Synagogue

 

Today I'm checking out this gorgeous art deco synagogue! As any long time reader will know, I do plenty of Christian chapels. It's time to show the Jewish folk some love too. I don't really know anything about Judaism, but one thing I actually love about doing this blog is that it can be educational for me. I document the place, then I research, then I regurgitate it all to you lot like a mother pigeon feeding her young. When I set out to write a piece on this synagogue, I was actually looking forward to writing about a topic I knew nothing about, and filling this gap in my knowledge.

 

 

Check out this gate! I love it. Being an urbexer, I usually only see the Star of David because idiots don't know how to draw a pentagram when they're trying to be edgy devil worshipers. This is the first time I've ever seen an intentional one, and it's kinda nice. I think it's great how after centuries of persecution they can just lay it all out with pride.

 

A century prior to this synagogue being built, the local Jewish community had a bit of schism. I'm not sure what that schism was about, but a breakaway congregation ended up using a warehouse before setting up their own synagogue. But in the 1920s many Jews from that congregation started moving away to wealthier suburbs and by 1928 the established synagogue concluded that it needed to relocate to be closer to them.

Consequently in 1936 this place was built. It was designed by a chap called Ernest Alfred Shennan, with capacity for about seven hundred people. It won two prizes for its design. The first was because it was the largest roof to be unsupported by pillars in the entire UK, and the second because of its curved cinema-style gallery seats. Today it's regarded as the finest surviving synagogue of the interwar era.

 

Here we have the foundation stone. This was laid by a chap called Baron Thomas Globe, alongside the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr Hertz. And thanks to the internet, I have a shot of it happening.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Check it out! That's Baron Thomas Globe, a Russian-born Jewish business owner, laying the foundation stone. His son would be the second child to have their bar mitzvah here. For those who don't know, that's a Jewish ritual to celebrate a boy coming of age, typically around the age of thirteen. From that point they're allowed to take on adult responsibilities. 

Dr Hertz doesn't seem to be in the image, unless that's him in the background with the mustache that was about to very rapidly go out of fashion. It doesn't look like him, but then it's not the clearest of images. Hertz was at the event though, so I'll include a photo of him anyway. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Is it just me or do all of these old Jewish blokes look at the camera as if it's interrupting their day? 

Hertz was born in Hungary in 1872, and he became Chief Rabbi of the UK in 1913, holding the position until his death in 1946. His tenure was not without controversy and he was known for getting into spats within the Jewish community. Much of this seems to be focused around Zionism. Zionism popped up in the late 1800s with the aim of establishing the promised land of the Jews. It's a very divisive subject that I'm not really the right three aliens in a human suit person to talk about in depth. But it is pretty important to establish that Judaism and Zionism are not the same thing.

 

My personal gripe with Hertz is that he was opposed to the kindertransport if it meant that Jewish children would be adopted by non-Jewish families. To me that's outrageous. I've talked about the Kindertransport before when I did that mansion. It was a hard blog to research because I ended up reading a load of diaries written by Jewish children in the 1930s. The Kindertransport involved smuggling Jewish children into the UK while the Jews were slowly losing their basic human rights in Nazi-occupied European countries. These parents feared that conditions would only get worse and decided to send their children to safety until it all blew over. Most of these children never saw their parents again, for obvious reasons, and I think it's pretty fucked up to suggest that it's better that these children share their parents fate than be raised by non-Jews.

 

But back to the Synagogue! Hertz might have been there when the foundation stone was laid, but it was Baron Henry Cohen who opened it and consecrated it a year later. I have a picture of him too.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

Baron Henry Cohen was, by all accounts, a genius and a saint. One of his teachers described him as showing signs of genius at an age when most boys are only just beginning to show signs of intelligence. Evidently his teacher has never been on Tinder or she'd know that there is no age where we begin to show signs of intelligence. 

Baron Cohen was a doctor and he was knighted in 1949 before becoming president of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1964. There's also a medal named after him, awarded to those who make a considerable contribution to gerontology research. He sounds like a great guy.

Time to slip inside...

