Having seen both the Auschwitz (shown above with me) and Birkenau Nazi Death Camps with my own Anglican
eyes on my journey to Poland's Cracow two years ago, I
now have even a deeper feeling of the diabolical horror
that took place there when I was only in an English cradle
at then a baby boy of the Second World War.
n
As an avid and an avowed and an affirming adult Anglican,
n
As an avid and an avowed and an affirming adult Anglican,
Protestant Christian, and living Gentile, I have a true fond-
ness today for our Jewish friends and their tradition and
culture and not to mention my utter fascination with the long
history of the fathers and mothers of the Jewish Diaspora.
The East End of London speaks of their diaspora as clear as
a bell. Today, however, the East End has become almost
everything but traditionally Jewish. The once local Jews
have now gone to new abodes at places like Edgware,
Chigwell, Finchley, and Camden Town and they have
seemingly abandoned their maternal home. At WWII,
there was 150 synagogues in the East London.
Today, there's just 4 ... It's like a vanishing act all of
its own. So now, the once proud community of British
Jews sees the rise and expansion of Muslims, Bangla-
dashis and Asians galore at the East End. The masses
of textile, clothing and schoolwear wholesale businesses
along the hub of Commercial Road is now controlled,
for the most part, by the new immigrants with hardly
a vestige left of Jewish entrepreneurship and owner-
ship to be anymore found.
n
So to sit, talk, and listen for almost four hours, like I
did, inside the East London Central Synagogue (ELCS)
-- opened in 1923 or at the Rabbinical Year of 5684 --
was my public affirmation and open solidarity with our
Semitic brothers and sisters along with those present
of differing faiths and creeds to me and to them. I have
always felt at home in the Synagogue for I have visited
such before in America, Morocco, and Germany. It was,
however, my first visit to any British Synagogue and I
was so pleased that I did. Unlike the Christian tradition,
at the synagogue one's head must remain covered
either with a "couple" or "yarmulka" or skullcap
or one's own hat. So you don't take your hat off.
If you do, you'll be gently told to cover your
bare head like I was at the synagogue.
n
The important occasion at ELCS was to mark
Holocaust Memorial Day, 2oo8, with an Interfaith
Commemoration. Thus came the local mayor Anne
Jackson, the local police inspector Paul Sloan, and
the local priest the Rev'd Father Allan Green,
among perhaps 95 or so other good folkz that
gathered inside the synagogue to pay remembrance
and homage to the six million people who so savagely
perished by the utter Nazi barbarity and Fascist
mechanization of now more than 60 years ago.
n
And there was Ilana Cravitz with her folksey violin
And there was Ilana Cravitz with her folksey violin
and James Siverly with his old accordian playing such
Yiddish pieces as "Zog Nit Keyn Mol," "Der Yidisher
Soldat in Di Trentshes," and my favourite "Doyne
un Khosidl." Yiddish music simply haunts me.
n
The memorial theme was"Imagine, Remember,
Reflect, React." Indeed, we did in our own way.
We then heard from Jane Barraclough speak
from a multifaith perspective. Ram Chandra
Saha from an Hindu point of view and Ansar
Ahmed Ullah from his Muslim overview.
n
Readers Alice Kingsnorth, Barry Davis,
Readers Alice Kingsnorth, Barry Davis,
Roland Maltman, and Henry Glanz, read
poetry and Hebrew writings about the
Holocaust for us all to remember. The
shofar was befittingly sounded to the mark
the close of the Interfaith Commemoration.
I think the presence of the local rabbi would
have been rather nice, too, for such an inter-
faith assembly, but I didn't see any sight or
sound of any rabbi. Perhaps, he was busy
elsewhere at another synagogue like the
one I saw from the outside as I walked
passed Watney Market to see the 1903
Synagogue of the Congregation of Jacob
and Chevra Yisroel and Bikur, which I
promptly photographed on such a lovely
Sunday afternoon in late January at the
dying Jewish heart of the East End.
n
Before I entered the synagogue, I took
Before I entered the synagogue, I took
a long stroll around the East End since I
had never really been there before other than
perhaps driving thru it at years and years ago.
I discovered a couple of interesting things at least
to me. At Parfitt Street, I saw the closed Jewish
Boxers Cafe with two large enamel signs in the
shape of boxing gloves ... It was neat. But my
biggest surprise was at Varden Street just the
next block up from ELCS at Nelson Street.
There I noticed the Free Presbyterian Church
of Scotland (FPCS) that I'd never before
encountered. I popped my head inside
and thought it was like one of those old
Welsh Congregational Church chapels that
I remembered well from Gwynedd of my
first teens ... (See more about FPCS at
the end of this post).
n
But for now, the Interfaith Commemoration
was indeed commendable. The only thing
that wasn't commendable was during the
morning cultural walk from Aldgate to
Whitechapel. Stones were thrown at the
defenceless walkers and one person was then
rushed to hospital after being hit badly by one
or two of the stones ... While I wasn't there
personally, the open anti-Semitic incident was
graphically told to me just moments before
the start of the Interfaith Commemoration.
I was truly appalled at what I was told. Are
the Fascist ghosts of Sir Oswald Moseley
and his black-shirt thugz still acting out
at London's East End?
Faithfully, Monty. + Sexagesiuma, 2oo8.
The FPCS has about 60 churches worldwide from
Oban to Odessa, from Santa Fe to Stornaway, and from
Vatten to Vancouver. Plus, presence even in Jerusalem.
While I was at the Zoar Chapel, Paul Rowland intro-
duced himself to me and asked me what interest
I had in visiting. I told him I curious about FPCS.
He told me his church was fundamentalist, evan-
gelical and strictly biblical. It was also, to say the
least, ultraprotestant in its preaching and
religious outlook. If rigid Rev'd Ian Paisley of
Northern Ireland is considered to be a rip-
raw protestant, then FPCS makes him look
like a flaming liberal ... Indeed, The Free
Presbyterian Church of Scotland rejects
Catholicism, interfaith endeavours, gay
marriages, and open-minded Anglicanism,
among its other "anti-isms." When I told
Paul Rowland I was going to the synagogue,
he replied: "You did claim to be an Anglican,
didn't you? To him, the thought of someone
like me going to an interfaith event wasn't
his cuppa of tea. I later discovered he,
Mr. D. P. Rowland, was general secretary
of the Trinitarian Bible Society, which
publishes its 48-page periodical "The
Quarterly Record" in glossy format and is
most professionally written and presented
like a quarterly treatise on biblical questions
and Free Presbyterianism, religiously
conservative to the enth degree. So by
exploring the East End, I not only learned
about the death of the old Jewish enclave
but also of Calvanistic religiosity just one
block away from the Central Synagogue.
n
London (ENI). The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Britain's Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, will mark Holocaust Day 2008 by attending a national ceremony in Liverpool which this year is a European Capital of Culture. The west coast English city was chosen in November to hold the national commemorations for the Holocaust memorial day. This is commemorated on 27 January each year on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. [516 words, ENI-08-0064]--Posted
By thebiggerissue.org to thebiggerissue.org at 1/27/2008 11:58:00 AM
:: UPDATE: More 1,600 people attended the above International
Holocaust Day ceremony at Liverpool, so reported the British media
the day after the major religious event ::
