Holland Park Synagogue – London
The Spanish & Portuguese congregation of Holland Park, London built their beautiful synagogue in 1928. I had the pleasure of celebrating its 90th anniversary on 10 March 2019. Despite my […]
Tag Archives: England
Ki Tetze -King Henry VIII’s Yibum
This week’s Torah reading is central to one of the greatest controversies in the history of England, the Levirate marriage of King Henry VIII, and Sephardim helped to cast the […]
Passover and the Splitting of the S&P
On the 7th day of Pesah 1827, at London’s Bevis Marks Synagogue, the reading of the spitting of the sea also split the congregation. Typically, Haham Raphael Meldola read the […]
Sephardic Women: The Heroes of the S&P
In the 19th century five remarkable Sephardic women laboured to preserve Jewish life. They defended it from threats of conversion, assimilation and change, and they did so with the pen. […]
Sephardic Jews and the American Revolution
The American Revolution pitted British subjects against one another. Patriots vs. Loyalists, Englishmen vs. Americans, brother vs. brother, and Jew vs. Jew. At that time there were only Sephardic congregations […]
Vayhi – The S&P and Ashkenazim
Narratives are important. The same series of events can take on a completely different meaning depending on how they are told. A prime example of this is the story of Yosef and […]
Starting Year Two – Consolidating and Expanding
I’m now into the beginning of my second year as rabbi of Bevis Marks Synagogue. The significance of my post hit me during my second Kippur service. I picked up […]
Hughenden Manor – How Jewish Was Benjamin Disraeli?
Since my arrival at Bevis Marks Synagogue I’ve felt conflicted about Benjamin Disraeli’s place within the S&P narrative. Disraeli was born a Jew in 1804, was a member of Bevis Marks, and is […]
Vayishlah – Fighting Jews
The joke goes that the shortest book in history is on the subject of Jews in sports. Historians claim, however, that the first modern day sports hero was actually a […]
Hamburg, Germany – Gateway to the West
I recently discovered more significant Jewish history in Hamburg than I had ever expected to find there. It turns out that Hamburg played an instrumental role in both the early […]
