Don’t be kind to Dahl
and the family of Roald Dahl are being too easy on this racist author. Not only did his antisemitic trope about Hitler having a point about the nasty Jews justify the Holocaust in his view, he also alleged in an interview that he “never saw a Jew in the Front Line in WW2”. How did he know who was Jewish? Did he examine for circumcisions?
How did he account for the two Jewish VCs, 3 GCs and hundreds of DFC, MC, MM, DSO, etc that Jews in the Commonwealth and including Israel (Mandate Palestine) , were awarded?
After he made that statement, a large group of children from a local Jewish school near where Dahl lived protested silently and with dignity outside his home in north London, carrying placards saying, “my grandpa was a paratrooper”, “my grandma was in SOE”, “my grandpa was a Commando”, “my grandpa was awarded the DFC in the Battle of Britain”, etc. His embarrassed daughter Sophie eventually emerged and took a long petition from them. Martin Sugarman London
previously reported on the sale of items from the late David Solomon Sassoon’s fabulous collection of Hebrew manuscripts. The most prized item, the Farhi Bible, is not included in that part of the collection to be auctioned by Sothebys on 17 December.
This Codex, so called after its previous owner Haim Farhi, was written and/or illustrated by Elisha Crescas, probably in Provence in the latter part of the 14th century. It contains no fewer than 29 ‘carpet pages’ of intricate Islamic-style design, illustrating the Judeo-Islamic heritage linked to the cultural values of Sephardi Jewry.
The Bible is said to have been deposited in a bank vault in Switzerland and access to it has long been denied by its current owners. It is even claimed by one source that it has not been seen by an outsider since 1913; though to be fair, I have seen photographs of several pages supplied by Rabbi David Sassoon for a publication dated 1988.
Doubts have recently been expressed as to the conditions in which so fragile an artefact has been stored and indeed whether it is still there.
Though my mother was a Farhi, I much respect the Sassoon family and have no personal interest in the Bible. However, the codex represents an important part of our Jewish heritage and its preservation is as important to all Jews as it is to its current owners, worthy custodians though they may be.
May I therefore enter a plea to its owners to allow a few selected scholars to view the Farhi Bible in its present location and report on its condition. Such a move would do much to remove unworthy suspicions and reassure doubters.
the United Synagogue is cavalierly selling off unique items of Anglo-Jewish cultural and historic importance. At an upcoming Sotheby’s New York Judaica auction, a collection of exceptionally rare, exquisite, important and valuable silver Sefer Torah ornaments are consigned for sale by the US. This follows similar sales of unique silver a few years back and the sale of the valuable Beth Hamedrash Library. It is horrific and disgraceful that our largest synagogue organisation is so oblivious to any responsibility for the treasures it holds. All of these items could be in a United Synagogue Museum; or the Jewish Museum; or the Victoria and Albert Museum. But no, sell off the family silver! What a bunch of Philistines!