TLSE Hakol January/February 2023

Mike Beral recently circulated to the trustees an interesting comment from a discussion forum within the US equivalent of LJ. He suggests that this, hopefully, is where we can start putting our efforts.

" What is important is that you have a group of people focusing on retention (aka engagement) AND another group that is focused on growth (aka marketing). In a small congregation, it might be the same group, but they are different functions and both need attention. And, regarding the retention/engagement part, those involved need to move from an emphasis on programs to an emphasis on building relationships."

I would point out that in the early years of this congregation we strongly focussed on these two aims. We had a proactive Publicity Officer who sent copy with photos to several local and Jewish newspapers as well as local radio stations regarding any interesting (or even not particularly interesting) activities or persons associated with the congregation. I have several folders full of the resultant newspaper cuttings. The Membership Team followed up every potential member on the interest list with a home visit, and even had brochures and a VHS video which highlighted all the facilities and activities of the shul as well as answering typical queries. We planned and advertised shul Open Day or Drop-In weekends to encourage unaffiliated jews to visit the shul.

We built relationships by inviting or coercing members to become involved in, or even starting a group in which they had a special interest, eg culture; functions and fund raising; music; Israel; card or board games; sports days; sports teams; building maintenance; group trips or holidays; brownies; babies and toddlers; ladies guild; education; religion school parents; security; youth club; etc. Many of our lifelong relationships came about because we reluctantly agreed to attend a fledgling committee meeting.

Unfortunately, most of the above have disappeared as the original enthusiasts retired or the activity was deemed old fashioned or irrelevant. With the present worsening financial outlook we may well even see the return of our popular jumble & bric-a-brac sales. Hard work, but great fun. As the recent turmoil within the synagogue following Rabbi Tanya’s resignation has reawakened many of the older members to become trustees again in order to revitalise TLSE, I ask you all to please use the facilities of Hakol to invite fellow enthusiasts of your particular interest to join with you and enhance your relationships within the congregation.

SILINS

The Trustees were delighted to announce that Rabbi Cantor Gershon Silins joined TLSE asInterim Rabbi on 1st December He previously served as Assistant Rabbi at the West London Synagogue for British Jews. He was on the Rabbinic Team of Liberal Judaism. Rabbi Gershon led Liberal Jewish communities in Lincolnshire, Norwich, Stevenage and Manchester. He was the first (and so far only) Rabbi Cantor in the United Kingdom.

Prior to arriving in the United Kingdom, he was cantor of Temple Sinai Congregation, Toronto; at Temple Avodah, Oceanside, New York; Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, Evanston, Illinois and Temple Emanuel, Kensington, Maryland. He also taught cantorial studies at the Abraham Geiger College Cantorial School in Berlin and the Levisson Institute in Amsterdam.

Rabbi Gershon was ordained as a rabbi by Leo Baeck College in July 2019 and has been a member of the London Philharmonic Choir since 2019. He has been a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto, and the

Music of the Baroque Concert Series in Chicago, and sang with many professional choruses, including the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the New York Choral Artists. He received the degree of Master of Sacred Music from the School of Sacred Music of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, where he was ordained as a cantor. In 2015, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Sacred Music (honoris causa) by Hebrew Union College, in honour of his service to the American cantorate.

Rabbi Gershon attended our recent Chavurah Supper along with Rabbi Charley Baginsky of Liberal Judaism. His first official engagement was at the Chavurah Supper on Friday, 2nd December, where many of the congregation attended to welcome our new Rabbi.

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FINAL MESSAGE TO TLSE

The response from Buckingham Palace to our greeting to Queen Elizabeth on her Platinum Jubilee was poignantly sent on the date of her death, the 8th September 2022, as shown on the postmark on the envelope which was received several weeks later.

PRESENTATION TO RABBI TANYA

Stacy Shurlin, presenting a new Tallit to Rabbi Tanya In grateful commemoration of her time as our rabbi

The Students of the Hub attended the war memorial in Elstree and joined in with a service before laying their wreath of poppies.

Everyone there commended the TLSE Hub students on their excellent and respectful behaviour. We are all very proud of them.

