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My first day at Leo Baeck College, I arrived early, dressed soberly but impressively to demonstrate my serious intent. I was shown into a room where I sat with two other students among the drawings and misspelled Hebrew words of a West London Synagogue cheder class. Feeling frightfully shy, I did not introduce myself to my two colleagues, and they, being equally reticent did not introduce themselves to me. So there we sat and waited for some twenty minutes in total silence. Rabbi Albert Friedlander z'l finally came in, blinked, and asked what we were doing. 'We are waiting for our class', we explained. 'O', he said, 'didn't they tell you? Your lecturer cancelled. You don't have anything for another hour and a half'. Somewhat bemused, I made my way up to the office where I was greeted by a secretary who handed me a phone. On the other end of the line was an energetic clergyman wondering if I could come and give a talk about women in Judaism at his Church the following Sunday. I knew nothing about the subject, but I had not yet learnt that one can say 'no'. All I remember of the rest of that first week was spending every spare moment in the Library frantically reading all I could about women in Judaism. I wasn't by nature a feminist, but a few similar requests later and suddenly I was an 'expert'. I had been to the Leo Baeck College study week in the past, and I had met students and staff when they came to Cambridge for a few days. My impression had been of venerable teachers of great wisdom with thick German accents exuding a deep love and knowledge of their subject. By the time I came to Leo Baeck as a student, every one of them had died. My impression in those first days was of young teachers looking anxious as well they might as the mantle of the generation of the Hochshul fell upon them. Today a similar sense of loss pervades the College. With the deaths of Albert Friedlander, John Rayner, Ben Segal and Hyam Maccoby in so short a period of time, the next generation feels not only lost, but scared at the awesome responsibility that is now theirs. They must pass on what little they feel they know and mould the next generation of leaders. The shape of Progressive Judaism is in their hands.

Leo Baeck College was founded shortly before the death of the man whose name it bears. As his biographer and one who knew him during his time as a student at Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Friedlander regrets that the qualities of the man himself become lost behind the many institutions that bear his name. One of his teachings was that of ‘positive neutrality’. When he led the Jewish community in Germany, Baeck had to mediate between the many Jewish factions, watched and scrutinised in everything he did. He was not a political leader, used to making compromises, but a religious leader who based his decisions on what he considered to be right in the sight of God. Of course he made mistakes, but people knew that this was a man of faith, prepared to live by the decisions he had made. He was also a teacher of hope who recognised endemic evil in the world but nevertheless saw a clear pathway for the Jew and for humanity.

When I began to study at the Leo Baeck College I was very much influenced by our lecturer in Bible Dr Ellen Littmann. In fact I owe to her my own interest in the Hebrew Bible. At her urging I went on to do doctoral studies so that I could eventually succeed her at the College. Bible was not her first field of study. Instead it was history and she belonged to that circle around Ismar Elbogen and Leo Baeck who were such significant figures at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin and indeed for all of German Jewry before the war. She was brought to England from Israel by Rabbi Dr Van der Zyl the main architect in the creation of the College.

It is a great privilege to have been invited to give this lecture in memory of David Goldstein, zikhrono livrakha. He was one of the great scholars and teachers of our movement and he died tragically young. I recall in particular a series of lectures he gave at the College on the Golden Age of Spain. In one of the earlier ones he noted that while at school he had been taught about the so-called 'dark ages' in Europe when there was little in the way of cultural development. The only exception, he had been taught, was the single shining light provided by the Venerable Bede. It was only in later life that he discovered that at the same time when Christian Europe was 'in the dark', Islamic Spain was going through its 'golden age' with an extraordinary flourishing culture that nourishes us till today. That same kind of cultural narrowness and ignorance seems to be no less a problem today when considering the Muslim presence in Europe, and I am always pleased to use that illustration to challenge people to think more broadly.

"Saperstein, Rabbi Prof. Marc Eli, (born 5 Sept. 1944), Professor of Jewish History and Homiletics, Leo Baeck College, London, since 2011 (Principal, 2006–11)" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Bayfield, Rabbi Prof. Anthony Michael, (born 4 July 1946), President, Movement for Reform Judaism, 2011–16 (Head of Movement, 2005–10; Chief Executive, Reform Movement and Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, 1994–2005); Professor of Jewish Theology and Thought, Leo Baeck College, since 2014" published on by Oxford University Press.

Leo Baeck College was founded a mere two days before Charles Middleburgh was born. His association with LBC began in 1975 and ends with his retirement in July 2026. During that time, he has witnessed or been part of all the major events in the College's lifetime; this personal memoir enables him to reflect on the College itself, rabbinic training and rabbinic life.

