CTJC magazine
Pesach
Nisan 5782 April 2022
CTJC Cambridge Traditional Jewish Congregation Magazine number 133
Contents Jo’s jottings .............................................................................................. 3 From the Editor........................................................................................ 5 Subscriptions and donations ................................................................... 6 Community news ..................................................................................... 8 Some thoughts about matzah ................................................................. 9 Insiders/Outsiders ................................................................................. 11 Building an ark: the intersection of woodcraft and religion.................. 12 Manx musings ........................................................................................ 19 The Island of Extraordinary Captives ..................................................... 24 Through the Language Glass ................................................................. 26 Pesach reminiscences ............................................................................ 29 From the children .................................................................................. 31 Festival calendar 5782, 2022 ................................................................. 32 Views expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent the views of the Editor, nor of the Committee of the CTJC
Cover painting by Béa Langley, aged 10
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Jo’s jottings From the Chair Jo Landy Welcome to the Pesach edition of the CTJC magazine. Another Pesach, but this year without a lockdown (please G-d)! COVID rates are very high, but in the UK life appears to be returning to a form of normal. Over the past few months it has been lovely to see a few familiar faces returning to Shul. It is appreciated that people are adapting to the “new normal” at different rates. And, given the law and societal pressures we are doing our best to create an environment where as many as possible are able to be comfortable. Mask wearing in shul is encouraged. There is enough space for people to distance themselves from the rest of the congregation, windows remain open to maximise air circulation, and a number of people are continuing to daven outside. Our Purim megillah reading promised to be pre-pandemic normal. However, Yoav fell victim to COVID. His Mad Hatter replacement didn’t manage quite as many different voices, but the atmosphere was lovely and it was great to see so many children enjoying themselves. On the subject of the Mad Hatter we are very sorry that Elazar, Alissa, and Telem will be departing for Israel in the Summer. It is so sad that their period as Chaplains has been marred by COVID. It has been a pleasure having them in Cambridge and I am sure that everybody will join me in wishing them every success in the future. For those of you worried about obtaining Pesach supplies, please remember Sainsbury’s Coldhams Lane have a selection of products, Derby Stores will bring things up to order and that Midan has started to stock foods too. In addition to this https://www.justkosher.co.uk, https://passover.b-kosher.co.uk/ and www.sabeny.com will deliver to Cambridge. There is no new news about plans for the proposed Jewish Centre. Discussions are continuing between planners and architects. Page 3
The next CTJC AGM will be held on Monday 4 July at 8pm. The Committee thought that it would be convenient to continue to use Zoom. Lastly, thank you to those individuals who provide services and this magazine. It has been particularly hard for Ben Blaukopf and Sarah Schechter who have had seriously ill family members. We wish Abi and Arie רפואה שלימה. Wishing you all פסח שמח.
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From the Editor Jane Liddell-King One of the pleasures of editing this magazine is reading the contributions as they arrive. The final paragraph of Jo’s evocative piece on the Isle of Man surely touches us all as we prepare for the Seder and to ponder the meaning of freedom. Having been born in the wake of the Second World War and brought up in a family of pogrom survivors who escaped on Russian passports, and having friends and neighbours who were Holocaust survivors, I wonder whether social justice can ever be achieved. What is the fatal attraction of power which dispenses with responsibility and justifies the slaughter of children? Targeting a TV tower on 1 March, the Russians damaged the Babi Yar memorial site. But can we draw encouragement from Yevtushenko’s determined empathy with the victims of Babi Yar in his remarkable poem of 1961 written in protest against the Soviet Union’s refusal to recognise the site as the place of the mass murder of 33 000 Jews? Can we feel inspired by Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony which makes reference to that poem? Perhaps, in search of hope, we can revisit Chagall, writing on 6 June, 1967, in the Tel Aviv Yiddish journal, Die Goldene Keyt: I have always painted pictures where human love floods my colours. Day and night I dreamed that something would change in the souls and relations of people … We now stand before the great trial of the soul: will all dear visions and ideals of human world culture of two thousand years be blown away in the wind?
Chagall had witnessed pogroms, the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust, and the 1967 war which he felt threated the very existence of the state of Israel. He continues: I have always thought that, without human or biblical feelings in your heart, life has no value.
