Tributes were paid at the Limmud Festival on Sunday to the one of the leading figures in the British rabbinate, Rabbi Abraham Levy, the emeritus spiritual head of the S & P Sephardi Community, who died on Shabbat aged 83.
In a special session to honour his memory, Rabbi Joseph Dweck recalled the legacy of a “towering figure. The influence he had on Anglo-Jewry was strong, deep, substantive and powerful”.
Rabbi Dr Levy, who received an OBE for interfaith relations, retired 10 years ago after leading Britain’s oldest synagogue body for 32 years and having served it for 50 years in all.
The Gibraltar-born rabbi, who trained in London, was a champion of the classic Western Sephardi ethos with its belief in synthesis between traditional Judaism and the best of secular culture.
“He was a man of God who was a leader in religious life and he did it with a great deal of conviction,” said Rabbi Dweck.
He offered a Judaism that was “humanistic, pragmatic, empathic” and “sensitive” and at the same time was “staunchly traditional and halachic. And he was able to in an amazing way blend all of those things into an integrated, whole, beautiful Judaism.”
His passing was “a huge loss” not only for the SPSC but for Anglo-Jewry “because he really did build, enhance and support our collective Judaism in ways that we are not all consciously aware”.
At a time when most of the centrist Orthodox rabbinate was boycotting Limmud during the 1990s, Rabbi Levy not only attended the cross-communal event but also encouraged student rabbis under his mentorship to teach there.
In the 1970s, he launched a leadership programme for young Jewish adults which offered an educational platform to the young Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
In 1983, he opened the Naima Jewish Preparatory School in London, the first Sephardi school to open in Britain for a hundred years.
He also helped to provide a home for the innovative Saatchi Synagogue, which was successful in attracting young adults who may not otherwise have set foot in a synagogue.
He played a key role in reviving semichah (ordination) for mainstream Orthodox rabbis within the UK under the auspices of the Montefiore Endowment in 2006 after the London School of Jewish Studies, formerly Jews’ College - where he had himself trained for the pulpit - had stopped offering it.
Rabbi Raphael Zarum, dean of the LSJS, who was graduated of the Montefiore course, said that Rabbi Levy was a “great leader” who had taught him “how to make things happen”.
Rabbi Levy “valued academic learning, He encouraged people to come to Limmud. He wasn’t afraid of modernity,” Rabbi Dr Zarum said.
It was Rabbi Levy, he said, who saved the London School of Jewish Studies in 2003 when as deputy principal of the institution, he refused to accept a plan that would have seen it drop its academic programmes.
Recalling Rabbi Levy’s dedication to his community, Rabbi Dweck recalled that his placemats depicted Bevis Marks Synagogue, while his cufflinks bore the emblem of the SPSC. “This was a man who lived, breathed and embraced the community that he served. And we don’t see that very often today.”
