Lauderdale Road Synagogue

The synagogue, pictured, in Maida Vale where we lived before moving to Richmond, blends into the neighborhood with similar red brickstone. This particular synagogue a place of worship for the Spanish and Portguguese Jews' Congregation of London, which traces its origins to a famous petition presented to Oliver Cromwell in 1656 by Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel, from Holland, and six of the 'secret Jews' (Marranos) living in London. Cromwell enabled Jews to live and worship openly in England for the firs time since the expulsion in 1290. The first synagogue established in a rented house in Creechurch Lane in the City and leased land in Mile End, Stepney, for a burial ground. The Congregation grew steadily and eventually built a large new synagogue in 1701 - the beautiful Bevis Marks Synagogue also in the City, which remains in regular use today. Increasing migration of members of the Congregation from the East End to the west and north-west of London led to the establishment of a branch congregation, at first in Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square in 1853, from 1861 in a purpose-built synagogue in Lauderdale Road or pictured.

Spanish and Portguese Jews are otherwise a distinctive sub-group of Sephardim who have their main ethnic origins within the crypto-Jewish communities of the Iberian peninsula and who shaped communities mainly in Western Europe and the Americas from the late 16th century on.

Me: "Are you going to get a hair cut?"
Eitan: "Why would I do that?"
Me: "Well, how about if we at least wash it this month?"
Eitan: "Madeleine actually saw a lady bird in my hair yesterday."
Me: