The Jewish Community of Leeds
Leeds
Cloth-manufacturing city in Yorkshire, N. England.
Jews first appear here in the late 18th century. However, a community was founded only c. 1823 and a cemetery acquired only in 1837. Until 1846 a small room served as synagogue, larger accommodation being acquired in that year. The first synagogue building for the parent congregation was erected in 1860, when there were a hundred Jewish families. With the growth in local prosperity the Jewish population increased, and in 1877 the present Beth Hamidrash Hagadol, now a congregation with 620 seat holders, was organized in a small room by recently arrived immigrants. Toward the close of the 19th century many Russian and polish immigrants settled in Leeds and were absorbed largely in the tailoring industry to which they gave a great impetus. Sir Montague burton was one of many Jews who contributed largely to its development.
Zionism flourished in Leeds, especially due to the presence of Professor Selig Brodetsky.
In 1970 the Jewish community totaled 18,000 out of a population of approximately 508,000. This was the third largest community, after London and Manchester, and contained the highest proportion of Jews to the general population in Great Britain. Three of the nine synagogues in Leeds are combined in the united Hebrew congregation with a total membership of nearly 2,000. There is also one Reform congregation. The Leeds Jewish Representative Council, organized in 1938, embraced almost every local synagogue, Zionist group, charitable organization, and friendly society. There was a Hebrew department at Leeds University and the teachers there have included Shimon Rawidowicz.
Hyman Morris was Lord Mayor in 1941--42 and J. S. Walsh in 1966--67.
By the mid 1990's the Jewish population had dropped to approximately 9,000.
In the 2001 British census, which recorded the religion of respondents, Leeds was found to have 8,270 declared Jews, making it still the third largest Anglo-Jewish community after Great London and Manchester.
Leeds continued to have a wide variety of Jewish institutions, among them six Orthodox, one Reform, and one Masorti synagogue.
Casriel Kahan
(Personality)Casriel Kahan (1875-1930), cantor, born in Bagaslaviskis (Boguslavishok), Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). The family had originated from Sadje, Lithuania. Casriel Kahan married his first cousin Pauline (Pera) in Lodz in 1895. That same year he came to England. He probably arrived at the port of Hull and settled in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. His wife stayed in Lithuania until their first child (Eli) was born in 1896 in her home town of Vilkomir. Then she joined her husband in Leeds where they lived from 1896 until he died in 1930. They had 5 children - 3 sons and 2 daughters. Casriel Kahan was naturalized as a British subject in 1903 when he was 27
Casriel Kahan was the Chief Hazzan at the New Briggate (Grinner) Synagogue in Leeds (where Rabbi Isaac Herzog served as spiritual head between 1897-1910. Settings of psalms written and arranged by Casriel Kahan for his 4-part synagogue choir were published in 1903. Died in Leeds, UK.
Ki Lekach Tov
(Music)Ki Lekach Tov ("A Good Doctrine" - in Hebrew, Proverbs 4:2)
Original recording from Mokum Jerusalem of the West: The Musical Tradition of the Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam. Produced by Beit Hatfutsot in 2004.
As the Torah is being returned to the Holy Ark, the congregation and/or the Hazzan sing a compilation of verses, beginning with "And when it (the ark) halted" (Numbers 10:36). Frequently the first few verses are said silently, and they begin singing only with the verse "For I give you good precepts: do not forsake My Torah" (Proverbs 4:2). The melody was composed by Hazzan Solomon Stern (1894 or 1895-1963) of Leeds, England. In this recording from 1947, cantor Moskovits sings it with his oldest son, Uriel, leaving out some of the repetitions in Stern's original composition.
Text by Yossi Avner, Anton Kras and Yuval Shaked originally published by Beit Hatfutsot in Mokum Jerusalem of the West: The Musical Tradition of the Ashkenazi Community of Amsterdam CD booklet.
Julius Unsdorfer
(Personality)Julius Unsdorfer (1919-1978), rabbi, born in Bartislava, Slovakia, the son of Rabbi Solomon Unsdorfer, he studied in the yeshivot of Galanta and Pressburg, as Bratislava was known when it was within the Austrian Empire. When aged nineteen, Unsdorfer was ordained as rabbi and was appointed minister of the Beth Yakov synagogue in Bratislava. In 1939, prior to the outbreak of war in Europe, he went to England and settled in Manchester, then the second largest Jewish community in England which was home to 35,000 Jews. After studying in the Manchester Yeshiva for one year, he became rabbi of the local Kahal Chassidim congregation. In 1950 he was appointed rabbi of the largest orthodox synagogue in Manchester, the Holy Law Congregation. He was awarded a MA degree by Manchester University in 1953 and nine years later a PhD from the University of Leeds. Unsdorfer was active in many communal and inter-denominational organizations in Manchester. He is the author of two books: The Jewish Brides Book (1956), and Karaite Lithurgy (1962). .
Menahem Zvi Kaddari
(Personality)Menahem Zvi Kaddari (born Schwarz) (1925-2011), Hebrew scholar and linguist, born in Mezőkövesd, Hungary to Joshua and Shoshana Schwarz. He received his high school education in Miskolc and Ungvar (now Uzhorod, in Ukraine)). After immigrating to Israel in 1947, he studied at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, receiving his doctorate in 1955 for a thesis on “The Grammar of the Aramaic of the Zohar.” Kaddari lectured at the Hebrew University from 1958 to 1960 and in 1963 was appointed senior lecturer at Bar-Ilan University at Ramat Gan, and head of the Department of Hebrew and Semitic languages there. In 1966, he was appointed associate professor. From 1968 to 1970 he was dean of Bar-Ilan’s Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Jewish Studies, and in 1970 he became full professor of Hebrew. He was appointed consultant-member of the Hebrew Language Academy in 1967. Kaddari was rector of the Bar-Ilan University from 1971 to 1975 and in 1976 was rotating chairman of the Committee of Heads of the Israeli Universities. Kaddari also taught at UCLA (1967) and the University of Leeds, U.K. (1978). He was appointed visiting professor and head of the Hebrew Department of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and lectured there between 1979-1981. Kaddari received the Israel Prize in 1999. His major fields of research included Aramaic, Hebrew syntax, biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, and, mainly, modern Hebrew. One of his special interests was in defining the principles underlying the process of the internal organization of today's language.
Kaddari’s publications include: The Grammar of the Aramaic of the Zohar (Heb., 1957); “The Aramaic Antiochus Scroll,” in Bar-Ilan, Sefer ha-Hashanah, I (1963), 81-105; II (1964), 178-214; Semantic Fields in the Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Heb., 1968); Medieval Heritage in Modern Hebrew (Heb., 1970) and Studies in Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Heb., 1976).