Rabbi Hugo Gryn

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a rabbi. From a life mutilated by antagonism, he has preached the message of conciliation. He was born in Czechoslovakia, but his well-ordered childhood was thrown into turmoil by the Second World War. He spent two years in concentration camps and survived. He came to Britain, where he won a place at Cambridge, then trained as a rabbi in America. After working in India, Africa and the Middle East, he returned here in 1964.

Presenter0:57

Since then, as President of the Reform Synagogue of Great Britain, and perhaps more conspicuously as a panellist on the B B C programme The Moral Maze, he has advanced the arguments for better relations between people of differing faiths. He is Rabbi Hugo

Presenter1:13

You've been a rabbi in London, then Hugo, for thirty years, always in the West London synagogue.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn1:17

Man and boy thirty years coming up exactly to that anniversary.

Presenter1:21

But were you always destined to become a rabbi? Was it always on the cards for young Hugo?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn1:25

Young Hugo. No, I'm not sure what I was destined to be. I suppose a life of leisure and comfort is what I hoped it would be.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn1:33

well to do family, very r hardworking. Most of our family were actually in sort of agriculture. My father was a forest developer and and sort of we had vineyards.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn1:45

And I suppose that's where I would have been heading.

Presenter1:48

Do you find it surprising, then where one ends up in life perhaps is is often surprising but that you, a boy from a small Czech town at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, should end up spending his life in West London ministering to thousands of people, not even having been taught English as a child?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:04

Well, my grandpa would have said if you live long enough you see everything.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:08

And uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:10

Yeah, I I I sometimes pinch myself.

Presenter2:13

I've said that you're from Czechoslovakia, but you're also from several other countries. Well, I tell you.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:16

Well, I tell you, uh I come well, a man from my hometown, Berexazo, Berejobo, uh recently arrived in heaven.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:26

And they said, now wait a minute, you can't come in without telling your life story.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:32

Okay, he said. Well, I was born in the Austro Hungarian Empire.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:36

I was brought up and educated in Czechoslovakia. I started to work in Hungary. For a time I did some special training in Germany. And then I settled down in the Soviet Union. And finally, I wound up in my retirement in the Ukraine. Oh, they say to him, You traveled such a lot. He says, Me? I never left Berehovo.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn2:58

That's the town I'm from.

Presenter3:00

So let's come to you on the Desert Island. What's the first record you're going to play?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn3:03

Well, something to remind me, in a way, both of Czechoslovakia and the first composer I knew by name, which was Mozart. It is the Prague Symphony, and it combines so many familiarities for me.

Presenter4:13

The opening of Mozart's Prague Symphony played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter4:19

Tell me about life in Berehovo, Hugo, before it was so cruelly interrupted by the Nazis.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn4:25

It was wonderful. It was comfortable, safe, very loving, lots of family, and also a sense that somehow we are all related to each other. It was a small town, a provincial town of about 25,000, and about 15,000 of the population were Jews. And these Jewish families, almost clans, had lived there, you know, forever, as long as we could tell. And we had our own, of course, synagogues, including a very beautiful big synagogue. Friday afternoons, you know, the town just quietened down for the Sabbath and remained still until Saturday night, and then it sort of came to life again. It had its own rhythm and

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:13

I I have nothing but the happiest of recollections. There was also in the background still a lot of poverty. Don't let me over-idealize it. The Carpathian villages.

Speaker 45:20

The

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:25

were actually places where a lot of people couldn't afford to wear shoes.

Presenter5:28

Yeah.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:28

But the feeling was it's all going to come right.

Presenter5:31

If you worked hard and if you put everything in

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:33

You could work hard and somehow it was going to happen.

Presenter5:34

The sum

Presenter5:37

Was this a wholly Jewish community, though, that you talk about, and uh or or did you mix freely with other people, other denominations?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:43

That is one of the things that I recall. Very sadly, we didn't.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn5:48

There was almost no relationship between the Jewish community in our town and the Roman Catholic and the Protestant and the Russian Orthodox communities, which were also there. And I think we paid a terrible price for that.

