Patrick Comerford
I have been writing over the past week about Berkhamsted and its architecture, castle, churches and literary heritage. But during my two visits to Berkhamsted this month, I also went in search of the legacy of the mediaeval and modern Jewish communities in the Hertfordshire market town.
Abraham of Berkhamsted, a wealthy banker and important moneylender who lived in the town in the mid–13th century, was a financier to the Earl of Cornwall. This was unusual for a small town in England at a time of heightened persecution of Jews.
Abraham’s patron, Richard Earl of Cornwall, was a brother of King Henry III and his principle centre was Berkhamsted Castle. Richard and Abraham had developed an association by 1231, and in 1235 permission was given retrospectively in 1235 for Jews to settle in Berkhamsted and establish an archa there.
However, Richard had Abraham and the archamoved to Wallingford Castle in 1242. Abraham was a tallage assessor in 1246 and 1249. In April 1250, he was described as ‘the king’s Jew’ in his appointment to a commission investigating the Jewry in London, York, Canterbury, Lincoln and Nottingham.
Matthew Paris claimed that Abraham was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1250 for desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child on her lap. It was alleged that he put the statue in his privy and did ‘most filthy and unmentionable’ things to it and convinced his wife Floria to do the same.
It was said that Floria secretly washed the dirt from the statue and that when Abraham discovered this he suffocated her. He was put in the ‘foulest dungeon of the Tower of London’ and ‘almost all the other Jews’ lobbied for his execution.
When the Earl of Cornwall spoke on Abraham’s behalf, he was offered him 1000 marks (£666 13s 4d) to keep Abraham in prison. For a fine of 700 marks (£466 13s 4d), Richard was able to secure his release.
Of course, there is no evidence that Matthew Paris’s story about Abraham of Berkhamsted and the statue is true. Abraham was indeed in legal trouble in 1250. But this may have been related to financial issues, not charges of murder or blasphemy. He only lost his chattels for this and the records describing the case state that judgment of death or loss of limb was to be reserved to the king.
This would have been quite lenient treatment and a slight punishment in the 13th century England if Abraham had both murdered his wife and desecrated a Christian statue. In January 1255, he was granted to Richard, permitted to lend money ‘in the king’s land like the king’s demesne Jews’, and exempted from tallage and from having any debts owed to him pardoned.
After Richard’s death in 1272, Abraham was granted by Henry III to Richard’s son and heir Edmund.
Five years later, Abraham of Berkhamsted, son of Hagin, was held as a prisoner in the Tower of London by 13 June 1277. Sometime after 13 June 1277, Abraham was fined 10 shillings by the Tower sergeant for fighting in prison.
The date of his imprisonment coincides with the mass incarceration of England’s Jews on the trumped-up charges of coin-clipping, and this may have been the accusation levelled against him. Abraham was probably one of the many Jews executed in the coin-clipping trials. He had been executed by June or July 1281, when he was described as a ‘condemned Jew’ and his debts had been forfeited to the crown.
After a lapse of almost seven centuries, a modern Jewish community was formed in Berkhamsted during World War II, when a congregation was formed by war-time evacuees from London. The Berkhamsted United Synagogue Membership Group first held services for the high holy days in September 1940, according to reports in the Jewish Chronicle.
The first services were held at Elvyne Hall on Chesham Road in Berkhamsted in September 1940. When the membership group was officially inaugurated in February 1941, it was already holding regular Sabbath services and Hebrew classes in Berkhamsted.
The Jewish Chronicle later reported the membership group had acquired the premises at Elvyne Hall, Chesham Road, ‘to be used as a Synagogue, Hebrew classes, and communal centre.’ It followed Ashkenazi Orthodox ritual and was linked to the United Synagogue.
Elvyne Hall on Chesham Road stands immediately opposite the house where the author Graham Greene was born.
Jewish activities in Berkhamsted soon included regular Sabbath services and Hebrew classes under the direction of the Revd M Katz, who is also referred to in 1941 as the group’s secretary.
However, the high holy days daytime services were held at the Town Hall in Berkhamsted in and at the Congregational Church Hall in 1943, an indication that the regular premises were too small to hold the large number of people attending on the high holy days.
The Revd M Katz, later rabbi, served the congregation from at least 1941. He was the minister and secretary in 1945-1946 and secretary in the 1947 and 1948. He also taught at the Hebrew and religious classes of the nearby Hemel Hempstead United Synagogue Membership Group.
Rabbi Katz of Berkhamsted was a guest preacher at a number of London synagogues in 1946 and 1947, and he addressed the membership group’s Hebrew classes annual prize distribution in 1947. The group continued to list its address at Elvyne Hall, Chesham Road, in the Jewish Year Books in 1947 and 1948, but seems to have closed in or shortly after 1947.
The Jewish journalist and television presenter Dame Esther Louise Rantzen was born in Berkhamsted in 1940, a daughter of Katherine Flora (Leverson) and Henry Barnato Rantzen (1902–1992). She presented That’s Life on the BBC in 1973-1994. She is a campaigner for children and the elderly, and established the helpline Childline.
Berkhamsted had a Jewish population of 140 in 1947. Today, the Jewish population of Berkhamsted totals 0.5 per cent of the people in the town.
In recent years, the South Bucks Jewish community has emerged as an informal and inclusive Jewish community with members across Buckinghamshire and West Hertfordshire. Rabbi Neil Janes describes it as ‘a friendly, informal and inclusive Jewish community which welcomes Jews and those interested in Judaism from across South Bucks and West Herts.’
It is a growing congregation with about 240 adults and children. It meets online and in Amersham for services, runs a religion school, and welcome all Jews, non-Jewish partners and families to its weekly and festival services as well as social and community events.
The community joined the 800th anniversary celebrations last year in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted, where an interfaith gathering incorporated a Sukkot service. The shul created an decorated a sukka in the churchyard.
Shul and church members met again for a ‘bring and share’ lunch at Saint Peter’s and Simchat Torah celebration.
Shabbat Shalom
