A few months before the outbreak of the last war, some men, chiefly from Berlin and Frankfurt-on-Main, got together and, with the help of Miss Lily Montagu, one of the founders of the English Liberal Movement and a lay Minister in the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, secured the use of Montefiore Hall (attached to the Liberal Jewish Synagogue) for Friday evening Services.

The first of these Services took place on 24th March, 1939 and was held in the continental Liberal manner. There was no formal congregational organisation. Each Sabbath Eve Service was conducted by a different Rabbi and Cantor recently arrived here. Some of them subsequently emigrated overseas, such as the late Rabbi Lemle who founded a similar congregation in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Others, such as the late Rabbis ltaliener and Van der Zyl, became Ministers in the Reform Movement.

It was in June 1939 that what was more or less an ad hoc state of affairs became organised by the formation of the New Liberal Jewish Association with the Hon. Lily Montagu, J. P. as its first Chairman, and Rabbi Dr. Georg Salzberger (formerly Frankfurt-on-Main) and Cantor Magnus Davidsohn (formerly Berlin) its first permanent Ministers. It was affiliated to the Jewish Religious Union (now Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues). Rooms were rented in the Swiss Cottage area.

In January 1940 the word "Association" was changed to the more descriptive "Congregation" and so it remained during Miss Montagu's life-time, although the words "New Liberal" were widely considered misleading. It was not until June 1971 that the congregation assumed its present title.

In 1951 it acquired its own home, a former vicarage in Belsize Square which was converted to accommodate a modest synagogue seating 80 and communal offices, as well as religion school.

Services right from the start, and to this day, were based on the German Einheitsgebetbuch (Unified Prayer Book) first published in 1929 and jointly edited by Rabbis I. Elbogen (Berlin), C. Seligmann (Frankfurt-on-Main) and H. Vogelstein (Breslau). This new prayer book is the beneficiary of that tradition. Similarly, the music of this Synagogue is based on that used on the continent and composed during the last century, mainly by Louis Lewandowski (Berlin) and, to a lesser extent, Salomon Sulzer (Vienna).

In the course of its existence there have been comparatively few changes in the ministry. The first two were followed by Rabbi Jakob J. Kokotek and Cantor Joseph Dollinger and, for a few years, Cantor Louis Berkman. The present incumbents are Rabbi Rodney J. Mariner and Cantor Norman Cohen Falah.

The changes that have occurred lie mainly in the gradual transformation from an exclusively refugee community to a much more indigenous one but which also attracts recent immigrants from as far a field as South Africa and even Iraq. While originally sermons were given in German they have long since changed to English, and instead of the erstwhile Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, sServices are now conducted in Sephardi.

In 1958 we were able to consecrate our current Synagogue (seating 350) and in 1973 added the Communal Hall. All this, and again right from the start, was achieved without having recourse to borrowing. It should, however, be gratefully acknowledged that twenty persons (who wished to remain anonymous) made substantial donations towards the purchase of the ground and vicarage, and the congregation received considerable grants from German restitution funds towards the building of the current Synagogue. During High Holydays, when attendance reaches more than a thousand, Services are held elsewhere so as to unite the community under one roof.

In 1957, a Holocaust Memorial was consecrated in the Willesden Liberal Jewish Cemetery where annually a Tisha b'Av Commemoration is held.

Of course, activities are not confined to the holding of Services. The Synagogue employs a professional Community Care Co-ordinator. There is a flourishing Cheder (founded in 1942). There are youth clubs, a professional choir, an excellent youth choir, as well as a community choir, consisting of adult volunteers. The congregation issues a monthly magazine (since 1947), has numerous committees and a Chevra Kadisha (founded in 1953).

The Synagogue peaked in the mid-1960s with 1,800 members. During the following decade there was a decline, mainly due to a limited number of new members not balancing the number of those who had passed away. However, in recent years there has been an upswing, and membership is once more on the increase.

At the end of 1989, Belsize Square Synagogue left the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues and is now an independent Synagogue.

