Patrick Comerford
The Montagu Centre on Maple Street is the London headquarters of Liberal Judaism, formerly the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues. It is part of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and of the European Union of Progressive Judaism, and so is part of the worldwide Jewish majority of non-Orthodox Jews.
Since April 2023, Liberal Judaism (LJ) and the Movement for Reform Judaism (MRJ) have been working closely together to create one new unified movement. The new movement, Progressive Judaism, will represent about 30% of British Jewry who are affiliated to synagogues.
The Montagu Centre is named after Lily Montagu (1873-1963), a founding figure in Liberal Judaism and a tireless campaigner for the rights of women. Liberal Judaism has had its offices at the Montagu Centre for more than 70 years since it moved there in 1954. The building was once home too to the West Central Liberal Synagogue, founded by Lily Montagu in 1928, but its roots could traced to services she first held in the 1890.
West Central Liberal Jewish Synagogue was known as the West Central Liberal Jewish Congregation until about 1961, and was at the Montagu Centre from 1954. The synagogue closed in 2022, having suffered from both the shift in population from central London and the fallout from the Covid-19 lockdown. Its last rabbi was the Dublin-born Jackie Tabick, who became Britain's first female rabbi 50 years ago in 1975.
At first, the synagogue was located at the Club House on Alfred Place, near Bedford Square, the premises of the West Central Jewish Girls’ Club since 1914. The club was founded by the Hon Lilian Helen Montagu, affectionately known as ‘Miss Lily’, her sister, the Hon Marian Montagu (1868-1965), and their friend, Emily Harris, in 1893 when they rented two rooms at 71 Dean Street, Soho.
All the club meetings included Jewish prayers. Many of the girls served by the club were forced to work 5½ days a week, including Saturday mornings, and so the club held Sabbath day services on Saturday afternoons, generally led by ‘Miss Lily’.
Lily and Marian Montagu were the daughters of a strictly Orthodox Jew, Sir Samuel Montagu (1832-1911), an MP and banker who later became the first Lord Swaythling. Although Lily was brought up in an observant Jewish home, she believed traditional forms of Judaism had no appeal to many young people of her generation and that they were at risk of giving up their Jewish heritage.
In an article in the Jewish Quarterly Review in 1899, ‘The Spiritual Possibilities of Judaism Today’, she identified the need to present Judaism in a way that is in harmony with the thought of the day and that gives meaning to people otherwise living without Jewish religious teaching.
Following her article, Lily Montagu involved in establishing Progressive Judaism in Britain and in 1902 she and Claude Montefiore (1858-1938) founded the Jewish Religious Union. It was the forerunner of both the Liberal Jewish Synagogue (LJS) and the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS), now known as Liberal Judaism.
The first services that led eventually to the formation of the West Central Liberal Jewish Synagogue were held in an hotel in Marylebone and then in the West Central Jewish Girls’ Club on Alfred Place. They were the first Jewish services in England to include prayers in English.
The group organising the services became the West Central Branch of the Jewish Religious Union in 1913. Many of the original members came mostly from the West Central Jewish Girls’ Club, and the section carried on most of the functions of a congregation, with Sabbath and festival services in Alfred Place.
The services were conducted mainly by Lily Montagu, who was supported by Dr Claude Montefiore and by the rabbis and ministers of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood. But the section was hampered by a lack of money, for most of its members were far from prosperous, and by the fact that the members came mostly from the West Central Jewish Girls’ Club, and so had few men.
Due to this lack of both finance and men, a congregation was not formed officially until 1928, when the West Central Liberal Synagogue was formed largely with the support of Rabbi Solomon Starrels (1895-1984) of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. The first service took place on 8 September 1928, and from then on regular services were held in the Club House on Alfred Place, with choral and organ music, and prayers in Hebrew and English.
The congregation was assisted by a number of ministers, mainly from the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, from 1928 to 1938. Then, from 1938, Lily Montagu was the sole minister once again. The life of the congregation included the open air services followed by tea and the annual general meeting, and the large annual bazaars.
Although Lily Montagu was the prime mover behind both the synagogue and the club, she kept the two organisations separate. She was also active in social improvement, particularly in respect to working women, unemployment, sweatshops and bad housing, and later with helping Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
During World War II, the West Central Liberal Synagogue and the Club House in Alfred Place were destroyed in a German bombing raid on the night of 16/17 April 1941, and 27 people who were sheltering in the basement were killed. The congregation was left without a home, and for many years it held services in a number of locations.
When the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues gave Lily Montagu the title of Lay Minister in 1943, she became the first Jewish woman minister in Britain. She conducted services, including weddings and funerals, in a gown and hat, but without a tallit. The rabbis who assisted her from time to time included Dr Leo Baeck (1873-1956), who moved to London after World War II.
The venues where the congregation held post-war services until 1954 included the Whitfield Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, now the American International Church; the Mary Ward Settlement, off Woburn Place; 2 Fitzroy Square (1945-1948); 82 Charlotte Street (1949-1952); and 51 Palace Court (1953-1954).
The architect Ernest Joseph found a bombed site at the corner of Whitfield Street and Maple Street, negotiated a 99-year lease and designed a simple but beautiful synagogue that was built in stages: the first floor was built and consecrated in 1954, a second floor was added in 1959, and the synagogue sanctuary, with the ark, desk and perpetual lamp were moved upstairs, while the lower floor became a communal hall in 1960.
The congregation transferred its lease and the building to the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues (ULPS) for its headquarters in 1970, on condition that it would have continued use of it for services and congregational activities. The building was renamed the Montagu Centre after Lily and Marian Montagu.
Lily Montagu was also one of the first women to become a Justice of the Peace. For many years was a magistrate in St Pancras and chaired the London Juvenile Courts. She died on 22 January 1963 in her 90th year, and her sister Marian died two years later in 1965 aged 96.
The Montagu Centre site was redeveloped in the 1990s, when the original building was demolished, making way for a mixture of housing and offices, including the offices of Liberal Judaism, and the synagogue. During the redevelopment, the congregation had a temporary location at 12/14 Clipstone Street. The congregation’s rabbis and ministers have included Dr Frederick K (‘Fritz’) Solomonski (later Rabbi Frederick Solomon), Joseph Ascher, Rabbi Roger Victor Pavey, Rabbi Lawrence Rigál, Rabbi Hillel Avidan, Rabbi Mark L Solomon, Rabbi Janet Burden, and Rabbi Dr Jacqueline (Jackie) Tabick from Dublin.
In time, the move of people away from the centre of London adversely affected the congregation. Before World War II, there were 249 ordinary members in 1939, as well as 48 associate members and two burial members. By 1990, there were 146 members; by 1996, there were 74 members, and 50-99 members in the period 2010-2016. Members were increasingly elderly, with many travelling long distances to worship there.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, the congregation found it could not meet physically from early 2020. The space at the Maple Street premises deteriorated and became unusable. For a while, the reduced congregation met using Zoom or physically at Westminster Synagogue in Kensington. However, the congregation formally ceased to exist in January 2022.
After the congregation was dissolved, a chavurah or small prayer group was formed, and it continues to meet and hold services once a month at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood. These services are led by Rabbi Jackie Tabick or members of the group.
Rabbi Jackie Tabick was born Jacqueline Hazel Acker in Dublin, where her childhood synagogue was the Dublin Jewish Progressive Synagogue, Leicester Avenue, Rathgar. She was ordained as Britain’s first female rabbi in 1975. She led the Shabbat and Festival services at West Central Liberal Jewish Synagogue from 2014 until it closed in 2022.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