BOOK REVIEW: REPARATION BY GABY KOPPEL Tina Shaw

This book has a number of modern themes which TLSE members might enjoy.

A young Jewish woman, brought up in rural Wales, is working in TV production in London.

She is the child of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who have brought her up to be largely secular.

When she becomes engaged to a non-Jewish Londoner she is subtly pressurised by her mother to re-consider marrying out, leaving her confused about her own feelings towards her fiancée. Meanwhile she is working on a child murder documentary in the Hasidic community in Stamford Hill, which adds to her doubts about her own origins. To add to the complications, her eccentric mother becomes obsessed by the idea of obtaining reparation from the Hungarian authorities for her material loses from the second world war. These themes are brought together in a well written and, at times, amusing way.

Rabbi Alan Mann

Whilst searching old Hakols for interesting articles for the ‘From The Archives’ section I noted a preface to an article that I had written as Hakol editor in June 1997.

I quote “In order to progress our aim of on-going improvements to Hakol we need a continual flow of interesting articles. They can relate to any unusual events, places or activities that you have experienced, or any, possibly controversial, opinions that you wish to express, provided that they are of interest to at least some of our readers.

The following article certainly falls into the areas of being of both Jewish interest and controversial. It is in fact the text of a sermon recently given by our Hon. Vice President (now Hon. Life President), Rabbi Alan Mann at HPS (now TLSE).

Everyone may not agree with its conclusions, but I can guarantee no one fell asleep during the sermon, nor will you on reading it.

I look forward to your opinions for publication in the near future.”

INTERESTING AND CONTROVERSIAL

There is a story that when the young Princess Victoria was studying with Baroness Lehtzen, her mother, the Duchess of Lent, interrupted them. As the Duchess walked into the room the Baroness was reading the story of Jonah and referred to him being in the belly of the whale for three days and nights. The Duchess was aghast and reprimanded the Baroness with the words. “My daughter should not know such words as belly”. Apologising profusely, the Baroness Lehtzen said that she checked the biblical passages most carefully before reading them to the Princess and added, “There are even parts of the bible that I have not read.”

There are many parts of the bible

Rabbi Alan Mann

which are somewhat unsavoury and if you study the Mishnah Megillah you will find a list of those passages that should be read and not translated. Not including in that list is the prescribed passage for today in the latter part of the Sidrah Achare Mot.

This passage deals with a number of unsavoury matters such as incest, consanguinity, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversions and general sexual immorality. Whilst these may be everyday topics of conversation round the dinner table in parts of Hampstead, they are not the type of subject which are generally aired in polite society. Their reason for being found in the Torah is quite simple. This is a legal document and these matters are dealt with as a matter of law. While anybody reading out an act of

Parliament for spiritual inspiration may be considered somewhat suspect, to read out the Sexual Offences Act of 1956 would, in polite society, put one beyond the pale.

There is in some ways a strange similarity between the Sexual Offences Act and these passages in Leviticus, although a number of the matters which are considered criminal and worthy of stoning are not necessarily dealt in the same way under English law. Homosexuality has now been decriminalised and whilst adultery is not made lawful, the ultimate penalty of stoning is not enforced. In Jewish circles in Western Europe one ignores adultery, as does society in general although homosexuality is a different matter. Progressive Judaism takes a more enlightened attitude than our Orthodox brethren.

We have what should be a theological problem. The Torah condemns it out of hand whereas Progressive Judaism looks on the individual and realises that this is his or her natural situation. It is how they are created. It is how they are created by God. To condemn them for being homosexual is condemning God’s creation. It is like condemning someone for the way they are born whether they are black or white, fair haired or dark haired or condemn someone for being Jewish. The theological problem arises in the unwillingness to condemn something that is created by God and the fact that the condemnation is ordered in the Torah that is supposed to be the word of God.

Progressive Judaism neatly gets around the point by rejecting the divine authority of written Torah. This opinion is unfortunately not available

to our Orthodox brethren who are constrained by their adherence to Torah true Judaism and Halacha Le Moshe Mi Sinai, the Law coming direct from heaven, Torah Min Hashamyim.

