Jewish Telegraph Thursday March
20, 2008
Middlesbrough relocates
by Doreen
Wachmann
We are
told that when the Messiah comes all Diaspora synagogues will be
relocated in Jerusalem.
This has
virtually happened to Middlesbrough Hebrew Congregation.
Towards
the end of 1998 the shrinking community closed its synagogue doors
for the last time.
But that
was by no means the end of the story for the community which began
way back in 1862.
Within a
month of the shul's closing ceremony, 40 Middlesbrough expats
assembled at the Jerusalem home of Anne, nee Goldberg, and Stuart
Dove and virtually resurrected the community on the website. Regular
newsletters attracted correspondence from expats all over the world,
including Mancunians Dr Gerald Feingold, Gillian Hush, Betty Ellman,
Susan and Dennis Broady, Trevor Kletz and Harold Stock and
Leodensians Ruth Sherwin, Ruth Hurwitz, Kitty Howard, nee Taylor,
Jonathan Rose, Michael Rose and Shirley Holton, Liverpudlians
Lorraine Coleman, nee Solomon and Fred Levy and Ronnie Goodman of
Edinburgh.
Also
reprinted are Jewish Telegraph stories about Middlesbrough. And now
editor Donald Wiseman has reproduced the newsletters in book form.
Middlesbrough- born Donald, now living in Jerusalem, decided to
publish Kehilat Middlesbrough - Past, Present and Future. He said:
"I didn't think our website would grow to its present size and
certainly did not expect it to be around for such a long time.
"Judging by my in-box, there is no slackening of interest. Indeed,
after nine years the opposite is the case. "I thought the time was
right to put an edited selection on to paper. Despite the growth of
the Internet, it is still far easier to read a printed page than a
computer screen."
Dr
Feingold of Prestwich said: "We have all got the Middlesbrough
touch. People had a connection to Middlesbrough." The first Jew to
settle in Middlesbrough was Maurice Levy, in 1862. He was followed a
year later by his son-in-law Isaac Alston who became a Middlesbrough
councillor as well a Jewish community leader.
By 1985
The Middlesbrough Weekly News and Cleveland Advertiser reported the
advent of "a large number of Jews into the town" who had obtained
premises for worship.
Mr Alston
junior, who left for Australia in 1905 recalled: "Gradually as the
first Jews began to arrive in Middlesbrough, either from Poland or
Russia, we were able to form a minyan, the services being held
either at my grandfather's or father's home.
"Each of
these gentlemen possessed a Sefer Torah. My grandfather brought his
from Poland.
"A year or
two later, my father engaged rooms which were fitted with divisions
for males and females. I was the first boy barmitzvah in this
temporary synagogue." A permanent synagogue was eventually built in
1874 at the cost of £2,500.
Early
synagogue minutes record that two men were fined a shilling each for
leaving shul before Aleinu, two others fined the princely sum of
7/6d (37p) for creating a disturbance, another a shilling (5p) for
non-attendance, another five shillings (25p) for refusing a mitzvah.
The sum of 7/6d was paid to employ someone to keep order on Yom
Kippur.Among Middlesbrough's ministers was the renowned scholar and
author Rabbi Dr Isadore Epstein who later became principal of Jews'
College.
After 60
years, the original synagogue in Brentnall Street was deemed too
small and too far from the suburbs to which congregants had moved.
A larger
one was built in Park Road South in 1938, but the community did not
then realise that it had numerically reached its peak.
Jewish
Telegraph Thursday March 20, 2008
[Ed
note: Click here to see a
photocopy (240KB) of this article as it appeared in
the Jewish Telegraph, together with the accompanying photographs:
CHIEF'S
VISIT: Rev Gershon Wulwick, Mrs Fischbein, Sam Doberman, Rabbi and
Mrs Louis Miller with Chief Rabbi and Mrs Brodie around 1935 in
Middlesbrough
IN TUNE:
Chazan JM Silverston, who served the shul from 1897 to 1936, with
his choir
THIRTIES'
LOOK: Mrs Miller, Sarah Wiseman and the Greenberg sisters at
Southfield Road in the mid-1930s]