Presenter6:04

Because when the persecution began.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:05

Because when when when the persecution began, there was no one there to lift a finger or to demonstrate. And that of course has been one of the things that motivated me, I suppose, for most of my life.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:19

Get that bit right as well.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:22

Record number two. Well, the one song from our town, thought to be uh the composition of a chazen, of a synagogue cantor of of our area. It's a magical song about this wonderful bird which has uh yellow wings and blue legs.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:42

And it's all fantasy and magic. And this bird somehow symbolizes messianic redemption as well. All the troubles will be over, and this bird will somehow

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:56

Come into its own.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn6:58

And will tell you that the world is safe now.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn7:01

is redeemed.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn7:03

And I've been waiting for this bird all my life.

Speaker 47:25

So you like a hush now.

Speaker 47:30

Roy Mad Bro the Mar.

Speaker 47:35

Z na ran china z ban shi kanyo na

Speaker 47:46

Me to the hollow.

Speaker 47:51

Need your love.

Speaker 47:56

Sharpolamo King Osaryo Angel Muder.

Presenter8:06

Sol o kokosma, The cock is now crowing, a Hungarian song from Berehovo, the home town of Hugo Green. You were a a bookworm, Hugo, and obviously a highly intelligent and perceptive young boy. What was the first you saw of anti Semitism? When did you realize what the phrase meant?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn8:24

Across the river from my uh grandparents' village uh was Hungary.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn8:32

And it was in Hungary that uh some of these terrorist groups began to develop with the sole purpose of terrorizing on the other side of the river the Jewish population. And uh one night a group of such terrorists came over,

Rabbi Hugo Gryn8:48

made their way into my grandfather's uh well, the farm and the houses.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn8:54

And Butchered Live.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn8:58

All the cows and calves in the barns.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:02

At dawn we had a phone call from the village to our town, which is very near, and and and my father immediately, you know, went and I went with him.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:12

Uh what, I was about eight and we arrived there just as it was getting to be light.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:21

And I've never seen anything like it. Pointless.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:27

Cruel, callous.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:29

Terrifying.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:32

And that was the beginning.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:35

Of the end.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:38

Uh because uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:40

Around that time in Munich,

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:44

There were a few angry words and some perfunctory signatures.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:49

and Czechoslovakia came to an end.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn9:52

And our part of the country became part of Hungary. It was given to them as a gift.

Presenter9:58

And do you remember the Hungarians coming in to Berehungo?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:00

Go.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:01

As it happened yesterday.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:04

Very clearly.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:06

First I remember the Czechs leaving.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:09

Which I thought was very sad. And and there were all these people standing there. We we kind of had to stand on the roadside to welcome the victorious Hungarian army, our liberators, in enormous quotation marks. And as far as I can remember, I was about the only person there, aged just eight and a bit, who was crying because I thought this was all terribly sad. Because I think I remembered a few months earlier the scene with the cows and the cows.

Presenter10:36

You think you put the two and two together, did you?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:38

I I I know I did, and and I had the worst premonition about it, and absolute powerlessness.

Presenter10:44

Hmm.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:45

And what can an eight-year-old do?

Presenter10:45

And what

Presenter10:47

And it was then that the Jewish laws, so-called Jewish law anti-Jewish laws, began.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn10:52

Very soon after the Hungarians came in, yes, with all sorts of discriminatory clauses about schools and numerous clauses, you know, percentages and people needing special permits and then having to prove citizenship. A whole panoply of so-called legalisms.

Presenter11:12

King.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:12

But they were only very thinly disguised forms of discrimination.

Presenter11:15

And the wearing of the yellow star.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:17

But that came much later. That came much later. That that was already really towards the finale of our community.

Presenter11:18

Uh

Presenter11:23

But the writing was very obviously on the wall in those early stages, as you say, and and you sensed it. Couldn't you and your family have escaped? Couldn't you have fled at that point?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:32

my parents and my brother and I, we were to escape. Arrangements were made for us to go to Turkey.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:40

And we never did. Later on, much later, when my father and I were in prison.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:47

And and one day I asked him, Why didn't we do it?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:54

And and he told me that uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:56

He and my mother went to

Rabbi Hugo Gryn11:59

his parents' village and to my mother's family's village to say goodbye.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:06

And when they came home

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:08

They looked at each other and they said, But how can we leave the old people behind? It was what? The trap of love, of caring so much about family.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:21

That when the chips were down.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:25

You couldn't choose.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:27

abandon them and save yourself or stick together and see what you can do to help each other. It's a terrible choice. And people, you know, all over the world have to keep on making that kind of choice.