It is all too easy to condemn Orthodox Judaism for their intransigence and their adherence to a fundamentalist interpretation of law. However, we should not condemn without thought and informed investigation as to their position. By investigating and studying Judaism in all its manifestations we see that Orthodoxy as we know it was a great reforming influence in its time. The Orthodox community does not take an intransigent view of Torah. They themselves have reformed it, developed it and distilled it. Their interpretation of Torah as interpreted by the Mishnaic rabbis and developed further by the Talmudic rabbis and distilled by the great Responsa literature, the philosophers and commentators up to around the 11th or 12th century. Judaism of the 11th and 12th century bore no relationship whatsoever to Judaism of the Temple time of immediate post-Temple period. To an Orthodox Jew, Torah is the Five Books of Moses as developed by the later rabbis.

The problem with Orthodoxy was that it stagnated. They drew parameters around them as the walls of the ghetto enclosed them. They were also confined in time by the authority of the printed book. The publication of the Shulhan Aruch, Joseph Karo’s code of Jewish law as commented upon by Moses Isserlis, produced the instant authority of the printed word. This was even though Joseph Karo referred to the Shulhan Aruch almost as an idiot’s guide to Jewish law being a mere summary of his greater work, the Bet Joseph.

Progressive Judaism has merely

INTERESTING AND CONTROVERSIAL Cont.

knocked down the parameters that Orthodoxy set itself so long ago. Our problem today is that we have no parameters and contemporary rabbis and laymen are forever pushing forward and challenging the accepted norms of Judaism. This development now seems to be reaching a crescendo and we are making law and developing facilities for situations our founding fathers would never have dreamt of. We are now proposing that non-Jewish partners should be given some status within Judaism. Offering associate membership of a synagogue. Allowing them to take part in religious activities. There are proposals for accepting mixed marriages and offering blessings on them. Whilst accepting that homosexuality should not be condemned, we now have Jewish gay meetings, gay synagogues, gay sedarim and the proposal for a gay prayer book.

Perhaps the time has come when we too should set our parameters to decide how far one can go to remain within the confines of Judaism. To set limits on our philosophical development so that we can say beyond that line we would no longer consider the people Jewish. For example, would we countenance the movement of the Shabbat to Sunday to make it easier for people all round. After all, it is one day in seven, does it really matter which day? Would we countenance the abolition of fasting on Yom Kippur on the ground that repentance is a purely celebral matter and requires no symbolism. Would we really countenance the abolition of Brit

Milah on the grounds that it is the ultimate example of child sexual ritual abuse. Perhaps we could go one stage further and say that the Jews for Jesus movement is really a Jewish movement as it comprises Jews. We are not a flag day Judaism. We do not jump on every band wagon and promote it for all its worth because it is a good cause. Nor are we New Judaism like New Labour throwing away all we stood for just for popularity and new members.

We accept homosexuals for what they are, human beings created by God. We do not necessarily promote homosexuality. There is therefore no need to rewrite the prayer books for them and develop new synagogues for each pressure group for if this develops we will have not only have gay synagogues but synagogues for all minority groups. There will be women only synagogues. There will be synagogues for retired groups or synagogues for Manchester United supporters who feel it is an infringement on their civil liberties to have to wear a blue and white or black and white tallit. Dare I even suggest there may be a minority synagogue for Jews.

To ensure the continued unity of the Progressive movement and to ensure the continuing unity of Klal Yisrael we must seriously continue curbing our own enthusiasms for philosophical development to ensure the passing on of Judaism to future generations.

Do you have an article, letter or photos that you would like to share? Contact the editor on Hakoleditor@tlse.org.uk

Da house in St Albans where I was born, the youngest of three. When I was a toddler we returned to Hendon where my father ran a stationers and bookshop. Both my parents came from the West London Jewish community and met helping at Camperdown House in the East End. My family trees have been traced to arrivals in England from Holland in 1755 on my father’s side, including some of the more well known wealthy Jewish names. On my mother’s side relatives have also been traced back to arriving from Holland in 1690, and included a number of Orthodox Rabbis.

