Leo Baeck College Research Articles

Rabbi Henry G. Brandt

Born Heinz Georg Brandt in Munich, at the age of eleven his family escaped from Germany in 1939 to England and later settled in Tel Aviv. He served as an officer in the Palmach during the War of Independence and became an officer in the navy. From 1951 he studied economics at Queens University in Belfast, then worked as a market analyst for the Ford Motor company in the UK, while doing volunteer work in the Ilford Jewish community. In 1957 he began rabbinic studies as one of the first students at the recently opened Leo Baeck College, obtaining rabbinic ordination in 1961. His first rabbinic post was in Leeds, following which he served an international community in Geneva, and in 1978 was the founding rabbi of the Liberal Jewish congregation ‘Or Chadash’ in Zurich and later served as the community rabbi in Gothenburg.

Editorial

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 It is a privilege to be able to include in this issue a previously unpublished paper by Irene, together with Gaby Glassman, her partner in pioneering work on the impact of the Holocaust on the second generation of survivor families.

Editorial

2018 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the spontaneous founding of an interfaith initiative involving Jews and Christians in the unlikely location of Germany. Anneliese Debray, who was the director of a Catholic women’s adult education centre in Bendorf, near Koblenz, had the imagination and courage to set about creating programmes for encounter and reconciliation in the post-war world. The centre, the Hedwig Dransfeld Haus, became a meeting place for French and German and Polish and German families; for physically and mentally handicapped people together with ‘normal’ people; for the challenging task of ecumenical encounters between Catholic and Protestant Christians; for dialogue between Christians and Muslims; and eventually between Israeli and German young people. In that latter context the editor of this journal found himself visiting the centre and then, with two fellow rabbinic students at Leo Baeck College, attending an annual Catholic Bible study conference that summer. Our presence, our willingness to be there, and the rarity of such an opportunity for the participants, led to the desire to repeat the experiment the following year. Through incremental changes, the International Jewish-Christian Bible Week became an annual reality. After the death of Anneliese Debray, who had struggled for years to keep the Haus financially afloat, it went into bankruptcy. Nevertheless, what had been built had enough recognition and influence that it led to an invitation from Dr Uta Zwingenberger, who was responsible for Bible education in the Diocese of Osnabrück, to re-establish the Week in a new home, another Catholic adult education centre, Haus Ohrbeck, in the area of Osnabrück. There it continues to grow and flourish, hosting up to 130 people each year. Part of the impact, which makes it different from other more formal interfaith encounters, is the participation of families, with special programmes for children, so that the entire atmosphere is one of a normal human community.

Rabbi Andre Ungar z’l

Rabbi Ungar was born in Budapest to Bela and Frederika Ungar. The family lived in hiding with false identity papers from 1944 under the German occupation. After the war, a scholarship brought him to the UK where he studied at Jews’ College, then part of University College, and subsequently studied philosophy. Feeling uncomfortable within Orthodoxy, he met with Rabbi Harold Reinhart and Rabbi Leo Baeck and eventually became an assistant rabbi at West London Synagogue. In 1954 he obtained his doctorate in philosophy and was ordained as a rabbi through a programme that preceded the formal creation of Leo Baeck College in 1956. In 1955 he was appointed as rabbi at the progressive congregation in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Very soon his fiery anti-Apartheid sermons were condemned in the Afrikaans newspapers and received mixed reactions from the Jewish community. In December 1956 he was served with a deportation order and was forced to leave the country.

Editorial

This issue contains the papers given at a special conference held at Leo Baeck College (22 May 2019), ‘Albert Friedlander: Comprehension, Compassion and Conciliation’, reflecting on his life and achievements. Among his many activities and achievements, Rabbi Dr Albert Friedlander z’l (1927–2004) was editor of this journal (1982–2004) and we marked his passing with many personal tributes (European Judaism 37, no. 2 [Autumn 2004], 103–122). However, this conference provides an opportunity to explore different aspects of his life and work. Originally conceived by Rabbi Dr Frank Dabba Smith in conversations with Evelyn Friedlander, he organised it together with Professor Michael Berkowitz, UCL, Rabbi Dr Deborah Kahn-Harris, Principal of Leo Baeck College, and Cassy Sachar, the Senior Librarian of the College, who developed an exhibition based on following traces of Rabbi Friedlander’s activities to be found in the library. As well as the papers included here, there was a panel chaired by Rabbi Dr Charles H. Middleburgh, Dean and Director of Studies of the College, including memories from Rabbi Colin Eimer, Rabbi Ariel Friedlander (via video link) and Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp. Evelyn Friedlander was interviewed by Frank Dabba Smith; it was fortunate that she could participate as she was frail due to ill health. Concluding remarks were given by Professor Lord John Alderdice (Director, Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, Harris-Manchester College, Oxford University). Plans are underway for a further conference, broadening the theme.

Reading with Albert

This article explores the personal experience of the Leo Baeck College librarian encountering Albert Friedlander, teacher and dean of the college, through his writing, the books he owned and his presence in the institution’s library and archival material. It explores how readers and writers are in relationship with one another and argues that a broad concept of reading and what can be read can offer new ways of being in relationship with the living and dead.

Editorial

Five years ago, we published an issue marking the fortieth anniversary of the creation of the annual international student conference established by the Standing Conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Europe (JCM). Interfaith dialogue is one of the topics regularly addressed by this journal, reflecting a long-standing commitment to such programmes by Leo Baeck College. The aim of the conference from its inception was to invite future religious leaders within their respective faiths to meet one another while still students in the hope that this direct experience of sharing time together with the ‘other’ would influence their work in the communities that they would subsequently serve.

Rabbis Jeremy Collick, David Goldberg, Harry Jacobi, Ernst Stein and Charles Wallach

Founded in 1956, Leo Baeck College is a relatively young institution in the world of rabbinic seminaries, yet it has been in existence long enough to witness the passing of a number of distinguished rabbis who have graduated from its programme. Sadly this ‘in memoriam’ commemorates the death of five such rabbis within the period of a year, each of whom has served the Jewish community and beyond, each of whom leaves a significant legacy and whose absence is a serious loss to family and friends, the communities they have served and the wider world. They came from very different backgrounds: two of them born in pre-war Germany, refugees who came late in life to rabbinic studies; two of them born and educated in the UK; one born in South Africa. They served in a variety of congregational settings: in the UK and continental European Liberal congregations; one worked within the Einheitsgemeinde system in Berlin, and one in the emerging Masorti movement in the UK; one served South Africa and Australia as well. They each offered a unique set of personal qualities and experience to the task.

Talking My Way In

AbstractIn the lecture she gave at the Day of Celebration to mark twenty-five years of ordaining LGBT rabbis by Leo Baeck College on 23 June 2014, Rabbi Dr Rachel Adler spoke persuasively and encouragingly of ‘newcomers’ to the ongoing Jewish ‘conversation’, ‘affecting the tradition’ by teaching the tradition ‘to re-understand its own stories’, and also by telling ‘stories that the tradition does not know at all’. For most of my rabbinate, I was engaged in the first kind of storytelling. More recently, I have been doing more of the second kind. In my response to Rachel Adler’s lecture, I trace my journey, both within the context of the developing women’s rabbinate and as a particular journey taken by a lesbian feminist queer rabbi determined that the voices, perspectives and lives of LGBTQ Jews are included within and transform Jewish life and teaching.

A Totem and a Taboo: Germans and Jews Re-enacting Aspects of the Holocaust European Judaism In association with the Leo Baeck College and Michael Goulston Educational Foundation Volume 49, No. 2 Autumn 2016

A Totem and a Taboo: Germans and Jews Re-enacting Aspects of the Holocaust European Judaism In association with the Leo Baeck College and Michael Goulston Educational Foundation Volume 49, No. 2 Autumn 2016

Reflections on Theology from an Anglo-Jewish Feminist Perspective

Reflections on Theology from an Anglo-Jewish Feminist Perspective

Editorial

Two rabbis played a major role at a key transitional period in the history of the Leo Baeck College. Eight years after its beginning in 1956 under the auspices of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain (RSGB) (now Movement for Reform Judaism) it was joined as a co-sponsor by the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS) (now Liberal Judaism). Two years later Rabbi Dr Werner van der Zyl, the founder and Hon. Director of Studies retired, to be succeeded in the shared leadership by Rabbi Dr. John Rayner (1924-1995), representing the ULPS, as Hon. Director of Studies, and, in the specially created post of Hon. Registrar, by Rabbi Hugo Gryn (1930-1996), representing the RSGB. Together they oversaw the College’s development until the appointment of Rabbi Dr. Albert Friedlander in 1970. In addition to their administrative tasks, both served as teachers, Rabbi Rayner in the field of rabbinics, and Rabbi Gryn in the area of practical rabbinics. Both had refugee backgrounds but made the U.K. their permanent home, serving as the senior rabbis at the two ‘cathedral synagogues’ of their respective movements, Rayner at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St. Johns Wood, and Gryn at the West London Synagogue. Very different in temperament and personality, both made an indelible impact on their congregants, their students and the College itself.

Rabbi Dr Werner Van Der Zyl and the Creation of Leo Baeck College. The German Rabbinate Abroad: Transferring German-jewish Modernity Into the World?

Rabbi Dr Werner Van Der Zyl and the Creation of Leo Baeck College. The German Rabbinate Abroad: Transferring German-jewish Modernity Into the World?

Editorial

In November 2009 the Humboldt University, Potsdam, awarded an Honorary Doctorate to Rabbi Ernst Stein, marking his eightieth birthday. Born in Germany, a refugee in Shanghai during the war, living in Israel at the time of the War of Independence, later settling in America, Rabbi Stein encapsulates in his life much of the dramatic history of continental European Jewry during the twentieth century. But exceptionally, in his fifties, he decided to study for the rabbinate and was accepted at Leo Baeck College. He subsequently returned to Germany where he worked as a community rabbi for sixteen years, remaining active on a part-time basis after retirement. We include the welcome from the University President, Professor Markschies, who notes the uniqueness of this occasion in the history of the university, together with the Laudatio by your editor and Rabbi Stein’s response.

