Booklet for the Induction Service of Rabbi Rachel Montagu, Cardiff, 1985

Description

This is a booklet for the Induction Service of Rabbi Rachel Montagu as Minister of the Cardiff New Synagogue ((now known as the Cardiff Reform Synagogue). The service was to be conducted by Rabbi L. Gerhard Graf and Rabbi Lionel Blue. The service was to take place on 20 January 1985. The booklet contains the daily Amidah and the addresses given by Rabbi Colin Eimer and Rabbi Montagu.

Rabbi Rachel Montagu graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Classics and was ordained as a rabbi at the Leo Baeck College in London in 1984.

Rabbi Dr Louis Gerhard Graf was head of the Reform community in Cardiff for 31 years. He was born in Berlin on 28 March 1912, where he lived until 1939 when, along with his wife, he left Germany and was welcomed in Manchester. He was Minister of the Bradford Synagogue from 1940 to 1948. He moved to Cardiff in 1948, where he began to take services in the newly formed Reform Jewish community. He died in December 1986, aged 74.

The Cardiff Reform Synagogue was founded in 1948 as the Cardiff New Synagogue. The following year, it became a constituent member of the Movement for Reform Judaism. Born in reaction against the more restrictive traditions of the Orthodox Judaism of Cardiff Hebrew Congregation, such as the prohibition of driving on the Sabbath and the ban on interfaith marriages, the new Synagogue appealed to the immigrants who had fled the war-torn Europe, where the Reform movement was already well-established. The congregation worships in a converted Methodist Chapel on Moira Terrace they acquired in 1952.

Sources:
'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Community/card1/index.htm);
Leo Baeck College https://lbc.ac.uk/d-var-torah/parashat-vaetchanan-5/;
The Ammerdown Centre http://www.ammerdown.org/Jeremiah-and-Huldah-Rabbi-Rachel-Montagu-2018;
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/Community/card1/index.htm);
ARJ Information, volume XLII No. 3 March 1987 (https://ajr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/1987_march.pdf).

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.

• https://cardiffreformsynagogue.uk/new/ (link opens in new window)