January 1990

INTRODUCTION TO OUR PRAYER BOOK

Belsize Square Synagogue has always been a puzzle, the odd-one-out among those congregations in this country that define themselves as Reform, Liberal or Progressive. Its distinctiveness comes not simply from its being founded by German and central European refugees but from the style of Judaism they preserved which is without exact parallel anywhere outside similar German-speaking communities. In this country, the Reform and Liberal Movements trace their origins to the same forces that shaped German Jewish Liberalism but as scholars have noted, where the British movements had sought to establish a Judaism independent of Orthodoxy, German Liberale Judaism was an attempt to "reform from within". Nineteenth century German Liberale Jews had no intention of breaking with traditional Judaism but sought to adapt it to their own experience of emancipation.

In form, German Liberale Judaism differed markedly from other reform manifestations, indeed the term "reform" in its application to Judaism was restricted in Germany to the most radical congregations and was to a large extent an anathema to traditionalist Liberalism. In content, however, German Jewish Liberalism shared that which was to be the essence of other forms of Reform and Liberal Judaism. It affirmed that Judaism is a dynamic process which draws its inspiration from the creative tension that links the wisdom of the past, with the learning and experience of the present. It evinced a love of form as well as content, which stressed the need for aesthetic principles to be applied to public worship.

It accepted the fruits of modern biblical scholarship as enhancing but not endangering the authentic voice of scripture in contemporary life. Finally, it endorsed Geiger's principle of "progressive revelation" because that represented the most significant contribution to Jewish thought in the modern age. In so doing, it affirmed the ever-present nature of the encounter between humankind and God, refusing to accept revelation as the "once and for all" event of Sinai, forever beyond the reach of subsequent generations.

When the community of refugees that became Belsize Square Synagogue was established in 1939, it was apparent that their loyalty to the German form of Service was such, that they were not prepared to jettison it for membership of the British Reform Movement, with which on ideological grounds there was kinship. Instead, they chose to place themselves under the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues with whom, despite the name, they had little in common beyond a profound and enduring gratitude for the compassionate concern with which they had been treated by the Hon. Lily Montagu. The value of being under the aegis of the U.L.P.S. was that the new community was free to use its own prayerbook.

Theoretically, the Einheitsgebetbuch (the unified prayerbook) of the Liberale Gemeinde was the prayer book of this refugee community which clung to its heritage by its fingertips. It was wartime and copies of the book were restricted to those who had brought it with them among treasured possessions when they fled their homes. Yet, even in Germany the Einheitsgebetbuch had not been universally accepted; many members of Liberale congregations still preferring to use a traditional prayer book in a "liberal" manner. In Britain, Belsize Square Synagogue became "the German Liberal Synagogue that uses the Singer's Prayer book".

The writing of the Shabbat Prayer book is not an attempt to break the "Singer's connection"; it is at one and the same time a gesture to the future and an acknowledgement of the past. While the liturgical differences between this congregation and the Reform and Liberal Movements are less marked than they were 1939, they are still significant and in the interests of Jewish pluralism, the nature of this congregation's liturgy should be available in a form, which readily reflects the distinctiveness of the contribution of German Liberalism's "radical traditionalism". The book is also intended for the many new congregants who have come to us from other traditions, both Orthodox and Progressive, for whom "playing hopscotch with Singer's" is as confusing as it is unedifying. Above all, it is an attempt to carry the Einheitsgebetbuch beyond the two most significant events of the twentieth century, the near annihilation of European Jewry and the reality of Israel reborn. It is with no small measure of arrogance that the text has been altered in order to project a liturgical response appropriate to those who survived that near annihilation and witnessed that miraculous rebirth. It is significant that these changes were wrought by reintroducing phrases from the traditional liturgy.

