大象传媒

From Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

Last Friday, my synagogue held a service marking the 175th anniversary of the congregation鈥檚 founding. Now, the founders were a group of solid merchants who wanted to build a synagogue in the west end of London, nearer to where they lived than the old synagogues of Bevis Marks and Duke鈥檚 Place in the City. They certainly weren鈥檛 great radicals, and yet, from the very beginning, they promoted the education of girls along with boys, highly unusual at that time. They scrapped bar mitzvah at 13 and had confirmation for boys and girls together at 15 or 16. They got rid of the second days of festivals, and they shortened the services dramatically. Indeed, in his introduction, D W Marks, first minister of the congregation, made the point that people need to be able to concentrate throughout, and not drift off into some kind of reverie!

We researched the music of the period, and sang wonderful, if solemn, renderings of the psalms. But without that music and three short addresses, the service would have been over in about ten minutes flat! Presumably they then all went home to a delicious formal Friday night dinner. It all feels very Victorian. And yet, dig a little deeper, and not only were these solid men about education for girls in Judaism, but also supporting the girls鈥� school movement and building halls of residence for young ladies at the universities. Not only giving charitably from the synagogue鈥檚 own charitable fund, but deeply involved in the movement for low cost, affordable housing. They might have been good citizens, a bit formal and stiff, but I can鈥檛 help feeling, like the 200 descendants of the founders we had there for dinner last week, that their values were in the right place for the time, and that they were truly committed to doing something about making the world a better place, rather than just talking about it. And that鈥檚 admirable- we could all learn from them!聽