Interfaith Commemoration on Holocaust Memorial Day, 2oo8.

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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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 ::