Mr Morris Milner is the stalwart president of the South Tottenham and District branch of the United Synagogue. In his seventies, he is still attending services on a daily basis and even participates in a Daf Yomi Shiur (albeit in English...).
South Tottenham is legally known as Seven Sisters Ward, London Borough of Haringey, Middlesex County, North London, but people tend to go for the shorter, more catchy name of "Tottenham", which is also the designation of the Hotspurs FC.
South Tottenham, an enclave nestled between the King's Cross to Cambridge British Rail line and Gospel Oak to Barking Overground Rail Service, has been home to Jewish immigrants perhaps since it was developed, between the two first World Wars (I'm writing this on day two of WWIII, 25/02/2022).
Were you to be in the area of the Crowland Shul - as the locals have become used to calling it, you will be able to set your watch by the time that Mr Milner is making his way to catch the 7:00AM Minyan for the Shacharis service.
I was privileged to be called upon to lead the services on Simchat Torah and in the fleeting minutes between the conclusion of Minchah and the beginning of my shift for Ma'ariv, I was accosted by Mr Milner who explained why we have to wait for the services to start.
According to Mr Milner, the times of
sunrise, sunset and by extension candle-lighting times in the UK were
historically set by the United Synagogue.
As the main Synagogal body operating under the auspices of both the
London Beth Din and the Office of the Chief Rabbi, it is they who have been
publishing annual calendars for the past century or more.
Whilst in the current era of readily
available information with instantly searchable resources affords everyone
access to daily, weekly and monthly times, this wasn't so in the days when the
digital age was a figment of some Sci-Fi thrill-seekers.
In order to have an organised Kehilloh,
properly run Synagogue services and friction‑free households, members of the
Jewish community relied upon calendars, newspapers and announcements by the
Shul‑sexton, to keep up with changing times.
You see, unlike Prime Minister's
question time or the Changing of the Guards, which are held at set times
throughout the year, Jewish law requires people to follow the sun. Morning prayers should be recited when the
sun is seen on the horizon - dawn, afternoon prayers when the sun has beaten
the meridian and evening prayers with sunset.
For this purpose, timetables were
prepared by Rabbinic officials to ensure the Jewish communities all over the
British Isles can pay their dues to the Creator on time, every time.
In fact, when Mr Milner visited The Home
and Hospital for Jewish Incurables in Tottenham (otherwise known as the “Tottenham
Jewish Home and Hospital) - this was in the late Seventies - he found a Chumash
(=one volume out of the Five Books of Moses) with the candle-lighting times
printed at the back. Upon checking the
print date, he discovered that it dated back to the last quarter of the Nineteenth
century. Assuming that the Chumoshim
were sent all over the UK, it would mean that Jewish communities in Scotland -
Glasgow and Edinburgh for example - kept the same candle lighting times as
their brethren in London... a sad situation indeed!
In the
1970's, Dr John Cohn[i] was
tasked by the London Beth Din to prepare the candle‑lighting times for the
weekly Shabbat. In order to simplify the
calculation of candle‑lighting times, which is essentially a ‘moving target’
(the time changes on a weekly basis; from after solstice the time moves back
and after the equinox it moves forth), he average used a calculation by
averaging a four year cycle, with the result being a happy median.
The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations
wasn’t happy with this and so started their own calendar, which was based on a
year‑by‑year candle-lighting times.
At the time, Dr Cohn suggested that this
updated timetable will last for 25 to 30 years.
We are now (March 2022) well into the
fiftieth year since it was first published and its use is going strong as if it
was published yesteryear….
The reason why it was necessary to re‑calculate
Shabbath times is because since the end of WWII, members of the Jewish faith
gave up on the squalid, dilapidated housing tenements of the East End and chose
to move to the suburbs.
This trek to the North created a seismic
shift in the Jewish calendars, when suddenly most of the synagogues in London
proper emptied out and new ones were built in the up-market areas like Golders
Green, Cricklewood and Hampstead. The
candle-lighting times were out by five to six minutes, which meant that the
bulk of the Jewish community were potentially striking matches when the holy Shabbos
already made its grand entrance!
The above number of minutes includes Tosefes
Shabbos - an added timespan of two-to three minutes to bring in Shabbos
early, which according to most Poskim (Halachah - Jewish Law - Authorities) is
a Biblical directive, nothing to sneeze at.
Since North West London is due West by
7° and five seconds for Erev Shabbos = candle‑lighting times. When trying to calculate the Zman
(=time) for Motze Shabbos (=the end of the Sabbath), it's 8°
below the horizon.
However in recent years starting in the
late Nineties, the United Synagogues' communal calendar has been erroneously
adding one minute to these more recent candle-lighting times, presumably due to
human interference, rather than an error introduced by the eminent Professor!
[i] Professor of Mathematics, of London, England, who was visiting professor of mathematics at UCLA and the son in law of the celebrated Jewish scholar Rabbi Dr Dayan Isidor Grunfeld and the father of Rabbi Dovid Cohn, the incumbent Rabbi at the North Hendon Adath Yisroel Synagogue in Hendon.
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