18 February 2023

Praying in Ordinary Time
with USPG: 18 February 2023

Fra Angelico (Fra Giovanni di Pietro da Fiesole), The Annunciation (ca 1440-1445), in the Basilica di San Marco, Florence

Patrick Comerford

These weeks, between the end of Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, are known as Ordinary Time. We are in a time of preparation for Lent, which in turn is a preparation for Holy Week and Easter. Before this becomes a busy day, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

In these days of Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday next week (22 February), I am reflecting in these ways each morning:

1, reflecting on a saint or interesting person in the life of the Church;

2, one of the lectionary readings of the day;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

Fra Angelico (1395-1455) is named in today [18 February] in the Roman Catholic calendar. Fra Angelico is also the Patron of Artists, and it said he once said: ‘He who does Christ’s work must stay with Christ always.’

During my visit to the Uffizi in Florence some years ago, among the works of Fra Angelico on display were his Coronation of the Virgin (ca 1432), his Altarpiece, The Coronation of the Virgin, and his life-sized Madonna and Child with twelve Angels.

The National Gallery of Ireland has his Saints Cosmas and Damian and their Brothers Surviving the Stake (ca 1439-1442), which was bought in 1886. This small panel was part of the predella or lower register of Fra Angelico’s most important altarpiece. Other parts of it are scattered in galleries around the world. The altarpiece was painted for the church of San Marco in Florence, and was commissioned by Cosimo de’ Medici – whose name is echoed in the profession of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian (medici means ‘physicians’ in Italian).

Fra Angelico was called both Angelico (‘angelic’) and Beato (‘blessed’) because his paintings were of calm, religious subjects and because of his extraordinary personal piety.

He was born Guido di Pietro in Vicchio, Tuscany, in 1395. He entered a Dominican convent in Fiesole in 1418 and he became a friar with the name Giovanni da Fiesole ca 1425. He apparently began his career as an illuminator of missals and other religious books. He began to paint altarpieces and other panels; among his important early works are the Madonna of the Star (1428?-1433, San Marco, Florence) and Christ in Glory surrounded by Saints and Angels (National Gallery, London), which depicts more than 250 distinct figures.

Among other works of that period are two of The Coronation of the Virgin (Uffizi and Louvre, Paris) and The Deposition and The Last Judgment (San Marco). His mature style is first seen in The Madonna of the Linen Weavers (1433, San Marco), which features a border with 12 music-making angels.

In 1436, the Dominicans of Fiesole moved to the Convent of San Marco in Florence, which had recently been rebuilt by Michelozzo. Cosimo de’ Medici, one of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the city’s Signoria, had a large cell – later occupied by Savonarola – reserved for his own personal use at the friary so he could retreat from the world.

There, Fra Angelico, sometimes aided by assistants, painted many frescoes for the cloister chapter house and the entrances to the 20 cells on the upper corridors. The most impressive of these are The Crucifixion, Christ as a Pilgrim, and The Transfiguration.

His altarpiece for San Marco (1439) is one of the first representations of what is known as A Sacred Conversation: the Madonna flanked by angels and saints who seem to share a common space.

Pope Eugenius IV summoned Fra Angelico to Rome in 1445 to paint frescoes for the now destroyed Chapel of the Sacrament in the Vatican. In 1447, with his pupil Benozzo Gozzoli, he painted frescoes for the chapel of Pope Nicholas in the Vatican, including Scenes from the Lives of Saints Stephen and Lawrence (1447-1449), probably painted from his designs by assistants.

Fra Angelico was the Prior of the Dominican Convent in Fiesole in 1449-1452. He died in the Dominican Convent in Rome on 18 February 1455. He was buried in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

His epitaph says: ‘When singing my praise, don’t liken my talents to those of Apelles. Say, rather, that, in the name of Christ, I gave all I had to the poor. The deeds that count on Earth are not the ones that count in Heaven. I, Giovanni, am the flower of Tuscany.’

Fra Angelico combined the influence of the elegantly decorative Gothic style of Gentile da Fabriano with the more realistic style of Renaissance masters such as the painter Masaccio and the sculptors Donatello and Ghiberti, all of whom worked in Florence.

Fra Angelico was particularly effective in his use of colour to heighten emotion. His skill in creating monumental figures, representing motion, and suggesting deep space through the use of linear perspective, especially in the Roman frescoes mark him as one of the foremost painters of the Renaissance.

He is described by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having ‘a rare and perfect talent.’ Vasari wrote: ‘But it is impossible to bestow too much praise on this holy father, who was so humble and modest in all that he did and said and whose pictures were painted with such facility and piety.’

Legend has it that Fra Angelico almost became a saint. When he was called to Rome in 1445, Pope Eugene IV was in search of a new Archbishop of Florence. He eventually chose the Vicar of San Marco, Antonio Pierozzi. Then, 200 years later, when Pierozzi was proposed for sainthood, it emerged that the pope’s first choice as Archbishop of Florence was Fra Angelico, but that the painter’s humility caused him to decline and instead suggest Pierozzi for the post.

