The centre at the synagogue aims to throw light on Jewish life in the City of London – and beyond. Hester Abrams takes a first look at some of the objects visitors will see when it opens later this spring
“Most people will probably never have seen these things,” says Kris Musikant, Lead on the Collections of the Spanish & Portuguese Jews’ Sephardi Community. “The collection is bigger than anyone realised.” She is talking me through the vast depository of paintings, documents, photographs, silverware, furniture, books, textiles and ephemera that makes up the community’s collection. These artefacts recall the history of the community’s flagship site, Bevis Marks Synagogue, near Aldgate, in the City of London, as well as the story of the first Jews to settle in England after they were readmitted in 1656, under Oliver Cromwell. Now, the stories behind the collection are about to be more fully revealed in a dazzling display, due to open at Bevis Marks this spring.
A £9 million conservation and redevelopment programme, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and other donors, has resulted in the creation of the Dangoor Heritage Centre at Bevis Marks, where visitors will be able to explore more than 300 items from the trove of objects commissioned and donated over centuries. Ritual silver and vestments will be shown in an undercroft, named the George Weisz Treasury.
The centre “will help people understand the diversity of the Jewish experience”, adds Dinah Winch, Heritage Manager for the Bevis Marks Synagogue Heritage Foundation. Jews’ continuous presence in Britain is surprisingly unknown and little understood, and often excluded from the story of migration to London. “I hope the project places the Jewish community more centre stage in that story,” Winch says.
