‘See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes’ (Luke 10: 19) … a Moroccan snake charmer in Tangier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX).
I have a busy day ahead, including a visit to my GP for my latest COVID jab early this morning. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
In search of the 70 on the way to Jerusalem … on Bridge Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 10: 17-24 (NRSVA):
17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ 18 He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’
21 At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
23 Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’
The early 19th century Gothic door at No 70 Bridge Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
In our Gospel reading on Thursday (Luke 10: 1-12), when they were on the road to Jerusalem, Christ sent out the 72 – or the 70 – in mission, two by two. The Gospel reading this morning (Luke 10: 17-24), they return, filled with joy and boasting, perhaps even exaggerating their experiences.
As I was saying two days ago, whether we speak of them as the 72 or the 70 depends on the translation we are reading and, in turn, the manuscripts the translations give greater weight to. In the Eastern Christian traditions, they are known as the 70 or 72 apostles, while in Western Christianity they are usually described as disciples.
The number 70 may derive from the 70 nations in Genesis 10, while the number 72 may represent the 12 tribes, as in the significance of the number of translators of the Septuagint, the symbolism of three days (24 x 3), and understanding the meaning of 144 (12 x 12), to appear again in the 144,000 in the Book of Revelation.
In translating the Vulgate, Jerome selected the reading of 72. In modern translations, the number 72 is preferred in the NRSV, NIV, ESV and the New Catholic Bible, for example, but 70 figures in the NRSV Anglicised (NRSVA) and the Authorised or King James Version.
Some years back, when these two readings came together as one, I was in search of a photograph last week that would illustrate the story of the 70 in next Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20), sent out in mission by Christ ahead of his journey on the road to Jerusalem.
I could find no speed signs for 70 kph on roads in Ireland or 70 mph in England – perhaps there are none, although they might have been suitable for a story about setting out on the road. Perhaps then, I thought, I might find a number 70 on a house or a shop on the streets of Cambridge.
It was hard to figure out where No 70 Sidney Street was in Victorian Cambridge. The older houses and shops have gone, and they have been replaced with an arcade of shops that includes Boots.
It would have suited my purpose if the former No 70 stood at the place where two plaques mark Charles Darwin’s lodgings on Sidney Street for his first year as an undergraduate at Christ’s College. But nothing was clear about the numbering on this part of Sidney Street, and I had to press on.
But later, as I made my way from Saint John’s College and the Round Church along Bridge Street towards the corner of Jesus Lane and Sidney Street and Sidney Sussex College, I came across Lindum House on 70 Bridge Street … a single doorway that I might have missed if I did not have this purpose in mind.
Discreetly located on the south-west side of Bridge Street, between 69 and 71 Bridge Street, the entrance archway to No 70 has with a good early 19th century Gothic door. In the yard behind, No 70 was once the Flying Stag, a former public house, built in 1842 of brick, but incorporating a timber framed 17th century cell and 18th century fragments.
The door was firmly closed, and had the look of not being opened for years. But I understand this is a three-storey and three-storey building with and attic ranges, sashes with glazing bars, and a tiled roof on an early lower build.
The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner notes that this is an 18th century building. In 1959, the Survey of Cambridge by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments described this as a mainly early 19th century building incorporating part of an 18th century structure.
I looked at the significance of the number 72 in my reflections on Thursday morning. But is there a further significance to the number 70 as 70 disciples go out on mission into Gentile territory?
The number 70 is assigned to the families of Noah’s descendants (see Genesis 10: 1-32). In Jewish tradition, 70 is the number of nations of the world, and this is repeated in the Book of Jubilees (44: 34), although is not regarded as Biblical in almost every tradition. The Septuagint lists 72 names, and some translations of Saint Luke’s Gospel enumerates the 70 as 72. Could the number 70 represent a future mission to all nations?
In the wilderness, Moses was aided by 70 elders (see Exodus 24: 1, 9; Numbers 11: 16, 24-25).
The Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, takes its Latin name, abbreviated to LXX, the Roman numeral 70, from the Greek name for the translation, Ἡ τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα μετάφρασις (ton evdomekonta metaphrais), ‘The Translation of the Seventy.’
The Letter of Aristeas in the Second Century BCE says the Septuagint was translated in Alexandria at the command of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-247 BCE) by 70 Jewish scholars (or, according to later tradition, 72 – six scholars from each of the Twelve Tribes) who independently produced identical translations.
Once again, we can see the confusion between the numbers 70 and 72. Is Saint Luke saying the 70 (or 72) represent the true words of God?
The Great Sanhedrin is described in rabbinic texts as the Court of 71, although no Old Testament text ever refers to such an institution. It was regarded as the supreme authority in matters religious and civil, including the appointment of kings, authorising offensive wars, punishing idolatry and teaching Torah.
Do Jesus and the 70 – or the 72 – represent the new 71, the new Sanhedrin?
The figure 70 as a speed limit in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 5 October 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘One God: many languages.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 5 October 2024) invites us to pray, reflecting on these words:
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability (Acts 2: 4).
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.
Additional Collect:
God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Trinity XIX:
O God, forasmuch as without you
we are not able to please you;
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit
may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning’ (Luke 10: 18) … Sir Jacob Epstein’s Saint Michael and the Devil on the façade of Coventry Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
05 October 2024
Belfast’s oldest surviving
purpose-built synagogue is
in need of immediate rescue
The former synagogue on Annesley Street, near Carlisle Circus, Belfast … a working synagogue from 1904 to 1965 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
In my recent walk about the streets of Belfast, in search of Jewish history, sites and memories, I visited both the site of the former synagogue on Great Victoria Street and its successor, the former synagogue on Annesley Street, near Carlisle Circus.
The synagogue on Annesley Street, at the Crumlin Road end of Antrim Road, was built in 1904 and continued in use for 60 years until 1965. Since the disastrous demolition of the earlier synagogue on Great Victoria Street in the 1990s, the former synagogue on Annesley Street is the oldest purpose-built synagogue in Northern Ireland. But it has been derelict and abandoned for many years now, and severe intervention is needed to ensure its survival as part of Jewish heritage and as part of the architectural heritage of Belfast.
The foundation stone of the new synagogue was laid on 26 February 1904 by Lady Jaffé, wife of Sir Otto Jaffé, Lord Mayor of Belfast, who paid for its construction, and the new synagogue was consecrated on 31 August 1904.
The synagogue was designed by the Belfast-based architectural partnership of Young and Mackenzie, with Benjamin Septimus Jacobs of Hull as the consulting architect. Young and Mackenzie was formed by Robert Young and his former pupil John Mackenzie in the 1860s. Young’s only son, Robert Magill Young, became a third partner in 1880.
By the early 20th century, Young and Mackenzie was the most successful architectural practice in Belfast. They were the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the north-east, including the Assembly Hall on Fisherwick Place, as well as more than a dozen Presbyterian churches in Belfast and Magee College, Derry. Their work in Belfast included the Northern Bank, Ocean, Robinson and Cleaver and Scottish Provident buildings on Donegall Square, the Linen Hall Library and Victoria College, as well as the Italianate villas on Lennoxvale, including Edgehill.
Young and Mackenzie also designed Bryce House on Garinish Island, off Glengarriff, Co Cork, for the island’s owner, John Annan Bryce (1841-1923), a Belfast-born Scottish politician. Young retired in 1912 at the age of 90 and both he and John Mackenzie died in 1917. The partnership continues in Belfast.
The consulting architect for the synagogue on Annesley Street was Benjamin Septimus Jacobs (1851-1931) of Hull, who designed the mikvah and baths. Jacobs also designed the mikvah or ritual baths at the Adelaide Road synagogue in Dublin, and the Western Synagogue in Hull. He designed many prominent buildings in Hull and was also the first Mayor of Keighley.
