Cardiff New Synagogue Newsletter, March 1987

Disgrifiad

A newsletter for the congregation of Cardiff New Synagogue (later Cardiff Reform Synagogue), dated March 1987. The newsletter contains obituaries, opinion pieces, articles, sermons, reports from synagogue groups, details of past and future synagogue-led events and open letters.

The newsletter includes:

An obituary for Rabbi Graf by Rabbi Rachel Montagu.
The obituary covers Graf's time in Germany and in particular describes how he delivered outspoken sermons against Nazism and continued to conduct wedding ceremonies even after Kristallnacht in November 1938. It also emphasises how Graf helped to improve the position of women in the synagogue long before it was considered necessary; how it is the work of him and other Reform Jews that has since allowed the introduction of Bat Mitzvah and women reading from the Torah along with equal education opportunities.

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).

The depository: Glamorgan Archives.