30 December 2023

Daily prayers during
the 12 Days of Christmas:
6, 30 December 2023

The ‘Six Geese a-Laying’ on the Sixth Day of Christmas are said to represent the six days of Creation … a flock of white geese has permanent sanctuary in the cloisters of Barcelona Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Sixth Day of Christmas (30 December 2023) and tomorrow is the First Sunday of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Before today begins, I am taking some time for reading, reflection and prayer.

My reflections each morning during the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a verse from the popular Christmas song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’;

2, the Gospel reading of the day;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

‘On the Sixth Day of Christmas … six geese-a-laying’ … geese on the banks of the Cam behind King’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Tenaya Hurst)

The Sixth Day of Christmas today (30 December) brings us half-way through the traditional ‘12 Days of Christmas’ – although, in liturgical terms, Christmas is a 40-day season that continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

The Sixth Day of Christmas is a quiet day in the Church calendar, without commemorations, although the Episcopal Church (TEC) recalls Frances Joseph-Gaudet (1934), the Educator and Prison Reformer, on this day.

The sixth verse of the traditional song, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, is:

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …

Six geese-a-laying,
five golden rings,
four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.


The Christian interpretation of this song often sees the six geese a-laying as figurative representations of the six days of Creation (see Genesis 1).

Perhaps today is a good day to begin preparing for the New Year, to begin making resolutions that have a truly spiritual and Christian intent.

Anna (right) and Simeon (centre) with the Christ Child and the Virgin Mary (see Luke 2: 36-40) … a window in the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Saffron Walden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 2: 36-40 (NRSVA):

36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him.

Anna (right) and Simeon (centre) with the Christ Child, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph (see Luke 2: 36-40) … a window in Peterborough Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 30 December 2023):

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 ‘Love at Advent and Christmas.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (30 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

We pray for senior church leaders around the world – bishops, primates and archbishops. We pray too for the head of the Anglican Church, the Most Revd Justin Welby. May they guide us all in 2024 with strength, grace and wisdom.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have given us your only-begotten Son
to take our nature upon him
and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin:
grant that we, who have been born again
and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
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:

God our Father,
whose Word has come among us
in the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
may the light of faith illumine our hearts
and shine in our words and deeds;
through him who is Christ the Lord.

Additional Collect:

Lord Jesus Christ,
your birth at Bethlehem
draws us to kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth:
accept our heartfelt praise
as we worship you,
our Saviour and our eternal God.

Collect on the Eve of Christmas I:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
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

The ‘six geese-a-laying’ represent the six days of creation … a December sunset at Stowe Pool in Lichfield (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

Memories of a former
Jewish home and its
two synagogues on
Denmark Hill, Rathmines

The former Jewish home on Denmark Hill, off Leinster Road, Rathmines, was founded in 1950 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

In my walk around Rathmines and Harold’s Cross last week, during my short return visit to Dublin, I spent a morning strolling around Leinster Road, Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West.

Between these two streets, I went in search of the site of the former Jewish Home on Denmark Hill, which was founded in 1950. The home had its own synagogue until it closed and was moved to the Quaker-run Bloomfield Care Centre in Rathfarnham.

The private synagogue was in what was formally known as the Home of Aged and Infirm Jews Synagogue on Denmark Hill, part of Le Bas Terrace running between Leinster Road and the junction of Leinster Road West and Effra Road.

The home, later known from about 1974 as the Jewish Home of Ireland, was founded in 1950 after Rifka and Zalman Potashnick made a deed of gift, giving their home on Castlewood Avenue, Rathmines, to the Board of Guardians of the Jewish community for the establishment of a ‘real Jewish home’ for the Jewish elderly ‘not blessed with children or other relations who can lovingly care for them.’

The couple were known locally as ‘Mr and Mrs Solomon’. Rifka Potashnick was moved to set up this charitable foundation after she befriended the widowed Rabbi Brown. He had been reduced to poverty, and she found him living in circumstances that made him dependent on community welfare. He wore many layers of clothes to keep himself warm and he moved from one household to the next, relying on the meals each family offered him.

When he failed to turn up at her home for a few days, Rifka went in search of the impoverished rabbi, and found him in Saint Kevin’s Hospital. When he died there, she was disturbed by the circumstances. She talked about her plans for a new home with her son-in-law Maurice Wine and, to help establish the new home, Rifka and Zalman ‘downsized’ and moved to a smaller home in Neville Road, Rathgar.

However, the Potashnick home was not suitable for communal living. It was sold to provide the initial funds towards buying the premises on Denmark Hill, close to the synagogue at 52 Grosvenor Road.

The architect of the new home was Norman Douglas Good, the eldest son of Dr Douglas Good and Ada Baillie Good of Appian Way, Dublin. He trained in a Dublin architect’s office, the school of architecture at University College Dublin, and the Architectural Association in London, in the 1920s. He worked in partnership with the architect Michael Scott as Scott & Good from 1931 to 1936, and then continued to practise from 36 Frederick Street.

The home was first listed in the Jewish Year Book in 1951. The synagogue followed Ashkenazi Orthodox ritual, and may have relied for spiritual leadership on the various Chief Rabbis of Ireland and Dublin’s communal rabbis, as well as readers from the various Dublin synagogues.

The home was supported by the Jewish communities in Dublin, Belfast and Cork, and was open to any Jewish applicant, anywhere in Ireland, subject only to medical condition and the availability of a bed.

The first trustees of the home included Maurice Wine, Gerald Gilbert, Solomon Verby, and Maurice Baum. They bought the home of Hanchen and Louis Wine. The acclaimed violinist and musician Erwin Goldwater was the first chairman of the committee. He was President of the Rathmines Hebrew Congregation, which then had its synagogue nearby at 52 Grosvenor Road, Rathgar.

At the opening ceremony, Erwin Goldwater expressed the hope that ‘never again will any of our poor and aged end their days in surroundings that are strange.’ It is said no-one was ever turned away for lack of funds.

The original synagogue in the home was a replica of a synagogue in Abraham Isaac Cohen’s antique shop on Lower Ormond Quay. Until his death in 1985, Abraham Cohen’s son, Louis Cohen, took personal responsibility for this synagogue. As Ray Rivlin has recalled in Jewish Ireland – a social history (2011), it attracted a regular Shabbat minyan, even from members of others shuls, and Louis Cohen hosted a Kiddush at the home every Sabbath and Festival.

The home was provided with a beautiful new synagogue in 1991, dedicated to the Revd Abraham Gittleson (1915-1983). He was born and raised in Dublin and studied at Gateshead yeshiva. He returned to Dublin and from the early 1940s for over 40 years he served many congregational roles in Dublin as a mohel, shochet and teacher.

He served at the Lennox Street Synagogue in the 1940s. He became second reader of the Dublin United Hebrew Congregation at Greenville Hall on the South Circular Road ca 1948, and served that synagogue as second and then first reader until he died in 1983.

The new synagogue in the home was named in his memory in 1991cand a scholarship fund in his name was established to support the education of Jewish children in Dublin.

When the home closed in 2005, the 18 residents were moved, two at a time, to the Quaker-run Bloomfield Care Centre on Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham, with a separate wing, its own prayer room and a kosher kitchen under kashrut supervision. Today, the Bloomfield Care Centre works in conjunction with the Jewish Representative Council to help members of the Jewish community to continue a Jewish lifestyle while in assisted living.

Initially, the home on Denmark Hill was converted into two student houses, one male and one female. But in recent years the site has since been developed into mixed housing.

Shabbat Shalom

The former Jewish home on Denmark Hill, off Leinster Road, Rathmines, closed in 2005 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)