Despite all this ancestry, my upbringing was almost entirely non-religious. My parents never went to shul but my father continued to be involved with the Bread, Meat & Coal charity and the Jewish Blind Society. My mother lit Chanukah candles and sang a shortened version of the traditional song, and also lit a yahrzeit light for her father. My sister and I were sent to Alyth Gardens religion school but after only two visits she refused to go again, so I had no further Jewish education until I went to Hendon County, where there was a separate Jewish assembly for the third of the pupils who were Jewish. Something

must have hit the spot for me, despite the fact that many of the Jewish pupils were of the non-practising orthodox variety and not on my wave length.

I started attending Shabbat morning services at Alyth Gardens and persuaded my parents to employ a tutor who taught me basic Hebrew. On leaving school I spent a year working at the Bernhard Baron Settlement in Whitechapel, a huge eye opener for me. There followed two years at Exeter University studying Social Administration where, in the six strong Jewish Society, I met Michael and the start of a new beginning.

We married in 1967 at Winchmore Hill Reform Synagogue and moved out to St Albans, and we have been here ever since, moving twice within a mile radius. We joined Beds-Herts Synagogue, then based in St Albans, and the Jewish Young Marrieds, (now Jewish Womens’ Forum), and gradually got more involved, transferring to Hertsmere (TLSE) at the end of the seventies. During my time at TLSE I have served on Council, Membership Committee, edited Hakol and been a member of the singing group. I graduated from the Ba’alei Tefillah course in 2014 and can thus conduct services, and I am now involved with R&P, Lunch Club and Care & Welfare.

In my other life I have worked as a Social Worker, retiring about 9 years ago. I keep busy with volunteering as a school governor and by presenting the NSPCC Speak Out Stay Safe workshops in primary schools. Tennis, badminton and walking also keep me out of mischief and last but not least my family, Ben, his wife and his two children who live in Shenley, and Cathy, her partner and their little one who live in St Albans.

I have a lot to be thankful for and membership of a Liberal Synagogue has given me a sense identity and belonging for which I am grateful.

An aspiring Jewish actress from Austria, who escaped her Nazi arms dealer husband and rose to fame and fortune in Hollywood. She married six times and in her spare time was a self-taught scientist whose inventions would influence the development of GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth...to say the life of Hedy Lamarr was eventful would be a seismic understatement.

a name for herself. During that same year, 18 year old Lamarr met her first husband, a wealthy 33-year-old Austrian arms dealer and manufacturer called Friedrich Mandl. Lamarr’s Jewish parents, disapproved of the union mainly due to Mandl’s strong fascist views and ties with Mussolini and Hitler, both of whom were reported to have attended parties hosted by Mandl.

Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.

Hedy Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna. Her father a wealthy Jewish bank director and her mother a pianist from an upper-class Hungarian Jewish family. As a child, Lamarr showed an interest in acting and was fascinated by theatre and film. At the age of 12, she won a beauty contest in Vienna. She also began an interest in invention with her father, who would take her out on walks, explaining how technology functioned.

Lamarr began taking acting classes in Vienna in early 1933. At age 18, Lamarr was given the lead in the Czech movie Ecstasy. The film became both celebrated and notorious for showing Lamarr's close-up face in the throes of orgasm as well as brief nude scenes.

Pope Pius XII denounced the film, Hitler & America banned it, but the film gained worldwide recognition. Lamarr had made

Lamarr's marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both her husband and country in 1937. She disappeared to Paris before moving to London where she met Louis D Mayer, head of MGM who was scouting for talent in Europe. Mayer persuaded her to change her name to Hedy Lamarr and brought her to Hollywood in 1938 and began promoting her as the "world's most beautiful woman". Her features were so striking they were said to have inspired Walt Disney’s Snow White character created that year.

She eventually starred in twenty five films alongside Hollywood’s leading stars. Many of Lamarr's roles emphasized her beauty and sensuality while giving her relatively few lines. The lack of acting challenges bored Lamarr. She reportedly took up inventing to relieve her boredom.

