Liberal Jewish Synagogue

Liberal synagogue in St John's Wood, London, England

The Liberal Jewish Synagogue (קהל קדוש לב חדש), abbreviated as LJS, is a Liberal Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in St John's Wood, in the City of Westminster, London, England, in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1911, the congregation is the oldest and largest member of Britain's Liberal Judaism movement, a constituent member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. The congregation uses the Lev Chadash denominational prayerbook. Since its earliest days, it has had mixed gender seating.

Claude Montefiore's Jewish Religious Union, established in 1902, opened a prayer association in a converted chapel at 18 Hill Street on 4 February 1911. Within a year, Hebrew Union College graduate Rabbi Israel Mattuck was appointed minister. By 1915, the congregation had 416 members and grew, reaching 784 in 1921. A permanent edifice at St John's Wood, with a capacity of 1,400 people and designed by architect Ernest Joseph, was dedicated on 13 September 1925. Leo Baeck, an internationally famous rabbi and Holocaust survivor, served as the synagogue's president.

The synagogue's rabbis are Alexandra Wright (Senior Rabbi) and Igor Zinkov.

It had 1,622 registered members in 1940, rising to 2,600 members in 1954 before peaking at 3,000 in the mid 1970s. The synagogue has long attracted strong numbers of American expatriate families and rabbis ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

Services at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue follow the prayerbooks of the Liberal Judaism movement. The first prayerbook produced by Rabbi Mattuck appeared in 1912 and was influenced by American Reform Judaism and Rabbi David Einhorn's Olat Tamid. In 1962 a new Haggadah was produced by Rabbi John Rayner and Rabbi John Rich of South London Liberal Synagogue. In 1973 Rayner produced a new prayerbook, Service of the Heart to replace Mattuck's earlier prayerbooks. Rayner aimed to strike a balance between traditional and modern liturgical materials. The older establishment was happy to continue with Mattuck's more radical approach, while an increasing number of congregations felt the need for a more tradition kind of service and more Zionism. Over the years, there has been a gradual re introduction of some of the traditional rituals and forms of worship abandoned by the synagogue's early leaders. In the 1930s and 1940s the synagogue began to accommodate the different traditions of an increasing number of congregants that were refugees from Europe. The greater impetus for traditional rituals also came from the context of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The ceremonies later became known as Kabbalat Torah (Confirmation) by Rabbi Rayner, as a part of a trend towards the greater use of Hebrew. In 1984, the discovery of structural defects convinced the board to demolish and rebuild the sanctuary, whilst maintaining the original portico. The right to build flats above the new synagogue was sold to a developer to help subsidise the project. In 1988 the original portico was taken down and kept in storage for three years at the London Docklands while the new synagogue was being built. It was then cleaned and reinstated from its original position. The sanctuary was conceived as octagonal. The bimah and three lecterns are made of oak and is enclosed by a high curved wall of Jerusalem stone. The stone was quarried from Hebron by a family whose employees had traditional skills of tooling the stone. The wall was hand finished in London by a team of Israelis. The ark was designed as the focus of the wall; the doors are a mesh of metals set in frames of bronze. The design and inset of the doors were carried out in Israel by sculptor Amit Schur, while the bronze frame and closing mechanism were manufactured under her direction in Sheffield.

The synagogue lent its support to refugees from Nazi Germany. Rabbi Mattuck raised funds to enable German refugees to come to England. The money that Mattuck raised allowed 156 refugees to escape persecution. Synagogue congregants assisted the refugees with securing employment and the Women's Society tried to ensure that the children they helped had a Jewish education, especially if they lived with non Jewish families. The synagogue also hosted a club for German refugees, organising dances, lectures and music recitals. The German refugees also began to run language lessons and conducted their own services. They eventually founded their own congregation, Belsize Square Synagogue. In the 1970s and 1980s the synagogue turned its attention towards the plight of Soviet Jewry, becoming particularly supportive of the refuseniks. An LJS Soviet Jewry Committee was established in 1977 by Doreen Isaacs. The members supported demonstrations and marches, they visited refusenik families in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and Odesa. They adopted refuseniks and sent messages of support, Rosh Hashanah cards, Chanukkah greetings and seder services for Passover. The committee produced 100, 000 Russian/Hebrew seder services which were sent out into the Soviet Union. The haggadot with the LJS initials printed were also sent out by Orthodox congregations, with the blessing of the Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits, Baron Jakobovits.