Surely the mitzvah to assert the value of life informs Pesach. חג פסח שמח Page 5
Subscriptions and donations 2021/2022 Members are reminded that their subscriptions for the coming year are now due, together with the Board of Deputies levy (£30 which should be paid to each body of which you are a member), the levy to the Chief Rabbi’s Office (£8 which should be paid by each male member), and any donations to the UJIA, the CTJC, or the Cambridge Chaplaincy that you wish to make. Donations to the Community Rabbi Fund will be used to support our promise to contribute to our Rabbi’s activities. The subscription fees for 2021/2022, as agreed at the AGM, are: Full family
£208.00
Associate family
£140.00
Full single
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These fees may be varied to suit individual circumstances; the Treasurer will be pleased to be consulted confidentially. Visitors for whom membership is not appropriate are invited to make a donation. The subscription should preferably be paid by direct bank transfer to sort code 20-17-19 account 20199192, in which case please send an explanatory email to the treasurer at treasurer@ctjc.org.uk. Alternatively send a cheque, payable to CTJC, together with this slip indicating how much is being paid in each category, to:
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Name Address
Subscription Community Rabbi Fund donation CTJC donation Board of Deputies Chief Rabbi’s Office UJIA donation Chaplaincy donation Total
CTJC is a registered charity, number 282849. Payment from tax paid income can be made by means of Gift Aid, which will enable the CTJC to recover the tax paid. A suitable declaration is available from the Secretary at secretary@ctjc.org.uk.
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Community news מזל טוב
Congratulations
To Sarah and Arie Schechter on the birth of Raya, daughter to Yali & Debs and sister for Ayana and Elijah To Lauren and Jonathan Allin, on the birth of Imogen Sarah, daughter to Victoria & David and sister to Theo, and on the birth of Zeb Kit, son to Benjamin & Jess and brother to Pippin Howard
Refuah shlema
רפואה שלימה
B"H Abigail Blaukopf continues to recover faster and more completely than might have been expected. We wish Abigail a refuah shlemah. We wish Arie Schechter a full recovery.
Please do get in touch with the Editor if you have news you would like to share
Cambridge Jewish community support Now that we are gradually relaxing the COVID rules and meeting in person again, if anyone requires welfare advice, assistance, or even just friendly company, do please get in touch. We have a number of volunteers that would only be too pleased to help. Wishing you an enjoyable Passover. Jackie Rogger, 01763 260809 Valerie Berkson, 01223 844503
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Some thoughts about matzah Rabbi Reuven Leigh Even though we label the festival of Pesach as “The Festival of Matzot”, and the Torah associates the seven (or eight) days of Pesach with the eating of Matzah many times, the Talmud (BT Pesachim 120a) explains that Matzah is required only for the Seder night, and for the rest of the festival it is an optional extra. Not so much that you should eat Matzah, but rather if you want to eat bread, eat only the Matzah variety. Moreover, the Talmud derives the obligation to eat Matzah on the Seder night from the verse that requires the Korban Pesach to be eaten together with Matza and Maror (Bamidbar 9:11). One sage suggests that after the destruction of the Temple and the inability to bring a Korban Pesach, there is no longer a Biblical obligation to eat Matzah and it is maintained as a Rabbinic enactment (just like Maror). However, the dominant opinion is that Matzah on Seder night remains a Biblical commandment even after the destruction of the Temple because of the additional verse: “in the evening they shall eat matzot” (Shemot 12:18). This distinction between the obligatory Matzah of Seder night and the optional Matzah of the rest of Pesach gives rise to an interesting dispute. The verse instructs us: “And you shall watch over the Matzot” (Shemot 12:17) which the Talmud explains to mean that one must “guard” the flour from the moment it comes in contact with water and prevent it from rising (BT Pesachim 40a). This was the original meaning of the term “Shmurah Matzah” which was later expanded to include guarding from the time of grinding the wheat and then further expanded to include guarding from the time of harvesting the wheat. Some authorities ruled that Shmurah Matzah is necessary only for the obligatory Matzah of the Seder night and one can make use of what they termed “Matzah Peshutah” for the rest of Pesach. In contrast, other authorities maintained that the requirement for Shmurah Matzah applies for the whole of the festival. From the above we see that everyone agrees that one should use Shmurah Matzah for the Seder night and for that reason, many people Page 9
make the extra effort to obtain Matzah for the seder night with the highest specifications. One aspect of guarding the Matzah is that it requires a focused attention on all the details of the Matzah baking process. Consequently, when in 1838, Mr Isaac Singer introduced the use of a machine to roll out the dough to replace the traditional hand held rolling pins, the great halachik authorities of the day argued over the permissibility of the machine and whether it could be a substitute for human consciousness. Whilst many reliable authorities approved the Shmurah status of the machine made Matza, many others rejected these Matzot for use on Seder night. As an aside, Mr Singer’s original machine Matzot were round. After the rolling machine flattened the dough, circles would be cut out for baking. In 1912, Manischevitz produced the first square Matzot and in 1942, as part of the ‘V for Victory’ movement of the Second World War, a V-shaped Matzah was produced. As many of you will no doubt know, I am a strong advocate for handmade Shmurah Matzah, and especially for the Seder night. This year I will be distributing Matzah from Ukraine which has been successfully transported across the border, and which I will be honoured to provide for you for your Seder. Those Ukrainians and their Matzah can teach us a thing or two about the quest for freedom.