 

 

This part of the building feels particularly ominous and gloomy, no doubt because it's all been vandalised and trashed, when it was probably once very grand and welcoming.

 

 

Stairs lead down, but we'll get to that. 

 

 

Before we get to the main worshiping area, let's swing by the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets. 

 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. 

Now onto the main bit!

 

 

Check it out! Someone has been pulling up all the floor pieces and stacking them neatly next to the pews, which is odd. Curiously the bimah, the platform where the preacher stands, is in the middle of the ground floor. I don't know if its central location is typical of all synagogues, or if this one is unusual, but I've never seen anything quite like that before. It certainly seems nicer to have everyone focusing on the centre instead of everyone facing forward. 

 

 

Right here where the pile of pigeon shit is, is where the preacher would have sang or read from the Torah to the congregation. 

 

 

But then there's also a pulpit at the end of the building, like a Christian church. Every photo and video I've seen of this place shows the service being conducted from the central bimah, so I don't know what this would have been used for. The choir, maybe? Whoever was positioned here would be facing the preacher in the bimah.

 

Thanks to the internet, I have a very grainy image of it from when the synagogue was open. 

 

(Image not mine, obviously) 

 

Here's the view from the pulpit. It has a book platform so evidently this was used for preaching too.

 

 

Over on the bimah someone has spray painted a big swastika, and someone else has scribbled it out and written "Death 2 Nazis," which is lovely. I'm not sure how many generations of ones family tree need to fornicate with their siblings in order to produce someone who thinks painting a swastika in a Jewish place of worship is cool, but that's okay because they probably can't count that high anyway.  

Hats off to the person who graffitied over the graffiti. You're a vandal too, but the ends justify the means. 

Here's a grainy photo of how it used to look.

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

So in spite of there being seating capacity for seven hundred people, I can't find any indication that the congregation ever reached that limit. They had 340 members in 1938, and it would peak at 582 in 1955. 

In 1941 the Synagogue opened its doors to the families who had lost their homes to German bombs, even holding a Christmas service for non-Jews. American Jewish soldiers who were stationed nearby also used the synagogue as a place of worship and a social centre. The minister at the time was a chap called Lehrman and unfortunately the events overseas, which he compared to a holy crusade, completely obliterated his pacifistic views.

 

Let's be honest, it must be difficult seeing your people gradually lose their rights and eventually get slaughtered while you're safe on some island. There must have been a lot of survivors guilt in the British Jewish community back then.

 

Here are some steps leading to the upper seating.

 

 

The synagogue fell on hard times in 1959 when a burglar set fire to the building. The building itself would eventually be restored, following enormous effort from the locals to raise the money, but the torah scrolls were lost to the blaze. For those who don't know, these are probably the most sacred thing in a synagogue. They're kept locked away when not in use, and they are typically read during prayer service. Apparently they contain the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. So basically a good chunk of the Christian bible, but none of the bits with that smelly Jesus guy.

 

We all know Genesis. It's the book that gave us Adam, Steve, Eve, Noah, etc. Exodus is about Moses leading his people to the promised land. And then after that the storytelling really drops the ball and we're left with a bunch of rules about who we're allowed to sleep with and whatnot.

 

But what's bizarre to me is that historically antisemitism does date back to the medieval Christians, who brought about the gradual removal of the Jewish rights. In 339AD, Jews were forbidden to marry Christians, and then in 439AD they were forbidden from holding positions in government, and then in 531AD they were forbidden from testifying against Christians in court. It's sort of like a very slow version of Nazi Germany. It's almost as if Hitler said "Lets do what the Christians did in the first millennium, but faster." And it makes little sense to me. Perhaps I'm missing something here, because if the Jews are reading from the same book, surely they're worshiping the same deity, and are therefore the same belief system dressed differently?

From what I can tell, the big difference is that the Jews aren't fans of Jesus, and think he's not the messiah, just a very naughty boy. In that regard, maybe the difference between the Jews and Christians is not dissimilar to the differences between the Christians and Mormons, where some random chap went off on his own, and conveniently when nobody was watching, met up with God and he alone was told that everything that came before isn't so much wrong as incomplete, and that his way is the right way and now he can have as many wives as he wants. It's sort of like a fan fiction sequel to a story written by someone else. Christianity is the "Carrie 2" of religion.