Eventually, after a further two centuries, Fra Angelico was beatified on 3 October 1982 by Pope John Paul II in recognition of the holiness of his life, giving him the title of ‘Blessed’ rather than ‘Saint.’ In 1984, Pope John Paul II declared him patron of Catholic artists.

The Incarnation was one of Fra Angelico’s favourite themes, and he painted over 25 variations of it. His painted meditations, so needed at the time of the early Renaissance, are still necessary today. This Lent, let us remember that God became human to bring us closer to God by way of all things human. God makes all things new by fashioning them into possible vehicles of grace for us, so that by visible realities and concrete concepts, we can arrive at an understanding and a love of higher, invisible realities, all leading to God himself.

‘The Adoration of the Magi’ by Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi (Florence, ca 1440/1460)

Mark 9: 2-13 (NRSVA):

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 10 So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean. 11 Then they asked him, ‘Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ 12 He said to them, ‘Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things. How then is it written about the Son of Man, that he is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt? 13 But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.’

Peter Preaching, Fra Angelico, ca 1400-1455 (see Acts 11: 4-18)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week has been ‘Bray Day.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Jo Sadgrove, USPG’s Research and Learning Advisor, who shared the challenges of uncovering USPG’s archives.

The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray in these words:

Let us give thanks for the vision that inspired USPG. May we, like Thomas Bray, seek to deepen our understanding of the gospel, be attentive to the world and promote the common good.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The Last Judgment (ca 1425) by Fra Angelico

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

Erwin Goldwater, the violinist
from Kovno who helped to
found a synagogue in Dublin

Erwin Goldwater, the Dublin violinist, was born in Kovno and was a founding figure in Terenure Synagogue in Dublin

Patrick Comerford

Jewish Arts and Culture Ireland (JACI) is being launched in Cork this weekend (Sunday 19 February 2023), with ‘Kovno to Cork’, a journey in music and words reflecting the immigrant experience from the Irish Jewish immigrants of the 1880s to present-day newcomers.

The programme includes a live interview with the Dublin film director Lenny Abrahamson, in conversation with the Human Rights lawyer Saul Woolfson, who chairs Jewish Arts and Culture Ireland (JACI).

The evening’s programme also includes the premiere of one of Ruti Lachs’s new pieces from the Irish Klezmer Suite, as well as the performance of two other original pieces by her.

Istvan Barnacz from Hungary on the violin and Brian Connor from Belfast on the piano are playing Jewish classical and film music. Simon Lewis, the poet from Carlow, reads from his collection Jewtown (Doire Press, 2016), set in Cork. The Fresh Air Collective, including Edel Sullivan (fiddle), Eileen Healy (guitar), Lucy Tasker (clarinet) and Ruti Lachs (accordion), are playing klezmer and folk music. Dr Vivi Lachs from London, who spoke recently in Milton Keynes Synagogue on Yiddish culture in the East End, is speaking about Yiddish song and story.

Many of the Jewish refugees who arrived in Cork – and in other Irish cities, including Limerick, Belfast and Dublin – in the 1870s and the 1880s were fleeing oppression and pogroms in the Tsarist empire. Those who fled Lithuania were known as Litvaks.

Today, Kovno or Kaunas is the second largest city in Lithuania The shtetls in Kovno they came from were all within 50 km of each other. Many of the Jewish figures in Cork who inspired the poems by Simon Lewis were often known as Akmajianites because they came from the village of Akmajian in Kovno.

The violinist Erwin Goldwater is an interesting example of one of these Jewish Litvaks from Kovno who found success in cultural life in Ireland, and he became a key figure in founding the synagogue on Rathfarnham Road in Terenure, Dublin.

Erwin Goldwater’s father, Morris Mendel Goldwater, was a son of Rabbi Abraham Goldwasser. He was born Mosek Menachem Goldwasser in Sochotszow or Sochaczew in central Poland on 23 February 1867 – although census returns suggest he was born in 1863. His parents were Abraham or Abram Goldwasser and Zilpa Frankel or Frenkel.

Morris married Machla (Minnie) Binkowsky in February 1885 at Kolo in central Poland, but they soon moved to Kovno, where he worked as art dealer in 1892-1894. Morris and Minnie had a large family of children, born between 1887 and 1904. The first two children – Israel (Erwin) Goldwater, the future violinist and musician, and Abram were born in Kovno. The other children included: Maryjem Zilpa (Mary), Chana Ruchla (Rosie), Jenny, Rebekah, Phillip, Jacob (Jack), Freda and Abraham (Alf).

Morris left Poland with his family when he was about 28, and moved to London by 1894-1895. They lived in Mile End in the East End, and Morris worked as a woollen merchant and an art dealer.

Israel (Erwin) Goldwater was born in Kovno in 1892 (or 1887) and grew up in London. He studied the violin under the Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík (1852-1934), who was based in Prague and Vienna and who taught briefly in London. Erwin was the first violin at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in London, before moving to Dublin in his early 20s to conduct the orchestra at the Carlton Cinema when it opened in Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street) in Dublin in 1916.

