Person DS/UK/245 Brodie; Sir; Israel (1895-1979) Brodie Israel Sir 1895-1979

Brodie, Sir Israel (1895–1979), chief rabbi, was born at Newcastle upon Tyne on 10 May 1895 as the second son and second of the five children (one daughter; a son died in infancy) of Aaron Uri Brodie (originally Braude or Broide), a sales representative who had immigrated from Kovno, and his wife, Sheina Maggid, whose surname derived from her father's occupation as a popular preacher in Lithuania (Tsemach Isaac, ‘the Tsemach maggid’). His schooling at Rutherford College, Newcastle upon Tyne, was supplemented by Jewish instruction, and in 1912 he entered University College, London, and simultaneously Jews' College, London, to prepare for a career in the Jewish ministry. A first-class BA (1915) in Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac qualified him for research, and he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916 to work for a BLitt (completed in 1921) on the origins of Karaism (medieval Jewish sectaries). He served from 1917 to 1919 as a chaplain on the western front. He returned to Balliol in 1919–20. Formal rabbinical training followed, with ordination in 1923 and practical experience in congregational and youth work in the East End of London under the guidance of J. F. Stern. He was in these years also much influenced by the impressive Jewish club leadership of Basil Henriques and by Herbert Loewe at Oxford, who involved him in Jewish adult education and introduced him to the study circle of Claude Montefiore. In 1923 Brodie went to Melbourne, Australia, to succeed Joseph Abrahams as rabbi and to take charge of the Jewish ecclesiastical court of Victoria. He was the first minister to visit all the continent's Jewish communities, thereby contributing to a Jewish federal cohesion. He returned to Balliol in 1937 as an advanced student. In 1939 he joined the staff of Jews' College as tutor and lecturer in homiletics—an appropriate assignment since he was an impressive speaker. But the Second World War took him back to chaplaincy work in France, and he was among the last to be evacuated from Dunkirk. Service in the Middle East with the Royal Air Force prepared him to succeed as senior Jewish chaplain in 1944. He returned to Jews' College briefly as its principal in 1946, and in that year he married Fanny Levine, whom he had known years before as a teacher in Jewish classes: her father, Jacob Levine, was a Hebrew teacher. There were no children. The same year saw the death of Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz, to whom Brodie was an obviously eligible successor, and he was appointed to the office in 1948: in 1965 he became the first incumbent to retire. Distinctions followed: the presidency of Jews' College, a fellowship (1950) of University College, London, an honorary DCL from Durham University and DD from Yeshiva University, New York, and in 1969 appointment as KBE. A collection of essays presented to him on his seventieth birthday edited by H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, and I. Finestein, appeared in 1967. Brodie's courteous manner contrasted with the masterful personality of Hertz, whose public statements had sometimes embarrassed the lay leadership. An attempt was made to impose on Brodie a consultative committee; but, while declaring willingness to consult, he made it clear that he would make his own decisions on all matters. The availability of air travel meant that his tenure would be very different from that of Hertz, and his achievements are best compartmentalized geographically. Australian experience familiarized Brodie with the situation of Jewish outposts, their educational problems and risks of erosion. He visited the antipodes, and also quite frequently South Africa, even after it left the Commonwealth, and he tried to attract ministerial trainees to Jews' College. In 1957, as a contribution towards reconstruction of the pitiful remnants of European Jewry, Brodie convened what became a standing conference of European rabbis, the limitations of which were, however, implicit in its restriction to Orthodox representatives, whose following by then constituted minorities within the European Jewish pattern; and the sort of topics that it was prepared to discuss were largely matters of detail. Brodie had always been a Zionist. He visited Israel frequently, and once declared his willingness to subordinate his Halakhic (jurisprudential) responsibilities to a central authority in Jerusalem should one ever emerge, although he must have known that