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Insiders/Outsiders Refugees from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British Visual Culture 29 May 2022 6pm 3 Thompsons Lane, Cambridge
Joel Herman: Refugees, c1941. Copyright Joseph Herman Estate With kind permission Ben Uri collection
A talk by Monica Bohm-Duchen Despite the traumatic nature of their dislocation and the obstacles they often encountered on arrival in the UK, those who fled here from Nazidominated Europe in the 1930s and 1940s made a deep, pervasive and long-lasting contribution to British culture. Focussing on the visual arts, this illustrated lecture will examine the nature of this contribution, embracing not only household names such as Ernst Gombrich, Oskar Kokoschka, Kurt Schwitters and John Heartfield, but also lesserknown figures such as Josef Herman, Milein Cosman and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky. Monica is the founding director of the Insiders/Outsiders Festival (www.insidersoutsidersfestival.org) and contributing editor of the companion volume (Insiders/Outsiders – Lund Humphries) Page 11
Building an ark: the intersection of woodcraft and religion Tim Goldrein Yes: I did build an ark. Yes: I built the Ark for Barry Landy. No: This wasn’t some survivalist scheme of Barry’s to escape the local effects of climate change. Many of you will know Barry has a Sefer Torah of his own: we used it at our last shabbaton, for example. For a long time, it has been kept in a velvet-covered silklined cardboard box that was beginning to show its age in a serious way. Early in lockdown and knowing my interest in various aspects of woodwork, he asked me if I could build him a wooden aron kodesh to replace the carboard box, and as I am partial to new challenges, of course I agreed. We planned a phone call to consider our options, and I did some Internet research to see what others had made. There was lots of inspiration for arks for shuls, but exactly none for a porta-aron. We came up with a design that was to be:
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• • • • •
an upholstered wooden box a fold-down flap that would be a crown when extended, but would latch the sefer into the box when folded down some legs or feet to give it a slight backwards tilt when in use a clean exterior with nothing to catch on anything if, for example, in the back of the car a main body of oak, with features of contrasting beech
I went away and did some modelling in the computer and came up with this:
With Barry’s assent, I ordered some wood, and began to realise I wasn’t just making a wooden box, but an aron kodesh, with “holy” in the name. Whatever I made would become a holy object, once I handed it over for its destined purpose. What’s more, it had to be durable. Really durable! I mused that, to a first approximation, Sifrei Torah last forever.
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If I made a box as I might otherwise knock out in an evening, it would be held together with wood-glue. I’m a reasonable joiner, I wouldn’t have used nails or screws, but glue doesn’t last forever. Think of all the wooden chairs you have sat on where the joints have started to come apart. A decade? Yes. Two? Probably. Three? Not so sure. All the joinery techniques I’ve used have relied on glue. Mortice & tenon joinery (even pinned ones), half laps, finger joints, mitre joints, dowels, biscuits, dominoes, even dovetails, all need glue to hold them together. Foxed tenons, on the other hand, don’t. Foxed (or wedged) tenons are similar to mortice & tenon joints, where one piece of wood (the tenon) projects into a hole (mortice) in another, but wedges driven into the ends of the tenon spread it out so that nothing at all can ever pull them apart. Once the wedges are hammered home, there’s no way of disassembling the joint without destroying it totally.
