Remembering Sir Sigmund, man of faith
Pioneer of interfaith relations, Labour supporter and Reform President
HIS NAME was one of the most recognised and celebrated, both within the Jewish community and beyond; synonymus with interfaith advancement and philanthropy.
Accordingly, tributes have been paid to Sir Sigmund Sternberg who died this week at the age of 95.
“The entire Reform Jewish community of the United Kingdom mourns on the sad news,” said Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner, senior Reform rabbi; Sir Sigmund was life-long president of the movement. Rabbi Klausner described his contribution as “transformational”.
Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies, praised his “energy, enthusiasm, talent for organisation and massive charitable efforts”.
Born in Budapest in 1921, Sir Sigmund — known affectionately as Siggy — left Hungary for the United Kingdom in 1939 at the outbreak of war and was initially dubbed a “friendly enemy alien”, prohibiting him from seeking paid employment.
Instead, he began to trade in scrap metal, a skill which, after being naturalised, led him to build up his company Ingot Metal Investments to great success. By 1965, he was able to sell out and devote his time to charity; three years later, he founded the Sternberg Foundation. From the 1970s onwards, the philanthropist was a tireless trailblazer for dialogue and cohesion between Jews and other religious groups.
He became chair of the International Council of Christians and Jews, an organisation created to tackle antisemitism and racism, and also launched the Three Faiths Forum, which provides a platform for Christians, Muslims and Jews.
He was also an active member of the Board of Deputies, supported the Hebrew University in Israel, and, in 1981, launched the Sternberg Centre for Judaism, which at the time became Europe’s largest Jewish cultural centre.
Two achievements stand out — in 1994, he used his influence to persuade the Vatican to recognise the state of Israel. He later told the JC: “I met all the Catholic leaders at the Vatican. I spoke on Vatican Radio and in the end they just got so tired of me that they said: ‘Okay, let’s talk about recognition’.”
The second came in 1987, when he played a major role in securing the removal of a Carnelite convent that had been established at Auschwitz.
Over the years, Sir Sigmund was the recipient of a myriad of awards. His knighthood in 1976 was followed by the papal equivalent in 1985. In 1998, he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for having “advanced public understanding of God and spirituality”.
Paying tribute, Rabbi Lord Sacks called Sir Sigmund “a one-man campaign for reconciliation between Christians, Muslims and Jews”.
Dilwar Hussain, chair of New Horizons in British Islam, fondly remembered “a man of exceptional vision, courage, energy, passion and generosity, driven by the desire to bring people together and to help them understand each other”.
Bishop Michael Ipgrave, chair of the Council for Christians and Jews, described him as “an incomparable champion of interfaith relations.”
John Witherow, editor of The Times, which supported the Sternberg Active Life Award honouring the over-70s, said: “Siggy was a highly respected philanthropist and indefatigable campaigner and he leaves an important legacy of promoting interfaith understanding. He will be much missed.”
He was a man of energy, passion and generosity’
ARRIVING IN England just days before the outbreak of the Second World War, Sigmund Sternberg was prominent among the ranks of central European J e wish émigrés who achieved success and renown in their adopted country. An 18-year-old who had just completed his matriculation, he was admitted as a “friendly enemy alien” but not entitled to work.
He later started a successful business career in metals basing his knowledge on the unpaid work in a metal firm he had undertaken in 1941 under the war-time government’s Essential Work Order, and took over a company in partnership with a Jewish businessman two years later. After the war, he bought a loss-making scrap metal company and set up the Sternberg Group of Companies. In 1965, he sold the metal business and started an investment property business.
Born the elder child and only son of a Budapest antiquarian and his wife, Sigmund Sternberg grew up in an 0rthodox environment. His family belonged to the Kazinczy Street Synagogue in Budapest.
After attending the Jewish gymnasium school, he went to a commercial college, where he was the butt of antise- mitic taunts about “killing Jesus”. Ironically, having finally beaten his principal tormenter in a fight, he then started to take an interest in Christianity.
The young Sigmund was obliged to take on family responsibility in his early teens, after his father died. After police came to the door asking for him in late August, 1939, he acceded to his mother’s demand that he join his cousins in England. After the war, he returned to Hungary to find his mother, who had survived, and brought her to England.
In 1949, he married Ruth Schiff and the couple had two children, Michael and Frances. The marriage was dissolved in the mid 1960s but the couple remained on good terms and Sternberg was particularly attentive when Ruth was diagnosed with terminal cancer 30 years later.
In 1970, he married Hazel, the widow of his cousin, Victor Sternberg. She was an invaluable source of help to him in his endeavours and predeceased him, to his great distress, in 2014.
Despite his Orthodox origins, Sternberg joined the then RSGB after his divorce. He was a congregant at Alyth Gardens Synagogue and later became President of the Movement for Reform Judaism. He was also the principal sponsor of the Stern berg Centre for Judaism, in Finchley, north London, the largest Jewish cultural centre in Europe.
Sternberg had used his experience in the metal business to supply the government with materials for stripping cables, which became a constructive form of work for prison inmates. He also showed interest in matters relating to health and was brought in by Sir Keith Joseph, then Minister of Health in the Conservative government of the early 1960s, to help with the National Health Service.
An institution Sternberg took great interest in was the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, of which he became a senior life vice-president. During the 1970s, he made efforts to reorganise health services for the Camden Area Health Authority. By the time he resigned in the 1980s — believing that too little time was devoted to patients and too much to management — he was already chairman of the North West Thames Regional Health Authority.
He was an active supporter of the Labour party and during the 1970s worked with prominent Labour politicians on company law reform and other projects. He was awarded a knighthood for services to industry in Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list in 1976.
Sir Sigmund had a close working relationship with Frank, later Lord, Judd, a former Director of Oxfam, who appreciated his help in handling tensions between Oxfam and the Jewish community. Another commitment was to the Rotary movement. He was listed among the 100 Great Rotarians.
In the late 1970s, he was directed towards the field of endeavour that was to play a leading role in his life, after being asked by the then president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews to “save” the Council of Christians and Jews. Interfaith activities were to become his passion and the main source of his renown.
Appreciating the importance of Christian-Jewish relations, particularly in the wake of the Holocaust, Sir Sigmund had already been greatly moved by the Papal declaration, Nos
tra Aetate, promulgated in 1965, which absolved the Jewish people from the charge of deicide and accepted the Jewish religion as valid in its own right. He wished to see this commemorated every year as a Nostra Aetate Day.
He established relations with several branches of the Christian church, in particular with Catholics and, in 1985, was invested with the award of Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of St Gregory, which was virtually unprecedented for a non-Catholic.
In 1986, Sir Sigmund helped arrange the visit of Pope John Paul II to the Tempio Maggiore, Rome’s Great Synagogue, the first visit of a Pope to a synagogue since apostolic times. He was also influential in bringing about the Vatican’s recognition of Israel and in resolving the imbroglio instigated by the presence of the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz. In 1998, he was awarded the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
Sternberg had long believed that interfaith dialogue should be extended to include Muslims and in 1997 set up the Three Faiths Forum with Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi and the Rev Dr Marcus Braybrooke, a cause to which he remained passionately committed. Sigmud Sternberg: born Budapest, 2 June 1921; died October 18, 2016