Bouncing Back and Forward

say that the author does not know much about the history of Auschwitz. This book, however, tells a story of a real person, his real tragic experiences, and this puts much more responsibility on a person who tells this story to the world.

“The number of different errors in the book - not only in simple basic facts but also in the depiction of the reality of Auschwitz - can sometimes create more confusion than understanding. It turns a real story into an interpretation - very moving and emotional - that however blurs the authenticity of this true experience. We believe that the survivor’s story deserved better”.

Perhaps read it and judge for yourself?

Stefan Reif’s autobiography Bouncing Back –and Forward is scheduled for publication in January 2021 by Vallentine, Mitchell in London. He has kindly supplied a brief preview, from part of chapter 16,

“Meanwhile at Home (1973–84)”

The plan is to have at least one launch in Cambridge and the publisher has agreed to offer a significant discount on copies sold at such a launch. Sabbaths and Festivals in Cambridge, in the 1970s The Cambridge Jewish community had been a strong one in the 1940s, with numerous refugees arriving from Hitler’s Europe–and indeed from evacuated London colleges–to bolster the small number of local observant students. By the time that we arrived in 1973 the tally of observant congregants was not an impressive one. That same summer, another family, Ron and Thelma Domb and their daughters, Dassa and Debora, came from Liverpool. Ron opened a local dental surgery and Thelma was a professional teacher of what was once called domestic science or home economics; I cannot recall what its more politically correct name was by that time. The girls functioned as leaders of a little

local Bnei Akiva for our children, Tanya and Aryeh, and a few others. Ros and Barry Landy had been stalwarts of the Orthodox community for many years and they had at one point sent their boys, Aron, David and Joshua to the Jewish boarding school, Carmel College, that had been established by Rabbi Dr Kopul Rosen just after the Second World War and was by then in Wallingford, near Oxford. For the first few years, all three families tended to go to their families in London to spend the most important of the Jewish festivals in a more intensive Jewish atmosphere. This was primarily because there was no minyan in Cambridge for the second (extra) day of the festivals, and also because on the important days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur a cantor would be brought in and would provide the kind of rather clinical–even heartless–service that none of us three families particularly enjoyed. Not that we so much enjoyed visiting the Stekels (Shulie’s family) in London either. The children were not that happy away from their own rooms, did not much care for the rich and elegant Viennese cuisine that their grandmother always prepared, and found their grandfather’s humour and constant ribbing a little disconcerting. While once sitting in synagogue next to his Grandpa, Aryeh was asked what he thought that the initials MS stood for on Muni’s cufflinks. Without hesitation he answered not Meir or Muni Stekel but ‘Mr Shlemiel’! To his credit, Muni was highly amused and not at all cross, taking great pride in repeating the story to his synagogal colleagues. We therefore soon resolved à trois that we would all stay for the ḥaggim in Cambridge and that we would lead the services ourselves. This was greatly appreciated by all and the little community of observant families grew with the addition (at various points of time) of the Blaukopfs, the Fagelstons, the Romms and the Rosemans, and the arrival of some of my researchers from the Unit, as well as the Freedmans, younger Landy cousins, the Schechters, and the Stones. Other couples, such as Brendel and Charles Lang, and Ruth and Haskell Isaacs, even if less strictly Orthodox, joined our festival services and seemed to derive pleasure at the manner in which they were conducted. Barry Landy, Lawrence Freedman, Paul Fenton and I took it in turns to lead the prayers and Ron Domb sounded the shofar.

When Barry’s father, Harry, and his brother-in-law were in legal trouble over their late father-in-law’s bank management, many of his own Page 37

community abandoned him and he was no longer invited to blow the shofar for them. Having experienced in the case of Muni Stekel how those who are close to you when things are going well turn away when there are financial difficulties, I felt that Harry should be supported. Ron kindly allowed Harry to replace him as shofar-blower while Ron himself efficiently ran the whole show as the gabbay. There were a number of very distinguished academics in the congregation, among them, Alan and Marilyn Fersht, David and Hanna Tabor, Erwin and Elisabeth Rosenthal, Norman and Tirza Bleehen, Eli Lauterpacht and his mother Lady Rachel, Charles Levene, and Michael and Jeanette Pepper. At one stage, there were in excess of a dozen observant families and we were able to ensure a minyan on all the necessary occasions. This meant that Tanya and Aryeh could enjoy a familiar enough experience of traditional Jewish Sabbaths and festivals that would make it possible for them to participate without difficulty in the Jewish communities that they entered when they themselves grew up and established families and lifestyles of their own. The Dombs, Landys and Reifs became, and have long since remained, close friends. I began to lead a regular Talmud lesson in my home in 1974 and we covered many tractates in the course of my decades in Cambridge. The tradition has continued until the present (now via Zoom every Wednesday evening!). One such Cambridge Jewish experience was remarkable enough to warrant here the rehearsal of some details. The final day of all the autumnal festivals is Simḥat Torah. While there were eight days in the festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles) in Israel in the early Middle Ages, there were nine in the Diaspora and the last one needed to acquire an identity of its own. It was given such an identity in Babylonia in or about the eighth century. Since the Diaspora custom was to conclude the annual cycle of pentateuchal readings with Deuteronomy chapter 34 and to begin the cycle again on that same day with the reading of Genesis chapter 1, a celebration was created around that synagogal event. Dancing with the Torah, the singing of special hymns, and the calling to the Torah reading of every male present in the synagogue (instead of just five, six or seven as on other Sabbaths and festivals) became characteristics of the day.

