 24 new societies, formed between 1870 and 1914, was an agreement to be converted. Prospective converts had to attend a church service before they could be considered for help. The fact was, however, that: English Jews who abandoned their ancestral religion were motivated on the whole by this-wordly rather than other-worldly concerns… very few experienced spiritual ferment before their conversion, or emerged from the experience fundamentally transformed and renewed...both established and dissenting churches were tireless in their attempts to effect the conversion of the Jews, devoting more time and money to this task than did religious bodies elsewhere in Europe.1 Of particular benefit to the immigrants was the availability of free medical care for converts provided by the societies. They set up a number of medical centres where some the doctors spoke Yiddish and they were a godsend to poor families. In 1911 there were 14,000 visits to the Barbican Mission in the East End and 24,000 to the Mildmay Mission. The problem of the health of the immigrants became an additional factor for all kinds of organizations to consider. At the time hospitals were variously used as insane asylums, homes for the aged poor and for operations and many other medical conditions. The oldest existing hospital in London is Barts (1123) but hospitals were abolished with the

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dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. New hospitals only appeared in London with the Westminster in 1719, Guys in 1724 (financed by a fortune made from the South Sea Bubble scandal) and the London in 1740. In the capital in the nineteenth century two wards of the London Hospital were provided with the necessary facilities for Jewish patients, with kosher food and the observance of the Sabbath and Festivals. These were financed initially by the Rothschild family. In 1898 Edward Raphael, a relative of Hermann’s wife, Rachel, financed a new Jewish ward at the London which, by 1905, had no less than five Jewish wards. The Westminster hospital also had Jewish wards. The Jews in Manchester played their part as well. They raised £4,500 (£400,000 today) to build the Manchester Victoria Memorial Jewish Hospital which opened in 1904. The subject of Jewish hospitals was, however, another source of contention within the community. Adler was not in favour of wholly Jewish hospitals because he considered them divisive; the efforts to achieve general Anglicization he felt would be undermined. A Jewish hospital in the East End would only be built after his death. Even then it was financed by small contributions from the general public, rather than by the Jewish elite who were of the same opinion as the Chief Rabbi. The London Jewish Hospital Association was founded in 1907 and eventually collected enough to build a hospital, but it took until 1919 to complete. One of the Doctors who practiced in the East End, Dr Julian Snowman, was at a loss to understand the argument: We have our Home for Incurables, we have our Convalescent Homes, the Home for the Deaf and Dumb and a Sanatorium for Consumptives, all of which are practically free medical charities. Why should we support these institutions and withhold it from the general treatment of diseases, I fail to understand. The Jewish community did its best to help with the medical problems of the newcomers, but there were a number of difficulties. First, the lack of Jewish nurses. There was no equivalent of the Catholic nuns, the Sisters of Mercy, who staffed the St John & Elizabeth hospital in London when it was founded in 1856. Jewish staff were necessary for Orthodox Jewish patients, in order to understand the dietary laws and to speak Yiddish to the patients, but nursing wasn’t an occupation common to Jews. Surgeons and doctors would be available to members of the establishment synagogues and would

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waive their fees to poor members, but the East Enders mostly kept to their chevras and had no Jewish medical resources. Admittedly, the emigrants were usually healthy enough. Steerage passengers who tried to come to the country were rejected if they were ill, but statistics showed that this only applied to 1.1 per cent of their numbers. Future studies of immigrant health would establish neurosis as the most common problem, which can often affect newcomers. Then there was the question of financing such medical aid. Because of the numbers involved, it was massively expensive. The Board of Guardians did their best but in 1884 they had to suspend giving hospital tickets to the poor, which admitted them to voluntary hospitals. They tried again and set up a full medical service in 1897, but once more they were unable to find enough money to sustain it after a few years. There was also a Sick Room Help Society, whose superintendent reported that they had 3,000 members, half of whom were Board of Guardian cases. In the Jewish wards in the London Hospital the Jewish patients could, at least, feel comfortable with their rituals. They weren’t subject to antisemitic ribaldry when they laid tephillin in the mornings or insisted on covering their heads when eating. That could easily be their experience otherwise. From Adler’s points of view, a Jewish hospital would extend the difference between the Jews and the general public and undermine the acculturation process. He was also a member of the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund committee, working to create new hospitals, and felt he had to support one concept or the other. When the Manchester Jewish Hospital was opened in 1904 he chose not to attend. The new hospital was criticized anyway as not being amongst the best in the city. Naturally, Adler was concerned to counter the efforts of the conversion societies in offering medical help, but the truth was that many of the converts the societies claimed were not genuine. Some even became baptized several times in order to be rewarded with the material benefits. The majority of the converts were poor, foreign Jews because the conversion societies couldn’t reach the members of the better-off Jewish communities. The Jews’ Episcopal Church in Spitalfields claimed 1,300 conversions between 1831 and 1880, which is only 25 a year, and they admitted that bribery rather than spiritual conviction was generally the attraction. Immigrants came from different countries, different provinces and different towns and villages. As many small groupings came from the same areas, and with the same religious customs, they tried to stay together. They often found it extremely difficult to pay their way, however, and consequently

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there was a positive reaction when, after a few years, a meeting of the small synagogues was called for Sunday 16 October 1887. The Whitechapel parliamentary constituency in the East End was represented by their MP, Samuel Montagu who took the chair. The meeting passed a resolution: That it is desirable for the Chevras to become Federated for certain clearly defined objects. That a representative of every chevra or minor synagogue in East London be invited…on Sunday, 6 November…to discuss plans for a Federation of the Chevras. Eighteen synagogues came to the November meeting and formed the Federation of Minor Synagogues. It was decided that it would be run by a Board of Delegates and it was announced by Montagu that Lord Rothschild had agreed to be its President. So from the beginning the United Synagogue and the Federation had the same figurehead. The ‘Minor’ was soon dropped and the new body became simply the Federation of Synagogues. There. were other considerations. The United Synagogue officers included members of Louis Cohen’s family. His son, Lionel, had been a senior figure in the formation of the US and his daughter, Ellen, married Samuel Montagu, which made the founders of both the United Synagogue and the Federation brothers-in-law. Samuel Montagu was already one of the most powerful members of the community, but he would soon find himself in an embarrassing position. Despite his personal strict Orthodoxy – he studied with Dayan Spiers – his daughter would be a founder of the Liberal Synagogue and would even be credited with persuading Claude Montefiore to head up the Liberal movement. Away from the community, Montagu was competition for the Rothschilds as a merchant banker. The Rothschilds believed in the gold standard and Montagu believed that silver should be equally regarded as an international currency. Both were popular in the City; Montagu roofed the Dealing Courts at the Royal Exchange at his own expense to shelter members from the elements. When a number of Jews switched from the Liberal to the Conservative party after Gladstone was returned to power, Montagu remained the main financial support of the Liberals for many years. He was also head of the United Synagogue Board of Shechita and married into the Cousinhood (a collective noun created years later for the rich inter-married Jewish families). So he had a foot in most camps. He was also very concerned at the impoverished state of so many of the East End congregations and was determined to help in any way he could. The highest Jewish accolade is to

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describe someone as a mensch, and it could be deservedly awarded to Samuel Montagu. Montagu’s reaction to the pogroms in Russia was to go there and visit a large number of the Jewish congregations to see if he could help. The Russians were not best pleased and eventually gave him 48 hours to leave the country. Montagu, as the MP for Whitechapel, raised his expulsion in the House of Commons as an insult to a member of a friendly government. It nearly became a diplomatic incident of some seriousness. Back home, Montagu turned to domestic matters and now decided that he would try to bring all the chevras together into his new organization. He eventually became a member of 40 of them. He didn’t, however, want to empire-build and split the Orthodox communities. He went to a lot of trouble to persuade Rothschild to be the head of both movements. The first constitution of the Federation, in November 1887 made it clear that the new organization had no intention of setting up in competition with the existing Jewish bodies. They did set down three objectives though; they wanted to gain representation on the Board of Shechita, the Board of Deputies and the Board of Guardians. In March 1888 they were offered a seat on the Guardians, and in 1889 the Spital Square synagogue was given a seat on the Deputies. Montagu also had to deal with the effects the chevras were having on non-Jewish opinion in the East End. Britain was never institutionally antisemitic but the influx of immigrants did result in an increase in antisemitic agitation over the years. The appeal of an Aliens Act to restrict immigration became more popular and in 1901 an East End Conservative MP, William Evans-Gordon, formed the British Brothers League, one of whose objectives was to get such an Act approved. Ironically, in 1905, when they were successful, there would even be considerable support for the Act from the leaders of the Jewish community, who correctly placed a lot of the responsibility for the increase in antisemitism at the door of the immigrants. It was a popular reaction where the newcomers were concerned, but it was hardly their fault. There was a famous cartoon in the humorous magazine, Punch, at the time. It showed two workmen looking at a passer-by across the street. One workman says to the other ‘Oos that then?’ The other replies ‘Looks like a foreigner. ‘eave a ‘alf a brick at ‘im!’ As the Jewish Chronicle had pointed out, on similar lines, in 1888: If poor Jews will persist in appropriating whole streets to themselves in the same districts, if they will conscientiously persevere in the

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seemingly harmless practice of congregating in a body at prominent points in a great public thoroughfare like the Whitechapel or Commercial Roads, drawing to their peculiarities of dress, of language and of manner, the attention which they might otherwise escape, can there be any wonder that the vulgar prejudices of which they are the object, should be kept alive and strengthened?2 There was yet another problem. The community was very willing to succour the persecuted but much less inclined to support the arrival of economic immigrants. Both Rothschild and the Chief Rabbi distinguished between the two. Samuel Montagu, however, was the exception. His daughter, who was no religious acolyte of her father, wrote: The religion of Samuel Montagu affected his whole conception of life. He was a Jew, primarily – and a citizen, a politician, a business man long afterwards. It was with Jewish eyes that he judged men and things. The need for the newcomers to have that powerful support in the East End came to the fore again in 1885 when a Jewish Polish refugee baker, nicknamed Simcha Becker, started a hostel for destitute immigrants. He gave the bread he couldn’t sell to be divided between the shelter and the Salvation Army. One result of his generosity was that more immigrants physically survived and escaped repatriation by the authorities, whose official policy remained to reduce their number by as many as possible. Repatriating all the potential immigrants they could was partly to reduce the adverse public relations. It was also because the Board of Guardians simply couldn’t cope with the demands made upon them by thousands of destitute co-religionists. The Guardians considered the shelter was hindering repatriation. So they arranged for a vice president to visit it, and he declared it unhealthy and had it closed. There was justifiable outrage, but little appreciation of the difficulties the Board of Guardians faced. A protest meeting at the Jewish Working Mens’ Club soon saw Montagu donate £600 to get a new shelter established. Accurate figures for immigrants are more guesswork than proven statistics. Of more concern at the time was the government’s attitude to them. That was always a major concern, because it was absolutely necessary to keep open a potential haven for the refugees. In the summer of 1891 the First Lord of the Admiralty, W.H. Smith, known for his chain of stationary shops today, was asked in the Commons to comment on reports in Russian

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papers that 60,000 migrants could be expected to arrive in Britain from the Baltic ports by the autumn. Smith replied that he had no confirmation of the stories, but ‘I can only say that I can hardly believe that such an intolerable abuse of the privileges allowed to aliens in this country can be contemplated.’ This was a diplomatic response, but the numbers quoted might very well have been accurate. Another source of contention between the members of the old Jewish community and the newcomers arose from the very different behaviour of the church authorities on the continent and in Britain. The Church of England was at the core of the nation’s culture. It stood for a high standard of morals and ethics, respect for national institutions, tolerance for minorities and the importance of family life. It was in no way antisemitic as an organization. Many of the senior members had warm relations with Hermann Adler. By contrast, on the continent from where the immigrants came, the Church tolerated pogroms, supported discrimination against the Jews and continued its centuries-old policy of trying to convert them. It still followed that Adler’s friendship with senior British clerics, his respect for the decorum of a church service and his adoption of some of the church’s terminology and vestments, both for himself and his ministers, grated in the East End. As one of Adler’s later critics wrote about their own spiritual leaders, ‘the status of one Rabbi as compared with that of another would depend entirely upon the communal view of their respective abilities’.3 This was in spite of the fact that, in academic circles, one’s ability is always decided by examination by those better qualified than the examinee. In the granting of semicha this has always been the case. There is nothing wrong in comparing one Rabbi’s ability with that of another, but for it to be decided by mostly novices is hardly to the credit of the institution. It would also override the view of the Chief Rabbi, who approved every ministerial appointment in the first place. For most members of a congregation the judgment of a minister’s ability was more likely to be based on his level of support in times of family trouble. His performance in synagogue might be impeccable but if his address at a funeral got the name of one of the relations wrong, it might be held against him for years. Sometimes, Adler’s choice of simile could be guaranteed to raise hackles. In 1890 he had written to the secretary of the United Synagogue that ‘the visitation of Provincial Synagogues and Schools is exclusively the

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function and duty of the Chief Rabbi, as is the visitation of a diocese by its Bishop’. Again, it’s simply nomenclature, but Rabbis predated bishops by a considerable margin of time and the comparison was like suggesting that Cambridge academics should adopt the policies of Oxford dons. In principle, everybody wanted the Jews in the West End and those in the East End to live in harmony as one big happy family. It was a reason for Rothschild becoming the President of the Federation. Montagu was, after all, a senior United Synagogue officer. The benevolence of the Federation, however, did not extend to their attitude towards the Progressives. Typically, the Federation withdrew from the Jewish Religious Education Board in 1908 when a member of Upper Berkeley Street became its President, even though Adler was the Vice President. Montagu’s financial support and membership of the Federation was also only given to communities who agreed to acknowledge Rothschild as the Federation’s President. Adler was diplomatic; he attended both the installation of Rabbi Chaikin as the Federation’s senior minister in 1901 and the memorial service for Frederic Mocatta at Upper Berkeley Street in 1905. What constantly undermined Adler’s efforts was the class system. British society was class-ridden from top to bottom. It wasn’t Adler’s fault for that was the world he lived in. The rich had the best seats in the synagogue because they could afford the higher fees. They were elected to run the synagogue because they had deep pockets. There was also a good deal of snobbery. Jewish thinking had always recognized the dangers of such criteria in society; the most prestigious graves in a cemetery are those nearest the chapel. The tradition is that they should be reserved for the wisest members of the community, not for the richest. In Britain the United Synagogue’s first cemetery in Willesden has the graves of the Chief Rabbis and Simeon Singer nearest to the chapel, including those of Hermann Adler and his father. The hidden agenda for the West End communities was their desire to be considered respectable by their neighbours. Vicars were respectable and so they could be role models. The long-time minister at the Golders Green synagogue, Rev Isaac Livingstone, would be known in the years to come as the Vicar of Golders Green and always wore a dog collar. Roman (Dog) collars were ubiquitous amongst the clergy. The synagogue wardens were equally formal. The senior lay officers at the synagogue would wear top hats in their seats and morning dress. When boys were barmitzvah, they too wore top hats. When a congregant had finished taking part in the Ashkenazi

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sabbath service, he would shake hands with the wardens before going back to his seat. At the Sephardi Synagogue they would bow to each other. Dignity and decorum were prized above everything else. The Sephardim haven’t changed their views. Ministers in Hermann’s time wore a black gown and neck bands. The United Synagogue insisted that these be worn at all services, which was difficult when the ministers were wearing tephillin on a weekday morning. The Sephardi ministers wore top hats and even the shamas (beadle) wore a top hat and a gown in both communities. By contrast, the Machzikei Hadath would have nothing to do with anything they considered appropriate for a vicar. Many of the Anglo-Jewish clergy didn’t wear hats at home, although Victorians would wear hats in the street much more than we do today. Hermann, himself, had dark blue canonicals, a colour which priests chose, rather than black, in Biblical times. The chevrot who formed the Federation came from a different background. The synagogues were often named after towns and villages abroad which were unknown in Britain; synagogues such as the Grodno, Kovno, the United Brethren of Konin and the Brothers of Petrikoff. Most of the synagogues were makeshift; one whose application to join the Federation was turned down, was severely criticized on inspection because: …There is no accommodation for women….the building is really not much as to command respect…t is unsafe. from a fire point of view, as if a fire occurred in the house there would be a panic in the synagogue and possibly not a soul could escape unhurt.4 Another difficulty arose with the death of members. When creating a new Jewish community, the first requirement is for a cemetery; not a synagogue, not a minister, but a cemetery. This was a particular problem for the immigrants as so many of them couldn’t afford the cost of interment in a United Synagogue graveyard. In 1888 the US agreed to only charge £3 for a ‘second class’ funeral, but this concession was not available if the deceased was a child, and £3 was still a great deal of money for a poor Jew. Furthermore, while the United Synagogue would bury any pauper, it would not allow a tombstone to be placed over the grave until the bill for the burial had been paid. In January 1889 Montagu came to the rescue again, once more at his own expense. He solved the problem by buying two acres of land in north London and creating the Federation’s own Burial Society. The cost of membership was set at less than 1p a week for the family. In the first three

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years over 50 per cent of the deaths in the Federation were of children under one years old. There were nearly 50 still-born. The level of infant mortality continued to be disastrous. Montagu’s effect on the community came in other ways as well. As the local MP he was well known in the East End, and he possessed even more influence when he became the co-owner of the Jewish Chronicle with Lionel Louis Cohen and Lionel Van Oven. One proposal of senior members of the United Synagogue in 1889 was that a major new synagogue should be built in the East End to accommodate the members of a number of the small congregations. It would be an anglicized chevra and much grander than any of the Federation’s properties. The result might have been a much safer and attractive structure, but the small immigrant communities were at home in their own chevras and the idea petered out in 1894 after lengthy but nonproductive discussions. Montagu also worked to get the Federation representation on the Flour Committee of the Board of Shechita, which looked after the production of Matzo for Passover; the profits of the supervision were then shared. Trying to keep all the parties he was associated with from each other’s throats, Samuel Montagu could still fall out with the Chief Rabbi on specific points. One of these was a major quarrel in July 1907. Montagu wrote to Adler about his attitude to Claude Montefiore’s new Jewish Religious Union which, to the Orthodox, was initially far less radical in its objectives to the Orthodox, than it finally became: I have again to write to you in answer to yours of the 25th inst. You only reply to one of the points I advanced, by stating that your connection with the Jewish Religious Education Board was a sufficient guarantee (by which I say - after you the deluge) you then attempt to use any proof that the Anglo-Jewish Association is not a religious body, to apply a similar argument to a professedly religious board. You then, as in unanswerable cases, abuse me. You state, in effect, that I signed a letter, the object of which was to weaken your authority, whereas 40 odd years ago, I turned the election at Bayswater so that you became the minister of that synagogue. Again, it was, I believe, I who proposed at the conference, your election as Chief Rabbi. In fact I have been your strongest supporter until you preferred a Free Thinker. Again, you charge me with advocating the advance of the Reform Synagogue as a constituent of the United Synagogue. My memory takes me back 20,

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30, or more years and I do not believe such an amazing incident occurred. I must ask you to substantiate these charges, or publicly withdraw them. Till you do so, this correspondence should cease.5 Remembering that the co-founder of the JRU was Montagu’s daughter, this angry response was to a number of concerns that Adler had about Montagu’s various activities within the community. The argument is not that important because both men would die within four years. It does illustrate that Adler was prepared to go to war with any community leader if he felt it necessary. With Rothschild or Montagu he was willing to stand his ground. Montagu, of course, was more accustomed to obsequiousness than criticism. ‘After me the deluge’ refers to the eighteenth century forecast that France would collapse after the death of Louis XIV. The Anglo-Jewish Association was not a religious body. It was a collection of unelected prominent Jews who, after some unpleasantness, were treated as colleagues by the elected Board of Deputies when considering international Jewish affairs. Adler was their Vice President. Montagu’s letter to Adler tended to distort the facts. Adler did not become the minister of the Bayswater synagogue when it first opened. He was appointed the preacher. His election to succeed his father was a foregone conclusion whoever nominated him. The Free Thinker was Claude Montefiore, the other co-founder of the LRU, and Adler’s friendship with him did not alter the fact that they had diametrically different religious views. The argument petered out. Normally, Adler and Montagu got on well enough. The Federation acknowledged the leadership of the Chief Rabbi and, thereby, extended his authority in the East End. They both encouraged the use and understanding of Hebrew, while insisting that the use of English should replace Yiddish in dealing with synagogue affairs. They also both worked hard to make sanitation and education actual moral obligations in the East End. While Montagu did not want to set up an organization which would compete with the United Synagogue, this objective did not result at first in a similar wish for cooperation on the part of the US. The minutes of the United Synagogue Council in February 1890 stated quite clearly: …at a time when the desire of the community is to unite as much as possible its various organizations…it surely seems inappropriate to create and extend a body whose policy must inevitably tend to disunion and disintegration.

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The fact was that the West End and the East End were in competition in a whole string of areas. If there was an opportunity to score points off each other, both sides were willing to take full advantage of it. As the West End held most of the positions of power, one East End manoeuvre was to cast doubt on the religious competence of the various United Synagogue officers. When the subject was the Chief Rabbi, the criticism centred on his alleged lack of Talmudic ability, and enough mud was thrown for some of it to stick even today. To begin with, the quality of his semichah was compared unfavourably with those of the spiritual leaders of the Federation. The appointment of their first minister was decided in January 1890, even before Adler had been chosen to succeed his father. The Federation Board of Delegates had advertised the post and a shortlist of four Rabbis had given half-hour sermons. The ballot for the winner resulted in Rabbi Dr Meyer Lerner, from Alsace, winning comfortably by 30 votes to 6. Now the two spiritual leaders could be compared. Much was made of the fact that Lerner’s semicha had been granted by the Rabbi of the Adath Yisroel Synagogue in Berlin. Undoubtedly Rabbi Hildesheimer was a great spiritual leader, but then so were the three Rabbis who had granted Adler semicha when he had gone to Prague. Lerner had produced Rabbinic writings, but Adler’s record in taking on Colenso and Goldwin Smith was also admirable. Different situations called for different academic approaches. Lerner had married a grand-daughter of a particularly notable Rabbi, Samson Raphael Hersch, but then Hersch was junior to Nathan Marcus Adler, Hermann’s distinguished father, as he had succeeded him at Oldenburg when Adler went to Hanover. There remained no measurable way of comparing one Rabbi with another. It was hardly surprising, however, that Adler’s free time for studying the Talmud was now even more severely limited. At this point he had a dual office; as Chief Rabbi for the Jewish community and as an ambassador to the non-Jewish community. Hermann Adler’s public profile with the nonJewish world was now far more important than it had been with his predecessors. His father had been well respected, but his predecessors, Solomon Herschell and David Tevele Schiff, were hardly known outside the Jewish community in their time. Lerner and Adler were both concerned with the quality of Jewish education available for youngsters in the community. They were quite prepared to work together in this area and when Lerner started the Sabbath Observance Society it had Adler’s warm support. The problem was that the

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sheer number of immigrant children who needed schooling made adequate teaching impossible. There were a number of good teachers, but the majority were trying to augment their totally inadequate income in very unsatisfactory conditions, and with little training on how to teach in the first place. No more than 25 per cent of the Jewish children were at Jewish schools. The Federation set up a committee to look into the situation. It reported in April 1891 that: There are considerably more than 200 Chedorim [After-hours schools] in the East End, where at least 2,000 boys from 5-14 years of age are trying to learn Hebrew…in the large majority of cases a bedroom or kitchen is used…sometimes with a sick wife or child in the bedroom, with cooking of washing being done in the kitchen. In nearly every instance the surroundings are of the most insanitary description, and the teachers in the most abject poverty. In the summer of 1894 the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge held a conference to see what could be done to improve matters. The result was the setting up of the Jewish Religious Education Board. The teachers had been persuaded that they should agree to their pupils being examined ‘under the sanction of the Chief Rabbi…in order to obtain certificates from him, as to their capabilities as teachers, and also that those who do not properly understand English will…take lessons of any gentleman appointed for their instruction’. Speaking in Yiddish, Adler would often advise immigrant audiences to take English lessons. Of course, advocating on many platforms ways to move the acculturation of the immigrants forward, would reduce Adler’s time for Talmud study still further. It was progress, as far as educating the children was concerned, but Lerner was also opposed to the minor changes to the ritual sanctioned by Adler. As he wrote to Montagu: ‘In connection with the ritual question which is agitating all minds I beg to inform you that, not without a sad and heavy heart, the Chief Rabbi has yielded to the violent clamourings of some congregations for alterations in our prayers.’ The alterations were, in fact, minuscule from a United Synagogue congregation’s point of view, but they were the thin end of the wedge to Lerner. In June 1894 he moved back to Germany, and others had to keep the Federation true to its traditions. The Federation was not left entirely without spiritual leadership. The previous February Montagu had hired Rabbi Chaim Zundel Maccoby (1858-

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1916), a famous Maggid (preacher), who was already working for the early Zionist society, Chovevei Zion. He was paid £150 a year by Montagu and stayed on the same salary until he died in 1916. Maccoby was not only highly regarded by the Federation. He was admired by Adler as well, and had been asked by him to give a memorial address for the old Chief Rabbi. He also preached at the Great Synagogue and gave the memorial address for Dayan Reinowitz when he died in 1893. Like Adler he was much against political Zionism and considered Herzl a false messiah. In this his views ran counter to the Lithuanian Rabbi Avraham Aba Werner (18321912), who was appointed the minister of the Machzikei Hadath Synagogue after Lerner departed. Werner had been the Chief Rabbi in Finland but was persuaded to come to London in 1891. He served the Federation until his death in 1912 when The Times in its obituary, called him ‘the most learned man in London in Talmudic and Rabbinic literature’. The folklore about Werner recounted an occasion when he gave a poor man his weekly salary of three sovereigns. He explained to his wife that the man’s needs were greater than his. When he died it was estimated that 20,000 people lined the streets of the East End, as the cortege moved to the Federation cemetery in Edmonton. Maccoby – although a great preacher – was never considered expert enough to succeed Lerner before Werner. The position was first accepted by Dr Moritz Grunwald, in 1895, but he died soon after he came to London. There was then an interregnum until 1901 when Montagu offered £1,000 to pay the salary of another minister for three years. The choice fell on Rabbi Moshe Avigdor Chaikin (1852-1928), a Russian who had received semicha from the eminent Rabbi Yitzchak Spector. Chaikin was the Sheffield minister at the time and was appointed by Montagu without reference to the Federation Board of Delegates. Montagu was not always a committed democrat. By the time Chaikin took office, the Federation was represented on all the main community bodies and it was promoting English classes and had established a nursing system for the poor. The Federation synagogues now provided better facilities for the education of the children and supported parents who didn’t want their children educated in state schools where there were no Jewish lessons. Many of the original inadequate synagogue buildings had been replaced by accepting loans from Montagu, who received a baronetcy in 1900. The luxury of having a better building was typified by the nickname given to the New Road Synagogue when it was rebuilt – ‘Die Englishe Shool’ (The English Synagogue).

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Montagu wanted to widen the membership of the Federation and approached a number of provincial synagogues for the purpose. As a consequence, in May 1902 43 congregational representatives met and formed the Jewish Dispersion Committee, to try to persuade more people from the East End to move to more upmarket locations. Charles Booth (1840-1916) took to writing extensively on the conditions of the working class in London and advised dispersion as well: ‘In the country foreign Jews become anglicized far more rapidly than in London and it is desired to make London conditions approximate to country conditions as much as possible.’6 Employment and financial help was offered by Montagu to help transitions and a considerable number of East Enders moved to towns like Reading and Leicester. To emphasize its commitment to this scheme the Federation in 1904 gave notice that it wouldn’t help ‘the establishment of new synagogues in the congested area in East London, believing that ample synagogal accommodation is now provided (save for the exceptional requirements of New Year and the Day of Atonement) for existing needs’. Rabbi Chaikin was now given responsibility for the spiritual framework of some 50 Federation congregations. Adler was all in favour and his attendance at Chaikin’s installation when he became the Federation minister at the New Synagogue was much appreciated. When Adler appointed comparatively new Jews’ College Rabbis, Feldman and Hyamson, to the Beth Din, it was hoped that Chaikin would be appointed as well, but Lord Rothschild wouldn’t support the move as Chaikin wasn’t ‘English’ enough and the United Synagogue’s ambition was still to anglicize the East End. The result was a protest meeting condemning ‘…those who mean to appoint for us East End Jews as Rabbis, persons whom we by no means recognize as such, as by the word Rabbis we understand well known and highly educated men in Talmudic learning.’ By what yardstick those at the meeting decided that Feldman and Hyamson lacked Talmudic learning was a very grey area. Within a very short time Adler persuaded the United Synagogue to invite Chaikin to participate in the work of the Beth Din, although without the title of Dayan. Members of a Beth Din do not have to be Rabbis, although it is obviously desirable. The key appointment is that of the Scribe, because the documents the Beth Din issue have got to be calligraphically perfect. Once they had Chaikin on board, his expertise was used on the Beth Din to a greater extent than had been envisaged: ‘He is in daily attendance for dealing with questions and sits regularly at the Beth Din.’ The benefit to the United Synagogue Beth Din, however, was to the

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detriment of the Federation. By 1906 the Federation Board of Delegates asked him to ‘once more devote his entire time to the services of the Federation and to cease acting as Dayan’. Montagu eventually decided that he wanted to make an appointment of a Chief Minister for the Federation while retaining Chaikin. Basically, he didn’t think Chaikin gave enough time to the Federation flock. The process of finding a chief minister, however, was not to happen in Montagu’s time. He fell very ill in 1908 and died in 1911, just a few months before Adler himself. He left £2,000 to continue to pay the salaries of Chaikin and Maccoby and left the Federation all the debts owed to him by the Federation synagogues. Adler, Montagu and Rothschild had a common wish to help the East End Jews became anglicized. To this end Montagu, as early as 1869, had decided to create a Jewish Working Mens’ Club. This would provide a reading room on the Sabbath and it opened in 1872. What was soon identified, however, was that a Reading Room with a religious context did not appeal to the younger generation and the Reading Room was closed in 1874. Montagu remained the President of the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. It was replaced with a club associated with the all-British Association of Working Mens’ Clubs and Institutes, and this was a great success. Financed by Montagu, its membership averaged over 1,000 for the next 30 years; women were accepted as members as well. The majority of the membership, however, came from Jews in the East End who were not refugees from the pogroms, but were from the Jewish families who had lived in the area for much longer. Montagu continued as president until 1908. Although the absorption of the immigrants was the first priority, the education of their children came a close second. Elementary education up to the age of ten had become law in 1880 and this was extended to eleven by the Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act in 1893. In 1899 it went up to thirteen. The Church of England schools had needed financing and this responsibility was devolved to town councils by the 1902 Balfour Education Act. It came in time for the Jewish schools, which would otherwise have been unable to cope financially. An act passed by the Liberal government in 1906 ensured that state finance paid for the teachers, but the Jewish schools still had problems. For example, they needed Hebrew teachers as well as those teaching the other subjects. Furthermore, the councils set standards for the school buildings which the Jewish schools had to meet

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from their own resources. Additional financial pressure arose when the immigrants were encouraged to move out of the East End and, in new suburban locations, the money had to be found for new premises and facilities. Adler saw the possibilities of the schools being used for other purposes as well. Evening classes were started for the parents and the children were taught hygiene and aspects of housekeeping in the hope that they would bring the lessons home to the poorer parents. Adler also encouraged the use of the schools for leisure pursuits to keep the children off the streets. Head teachers like W. Ashe Payne, the non-Jewish Head of the Stepney Jewish School, was particularly keen on sport and turned the attention of the pupils to many forms of athletics. There was a good deal of support from Jewish organizations and Claude Montefiore became President of the Jewish Infant Schools Association in 1896. The number of children who had to be looked after ran into the tens of thousands and without state aid the task would have been beyond the community. Nettie Adler, Hermann’s daughter, was deeply involved and would have kept her father informed of progress. The Jewish Religious Education Board had been formed in 1894 and worked well for some years. It was a complex organization; it even had its own reform school, the Hayes Industrial School, where difficult children would be sent. After Claude Montefiore started his Jewish Religious Union, however, Samuel Montagu refused to work with him on the Board and took the Federation out of the organization. Thereafter they worked on their own and created some important educational bodies, like the Brick Lane Talmud Torah, which eventually had 1,000 children on its school roll. The needs of the immigrant children went beyond education. At least 100 pairs of shoes a year were given to poor children at the Jews’ Free School by the Jewish Boot charity. They often needed decent clothes too, and money was raised to provide them with lunch. When the state took over that responsibility as well, by 1910 they provided some 400,000 free lunches in the East End. One of the root causes of the poverty had always been the pay and conditions in the sweatshops in the East End. This had led the government to set up a House of Lords Committee on conditions in these shops. It eventually reported in 1890 that the problems were the workers’ fault! As a consequence Lord Dunraven formed the Association for the Prevention of Immigration of Destitute Aliens, but even if the government had been prepared to pass an Aliens Act, it wouldn’t have helped the destitute aliens who were already in the country.

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The solution to the poverty in the East End was for the immigrants to work their way out of it. Over the next 100 years most of the community or their descendants managed this very difficult exercise.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Endleman, Todd, Radical Assimilation in English-Jewish History (Indiana University Press, 1990), p.144. Jewish Chronicle, 28 September 1888. Alderman, Geoffrey, The Federation of Synagogues (1987), p.10. Ibid., p.13. From Southampton University archive. Booth Collection.

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3. The Adler Bookmark.

4. The Bookplate of the Chief Rabbi.

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7 Chief Rabbi, As Planned When Nathan Marcus Adler died, Hermann had been Delegate Chief Rabbi for over ten years. He was just over 50 and at his peak. There was very widespread regret throughout the community at Adler senior’s passing, because the old Chief Rabbi had been in office longer than any of his predecessors and, indeed, served longer than any of his successors. During his ministry he had laid down hard and fast rules for the community and nurtured the creation of the United Synagogue, Jews’ College, the Singer prayer book and the Board of Guardians, besides making a substantial contribution to academic studies of aspects of the Talmud. The regret at his death was not confined to the Jewish community; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, was only one of the many churchmen who wrote to Hermann to assure him of their sympathy. Hermann had done a very good job as Delegate Chief Rabbi and there was really no competition for the succession. A decision was not made for eighteen months, however, as arguments arose in the community about the office itself. The Federation, for example, were concerned that there should be no changes in the traditional ritual in the synagogues under the aegis of the new Chief Rabbi. It was a compliment that, at a meeting of the Federation Council, they expressly excluded Hermann Adler from their concerns as they minuted that they were sure the ritual was safe in his hands. The Jewish Chronicle got into the act by starting a campaign to get a Jewish synod formed to take on the responsibility for the ritual in synagogues: ‘The paper set out radical proposals for the reform of Jewish law and practice which such an assembly might undertake.’1 It also attacked the ecclesiastic authorities: ‘The truth is, that what is wanted nowadays is a more liberal interpretation of Jewish law than the Beth Din in its existing form is inclined to give.’2 When a meeting was finally called in June 1891 to choose the new Chief Rabbi the chair, Henry Lucas reminded the assembly that: It will be within your recollection that shortly after the vacancy occurred, differences arose in our community. Differences were

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expressed in the Jewish public press and other sources as to the powers and direction of the Chief Rabbi. Various suggestions were made, and owing to these other circumstances, the peace of the community was threatened and the atmosphere surrounding it charged with heavy storm clouds…the difficulties that have arisen have been smoothed down. It was quite in order that the Jewish Chronicle should be at liberty to powerfully advocate new policies, week after week, if they so wished. Whether these had any effect on the decisions of the Chief Rabbi depended entirely on how determined the incumbent was. In the future, Chief Rabbi Brodie would dread Fridays because he was constantly attacked by the Jewish Chronicle on the question of Rabbi Louis Jacobs’ philosophy, but, like Hermann Adler, he did not change his views.3 The Adler’s were not for turning either. In many ways the newspaper itself was not always consistent. It had a number of owners over the years and their individual views could lead to different approaches. If Adler had been needed to take on Colenso twenty years before, when he had only recently obtained his semicha, the idea that the Jewish Chronicle was capable of coming up with radical and acceptable reform proposals on its own, had little merit. Moreover, those reforms would still have had to gain international approval if the British Orthodox community were not to find itself in a religious wilderness. The problem with a ‘fundamentally more liberal interpretation’ was where it stopped. Do you make eating bacon acceptable but still forbid eating lobster? Do you lay tephillin when there is an ‘R’ in the month? If your synod reaches agreement, what happens if another synod disagrees? The interpretation of the Adlers was to stick to the rules. Furthermore, the Beth Din’s role was misinterpreted; it was there to see that the din was followed; not to create its own version. It also remained the case that the arguments about the synagogue ritual were of little importance to most congregants. There might be large-scale demonstrations and parades against the conditions of sweated labour, many might take an interest in Zionism or socialism, as they tried to gather supporters, but whether one prayer or another was retained or omitted in a synagogue service did not deeply involve the majority of the congregants. Particularly those who only attended the synagogue on rare occasions, and they were very often typical of the West End members. Belonging to a congregation was not centred alone on services anyway; in Judaism a synagogue is a place of worship, a place of learning and a place

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of meeting. How many congregants could actually translate the prayers they were reading in Hebrew depended on their upbringing, but the languages they spoke every day were either English or Yiddish. Very few attended the daily morning, afternoon and evening services, but far more would go to synagogue on the anniversary of the death of their parents or spouse, and their faith was a great support to them in any emergency. Places of worship are always more likely to be full in wartime. In addition a large number were members of a congregation because of family feeling. As congregants they were not alone, for they belonged to the Jewish community, and that normally mattered a great deal, particularly to immigrants in a strange land. Only a few were prepared, or had the time to, spend hours helping run the synagogue and the main benefit which was, not surprisingly, considered vital on their hidden agenda, was their plot in the cemetery at the end of their days. Every Synagogue was a burial society. Within some of the older community there had been grumbles for years about the services. So the campaign for ritual change when Hermann Adler became Chief Rabbi had enough supporters to make at least a gesture necessary. As a consequence Adler agreed to the holding of a Ritual Reform Conference in 1891. It was originally proposed by several hundred members of the United Synagogue and the Progressives, but was eventually held without either the Progressives or the Sephardim being represented. The Progressive leaders had indeed advocated the conference, and Adler had approved and was prepared to listen, but then the Progressive members voted overwhelmingly not to take part. They, too, wanted to remain strictly independent of Orthodox theology. The conference in May 1892 came up with a large number of recommendations for the Chief Rabbi to consider. The Jewish Chronicle regretted that much of the discussions were in camera, so that they couldn’t give a full report of the proceedings. They did add, however, that ‘few of the changes touch even the remotest fringes of the true essence of Judaism’. Again, the Jewish Chronicle was taking upon itself the formulation of orthodoxy. This time deciding what was the ‘true essence’. Adler’s response was published two months later in July 1892. He had only just settled into his new post and he was anxious not to appear dictatorial. He said diplomatically: I have endeavoured, where at all possible, to give effect to the recommendations of the conference…in consequence of the communication you have made to me which was emphatically

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endorsed by a majority of your Ministers, that such modifications in the ritual were earnestly desired by a majority of your members.4 The assertion that the majority of the members of the congregations had voted in a referendum and approved specific changes in the ritual was farfetched. It was unlikely that there had been such referenda and what the ministers were saying was designed to give unqualified support to their own views. In Adler’s response the key words were ‘where at all possible’. Because Adler was only going to sanction alterations ‘which do not violate any laws of traditional Judaism’ and if, at the end of the day, that went against the wishes of the majority of the members, or the ministers, that was just unfortunate. In turning down many of the recommendations he said: I have felt it my duty to refrain from adopting the opinion of the majority of the members…I shall be gratified to learn that [the congregations] continue to hold their Services in strict accord with ancient usages. He very seldom budged. Among a number of other recommendations he turned down, for example, was the elimination of the blessing by men for not making them women. Of course, the rationale for this blessing is usually misinterpreted. Jewish men have the sacred responsibility of looking after the synagogue, while women are excused because of what has always been considered their far more important and onerous responsibilities, for the sanctity of the home. A room in which to pray is important but the home is vital. Indeed, even a room is sometimes surplus to requirements; the din is that marriage ceremonies should take place in the open air and, during Succot, prayers are said in booths outside the house. In 1884 the Board of Guardians was so concerned that this responsibility for the home might be neglected, that they appointed a Sanitary Inspector to visit poor homes and inculcate good habits. The thanks in the prayer are for having the privilege of looking after the synagogue and they are not meant to be misogynistic. In many ways in the Talmud, women were stated to be superior to men. It is said in the Talmud that if a wicked woman marries a pious man, he would become wicked, but if a pious woman marries a wicked man, he would become pious. Women were also said to have greater intuition than men; to be more understanding and intelligent; to have more business acumen. A number

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of Victorian Jewish women proved this, such as Rachel Sassoon, the first woman newspaper editor of the Sunday Times and the Observer. Furthermore, the sixth-century Talmud had no problems with allowing women to buy, sell and own property and to make their own contracts, all of which rights were denied them in most of Europe until the nineteenth century. Adler also insisted on maintaining the Ketubah (the marriage contract), and he refused the use of an organ on the Sabbath or Festivals, he wouldn’t allow the shofar (the ram’s horn) to be blown on the New Year if it fell on a Sabbath, and didn’t accept any changes in the Kol Nidre service on Yom Kippur eve. The key point was not to allow innovations which involved activities which could be categorized as work, which was forbidden on the Sabbath or festivals. There were a considerable number of additional recommendations which Adler refused to accept and he stuck to his guns. On the other hand he showed throughout his ministry that he would accept new historical discoveries. In 1893 he pointed out in a sermon that a parable in the Hebrew Bible might have originated as an Indian story. He also justified his opinion that one prayer was composed 900 years after the date traditionally ascribed to it Basically, Adler distinguished between history and Talmud. He remained determined to defend the Written and Oral Law. As he said in 1882, soon after he was elected: ‘The Pentateuch [has] the law of Sinai to which we owe the most valued achievements of civilization.’ It was also becoming clear that he was not prepared to be a tool of the lay authorities, wherever they were to be found. Not for nothing was he described as a patrician English gentleman who stood for accepted tradition. Hadn’t the man who nominated him for Chief Rabbi referred to him as ‘the head of our church’? Adler is often accused of weakness when dealing with the community’s lay leaders but, like his father, he only gave ground when he considered it didn’t fundamentally matter. On rare occasions he did allow minor ritual changes; he accepted the omission of some of the penitential prayers on fast days, and allowed the deletion from the synagogue service of the regulations for lighting Sabbath candles. The description of the Temple incense, which was traditionally part of the Sabbath morning service, was also omitted. None of the rules in Judaism can be described as dispensable because all the rules have the same importance, but a considerable percentage of almost any of the members of the old congregations would not have had sleepless nights worrying about the ritual subjects under discussion.

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Among those who did, however, was the Chief Minister of the Federation of Synagogues, Rabbi Dr Meyer Lerner (1857-1930), who condemned all of Adler’s changes: All who are faithful adherents to G-d and His doctrine will act entirely in harmony with His desires and feelings by holding fast to the existing order of prayer. We know from experience that all those who commence with alterations of the ritual of prayer have ended by shaking off the yoke of G-d’s commandments and destroying all the foundations of Judaism. .

This, of course, had on occasions been true. It was not inevitable but the instances had become part of the history handed down from generation to generation. One such movement, for example, had been the Sabbataeans in the seventeenth century, led by a charismatic Rabbi, Sabbatei Zevi. Starting with the kind of minor changes Rabbi Lerner pinpointed, Zevi ended up by going so far as to alter the nature of the fast of Tisha b’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the temple. He made the day a festival instead of a fast because it was his birthday. Zevi also converted to Islam and the few who still follow his teachings today are part-Muslim and part Jew. They are called the Dönme and are to be found in Turkey. In its time, the Sabbataean movement was very fashionable and few saw the potential danger to traditional Jewish practices. One of those who did, however, was the first Sephardi British Haham, Jacob Sasportas. He warned about the activities of Sabbatei Zevi, and his strictures were not forgotten for years after. Zevi, of course, wasn’t the only false prophet in Jewish history by any means. At the end of the day, however, he is just a footnote in the long story of the Jewish past. The Chief Rabbi also had a quite separate objective to promulgate; creating and publicizing the image he wanted the immigrants to achieve; that of committed British citizens. For centuries in many countries, the Jews had been labelled a race apart, often forbidden citizenship, expelled on a ruler’s whim and treated like aliens. This wasn’t true in Britain. By Adler’s time, however, the core Jewish community had established their loyalty to the Crown on many occasions over two centuries. Now the flood of new immigrants made it possible for antisemites to raise the question of Jewish loyalty again. One result was that, for the next twenty years, Adler and Rothschild worked hard to make the case that an Aliens Act was unnecessary. Nothing was more important if the refugees were to find a safe haven.

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There would be one area of life where Hermann Adler had little success in combating a liberal interpretation. This was in the choice of schooling for the children of well-to-do Jewish families. It was true he denounced a public boarding school education for Jewish children, because the vast majority of the schools made no allowance for Jewish pupils to learn and practice their faith. The excuse for a public school choice was that they could still receive Jewish tuition at home in the holidays. That rationale, however, ignored the absence of kosher food in the schools, the refusal to allow the celebration of Jewish festivals, and compulsory school on Saturday mornings instead of synagogue. As far as the young people were concerned, their parents had decided that a public school education was worth allowing a liberal interpretation of the din. This the youngsters could use as a precedent in later life if the question of intermarriage arose. For if a public school education was worth sacrificing Sabbath observance for, many suggested it was just one more step in the same direction to sacrifice the faith for a marriage. Adler knew that even when he criticized public school education, he couldn’t win. Although public schools often had quotas to restrict the number of Jewish pupils they would accept, they were still popular with many Jewish families who could afford the fees. Even though they seldom offered any Jewish education and tolerated a good deal of antisemitism within the ranks of their pupils, they remained the family choice because it was part of their social status and acceptability among their non-Jewish neighbours. With their children being at public school, this also made the family one-up on those who found the fees beyond their means. At the 1902 conference of the Union of Jewish Women, Adler was crystal clear on his own views: I confess that nothing fills me with graver misgivings as to the future of Judaism in this country than that there is an increasing number of parents who do not hesitate to send their sons to non-Jewish boarding schools and houses where Jewish home worship is altogether lacking.5 Adler was trying to square the circle. On the one hand he felt that Jewish schools should be, primarily, for children from poor immigrant East End families who had a need to be anglicized. The Jews’ Free School was the epitome of this. If, however, Jewish schools were for the poor, where were the better off sons to be educated? In fairness a lot of the public schools were Christian foundations and equally trying to bring up their pupils to

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be Christians. Many only accepted Jews with reluctance because they needed to increase the schools’ income. Dr Arnold at Rugby was just one antisemitic headmaster. Many well-to-do Jewish parents also saw a public school education for their boys as part of Jewish emancipation. This was often their ultimate objective. The public schools offered the best education and the parents would mostly have objected to Adler telling them to send their boys to poorer schools. In Hermann Adler’s time, the British Jewish community numbered some 400,000. It is down to 280,000 today with a high level of inter-marriage. The other side of the coin is a tremendous increase in the Jewish children at faith schools, where academic results are often exemplary. In 1891 the United Synagogue Council proposed Hermann’s appointment, and there were no objections. He gave up his pulpit at Bayswater but he always retained happy memories of his time in office, and made it a point to always preach at the synagogue on the first day of Passover. The presence of the Chief Rabbi at the Sabbath service made it an occasion for the congregation. A number of such annual events became the norm. The Chief Rabbi, for example, would always be at the Central Synagogue on the first day of the festival of Succot. There was only one minor disagreement about Adler’s elevation. He told the United Synagogue that he wouldn’t move his home to the East End to be near the main body of the old community at the Great Synagogue. He agreed that his office as Chief Rabbi would remain in the East End, but he insisted on living in Craven Hill near the Bayswater Synagogue, as he had for years. As he struggled to establish a warmer relationship with the new immigrants, in later life he did spend many weekends in the East End. His original wish was respected however, and, with the strong support of the Rothschilds Adler replaced his father at the same handsome salary of £2,000 a year. (over £200,000 today). This compared with the lamentable salaries of congregational ministers. Small congregations paid between £65 and £75 a year; medium-sized congregations managed £100-150. In London Brondesbury paid £250. With Samuel Montagu’s financial support the Federation synagogues did better. At least some paid £300 and by 1910 this had increased to £500. It wasn’t surprising, as a consequence, that many ministers took positions in pulpits as far away as Australia and New Zealand, although these, like all empire synagogue pulpits, had to have the approval of Adler back in London. During Adler’s incumbency at least two dozen Jews’ College graduates were recruited for overseas ministries. His successor, the

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American-trained Joseph Hermann Hertz, had his appointment to a Johannesburg pulpit confirmed by Adler in 1898. In his role as Chief Rabbi of the Empire, Hermann wrote to congratulate him. Hermann Adler’s own election process in Britain was made smoother when neither the Sephardim nor the leaders of the Reform movement were prepared to take part in it. Such involvement might provide the desirable impression of a united community. That attraction, however, was counterbalanced by the certain knowledge that the United Synagogue would always make sure to keep the majority of the votes in the hands of their own delegates. Thirty-two provincial Ashkenazi congregations did take part in the election, but their total votes were insignificant as a percentage of the whole. The predominance of the United Synagogue votes though was in spite of the fact that the new Federation of Synagogues actually had more members than they did. It had always been unlikely that the Sephardim would agree to be involved. Periodic discussions over the century had always seen the collapse of any proposals for a joint Sephardi/Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi. The Sephardim had appointed their own leader, the Haham, since the time of Charles II and didn’t intend for a moment to give up their individual independence. The initial Loyal Address to George III had only come from the Sephardim, who had arrived back in Britain earlier than the Ashkenazim and had had more time to become acclimatized to British culture. It was when the Ashkenazi at the Great Synagogue complained at being left out that the Sephardim invited them to join what became known as the Board of Deputies of British Jews. There are still only 27 organizations allowed to present Loyal Addresses to the monarch; of those the Board of Deputies is one. That Upper Berkeley Street were invited to participate in the 1891 election illustrates the far better relationship between the Orthodox and the Secessionists than had been the case at the outset of the breakaway back in 1840. It would be unlikely to happen today. The voting system for the election was the same as the last time there had been a vacancy 45 years earlier in 1844. For a contribution of £5 a year to help pay for the Chief Rabbi’s office, any congregation could again have a vote. The problem was that most congregations could only afford one or two votes. By contrast, the large London synagogues could still promise far greater financial support, and through that mechanism constituted a considerable majority of the electors.

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The Federation naturally wanted voting to be apportioned according to the number of members of the organizations involved. If that system had been adopted, the Federation would have had most of the votes, so it had no chance of being approved by the United Synagogue Council. Adler’s installation was typical of such momentous events, but it still impressed the general public, even interesting the readers of the New York Times: Excited crowds gathered in the neighbourhood of the Great Synagogue at Aldgate this afternoon, all agog to see something of the pomp surrounding the installation of the Rev Dr Hermann Adler as Chief Rabbi of ‘The United Congregations of the British Empire’. Lavish and tasteful floral decorations throughout the building gave an impression of light and gaiety. The floor of the synagogue was reserved for the male sex, and ladies were only admitted to the galleries, whence they peered with interest on the chattering and animated crowds beneath, every member of which, according to Jewish custom, wore his hat.6 Unlike his father, who had been a stranger to the community at the time of his installation, Hermann Adler had, of course, become a well-known figure over many years. The provincial communities had written ‘that means should be adopted for frequent pastoral visits to Provincial Congregations, either by the Chief Rabbi himself or by ministers delegated by him’. The congregation for the installation at the Great Synagogue in June 1891 naturally included all the luminaries in the Jewish community, but also the Grand Rabbi of France, the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster, the Lord Mayor, the Irish Earl and Countess of Meath, the Headmasters of Harrow and Clifton, two of the only Jewish boarding houses at public schools, and the Chief Clerk of the Bank of England, reflecting the importance of Great members in the City. From the colonies came Sir Saul Samuel from Australia and Abraham Sassoon from Bombay. The poor were represented by Canon Barnett of Toynbee Hall, an East End Christian establishment founded in 1884 to help the impoverished. He was a good friend of the new Chief Rabbi and, with his wife, Henrietta, he would also develop Hampstead Garden Suburb, which now has a large Jewish community. The Great Synagogue was en fête, with all the aisles lined with children strewing flowers, and a canopy of blue satin and silver at the door where the Chief Rabbi came in. As the Chief Rabbi said in his installation sermon:

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I have grown up in your midst…I have endeavoured to draw my mental nurture from the rich stores of our dear England’s thought and learning…In my paternal home…every detail has become familiar to me of the exalted office…to direct the religious government of the many Jewish communities scattered over every part of the globe…how great an increase has there been in the number of our institutions…each of them needing some supervision….this population widely differing between the two extremes of the religious thermometer…By the all absorbing desire …which my parents fostered within me since ere I drew conscious breath…ever mindful that the interests, not of any one powerful and influential section, but of the whole House of Israel have been entrusted to his keeping…despising the soft flatteries of an easy popularity…but what line of action will stand the scrutiny of heaven…the poor and the oppressed will confidently look to him for help and for defence…every service be characterized by dignity and reverence, by fervour and devotion…he will watch over the schools, nor will he be unmindful of… the leisured classes, who stand in need, not less, but more urgently of the wise and wholesome restraints of religion…he will watch over the pupils at that critical period when they are launched upon the world with all its lures and enticements… during the last 12 years I have learnt what the English rabbinate entails…R.Gamaliel – ‘Think not that I commit governance unto you? Ah, no! I give servitude to you.’…Do not stigmatize the denizens of the East as bigoted fanatics, lost in the sloth of mediaeval superstition…they certainly teach many a precious lesson of staunch, manly, religious allegiance…and make heavy sacrifices for the sake of their faith. In the East…do not look upon those who are not in entire agreement with you as though they were outside the pale of Judaism…For gratitude I ask not. As with the manifesto for the election of every Prime Minister, there was the promise to represent everybody and not just a single segment of the community. If Adler was criticized on occasions in the future for favouring only the rich and powerful, it was a stigma he went out of his way to avoid and didn’t deserve, as any unbiased study of his working day would easily prove. He certainly, however, had a great deal on his plate. The ambition of his predecessors may have been to sit in the study and pore over the Talmud, but the demands on Adler’s time must have made such scholarly

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preoccupations particularly difficult. As a result, the Right Wing might compare his Talmudic knowledge unfavourably with the standards reached by their own great Rabbis, but most of their sages could find far more time to devote to learning. The immigrant Rabbi was, normally, only required to look after a single small congregation, whereas Adler often worked more than twelve hours a day on a multitude of challenges. The scope of his work was described by the appointments committee: Synagogues outside the United Synagogue…are constantly calling upon the Chief Rabbi to use his influence in the collection of funds towards building new Synagogues and towards the purchase of Cemeteries, inviting him to consecrate their edifices and to examine their schools. They participate in all the advantages of the Chief Rabbi’s supervision; he communicates with them on all celebrations which have communal interest, they write to him continually concerning their local affairs; they invoke his decision on religious questions; they rely on him to find and examine suitable officials as Preachers, readers, teachers and shochetim, and they appeal to him for his advice on every conceivable occasion.7 For Adler it was always likely to be a lose/lose situation. If he studied and wrote learned works, he might be accused of neglecting his public responsibilities. If he didn’t, he could be criticized for not being as Talmudically knowledgeable as the best of the immigrant Rabbis. Hermann inherited a very different Jewish community from the situation existing when his father had been installed as Chief Rabbi. In 1845 the undisputed lay leadership had rested with Sir Moses Montefiore, whose views on Orthodox Judaism coincided with Adler’s, and who left all the religious decisions to him. By the time Hermann Adler was installed, Montefiore had passed away and the lay leadership had expanded to include Lord Rothschild and the Council of the United Synagogue, Samuel Montague, later Lord Swaythling, and the Federation of Synagogues, and a number of very Orthodox immigrant communities, often represented by a new organization called Machzikei Hadath. Of these leaders, the most important was Lord Rothschild (1840-1911) who was the President of the United Synagogue throughout Adler’s ministry. This did not necessarily mean that he kept all the 600 plus laws; he was particularly keen on oysters and French cuisine, where milk and meat would be cooked together, which makes the resulting dish not kosher.