I had seen and admired these joints, because they can look very decorative, but I’d never made any, so I did some experiments, and found I could make a reasonable fist of them. Here’s an early test:
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Three planks of wood arrived, and I sawed them in half so I could open them like a book and the doors and the back panel halves would be near mirror-images of each other. Stopped grooves would hold the back panel in, and a curve-cutting jig would enable me to make the flap. The flap was hinged on wooden dowels in a dry test assembly and it became obvious that these dowels would become the next points of failure. I replaced the wooden dowels with brass rod, and once again, I could imagine it becoming heirloom joinery. Before any final assembly could happen, all the hardware needed to be installed. Concealed brass hinges, a mortice lock in the righthand door, and a brass bolt for the left-hand door all needed routing, chiselling, sanding, and massaging to fit, but they were easy compared with the door handles. Remember the need for a clean outside with nothing to catch on anything? Conventional handles couldn’t work – something recessed was required. The plan was to rout a Magen David in the front, using a drawer-pull cutter. The edge of the star would be Page 15
undercut to give purchase for fingers. Then I decided to decorate it with a brass inlay. Again, I’d never inlaid any brass before, so there was a long period of practice, jig-making, cutting and polishing before these brass accents could be glued in place. While I was at it, I made a circular brass escutcheon for the keyhole, and this made the keyhole blend with the style of the rest of the hardware. Another dry fit was encouraging. Now the nerves began to set in. The fold-out foot in the original plan was abandoned because it wouldn’t balance that way. Instead, two feet, one slightly longer than the other made it tilt back. It was time for a last sanding, many layers of varnish, and final assembly, including the irreversible setting of the wedges in the tenons. The end was in sight. A few samples of cloth later, Barry had chosen the material for upholstering the foam pads. With Helen’s help in sewing, the Ark finally began to come together, and once again, I needed to borrow the sefer to make sure everything fitted just right. It turned out, pads weren’t needed on the doors, which looked much nicer anyway, and as a final touch, I turned a couple of key fobs from offcuts of the beech and oak.
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Finally installed in Barry’s lounge, I think the ark I built sits nicely. Luckily, Barry agrees. There’s just a few things left to add. Firstly, Barry was an almost perfect “client”. He paid for all the materials unquestioningly, and gave me all the latitude I needed to make important choices. Equally, I was able to give him many of the aesthetic choices, so I hope it makes it feel as if it’s his own. He was very tolerant of the ages it took me to get from start to finish, nearly a year of evenings and Sundays here and there, and I’m grateful for that too. Page 17
Secondly, it was a privilege to take on a “commission” like this. It became an opportunity to build an heirloom and an item of sacred ritual. It was a special feeling to be creating something with such complex attributes, both practical and emotional. And of course, it was an opportunity to learn and practice many skills, new and old. I don’t have a boat to escape the next floods, but I don’t feel any the worse for that!
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Manx musings Jo Landy The Isle of Man is for me, littered with childhood memories. My maternal grandparents moved there when I was a child. They were part a ghetto of three Jewish retired seniors on Howe Road, Onchan. I recall faded elegance, sodden walks, clambering over rocks by the beach, the Venus fly traps in my grandfather’s conservatory and rockhard Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot were my grandmother’s signature dish but she was not a good cook. We always had to remember to clear the biscuit tin of her previous output when she came to the mainland to visit. Much of the Island feels as though it is stuck in a 1950’s time warp. A sensation strengthened for summer tourists by its Victorian systems of transport: horse drawn and electric trams and a steam railway (this engine was one which inspired Rev W Awdry’s Thomas The Tank Engine stories). We went to the Isle of Man with a Jewish Renaissance group to learn about the internment of enemy aliens in two World Wars. The island has not changed much in 80 year, which makes it easier to look at long rows of hotels and boarding houses and imagine the barbed wire fences that once encircled Sodor lives on them from other parts of Ramsay, Onchan, Douglas, Port Erin and Port St Mary. Especially after reading the words to a song:
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The seagulls are in a curious mood Maybe they are getting too much food One thing they all very much deplore Is the barbed wire that grows up the shore So in the seagull parliament There was a great debate on that end And many of them then did enquire Why are humans behind the wire. This song was part of “Central” camp’s review What a Life. The review was based upon tableau of their daily lives. It was one many public performances by internees from different camps at the Palace Theatre and other venues around the Island. What a Life was created by the inmates, from scratch, in two weeks. The tight schedule was a result of squeezing themselves in before another camp’s performing Italians. That contingent included Italian sailors who were in the UK because Mussolini had not thought to inform his Merchant Navy that he was about to declare war on the UK. German speaking 1Illustration for a programme Central Camp had a wealth of talent to draw upon. Inmates included Ferdinand Rauter whose world-renowned performances included Yiddish songs. When his group was invited to perform in Nazi Germany, but were told to Page 20
omit non-Aryan songs, their response was that they were booked out until the end of the Third Reich. The overriding impression I have of this section of Jewish history is the Kafkaesque nature of those suffering from a policy that appeared to be triggered by frenzy. A policy that almost had ramifications for Cambridge finals. An interned law professor was detained with the only key to the desk that contained final examination papers. The experience of those passing through this ordeal was often influenced by the philosophy of officers in charge. At Wrath Mills, an insanitary transit camp in Manchester, bags were not only checked, but items of value, even stethoscopes, were pocketed by soldiers carrying out initial inspections. The incident resulted in the officer in charge being court-marshalled. Ideology created problems within the Women’s camp. This, unlike the men’s camp, was under civilian administration. Dame Joanna Cruickshank was a former Matron-in-Chief of the RAF Nursing Service and British Red Cross. A formidable organiser, her attitudes towards those under her administration were probably born of her colonial experiences. Having organised the billeting and support structure (including food distribution, medical facilities, and schooling) for roughly 3,000 internees, Dame Cruickshank decided that all internees should coexist peacefully. Simon Parkin, author of The Island of Extraordinary Captives (reviewed elsewhere in this magazine), noted concern that German nationals and Jewish refugees should not be billeted together. She responded “You are all enemy aliens, and that is the end of it”. Thus, Jewish women were forced to share houses and even beds with fervent anti-Semites. In the last few years there has been work by Manx individuals to record and publicise internment history. In 2011 work began to utilise part of Patrick Old School to tell the story of families impacted by civilian internment in WW I. The building along with Patrick’s Cemetery (in which two Jewish internees are buried) is across the road from the site
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of the camp established on Knockaloe Moar Farm. The school is now a museum. At its height, this camp housed over 22,000 internees in seven compounds, in wooden barracks. As with later camps WW II camps, it was run by internees as autonomous units. Educational and cultural programmes enabled many to access educational opportunities for the first time. This created a socialist environment where all structures of society coexisted. This was not the case for all. Unlike their WW II counterparts the wealthy could pay for better accommodation within Knockaloe. Near Douglas, a disused holiday camp housed those able to afford privileges, including a dining room providing silver service. The Douglas holiday camp also had a kosher kitchen (but not silver service). The museum provided sensitive social and political context. Seven interested locals in the Island’s South have researched the history of a camp used to intern women and children and then families. Local interviews led to the discovery of documentation, including registration forms preserved by a local police officer (against directions). They have published a book, Friend or Foe?, which contains accounts of some of the tensions faced Page 22
by locals housing internees. One of the authors spoke of how one family felt intimidated when they found a swastika drawn in the condensation on their bathroom mirror. Two of the authors said that the provision of one Guinea per week internee per week saved their families from destitution. Many of our group had relatives who had been interned on the Island. One member had been there as a four-year-old. Some of the group were able to find new information about their relatives from the Manx Museum’s Archives. It was an especially resonant trip because difficult decisions made before 1939 are being echoed in Ukraine. A member of the group told me of current traumas faced by the Jewish and wider population in Zaparozhye. Apparently Rabbi Ehrentreu has been encouraging people to go to the relative safety of the Carpathian mountains. However, from the end of March, men of fighting age are being forcibly conscripted as they pass through check points as people head west. A difficult decision for any family has just been made so much more complicated. One can only hope and pray that the aggression causing such devastation, turmoil, and upset ends quickly.
