Modeled on the Great Synagogue in Amsterdam, it has stayed almost unchanged ever since. Only the addition of electric lights has marked the passing of time – and even so, on special occasions, services are candle-lit as they were in those early days.
For the tercentenary service in 2001, Prince Charles came to the synagogue. There he met members of the community and leaders of Anglo-Jewry. What was impressive is that he spent as much time talking to the young men and women who were doing security duty as he did to the great and good of British Jewry. For security reasons, people volunteer to stand guard at communal events. Often, people walk past these guards, hardly noticing their presence. But Prince Charles noticed them, and made them feel as important as anyone else on that glittering occasion. Greatness is humility.
Sarah Levine (not her real name) died tragically young. She and her husband had been blessed by G-d with great success. They were wealthy, but did not spend their money on themselves. They gave tzedakah on a massive scale, within and beyond the Jewish community – in Britain, Israel and elsewhere. They were among our time’s greatest philanthropists.
When she died, among those feeling most bereaved were the waiters and waitresses of a well-known hotel in Israel where they often stayed. It transpired that she had come to know all of them – their backgrounds, family situations, and personal difficulties and challenges. She remembered their names, and those of their spouses and children. Whenever any of them needed help, she made sure it came – quietly and unobtrusively. It was a habit she had wherever she went.
After her death I discovered how she and her husband came to be married. He was older than her, and a friend of her parents. She had some weeks free in the summer before the start of the academic year, and Mr. Levine (not his real name) gave her a holiday job. One evening after work they were about to join her parents for a meal. In the street they passed a beggar. Mr. Levine, punctilious about the mitzvah of tzedakah, reached into his pocket and gave the man a coin. As they were walking on, Sarah asked him to lend her some money – a fairly large sum, which she promised she would repay at the end of the week when she received her wages.
He did so. She then ran back to the beggar and gave him the money. “Why did you do that?” he asked, “I had already given him some money.” “What you gave him,” she said, “was enough to help him for today but not enough to make a difference to his life.”
At the end of the week, Mr. Levine gave her her wages. She handed him back most of the money, to repay him for the sum he had lent her. “I will accept the money,” he told her, “because I do not want to rob you of your mitzvah.” But – as he told me after her death, “It was then that I decided to ask her to marry me – because her heart was bigger than mine.”
Throughout their marriage they spent as much time and energy on giving their money – quietly, effectively, and humanely – to charitable causes as they did on earning it. Greatness is humility.
This idea – counterintuitive, unexpected, and life-changing – is one of the great contributions of the Torah to Western civilization. It is set out in the words of our sedrah, when Moses told the people about the “G-d of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty and awe-inspiring G-d” whose greatness lay not just in the fact that He was Creator of the universe and shaper of history, but that “He upholds the cause of the orphan and widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.” Those who do this are the true men and women of G-d.