However, she was never able to achieve a successful marriage. Lamarr was married and divorced six times and had three children.

Cecile B. DeMille cast her as the ultimate femme fatale, Delilah, in his film Samson and Delilah in 1949 and the film was to be Lamarr’s greatest box-office success. However, her follow-up movies

didn’t fare so well. Lamarr’s career went into decline and her final film appearance came in 1958. Her life had already been a rollercoaster ride and in retirement, the ride continued to show no signs of coming to an end.

By 1966 she divorced her sixth and last husband. A scandalous memoir of her life, entitled Ecstasy and Me, was also published that year in which the lurid details of her sex life had been written down for all to see. She also sued Mel Brooks for mocking her name in his film Blazing Saddles (1974). They settled out of court.

In recent years her legacy has been transformed and she’s now remembered more for her brains than for her looks. Lamarr was a great inventor. In between shoots, she would retire to her trailer and tinker with her inventions. She was a very gifted scientist and on top of that she was completely self-taught. Some who knew of Lamarr’s talents, included the eccentric aviation inventor Howard Hughes, a one-time flame of Lamarr’s.

Lamarr helped Hughes find a way to make his planes fly faster. She believed his current wing designs were too square, so she brought a couple books, one about birds and one about fish. She studied their anatomies and concluded that the wing shapes on Hughes’ planes needed to be more streamlined to help reduce drag. Hughes declared her a genius.

The true extent of Lamarr’s scientific talent was shown, although not fully appreciated, during the war. When Lamarr heard that 80 children had been killed after a German U-boat sank a passenger ship crossing the Atlantic, she became desperate to help the Allied cause. It didn’t take long for her to discover just how she was going to do that.

Lamarr worked with composer George Antheil to develop a new way to steer torpedoes. She had already discovered that radio-signals used to control torpedoes could be jammed by the Nazis,

making them miss their targets, and she wanted to come up with an unjammable alternative. The pair settled on a system that would randomly switch to different radio frequencies to get around jamming, known as frequency-hopping (FH) spread spectrum communication. It was controlled by a piano player mechanism of Antheil’s, meaning the system could switch between one of 88 different frequencies for each of the 88 black and white keys on a piano.

Lamarr and Antheil patented their invention in 1942, but although initially rejected it was classified by the US Navy as secret until 1981.The Navy returned to her idea in the 50s once the system could be developed electronically. By the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the technology had been fully embraced by the military. Her invention would go to become the foundation for secure telecommunications and would be used in the development of GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth. Our modern world would not function as it does without Lamarr’s invention.

Meanwhile, Lamarr’s patent expired before she ever saw a penny from her inventive genius which was yet to be recognized by the public. It wasn’t until Lamarr’s later years that she received several awards for her invention. Although she died in 2000, Lamarr was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014 for the development of her frequency hopping technology . Such achievement has led Lamarr to be dubbed “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.

TEAM TEAM

CARE TEAM MESSAGE:

Your Care Team hopes that the coming Year will be a good one. It’s interesting to note that currently we stay in contact with over 40 members within TLSE. As you know, we support the Lunch Club and provide transport for those requiring it. We have also helped members with long time care issues, helping with visits to medical appointments as well as collecting prescriptions. We know from your feedback that our phone calls are appreciated and as the old saying goes, IT’S GOOD TO TALK!!!

We would like to extend very many happy Birthday wishes to our members who are enjoying a SPECIAL birthday this year in 2023.... not wishing to embarrass anyone - we all look so much younger than our real age these days, But you know who you are, and we send warmest congrats!

We are delighted to have the support of Rabbi Gershon and really appreciate His input ..... it's just what we need for our members needing pastoral care and it's a pleasure to have him on board.

We’re hoping to extend the members who currently work on The Care Team and if you have a little spare time and would like to join us, do please get in touch. We extend sincere GET WELL WISHES to those in our Community who are currently feeling unwell or awaiting surgery - please let us know if we can help you in any way.