The new synagogue was built in the Rundbogenstil style, a 19th-century historic revival style of architecture once popular in Germany and in the German diaspora. It is a German expression of Romanesque Revival architecture that combines elements of Byzantine, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture with particular stylistic motifs. The Annesley Street synagogue is a unique example of this style in Belfast.
The brick and stucco synagogue was built by James Henry and Sons. The internal features are said to be largely unchanged. The small single-storey projection was used as the mikvah. Small extensions in 1928 provided additional facilities.
A Star of David above the door of the former synagogue on Annesley Street, near Carlisle Circus, Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The ministers and rabbis during the six decades the synagogue was served the Jewish community in Belfast have been traced in recent years in research by the Belfast Jewish historian Steven Jaffe, by Stuart Rosenblatt in his work on Jewish genealogy in Ireland, in the work of JCR-UK (Jewish Communities and Records), an online project on Jewish communities in Britain and Ireland, and through listings, reports and entries in the Jewish Year Book and the Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History.
The Revd (later Rabbi) Jacob Rosenzweig (1875-1956), later known as John Ross, was the minister, reader, teacher and secretary of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1905-1914. He was born in Ravah in Poland and was the brother and son-in-law of rabbis. He was in Wales from the 1890s as the minister of Bangor Hebrew Congregation (1894-1905), and lectured in Hebrew at Bangor University College and the University of Wales.
While he was in Belfast, he returned to Poland in 1911 for his semicha or rabbinical ordination. He resigned in 1914 and became involved in the linen trade in Belfast and twice served as President of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation (1924-1928 and 1936-1938). He died in in 1956 and left a large library of Jewish books to Queen’s University Belfast, the Ross-Rosenzweig collection.
An early contemporary of Jacob Rosenzweig or John Ross was Rabbi Gedalia (George) Silverstone (1871-1944) who was in Belfast from 1901 to 1906. He was born Gedaliah Zylbersztejn in Jasionowka, now in north-east Poland but then in the Russian Empire. His father and grandfather were also rabbis, and when he was a child his family moved to Liverpool. He was a rabbi in Belfast in 1901-1906, working mainly with the immigrant community in North Belfast. He then moved to the US, where he was the first Orthodox rabbi in Washington DC. He died in Jerusalem and is buried on the Mount of Olives.
Rabbi Zusman Hodes (1868-1961) was the rabbi in Belfast from 1906 to 1916. He was born in Lithuania and lived in Baltimore, Maryland (1889-1896), before moving to Dublin, where he lived from 1901 to 1906. He was the rabbi of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation (1906-1916), principally serving the immigrant community in north Belfast, until he moved to Birmingham in 1916 as rabbi of the Birmingham Beth Hamidrash, later Birmingham Central Synagogue.
No 33 Bloomfield Avenue in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ was the home to successive Chief Rabbis of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Undoubtedly, the most famous rabbi in Belfast was Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog (1888-1959), although he was only in Belfast for three years (1916-1919). He was born in Lomza, Poland, the son of Rabbi Joel Leib Herzog, and his family moved to Leeds in 1898. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and University College London, where he was awarded a doctorate (DLitt).
Rabbi Herzog was minister of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1916-1919, and then moved to Dublin in 1919 as chief rabbi of Dublin, including six congregations in the city. He was appointed the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland in 1922. During his time in Dublin, he lived at No 33 Bloomfield Avenue, off the South Circular Road, in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ area in Portobello.
He moved to British Mandated in Palestine in 1936 as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine. The story is often told that after World War II, Rabbi Isaac Herzog set out on a mission to bring lost children back to Jewish homes. As he went from orphanage to orphanage and convent to convent across Europe, he had no documentation to prove children were Jewish. Yet he had heard the stories and deep down knew there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of missing children still in orphanages and convents.
