The New West End Synagogue, London – Simchat Torah Service 1967, and Centenary Thanksgiving Service 1979.

Here are two interesting pieces of ephemera from the New West End Synagogue in St. Petersburgh Place, Bayswater. In 1967 Simchat Torah was advertised as a choral service, and the Choson Torah and Choson Bereishis (Bridegrooms of the Law – a ceremonial honour) were the Chazan (Cantor) Rev. Raphael Levy and his son, Mr. Elkan Levy.

In 1979 this historic and architecturally significant building celebrated its Centenary. It has been Grade I listed since 2007. The listing put New West End in the same class as Buckingham Palace and Oxford’s Bodleian Library, offering them legal protection from demolition and alterations.

The cornerstone of the building was actually laid on June 7, 1877, by Leopold de Rothschild, the first Jewish member of the House of Lords (his father, Lionel, was the first Jew to take a seat in the House of Commons, and in the presence of the United Synagogues founder and chief rabbi, Nathan Marcus Adler.

The booklet scanned below gives the history of the synagogue. Rabbi Morris Nemeth had been the Minister since 1965.

The booklet mentions briefly the role that New West End was forced to play in the expulsion of Rabbi Louis Jacobs from the United Synagogue in 1963.

Rabbi Jacobs had been the New West End Synagogue’s rabbi from 1954 to 1960, before he left to teach at Jews College. Although he had been promised the leadership of the college — which in turn was understood to be a springboard to the position of Chief Rabbi — upon the retirement of the incumbent, Rabbi Israel Epstein, Jacobs found his way blocked by the chief rabbi of the United Synagogue, Israel Brodie. Rabbi Brodie was among those who believed that Jacobs attempt, in his book, We Have Reason to Believe, to incorporate critical textual analysis of the Bible into the Orthodox worldview disqualified him from serving as a rabbi in the movement.

The New West End offered to rehire Rabbi Jacobs, but this too was blocked by Rabbi Brodie. Instead, Jacobs moved to what became the New London synagogue in St. John’s Wood.