Remember. CARING IS SHARINGbest wishes from us all Tina, Penny, Peter, Barbara, Carole, Pat

Maureen Adams

Estelle Leigh 07961 075657 07754 654297

BURIAL

In cases of bereavement, please contact our Burial Officer, Joan Shopper, on 01582 792959

howing the range of Voluntary Activities required to run TLSE.

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Mitzvah Day at the Hub was a huge success. The children, teachers and parents spent the morning making cakes and gingerbread people for the Borehamwood food bank as well as a large batch of vegetable soup made from the fresh vegetable donations.

The morning began with a talk from Penny Beral who volunteers at the Foodbank and a discussion about why what we are doing is so important.

Then everyone got baking and as you can see everything looked delicious. The Hub have also been collecting dried goods and tinned food as well as festive treats for the Foodbank and we had a huge collection to deliver.

Our Hub children set us all a huge example on how to perform a mitzvah and we are again exceptionally proud of them all! Let's not stop now. Please keep bringing your donations to TLSE.

The TLSE Community is looking for a volunteer to work with Julius Kosky to learn and acquire the skills to produce our greatly loved leaves that are prepared for attachment to the ‘Tree of Life’, that is such a prominent feature in our Sanctuary .

If you have some basic practical skills and are interested in becoming involved in such a worthy exercise please message Mike Rebak on 07802 86 5252 or email mike.rebak@gmail.com or, of course, communicate via the TLSE Office with your full contact details.’

Thanks

TLSE has had some involvement with the Borehamwood Foodbank, part of the Trussell Trust Charity since it started. 2023 celebrates its 10-year anniversary. Sue Woolf was the first person to get involved in the project and I started volunteering in January 2014. I immediately got involved with cooking for Family Lunches which were run every half term and end of term. In addition to this I started volunteering every Monday afternoon in the distribution area, meeting clients, and giving out packs of food. Then, we had time to talk to clients have a cup of tea and a biscuit and see if there were areas we could help.

As the years have gone on the numbers have increased enormously and we barely have time to say hello because of the queues of clients needing extra food to feed themselves and their families. The contribution that TLSE has given the Foodbank over many years is invaluable.

There is a misconception that anyone using the foodbank is poor, out of work and on benefit, this is far from the truth. Many of our clients are on low paid jobs and struggle to give their families a healthy nutritious meal or have enough money for Gas and Electricity. Borehamwood is lucky to be in an area where the Foodbank

is well supported by local Supermarkets and very generous people donating food and money to allow the Charity to Feed our clients. A recent innovation introduced to guarantee no one goes hungry. A small group of volunteers come together on a Monday morning and cook in the Church Kitchen, we then portion the food and either give it out in the afternoon session or freeze for another day. It is proving to be very popular. The Cooking Crew are a small band of enthusiastic cooks working under my supervision. Typically, we make, Soup, Meatballs, Bolognaise, Chicken Curry, Apple Muffins, Chocolate Chip Muffins, Bread Pudding, and anything else that is easy to box up and will travel home safely.

A huge thanks to TLSE for your continued support of the Borehamwood Foodbank.

Elstree High Street, Elstree, Hertfordshire WD6 3EY Phone: 020 8953 8889 Email: office@tlse.org.uk www.tlse.org.uk

Edited by Terry Benson

Would all those involved in arranging functions services or meetings, please contact the office on 0208 953 8889 or office@tlse.org.uk so that the event can be scheduled in the Synagogue diary. This ensures that any physical set-ups in the Synagogue are arranged and that meetings do not conflict.

If you need to talk to Jacqueline Bernard in the office, please note that she is mostly working from at home so it is better to email her at office@tlse.org.uk and she will respond.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure that details printed in Hakol are correct, no responsibility can be accepted for information misprinted or incorrectly given to the Editor. Please let the Editor know of any errors or corrections. The Editor reserves the right to edit material submitted for publication.

The deadline for submissions to the next edition of Hakol is Monday 1st February 2023 but submissions will be accepted at any time and early submission is appreciated.

hakoleditor@tlse.org.uk

020 8449 6688 www.brunswickpress.co.uk