Edgware United Synagogue, Parnell Close, Edgware, Middlesex, HA8-8YE

ADULT EDUCATION PROGRAMME OCTOBER 2019 TO APRIL 2020

All sessions commence at 8.15 pm and cost £5 including refreshments, except where otherwise stated.

Welcome to the Edgware United Synagogue adult education programme for October 2019 to April 2020. Is there anyone who hasn’t now watched the July 2019 Panorama ‘Is Labour Antisemitic’? The young people who bravely spoke out against their treatment by the Labour Party in the BBC programme visit Edgware US in February to update us on what has happened since then. This is sure to be a popular session that will attract media attention. There are two sessions at which there will be book signings. Robert Chandler, the translator of the Russian novel Stalingrad by Vassily Grossman, which is considered to be one of the great novels of the 20th century, will discuss the book and its author. Dr. David Lawson will talk about how a scroll at Kingston US from the Czech Memorial Scrolls museum stimulated his interest in Ostrova, the town it had come from and led him to write a book about it. In total, 1564 Czech scrolls were rescued. The following week, we shall visit the Czech Memorial Scrolls Museum in Central London for a private guided tour. You may wish to watch in advance of the lecture and the visit, a short 6 minutes video on youtube, ‘Memorial Scrolls Trust- the story of the Czech Scrolls’ at which the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was the guest of honour. There are two anniversaries in the programme. Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2020 will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. We screen the film taken by the Soviet film crew. We also have a session on the Suez Canal which will be 150 years old later in the year. We look at its history and its importance in terms of the Middle East in the second half of the twentieth century. Can you imagine anything stranger than Jewish British army officers being assigned to rehabilitate SS Nazis in remote Northumberland? But that is exactly what happened and the war studies expert, Robert Bieber MBE, relates this fascinating story. On a more joyous note, we remember the wonderful hotel life at the Bournemouth Jewish hotels in their heyday and in particular the Green Park. We have a private showing on a Sunday afternoon in February of the film ‘The Green Park’ in the presence of the late owners’ family, followed by a cream tea. If you have photographs or memorabilia of the Green Park, please let us know. The talk by Melvyn Hartog, head of the US burial society on ‘Talking about death won’t kill you’ is a light hearted look at what goes on behind the scenes. I conclude the series with a session on some of the 35 out of 50 songs which failed to get into the stage production and film of Fiddler on the Roof and speculate how different Jewish simchas would be if they were deprived of Tradition, Matchmaker, and Lechayim-To Life. We’ll play at least a dozen of the lost songs which I have tracked down and you can decide whether songs such as ‘When messiah comes’ and ‘What a life’, sung to Tevye’s horse, should have been retained. We advertise all our events on the Edgware US, United Synagogue and UniquelyEdgware websites and details of each upcoming session can be found in the weekly Edgware Chailights. If you miss any of the sessions, you can find most of them on youtube. Just type in “Tony Honickberg” and search for the one you are interested in. For more information please contact Spencer Nathan spencer.nathan@outook.com

SUMMARY Tuesday 29 October

Now published in English for the first time, Vasily Grossman’s

STALINGRAD ‘ONE OF THE GREAT NOVELS OF THE 20th CENTURY’ Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, 2019

Robert Chandler discusses the book and its author Vasily Grossman and will be available to sign copies of Stalingrad

Tuesday 19 November

THE STORY OF THE CZECH SCROLLS

AND OSTRAVA JEWS Dr. David Lawson

Dr. David Lawson will be available to sign copies of his book ‘Ostrava and its Jews’ 2018.

Tuesday 26 November. Guided tour starting at 11am. Possible 2nd tour 2pm

VISIT TO CZECH MEMORIAL SCROLLS MUSEUM

Kent House (3rd floor), Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge, London SW7 1BX Guided 1.5 to 2 hours tour. Maximum 20 named people per group.

Early booking strongly recommended. The session on 19th November is £5. The lecture on the 19th November combined with the

museum visit on 26th November is £10.