this was unlikely. He supported not only the secular Hebrew University of Jerusalem but also the creation of the religiously articulated Bar Ilan University, where a chair was named in his honour. At home he worked hard to advance Jewish education. He secured purpose-built premises for Jews' College, he supported the movement to create Jewish day schools, and concerned himself with the reorganization of part-time Jewish education, while ruling that children whose mothers were not Jewish by birth or Orthodox conversion must be excluded from synagogue classes. He fought a rearguard action, in the face of enthusiasm for all things Israeli, against the introduction in the Ashkenazi synagogues under his jurisdiction of the Israeli (broadly Sephardi) pronunciation of Hebrew. The emergence of the state of Israel stimulated significant reversion towards traditionalism and greater use of Hebrew in prayer among the Progressive (non-Orthodox) congregations; but because of the movement's self-determination in matters involving Jewish status, Brodie maintained an aloofness from it no less distant, if less fulminating, than his predecessor's. The greatest crisis of Brodie's incumbency made national headlines of a domestic Jewish issue. Rabbi Louis Jacobs, a lecturer at Jews' College and an impressive preacher, had in popular writings acknowledged the view that if reason is considered God-given, issues of biblical fundamentalism, criticism, and modern science should not be evaded in the pulpit and restricted to muted discussion by mature Jewish minds only. Jacobs was passed over for the principalship of Jews' College; and in 1963 his former congregation purported to re-engage him as minister, despite Brodie's withholding his requisite approval. The attempt was blocked as unconstitutional. Brodie, sensitive to views of rabbis on his own ecclesiastical court whose education had been entirely Talmudic, and concerned at what was regarded as an implicit threat to the authority for Jewish observance, found himself driven into making a statement about intellectualism and authentic Jewish tradition that upset some Jewish intellectuals (including rabbis). His main scholarly work was the publication (1962–7) of the Etz hayyim of Jacob of London, a thirteenth-century compendium of Jewish liturgy, ceremonial, and law. Brodie's tenure of the chief rabbinate, itself otherwise unremarkable, reflected changed conditions: the wane of Anglo-Jewish, as of British, influence, and the rise of Israel as the renewed centre of gravity for post-Hitlerian Jewry. The chief rabbinate, safeguarded by act of parliament, represented the hub of a nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish solidarity that no longer corresponded to the statistical facts of Jewish observance and intermarriage, but it nevertheless remained entrenched by Anglo-Jewish conservatism. Within its framework, any attempt to transcend separatisms (save where Israel's security and fund-raising for Israel were concerned) would have required a character capable of riding out any storm, which Brodie did not possess. As a gentleman, a representative figure of dignity in bearing, as a well-liked chaplain to the forces, and by his devotion to what he considered his duty, he handed on intact to his successor an office of potential leadership, and retained the broad loyalty of some English-born Jews who might otherwise have lapsed. Brodie died in London on 13 February 1979 and was buried at Willesden Jewish cemetery. Raphael Loewe, rev. Sources CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1979) · Jewish Chronicle (16 Feb 1979) · personal knowledge (1986) · H. J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, and I. Finestein, eds., Essays presented to … Israel Brodie, 2 vols. (1967) Archives LMA, corresp. and papers · U. Southampton L., journals and papers | U. Southampton, Anglo-Jewish archive, pressmark 206 Likenesses M. Wallach, photograph, priv. coll. [see illus.] · portrait, repro. in Zimmels, Rabbinowitz, and Finestein, eds., Essays, vol. 1 Wealth at death £21,049: probate, 29 May 1979, CGPLA Eng. & Wales © Oxford University Press 2004–5 All rights reserved: see legal notice Rabbi Raphael Loewe, ‘Brodie, Sir Israel (1895–1979)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30857, accessed 25 Aug 2006] International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) 2nd edition - ICA 2004 ISBN 2-9521932-2-3 National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 Yes Lrees 25/08/2006 Lrees 25/08/2006 ef4b675c-7476-48ea-bffd-0b3fc8cdd5a2