Presenter12:41

Record number three.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn12:43

I think back of the triumphal part in the life of Czechoslovakia and the Janacek Symphonietta, specially composed for a so-called sort of gymnastic festival of young people. When I was a boy, one of my ambitions was that I should one day be that kind of a gymnast. Well, I never was, but the music

Rabbi Hugo Gryn13:08

suggests bodily movement and and people

Rabbi Hugo Gryn13:13

working in harmony with each other and looking forward to the future.

Presenter14:16

The final movement of Janicek Sinfonietta played by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Naim Yervi.

Presenter14:23

You'd have been thirteen in the summer of'forty three, Hugo. Were you still free? Did you have your bar mitzvah with the whole family?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn14:29

The last time the family were together was exactly in my bomitzpo in the summer of 1943.

Presenter14:37

You you say it was the last time the family was all together, so how soon after that, in forty three, were you rounded up?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn14:42

Round it up.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn14:43

Uh i it it it all

Rabbi Hugo Gryn14:46

began to close down in that following year. Uh and uh in fact the Jewish community in our town were finally sort of liquidated.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn14:58

in the spring of'forty four.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:00

Uh the Gestapo came in directly.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:03

rounded up the whole Jewish community into the sort of brick factory. And not only from our town, but also from the neighboring villages. Thousands of men, women, children, everybody, everybody, absolutely everybody.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:17

And then the trains came in, these

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:21

Cattle wagons

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:23

into the brick factory.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:26

And uh day after day everywhere is loaded on.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:30

and taken to Auschesburg Canal.

Presenter15:33

So so for you, then, the horror was that your whole life and way of life had been destroyed and turned on its head, and you didn't know quite where you were going, but you had no idea of the full horror.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:43

No

Presenter15:44

Yeah.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:44

And I don't believe uh things would have happened had we known. And I I and I often uh regret and resent that somehow

Rabbi Hugo Gryn15:54

We did not know this, though there were plenty of people in the world, and many powers, great powers, including the Allies, who knew about it by then.

Presenter16:04

Good day.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:04

Yes, oh yes.

Presenter16:06

But the Allies were still surprised when the camps were eventually found after the war.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:06

Yeah.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:09

Yes and no. I think it was yes and no. I think they perhaps did not know of the extent of it, but certainly reports had already come out. Even a few people had escaped and they brought reports. And for various reasons, all sorts of people chose not to believe it or not to publicize it. It wasn't that what was happening to the Jews and indeed the gypsies didn't matter. It was, I think, that it didn't matter enough. for actually people to protest or to demonstrate or to do things. And when people don't care enough, terrible things happen and that's what happened to us. Total disaster.

Presenter16:48

How hard did you pray at that time?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:52

Well, as hard as I knew.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:55

But I also knew something then.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn16:59

Which uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:00

I've only sort of understood better and better as time has gone on. And that is that.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:06

It's when people dethrone God, and that's exactly what happened in Auschwitz, and put themselves.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:15

into that uh roll and onto that pedestal. That is when terrible things happen.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:20

And I believe God was there, and I believe God actually cried with me.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:25

And the

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:28

It was helpless to prevent it.

Presenter17:31

Let's have record number four.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:35

Well, it's a song from that period. It's one of the two songs that I learned in the camp.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:40

It's as ogdit kainmul as the geisten lettenfeg. In Yiddish Never Say You Now Walk the Final Path was written by a young Russian Jew called Hirsch Glick. He wrote this song, which became the song, Never Say You Now Walk the Final Path.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn17:58

And the people who sang it.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn18:00

We're walking the final path.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn18:02

And and it's that

Rabbi Hugo Gryn18:04

Stubbornness of Hope

Rabbi Hugo Gryn18:07

That this song suggests and

Rabbi Hugo Gryn18:10

It's one of my absolute favorite songs.