The Library - A Source of Strength: An Imaginary Tour through the Present and Past of Leo Baeck College Library

Leo Baeck College Library is an international meeting place. It may happen that suddenly a rabbi from France or South Africa, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Russia or the United States pops into the main room of the library to look something up during the break in a meeting at the college or somewhere else in the Sternberg Centre for Judaism. It is here that Leo Baeck College Library is located in interim rooms since 1982, waiting to move into purpose-made library rooms. The international visitor is very likely to be one of the over 1 50 alumni from Leo Baeck College. He or she may have come to use the books or to donate some: for example the first Progressive Haggadah printed in Russia, the latest books by a rabbi in France, the latest book about Dutch Jewry, and others. The books of the library mirror the international flair of its users. The books are in German, English, Hebrew, French, Russian, Dutch and other languages and deal not only with the main areas of academic Jewish Studies or traditional Rabbinics, but with the history and present situation in all its diversity of Jewish congregations in all European countries, Israel and the United States. At many places Leo Baeck Library reflects the college's fascinating history. Founded in 1956, it is of course not as old as many other theological libraries in the United Kingdom, but it reflects impressively the vivid history of European Jewry in the twentieth century. Take for example the big leatherbound volume with a heavy wooden and silver title page, 40 cm by 23 cm in size, containing a collection of 83 faded photographic images on thick cards from the times of early photography, most of them about 8 cm high. Handwritten below them on the thick grey pages of this book are the names of

Battle for Three Books

The Library of the Leo Baeck College has been immeasurably enriched by the arrival of three rare and precious volumes. The books are of great importance to Jewish cultural and religious heritage and will provide scholars with rich research material. The oldest is an edition of the Kol Bo , a large compendium of halachic material, that was probably printed in Naples around 1490 and is, therefore, one of the very first Hebrew books to appear after the art of printing was invented. Kol Bo may be almost 500 years old but the quality of the paper and the beauty and clarity of the typeface are breathtaking, great testimony to the art of those anonymous early printers. The second of the three volumes is a small 18th century Haggadah , handwritten on vellum and profusely illustrated after the pattern of the Amsterdam Haggadah of 1695. The artist/scribe was Aaron ben Wolff Herlingen of Gewitsch and he wrote this Haggadah in Presburg now Bratislava in 1730, a few years before he was appointed as scribe to the Imperial Library of Vienna. Most of the illustrations are in black and white, very fine and richly detailed and some have been enlivened with watercolour. The works of this Jewish manuscript artist are today very much sought after. A somewhat larger Haggadah of the same date was offered at auction in London with an estimated price of £140-180,000. The most recent of the three works is also a manuscript, a notebook in the tiny, neat hand of the great 19th century Italian rabbi, Samuel David Luzzatto (ShaDaL). The book consists of a series of short monographs on groups of words appearing in the Hebrew Bible that are generally regarded as synonymous. ShaDaL, however, is at great pains to explore subtle differences in meaning between the words and thus to demonstrate that such words are not merely interchangeable synonyms each one carries a unique nuance and one word and one word only is appropriate to each particular context. ShaDaL wrote this notebook around 1824, when he was only 24 years old. Various of the monographs were published in scholarly Hebrew journals in 1826 and 1856. These three books have in themselves much to excite and inspire both scholar and layman. But the strange, almost incredible story of how they came to the Leo Baeck College also needs to be told. When the College was founded in 1956,

'To Give You a Future and a Hope' Jeremiah 29:11: Leo Baeck College - Centre for Jewish Education Through the Retrospectoscope. David Goldstein Memorial Lecture, 16 June 2005

'To Give You a Future and a Hope' Jeremiah 29:11: Leo Baeck College - Centre for Jewish Education Through the Retrospectoscope. David Goldstein Memorial Lecture, 16 June 2005

My Student Years at Leo Baeck College

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

My First Day at Leo Baeck College

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.

Memoir of Leo Baeck College

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 s h va na ' and a s h va nach. Our lecturers that first year must have been in hysterics over us. In those days, as now, entry to the College was by interview. But what an interview! It was divided into three parts: a general discussion with the full College Board, a psychological assessment and a financial review. The College was then housed in the schoolrooms of the West London Synagogue. The interview with the full Board was held in the Council Room of WLS. We were surrounded by portraits of the good and the great who had ruled over WLS for several decades. Despite the somber setting, I've rarely, if ever, attended such a nonchalant interview. Most of the time I sat bemused, listening to the rabbis on the Board debating an abstruse point of theology that had been unearthed by my innocent reply to some question or other. When Jonathan Magonet asked me why I wanted to become a rabbi, I said that I'd received a great deal from my Judaism as a child and adolescent, and I wanted to give something back to the community. Evidently, this was sufficient back then to get me into the course. My psychological assessment was with Wendy Greengross. Knowing that I'd come from several years as a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Bristol, Wendy pointed to the pock-marked and graffiti-covered school desk between us and asked me whether I would honestly consider leaving the University, with all its wonderful facilities, for this (I recall that her voice italicised the word 'this'). I'm sure that my affirmative answer was evidence of