Old Synagogues
בתי כנסת ישנים
www.oldsynagogues.org
New Synagogue, Great St. Helens Street, London, 1850*
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The initial purpose of this Web site is as an archive of pictures and videos that I have taken over the years at four shuls to which I had or have an affiliation. This is my contribution to the maintenance of our Jewish Heritage. Only the last shul is located in the USA, and is my present synagogue. It is definitely not defunct!. Northwold Road and Egerton Road shuls are now long since defunct, as their congregations moved out of their areas many years ago, though the Stamford Hill and South Tottenham area is now the Chassidisher capital of the United Kingdom (apologies to Golders Green). Between the time I was born in 1948 till 1957, we lived upstairs at 18 Fountain Road, Stoke Newington. I attended Tyssen School in Old Hill Street, Clapton and Lampard Grove (Grove Lane) cheder. At that time, my grandparents lived above the baker's shop in Old Hill Street, just one turning from the school - this being quite convenient for a little kid. In May 1957, we moved to 43 Rostrevor Avenue, South Tottenham. My nearest synagogue was Crowland Road (United Synagogue affiliation), where I attended Talmud Torah, was taught my Barmitzvah by the late Rabbi Unterman, and attended the "Jewish Canteen" (of blessed memory) whilst at Crowland Road Junior and Senior Schools, and Markfield Secondary Modern. After my Barmitzvah in 1961, I attended the Egerton Road Cheder, with classes below the Marcus Samuel Hall and upstairs in the adjacent Victoria Club. After a few years there, I was taught by the late Rabbi A.D. Suffrin at the Lubavitch Headquarters on Stamford Hill. During many of the years that I attended The New Synagogue, Dr. N.J. Goorney was a warden (1958-1969), and I remember that his son, Hershey, was in my class at Egerton Road cheder. The family left the congregation when they went on Aliyah. Unfortunately, the South Tottenham shul was not of architectural merit and did not have a choir, so I never took much in the way of photographs or any recordings. It later merged with the Egerton Road congregation, or rather the latter merged with the former. The Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation is still going strong and approaching its Centenary. It is my intention that this archive will present the greatest Internet-based collection of photographic, audio and video materials on all or most of these shuls. In the case of Northwold Road and Egerton Road Synagogues, it is very likely to be the only representation of once thriving communities - now just a distant memory to their former congregants and families. It is intended that this site becomes a living memory of communities as they once were - in some cases far outlasting those that can remember. Having recently had reason to consider my own mortality, I came to the decision to start putting this material in the public arena to prevent them from being lost. In Memoriam: Dr. Stuart A. Kingsley *The Jewish World, Revelation, Prophecy and History, edited by Elie Kedourie, Thames and Hudson, 1979.
Featured Synagogues on this site:
Other Materials:
First Upload: August 11, 2002 Last Update: November 23, 2011
This Web site is maintained by British American, Dr. Stuart A. Kingsley, formerly of Columbus, Ohio (since January 2008 I have been living in Bournemouth, England). In 1981, I emigrated to the United States from England. Born in Stoke Newington, London, on Saturday, May 15, 1948 (the first full day of independence for the State of Israel and the day that the British Mandate over Palestine lapsed), my homes in the UK were in South Tottenham (Stamford Hill), London and Bournemouth, Dorset. My father, the late Sydney Alexander Kingsley, named me Shmuel Yisroel Ben Alexander, in honor of being born on the first Yom Haazma'ut. That Ben Gurion's premature declaration of independence a few hours earlier, prior to shabbos, on Friday, May, 14, (Iyar 5th) did not distract my father from the association of my birthday with that of Israel's! The places where I have lived is reflected in the synagogues archived on this site. I would be very pleased to link and be linked to other Jewish Heritage sites. Further information about the Webmaster may be found at the bulleted link above and the link below. If you have a collection of photographs, 35 mm negatives, slides or short video clips of a shul you would like to see archived here, please contact Stuart Kingsley (see contact info page). It would be of considerable assistance if such materials could be be prepared for the Web with text and annotations before being offered. I would then be pleased to host the materials on this site. If you have photographic, audio and video materials to complement the shuls already covered on this site, again he would be pleased to add them to this collection. Dr. Stuart A. Kingsley
Webmaster: www.stuartkingsley.com
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