No 76 Lower Clanbrassil Street … once the home of Robert Comerford and later Goldwater’s shop (Photograph courtesy Manus O’Riordan)

Erwin arrived in Dublin shortly before the Easter Rising, perhaps with the assistance of cousins among other Goldwater families living in Dublin. He was undaunted by the changing political climate; he remained in Ireland, carved out a successful career, and became a leading figure in the Jewish community in Ireland.

Cinemas were a booming business in Dublin at the time, and they often provided the principal opportunity for people to hear live, classical music. The Carlton Cinema, for example, introduced the concert soloist as a permanent feature.

The Irish Times described Erwin Goldwater’s debut at the Carlton on Saint Patrick’s Day 1916 as a ‘new departure in connection with cinema entertainments [that] takes the form of a violin recital by Mr E Goldwater, a pupil of Sevcik, and formerly first violin at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Mr Goldwater will conduct the orchestra at the Carlton.’

Goldwater’s appointment at the Carlton undermined a long-standing claim by the Bohemian Cinema in Phibsborough that it had Dublin’s largest and best picture-house orchestra. A month later, however, the Bohemian engaged Clyde Twelvetrees – concert cellist and professor of the Royal Irish Academy of Music – to play as part of its daily programme. Not to be outdone, the Pillar Picture House engaged, Joseph Schofield in April 1916. A month later, the Bohemian contracted a second soloist, the violinist Achille Simonetti.

Surviving programmes from Erwin Goldwater’s times at the Carlton in the late 1910s show how as a soloist he added a further musical layer to the cinema bill at Dublin’s most prestigious picture houses. The programme for the week of 10-17 December 1917 – when the feature was Maslova (Tiber, 1917), an Italian adaptation of Tolstoy’s The Resurrection – features the films and music played and shows how the musicians changed during the day.

Erwin Goldwater’s musical selections for Maslova were printed opposite the film programme. He also played a violin solo, which that week was Henryk Wieniawski’s Légende.

In one day in that decade at the Carlton and Dublin’s other prestige ‘picture houses’, a cinema-goer could experience music played in turns by a solo pianist, a trio, a larger orchestra and a concert soloist. The advent of the cinema offered people quality music in a readily accessible form.

Erwin Goldwater stayed on in Dublin after the War of Independence and the Civil War, and he married Marie Fine, daughter of Simon Fine, in Dolphin’s Barn Synagogue on 2 July 1933. He was 39 and she was 19, and they both gave their address as 398 Harold’s Cross Road. WB Yeats had part of his childhood on the same row of houses at No 418, and at the time my grandmother was living around the corner in Ashdale Park.

The wedding was conducted by the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Dr Isaac Herzog (1888-1959), whose wife Sarah Hillman (1898-1979) was also born in Kovno. The wedding reception was held in the Winter Gardens at the Theatre Royal.

Erwin Goldwater may have been helped in moving to Dublin by other members of the Goldwater family. Goldwater’s butcher shop was at 76 Lower Clanbrassil Street in Dublin’s Little Jerusalem from the 1930sIt had been the home my grandfather’s first cousin, Robert Comerford (1855-1925), when he died there on 1 May 1925. Janie and Isaac Goldwater ran Goldwater’s shop at No 76 from the 1930s until it finally closed in 1977.

Meanwhile, Morris Goldwater applied for naturalisation in London in 1923. In his application, he states he had one sister last heard of in Poland, but it was not known if she was still alive.’ It is not known whether he had other siblings. In a letter dated 25 June 1923 he expresses his wishes ‘to go to Poland to see my relatives.’

Some time after his naturalisation, Morris Goldwater moved from the East End to live with his son Erwin and daughter-in-law in Dublin. He died at their home on Highfield Road, Rathgar, on 31 January 1942.

In the post-war years, Erwin Goldwater was an eminent member of the Jewish community in Dublin. In 1945-1949, he was President of Rathmines Hebrew Congregation, which had its synagogue at 52 Grosvenor Road, Rathgar.

He donated to the publication of the book Degel Yosef by Rabbi Zalman Yosef ben Yitzchok Aloni, published in Dublin in 1949 in memory of his parents.

Erwin Goldwater and Woulfe Freedman bought the site for the new synagogue in Terenure, then known as Leoville at 32a Rathfarnham Road, and opposite the then Classic Cinema. They paid £1,490 for the site and donated the site to the congregation.

I have often jested that I was born beside a synagogue and across the road from a cinema. With his background in cinema music, Erwin Goldwater must have relished the humour within the Jewish community in Dublin that referred to the new synagogue opposite the Classic Cinema as the ‘cinema-gogue.’

The new synagogue designed by Wilfrid Cantwell was built in 1952-1953 and was dedicated on 30 August 1953. Erwin Goldwater was chair of Terenure Hebrew Congregation from 1949. He was 67 when he died on 21 May 1959 at 42 Cowper Road, Rathmines.

One of Erwin’s younger brothers, Jacob (Jack) Goldwater, also moved to Dublin. Jack Goldwater was born in Mile End in April 1899, and married Rachel Goldfoot. He died in Dublin in 1966.

Shabbat Shalom

Terenure Synagogue on Rathfarnham Road, Dublin … Erwin Goldwater was instrumental in buying the site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)