The Synagogue on Cathedral Road, Cardiff, prior to its closure in 1989

Description

This photograph shows preparations for the closure of the synagogue on Cathedral Road, which was sold in 1988 for office accommodation.

RC: "So the place was very damp, it was leaking all the time and it was costing a lot of money for the upkeep for not very many congregants and also the number of congregants in Cardiff West had diminished dramatically, so they decided to sell it and the — I think the United Synagogue at that time said, “You can sell it but you mustn’t sell it to another religion” which they allow nowadays but I think that was what went on, so we put it on the market and in 1981, I think it was, we manage — we got the buyers and it went for about £400,000 and of course there’s always people saying, “We could have got £600,000”, or, “We could have got thousands”, you know, or “We could have got £1,000,000”, anyway, we got £400,000 for it and on — the condition of it of the sale is they had to keep the front, there was a preservation order on the front of the shul but the rest of the synagogue they could knock down and the back there was rooms and then what have you and knocked some — some of those down as well…”

(JHASW oral history with RC, 20 January 2019)

The “Articles for Sale or Wanted” column of the Jewish Chronicle of December 16 1988, (page 29) advertised:

“CARDIFF UNITED SYNAGOGUE. Sale of synagogue fittings, pews, pulpit, large Ark and other fittings-
Inquiries to: Secretary 0222 2298T3.”

The March 1989 edition of CAJEX reported that the last service was held on Shabbos, 30th December, 1988, and was attended by “forty men, women and children, many of them from the Penylan area…”
“How sad that with a membership of 160, only three attended on Erov Shabbos, Friday 29th December.”

JHASW was told that the congregation moved to a meeting room at 176 Cathedral Road:

GO: "Well, at that time, there were still lot of Jewish people living in this part of town, Canton, Pencisely, Llandaff, and they didn’t want to go to Cyncoed, Brandreth Road. There was always a them-and-us between Cathedral Road shul and Cyncoed shul congregations. Not hatred, but a mutual dislike: “Oh no, we wouldn’t go there,” attitude. As the Cathedral Rd congregation collectively said “We’d never go there” my father, Rudolf, turned one of his flats in Cathedral Rd into a prayer room, at no cost to the congregation.. Call it a synagogue if you like but it was a glorified prayer room. And that kept going for quite a few years. And then, as you know, people die off and all of a sudden you haven’t got a congregation. You need 10 males over the age of 13 to have a proper service. That’s why Judaism has survived all these thousands of years in the diaspora, because ever since the second temple was destroyed by the Romans, Judaism became portable. As long as you had 10 males over the age of 13, you could do the whole service, including reading/prayers from the Torah scroll, you could do the whole thing. If it’s less than ten then you can’t, the service is then carried out in a modified form. There’s many, many congregations with fewer people where they can’t have the full service, but as long as you have the required 10 men, Judaism can survive, as it indeed has, and will continue to do so."

(JHASW oral history with GO, 25 October 2018, amended by GO).

This photograph is part of a collection taken by Alan Schwartz prior to the closure of the synagogue in 1989. It is reproduced with the permission of his brother Anthony Schwartz.

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.