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It also accounted for Rothschild at 1.7 metres (5 ft.7 inches), being 1.2 metres (four feet) round the waist and 91 kilos (200 lbs) in weight. Rothschild had a reputation for being one of the rudest men in the community: One German prince with proportionate pretensions, came to pay his respects to the banker. ‘Take a chair’ Rothschild offered remaining bent over the books. ‘I am afraid’, replied the other, unused to such a lack of courtesy ‘that you do not know who I am’ and he enlightened him. ‘Well, well’, rejoined his host ‘take two chairs’. 8 His rudeness was not reflected in his relations with Hermann Adler. It wasn’t just that the Rothschilds and the Adlers were related by marriage; the friendship of the Rothschild founder, Amschel, and Adler’s grandfather, Rabbi Mordecai Adler, was far warmer than that. When Amschel visited Hanover, where he had been brought up for some years in his younger days, he would stop by Mordecai’s home, even in the middle of the night, to get his blessing. The Rothschild males were observant Jews and there was a spiritual element to their relationship with the Adlers, no matter how odd that might appear in these secular days. As Adler became Chief Rabbi, so Nathaniel Rothschild took over the family bank after his father died in the same year. Rothschild had become friendly with the Prince of Wales when they were both undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was made a Privy Councillor when the prince came to the throne. He was also the first Liberal MP for Aylesbury from 1865-1885. Rothschild would do a great deal to improve the living conditions of Jewish refugees in the East End, but he was happy to be a trustee of the London Mosque Fund as well. This created the largest mosque in Britain in the East End, capable of accommodating 7,000 worshippers. Rothschild’s wife, Emma, was also a force to be reckoned with, as President of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. She was also very friendly with Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales and his wife, Alexandra. In addition, both the Rothschilds and the Adlers would have in common that they were anti-Zionist. But even with the support of the Rothschilds, Adler was still left with a number of challenges. He had a particular problem with the new immigrants because he had little experience of Jews from Russia, the homeland of so many of the newcomers. Talking to one Jewish writer, Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, known as Ahad Ha’am, he said that ‘they are not like the English and German Jews who made up the community in the days of my father. They

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are always quarrelling among themselves and finding fault with the religious standards of the establishment, and nothing I do will satisfy them’. It wasn’t just a matter of trying to mould the different Jewish communities into one whole. In fact, the older community largely remained contentedly middle-of-the-road Orthodox. In Adler’s time the Secessionists only had the communities of Upper Berkeley Street (1841), Manchester (1856) and Bradford (1873). The British Weekly did a survey in 1886 and reported that on Saturday 23 October there had been 2,360 Jews in Synagogue, of whom 81 went to Upper Berkeley Street. Adler also had the problem, however, of trying to stop many families leaving the community altogether. Keeping up all the practices was still difficult. One solution, which gained popularity, was to take pride in the ancestry of Judaism, and to put the history on a pedestal, rather than the din. Adler would not have agreed with the sentiments of the Jewish Chronicle on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee: To feel oneself a Jew nowadays is more to feel the claims of Jewish history upon our lives than to perform the time-honoured Jewish rites…that revival of the historical sense in Anglo-Jewry is the most striking movement in its inner life. The claims of Jewish history were often not, however, sufficient to avoid inter-marriage. It was the claims of the religion which would constitute a far stronger argument, as they knew very well in the East End. One problem was the German immigrants who had arrived 30 years before. After 1848 there had been a considerable influx of German Jewish refugees, fleeing the repression after the collapse of the revolution. They were often quite well-to-do and well educated. Many had scientific qualifications, which were unusual in Britain where the universities concentrated on the Classics. It enabled many of the immigrants to start firms which filled gaps in the country’s manufacturing processes. British agriculture was transformed, for example, by one Jewish company creating rolling mills instead of using windmills. As far as their Judaism was concerned, however, there were two problems for a German immigrant. The first was the rejection of religion as a whole, in the world from which they had come, where secularism was becoming more fashionable. Adler saw this growth of secularism as a great danger to religious practices, and, in this view he had the full support of the Church of England.

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Fighting this development was one of the bases for the close cooperation between the Archbishops and the Chief Rabbi. The second problem for the German influx was the emotional baggage so many carried with them from having suffered discrimination in the German states where they were born. From the point of view of a lot of the immigrants, they had been so traumatized by their continental experiences that they found it difficult to accept that their religion was not going to be a serious barrier to their social acceptance in Britain. They failed to appreciate that such barriers, as had existed in public life, had been very largely abolished by legislation in Parliament over the years. Jews could now be sheriffs, magistrates, deputy lieutenants, alderman and Lord Mayors. Where Jewish mens’ clubs were established in America, they were not needed in London, where Jews were usually able to gain membership of one organization or another. As the Duke of Argyll said in1906: ‘Nor does there now exist in England any of that disgraceful antipathy to Jews which still prevails on the Continent of Europe.’9 It wasn’t quite that liberal, as the Aliens Act the previous year had shown, but it was certainly better than such countries as Germany, Austria and France. The alternative to remaining Jews was to become converted, and a proportion of the German immigrants and their offspring did leave the faith during the time of the Adlers. They often chose to join the Unitarian branch of Christendom because the Unitarians did not believe in the concept of the Trinity. Having been brought up in a monotheistic religion, the prospective converts often considered adopting the Trinity a step too far. Adler had to try to stop the defections but he also had the problem of the Christian conversionist societies. The specifically East End problem was that where the better-off German Jews were looking for social acceptance, so many of the poorer new immigrants in the 1880s were trying to get financial help just to stay alive. The Mildmay Whitechapel Mission to the Jews was part of the conversionists’ effort. It opened in 1880 and, by 1898, ran twenty general missions throughout London. It included meeting halls, orphanages, schools, hospitals, training schools and classes. By contrast, Leopold de Rothschild was the treasurer of the Metropolitan Hospital, with two Jewish wards, and vice president of the London with its five. Both the possibilities of official acceptance and the activities of the conversion societies led to more defections. While these influenced the German immigrants, they were less of a problem with the sections of the

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community who had been in the country far longer. Most of that community had struggled out of poverty and, when Adler became Delegate Chief Rabbi, probably around 60 per cent were middle class. The picture changed dramatically, of course, when the impoverished refugees started to flood in from the pogroms in Eastern Europe, a few years after Adler became Chief Rabbi. The British community soon got an international reputation for helping their impoverished brethren. The Poor Jews Temporary Shelter opened in November 1885, though the pusillanimous Board of Guardians wouldn’t recognize it for fifteen years. The official proposal was that the shelter should only offer accommodation for two weeks and then, if no work was found for the refugee, pass the family to the Board for repatriation. The fate of the wretches who were, effectively, deported could be ignored as out of sight and, therefore, out of mind. In fairness, the Board was dealing with a major crisis, but those who were not able to stay vanished into the usually unpleasant unknown. The continuing need to make the argument for Judaism emphasized the importance of the synagogue sermon where Adler was prolific and inspiring. There is, of course, no way of estimating how many he kept within the fold by his expositions, but the number defecting did not prevent the United Synagogue from expanding its number of constituent synagogues to a considerable extent. During Adler’s ministry as Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi, eleven new United Synagogues were founded in London alone. They might only be full on Yom Kippur, the members might only be present at funerals, stone settings, circumcisions, barmitzvahs, Seder nights, the High Holydays and marking yahrzeit for parents, but they remained firmly within the community. Another alternative case for remaining in the community was often a sense of duty. Where their fathers and grandfathers had served Jewish organizations, many accepted that they should follow in their footsteps, even if they rejected the disciplines of the faith. This was particularly true of the wealthier families who were often linked by both marriage and business. As a writer in the Jewish Chronicle would put it in 1901, it was ‘a mixture of family sentiment, recollections of childhood, unsatisfied doubt and unmistakable superstition’. The Jewish World in 1892 pointed out that the seven Jewish MPs in the Commons ‘attended seriously to their communal responsibilities’ although most were Reform. Neither media mentioned religious conviction. Part of abiding by the norms of Victorian society was, however, the observance of

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the Sabbath. The Lords Day Observance Society had been founded in 1831 and worked hard to make the Sabbath day special. There was no delivery of mail on Sunday and shops were closed. It would have been helpful if exceptions were made for Jewish shops who, if they were closed on Saturday, wanted to trade on Sunday. They were only eventually permitted to open on Sunday not long before Adler died. In the meantime there were a large number of prosecutions for illegally trading on the Christian Sabbath. There was also the problem of marrying out. It inevitably involved social stigma within the community. Where community notables or their children did so, there were often drastic consequences. When Henry de Worms’ daughter married out in 1886, her father attended the church wedding but had to resign the presidency of the Anglo-Jewish Association, an office he had held since 1872. Henry de Worms, of course, was another of Hermann’s relatives. When Arthur Cohen’s daughter married out in 1895, her father resigned as president of the Board of Deputies, a post he had held for 15 years. Fear of intermarriage also led to Jewish communities in the provinces being inclined to live in specific suburbs, so that their children were not tempted by inter-mingling. The explanation given was that it was forbidden to ride to synagogue on the Sabbath and, therefore, it was helpful to live near it. This was true but not the whole story. For whatever reason, Jewish quarters grew up in many towns. Yet another criticism with which Adler had to deal was what Chaim Weizmann noted: ‘Only the very rich, or the very gifted, are allowed to do anything besides unmitigated bread-winning.’ Adler often criticized this materialism as well, but the first necessity for any family is to have enough money coming in to pay the bills. If drinking and gambling are anti-social because they make the task more difficult, then making the financial support of the family a major priority can hardly be fairly criticized. Reports on the East End Jewish community always noted, with some surprise, that alcoholism, which often destroyed a family’s budget, health and job prospects, was hardly known amongst them. Partially this was because those who carried out pogroms in other countries were often members of drunken mobs. There is a Yiddish saying ‘Shikkur’ (drunkenness) ‘is a goy’ (stranger). Abstinence was a negation of such a culture. The United Synagogue made a good case for materialism when they criticized the lack of support they received financially from provincial communities for the Chief Rabbi’s office:

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There were in all twenty seven Congregations who, at the outset, promised to contribute: five Metropolitan, twenty one Provincial and one Colonial. Of these originally contributing Congregations, nine Provincial and one Colonial have ceased to pay…four Congregations, which contributed later, have also ceased to do so. There are several Congregations who pay irregularly…There are no fewer. than twenty-one Provincial and fifteen Colonial Congregations participating in the benefits of the Chief Rabbi’s supervision who have never contributed to the Fund.10 Adler spoke widely in the East End, and it was generally agreed that ‘Dr Adler had worked 16 hours a day, of which he devoted 15 to the interests of the foreign Jews.’ As he had said at his installation, his objectives were to ‘Rally round the poor and uncultured, sympathize with them in their struggle, mitigating their troubles, and advising them in their perplexities.’ To help them assimilate he encouraged the establishment of Jewish clubs and athletic teams for both boys and girls in the East End, many of which had the support of Jewish luminaries and non-Jewish supporters, such as the young Labour activist Clement Attlee in Stepney. Attlee’s career included time as manager of Haileybury House, a boys’ club in the East End before the Great War, and he was guided and sponsored by the Jewish head of the constituency Labour Party, the Romanian Oscar Tobin, when he set out on a political career afterwards. Adler didn’t hide his light under a bushel either. As an English clergyman, he looked the part, he acted the part and he fitted easily into the role: ‘Hermann Adler’s outstanding characteristic was perhaps his dignity.’ Even his critics admitted that he had presence, dignity and urbanity. As the years went by he became an even more effective ambassador for the Jewish community. For public use he adopted the Christian clerical title of The Very Reverend on the advice of his friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Adler, on occasions, even wore a bishop’s gaiters for national religious occasions. It isn’t easy to recognize what actions in life are still going to be remembered years later, but certainly Adler’s use of the clerical title has led to his objectives being deliberately misinterpreted. In fact, it was a welcome by-product that the status of the Chief Rabbi was raised in the country as a whole and the result was that the image of the community improved as well.

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Notes 1. Cesarani, David, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry 1841-1991 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.92. 2. Ibid. 3. Recalled by his nephew, Lord Janner, in conversation with the author. 4. Jung, J. Champions of Orthodoxy (London, 1974), pp.25-26. 5. Finestein, Israel, Scenes and Personalities in Anglo-Jewry 1800-2000 (London:Vallentine Mitchell, 2002), p.83. 6. New York Times, 24 June 1891. 7. Chief Rabbinate file, United Synagogue archive. 8. Allfrey, Anthony, Edward VII and his Jewish Court (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p.32. 9. Endleman, Todd, Radical Assimilation in English-Jewish History (Indiana University Press, 1990), p.77. 10. 8 May 1871. Minute Book, United Synagogue archive.

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8 The Ablest Preacher As Adler has been subject over the years to much criticism, how he carried out his Rabbinic duties needs examining. A judgment on your academic ability depends on the league in which you’re playing. As recalled, in the eighteenth century Haham Dazevedo didn’t seem very high-powered to his Talmudic peers, but he set exceptional standards when judged by Christian Hebraists. On the other hand, Hermann Adler, as a preacher, may have been less impressive in the pulpit when compared to the best Christian exponents. Preaching in English was comparatively unknown in British synagogues until Nathan Marcus Adler popularized it. There was also a tradition that pulpit addresses should be in Yiddish and not English. This ran counter to the movement for emancipation, so Hermann always discouraged sermons in Yiddish, though he was quite capable of giving them in that language if he was addressing an East End audience. In addition to sermons in the pulpit there were itinerant story tellers – Maggidim – who were very popular and could reduce congregations to tears. Formal sermons, however, were expected to be more substantial than emotional. Among the first regular preachers in Britain was Hermann Holzel, a Hungarian Rabbi who had been appointed as chazan of the Hambro’ Synagogue in 1845. Holzel emigrated to become the minister in Tasmania in 1853, but left behind the memory of a preacher who was not afraid to be controversial in the pulpit, whether the congregation approved or not. Hermann would probably have heard Holzel discussed at home and adopted the same approach. Adler’s style didn’t please everybody. James Douglas, who wrote about preachers for the national Morning Leader, reported in 1905 on one of Adler’s sermon given at the Hampstead Synagogue. Dr Hermann Adler is no orator. He reads his prediction in a husky voice with a strong Teutonic brogue. His personality is invisible… the voice is passionless, remote, aloof. He has no gesture, no trait, no eccentricity.

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In 1905, though, Adler was still at loggerheads with sections of the Hampstead community and probably did not wish to appear a particularly amenable visitor from Head Office. James Douglas’ reaction wasn’t typical. A non-Jewish Liverpool journalist listening to Adler addressing a provincial congregation, reported quite differently: Dr Adler has a slight Hebrew accent in his voice, which, however, in preaching is hardly perceptible. In the pulpit he is an eloquent and most finished speaker and commands a wide vocabulary of classical English. He possesses that peculiar chromatic1 richness of language which is often observable in deep students of Oriental literature. Dr Cyrus Adler of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York was on the side of James Douglas, but his religious views were not those of the Chief Rabbi. He gave this opinion in his memoirs: ‘He was a very sensible, plain speaking preacher, far from being an orator.’ It was generally agreed, however, that the Bayswater Synagogue had to be extended because there wasn’t room for everybody who wanted to come to listen to Adler, and in his notebook he listed those 2,000 sermons and addresses he had given over the years. He continued to tailor his sermons to his audience wherever he was preaching. The Jewish Chronicle reported on one of his sermons, given between New Year and Yom Kippur in 1896. ‘The discourse was attended by the leading rabbis, dayanim and maggadim of the East End in such numbers that a larger venue had to be found at the last minute.’2 It went on: ‘The Chief Rabbi brought to bear an astonishing amount of abstruse Rabbinic law…in really masterly fashion.’ In one book review on the volume of his sermons, the writer remembered: I recall the time when his weekly Bayswater sermons drew congregations which taxed the capacity of the building, A ten mile trudge (5 miles each way) was to me well repaid by the light offered by such a sermon…Dr Adler was the most interesting of preachers. There was no dull moment when he was in the pulpit. It was pure joy to listen to him.3 In 1875 two of the original Bayswater wardens retired and one of them spoke of Adler’s sermons:

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He could not find words to express the great esteem in which he was held by the members and how highly his services were appreciated and valued. (Cheers). The members longed to hear his eloquent words from the pulpit. and looked forward with eager delight to his weekly sermons. Adler was achieving the objective of all ministers; he was reaching the congregation. What was more, he was making membership of the synagogue an attractive proposition; the income of the Bayswater in 1875 had reached £4,000 a year. The many challenges facing even as resourceful a preacher as Adler were well illustrated in December of that year when a deaf-mute was barmitzvah in the synagogue. The boy was in a home and had been taught to read the Hebrew by sight rather than hearing. As one congregant wrote about Adler’s sermon: ‘The words, earnest and pathetic to the last degree, came from a heart which sympathizes deeply with every phase of affliction, not only in our community but wherever it can be found.’4 There were, of course, a series of objectives which Adler had formulated when considering the content of his sermons. He explained these when speaking at the Central Synagogue in 1902. The minister should be outspoken against ‘irreligion’. He must show that Judaism is in harmony with all the best and healthiest aspirations of the age. He should not regard the instruction of the intellect as the only or indeed the main end of preaching. Its highest objective is a moral one. He must be fully abreast of the culture of his day. He must seek to cultivate the character of his congregants.5 What was disappearing was the derosha, the lecture which was based on a careful analysis of a portion of the Talmud. Adler was fully capable of giving that kind of address, but his sermons were more about present-day issues. The Jewish school at the Bayswater, which he started, was also soon flourishing. It had 70 pupils with Rachel Adler serving as the Honorary Secretary, and their prize-givings were invariably graced by notable members handing out the awards; the Countess Rachel d’Avigdor did the honours one year. So it depends on who was listening and judging his Talmudic ability. His views were sought far beyond Britain. In New York the Orthodox congregation, Orah Hayyim, and its Sephardi equivalent, Shearith Israel, both asked for Adler’s rulings; while an Argentinian Rabbi even asked his

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view on whether the Muscovy duck was kosher. He was consulted by ministers throughout the Empire and by clergy of the Church of England as well. The first record which survives of a Chief Rabbi’s voice is that of Adler’s successor, Joseph Herman Hertz, whose broadcast in the spring of 1940 is available at the British Museum and is very warm and impressive. The creation of the Jewish pulpit by Nathan Marcus Adler, though, grew out of the traditional discourse. In his day it was not normally as homely as a vicar’s sermon could often be. There were instances, of course, when Hermann Adler spoke in more personal terms to his congregations, but James Douglas obviously wasn’t present on one of those occasions. When Douglas’ comments are compared with the high reputation in which Adler was held in the Jewish community, the first historical point to recognize is that a strong Teutonic brogue was very acceptable in the highest circles in Victorian and Edwardian England. With many people, even nowadays, the aftermath of two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century connects anything Teutonic with a former deadly enemy, but that was not the case in Victorian times. In those days the North German states were our traditional allies. They were Protestant like Britain. From 1715-1837 the Protestant King of Hanover had also been King of England. It was the elderly Prussian general Blücher who had arrived in the nick of time to enable Wellington to win the battle of Waterloo, although – and it is difficult to believe – the old man was under the impression he was pregnant by an elephant! Prince Albert, Victoria’s husband, was very popular and very German. The official name of the royal family was Saxe-Coburg and when Victoria was dying, the relative grieving at her bedside was her grandson, the Kaiser. Germany had been the natural supporters of the British for all those years and the traditional enemy was France. When Edward VII referred to Adler as ‘his Chief Rabbi’ he might well have been reminded of his father. The German Hospital in London had royal support since it opened in 1845. In 1892 when Victoria’s son died. Adler arranged a memorial service and received the Queen’s thanks. Adler gave his own views on preaching in a sermon in 1902. He said the preacher must: …show that Judaism is in harmony with all the best and healthiest aspirations of the age. He must seek to cultivate the character of his congregants. The prescription reflects well the deepest sentiments and assumptions of the entire generation whose fathers remember the emancipation. The emphasis, the language and the conscious

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scale of values mark the age. Yet none of this was intended to underrate the importance of pastoral work.6 Adler’s acceptability as a senior clergyman at court was further enhanced when he received an invitation to Edward VII’s coronation. The ceremony was scheduled for 26 June 1902, but the king fell ill with appendicitis the day before. When his doctors told him he needed an urgent operation, he pointed out that he was to be crowned the next morning, only to be courteously informed that he wouldn’t survive the night if he didn’t have his appendix out. So instead of 26 June, he was crowned on 9 August. It was a social catastrophe, with triumphal events all over the country needing to be cancelled at the last minute. It was from a reaction to the cancellation that London’s greatest hotelier, Cesar Ritz, had a total nervous breakdown from the shock, from which he never recovered. If the King and the country were disrupted by the inevitable decision, it was even more inconvenient for the Chief Rabbi. The day of 26 June was a Thursday but 9 August was a Saturday and the Chief Rabbi was supposed to be in synagogue that morning and not Westminster Abbey. Adler was quite capable of dealing with such minor problems: In order that the Chief Rabbi could attend the ceremony, he became the guest of the congregation [The Western Synagogue] over the week-end. On that Sabbath morning a specially early service was arranged at which Dr Adler preached a coronation sermon and after being entertained at a small breakfast party, walked to the Abbey in his official robes, accompanied by Reverend H. Davids (also in canonical garb) and honourably escorted by a posse of police.7 Treated with that degree of deference, it wasn’t his public persona that could be easily criticized. His bureaucratic policies, however, could easily be distorted and portrayed in a negative way. As one right-wing critic has written: A social elite, which became a ruling elite, dominated Jewish life, all but displaced spiritual leadership and created a near-mediaeval clergy which could not guide or challenge its masters. Instead the clergy were deprived of the title, Rabbi, reduced to being practitioners of ritual. Religious functionaries, who administered appropriate procedures for the management of life-style events.8

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This view still has many supporters but it is very one-sided. Adler’s father, as Chief Rabbi, inherited a community where very few members had much Talmudic knowledge, if any at all. Nathan Marcus Adler, of course, had semichah, but he was almost unique among the Jewish clergy. Fortunately for the community he was a very able Talmudic scholar and, therefore, well fitted to lead them. By contrast, the ordinary ministers were not sufficiently educated for the most part to question his judgments, and many of his congregations were riven with discord. Trying to obtain agreement among a wide variety of communities had proved impossible in the past and, even with the ability of an Adler, would continue to prove difficult in the future. Nathan Marcus Adler reserved the title of Rabbi to himself to stave off dissident movements, after Rabbi Dr Solomon Schiller-Szinessy tried to set up in competition with him, in Manchester in the 1850s. Schiller-Szinessy had been a considerable threat to his hegemony, as were some of the East End religious leaders but the arguments with them were over what was the law, rather than creating new laws. It also has to be recognized that ‘Rabbi’ is not just a title; it is a confirmation that the candidate has mastered a large range of Rabbinic knowledge. It has to be earned, not just used as a label. Without semichah there is no right to use the title of Rabbi, although liturgical and pastoral functions are not affected. As time went by it was possible to set higher standards. In future years one of the conditions of the appointment of a new minister for the Central Synagogue in London was that he study for semichah, which he attained. Adler also inherited a number of communities which had forms of service which were not entirely in accordance with tradition. Their origins were often on the continent; there are also still differences between the practices of the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. There was a need to set out a common content for the services in Ashkenazi communities and Nathan Marcus Adler achieved that with the creation of his Authorized Prayer Book. There are always only a small number of people prepared to sacrifice their time and effort in a good cause. They can be labelled a ‘social elite’ but this is to ignore the unpaid hard work they put in voluntarily. In Nathan Marcus Adler’s time the leadership of the community, for as long as he lived, was Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885). He was a Sephardi and the senior voice in communal matters, but he always deferred to the Chief Rabbi in any Ashkenazi religious context. It was a very successful partnership.

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‘Practitioners of ritual’ and ‘religious functionaries’ are negative descriptions of ministers who ensured their communities maintained public Orthodoxy. The alternative was for them to stand wringing their hands while the theocratically ill-educated lay leaders virtually changed the Halacha by imposing their own views. The law itself was, of course, in no way created by Nathan Marcus Adler; it had been laid down in the Babylonian Talmud well over a millennium before, and the responsibility of both Adlers was simply to state it and make sure it was not altered fundamentally. To Hermann Adler, it didn’t mean that new scientific knowledge had to be rejected. In Adler’s view it was possible and absolutely necessary to marry it carefully to Judaism, but not to affect the fundamentals. As he said at Jews’ College in 1905: ‘I conceive it to be one of the main duties incumbent upon the teachers of our College to show…that…the results of sound scientific research do not affect and assail that fundamental doctrine of Judaism – the belief in Divine Revelation.’9 Adler’s policy was to consider every recommendation for change on its merits. If its adoption would be against the din, he rejected it. It was recognized by the lay leaders that when they felt it necessary, both Adlers could be very firm. That had to be the case. By the time Nathan Marcus Adler died there were many able ministers up and down the country, but they lacked the status typical of Eastern European communities granted towards their minister. In British communities it was more often the lay leaders who exercized power, because they provided the finance which kept their communities afloat. It was, therefore, the Chief Rabbi who had to ensure that the actions of the lay leaders remained strictly within Orthodox law. This both Adlers ensured and Hermann Adler improved the quality of the ministers still further, though most were not thoroughly trained in Rabbinics. Adler took every opportunity to address non-Jewish audiences because he recognized the continuing need to emphasize the loyalty of the community to the country. The key question continued to be whether the Jews were a nation or purely a religion. Adler always made the case strongly that they were strictly a religion. He argued that this equally applied to the East End migrants who, he also insisted, posed no threat to their new countrymen. Adler’s approach to the richer congregation members in London was anything but subservient or deferential. In 1897, for example, he was addressing a sparse congregation at the North London Synagogue and told them that too many Jews were entirely absorbed by:

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...low, selfish materialistic tendencies; they talked, thought, and cared for nothing but money; they sought wealth in order to live in luxury, indulge their expensive tastes, and satisfy their every caprice and folly. Their whole mental horizon is bounded by the money market and the card table.10 Many Jews could have escaped the criticism, but even a few were too many. Of course, how Orthodox Hermann Adler was, himself, depended on one’s viewpoint. The pressure on his father to allow changes in the liturgy had been stoutly resisted. Nathan Marcus Adler allowed about 30 suggestions but they were all concerned with minutiae. Many hoped that Hermann would be more malleable than his father. The Jewish Chronicle ‘regretted the slow pace of reform under [Nathan Marcus Adler’s] stewardship’ because of the ‘existence of a reactionary section which strenuously opposed even harmless modifications of established ritual practice’. Why the editor of the newspaper considered himself a qualified judge of what was a ‘harmless’ modification, was not explained. To his dismay, however, Hermann Adler ‘proved to be a conservative influence’. It wasn’t only in the East End where there were rumblings of discontent. In the acculturated West End, however, the rumbling didn’t emanate from what Israel Zangwill, the great Jewish author, called ‘rabid zealots, yearning for the piety of the good old times’. The radicals were the highly respectable but mostly complacent members of the community, who just wanted what they felt should be a more modern form of worship in the synagogue. A typical example of the problems emerged with the opening of the Hampstead Synagogue in 1892. It was always likely to be a congregation that aspired to be accepted by its English upper-class counterparts. It wanted to fit in with the respectable, dignified Victorian mind. For many congregants it seemed a small price to pay for total social acceptance. That was their key objective, but the Adler’s wanted to ensure it didn’t come at too high a cost. Douglas had asked a pertinent question concerning Judaism in his article ‘It defied torture. Will it defy tolerance?’ Religion was still a disruptive issue. In November 1892 Sir Stuart Knill had been elected Lord Mayor of London. He was one of the first Catholic Lord Mayors since the Reformation but, as a staunch Catholic, he wouldn’t enter a Protestant Church, including St Paul’s Cathedral. This made for problems on state occasions. During his term of office, however, he entertained a lot of Board School pupils at the Mansion House, but as these occasions were on Saturday, the Jewish Board School pupils couldn’t attend.

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So Knill invited them especially on another day and congratulated them on acting according to their consciences. It was an example, of how Adler had moved Judaism in the public eye way beyond the concept of it being oldfashioned and mistaken superstition. Hampstead was a very upper-class community. It had begun with members holding Sabbath afternoon services at which the Rev Morris Joseph had presided. Many of the members were keen on liturgical change. This, as well as having the additional hope that the division between the Secessionists and the Orthodox, might be ended through such ritual reform. It was still the situation that many leading families had members in both camps, which led to ill feeling. When Adler Senior turned down most of their Reformist ideas, a number of the potential Hampstead members left the founding committee and joined Upper Berkeley Street. One serious ongoing argument, which affected the service, was the ritual blessing of the congregation on festivals by the Cohanim, members of the Jewish priestly tribe. Adler, who was a Cohen, wanted the ceremony to remain in place but after three years of discussion the Hampstead Synagogue abolished it unilaterally. Where the honours in a synagogue service could be restricted to the most affluent members of the congregation, this was not possible with the blessing of the Cohanim. No matter their status in society, if a member was a Cohen he had a duty to bless the congregation. Rich and poor, young and old, stood together to carry out the responsibility. It was an anomalous and egalitarian situation which Hampstead abolished until it was restored in the years to come. When he made his decisions Hermann Adler, as Delegate Chief Rabbi at the time, did produce some formulae ambiguous enough to both uphold his father’s rulings, but also able to satisfy the Hampstead committee. He made some more minor changes when he became Chief Rabbi. He always aimed for harmony within the whole community where it was possible. It was, for example, typical of his outlook that, although he fundamentally disagreed with the religious views of the Upper Berkeley Street minister David Woolf Marks, that they remained on good terms and laid the cornerstone of the new Hampstead Synagogue together. Sometimes there were problems to resolve with the local population. In 1886 Adler had visited Dublin again, where there was concern because of antisemitic publications. There had even been a move to boycott Jewish traders. Adler appealed to William Walsh, the Archbishop of Dublin, for help, but accepted his advice that the best thing was to do nothing and allow the adverse problems to die away of their own accord, which they did.

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The contrast between the concerns of the Jewish community in Britain and the far more serious problems experienced overseas was highlighted in 1892. The Jews of Malta would then have happily settled for concern over organs, choirs and the blessing of the Cohanim. In Valetta a book was published that year called The Blood of Christ as Shed by Jews. It repeated the old canard about the blood of Christian children being used to make matza at Passover, and it bore the official seal of the Catholic Archiepiscopal church on the front cover. The Jews in Malta appealed for help from Adler and he, in his turn, asked Cardinal Vaughan, the Archbishop of Westminster, to talk to the Archbishop of Malta. This eventually resulted in the withdrawal of official sanction for the book and, in addition, the Board of Deputies got the Colonial Secretary to instruct the governor of Malta to protect the Jewish community, but it was an unpleasant episode. Back home, Morris Joseph, the Hampstead congregation’s preferred choice for their first minister, had a range of non-traditional views. He, too, was against the blessing of the Cohanim but, in addition, he was in favour of playing organ music on the Sabbath, a male-female choir, and he was against the prayers for the restoration of animal sacrifices. Furthermore he insisted on complete freedom in the pulpit to expound his views, which he later described as ‘midway between the Orthodoxy which regards…the Talmud as the final authority in Judaism, and the extreme liberalism which…would lightly cut the religion loose from the bonds of Tradition’.11 In refusing to say prayers for the return of animal sacrifices, Joseph was questioning an ancient Biblical practice, but neither side seemed to seriously consider the state of civilization in Biblical times. Other cultures in those days not only practised animal sacrifices; they also approved human sacrifices. When it was recorded about a newly-created city, that it was founded with the son of the King, it meant that the son was walled up in the foundations and left to die. This was believed to give the city a soul. Human sacrifices in the Colosseum in Rome were common. The Jews, by complete contrast, were forbidden to carry out such barbaric practices and there were, indeed, many laws insisting on the humane treatment of prisoners of war. To move from the normal practices of human executions in other cultures to no sacrifices at all, could well have been seen as a step too far. Retaining the halfway house of animal sacrifices would have been less radical. These were abolished as well when the Jews were expelled from the Holy Land. What was certainly hoped for, in saying the prayer, was to

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‘renew our days as of old’, when Jews would no longer be persecuted, as was the happier situation when they had their own country. The idea that animal sacrifices were a halfway house to total abolition had one notable advocate in the history of the Jews, but supporters of the concept couldn’t have asked for a better spokesman. For it was Moses Maimonides who originally put forward the idea and it aroused a storm of criticism. He was castigated for it, it was said, suggesting that the Almighty was prepared to placate those who believed in sacrifice. It was only as his reputation increased that the subject became no more than a difficult issue. The question now was would the new Chief Rabbi accept this repudiation of animal sacrifices from the minister of a synagogue for which he was spiritually the final authority? No, Adler certainly wouldn’t and instead he inhibited Joseph, denying him the certificate he needed to act as a United Synagogue minister at all. Joseph had said he would conform but Adler said his views were ‘not in accord with the teachings of traditional Judaism’. This decision did not go down well. Hampstead had many rich and powerful members who were not used to being thwarted. Nevertheless, they had little option but to agree reluctantly to abide by Adler’s decision, even though some additional congregants left for Upper Berkeley Street. The New Synagogue had come to the same conclusion when Nathan Marcus Adler put his foot down in similar circumstances in years gone by; it was agreed that, at the end of the day, the Chief Rabbi was in charge. When David Woolf Marks retired from the Reform’s Upper Berkeley Street Synagogue in 1893, Adler would have felt vindicated; for it was Morris Joseph who was appointed in his stead. Like Schiller-Szinessy in Manchester in his father’s time, and like Louis Jacobs in the future, the journey away from strict Orthodoxy invariably started with a single step. Jacob Sasportas, the first Haham, David Nietto in the eighteenth century and Solomon Herschell, who had issued the Herem on the first Secessionist synagogue, Joseph Herman Hertz and Israel Brodie would ensure that their community avoided the same route. The Hampstead members also wanted a mixed choir and admittedly, the question of mixed choirs illustrates the complexity of Jewish law. It was generally agreed that the sound of a woman’s voice could distract men from their prayers. Therefore, by that criterion, there was a case for not having mixed choirs. On the other hand it was held, by even some distinguished Talmudists, that if there were a number of voices in harmony the individual voices of men or women were indistinguishable and according to that view mixed choirs were acceptable.

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In 1880 the Central Synagogue had wanted a mixed choir and Nathan Marcus Adler had refused permission, so the idea was dropped. The same happened with the Borough Synagogue in 1883, but when the Hampstead Synagogue was founded in 1892, permission was not asked and a mixed choir was established. Arguments on the subject would continue for nearly 100 years at Hampstead, with successive Chief Rabbis withholding their permission, but there was no majority on the United Synagogue Council to force the issue and, potentially, drive the Hampstead members into the arms of the Progressive movement. If he contented himself with denying he had approved the make-up of the Hampstead choir, Adler’s determination to oppose the practice hardened as the years went by. In 1897 one of the wardens at the Great arranged for a service with a mixed choir against the wishes of the congregation. Adler mustered his friends and forced the warden’s resignation; the idea was not repeated although the warden was eventually re-elected. It was all very well insisting on a male choir, but the result was not as melodious as it could be. To improve the sound, a number of synagogues recruited the unbroken voices of young boys, so brilliantly utilized in many churches. They would very often be found for the West End synagogues in the East End, but then they had to be paid to travel by omnibus across town on the Sabbath. This was strictly forbidden, but the synagogue officials turned a blind eye to the infringement. It must have been criticized but tolerated, when the Chief Rabbi wasn’t present, or the question of how the choristers reached the synagogue simply wasn’t asked. If the boys were rewarded it helped the family budget (my own father sang in the choir at the Central, although he lived nearby). Where Adler put his foot down was when the Hampstead wanted an organ to be played during the Sabbath service. The question was whether playing an organ was work, which was forbidden on the Sabbath. Opinions differ and there are Orthodox synagogues on the continent with organs. Nathan Marcus Adler, however, in 1888, had forbidden the Great from using an organ for a Chanukah service. The head of the United Synagogue, the same Lord Rothschild who now worked with Hermann Adler, was in favour of the organ, but the Adlers refused to back down and the service was cancelled. Rothschild accepted the decision. Like Moses Montefiore in the time of Nathan Marcus Adler, if it came to the crunch Rothschild would always support the Chief Rabbi. As a powerful voice in the city and the House of Lords, he was often under attack by the Liberals, such as Lloyd George, and would have taken comfort from

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his good relations with his spiritual leader and cousin. The organ couldn’t be used on the Sabbath, but it was acceptable on other days of the week; one was used at Hermann’s own installation. Using an organ on the Sabbath was certainly against the din and Hermann said ‘mere attractiveness would be too dearly purchased if it infringed in the slightest degree on the rest prescribed for the Sabbath’. He had already persuaded Bayswater years before not to install an organ and now he went to Hampstead and preached a sermon in which he denounced the idea; it was dropped. It could have been the sermon criticized by James Douglas. To those of a secular frame of mind, these convoluted discussions about religious services may well seem much-ado-about-nothing. Judaism has survived over the centuries, however, by its rigid adherence to the rules set down in the Talmud, and its continuance would continue to be based on keeping to those laws. Instead of Morris Joseph, Aaron Asher Green (18601933) was appointed the new Hampstead minister and soon became a very popular choice. The Chief Rabbi was, himself, still seeking greater acceptance of the Jewish community in the wider Christian world. He reduced the differences. The Christian vicars were called Reverend, so the Jewish ministers were told to call themselves Reverend as well. As very few of them had semicha, this should only have been mildly contentious. Adler did, in fact, eventually give semicha in 1898 to two able students at Jews’ College – Moses Hyamson and Asher Feldman; they were both appointed dayanim on the Beth Din in 1902. One incentive for this change of heart was the award of semicha to two Sephardi students at their yeshiva in Ramsgate, by the Haham Moses Gaster. It was one up for the Sephardim until the two new Rabbis were accused of conduct unbecoming. There was a giant row over a good six months, covered every week by the Jewish Chronicle with attempts by the Mahamad, the Sephardi ruling body, to get rid of Gaster. He was, however, very popular with the Sephardi members – he was the first they had ever been allowed to elect – and he was triumphantly vindicated at a meeting of the yehidim. Relations with the Mahamad were soured, however, and Gaster’s Zionism was another contentious issue in the future. As a result, the Ramsgate Yeshiva was closed. It was amalgamated with Jews’ College after lengthy discussions in which Adler was involved. The two new Sephardi Rabbis went to America and one served a Reform community for many years with distinction. The other decided instead to sell insurance when his synagogue contract wasn’t renewed.

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The relationship between the Sephardim, represented by Gaster, and the Ashkenazi, represented by Adler, was that of siblings. They had a close and warm friendship, while still competitive for the status of their communities. Under Nathan Marcus Adler there was no problem; Moses Montefiore dealt with secular matters and Adler with religious. For most of Nathan Marcus Adler’s ministry, however, the Sephardim had no Haham. Their lay leaders disliked sharing power with anyone and they had many arguments with the last pre-Victorian Haham Raphael Meldola (1754-1828). With Hermann Adler and Moses Gaster it was slightly different. They were both Ashkenazi – Gaster was the first British Sephardi Haham to be so, and so far the last – and they were both highly traditional. In addition they both had semicha and Ph.Ds. Gaster was 20 years younger than Adler and an academic. He was 31 when he became the Haham and, as a renowned expert on his native Romanian language and literature, he had even been given the Romanian Order of Merit for his contribution. He had, however, also been expelled from Romania for protesting against the government’s treatment of the Jews. When he first came to Britain in 1885 it was to be a lecturer at Oxford on Slavonic literature. As his eminence in Romanian studies increased, the Romanian government cancelled the expulsion order and asked him to return but Gaster turned them down. He was a truly formidable intellect, but to get the benefit of his considerable brain he had to produce his own challenges. His responsibilities as Haham were not initially onerous. As Cecil Roth, the eminent Anglo-Jewish historian, said: ‘If Moses Gaster fell short of unquestioned primacy in any of his multifarious activities, it was for the very reason that his enormous ability was diverted through so many channels and brought him such high distinction.’12 When he died just before the Second World War his collection of 170,000 items of literature were donated to University College London, although many were destroyed when the college was bombed during the Blitz. Adler and Gaster had very different views on Zionism. These arose from the fact that Adler knew the Jews in Britain didn’t need a refuge, but Gaster was well aware that the Jews in Romania certainly did. So Gaster became a keen supporter of Chovevei Zion, Vice President of the first Zionist Conference in Basel and a founder and, for three years, President of the English Zionist Federation which he helped to create in 1899. This commitment to Zionism aggravated the Board of Deputies who were still concerned that their role as the lay spokesmen for the Jewish community might be usurped by the EZF.

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The Sephardi Mahamad were also worried. As a consequence Gaster accepted the Mahamad dictate to preface his remarks to an audience on Zionism, by pointing out that he was only conveying his personal opinions. That suited the Mahamad who were not, in the main, Zionists. It also suited Gaster who could express his views in larger public arenas than the position of Haham afforded him. Certainly, Adler and Gaster had no major disagreements about Judaism generally, but as a religious leader and a scholar Gaster was good competition for Adler and certainly a more popular figure in the East End. He was also closely associated with the West End Jewish community through his marriage to Leah Friedländer, the daughter of the head of Jews’ College. If he had been less associated with difficult issues like Zionism and the Ramsgate Yeshiva, he might well have been an alternative to Adler as the spiritual voice of the community. The appearance of Jewish ministers might become closer to that of Church of England vicars but in dress there was no recognized Jewish tradition besides the tsitsit, (worn over the vest) in daily wear, and the tallith (prayer shawl) during services in synagogue. If many ministers now took to wearing clerical collars, they actually had no theological origin despite the term ‘Roman collar’. In moving that far towards the Christian clergy, Adler would have said that he was not going against any Orthodox tenet; after all eighteenth-century hazanim had worn canonicals, as had a former Chief Rabbi David Tevele Schiff. Christian clerical dress was originally academic dress anyway. Many members of the extreme right were wearing the long-forgotten Polish nobility fashions, when they put on the streimel (fur-trimmed hat), knee-breeches and buckled shoes every Sabbath. They had been forbidden to wear this clothing in the old country and were celebrating their new independence, although this might be overlooked today. It may have appeared very odd to the newcomers, that the establishment ministers often appeared in public without a head covering, but there are distinguished Talmudic experts who hold that the head only has to be covered for eating and praying.13 Adler was perfectly happy to dress appropriately for the occasion. When invited to the reconsecration of the strictly Orthodox East End Spitalfields Great Synagogue in 1910, he readily agreed not to wear his canonicals. By this time, however, with the Great beginning to be referred to as the Cathedral Synagogue and Adler, on occasions, being described as the head of the Jewish church in Britain, the right wing could be excused for thinking the United Synagogue was itself heading down a slippery slope. It was rather

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unnecessarily insensitive for Adler to insist on addressing even eminent Rabbis, such as Avraham Aba Werner, as ‘Reverend Mr’. Those who denigrated the ministers produced caricatures: ‘The Reverend X, whose Jewish studies terminated when he was 18, carried his umbrella on the Sabbath and was very broadminded about the dietary laws, was the real religious guide of his congregation.14 Carrying an umbrella, or anything else, is certainly forbidden in the din, but the United Synagogue, who employed the ministers, wasn’t looking for strictly Orthodox Rabbis. They wouldn’t, of course, have actually objected to a minister keeping strictly to the din, but in a 1910 report by the US to Jews’ College it was clearly stated: The requirements in a minister were (a) to preach efficiently, (b) to teach Hebrew and religion, (c) to read the prayers in synagogue, including the Law with proper intonation, (d) to help their congregants with advice and sympathy, (e) to engage actively in and to organise the charitable work…and (f) to aid if necessary the routine administrative work of their congregation…academic distinction, while very desirable, is not everything and other requirements should not be sacrificed to the attainment of profound scholarship.15 The impression is given that the Honorary Officers of the United Synagogue at the time were running a business; Jews’ College was commonly known anyway as the poor relation of Jewish charities. Although many of the graduates from Jews’ College had careers as ministers in United Synagogues, the organization only supported the college with miserly contributions. The Chief Rabbi was President of the college and its ultimate authority, but even if Adler had wanted to restrict the students to the demands of the United Synagogue, he would have been vigorously opposed by both the Principal and the college staff, who were distinctly uneasy about producing what they referred to as ‘half-baked’ ministers. Adolph Büchler became the Principal in 1907, and his intention was always to turn out graduates who were highly Talmudically knowledgable. The possession of profound scholarship would have delighted him and if the United Synagogue weren’t happy with that priority Büchler was not in the least concerned. Adler was caught in the middle of the argument, but he could hardly overrule Büchler without risking the latter’s immediate and very public resignation. In all probability, though, he agreed with him.

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There were, of course, many scholarly exceptions to the standards stated to be required by the United Synagogue leaders. The main reason for all this window dressing was still the desire to be as English as the English, even if the facts didn’t measure up to the theory. For example, at the Jews’ College Jubilee Festival in 1906, the guest of honour, Sir Edward Sassoon, said: ‘I am glad to think that we are free…of having holy office and clerical positions filled by strangers.’ By which he meant foreign Rabbis from Europe. There were cries of ‘hear hear’. The fact, however, was that the President, Hermann Adler, himself, had been born in Germany and the Principal, Michael Friedländer, was German. Büchler was Hungarian and half the teaching staff were midEuropean as well. This was due to not being able to find properly qualified British candidates and because the community wouldn’t provide the money to sustain poor students at a decent Yeshiva. If there was a Jewish education policy it was still, primarily, about raising money to pay for it. Aaron Green, one of the brightest Orthodox ministers, said that far from trying to teach the refugees in the East End to become English, it might be better to create a Whitechapel mission to convert the West End Jews to Judaism, with branches in Bayswater, Kensington, Soho and Hyde Park and at least one in Hampstead, where, of course, Green was the new minister. Developing a proper educational structure was expensive. To raise the necessary money, Adler was quite content to have leading members of the Upper Berkeley Street community serve on educational bodies which came under his authority. He might also criticize the Liberal synagogue when it came into existence, but he didn’t ask their members to withdraw from the educational bodies either. In Adler’s day the Reform movement’s growth had come to a halt. After the Bradford Reform Synagogue had been founded by German immigrants in 1873, the next new Reform Synagogue would not open until the Settlement Synagogue in the East End in 1919, and the next was founded in 1933. There were no new Reform synagogues during Adler’s ministry and the famous writer, Israel Zangwill, called it ‘a body which had stood still for 50 years admiring its past self ’. In 1886 Upper Berkeley Street had the lowest attendance of any major London synagogue. It would have been disappointing to David Woolf Marks, still its minister after 40 years. It had a considerable number of eminent adherents but their interest in Jewish theology was very limited. As was said at the time:

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It would be no thunderbolt to any of us if we were to learn that a minister trained even at Jews’ College and hitherto occupying a post under the jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbi, would see himself that the gulf which separated his personal views from those of the Reform Jews had become so small that it could be bridged without any mental changes on his part.16 When both Nathan Marcus Adler and Hermann Adler turned down recommendations for ritual changes there might be minor grumbles, but the large majority of the community were content to leave such decisions in their hands. On even a much publicized subject, such as Adler’s refusal to grant a licence for Morris Joseph to be the Hampstead minister, there was some grumbling but no substantial revolt. Adler’s theological view remained based on his belief in the total immutability of the contents of the Pentateuch. He was more flexible when it came to the rest of the Bible. Judaism doesn’t regard many of the books of the Prophets as being divinely revealed, and it was generally agreed that King David might not have written all of the Psalms. Even Büchler thought that some of them might have been compiled in Maccabean times. Where, however, the Singer Prayer Book had settled the form of service for all the congregations in Britain who acknowledged the Chief Rabbi as their spiritual authority, there were still no equivalent books for the festivals. Adler was happy to help correct the omission. What is now known as the Routledge Machzor (from the name of the publisher) appeared in six volumes between 1904 and 1909. Its Hebrew name was Avodat Ohel Mo’ed and the title page assured the community that its content followed Minhag Polin, the Polish usage, which also dictated the contents of the Singer Prayer Book. Minhag Ashkenaz, the German usage, was not identical with Minhag Polin, with which the early Anglo-Jewish congregations were more familiar from their countries of origin. An American version, known as the Adler Machzor, was produced by the Hebrew Publishing Company. The plan originated with Arthur Davis (1846-1906), a self-taught Hebrew grammarian and Bible and Talmud scholar, whose career began in Derby where there was at that time no synagogue. Davis died when two volumes of the Machzor had appeared and the rest of the material was ready. Adler kept the production in the family; the editor was Herbert Adler (1876-1940), Adler’s nephew. Herbert was a barrister who became Director of Jewish education for the Jewish Memorial Council.

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Adler and Davis were responsible for the prose translations, occasionally utilizing Singer’s material. They probably produced an interim translation of the liturgical poems, which were re-cast in English poetical form by Israel Zangwill and Davis’ daughters, Nina Salaman and Elsie Schryver. Lady Katie Magnus was also involved in the poetical translations. Nina Salaman was married to a relative of the Adlers. Davis and Herbert Adler would have brought their ideas to Hermann, who certainly determined the content and approach of the work. Many of the festival poems had been dropped, although those that were best known and most warmly loved by the community were retained. Hermann’s contribution resembled that of his father’s in relation to Simeon Singer. Hence, although Herbert Adler and Arthur Davis got the credit, the Machzor reflected Hermann’s policies and thinking. In an address given to the Jewish Historical Society of England, Israel Zangwill paid tribute to Davis, who was devoted enough to gave his daughters daily lessons in Hebrew language, Bible and Talmud. Both daughters became accomplished scholars in their own right. Hermann took his responsibilities for the congregations outside London very seriously. Like his father, he was always busy with visits to provincial congregations. He took full advantage of the railway, although the travelling was still arduous. Typically, he was in Liverpool in 1886 and preached in aid of the Hebrew Educational Institution and Endowed Schools. Over the years he had tried to get the two Liverpool synagogues to amalgamate. This would not only have been sensible from an administrative point of view, but was intended to enable the firmly Orthodox Hope Place synagogue to influence the more Reform minded Princes Road congregation. In the end Adler was unsuccessful. The two synagogues remained independent of each other but Princes Road stayed Orthodox in their beautiful building. To see Princes Road today is to be transported back to the glory days of Czarist architecture. Adler’s policy of not normally allowing students to work for semicha were finally abandoned in Büchler’s time. When, however, Claude Montefiore of the Liberal Synagogue was invited to give out the prizes at Jews’ College in 1895, he poured scorn on the old principle: I should not mind the stigma attaching to Jews’ College that no single student has received the Rabbinical Diploma at its hands. I should not mind the stigma if it be frankly said, the Rabbinical Diploma cannot be given without the acquisition of a mass of knowledge which has now become obsolete.17

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The difficulty in sustaining an argument that any Talmudic knowledge is obsolete is that so much of it has been proven valid as the centuries have gone by. For example, the sixth-century Talmud lays down strict rules on washing, bathing and keeping homes clean. In the eighteenth century, over 1,000 years later, Frederick the Great of Prussia, like everybody else, didn’t wash for 30 years at which point he cut his leg, contracted erysipelas and died. The rationale for the laws in the Talmud can always emerge in the years to come. In 1900 the Council of Jews’ College grasped the nettle and considered the possibility of awarding semicha themselves as a result of examination results within the college. Adler finally agreed in 1901. The examining board would include the Chief Rabbi, the Haham, the Principal and Theological Tutor of the college and a Dayan. If there was a tie on the suitability of a candidate, the Chief Rabbi would have the casting vote. In 1902 it was agreed that four theology exams, taken over six and a half years, would constitute the curriculum leading to semichah. Progress was slow; it was another six years before Barnett Cohen got his certificate. In 1908 Adler resigned as chair of the College Council., though he remained the President. The Sephardi Elders had accused him of dictating to the Council and wanted the press admitted to the meetings. They carried a resolution to that effect and Adler decided to let them get on with it. He remained the President of the college and was not short of work.

