Obituary of Lily Tobias, Swansea, 8 June 1984

Description

This newspaper clipping, presumably from The Jewish Chronicle, notes the death of Lily Tobias. Born in Ystalyfera (misspelled in the article as Ystalyfera) near Swansea in 1887, she wrote several well-received novels while living in Swansea and Cardiff. Ms Thomas emigrate to Palestine in the 1930s with her husband who, the article notes, was stabbed to death by an Arab. She stopped writing fiction soon after and her literary work was largely forgotten until Dr Jasmine Donahaye, a lecturer at Swansea University, published her biography in 2015. The clipping mentions the well-known Welsh physician and poet Danny Abse as the source of information on Lily Tobias's death. Ms Tobias was Danny Abse's aunt.

The Swansea Jewish Community is the oldest modern Jewish community in Wales with records going back to the 1740s. The first formal mention of a congregation dates in 1768 when a small Jewish cemetery was established on Town Hill. After worshipping at several temporary locations, a purpose-built synagogue was erected for the Swansea Hebrew Congregation in 1818. It was replaced by a bigger synagogue on Goat Street in 1859. In 1906, a group of recently arrived Yiddish-speaking immigrants set up a more orthodox congregation as supplementary to the main synagogue. This community, the Swansea Beth Hemedrash, developed independently while maintaining close ties to the Swansea Hebrew Congregation. In 1941, the Goat Street synagogue was destroyed in a German air raid and the congregation continued to worship in temporary premises at Cornhill House on Christina Street. A new synagogue was finally built in 1955 on Ffynone Road. Around the same time, the Swansea Beth Hemedrash was incorporated into the Swansea Hebrew Congregation. The Ffynone Road synagogue was sold in 2009 but the congregation continues to rent a hall in the building for worship.

Sources:
"Award-winning university lecturer publishes new book examining life and troubled times of the author and political activist Lily Tobias" (http://www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office/news-archive/2015/award-winninguniversitylecturerpublishesnewbookexamininglifeandtroubledtimesoftheauthorandpoliticalactivistlilytobias.php);
'The History of the Jewish Diaspora in Wales' by Cai Parry-Jones (http://e.bangor.ac.uk/4987);
JCR-UK/JewishGen (https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/community/swansea.htm).

Depository: West Glamorgan Archives.

• http://www.thejc.com (link opens in new window)