Appointment of young rabbi spearheads drive to reach 'a lot of Jews living out here that no one has reached out to'
October 16, 2019 11:47
ByDaniel Sugarman, daniel sugarman
Chabad is to expand its operations in Essex, appointing a new family of shluchim (representatives) to serve the Jewish community in Epping.
Rabbi Yossi and Rifka Posen, together with their three young children, took up their new post in the Essex town six weeks ago, leading the area’s first Rosh Hashanah services last week.
For Rabbi Aryeh and Devorah Sufrin, the executive directors of Chabad across Essex, this new development is the result of their efforts over the past few years. The couple have lived in Gants Hill, where they operate a Chabad centre, since 1983. 12 years ago they opened a branch of Chabad in Buckhurst Hill, which Rabbi Sufrin describes as “extremely successful.” Epping is the latest outpost.
“When you look at the bigger bodies, such as the United Synagogue and Federation, they have curtailed their services in Essex on the basis of their understanding as to what the needs are. So there have been amalgamations of synagogues, creating one out of two.” Chabad, he says, operates differently.
“We are building and growing. We are looking to bring a vibrant exciting Judaism to those smaller places which perhaps have been overlooked because they’re not part of the bigger community. And that’s really what’s happened. There’s no Orthodox synagogue in Buckhurst Hill. In Epping there’s no synagogue at all.”
When he and his wife saw the migration away from Gants Hill and Ilford, they started trying to track where people were going. Some went to North West London, he says. “But we have seen that the greater majority haven’t moved there at all. They’ve moved to what we refer to as the Essex corridor, along the Forest Hill. It’s like one road here, all the way down from Gants Hill to Woodford, to Buckhurst Hill to Epping and beyond.”
Rabbi Sufrin and his wife started providing services in Epping three years ago, “offering classes, monthly activities, discussion groups and so on.” Two years ago they held a Yom Kippur service at a hotel in Epping. “We had 100 people and a young people’s service”. From last June, the Sufrins rented a house in Epping and would go there once a month for Shabbat, “continuing our discussion groups, socials, fundraising with a core group of people and getting to know more people in the process.” They realised that the only way they could really take things “to the next stage” would be by bringing another family in full time.
The Posens are both 25, with three children under the age of three and moved to the area in mid-August. Rabbi Posen described the “massive potential” to build a community.
“There are a lot of Jews living out here that no one has reached out to”, he said, suggesting that it was not that Jewish people in the area were uninterested in participating in Jewish activities but rather that because of “the total lack of Jewish infrastructure here…they weren’t participating in anything.
“When Rabbi Sufrin came a few years ago, it was evident right away that people actually wanted something, they were very excited for it.”
While the couple are hoping to reach Jewish people of all ages, understandably, given their age and family, they are especially keen on finding young professionals and young married couples with children. For Rosh Hashanah services, they had around 40 people with around 100 expected for Yom Kippur.
In the meantime, there are other developments. “More or less as soon as we found the new shluchim and they had agreed to come, we were approached by people in the Havering, Collier Row area, towards Romford, where a lot of young people have moved”, Rabbi Suffrin said.
“They have made an approach to us and said we would like to have a Chabad in our area. We’ve had a couple of meetings already, after Yom Tov we’re going to meet in one or two of their houses, and see if we can start to give them something.”
Speaking to Rabbi Sufrin, this does not sound like a community in decline. The Gants Hill Chabad gets around 50-60 people every Shabbat, with approximately 200 for the High Holy-Days. Buckhurst Hill has a similar number of people for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“We hear sometimes about the east side of London that this is a dying community”, Rabbi Suffrin says.
“We refer to it as a changing community. We are building and growing.
“We don’t go by synagogue membership – we’re meeting people on a daily basis that are Jewish and have just never assigned themselves to a synagogue. That’s why the work of Chabad will never finish, because there will always be a Jew somewhere looking for something who hasn’t identified themselves up until now.”
