Letter from Raymond Wolfe, the editor of CAJEX, to Rabbi Graf regarding the Cardiff New Synagogue's support of the magazine, Cardiff, July 1953

Description

A letter from Raymond Woolfe, the editor of the CAJEX magazine, the Cardiff branch of the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, to Rabbi L. Gerhard Graf, the Minister of the Cardiff New Synagogue (now known as the Cardiff Reform Synagogue). In the letter, Raymond Woolfe, the newly appointed editor, requests the support of Rabbi Graf and the Cardiff New Synagogue to ensure that "true and unbiased accounts of communal events are recorded" within the pages of the magazine. Mr Woolfe notes that even though the Synagogue had pledged its support early on, this had since "petered out". He requests the list of the names of members of the congregation so that the magazine can reach all the Jewish homes in Cardiff.

The Association of Jewish Ex-servicemen and Women (AJEX) is dedicated to the remembrance of Jewish men and women who died while serving with the armed forces of the Crown. It was founded in 1929 to serve the needs of Jewish veterans of the First World War (1914-18).

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);
Jewish Legacy (https://www.jewishlegacy.org.uk/charities/ajex/).

Depository: Glamorgan Archives.

• https://cardiffreformsynagogue.uk/new/ (link opens in new window)