"Middleburgh, Rabbi Dr Charles Hadley, (born 2 Oct. 1956), Rabbi: Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, 2002–11, Rabbi Emeritus, since 2015; Cardiff Reform Synagogue, 2004–14; Director of Jewish Studies, since 2011, Dean, since 2014, and Reader in Bible and Liturgy, since 2015, Leo Baeck College; Lecturer, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College, Dublin, 2002–09" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Saperstein, Rabbi Prof. Marc Eli, (born 5 Sept. 1944), Professor of Jewish History and Homiletics, Leo Baeck College, London, since 2011 (Principal, 2006–11)" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Bayfield, Rabbi Prof. Anthony Michael, (born 4 July 1946), President, Movement for Reform Judaism, 2011–16 (Head of Movement, 2005–10; Chief Executive, Reform Movement and Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, 1994–2005); Professor of Jewish Theology and Thought, Leo Baeck College, since 2014" published on by Oxford University Press.

I entered the Leo Baeck College in October 1959 and completed my studies there in June 1965. In those days the college had few students and was initially housed in the old council room of the West London Synagogue atop the main entrance in Upper Berkeley Street. In 1963 the building on the corner of Upper Berkeley Street and Seymour Place was demolished and in its place was erected a new building for the Leo Baeck College which also doubled as a venue for the West London Synagogue Religion School. In the late 50s the faculty was almost entirely made up of refugees from Nazism, many of them graduates of the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums , the great Berlin seminary founded in 1 872 by Abraham Geiger and closed in 1942 by the Nazis. An exception was Rabbi Dr Alan Miller, a young and dynamic British born graduate of Jews College and Oxford University, who taught history and Modern Hebrew literature. In 1961 two other British born scholars joined the faculty, Raphael Loewe, who also taught at University College and David Patterson, Cowley lecturer in post-Biblical Hebrew at Oxford. By this time Alan Miller had left for New York to take up the prestigious post of Rabbi at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. David Patterson took over the teaching of Modern Hebrew literature and Raphael Loewe taught us Midrash. Raphael Loewe, though an Ashkenazi, was Parnas Presidente of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Maida Vale. He was later appointed Professor of Hebrew Studies at University College. David Patterson was to later found the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. An expert on Avraham Mapu (the first Hebrew novelist) Patterson also taught us the poetry of Bialik and the prose of Agnon. He was probably the most self-effacing of our teachers. Rabbi Dr Israel Otto Lehman, former curator of Hebrew documents at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, taught us liturgy and Mediaeval Jewish philosophy. He also offered to teach Arabic but was persuaded by the college authorities not to do so. (Arabic had been a part of the Hochschule curriculum.) Dr Lehman

"Middleburgh, Rabbi Dr Charles Hadley, (born 2 Oct. 1956), Rabbi: Dublin Jewish Progressive Congregation, 2002–11, Rabbi Emeritus, since 2015; Cardiff Reform Synagogue, 2004–14; Director of Jewish Studies, since 2011, Dean, since 2014, and Reader in Bible and Liturgy, since 2015, Leo Baeck College; Lecturer, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College, Dublin, 2002–09" published on by Oxford University Press.

I entered Leo Baeck College in September 1979 as 50 percent of the Class of 1984; my co-student was William Wolff. It would be hard to conceive of two less similar people, yet we hit it off like a house on fire and remained close mates throughout our College years. I came from an academic background; my general Jewish knowledge was almost nil, but I'd already mastered Biblical Hebrew. Willie, a tabloid journalist, was steeped in Yiddishkeit but couldn't differentiate between a sh'va na' and a sh'va nach. Our lecturers that first year must have been in hysterics over us.

This chapter presents three responses to the September 11 attacks from the Jewish pulpit. The first sermon reproduced in the chapter is by Elias Lieberman of Cape Cod. Next, the chapter turns to the sermon by Alexandra Wright, a British Liberal rabbi ordained at the Leo Baeck College. It was her second Rosh Hashanah sermon to address the events of 9/11. As this book opens with sermons from the two leading Orthodox synagogues of London, the chapter thus concludes it with a sermon from the leading Orthodox synagogue of America's capital. As such, the third sermon is delivered by Barry Freundel, rabbi of the Orthodox Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown.

This issue continues a tradition in this journal of devoting issues to the broad theme of ‘Judaism and Psychotherapy’. It began formally in autumn 1982, but the journal had already explored the topic earlier with occasional writings as noted by Howard Cooper. The dedicated issues grew out of a series of lectures on the topic initiated by Leo Baeck College and were subsequently continued in collaboration with the Raphael Centre, a Jewish counselling service. The origin of this exploration belongs in large part to the influence of Irene Bloomfield z’l, who became involved, together with Dr Wendy Greengross z’l, in the establishment of a pioneering programme of ‘Pastoral Care and Counselling’ for the rabbinic students at the College. It is a privilege to be able to include in this issue a previously unpublished paper by Irene, together with Gaby Glassman, her partner in pioneering work on the impact of the Holocaust on the second generation of survivor families.