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

A sudden change in tone. Jewish Chronicle, 1896. Ibid., 11 June 1909, p.16. Jewish Chronicle, 10 December 1875, p. 95. Finestein, Israel, Jewish Society in Victorian England (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993), p.334. Central Synagogue, Succot 1902. Barnett, Arthur, History of the Western Synagogue (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1961). Carlebach, Julius, Second Chance (JCB Mohr, 1989). The Jewish World, 30 December 1910, p.77. Endelman, Todd, Radical Assimilation in English-Jewish History ( Indiana University Press, 1990), p.97. Apple, Raymond, The Hampstead Synagogue 1892-1967 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1967). Taylor, Derek, British Chief Rabbis (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006), p.281.

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13. Rabbi Samuel Kraus, one of the most distinguished European twentieth-century Talmudists wrote a monograph stating this conclusion. 14. Homa, Bernard, Fortress in Anglo-Jewry (London: Shapiro Vallentine, 1953), p.73. 15. Gould, Julius and Esh, Saul, Jewish Life in Modern Britain (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). 16. Hyamson, Albert, Jews’ College 1855-1955 (Jews’ College, 1955). 17. Ibid.

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5. Rachel Adler.

6. On holiday in Birchington: (from left to right) Rachel, Hermann, Alfred, Ruth, Bobby Eicholz, Herbert Eicholz.

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9 The Supporting Cast During Hermann Adler’s lifetime the size of the Jewish community in Britain multiplied about ten times. One result, of course, was that there was an increasing need for more ministers. Their role in looking after their congregations, seeing that the children had access to Jewish education and handling everything from services to shivas to hospital visiting to barmitzvahs, created heavy workloads. Halachic guidelines were provided by the Chief Rabbi and the Beth Din. The key questions were, where were the candidates for vacant pulpits to come from and how were they to be rewarded? At the beginning of Nathan Marcus Adler’s ministry the only available source of knowledgeable ministers was likely to be abroad, or from continental families. David Isaacs, for instance, who served for many years in Liverpool, was the son of a Dutch father who had semichah and came to Britain after the Napoleonic Wars. Solomon Schiller-Szinessy in Manchester was born in Budapest and got his semicha there. Hermann Gollancz at the Hambro’ Synagogue in London was the son of a Polish Rabbi. David Mendes in Birmingham was an almost solitary exception. Born in Jamaica, he studied under the senior minister at Bevis Marks. Otherwise the vast majority of congregations had readers who conducted the services with varying degrees of competence but did not – and probably couldn’t – preach sermons. By contrast, during his years at Bayswater, Adler’s sermons were the main attraction. Because of the better conditions available in the colonies, many of the early Victorian ministers emigrated and were lost to the British community. They included the Sephardi Abraham de Sola (1825-1882) who went to Canada, Henry Abraham Henry (1806-1889), Morris Jacob Raphael (17981868) and Sabato Morais (1823-1897), who went to the United States, and Joel Rabinowitz (1828-1902) who went to South Africa. It was, of course, an important consideration that the reader would be more popular if he had a good singing voice. The minister would be totally competent with the Hebrew prayers, but if he had a poor voice, he would only conduct the service in an emergency.

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When Nathan Marcus Adler took office, the training of ministers in Britain was almost non-existent. When he founded Jews’ College it had to start with a school because there were very few prospective pupils old enough to be ministerial students. If there was little formal Jewish education available before Jews’ College, that was only half the problem though. The other half was the reluctance of British Jewish families to recommend the ministry as an occupation for their sons. It wasn’t just that ministers were badly paid. It was also that the richer families were keen on achieving emancipation, which would open up the higher paid and higher regarded professions to their children. They felt that too much emphasis on Talmudic knowledge was almost certain to be counter-productive. The image they wanted to present of the community was of people ‘of the Jewish persuasion’ and the continental Rabbi, speaking Yiddish and possibly dressed like eighteenth-century Polish nobility, was exactly the picture they didn’t want to portray. Nothing could be more foreign and ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’ was the dreaded label. So often it was used as an alternative to ‘Jewish’ in polite society. The senior laymen were also conscious that the status of the continental Rabbi was superior to that of the lay leaders of his community, and they didn’t want to go down that route either. So the Principals of Jews’ College in the Adler’s time, notably Michael Friedländer and Adolph Büchler, were starting from a relatively low base, without much practical encouragement from the community. The desirability of having able preachers was universally acknowledged, as long as it wasn’t the wealthier families who were asked to provide the candidates. There was a good deal of lip service, but few members of the community were prepared to underwrite the financial inadequacies. Aaron Green, however, the Hampstead synagogue minister for many years, saw one advantage to ministers coming from poor homes: I recognize that in many respects there is incalculable good to be derived from the fact that so many men assume the office of a minister of religion with a personal experience of struggle and sacrifice, and with a sympathetic and intimate knowledge of conditions of life which call for religion at its best, and have the best effect upon a personal character. As a consequence there was always the question of how to raise sufficient funds for Jews’ College, so that there could be adequate staffing. Those who

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taught there had to make substantial financial sacrifices in their own lives in order to take on the responsibility for educating the students. Both Nathan Marcus and Hermann Adler were deeply involved for many years, but a lot of their pupils dropped out and most of the intake – such as it was – came from poor families. Most of the students had to make ends meet by becoming private tutors and conducting overflow services during the High Holydays. The next question to be resolved was what made an ideal minister? This involved the curriculum. There were three choices; they could have pleasant voices with which to conduct the services; that was popular in the early days when Talmudic scholars weren’t available anyway. They could also be competent bureaucrats; somebody had to be; it wasn’t a ministerial task, but it saved the synagogue money. After all, to have a properly-staffed Jewish community, you needed a mohel for circumcisions, a shochet to provide kosher meat, a cemetery guardian in difficult locations, someone to look after the petty cash and correspondence, as well as someone to conduct the services. The third option was to be a Talmud Cochem, steeped in the Biblical and Talmudic law. Most lay leaders did consider that a degree of Talmudic knowledge would not necessarily be a disadvantage, but that was as far as many of them were usually prepared to go. That qualification was, in fact, an absolute sine qua non for keeping the religion in existence over the centuries, but it was true that, on a day-to-day basis, a new community could survive without a very learned spiritual leader. Most congregations in Hermann Adler’s time wanted bureaucrats and hazans (readers). The Jewish Chronicle, however, was in the vanguard of those who wanted scholars. As it said in 1881: The culture and status of the Jewish minister is an exact measure of the culture of his community…the qualifications of a minister should extend beyond the beauty of his voice...the exertions of the minister par excellence reserved for his more particular function of exhortation and admonition…To expound the principles of Judaism from the pulpit in voice and earnest language…lay leaders of a community cannot respect their minister…unless he is equally cultured with themselves…the Jewish minister must have a general education equal to the highest type of his community…we expect its exponents to be scholars.1 The general rise of intelligence in the community and the courageous efforts of a few ministers, among whom the Rev Dr

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Hermann Adler and the Rev. A.L. Green should be honourably mentioned, have made it impossible today that anyone should be appointed to an important post who does not possess adequate preaching power and general culture…It must take time…before all English congregations shall have risen above the temptation of preferring a singer to a scholar as their minister. The lay leaders keeping a synagogue functioning were, however, often not anything like so sure that scholarship was the first priority. What few mentioned, except in private, was that they, primarily, wanted someone who would be regarded as an English gentleman by their neighbours. If their minister spoke in the pulpit like the local vicar, this would be considered a very acceptable means of gaining social acceptance for the community in their neighbourhood. Over the years, at least in appearance, the Jewish ministers would become more like vicars. There is a picture of the United Synagogue ministers in Chief Rabbi Hertz’s time in the 1920s, with most of them wearing a vicar’s collar but without their heads covered. By contrast with many Jewish ministers, the vicar had a very senior status in a Christian community. He was not under the thumb of the church wardens because he was appointed by the Church of England and paid from local tithes. A synagogue minister, often comparatively young, was paid by the community and the lay leaders were very much in charge locally. As the Jewish Chronicle pointed out: It has often been remarked that the Church of England has better clergymen than any body of dissenters because the former does not put its pastors under the direct government of their flocks. Similarly, now that the right of dismissal is controlled by the General Council of the United Synagogue, the tone of the Jewish ministry will probably be greatly raised. The United Synagogue Council, however, passed all such decisions to Adler. The one cleric the lay leaders could not overrule was the Chief Rabbi, who had to endorse their choice of any synagogue official. There is plenty of correspondence from Nathan Marcus Adler’s time criticizing the behaviour of provincial community lay leaders for shortcomings in the treatment of their spiritual helpers. Hermann has often been described by Anglo-Jewish writers in terms such as ‘a powerful Chief Prelate holding tightly to the ecclesiastical reins’.

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The key phrase is ‘holding tightly’. Yet the Chief Rabbi was appointed to be the spiritual head of the community. He wouldn’t have been doing his job if he hadn’t kept hold of the ecclesiastical reins. This type of criticism would have been seen as very far-fetched if it was applied to the Victorian Archbishops of Canterbury. Judaism has only survived because the Written Law and the Oral Law have been scrupulously defended. In every generation there had to be religious leaders prepared to take on that responsibility. With hindsight it is easy to see that, from an Orthodox point of view, the British Jewish community was lucky to have had Nathan Marcus Adler and Hermann Adler, able and willing to fulfil the function of holding tightly to the ecclesiastical reins. Sometimes the lay leaders would put obstacles in the way of ministers moving to a more senior post in another community, and the Chief Rabbi was forthright in his condemnation of such tactics. Even 30 years after Nathan Marcus Adler was appointed, though, there were remarkably few Rabbis in Britain. Father and son Adler, Dayan Aaron Levy, A.L. Barnett and Hermann Gollancz were just about the only prominent ministers with semicha. It was invariably necessary to find Rabbis abroad but then they had to acclimatize themselves to what was normally a very different environment, often with language problems, if English was preferred to Yiddish. While this was the situation in the time of Nathan Marcus Adler, it changed dramatically when the immigrants started to arrive from Eastern Europe. These communities had refugee Rabbis and were accustomed to them laying down the law on every aspect of the lives of the members of the community. There was no overall Chief Rabbi on the continent, which suited the small congregations. Washed up on the shores of a strange country, the immigrants resented the likelihood of what they considered interference in their affairs by the spiritual head of the national community, and they were aggravated by his Anglican-like garb. Deeply wedded to their traditions, the Talmudic level of scholarship of the immigrants could be very high. A Sunderland congregation, almost all of whom had come from Lithuania, conducted a traditional study of the voluminous Babylonian Talmud, This is called the Blat and in the process, one page is studied every day. To complete the exercise took them 25 years. It was carried out four times in their 100-year history, with many businessmen, doctors, accountants and lawyers attending the meetings every day. No native-born British Jewish community would have considered attempting this immense task.

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The Sunderland community was only one which never submitted to the suzerainty of the Chief Rabbi. Alhough they promised to do so, as a quid pro quo for his confirmation of their right to a marriage secretary, they failed to honour their undertaking. The same occurred with the tiny Gateshead community which asked him for his help, as they didn’t have a Sefer Torah. Adler advised them to ally themselves with the Newcastle community, but the members had moved to Gateshead precisely to get away from Newcastle, as they were unhappy with its level of Orthodoxy. Gateshead got its Sefer Torah as a gift from a Nottingham Jew and remained independent of Adler. If the membership were so learned, the minister needed to be at least equally expert. In 1890 the United Synagogue honorary officers said of Dayan Jacob Reinowitz, for example, that he succeeded in ‘wielding a powerful influence over the foreign element in the East End, an influence invariably exercised in the interests of peace and union’. The new Chief Rabbi left the day-to-day authority in the Beth Din to Reinowitz. He paid him £2 a week out of his own pocket until the Dayan died in 1893. Adler was not, however, a ‘yes’ man. Before his election he refused to commit himself to consulting the Beth Din if he didn’t feel it necessary. He also made it a condition that only he would deal with questions from the provinces and the empire. The responsibilities of the Beth Din were confined to London, although there was eventually a Beth Din in Manchester. Nathan Marcus Adler realized very well that the provincial ministers needed additional support. In May 1884, in his last years, he created a Provincial Jewish Ministers Fund. In a letter, probably written by Hermann, he said: A generation is now growing up ignorant of the sublime significance of Judaism [and] of the meaning of its precepts and consequently indifferent as to their observance…ignorant and, therefore, careless of the high morality it inculcates. The fund was to enable officials to learn better English and, thereby, to teach young people more effectively. The provincial communities often consisted of three separate groups in the late nineteenth century There were the original members of the established congregations who intended to remain in power. Then there were the poor refugees, not just after the pogroms in the 1880s, but people who came after the 1848 uprisings on the continent as well.

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Lastly there were the originally poorer refugees who were successful in business and had ambitions to achieve power in the community themselves, but still preferred the less formal atmosphere of the continental style of chevra. For a new immigrant, membership of the established synagogue was usually beyond their means. The cheapest seat was likely to be £2 and burial fees would add about another 70p. Charitable offerings were expected, and these could cost at least another pound. It was not surprising that the small groups were formed to pray in less expensive locations. The different ambitions made for any number of squabbles, both between and within the provincial communities. Both the minister and, in extremis, the Chief Rabbi, would be involved in keeping or restoring the peace. If the wish of the young people to take over from the old-timers is added to the mix, the opportunities for discord were certainly numerous. Herman Adler became well known for his provincial visits and was responsible for umpiring and settling many of the arguments. After Reinowitz (1818-1893) died, his son-in-law, Susman Cohen, a Manchester Rabbi, was appointed in his stead. Cohen’s own son-in-law, Harris Lazarus, also became a Dayan later, making three dayanim in succession from one family. Bernard Spiers had been made a Dayan in 1876 and died in office in 1901. Cohen retired in 1906 and the two replacements were Asher Feldman and Moses Hyamson, both relatively recent graduates of Jews’ College. The East End communities scoffed at the latest appointments. They accused the two new Dayanim of being too inexperienced for such senior roles, which was unfair and inaccurate. After much discord, a compromise was reached. The minister of the Federation, the Russian Rabbi, Moses Avigdor Chaikin (1852-1928), was appointed to the Beth Din in 1911. Chaikin had been with the Federation since 1901 after serving as the minister of a new, very Orthodox congregation in Sheffield. He was certainly a very able representative of the immigrant community, but it was significant how close he came to be with Adler. The fact that Adler and Chaikin had been brought up in slightly different Jewish cultural backgrounds did not create problems because both men were highly regarded for their decisions. Apart from the responsa he wrote for congregations throughout the Empire, Adler was consulted by a number of Rabbis in the United States. For example: The Hirschian Congregation Orach Chaim and the Sephardi Shearith Israel congregation, both in New York, turned to Adler for

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rulings and Rabbi Josef Sharon Taran of Argentina sought Adler’s opinion, alongside that of other leading European Rabbis.2 As the years went by, exceptional ministers did begin to appear. One was Simeon Singer. Ephy Levine, a later minister at the New West End Synagogue wrote after Singer’s death: His scholarship, both Jewish and secular, was of a high order. He had a very wide and penetrating knowledge of English and foreign literature...it was this power of reconciling the old with the new which made him so great a master of pulpit exhortation. [He preached weekly] as a result of repeated requests on the part of the worshippers…While the pulpit was his first responsibility, he recognized the place of the Reading Desk and delighted in the performance of the office of Reader [Hazan].3 That is one reason why it is always known as the Singer Prayer Book. Unfortunately, however, there weren’t many ministers like Singer. It could well have been because he said in 1906: ‘The man who becomes a Jewish minister literally takes upon himself the vow of poverty.’4 Simeon Singer was the first minister to go to the continent for semichah since Hermann Adler himself. Singer’s motive was not personal aggrandizement or defiance of the Chief Rabbi. He wanted to show that English ministers were competent to secure the Diploma from the greatest of European authorities. He got his semichah from Rabbi Isaac Hirsch Weiss in Vienna but he never used the title. Singer was no rebel. He was an innovator; he introduced children’s services and religious classes for girls. He tutored Lily Montagu, who co-founded the Liberal Synagogue, and he was a pioneer in giving weekly sermons. He was among the first ministers to visit hospitals and prisons and joined the International Jewish Society for the Protection of Women. He was also an original supporter of Claude Montefiore’s Jewish Religious Union because he didn’t believe in the separation of Jewish sects. He was disappointed when he had to resign from membership at Adler’s request. Singer received no reward for his work on the prayer book, even though it sold 500,000 copies. He died in August 1906 in considerable pain, partly alleviated by daily deliveries of blocks of ice by J. Lyons, the caterers. The community paid its respects and expressed its sorrow, but its treatment of Singer was only acceptable in the age in which he lived. In fairness, while

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Singer quite rightly advocated better financial rewards for synagogue ministers, he did leave £5,000 in his will, which in today’s money is about half a million. Hermann Gollancz was another who felt ministers should be Rabbis, but by way of contrast with Singer, Gollancz was a fighter. His father, Samuel Marcus Gollancz, had been the Hambro’ Synagogue minister for 45 years and so Hermann Gollancz was no stranger to the world of the Rabbinate. In 1897, when he got his semichah on the continent, he insisted on his right to be called Rabbi. He felt so strongly on the subject that he refused to be called to the Torah in his own synagogue – he had taken over from Hermann Adler at Bayswater – if he was not called up as Morenu Harav (Our teacher, Our Rabbi). Gollancz’s insistence, as he wrote, ‘gave rise to a storm in the hierarchical chair which practically ended an anomalous and unsatisfactory state of affairs’. Gollancz had a D.Litt from Bremen University and went on to be Professor of Hebrew at University College, London. He also served at the synagogues of St Johns Wood, The New, South Manchester and Dalston, before Bayswater. The question of the title of Rabbi was indeed highly controversial. Humourists would point out that the Chief Rabbi had no Rabbis over whom to be chief. Both Hermann Adler and his father were primarily concerned, however, that the din should not be undermined in any way, as the Secessionists and some Orthodox lay leaders were keen to see. It was important to ensure that any voices advocating change should not have anything like the status of the Chief Rabbi, and withholding the title of Rabbi did have that side effect. As the forms of service were approved by the use of the Singer Prayer Book, the danger diminished over the years, but it remained a factor during both Adler ministries. It was always going to be some years before the students at Jews’ College were sufficiently knowledgeable to be granted semichah, but Adler did give the certificate to Solomon Levy in 1896, Abraham Wolf in 1898 and Benjamin Michelson, Asher Feldman (1873-1950) and Moses Hyamson (1862-1949) in 1899. In 1901 the Jews’ College Council decided that they would be prepared to award semicha, setting up a special committee to assess the candidates. The Chief Rabbi gave up his sole right to award semicha with reluctance, but the new committee could hardly be faulted. It consisted of the Chief Rabbi and Simeon Singer, academics such as Michael Friedländer and the senior tutor at the college and laymen like Israel Gollancz and E.L. Mocatta for the Sephardim.

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After alterations to London university statutes it had, in fact, been possible to grant semicha since 1883, in conjunction with University College, but none had been awarded until Solomon Levy. Under the new system, it would still be seven years before the first examination. In 1908 Barent Cohen, the Sheffield minister, was approved. The appointment of Feldman and Hyamson to the Beth Din certainly strengthened the organization. It was possible to meet far more often and it took a lot of the pressure off Adler’s shoulders. The almost inevitable problem it created was the adverse reaction of the East End communities, who insisted that neither Dayan was Talmudically able. In fact, both Feldman and Hyamson were born in Eastern Europe and Hyamson had been taught in his youth by his father, Rabbi Nathan Haimsohn. The criticism was shown to be misplaced over the years as both Dayanim proved very good appointments; Hyamson would actually be appointed acting Chief Rabbi after Adler died in 1911. He went on to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York as professor of codes and defended its Orthodox principles for years, as it moved to the left. As Adler got older he delegated a number of responsibilities to Hyamson, who was 25 years younger and had occupied pulpits in Swansea, Bristol and Dalston. The new Dayan also had a Doctorate in law and in his twelve years on the Beth Din only had one decision not upheld when appealed to the civil courts. The East End critics insisted that he did not have the qualification of having studied at a yeshiva from an early age, but Hyamson’s future career showed him to be a very competent Talmudist. Another minister who would burnish the image of the clergy was Aaron Levy Green, the long-time minister at the Central Synagogue in London. Michael Adler – no relation to Hermann – the first Senior Jewish Chaplain to the Forces, wrote: Amiable personality, powerful and witty preaching, decorous rendering of the service…excellent hazan, delivered a sermon every week, and as a rule preached extempore [without notes]. Especially successful with his appeals for charitable funds...the Central Synagogue owed its prominence in the community as much to the remarkable personality of its minister as to the social status of its worshippers…no man of his generation was more intimately connected with all the interests of English Judaism…education, religious culture, state of the poor, revival of Hebrew literature, closer union of Jews...uplifting of the religious tone of the community.

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When Hermann Adler became the Delegate Chief Rabbi, he always said that the senior minister in London was Green (1821-1883). This minister was the son of a Petticoat Lane trader and educated at the Jews’ Free School. He was such a good student that he was appointed Reader for the Bristol community when he was only 16 in 1837. In 1851 he went to the Great and from there in 1855 to the Central. Green was controversial in that he preached in English, remained friendly with the Secessionists and wrote an influential column in the Jewish Chronicle under the name of Nemo. From 1859 until he died he was the Honorary Secretary of Jews’ College and a founder of the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge, which became the Board of Jewish Religious Education. The debt the community owed to Jews’ College was also exemplified in the life and career of its graduate Joseph Stern (1865-1934), who became minister of the East London synagogue in Stepney in 1887 and only retired in 1927. The East London Synagogue was the first to be built by the United Synagogue and this was before the influx of the refugees from Russia. When the immigrants came they formed their own small synagogues rather than join the East London, which had on average only 300 members over the years. Stern was indefatigable in creating and supporting charities for the poor. He was such a popular and charismatic minister in the area that he was soon known as the Jewish Bishop of Stepney, although his opinions were not always in accordance with Halacha. When he died in 1934, he rightly merited an obituary in The Times, which commented: But for the wisdom, sympathy and unflagging courage of men like Canon Barnett and J.F. Stern, the process of absorbing and digesting the great influx of foreign Jews would have caused a far more serious social upheaval that it in fact did.5 Stern was the Honorary Secretary of the Stepney Jewish Schools for many years and was very independent in his outlook. He had joined the committee of Claude Montefiore’s Jewish Religious Union until asked to step down by Adler. He introduced a mixed choir after Adler died and when he himself passed away, he was cremated; all rather unusual decisions for an Orthodox minister. Cremation is not the usual method of interring an Orthodox Jew. The tradition went back as far as Abraham in the Book of Genesis. The patriarch was particularly concerned in the Bible to find a plot for his wife, Sarah, when she passed away. Nathan Marcus Adler had ruled in 1887, though, that the cremated ashes could still be buried in an

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Orthodox cemetery and Hermann confirmed this in 1891, with the support of the internationally-renowned Russian Rabbi Yitzchak Spector. When Morris Joseph died in 1930 he was cremated. Unlike Joseph, Stern did not publicise his own views, if they were at odds with traditional Jewish practice. When Adler was very old, however, Stern would seek to have the Chief Rabbi’s powers devolved to a committee. The provinces produced a few highly noteworthy ministers as well. One of the best-loved was Rev Samuel Frampton (1863-1943), who gave his inaugural sermon at Liverpool’s Princes Park Road Synagogue in 1891 and served the congregation until he retired in 1932 to become the Emeritus minister. The lay leader when Frampton was appointed was Alderman Louis Cohen, Lord Mayor of Liverpool and the chair of Lewis’ famous department stores. It was a typical case of a young minister massively outranked by the lay leader. Frampton was up to the task. As his obituary recalled: The congregation had notions of its own in regard to the conduct of Divine Service and those who performed it [but]…enshrined in the memory of more than one generation is the remembrance of his sonorous voice and pleasing voice resounding through the synagogue, of the forceful and perfectly-chosen language which was the foundation of his eloquence and of the attention to style, detail and construction which made his sermons justly famous.6 The problem was that these were exceptional men who had the additional quality that they had a vocation for the ministry; they were devout Jews. Like missionaries, to dedicate one’s life to serving others requires a very special kind of individual. From that point of view, it was easier for Hermann Adler because, besides his own commitment, he was continuing the centuries-old family tradition. If the London ministers had their own burdens, the provincial minister had to be even more dedicated to put up with his lot. As early as 1854 the Jewish Chronicle was complaining: Why are English-Jewish institutions generally so badly served, but because respectable Englishmen of business have found no inducement to train their children for places which afford no respectable living…[just] genteel beggary of a public appointment, for which there is no future but pauperism.7

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Things didn’t improve. At best, ministers received the kind of salaries which were appropriate for the lower middle class. There was, in fairness, no way of knowing what a free house, possibly free coal, and presents from the congregants on family events, were worth in individual cases. The richer the community, the higher the perks. Under Clause 6 of the United Synagogue constitution, however, a minister’s maximum salary would only be reached after 20 years of service. When he retired, the financial position of the minister was often dreadful. Many ended their lives in poverty when they lacked the strength or health to continue in office, because they had been unable to save money and lacked a home of their own. If they didn’t have the support of their old communities, their last years were often a misery. It was perhaps fortunate that the expectation of life at the time meant that few were retired for long. The exception was the Chief Rabbi, where there was no mandatory retirement age; Nathan Marcus Adler died in harness at the age of 87 and Hermann Adler at 72. If the ministers were generally limited in scope and scholarship, the position of the Jewish intellectuals could be, potentially, much more influential in the structure of the community as a whole. One of the intellectuals was Solomon Schechter (1847-1915), the son of a Romanian Rabbi, who had mastered the Chumash by the age of five and obtained semicha in Vienna. It was Schechter who in 1890 became a lecturer in Talmudics and a Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge after the death of Schiller-Szinessy. He also travelled to Cairo with a letter of introduction to the Egyptian Chief Rabbi from Hermann Adler. His purpose was to examine the material in the Cairo Genizah. The Jewish law is that written material with Hebrew on it should never be thrown away, because Hebrew is the holy language and it is considered disrespectful to discard it like any other papers. At the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo it had been left in a room without a door for 1,000 years. The material was thrown over a gap in the wall. The find of over 100,000 pages revolutionized the understanding of medieval Judaism, and Schechter obtained permission to bring a substantial proportion of it to Cambridge, where it is still being analysed. Schechter was not impressed by the status of ministers in England, feeling that the Jewish clergyman: labouring under a cruel system, reducing man to a mere plaything for politico-economic forces, is rapidly losing touch with the venerable rabbi of Jewish tradition, whose chief office was to teach

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and to learn Torah…in his capacity as full Reverend, he is expected to divide his time between the offices of cantor, prayer, preacher, bookkeeper, debt collector, almoner and social agitator…imitating the establishment in which…the man of business or the great organizer has of late years gained ascendancy over the man of thought and learning…looking upon our ministers as a sort of superior clerk in who business-like capacity is more in demand than any other virtues they may possess. Schechter was not without a sense of humour. He added: Rumour spreads about some minister that he neglects his duty to his congregation through his being secretly addicted to Jewish learning, but such rumours often turn out to be sheer malice. Schechter went on to be the Head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, which is now the centre for Conservative Judaism. It would not wish to be considered Orthodox today, but Schechter made his own views clear in his inaugural address in 1902: Judaism is not a religion which does not oppose itself to anything in particular. Judaism is opposed to any number of things and says distinctly ‘thou shalt not’. It permeates the whole of your life. It demands control over all your actions, and interferes even with your menu. It sanctifies the seasons, and regulates your history, both in the past and in the future. Above all, it teaches that disobedience is the strength of sin. It insists upon the observance of both the spirit and of the letter…In a word Judaism is absolutely incompatible with the abandonment of the Torah. The remuneration of the minister was one thing. Who was in charge was something else. In Nathan Marcus Adler’s time there had been no question; Adler had the immensely powerful Sir Moses Montefiore on his side to take care of the laymen, and knew far more about Judaism than almost anybody else in the country. He also had a national mandate, where any threat to his authority could only come from small organizations. The only opposition to father Adler’s authority during his ministry had emerged in Manchester, with Rabbi Solomon Schiller-Szinessy. There had, however, been little support for the idea of a District Rabbi and SchillerSzinessy ended this career as an academic in Cambridge.

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The logical time for critics to press for changes in the authority pecking order was when Nathan Marcus Adler died. By this time Adler himself had fathered a strong organization in the creation of the United Synagogue. It was important enough to attract powerful lay leaders like its Vice President Lionel Cohen (1832-1887) and its secretary Asher Asher (1837-1889). Lord Rothschild was the titular President, but left much of the work to Cohen and Asher. Both laid firm foundations. For example, the United Synagogue had opened a new cemetery in the countryside at Willesden in 1873, and set up a Building Committee to deal with its construction. They then argued about the first burial, and the Chief Rabbi had to remind them that anything to do with burials came under his jurisdiction. The Building Committee apologized for not consulting him. The creation of the United Synagogue also emboldened certain London synagogues to start the pressure for changes in the liturgy and Nathan Marcus Adler had to deal with those, just after Hermann had become Delegate Chief Rabbi in 1879. Now in 1891 there were ministers who wanted greater power in their own communities and a greater degree of consultation by the new Chief Rabbi. The columns of the Jewish press were full of opinions about the Chief Rabbinate itself. From the question of where Hermann Adler should live, to whether there should be a Chief Rabbinate at all. There followed the conference held in 1892, largely initiated by the New West End Synagogue. It was not held in the happiest of atmospheres. It was reported that every proposal to amend the services that was brought forward was listened to by a noisy section of the meeting with illconcealed impatience,. The supporters were answered by loud appeals to prejudice and assertions that they were not fit to be Jews. The advocates for change did not have an agreed programme. Eventually there would also come about a conference of Anglo-Jewish ministers in 1909, on which the Jewish Review commented: It [the conference] might have raised an effective protest against the recommendations, from a ‘saving ignorance’ of Jewish learning and against the degradation of the position of the wise and honoured teacher of the community, to that of a combined preacher, synagogue official and charity visitor. We look to the Conference, as well as to Jews’ College in future to save us from all that tends to the production of a peculiar order of Anglo-Jewish ministers and a consequently peculiar Anglo-Judaism. [Abroad] the position of the Rabbi was

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defined. He is a master of Jewish science. [Here] the position of the minister, however, is undefined.8 The Conference was a success in that it brought together ministers from both London and the provinces for the first time since Adler’s inauguration. The Chief Rabbi had actually initiated it to clear the air. It was possible to see its proceedings, however, as another attempt to undermine the Chief Rabbi as the sole spiritual authority; the conference set up a Standing Committee to which ministers were invited to bring their problems. This would have been an alternative to consulting the Chief Rabbi himself, although any conclusions on spiritual matters would still have needed his approval. Some delegates looked forward to the setting up of an Ecclesiastical Synod at some time in the future, which would have left the Chief Rabbi as simply the chair of a committee, rather than the ultimate authority. It didn’t happen, although there would be other attempts in the future to create a similar body. The lay head of the United Synagogue for much of the first half of the twentieth century, Sir Robert Waley Cohen, in 1948 tried to make the new Chief Rabbi, Israel Brodie, accept a consultative committee when he was appointed. Brodie made it clear he would not consult it. If Adler had lived, it seems highly unlikely that he would have cooperated with a Standing Committee either. The new thinking encouraged at least one minister to oppose Adler in the pulpit. This was Rev Dr Joseph Hochman, who had become the minister at the New West End in 1906. Hochman was a Jews’ College graduate. He had a fine mind but some of his views were far from Orthodox. In 1910 he preached a sermon on Yom Kippur denying the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, crossing a red line as far as the Chief Rabbi was concerned. Adler insisted that he ‘explain that it had not been your intention to impugn traditional Judaism’ which, of course, he had. Adler advised him to ‘be careful in your sermons to refrain from anything that might be interpreted as being antagonistic to traditional Judaism’. Adler instructed Hochman to let him see the text of the next sermon he proposed to deliver and said that, if he didn’t, he would come to the New West End himself and speak instead. By the end of his life Adler acted like a headmaster towards his clergy and was perfectly prepared to give strict instructions to recalcitrant ministers. Hochman survived Adler’s incumbency but his views became more radical and he was dismissed by Adler’s successor, Joseph Herman Hertz in 1915. Hochman in later life became a barrister and an adviser to the King of Siam.

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Where there were differences of opinion about the din, a number of the Chief Rabbi’s ministerial colleagues attacked the institution of the Chief Rabbinate where they couldn’t undermine the spiritual occupant. The Rev A.A. Green was typical, writing in 1911 that ‘all the old systems of ecclesiastical government and ecclesiastical training were fundamentally wrong’. The Written and Oral Laws were still maintained. Hermann Adler’s health became a matter of concern early in 1911, in the year when he died. The strength of his control of the spiritual side of the community could be seen to be weakening, and those ambitious to reduce the power of the office saw that the time was opportune to make the attempt. In June 1911, just a month before his death, the second conference of Anglo-Jewish ministers met and listened to a paper by Joseph Stern, on ‘The Future Religious Government of the Community’. He recommended an ecclesiastical board with the Chief Rabbi as Chair. As he said, ‘in its present form the Chief Rabbinate undoubtedly implies an autocracy, and it is not given to all autocrats so to act as to gain the affection and esteem of their subjects’. It remained the case, however, that the Chief Rabbi’s main role was to ensure that the Halacha continued to be inviolate. If the responsibility was given to an ecclesiastic board, the conflict over authority would be a new and disruptive feature. As it was, the conference heard complaints that hazanim were considered inferior to ministers. As a consequence a Preachers’ Union was formed and future conferences referred to AngloJewish Preachers rather than Ministers. They insisted that they would bow down to Rabbis but not to ministers. The Jewish Chronicle lamented what it described as: ….megalomaniac egoism…[and] miserable small spite…[which had tended to] excuse the community to itself for its attitude towards our Ministry…and just at a time when the Conferences were regarded as a real hope for securing higher status for ministers. The recommendation for an Ecclesiastic Board was, nevertheless, sent to the Council of the United Synagogue in 1912. Lord Rothschild shot it down in flames, calling it ‘irresponsible frivolity’ and saying that it would ‘place the Chief Rabbinate in slavery and chains’. His Lordship continued: ‘I am perhaps very old fashioned, but I do not know at the present moment that we officially recognize the position of ministers.’ It was the clearest possible indication that the undisputed head of the United Synagogue stood foursquare behind the authority of the spiritual head of the community.

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Stern wasn’t the only minister anxious for change. Samuel Daiches, who had been the minister of the original community in Sunderland and now lectured at Jews’ College, was scathing: [It is the] almost unanimous opinion of the ministers assembled that the Chief Rabbinate in its present form, has outlived itself [and after the retirement of the present holder, should cease]…it was the general view that the Chief Rabbinate has crippled the community, has destroyed the sense of responsibility in congregation and minister alike, has been responsible for the fact that many congregations have ministers not able to be the spiritual guides to their flocks. It was the general feeling of the Conference, that if Judaism in this country is to be vitalized, every congregation must have its own absolutely independent spiritual head. Yet Daiches knew perfectly well – he was after all a lecturer at Jews’ College – that the responsibility of ministers was to uphold Jewish law, which was the Chief Rabbi’s objective as well. How Adler could be blamed for the alleged lack of spiritual guidance was not explained. Like many other ambitious men Daiches was probably aiming for increased power. The flourishing state of the community, when Joseph Herman Hertz succeeded Adler, showed that the severe criticism of Adler was misplaced. What was agreed was that if there was a request to change the ritual, Adler would consult a committee of the preachers of the synagogue in question. That didn’t mean, however, that Adler would approve the changes, and there was plenty of precedent for expecting him not to do so. For example, Adler had explained the problem with granting semicha in a paper he read at Jews’ College in 1905. There is another function which. Jews’ College is now called upon to fulfil. When originally founded it was for the purpose of educating ministers and teachers, but provision was not made for teaching the students to become Rabbis. The reasons for this limitation were twofold. As before stated, the subjects then required for the graduate examination were entirely outside the curriculum of a strictly theological college, and the strain of preparing for those tests did not leave the time required for mastering the bulky treatises of the Talmud and the massive ritual codes, a knowledge of which is indispensable for enabling candidates to obtain the Rabbinic diploma. Nor indeed was the possession of such Hatarath Horaah necessary,

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as the members of our community, both here and in the provinces, were fully satisfied with the facilities for deciding religious questions afforded by the Chief Rabbi and the Beth Din. This condition has been materially modified during the last quarter of a century. Congregations are springing up [in the Empire] which require supervision and guidance of a local Beth Din. Moreover…our brethren who hail from Russia and Poland have been accustomed to consult their Rabbis on every detail of their daily life, and to submit to them questions of ‘things forbidden or permitted’. At present several communities in the provinces have enlisted the services of Rabbis, who, however competent in their own department are as yet ignorant of the vernacular…The College is therefore giving the needful facilities for enabling the advanced students to prepare themselves for the proscribed rigid examination. The importance of Jews’ College to the United Synagogue was even more evident as Adler’s ministry came to its close. By 1910 fourteen out of the sixteen constituent United Synagogues had a Jews’ College graduate for both its minister and preacher. One of the Jews’ College Council, Sir Adolph Tuck, was also a member of the United Synagogue Council. Every year he tried to get the US to increase its financial support for the College but he was never successful in persuading them that if they got the benefit, they should pay for it in a meaningful way. There were only just over 7,000 members of the United Synagogues in all, which was a very small percentage of the over 100,000 Jews in the capital. Its importance lay in its financial strength. The principal of Jews’ College, Adolph Büchler, said: ‘It impressed one as a great business concern, expecting its officials to work in the first instance for the balance sheet.’ The United Synagogue leaders knew that Jews’ College would continue to produce graduates for their synagogues whether they helped it financially or not. Relying on the devotion to the cause of the Chief Rabbi and the teachers at the college, they, parsimoniously, took full advantage of their devotion to it. Of course, the parlous financial state of Jews’ College meant that the salaries of the lecturers were lower than they should have been, and consequently the academics had to make their own financial sacrifices to maintain the College. It was even worse in the provinces, where only a handful of congregations made any contribution to the College at all. On the other hand, the community in the East End was not impressed by Jews’ College’s concentration on producing ministers. Their view was that a theological college should be primarily concerned with studying the

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Talmud. In 1885 a Russian Rabbi, Aharon Hyman, had been another to flee the pogroms. He became the chief shochet (meat slaughterer) in the East End. In about 1900 he started his own yeshivah which was called Etz Hayim. It was named after a similar college in the Holy Land, which had been founded in 1841 by the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Future students would include Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits, Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks, Ashkenazi Dayan Binstock and Sephardi Dayan Toledano. More Rabbis would emerge from the efforts of the Gateshead community, who would found their own yeshivah with help from the Sunderland community. If a Rabbi was sufficiently charismatic he could have a great influence, even without a substantial power base. For example, Rabbi Maccoby (18571916) electrified all who heard him. He was even more effective when he learned to speak English. He spoke enthusiastically about living in Palestine and was a great advocate of vegetarianism. Indeed, he was so much against animal slaughter that he always wore cloth shoes. In all he had eight children, the first of whom was born when he was only seventeen years old. He would have been flattered to know that in 1975 a Hall of Education Library at Bar Ilan University in Israel would be named after him. The senior minister in Samuel Montagu’s Federation was Rabbi Abraham Aba Werner (1837-1911). He was born in Russia, educated in Lithuania, a Rabbi at the age of 20 and a dayan at 25. He came to London in 1891 after being the Chief Rabbi of Finland, to be the minister at the Machzikei Hadath synagogue. Werner was deeply involved in the disputes over shechita and was the Av (Head of the) Beth Din for the Federation until agreement was reached to recognize Adler’s authority in 1905. A keen Zionist, he spoke at Herzl’s first meeting in London. His synagogue was open from early in the day until well after nightfall, with lectures alternating with services. He was a powerhouse for the very orthodox, lecturing in Yiddish and creating a very large Talmud Torah (religious school). The Jewish community in Britain was fortunate that in Adler’s time there was plenty of support from ministers for their Chief Rabbi. There was a short-lived drive to share some of his authority but the work he did was much admired, even eventually in the East End. Chief Rabbis face different problems, according to the age in which they conduct their ministry. The new immigrants outnumbered the old community but most were primarily concerned to work for a better life for their children. Their synagogue ministers helped solidify family life in their communities, educated the offspring and maintained the old traditions. There are always grumbles in

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Orthodox communities but Adler ensured that the fundamentals remained unchanged.

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

Jewish Chronicle, 8 July 1881. Finestein, Israel. Jewish Chronicle, 3 June 1910, p.2. Ibid., 1906. The Times, 1934. Jewish Chronicle, 9 July 1943, p.4. Ibid., 1854. Ibid., 1909.

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10 The Member of the Establishment The pressure of work on the Chief Rabbi made for a very full life indeed. If visiting provisional communities was developed into a fine art, it still involved careful planning and a very good system for remembering local conditions. Adler travelled a good deal abroad as well. As a result, the occasions when he could get away with members of the family were severely limited but he could still be found with some of them at Birchington-onSea in August 1905, before the High Holidays. Alfred and Nettie might be hard at work, but Ruth and her husband, Alfred would join Hermann and Rachel at the seaside with their sons, Hubert, Bobby and David. Even on holiday, however, Hermann continued to worry about the persecuted Jews in the Russian empire. Keeping his network of contacts together to help them, involved him in a high level of diplomacy. Many of Hermann Adler’s political friends ignored the clamour for an Aliens Act for the best part of 20 years. The generosity of the Rothschilds must have helped. For example, they had lent the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, a fortune by the time he died.1 Other prominent figures were equally indebted and Lord Rothschild was one of the seven men on the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration which sat between 1902 and 1903. There was still no Aliens Act until 1905. Balfour had tried to introduce one in the dying years of his administration but opposition, led by Winston Churchill, the new MP for a Manchester constituency, was so intense that it was abandoned and then reintroduced. It was the new Liberal government which brought in its own bill. The main problem for the refugees was the high naturalization fee, which the government refused to lower. The opponents of the bill realised that it was essential to help the pogrom refugees to safety. Otherwise the death toll would continue to rise as it did in many future outbreaks. There were, of course, other Jews who were more important than Adler in politics, but it was the highly respected Chief Rabbi who was called upon to give evidence to many government enquiries including those on Sweating in 1888, on Sunday Closing in 1907 and on Divorce in 1910. Adler

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may have been criticized in the East End for the company he kept, but if the Chief Rabbi had adopted the position of the religious right wing, it would have disassociated him in many ways from those who wielded power in the land. The Chief Rabbi had other objectives as well. As far back as 1886 Adler was working at an elevated level on his social image with the British establishment. One potential route was to join one of the exclusive London Clubs and in 1886 the prestigious Athenaeum Club General Committee noted that candidate 7910, had been proposed by Charles Henry Anderson, CB and seconded by Arthur (Sampson) Lucas, a prominent Jewish philanthropist and one-time Vice-President of the United Synagogue. It might take 14 years for Adler’s application to be approved, but the General Committee noted that he had also been put forward by the Bishop of London, Mandell Creighton. The description was: Very Rev Hermann Adler, D.D., LL.D., St Andrews (1899), M.A (London), Ph.D., Chief Rabbi United Hebrew Congregation of British Empire. Author of many books and contributions to literary reviews and magazines; distinguished as a Semitic Scholar, and for his public services in connection with the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund, the Mansion House Association for Improving Dwellings of the Poor, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the People’s Palace, Toynbee Hall, etc.2 Adler was accepted as a Rule 2 entry, which illustrated how highly he was regarded. Rule 2 said: It being essential to the maintenance of the Athenaeum, in conformity with the principles upon which it was originally founded, that the annual introduction of a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence in science, literature or the arts, or for public services, should be secured. A limited number of persons of such qualifications shall be elected by the Committee. The number so elected shall not exceed nine in each year…no committee shall take place unless nine at the least of the Committee be actually present, and the whole of those present unanimous in their election. The Jewish Chronicle was delighted, pointing out that Adler’s admission as a distinguished public figure was in contrast to the application of the novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray, who had not been elected.

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There seemed no end of problems though. Another one Adler had to tackle was the deaths which were occurring after a briss, when male babies were circumcised. Circumcising boys eight days after their birth is a fundamental in Judaism., although not if they come from a family with a history of haemophilia. An Orthodox Jew can break any law if health is involved and the Oral law made the exception for haemophiliac families. Otherwise the ceremony is so important that it is carried out even on Yom Kippur and can be held in the synagogue. The operation is carried out by a trained Mohel (a surgeon who specializes in the operation) and in Edwardian times most of them were foreign born. Apart from its religious significance, circumcision was believed to be beneficial in avoiding syphilis, neurosis (a mild mental illness), penile cancer and bilharzias (a disease affecting the urinary tract). A considerable number of the Mohelim were members of the Initiation Society, which was founded in 1745 and is the oldest Jewish charity in the country. In Adler’s time the President was Louis Montagu, the eldest son of Samuel Montagu. It was his financial support which maintained the Society. To become a member, the prospective Mohel had to pass a rigorous exam, but many Mohalim avoided this by not joining the society at all. In 1901 it only had 27 members; 19 in London, 5 in the provinces and 3 in the colonies. A shortcoming was that a medical expert was needed to teach modern hygiene to the Mohelim, but the suggested salary of £100 a year did not produce any applications. When the occasional lectures were given, Adler arranged that all Mohelim, and not just members of the Society, should be allowed to attend. The difficulty was identifying those who were not members of the Society, so they could be persuaded to join. The Federation agreed to circulate its synagogues to fill the gaps in the names, but the problem of paying the Mohelim remained for many families. As the Lancet reported: There are many and great obstacles to providing medical men for all cases of circumcision, all of which are summed up in the simple statement that many of the patients’ parents could never pay the medical operators a professional fee even on the lowest scale.4 Appeals for funds from the community were not productive and, as a consequence, the parents’ choice of Mohel was often made on the grounds of cost, where medical proficiency was the far more necessary yardstick. On occasions the medical knowledge of the Mohel was insufficient and

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babies died. It happened infrequently, but the inquests might well establish that the right precautions had not been taken and Death by Misadventure was often the coroner’s verdict. Obviously, this reflected very badly on the Jewish community. Adler had recognized the seriousness of the problem, particularly as the number of babies born to the new immigrants had made it difficult for the existing Mohelim to cope with the demand. As early as 1894 he had written to all the Mohelim he could trace (See Appendix E) with clear instructions on the necessary procedures which had to be observed. He had gone so far as to threaten to withdraw their licence to act as a Mohel if the rules were not rigidly enforced. The occasional fatality, however, continued to occur. When baby Michael Dosternock died after the briss in 1903, the coroner demanded information about the practice of circumcision. Now the whole process was on trial. The coroner summed up that ‘in this case there is ample testimony of looseness of working arrangements and even now Mr Goldstein [the Mohel] does not seem to realize the importance of antiseptic methods in modern surgery’. The jury found ‘death by septic poisoning, but how caused there is not sufficient evidence to show’. Even after a second request by Adler for additional names, only another twelve were provided. Adler now ensured that the Initiation Society tackled the problem firmly. A committee was formed which recommended in 1903 that there should be a medical board, and a medical officer. There would be a new register of Mohelim who had been approved by Adler and members would have to be both religiously and medically competent. The new medical officer was Dr Jacob Snowman, who in later years would circumcise Prince Charles and this author! Pressure was brought to bear on the United Synagogue to deal with synagogue officers who practiced as Mohelim. They would only be able to do so in future with the permission of the United Synagogue Council. It was also made clear that if they weren’t registered, the Beth Din would publish their names to warn off parents. There were other cases. In one the coroner said that the question of circumcision had been brought to the attention of the Home Secretary. In another inquest, the Mohel hadn’t understood a medical condition arising from the circumcision. The jury said he had acted properly within his knowledge, but the coroner said that if the jury hadn’t taken that view, the Mohel would have been sent to the Old Bailey and charged with manslaughter. After this the number of deaths after circumcision practically

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disappeared and the Chief Rabbi was highly praised for the action he had taken. Circumcision was widespread outside the Jewish community. One surgeon writing in the Lancet as early as 1900 said it was: ...the imperative duty of everyone who is cognisant of the facts [of the transmission of syphilis] to exert his influence for the benefit of humanity at large by securing, as far as possible, the effective circumcision of every male child that comes under his notice.5 At home, Adler was less involved in the career of his son, Alfred, than his father had been in his. It wasn’t that Alfred was a disappointment, but his health was always a concern. He also had a serious stammer as a child and Hermann arranged for him to attend a speech course when he was thirteen at the City of London School. Although he hadn’t been a brilliant student, he was able to go on to Jews’ College and from 1898 he began to give sermons and to write as a journalist. Combining the two, he wrote a book called The Discipline of Sorrow which contained many of his sermons ‘mostly written in language of extraordinary beauty’.6 As a journalist, he travelled to South Africa during the Boer War and wrote proudly of the Jewish soldiers ‘Who have proved that the spirit of Judas Maccabaeus still walks abroad.’7 Alfred moved on to Australia where: The Victorian Jews, in their anxious desire to do honour to the scion of the illustrious house of Adler, broke down all attempts to avoid notice being taken of his presence in the colony, and by their hospitality enabled him to carry off fond memories of his brief sojourn among them.8 He fell ill again in Sydney and wrote of …a bed of sickness, hazy and indistinct…a period of white-winged angels, a smother of flowers, fruit and physic, where warm-hearted Australian rabbis and their congregations sit in silent sympathy beside the bedside of their sick London co-religionist.9 When he arrived home, Alfred became involved in the Brondesbury Synagogue and created Hebrew and religion classes for the local children. In 1902 he became the minister at the Hope Place Synagogue in Liverpool

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and moved on to the Hammersmith Synagogue in London from 1904-1909. He was not impressed by his new congregation. In one sermon he inveighed against bringing a spirit of commercialism into the house of G-d ‘with idle chatter of the market-place and of the counting-house’. In addition, he said he objected to the minister having also to be the synagogue secretary, calling him ‘the preacher turned bank clerk’. He went on to plead for the minister to get properly paid: ‘We have the shame and degradation in our midst, that men of refinement, education and spirituality are toiling for a living wage, are fighting for existence on a mere pittance.’ Alfred had still found time to go to the 5th and 6th Zionist Conferences in 1901 and 1903 and met with Theodor Herzl. He described him as ‘tall, leonine and inspiring…here was genius, real and unflattered’.10 It wasn’t his father’s opinion but Alfred was not afraid to be independent. Eventually he was recalled in this way: Alfred was a sad man. Rightly or wrongly, he felt insulted for his calling and having contracted tuberculosis retired from the ministry. I believe he was talented and that many appreciated his poetry and his idealism.11 Alfred was outspoken as a minister, but attacking the son of the Chief Rabbi was not really an option for most critics. His father had even less to hold him back. If the Chief Rabbi disliked Zionist secularism, he was also perfectly capable of attacking the religious standards of his own community. On one occasion he quoted a Christian essayist: The poor Jew fasted or ate dry bread when he could not get meat which had been duly killed; the rich Jew eats meat unclean to his fathers because the other is not served at the Savoy Hotel…the poor Jew clung to his heritage, though the world battered him; the rich Jew gives it up to win a contemptuous smile. It was an accurate and crushing commentary, but Adler did try normally to tread a delicate middle path between the various factions within Judaism. He may not have approved of the Reform synagogue at Upper Berkeley Street, but he attended the memorial service for David Woolf Marks in 1909. Nearly 100 years later a Chief Rabbi was criticized for not doing so in similar circumstances. The important difference, which was drowned in the twentieth-century hysteria, was that, in Adler’s time, the Reform

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synagogue was nothing like as far removed from the Orthodox position as it is today. The Jewish Chronicle had recorded in 1874: We may state that the members of the new congregation deny altogether the impeachment of having renounced the Oral Law. Professor Marks and Mr. Elkin in the earlier days of the Reform, strenuously maintained the general fidelity of their congregation to the Jewish tradition. There is probably less discrepancy between the Jews forming what are called Orthodox congregations and Jews who are members of the Reformed Congregation of London than is apparent within the bosom of a single denomination of Christian we will say the Church of England. [The Reformed synagogue] cannot be characterized other than as a secession.12 In Edwardian times nothing much had altered. Influential members like Mrs Lionel Lucas (a Goldsmid): …stood prepared to denounce any hint of concession or change. Indeed one contemporary said that ‘It is largely due to her influences that the Reform ritual has suffered so little change during 60 years.’13 There was certainly a great need for sensitivity, because there was always one faction or another which would take offence at whatever the Chief Rabbi did – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It is true, for example, that spiritual authority within the United Synagogue was totally centralized, and the desire to wield power can never be excluded as a reason for this. It is suggested that this led to breakaways, like the Liberal Synagogue on the left and the very Orthodox Federation of Synagogue and Machzikei Hadath on the right. There were, in fact, a number of quite different reasons for both. The fact remained that the British community, as a whole – even the Reform – remained loyal to their Orthodox traditions. For those who didn’t, the serious problem that they presented to Adler was when the question of conversion to Judaism came up. The Orthodox view was that conversion was only possible if the convert genuinely believed in Judaism after carefully studying the religion and their conscience. It was not acceptable to want to convert simply in order to be able to marry in synagogues, although most conversions did have a marriage motivation. For the Orthodox, without the appropriate conversion, which was a lengthy process, the children of a non-Jewish mother would not be

