Traces of Jewish life in the verdant hills and valleys of South Wales
In the capital city of Cardiff, we’re standing in front of an old cathedral-style building, where we spot the familiar pasuk above the doorway ,“Ki beisi beis tefillah… For My House is a house of prayer…” This is the Cathedral Road synagogue, founded in 1896 and a mainstay of the Jewish community that once thrived here in small independent kehillos dotting the verdant valleys of this land. And as we stand here, we wonder: Why did their ancestors come here, and why did their progeny leave?
We hope our guide, fifth-generation Jewish Welshman Adrian Jacobs, will solve the mystery.
While the date traditionally given for the first Jewish settlement in Cardiff is 1787, this glorious shul was built once the community became affluent enough for an ornate building of their own. In its heyday, Cardiff was home to around 5,000 Jewish people, says Mr. Adrian Jacobs, who grew up in the city. The rav, Rabbi (Mordechai Dov) Ber Rogosnitzky, a Leipzig-born talmid of the great Telshe yeshivah, lived right around the corner, on Hamilton Road.
“The greatest Jewish influence on my life was Rabbi Rogosnitzky,” says Mr. Jacobs of the distinguished European rav who led Jewish life and education in the town from 1945, when his father, the previous rav, passed away, until his own petirah in 1985. As a teenager, Mr. Jacobs — one of hundreds of kids in the kehillah’s youth group — would help the rabbi to don his formal minister’s attire in the shul’s “robing room.” The Rav learned with him several times a week, and once asked Adrian to drive him to carry out a surprise visit to check up on the town’s shochtim.
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