Dr Calmen Rosen
AMAN WHO embodied traditional Jewish traits of leadership – humility, integrity and complete disregard for personal honour – Dr Calmen Rosen, known as Carl, was an unusual leader of the Hull community. He showed great courage and tenacity on genuine issues of principle, and during the Yom Kippur War played a pivotal role in running the blood donation centre at St John’s Wood Synagogue through which thousands of units of blood were obtained for the Israeli Defence Forces, saving many lives.
Dr Rosen studied medicine at Manchester University during the Second World War. After he qualified in 1946, he was house physician at the Manchester Jewish Hospital followed by National Service in the Royal Army Medical Corps between 1947 and 1949 in occupied West Germany. This was a period in which the threat of a potential conflict between the Western allies and the USSR loomed large.
Strongly bonded to the family generations that preceded him, Calmen Rosen returned to Hull to resume his medical career. He was a medical registrar at the Western General Hospital (now the Royal Infirmary) before entering general practice, in which he remained a principal practitioner until retirement at the age of 70. In 1954 he married Cynthia Perlman of Leeds, but sadly she passed away in 1977.
Highly regarded personally and professionally, Calmen Rosen extended his clinical interests and skills into haematology and transfusion medicine. Calmen Rosen enthusiastically continued the tradition of his father and grandfather as an active member of the Hull Old Hebrew Synagogue and a member of the synagogue council from 1966. He had a major involvement in almost all the major communal organisations, including the Hull HebrewCommunal School and the Hull Jewish Representative Council, of
whi c h he was president from 1972-1975.
He worked particularly hard in connection with shechita, chairing the Board for many years. During that time, very high standards of kashrut and quality of practice were achieved and Hull supplied kosher meat to several northern communities.
In 1980 he joined the Western Synagogue and by 1982, he was on its council; as synagogue warden from 1985 and vice president from 1987 till 1991. For several decades, he strove for the unification of the community and the establishment of a shul where most Jews lived. These ideals were eventually realised in the Pryme Street Synagogue.
Over many years, Calmen Rosen provided unique support for the Hull rabbinate and was totally committed to Jewish education. He fought hard for the interests of the community all his life and well into his 80s.
He successfully made representations to the Department of Transport to prevent the re-routing of a major road, the effect of which would have been to encroach on one of the Jewish cemeteries.
In 2006, he left Hull and moved to Jerusalem where he lived a rich Jewish life and was attentively cared for by his children and grandchildren. He was buried on the Mount of Olives.
He is survived by his sons Stuart, Rabbi Jonathan Rosen and Rabbi Joseph Rosen.