The Hebrew of the Einheitsgebetbuch was the basis of this new text. As there was no intention of providing for other congregations that might have had varying needs, it was possible to remove prayers and liturgical poems not essential. to the maintenance of the traditional structure of our Service and which, by their disuse, had long ago been excluded. At the same time, it was possible, where appropriate, to restore prayers which by custom and convenience have ceased to be part of our usage. The most important changes with respect to the Einheitsgebetbuch liturgy, however, lie in the reintroduction of references to the "return to Zion", in recognition that the future of Jewry is both national and international and that praying for the welfare of Israel is not an act of disloyalty for a diaspora Jew but a reflection of the positive dualism inherent in contemporary Judaism. Similarly, references to the concept of "chosenness", that had been voluntarily expunged from the liturgy in the interest of universalism, have been restored. This concept had always been a matter of being chosen for a particular task, rather than being chosen from a particular group. The Holocaust should have taught us that it is not the differences between peoples that are the cause of war and strife but the kind of intolerance which demands that all are the same. Indeed, to assert the right to be different and to defend the rights of others to be different is a desirable and not a negative consequence of a life-affirming self-esteem.

If the changes in the Hebrew text tend toward the traditional, the principle upon which the new English translation is based can only be described as radical. The English is faithful to the Hebrew in all respects but one: the attempt to render the prayers into English in a way that none should feel excluded on the basis of gender. It is not the practice of our congregation to use the vernacular of anything other than non-statutory prayers, so the "inclusiveness" of the language is more symbolic than functional. However, while it may feel awkward initially, it is hoped that the new translation will serve to counterbalance the images of masculinity that have inappropriately been associated with the God of Israel, who is all things except human. The translation of the Tetragrammaton as Everpresent and not as Lord, Eternal or Adonay is as much a theological statement, as it is an attempt to avoid the complications of gender.

Other features of this text worthy of note are the song anthology and the collection of passages from traditional literature. The song anthology is intended to bring to Shabbat Eve worship some of the joy traditionally associated with the Shabbat dinner table and thereby to encourage those who may have lost it, to reintroduce this happy aspect of celebration into their own home observance. The small collection of passages gleaned from the vast richness of Judaism's literary heritage is in no way intended to be representative of the whole of our tradition, which extends from antiquity even to the present day. Their inclusion is simply to provide the reader with some resonances from the past, serving perhaps, as a new point of departure on the eternal journey to self-discovery which is the heritage of all Jews.

The most distinctive aspect of our liturgy however, is the Music of our service, drawn in the main from Lewandowski and Sulzer, who wrote with the text of what was to become the Einheitsgebetbuch. Such nineteenth-century romantic synagogue music remains the hallmark of our worship and serves to encapsulate the essence of our particular form of Judaism. The music is cherished as a treasure and not as an exhibit from a museum of Jewish liturgical music. As Jewish classics, these melodies are enhanced in our Service by modern settings or by contemporary compositions, thus reflecting again the traditional radicalism of this Synagogue community. Ours is a Judaism that responds to both past and present as surely as it seeks to provide for its future needs. It does so by maintaining the same openness to the millennial Jewish experience as is reflected in Franz Rosenzweig's, "nothing Jewish is alien to me". Nor, it must said, is it prepared to accept at face value the concept that any aspect of Jewish tradition is rendered obsolete by time. That which is Jewishly obsolete for us is only that which fails to serve as a bridge between the past and the present. That which is Jewishly alien for us is only that which would mar the authentic voice of Judaism by muffling it in a mask that distorts, not by reason of its antiquity but by being inappropriate to our experience.

    In 1990, the newly independent Belsize Square Synagogue chose as its Hebrew name Etz Chayyim - Tree of Life. The image chosen for the mantle of its Jubilee Sefer Torah was that of a tree cut down to its roots which, by virtue of their vigour, had again burgeoned into life on ancient stock. As surely as this congregation draws its sustenance from the past, so it looks with hope to its future growth, not only for itself but for all who look upon it with joy. Kehilla Kedoshah Etz Chayyim - the Holy Congregation of the Tree of Life - is no longer a community of German and central European refugees who are survivors but of a community of Jews who have survived and through whose efforts a significant form of Judaism will continue to flourish for their descendants and all who care to share in it.

Adar 5750

Rabbi Rodney J. Mariner

    Thanks are due and gladly given to those members of the congregation who contributed to the writing of this text, whether by making accessible documents relating to the nature of German Liberale Judaism or by offering advice and encouragement. A special measure of gratitude is reserved for Sue Mariner, whose patience, enthusiasm and meticulous attention to detail have been part of every stage of this book as it journeyed from conception to realization.