One day, he devised a plan. He walked into orphanages and spoke out loud, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. Instinctively, many of the children raised their right hands to cover their eyes, showing their undoubted Jewish origins. And so, Rabbi Herzog saved 500 children and brought them home.
Following Israel’s independence, he became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel in 1948. He died in office in Jerusalem in 1959. His Belfast-born and Dublin-educated son, Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), was the President of Israel in 1983-1993; his grandson, Isaac Herzog, has been the President of Israel since 2021.
Rabbi Jacob Shachter (1886-1971) was in Belfast from 1926 to 1954. He was born in Romania, where he obtained semicha in 1911. He was a rabbi in Galatz before moving in 1920 to become the rabbi of the New Romanian Synagogue in Manchester. He was appointed the rabbi of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1926, and became the longest serving rabbi in Belfast (1926-1954).
He was an army chaplain in Northern Ireland during World War II, and also had responsibility for the welfare of the Jewish community evacuated from Gibraltar to Saintfield, Co Down. When he retired in 1954, he moved to Jerusalem, where he died.
Rabbi Dr Alexander Carlebach (1908-1992) was in Belfast from 1954 to 1965. He was born in Cologne and studied at a yeshiva in Lithuania and at universities in Cologne, Leipzig, Paris and Strasbourg, and from 1933 at Jews’ College, London. He served in Golders Green and after World War II was with the Jewish Relief Unit in Germany. He was minister of the North Hendon Adath Yisroel Synagogue in London when he was invited to become the rabbi in Belfast (1954-1965).
Rabbi Carlebach was awarded a doctorate by the University of Strasbourg in 1955. He retired in 1965, moved to Israel, and died in Jerusalem in 1992.
The synagogue on Annesley Street continued in use until 1965, when it was replaced by a new synagogue built at 49 Somerton Road. The new synagogue was designed by the architect Eugene Rosenberg, assisted by Karl Kapolka. The foundation stone was laid on 3 May 1964 and the synagogue was consecrated on 25 October 1964. The synagogue on Somerton Road was designated a Listed Historic Building in 2015.
Meanwhile, the building on Annesley Street was acquired by the Mater Hospital and was used by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust as a physiotherapy gym and storage facility. It has been empty for many years but remains the oldest purpose-built synagogue Northern Ireland.
The former synagogue was designated an historic building in 2002. The proposals for its future have included a centre for participative democracy and a semi-permanent exhibition on Belfast’s Jewish community. But it looks sad and lonely today and continues to deteriorate, covered in graffiti and subjected to vandalism, and without intervention in the immediate future it is in danger of being lost to future generations.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
The former synagogue on Annesley Street, Belfast, is covered in graffiti and its condition is deteriorating (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
In my recent walk about the streets of Belfast, in search of Jewish history, sites and memories, I visited both the site of the former synagogue on Great Victoria Street and its successor, the former synagogue on Annesley Street, near Carlisle Circus.
The synagogue on Annesley Street, at the Crumlin Road end of Antrim Road, was built in 1904 and continued in use for 60 years until 1965. Since the disastrous demolition of the earlier synagogue on Great Victoria Street in the 1990s, the former synagogue on Annesley Street is the oldest purpose-built synagogue in Northern Ireland. But it has been derelict and abandoned for many years now, and severe intervention is needed to ensure its survival as part of Jewish heritage and as part of the architectural heritage of Belfast.
The foundation stone of the new synagogue was laid on 26 February 1904 by Lady Jaffé, wife of Sir Otto Jaffé, Lord Mayor of Belfast, who paid for its construction, and the new synagogue was consecrated on 31 August 1904.
The synagogue was designed by the Belfast-based architectural partnership of Young and Mackenzie, with Benjamin Septimus Jacobs of Hull as the consulting architect. Young and Mackenzie was formed by Robert Young and his former pupil John Mackenzie in the 1860s. Young’s only son, Robert Magill Young, became a third partner in 1880.
