Born Cardiff, April 22, 1917. Died London, August 19, 2008
Determinedly secular, social reformer MP Leo Abse was fiercely wedded to his Jewishnessness and Judaism even as he slammed it - and was fully aware of the contradiction.
He entered party politics through Poale Zion (Workers of Zion), the Jewish Labour Party, as chair of the Cardiff branch which he set up in 1948. Elected chairman of city's Labour Party in 1951 and councillor in 1953, he won the safe Labour seat of Pontypool in 1958.
He remained MP, through a change of name to Torfaen in 1983, until retiring in 1987. He was the second Jewish MP in Wales, the first being the Liberal Alfred Mond in 1910.
The product of two minorities, Welsh and Jewish, he imbibed his Jewish learning from his maternal grandfather, talmudist, Zionist and glass manufacturer Tobias Shepherd, whose Jewish "capital" he admitted living off.
His paternal grandmother fought against ghetto restrictions. He too deplored the Jewish attitude to girls' education and marriage.
The third of four children, he grew up in decreasing fortunes as his cinema operator father, Rudolph, lost rather than made money. He was the only Jew at elementary school, holding his own as a playground boxer. After the London School of Economics, he served in the RAF - where he was proud to have been arrested for supporting the idea of nationalising the Bank of England at a forces debate in Cairo.
Qualifying as a solicitor, he established Leo Abse and Cohen in the 1950s as a leading firm specialising in union matters and industrial injuries.
A member of Cardiff New Synagogue (Reform), he disliked synagogue organisations and accused them of being capitalists, whose leaders made religious appointments in the boardroom.
At the same time he was intensely involved in the community. As a councillor, he was instrumental in creating the communal mikva at the Empire Pool swimming baths. He admired the welfare work of Ajex and engaged with Cardiff Jewish students. Their confusion over Jewish identity made him realise the strength of his own.
A prolific speaker at B'nai B'rith lectures, synagogue halls and to all manner of Jewish groups, he never shrank from controversy or offence through his strong if wayward beliefs.
He castigated British Jewry for "gutlessness", fretted that they might put Israel above civic duty and seemed unable to decide whether Jews should assimilate or retain their distinctiveness. "I don't preach intermarriage," he said, "I practise it." But he held Seders.
A strong supporter of Labour-ruled Israel, he became critical after its right-wing turn in 1977. But in a David Frost interview in Tel Aviv in 1973 he already noted that Israel was held to higher standards than other countries.
Working to change the law on homosexuality, divorce and family planning in the 1960s and 70s, he continued his interest in developments like abortion and fertility treatment. He tried to help the agunah (chained woman) situation by an amendment to the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984, which would tie Jewish to civil divorce.
In his books he psychoanalysed politicians, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as Germany in Wotan, My Enemy, which won the Jewish Quarterly's 1994 Wingate Prize.
His wife, Marjorie Davies, whom he married in 1955 and who made the peacock waistcoats he wore in his early parliamentary career, died in 1996. In 2000 he married Anya Czepulkowska. He is survived by her and by the son and daughter of his first marriage.