Speaker 418:13

Let me borrow my gift in both and mine. On the left to let my skin be mine.

Speaker 418:27

But then they all

Speaker 418:31

Young My Lord was fighting the sleep in

Speaker 418:55

See, they did like God and he

Presenter19:07

The partisan song Zognit Keinmaul never say This is the last road, sung by the Polish Army. You spent two years in the camps, as I said at the outset, Hugo. You were separated from your mother at some point.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn19:19

Or at Auschwitz from uh pretty well all members of the family uh except my father. We were together. Uh I lied about my age, as it were, upward. I said I was nineteen and he lied downwards a bit, so he was, I think, thirty eight, thirty nine. And the cousin of mine, a nephew of my father's, who also

Rabbi Hugo Gryn19:42

changed his name as it were so that we could be together.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn19:46

And the three of us actually work together much of the time.

Presenter19:48

What about your brother,'cause you had a brother three years younger?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn19:50

I had a younger brother and he was just too small to even to to to lie his way out of the selection line there. And and he was uh destroyed on the day of arrival there, together with with with our grandparents. The last scene I have

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:09

Is him walking with my grandparents?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:13

The wrong direction.

Presenter20:15

And how did you and your father survive?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:18

Well, he didn't.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:20

He actually died at the end of the war, just days after our liberation from the combination of starvation and typhoid.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:29

And uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:31

And I survived by chance, pure chance. Uh well, no, not quite true. I also survived because my father was with me and protected me.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:41

uh many times from all sorts of dangers.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:45

Uh so yes, uh it wasn't as much chance, but altogether it was chance.

Presenter20:51

So you were liberated. You were not quite, what, fifteen? You would have been at the end of the war.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn20:56

Just, yes, coming up to it.

Presenter20:58

What did you do?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:01

Well, first of all I was sick, as we all were. We all we all had typhoid and uh took a while to recover.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:09

And then thought, well, best to try get back home to Berejovo.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:14

to see who else might have survived.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:16

And as it turned out, my mother did. So she was already back there waiting. She had heard.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:23

that somebody had seen her husband and son.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:27

alive at the end of the war, which technically was true.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:31

And so she expected us both to come back.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:35

And only I came back.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:37

Um

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:38

And I I I mean, I knew very soon that there was no future, no life.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:45

for us in that part of the world. It was finished. And as soon as I could left,

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:51

to try and pick up life, but elsewhere.

Presenter21:55

Next piece of music.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:58

B

Rabbi Hugo Gryn21:59

Synagogue where I have been rabbi for the last 30 years is blessed with a wonderful choir.

Speaker 222:05

Wonderful

Rabbi Hugo Gryn22:07

A great music director in Sydney Fixford and a wonderful organist in Christopher Barr's broadband. And we have for years and years now, as it were, sung together, worked together. And this is a particular piece of liturgy that I love. Shamakolenu, a prayer, hear our voice. It has everything in it, the right emotion, the right music.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn22:33

And the right sentiment that God should always be ready to accept our prayers.

Speaker 423:35

Uh

Presenter23:42

The choir of the West London synagogue singing Shemah Kalenu, Hear Our Voice.

Presenter23:47

Within six months of the end of the war, you were in Scotland, still not speaking a word of English. I mean, how how did you get there and why Scotland?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn23:54

Well, I so didn't speak English so that the night that we arrived from Prague, a group of so called children, all of us under sixteens, uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:04

The Home Office gave permission for a thousand

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:08

Children survivors.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:10

to come to this country. They couldn't find a thousand. In the event there were only about seven hundred of us who who came in. And I was on the very last transport and I was convinced that we were coming to London, bright lights, girls, everything. And instead we came to Scotland a farm school. And me having to milk fifty-six goose twice a day.

Presenter24:32

But the whole idea was to get out, to get away, to make a fresh start somewhere, was it?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:38

It was still too soon to have sort of clear plans. I mean, I knew that sooner or later I I I would have to get on with the business of education, because that had sort of come to an absolute halt.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:51

and was essential, necessary.