Tuesday 10 December

TALKING ABOUT DEATH WON’T KILL YOU

Melvyn Hartog, Head of Burial, United Synagogue Will give a humorous insight into the world of the Burial Society

Tuesday 7 January

150 YEARS OF THE SUEZ CANAL Opened 17 November 1869

Excerpts from films about its construction and history, the Suez Crisis 1956 and the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973

Sunday 19 January at 3 p.m. £15 Early booking strongly recommended

Film: THE GREEN PARK (65 minutes)

followed by AFTERNOON CREAM TEA In the presence of family members of the late owners of the Green Park Bournemouth, parents Ruby and Sarah

Marriott and three aunts Ray, Hannah and Judy Richman, who ran the hotel from November 1943 until its closure in October 1986. Film produced by Marsha Lee, a member of the extended Marriott/Richman family

Monday 27 January Holocaust Memorial Day FREE ENTRY

75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. Documentary film:

THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ 27TH JANUARY 1945

Featuring footage that was used to indict the Nazis during the Nuremburg Trials.

Tuesday 11 February

THAT PANORAMA: 10 JULY 2019 IS LABOUR ANTISEMITIC?

The panellists discuss what has happened since they appeared on BBC Panorama in July 2019

Philip Rosenberg, Director of Public Affairs, Board of Deputies Ella Rose, former Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and former President UJS Josh Garfield, former Jeremy Corbyn supporter and member of Momentum

Izzy Lenga, former Jewish student leader

Tuesday 3 March

THE JEWS WHO HELPED CURE THE NAZIS

Robert Bieber MBE Visiting Research Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, London

An illustrated talk about the remarkable tale of Jewish Army Officers who used kindness to rehabilitate their former SS enemies at a prisoner war of camp in

Northumberland.

Tuesday 24 March

THE LOST SONGS OF FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

You’ve only heard 15 out of the original 50. Come and hear many of the songs that failed to get into the musical.

Spencer Nathan

Tuesday 29 October 2019

Now published in English, for the first time, Vasily Grossman’s

STALINGRAD ‘ONE OF THE GREAT NOVELS OF THE 20th CENTURY’

The prequel to Life and Fate, the War and Peace of the 20th century Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, 2019

Robert Chandler discusses the book and the author Vasily Grossman and will be available to sign copies of Stalingrad

In April 1942, Hitler and Mussolini meet in Salzburg where they agree on a renewed assault on the Soviet Union. Launched in the summer, the campaign soon picks up speed, as the routed Red Army is driven back to the industrial center of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga. In the rubble of the bombed-out city, Soviet forces dig in for a last stand.

The story told in Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad unfolds across the length and breadth of Russia and Europe, and its characters include mothers and daughters, husbands and brothers, generals, nurses, political activists, steelworkers, and peasants, along with Hitler and other

historical figures. At the heart of the novel is the Shaposhnikov family. Even as the Germans advance, the matriarch, Alexandra Vladimirovna, refuses to leave Stalingrad. Far from the front, her eldest daughter, Ludmila, is unhappily married to the Jewish physicist Viktor Shtrum. Viktor’s research may be of crucial military importance, but he is distracted by thoughts of his mother in the Ukraine, lost behind German lines. In Stalingrad, published here for the first time in English translation, and in its celebrated sequel, Life and Fate, Grossman writes with extraordinary power and deep compassion about the disasters of

war and the ruthlessness of totalitarianism, without, however, losing sight of the little things that are the daily currency of human existence or of humanity’s inextinguishable, saving attachment to nature and life. Grossman’s

two-volume masterpiece can now be seen as one of the supreme accomplishments of twentieth-century literature, tender and fearless, intimate and epic.

Robert Chandler's translations from Russian include many works by Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov. He has also compiled three anthologies for Penguin Classics: of Russian short stories, of Russian magic tales and, with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. He is a co-translator of three volumes of memoirs and stories by Teffi and has published a short biography of Pushkin. Teaching is increasingly important to him, and he runs a monthly translation workshop at Pushkin House (Bloomsbury).

Grossman's grave in Moscow

Grossman in his study

Robert Chandler

Tuesday 19 November 2019

THE STORY OF THE CZECH SCROLLS AND OSTRAVA JEWS

Dr. David Lawson Dr. David Lawson will be available to sign copies of his book ‘Ostrava and its Jews’ 2018.

The story of Ostrava and its Jews encapsulates in a small space (10 miles across) and a short time (ca 150years) a miniaturised history of Central Europe. It covers industrialisation and massive economic growth, immigration and emigration, intolerance and tolerance, multi-culturalism and nationalism, high culture and social welfare, the Holocaust, communism and the diaspora. The lecture will draw on family histories and eye-witness accounts, many unpublished, and will be illustrated.