 

But let's stop our ponderings and just appreciate the view for a bit. Isn't this building gorgeous? 

 

In 1963, Clive Epstein got married here. For those of you who don't know, that's the brother of the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein. Also in attendance were Billy J Kramer and Gerry Marsden. I was quite excited about such a high profile wedding, thinking surely I'll get some old photos of the synagogue from that, but the only wedding photos I could find are this one, and variations of it. Allegedly this is taken in the function hall of the synagogue.   

(Photo credit: Albert Marrion)

 

And perhaps the reason why these photos faded into obscurity is because they were associated with a much bigger shoot. Brian Epstein was so fond of the photos of his brothers wedding that he asked the photographer, Albert Marrion, to do a photoshoot of that strange new band that he was managing. Albert was reluctant, but Brian persuaded him, telling him that they were a scruffy looking bunch but harmless. And so the wedding of Clive Epstein was soon overshadowed by a more famous set of photographs, that being the Beatles in leather and looking like they have more guitar strings than pubes. 

 

(Photo credit: Albert Marrion)

And look, it's Pete Best, the original drummer!

By all accounts Albert Marrion didn't enjoy this shoot, mainly because John Lennon kept making comments about his receding hairline, and out of thirty images, only seventeen survived because the others were ruined by Paul and John pulling faces at the camera.

Brian Epstein died in 1967. His funeral was here at the synagogue, but the Beatles were asked not to attend for fear it would turn the event into a media circus.

 

 

Let's check out the pews themselves, and see how they vary from Christian churches. Firstly, they're cushioned. That's a huge improvement. But they also have cute little drawers for one to store their hymn books.

 

 

They're also named. It seems that the Jewish community pay to reserve their own individual seats. 

 

 

So the Jewish congregation would have had three daily prayer services, called Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv, which are basically the morning, afternoon and evening prayers. What's peculiar is that in this synagogue Shacharit was held at different times depending on the day. On Sunday it was held at 8:30am, but on Mondays an Thursdays, it was held at 7:30am. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, shacharit was held at 8:45am. There was also a minor holiday to mark the start of each Jewish month called "Rosh Chodesh," and the shacharit was held at 7:30 on those days, irrespective of what week day it happened to be. Curiously on Mondays and Thursdays only, during the winter there would be no Mincha.

And then of course, there's the Shabbat, better known to the Western world as the Sabbath. This is the official day of rest. For the Jews that's Saturday. For Christians it's Sunday. How peculiar. 

I decided to look into how and why the Christians chose to shift the day of rest to Sunday, and sure enough, it's all because of that pesky Jesus bloke! So both Judaism and Christianity consider Sunday to be the first day of the week. In the old testament books, which the Jews follow, the seventh day is the day of rest because God made the world in six days and then chilled out on the seventh. In the new testament books, which aren't part of Judaism, Jesus was resurrected on the first day of the week, Sunday. And so the day of worship became Sunday instead of Saturday, which is ironic because resurrecting from the dead is the exact opposite of resting.

On Saturdays, the Jewish congregation still had the Mincha and Maariv prayers, but they didn't do the morning one. They could have a lie in.

 

 

From this angle above the pulpit, we can see a little detail that I missed when I was there, and that's the Star of David being part of the light fixtures. That's a nice touch.

I have managed to find a photo of this view, back when the synagogue was still in use.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

I'm quite intrigued by the menorah. That is, the big multi-candle thing. A temple memorah usually has seven candles, one for each day of creation. A Hanukah menorah usually has nine, which allegedly goes back to a story where one days worth of oil miraculously lasted for eight days, meaning the nine candles represent the eight days and the one that lit them. 

I've never seen one with five candles before, but apparently it refers to the five levels of the soul. The lowest level of the soul seems to be basic awareness of oneself, and then as one ascends we get things like emotions, the shedding of the ego and being closer to God. The five candled menorah is sometimes associated with mourning a deceased loved one, which makes me wonder if this is a photograph of a funeral service.