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The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin reviewed by Julian Landy When you are young everything seems at once possible and scary. The future is all there to play for even if it seems uncertain. When you get older, life seems fixed and predictable. You know who and what you are and where you are going. Yet, whatever your age, war is totally discombobulating, driving falsehoods, promoting insanity, exploiting ignorance, and dividing siblings and friends. “The Island of Extraordinary Captives” by Simon Parkin is entirely fact based and tells the story of the use of the Isle of Man as the location of internment camps in World War II. Parkin draws on survivors’ stories and his own scrupulous research. The result reads like a thriller. AS we know, the stated intention of our wartime leaders was to put socalled “fifth columnists” out of circulation. The vast majority of those interned were Jews. Some were new arrivals, many merely youths. Some had lived in UK for years, but were not naturalised. All were angry, frustrated, and kept in ignorance of how their futures would develop. Moreover, they were a genuinely mixed bunch, including Nazis or fascist sympathisers, as well as distinguished people who had worked in government and academia, some in Cambridge. Page 24
The writer starts by telling the background story of one particular young man who, for a variety of causes, is orphaned and homeless. He comes to the UK on the Kindertransport and, after various weird and unpleasant experiences, is interned. Later, we are told of the reality of everyday life in one particular camp, called Hutchinson: a place for men only. Initially, the experience of adaptation proves hard for both the inmates and those running the camp. Eventually, the residents organise themselves and a vast variety of activities begin. Effectively, the camp becomes an open university. The one essential qualification is that you must be an internee. Of course, no degrees were awarded. Yet people were enabled both to teach what they knew and to learn what they did not know: a cathartic experience in the most peculiar of situations. This is a book to treasure. It is well written, with no digressions or excessive detail often found in academic volumes. It has voluminous notes at the end of the book. Frankly, this is such a great read, both gripping and enlightening, that the notes, while interesting, are almost superfluous. As I write, another dictator is laying waste to eastern Europe. This book provides a welcome story of hope amid the ruins: I hold fast to it.
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Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher reviewed by Jonathan Allin Guy Deutscher is an honorary Research Fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics, and Cultures in the University of Manchester. He is an Israeli linguist, born 1969 in Tel Aviv. He received an undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, then earned a PhD in linguistics from Cambridge. He researched Historical Linguistics at St John's College. In the 2018 Rosh HaShanah magazine I reviewed Deutscher’s “The unfolding of language”. “Through the language glass” is perhaps not quite up to the same standard, but is still a useful and interesting read. The premise behind the book is the relationship, if any, between language and how we think. It’s not a perfect read: there may have been too much on colour and not enough on gender or other language differences, and perhaps by the end the journey was more interesting than the destination. It seems obvious that our language must affect the way we think: language is part of our culture and our culture certainly has an impact on our social mores. The converse is also true: changes in our culture will effect changes in our language. Foreign words are adopted to discuss new ideas, the uses of gender are modified, new words are created by the “pop” generation, new poetries are invented. We might investigate the impact of language on culture by studying bilingual Page 26
children, for instance do they choose which language to use for a specific task? Deutscher thinks we should be surprised that the English concept of “we” can have multiple words in other languages. I don’t find this surprising as “we” is so often ambiguous: does it or does it not include the person being spoken to? Multiple words for “I” might be more interesting. Homer’s use of colour is superficially strange, but we also use colour in very poetic ways: from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner we have “All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon”. And there’s a wonderful line from Tom Jones’s Delilah, “Her golden lips like cherries” (juxtaposing simile and metaphor). In discussing colours Deutscher perhaps misses a trick: colour has a well-defined scientific meaning, however I think a popular language definition of colour would be difficult. Does “colour” have the same meaning in all languages? I found it interesting that some colours were named before others, with “blue” being relatively recent and I’m dying to ask my grandchildren if they can identify the sky as blue. Deutscher states that the bible makes no direct mention of blue, however the colours turquoise (techelet, (תכלת, purple, and scarlet are mentioned in Exodus 25:4 and in many of the following verses. Also in Numbers 15:38 is the commandment to wear turquoise tzizit. There’s an interesting Wikipedia article on techelet: the exact colour of techelet is not known and might be any colour from midnight blue to turquoise. My guess is that detailed colour naming happens on demand, for instance when people start to use pigments for dyeing clothes or in art. Ascribing names to colours by hue is only one option. Even in English we use value and saturation: brown is orange with a lower colour value, and white through grey through black represents a change in value. Pink, on the other hand, is a desaturated red. The appendix provided a useful primer on colour vision: I hadn’t realised how close the frequency responses of the “red” and “green” cones were to each other and how much they overlapped. Page 27
I like Deutscher’s argument that whilst any language can be used to express any idea (Turing complete, anyone?), languages vary in what they require is expressed. Take the sentence “a neighbour visited him”: French, Hebrew, and many other languages would reveal the sex of the neighbour. Hungarian, Finnish, and other languages would not reveal the sex of the subject (male in this example). In Chinese the tense can be omitted so we would have no notion of when the visit happened. In the Matse language the tense reveals how recently the visit occurred and how certain the reporter was about the event. Deutscher clarifies the distinction between gender and sex. The former just means type or genus, and is used to classify nouns; the latter reflects an animal’s physical characteristics (technically the female animal provides eggs, the male provides sperm: with the difference between egg and sperm being solely a matter of the cell size). Why does English not have gendered nouns? In general language simplification is a consequence of invasion: invaders and invaded develop a Pidgin for basic communication, which is then turned into a Creole by the second generation. English did have three genders, but these were lost following the Norman conquest. Overall, a worthwhile read, though with its flaws.