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considered Jewish. Furthermore, during the period of conversion, there was a requirement to observe Jewish law to a far greater extent than could be required of someone born Jewish. If the wedding took place in a Progressive or Liberal synagogue, the same ruling would apply as far as the Orthodox were concerned. The children of the couple would not be accepted as Orthodox Jews. This was particularly noticeable as both the Progressive and Liberal movements made conversion easier than the very stringent process applied by the Orthodox. The Orthodox conversion in Britain had become more inflexible over the years after the Beth Din had been set up by Solomon Herschell and the Dayanim applied the rules more rigorously. This was in contrast to the position between 1780 and 1820 when 4 per cent of the marriages in the Great Synagogue involved a Christian girl marrying a Jew.14 Conversion must have normally been viewed slightly differently at that time. Certainly, according to the din, the couple could only be considered Orthodox Jewish if both had an Orthodox Jewish mother. The inevitable result was that many families were now split asunder, amid parental heartbreak, often on both sides. For many years it was hoped that the communal split between the Reform and the Orthodox might be mended. The Secessionists had wanted to remain Orthodox. Moses Mocatta, the son of a senior figure at Bevis Marks, had become a warden at Upper Berkeley Street and told his Board emphatically that: For the least deviation, unqualified censure will be heaped upon us and the self-styled Orthodox of our co-religionists will gladly seize on the minutest point to vilify our minister and cast obloquy on our congregation. It was therefore not surprising, although somewhat over-egging the pudding, that Adler told Cassell’s Saturday Journal in 1891 that: …there is the West London Synagogue of British Jews, who also differ from us on a few small points of ritual but there is no sort of hostility between us. We are on terms of perfect friendliness. We work together with the utmost cordiality on the committees of our charity schools. On this occasion, Adler conveniently overlooked the problems of conversion and the lack of recognition of Upper Berkeley Street weddings

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in Orthodox circles. He also didn’t mention the Orthodox view that children of such marriages were not considered Jewish. The right wing, by contrast, would never have considered the United Synagogue to be sufficiently Orthodox for them to come to rest under the Chief Rabbi’s banner. As one of their leaders commented 50 years later: It is impossible for younger members of the community and particularly for people who have arrived here since, to realise how lax conditions had become in official Jewish quarters and what remarkable changes have taken place during the past few decades.15 Although the Federation acknowledged Adler’s authority, the Chief Rabbi would not have been supported by his own community had he tried to impose stricter conditions. Right-wing critics even suggested that Dayan Reinowitz ‘was afraid to come out into the open for fear lest it might affect his livelihood’. Against such generalized criticism Adler was hard put to defend his colleague, except to denounce the allegation. Certainly, Samuel Montagu felt that even allowing minor adjustments was flouting the rules of the Sabbath. The refugees from the pogroms were poor, but that did not, in fact, automatically make them illiterate. Like many of the eighteenth century Jewish pedlars, they might have appeared totally insignificant to the world outside, but inside their homes many were knowledgeable and experienced religious traditionalists. The Orthodox hard core chevras of the East End generally comprised a more observant and knowledegable congregation than the majority of the United Synagogue’s communities. The poor, however, often feel themselves patronized by the rich. The proud poor resent the charity they have perforce to accept. Admittedly, this wouldn’t have led to the creation of ultra-religious movements, unless their faith had been as strong as it was. Just as Europe had provided almost all the British Chief Rabbis and Hahamim, so the new immigrants came from the same more observant Orthodox stock. Criticism of right-wing Orthodoxy was not confined to its spiritual content. It became standard practice to locate its existence only in the least attractive setting. Even Rev James Parkes, a pillar of the Church of England, a very good friend to the Jewish community and the founder of the Parkes Library Jewish archive at the University of Southampton, fell victim to the same thinking. When he was describing the East End right wing he said it was for ‘those who seek to maintain unimpaired the traditional Orthodoxy of the East European ghetto.16

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Now it is perfectly true that traditional Orthodoxy was practised in East European ghettos – those impoverished, downtrodden, cramped, bedraggled and dilapidated semi-prisons on the continent to which European Jews had been relegated by oppressive Christian regimes. But Sir Moses Montefiore was equally observant on his estate in seaside Ramsgate, as was Samuel Montagu, who became Lord Swaythling. In mansions in Mayfair, in brownstones in New York, on fashionable boulevards in Paris and in great homes as far apart as Holland, Persia and India, the same standards of religious observance would apply if the owners were sufficiently Orthodox, and there were plenty who qualified. To suggest that strict Orthodoxy only applied in ghettos was an unconscious slur which had – and has – no foundation in fact. To associate the East End with a European ghetto was also very unfair to the law as it applied in Britain. For hundreds of years in the Frankfurt ghetto, for instance, Jews were not allowed out of the area on Sunday for fear that the mere sight of them could be offensive to Christians on their sabbath. In ghettos like Venice, where the word comes from, the Jews were ordered to live in the area in 1516 but not allowed to build a synagogue. When permission was finally granted, a condition was that the synagogue had to be built on the first floor so that its entrance wasn’t on the street, which was considered likely to be unacceptable to their Christian neighbours. These regulations were in spite of the fact that the Jews had been allowed back to live in Venice again because the faltering Venetian economy needed their skills. In many ghettos the Jews were subject to discriminatory taxation This never happened in Britain after the Restoration, although the building of several cathedrals in medieval times, before the Expulsion, was substantially financed by special taxation on the Jewish community. The fact remained that the Victorian East End of London was in no way a government controlled ghetto. Nevertheless, Hermann Adler severely criticized the standards of behaviour of the immigrant Jews in the East End. If I could add a personal note here, it did occur to me that the Chief Rabbi was talking about my paternal grandfather. My ancestor was one of those who fled Russian Poland in the 1880s to avoid the pogroms and the mandatory conscription into the Russian army, which could become a 25-year stint. Grandpa Albert chose to get out. He was a tailor and set up a workshop in a small London side street. My father had to leave school when he was 12 to go into the workshop to help support the family. Grandpa Albert was certainly illiterate in English; he could write his name but that was all. My grandmother took care of

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anything else. Of course, Grandpa Albert could say his prayers fluently in Hebrew. He spoke Yiddish at home because that was the language the immigrants had in common. He was a good tailor. The average workshop looked like a tumbledown attic on a bad day, as far as its decoration was concerned, but Grandpa cut clothes well enough to make some of the uniforms for the coronation of Edward VII. My grandmother kept her home meticulously clean. It may have been shabby but my father always remembered that it was spotless. Unsanitary would have been unthinkable. It would have been no use, however, suggesting that the workshop could be smartened up as the first priority was to earn enough to feed the family. The dole was only made available to the unemployed in 1911. Before that, if you were unemployed, you had to rely on charity, or have the family suffer from malnutrition and the medical conditions which came from it. When Nathan Marcus Adler visited the poor, which he did regularly during his ministry, he would always give the family enough money to buy breakfast the next day. When there was enough to feed the family, the next necessity was coal to keep them warm in the winter. Only after those two necessities had been taken care of, could attention be turned to clothing for the children. There often wasn’t enough to buy them shoes. To make things even more difficult, my father walked to school as a child with a brick in his cap in case he was attacked by the local Irish children. That was the reality of life for immigrants, and my grandfather was one of the luckier ones; those who slaved in the sweatshops were old men long before their time. To Jews brought up like Hermann Adler, this was a world they had never known. They found it difficult to appreciate that there was no time for the great mass of immigrant Jews to be cultured, there was no money to repaint the home or replace the frayed furniture to make it more civilized. The family would be packed into as little space as possible to save rent. In the East End, though, in times of trouble, there was still the synagogue. In a scruffy room, or even in the home of a congregant, a member’s reputation would depend on his level of observance of the laws of Judaism. He was surrounded by a congregation which generally came from his part of the world in Eastern Europe, along with his friends and relatives. With difficulty, he could even get a loan to help him over the bad times, and – most important of all – he belonged. The Jews who were members of the major United Synagogues in the East End – the Great, the Hambro’ and the New – would have accepted the immigrants as members, subject to their knowing their alleged place as

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newcomers and simple congregants, rather than helping the rich families run the synagogue. The original members were also not too certain about the appearance of the newcomers, dressed in those fashions of eighteenthcentury Eastern Europe. The fact was, however, that the immigrants couldn’t afford the annual membership fees and spoke little or no English. In such grand synagogues they didn’t belong, although they could, of course, attend any service. Indeed, because of its foreign connotations, Yiddish was generally looked down upon and called ‘the jargon’. Lord Rothschild was particularly hard on it. It was guilt by association; still too obviously common, although Yiddish has a rich literature produced over the centuries. When the Federation of Synagogues was formed by Samuel Montagu, its second spiritual leader was Rabbi Werner (1836-1912). After 20 years in the country, he still didn’t speak English. In his world there was no need as everybody got along perfectly well in Yiddish. It was hard to establish common cultural ground. The immigrants disliked the richer Jews for being rich, patronizing and less observant than they were. While this may have been true, in fairness the rich were also generous to a fault. The number of Jewish charities aimed at alleviating the poverty of the immigrants was a credit to the community. In addition, although it would only alleviate a small part of the problem, from 1881-1914 the Board of Guardians provided 1,759 loans to the poor, totalling £220,000 (in today’s money at least £22 million). Baroness de Hirsch was just one benefactor, providing three million French francs (about £7.5 million). Hermann Adler spoke on behalf of the East End poor on innumerable occasions. The Jewish leaders sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to try to help. The Rothschilds started the 4 Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company in 1885 to build better houses, with a 4 per cent dividend for the investors, a half per cent over the return on government securities: Demolition was the surest cure for the ills found in most of the Jewish immigrants houses…With Rothschild as Chairman and prime mover, the capital was speedily raised…Each had two rooms, shared a toilet and kitchen with the adjacent flat…and tenants paid about 25p to 30p a week. These grey stone houses were drab and draughty, but they were also solid and sanitary.17 It wasn’t surprising that the money was found for a speculative venture; Alfred Rothschild was a governor of the Bank of England. It wasn’t just Jews either. At the Mansion House there was another group, the Association for

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Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, and Adler remained Vice-President of that organization as well. Grandpa Albert started the family tradition of supporting the United Synagogue. My father sang in the choir and later served as a warden of the Central Synagogue for 15 years. He never said if he was paid as a choir boy. He joined the army in 1914 as a private to earn more money than Grandpa Albert could pay him in the workshop. As Grandpa had come from Russia to avoid military service, he was furious and didn’t speak to him for three years; cultures clashed. They were reconciled before my grandfather died at the age of 56 in 1920 and my grandmother ended her life in a basement flat in Willesden. It was shabby, but remained impeccable until she was too old to cope. My mother’s side of the family arrived in Wales after the Napoleonic Wars. Great Great Grandpa Solomon is in the 1820 census. His son, my great grandfather, started life as a pedlar with a pushcart around the Welsh valleys. It was a typical Jewish occupation in Eastern Europe, but it was dangerous on the roads there in the winter. So the Jews got wood from the nearby forests and made rough furniture for sale in the spring. It was following in that tradition that Grandpa Joe stopped peddling and started a small furniture shop. When he was in his sixties, hire purchase became popular – pay a small deposit for the goods and pay off the rest over two years. Great Grandpa made a fortune. He left £2 million to his children when he died in 1949. My grandfather blew his inheritance on the horses – the Jewish disease – and went bankrupt. One of his nephews, however, started a property company and rebuilt much of Plymouth after it was savaged by the bombing during the Second World War. He also won the Derby and finished up a senior member of the Jockey Club. We completely lost touch with Grandpa Albert’s family in what became Poland. They presumably all died in the Holocaust. The family continues to belong to the United Synagogue. So, on both sides of the family, we were part of Hermann Adler’s community. If they were still alive today, the ancestors would have been pleased that the problems faced by the immigrants in their days were eventually resolved in the majority of cases by their descendants. The Reform movement said the United Synagogue was too Orthodox and the strictly Orthodox Machzikei Hadath said it wasn’t religious enough. The United Synagogue members liked the situation pretty well the way it was. As Britain was a middle-of-the-road constitutional democracy, so was the United Synagogue.

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The Liberal political party was to discover, when they had a majority of over 300 in the House of Commons at the General Election in 1906, that the House of Lords was capable of frustrating the passing of their legislation. Similarly, as the members of the United Synagogue knew, the important Jewish families had the ability to remain in office and retain control for very long periods, even if they were only a tiny minority on the councils. There was respect and deference for both the members of the House of Lords among the public and, in the community, for the interrelated rich Jewish gentry. Because of his upper-class connections Adler was part of the gentry and was, primarily, concerned to see that the Jews were treated like everybody else in the country. He was invited to dinner by the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, in 1906. The Aliens Act, however, could have been the first step to treating the East Enders differently. In 1908 a dinner was held to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Jewish Relief (Oath) Act which cleared the way for Jews to sit in parliament in 1858. The Chief Rabbi took the opportunity to remind the audience of the Mosaic ordinance ‘Ye shall have one manner of law for the stranger, as for one of your own country’. Equality under the law, for those who weren’t brought up to the state religion. Another piece of legislation at least a thousand years ahead of its time in the sixth century Talmud! It certainly did not apply in many parts of Europe in Adler’s time and from 1903-1906 there was another major series of pogroms, far more damaging even than the 200 which occurred in the 1880s. Over 2,500 Jews were killed in a pogrom in Odessa in 1903 and over 60 towns and over 600 villages in Russia suffered from the brutality. In Northern Ukraine 800 Jews died and, of course, the persecution also included rape, vandalism, the pillaging of 600 stores in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, in 1903 and the destruction of 1,500 homes. The pogrom in Kishinev aroused worldwide attention and American Jewry raised the finance to support the remnants of the Kishinev community and help them emigrate to America. What particularly angered the international media was that the police and army made no attempt to quell the pogrom, and the fact that the mob was led by priests calling for the death of the Jews. Adler was prepared to support those Zionists and Socialists who remained Orthodox, but it didn’t take a genius to recognize that the tenets of Karl Marx left little room for either the Oral or Written laws. Under any circumstances, though, Adler was unlikely to have had left-wing views. He wasn’t in favour of any form of class war, no matter how well intentioned

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the demonstrations, riots and marches might be. As he once dryly pointed out, ‘it is not my intention to seek temporary hospitality in one of Her Majesty’s prisons’. Indeed, it was in 1898 that he wrote to the Jewish congregation in Plymouth to ask them to support the non-Jewish Conservative candidate rather than the Jewish Liberal one. Socialism was in its infancy in Britain in Adler’s time. Keir Hardie was trying to found a party for the workers which could have representation in parliament, but his thinking was in no way revolutionary. On the other hand the immigrant socialists from Russia and Poland had been fighting for their lives against pogroms. It was suggested that half the socialist revolutionaries were Jews, but Chaim Weizmann went on record as suggesting that this was an underestimate.18 One area in which it was mostly the poor who suffered was the employment of children. A study of the incidence of child crime concluded, not surprisingly, that most of those arrested were from poor families. Here it wasn’t the Chief Rabbi himself who was involved, but his daughter, Nettie (Henrietta). Women have had to fight hard for recognition in public life and one of those who have been long forgotten is Hermann’s daughter. By occupation she was a school manager for the London School Board and was a member of the London Education Board from 1905. She was also honorary secretary for the Committee on Wage Earning Children from 1899-1946. The treatment of children, who were needed to work for a living to help support their families, was often a disgrace. In her role as Hon. Sec. Nettie took a delegation to call on the President of the Board of Education, Sir John Gorst, with details of no less than 7,000 child workers which had been collected. It was a passionate cause for Nettie and throughout her life she campaigned to stop child labour. Gorst responded by piloting the 1906 Education (Provision of Meals) Act through parliament on the grounds that if the children were hungry, they couldn’t take advantage of their education. What particularly appalled Nettie was the treatment of children who fell foul of the law. In 1908 she wrote a pamphlet called ‘Separate Courts of Justice for Children, Probation and Probation Officers’. She had done her research very carefully, citing examples from Germany, Australia, Canada, the United States, Scotland and Ireland. It seems hardly believable, but it wasn’t exceptional that she recorded that a boy of nine had been sent to prison for stealing fruit. There were 727 children in adult prisons in Britain in 1906-7. What Nettie wanted first was Children’s Courts. There was one established in Birmingham in 1905 and the number of children imprisoned

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had fallen from 166 in 1904 to 20 in 1905. She also wanted to stop children on remand being put into police station cells where they might come into contact with hardened criminals. Over 300 children under 16 were detained in London police cells in 1907; 43 of them under 10 and 81 between 10 and 13. A third major change Nettie strove for was the appointment of probation officers, to take an interest in the children and try to help them with their problems. In 1908 Herbert Samuel, from the Home Office, introduced a Childrens’ Bill in Parliament for ‘the protection of children and young persons, reformatories and industrial schools and juvenile offenders, and otherwise to amend the law with respect to children and young persons’. The bill included everything that Nettie wanted. She might well have known Samuel; he came from an old established Orthodox London Jewish family and his wife was a good friend of Haham Gaster’s wife. It seems highly likely that they would have met socially. The Childrens’ Bill passed and trained probation officers were created. The legislation ensured that no child under 14 would be imprisoned in future, and those between 14 and 16 only in exceptional circumstances. Separate places of detention would be provided for those arrested or on remand. Juvenile courts were set up all over the country and training for probation officers became mandatory. Nettie could be well pleased and her father would have been very proud of her. He was, himself, Vice President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which would have had Nettie’s warm approval. It would have made up for the argument they had over the financing of faith schools a few years before. Nettie was publicly against faith school finance as being divisive, while the Chief Rabbi was, naturally, all in favour. Very unusually for a woman at the time, Nettie then went into politics. When the Liberals set up the London County Council in 1910 there was nothing to stop a woman standing for election and Nettie won the Hackney Central ward for the Progressive party; one of only two women to do so. She also served on the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Association and was a governor of the Dalston County and Hackney Downs schools, as well as the Hackney Technical Institute. She became highly regarded and was appointed the Deputy Chair of the LCC in 1922-1923. When she finally lost an election in 1931 she was still co-opted for the LCC Public Health Committee from 1931-1934. Jewish immigrants were accused of reducing the wages of working-class people in the East End. That is still remembered but Nettie’s contribution to the abolition of child prisoners is forgotten.

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Adler turned 70 in 1909 and this roughly coincided with his 20 years in office after his father’s death. It was a very notable year for him, as he not only received the CVO from Edward VII, but also an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford. Membership of the Royal Victorian Order was in the gift of the monarch and Edward VII often used it as an inexpensive way of rewarding those who had done him favours, particularly when he had financial problems. Adler, however, had been no more than a very loyal subject, so his appointment to the Order was a recognition of his contribution to the moral standards of the country. The United Synagogue created a special committee to organize a community celebration of the Chief Rabbi’s 70th birthday. A letter was sent in March 1909 to all concerned. Adler had said he didn’t want anything that cost more than a nominal amount. He did want a reception though, where he could greet members of the community including friends from the provinces. So Leopold de Rothschild lent his house at Gunnersbury Park and Lord and Lady Rothschild agreed to receive and entertain the guests of their cousin. The clergy and members of the United Synagogue were invited, plus representatives of Jewish institutions, and the reception was fixed for the afternoon. The Church was well represented by General Booth of the Salvation Army and the Bishop of Winchester. It was decided to give the Chief Rabbi a portrait and an album in which everybody could write a sentence or two, suitably bound and illuminated. In addition there would be a piece of silver plate. Any surplus from the fund they were raising would go to a communal objective. Contributions were fixed at 12.5p to £10.50. As could be confidently expected, everything went off splendidly. There was a great deal of press coverage for his birthday and Edward VII sent him his own message of congratulations, which was widely reported. Delegations from the Board of Deputies and many other Jewish organizations called to offer their best wishes and among the gifts was the album of copper and silver from the Board, an ethrog casket from the Swansea community and a seventeenth century antique pair of candelabra from Jews’ College. Even in the midst of the celebration month, however, there was still work to be done. The Chief Rabbi had considered approaches for him to make yahrzeit, the annual memorial to close relatives who had died, a more elaborate occasion for the mourners.19 Adler advised that after the service, the family should in future stay on in the synagogue and read the memorial prayers for the dead.

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It is often said that Adler’s last years were dogged by dissension. It certainly wasn’t the case in 1909, by which time even the immigrant groups had come to terms with the Chief Rabbi. Although there are always differences of opinion in any large organization, with Lord Rothschild as the senior lay figure in the community the Chief Rabbi’s ultimate spiritual authority continued to be under no real threat. Neither was his status as the representative of the community, where the wider world was concerned. When Florence Nightingale died in 1910, it was to the Chief Rabbi that Lady Marcus Beresford turned for support for the memorial fund. Towards the end Adler did tire. In 1911 when he was over 70, he saw that what ‘must press itself on every thoughtful mind is that a measure of decentralization has become requisite’. Because of his age Adler started to find visits to the provinces increasingly burdensome. He had delegated many visits to his Dayanim, but Reinowitz had died in 1893 and Spiers in 1901. The two new Dayanim were less highly regarded and discussions about Adler’s inevitable successor started to consider the future of the Chief Rabbinate itself. While he lived, though, they would be no more than murmurings. An energetic successor, anyway, might well be less convinced of the need for such a move. What actually happened was that Adler was succeeded by Joseph Herman Hertz, who was his own man and kept everything centralized to the benefit of the community. Unlike the cooperating team of Adler and Montefore and Adler and Rothschild, the relationship between Hertz and Waley Cohen would be tempestuous. Building teams can be a difficult exercise. When he was in his last year, Adler also made a plea that his successor should be able to win the support of the Jews in the East End better than he had (see Appendix C). In this respect, Hertz had known the Eastern European Jews well when he was brought up in New York and he found it easier than his predecessor to win them over. Adler’s son, Alfred, died in November 1910. In February 1911 Marcus, his older brother, passed away, and the Chief Rabbi died of heart failure in July the same year. It was a terrible year for the family. Hermann had seen the end coming, and two days after Marcus’ passing he wrote a farewell message to his family and community. It began: The death of my dear brother, Marcus, admonishes me to write these few lines with full trust in the goodness of Almighty G-d who I have endeavoured to serve all my life, though fully conscious of my weakness and imperfections.

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He spoke movingly to, and of, his wife and children and ended: I confess I think of Anglo-Jewry with much misgiving…I am strongly convinced that to ensure the welfare of Judaism in this country, it is essential that a successor in the Rabbinate should be appointed with the least possible delay after my demise. Knowing how demanding the burden was, he went on: He must be a strong personality, strong in piety and learning, one who will be equally acceptable to the East and the West, and one who will preserve a good and cordial understanding between the East and the West, the native and the immigrants. He would also have to maintain the acceptability of the Chief Rabbi among the general public, which was one of Adler’s great achievements. There was about the office a distinct English flavour. Its centralization, the Broad church nature of what lay within, the reasonableness of style and speech, the social stability which it seemed to represent, all these gave to the office in the late 19th century an unprecedented prestige.20 One of his last public duties was the consecration of the West Ham Synagogue in April, and in his address he took the opportunity of reminding the congregation that their duty was to adopt the spirits and habits of Englishmen without sacrificing the ideals and teachings of Judaism. It was the lesson he had been advocating ever since he first spoke at the Swansea Synagogue consecration in place of his father. It was reported that this was his 2,726th sermon.

Notes 1. Allfrey, Anthony, Edward VII and his Jewish Court (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p.178. 2. Athenaeum Club archive. 3. Ibid. 4. The Lancet, 16 December 1905, pp.1796-7. 5. Freeland, E. Harding, The Lancet, 29 December 1900, p.1871. 6. Apple, Raymond, Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, June 2013, vol: XXI,Part 2.

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7. Ibid., Part 3. 8. Australian Hebrew Standard, 12 January 1900. 9. Apple, Raymond, Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, June 2013, vol: XXI, Part 2. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid 12. Taylor, Derek, British Chief Rabbis, 1664-2006 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), p.228. 13. Ibid., p230. 14. University of Southampton, Hermann Adler archive. 15. Homa, Bernard, A Fortress in Anglo-Jewry (London: Shapiro Vallentine, 1953). 17. Ibid. 16. Freedman, Maurice, A Minority in Britain (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1955). 17. Ibid. 18. Allfrey, Anthony, Edward VII and his Jewish Court (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p.178. 19. Yahrzeit is the anniversary of the death of a loved one when mourners say prayers for the departed. 20. Finestein, Israel, Jewish Society in Victorian England (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993), p.101.

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7. The 1889 procession needed promoting.

8. The Ethrog case from the Swansea community on the Chief Rabbi’s seventieth birthday.

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11 Liberals and Socialists At the turn of the twentieth century both Adler and Upper Berkeley Street were increasingly concerned about the drop in synagogue attendance among the communities outside the East End of London. The Daily News estimated that only 25 per cent of the West End Jews went to Synagogue even on the first day of Passover. In the East End the figure was only 50 per cent. Adler had done his best to make the services more attractive. With his encouragement, the United Synagogue services had become more decorous, the standard of sermons had markedly improved and more provincial and West End synagogues had been built to cut down the walking time to Sabbath services. The Singer Prayer Book was a great improvement on past publications and Jews’ College was producing better trained ministers for both United Synagogues and those in the provinces. Nevertheless, synagogue attendances were still dropping. Upper Berkeley Street is a very substantial and impressive building but on one Sabbath morning it was officially reported as having only 18 congregants. The problem was the attitude to religion of the members of the communities themselves. There is an old Rabbinic saying ‘forget not the Lord in the days of thy youth’, and this certainly applied to the younger generation in Hermann Adler’s time. It is common for most people to consider, up to the age of about 50, that they are immortal. The young Jews had achieved emancipation, they spoke English as well as their non-Jewish neighbours and for a considerable number there was a serious generation gap. Many of their parents could be seen as holding them back by being foreign and, quite possibly, illiterate and unfashionable. There is a pendulum theory in history by which generations revolt against the practices they inherit. The Puritanism of Cromwell’s time was followed by the topless court of Charles II. The Regency bucks, followed by the Victorians modestly covering the legs of pianos. Much of the younger Jewish generation, from the leading families in Victorian times, drifted away over the years.

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Many community leaders despaired of improving the situation, but one senior member saw an opportunity to achieve two of his lifetime objectives; to bring the disaffected back to Judaism and to change – or as he saw it – to modernize the services to a greater extent than the Reform synagogues had ever attempted, or indeed wanted. The result was the Liberal Synagogue movement. It was the creation of Claude Montefiore (1858-1938), Moses Montefiore’s great-nephew, and Lily Montagu (1873-1963), the daughter of Samuel Montagu the strictly Orthodox founder of the Federation. Sir Moses would not have approved and neither did Montagu, but their descendants had minds of their own. Their Liberal Judaism was designed to be to the left of the Reform movement. Montefiore had, in fact, become a member of the Upper Berkeley Street congregation in 1890 and served on their Board of Directors, but departed their ranks because he did not consider their theology radical enough. Certainly, the relationship between Upper Berkeley Street and the United Synagogue was now acceptably amicable. United Synagogue representatives attended the 50th anniversary service of Upper Berkeley Street, even if Adler and the Haham didn’t. In 1895 the Reformers and the Sephardim agreed to jointly purchase land for a cemetery which they still share in Golders Green. Of course, the Talmud lays down that Jewish cemeteries have to be in the countryside, but Golders Green qualified as it comprised Hampstead Heath and rural uncultivated fields until the Underground reached the district years later. The views of Claude Montefiore were never going to be ignored. Within Jewry his family could not have been more distinguished, built on the fame of Sir Moses Montefiore, for many years the lay leader of the community. Personalities, though, develop from early childhood and Montefiore was no different. He was a revolutionary thinker from a very early age. During his lifetime he attacked a considerable number of new, as well as long established institutions. He was a noted scholar, a highly regarded philanthropist and a major figure in many Jewish organizations. His basic motivation would, however, appear to be a need to establish his personal status in the world in which he found himself. To begin with, he was related to towering figures in Jewish life. He was a great-nephew of Sir Moses and he had Rothschild relatives. He was from a rich family, but he couldn’t claim credit for that. He also couldn’t become a major figure in school surroundings either, because, after suffering tuberculosis, he had to be educated at home. His home tutors were antiZionists and Protestants.

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Certainly, he had a brilliant mind and he achieved a first-class Classics degree at Oxford in 1881. His major influence there was the Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett, who was famous for his ‘new’ Biblical criticism. Jowett was a theologian and translator of Plato. He was averse to dogma and bias; he considered there to be elements of both in the Old and New Testaments and wanted their teaching ‘modernized’, which meant agreeing with his views. He described Judaism as ‘in an intellectual ghetto’. Jowett became Montefiore’s guru. He described Jowett as: ‘one to whom in matters of religion, I owe more than to any other living man’. He wouldn’t be the last major influence though. Throughout the period, the contrasting claims of Hellenic, Roman and Jewish cultures to predominance was another constant intellectual argument. Influenced by Jowett, Montefiore came to the view that Judaism was not handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai and that the teaching of the prophets was more important than the Pentateuch. As far as the Greeks were concerned, he said that ‘Israel has something to learn from Greece. Both Greek and Hebrew spiritualities are immortal yet neither can exist in full potency without the other.’ The Greeks had influenced Judaism a great deal; Synagogue, Bible and Pentateuch all come from the Greek and Rabbis in the time of the Greek hegemony had to maintain Judaism in the face of the predominant Greek culture. Adler’s view was that both Greece and Rome were ‘addicted to idolatry and the gratification of the senses’. In the future Montefiore would publicize his alternative views in hundreds of pamphlets. Even so Montefiore would always come down on the Jewish side in the Hellenic/Jewish arguments and he was the first Jewish scholar to write a critique of the Synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. He spoke in favour of Rabbinism and went to Germany in 1881 after Oxford to train to be a Reform Rabbi at the Berlin Hochschule für die wissenschaft des Judentums, under Rabbis Abraham Geiger and Samuel Holdesheimer. His tutor in Rabbinics was a Rumanian Rabbi, Solomon Schechter, and when he came back to London he brought Schechter with him as his tutor and said of him: To Mr Schechter I owe more than I can adequately express here. My whole conception of the law and its place in Jewish religion and life is largely the fact of his teaching and expertise. Montefiore now felt that Judaism was too rigid in its ordinances. He found much to praise in the New Testament and wanted the two religions to learn from each other. There were certain ideas in Christianity with which

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Montefiore agreed, and he even wanted to include these parts of the New Testament in the Jewish scriptures. This was approaching extreme radicalism. Montefiore always believed that Judaism’s most pressing and primary need was the maintenance of Jewish identity, which was the crucial argument for keeping the new generation within the fold. He was not going to rely on the Almighty’s promise in Deuteronomy that the Jews would survive. He also couldn’t believe in the miracles in the Bible being a stimulus to faith. Intellectuals often wanted more solid evidence. Sometimes it is available. As Moses saw, there is a bush in the Sinai desert that burns without being consumed; its coating of oil burns but the body of the bush is unaffected. Beyond that, he considered that everybody should be able to decide what they believed in, as a matter of personal choice and according to their conscience. As his theological beliefs developed he found little difference between human reason and divine inspiration. For his part, monotheism and the moral law were the essential foundations, not the laws in the Talmud. It was a refrain which had echoed through the centuries. The problem many intellectuals have with faith is that they have to accept they are not in control. That there is no way of proving that the laws that have come down through the generations are correct. There is no proof and, like scientists, for many intellectuals proof is essential. In 1888 Montefiore started a publication called the Jewish Quarterly Review, which had a very intellectual content; it would air his views and criticize many of the aspects of traditional Judaism, which Adler was determined to protect. Becoming a Reform Rabbi did not, however, offer Montefiore the prospect of a superior position in society. He settled for becoming a very independent thinker, creating his own movement of which he remained the lay leader for the rest of his life. Montefiore’s wider theological objectives were manifold, although they centred on achieving a closer relationship between Judaism and Christianity. It was Montefiore’s belief that Judaism emerged, not from Mount Sinai, but from the principles and uses of ancient Biblical tribes, among whom the Israelites had lived. It was a view in direct opposition to the basis on which the traditional synagogue had been founded. As Montefiore said: ‘The Bible contains the highest truth, but not every word in the Bible is true.’ He used his wealth to support many good causes and believed strongly in his revolutionary views. His charitable work made him much admired, but this was married to opposing other philosophies in Jewish society, from

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the Orthodox position to Zionism. While he became highly respected, his Liberal synagogue would never achieve the support, the gaining of which he had dedicated so many years of his life. Even today Liberal Jews are less than 10 per cent of the British community. As a Montefiore and twenty years younger than Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi would have known him as a child and, even though they would greatly differ in their religious views in the years to come, they remained friends. They had in common that they were both anti-Zionist and in their opposition to Theodor Herzl they sang off the same hymn sheet. They also were keenly aware of the need to organize proper religious education for the children of the immigrants in the East End. Where Montefiore wanted the community to be Jewish, religious and united, Adler denounced it, with characteristic wit, as ‘unJewish, irreligious and disunited’. Samuel Montagu didn’t need to be pragmatic and took the Federation out of the Jewish Religious Education Board because of senior Reform representation among its officers. Adler, on the other hand, was always realistic about the implications of his work. He was not going to lose Montefiore’s financial support for the creation of Hebrew classes and the payment of the teachers, just because his theological views had to be opposed from the pulpit. Montefiore’s public image was of a gentle, prudent and self-effacing scholar. For a man who consistently tore up the Orthodox and Reform rule book this could have been a pose; that of a man who was always to be found backing into the limelight. Certainly the way he delivered his arguments made his words more forceful than his image. Montefiore had made his personal position clear when he was asked to give the Hibbert lectures in 1892. These talks were the creation of Robert Hibbert in 1847. Hibbert was a non-conformist who was devoted to ‘the unfettered exercise of private judgment in matters of religion’. Initially, though, Montefiore’s main emphasis was firmly on the need to bring back to the faith the young people who were drifting away. He was very much a family man, but he had lost his first wife in 1889. He married his second wife, Florence Fyfe Brereton Ward, the Vice-Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, at Upper Berkeley Street after her conversion by Morris Joseph. He was in his forties but he still identified with the younger generation. Of course, his wish to make Judaism more attractive to the uncommitted was favoured by all the segments of the community. The problem was how to achieve it. Montefiore was a persuasive advocate and initially his organizing committee included three United Synagogue ministers – Simeon Singer,

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Aaron Green and Joseph Stern. Morris Joseph was also prepared to join the ruling body of what was named the Jewish Religious Union. Other supporters initially were Albert Jessel, a United Synagogue Vice President and Felix Davis, the United Synagogue treasurer. Singer’s views were well known. He had preached in a Reform Synagogue in Manchester on the Sabbath in 1893, though he was criticized for doing so. A. A. Green at the Hampstead Synagogue was a more unexpected advocate. Green was a prolific writer in the Jewish Chronicle and the unofficial ambassador to his Christian neighbours. He referred to Biblical criticism in his sermons, where the custom was to consider it as strictly historical comment. He was also against the sacrificial prayers and was in favour of women being counted as part of a minyan (ten male Jews are needed to make a quorum, enabling all the prayers to be recited). Since, however, he acknowledged Adler’s final authority on all these subjects, the two remained colleagues; losing two ministers at Hampstead would have been very embarrassing. The co-founder of the new movement was Lily Montagu, who was the sixth child of ten in the family of Samuel Montagu. Just as her father was devoted to helping the East End immigrants, so Lily Montagu at the early age of 19 set up the West Central Jewish Girls Club, which she later made into the Jewish Girls Brigade. Montagu was a feminist and a member of the 1912 Jewish League for Women Suffrage. At this time both the suffragettes and White Slavery were making the status of women in society more of an issue in the nation’s culture. The Westminster Review, in particular, was questioning the position of women in Judaism. The Montagus would be the only family who could lay claim to starting two new Jewish movements in Britain; at both ends of the spectrum were the Federation and the Liberals. Lily Montagu had many of the attributes of her father. She was determined to achieve her objectives and she was successful on many occasions. For instance, she eventually got men and women sitting together in Progressive synagogues. Her girls’ clubs in the East End did a lot of good. She also had her failures; her father never agreed with her and they quarrelled on religious matters. Her movement never attracted the support she craved and she was reduced to insisting that the Jewish Religious Union: ‘desired to prove that Judaism was a living force capable of affecting modern life and not dependent on the survival of oriental customs’.1 To try to reduce the Talmud to ‘oriental customs’ was fatuous. Nevertheless, while Adler did not approve of the Jewish Religious Union,

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he allowed Montagu to begin monthly children’s services at the New West End Synagogue in 1906. Montagu also wrote Prayers for Jewish Workgirls and Hebrew and English Prayers for Young Children, but she eventually resigned as Director of the children’s services. As the Liberal Movement developed, Lily Montagu became a minister in the Liberal congregation and would give her first sermon in 1915. She was always close to Montefiore and it was widely believed to be a disappointment to her that he chose to marry Florence Ward. Though much criticized, Montagu was a very determined character and it would be at her instigation that the Liberal Synagogue adopted mixed seating in the 1920s. She was appointed an OBE in 1937 and a CBE in 1955. She was buried in the Federation’s Edmonton Cemetery and the Orthodox minister, Ephraim Levine delivered the eulogy. Allied to Montefiore and Montagu was Israel Abrahams (1858-1925), the son of Barnett Abrahams, who had been the Principal at Jews’ College until his untimely death. Abrahams was Simeon Singer’s son-in-law, another powerful intellect and his eventual rejection of Orthodoxy might have been his way of condemning the Almighty for depriving his family of their father. Emotional judgments can be as powerful as intellectual argument. Abrahams would become well known for his history The Jews in the Middle Ages. Educated at Jews’ College and University College, London, he became the senior lecturer at Jews’ College in 1900 before abandoning Orthodoxy. He became Honorary Secretary of the Jewish Historical Society of England and was also the co-founder of the Jewish Guardian. In 1895 he wrote Aspects of Judaism with Montefiore. The development of Jewish Liberal thinking was still in the future. It is said the if you want something done, ask a busy man, and Abrahams also became the joint editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review which Montefiore produced to publicize his views. Eventually, when Solomon Schechter went to New York to the Jewish Theological College, Abrahams took his place in 1902 as Reader of Talmud and Rabbinical literature at Cambridge. He always believed that Biblical criticism should influence the conduct of the religion. Montefiore’s new movement started with the creation of afternoon services on the Sabbath. There would be a modified mincha (afternoon) service, a scriptural reading, a psalm and a prayer in English. There would also be an organ and a mixed choir. Half the prayers would be in English and men and women sat together. It wasn’t surprising, therefore that, at this point, when he learned of the proposed form and content of the services,

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Adler refused to allow Montefiore the use of any of his synagogues. Montefiore then turned instead to the Reform for support, but they set down nine conditions for their cooperation, including the separate seating of the sexes and for the key prayers to be in Hebrew. When Montefiore wouldn’t guarantee to observe the restrictions, the Reform also refused to allow him the use of Upper Berkeley Street. The sexes wouldn’t sit together at Upper Berkeley Street for a further 30 years. Montefiore, though, had no intention of giving up. Instead the new afternoon services were held in town halls. It was very disappointing that the hoped-for younger generation still failed to materialize. The appeal was much more to elderly ladies who could follow the proceedings far better than from an upper floor in a synagogue. The initial idea was to have the Saturday afternoon services, not in competition with the existing Orthodox Sabbath services, but as supplementary to them. The first was scheduled for February 1902. The eventual service was conducted by Simeon Singer and about 300400 people came to hear a mixture of prayers and readings, mostly in English. The Jewish Chronicle sent a representative, who reported that he found the service more akin to that of a church. The absence of an Ark could be excused by the fact that Adler had forbidden any United Synagogue to be the setting. The absence of a Sefer Torah was, however, a gap which would never have been permanently tolerated in an Orthodox synagogue. Furthermore, there was an organ which Adler had forbidden at Hampstead and the mixed seating would have been another totally unacceptable innovation in an Orthodox synagogue. A few years later, there would be a proposal at Upper Berkeley Street that they should also introduce mixed seating but, at that stage, it was rejected out of hand. Although in retrospect the Liberal Synagogue could be seen as a new segment of the community, it was hardly more noticeable at the time than one large East End chevra. When the novelty of Montefiore’s advocacy had worn off, the afternoon services petered out after three years and the support of the few United Synagogue ministers was withdrawn. To make his Sabbath services easier to attend, in 1903 Montefiore even considered changing the Sabbath day to Sunday but couldn’t even agree himself with such a radical move. He did include more English in the services and shortened the Sabbath service by half an hour, but with little effect on attendances. No Liberal congregation emerged outside London and, at the end of his life, Montefiore was very upset that his views had garnered so little

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support. To his chagrin the movement remained insignificant numerically. By 1905 it only had just over 400 members. But then, as his former tutor Solomon Schechter had said, ‘for what the whole thing means is not Liberal Judaism but Liberal Christianity’. When Schechter became the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in later life, he didn’t like to be reminded of his contribution towards Montefiore’s theological education. In his day though, Montefiore was considered a major intellectual figure and was certainly a great philanthropist. In 1902 he was the second largest financial contributor to the funds of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. In spite of setting up in competition to both the Orthodox and the Reform, he was elected President of the Jewish Historical Society of England and in 1898 of the Anglo-Jewish Association. He also served on the Council of Jews’ College and the Jewish Religious Education Board. In 1896 over 2,000 Jewish children were being educated at Jewish Infant Schools and Montefiore became the President of their institution as well. In the wider world, he would be President of University College, Southampton from 1913-1934. Montefiore revelled in being a revolutionary. He despised hunting, while the Rothschilds enthusiastically rode to hounds. He disliked country weekends and he considered that alcohol corroded moral character.2 He felt that gambling destroyed both the winners and the losers, and he preached a seriously moral code of behaviour. All this was against fashionable culture, but it might well have been the base for why he stayed friendly with Adler. They would have both agreed with Adler’s reminding the audience at the JREB prize-giving of what Montefiore had said about minorities in 1905: Every Jewish scamp, every Jewish money-lender, every Jewish cheat, does more harm to Judaism than a Christian scamp, a Christian money-lender, a Christian cheat does to Christianity…that is the necessary condition of minorities. If the Jewish Religious Union appealed to members of the West End communities, it was primarily to middle-class Jews. The East End Jews were not interested at all. If the chevras in the East End were the epitome of immigrant communities who could be labelled common, the Liberal gathering would attract the upwardly mobile. The class distinctions were well in place as usual. Of course, Victorian morality was often only a surface image. Mistresses, gambling and alcoholism were widespread in the upper classes, while publicly condemned.

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Montefiore also addressed the wider British community. His subject for his nine well-attended Hibbert lectures in London and Oxford, was ‘The Origins and growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews’. In the lectures he strongly defended Rabbinism as a power for good, and put the case against St Paul’s criticism of Jewish law. Even so, his support for the right of the individual to make up his own mind in religious matters, his ‘unfettered exercise’, was never likely to gain Adler’s approval. It was while he was President of the Anglo Jewish Association that Montefiore set down his attitude to Zionism when the Jewish Review was making the case for the movement, Montefiore told the delegates: ‘It is of cardinal importance that you should not seem to commit yourselves to, or in any way in relation with, the Zionist movement.’ The Jewish Religious Union committee agreed to have a new prayer book written, to which Singer, as well as Aaron Green, contributed. Simeon Singer believed strongly in the need to reunite the Upper Berkeley Street and United Synagogues. This was not the first time he had cooperated with Montefiore. In constructing Nathan Marcus Adler’s prayer book, Singer had consulted Montefiore on some of the translations of the prayers. This was acknowledged in the first edition, although not subsequently. There is a case for pique being the eighth deadly sin! While Montefiore improved the English, though, the old Chief Rabbi, of course, retained the final say on every prayer. It was now becoming obvious, as Montefiore had made clear in a manifesto, that what he had in mind was not just another attempt to modify the liturgy, but to create a new movement, whose theology would be the one he had outlined in the Hibbert lectures. Adler reacted to the development of the JRU by giving a sermon in December 1902 with the title ‘The Old Paths’. In it he criticized the new movement unequivocally, but with a great deal of dignity and compassion. He also defended the use of Hebrew for the prayers and pointed put that there had been popular Saturday afternoon services at the Great Synagogue for many years. For his part, Montefiore defined his own position in his book The Old Testament and After. In it he wrote: Liberal Judaism has taken up again, on distinctly Jewish lines, the teachings of the Prophets. It has, we may truly say, put Prophets and Law in a new position and relation to each other. It has religiously emancipated women, and in this respect, as in some other respects, it has become a religion suited to, and fitted for, the western world. It has attempted to denationalize Judaism and to universalize it. It

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has fashioned or adopted new ideas of such moment and significance concerning revelation and inspiration, as well as new ideas concerning authority and freedom. It has boldly and openly faced the new conclusions of history and criticism, and sought to find new adjustments to them. It has attempted to fashion a Judaism which can look Science in the face without flinching, which is independent of the dates and authorship of the Biblical books and of the miracles recorded in them. It has sought to free Judaism from obsolete priestly conceptions. None of this was going to be acceptable to Adler and when it was discovered that the extra element in what became known as the Liberal movement, was going to be the abolition of the need to practise many core Orthodox practices, the Jewish Religious Union found itself very isolated. Both the ministers and the United Synagogue officers eventually withdrew, although Singer was the last to resign, and only after pressure was applied by Samuel Montagu. The attempt, however, to pass a vote of no confidence in the United Synagogue officers who had supported Montefiore was roundly rejected by the Council by 33 votes to 4. Simeon Singer died in 1906 at the age of 59. Montefiore had many arguments with both Adler and his successor, Joseph Herman Hertz but, such was intellectual argument that he remained on friendly terms with both of them. He was also kept on the Board of Jewish Religious Education When he died in 1938 The Times wrote: ‘By his death, Biblical Scholarship, Liberal Judaism, philanthropy and the cause of education have lost a distinguished, generous and broad minded exponent and advice.’ All this was true, but Adler and his successor, Joseph Herman Hertz, had been more effective in retaining the affiliation of the bulk of the community. In 1910, when the Liberal Jewish Synagogue was founded, Adler made his position crystal clear. He said:: A new Judaism is being proclaimed, with many essentials of Judaism left out or whittled down almost to vanishing point. With a stroke of the pen the divine authority of every teacher in Israel is denied…the purpose which actuated the founders of the new faith is no doubt praiseworthy, to prevent Jews by birth from drifting away from Judaism. But what is the method they employ? They annunciate a new Judaism with faith and practice omitted. Wherein does the

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movement differ from Unitarians and from Theistic and Ethical churches? In lieu of reclaiming the drift from us, are they not promoting assimilation and encouraging disloyalty? Like so many other Jewish communities, one core problem the Liberals had to solve was finding a suitable minister. The offered salary of £500 year did not produce any candidates. The American Rabbi Gerson Levi, later President of the Rabbinical Association of Chicago, was just one who turned the job down. The fact was that Rabbis in America were paid far better than those in Britain. As was pointed out, no Rabbi in Britain was paid £1,000 a year, except, of course, the Chief Rabbi and the next best paid United Synagogue officer was the secretary. The Liberal congregation had to cope, but wouldn’t have a Rabbi for many years. It took over a converted chapel in the West End in February 1911, shortly before Adler died, and a magnificent synagogue was built after the First World War opposite Lords cricket ground and opened in 1925. As the years went by, the problems of the immigrants in the East End became more prominent in the minds of the upper and middle classes. Charitable organizations, additional conversionist societies and the Salvation Army, which was founded in 1865, tried to do what they could to ameliorate the problems of poverty and savage working conditions. Social and cultural institutions were created, like the Peoples Palace and Toynbee Hall. They offered classes, concerts, art exhibitions, rambling clubs and many other events to help the immigrant acculturate. The main source of publicity by which to examine the problem areas came in books, pamphlets and the press. All sides of the analysis of the conditions were well represented. Those who blamed the Jewish immigrants were supported by such antisemitic novels as those by the highly popular Anthony Trollope. Those who saw the Jews as victims could look for expression of this view in books such as The Children of the Ghetto by Israel Zangwill. Local events could create antisemitism, such as the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper. Detailed enquiries, like those of Charles Booth, could try to throw light on the real situation. Attention would be stirred by trade unionists such as John Burnett, whose Report to the Board Trade contributed to the setting up of Lord Dunraven’s House of Lords Committee on Sweated Labour. There were antisemitic papers such as The British Weekly and William Thomas Stead usefully exposed child prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette.