But I might be wrong. I know very little about Judaism. 

This little area above the pulpit seems to have been the focal point of graffiti. The walls are covered in imbecilic bleating.

 

 

Much of the graffiti is people advertising their social media handles, including a lot of urbexers. I checked a few out and they are definitely the sort who want their face on camera more than the place they're exploring. It's a bit depressing, and it really goes to show why any self respecting urban explorer shouldn't share location details. There's that old saying "Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints," and I don't think I've ever uttered those words because it's like the "Live Laugh Love" of the urbex world. But having said that, I do believe in the overall message, that we should document places and not disturb them. Often if you don't hand out locations, the same urbexers who scribble their names on walls will protest "It's not urbexers who trash places, it's local kids." And yet their name is on the wall, their piss is in the corner, and a trinket from the building is now on their bedside table.

 

 

So someone who I assume is an urbexer has gone around this area with a blue pen and named a few urban explorers, and said some rather unkind things about them. I know them all by name, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have ever spoken to them, and I've censored their surnames anyway because these accusations aren't just something that should be said willy nilly, and I don't want any part in that. If you think someone is a pedophile, go to the police. If you truly believe that this is what they are, report them, otherwise you're basically saying that you're happy for a predator to be at large as long as you hurt their feelings. But damaging someones reputation in this way is not funny and it can have a lasting impact and potentially ruin their lives. So either take your evidence to the police, assuming you have it, or shut up.

 

 

I'm not sure if this guy is really a wife beating cunt like the blue pen person suggests, but if he is tagging his urbex page then he is at least a regular cunt, so I censored his social media tag anyway. His facebook page even regurgitates the line "Take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints," and yet here he is tagging a place. This is not what urbex should be about. Urbex is about the building and its history, not getting your weird head on camera.

 

 This was a nice touch though, I will give them that.

 

 

In the upper front of the Synagogue, away from all the pews, pigeons and despair that we don't do mandatory IQ tests on everyone who purchases a marker pen, there's a few (presumably) meeting rooms which have a bit of a chilled vibe to them. I'm quite fond of these windows.

 

 From 1975 onward, the minister at the synagogue was a chap called Henry Chait, who was loved by just about everyone. He was said to be humble and genuinely caring. He wanted to make Judaism accessible for everyone but didn't care for ordering people around. He was completely non-judgemental, and despite being very traditional he was able to engage with younger people too. He also had a voice so spectacular that non-Jews would sit on the steps outside the Synagogue just to hear him sing. Allegedly he was keen to become an opera singer, but his father had told him that he had a gift from God, and so should use it in Gods service. He met his wife, Helena, and they got married here at this synagogue, before having seven children. Here he is.

 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

But poor Henry Chait was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 1992. It was a battle that inspired many but robbed him of so much. He was unable to even speak by the end of his life. He died in 1999.

I'm loving this great big Jewish cupboard, decorated with the Star of David. It looks like someone has tried to move it but then given up.

There are some steps down to the cellar, which was a huge youth centre prior to the arson attack, even having its own little scout troop. Now it's got this rather nice window and a sign that names it as the Max Morris Hall.

 

And this is when I found out that Jews have their own calendar. That's pretty cool, but it makes this guy a lot harder to research. I did find out that a Glaswegian Jew called Max Morris was a fairly notorious head teacher who flipped from Zionism to Socialism before dying in 2008, but I don't think this is the same guy. I'm pretty sure these Jewish dates mean that both he and his wife died in the late 1950s. I can find publications from the 1960s referring to this as the Max Morris Hall, but I can't find who this Max Morris is or what he did that was so spectacular that they named a big subterranean room after him. It's mildly infuriating.

 

Likewise, this sign makes mention of Abraham Yaffe and an entire library dedicated to him and his family. I assume the library was upstairs seeing as this sign has clearly been moved from where it was originally on display. But I have no idea who Abraham Yaffe was. I managed to find his grave, recognisable due to the locality, matching date of death and the Star of David. It says that he is deeply missed by his family, but doesn't indicate why he'd have a library named after him.

