Patrick Comerford
During our recent weekend visit to Belfast, I tried to renew my acquaintances with the Jewish history and heritage of the city, looking again at the stories of the Jaffe Memorial Fountain and Sir Otto Jaffé, and visiting the sites of a number of former synagogues in Belfast, including those that stood on Great Victoria Street, Annesley Street and Regent Strret.
The present synagogue at 49 Somerton Road, Belfast, was built in 1964, replacing an earlier synagogue at Annesley Street, off the Antrim Road and near Carlisle Circus, that was built in 1904. The synagogue on Annesley Street replaced an earlier synagogue built on Great Victoria Street in 1871-1872.
It was the first purpose-built synagogue in Belfast and the cost of building it was funded largely by the linen merchant Daniel Joseph Jaffé, who is commemorated in the Jaffe Memorial Fountain.
There has only ever been a single Jewish congregation in the city except for two short periods at end of 19th century and in the early 20th century, when rival congregations existed. The only other Jewish communities in Northern Ireland were small communities in Derry (1894-1947) and in Lurgan (1911-1926, and 1941 briefly).
There has been a Jewish presence in Belfast from the 17th century and the Jewish traders in Belfast in the 18th century included Israel Woolf, who was selling ‘gold and silver plate and ornaments and picture frames’ from 1754, and a kosher butcher in 1771.
A Swedish-born rabbi, Morris Jacob Raphall of Birmingham Synagogue, visited Belfast in 1845. But a riotous rabble made so much noise that his planned lecture was cancelled.
But the community began to grow in the 1850s and 1860s, and my task of finding the sites of the early synagogues in Belfast on a grey Saturday morning was enriched by the research of my Facebook friend, the Belfast historian Steven Jaffe, the work of the Belfast Jewish Heritage project and its interactive map, and the detailed research on Jewish Communities & Records (JCR-UK).
In all, 52 Jews were living in the province of Ulster by 1861. Most were living in Belfast, and many had come from Germany to engage in the linen trade, including Jacob Mautner and Daniel Joseph Jaffé (1809-1874).
Jaffé was a frequent visitor to Belfast, trading in linen goods, before settling there to work in a business partnership with his brother Isaac Jaffé. Several of his nine sons and daughters took a prominent part in public life, especially Martin Jaffé and Sir Otto Jaffé, later Lord Mayor of Belfast.
The present Jewish community in Belfast dates from 1864, when regular services were first held in private homes, including Martin Jaffé’s house in Holywood, Co Down. Five years later, the Jewish congregation in Belfast was formally organised in 1869, mainly through Jaffé’s efforts.
At first, the congregation in Belfast met in a small room at Inkerman Terrace, a short terrace of houses on Dublin Road, near the junction with Shaftesbury Square and Great Victoria Street, where the small room was fitted as a synagogue in 1869. Meanwhile an advertisement was published in a German-Jewish newspaper in 1869 calling for ‘a minister of the non-orthodox cult’ in Belfast.
The site for a new synagogue at 113 Great Victoria Street was bought in 1869. The foundation stone was laid on 7 July 1871, and it was built in 1871-1872. It was designed by the London-based architect Nathan Solomon Joseph (1834-1909) and the Scottish architect Francis Stirrat (1833-1895).
The architect Nathan Samuel Joseph is also remembered as a philanthropist, social reformer, architect, author and community leader. He was a brother-in-law of the Chief Rabbi, Dr Hermann Adler, the father of Ernest M Joseph (1877-1960) who was a founding member of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and honorary architect to the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, and the uncle of Nathaniel Delissa Joseph (1859-1927), the architect of Hampstead Synagogue, which I visited earlier this week.
Nathan Samuel Joseph studied architecture at University College London. His Jewish architectural works included Bayswater Synagogue (1862-1864), Central Synagogue, Great Portland Street (1866-1870), Sandys Row Synagogue, Bishopsgate, which he remodelled (1867-1870), and New West End Synagogue, Bayswater (1877-1879).
The synagogue at 113 Great Victoria Street was a polychrome Gothic building with red and black brick and stone decoration. Francis Stirrat was probably responsible for its design in a Ruskinian Gothic style.
The cost of building the synagogue was funded largely by Daniel Jaffé who died in 1874 shortly after it was consecrated. The synagogue opened in 1872, and it continued in use until 1904.
An early member of the Jewish community in Belfast was Elizabeth Jane Somerville (1834-1882), Countess of Charlemont, wife of James Molyneux Caulfeild (1820-1892), 3rd Earl of Charlemont. Soon after their marriage in 1863, she converted to Judaism.
She frequently attended the synagogue in Belfast, and while she was in London she worshipped at the Central Synagogue on Great Portland Street, built in 1870, and at the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, which was consecrated in 1879 and whose founding members included Martin Jaffe from Belfast.
The first minister in the synagogue was the Revd Dr Joseph Chotzner (1844-1914), who served the Belfast congregation on two separate occasions. He was born in Krakow and was educated in Breslau Rabbinical Seminary and the University of Breslau, and moved to the Belfast Hebrew Congregation in 1869. He left Belfast in 1880 to become a Hebrew tutor and to run a house for Jewish pupils at Harrow School, known as Beeleigh House.
