Board of Deputies president unveils memorial
plaque rescued by JEECS - September 2007
A
memorial plaque marking the consecration of New Road synagogue in 1892
but left languishing in the basement of the closed Whitechapel Library
was unveiled in a new home on Sunday September 2 by Henry Grunwald QC,
president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
The
plaque, rescued from dust-covered oblivion by the Jewish East End
Celebration Society, now has pride of place in the entrance to the East
London Central Synagogue in Nelson Street, one of the few remaining
functioning synagogues in London’s East End.
Nelson Street is the successor synagogue to the long-closed New Road
synagogue. The plaque records the congregation’s message of loyalty and
gratitude to Queen Victoria for the “priceless blessings of religious
and civil liberties”, and the reply of thanks from Buckingham Palace. It
was one of many Jewish artefacts, including historically important
paintings, abandoned in the Library. Despite entreaties from JEECS, most
of the others remain in Tower Hamlets council storage scattered unloved
across the borough instead of being restored to public display.
The
unveiling was among the highlights of the JEECS annual meeting at Nelson
Street, which also included a poetry reading by Bernard Kops, the
renowned East End poet and playwright, an address by Jonathan Joseph,
president of the European Council of Jewish Communities, and an
introduction by Professor Bill Fishman, fellow of Queen Mary University,
author of many books about the East End’s social and political history,
and honorary president of JEECS.
Among the many others present were Baroness Sarah Ludford (Liberal
Democrat), one of London’s representatives in the European Parliament,
and Geraldine Auerbach MBE, director of the Jewish Music Institute.
The
Jewish East End Celebration Society aims to act as a social forum for
those living and working in the Jewish East End; to preserve this
heritage for future generations, both of Jews and the area’s more recent
immigrant communities; to encourage knowledge of local history; to
re-establish roots and interest in the Jewish East End; to preserve and
document past Jewish life; and to reinvigorate and support current
Jewish life.
Unveiling the plaque, Henry Grunwald said it had special significance
for him as he had been barmitzvah at New Road synagogue.
Clive Bettington, JEECS chairman, said the plaque had been discovered,
encrusted with dust, at the Whitechapel Library and was the only
artefact there that the Council had let JEECS have. It had taken eight
men to lift it. Its restoration was an important part of rescuing the
Jewish heritage in the East End.
“So
many things have been thrown away – just dumped.”
Introducing his latest poem, Anne Frank’s Fragments from Nowhere,
Bernard Kops spoke movingly about his family’s Dutch origins. His father
had come to Stepney from the Netherlands and in the 1930s had come close
to returning there after receiving assurances from relatives that the
Netherlands would remain neutral in the impending war. Luckily, he could
not afford to go back. He came from the same area of Amsterdam as Anne
Frank.
Years later, the translator of the first of Kops’s books to be
translated into Dutch had been Anne Frank's former tutor. Anne Frank is
also the theme of Kops’s 1992 play, Dreams of Anne Frank.
The
new poem was commissioned two months ago by the Scottish Arts Council,
which asked for a poem about peace. Kops told the Nelson Street audience
that he just could not do it. He decided that he would wait until the
poem came to him. And eventually it did.
The
meeting also heard Kops read his very evocative, autobiographical poem
Whitechapel Library – Aldgate East.
The
presence of Jonathan Joseph at the meeting was highly appropriate: the
event coincided with European Jewish Heritage Day, of which the European
Council of Jewish Communities is one of the principal drivers along with
B’nai B’rith.
Joseph paid tribute to the work of JEECS. He would be signing his family
up.
Though he was born in South Africa, his father’s family had come from
the East End (his mother’s family was from Lithuania). The earliest
document the family possessed was the marriage certificate of his great,
great, great grandfather in 1780.
“There are so many of us who have roots here,” he said.
The
European Council of the Jewish Communities dealt with 43 different
communities across Europe, and Jewish Heritage Day was taking place in
30 European countries.
“Part of what we do is to work on exposing and making normal and making
accessible Jewish culture across Europe,” he said. In addition, the
Council sought “to encourage our members to live comfortably in a civil
society”.
“We
represent the tale of the wandering Jew. We move from one place to
another, and hope to find sanctuary and peace.”
Professor Fishman spoke about the fact that, with the London Olympics
pending, the East End was now on the international map. “This East End
must be preserved,” he said.
Talking about his career, he revealed that when he had been awarded a
fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, he was asked by Christopher Hill,
the Marxist historian who was Master of Balliol, how he regarded
himself. He thought hard about his journey from the East End to high
academia and decided he was “a Yiddisher boy gone wrong”.
Clive Bettington revealed JEECS’s success in securing English Heritage
agreement to a Blue Plaque to mark the home of Solomon, the great
English pianist, in Fournier Street. The building’s owners had still to
give their consent, but a Solomon memorial concert at the Bishopsgate
Institute was being planned to commemorate the musician’s life. JEECS
was also active in the campaign for the restoration of the Minnie
Lansbury memorial clock in Bow, commemorating one of the leaders of the
suffragette movement, toward which £8,000 had been raised. It was also
planning to commemorate the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943, in
which 173 people died.
It
would be playing a big part in the commemoration of the 90th anniversary
of the death of Isaac Rosenberg, the artist and great First World War
poet. In May next year, there would be a seminar on the Jewish East End
and the rise of Zionism, following on from the highly successful seminar
on the Battle of Cable Street earlier this year.
In
September next year it would be marking the 70th anniversary of the
death of Rudolf Rocker, the German anarchist who, though not Jewish,
played a huge role in the Yiddish press in the East End.
JEECS had also commissioned a plaque in memory of Daniel Mendoza, the
18th century boxer credited with being the father of scientific boxing,
which would be erected at Queen Mary University close to Mendoza’s
grave.
Clive Bettington revealed that he was in very fruitful discussions with
the Principal of the University about the establishment there of a
Jewish Institute, and also revealed the possibility of two important
Jewish institutions moving to the East End.
JEECS would also have a big presence at the Simcha on the Square event
at Trafalgar Square on October 14.
The
meeting ended with the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn trumpet, to
mark the month of Elul ahead of the holy days of Tishrei.