By the early 20th century, Young and Mackenzie was the most successful architectural practice in Belfast. They were the leading architects for the Presbyterian Church in the north-east, including the Assembly Hall on Fisherwick Place, as well as more than a dozen Presbyterian churches in Belfast and Magee College, Derry. Their work in Belfast included the Northern Bank, Ocean, Robinson and Cleaver and Scottish Provident buildings on Donegall Square, the Linen Hall Library and Victoria College, as well as the Italianate villas on Lennoxvale, including Edgehill.
Young and Mackenzie also designed Bryce House on Garinish Island, off Glengarriff, Co Cork, for the island’s owner, John Annan Bryce (1841-1923), a Belfast-born Scottish politician. Young retired in 1912 at the age of 90 and both he and John Mackenzie died in 1917. The partnership continues in Belfast.
The consulting architect for the synagogue on Annesley Street was Benjamin Septimus Jacobs (1851-1931) of Hull, who designed the mikvah and baths. Jacobs also designed the mikvah or ritual baths at the Adelaide Road synagogue in Dublin, and the Western Synagogue in Hull. He designed many prominent buildings in Hull and was also the first Mayor of Keighley.
The new synagogue was built in the Rundbogenstil style, a 19th-century historic revival style of architecture once popular in Germany and in the German diaspora. It is a German expression of Romanesque Revival architecture that combines elements of Byzantine, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture with particular stylistic motifs. The Annesley Street synagogue is a unique example of this style in Belfast.
The brick and stucco synagogue was built by James Henry and Sons. The internal features are said to be largely unchanged. The small single-storey projection was used as the mikvah. Small extensions in 1928 provided additional facilities.
A Star of David above the door of the former synagogue on Annesley Street, near Carlisle Circus, Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The ministers and rabbis during the six decades the synagogue was served the Jewish community in Belfast have been traced in recent years in research by the Belfast Jewish historian Steven Jaffe, by Stuart Rosenblatt in his work on Jewish genealogy in Ireland, in the work of JCR-UK (Jewish Communities and Records), an online project on Jewish communities in Britain and Ireland, and through listings, reports and entries in the Jewish Year Book and the Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History.
The Revd (later Rabbi) Jacob Rosenzweig (1875-1956), later known as John Ross, was the minister, reader, teacher and secretary of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1905-1914. He was born in Ravah in Poland and was the brother and son-in-law of rabbis. He was in Wales from the 1890s as the minister of Bangor Hebrew Congregation (1894-1905), and lectured in Hebrew at Bangor University College and the University of Wales.
While he was in Belfast, he returned to Poland in 1911 for his semicha or rabbinical ordination. He resigned in 1914 and became involved in the linen trade in Belfast and twice served as President of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation (1924-1928 and 1936-1938). He died in in 1956 and left a large library of Jewish books to Queen’s University Belfast, the Ross-Rosenzweig collection.
An early contemporary of Jacob Rosenzweig or John Ross was Rabbi Gedalia (George) Silverstone (1871-1944) who was in Belfast from 1901 to 1906. He was born Gedaliah Zylbersztejn in Jasionowka, now in north-east Poland but then in the Russian Empire. His father and grandfather were also rabbis, and when he was a child his family moved to Liverpool. He was a rabbi in Belfast in 1901-1906, working mainly with the immigrant community in North Belfast. He then moved to the US, where he was the first Orthodox rabbi in Washington DC. He died in Jerusalem and is buried on the Mount of Olives.
Rabbi Zusman Hodes (1868-1961) was the rabbi in Belfast from 1906 to 1916. He was born in Lithuania and lived in Baltimore, Maryland (1889-1896), before moving to Dublin, where he lived from 1901 to 1906. He was the rabbi of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation (1906-1916), principally serving the immigrant community in north Belfast, until he moved to Birmingham in 1916 as rabbi of the Birmingham Beth Hamidrash, later Birmingham Central Synagogue.