The Belfast Hebrew Congregation was then served by the Revd Edwin Hyman Simeon (Henry) Collins (1858-1936), who was in Belfast from 1882 to ca 1887. He then spent about a year in Dublin, where he served the Adelaide Road Synagogue of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation in 1887-1888. He was a literary collaborator with Sun Yat-sen, later first president of the Republic of China, in the late 1890s, and was the headmaster of Annandale House School, Bedford (1911-1913). His successor, the Revd BH Rosengard, was in Belfast ca 1888 to ca 1891.
Chotzner returned to Belfast in 1893 for a second term (1893-1897). The congregation acquired additional premises with a mikveh in 1892, and another house was bought in 1897 for the Hebrew National School, which provided both secular and religious education.
The Jewish population in Belfast grew rapidly in the 1890s with the influx of East European Jews, mainly refugee families fleeing pogroms in the Russian empire. Soon, relations were tense between the Russian-Jewish immigrants and the established English-speaking community with mainly German origins.
Chotzner often criticised the newer immigrants, accusing them of bigotry in petty religious matters. He left Belfast in 1897 to become the senior scholar in residence at the Judith Montefiore College, Ramsgate. He retired in 1905 and died in Harrogate in 1914.
Meanwhile, the differences between the older families and the newer arrivals came to a head with the decision to set up a new independent synagogue. The short-lived Belfast New Synagogue was established in 1893, and was composed mainly of recent arrivals from Lithuania and Poland.
Services were held at 2 Jackson Street, with up to 40 families attending. Two corner house in the Peter’s Hill and Shankill Road area were joined together to form the synagogue, known in Yiddish as a shtiebel, meaning a small place of worship and study.
Belfast New Synagogue was led by a series of ‘foreign’ rabbanim, including Rabbi Harris (Zvi Hirsch) Levin (1871-1933). He was born in Goniądz in Poland (now part of Belarus) and came to Belfast in 1891. He later moved to Cork, and by 1897 he was in Manchester, where he became a leading figure in a very Orthodox community. He died in Southport in 1933 while he was on holiday.
The other ministers in Jackson Street included the Revd E Freedman, around 1893-1894, and the Revd Abraham Rosenberg (1852-1913), around 1894. The house on Jackson Street was used as a meeting place for the Belfast Chevra Gemorrah, a men’s Talmudic study group.
Belfast New Synagogue on Jackson Street continued until at least 1895, but had ceased hosting regular services by 1898, when Chotzner had left Belfast. The corner house was finally demolished in 1968 or 1969.
Chotzner left Belfast in 1897 and he was succeeded in 1898 by the Revd Joseph Emanuel Myers (1836-1910), who had served previously in New Zealand and Australia. Myers returned to England in 1874 and first moved to Ireland in 1890 as minister of the Cork Hebrew Congregation (1890-1898).
During his 14 years in Ireland, Myers often acted as visiting minister to the smaller Jewish communities in Limerick, Derry and Waterford, and was instrumental in opening schools under Jewish management in Cork and in Belfast. He was the scholar-in-residence at the Judith Montefiore College in Ramsgate when he died in 1910.
A new Jewish schoolroom opened in 1898 at 5 Regent Street, at the back of the Orange Hall on Clifton Street.
For a short period at the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, the school on Regent Street was used by another rival congregation in Belfast, the United Hebrew Congregation, also known as the Regent Street Congregation. The Revd Abraham Weinberg (1869-1938) was its minister in 1902-1903. He returned to South Africa and died at Bulawayo, South Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
But the need for co-operation on issues such as education and the supply of kosher meat led the two congregations to consider amalgamating in 1902. Harmony was restored in the community, a new united body was formed in 1903, a new synagogue was built on Annesley Road in 1904, and a new school paid for by Sir Otto Jaffé opened in 1907.
Jaffe, who president of the congregation from 1896 to 1924, presided over the remarkable growth of the Belfast community. At one time, briefly, he was also the treasurer (1904-1905).
After the congregation moved to the new synagogue on Annesley Street, the former synagogue on Great Victoria Street became an Orange hall, and was then acquired by the Apostolic Church.
It had fallen into disrepair by the late 1980s, and an application was made to build a new church building behind the façade. It looked like Francis Stirrat’s decorative façade would be retained.
Despite the erection of a massive piece of structural steelwork for a different building, however, the façade of the former synagogue collapsed in 1993. The material from the façade could have been collected, but to the consternation of conservations this never happened, and the façade of the former synagogue was never rebuilt.
The site is now occupied by the Hope International Christian Fellowship, a multicultural evangelical church.
‘Flying High’, a large 295 sq metre mural on the south gable of the church building, is by Annatomix, a self-trained Birmingham artist. Her installation was completed earlier this year (February 2024).
Her birds represent a mix of species in the area and celebrate the inclusivity and diversity of the Great Victoria Street district. They The birds include a Godwit, a Dunlin, an Arctic Tern and a Lapwing. The Lapwing is semi-native and the unofficial national bird of Ireland. The other birds are all migratory and represent the diversity of the church congregation.
All four birds are sea waders, representing the geography of this part of Belfast before it was developed. The lands between Sandy Row and the River Lagan were marshlands along the lower course of the River Blackstaff. All the birds depicted are either red or amber for their conservation status, raising awareness of the fragility of local wildlife.
As for the synagogues on Annesley Street and Somerton Road, their stories are for other Friday evenings.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
No comments:
Post a Comment