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Specific journalists, such as Arnold White, produced antisemitic articles, criticizing British generosity in taking in refugees as sloppy sentimentality. White actually paid some East End Jews to give evidence to the Select Committee on Immigration and Emigration, and ensured that only the most disreputable in appearance were chosen. The Jewish Chronicle commented that ‘their abject misery and haggard appearance spoke volumes of the oppression to which they had been subject before reaching England’. The fault line there, it transpired, was that a number of them had been in the country a long time, and gave false evidence in the hope of being helped financially to reach America. Adler spent a great deal of time in the maelstrom of argument. Where did he stand? The answer became clear when the East End socialists decided to hold a ‘parade’ of the unemployed and sweaters’ victims at the Great Synagogue in February 1889. Adler told the organizers he couldn’t sanction a parade – it was to be held on the Sabbath – and that the Great Synagogue could not be made the scene of a demonstration. He wouldn’t allow the socialist leader to occupy the pulpit and deliver a speech either. He also wouldn’t read out the names of those employers the organizers of the march considered to be treating their workers unjustly. They might well have included some West End congregants. He did agree, however, to give a special sermon at the synagogue afternoon service. A series of lectures at those services was designed for the working classes anyway and Adler said he would be speaking about their daily lives. He took for his text the Biblical words of King David. ‘If thou wilt eat of the labour of thy hands, happy shalt thou be and it shall be well with thee.’ He suggested, however, that many in the congregation: …worked from early morning until far into the night, from five and six o’clock in the morning until eleven or twelve at night, and yet could scarcely eke out maintenance for themselves, their wives and their children…Was it not known that men lay down to die at their work, and that the unhealthy atmosphere in which they laboured prematurely broke down their physical strength. But he would say that it would be far worse for them if there was no employment obtainable. The evidence given before the House of Lords Committee on Sweating revealed the fact that thousands were groaning under the weight of their overtaxed industries…He had no desire to lay too much emphasis on the fact, but only during the previous year he had been so overworked that he had become as

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weak as a child…Wherever there were agitations of the workingclasses there sprang up men who professed to be their friends…but sooner or later they would lead them into difficulties from which it would be almost impossible to extricate themselves…A number of Jews had been allured into accepting the pernicious doctrine that the socialists circulated.3 Adler went on to itemize and dismiss all the socialists’ mantras and then justified his addressing the policies: Perhaps there were some who considered that Socialism was scarcely a subject to deal with in the pulpit, but he would declare that every subject, whatever its character, which affected the happiness of the lives of the people, was holy enough for the pulpit.4 He appealed to them to be grateful: Most of those assembled in this synagogue are not Englishmen but foreigners, who have fled from bitter persecution and have found in England a haven of rest, where they are on perfect equality with their neighbours, and where the life and property of the lowliest are as sacred as those of the highest in the land…[they should] shun those agitators who were the enemies of this country and dangers to its peace and well-being.5 Adler recommended they should join a trade union instead. As could be expected, his views met with a very mixed response in the community. The Socialists were aggrieved. What they were looking for was unqualified support. Another parade – 300-400 strong – was planned for 16 March 1889 and ‘the approaches to the Great Synagogue presented a scene on Sabbath afternoon last quite unparalleled in the history of the Jews of London’.6 This parade too had been widely advertized in the East End, promising another sermon by Adler. It was organized by Louis Lyons, the leader of the Jewish Unemployment Committee which had 10,000 members. Lyons was a dedicated socialist but an incompetent trade union leader. He held office in many minor Jewish trade unions but they seldom lasted for more than a very short time. That Saturday the police were out in force, the approaches to the synagogue were kept clear, and in the room used by the choristers there was a reserve of 50 constables. Adler hadn’t said he would speak this time,

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and the address was actually given by Rev Isaac Meisels, the Chief Rabbi’s secretary. Meisels, addressing an almost entirely foreign congregation, took the opportunity to castigate the missionaries in the East End who were trying to convert the newcomers. The demonstration itself passed off almost entirely peacefully, although there was plenty of invective from both those supporting the parade and those against it. In August 1889 the tailors and sweated workers went on strike but Sir Samuel Montagu and Rothschild mediated and settled the dispute. The combination of Montagu, Rothschild and Adler were far too strong for socialists who organized parties on Yom Kippur. The lay leaders of the community improved the Jewish club life in the East End and the Federation criticized the socialists as anything but Orthodox Jews. The agitation petered out. Adler’s attitude towards the workers in the East End has often been criticized as unfeeling. The work he put in to improve their plight questions this argument. For centuries Jewish communities had been expelled from the lands in which they had been born. It had happened in England in 1290. The Jewish refugees were always in desperate straits as a result. The classic response was not demonstrations which were too likely to trigger pogroms. The hope was that other Jews, often even in other countries, would answer the appeal of the refugees and provide them with charitable support. The rule for the refugees themselves was, as the old song goes, to pick themselves up, dust themselves down, and start all over again. A social worker in late twentieth-century Manchester was complaining that there were three generations of families in the city unemployed. It was suggested that the younger go where there was work, and earn enough to send for his relatives. The social worker was not convinced by the recommended solution. ‘It’s alright for the Jews,’ she said. ‘They’ve got 2,000 years experience!’7 In the time of Chief Rabbi Jakobovits late in the twentieth century, the church produced a petition criticizing the government for not doing enough for the poor. The Chief Rabbi was asked to sign it as well, but apologized that he couldn’t do so. He explained that the Jewish attitude to poverty was for the better-off Jews to provide money, at no interest, for the unemployed, so that they could start on their own to earn money, and get out of poverty. Adler was taking the same attitude a hundred years before. Jakobovits became the first Chief Rabbi to be elevated to the House of Lords. An occupational study after the Second World War identified that nearly 70 per cent of the Jews in business questioned were self-employed,

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where the national average was 6 per cent. Whether Adler was critiqued then or now for his comments, over the years a considerable majority of his co-religionists took his advice. There were no realistic alternatives for the Victorian workers who were so dreadfully exploited. The Social Democratic Federation was the major organizing body, and it called many meetings and organized marches for the unemployed. The largest was held on 13 November 1887 in Trafalgar Square and was remembered as Bloody Sunday. There were 75 arrests, countless injuries and three deaths. Enthusiasm for such demonstrations waned. The next possibility was government action, which was when the House of Lords Committee on Sweating was set up in 1888, to investigate the whole sorry mess. It produced its final report in April 1890 having listened to 290 witnesses, including the Chief Rabbi, but legislation for minimum wages for even a few occupations, was only completed with the passing of the Trade Boards Act in 1909. Lord Dunraven, the Chair of the Committee, gave his report in June 1890. He referred to: The almost inhuman hours of work; the miserable pittance for which these people exchange their almost unremitting toil, the scanty fare, barely enough to keep starvation from the door, the horrible unsanitary conditions in which they work, the overcrowding in their dwellings, men, women and children, often not even members of the same family, sleeping huddled on the floor of the dilapidated room in which they live and work, and work and die; the children sick of infectious disease, covered with half-finished clothing, destined to be distributed and to carry infection through all classes of society, the effect in increasing the national scourge, consumption.8 If demonstrations and legislation were not going to solve the problem, the traditional Jewish solution was the best option. That was the conclusion to which Adler came, and the one he advocated to those who were suffering under the sweating system. Over the course of the next century the Jewish community in Britain did, to a great extent, drag itself out of poverty. Reflecting on Adler’s unwelcome advice that ‘a man endowed with health and ten fingers should not consider accepting benefit’, one academic author came to the reluctant conclusion that: Though unsympathetic and harsh, Adler’s view that only an upturn in the economy could really help the downtrodden workers, was

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perhaps the more realistic in an era when the provision of welfare and benefits for the unemployed was seen as a concession to weakness rather than an acceptance of social responsibility.9 Shortly afterwards Adler was to be found on a pastoral visit to Manchester. To everybody’s satisfaction, he was able to sort out a number of problems that had existed between the various congregations for many moons, and gave his sermon on the Sabbath at the Great Synagogue. In it he pointed out bluntly the criticism which resulted from any Jewish woman being overdressed, vulgar or noisy, and told the men in the congregation to make the world better, wiser and happier. He also devoted part of his discourse to the parade in London. He dismissed it as a ‘few noisy agitators who wanted to propagate their pestilential opinions’ and insisted that most were atheists, rather than practising Jews. He also queried, in passing, whether such people would be condemned if they were Christians. He earnestly hoped that the Jewish working men of Manchester would hold aloof from those who termed themselves Socialists and who, under the guise of that name held opinions subversive of religion, of government, of the family, and all that which their holy faith told them to hold dear and respect (Applause).10 Of course, there was no reason to believe that atheists were not good family men. Labelling them anti-religious and anti-government could well have gone too far as well. It was a reasonably typical pastoral visit. On the Sunday he inspected the Hebrew classes, congratulated the teachers, and pointedly approved of the lessons being conducted in English. Although Adler could and did give sermons equally well in Yiddish to the right audiences, he was not in favour of its use, instead of the vernacular, as a general rule. He always remained a detail man. He went on to the consecration of a new mortuary house at the cemetery and appealed for funds to build a wall round the boundary, rather than the existing hedge. Many Jews were enthusiastic recruits to socialism; they were supporters of the fashionable new bogeyman, the Red Peril. The importance of getting Adler’s approval for socialism was such that Sidney Webb, one of the founders of the movement, wrote to him on the subject in 1889 when there was a Jewish Socialist demonstration. Neither the Federation nor the socialists upset Adler’s main policy of keeping to the Written and Oral laws. As the infant Labour Party struggled to grow, so did Zionism. After

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Herzl died, the Zionist organization which grew up with a national home as its objective was called Poale Zion – the Workers of Zion. It was started in Russia and spread to other countries in Europe and the United States. It was always going to be difficult to put together an international movement with common objectives. Decisions taken in one country might run counter to the views of members in another. There were a number of splits in the early years, including one over the Uganda proposal. It wasn’t until 1905, at a secret meeting in Kiev which went on for seven days, that there emerged the All Russia Organizational Convention of the Jewish Social Democratic Labour Party, Poale Zion. The meeting was eventually broken up by the police. In some countries the organization did have to deal with a hostile government and in others, such as Britain, the government was totally indifferent. About all the initial groups had in common was that they were definitely socialist. Otherwise, whether there should be a National Home or a concentration on solving problems inside their country, whether they should communicate in Yiddish or Hebrew, and who should be the leaders, were all questions where unanimity was almost impossible to achieve. British branches of Poale Zion were founded in Leeds in 1902 and Manchester in 1904. One was based on the Independent Cabinet Makers Union and the other on the Garment Workers. By 1905 there were five branches in Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester. As a much later submission to the Labour party towards the end of the century would explain: ‘The ideas of Marx were wedded to the ideals of the prophets of the Old Testament, dictating worker solidarity, the revolutionary/evolutionary progress of societies in all countries, and social justice.’ It was an anomaly that Leeds started the first branch, because as late as 1868, there had only been 40 Jews on the electoral roll. Only in 1904 was a Jew elected as a Councillor. At the Poale Zion Conference in Manchester in 1906 it was agreed: To support the Zionist Conference; to support trade unions; to support Jewish self-defence in Russia; to support a worldwide Federation of Poale Zion parties; to promote Poale Zion publications; to support schools in Hebrew and English; to create a national executive for Poale Zion in Britain. If PZ was to promote Zionism all over the western world, some form of media was obviously highly desirable. It was, however, also costly and these

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problems of finance would bedevil Poale Zion for most of its existence. One of their leaders, Kalman Marmor (1879-1956), was scathing about the official Zionist movement. He dismissed it as ‘…self advertisement, the support of rich people with high sounding titles, and on prominent speakers with the ability to create enthusiasm for fund raising’. The same article castigated the Jewish working people for their passivity and lack of understanding for the importance of organization. Having insulted most of the community, Marmor tried again in 1905 with Jewish Freedom. It was written in Yiddish and was supposed to come out monthly. Again, there were only three issues. Marmor did become a distinguished Communist writer, but in America from 1906. What survived for more years was Die Zayt (The Jewish Times) which was founded in 1913 by a Rumanian immigrant, Morris Meyer (18941944). Poale Zion was initially opposed by the General Jewish Labour Bund in Russia and Poland, which had been formed in 1897. The Bund’s objective was to ‘improve the lot of the Jews in the Russian empire and it rejected the Zionist concept of a National Home, in favour of its more local efforts. Its motto was ‘Where we live, that is our country.’ Marxism appealed to many Jews, and their association with the Communists often raised the dual loyalty question again. It was another reason why committed Zionists continued to be thin on the ground in Britain for very many years. Despite their common interests, the relationship of the Jewish workers with the initial Labour party founders had its teething troubles. As far as the socialists were concerned, for many, the other end of the Jewish spectrum was their wealthier brethren’s opposition to the Marxist aversion to capitalism. For the Marxists, bankers such as the Rothschilds represented capitalism in its extreme form. The arguments continued to rage long after Adler had died.

Notes 1. Black, Eugene C., The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1920 (Basil Blackwell, 1988), p.69. 2. Ibid., p.24. 3. Kershon, Anne, Uniting the Tailors (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p.141. 4. Jewish Chronicle, 22 February 1889, p.7. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 29 March 1889. 7. Talking to the author. 8. Hansard, June 1890. 9. Jewish Chronicle, 22 February 1889, p.7. 10. Booth Collection.

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12 Zionism: The Egregious Blunder Adler, as an Orthodox Jew, believed in the eventual restoration of the Children of Israel to the Promised Land. As far as he was concerned, though, that meant when the Messiah came, which was the decision of the Almighty rather than of man. What worried him was the emergence of political Zionism – the idea that the Jews should decide for themselves when they should once again run the country. He reluctantly saw Political Zionism as a movement quite capable of undermining all his hard work, in publicly maintaining the loyalty of his Jewish community solely to Britain. He also felt the ambition to be entirely unrealistic in terms of practical politics. The Holy Land was part of the Turkish empire. Adler made his views on religious, as against political Zionism, in a sermon (see Appendix E). Goldwin Smith was only one antisemite who had questioned whether British Jews could be patriots. It was an accusation which had occured time after time over the centuries. Adler had blunted the attack by a sturdy defence in print but the criticism didn’t go away. Adler could see that, backed by this contention, restricting Jewish immigration was becoming a slightly more popular political idea, even if the majority of the country was completely indifferent to it. For Adler, the 1870s was a very bad time for the Eastern Question to erupt. The publicly-declared policy of the Zionists, even if the movement was in its infancy, was guaranteed to bring the question of dual loyalty to the fore again. For all the antisemites, with their cries of ‘Why don’t you go back to your own country’, Zionism was a gift from the gods. Here was a body of Jews who were asking to do just that. For the Chief Rabbi, Zionism was an unwelcome red herring. He had worked extremely hard – as had his community and his predecessors – to make the case that the Jews were dedicated Englishmen, not temporary residents until the Holy Land became vacant. He had been trying for years to bury the question of dual loyalty, the idea that the Jews divided their support between Britain and the various lands in which many of them had been born. Now it might be a question of triple loyalty. He called Zionism

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‘an egregious blunder’, which meant outstandingly bad. In this he was, very unusually for him, going against the opinion of his father. Hermann Adler’s rejection of Zionism was also partially because he believed that the only Jewish role in international affairs was to work for a higher level of morality among the nations. He felt that returning to the position of a small nation state in the Middle East would reduce the possibility of achieving this; he felt that any Jewish international moral influence would be substantially decreased if all the Jews were to be limited to the Holy Land. Today the international moral leadership of any major religion is not a flag around which many adherents would gather. Communism and Fascism have had their day. In Victorian times, however, religion played a far greater role in the nation’s consciousness and it was connected in the public mind with morality. It wasn’t that Adler was sniping from the sidelines. He visited Palestine in April 1885 with Baron Lewis Benas, the leader of the Liverpool branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association. Everybody was on their best behaviour for the occasion. A guard of honour was provided by the Governor of Jerusalem, Reouf Pasha, and the Chief Rabbi inspected many of the new institutions that had been created in the country, such as the Agricultural School of the Alliance Israélite and the Rothschild winery at Rishon le Zion. He talked to the Director of the Rothschild School, saw the Moses Montefiore almshouses and visited the Rothschild Hospital. There were meetings with the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis and he had a long discussion with the Governor himself. Compliments were exchanged, with Adler conveying his thanks, and those of Sir Moses Montefiore, for the way the Jews in Palestine were protected. The Governor promised continual support as long as he was in charge and appealed for the country’s poor Jews to be financially supported. There was only one bone of contention; the Governor was concerned that the residents of Petach Tikva had put up buildings without permission, even though such homes were prohibited. Adler pleaded that the buildings be allowed to be completed and the Governor graciously consented, much to the approval of the community back in Britain, who gave the Chief Rabbi full marks for his efforts. Adler was very impressed with the progress the immigrants had made and the visit was a great success, but it didn’t persuade the Chief Rabbi to become a Zionist. Adler was always a realist. If he was not convinced by the promises of the Governor, he was justified when, in 1892, the Porte

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in Constantinople forbade the further sale of land to the Jews in Palestine, even if they were Turkish citizens.. A year later, in 1893 Ahad Ha‘am was a visitor to Britain on behalf of the Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) charitable movement. Chovevei Zion had been started in Russia to help the Jews in Palestine. As an organization, the Russian government insisted that it be designated a charity and it became officially The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel. As its first meeting was in Odessa, where 63 delegates gathered, it was known as the Odessa Committee. Its main financial support at the time was from Kalonimus Wolf Wissotzky, whose tea company was a major Russian firm. In Russia, too, influential Jews would support Jewish initiatives. Ahad Ha’Am recorded in his diary a conversation with Adler, who said he was sympathetic to Zionism and thought he could have done a lot for it. He said, however, that he was too fully occupied in dealing with questions of shechita and in attempting to suppress communal scandals, to have any time or energy left for this wider Jewish issue. It was an excuse; he didn’t approve of the concept, but he didn’t feel inclined to attract criticism from yet another section of the community. Zionism was always another highly contentious issue. Ahad Ha’Am ended the entry in his diary by asking; Will the non-Jewish world find it conceivable that England’s Chief Rabbi can do nothing for his people in such distressful times as these, because he is too busy with shechita matters? The fact was, though, that shechita was a current problem and a National Home would, of necessity, have to wait until the Turks ceased to rule Palestine in goodness knows how many years time, if ever. No-one was going to go to war with Turkey in 1893 to dislodge them from Palestine. On the other hand, supporting those of their communities who were in trouble was a centuries-old Jewish tradition. It had never been abandoned, and Adler fully supported that humanitarian effort. Whatever his views on political Zionism, Adler still appealed in a sermon at the Great Synagogue for support for those going to live in the Holy Land. He said that: Outward protestations of affection were idle and hollow, unless we become inspired with an earnest and living interest in the Holy Land and resolved to labour for the welfare of its indwellers.

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The problems in achieving the Zionist objectives were immense. At the time Adler knew that a national home in Palestine was strictly a pipe dream. There weren’t, in reality, anything like enough Jews in the country to run it and the Turkish government showed no signs of abandoning control. Furthermore, the economic prospects in the country were dire in the extreme, because the agricultural land in Palestine had been wrecked by poor farming practices over literally hundreds of years. It was also evident that while the Jews in Palestine were not actually persecuted, the life and prospects of the community in Britain was far better. Britain was a genuine democracy, but full democratic emancipation for his subjects was not on any Sultan of Turkey’s agenda. When discussing the early history of Zionism, the tendency has been to ignore anything which happened before the efforts of Theodor Herzl. In Britain, in fact, the ambition to see the Jews resettled in Palestine had a positive history going back at least to the beginning of Victoria’s reign. Andrew Bonar Law, an ancestor of the future Prime Minister of the same name, was the head of a mission set up by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1839 to enquire into the lives of the 12,000 Jews in Palestine at the time. It was a thoughtful initiative, but the Zionist concept was a very long time in burgeoning. The mission was another sign that official prejudice against nonConformists was declining in Victorian days. This was one of the factors leading to an increased interest in the land of the Bible. The nonConformists took a different view from the Catholics. In 1838 Britain opened a consulate in Jerusalem, the first for centuries. Amongst the earliest Jewish preachers to advocate resettlement was a Hungarian Sephardi Rabbi, Judah Alkalai, who came to London in 1852 and produced a pamphlet entitled ‘Harbinger of Good Tidings: An Address to the Jewish Nation on the Prospects of Organizing an Association to Promote the Regaining of their Fatherland’. Even in those early days the advocates of a Jewish return to Palestine were both non-Conformists and Jews. The former were influenced by the prophecies in the Bible and the opportunity that resettlement might provide to make it easier to convert the Jews. From a national outlook, that involving British foreign policy, the geographical position of Palestine made it an important barrier to any Russian or French expansionist aims towards the East. From that point of view, the government wanted to keep a watching brief, although the Foreign Office was not keen on seeing a multitude of Jews arriving in Palestine, who might be less easy to influence than the

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Turks. There were always going to be two streams of thought; the religious and the political. The British had, in fact, been keeping a close eye on the situation in the Holy Land since Lord Palmerston’s time as Foreign Secretary in the 1850s. It was accepted that Russia would take it upon itself to look after the members of the Greek Orthodox Church. France had a policy of taking care of the Catholics. Palmerston decided that this left the Protestants and the Jews who could be the concern of the British. It would give Britain the necessary rationale for becoming involved in the area. A relative of Palmerston, the Earl of Shaftesbury, made a speech at the end of the Crimean War in 1856 in which he said: As long as two years ago a despatch from the Foreign Office, written with my noble friend’s [Lord Clarendon’s] own hand, was sent to Constantinople, urging on the representative of the British Empire there [Lord Stratford de Redcliffe] that he should do all that lay in his power to effect for the Jews this great emancipation – that they may be allowed to hold land, and enjoy every single privilege in the holy land of Palestine.1 The Church of England were in line with Foreign Office thinking for their own reasons. In 1833 a missionary station had been established in Jerusalem with the support of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews and in cooperation with the Evangelical Church in Prussia. In 1842 Michael Alexander, a converted Jew, arrived in Jerusalem as the first Anglican Bishop. He had been born Solomon Alexander in Poland in 1799 and had taught Talmud from the age of 16. He emigrated to Britain in 1820 and became the minister in the Norwich and Plymouth synagogues. He converted to Christianity when he was 26, however, and was ordained in 1827, although he continued to teach Hebrew. He was a good choice for Jerusalem but unfortunately he died in 1845. The Turkish government was a dreadful mess. It not only had considerable difficulty in controlling its own massive empire but it was corrupt, and its financial affairs were often in a very bad state. Servicing its foreign debt was a constant problem and a moratorium was necessary in 1875. Being inexperienced in raising foreign loans, the terms the Turks had accepted from British and French banks had been very onerous. From the British point of view, however, Turkey remained a bastion against Russian entry into the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. With the opening

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of the Suez Canal, the Middle East became an even more important foreign policy consideration. British foreign policy was to support Turkey. From the Jewish point of view, in Turkey itself they had flourished. Although it was a Moslem country, it had valued the economic contribution made by its Jewish citizens for 400 years and treated them very well. In 1492 the ruling Sultan had actually encouraged them to settle in the country after they were expelled from Spain, and 20,000 refugees had taken advantage of the Sultan’s welcome offer. While they weren’t considered on a par with the Moslems, they had no cause for complaint about any form of serious discrimination and pogroms. There were a number of early supporters of a Jewish colony in Palestine. They included Abraham Benisch, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle. He was a constant promoter of such a possibility until his death in 1878. His beliefs must have been well known to Hermann Adler, who had worked with him on defending Judaism against Bishop Colenso. Adler, however, had many objectives and they were sometimes difficult to reconcile. The primary concern still remained that both the Adlers intended to defend the Written and Oral Laws. At the same time they also wanted to support Jewish communities anywhere in the world if they were under attack, and to uphold the community in Palestine. There were occasions when the strategies clashed; for example, support for the Jews in the Balkans meant accepting the massacre of Christians by the Turks. In 1852 Benisch had formed An Association for Promoting Jewish Settlements in Palestine. Its prospectus stated: True, there was a time when the intolerant policy of Turkey joined to unwillingness on the part of the Jewish population to become instrumental in their own support, rendered any other assistance unavailable, save that in the shape of alms. But now that more enlightened views have removed all legal obstacles to endeavours for self-support on the part of the Jewish population – nay, when there is reason to believe that the Porte would lend its heavy cooperation to any scheme for that purpose; when that very population earnestly appeal to the world for the means to emancipate itself from the state degradation entailed by pauperism, is it just that we should withhold from it a helping hand?2 Nathan Marcus Adler had become a member of the new organization in 1862. There was a major difference, however, between a helping hand and an attempt to take over the whole country.

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What of Palestine itself, the Holy Land? In the middle of the nineteenth century it was a neglected province of the Turkish empire with under 200,000 inhabitants. Its decline over the centuries had been draconian. In Biblical times it has been estimated that the population was in the millions. By contrast, when travellers came on pilgrimage to Palestine in the latter part of the nineteenth century, they spoke of the ‘land being empty and the population not being large enough to till the land’.3 It wasn’t surprising; the countryside had been allowed to deteriorate by the Turkish authorities until it had become an almost total wreck. At the end of the nineteenth century … it was: impoverished and utterly neglected, denuded of trees. Its coastal plains were deadly marshes depopulated by malaria. The peasantry suffering severely from malaria and trachoma, with no schools or doctors outside the towns. The Turkish government farmed out tax collection to the highest bidders, who were usually rich landowners living in the cities. Villages and home life were wretched.4 Non-Jewish agricultural experts would survey the country in later years and totally agree about the appalling state of the prevailing conditions. The problem was, however, pure neglect, not the climate. As late as 1939, Dr Walter Lowdermilk, the Assistant Chief of the United States Soil Conservation Services, in the US Department of Agriculture, studied the farming in Palestine. He was an Oxford educated non-Jew and he recorded that, as far as the land was concerned, ‘it is estimated that over three feet [a metre] of soil has been swept from the uplands of Palestine’.5 The result had been disastrous. When he was in Palestine he observed: We saw drainage channels running full of brown silt-laden gully washers, cutting their banks and joining with water from other drainages to make a storm flood...the remarkable red-earth soil of Palestine was being ripped from the slopes and swept down into the coastal plain and carried out to sea, where it turned the blue of the Mediterranean to a dirty brown as far as the eye could see.6 There was, however, throughout Adler’s time, a potential solution which might suit both the Turks and the Jews. It was also a possibility for easing the periodic financial crises in Turkey. Money could be raised by selling land in Palestine to the Jews. There were occasional discussions with the Sultan of Turkey about the option. It would have made little difference to

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Turkey, for nothing would change as far as the government was concerned, but the land might become productive enough to pay taxes; in 1891, 4,000 acres of land in the Golan Heights were, in fact, purchased, but in Adler’s time the negotiations eventually petered out. If the Turkish government was no longer interested, the Zionist organization was. In 1908 the Palestine Land Development Company was set up with the objective of buying land from its Arab owners. Other organizations with similar objectives came into existence as well. The attitude of European governments towards the Holy Land was always going to be influenced by the fact that it contained many sacred Christian sites, such as the Church of the Assumption at the foot of the Mount of Olives. From the Christian point of view, the way in which the Turks had allowed the Biblical ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ to deteriorate into a desert was an insult to their holy places, to which they strongly objected. These factors had led in 1865 to the creation of the Palestine Exploration Fund, formed to investigate the situation in the country. Much media coverage advocated the development of a Jewish colony, often recommended to take the same form as the East India Company. The organization still exists and continues its historical research. The people who lived in the Holy Land when the Zionist movement was created were mostly Arabs. A lot of the Arabs were Bedouins, who travelled the countryside as itinerant animal farmers, with little interest in maintaining the agricultural land. Even if it was accepted, however, that the inhabitants had been neglectful of the country, atrociously governed by the Turks and that most were semi-civilized by the standards of the Western world, the fact was incontrovertible that they had lived in the Holy Land for hundreds of years. Nobody questioned in 1900 that Palestine had been a Moslem province since 635 and, after the Crusades, part of the Ottoman Empire since 1299. It wasn’t that Palestine had to be written off as, geographically, practically uninhabitable. The contrast between the land of Palestine when the Zionist migrants first arrived, and its condition in Biblical times, is recorded in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy, where we read: Behold, the Lord thy G-d giveth thee a good land, a land of water brooks and fountains that spring out of the valleys and depths, a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, of olive oil and honey, a land in which thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it.7

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This was its history and for Christians around the world, Palestine remained a land of pilgrimage, with the additional attraction that many academics could now carry out extensive archaeological research among the Biblical ruins. In the nineteenth century many major expeditions increased the knowledge of Biblical times. Zionists also started to emigrate to the Holy Land. In 1880 the initial wave of new Jewish immigrants to Palestine was called the First Aliyah. Of course, of all the Arab states, Palestine probably had the least to offer the newcomers. In the Holy Land, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the living conditions for the population, including its comparatively small number of Jewish inhabitants, had become disastrous. Apart from the state of the land, there were cholera epidemics, a catastrophic shortage of water in Jerusalem, long droughts and price inflation. The Turks continued to let the country go to rack and ruin. In extreme cases, Jewish parents were actually selling their children to avoid them dying of hunger. As always when appealed to, Jewish congregations around the world would rally to the support of any Jewish community in difficulties – and the people in the Holy Land were, naturally, considered very special. There was considerable investment in the country. When a rich American, Judah Touro, died in 1854, he left a large legacy for the benefit of the Jews in Palestine and made Moses Montefiore his trustee. The money went to found a Hospital in Jerusalem, a girls’ school, the first residential settlement outside the Old City and a number of agricultural projects. In 1864 a Jerusalem Water Relief Society was set up, under the patronage of both the Montefiores and the Rothschilds. It would take a few years to solve the problem, but in 1867 the waterworks were at last rebuilt. The water supply in Jerusalem should obviously have been the responsibility of the ruling Turks, or a charity the rich Arab landowners could adopt to help their brethren, but both failed to honour their obligations and it fell to Jewish philanthropists to tackle the problem. For their part the Rothschilds also started the vineyards which still provide sacramental wine for Jewish communities in many parts of the world. It was true that, initially, the products were no commercial threat to the French and German vintages. In the middle of the twentieth century one of the foremost British wine shippers, Grant of St James, produced a book on the wines of the world. They recorded, with tongue in cheek, that ‘Israeli wine is drunk for sentimental rather than oenological reasons’! although that isn’t the position today as major improvements have been made.

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In addition to individual beneficence, in 1897 a new Zionist Federation was formed and held its first meeting in Basel with delegates from all over the world. In 1899 the English Zionist Federation was formed. There was, however, a great deal of opposition in the British Jewish community to sending delegates to the conference in Basel. The Jewish Chronicle summed up the feeling: The very notion of an ‘International’ Congress was an insult to the patriotism of Jews of various nationalities, and antisemites have not been slow to avail themselves of the groundless insinuations that Jews are confessedly unpatriotic and half-hearted as citizens of the states in which they live.8 This was Adler’s worry. He would support Chovevei Zion in principle and attended its first British branch meeting at the Jewish Working Mens’ Club in 1890. It was a demonstration of solidarity with their suffering co-religionists and the Jewish luminaries turned out in force. Lord Rothschild represented the United Synagogue and Sir Samuel Montagu the Federation. From the Board of Guardians came its President, Sir Benjamin Cohen and both Adler and Gaster also attended. It was a firstclass exercise in communal unity, but a helping hand for the Jews in Palestine was as far as Adler wanted to go. He was certainly not alone in this; at least until 1914 Zionism was more often vilified than praised by the community in Britain. While Zionism was developing, the appalling way in which the Russians treated the Jews in their empire continued unabated. The rule of the Romanoffs only started to be undermined by the loss of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. At the outset of that conflict the Japanese had felt they had ample justification to go to war, but they had a very serious problem. When it came to the logistics for fighting their massive neighbour, they didn’t have the money to finance a major conflict. Japan’s eventual ability to pick up the tab was underwritten by the provision of $250 million by the Jewish bank of Kuhn Loeb in New York, which raised the necessary funds. As far as Kuhn Loeb’s Chair, Jacob Schiff, the acknowledged leader of American Jewry, was concerned, it was pay-back time for pogroms, forced conversions, discriminatory taxation, restrictions to living in the Pale and many other laws aimed at forcing the Jews in Russia over the centuries to give up their faith. The Russian Jewish community had continued to survive, but at a dreadful cost over the centuries. Even after the State of

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Israel was eventually established, it would still be another 40 years before Jews were finally allowed to emigrate by the Soviets in the days of Mikhail Gorbachev. If Kuhn Loeb were accused of supporting Russia’s enemies, justification at the time would not have been difficult. The pogroms in Kishinev in 1903 and 1905, as well as in Odessa and Kiev, saw nearly 70 Jews killed in Kishinev alone, plus 100 severely wounded, many women raped and 1,500 homes damaged or looted. The most popular paper in the district would regularly come out with banner headlines on the front page, advocating ‘Death to the Jews’. This inflammatory journalism, coupled with the fact that there was a wave of 500 pogroms across Russia after 1905, made it not surprising that there was international outrage at the behaviour of the Russian government. Unfortunately, fine words butter no parsnips. Adler voiced the community’s concerns on innumerable occasions, but to little effect. As a consequence a considerable proportion of the early Zionist immigrants to Palestine came from the Russian empire. As far as Palestine was concerned, the Jews in Britain were more interested in emancipation than in the Promised Land, though they regularly made collections for the Jews living there. Moses Montefiore was a dedicated Zionist and he made investments to create both agricultural and industrial centres. The windmill he built is still a tourist attraction in Jerusalem. Montefiore was even nicknamed ‘Treasurer of the Holy Land’. The first conference of European Jews to promote colonization in Palestine was in 1885, when a meeting in Kattowitz decided to establish the Montefiore Association in honour of Sir Moses’ 100th birthday. The Rothschild vineyards, for their part, produced wine which became very popular for religious services such as bringing in the Sabbath and Seder Nights. If the first supporters of the Jews in the Holy Land were philanthropists, such as Montefiore and the Rothschild family, they were augmented by a number of charities such as Chovevei Zion. It was hard going. Like the Trade Unionists and the socialist movement itself, Jewish Zionist societies in those days were born, tried to grow, competed with each other and some survived, while the majority fell by the wayside. Chovevei Zion wanted to help the Jews in Palestine, but in no way did they have the same objectives as the future Zionists. As one of their circulars laid out: Exaggerated statements have from time to time been put forward as to the aims of the Chovevei Zion societies: viz, that their object is to

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anticipate the fulfilment of prophecy by encouraging a wholesale immigration of Jews to Palestine. Such is not the aim or the idea of Chovevei Zion. In 1892 it was announced that there were 22 branches of Chovovei Zion outside London and many prominent Jews, such as Elkan Adler, supported this. At one meeting in London, Elkan Adler was a guest and addressed the meeting in German to considerable applause. The movement, however, disintegrated in the course of the next few years.9 The English Zionist Federation would be equally weakened by internal squabbles in Edwardian times. Theodor Herzl, the eventual Zionist leader, was an Austrian journalist whose international experiences had formed his views. He had seen the antisemitism which the Dreyfus case had triggered in France, in what had been considered a liberal nation. Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason and sent to the French prison on Devil’s Island until his innocence was established years later. To Herzl, a National Home for the Jews had become a necessity. When he first came to London in 1895 to gather support, he was introduced to senior Jewish lay leaders by Israel Zangwill and, unlike later visits, when the community was split on the subject he was neither shunned nor silenced. As far as Herzl was concerned, enough was enough; the Jews had been kicked around for nearly two millennia and there was hardly a year in which some Jewish community or another wasn’t viciously attacked. Herzl decided something finally had to be done about it. Waiting for the arrival of universal and everlasting brotherly love had been given much more than a fair chance, but it was as far out of sight as ever. It was a commonplace that the Jews had pleaded for justice and begged for equality for centuries. They had endured the howling mobs, mourned their martyrs and fled their homes in the hope of finding somewhere better to live, mostly to no avail. The Holy Land, or some National Home, was a potential answer, and the Zionists had the totally impractical dream of converting what had become a decrepit piece of desert into a modern state. Given the size of the potential task, it wasn’t surprising that Zionists were few and far between. Adler’s personal view was that of almost all of his community; they wanted nothing to do with what appeared to be an impossible objective. Membership of Zionist societies was widespread but usually minuscule. To make matters even worse, Herzl was a self-confessed atheist and his Zionism was equally secular. As he advocated a seven-hour working day, he was also considered a socialist.

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Socialist and atheist, but even worse, from Adler’s point of view, the majority of the Zionist leaders wanted to dismantle what they considered the shackles of Orthodox Judaism. If Herzl was, by any remote chance, successful, the Orthodox considered the leadership of the Holy Land might well end up in the hands of the ungodly. There was one political situation at the time which might well have had a major effect on future Zionist history. The future Conservative Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, would become the architect of the Balfour Declaration. His parliamentary seat was East Manchester and his constituency Chair was Sir Charles Dreyfus, the immigrant founder of the massive Clayton Aniline company. In addition to looking after Balfour’s interests, Dreyfus was a cousin of Alfred Dreyfus, the falsely disgraced French army officer. The support of Sir Charles Dreyfus for Zionism was not only out of family feeling. He was also the Chair of the Manchester Zionist Society, and Chaim Weizmann, the future President of Israel, worked for his company. It was Dreyfus who first introduced Balfour to Weizmann in 1905, so the aims and objectives of the Zionists would have been well known to the future conservative leader long before the idea of a National Home for the Jews came up in government in 1916. Balfour was typical of the members of parliament of his day, helped by members of the House of Lords. His rise through the unpaid Conservative ranks in the House of Commons had been materially helped by his close relative, Lord Robert Salisbury, the Prime Minister; hence ‘Bob’s your uncle’. Over the years, Balfour became the great survivor and a consummate diplomat. Herzl published his pamphlet, ‘Der Judenstaat’ (‘The Jewish State’) in 1896 and it had a very mixed reception. Some thought the Sultan of Turkey, Abdulhamid II, would take offence at the Zionist objectives, endangering the Jewish agricultural settlements which had already been set up in the country. Herzl offered a vigorous defence: ‘smaller people than Jews dared to demand a piece of land; they had courage and obtained their aim. A people cannot be helped through philanthropy but by political means.’ When Herzl came to London again to gather more support in October 1898, Moses Gaster, the Haham, was exceptional as the only communal leader to agree to chair Herzl’s main meeting. Gaster’s attitude has often been favourably compared with that of Adler’s anti-Zionism, but the world in 1900 was very different from the world of today. Gaster and Adler certainly did not see eye-to-eye on Zionism. Adler, who was instrumental in the acceptance of the Jewish community as an

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emancipated part of the British people, remained primarily concerned about how Zionism could reinvigorate the accusation of dual loyalty. For Haham Gaster it was a different story. He was a Romanian refugee. He had first hand experience of government-supported antisemitism in the country of his birth. In Romania Jews still could not be citizens even if they were born there. For Gaster the prospect of a National Home in the Holy Land, now offered the faint first possibility of a miracle solution to the pogroms experienced by Jewish communities in many parts of the continent. The Sephardi community in Britain had laid down its roots in Britain in the seventeenth century, and after Sir Moses Montefiore’s death in 1885 had pretty well left it to the Chief Rabbi and the Ashkenazi leaders to deal with the public perception of the Jews. Both Adler and Gaster were acting in the best interests, as they saw it, of their communities, and at the time it was Adler’s view which had the support of the large majority of both his and the Sephardi flock. Gaster’s memories of conditions in Romania were his own. The first meeting of the new Zionist Confederation finally took place at Clerkenwell Town Hall in March 1893, to try to amalgamate the Zionists and Chovevei Zion. Representatives of 27 ‘tents’ of Chovevei Zion and 15 non-affiliated Zionist societies decided to draw up an agenda for a Zionist Federation. On second thoughts, though, the Chovevei Zion leaders feared for their independence and resolved to remain on their own. The first Zionist Confederation constitution was written in 1898, although the Zionist Conferences in 1896 and 1898 didn’t end the clashes between Chovevei Zion and the World Zionist Organization. A massive ten thousand people came to Herzl’s meeting in London in 1898. A new Zionist Federation was created, as well as a Zionist bank. In fact, the growth of Zionism led to Chovevei Zion being wound up in 1902, at which point the British government was in the process of offering Herzl land in Uganda; the English Zionist Federation, as it was now called, attracted 500 to a meeting to discuss the possibilities. The Zionists were, indeed, mostly socialists. Adler objected to the fact that much of their leadership was not only anti-capitalist but it was antireligion as well. The main body of British Jewish socialists did not see Orthodox Judaism as a useful weapon in the hopefully upcoming class war. Many of them rejected the religious rituals of Judaism; they provocatively held parties on Yom Kippur, which was hardly a practice designed to cement relations between them and their religious brethren. As Adler said in his usual witty way, he was not so much concerned about the Karaites, a

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Jewish sect who only believed in the Written Law, as about the Don’tcareites of his day. A united approach to Zionism remained very difficult. Poale Zion, for example, appealed to young people, and while their main objective was a National Home for the Jews, there were other considerations as well. One of their leaders, Jacob Pomeranz, writing many years later, recalled the early days of the organisation. They arranged a series of public meetings, with a noted American speaker, which they considered gave added prestige to the party. They also held concerts of Jewish folk music in Yiddish. They arranged for Chaver Zerubavel to come from Palestine to give a first hand account of the situation in the Holy Land, and they held meetings and receptions with Jewish trade unions and members. There was also a social side. There were meetings every Saturday evening for the members, and: Let it, however, be accepted for the sake of truth that the gatherings also had another attraction…there would come to the meetings, week in and week out, many charming chaverot and amongst the opposition parties it was accepted as a fact that Poale Zion was very adept in ‘kidnapping’ the finest ‘Bnot Zion’ into their movement. Poale Zion was one of the few Zionist societies to survive the passing of the years and to still be in existence when the State of Israel was finally established in 1948. In 1920 they became associated with the Labour Party and celebrated their centenary with the party in 2020. Many of the future Israeli politicians would emerge from their ranks, including Abba Eban, the future Foreign Secretary, and David Ben Gurion who would spend time in London, working to get the Balfour Declaration translated into a real National Home. It would take 30 years and Adler was right to consider it a very unlikely venture in his day. In the early part of the twentieth century Theodor Herzl, as the leading Zionist, started to try to negotiate a National Home for the Jews with the British government. The British empire, for their part, had plenty of spare acreage and emigrants from Britain had created colonies in many parts of the world. So it wasn’t out of the question that the British could help Herzl. The question was where and on what terms? As negotiations started, a draft

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scheme for a settlement in East Africa was drawn up by solicitors recommended by Leopold Greenberg, Secretary and co-founder of the English Zionist Federation. The drafting was done by a Welsh firm called Lloyd George, Roberts & Co and so David Lloyd George, whom Greenberg had spotted as a coming man in the Liberal Party, was educated in the Zionist ideology from that early stage. He was also retained to draw up a Zionist constitution. Discussion with the government initially centred on Uganda as a possible location for a potential Jewish National Home. In 1903 Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, offered Herzl 5,000 square miles, saying: ‘If Dr Herzl is at all inclined to transfer his efforts to East Africa, there would be no difficulty in finding land suitable for Jewish settlement.’10 The proposal was discussed at the Third Zionist Congress in Basel in that year. After a heated discussion, it was decided by 295 to 177 to consider the offer. A scouting party then went out to Uganda in 1904. They liked the climate but disliked the wild animals, and weren’t at all sure they’d get a warm welcome from the resident tribe of Masai. After further discussion, in 1905 they politely turned the idea down. The pioneers reverted to the traditional position that the wish had always been to try to settle back in the Holy Land. At the outset, few diaspora Jews changed their minds and actively supported this Zionist ambition. They were Europeans rather than Middle Eastern, and what they had heard of Palestine was not attractive from the point of view of earning a living. It was also a long way away from their families and many of them couldn’t afford to emigrate anyway. In England the Zionist movement had local problems. Chaim Weizmann wrote about the provinces in his book, Trial and Error. I found communities modelled very much on the Manchester pattern: a handful of devotees to the cause among the lower-middle classes, indifference or hostility among the upper classes, whether of British, German or Russian origin...the old English-Jewish families might just as well have belonged to another world. On the whole the communities were sombre and drab. There was rarely a decent hall to hold meetings in; usually we gathered in a room in some gloomy building.11 Weizmann knew very well that the objectives of his Zionists ran counter to the long-term ambition of the old English-Jewish families. Their objectives

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had been achieved. The older families were indifferent or hostile to Zionism because they were patriotic Brits and their primary aim was to be recognized as such. There was also the major difference between those who had suffered discrimination and those who had been the beneficiaries of British tolerance. Obtaining a National Home for the Jews somewhere else in the world was way down on the agenda of the older families, apart from such an ambition giving ammunition to divided loyalty critics. For the British Jews there was no feeling of persecution in the country where they lived. They were British to the core and knew they were fully protected by the law. As far as they were concerned, Zionism sent out the wrong message. Another disturbing question for many potential Zionists was whether the movement’s secular, Marxist members were going to try to undermine Judaism as a religion. Das Kapital and the Talmud did have similarities, but not that many. For the most part they were opposite icons. Religious Jews had been defending the practices of the religion, often against impossible odds, for centuries and Zionism could well be seen as another movement which sought to undermine their loyalty to Judaism itself. They had already resisted the Samaritans, Canaanites, Christians, Arabs, Karaites, and Sabbateians. Among the religions which had been long forgotten were Atenism (Egypt), Ashurism (Assyria), Canaanism (Mesopotamia), Manichaeism (Persia), Minoanism (Crete), Mithraism (Persia), Olmecism (Mesoamerica), Sumerianism (Mesopotamia), Tengriism (Central Asia) and Vedism (Indo-Aryans). Judaism, however, had survived them all, though it had been a titanic struggle. To further complicate matters, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century the new Reform movement was developed in Germany, which questioned many fundamental Orthodox laws and practices. When the state of Israel finally came about, the arguments between the secular and religious Jews would continue unabated over the years. The crucial question about Zionism was whether its philosophy was compatible with traditional Judaism. A calming influence came from the Russian Rabbi Maccoby (the Kamenitzer Maggid) who gave talks about Zionism in the East End of London which aroused great enthusiasm. He argued that strict orthodoxy and Chovevei Zion were indeed compatible. Progress was slow, however, and it was not before the end of the century that Theodor Herzl emerged as the charismatic leader who inspired the Political Zionist movement, just as Keir Hardie started the British Labour Party around the same time. As Herzl was not an observant Orthodox Jew, the East Enders were soon in two minds.

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Meanwhile the Kaiser had been an early supporter of Zionism as a potentially disruptive force against his future enemies. The worldwide Zionist organization came to be headquartered in Berlin and many of its leaders, such as Herzl himself, were Austrian and German. The fact that Germany was antisemitic at the time was ignored. In the 1893 German elections, the antisemitic Social Party had won sixteen seats in the Reichstag. Even so, in 1898, when the Kaiser visited Palestine, Herzl had gone there too and met the Kaiser twice. There were those in the British Foreign Office in 1914 who took the view that Zionism could well be a clandestine part of the German Foreign Office. In Britain, questioning the community’s loyalty would remain the ultimate insult. The son of one of the East End immigrants was Emanuel (Manny) Shinwell, who became a leader of the socialists and an MP. Speaking in the House before the Second World War, a Conservative called out ‘Why don’t you go back to Poland?’ – Shinwell was born in the East End. The Conservative was a former navy boxing champion, but Shinwell crossed the floor of the House anyway, and hit him so hard he broke his eardrum. The Speaker took no action. Adler’s belief that Zionism was an egregious blunder remained his view until the day he died. He had strong support. The Balfour Declaration was made a few years after he died but, when the idea surfaced in the government, both the heads of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association wrote to The Times to protest that the community didn’t support the idea. Even when their letter was disavowed at a meeting of the Board of Deputies afterwards, the voting against the President was basically caused by aggravation that the provincial delegates hadn’t been consulted before the letter was sent. The London delegates voted for the President and the overseas delegates split 50:50, but the provincial delegates voted 36 to 4 against the President and he had to resign. The Chief Rabbi still ensured that the din was followed in the provinces, but the United Synagogue did not extend much beyond London and the Federation remained independent.

Notes 1. Harold Wilson, The Chariot of Israel (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981), p.125. 2. Shaftesley, John (ed.), Remember the Days (Jewish Historical Society of England, 1966), p.223. 3. Jewish Chronicle, 23 May 1856, p.600. 4. John Cecil, Israel, Palestine & The Middle East. Fact not Fancy (Labour Friends of Israel 1968).

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5. Richard Crossman, Lord President of the Council, speaking at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Balfour Declaration, 5 November 1967 (Labour Friends of Israel & Poale Zion, 1967), p.1. 6. Wilson, Chariot of Israel, p.123. 7. Deuteronomy, viii 7-9. 8. Jewish Chronicle, 9 July 1897, p.12. 9. In the 1898 Jewish Year Book Chovevei Zion Societies were listed in Birmingham, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cork, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Limerick, Liverpool, Merthyr Tydfil, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Newport, North Shields, Norwich, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Sheffield, South Shields, Stockton-on-Tees and Sunderland. 10. Dr Lowdermilk was President of the American Geophysical Union from 1941-1944. Walter Clay Lowdermilk, Palestine: Land of Promise (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944), p.13. 11. Poale Zion archives.

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13 Protecting Shechita The Talmud specifies in great detail the permitted way of killing animals for food. The method is called shechita and if the animals are not killed according to the rules, the meat is not kosher and cannot be eaten by Orthodox Jews. Both the slaughterer and the butcher are supervised by the Chief Rabbi and there is a Board of Shechita to back him up. Few of his tasks over the years would give Adler as much aggravation as the organization of the community’s shechita. Admittedly the Ashkenazi London Board of Shechita had been founded as early as 1804 by Chief Rabbi Solomon Herschell to carry out the administration, If there were problems, however, the Chief Rabbi was still the ultimate authority, so the buck stopped at his desk. He was responsible for a version of Health and Safety for thousands of Jewish families. When Hermann Adler became Delegate Chief Rabbi in 1879, shechita was one of his new responsibilities. It is an integral part of kashrut and it is an example of Judaism’s social humanity even in Biblical times. You have to go back at least 2,000 years to appreciate the Jewish laws concerning animals, because the treatment of them was first laid down in the Ten Commandments. The fourth deals with the Sabbath and makes it very clear that, like everybody else, animals have to get the day off. The rule that ‘Neither thine ox nor thine ass’ should be made to do any work on the Sabbath day has always been taken to cover all animals. That, in itself, was unbelievably civilized by the standards of the next couple of millennium. The modernity of the Talmud in that regard isn’t by any means exceptional, though. For example the Fourth Commandment of ten is also explicit that servants are to have the day off on the Sabbath. In Adler’s nineteenth-century Britain, where one third of women in work were in service, they only got Sunday afternoon and evening off. Not the whole day. In that regard, they were worse off than the Biblical animals. There is, of course, the whole question of how animals can be used for food. If meat is to be eaten at all, the laws were more civilized than they are today. For example, the Talmud lays down that it is permissible to kill

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animals for food but it is forbidden to kill them for sport. Ironically, abiding by the rule over the years would have saved many important lives on the hunting field. For Orthodox Jews, hunting for fun is strictly forbidden. It doesn’t mean that no Jews hunted, It is just that they’re breaking Jewish law when they do. To kill an animal and make it kosher means that its throat has to be cut. In Victorian times on some Jewish estates in the country, nets were laid down to entangle the feet of the pheasants, who could then be killed without being shot and possibly only wounded. Behaving humanely to animals is an absolutely fundamental Jewish law. Even when it comes to killing animals for food, the first consideration, and the core of the regulations, is to cause them as little pain as possible. This is achieved by cutting the carotid artery in the throat with an extremely sharp knife, resulting in immediate brain death. The rules about the condition of the knife alone are voluminous. For example, the slightest nick in the blade and it can’t be used. You can’t dispatch a chicken by wringing its neck. There are side benefits to shechita killing, protecting the health of the Orthodox. One of the advantages of only eating kosher meat is that the diner is protected from a form of cattle tuberculosis. This is because another of the laws of shechita is that the lungs of the dead animal have to examined for traces of the disease. If they are found, the animal again isn’t kosher. It is astonishing that these rules were laid down in the dim and distant past. Before refrigeration it was the case on many occasions that, when meat was wanted, the larger animals were mutilated rather than killed. There were no butchers on farms. This barbaric practice is also forbidden in the din. Furthermore, even though the laws were laid down in the sixth-century Talmud, there is no evidence that pre-stunning, which is the common practice today, is scientifically proven to be more humane, 1,500 years later than the dictates of the laws of shechita. If an animal is shot it isn’t kosher either. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas and stags and pheasants must approve of shechita. Today, however, there are still substantial numbers of people and countries who object to shechita, although they have no scientific justification for their views. Killing by shechita has always been allowed in Britain since the Restoration. Jewish slaughterers (shochetim) in Britain have always needed a licence from the spiritual leader of the community. Samuel Sasportas paid the Sephardi Mahamad (executive) £20 a year for permission to act as the official shochet in Stuart times. Shochitim charge butchers for their services.

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It isn’t a sufficient qualification, however, that the shochetim could do the job. For observant Jews, the shochet, as one explained: …is more like a high priest, for he must be a G-d-like man, a skilful man in his profession, a learned man, who chooses the humble and dangerous calling because he believes it his mission to so serve not only his generation, but the generations to come.1 For a man – it could be a woman but it seldom is – to lose his licence is obviously a serious matter. The law is that a Jew cannot sell non-kosher meat to a non-Jew, so it isn’t possible to just switch customers by becoming another kind of butcher.2 Of course, there are also rules about what animals and fish can be eaten and which are forbidden. Hoteliers and restaurateurs will tell you that if you’re going to get really ill, a bad oyster can be an extremely unpleasant culprit – all shellfish are forbidden to Orthodox Jews. Permitted animals have to chew the cud and have cloven hooves; fish have to have fins and scales. In Adler’s time the opposition to the practice of Jewish shechita came from all sides; there was the opposition of the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals. They wanted all animals to be prestunned before being killed, which is the law today except for Jewish and Moslem slaughter. Then there was the opposition of the very Orthodox, Machzikei Hadath, who believed that the supervision of shechits was inadequately lax, and that many kosher butchers were selling non-kosher meat. Then there were the Progressives who believed that their members should make up their own minds, rather than be directed by the din. As a current Progressive Rabbi said, ‘in a modern post-enlightenment world, where individual autonomy has taken the place of divine sanction’.3 Who decided that individual autonomy was better than divine sanction is left in the air. If, as an individual, it is decided to smuggle into the country crates of brandy, the rule of individual autonomy is, however, unlikely to be considered a sufficient defence. Shechita remains the most humane method of killing animals. That right of individual autonomy, at least, goes some way towards reducing the guilt complex inherent in not obeying every one of the 600 plus laws of the din. Opposition to shechita also came from the antisemites who disliked anything the Jews did anyway, and labelled shechita cruel. The DEFRA government body (The Department for Environment, Food and

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Rural Affairs) reports today that pre-stunning is carried out inefficiently on hundreds of thousands of occasions in Britain and the animal does suffer. In the face of all the criticism, however, Hermann Adler was determined to protect the right of his community to kill animals in the way set down in the din. The age of the regulations in the Talmud was, however, one of the main problems. For the question was how could a body of law compiled in the sixth century not be capable of improvement by the nineteenth? To avoid that argument, the defence of shechita in Victorian times was cautiously based on the right to religious tolerance. This, rather than the contention that shechita remains the most humane way of killing animals, which divides scientific experts to this day. In Adler’s time the RSPCA and the antisemites both accused Judaism of knowingly permitting cruelty to animals by insisting on the laws of shechita. Of course, shooting deer, potting pheasants and all forms of killing for sport are, even now, still nothing like as subject to the same level of criticism. Only the fox is protected and the fox doesn’t chew the cud, so it isn’t kosher anyway. The Victorian Board of Shechita, for their part, worked hard to improve the shechita infrastructure. This involved the standards of abattoirs, which were run by non-Jews who worked with the shochetim. In 1877, for instance, the Board instituted an award scheme where there was a first prize of £10, and two prizes of £5 for the best-run abattoirs. The RSPCA sent representatives to the award ceremony at Bevis Marks in November 1877. It was a well attended event and the three winners were all Christians. The Chair pointed out that there was a tradition that Moses and David were appointed to be the leaders of the community because, when they were shepherds, they had been known to be careful to look after their animals. The member of the RSPCA congratulated the audience on the care taken to conduct shechita, but still added that he thought poleaxing was the least painful for the animals. In reply Adler quoted scientists who disagreed with this view and firmly defended shechita. It would not be the last time the RSPCA opposed the practice. Hermann Adler, like his father, worked to ensure that shechita continued to be permitted as part of the law of the land. In this he was successful but, ironically, he also faced strong resistance to the existing structure from within the Jewish community. The new emigrants in the East End were not satisfied that the Board of Shechita applied the rules with sufficient vigour.

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Their organization, the Machzikei Hadath (Upholders of the Faith), was a combination of two strictly Orthodox synagogues; the North London Beth Hamedrash, formed in 1889, and had the support of such luminaries as Raphael Tuck, who first produced Christmas cards for the general public, and David Gestetner who invented the duplicating machine. A Centre for Jewish Studies had been founded to look after a major bequest of Talmudic books. From this came the synagogue. The other half was the Machzikei Shomrei Shabbat synagogue founded in 1890. Their members were refugees from the pogroms, and they, typically, acknowledged no religious authority except their own Rabbi. As the new immigrants were, in general, more observant than the older community, and wanted to prove it, the Chief Rabbi’s approach to shechita became a main source of contention between the two sides. As far as they were concerned, the Machzikei Hadath had a number of reservations about the supervision of the United Synagogue Board of Shechita; for example, the Jewish butchers had been selling kidney suet and unporged meat for many years, and neither was permissible according to the din. It was a question of the animal’s blood. Consuming the blood of slaughtered enemies was one of the barbaric rites of some civilizations in Biblical times. To show their abhorrence of this practice, there were strict rules in shechita to ensure the draining of the blood after an animal had been killed. To drain the forbidden blood from hindquarters, it is necessary to porge the meat, removing the blood, veins and forbidden fat. The Machzikei Hadath said it wasn’t being done anything like consistently enough by the Jewish butchers licensed by the Chief Rabbi. There was also the problem that butchers were selling chickens which might well have not been killed by shechita at all, particularly when there were no labels to prove they had the Board’s approval. An additional complaint was that the meat had to be washed in cold water and it was argued that this didn’t always happen either. The Machzike Hadath pointed out, quite correctly, that as the butchers and shochetim had licences from the Chief Rabbi, the public assumed the meat was kosher when sometimes, because of lax supervision, it wasn’t. Representatives of the Machzikei Hadath asked to call on the Chief Rabbi to air their grievances and this was agreed. The meeting was not a success. Adler reported that he gave the complainants a ‘patient hearing’ and, while admitting that there were some rogue butchers, he assured the delegation that properly koshered meat was readily available. The delegation was not convinced and they withdrew dissatisfied. Their minds

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were probably made up before they arrived. They then reported back to their colleagues that they had been dismissed in a patronizing way. From Adler’s point of view, the decisions of the Chief Rabbi were being questioned by poor immigrant Jews who had no authority to do so, other than that they definitely had a case. If this upset Adler’s amour propre, he had the additional problem that a lot of good causes benefited from the support the fees provided for charging for supervizing shechita. If politics is the art of the possible, there were those who believed the laws of shechita were subject to the same constraints. The Machzikei Hadath did not and, of course, they were right. If one law can be broken because it is expedient to do so, then all law is undermined. Nevertheless, it would not be until the Second World War that a determined enough Dayan of the Beth Din insisted that unporged meat be totally banned. Adler’s report of the Machzikei Hadath meeting to the Shechita Board was discussed in March 1892: At the last meeting of the Shechita Board it was his duty to inform you that certain persons styling themselves Members of the Society ‘Machazeki Hadoss’ had engaged Shochetim who did not hold our kabalas [licence] and that several shops had been opened by butchers who were not licensed by the Board and ourselves. As there was not the slightest guarantee that these Shochetim were competent, we had no alternative but, in accordance with our religious law, to declare the meat prepared by such Shochetim to be trifah and forbidden to be eaten by Jews. This announcement, fortified by similar declarations spontaneously sent us by the most eminent Rabbis of Russia in consequence of statements that had appeared in the Jewish newspapers, had the effect of greatly reducing the number of unlicensed shops, so that at present only one shop is open, doing as I have been credibly informed, but a small amount of business… While [Machazeki Hadoss] were willing that the society should place itself under the Ecclesiastical Authorities, they were determined to maintain their own independence and organization, and to keep the Rabbi, Shochetim and Shomer they had engaged. After discussion it was ‘resolved that the Board supports the Ecclesiastical Authorities in their action with regard to unlicensed butchers, but respectfully requests them to discontinue the distribution of handbills.4 Both sides were producing these handbills for passing out in the East End. This washing of dirty linen in public, of course, put the community in a

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bad light. After their meeting, though, the Machzikei Hadath continued to insist vociferously that butchers licensed by the Chief Rabbi were selling some meat which was not kosher. The Board of Shechita, acting on behalf of Adler, chose to ignore the accusation. Partly this was because the butchers were such important sources of the funds they devoted to charitable purposes, and partly because the Board didn’t have the resources for the adequate supervision of shochetim all over the country. In one way, the East End Jews were in serious danger of biting the hand that was feeding them. They needed financial support very badly and it came with great generosity from the founder of the Federation, Samuel Montagu. At the same time, from 1870, Montagu chaired the Board of Shechita whose standards they were denigrating. He was also a life member of the Council of the United Synagogue, a founder of the Brighton, St Johns Wood and New West End synagogues and President of the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. Montagu’s views were, therefore, to be taken seriously and he would get permanently involved, hectoring inefficient butchers and backing up Adler’s appointments of mohelim, as President of the Initiation Society, of which those who circumcised baby boys became members. The East End Jews had another complaint. They were probably the major consumers of the majority of kosher meat sold in London. The charges for supervision produced a profit for the Board of Shechita, and the Federation considered that some of that profit should be given to them. As Montagu was the Chair of the Board, this would have seemed a proposal to be passed on the nod, but that was far from the case. The Board, in fact, refused to give any part of its profits to the Federation. As a consequence, to keep the peace, Montagu wrote the Federation a cheque every year for what they would have been due, which had been estimated as one-fifth of the total. Montagu was extremely generous in using his chequebook to try to keep everybody happy. The arguments raged for the next twelve years, however, and it was only in 1901 that the Federation received its first cheque from the Board for £76. The temptation to meet the butchers half way presented a real problem. For example, the Manchester Board of Shechita was equally criticized at the time and one of its members wrote in its defence to point out the uses to which the shechita income was put. He itemized support for the Jewish Hospital and the cost of the provision of High Holyday services for the poor. Even more commendable was the burial of the poor dead. All these worthy charities would suffer if the butchers didn’t continue to support them.