On one such Simḥat Torah in the mid-to-late 1970s, the Landys, on their way home from synagogue, “invaded” our home just as we were about to eat, and were of course invited to share lunch with us. We then all went back to their house for some cake and fruit and walked on to the Dombs, ready for afternoon tea. Neither Shulie nor Thelma were ever nonplussed by such unexpected arrivals at meal-times. It was all such a wonderful success that it became an annual event. Shulie made the traditional holoptches (cabbage stuffed with chopped meat) and kigel (baked potato pie) and the other courses were provided by the Landys and Dombs, and then in later years by others too. I should also have mentioned that imbibing lots of strong drink is another feature of that festival and we piously practised that tradition with great enthusiasm. In fact, some of the younger generation learned how not to drink alcohol when they attempted to follow their parents’ example and suffered inevitably unpleasant consequences. When, one year, the number of luncheon guests reached nearly sixty, Shulie and I decided that in future it would be the turn of others to provide the festive fare. Some of them duly did so in later years, but (for me at any rate) some of the original magic seemed to get lost along the way. But then in 1979 there occurred an ideological clash… The Founding of the CTJC The growth in the number of Orthodox Jewish families was bound ultimately to lead to a clash with the more established, less committed and larger numbers of local Jews who, while acknowledging their Jewishness, preferred a somewhat lower profile for its expression. They were in many ways more typical of the Anglo-Jewish communities of the day than we more Orthodox families were. They were represented by the Cambridge Jewish Residents’ Association (CJRA), while the students who used the synagogue in Thompson’s Lane (opposite the Master’s Lodge of St John’s), where we held Orthodox services, were the Cambridge University Jewish Society (CUJS). Almost all the local Jewish families were members of the CJRA at that time and it ran the usual kind of Sunday morning Hebrew and Jewish classes for its children.

Ramon Phillips was an excellent teacher who was a Reform Jew and who, with a number of others, had been involved in promoting that

brand of Jewishness in Cambridge since 1976. Given their majority in that body, the less religiously committed in the CJRA saw no problem in 1979 in offering him the post of headmaster of its Sunday classes while we Orthodox families preferred to have someone who was more traditional in doctrine and practice. They would not heed our strong objections and were determined to press ahead with his appointment. We warned them that if they did so we would resign our memberships and form our own Orthodox organization. They either did not believe us, or did not care, because they went ahead with their plan and we therefore felt obliged to implement our own. With the help of professional friends in London we drew up a Trust Deed and laid down a constitution for a newly created Cambridge Traditional Jewish Congregation (CTJC). We avoided the word Orthodox because we felt the need to demonstrate a greater degree of openmindedness than was (and is) common among some Orthodox communities. In making our legal plans, and in our discussions with the lawyer who assisted us, we were aware that there might at some future date be a group of members who would wish to revert to the kind of wishy-washy Jewishness –as we saw it–out of which we had just voted ourselves. We therefore built in safeguards to our ideals and observance by making the religious practice acceptable to the Orthodox Chief Rabbi in London and ensuring that all decisions were to be made by the Trustees and not by any electoral process. If members wished to have an organization more like the CJRA they could always return to that body and not opt to turn the CTJC into such an organization. It later proved to be a wise and prescient precaution. With some fifty members, we had a most active and successful existence throughout the years now being discussed, beginning with our formal foundation in 1979. With regard to the synagogue in Thompson’s Lane, which was under the control of the CUJS, we drew up an agreement with them and with the CJRA by which we all contributed to the running costs, given that we were all making use of the students’ building for our services. The Reform group created its own congregation in 1981 and eventually moved into its own premises in Auckland Road in 2015, by which time we were all on affable terms with each other. The Orthodox services of those years were well attended, efficiently run, especially outside term-time when the CTJC

took control. The CUJS’s level of competence varied from student generation to generation, at times reaching admirable levels and at others leaving us more than a little frustrated, and even cross. But it was their building. On the social side, we were also successful. We organized lectures and debates, quiz evenings, plays (directed by Vic Fagelston), roulette evenings around Purim (usually won by Mrs Priscilla Gee), rambles in the countryside during the Pesacḥ holiday (led by Barry Landy), football games of indeterminate numbers out of doors and five-aside indoors, table tennis competitions and cricket matches. We also produced a bulletin a few times each year in which news of our activities and more general Jewish content were included. In response to an appeal from some couples for a greater degree of democracy, we delegated the day-to-day running of the Congregation to the elected officers and committee, and allowed the committee its own bank account, always on condition, as laid down in our Trust Deed, that the Trustees would approve the accounts and activities at their annual meetings. It was, after all, the Trust that was responsible to the Charity Commissioners, and the Trustees therefore took their job very seriously. Most of the children of the enthusiastic CTJC members of those early days eventually went off to live in larger Jewish communities where they became active members. I appreciate that there were those who resented what amounted to the CTJC’s unilateral declaration of independence but I feel strongly that it gave us and our children (as well as visiting Orthodox families) a warm and lively traditional Jewish atmosphere in shul and in our homes that served well to combat the assimilationist trends that were all around us.

See “Seeds of collapse”, p52