Currently Browsing: synagogue 8 articles
Jewish velvet – a touching memoire
Keith Kahn-Harris explores how his inability to tolerate the touch of velvet shaped his experience of growing up Jewish.
Re-Opening A Historical Polish Ark
Shmuel Polin describes how he fashioned from wood a recreated historical ark from Poland. Earlier this week, the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati reopened with a central exhibition on the reconstructed Torah Ark of Sidra, Poland. The reconstructed holy ark was the culmination of my Opening the Ark Project and years of study into the rabbinate. […]
Rosh Hashana 5781
Nigel Grizzard reflects on the new and improved Rosh Hashana services this year. What were my abiding memories of Rosh Hashanah as a child growing up in Woodford Green, Essex? Full shuls and long services that finished around two o’clock in the afternoon. Fifty years on in Leeds, things have not improved much. Schlep it […]
Being Jewish in Aberdeen, Rosh Hashanah 5781
Mark Taylor reflects on a strange year in Britain’s most northerly congregation. Looking back at this year, as you do during Rosh Hashanah, it has been a surreal year. This is Aberdeen Synagogue’s 75th anniversary year, and plans were ongoing to have a celebratory party but all of this has been put on hold. The weather is still beautiful. It has […]
How Will This Rosh HaShanah Be Different From Every Other? It Won’t
Nathan Abrams reflects on how there will be little change to his Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There is a great deal of talk about how Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will be different this year for many people but for me it won’t. In fact, it will be better. I live in Bangor, in […]
Britain’s Most Northerly Shul’s Deluge of Disasters
Debby Taylor catalogues the problems that have befallen Britain’s most northerly congregation over recent years, and how you can help out. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the UK’s most northerly synagogue. Aberdeen Hebrew Congregation was founded in 1893 but didn’t own its own place of worship until 6th June 1945, when the current […]
Shtiebls Sans Frontieres
Sometime ago, before the ‘lockdown’, I was talking to a United Synagogue Rabbi who was bemoaning the lack of younger people in Shul on a Friday night; I guessed by “younger” he meant under 60, but he was thinking about those in their 20s. So, I told him they were all in their shuls. SHULS!? he spluttered with incredulity. Yes, shuls: […]
Auto-Generation: Religious services on Hendon’s streets
They have always been religious, they have always been rich, and I am welcome there. They don’t need anything from me, I don’t need anything from them. It’s Shabbos many months into coronavirus lockdown and because the dozen or so synagogues within a 15 minutes’ walk are closed, prayers are happening on my parents’ street – average age 60. Someone spoke to the […]