"It's really important for people to see that we're just the same as everybody else"

What Steven asked Dalia Halpern-Matthews, Chair of Trustees at Chatham Memorial Synagogue.

Dr Dalia Halpern-Matthews is the former Chief Executive of the Halpern Trust, where she helped to set up Nucleus Arts. Steven met her at the Chatham Memorial Synagogue, where she is the Chair of Trustees. They discussed her family’s long involvement with the synagogue, the vandalism that has plagued it, Israel, and lots more. During the interview, Steven learnt something about himself and left the Synagogue a changed man…

What is your involvement with the synagogue?
I am currently the Chair of Trustees here at the synagogue, but my family has been here and heavily involved since the 1890s. Starting with my great-grandfather Solomon, and then my grandparents, Alec and Dora Halpern, and then my parents Hilary and Mari Halpern. With my son, that's five generations of Halperns.

What is it that makes Chatham Memorial Synagogue unique?
It is completely unique in many ways, actually. There's the obvious one: We have a cemetery, and it is the only synagogue in the country that has a burial ground attached to it because Jews don't put their burial grounds next to the synagogue because the priests are not supposed to go into a cemetery in case there are any bad spirits that would taint them. For that reason, they don't put them together. In fact, the burial ground is older than the synagogue itself, which is how this has happened here. Jews were banned from England for hundreds of years, and then we were allowed back, and people started to come with the docks and the military, and there wasn't a burial ground, and there wasn't a synagogue. I think the Jews were leased an area of land from the hospital, where they started to bury their dead. At a similar time, they rented two of the tenement houses that were more or less in the same plot, but not next to each other. One of the tenement houses they used for the rabbi's house and the other as the synagogue. Then after a few years, the tenement houses were dismantled, and the first synagogue went up on a similar site, and they carried on burying. This building was completed in 1869. They moved it further forward on the site, and then the graveyard grew. Although, in fact, there's no such thing as a Jewish cemetery, only a Jewish grave. Anywhere a Jewish person is buried is a Jewish grave.

Is the graveyard full?
Yeah, it's been full for years. The last burial was in the 80s, but the new cemetery off Chatham Maidstone Road, Palmerston Road, has been used. Certainly, my grandparents were buried there, and grandpa died in ‘75. But it's also unique because we are one of only three surviving synagogues that were designed by Hyman Henry Collins, who is considered to have designed the most beautiful synagogues in the country. It also had a mikvah when it was built. A mikvah is a ritual bath. It's something that's really important for a community, but for a tiny provincial community like Medway to have a mikvah is incredibly unusual. It hasn't been there in my lifetime. I don't know why or what happened to make it removed. The nearest mikveh now is up in Bushey. A Jewish person, when they die, for example, needs to be cleaned in a mikveh. That's quite significant. The synagogue is a grade two star, the cemetery is a separate scheduled park and garden, and the Magnus Memorial has its own grade two listing. We're triple-listed.

What is the Magnus Memorial?
The reason why it's Chatham Memorial Synagogue is because it was built in memory of Captain Lazarus Magnus, who died in his 30s of an accidental overdose of laudanum following a toothache. He was quite notable. He was a friend of Brunel. He was a mayor, I mean just lots of different things. His father, Simon Magnus, was distraught. He built this in memory. The big memorial is for Lazarus. It's been quite badly defaced. We've had a lot of vandalism in the cemetery, unfortunately, over the years.

Is vandalism something that still goes on today?
The cemetery has been. It's been much better since we’ve had the new CCTV, which is much better than the old one. But we have still had issues. Just last month, someone threw pigs trotters onto the synagogue grounds. It's not like things don't happen.
Someone a few months ago, I'm assuming that it was something to do with drugs, but I don't know. CCTV picked up these people climbing over a wall at the front. They actually managed to knock over the front wall. That, luckily, was covered by the insurance. It has all been done. We're just fundraising at the moment to do some extra security works that will stop people from being able to get in.