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Description
A photograph of Rabbi Graf and three wardens of the Cardiff New Synagogue reading from the Torah. The wardens have been identified on the reverse of the photograph as Louise Lerman, Jo Solomons and Peter Bogod.
Rabbi Dr Louis Gerhard Graf was head of the Reform community in Cardiff for 31 years. He was born in Berlin on 28 March 1912, where he lived until 1939 when, along with his wife, he left Germany and was welcomed in Manchester. He was Minister of the Bradford Synagogue (1940-48), then he went on to found the Leeds Sinai Synagogue in 1942. Eventually he moved to Cardiff, in 1948, where he began to take services in the newly formed Reform Jewish community. He died in December 1986, aged 74.
The Cardiff Reform Synagogue was founded in 1948 as the Cardiff New Synagogue. The following year, it became a constituent member of the Movement for Reform Judaism. Born in reaction against the more restrictive traditions of the Orthodox Judaism of Cardiff Hebrew Congregation, such as the prohibition of driving on the Sabbath and the ban on interfaith marriages, the new Synagogue appealed to the immigrants who had fled the war-torn Europe, where the Reform movement was already well-established. The congregation worships in a converted Methodist Chapel on Moira Terrace they acquired in 1952.
Sources:
'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/card1/index.htm);
ARJ Information, volume XLII No. 3 March 1987 (https://ajr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/1987_march.pdf).
Depository: Glamorgan Archives.
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