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.
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.
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