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The letter spoke of a poor woman who had died and the fact that the charitable Board of Guardians wouldn’t pay for her funeral. The Board of Shechita stepped in, but got no credit for it. The Board member also argued that much of the criticism came from people who didn’t even keep kosher themselves. The situation deteriorated. The kosher butchers held a meeting in May 1891 when they dramatically forecast that any changes would ruin them. One butcher said that half the Jewish community would be driven to Christian butchers if new rules were introduced, and they all agreed that to discontinue the sales of kidney fat and hindquarters was quite impractical. It wasn’t, but it could certainly be financially damaging. The East End communities were not satisfied; they stuck to their guns and insisted on the need for stricter supervision to prevent the unauthorized sales. They had nothing to lose financially, thanks to Montagu’s generosity. The argument became a stalemate. Later in 1891, though, the Machzikei Hadath lost patience with the London Board and set up their own Board of Shechita. This body the Beth Din immediately denounced and said that the meat they licensed was trefah (not kosher). The condemnation was signed by the Chief Rabbi, the Haham, Moses Gaster for the Sephardim and two Dayanim, Jacob Reinowitz and Bernard Spiers. Both sides now energetically sought support from continental Rabbis. Adler wrote to Rabbi Yitzhak Elchanan Spector of Kovno, who was a renowned Talmudist: May the Lord ordain peace to my dear friend, the truly great Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanon, Ab [Chair] Beth Din of Kovno. I should not have troubled him, but I desire briefly to inform his Eminence that some Russian and Polish Jews have risen up, calling themselves Chevrath Machzike Hadath, have taken as their Rabbi a certain man named Avraham Aba Werner from the town of Tels, and have appointed for themselves a Shochet and opened shops to sell ritually slaughtered meat; and thereby they have breached the fence which the great Rabbis of former years had set up. We have already forbidden this Shechita. His eminence will realise, in his wisdom, the serious situation which may develop, G-d forbid, if some Russian and Polish Jews separate themselves from the Kehilla. For it is known to his Eminence how much the practice of charity has advanced among us, and should the dispute spread, the members of the Community

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would turn away from them and would no longer work on their behalf for the benefit of our unfortunate coreligionists. Would his Eminence, therefore, be pleased to write me a few lines to approve the interdict issued by me and my Beth Din, and that no man in England shall dare to perform Shechita without my permission and that of my Beth Din, and our esteemed Rabbis, Jacob Reinowitz and Bernard Spiers. Furthermore, should any wicked person dare to libel the Shechitra here, would he please not believe nor listen to them. For just as the Shechita was carried out in the days of my esteemed father, of blessed memory, so it is now, and we watch with open eyes over everything that is done. In addition we have a supervisor, the Rosh Hashochtim [Head shochet] Reb. Nahum Lipman; and all our aims are to strengthen the prestige of the Torah and religion.5 Spector was on his side. He ruled that it was forbidden to set up a competing Beth Din, which was, in effect, what the Machzikei Hadath had done. This was correct, but the new body retorted that they were only trying to enforce the law. Spector sent Adler an issur, a condemnation of the new body. For their part, the Machzikei Hadath printed more leaflets in the East End to inform their supporters of their case. Accusations continued to flow back and forth between the Board of Shechita and the Machzikei Hadath, each claiming that the other was approving non-kosher meat. Sheafs of letters were now collected from continental Rabbis supporting one side or another. Spector gave Adler additional support by writing that the Chief Rabbi was a Posek – a Rabbi whose rulings could be relied upon if an individual asked for his advice on matters of halachah. The rationale is that the Beth Din is a team, but a Posek is held to be more eminent than a Dayan. Adler was delighted with Spector’s support and hurried over to Lord Rothschild to show him the letter. On the other hand, Rabbi Werner, for the Federation, was taking on the responsibilities of the senior Rabbi for his East End communities. He was tutoring his students and granting them their semicha when they had reached the appropriate standard.6 He was also dealing with marriage and divorce problems and heartily advocated Zionism. To a considerable extent he was acting as his own Beth Din, and many of the causes he supported did not have the approval of the community’s official bodies or its Chief Rabbi. The Machzikei Hadath were deadly serious in the standards they set, even if the Talmud has a range of options. Discussions are still continuing today about what some of the laws involve. As Israel Zangwill, a famous

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community commentator, said of the East Enders, dismissively and rather unfairly: ‘They don’t understand a word of what they’re saying, but they certainly mean it.’ Eminent Rabbis gave their opinion for and against Machzikei Hadath. The other side would then accuse the writers of not being given the true facts, or being bribed to give the wrong decision. Others were accused of fearing for their positions, or of being particularly friendly to whoever asked for their judgment. The core problem didn’t go away; kidney suet and unporged hindquarters were not kosher and they were being sold by kosher butchers. Non-Jews must have been amazed at the vituperative nature of the arguments. The home truth was that a lot of Jewish housewives wanted the kidney suet for cooking and many didn’t mind if the hindquarters hadn’t been porged. If they couldn’t get the meat from one butcher, they would shop until they found one who was willing to evade the din. Adler was doing his best. Within the original community, all the shochetim still had to be approved as competent by the Chief Rabbi. They were supervised by a head shochet and the policy was to examine them annually to be sure that they had retained their ability. By this level of control the standards of the Shochetim were maintained at a higher level than those of the ordinary slaughterer. Non-Jewish slaughterers were not subject to the same annual examinations. It was, however, an expensive business and Machzikei Hadath’s suggestions would make it more so. One of the first things their new Board of Shechita did was reduce the cost to the butchers for certificating properly-killed chickens. The United Synagogue Board of Shechita was forced to follow suit, which reduced the financial viability of both organizations. The United Synagogue, of course, could afford the drain on its funds if they had to. The Machzikei Hadath had to resort to paying their shochetim a pittance and appealing to them to sacrifice their standard of living for the sake of the community. They accepted the situation initially but it obviously couldn’t go on that way indefinitely. There was certainly some malpractice. Many shochitim, to evade any unwelcome supervision, chose to obtain their licences to practice from continental Rabbis. It was then a justified criticism that, as a consequence, some of their standards might not have been as strict as the London Board of Shechita enforced on behalf of the Chief Rabbi. When the Machzikei Hadath attacked the London Board of Shechita there was another consideration; the charities badly needed the income. If

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the business of the butchers was affected by new restrictions, they were quite capable of threatening to withdraw their support. At the end of the day, though, keeping all the parties from each other’s throats and maintaining the correct standard of kashrut for the community was still down to Adler. One of his chief concerns was that arguments within the community about kashrut could be used by antisemites to attack the whole concept of shechita. There were a number of cases which were tried in court and might be used as precedents. Admittedly, as was often the case, many of the prosecutions were undertaken on the flimsiest of grounds. Shechita had, after all, been permissable by law in Britain for centuries. The first clash was a case 40 years before when his father had been sued in Schott vs Adler for refusing a butcher a licence in Whitechapel. Nathan Marcus Adler felt there were too many butchers in the East End of London and more would increase the likelihood of unfair competition. He offered Schott a licence in Islington, further north, but the butcher turned down the offer and sued. The judge in court held that the Chief Rabbi had the authority to withhold the licence. It was also significant that, during the case, the butcher had called David Woolf Marks, the Progressive minister, to testify on his behalf, but to his discomfort, Marks supported the authority of the Chief Rabbi where it concerned Orthodox Jews. What never came out in the case was that the Chief Rabbi was acting according to the din. This laid down that a shop should not be licensed if it was going to undermine the trade of one which already existed nearby. Community togetherness was considered more important than competitive trading. Whatever the result of the case, there could still be instances of incompetence, human error and exceptional circumstances, which could also end up in court. In the time of Nathan Marcus Adler the RSPCA prosecuted a non-Jew for cruelty in casting a cow. That is placing it too roughly in the position where the throat is exposed. On that occasion the shochet was not involved in the process, which was carried out by the staff in the abattoir. The RSPCA made the case for pre-stunning, but the judge found that no evidence of cruelty had been produced and dismissed the case. In 1878, just before Hermann became Delegate Chief Rabbi, three nonJewish butchers and a Jewish shochet in Manchester were again charged by the RSPCA with cruelty. Once more, it was alleged to have taken place in the casting, although the din is explicit that the animals have to be cast gently. If they suffer a cut of any description in the process, or if they are found to have defects, the animal is no longer kosher.

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The court found that there had been no intentional cruelty and the evidence was contradictory, so the proceedings were terminated. What concerned the Jewish community was that the RSPCA had prosecuted the shochet, who had not been involved in the casting at all. He was properly licensed as a shochet by the Chief Rabbi and was only there to administer the cut to the throat. Charging him, therefore, appeared to be antisemitic, and that has been an accusation levelled against the RSPCA for similar actions on a number of occasions since. The first court case in which Hermann Adler, as Chief Rabbi, was involved, was in Aberdeen in 1893, when the head of the community and the shochet were charged with cruelty by the Procurator Fiscal. It was alleged that the feet of the animal had been tied, it had been thrown violently to the ground, and the knife had been used inefficiently. The community was aroused at these accusations and Elkan Adler, Hermann’s half-brother, went to Aberdeen to instruct the defence solicitor and to translate for the shochet, who didn’t speak English. Elkan (1861-1946) was their first child after the Chief Rabbi married again. He was twenty years younger than Hermann and, initially, very likely to remain in the shadow of his illustrious father and older half-brother. As a loyal member of the family, he was always, of course, going to be in the public eye, but he wanted to make his own mark in the world. Elkan found the perfect solution by becoming a famous Jewish bibliophile. He became, by profession, a solicitor after studying at Jews’ College and formed a partnership with Edward Perowne, the son of the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor and Master of Corpus Christi College. The firm of Adler and Perowne was referred to in the city as The Old Testament and the New Testament, and the advantage of the partnership was that either Adler or Perowne would be available on the Sabbath and the Day of Rest. Elkan collected Hebrew books from all over the Middle East, Russia and Europe and was one of the founders of the Jewish Historical Society of England. He was also the first to recognize the importance of the material in the Cairo Genizah and brought 25,000 pieces of material to England. An officer of the Stepney Schools, the Chovevei Zion, the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge and the committee in Berlin to formulate a policy for the pogrom refugees, Elkan became a distinguished member of the community in his own right. His magnificent collection of Jewish books are now largely in the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. There was a serious case of embezzlement in Adler and Perowne and Elkan had to sell thousands of his books to repair the damage. For a substantial part of the collection, 3,500

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books and 4,000 manuscripts, the Jewish Theological Seminary paid $100,000 (£20,000), after the First World War. Back in Aberdeen in 1893, Elkan served the community once again in the shechita case. It was such a packed courtroom that not everybody who wanted to attend could get in. For Aberdeen it was a very novel accusation. The evidence proved that the President of the community had only been at the slaughterhouse because it was the first time the infant community had killed an animal. The President had done nothing but attend, but he was still prosecuted. All the other slaughterhouse people present, except the shochet, were not prosecuted. These included the non-Jews who had actually cast the animal. The Jews had just looked on at the casting, but they were the ones who were prosecuted. It was pointed out that the shochet had been examined and licensed in Poland and his ability had been confirmed by the London Board of Shechita, which was the Chief Rabbi’s responsibility. After witnesses for the defence and observers of the event had given evidence, the Procurator Fiscal admitted the he had not proved cruelty in the casting process. He insisted, however, that any method which did not include prestunning involved unnecessary cruelty to the animal. He was, therefore, attacking the process of shechita as cruel under any circumstances. The judge eventually found the President of the community not guilty and the case against the shochet not proven. Which left the justification for shechita up in the air in Aberdeen. Two years later, in 1895, the RSPCA charged a Liverpool shochet with cruelty. On this occasion the trial was held on the second day of Succot and the request for an adjournment was rejected. So the defendant didn’t attend court and didn’t offer a defence until the trial was well under way. The prosecutor said that the RSPCA had general respect for all religious ‘prejudices’, but then attacked shechita. He insisted that ‘under the best and most favourable circumstances the method adopted was necessarily a very cruel one’.7 The shochet was found guilty and fined £1 including costs. The shochet had been practising for 26 years and insisted that he had killed the animal correctly, but he was not legally represented in court. Adler brought the shochet to London to examine his competence and, for other reasons, suspended him a few years later. Nevertheless, it was agreed that the shochet was highly competent at the time of the case. The prosecutor acted as secretary for the RSPCA for 45 years. The RSPCA said later that if a request for an adjournment had been made, which it was, they would have had no objections.

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In 1897 another shochet was found guilty of cruelty, again in Liverpool, for a delay in killing the animal, although he had said he couldn’t do so because he had to be elsewhere. He hadn’t given instructions for the animal to be killed, as was his responsibility as the chief shochet at the abattoir. He was fined 50p and Adler suspended him. The arguments between the Board of Shechita and the Machzikei Hadath dragged on for 14 years. Handbills and posters continued to appear all over the East End and in 1904 an internal quarrel still finished up in court. For the community it was a public relations disaster. In Liverpool the Chief Rabbi had approved the setting up of a Board of Shechita for the area. In addition, two Liverpool kosher butchers, Greenspan and Finkelstein, had been licensed by continental Rabbis; they had the required kabalas certificate, but they had not got its equivalent from Adler’s London Board of Shechita. One was considered skilful enough to kill chickens but not cattle. He had taken his equipment to London and Adler had approved the quality of his knives; a very important factor when slaughtering the animals. On further examination, however, the London supervisor said the continental kabalas should not have been given. The supervisor for the Liverpool Board of Shechita, Rabbi Sukmansky, now produced a leaflet warning the community not to buy meat from the two butchers. It obviously severely affected their business and they sued the Board of Shechita and implicated the Chief Rabbi. Adler, on the advice of Sukmanski. had issued an issur, which was a warning to the community not to buy meat from the butchers because he hadn’t been responsible for the continental kabalas or the butcher’s Liverpool supervisor. Therefore, he held that the meat couldn’t be guaranteed to be kosher. To further complicate matters, a local Liverpool man had translated the leaflet into Yiddish and embellished it without Adler’s approval. The Liverpool shechita authorities had also suggested that the butchers were being bribed to sell the non-kosher meat. The Liverpool Board guaranteed Adler’s costs and the case was heard in February 1904. Mr Justice Bingham was chosen to preside as he spoke German, and this was correctly felt to be an essential; a number of witnesses, including Rabbi Werner from Machzikei Hadath, couldn’t speak English. Some of the more esoteric aspects of Judaism came up and were reported to have caused amusement: Witness: The Rabbi does not grant divorces. It is the husband who divorces. Mr Justice Bingham: Oh, really! (Laughter).

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The case against Adler and his secretary came down to the question of whether they had approved the leaflet or not. Adler had, in fact, written to the Liverpool Board of Shechita as soon as he saw the leaflet to express his disapproval, but the letter in Hebrew had been mistranslated in the court proceedings. Where he had said he did not approve, the word ‘not’ had been omitted. When it was properly translated, the lawyer for the plaintiffs immediately absolved Adler and so did the court. Adler’s defence team was high-powered. He was backed up by the recently-elected President of the Board of Deputies, David Alexander, KC., and the head of the London Board, Samuel Montagu. Both were called as witnesses; two immigrant butchers had forced three of the most eminent members of the community into a provincial court. Dayan Hyamson also gave evidence and stated the qualities required of a shochet. These were a satisfactory character, a knowledge of Talmud, the knowledge and skill of Bedika (examining animals) and shechita, practical skills and having efficiently killed three animals in front of a Rabbi. It was obviously, however, a steep learning curve for the jury. The verdict was that the leaflet was libellous and the Board of Shechita were fined £100 (£10,000 today). Adler’s authority to take the action he had was confirmed, however, and Rabbi Werner this time gave evidence in his favour. The jury eventually found that Adler was, indeed, the sole authority in Britain for shechita. A number of the Jewish shochetim were immigrants and some of their licences were, therefore, inevitably from continental Rabbis. These, on occasion, had to be considered invalid by the Board of Shechita in London because they might not have known the continental authorities in question. Accusations of bribery continued to be made in court and the reputations of a string of clerics came under scrutiny. The judge in his summing up regretted that the court had been involved in a purely Jewish argument and both Adler and the Machzikei Hadath agreed after the case that the image of the community had hardly been enhanced by the proceedings. The Machzikei Hadath also came to recognize, at the same time, that although they had triumphantly set up their own Board of Shechita, the cost of its maintenance was really beyond their financial resources. A union of the two organizations was obviously desirable. As Adler said: The Beth Din would hail with extreme satisfaction the proposed union because these are critical times and in face of the fact that the very existence of Shechita in this country is unfortunately threatened

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by the adverse report of the Admiralty Committee, it would be, to my mind, almost unpardonable if there was any disunion in our own ranks.8 As a consequence of the case an agreement was drawn up and approved at a meeting at Bevis Marks in February 1905. With Samuel Montagu in the chair, the Chief Rabbi and Dayan Feldman represented the United Synagogue authorities, Rabbi Chaikin was there for the Machzikei Hadath and Dayan Cohen for the Sephardim. The agreement made the management and control of the Machzikei Hadath Board of Shechita the responsibility of the London Board, subject to the by-laws of the Machzikei Hadath being observed. It was agreed that the Machzikei Hadath would employ no more than four shochetim; two for cattle and two for poultry, paid £2.50 a week for the cattle shochetim and £1 a week for the poultry slaughterers. The abattoirs would be at Deptford and Whitechapel and any new shochetim would be nominated by the Machzikei Hadath, but approved by the London Board. The number of Machzikei Hadath butchers shops was restricted to six and the London Board agreed to pay £184 a year to Machzikei Hadath to help them with their salary problems. Adler would still need to approve the appointments of all the shochetim and his authority was confirmed, so long as ‘he acts in accordance with the Shulchan Aruch’ (a sixteenth-century compilation of Jewish laws). That was a considerable proviso, leaving Orthodox Rabbis plenty of room to continue to question decisions by the London Board of Shechita. Nevertheless, as a consequence, the problem with the Machzikei Hadath had been concluded, but the problem of rogue shochetim remained. In 1907 three Rabbis of the Manchester Board of Shechita issued an issur, warning the community not to buy meat from four butchers who were getting it from an unauthorized shochet. The butchers sued the Board, although this time the Chief Rabbi was not involved, as he hadn’t issued the issur. When the case came to court, it was pointed out, as before, that an unauthorized shochet, or one who had a certificate from a continental Rabbi, could not be properly supervized and tested regularly to confirm his competence. Therefore his meat was trefah, unacceptable to the Orthodox. The jury halted the proceedings on the grounds that there was no case to answer, as the Board had acted properly. A writer in the Jewish Chronicle did point out that it was anachronistic for a Christian jury to have to decide on a point of Jewish law.

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The problems were mostly in the provinces. Some years later a nonJewish butcher’s assistant was found guilty of cruelty as he had lacerated the eye of a bullock in the casting. The laceration, of course, made the animal unfit to be considered kosher. This case in 1908 was, however, the last the RSPCA brought against shochetim in Adler’s time; the Liverpool Corporation had made pre-stunning mandatory but, in discussion with Adler’s office, they agreed to continue to exempt shechita. In 1904 the London Board of Shechita also came to the somewhat belated conclusion that casting by non-Jewish employees of slaughterhouses was undesirable, and that the whole process should be conducted by Jews who understood the requirements of the din to treat the animals humanely and mercifully. It was in that year as well that a potentially much more serious report was produced by the Admiralty on the humane killing of animals. It was sent to both Houses of Parliament and was written by two reputable physiologists, Sir Michael Foster and Professor Ernest Starling. Both recommended forbidding shechita until pre-stunning was agreed. They said: The Jewish system fails in the primary requirement of rapidity, freedom from unnecessary pain and instantaneous loss of sensibility, and it compares very unfavourably with the methods of stunning recommended by the Committee.9 This time Hermann Adler asked the Board of Deputies to become involved. They set up a committee of their own and Tommy Openshaw, FRS, a surgeon at the London Hospital, took the trouble to observe many examples of both kinds of slaughter. He concluded: Poleaxing is by no means a quick and painless death. I am absolutely in accord with the statement that to charge the Jews with cruelty in this matter, i.e. the killing of animals, is grossly unjust. Dr Leonard Hill, a lecturer in physiology at London Hospital Medical College, was also present at many acts of shechita and estimated the time between the cutting of the carotid artery and death at three seconds. Both members of the Board of Deputies committee pointed out that the comments of Foster and Starling made no reference to the duration of consciousness or the duration of pain. They insisted that shechita was superior to poleaxing. The Admiralty recommendations were never acted upon.

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From the Jewish point of view, another problem with all such reports was that shechita was always described as the ritual slaughter of animals. Religious ritual, however, involves a religious ceremony and that, in no way, describes shechita, which is simply to set down laws for the most humane way of killing an animal. There is a belief that anything in the Talmud must be spiritual, but a good deal of it is simply sound thinking. In 1906 Adler had paid tribute to the British approach to ethnic traditions. At the dinner to mark the 250th anniversary of the Whitehall Conference, called by Cromwell to discuss the readmission of the Jews to England, Adler had declared: ‘The secret of England’s greatness is that her rule is based upon those eternal principles of justice and toleration first enunciated in our sacred scriptures.’ Adler’s control over shechita was confirmed in 1908 when the Local Government Board approved a by-law that only slaughterers acceptable to the Chief Rabbi could slaughter animals without pre-stunning them. In 1911, however, another case led to a hung jury and after this the Board of Shechita did not automatically condemn shechita authorized by Rabbis other than the Chief Rabbi as being, ipso facto, trefah. Towards the end of Adler’s life, shechita boards were agreed for many provincial towns such as Glasgow and Leeds. There were still arguments about the ways in which the shechita income was spent but at least it took some of the weight off Adler’s shoulders.

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

Friedman family papers, American Jewish Historical Society, New York. Mishna, Sheviit, 7:3. Taylor, Derek, British Chief Rabbis (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), p.220. Homa, Bernard, A Fortress in Anglo-Jewry (London: Shapiro Vallentine, 1963), p.106. Ibid., p.104. Ibid., p.22. Liverpool Mercury, 4 October 1895. Admiralty report 1904, p.66. Ibid.

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14 The Public Figure Hermann Adler’s public image was of great benefit to the community. Where, traditionally, British Chief Rabbis and Hahamim had confined their activities to the internal affairs of the Jewish community in Britain – and sometimes only in London – Hermann Adler was far more involved as a moral voice in the life of the nation. Throughout his ministry it was a public relations role of considerable importance. Adler’s dignity was well balanced with humour, in the vein of England’s much-loved irony and self-deprecation. He could sometimes be very funny. Where the words of a Chief Rabbi are usually confined to serious matters, Adler knew the value of humour and was not afraid to retain the attention of his audiences by incorporating it into his pronouncements. The last thing you would call him was pompous. For example, in 1896, before giving a paper to the Jewish Historical Society of England, he wryly told the members: ‘For surely we give you adequate value for your money, save and except, of course, in regard to the address to which you are doomed to listen this evening.’ There was often an underlying firmness however. It came, for instance, in his constant insistence that the Jews weren’t a nation in the political sense. He had made the assertion as early as 1878 in the magazine Nineteenth Century: Judaism has no political being whatever. Ever since the conquest of Palestine by the Romans we have ceased to be a body politic. We are citizens of the country in which we dwell. We are simply Englishmen, or Frenchmen or Germans, as the case may be, certainly holding particular theological tenets and practising special religious ordinances, but we stand in the same relation to our countrymen as any other religious sect, having the same stake in the national welfare and the same claim on the privileges and duties of citizens. This had been the position of the Sephardim from Stuart times. It had been held by the Ashkenazim when they followed them into Britain. The emerging Zionists, however, took a totally different view, which put them

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at odds with the Chief Rabbi. For their purposes, the Jews were a nation and, like any other nation, they deserved a National Home. To complicate matters further, the new Sephardi Haham, Moses Gaster, was an enthusiastic Zionist. Adler recognized that there had to be a hidden agenda for the majority of the community. They knew that if the loyalty of the immigrants was ever successfully challenged, the likelihood of an Aliens Bill to restrict the ability of more of the persecuted to escape to Britain would be substantially increased. It was potential legislation which Adler and Rothschild worked to stifle. Adler’s authority was now often manifest, not as his father’s had been by his Talmudic learning or the decisions of his Beth Din. Instead his authority was founded on the permanence of legal statutes and constitutions. These were to be found, primarily, in the constitution of the United Synagogue which made the Chief Rabbi the ultimate religious decision maker. It wasn’t enshrined in the original United Synagogue Act because the government had just disestablished the Irish church, and didn’t want, by contrast, to agree to establish the Chief Rabbi’s overall authority at the same time. So the United Synagogue had written the necessary conditions into its own constitution. A major problem was the legal position concerning the appointment of marriage secretaries. A Jewish congregation had, by law, to be confirmed as such by the Chief Rabbi, and if he declined to recognize a synagogue as Jewish, then the state wouldn’t allow them to have a secretary to authorize, record and conduct, if a clergyman, marriages. Permission to hold marriages depended on accepting the Chief Rabbi’s authority. It was often a great irritation because otherwise a synagogue, such as the Reform, had to get a private Act of Parliament. To have to use this method was considered an insult to the synagogue concerned. On those grounds, every congregation obviously wanted a marriage secretary, but on occasions they would promise to accept the Chief Rabbi’s authority and not keep to their word. That happened, for example, with one of the immigrant Sunderland communities who reneged. It was possible for them to go back on their pledge because to obtain the right to a marriage secretary, it had, of course, been necessary for the Chief Rabbi to confirm that the applicants were a Jewish community. He could hardly deny that this was the case, when the Sunderland community so obviously fulfilled the requirements of Orthodoxy, even if they remained strictly independent of his office. The number of provincial congregations and their distance from London also made independence easier than if they were a London congregation.

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When synagogues needed help with marriages it wasn’t just that the Chief Rabbi had authorized them to have a marriage secretary. The Board of Deputies then acted on his behalf. As they said in 1880: Although the parliamentary powers of the Board in connection with marriages is confined to certifying certain secretaries as Jewish registrars, it has always exercised a surveillance over these officers, advising them on all cases of difficulty and doubt, and correcting abuses when the same have been brought to light. The Registrar General readily avails himself of the Board for the purpose.1 Politically, the emancipated Jews had favoured the Liberal Party originally because the Liberals had supported their initial efforts to sit in Parliament. With Disraeli as Prime Minister, even though in his declining years, many now switched to the Conservatives. Samuel Montagu was a main financial support of the Liberal Party until he died. Adler’s politics were geared to what he considered would be best for his community. He actually wrote to one congregation to ask the members to support the non-Jewish Liberal candidate. Adler did become friendly with Gladstone in 1893 when he was invited by James Knowles, MP, to join them for dinner. Knowles (1831-1908) was the founder of Nineteenth Century and the Metaphysical Society, which drew its members from scientific and religious circles, aiming to try to find common ground. After the dinner Gladstone took the trouble to write to Adler: ‘The occasion which Mr Knowles gave me of meeting you afforded me very sincere pleasure.2 In spite of disagreements, the Chief Rabbi and the four-time Prime Minister would have had much in common to talk about. As Chief Rabbi, Adler’s concerns expanded to even more fronts. There was the problem of the 1853 Factory Act which made work on Sundays illegal, thereby restricting Orthodox Jewish manufacturers to a five-day week well before its time. That had to be corrected. In addition, the 1870 Education Act introduced government-funded, universal schooling, but the assimilationist possibilities when Jewish children attended Christian Board schools worried the Orthodox a great deal, even though parents could withdraw their children from religious instruction. Wherever one looked, when Hermann succeeded his father in 1891, there was still an enormous amount of work to be done. The new Chief Rabbi also felt deeply for all the oppressed Jews in Eastern Europe. He knew how Jewish communities in Europe had for

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centuries been treated shamefully, because his father had experienced very considerable discrimination in Hanover when he was its Chief Rabbi for 15 years in the 1830s. Nathan Marcus Adler would very likely have reminisced to Hermann about the disgraceful state of affairs in Germany after he had left Hanover and settled in London. The situation didn’t improve a great deal in any country on the continent for many more years. One of Hermann’s last acts as Delegate Chief Rabbi in 1890 was to attempt to go to Russia to plead with the Czar to prevent the pogroms. Lord Salisbury, for the government, told him that it would do no good, and the Foreign Office wrote to him that there was nothing they could do either. The attempt was stillborn and the Jews in Russia still suffered. Adler never ceased in his efforts to counter prejudice. In his last message to his family he would tell them ‘I have tried to do everything in my power to check the growth of antisemitism’. Antisemitism was nonthreatening but vociferous. It was voiced in newspapers and embodied in villains in novels, such as Fagin in Dickens’ Oliver Twist. There was even a lot of talk of the Jews being involved in the Jack the Ripper murders. One of the wilder suggestions was that the Ripper was a shochet who had developed a blood lust from slaughtering animals. Nothing was too farfetched for antisemites. The influx into the East End led to the government in 1898 setting up the House of Commons Select Committee on Emigration and Immigration of Foreigners and the House of Lords initiating a Select Committee on the Sweating System. The evidence given to both committees was, on occasions, very biased. Lord Rothschild, a member of the committee, wondered aloud why paupers were specifically identified as Christian or Jewish. Facts were in short supply and some of the witnesses even confessed that they had given evidence in the hope of financial aid. Neither committee recommended much more than a watching brief to see how the situation developed. Governments recognized that the immigrants couldn’t represent a national problem, when the major influx was confined to the East End of London. Moreover the Jews seldom competed with the native Londoners in their chosen areas of employment; there were few Jewish dockers and the majority of the immigrants were to be found in tailoring, cigar manufacture and making furniture. Certainly, Adler was to become a very acceptable image of the Jewish community. In 1894 there was a splendid cartoon by Spy in Vanity Fair and it was in the accompanying article that he was called ‘the greatest Jewish

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divine in the world’. In earlier days when he became Delegate Chief Rabbi, The Times described him as a Hereditary High Priest. The praise reflected his standing, although the conclusions were hardly the result of scientific study. When the government looked for a spokesman for the community, it was often Adler who was called upon to give evidence. The Board of Deputies represented the community on one level but Adler had become part of the British establishment. It was also the case that there were both external and internal disagreements between members of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and between the members of various synagogues. The creation of the United Synagogue itself had been a very long drawn-out process because of disagreements between the Great and the Hambro’ synagogues. The Chief Rabbi was a far less contentious spokesman as far as the government was concerned. Adler’s concern for the East Enders was again to the fore when the House of Lords and the House of Commons created a joint committee to consider the problems of Sunday opening in 1906. It was generally agreed that the Jews had a sound religious case for closing for the Sabbath and opening on the Christian Day of Rest. Adler addressed the House of Lords Committee, advocating a change in the law by which Jewish firms could be excluded from the existing legislation. The law at the time said, however, that they couldn’t be treated differently and there were a large number of prosecutions of every kind and in every part of the country, which involved Jews and non-Jews. Indeed the situation got worse with nearly 4,000 prosecutions in 1897 rising to 5,500 in 1904.3 Although the Lords voted for changes in the law, the Commons wouldn’t agree and the situation wasn’t resolved until the passing of the 1911 Shop Act. Adler was very clever in making his appeals sound entirely logical on the most unlikely occasions. For example, he gave a sermon to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. He linked the occasion with the needs of the poor in the most felicitous way: On Tuesday next during the royal progress, the word of command will ring out again and again, ‘Present Arms’. Today I entreat and beseech you ‘Present Alms’. ‘Present Alms’ with no grudging hand to the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund in honour of our sovereign lady, the Queen.4 In 1895, in Cambridge, he told the Jewish students:

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I ardently hope that when your academic career terminates...you will devote some time and thought to our brethren who toil in the East of London. Nor was he disappointed, as many idealistic young Jews hurried to play their part. In support of the Jewish clubs, Adler also encouraged the creation of the Jewish Lads’ Brigade to try to help poor youngsters get on in life, based on the model of the Church Lads’ Brigade – the right image in a very jingoistic nation which dearly loved its armed forces. Immigration was a hot topic, particularly when there was a slump after the Boer War. In fact, in the 1901 census, immigrants in Britain were a smaller percentage of the population than in any other European country, except Spain and Sweden. Unfortunately, the statistical evidence of the 1901 census was no match for popular prejudice. The Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, eventually thought an Aliens Act would be a vote winner, when in 1905 his Conservative government badly needed one. The main organization working for an Aliens Act was the British Brothers League, which included in its membership some MPs. They campaigned for some years and included in their criticism many antisemitic accusations. They accused the Jews of creating sweatshop conditions, being the cause of the Boer War, undercutting wages in the East End, criminality, unsanitary behaviour and pauperism. They were supported by the Trades Union Congress which passed resolutions advocated controls on immigration at no less than three of their annual meetings. The government eventually set up a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in June 1902 and delivered its report in August 1903. Lord Rothschild was one of the invited members; many of the Jewish leaders he represented were not averse to an Aliens Act. The communal charity organizations were overwhelmed by having to try to support so many newcomers. They certainly didn’t want Jews with a criminal record to be allowed into the country to get the community a bad name. They resented the continuous bad publicity. Adler, himself, recognized that there was a case for an Aliens Act. What he feared most would be the result, which did occur after the bill was passed. In 1906 there were 500 permits granted for immigrant Jewish refugees. In 1908 there were 20 and in 1910 there were five. The number of Jews deported before the war in 1914 was 1,378. Of course, the facts were often ignored. The Board of Trade figures for 1891-1893 had shown total immigrants of 24,688 and total emigrants of 164,000. Colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand welcomed

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immigrants from the motherland. When the Aliens Act was eventually debated in 1905, three of the four Conservative Jewish MPs voted for the bill, although the Liberal Jewish MPs voted against as did Keir Hardie for Labour. Hardie felt for the refugees but still had a concern that Jews could become accepted as immigrants if they had a contract to work in Britain. They might well then work for less than those who held down the jobs at the time; it was humanity versus living standards. The results of the legislation are difficult to assess. Certainly, until the outbreak of the First World War put an end to immigration for the duration, the Aliens Act did not prevent the arrival of Jews who had job offers and were in good health. At the designated ports of entry the Home Office took a lenient view of the applicants. This was also the period when The Protocols of Elders of Zion was published in 1903 with its ludicrous claim that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It was, nevertheless, gratefully seized upon by antisemites and took in a large number of the gullible in many countries. It was proved to be a fake by The Times in 1921 but it is still on sale in Arab states today. The truth was buried in false generalizations, but the message did strengthen the campaign to have an Aliens Act passed. It was fortunate, therefore, that the Chief Rabbi was always there to maintain the respectability of the community. Not wishing to be confused with the facts, the agitators for an Aliens Act were obviously a serious threat to the possibility of rescuing more Jews from the continuing massacres in Eastern Europe. Their efforts finally culminated in 1905 in the passing of the Act which put obstacles in the way of many Jews wanting to come into the country. Arthur Balfour, the Prime Minister, spoke in the House of Commons of ‘the undoubted evils that had fallen upon the country from an immigration that was largely Jewish’. Because of the Act, many Jews who would have been safe had they been allowed to flee to Britain, now died in a series of new pogroms abroad. To take a modern example, it isn’t difficult to imagine what would have happened to the Iranian Jews when the Shah was overthrown in the 1980s and the fundamentalist regime took over. On this comparatively recent occasion the British government quietly let into the country those of the Iranian Jewish community who wanted to come, and it enormously strengthened the Sephardi congregation in London. The Iranian Jews had their poor, but most of the community was far better off than the victims of the pogroms in Victorian times. Very few countries object to well-to-do immigrants; they just dislike poor ones.

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Britain has, in fact, benefited enormously from immigrants. When Sir Ian Jacob, Churchill’s military adviser after he became Prime Minister, was asked why we had won the Second World War, he said that it was ‘because our German scientists were better than their German scientists’. The German scientists were largely Jewish refugees. It wasn’t only the needy immigrants who concerned the Chief Rabbi. He also organized teams among his congregation to visit the impoverished and infirm on a regular basis from wherever they came. Those who agreed to help by making visits had a pattern of behaviour expounded to them. Visiting the homes was not to be given pious overtones. The visitors were also to advise them of the organizations who could help the indigent with their welfare and the education of their children. The visitors were asked to recommend industrial training and warn those they called upon of the disadvantages of socialism and the dangers of the conversionist societies. There was, thus, a definite structure to the visitations but they were for those in need. Adler stated publicly that he was against the continuing influx of economic immigrants. In the Jewish Chronicle in August 1895 he said that the Jewish charities …use every available means to discourage the migrants to these shores of all who are not victims of persecution…I endeavour to second these efforts in many communications to the various Rabbis in Russia and Poland, by pointing out the difficulties they would encounter here. The truth is that immigrants often make very good citizens. To slightly paraphrase Shakespeare, they take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing they intend to end them. Within a hundred years, the Jews of the East End moved to more salubrious suburbs and into the middle classes. The largest body remained members of the United Synagogue, although the relations of the leaders of that body with the Chief Rabbi had its ups and downs in the time of Joseph Herman Hertz. They didn’t resume their harmonious cooperation until the time of Sir Isaac Wolfson and Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie after the end of the Second World War. Relations between the United Synagogue and Hermann Adler were, however, invariably harmonious. Throughout Adler’s ministry as Delegate Chief Rabbi and Chief Rabbi, although the President of the United Synagogue was Lord Rothschild, the majority of the day-to-day work was in the hands of the Vice-President and secretary; Rothschild’s office remained imperiously at his New Court city address.

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If there were any serious problems, however, Adler could usually rely on Lord Rothschild’s support. Any attempt to undermine the Chief Rabbi’s spiritual authority would certainly find Rothschild springing to the defence of his cousin. Moreover, the management of the United Synagogue was primarily concerned with financial considerations and seldom took much serious interest in religious matters, preferring to leave Adler to deal with them. Rothschild recognized just how valuable were Adler’s efforts in the wider world. As he wrote to the Chief Rabbi in 1893 about the family’s reaction to one of his public lectures: They wish me to say with great pleasure and gratification when they read this morning the various accounts of your very excellent lecture at the London Institute last night. They consider that nothing is calculated to do more good for the Jews than when it is shown that they have other interests besides trade and finance.5 The effect of Adler’s increasing involvement as a public figure helped the community in many other ways as well. In 1892, for example, if was agreed that for the first time there should be a Jewish Chaplain to the Forces. Reverend, (later Rabbi), Francis Lyon Cohen took on the role. In 1905 he became the chief minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney. The contribution Adler made to the community as a whole is well illustrated in Appendix B, where the result of his work produced a memorable reaction from a journalist. Adler was invited to appear on the public stage on many different occasions. When the delegates of the Imperial Ottoman parliament came to London, Adler was one of those invited to lunch with them at the House of Commons. In private, however, the Chief Rabbi’s home was typical of the old-established Jewish gentry. On one occasion Theodor Herzl spoke deprecatingly of a dinner at the Adler home being ‘…everything English with the old Jewish customs peeping through’. On another occasion he described Adler as ‘a man of Germany…who would undoubtedly like to think of himself a descendent of the Anglo-Saxons’. That, of course, was the effort every country wanted its immigrants to make, but foreign origins could be unfairly used as a criticism when an excuse for condemnation was needed. Adler could ride the punches; as the Chronicle recorded towards the end of his life, he had became ‘a past master of the tactful handling of problems and men’. Herzl was honest enough to be extremely impressed with the level of activity in the Adler household. He found Rachel conversing with a Social

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Welfare group, Nettie meeting with a Girls’ Club Bible study group and Herman, himself, was acting, as usual, as a courtly and genial host, a good conversationalist and a good listener, with tact and savoir faire. The battle for a positive image needed to be continuous, however, and Adler didn’t let the community down. His contribution didn’t include unqualified support for Zionism. As he told the Anglo-Jewish Association, ‘We must be on our guard against fostering fantastic and visionary ideas about the re-establishment of a Jewish nation.’ He explained to Cassell’s Saturday Journal that ‘nobody whose opinion is of any weight advocated that Palestine should be acquired by the Jewish people or that Jews should gather there as a nation, at least until the coming of the Messiah’. In this view, though, Adler represented the majority opinion of the Jews in Britain. In the future, even after the Balfour Declaration, only a small proportion of the community would join the Zionists. There was still no unanimity on the subject. Adler continued to have a wide range of critics. Disliked by the Zionists for his lack of support, Adler was also derided by the right wing for his cultivated British image. The immigrants were, of course, now fighting for their self-esteem as well as a livelihood. For no fault of their own, they were reduced to wrapping themselves in their piety, but still having to appeal both to the Jewish establishment for financial help and to the government for state support. It was a very hard life. They criticized the Chief Rabbi but they (like all British Jewry), needed him on many occasions. Although the right wing have today left the Board of Deputies, they still need the support of the organization when issues affecting them are considered by government. The fact was that Adler was the most senior, and one of the very few Jewish spiritual leaders, in his time, to be working in the public arena. He had to represent his religion and his co-religionists in the wider world of a Christian nation. It was as much in the interests of the East End Jews as of the wealthier members of the community, that he was well able to do so. Adler wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t been pleased with the respect he earned from those in power, but he was never a man to rest on his laurels. Adler’s relations with the church were also very valuable. In the ever more secular world we inhabit today, the importance and power of the Church of England in Victorian times is sometimes difficult to appreciate. Religion and public good work were considered to be intricately interwoven. The key religious factor was that, from the time of Henry VIII with the exception of a few years under Queen Mary, it was a Protestant

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country in a world where, internationally, the Catholic Church was far more numerous. For hundreds of years the Catholic nations were likely to be the enemy. On the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Jews could be relied upon to support the Protestants. The laws that discriminated against Jews in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century had been primarily passed to discriminate against Catholics and non-Conformists. As an instance, Mill Hill is an excellent school on the outskirts of London. It is situated there because, when it was founded in 1807, no non-Conformist school was permitted less than six miles from the heart of London. Catholics also couldn’t sit in Parliament until 1829. If the immigrant Jews were to be fully accepted in Britain, the attitude of the Church of England would be a major factor. How would that marry with the ambition of many Christian societies to convert the Jews, by making them see the alleged errors of their ways? Adler had to decide whether to lead his flock towards theological cooperation with the church or to stand his ground. He was very successful when he adopted the second course. He became so accepted in non-Jewish circles that nobody senior in the church even officially took offence when he defended Judaism against Christian misrepresentation. He had an unspoken licence to be critical. Standing on his paternalistic pedestal as a respected clergyman in the mother religion Adler, unlike most of his predecessors, was not afraid to take issue with the behaviour of the Christian church. In a sermon in 1902 he declared his irritation with anyone who belittled the Torah: Does then Judaism, so sublime in its purity, so pure in its sublimity, teach dogmas which are repugnant to our common sense?6 On another occasion he was equally blunt: How dare Christianity assert that a purer and more elevated morality than that contained in the Bible was preached by its founder? The word of G-d could not have been imperfect or incomplete so as to require either correction or development.7 The principle might be incontestable from an Orthodox Jewish point of view, but over the years the invention of electricity, photography and telephones – to name just three innovations – made it necessary for Rabbis to decide how they fitted into the word of G-d.

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Adler was also not afraid to criticize the church for not protesting loudly enough about the pogroms. In a sermon in the Great Synagogue in 1905 he asked: Does it not then behove the leaders of Christian thought and action…to arise and offer their solemn protest against the atrocities committed and left unrebuked in a Christian country? It would have been much more difficult to take that stance had Adler withdrawn the community behind the stockade walls of spiritual isolation from the world, as some of the extremely Orthodox communities preferred. That wasn’t Adler’s way. He came to expect his views to be sought as the representative of the Jews, and he didn’t settle for platitudes unless there was a serious need for diplomacy. He was always anxious that there be even better relations with the Church of England. At a clerical symposium on immortality in 1885 he was the only Jew invited to speak. In return Canon Barnett was invited to address the Maccabeans as early in Adler’s ministry as 1893. This was reciprocated by an invitation to the Chief Rabbi to lecture at Church House on Mosaic sanitation. His address was marked by ‘genial tact and persuasive modesty’, but he took the opportunity to make a spirited defence of shechita, pointing out that 50 eminent non-Jewish veterinary authorities had approved this method of slaughter. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward Benson, was ill in 1890, Adler wrote to wish him well and did the same when one of Benson’s successors, Randall Davidson, had influenza in 1906. Theologically they might differ, but as individuals they were firm friends. Not everybody was equally tolerant and there was a difference between newsworthy stories and those of lesser importance. Canon Barnett’s address came into the first category. Out of the public eye, Jews could still be considered ‘not one of us’. Barnett’s wife, Henrietta, had created a fine school for girls, named after her, and had appointed the new headmaster. When it was to be opened, however, she didn’t send an invitation to the local Jewish minister to attend the ceremony. She only relented when the new headmaster said that if the Rabbi wasn’t there, he wouldn’t be there either.8 For many years Adler was seen as a major apologist for the Jews, not only in Britain but also in the empire, the United States and Europe. He represented it [Judaism] indeed superbly well. He elevated the institution to a dignity and position almost unequalled in the history

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of the diaspora. On all public occasions when it was called for, the Chief Rabbi would figure on the platform by the side of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and would be heard with the utmost deference. At state services in Westminster Abbey, at times of national mourning or celebration, his impressive figure would be seen in the seat of honour…wearing a quasi-episcopal rosette in the ribbon of his top hat as an addition to the clerical garb.9 At the 50th anniversary dinner to mark the 1858 admission of Jews to the House of Commons, Adler even addressed the question of whether a Jewish state would have given Christians political rights, if the shoe had been on the other foot. He pointed out accurately that: History enables us to answer this question with no uncertain voice. From the 8th to the 10th century…there existed a powerful and independent kingdom, the Khazars. Both King and subjects had embraced the Jewish faith. Contemporary historians tell us that the… chief authority, next to that of the sovereign, was vested in a tribunal which was composed of seven persons; two Jews, two Christians. two Mohammedans and one Pagan. And we are told that there was an entire absence of all sectarian animosities.10 Although on these occasions Adler referred in general terms to Jewish peoplehood, he was still normally careful to deny that the Jews were a nation at all. Over the years, those who proclaimed Jewish nationhood seemed to give ammunition to those who questioned their loyalty. Adler continued to insist that the Jews were a religion and it was as such that Judaism had been enabled to survive over the centuries. Adler’s reputation in the wider world continued to grow as long as his ministry lasted. In 1891 the North American Review ran an article by Gladstone, criticizing Andrew Carnegie’s ‘Gospel of Wealth’. It was followed by another by Cardinal Manning and Hermann Adler on ‘Irresponsible Wealth’. Adler was a good friend of the Cardinal and the story was told that on one occasion Manning asked him when he would eat pork. Adler was said to have replied ‘At your wedding, Your Eminence.’ In the Southampton University archive there is a letter confirming that the North American Review paid Adler £52.50 for the article. Today that would be about £5,000. Adler wasn’t concerned, however, with the financial

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rewards. For an article in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1887 he was paid £4. Often he wasn’t paid at all.11 In order to get a balanced view of the Chief Rabbi it is fortunate that he collected his favourite sermons in a book entitled Anglo-Jewish Memories, published in 1909, two years before his death. In those addresses he certainly backed the British party line. He eulogized the Golden and Diamond Jubilees of Queen Victoria and took particular pleasure in the fact that she was the first sovereign to include the Jewish community in a call for a national day of prayer. On 15 April 1887 he had been able to announce in the Bayswater Synagogue: The Chief Rabbi has this morning received a gracious inclination from the Queen to the effect that Her Majesty fully approves of a public service of thanksgiving being held by members of all religious denominations in celebration of the forthcoming jubilee. Palace recognition at last for his whole community; there had never been such times. Adler also supported the dubious case for the Boer War and wrote a war prayer which reflected public opinion in its favour: ‘Our members are absorbed, even as it becomes loyal Englishmen and Englishwomen, by the critical position of a portion of Her Majesty’s forces.’ He didn’t, however, neglect the newly-created articles of the Geneva Convention. Indeed, he pointed out to the government the section of the Second Book of Chronicles dealing with the treatment of prisoners of war: ‘The prophet rebuked everybody for treating the prisoners badly and the prisoners were clothed and shod and given food and drink and anointed.’ Two thousand years later, the victorious British burnt the Boer farms, and 25,000 Boers, including women and 20,000 children, died in rural imprisonment settlements, known as concentration camps, ostensibly to prevent the growth in the number of guerrillas. Another 10,000 died in Black concentration camps. This time the Bible was millennia ahead of the Geneva Convention. When Jewish Randlords were accused of fomenting the Boer War, Adler’s criticism of the treatment of the Boers was a counterbalance. The human cost of the war, however, was far greater than had been foreseen. The total of British killed, wounded and captured eventually reached 55,000. A scapegoat for casualties on that scale was needed in the country, and the antisemites fixed on the argument that Jewish financiers had persuaded the government to become involved in an unnecessary war.

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It was also during the Boer War, however, that 2,000 Jewish men joined the colours. It gave a further lie to the antisemitic canard that the community wasn’t loyal to the country. It was a good time for Adler to provide his support, as international opinion was very much on the side of the Boers and Britain felt abandoned by the defection of many former allies. If Adler was like a recruiting officer for the Boer War forces, the inevitable result later, was his duty to unveil the war memorial to those 114 Jews who died as a consequence, with half succumbing in battle and half dying of disease. As he said at the ceremony in 1905: ‘Here we are spared that most distressful sight, the revival of odious religious prejudice and pernicious racial antipathies.’ It was a powerful but unheeded argument against the Aliens Act of the same year. If a group is 300,000 strong, it will obviously include some black sheep. The Jewish community was no different. Antisemites, of course, would generalize from the particular. One of the events for which the Jews were held responsible by their critics was, indeed, the Boer War. In South Africa those entrepreneurs who developed the gold and diamond deposits, the socalled Randlords, had been at odds with the Boer government in the Transvaal. When war broke out in 1899, the Boers were swiftly defeated but fought a guerrilla war until 1903. The British were portrayed as bullies in many overseas countries and the Randlords were widely accused of fomenting the war to gain their ends. At least half of the most prominent Randlords were Jews. They had used their initiative to build major companies from impoverished beginnings, but the inevitable success of the British in the war certainly served their purposes. The discrimination of the Boers against them could be nullified as a result. In fact, however, the first war in the Transvaal was the one in 1880 and it had seen heavy British casualties before an armistice was agreed. British governments had been anxious for revenge long before gold was discovered, or substantial numbers of Jewish refugees had arrived in South Africa. One of the disasters had been at a location called Majuba Hill in 1881, which was a resounding Boer victory and ended the war. A mass of commemorative pottery produced to mark the victory in the 1899 Boer War, included works devoted to the achievement of revenge for that loss. It was that important to the country. The events which had led to the second Boer War in 1899 had been masterminded by Cecil Rhodes, who was certainly not Jewish and, not for the first time, Jews were given a prominence they couldn’t possibly have deserved.