 

 

Still, the underground hall is quite impressive, even if it is a bit bland. Rumour has it that the Beatles played here in the summer of 1961, but the validity of this has been questioned. One band who definitely played here was The Remo Four, who George Harrison would later hire to be his backing band for his solo project.

 

 

So this whole area was like a function room, used for gatherings and parties for the Jewish community, making it as much a social hub as it was a place of worship, and that's pretty cool. I mean, sitting in a pew isn't for everyone. It's nice that they have something else to do every now and then that keeps the community together. People need people. We're a social animal.

 

 

With Henry Chait suffering with his Parkinsons disease, in the late 1990s the American Rabbi, Aaron Balkany ended up becoming a part-time minister here. He was already a teacher for Jewish children, and with Henry Chait unwell, he was asked to give the sermons at some of his students bar mitzvahs. He described the community as warm and welcoming, but by 1999 there were only 120 members of  the congregation left, and this dwindled down to just forty in the early 21st Century.

In 2007 the decision was made to amalgamate what was left of this congregation with another synagogue. The last sabbath service took place on the 5th January 2008, and then the Torah scrolls were sold. The doors closed for the last (legitimate) time, and the building was left vacant, a sad fate justified by one Rabbi with the line "We are not a people who worship buildings." And like that, he's lost me. I love this building. It's fucking gorgeous.

In 2017 plans were drawn up to renovate it into a load of apartments, so long as the changes were reversible due to the buildings listed status. Apparently the renovations were to include an "internal street" decorated to give the illusion of being in an outdoor street, complete with a coffee shop and reading room thrown in there somewhere. It sounds very ambitious and so far there hasn't been a single hint of that project starting. When I visited here, the door was wide open and any old weirdo could just stroll in.

 

There's some graffiti here that says "Your God Abandoned You" except they didn't give themselves enough room to write it, so it's all kinda crammed in there. And then it says "Prey, God has mercy."

Hmm... I think you should pray that your GCSE English teacher has mercy, mate. 

 

And that's pretty much all I've got.  This synagogue is lovely but trashed. Its time in the urbex spotlight has not been kind to it, and I'm not sure what its current condition is. It's either gotten worse or work has finally started. I'd really like to see it saved.

It made for a nice mooch anyway. I've had this place on my radar for many years and it was good to finally scratch the itch. 

 

While we're on the subject of Jews, I just want to slide this in real quick. I know I'm known for my dark humour and prodding the hornets nest, but I would like to speak to you like a grown-up for a bit. I'm not going to explain all of the bullshit going on with Israel, because I'm not the right person for the job, but at the moment my newsfeed is just full of stories of regular people just trying to get on with life and ending up dead for no reason. I know people don't come here for this sort of seriousness. They come here to read about the misadventures of an eccentric urbexer who sneaks into abandoned places instead of going to therapy, and looks like a sad face drawn on a bollock, but this is bigger than that. We obviously can't fix everything, but we can contribute and donate to some of the humanitarian organisations that are trying to provide relief on the frontline. I'll post some links- there's the PCRF (Palestine Childrens Relief Fund), the Islamic Relief who do great work, and Unicef, who are a bit more of a household name. And I know people hate being preached to. I don't like it which is why I don't like doing it. I usually just prefer to swim in the cesspool that is human existence and wait for the asbestos that's probably in my lungs to finish me off. But if you do have a bit of empathy and a fiver, do consider some of those links. Donate if you're able.

My next blogs will be on my local one because I'm going to put some effort into tying up all the loose ends, dotting the I's and crossing the T's. There's a lot of stuff around my home in Shrewsbury that I've known about for ages but haven't got around to visiting. Mainly houses and follies, and I'm going to focus on those for a bit.

In the meantime, you can make sure you don't miss anything, or at least do your bit to try not to miss anything while the algorithm fails us all, by following my social media. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Vero, and sometimes I remember that I have Twitter and Threads.

Thanks for reading!