In the early 19th century the leaders of London’s small Jewish community were largely of Sefardi heritage, descendants of refugees who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal over three centuries earlier. Many were interrelated, members of families whom Chaim Bermant would later designate as the Cousinhood. They lived in and around the City of London, within walking distance of the small and remarkably ornate Bevis Marks synagogue. It is still there today, the oldest in Britain, built in 1701 by the first generation of Jews to return to the country after Edward I had expelled them half a millennium earlier.
Members of Bevis Marks in the 19th century were obliged to adhere to a detailed set of rules and regulations determined by the synagogue Elders. One of the regulations was that no religious services were to be held within six miles of the City of London, other than in Bevis Marks. In the early days, when everyone lived nearby, this rule no doubt worked well as a means of keeping the community together and protecting against schisms and breakaways. But London was expanding and the more prosperous members of the Bevis Marks community were moving westward, to the new, up-market areas of Mayfair, Kensington and Bayswater. Since they would not travel on Shabbat those who moved westward were faced each week with a lengthy walk to and from synagogue. Proposals to establish a branch synagogue in the West End were floated from time to time, but they were regularly shot down by the leaders of the Bevis Marks congregation.
In 1840 nineteen dissident members of the Bevis Marks synagogue met in the Bedford Hotel in Southampton Row, roughly midway between the West End and the City. They were joined by five members of the Great Synagogue, one of London’s three Ashkenazi congregations, based in Dukes Place, close to Bevis Marks. The purpose of the meeting was to establish a synagogue more conveniently sited for those who lived in the West End.
By the time the meeting was convened, location was no longer their only concern. Had the leadership of Bevis Marks supported the dissidents in their original proposal to set up a branch synagogue in the West End, the row that was about to take place might not have happened. But they had not agreed and other issues had now found their way onto the agenda. The meeting resolved not only to establish a West End synagogue, in defiance of the Bevis Marks rules, but also to issue a revised prayer book, to allow for shorter, more decorous services, sermons in English and a merging of the Ashkenazi and Sefardi liturgical traditions. Thus the West London Synagogue was born.
The rabbis and the lay leaders of the Jewish community were outraged. The London community was still small enough to be tightly controlled and its leadership regarded the creation of the new synagogue as schismatic; defying the established practices and norms of the community and contravening Jewish law.
The backlash was led by Sir Moses Montefiore, a member of Bevis Marks who each week, without complaint, would walk the eight mile round journey between the synagogue and his Park Lane home. Sir Moses, the Churchillian, undisputed leader of the Jewish community, friend of Queen Victoria and President of the Board of Deputies, the communal governing body, consulted London’s rabbis. He announced that the rabbis had issued an edict of excommunication against the new synagogue and its members. Henceforth they were not to be regarded as members of the Jewish community. Even though many of them were his cousins, friends and business associates, for the next 35 years he refused to allow them to attend meetings of the Board of Deputies.
The establishment of the West London Synagogue was a very British affair. More interested in form than substance, the breakaway had been about location and decorum rather than matters of faith and belief. But the founders of the synagogue were emboldened by events in Germany over the previous thirty years. Led by Rabbi Abraham Geiger a new reforming movement had emerged there, in which belief and theology were all-important. Synagogue services were being changed in fundamental ways. Prayers were recited in the vernacular rather than in Hebrew, congregations no longer prayed for the restoration of the Temple or for sacrifices, men and women sat together, choirs sang and organs were played. This was the beginning of the movement that would become known as Reform Judaism. Emigrants from Germany took the movement to the USA; in 1824 they formed the Reformed Society of Israelites in Charleston. In 1841 it became America’s first Reform congregation, just one year before the formal consecration of the West London Synagogue.
(It is worth noting that the creation of Reform Judaism led to a new name for what had been, until then, mainstream Judaism. It was only after Reform Judaism was established that its opponents became known as Orthodox. There had been no thought of designating mainstream Judaism as Orthodox until then; theologically it had been the one and only normative expression of Judaism).
By 1850 The West London Synagogue was referring to itself as a Reform congregation, the first in Britain. But Reform Judaism in England was in its infancy, it was still going through a process of evolution and change. It did not take long until some of the synagogue’s members began to express dissatisfaction with the pace and direction of the change, feeling that the Reform movement itself was now stagnating.
The driving force behind the push for greater change was Lily Montagu. She was the daughter of the banker Baron Swaythling who, as Samuel Montagu, had been Member of Parliament for Whitechapel. Lily Montagu had become disenchanted both with the strictures of her father’s religiously observant home and with the expectations placed upon women in Victorian Jewish society. She became a social worker at 17 and at the age of nineteen she established the West Central Jewish Club for Girls, to help give educational and social opportunities to young working class women. Although she was disenchanted with her father’s strict religious observance she shared his commitment to Jewish life. In 1899 she wrote an article in the Jewish Quarterly Review entitled “Spiritual Possibilities in Judaism Today.” The reception that the article received encouraged her and the Review’s editor, Claude Montefiore, to set up the Jewish Religious Union, for those ‘who are not in sympathy with the present Synagogue Services.’
Claude Montefiore was a great nephew of Sir Moses who had opposed the establishment of the West London Synagogue. He belonged to the West London Synagogue as had his mother, although his father remained a member of Bevis Marks. Claude Montefiore was a prolific writer and scholar of Judaism who had studied under Solomon Shechter in Berlin. He believed that Judaism and Christianity had so much in common that, although they disagreed on the nature of God and Jesus, they should nevertheless look forward to some sort of accommodation. He became President of the Jewish Religious Union and, with Lily Montagu, preached at Saturday afternoon services that were conducted mainly in English, with instrumental accompaniment.
After the Jewish Religious Union held its first service in 1902 they were invited by the West London Synagogue to discuss the possibility of holding their services on the synagogue’s premises. However the conditions that the synagogue laid down were not acceptable to the JRU and the two organisations went their separate ways. In 1911 the Jewish Religious Union became the Liberal Jewish Synagogue.
During the course of the 20th Century new Reform and Liberal congregations were established and organised themselves into movements. Unlike America where Reform Judaism was the sole Progressive movement, Britain had two, Liberal and Reform.
The Liberals were initially seen as being to the left of Reform in terms of practice and theology but as time passed the differences between the two movements became less pronounced. They began sharing resources, training their rabbis at Leo Baeck College in London, becoming collectively known as Progressive Judaism and independently adopting similar policies on issues such as conversion and mixed faith marriages. Their rabbis were able to make seamless career moves from one movement to another.
Last month the two movements announced that they were to merge. Many people thought it was about time. Like America, Britain will now have just one Progressive movement. One less voice in the religious cacophony.
West London Synagogue had been formed because some of its members found its location and style of service inconvenient. The Jewish Religious Union split from the West London because they believed that not enough was being done to strengthen religious and spiritual life in Britain. Although both movements adopted the theology of the 19th century Reform movement in Germany and America, neither had been established due to a profound theological urge. That was not the way things were done in Britain. It would take until the 1960s until British Jewry was challenged theologically, and it caused as great a trauma in the community as the founding of the West London Synagogue. But that is a discussion for a later article.
Great piece!