As part of the Saatchi Synagogue Shabbat activities, David and I had been invited for Friday night dinner - David was to give the talk during the Shabbat lunch. In an attempt to preserve our waining (health) resources, I called Elliot Gotkine (the nice chap who had organised David to talk) on Friday morning to plead illness and cancel our attendance at the dinner. Elliot kindly let me wriggle out of the occasion, but within minutes we were feeling guilty and David was back on the phone to Elliot, who revealed that a large St John's Wood dinner was being held in our honour with a range of preeminent types. (Incidentally, David Newton, who we had met at LimmudNY and again when David spoke at the Carlebach Shul sent us an email in advance of this dinner saying that the hosts were in fact his cousins...small world...) Naturally, we felt terrible and immediately rescinded our rescindment...feeling terribly ungrateful...
Naturally, the Friday night dinner was lovely and our hosts, Claire and Paul, had organised an impressive gathering.
Anyway, went to shul the next morning in the new Saatchi Synagogue setting, which is effectively a building across the courtyard (but within the grounds of) the St John's Wood/United Synagogue. After the service, we moved to the St John's Wood/United Synagogue building proper for kiddish, which was shared between the Saatchi Synagogue and the St John's Wood/United Synagogue congregations.
I didn't realise immediately, but David pointed
out that the man making kiddish was, in fact, the Chief Rabbi. Naturally, David then lead us over to him to introduce ourselves (and David as the guest speaker) and to wish him a Shabbat Shalom. The Chief Rabbi was politely responsive and we thought that was that. But then, a few minutes, later the Chief Rabbi came over to us (actually, more like bound over to us!) and explained to David that his children had raved about David's talk and that he was impressed by the story in the Jewish Chronicle and wished David well in his project, which he supported. Well, that was a moment to be remembered. A little later, David explained to the Chief (as Elliot called him) that we were making Aliyah and asked him for a brachah (blessing) for Aliyah which he very kindly gave us. (He must have some sort of connection to upstairs because we were subsequently upgraded on our flight to Israel!)OK, so we sat down to lunch (which was free for the 100 or so people who attended) and then David gave his talk Has the Mashiach already come? Famous historical disputations between Jews and Christians – and their outcomes. He gave a very interesting account of three disputations in history and there usually tragic outcomes for the Jewish communities and individuals involved. The talk was enough entertainment but then, amazingly, at the end, a woman in the audience revealed herself as a Christian (or perhaps a Messianic Jew ...see the Wikipedia article on the Messianic Jews for an overview, although it is queried by Wikipedia itself) and started arguing with David ...in front of everyone! Really, I still can't believe that she didn't see the irony of her situation ...or that she was taking on someone - in a public forum - who was not only the guest of honour but who enjoys eating missionaries for breakfast!
Not contented with doing this during David's talk, after it was over and David had returned to his seat, she and her side kick came over to us and tried to continue debating with him. They was so unrelenting that in the end I asked someone to intervene and have them removed. This was done and, naturally, the chap who kindly assisted was duly cursed and damned by the Christians...who then (again without irony) proved David's point that Christians only want to debate this point with Jews for so long and then they turn to violence!
Fortunately we were able to purge ourselves from this experience. David sat and talked with a group of devotees. I left him to that while I caught up with my friend Marjorie Johnson (from my days at the ABPI), who I was very excited to see come, with what was left of the wine.
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