Of

the ca.10,000 Jews in Ostrava before the Second World War, fewer than 300 survived and returned. The second theme of the talk will be how a classic academic research project transformed what was effectively a dead community into a live one in virtual and actual reality. In conclusion, the meta-theme of the lecture is to ask how far the Ostrava story can provide lessons or guidance to 21st century political issues in the UK.

Dr David Lawson, Kingston Ostrava Group, was a management consultant specialising in strategy, commercial and organisational effectiveness, now retired. He is married with two married daughters and two grandsons. For the past 13 years, inspired by a sefer torah in his synagogue that came from Moravská Ostrava, David has been researching the history of Ostrava and its Jewish community in collaboration with the Jewish Museum in Prague. He has written and lectured widely on the subject. The book he has

written on this subject, with Mgr Hana Šústková and Libuše Salomonovičová, has been published by Vallentine Mitchell.

The Jewish School in Ostrava

The Jewish School in Ostrava

Tuesday 26 November 2019 Guided tour starting at 11am. Poss. 2nd tour 2pm

VISIT TO CZECH MEMORIAL SCROLLS MUSEUM

Kent House (3rd floor), Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge, London SW7 1BX The museum is on the third floor of Kent House and is accessible by a lift

Guided 1.5 to 2 hours tour. Maximum 20 named people per group. Early booking strongly recommended.

The session on 19 November is £5. The lecture combined with the museum visit is £10. The inspiring story of the survival and second life of 1,564 Torah Scrolls from

Bohemia and Moravia. The permanent exhibition at the Memorial Scrolls Trust Museum tells the remarkable story of 1,564 Torah scrolls. The scrolls were saved whilst the communities who worshipped with them were destroyed. The story follows the scrolls from towns in Bohemia and Moravia to Prague and ultimately to London. One tenth of the

collection is currently on display. The rest has been lent to communities across the globe, giving the scrolls a second life as the focus for new generations, through ritual use, education and interfaith work. The museum’s goal is that visitors are inspired by the scrolls’ message of hope. The MST has a sacred responsibility for 1564 Torah scrolls once used by Jewish communities in Bohemia and Moravia. The scrolls were rescued from the Shoah by the Prague Jewish community, which largely perished. They were stored in the Prague Jewish Museum. After World War II, they remained in storage until they were sold by the Communist government to Westminster Synagogue and came to in London in 1964. The scrolls arrived with c. 400 Torah binders, many of which are also on display. The MST has created a travelling version of the museum, currently only available in the UK.

Tuesday 10 December

TALKING ABOUT DEATH WON’T KILL YOU

A Humorous Insight Into The World Of The Burial Society

Melvyn Hartog, Head of Burial, United Synagogue

Melvyn Hartog, of the US Burial Society, is the man with the answers. Melvyn understands that people have questions but they always ask the wrong person and finish up with some very strange answers, now is your chance to get it straight from the “horse’s mouth.” His talk will let you see the light-hearted, beautiful and dignified side of an inevitable journey. He joined the United Synagogue as Head of Burial in January 2002 having spent over 20 years in Financial Services.

He served 8.5 years in the Royal Navy; was a Prison Chaplain for over 20 years; and is a member of the Home Office Burial and Cremations advisory committee”

Tuesday 7 January

150 YEARS OF THE SUEZ CANAL Opened 17 November 1869

Excerpts from films about its construction and history, the Suez Crisis 1956 and the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973

Construction began, at the northernmost Port Said end of the canal, in early 1859. The excavation work took 10 years, and an estimated 1.5 million people worked on the

project

Sunday 19 January at 3 p.m. £15 - Early booking strongly recommended!

Film: THE GREEN PARK (65 minutes)

followed by AFTERNOON CREAM TEA In the presence of family members of the late owners of the Green Park Bournemouth, Ruby and Sarah

Marriott who ran the hotel, together with sisters Ray, Hannah and Judy Richman from November 1943 until its closure in October 1986. Hannah and Judy still live in Bournemouth.

Film produced by Marsha Lee, a member of the extended Marriott/Richman family and we are grateful to her for allowing us to screen it exclusively. Directed by Justin Hardy, written by Jack Fishburn.

We shall be inviting members of the audience to share their memories of the Green Park hotel and if you have any photographs or memorabilia that you would like to share, please let us know in advance.