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The importance to the community of Adler’s position as a popular public figure grew at the turn of the century for a number of reasons. As more and more Jews arrived in the East End, the accusations of accepting lower wages than the British born workers grew in intensity. Much as sweated labour was deplored, it was true that a proportion of the employers were Jews and behaved as badly as the non-Jews. It is always difficult to measure national attitudes. Jews in Britain suffered no pogroms and little violence. There were antisemitic publications like The National Review, which was a middle-class Conservative magazine and virulently antisemitic. Its circulation, however, was a mere 10,000. Its main objective was to portray the Jews as foreign aliens, disloyal to Britain. Irrespective of the nationality of its targets, or the length of time they had been in the country, they were lumped together as German Jews. As relations with Germany worsened before 1914 the soubriquet became more and more damaging. The antisemites also picked on the press as being controlled by Jewish financiers. It was true that for a time the Daily Telegraph’s editor was Edward Levy and the editor of the Observer and the Sunday Times was Rachel Sassoon. Both were British and on Rachel Sassoon’s watch the culprit in the notorious Dreyfus case, Count Esterhazy, admitted his guilt in an article in the paper. At the end of the day the Boer War was popular in the country as another Jewish and British victory. It then led, however, to considerable inflation, which hit the poorer people badly and provided fuel for a number of antisemitic outbursts by socialist leaders such as John Burns. Adler remained another important element in the mix, around whom the more liberal-minded in the country could congregate. What wasn’t eventually acceptable were the extortionate rates being charged for loans to poor people. It led to the Money-Lenders Act of 1900. Some Jews did indeed batten on to their poor brethren in the East End. The Act made them register and made it an offence to get people to take up loans on the basis of false information. It didn’t set a figure for maximum interest, though, and 50 per cent per annum was quite normal. Even the next Act in 1927 still made the maximum interest that could be charged a disgraceful 48 per cent. Of course, Christian money-lenders outnumbered Jews by a large margin but that didn’t stop antisemites blaming the Jews for a totally unsatisfactory situation. In his will Nathan Marcus Adler had specifically warned his family never to have anything to do with usury, and Hermann felt equally aggrieved with those who took advantage of the ignorant and desperate poor.

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Many of the immigrants produced another social problem. This time, in December 1910, Adler was asked to give evidence to the House of Lords committee considering the laws on divorce. There were a number of differences between British and Jewish law. As long ago as 1866 the Registrar General had laid down that a Jewish divorce could not be approved, unless there had also been a civil divorce. There were about 2,000 Jewish marriages in Britain in 1910 but divorces could be administered by the Beth Din of any country. Where they were granted abroad, a Jewish divorce did not apply in Britain without a civil divorce being granted as well. Many immigrants did not realize the significance of this and, anyway, could not afford the legal costs of getting a civil divorce. Adler pointed out that a Jewish divorce had to be given by the husband in the form of a document called a Get. The problems mostly occurred when immigrant Jews based their marital status on a divorce granted abroad. Adler asked the committee to make such divorces an offence if they were designed to get round British law. The Registrar General would be given a copy of the divorce granted abroad, and would then submit it to the Chief Rabbi for his approval of its legality. If he rejected the divorce, the Registrar General would abide by his decision. In the event, the committee decided not to recommend that such divorces should be an offence; just inapplicable. In cross-examination, committee members went to the trouble of considering the history of the Jewish law. There was a great desire, on the part of the committee, to get the conflicting rules clearly established Adler had to field very awkward questions from members of the committee. What should happen if either the wife or the husband converted to Christianity? Would such a course be grounds for a Jewish divorce? Adler could either be diplomatic or honest. On this occasion he eschewed diplomacy and answered that the Beth Din should do all they could to bring the convert back to Judaism. If they were unsuccessful, however ‘it might be advisable to grant a divorce after all endeavour had failed’. Adler’s evidence was severely criticized in letters to the Jewish Chronicle and the criticism in East End publications was described in one letter to the paper as a ‘Niagara of vituperation’. The Beth Din was called sycophants, traitors and ignoramuses. Adler’s evidence was described as a ‘foul blot upon the annals of English Jewry’. What Adler had really said was not spelt out in detail. The argument was on the question of whether continental Rabbis were as proficient as Adler. It was a different version of the West

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End/East End argument. On the question of obeying the law, the East End critics were wrong, but there were a large number of them. Another main objection was to British law overriding the Jewish religious regulations. Adler, however, could hardly suggest that British law be ignored where a Jewish divorce was involved. The din that the laws of a country in which Jews lived had to be obeyed by the community was still operative; Dina d’malkhuta dina, as Haham Nieto had reminded the Sephardi Mahamad when the question of which claimant to the throne should be supported after Queen Anne died two centuries before. On the other hand, if it was question of religious priorities, Adler certainly had conflicting demands. As the Chief Rabbi became frailer, the opposition to his office, even among the ministers, grew stronger. In December 1909 it was agreed to hold a Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers at Jews’ College for three days on 26-28 December. Adler gave the opening address but the chair at the sessions was taken by different ministers. The papers on Sunday were on the Functions, Titles and Qualifications of Jewish Ministers, Children’s Services and superannuation. On Monday they discussed Sabbath observance, mixed marriages and the district organization of provincial congregations. On the last day they formulated an organizational structure. There would be a President, Vice-President, Treasurer and a 22-strong Standing Committee. Eleven of the standing committee would be from London congregations and the other eleven from the provinces. One of the agreements they reached was that the standing committee was ‘empowered to deal with any matter arising between each conference’. Did that mean the standing committee had the equivalent of the Chief Rabbi’s authority? The second conference was held in 1911 at the time of Adler’s death when Dayan Moses Hyamson was temporarily occupying the vacant role. In a further sixteen years there were only four similar conferences, and only a further eight were held in the next 60 years. The Chief Rabbi remained in charge throughout.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Minutes of Meeting of the Law and Parliamentary Committee, 28 February 1892. Adler, Herman, The Old Paths sermon, 1902. Figures given in the House of Lords 1906 debate. Religious Review of Reviews, vol 2. no. 8, 1891. University of Southampton Hermann Adler archive. Roth, Cecil, Jewish Leaders, 1750-1940 (Bloch Publishing, 1953).

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Adler, Hermann, Anglo-Jewish Memories (London: George Routledge, 1909), p.103. The Rabbi’s wife related this to the author. Adler, Hermann, Naphtulei Elohim, pp.170-171. University of Southampton Hermann Adler archive. Ibid.

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15 Conclusion A month after Adler’s death, in August 1911, after 250 years, those who had always insisted that anti-Jewish riots could also happen in Britain, were given their only piece of positive evidence. There were, in fact, two examples in Wales; one in Tredegar and one up the road in Ebbw Vale. Tredegar was a very small community. It had been given the land for a synagogue by the Tredegar Iron and Steel Company in 1874, and the Duke of Beaufort had given them land for a cemetery. There was a fair amount of controversy in the early days about the raising of funds for the synagogue and Hermann had led an investigation by a London committee. The synagogue was opened in 1884. The disturbances took place on the Saturday and Sunday nights of 19 and 20 August. Eighteen Jewish-owned shops were looted. The two towns had been going through desperate economic times, and some Jewish landlords were widely regarded as charging exorbitant rents to their poor tenants. In addition, some of the Jews who owned factories were accused of paying wages in tokens, which could only be used in company shops; the infamous Truck system. There were unfortunately instances where these reports were accurate. The largest non-Jewish employer in the town had reported to the Home Office: I know of no other reason other than this [rack renting] which would give rise to the feeling against the Jews, many of whom are respectable citizens and who have been in business in Tredegar for very many years.1 The Chief Constable wrote later: The present state of general unrest is too favourable an opportunity to be missed for attacking the Jews. The advance in prices owing to the railway strikes also caused ill feeling.

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During the looting, no Jews were hurt. Many Jewish families nevertheless left their homes to shelter in the houses of non-Jewish friends, who were horrified at the disturbances and supportive of their neighbours. Unlike Russia, where the police would often stand by and watch similar violence – and sometimes lend a hand – the local magistrates did their duty. They read the Riot Act in the street and called out troops to help the police. The constabulary waded in with their truncheons, much to the disgust of one Councillor, who was a Mines Federation sponsored representative, and said they were too brutal; but then it had happened before on another occasion; only that was 30 years earlier and then it was the Catholics who were accused of disturbing the peace of the villeins by undercutting wages. In 1911, on Monday morning, troops of the Worcester regiment arrived in Tredegar from Cardiff to keep order. So on Tuesday the looters moved and started rioting again a few miles up the road in Ebbw Vale. That was stopped by the same force. By the weekend it was all over. It didn’t prevent one publication, The Jewish World, coming out with a blazing headline: ‘An all-British pogrom in South Wales’. That wasn’t the general reaction, however. Most Jewish and non-Jewish pundits fell over backwards to protest that the riot was not even antisemitic; they insisted that it was just a coincidence that all the Christian shops had their windows broken and all the Jewish shops were looted. The Jewish victims received a lot of sympathy locally but at least one of their leaders was less supportive. Lord Rothschild, still head of the United Synagogue, when asked to approach the government during the riots, said of his co-religionists: ‘They are a bad lot and probably deserve what they are getting.’ Dayan Hyamson did his ambition to succeed Adler no service by defending the Tredegar congregation. Rothschild, however, did not like to be contradicted. Like many other stories about antisemitism over the years, the publicity appeared more an effort to produce a good news story than an unbiased report of actual events. The Tredegar Council agreed to set aside £12,500 as restitution for damages, although only £6,000 was eventually needed. At Ebbw Vale it was slightly more at £7,500. It meant adding 1p to the rates. All the authorities had behaved impeccably throughout. It is no wonder that the right wing still refer to Britain as malchut shel chesed – the Kingdom of Mercy. So, overall, what did Hermann Adler achieve? Cecil Roth, the great Anglo-Jewish historian, summed it up very fairly: One with less learning, less executive ability, or with a weaker personality, could never have untangled all the threads of Jewish

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life…could never have preserved for the heterogeneous AngloJewish community even a semblance of unity and integrity. It’s all too easy to judge people in history by today’s standards or with the benefit of hindsight. A life can only be judged, however, by the standards of the time in which it is lived. It is certainly true that in the wider community, Adler was better known than any of his predecessors. He added lustre to Anglo-Jewry in the eyes of the country’s movers and shakers. In Marienbad, where they were both on holiday, Edward VII stopped to talk to him. He was made a Commander of the Victorian Order. Admittedly there is one small problem for a Chief Rabbi in wearing the insignia of that illustrious body – below the ribbon is a handsome cross! With typical diplomacy, Adler arranged to cut a slit in his canonicals which concealed the bottom arm of the cross. In the Jewish community he had his admirers among the gentry, but even they sometimes criticized him and said he ‘asserted his authority when he could and bent with the wind when he could not’. There were, however, like his father before him, remarkably few occasions when he couldn’t get his own way with Rothschild’s backing. The changes he accepted were halachically justified. For example, the traditional place from which to conduct a service in synagogue is on the bimah in the middle of the building, with the Ark at one end. After pressure from the laity Adler approved the placing of the bimah in front of the Ark in some synagogues, such as Hampstead, but nothing fundamental was changed by this and, in fact, there were precedents. It was a decision in line with his regular approach. Changing the position of the bimah could be approved within the din and could, therefore, be allowed. Sometimes difficulties were less easily overcome. At the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee service at the Great Synagogue, for instance, a mixed choir took part. Adler remonstrated with the lay leaders of the synagogue, but other synagogues started to follow suit and introduced mixed choirs. Adler’s view, as his successor put it, was that while he did not approve he did not rate the subject as fundamental. The lay leadership on this subject did manage to overrule the religious, but it happened very seldom and never with anything fundamental. It was equally a rare occasion when Rothschild sided with the Great membership against Adler’s wishes. It would take the best part of 100 years to get mixed choirs abolished again. Nevertheless, the situation would return to its traditional norm eventually and, in the meantime, the United Synagogue remained united.

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As far as Jewish education was concerned, Adler could point to much progress during his incumbancy. It wasn’t just that the Jews’ Free School had become the largest in the country with 4,000 pupils, or that Jews’ College was now producing a more broadly-educated set of ministers than had been possible in its early days. It was in the safe hands of the new Principal, Adolph Büchler, who could be trusted to be as firm as Adler or even more so. Indeed, he criticized the Chief Rabbi for the evidence he gave to the Committee on Divorce, particularly on the subject of divorces administered by continental Rabbis. Büchler was a continental Rabbi himself. With regard to schooling, the question was whether communal support for Jewish education was adequate. In the year Adler died a new yeshivah was started in Manchester, the first in the provinces. It followed the creation in 1903 of the Yeshiva Etz Chaim in the East End. The situation with Board Schools, set up by the government, was difficult. To send the children to Jewish schools was often seen as running counter to the need for them to be anglicized. In 1895 the number of children in Jewish schools in London was 8,100 and in the Board Schools only 7,800 Jewish pupils. In 1905, however, only 7,800 were in Jewish schools and over 20,000 in the Board schools. Over 10,000 children in Board schools were getting a smattering of Jewish education in the school curriculum. The Jewish Religious Education Board, with the authority of the Chief Rabbi, also provided Jewish lessons after school hours and on the Sabbath. The system didn’t suit everybody. The Great Garden Street Talmud Torah in Whitechapel withdrew from the JREB because the children were being taught in English rather than Yiddish. As a result, the Brick Lane Talmud Torah was created and had 1,000 pupils by 1900. The Kamenitzer Rebbe praised its teaching and criticized the JREB for giving less time to Rabbinic subjects. Undoubtedly, Adler would have seen his greatest achievement as keeping the vast majority of the British community within the Orthodox fold. The experience of the Orthodox Rabbis in the United States was very different. In America, 75 per cent of the Jews eventually turned to Reform, which was far more radical than Reform in Britain, where Hermann Adler kept the same proportion of his community in the Orthodox fold. He didn’t get involved unnecessarily. For example, he didn’t object to Reform members playing a full part in the Anglo-Jewish Association. He recognized that membership of that organization involved no theological implications and, as the Vice-President, he could keep an eye on proceedings anyway. The Board of Deputies was a more complicated issue.

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After the death of Moses Montefiore, the Reform congregation had been allowed to join the Board. They became far stronger, in their ability to sway the community, than their numerical insignificance warranted. To Adler, the lack of democracy in the somewhat secretive behaviour of the Conjoint Foreign Committee, formed by the Deputies and the AngloJewish Association in 1878 to deal with international affairs, was of less importance to the Jewish needy than the support they would get from the resources of the members of the Reform families. On this occasion he felt the ends justified the means. Adler was determined not to give an inch on Orthodox practice and he preferred to concentrate his moral force on that front, rather than trying to take on everybody about everything. If the Conjoint produced minutes of their discussions with the government, that did not affect Adler’s total control over the Board of Shechita. If he could not prevent Jewish immigrants from demanding the overthrow of the Russian grandson by marriage of the Queen, that didn’t enable ministers with Reform leanings to take up pulpits in the United Synagogue. In 1883 he even advised the independent Western Synagogue not to invite David Woolf Marks to preach in the synagogue and they withdrew the invitation. Adler handed over to his successor a community which could have gone the American way, adopting the radical Reform 1885 Pittsburgh platform, but it didn’t. The two Adlers, far more than anybody else, kept the community Orthodox. That was their objective and that was what they achieved. Their successors were equally committed. His steadfast opposition to the Reform movement did not prevent him being highly regarded by them, even in the Reform heartland in America. Rabbi Emil Hirsch, who served the Sinai Synagogue community in Chicago for 42 years, was the Professor of Rabbinical Literature and Philosophy at the University of Chicago. In 1909 he wrote: ‘Many do not hesitate to assert that, but for Hermann Adler, and his exceptional gifts of mind and heart, the institution of the Chief Rabbinate could not have maintained itself.’ Hermann was, of course, advised by his doctors to take life easier but he was quite incapable of doing so. To the end of his life he had a crowded schedule of appointments from morning to night. He still insisted on paying a number of pastoral visits to provincial congregations and appeared on countless platforms. His personal acceptability in ecclesiastical and court circles continued to bring prestige to the Jewish community and made him one of the great figures in the land. With his death there came to an end an extraordinary dynasty of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis in Britain. Each one, since Aaron Hart in 1705, had

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been related to the others. Adler’s father was Nathan Marcus Adler, whose great-uncle was David Tevele Schiff. Schiff ’s great-uncle was Zevi Ashkenazi, the senior Rabbi in Amsterdam. Ashkenazi’s grandson was Hart Lyon and Hart Lyon’s son was Solomon Herschell. It was a dynasty that served the Jewish community in Britain for over 200 years. Hermann Adler died at his home in Bayswater on the morning of Tuesday 19 July 1911. He had first become ill after Shavuot in early June and he was too ill to attend the coronation of George V on 22 June. He insisted, however, on attending the coronation service at the Bayswater Synagogue, although he was unable to stay for the whole service. The second Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers was convened on 16 June, but Dayan Hyamson presided. Hermann’s sense of humour never deserted him. On the Monday before he died he discussed recuperating in North Wales and said to his doctor: ‘Well, Doctor, which is it to be? North Wales or Willesden [cemetery]. Both are in NW.’ His son-in-law, Alfred Eichholz, was there with the family when Adler passed away and registered the death. There were many warm obituaries. As the Daily Graphic recorded: He was in many respects a unique man. Theologically Hebrews and Christians are divided, but all the Christian leaders respected and honoured the Chief Rabbi for his high character, his great gifts and his abounding zeal on behalf of the Jewish Community…No religious leader in this country lived to a greater extent for the adherents of his faith than Dr Adler.2 At the end, the astonishing fact remained that Adler could make the case for Judaism without there being any refutation from the headquarters of the Church of England. The situation on the continent was very different. From within the community, at Adler’s death, came a tribute from the provinces when, David Isambard Sandelson, a prominent Leeds solicitor and the son of a Newcastle Rabbi, summed up: Never was the community in greater need of his wonderful powers of organisation, his boundless tact than now. Never was his mature judgement, his sound counsel, his ripe experience more needed than now. How he dedicated his life to the service of his people. Truly was he called the hardest worked man in the Jewish

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community. His office in the City was the scene of incessant industry. His strength lay in his people’s conviction that he was their representative, a type of their genus, an embodiment of their aims…He had a high and noble ambition: he sought the welfare of his oppressed brethren in dark lands and tended his flock – the Jews in the British Dominions, basking in the sunshine of freedom and liberty. The high office he held he had himself created. He invested it with a power equal in extent to the suzerainty of the British Crown itself. His life and work are as a radiant gleam of idealism amid a welter of materialism.3 Cyrus Adler from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York sent condolences and one of the spokesmen for the East End communities, Rabbi (later Dayan) Avigdor Chaikin, was genuinely moved when he wrote to Rachel Adler: Our memory of him will ever remain fresh in our minds, for I have lost in him a devoted friend and a warm-hearted councillor…May it be a consolation to you, to your daughters and family to know that your poignant grief is keenly felt by every section of the community and that all are conscious of the guiding spirit of our coreligionists here and also abroad. Ismar Elbogen, a distinguished German-Jewish historian, paid tribute to the ‘ability which he had displayed in his interpretation of Jewish law’. The relations between Adler and the strictly Orthodox in the East End had certainly improved over the years. The Jewish Chronicle observed: ‘The markedly reverent reception accorded the departed Rav when visiting a place of worship that had in the past been somewhat of a thorn in the flesh in the body ecclesiastic.’ Adler’s relations with the East End Jews have often been criticized, but their arrival in Britain presented him with a problem, for the size of which there was no precedent. It was hardly his fault that he had been brought up as part of the Jewish gentry, with no experience of the life style of the new refugees. Like the rest of the gentry he was anxious to help them in any way he could, but initially they were poles apart. Edward VII had, of course, passed away and George V was on the throne. The regard for the Chief Rabbi at court was, however, as strong as ever. Lord Rothschild wrote to Rachel Adler, when he received a letter from the King’s secretary:

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As the king does not know the Chief Rabbi’s family well, will you please convey to them His Majesty’s sincere regret at the death of Dr Adler, who His Majesty had known for many years, and had always regarded with esteem and respect. The King deeply empathises with Dr Adler’s family and with the whole Jewish community in their great loss.4 It was not Adler’s only connection with the royal family. As far back as 1888 he had written to the Princess Royal who was married to the Emperor Frederick III of Germany. Frederick was very ill and dying of throat cancer after only 99 days on the throne. Adler offered his sympathy. In 1911 Princess Christian, Victoria’s third daughter, had written to the Rabbi when Alfred Adler died. She could share his grief as she had lost a son from malaria in the Boer War, when he was just about Alfred’s age. There is still one public recognition of the high esteem in which Adler was held when he died. In 1913 Union Street in Whitechapel was renamed Adler Street. It still is. The Beth Din premises are also known as Adler House, but few of today’s generation know the name of Hermann Adler or his father and predecessor, Nathan Marcus Adler. It is unjust because, looking back over so many years of service to the community, the breadth of the Adlers’ contribution was indeed remarkable. Hermann had consecrated no less than 30 new synagogues in London and the provinces, and officiated at the opening of numerous charitable and educational institutions. The United Synagogue had grown from five synagogues in 1870 to 20 when he died. He was a council member of the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund and Vice-President of the Medical Provident Association. He was a life governor of University College and examiner in Hebrew at the College of Preceptors, which was the official name for the teaching profession association. When writing about the life and times of Hermann Adler there are advocates of all the institutions and associations which opposed his concept of Orthodox Judaism. There are historians of Reform Judaism, but the adherents of the movement had no more than three synagogues in Adler’s time. The Liberals have their supporters, but they were also negligible as a percentage of the whole Jewish community. The Zionists wanted the Jews to be a nation as well as a religion, but in Adler’s time they attracted a very small number of followers. The Jews themselves were held up to ridicule in novels, such as Amy Levy’s Reuben Sachs in 1888. But then Amy Levy committed suicide and other Jewish antisemitic authors are long forgotten. Adler’s Talmudic ability

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was denigrated, but his service to Anglo-Jewish history is seminal, where his traducers are, rightly, often not even footnotes. There are examples of followers of every antisemitic body, just as there are far-right movements today. Taking the helicopter view, however, of the whole Jewish community, the majority of the British Jews in Adler’s time moved towards acculturation, worked hard to improve their financial status and remained steadfastly members of their Orthodox congregations. At the end of the day, Adler had won. The memorial which would probably have pleased him most was set up at the Stepney Jewish Schools. The inscription read: In loving and revered memory of the Reverend Doctor Hermann Adler, CVO, DD, Chief Rabbi, through whose energy and labour these schools were founded in the year 1866-5626. He served the institution for over 45 years and strove by every means in his power to advance the religious, moral and educational welfare of the children taught within its walls. Today he might well have been given the accolade of a National Treasure. His objective, as he said at his inauguration, was that: His voice will be heard…awakening the careless and stirring up the slothful, seeking to kindle in his hearers hearts the enthusiasm that stirs and questions his own soul. Rachel, his devoted wife, never fully recovered from his loss and that of her son, Alfred. She died after a long illness on 12 January 1912, from congestion of the lungs. She had devoted her married life to a wide range of good causes. Perhaps the most important was her efforts to provide school meals for poverty-stricken youngsters. The charity was called the Jewish Children’s Penny Dinners Fund and it provided kosher food for thousand of children. The London County Council eventually took over the funding of facilities for necessitous children and Nettie Adler would have taken a keen interest in it. Those who supported the children’s charity were listed in the Jewish Chronicle and the figures for 1874-1875 are illuminating. Of the total of £215 donated by 127 people, nearly £100 came from three members of the Rothschild family. An additional £34 came from collections made by children themselves for their poorer co-religionists. In addition to money donations, Mrs Polack provided 25 pounds of beans and 5 pounds of

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potatoes. Mrs Van Ran gave 60 pounds of potatoes. In all nearly 15,000 meals were provided over the year, over 4,000 of them completely free. It was significant that 100 children were taught how to cook, but at the end of the year the deficit between income and expenditure was £80 (in today’s money about £7,000). Penny Dinners were a very important part of the diet of the children who benefited. At the time they would be fortunate to get a meat meal once a month without the efforts of the charity. Naturally, a great many good causes asked for Rachel’s support. Among those in which she took office were the Bayswater Jewish Schools, the German Hospital, the Jewish Crèche, the Jewish Day Nursery, the Royal Opthalmic Hospital Guild, the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, the Jewish Boot Fund, the Jewish Children’s Holiday Fund and the Sick Room Help Society. She was also instrumental in the formation of the Ladies Committee of the Anglo-Jewish Association. She became an eloquent speaker on behalf of all of them and, as the Chief Rabbi’s wife, was able to gain financial support from many of the well-to-do members of the richer Jewish families. Typical of her work was as Vice-President of the Sick Room Help Society. This had been formed in 1895 and aimed to help poor mothers having babies. Volunteers took care of the secretarial and administrative work and a team of nurses would visit poor homes to help mothers and nurture their families. In 1910 they helped over 2,000 mothers and nearly 1,000 sick men and children. It was another example of the efforts the richer members of the community would make towards helping the poor. Like the Chief Rabbi she had taken a keen interest in helping the poor girls and women in the East End. She supported the Industrial School for Girls and the Domestic Training Home and was a Vice-President of the Union of Jewish Women. An eloquent speaker, she was a good role model for her daughters who followed in her footsteps. Her support was always a great help. In 1895 the Superintendent of Cookery for the School Board for London produced a Jewish Cookery Book for the use of the cookery centres under the Board. Its author, Miss M.A.S. Tattersall, dedicated it to Rachel, who endorsed it, saying: I have read it carefully, and am of opinion that the recipes are in full accordance with the requirements of our dietary code. I am sure the book will prove very useful to the Jewish Scholars in our Board Schools and consequently to their parents.

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Ironically, Rachel’s death occurred on the day the United Synagogue Council acknowledged a letter she had sent thanking them for the pension they had agreed for her. There is still extant the letter she sent to the Bayswater Synagogue on 16 November 1911, just two months before her own death. As a memorial to Hermann, she said: My co-executors and I have sent to the Bayswater Synagogue an Oak Pedestal, which will exactly match in colour and style the oak of the pulpit. We hope that the Wardens and Board of Management will accept it, and have it placed at the side of the pulpit next to the lowest step, and that on the Festivals when the Duchan [priestly blessing], takes place they will kindly place the Ewer and Basin on it and have the holy ceremony of laving the hands as is usual in the Synagogue, in the sight of the congregation. We all feel that this idea was in the mind of my dearly beloved and revered husband, when he made the bequest to the Synagogue. With kind regards to the Wardens and Board of Management, I remain. Yours sincerely, Rachel Adler 5 The Chief Rabbi had specified the gift of the oak pedestal in his will which he made in January 1911: in recognition of the uniform courtesy and consideration shown to me by the Ministers and Wardens during the period of my ministry and subsequently when I attended synagogue as Chief Rabbi. Hermann left a memento to a wide range of friends, from Haham Gaster and the ministers at synagogues in Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, to the librarians of the London Institution and the Athenaeum. His servants weren’t forgotten and his daughter, Nettie, was left an annuity of £100 a year. Hermann Adler’s estate was sworn at £12,590 which, in today’s money, is over a million pounds. Rachel, Nettie, Alfred Eichholz and his brother, Elkan Adler, were appointed trustees, so his relations with Nettie had returned to normal after the problems of her proposed husband. Chief Rabbis face a series of similar challenges. They also have to handle events which specifically occur during their ministries. Hermann Adler never had to deal with the kind of problem created by Sabbatai Zevi, but the Hampstead synagogue dispute was quite similar to that which a later Chief Rabbi, Israel Brodie, would have to address in the time of Louis

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Jacobs. There were no major insurrections within the community in Adler’s time, and even when he prevented some of his ministers from associating themselves with the Liberal movement his personal relationship with his colleagues remained warm. He never faced competitors for his office, as had David Tevele Schiff and his own father. The pogroms were horrific, but could not compare with the Holocaust. Getting historical facts right is, however, a lot easier than forecasting the future. In 1907 a portrait of Adler was presented to Jews’ College by Sir Adolph Tuck, who had been the College Treasurer since 1903. He summed up the likely future image of the Chief Rabbi entirely fairly, but he still got it wrong. He said: The fame of Dr Hermann Adler will be handed down to posterity and the great place occupied by him, widely recognised, as it is already in our generation, will loom still more vividly in the future, when a broader view of his achievements will be possible Why has Hermann Adler been largely overlooked in Anglo-Jewish history? Perhaps because he generally kept things on an even keel and used his charm, patience, personality and determination to maintain the supremacy of Minhag Anglia, ‘The English Usage’. To achieve that was, however, the fitting epitaph of a highly successful Chief Rabbi. Like his father before him, everybody else got the credit but the Chief Rabbi achieved his objectives.

Notes 1 2. 3. 4. 5.

Henriques, Ursula, The Jews of South Wales (University of Wales Press, 1993). Daily Graphic, 20 July 1911. Jewish Chronicle, 13 September 1963. Letters to the Editor. University of Southampton, Hermann Adler archive. Ibid.

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Appendix A Hermann Adler’s handwritten list of his literary output and general achievements

Publications of the Rev Dr Hermann Adler, Joint author of the Jewish Reply to Dr Colenso’s criticism of the Pentateuch (1865). Written two years previously in the media on the appearance of Dr Colenso’s book, published two letters in the Athenaeum in which he pointed out many of the serious blunders committed by the Bishop in his book. He contributed many articles to the Sabbath readings, published particularly by the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge. In 1863 he published an essay on Ibn Gebirol and his influence upon Scholastic philosophy. In 1869 he published, by request of the members of his congregation, a volume of Sermons entitled Naftulei Elohim, on the Biblical passages adduced by Christian theologians in support of the dogmas of their faith, which had been preached at the Bayswater Synagogue. In the British Museum Catalogue a whole page is filled with the replies which have appeared to this volume. Among others is the Baird Lectures delivered by the Rev Dr Gloag. In 1875 he published: Discourse ‘Is Judaism a Missionary Faith?’ (in answer to the lecture on Missions that had been delivered by Professor Max Müller in Westminster Abbey. The Professor published a Rejoinder in his Chips from a German Workshop). In 1870 and 1871: Lectures on Daniel Deronda, Moses Mendelssohn, Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud, the Jews in England etc.

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In 1878 he published an article ‘Can Jews be Patriots’ in the Nineteenth Century, in answer to Professor Goldwin Smith, which was followed by another on ‘Jews & Judaism’ and ‘Recent Phases of Judaeophobia’ (1881) in which the attention of the public was first directed to the outrages in Russia. Among the Brochures and Sermons may be mentioned ‘The Purpose and Methods of Christian Relief ’, ‘A Plea for the Orphans and Helpless’, ‘Hebrew – the Language of our Prayers’, ‘A Pilgrimage to Zion’ (being impressions of a journey to the Holy Land in 1885), ‘A Father’s Barmitzvah Sermon, a Copy of which is sent to every lad in the Community on his attaining his religious majority’. Dr Adler has preached Sermons on several notable occasions, the Discourse being publicized in extension or in abstract in the Newspapers, including Memoriam of Sir George Jessel and the Baroness de Rothschild, published under the title Remember the Poor, being the last words of this lamented philanthropist. The Russo-Jewish crisis with its stirring test If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small” Proverbs 24. 10-12 in memory of the Rev A.L. Green, Sermons at the Bevis Marks Synagogue, on the occasion of the Centenary and the funeral of Sir Moses Montefiore, in memory of Lionel L. Cohen and A. Asher at the Jubilee of Her Majesty, and at the Centenary of the Great Synagogue. Dr Adler has also taken part in several symposia, one on the Immortality of the Soul, with several eminent Christian Divines, one on Irresponsible Wealth, with Cardinal Manning and Gladstone, and the Rev Price Hughes. He has consecrated 30 new synagogues in the Metropolis and Provinces and officiated at the opening of numerous charitable and educational institutions. He has lectured at all the Jewish and many general institutions, including the Hull Library and Philosophical Society, and the South London Polytechnic. He is intimately connected with many important charities outside the Jewish community. He is one of the Council Members of the Council of the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund, and Vice President of the Mansion House Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, the Medical Provident Association. He is a Life

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Governor of University College and Examiner in Hebrew at the College of Preceptors. Dr Hermann Adler’s first and last Teacher was his late lamented Father. He began to teach his son the Decalogue when he was four years old, and studied Talmud with him practically to the very last day of his life. His other tutors were the Rev Barnett Abrahams, Dayan of the Portuguese Congregation, a man of profound piety and an excellent mathematician, Dr David Asher of Leipzig, and Dr Kalish. In Prague, where he remained from 1860-1862 he devoted himself exclusively to the study of Nezikin under the guidance of Chief Rabbi Rapoport, the Dayan, or Oberjurist as he was called. Rabbi Samuel Freud, and Rabbi Simon Ausch, at whose house he stayed. During that time he wrote chiddushim, elucidating on Gittin, Baba Metzia, and the more difficult portions of the Gemara. He also attended the Lectures at the University of Professor Kampf on Isaiah, and of Professor Wessely on Hebrew philosophy. On his return to England he read the More N’Vuchim (Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed) with Mr Zedner. During the period of his connection with Jews’ College (1863-1879) he taught Talmud, Poskim and the other branches of Rabbinical literature. He received his Hattarat Hora’ch from Chief Rabbi Rapoport and Rabbi Samuel Freund.

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Appendix B

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF RABBI November 30th, 1894 My Dear Sir, In consequence of the advice tendered to me by one of the most experienced Mohelim, who is also a qualified Surgeon, I have framed the following rules, to which I invite your earnest attention: 1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

Lint is to be used as a dressing. A lotion of Condy’s Fluid, half a teaspoonful to a quart of pure water, or Permanganate of Potash, as much as will lie on a sixpence, dissolved in a quart of pure water, must be applied as the dressing twenty four hours after the milah. The Mohelim must critically observe the duties of personal cleanliness, especially with regard to their hands and nails, which must be carefully and thoroughly cleansed before each operation in the abovementioned solution of Condy’s Fluid. Their instruments must be carefully cleansed, after being used, in the above-mentioned solution. The amputated foreskins must on no account be carried away from the house where the operation has taken place, but must at once be burnt or destroyed. If, from any cause, the wound be not healed within one week after the milah, the Mohel must hand the case over to a Doctor. In the event of the parents being poor, he must see that the child is taken to the nearest hospital for treatment. In case of haemorrhage (bleeding) after milah, a Doctor is to be called forthwith, and the Mohel must, in every instance, leave directions at the house to that effect.

It is my duty to inform you, that failure to comply with these directions will entail forfeiture of permission to act as Mohel. Please acknowledge the receipt of the communication. H. Adler.

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Appendix C A message written by Hermann Adler on 27 February 1911 The death of my dear brother, Marcus, admonishes me to write these few lines with full trust in the goodness of Almighty God who I have endeavoured to serve all my life, though fully conscious of my weakness and imperfections. I have written my will, which is at the office of my brother, Elkan, (Messrs Adler & Perowne, 15 Copthall Avenue). It does not contain any direction about my funeral. It need not, therefore, be opened and read at once after my decease. I have no wish about my funeral, except that everything should be done in conformity with the din. I should be grateful if my dear and venerable friend, Rabbi Avigdor Chaikin would take part in the service. My friends, the dayanim, will also no doubt like to take part. I have one earnest wish, that my dear wife be spared all anxiety and worry in this and kindred matters. There will, of course, be no flowers. Should any be sent, they will, I hope be forwarded to the Hospital. As it has pleased God to take my son. I beg my dear brother, Elkan, to perform the act of Kaddish and to say Kaddish during the 11 months, and to say Jahrzeit, so far as he is able to do so without injury to his health or profession. I thank God with a full heart for all his goodness to me. I have had to bear many anxieties and troubles. But in this way, He has spared my beloved wife, who has lightened my heavy burdens and spread around me a measure of comfort and cheerfulness. My dear children will know that everything they can do to cheer the declining years of their devoted mother and to prevent her from feeling our earthly separateness will be likewise an act of filial affection for me. When it pleases God to remove her from earth, I desire my children to have this wording engraved on her tombstone in Hebrew and English. ‘She doeth him good and not evil all the days of her life’. Proverbs 31:12. Dear Nettie, Ruth and Alf [Eicholz] You will, I am sure, continue to give the example of all that a Jew and Jewess can be and do. I especially hope

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that you will help your children to gain a good knowledge of their religion and of Hebrew, including familiarity with the prayer book. Bob, Hubie and David, whether at the university or in the professions you will embrace, I encourage you to prove yourself loyal and observant Jews. In my will I have not made any legacy dependent on your marrying within the pale. I will not and cannot contemplate the possibility of such disloyalty on your part. I confess I think of the future of Anglo Jewry with much misgiving. I have tried to do my duty, to act in conformity with the Torah. I am strongly convinced that, to ensure the welfare of Judaism in this country, it is essential that a successor in the Rabbinate should be appointed with the least possible delay after my demise. He must be a strong personality. strong in piety and learning, one who will be equally acceptable to the East and the West, the nation and the immigrant. And realizing the grave difficulty of meeting with such a personality I pray with all my heart ‘May the Lord God of the spirit of all flesh, set a man over the congregation who may go out before them, and who may go in before them and who may lead them in and bring them out, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.’

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Appendix D One of the attributes for which Hermann Adler was most highly regarded within the Jewish community was the way in which he represented Jews to the wider world. Happily, the Jewish World noted its effect on one Liverpudlian in December 1909. It recorded: Of exceptional interest is an article signed Seti, which appeared in the Liverpool Post and Mercury last month. The writer commences by saying that he was reading Dr Adler’s recently published Anglo-Jewish Memories when a number of Jews passed his window, talking and gesticulating. Seti wrote: Always before I have looked upon Jews as Jews, and no concern of mine. They live here but nobody wanted them. They worked here but people wished they wouldn’t. They weren’t English; they were Jews, and never would be anything else. How they lived, how they worked, how they played, how they voted, what they thought, what they did, was no concern of mine or anybody elses. They were only Jews and rather a nuisance at that. But Dr Adler has taught me to think differently and for the first time in my life I have begun to realise that the Jews are English, and very proud of the fact. Indeed, I have begun to wonder whether any citizens of this Empire are equally conscious of its advantages and equally zealous for its continued wellbeing. Certainly in all my life I have never read any addresses more intensely patriotic, more touchingly loyal, or more full of pathetic gratitude than the sermons which the Chief Rabbi has preached to his people on occasions of national importance. There is nothing of the alien about them. It is ‘Our beloved King’, ‘Our Queen’, ‘Our Royal House’, ‘Our Commander-in-Chief ”, ‘Our soldiers’, ‘Our dear country’, and so on. One never expected a Jew to talk like that to Jews. Most of us I fancy had the idea that the Jew lived in this country for what he could make out of it. That he could love it enough to die for it; that ‘Our King’ was his King, ‘Our army’ his army, ‘Our country’ his country, ‘Our gain’ his gain, and ‘Our loss’ his loss, we never seemed to imagine. Fancy a Jew saying ‘Our’! It comes to us almost as a surprise. But if these sermons are typical of the sermons ordinarily preached by the rabbis to their people, sabbath after sabbath, if the sentiments represent the sentiments of the synagogues - and I believe they do - then we have been for years cold-shouldering and misunderstanding a great and growing section of the community, whose

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brain is only equalled by its industry, and whose temperance, soberness, and chastity, constitute a standing example to a so-called Christian people. The Jew in England - how little we really known of him; how little we understand him! The influential Jew we know; the rich Jew we know; the clever Jew we know. Indeed, we cannot help ourselves. But I am not speaking of this Jew, but the Jew of Brownlow Hill, the Jew of the Hebrew colony, of the ghetto; who is as little known to the ordinary citizen as he is to the police. It is this Jew who all the time is praying for my King as his King, my Country as his country, my home as his home; and is as proud as I am to feel that to do so is not merely his duty, but the fulfilling of his hearts desire. And why he does it is told to me by the Chief Rabbi.

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Appendix E Religious vs. Political Zionism Herzl came to London in October 1898 to gather support for Zionism. Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler gave a sermon on November 12th at the North London Synagogue to state his position on the subject. And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord; and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place where I caused you to be carried away.(Jeremiah xxix. 13,14) The hearts of a considerable proportion of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe and of Eastern London have been deeply stirred of late by a novel proposition, by the broaching of an idea calculated to fascinate them and to enlist their warm sympathy. The appeal has been addressed to them. Why will you continue to suffer persecution and oppression in the countries of your birth? Why should you toil unrestingly for a mere pittance even in those countries where you suffer no disability? There is a land which is yours by prescriptive right, the land in which your sires dwelt of yore. Should you not strain every nerve to regain possession of that country, either by purchase or by negotiation, or by colonising it so extensively that it must ultimately revert to you in its entirety? Is not the Holy Land the territory on which you should settle in your millions, where the Lord will give you rest from your sorrows and your fears, and from your hard bondage? And at a congress of individuals favouring this scheme, recently held at Basle, it was resolved that, as a means for securing a public legallyassured home for the Jewish people in Palestine and Syria, a Jewish Colonial Bank should be founded in this city with a capital of two million pounds. The enquiry has been addressed to me. Why do you hold aloof from a movement charged with such great possibilities? Is it not one that should enlist your most ardent sympathy, that should gain your enthusiastic approval, and secure your heartiest cooperation? In answer to this question, I deem it right to state, as fully as the exigencies of the pulpit admit, the

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considerations which actuate my attitude, and the attitude of those who think with me in the face of this new departure. In olden times, when any supreme national crisis arose, it was the practice of our fathers to consult the sacred volume, so that they might learn from its pages the duty incumbent upon them. And we are told that it was the custom to accept a schoolboy fresh from his studies, and to say to him “Repeat to me thy text, the Scriptural passage thou hast learnt in school today.” This was not done as a kind of divination. The doctors of the Talmud knew full well that, at a time of perplexity, the prudent schoolmaster would teach his young charges such Bible texts as might afford practical counsel and wise guidance. I, therefore, ask myself, Has there ever been an agitation similar to this in Biblical times? Undoubtedly. We are told that, when Judah had been carried away captive to Babylon, there were those who chafed beneath the foreign yoke, who were restless and discontented, and ardently longed to return to their native land. And some of their leaders, both priests and prophets, counselled the people to revolt against their sovereign. Then did Jeremiah, the Prophet, address a “letter from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders which were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon, saying Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives….Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take ye wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, that they may be increased there and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof ye shall have peace. For thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Let not your prophets and diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither harken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophecy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord. For thus saith the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place….Then you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I have caused you to be carried away captive.” (Jeremiah xxix 1-14.) A somewhat lengthy text, but one strikingly appropriate to the agitation

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that has been fanned by the two Basle Congresses. I maintain that, if in the case of the Babylonian Captivity, the termination of which was in sight, the Israelites were bidden to eschew unrest and await quietly their ultimate restoration, how much more needful is it that we should avoid all precipitate action at the present day, when there is no sign whatever of our hoped-for redemption, no premonition of the promised ingathering. My brethren, I view the present movement with unfeigned concern, because I regard it as opposed to the teaching of Judaism, as impolitic, aye, as charged with great peril. I do not identify this movement with Zionism. This agitation has its rise from a brochure published by Dr Herzl two years ago, entitled “The Jewish State: an Endeavour for the Modern Solution of the Jewish Question”. In this pamphlet the author, prompted by sentiments of mingled indignation and pity for the degraded condition of his fellow religionists in many lands, proposed that a Jewish State should be formed, which should serve as a refuge for the victims of intolerance and hostility, a State that should lift its voice with dignity and potency against the malice and hatred of which our race is still, unhappily, the victim. The author left it an open question whether Palestine or Argentina should be the country selected for the establishment of the State – (p29 “Palestine or Argentina”). But learning that Palestine was the only country which would evoke a responsive thrill from Jewish hearts, Dr Herzl and the adherent to his scheme fixed upon that land as the proposed seat of the new Hebrew polity. Hence, I contend, that it would be incorrect to describe the plan as Zionism, pure and simple. It should be labelled Political, Secular, or Basle Congress Zionism. I cannot hallow it with the title of Religious Zionism. Every believing and conforming Israelite must be a Zionist. His heart cannot help to beat with love and reverence for Zion. Zion, the land of our glory and our humiliation, where the Patriarchs proclaimed their belief in the One true God to a world shrouded in the darkness of idol worship, where pious minstrels sang the hymns which have become the world’s treasury of sacred song, where inspired seers pronounced the Divine doom of cruelty and injustice, Zion, round which there centre most ideal hopes for that: one far-off Divine event, to which the whole creation moves. the ultimate establishment upon earth of the Kingdom of Heaven – even the days of the Messiah. Every professing Jew must feel it alike his duty and his privilege to be a lover of Zion and to seek the welfare of its indwellers. We all deem it a highly meritorious act to promote the colonisation of the Land of Israel wth care and circumspection. We regard as most salutary the endeavour to induce capable men to adopt agriculture as a means of

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livelihood. We shall all rejoice if that goodly land, once flowing with milk and honey, diamond in the desert, a palm grove islander ‘mid the waste, would regain at least a portion of its former productiveness. But our objections to Political Zionism are based upon the fact that it is claimed to constitute a solution of the Jewish Question. In making this statement I am not guilty of a misrepresentation. This is the gist of the movement. In the placard inviting the East End Jewish population to the demonstration recently held in honour of the propounder of the plan, the Judaeo-German words appear “Die judische Frage muss gelõst warden Die Erl” sung (sic) ist schon nicht weit. (The Jewish question must be solved.) The redemption (probably only solution was meant) is already not distant”. These sanguine anticipations we do not share. It has been gravely proposed that the Jews throughout the world should acquire Palestine from Turkey, they paying tribute to that Empire and enjoying its protection under the joint guarantee of the European Powers. Now, granted that such an enterprise could be carried out, of what possible benefit would it be to our oppressed brethren? What authority, what influence could such a state exercise in the Areopagus of nations, possessed, as it would be, neither of an army nor a navy. Would an autocrat or his minister pay any heed to an envoy from Palestine, remonstrating with him for his unfriendly acts towards Jews residing in his empire? Nor can the proposed colonization on an ambitious scale be pronounced a solution of the Jewish Question. Several settlements have been effected in the Holy Land, thanks to the untiring efforts of an honoured philanthropist, who has given to this pious object unstintingly, not only his gold, but his devoted energy, thanks also to the exertions of several branches of the Chovevei Zion Association. The reports touching the success of these several colonies are somewhat conflicting. It is claimed but for a very small number of them that they are entirely self-supporting. Their prosperity is retarded by many obstacles, mainly the difficulty of disposing readily of the produce of the settlements. In the whole of Syria and Palestine there is not one available harbour. The country is intersected by but few roads, railways and bridges. We are told that the new Zionist movement is calculated to meet all these defects. One of the purposes of the Jewish Colonial Bank, which it is intended to found here, is the acquisition of concessions for the construction of roads, harbour works, mines and trade monopolies in the East. Now I gratefully acknowledge that the Ottoman Empire has always accorded a full measure of protection to its Israelitish subjects. But at the same time it must be conceded that its methods of administration do not

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uniformly correspond to our Western conceptions of wisdom and efficiency. To give one illustration. For many a weary year an English committee has been endeavouring to introduce an imperatively needed system of water supply into Jerusalem; but so many obstacles have been interposed that the project has had to be abandoned. We should greatly rejoice if capitalists here and elsewhere would devote their superabundant wealth to the various industrial enterprises and works needed in Palestine. But we cannot approve of our toiling brethren being asked to place their hard-earned savings in a Jewish Colonial Bank, where there is no guarantee whatever that their investments can prove remunerative. We view the proposed blending of sentiment and finance with profound concern. For experience teaches that this ill-assorted union may lead to disaster. Nor can we deem it a kindness to tantalise these trustful people with illusory hopes of their settling in a country where they will all enjoy independence, prosperity and security. Assuming that the leaders of the agitation will acquire possession of Palestine, who are the persons that would migrate? Not the thriving inhabitants of Western Europe and of the United States, but the unfortunate starvelings that pine in the Russian pale of settlement, and the hapless beggars that crowd the Galician villages. They will sell their all, hoping to enter a Land of Promise; for, surely, the heads of the movement will not inaugurate their administration by issuing a decree on the lines of the threatened Pauper Alien Bill. But is there any probability that the Porte will grant, or that it will be permitted to grant, possession of the Holy Land to our people? Is it not apprehended that the very commencement of this agitation has been followed by irksome consequences. Immigration on the smallest scale has been arrested. Even English Jews are not allowed at present to settle permanently in Palestine or to acquire real property there. But we are met with the taunt, Is it any wonder that you deprecate the proposed establishment of a Jewish State, you who dwell in peace and comfort on British soil without one to molest you or make you afraid. But what solution of the Jewish Question do you propose? Whence shall help come to those millions who have to submit to social ostracism and degrading restrictions in every relation of life? Brethren, we need not quail before this taunt. I may claim for the Jews of England that they have never turned a deaf ear to the plaint of their afflicted brethren. We, together with the Jews of the United States, have striven manfully to provide a refuge, as far as in our power lay, for the stricken fugitives from the North. And when we refuse our cooperation to the project that has now been formulated it is not from lack of sympathy, but because we regard it as impracticable, as

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inoperative, as fraught with peril, as calculated to revive the false charges of incivism and lack of loyalty to our native country or the land of our adoption, and finally as opposed to the teachings of Judaism. For there is yet another challenge we have to meet. We are asked, If you then refuse to lend your aid to the re-establishment of a Jewish State, if you discountenance the settlement of Jews by their millions in the Holy Land, how can you consistently retain the various passages in our Liturgy relating to our restoration? How can you pray, as you did this day, “May it be thy will, O Lord our God, and the God of our fathers to lead us up in joy unto our land, and to plant us within our borders,” while you discourage a movement calculated to hasten this consummation? To this I rejoin, It is not declared in the prophetic books that our return to Palestine is to be accomplished by our instrumentality and at the period desired. It is distinctly announced that our redemption is to be effected by Divine interposition at such time as seemeth good in God’s sight, when it pleases Him to send the Messiah, and when the nations of the world shall with one accord unite and help Israel to return to the land of their fathers. Is there any indication of the Messianic advent at the present time? Nay more. We are especially warned against adopting any precipitate steps for affecting this. “I, the Lord will hasten it in its tie.” Isaiah announces in the name of the Lord “I charge ye, O ye daughters of Jerusalem that ye stir not up nor awaken his love until he pleases.” says the Song of Songs. An ancient Rabbi comments on this verse, “The Lord has conjured Israel not to seek to hasten the redemption before the appointed time.” I will forbear from multiplying quotations and will only cite the statement made on the subject by the Principal of Jews’ College in his work on the Jewish Religion (p61). “The hopes with which our religion inspires us can never lead us to intrigues, political combinations, insurrections, or warfare for the purpose of regaining Palestine and appointing a Jewish Government. On the contrary, our religion teaches us to seek the welfare of those nations in whose midst we live, and to conscientiously take part in the work for their national progress and prosperity, whilst patiently waiting for the miraculous fulfilment of the prophecies. Even if a band of adventurers were to succeed in reconquering Palestine for the Jews by means of arms, or re-acquiring the Holy Land by purchasing it from the present owners, we should not see in such an event the consummation of our hopes.” This is the link of action to which the leaders of Israel have at all times and in all ages adhered. We have in former days been visited by sore affliction, but the only persons who have proposed the nostrum of establishing a Jewish State have been men like the adherents of that arch-

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impostor Sabbatai Zevi. No man has ever lived fired with a more ardent love for Zion than Sir Moses Montefiore. Again and again he pleaded on behalf of his sorrow-stricken brethren before the rulers of Turkey, Russia, Rumania and Morocco. Seven times he journeyed to the Holy Land, his heart yearning to ameliorate the condition of its indwellers. If ever there was one who, by his commanding influence, might have hoped to regain possession of the land of his fathers it was he. But he was not the man to embark on an enterprise so impolitic and chimerical. I would ask you to be quickened by the religious Zionism that inspired him, that has burnt in the hearts of all true Israelites. Religious Zionism urges you, whilst devoting your fullest energy to the service of your country and your community, to labour also for the welfare of the indwellers of the Holy Land, to aid in extirpating pauperism, banishing ignorance, and alleviating sickness. Religious Zionism urges you to labour for the advent of the Messianic times by seeking to discard every racial fault, by endeavouring to realise the high ideals which our religion sets before us. For the divine promise has been held out to us, “When ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart, then I will be found of you, saith the Lord; and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.” Amen.

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Appendix F On November 11th 1877 the new premises for the Sir Moses Montefiore Literary and Art Society were opened. In the absence of his father, who was indisposed, Hermann gave an address after some psalms had been read. What he had to say not only illustrates his style when not in the pulpit, but also his view on religion as a whole. It is also significant that in a relaxed club meeting of this nature, he could still rouse his audience to cheers. He said: There may perhaps be some among you who think it slightly incongruous that the proceedings of this evening should be opened with Praise and Prayer. Who deem it out of place that the Divine Blessing should be invoked upon a society which is, in the main, to be devoted to amusement and recreation. If there are those here present who hold these views, I would tell them that the idea of divorcing religion from everyday life is not countenanced by Judaism. It is a great mistake to imagine that our religion is intended only for the Sabbath and the Synagogue, and that it is to be locked away in our Synagogue seats with our tallish and prayer book. The author of Ecclesiastes has said “For everything there is a season and a time, to every purpose under the heaven.” He then proceeds to give a very extensive catalogue of things for which there is a season. But in this exhaustive list the subject of religion is never once mentioned. Think you that the preacher would have omitted the most important concern of all? Surely not. There is an excellent reason why he does not say that there is a time to be religious, because Religion is to regulate all our times and seasons…It is meet and proper that all our doings at all times should be brought under the influence of our dependence on God and the duties we owe to Him. (Cheers).

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Bibliography Adler, Hermann, Anglo-Jewish Memories (George Routledge, 1909). Alderman, Geoffrey, The Federation of Synagogues (The Federation of Synagogues, 1987). Allfrey, Anthony, Edward VII and his Jewish Court (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991). Black, Eugene C. The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1920 (Basil Blackwell, 1988). Cesarani, David, The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry (Basil Blackwell, 1990). Elton, Benjamin J., British Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of AngloJewry, 1880-1970 (Manchester University Press, 2009). Endelman, Todd, Radical Assimilation in English-Jewish History 1656-1945 (Indiana University Press, 1990). Feldman, David, Englishmen and Jews (Yale University Press, 1994). Finestein, Israel, Anglo-Jewry in Changing Times (Vallentine Mitchell, 1999). Finestein, Israel, Jewish Society in Victorian England (Vallentine Mitchell, 1993). Fraser, David, Anti-Shechita Prosecutions in the Anglo-Amerian World 18551913 (Academic Studies Press, Brighton, Massachusetts, USA. 2018). Goulston, Michael, ‘The Status of the Anglo-Jewish Rabbinate 1840-1914’, Jewish Journal of Sociology, 1968. Herd, Douglas and Young, Edward, Disraeli or The Two Lives (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013). Homa, Bernard, A Fortress in Anglo-Jewry (Shapiro Vallentine, 1953). Newman, Aubrey, The United Synagogue, 1870-1970 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976). Persoff, Meir, Faith Against Reason (Vallentine Mitchell, 2008). Persoff, Meir, Hats in the Ring (Academic Studies Press, Boston, USA, 2013). Shaftesley, John (ed.), Remember the Days, Jewish Historical Society of England, 1966.

