This summer, while taking a voyage around the Harris Family’s earliest steps in the UK…
…I was acutely aware that we only have one actual relic of Grandpa Harris: the large certificate of honour depicted in the headline picture. We do not even have a surviving photograph of him – he died in the early 1940s – all such things were disposed of when Grandma moved out of the family home (104 Clapham Common Northside) in the 1960s.
I suspect that the certificate only survived because of its religious significance and the lingering, somewhat superstitious sense that such a thing should not simply be destroyed.
It lived at the back of my dad’s shop for at least a quarter of a century – then it lived in our Woodfield Avenue attic for another quarter of a century.
Mum nearly (accidentally) gave it away when dad died, but I managed to rescue it thanks to the good offices of Michael and Tessa Laikin who in any case hadn’t quite believed that I wanted shot of it, even if mum did.
It was in a pretty shocking state by the time I took it to Janie’s favourite picture framer in Bayswater, who declared the artefact to be on the verge of disintegration and recommended a specialist restorer to preserve it and bring it back to life before framing.
Several weeks and several hundred pounds later, it has pride of place on the hall wall in my flat.
The stunning, large certificate (60 x 45 cm unframed, 75 x 60 cm framed) commemorates my grandfather being honoured in the synagogue as Chatan Torah on the festival of Simchat Torah on 14/15 October 1922 – now 100 years ago. Or, in Hebrew calendar terms, 17/18 October 2022 is exactly 100 years after the event.
As it happens and by strange coincidence, Janie and I found ourselves on 15 October this year just around the corner from 14 Manette Street, which is the building which was, back then, the West End Talmud Torah & Bikkur Holim Synagogue.
I couldn’t resist the urge to walk around the corner and photograph the very building on the very 100th anniversary of Grandpa’s honour:
Religion isn’t my thing, but it was my grandparent’s thing and this honour would have been one of the most notable moments in my grandfather’s (relatively short) life.
That Soho synagogue – the West End Talmud Torah and Bikkur Holim was a rather fascinating and controversial thing, if Gerry Black’s Living Up West book is anything to go by (which it is…go buy it if you are interested). He describes it as an
orthodox and shtetl-like shule [synagogue, where comparatively] …the service, rabbi, and fervid atmosphere were more typical of the heim [the old country].
This shtetl style apparently emanated from the “larger than life” Rabbi at the place, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Ferber, who hailed from Kovno (Kaunas) – which is, coincidentally the Lithuanian part from which my mother’s Marcus family hailed.
There are some wonderful passages in Living Up West about that Rabbi; I do remember my father talking about him as a formidable figure, even though my father was still quite small when the family moved away from Fitzrovia/Soho. Intriguingly also, the book reports that, by 1926, the congregation had grown so large that they needed to hire The Scala Theatre in Charlotte Street for overflow services.
Living Up West also has an astonishing, detailed account in it about the 1930 AGM and elections in that community that
…were on the point of coming to blows…
…Ultimately the meeting broke up in chaos and confusion.
I am minded to write more about that strange community, not least because those detailed accounts include the names that appear on Grandpa’s certificate.
But at the moment, 100 years on, we get more than enough such chaos and confusion from a more southerly part of Westminster. In any case my purpose today is really to commemorate my Grandpa’s big day in 1922.
