My dear Friends
A very happy and healthy New Year to you all! May it be a peaceful one for us and for the whole world. I have some interesting news of what has passed and of what is to come. I commemorated the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 by giving a concert that day. Our theme of Peace and Reconciliation played itself out reflectively in the music performed and which you are now familiar with. After Reverend Schilson-Thomas drew us into silence in the beautiful chancel in the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge, I started singing ' Last night I had the strangest dream.' This was composed by Ed McCurdy, the father of folk singers such as Dylan, Paxton and Baez. 'I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.' Psalm 23 in Hebrew continued the theme of good coming out of evil and 'Eli, Eli' spoke of the transcendent God, a song written by Hannah Senesh by the Sea of Galilee. She perished in the Second World War but wrote these lines during her life in Palestine.
'The souls who have gone before us light up the way for the rest of mankind.'
I was blessed at the concert with a full house and with many resonant voices joining in the songs of the sixties.
You may know that I was born in London and raised in Glasgow. I had my schooling there from age 11 and in my formative years had my wild youth(while I was at Glasgow university.) I did a lot of singing, in the style that I do now, in those days, in cafes and once at the Edinburgh Festival. So I jumped at the chance to visit my Glaswegian family and friends, especially as my cousin had been unwell in the summer.
They say that Glasgow has changed. I stayed in the West end, near the University, and I still recognised some pubs from the old days. I remembered too the cloisters and the sweeping boulevard leading up to the University being a fine match for Cambridge. I went to Glasgow Cathedral, picking up the echoes of its once Catholic heritage and relishing the beauty and peace. Relishing too the Glaswegians and the immediacy of the way they respond to you. Observing the chiselled faces in the University Cafe, still run by the same Italian family who founded it around 1917.
Highlight of the trip ( as well as a drive through the Campsie Hills) was a visit to Garnethill Synagogue. Founded in 1879, it is possible that my great-grandfather had a hand in its foundation. Certainly my maternal grandparents, Samuel Solomon Samuel, the first Jewish magistrate in Glasgow and his Swedish wife Anna (Bergson) were regular attenders there. My cousin and I delighted in a stained glass window in their memory. My cousin had a sudden inspiration and pointed to the place where her father, Henry, would have sat, near the Ark with the Torah scrolls. Beside him would have been my father, Joseph, up on a business trip from London. Legend has it that my father, contrary to tradition, raised his eyes to the ladies' gallery opposite and had his first glimpse of my mother. And the rest, as they say, is history...
This summer, if all goes well, I will be in Toronto for the first time in five years. It is one of my favourite cities in the world and in one sense my spiritual home. You may recall that I was thinking of emigrating there. That didn't quite work out, but I felt it was time to revisit friends and places still dear to me. Bishop Lacey, now in his nineties and fondly known as Father Pearce has issued a welcome, as has my friend John in Cambridge, Ontario. That was the first place I visited in Eastern Canada way back in 1988; it was a result of that visit that I decided to come into the Church.
Tell you all about it in the next newsletter. I hope to have fun and lots of relaxation over there.
I wish you all good things.
Shalom and be well.
Your sister Gila
A very happy and healthy New Year to you all! May it be a peaceful one for us and for the whole world. I have some interesting news of what has passed and of what is to come. I commemorated the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 by giving a concert that day. Our theme of Peace and Reconciliation played itself out reflectively in the music performed and which you are now familiar with. After Reverend Schilson-Thomas drew us into silence in the beautiful chancel in the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge, I started singing ' Last night I had the strangest dream.' This was composed by Ed McCurdy, the father of folk singers such as Dylan, Paxton and Baez. 'I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.' Psalm 23 in Hebrew continued the theme of good coming out of evil and 'Eli, Eli' spoke of the transcendent God, a song written by Hannah Senesh by the Sea of Galilee. She perished in the Second World War but wrote these lines during her life in Palestine.
'The souls who have gone before us light up the way for the rest of mankind.'
I was blessed at the concert with a full house and with many resonant voices joining in the songs of the sixties.
You may know that I was born in London and raised in Glasgow. I had my schooling there from age 11 and in my formative years had my wild youth(while I was at Glasgow university.) I did a lot of singing, in the style that I do now, in those days, in cafes and once at the Edinburgh Festival. So I jumped at the chance to visit my Glaswegian family and friends, especially as my cousin had been unwell in the summer.
They say that Glasgow has changed. I stayed in the West end, near the University, and I still recognised some pubs from the old days. I remembered too the cloisters and the sweeping boulevard leading up to the University being a fine match for Cambridge. I went to Glasgow Cathedral, picking up the echoes of its once Catholic heritage and relishing the beauty and peace. Relishing too the Glaswegians and the immediacy of the way they respond to you. Observing the chiselled faces in the University Cafe, still run by the same Italian family who founded it around 1917.
Highlight of the trip ( as well as a drive through the Campsie Hills) was a visit to Garnethill Synagogue. Founded in 1879, it is possible that my great-grandfather had a hand in its foundation. Certainly my maternal grandparents, Samuel Solomon Samuel, the first Jewish magistrate in Glasgow and his Swedish wife Anna (Bergson) were regular attenders there. My cousin and I delighted in a stained glass window in their memory. My cousin had a sudden inspiration and pointed to the place where her father, Henry, would have sat, near the Ark with the Torah scrolls. Beside him would have been my father, Joseph, up on a business trip from London. Legend has it that my father, contrary to tradition, raised his eyes to the ladies' gallery opposite and had his first glimpse of my mother. And the rest, as they say, is history...
This summer, if all goes well, I will be in Toronto for the first time in five years. It is one of my favourite cities in the world and in one sense my spiritual home. You may recall that I was thinking of emigrating there. That didn't quite work out, but I felt it was time to revisit friends and places still dear to me. Bishop Lacey, now in his nineties and fondly known as Father Pearce has issued a welcome, as has my friend John in Cambridge, Ontario. That was the first place I visited in Eastern Canada way back in 1988; it was a result of that visit that I decided to come into the Church.
Tell you all about it in the next newsletter. I hope to have fun and lots of relaxation over there.
I wish you all good things.
Shalom and be well.
Your sister Gila