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Pesach reminiscences Barry Landy Since Pesach is the supreme family festival it is also the season for nostalgia. In the last two years we have all had private sedarim and that naturally makes us think about who is not there. So I got to thinking about the Pesach festivals I have experienced in the past. The one thing I don't remember is saying “Ma Nishtanah”. I am sure that I did, possibly when I was three, although I would soon have been supplanted by my sister who was just 18 months younger. During World War II we used to go to Llanelli, South Wales, to join my father's family at Pesach, so the first seder I recall was there. My main memory is that the table was full. My father was one of seven siblings so the family was large to start with and we contributed four more. That was normal. What stood out for a child's eye were a group of men in uniform that my grandparents were hosting for seder. This may have been an occasion when I said Ma Nishtanah. On a later visit for Pesach in 1950 I chanced to see a lunar eclipse through a window during the few moments when we left the table to wash our hands. Naturally, I remember celebrating at my parents' table and all the extra people: uncles, cousins, and of course the unexpected guest or two. One memorable year we were in Jerusalem with my mother's father, where one of my jobs was grating horseradish - a job we all know and fear. Another Jerusalem job was managing the water. Water was rationed in Jerusalem; all premises had a tank on the roof which was filled at night and provided all water for all purposes for a day. My grandfather's double flat was full of people. Luckily the neighbour was away and let us use their water, so another job for me (and a cousin) was to syphon the water from their tank to ours. In 1959, I was a student at Cambridge and Pesach fell in term. Together with a friend, Vivian Berman, we arranged everything, knowing a Page 29
caterer who would help. We arranged and led the sedarim and services, and even sold some tickets to members of the community, among them Maurice and Monica Bogen. After Ros and I married in 1961 we continued to visit my parents for Pesach, until in 1976 one of our children said they would like to have Pesach at home, which we then did from 1977. Obviously, we have many memories of many guests, including both sets of parents. The strangest of these memories involves two girls who turned up in shul for the ma’ariv of the first night; naturally I invited them to join us. One of the girls made some rather odd comments, the one that sticks in the mind being, in connection with the Charoset, “what does mortar signify”. So much so that my mother whispered to us when we left the room to wash “Is she Jewish?” So eventually we chatted to the girls and found out the story. One girl was Jewish the other not. The Christian girl had invited the Jewish girl to come to an Easter church service and in return the Jewish girl asked her friend to the shul service, so they wound up at a seder. One year we had two female students staying with us for the whole yomtov. They were both becoming observant and couldn't go home because they wouldn't be able to eat. They were so helpful, especially as we had a houseful! These are some of the people who come to our minds when we sit at an almost empty seder. Chag Sameach ve Kasher!
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From the children
Lenny, aged 8
Eliana, aged 10
Eliana aged 10
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Festival calendar 5782, 2022 Due to continuing uncertainties not many service times have been included. More information will appear near the time of each event. For Pesach, if would like to attend a Seder, or know someone who would like to attend a Seder, please consult Rabbi Leigh. Derby Stores (Cambridge 354391) and Just Kosher (https://www.justkosher.co.uk) will take Pesach orders.
Pesach Fast of the first born Finish all chametz Burning of chametz Shabbat starts First Seder starts Shabbat ends and Second Seder starts Second day ends Festival starts Shabbat and festival ends
Friday 15 April by 10.20am by 11.43am 7.43pm 8.30pm Saturday 16 April 8.48pm Sunday 17 April 8.50pm Thursday April 21 7.53pm Saturday 23 April 9.01pm
Shavuot Shabbat ends and Festival starts Shacharit Festival ends
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Saturday 4 June 10.19pm Sunday 5 June 9.30am Monday 6 June 10.21pm
Tisha B'Av Fast commences Shabbat ends Maariv and Eichah Shacharit Minchah Fast ends
Saturday 6 August 8:42pm 9.36pm 10.00pm Sunday 7 August 8.00am to 10.00am 1.45pm or 6.00pm (TBD) 9:25pm
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