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Taylor, Derek, Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018). Taylor, Derek, Defenders of the Faith (Vallentine Mitchell, 2016). Vital, David, A People Apart (Oxford University Press, 1999).

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Index Abattoirs, 237, 244, 246, 247, 249 Abdulhamid, 227 Aberdeen, 245, 246 Abraham, 165 Abraham, Dayan Barnett, 22, 31, 32, 35 Abrahams, Barnett, 202 Abrahams, Israel, 202 Abuya, Elisha ben, 23 Adler, Alfred, 176, 180, 181,193, 278, 279 Adler, Dr Cyrus, 135, 276 Adler, Henrietta, 16, 26 Adler, Hermann Anti-Zionism, 227 Bayswater, 37 Biblical References, 41 Beth Din, 30 Beth Hamedresh, 53 C.V.O., 192, 273 Charities, 177 City office, 53 Colenso, 39, 43, 50, 108,116 College of Preceptors, 278 Conservative, 78 Criticism, 5 Dayan, 52, 57 Death, 276 Delegate Chief Rabbi, 1, 3, 52, 58, 60, 65, 91, 94, 115,165,169, 234, 255, 256 Finances, 5 Goldwin Smith, 108 Head Grecian, 25 Hebrew Classes, 37, 46 Installation, 125 Jews’ College, 32, 39, 45 Lecturer, 13, 37 Linguist, 21, 28 Naturalization, 20

Oxford Doctorate, 192 Posek, 30, 242 Preaching, 134 Responsibilities, 71, 73, 136 St Andrews University, 61 Semicha, 108 Sermons, 6, 32, 33, 43, 130, 135, 136, 140 Shechita, 53 Visitation, 75, 161, 176, 193, 259 Writings, 61 Adler, Elkan, 226, 245, 281 Adler, Jeanette, 21 Adler, Herbert, 151 Adler House, 278 Adler, Marcus Baer, 19, 21, 193, 194 Adler, Michael, 164 Adler, Minna, 21, 29, 44, 47 Adler, Rabbi Mordecai, 1, 4, 19, 20, 23, 24, 127 Adler, Chief Rabbi Nathan Marcus, 1, 2, 14-16, 19-24, 26, 28, 30, 34-36, 45, 46, 49, 53, 54, 57, 58, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75, 77, 91, 92, 94, 101, 107, 108, 110, 115, 122, 126, 139, 140-142, 144, 145,147, 151, 155-160, 165, 167-169, 186, 205, 242, 244, 253-255, 267, 276, 278, 282 Adler, Nettie, 47, 48, 113,176, 190, 191, 220, 237, 261, 279, 281 Adler & Perowne, 245 Adler prayer book, 72 Adler, Rachel, 47, 98, 136, 176, 192, 260, 277, 279-281 Adler, Richard, 51 Adler, Ruth, 47, 48 Adler, Sarah, 21 Adler Street, 278 Adler, Solomon Alfred, 47

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Admiralty Committee, 249, 250 Admiralty, First Lord, 102 African Bishops, 42 Agricultural School, 216 Ahad Ha’Am, 4,127, 217 Akiba, Rabbi, 47, 192 Albert, Prince, 137 Alcoholism, 131 Alexander II, Czar, 60, 96 Alexander III, Czar, 62 Alexander, David, 248 Alexander, Michael, 219 Alexander, Solomon, 219 Alexandra, Princess, 127 Aliens Act, 65, 74, 94, 101, 113, 120, 129, 176, 189, 253, 257, 258, 266 Alkalei, Rabbi Judah, 218 Alliance Israélite Universelle, 49, 65, 80, 216 Alsace, 108 America, 14, 20, 35, 61, 62, 65, 86, 97, 123,146, 151, 155, 189, 190, 207, 208, 213, 214, 224, 231, 263, 275 Amsterdam, 276 Anderson, Charles Henry, 177 Angel, Moses, 44, 45 Anglo-Jewish Association, 49, 50, 83, 106, 107, 131,191, 203-205, 216, 232, 256, 261, 274, 275, 280 Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, 74 Anglo-Jewish Memories, 265 Anglo-Jewish Ministers Conference, 171 Anglo-Saxons, 10, 260 Animals, 234, 235 Animal sacrifices, 143, 144 Anne, Queen, 1, 20, 269 Antisemitism, 4, 11, 73, 74, 77, 90, 92, 94, 99, 101, 120,121, 123, 142, 208, 215, 224, 226, 228, 232, 236, 237, 258, 245, 246, 255, 265-267, 272, 279 Anti-Zionism, 197, 200 Apple, Rabbi Raymond, 51 Arabs, 222, 258 Archbishop of Canterbury, 54, 62, 91, 115, 129,159, 263, 264 Archbishop of Dublin, 142 Archbishop of Malta, 143

Archbishop of Westminster, 143, 264 Archiepiscopal, 143 Argentina, 136, 162 Argyll, Duke of, 81,129 Aristocracy, 91 Aristotle, 55 Ark, 203 Arnold, Dr, 124 Artom, Haham Benjamin, 37, 55 Arundel, Earl of, 3 Asher, Asher, 17,169 Asher, Dr David, 23 Ashkenzi, Zevi, 276 Ashkenazim, 19, 21,123, 252 Aspects of Judaism, 202 Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, 187, 188 Association for the Prevention of Immigration of Destitute Aliens, 113 Association for Promoting Jewish Settlements in Palestine, 220 Assyrians, 9 Athenaeum Club, 177, 281 Atheists, 212 Attlee, Clement, 133 Ausch, Rabbi Simon, 30 Australia, 65, 123, 180, 190, 257 Austria, 72, 88, 129, 226, 232 Austria-Hungary, 79 Aylesbury, 127 Aziz, Abdul, 9, 80 Babylonians, 9, 46 Babylonian Talmud, 23, 140, 159 Bacon, 2 Balfour, Arthur, 176, 237, 257, 258 Balfour Declaration, 227, 229, 232, 261 Balfour Education Act, 112 Balkans, 49, 60, 69, 79, 80-82, 86-89, 91 Baltic, 103 Bank of England, 124, 187 Bannerman, Sir Henry Campbell, 189 Bar-Ilan University, 174 Barbican Mission, 97 Barmitzvahs, 155 Barnet, A.L., 159 Barnett, Canon, 134, 165, 263

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Index

Barnett, Henrietta, 134, 263 Basel, 147, 224, 230 Bashi Bazouk, 80 Bath, Bishop of, 132 Bayswater Jewish Schools, 280 Beaufort, Duke of, 271 Bedika, 248 Bedouins, 222 Belarus, 13 Becker, Simcha, 102 Belgrade, 82 Ben Gurion, David, 229 Ben Israel, 75 Benisch, Abraham, 39, 89, 220 Benson, Edward White, 115, 263 Beresford, Lady Marcus, 193 Berlin, 24, 29, 30, 45, 65, 90, 108, 232, 245 Congress of 90 Hochschule 198 Bessarabia 89 Beth Din, 14, 22, 31, 34, 52, 57, 94, 111, 115, 116, 146, 155, 160, 161, 164, 173, 174, 183, 241, 242, 248, 253, 268 Beth Hamedresh, 19 Bible, 84, 86, 119, 151, 218, 262, 265 Biblical Criticism, 26, 38, 39, 42, 43, 201 Bigamy, 92 Bimah, 273 Bingham, Mr Justice, 247 Binstock, Dayan, 174 Birchington-on-Sea, 176 Birmingham, 37, 190 Bishop of London, 134,177 Bishop of Winchester, 192 Bismarck, 79, 88, 90 Blat, 159 Blitz, 147 Bloody Sunday, 211 Blücher, General, 137 Board of Deputies of British Jews, 10, 16, 21, 49, 50, 82, 85, 101, 107, 123, 131, 143, 147, 192, 232, 248, 250, 254, 256, 261, 274, 275 Board of Guardians, 16, 25, 47, 60, 63, 92, 99, 101, 102, 115, 118, 130, 241 Board of Jewish Religious Education, 165, 206

303

Board of Management, 12 Board Schools, 27 Board of Shechita, 17, 100, 101, 106, 187, 237-241, 243, 246, 248-251, 261, 275 Board of Trade, 257 Boers, 93, 94 First Boer War, 93, 94, 266 Second Boer War, 94, 180, 257, 265, 266, 267, 278 Bombay Gazette, 42 Bonar Law, Andrew, 218 Book of Common Prayer, 72 Booth, Charles, 69, 207 Booth, General, 192 Bosnia-Herzgovina, 79, 88 Boy choristers, 145 Bremen University, 61, 163 Breslau, 29 Brick Lane Talmud Torah, 11, 274 Brighton, 57 British Association of Working Mens’ Clubs, 112 British Brothers League, 74, 101, 257, 258 British Museum, 22, 42, 137 British Weekly, 128, 207 Brodie, Chief Rabbi Israel, 116, 144,170, 259, 281 Browning, Robert, 90 Bubonic Plague, 43 Büchler, Adolph, 149-152, 156, 173, 274 Budapest, 155 Bulgaria, 81, 87, 88, 90 Burial Society, 117 Burnett, John, 207 Burning Bush, 199 Burns, John, 267 Cabinet Makers Union, 213 Cairo, 167 Cambridge, 24, 25, 32, 77, 167, 168, 202, 256 Corpus Christi, 245 Emmanuel College, 48 Girton College, 200 Reader of Talmud, 202 Trinity College, 127 Cambridge, Duke of, 1, 2

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Canada, 62, 65, 86, 155,190, 257 Canonicals, 105, 148 Cape Colony, 94 Cardiff, 272 Carnegie, Andrew, 264 Carotid artery, 235, 250 Cassells Saturday Journal, 183, 261 Casting, 244-246, 250 Cathedrals, 185 Catholics, 7, 35, 38, 141, 218, 219, 262, 274 Cattle Tuberculosis, 235 Cemeteries, 61, 104, 126, 157, 166, 197, 212 Centre for Jewish Studies, 238 Chaikin, Rabbi Moshe Avigdor, 104, 110, 161, 249, 277 Chaldee, 46 Chamberlain, Joseph 230 Chanukah 145 Chaplain to the Forces, 164, 260 Charedim, 6 Charities, 187 Charles II, King, 123, 196 Charles, Prince, 179 Charles University, 30, 31 Chaver Zerubavel, 239 Chedorim, 109 Cheltenham, 73 Chevras, 96, 99, 100, 101,105, 184 Chicago, 275 Chicago University, 275 Chiddushim, 30 Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, 174 Chief Rabbi’s office, 123, 131 Child employment, 190 Child mortality, 106 Child prostitution, 207 Children Bill, 191 Children of the Ghetto, 207 Childrens’ Services, 202 Chinese, 10 Cholera, 45, 223 Chovevei Zion, 66, 110, 147, 217, 224-226, 228, 231, 245 Christian Commonwealth, 71 Christians, 11, 24, 62, 79-81, 86, 89,199, 261, 263, 264, 268 Christmas cards, 238

Church of the Assumption, 233 Chronicles, Second book of, 265 Church of England, 42, 72, 103, 112, 128, 137, 158, 184, 219, 261-263, 276 Church House, 263 Church Lads Brigade, 257 Church Ministry among Jewish People, 39 Church of Scotland, 39, 218 Church service, 70 Church Times, 77 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 176 Churchill, Winston, 64, 176, 259 Cigar manufacturing, 255 Circumcision, 7, 61, 92, 178-180, 240 City of Glasgow Bank, 49 City of London Guardians, 92 City of London School, 180 Civil Divorce, 268 Clarendon, Lord, 219 Class system, 104 Clayton Aniline, 227 Clerkenwell Town Hall, 228 Clifton College, 40, 73, 124 Cohen, Alfred, 53 Cohen, Arthur, 16, 95, 131 Cohen, Barent, 164 Cohen, Barnett, 153 Cohen, Sir Benjamin, 16, 25, 224 Cohen, Ellen, 100 Cohen, Rabbi Francis Lyon, 260 Cohen, Levi Barent, 25. Cohen, Lionel Louis, 5, 17, 100, 106, 169 Cohen, Louis, 100, 166 Cohen, Dayan Sussman, 161, 249 Colenso, Bishop John, 6, 38, 39, 83, 110 Colonial Secretary, 143 Commonwealth, 86 Communism, 216 Concentration camps, 265 Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers, 269, 276 Conjoint Foreign Affairs Committee, 50, 275 Conservative Judaism, 168 Conservative party, 78, 82, 89, 100, 190, 227, 232, 254, 257, 267 Constantinople, 87, 88, 217, 219

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Index

Consumption, 211 Conversion, 182, 183 Conversionists, 5, 33, 39, 93, 97, 99, 130, 207, 259, 262 Corn Laws, 82 Cornell, 83 Court of Arches, 39 Cousinhood, 100 Craven Hill, 123 Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 177 Cremation, 165 Crete, 79 Crimean War, 80, 88, 219 Cromwell, 85, 196, 251 Crusades, 222 Cumberland, Duke of, 20 Cyprus, 90 Czar, 38 D’Avigdor, Countess Rachel, 136 Daiches, Samuel, 172, 185 Daily Graphic, 276 Daily News, 196 Daily Telegraph, 267 Dalston County School, 191 Daniel, Book of, 42, 46 Dante, 37 Dardanelles, 80, 88, 219 Darwin, Charles, 62 Das Kapital, 231 David, King, 21, 151, 208, 237 Davids, Rev, H., 138 Davidsche, Michael Foundation, 19 Davidson, Archbishop Randall, 263 Davis, Arthur, 151, 152 Davis, Felix, 201 Davis, Myer, 74 Dayanim, 16, 183, 193, 242 Dazevedo, Haham, 134 De Hersch, Baroness, 187 de Sola, Abraham, 155 de Radcliffe, Lord Stratford, 219 de Veteribus Persarum Regibus, 45 Dead Sea Scrolls, 41 Declaration of Independence, 86 DEFRA, 237 Deptford, 249

305

‘Der Judenstaat’, 227 Derby, 151 Derby, Lord, 77, 89 Deuteronomy, Book of, 9, 199, 222 Devils Island, 226 Dewsbury 82 Dickens, Charles, 255 Din, 21 Dina de-Malchuta Dina, 11, 269 Discriminatory taxation, 185 Disraeli, Benjamin, 59, 60, 77-79, 81, 83, 84, 86-91, 254 Disraeli, Isaac, 77 District Rabbi, 168 Divorce, 67, 247 Domestic Training Home, 280 Don Pacifico, 54, 92 Donme, 120 Dosternock, Michael, 179 Douglas, James, 134, 135, 137, 141, 146 Dover, 21 Dreyfus affair, 65, 226 Dreyfus Alfred, 227, 267 Dreyfus, Sir Charles, 227 Dreikaiserbund, 79, 88 Druidism, 30 Dual Loyalty, 215, 228 Dublin, 142 Lord Mayor, 62 Duchaning, 142, 143 Dunraven, Lord, 113, 211 Earl of Meith, 124 East Africa, 230 East End, 12, 17, 60, 65, 70, 71, 73, 107, 108, 110-114, 123, 128, 132, 141, 145, 148, 161, 164, 173, 174,177, 185, 191, 201, 204, 207-209, 231, 232, 237, 240, 244, 247, 255-257, 259, 261, 267, 269, 274, 277, 280 East End Talmud Torah, 44 East India Company, 222 East Manchester, 227 Eastern Question, 60, 215 Eban, Abba, 229 Ebbw Vale, 271, 272 Ecclesiastes, Book of, 8, 23

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Ecclesiastical Board, 171 Economic slump, 69 Edict of Nantes, 93 Edmonton Cemetery, 202 Education Act, 254 Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 190 Edward, VII, King, 25, 54, 59, 64, 83, 127, 128, 192, 273, 277 Effendi, Murad, 79 Egypt, 66, 78 Egyptian Chief Rabbi, 16 Eicholz, Dr Alfred, 48, 176, 276 Eicholz, Bobby, 176 Eicholz, David, 48, 176 Eicholz, Hubert, 48, 176 Eicholz, Robert, 48 Eicholz, Ruth, 176 Elbogen, Ismar, 277 Elementary Education Act, 48, 112 Elias, Meir Ben, 75 Elizabeth, Queen I, 8 Elkin, Mr, 182 Emancipation, 129 Empires, 231. English Bible readings, 7 English Zionist Federation, 147, 226, 228, 230, 234 Enlightenment, 23, 38 Episcopal Chapel, 39 Episcopos Omnium Judaeorum, 6 Erisipelas, 153 Erlangen University, 31 Essays & Reviews, 39 Essenes, 41 Esterhazy, Count, 267 Ethics of the Fathers, 23 Etz Hayim, 174 Evans, Gordon William, 101 Evening classes, 113 Expulsion, 129, 185, 210 Factory Act, 254 Fagin, 255 Faith Schools, 191 Fascism, 216 Federation of Minor Synagogues, 13, 100 Federation of Synagogues, 17, 26, 100, 101,

104-109,113, 115, 120,122-124, 126, 161, 174, 178, 182, 184, 187, 197, 200, 201, 210, 212, 224, 232, 240, 242 Board of Delegates, 108, 110 Burial Society, 105 Cemetery, 110 Feldman, Dayan Asher, 111, 146, 161, 162, 164, 249 Finkelstein, 247 Finland, 110, 174 First Aliyah, 223 First World War, 82, 258 Flemish, 10 Foreign Office, 62, 91, 94, 218, 219, 232, 255 Forster Act, 48 Foster, Sir Michael, 250 Fountain, Samuel, 92 Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Co., 187 Fraenkel, Rabbi, 29 Frampton, Rev Samuel, 166 France, 38, 49, 65, 129, 137, 218, 219, 223, 227, 253 Franco-Prussian War, 79 Frederick the Great, 153 Frederick III, King, 278 Free lunches, 113 Freeman, Professor Edward, 83 French Revolution, 97 Freund, Rabbi Samuel, 30 Friedländer, Leah, 148 Friedländer, Dr Michael, 32, 45, 150, 156, 165 Friendly Society, 12 Funerals, Second class, 105 Furniture making, 60, 188, 255 Gaelic, 7 Gamaliel, Rabbi, 125 Garment Workers, 213 Gaster, Haham Moses, 146-148, 191, 197, 224, 227, 228, 241, 253, 281 Geiser, Rabbi Abraham, 198 Genesis, Book of, 43 Genizah, 167, 245 George I, King, 1, 20 George III, King, 10, 86,123

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Index

George V, King, 276-278 George Louis, King of Hanover, 20 German Hospital, 137 Germany, 1-4, 10, 11, 19-21, 23, 24,26, 35, 38, 52, 61, 65, 79, 109, 127-129, 137,150,190, 198, 223, 226, 230, 231, 247, 253, 255, 259, 260, 267, 277, 278 Frankfurt, 1, 3, 20, 24, 35, 82, 85, 86 Ghetto, 3 Get, 68, 268 Gezer, 74 Gestetner, David, 238 Geneva Convention, 265 Ghetto, 184,185 Giesen University, 31 Girls Religious Classes, 162 Gladstone, 26, 54, 59, 80-82, 84, 86-89, 913, 95,100, 254, 264 The Globe, 73 Golan Heights, 222 Gold, 94 Golden Calf, 41 Golders Green, 197 Goldschmidt, Isaac Lyon, 25 Goldschmidt, Lucien, 65 Goldwin Smith, Professor William, 6, 83, 84, 86, 87, 215 Gollancz, Hermann, 67, 72, 155, 159, 163 Gollancz, Israel, 163 Gollancz, Samuel Marcus, 163 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 235 Gorst, Sir John, 190 ‘Gospel of Wealth’, 264 Grade, Lord, 61 Grand Rabbi of France, 124 Grant of St James, 233 Great Garden Street Talmud Torah, 274 Greek, 26, 198 Greek Orthodox Church, 80, 219 Green, Aaron Asher, 146, 150, 156, 158, 171, 201 Green, Aaron Levy, 164, 205 Greenberg, Leopold, 230 Greenspan, 247 Greenwich, 80 Grunwald, Dr Moritz, 110 Guilt complex, 236

307

Gunnersbury Park, 192 Guys Hospital, 98 Hackney Central Ward, 191 Hackney Downs School, 191 Hackney Technical Institute, 191 Haemophilia, 178 Haggadah, 34 Haileybury House, 132 Halacha, 23, 43, 46, 140, 171, 243 Hall of Education Library, 174 Hamburg, 52, 61 Hampstead Garden Suburb, 124 Hampstead Heath, 197 Handbills, 239 Hanover, 1, 2, 4,19-22, 24, 28, 31, 35, 108,127, 137, 255 Harbinger of Good Tidings, 218 Harris, Rev Isidore, 32, 45 Harris, Raphael, 37 Harrow, 73, 124 Hart, Aaron, 275 Hayes Industrial School, 113 Hazan, 34, 157, 171 Hebrew, 4, 6, 7, 13, 21, 27, 29, 34, 40, 42, 107, 109, 112, 117, 136, 167, 180, 198, 200, 203, 205, 22, 213, 219, 248, 278 Hebrew and English Prayers for Young Children, 202 Hebrew Publishing Company, 151 Hellenism, 98 Henry VIII, King, 261 Henry, Abraham Henry, 155 Henry, Michael, 50 Herem, 21, 144 Hersch, Rabbi Samson Raphael, 108 Herschell, Farrer, 26 Herschell, Chief Rabbi Solomon, 19, 57, 108, 144, 183, 234, 276 Hertz, Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman, 4, 123, 137, 144, 158, 170, 172, 193, 206, 259 Herzl, Theodor, 110, 174, 191, 213, 218, 231, 232, 236-239, 260 Hibbert lectures, 200, 205 Hibbert, Robert, 200 Hildesheimer, Rabbi Samuel, 108,198 Hill, Dr Leonard, 250

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Hille, l 55 Hindquarters, 241 Hirsch, Rabbi Emil, 275 Historical criticism, 39 Hochman, Dr Joseph, 170 Holland, 61, 83, 155, 185 Holocaust, 9, 282 Holy Mass, 143 Holy Roman Empire, 9 Holzel, Hermann, 134 Home Office, 191, 271 Home Secretary, 179 Horowitz, Rabbi Saul, 73 Hospitals, 97 House of Commons, 77, 78, 94, 101, 102, 189, 232, 237, 250, 255, 256, 260, 264 House of Lords, 64, 77, 113, 145, 189, 210, 237, 250, 255, 256, 260 Committee on Divorce, 268, 274 Committee on Sunday Opening, 256 Committee on Sweating, 207, 208 Hoxton Lunatic Asylum, 51 Huguenots, 10, 66, 93 Hull, 61 Human sacrifices, 143 Hungary, 134, 150, 218 Hunting, 204, 235, 237 Hyamson, Dayan Moses, 111, 146, 161, 163, 164, 248, 269, 272, 276 Hyamson, Rabbi Nathan, 164 Hygiene, 153 Hyman, Rabbi Aharon, 174 Ibn Gabirol, 33 Immigrants, 61 Immortality, 263 Imperial Ottoman Parliament, 260 India, 10, 25, 54, 75, 80, 89, 119, 185 Treasury, 89 Industrial Revolution, 19 Industrial School for Girls, 280 Initiation Society, 178, 240 Inquisition, 10 Institute of Actuaries, 21 Intermarriage, 128, 131 International Jewish Society for the Protection of Women, 162

Iran, 258 Irish, 10, 190 Church, 253 Isaacs, David, 155 Isaacs, Sir Henry, 59 Isaiah, Book of, 30, 42 Islam, 86, 120 Israel, 4, 7, 174, 225, 229, 231 Israel, Rabbi Manasseh ben, 85 Israelites, 199 Issur, 242, 247, 249 Jack the Ripper, 207, 255 Jacob, Sir Ian, 259 Jacobovits, Immanuel Chief Rabbi, 86, 174, 210 Jacobs, Rabbi Louis, 116, 144, 281 Jaffe, David, 49 Japanese, 224 Jeremiah, Book of, 27 Jerusalem, 218, 219, 223, 280 Hospital, 233 Talmud, 23 Water Relief Society, 223 Jessel, Albert, 201 Jessel, George, 77 Jesus, 38, 39, 41, 42, 78, 83 Jethro, 14 Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge, 35, 48, 109, 112, 165, 240, 245 Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women, 43, 127, 204 Jewish Boot Charity, 113, 280 Jewish Charity, 115 Jewish Childrens’ Holiday Fund, 280 Jewish Childrens’ Penny Dinner Fund, 279, 280 Jewish Chronicle, 18, 27, 33, 39, 42, 49, 50, 53, 59, 65, 66, 74, 80, 89, 94, 101, 106, 116, 117, 128, 130, 135, 141, 146, 157, 158, 165, 166, 171, 177, 182, 201, 203, 208, 220, 224, 249, 259, 260, 268, 277, 279 Jewish Clubs, 132, 257 Jewish Convalescent Home, 83 Jewish Cookery Book, 280

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Index

Jewish Crèche, 280 Jewish Encyclopaedia, 6 Jewish Day Nursery, 280 Jewish Dispersion Committee, 111 Jewish Freedom, 214 Jewish Girls Brigade, 201 Jewish Guardian, 202 Jewish Historical Society of England, 15, 31, 75, 152, 202, 204, 245, 252 Jewish Hospitals, 98 Jewish Infants Schools, 204 Jewish Labour Bund, 214 Jewish Ladies Society for Preventive and Rescue Work, 43 Jewish Lads Brigade, 257 Jewish League for Women Suffrage, 201 Jewish Memorial Council, 151 Jewish Migrants Schools Association, 113 Jewish Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England, 39 Jewish Nurses, 98 Jewish Orphans Society, 45 Jewish Quarterly Review, 199, 202 Jewish Religious Education Board, 104, 107, 109, 113, 200, 201, 204, 274 Jewish Religious Union, 106, 107, 113, 162, 165, 182, 183, 201, 204-206 Jewish Review, 169, 205 Jewish Scholars Lifeboat Foundation, 50 Jewish Schools, 112, 121, 141 Jewish Theological Seminary, 135, 164, 168, 202, 204, 245, 246, 276 Jewish Times, 214 Jewish Unemployment Committee, 209 Jewish Women, 118, 119 Jewish Working Mens’ Club, 54, 55, 102, 112, 224 Jewish World, 68, 130, 272 Jews’ Chapel, 39 Jews’ College, 13, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 35, 45, 47, 57, 68, 73, 83, 111, 115, 122, 140, 146, 148, 149-153, 156, 157, 161, 163, 165, 169, 170, 172, 173, 180, 193, 196, 202, 204, 245, 269, 274, 282 Examining Board, 153 Jews Episcopal Church, 99

309

Jews’ Free School, 16, 36, 44, 82, 113, 121, 122, 165, 274 Jews in the Middle Ages, 202 Jingoism, 90 Johannesburg, 123 Johnson, President, 86 Joseph, Morris, 143, 144, 146, 151, 166, 200, 201 Joseph, Nathan, 51 Joseph, Norman Solomon, 47 Joseph, Rachel, 47 Jowett, Benjamin, 198 Judas Maccabaeus, 180 Judensau, 23 Julian calendar, 54 Juvenile Courts, 190, 191 Kabalas, 239, 247 Kaempf, Dr S.J., 29, 30 Kahn, 3 Kaiser, 137, 232 Kalisch, Dr Marcus, 22 Kamenitz 1, 3 Kamenitzer Rebbe, 13, 231, 274 Karaites, 228 Katterwitz, 225 Khazars, 264 Kidney Suet, 238, 241, 243 Kier Hardie, 190, 231, 258 Kiev, 61, 225 King Alfred, 14 King of Siam, 170 Kings, Book of, 8 Kishinev, 189, 225 Knowles, James, 254 Kol Nidre, 119 Kosher, 157, 234-236, 243, 244 Kosher Butchers, 241 Kovno, 241 Krill, Sir Stuart, 141, 142 Kruger, Paul, 94 Kuhn Loeb, 224, 225 L’Anti Juif, 65 Labour party, 132,190, 212-214, 229, 231, 258 Ladies Loan Society, 4

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Lancashire Distress Fund, 35 Lancet, 178, 180 Latin, 7 Lay leaders, 158 Lazarus, Harris, 161 Leeds, 21, 276 Lehfeld, Celestine, 29 Leicester, 111 Leipzig, 30 Leipzig University, 22, 30 Lerner, Rabbi Dr Meyer, 108-110, 120 Levi, Dayan Aaron, 25, 57, 159 Levi, Rabbi Gerson, 207 Levine, Ephy, 162, 202 Levy, Amy, 278 Levy, Edward, 267 Levy, Rabbi Solomon, 163, 164 Lewis’ Stores, 166 Liberal party, 80-82, 89, 91, 94, 95, 100, 112, 176, 189, 191, 254, 258, 278 Lincolns Inn, 35 Lipan, Rabbi Nahum, 242 Lithuania, 10, 110, 159, 174 Liverpool, 67, 71, 135, 152, 155, 166, 180, 213, 246, 247 Board of Shechita, 247, 248 Corporation, 250 Livingstone, Rev Isaac, 104 Lloyd George, David, 54, 230 Lloyd George, Roberts & Co., 230 Local Government Board, 251 London, 61, 205, 213 County Council, 25, 279 Education Board, 190, 191 German Hospital, 280 Hospital, 98, 99, 129, 250 Institute, 260, 281 Jewish Hospital Association, 98 London Mathematical Society, 21 London Mosque Fund, 127 London School Board, 190, 280 London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews, 39, 97, 219 Trafalgar Square, 205 Lord Mayor, 62 Lord Mayors, 59, 124, 141

Lords Day Observance Society, 131 Lowdermilk, Dr Walter, 231 Loyal Address, 123 Lucas, Arthur Sampson, 177 Lucas, Henry, 115 Lucas, Mrs Lionel, 182 Lyon, Chief Rabbi Hart, 19 Lyon, Hart, 276 Lyons, J., 162 Lyons, Louis, 209 Maccabean Society, 66, 263 Maccabaeus, 151, 174 Maccoby, Rabbi Chaim Zundel, 13, 109, 110, 112, 231 Machzikei Hadith, 5, 16, 105, 126, 182, 236, 238-243, 247-249 Maggid, 13, 134 Magnus, Lady Katie, 152 Magnus, Sir Philip, 33 Mahamad, 11, 146, 148, 235, 269 Maida Vale, 70 Maimonides, Moses, 9, 22, 144 Maisels, Rev Isaac, 210 Majuba Hill, 94, 266 Malchus Shel Chesed, 272 Malta, 89, 143 Manchester, 31, 32, 45, 67, 98, 144, 160, 161, 168, 176, 201, 210, 212, 213, 230, 244 Board of Shechita, 240, 249 Jewish Hospital, 99, 240 Victoria Memorial Hospital, 98 Yeshiva, 274 Zionist Society, 227 Manning, Cardinal, 62, 264 Mansion House, 141, 187 Mansion House Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, 62 Mansion House Trust, 62 Marienbad, 273 Marks, Rabbi Professor David Woolf, 42, 142, 144, 150, 181, 182, 244, 275 Marmur, Kalman, 214 Marriage, 67-69 contract, 21, 119 Secretary, 160, 253, 254 Marrying out, 131

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Marx, Karl, 189, 213 Marxism, 97, 214, 231 Mary Tudor, Queen, 261 Masai, 230 Matthew’s gospel, 39, 41 Matza, 106, 143 May Laws, 10, 60 Medical Centres, 97 Medical Provident Association, 278 Medical Service, 99 Mediterranean, 3, 81, 90, 221 Meldola, Haham Raphael, 37, 147 Messiah, 41, 66, 215, 261 Metaphysical Society, 254 Metropolitan Hospital, 129 Sunday Fund, 256, 278 Meyer, Morris, 214 Michaelson, Rabbi Bernjamin, 163 Middle East, 216, 220 Midrash, 23 Mill Hill School, 262 Milton, 23 Minhag Anglia, 282 Minhag Ashkenaz, 151, 205 Minyan, 201 Mishnah, 23, 29 Mixed Choir, 17, 144, 145, 273 Mixed seating, 202, 203 Midlothian campaign, 59, 91 Mildmay Mission, 97, 129 Miners Federation, 272 Mincha, 202, 203 Missionaries, 51, 63, 210 Mixed Choir, 143, 165, 202 Mocatta, 63 Mocatta, Ella, 163 Mocatta Frederic, 104 Mocatta Jewish Library, 55 Mocatta, Moses, 183 Modernisation, 7 Mohalim, 5, 157, 178, 179, 240 Mohammad, 62, 77 Money Lenders Act, 267 Montagu, Lily, 8, 9, 17, 107, 162, 197, 201, 202 Montagu, Louis, 178 Montagu, Samuel, 17, 74, 91,100-102, 104-

311

107,109, 110-113, 122, 126, 174, 178, 184, 185, 187, 197, 200, 201, 206, 210, 224, 240, 241, 248, 249, 254 Montefiore, Claude, 8, 9, 17, 50,100, 106, 107, 113, 152, 162,165, 197-200, 202, 203, 205 Montefiore, Sir Moses, 2, 5,15,16, 23, 27, 36, 45, 69, 85, 90, 126, 139, 145, 147, 168, 185, 193, 197, 216, 223, 225, 228, 275 Almshouses, 216 Association, 225 Montenegro, 79, 88 Morais, Rabbi Sabato, 155 Morning Leader, 134 Morris, Rev Joseph, 8 Mortara, 93 Mosaic Sanitation, 263 Moscow, 61 Moses, 2, 9, 14, 38, 41, 198, 199, 237 Mount of Olives, 222 Mount Sinai, 2 Muscovy Duck, 137 Muslim, 10, 79, 82, 220, 222, 236, 264 Musurus Pasha, 80 Naphtulei Elohim, 50, 51 National Day of Prayer, 265 National Home, 213, 217, 226, 228-231, 253 National Review, 267 Nazarene, 41 Nazareth, 41 Nemo, 165 Neuroses, 99 New Court, 259 New Jersey, 62 New Testament, 38, 39, 41, 78, 198, 199 New Year, 72, 119 New York, 111, 135, 136, 161, 164, 168, 185, 193, 202, 204, 224, 245, 276 Public Library, 42 New York Times, 124 New Zealand, 65, 66, 122, 257 Newcastle, 35, 276 Newhaven lifeboat, 50 Newman, Professor Aubrey, 17

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Nieto, Haham David, 11, 144, 269 Nightingale, Florence, 193 Nineteenth Century, 83, 252, 254 Nobel Prize, 8 Nonconformists, 35, 218, 262 Norman, 10 North American Review, 264 North Dakota, 62 North Shields, 35 Norwich, 75 Nottingham, 160 O’Connor, Thomas, 90 Oak Pedestal, 281 Oaths Act, 78, 92, 189 Observer, 119 Odessa, 96, 189, 217, 235 Committee, 217 Old Castle Street School, 48 Old Paths sermon, 205 Old Pretender, 11 Old Testament, 38, 40, 41, 78, 92, 198, 213 Oliver Twist, 255 Olympus, 50 Openshaw, Tommy, 250 Oral Law, 8, 9, 43, 46, 119, 159, 171, 178, 182, 189, 212, 220 Organ, 9, 119, 143, 145, 146, 202, 203, 220 Orthodoxy, 20 Oxford, 24, 25, 77, 83, 147, 198, 205, 221 Balliol, 198 Dictionary of Quotations, 87 Oyster, 236 Pagan, 264 Paine, W. Ashe, 113 The Pale, 224 Palestine, 66, 174, 216, 217-225, 229, 230, 252, 261 Exploration Fund, 222 Land Development Company, 222 Pall Mall Gazette, 207, 265 Palmerston, 54, 219 Paris, 65, 66, 80, 185 Parkes, Rev James, 184 Parkes Library, 184 Parliament, 73, 263

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 54 Passover, 2, 34, 106, 122, 143, 196 Peel, Sir Robert, 83 Penitential prayers, 7, 119 Pentateuch, 8, 38, 43, 85, 119, 151, 170, 198 Peoples Palace, 207 The People’s Will, 60 Pepys, Samuel, 70 Perse School, 73 Persia, 185 Perugia, Marie, 59 Pettycoat Lane, 165 Philanthropic Society, 5 Pirates, 81 Pirbright, Baron, 19 Pittsburgh Platform, 275 Plato, 55, 198 Poale Zion, 213, 214, 229 Pogroms, 60, 62, 69, 96,180, 190, 210, 224, 225, 255, 258, 271, 282 Polak Mrs, 279 Polak, Rev, 40 Poland, 4, 10, 22, 57, 66, 69, 155, 156, 173, 185, 190, 214, 219, 232, 246, 259 Poleaxing, 237, 241, 250 Polish Minhag, 151 Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, 63, 130 Pope, 92 Ports, 19 Portsmouth Hebrew Benevolent Institute, 45 Potter, Beatrice, 69 Prague, 6, 28-31,108 Prague University, 29 Prayers for Jewish Working Girls, 202 Preachers Union, 171 Press reports, 153 Pre-stunning, 235-237, 244, 246, 250, 251 Prince of Wales Hospital Fund, 99,177 Princess Christian, 278 Princess Royal, 278 Prisoners of War, 143, 265 Privy Council, 39 Probation Officers, 191 Procurator Fiscal, 245, 246 Progressive party, 191 Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 35 Prophets, 205

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Protestants, 1, 11, 38, 127, 197, 219, 261 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 258 Provincial Jewish Ministers Fund, 160 Prussia, 61 Prussian Evangelical Church, 219 Psalms, 20, 151 Public Health Committee, 191 Public Schools, 74, 121, 122 Publicans, 73 Punch, 101 Puritanism, 196 Rabbinical Association of Chicago, 207 Rabbinical Literature, Professor of, 275 Rabbinism, 197, 205 Rabbis, 103, 163 Rabinowitz, Joel, 155. Ramsgate, 27, 185 Yeshiva, 146, 148 Randlords, 265 Raphael, Edward, 98 Raphael, Morris Jacob, 155 Raphaels Bank, 47 Rapoport, Rabbi Solomon, 28, 30 Rashi, 9 Reading, 111 Reading Room, 112 Reform, 2, 5, 8, 14, 17, 20, 21, 28, 33, 43, 97, 104, 106, 117, 123, 130,145, 146, 150, 151,181, 182, 183, 188, 197-201, 203, 204, 231, 236, 244, 253, 274, 275, 278 Reform Bill, the Second, 89 Reformation, 38 Regency, 54, 196 Registrar General, 256, 268 Reichsadler, 3 Reinowitz, Dayan Jacob, 23, 31, 57, 110, 160, 161,184, 193, 241, 242 Religions lost, 231 Reouf Pasha, 216 Repatriation, 63, 102 Responsa, 29 Restoration, 82, 235 Reuben Sachs, 278 Reverends, 146 Rhodes, Cecil, 94, 266

313

Riot Act, 272 Rishon le Zion, 216 Ritual Reform, 12, 34, 46, 69, 71, 115, 118, 141,142, 151, 169, 170, 172, 251 Conference, 117 Ritz, Cesar, 138 Roman, 7, 9 Romania, 10, 89, 90, 132, 147, 167, 198, 214, 228 Romanoff, 234 Rome, 92, 143,198, 252 Rosebery, Albert, 59 Rosebery, Lord, 54, 59 Rosebery, Neil, 59 Rosh Hashonah, 2, 94 Roth, Cecil, 147, 272 Rothschild family, 14, 17, 19, 26, 59, 278 Alfred, 189 Amschel, 20 Amselm, 28, 127 Sir Anthony, 16, 28, 44 Baroness de, 47 Charlotte de, 66, 67 Constance, 45 Emma, 127 Hannah de, 54, 59, 91 Hospital, 216 Lord Jacob, Foreword Jeanette von, 16, 26 Leopold de, 59, 129,192 Baron Lionel, 16, 77 Lord, 16, 18, 19, 59, 69, 100-102, 104, 111,112, 120, 126, 127, 145, 169, 171, 176, 187, 192, 193, 210, 234, 242, 253, 255, 257, 259, 260, 272, 273, 277 Nathan Mayer, 20, 25 Nathaniel, 61, 64, 127 School, 216 Rothschilds, 3, 62, 67, 78, 91, 98, 100, 122, 176, 187, 197, 204, 214, 216, 223, 235 Rotterdam, 61 Routledge Machzorim, 6, 151 Royal Albert Hall, 74 Royal family prayer, 7, 85, 86 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, 176, 257

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Royal Commission on Divorce, 68, 69, 176 Royal Commission on Sunday Closing, 176 Royal Commission on Sweating, 176 Royal Ophthalmic Hospital Guild, 280 Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 236, 237, 259, 244-246 Royal Statistical Society, 20 Rugby School, 122 Russia, 10, 38, 60-62, 69, 79, 80, 82, 87, 88, 90, 91, 101, 102, 110, 127, 161, 165, 173, 174, 176, 185, 189, 190, 213, 214, 217-219, 230, 234, 235, 239, 241, 245, 255, 259, 272, 275 Russo-Japanese War, 234 Russo-Jewish Relief Fund, 62 Ruth, Book of, 23 St Andrews University, 61 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 38 St Bartholomew’s Hospital, 97 St Catherine’s monastery, 38 St John & Elizabeth Hospital, 98 St Mary’s Hospital, 51 St Paul, 41, 205 St Paul’s Cathedral, 141 Sabbath, 7, 146, 256 Sabbataeans, 120 Sabbath Candles, 119 Sacks, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan, 174 Salaman, Nina, 152 Salaries, 132, 167 Salisbury, Lord Robert, 227 Saliva, 8 Salvation Army, 102, 192, 207 Samuel, Book of, 43 Samuel, Herbert, 191 Samuel, Isaac, 37 Samuel Sir Saul, 124 San Stefano, Treaty of, 88 Sandelson, David Isambard, 276 Sanitary Inspector, 118 Sarah, 165 Sasportas, Haham Jacob, 120, 144 Sasportas, Samuel, 235 Sassoon, Abraham, 25,124 Sassoon, Albert, 54 Sassoon, David, 25

Sassoon, Sir Edward, 150 Sassoon, Rachel, 119, 267 Savoy Hotel, 181 Saxe-Coburg, 137 Schecter, Rabbi Solomon, 167, 168,198, 202, 204 Schiffs, 3 Schiff, Chief Rabbi David Tevele, 19, 108, 148, 276, 282 Schiff, Jacob, 224 Schiller-Szinessy, Rabbi Solomon, 31, 32, 139, 144, 155, 167, 168 Scholastic Philosophy, 33 Schott, 244 Schott vs Adler, 244 Schryver, Elsie, 152 Scientists, 11, 25, 140, 199, 206 Scotland, 59, 61, 190 Scribe, 111 Secessionists, 21, 34, 42, 43, 50, 123, 128, 142, 144, 163, 165, 183 Secularism, 128 Sefer Torah, 160, 203 Segal, Dayan Azriel ben David Halevi, 22, 57 Self employment, 210 Select Committees Emigration & Immigration, 255 Sweating System, 255 Semicha, 6, 13, 28, 31, 139, 146, 147, 152, 159, 162-164, 172, 242 Separate seating, 203 Sephardim, 11, 14, 117, 123, 146, 147, 153, 163, 197, 228, 235, 249, 252, 253, 258 Sermons, 24 Serbia, 79, 82, 88, 90 Seven Years War 3. Shaare Tikvah School, 74 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 219 Shakespeare, 23, 37 Shamas, 105 Shechita, 6, 30, 174, 217, 234, 235, 237, 241, 242, 244, 246, 248, 251, 263 Sheffield, 89, 110,161, 164 Shellfish, 236 Shema, 42 Shevuot, 29

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Index

Shinwell, Manny, 233 Shivas, 155 Shochet, 157, 174, 235-241, 243, 245-247, 250, 255 Shofer, 119 Shomer, 239 Shulchan Aruch, 249 Sick Room Help Society, 99, 280 Simon, John, 82 Simony, 71 Sinai, 119,198, 199 Singer Prayer Book, 24, 72, 115, 139, 151, 162, 163, 196 Singer, Rev Simeon, 72, 104, 152,162, 200, 201-203, 205, 206 Sisters of Mercy, 98 Slavonic literature, 147 Smith, W.H., 102. 103 Snowman, Dr Jacob, 179 Snowman, Dr Julian, 98 Social Party, 232 Social Democratic Federation, 211 Socialists, 5, 13, 55, 97, 116, 189, 190, 208210, 212, 213, 228, 235-237, 259 Demonstration, 209 Society for the Protection of Children, 191 Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel, 217 Society for Talmudical Studies, 22 Soil Conservation Services, 221 Sokmansky, Rabbi, 247 Soup kitchens, 63 South Africa, 65, 93, 94, 155, 180, 266 South Sea Bubble, 98 Southampton University, 184, 264 Spain, 33, 80, 220, 257 Speaker, 232 Spector, Rabbi Yitzchak, 6, 30, 110, 166, 241, 242 Spielman, Sir Isidore, 74 Spiers, Dayan Bernard, 23, 34, 57, 100,161, 193, 241, 242 Spy, 255 Starling, Professor Ernest, 250 Stead, William Thomas, 207 Stepney, 132, 165

315

Stepney Jewish School, 44, 113, 165, 245, 279 Stern, Jeanette, 52 Stern, Rabbi Joseph, 52, 165, 166, 171, 172, 201 Striemel, 148 Stuart, 11, 252 Succot, 70, 122, 246 Suez Canal, 78, 80, 220 Suffragettes, 43, 201 Sultan, 88, 231, 237 Sumarian, 9 Sunday Times, 119, 267 Sunday Trading, 131 Swansea, 92 Swaythling, Lord, 185 Sweat Shops, 67, 116, 211, 267 Sweden, 257 Synod, 116 Synoptic gospels, 19 Synagogue, 12, 13, 21, 70, 81, 85, 116-118, 161, 187 Adath Yisroel, 108 Architecture, 70 Ashkenazi, 105 Bayswater 13, 15, 25, 37, 38, 40, 43, 46, 48, 51, 52, 75, 106, 107, 122, 135, 136, 146, 163, 276, 281 Belfast, 46, 49 Ben Ezra, 167 Bevis Marks, 14, 15, 36, 70, 77, 90,183, 237, 249 Birmingham, 35, 281 Borough, 72, 145 Bradford Reform, 128, 150 Brighton, 240 Bristol, 164, 165 Brondesbury, 122, 180 Brothers of Petrikoff, 105 Central, 15, 37, 59, 66, 122, 136, 139, 145, 164, 165 Dalston, 163, 164 Dublin, 46, 49 East End, 186 East London, 115 Edinburgh, 49 Gateshead, 160, 174

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Glasgow, 46, 49 Golders Green, 104. Great, 1, 14-16, 35, 43, 47, 62, 110, 122124,145, 148, 165, 205, 208, 209, 217, 256, 263, 273 Great Sydney, 260 Hambro’, 15, 35, 134,155, 163, 183, 186, 256 Hammersmith, 181 Hampstead, 134, 135, 141,142, 144146, 151, 156, 201, 203, 273, 281 Hope Place, 152, 180 Kovno, 105 Leeds, 281 Liberal Synagogue, 5, 8,17, 50, 100, 150, 152, 162, 197, 200, 203, 206, 207, 282 Machzikei Hadath, 110, 174 Machzikei Shomrai Shabbot, 238 Maiden Lane, 35 Manchester Great, 212, 281 Manchester Reform, 128 Middlesborough, 49. New, 15, 27, 35, 38, 144, 163, 186 New Road, 110, 111 New West End, 15, 43, 72,162, 169, 170, 202, 240 Newcastle, 49,160 North London, 140 North London Beth Hamedresh, 238 Norwich, 219 Orach Hayyim, 136, 161 Plymouth, 190, 219 Princes Park Road, 152, 166 Provincial, 103, 123, 124, 126,, 253 St Johns Wood, 163, 240 Sephardi, 105 Services, 70 Settlement, 150 Shearith Israel, 136, 161 Sinai Chicago, 275 South Manchester, 163 Spital Square, 101 Spitalfields Great, 148 Stepney, 44 Sunderland, 149, 150, 172, 174, 253 Swansea, 26, 34, 164,193

Tredegar, 271 United Brethren of Konin, 105 Upper Berkeley Street, 104, 123, 128,142, 144, 150, 181, 183, 196, 194, 197, 200, 203, 205 West Ham, 194 West Hartlepool, 49 Western, 15, 138, 275 Tailoring, 60, 210, 255 Tallith, 148 Talmud, 7-9, 13, 14, 19, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 33, 41,43, 47, 54, 55, 57, 69, 86, 108, 109-111, 113, 126, 136, 137, 139, 143, 146, 148, 149, 153, 156, 157, 159, 164, 172, 174, 189, 192, 201, 219, 231, 234, 235, 237, 241, 242, 248, 251, 253, 278 Talmud Association School, 45 Talmud Torah, 174 Tasmania, 44, 134 Tattersall, M.A.S., 280 Taylor family, 185, 186, 188 Tax money, 8 Teachers, 109 Tels, 241 Temple, 120 Temple incenses, 119 Ten Commandments, 234 Tephillin, 99, 105 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 177 The Times, 11, 82, 110, 165, 206, 232, 256, 258 The Blood of Christ as Shed by Jews,143 The Discipline of Sorrow, 180 The World, 58 Thirty Years War, 38 Tisha b’Av, 120 Tobin, Oscar, 132 Toledano, Dayan, 174 Tombstones, 105 Top hats, 104 Torah, 168, 242, 282 Toronto, 83 Touro, Judah, 233 Toynbee Hall, 207 Trade Boards Act, 211 Trade Union, 209 Congress, 257

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Transvaal, 93, 94, 266 Tredegar, 271 Chief Constable, 271 Council, 272 Tredegar Iron & Steel Co., 271 Trial and Error, 230 Trinity, 42, 50, 129 Trollope, Anthony, 207 Truck System, 271 Tsitsit, 148 The Old Testament and After, 205 Tuck, Sir Adolph, 173, 282 Tuck, Raphael, 238 Turkey, 79, 80, 81, 84, 87-91, 215-218§, 219, 230-232 Turkish Sufferers Fund, 81 Tysmienitz, 73 Uganda, 213, 228, 230 Ukraine, 73 Union of Jewish Women, 121, 282 Union Street, 278 United Synagogue, 5,12,14,15-18, 24, 51-53, 57, 59, 60, 61, 69, 103-109, 111,115, 117, 123, 126, 130, 131, 144, 145, 148-150, 158, 160, 165, 167, 169-171, 173, 179, 182,184, 188 189, 192, 196, 197, 201, 203, 205207, 232, 234, 238, 240, 243, 249, 253, 256, 259, 260, 272, 273, 275, 278 Act, 25 Building Committee, 169 Council, 1, 22, 124, 281 Visitation Committee, 51, 92 Unitarians, 129, 207 United States Department of Agriculture, 231 Universities Test Act, 77. University College, London, 25, 28, 33, 36, 55, 147, 163, 164, 202, 278 University College School, 25, 36 University College, Southampton, 204 University of London, 45, 164 Unporged Meat, 238, 243 Usury, 267 Valetta, 143 Van Ran, Mrs, 280

317

Vanity Fair, 4, 256 Vatican, 75 Vaughan, Cardinal, 143 Vienna, 28, 72, 82, 86, 167 Victoria, Queen, 20, 54, 64, 77, 83, 87-89, 127, 128, 137, 196, 256, 265, 273, 278 Vilna Gaon, 9 Wage Earning Children Committee, 190 Waley Cohen, Sir Robert, 170,193 Walsh, William, 142 War Prayer, 265 Ward, Florence Fyfe Brereton, 200, 202 Warsaw, 63 Webb, Sidney, 212 Weiss, Rabbi Isaac Hirsch, 72, 162 Weizmann, Chaim, 131,190, 227, 231 Wellington, 137 Welsh, 7 Werner, Rabbi Avraham Aba, 110, 149, 174, 187, 241, 242, 247 Wessey, 38 West Central Jewish Girls’ Club, 201 West End community, 67, 71, 108, 116, 141, 145, 148, 150,194, 196, 204, 208, 269 West Indian, 10 Westminster Abbey, 138, 264 Westminster, Dean of, 124 Westminster Hospital, 98 Westminster Review, 201 Whig, 89 White, Arnold, 208 White slavery, 43, 64, 201 Whitechapel, 100-102, 278 Whitehall Conference, 251 Willesden Cemetery, 59,109 William, King IV, 1 William of Malmesbury, 14 Wilson, Harold, 88 Windmill, 235 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 28, 30 Wissotzky, Rabbi Kalonismus Wolf, 217 Wolf, Rabbi Abraham, 163 Wolfson, Sir Isaac, 259 Wogan, James, 25

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Women and Judaism, 34, 43, 201 Worcester Regiment, 272 Workhouse, 63, 92 Working Mens’ Club, 66 World Zionist Organization, 228 Worms, Henry de, 19, 49, 54, 131 Written Law, 4, 38, 43, 119, 159, 171, 189, 212, 220, 239 Yadin Yadin, 30 Yahrzeit, 193 Yiddish, 4, 13, 21, 22, 27, 44, 61, 66, 70, 71, 96-98, 107, 109, 117, 134, 156, 159, 174, 187, 212-214, 229, 247, 274

Yom Kippur Preface, 27, 66, 73, 111, 119, 170, 178, 210, 228 Yoreh Yoreh, 30 Zangwill, Israel, 141,150, 152, 207, 226, 242 Zednik, Joseph, 22 Zevi, Rabbi Sabbatei, 120 Zionism, 13, 54, 66, 93, 110, 116, 146-148, 174, 181, 189, 200, 205, 212-218, 222232, 242, 253, 261, 278 Congress, 230 Constitution, 230 Zionist Bank, 228 Zionist Confederation, 228

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