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SHEILA AND Ron Bayfield celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary on Sunday — and it was the first time in 74 years they had been separated on their big day.
Mr Bayfield, 94, was hospitalised after a fall and his wife, also 94, was at home with a chest infection. But thanks to modern technology, they were able to exchange greetings via Facetime.
The Temple Fortune couple are the parents of former Reform Judaism president Rabbi Tony Bayfield, who said that while they were bashful about their long and happy union, the rest of the family were “over the moon.
“They spent their first wedding anniversary apart because my father had been badly wounded when his tank was blown up in Normandy and he was having shrapnel picked out of him. So it is a shame for them to be apart again. But we have made a huge fuss over them.”
The Bayfields were seven-yearolds when they first met at cheder.
“It was at Barking and Becontree Synagogue, where Ron’s parents were members and Sheila’s parents were founding figures,” Rabbi Bayfield explained.
“My parents went on to become founder members of South West Essex Reform Synagogue in 1953. Dad was the first religion school head and later president — and one of the founders and leaders of Leo
Baeck College education department.”
He was also head of a boys’ comprehensive school in Hackney. Rabbi Bayfield credits his parents as the inspiration for him and others in the family to pursue careers in Judaism.
They were proof that “you don’t have to be separate from society to thrive and flourish as a Jewish family”.
His parents were “incredibly proud” of their grandchild, Miriam Berger, the senior rabbi of Finchley Reform Synagogue. He added that the couple were