The Movement for Reform Judaism

Rabbi Tony Bayfield

Linda was indeed an Essex girl – the daughter of a family who’d started out in the East End and arrived in the leafy suburbs of Ilford by way of Clapton. They were loyal members of Beehive Lane though Linda defected soon after she met me, a teenager from South West Essex, and found that she could play an equal part in Reform Jewish life.

The little dig at me was because, although I was born in a maternity home in Ilford, I spent the first four years of my life in Stoke Newington. It was but a temporary aberration – I never even thought of supporting Arsenal. My father was born in British Street in Bow. My mother’s parents were founder members of Barking & Beacontree District Synagogue. Their surname was Mann – as I tell anyone who asks, my mother was a ‘man’ before she got married. After their brief sojourn in North London, they moved to Seven Kings and then Redbridge which is where they still live. They even contemplated retiring to Westcliff in memory of many happy family days out and only decided against it because their social network, their friendships so revolved and still revolve around SWESRS, at the other end of the county.

Linda was right – our roots are ‘round this side of London’ and they show. You can take a Jew out of Essex but you can’t take Essex out of a Jew. People – Jews from North West London – ask me incredulously why I support West Ham (as do my son and his fiancée, I’m proud to say). I look them in the eyes and tell them that I’m an Ilford boy and that it’s a non-negotiable article of faith. Incidentally, I want you to note the huge sacrifice that I’m making in being with you this last Sunday afternoon of the season.

All of which is mildly interesting, I hope, but you may well ask what on earth am I doing indulging myself in all this family history when it’s your 60^th anniversary. Just give me a few moments more and I’ll explain.

Things started to go wrong for me when I left the Royal Liberty, Romford and went to our local university up over the county boundary in Cambridge and read law. I started to use long words for the sake of using long words and even a year working as student rabbi in Harlow didn’t knock that out of me. When I got semikhah, I spent more than a decade living and working in Weybridge in Surrey and I then committed the ultimate betrayal by moving to Hampstead Garden Suburb, the heart of the North West London ghetto, where I’ve lived ever since. I’ve been severely punished for my defection. My elder daughter married out – she married an Arsenal supporter.

But now here’s the serious bit. Jews have always had their internal rivalries – Sephardim and Ashkenazim – with each regarding themselves as superior. Litvaks and Galicianers, beigels and baigels would be another example. Incidentally I’m predominantly Galicianer with a bit of Dutch thrown in. So I suppose it’s not surprising that there is a perceived distinction between North West London/Hertfordshire Jews on the one hand and North East London/Essex Jews on the other. But it’s not always as light-hearted as it should be. We are, from time to time, the butt of rather class conscious jokes and we tend to have a bit of an inferiority complex, even a chip on our collective shoulders.

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the 25^th anniversary of Sukkat Shalom, our synagogue in Wanstead. The week after I spoke at the 50^th anniversary of SWESRS. Next week I’m in Harlow for the induction of their new rabbi and here I am today at your 60^th anniversary. I not only want to congratulate you, the oldest progressive synagogue in Essex, but I want to spend a few minutes affirming our positive characteristics, our distinctiveness.

When I was growing up in Ilford, the largest single occupation was self-employed taxi driver. Some people snigger at that but it’s highly symbolic. It’s symbolic of self-reliance and independence and I have no doubt that it’s a deeply engrained Essex Jewish characteristic which lives on – self-reliance, independence and hard work; I’ll do it and I’ll do it my way and nobody is going to tell me what to do.

Last Monday was my Dad’s 82^nd birthday. I took Mum and Dad out with their eldest granddaughter, her husband and their two great grandchildren. We went – of all places you might think – to the Isle of Dogs. Dad came out of the army in 1946 and did an accelerated teachers’ programme. He spent the whole of his career teaching disadvantaged kids in tough areas, ending up as Head of a large comprehensive school in Hackney. His first teaching appointment, however, was in Poplar and he supplemented his meagre income (in the 50s) by teaching at an evening institute on the Isle of Dogs with a man called Bill Fishman, later Professor Bill Fishman, the historian of East End Jewry. By the way, we drove round the Isle of Dogs, didn’t find the evening institute (everything has changed so much) but we did find an excellent pub for lunch.

The whole driving force behind my father’s career was a deeply engrained concern for the disadvantaged and an unswerving belief that everyone needs to do their bit their way not just to help others but to make society a fairer, more just place in which people can fulfil their innate potential and do their particular thing. I remember the ambivalent feelings he displayed when he took early retirement – when he felt that as a head teacher he had been stripped of the resources and the freedom necessary to make a difference to the boys of Hackney nearly twenty years ago.

So let’s add to self-reliance and independence, a passion for fairness and justice, a concern for the disadvantaged and a determination to make a difference. I’d like to think that those are the characteristics of Essex Jewish girls and Essex Jewish men, not white stilettos and spiv-ery!

This is a very significant occasion and one on which the dominant theme has to be congratulations. The oldest progressive synagogue within the Eastern Counties Association of Progressive Synagogues (good old ECAPS); still going strong and in good shape after sixty years; recipients of a grant of national significance for interfaith work; and promoted to the Championship. Congratulations.

But I looked at the statistics for Southend Jewry and I don’t have to tell you that this is an ageing community, declining in numbers. Synagogue affiliation figures are falling. Things don’t look all that rosy. You may be concerned about the future.

Don’t be – at least don’t just be concerned. The figures for Southend are no different from many other communities and the Reform Movement has decided to turn a threat into an opportunity. For what the 2001 census tells us is that there are many more Jews in an area than are members of synagogues. Especially amongst the young, a growing number of Jews don’t affiliate. And, something that you will be aware of, even when people do join synagogues, they no longer come rushing through the doors at the drop of a Kippah or the sound of the barechu. It’s the same picture in North West London/Hertfordshire as it is in North East London/Essex. It’s not even just a Jewish phenomenon. But we have to respond.

And we respond by saying – and I hope this is still politically correct – if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will have to go to Mohammed. In other words we have to focus less on the way our institutions have always been and the programmes they have always offered and more on the people out there, their needs and their many ways of choosing to do things. We have to get off our posteriors (I told you university mucked me up with lots of long words) and go out to where our members and prospective members are, listen carefully to them, engage them and find ways of linking them and their needs to the rich and varied inheritance which is Judaism.

It’s a terrific challenge but nobody is better suited to rising to that challenge than a community of Essex Jewish men and women. Why? Because what characterises us? Self-reliance and independence, a passion for fairness, a concern for the disadvantaged and a determination to make a difference – that’s a pretty good approach to Judaism.

It also recognises something very important about the women and the men who make up this congregation and the Jewish community of Southend and beyond. They’re self-reliant, independent and determined to do things their way. They know that one-size doesn’t fit all, that there’s no one way of doing things that works for everyone, that each has his or her own questions and problems and needs which Judaism can touch.

Mazal tov on 60 years. As we say in the trade, ad meah ve’esrim. Here’s to 120.

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