No 33 Bloomfield Avenue in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ was the home to successive Chief Rabbis of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Undoubtedly, the most famous rabbi in Belfast was Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog (1888-1959), although he was only in Belfast for three years (1916-1919). He was born in Lomza, Poland, the son of Rabbi Joel Leib Herzog, and his family moved to Leeds in 1898. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and University College London, where he was awarded a doctorate (DLitt).
Rabbi Herzog was minister of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1916-1919, and then moved to Dublin in 1919 as chief rabbi of Dublin, including six congregations in the city. He was appointed the first Chief Rabbi of Ireland in 1922. During his time in Dublin, he lived at No 33 Bloomfield Avenue, off the South Circular Road, in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ area in Portobello.
He moved to British Mandated in Palestine in 1936 as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine. The story is often told that after World War II, Rabbi Isaac Herzog set out on a mission to bring lost children back to Jewish homes. As he went from orphanage to orphanage and convent to convent across Europe, he had no documentation to prove children were Jewish. Yet he had heard the stories and deep down knew there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of missing children still in orphanages and convents.
One day, he devised a plan. He walked into orphanages and spoke out loud, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. Instinctively, many of the children raised their right hands to cover their eyes, showing their undoubted Jewish origins. And so, Rabbi Herzog saved 500 children and brought them home.
Following Israel’s independence, he became the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel in 1948. He died in office in Jerusalem in 1959. His Belfast-born and Dublin-educated son, Chaim Herzog (1918-1997), was the President of Israel in 1983-1993; his grandson, Isaac Herzog, has been the President of Israel since 2021.
Rabbi Jacob Shachter (1886-1971) was in Belfast from 1926 to 1954. He was born in Romania, where he obtained semicha in 1911. He was a rabbi in Galatz before moving in 1920 to become the rabbi of the New Romanian Synagogue in Manchester. He was appointed the rabbi of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1926, and became the longest serving rabbi in Belfast (1926-1954).
He was an army chaplain in Northern Ireland during World War II, and also had responsibility for the welfare of the Jewish community evacuated from Gibraltar to Saintfield, Co Down. When he retired in 1954, he moved to Jerusalem, where he died.
Rabbi Dr Alexander Carlebach (1908-1992) was in Belfast from 1954 to 1965. He was born in Cologne and studied at a yeshiva in Lithuania and at universities in Cologne, Leipzig, Paris and Strasbourg, and from 1933 at Jews’ College, London. He served in Golders Green and after World War II was with the Jewish Relief Unit in Germany. He was minister of the North Hendon Adath Yisroel Synagogue in London when he was invited to become the rabbi in Belfast (1954-1965).
Rabbi Carlebach was awarded a doctorate by the University of Strasbourg in 1955. He retired in 1965, moved to Israel, and died in Jerusalem in 1992.
The synagogue on Annesley Street continued in use until 1965, when it was replaced by a new synagogue built at 49 Somerton Road. The new synagogue was designed by the architect Eugene Rosenberg, assisted by Karl Kapolka. The foundation stone was laid on 3 May 1964 and the synagogue was consecrated on 25 October 1964. The synagogue on Somerton Road was designated a Listed Historic Building in 2015.
Meanwhile, the building on Annesley Street was acquired by the Mater Hospital and was used by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust as a physiotherapy gym and storage facility. It has been empty for many years but remains the oldest purpose-built synagogue Northern Ireland.
The former synagogue was designated an historic building in 2002. The proposals for its future have included a centre for participative democracy and a semi-permanent exhibition on Belfast’s Jewish community. But it looks sad and lonely today and continues to deteriorate, covered in graffiti and subjected to vandalism, and without intervention in the immediate future it is in danger of being lost to future generations.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
The former synagogue on Annesley Street, Belfast, is covered in graffiti and its condition is deteriorating (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
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