Following the successful session in March 2018 on ‘The rise and fall of the Bournemouth Jewish Hotels’ by Geoffrey Feld, you will certainly want to come to our afternoon tea at which we are screening the feature

length film ‘The Green Park’ in the presence of family members of the late owners. Who can forget the wonderful kosher hotels in Bournemouth when Jews from all parts of the UK would look forward all year to spending their holidays in luxury in a Bournemouth

hotel? The smartest was the Green Park, opened in 1943 by Ruby Marriott and his wife Sarah Richman and her 4 sisters. If you went on holiday to the Green Park, you considered yourself to be among the upper echelons of British -Jewish society where you could mingle with the wealthy and the famous. The cuisine was of the highest standard and people remember eating their way from one meal to the next throughout the day. Come and be entertained by a film reflecting the social history of British Jewry for almost half a century from 1943, wallow in nostalgia by remembering Bournemouth when it reigned supreme as the number one holiday destination for our community and enjoy our afternoon tea.

Monday 27 January Holocaust Memorial Day. FREE ENTRY

75th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. Documentary film:

THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ 27TH JANUARY 1945

Featuring footage that was used to indict the Nazis during the Nuremburg trials, this shocking documentary records the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp. it is a painful film to watch, but is an important record of this terrible time in history, and works to raise consciousness in the hope that it will never happen again. Filmed by a Soviet film crew, the cameramen describe how they felt at the horrific scenes that confronted the liberators. A majority of prisoners had been forced by the Germans to leave the camp as the Red Army approached Auschwitz and many had perished on their ‘Death Marches’.

The film provides a horrific record of the brutality that was wreaked upon the Jews at Auschwitz. It also documents the desperation and sadness of the over 6000 prisoners who survived, the courage of the

liberators of the camp, and the terrible evidence of torture and death that awaited them there when they arrived in 1945.

Warning: This historical documentary contains some explicit scenes that are of a violent and disturbing nature

Tuesday February 11

THAT PANORAMA: 10 JULY 2019 IS LABOUR ANTISEMITIC?

Panellists include: Philip Rosenberg, Director of Public Affairs, Board of Deputies

Ella Rose, former Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and former President UJS Josh Garfield, former Jeremy Corbyn supporter and member of Momentum

Izzy Lenga, former Jewish student leader

‘It was harrowing to watch on national television Labour staffers saying that they were driven to extreme

levels of mental anguish.’

Board of Deputies

President: “Corbyn,

Milne and Formby

are responsible for

turning a once-

great, anti-racist

party into a cesspit

of antisemitism”

The panellists discuss what has happened since they appeared on BBC Panorama in

July 2019

Tuesday 3 March

THE JEWS WHO HELPED CURE THE NAZIS

Robert Bieber MBE Visiting Research Fellow in War Studies at King’s College, London An illustrated talk about the remarkable tale of three Jewish Army Officers who used kindness to rehabilitate their former SS enemies at Featherstone, a prisoner war of camp in Northumberland.

What made Featherstone, one of a number of PoW camps operated in Britain to rehabilitate German soldiers, including many devoted Nazis, different was that its key officers, Colonel Vickers, Captain Merkel and a Captain Herbert Sulzbach, were all Jewish.

Initially, Mr. Bieber said he “couldn’t imagine what came over the British authorities, to put three British Jewish officers in charge of a Nazi prisoner of war camp. But then he had a sense of ‘isn’t this what Jewish people stand for? Reaching out the hands of friendship?’. This is exactly what Jewish people do. I felt a huge sense of pride and belief, justifying my confidence in what we Jews are.”

Walter Merkel and his twin brother

The camp was used for the de-Nazification of former SS officers

Tuesday 24 March

THE LOST SONGS OF ‘FIDDLER ON THE ROOF’

Initially called ‘Where poppa came from’ Spencer Nathan

You’ve only heard 15 out of the original 50 songs in the stage production and film Imagine going to Fiddler on the Roof and not hearing ‘Tradition’, ‘Matchmaker Matchmaker’, ‘If I were a rich man’, ‘To life’, ‘Miracle of Miracles’, ‘Now I have everything’, ‘Anatevka’ and many more…….. and instead hearing

‘We’ve never missed a Sabbath yet’, ‘To marry for love’, ‘What a life’ sung to Tevye’s horse, ‘A Butcher’s soul’, ‘The richest man in town’, ‘Any day now’, ‘Dear sweet sewing machine’, ‘If I were a woman’, ‘Get thee out’, ‘When messiah comes’, ‘Letters from America’, which were among the 35 rejected.

Come and hear all these songs with explanations of why they were cut.

Dear sweet sewing machine