Presenter24:53

But you seem to have done it very fast. I mean, you were in in Cambridge a few years ago.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn24:55

In Cambridge a few years ago. My English teacher, to whom I went uh from Poulton House, this farm school in Scotland, to Edinburgh, Miss Harris,

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:09

She was wonderful. She taught me.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:12

to speak and and and to communicate in English, which I thought was a wonderful language, in months.

Presenter25:18

What did you read at Cambridge?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:20

Mathematics

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:21

I first learned mathematics in the camps.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:24

And I learnt it from a uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:27

A Roman Catholic priest who was also in prison.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:30

Uh he was an anti-Nazi and uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:34

He was a uh professor of astronomy in in sort of real life.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn25:39

And there I was, a sponge, and there he was, full of this enormous knowledge of mathematics. And as we were working side by side, he would sort of offload that and I would just absorb it. So I knew a lot of mathematics and very little else. And so there was a kind of plausibility about my mathematicness. And nobody fortunately prodded deeper to see that there was very little around it.

Presenter26:07

And then after Cambridge, to become a rabbi, you went to Cincinnati. Now, why Cincinnati?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn26:11

Well, I I went to Cincinnati to become a rabbi because the kind of rabbi that I wanted to uh become and be, namely a reform rabbi, there was no other training place because the only other training places that existed before the war

Rabbi Hugo Gryn26:29

Berlin, Breslau, Budapest, they've all been destroyed.

Presenter26:34

Next piece of music.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn26:35

This next piece of music is From India.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn26:38

which impact was where I was first a congregational rabbi after I qualified in the United States. And on the trip that my wife and I first took to India on this airplane,

Rabbi Hugo Gryn26:54

Three seats were reserved for one man and his instrument, and he was Rabi Shankar and his sitar. And on the journey we became quite friendly, and afterwards I also became a great fan of his. And this piece of music, this this raga, suggests to me a very, very happy time in India.

Speaker 227:10

Raga

Presenter28:11

Ravishanko playing Gat Kirwani. You worked in India, Hugo, in New York, you've travelled in Iran and Africa and the Middle East, and you found yourself, it seems, naturally drawn by the ideas of multiculture, of multi faith. I mean, it it's it's tolerance that you're in search of, tolerance that you believe in, isn't it?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn28:29

Obviously, I believe in tolerance, but I sometimes almost feel tolerance is too patronizing. I believe that part of the mark of being a spiritually civilized person

Rabbi Hugo Gryn28:40

is when you can celebrate differences. Life comes in so many forms, so how can you not be multi-faith, multicultural?

Presenter28:50

So the m the the measures are there, the attempts are made all of the time to to create a a a tolerant society which

Presenter28:58

obviously, you believe to be the only safe society, the only society in which people can feel secure. But d do you feel, you must feel, the alarm bells ringing when you see the British National Party scoring victories, albeit brief in the East End, or the rise of neofascism in Germany?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:13

There is such a betrayal of history going on right now in this country, in Europe, but in North America as well. And I find that

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:24

Obscene.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:25

And I think it has to be resisted and fought.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:29

I can tell you, you know, I mean, we Jews, we're out of the victim business. That that that's finished. And only a society

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:40

which can cherish

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:42

and protect

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:44

all its members.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:47

It deserves the term civilized.

Presenter29:49

Make code number seven.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:51

Well, talk of civilization.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:54

Kid Ori and his Creole jazz band.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn29:58

A wonderful group from New Orleans.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn30:01

I knew Kidore when I was in Cincinnati a a student, and it was my good luck to think of inviting him to come and play a big punction, and he came and it was wonderful. And I think of him and Saint Louis Blues, which is absolutely well, it's just a classic.

Presenter31:18

Kidori and his Creole jazz band and St. Louis Blues. You've got some two and a half thousand families directly in your pastoral care in West London. Have they in a sense

Presenter31:29

If you like, replaced what you lost in Verehovo. Is that they're that same, despite the fact that this is a much more affluent society, that kind of interdependence and sense of history.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn31:33

This is a magic

Rabbi Hugo Gryn31:39

We have a new prayer book in our synagogue and and in in the reform movement. And there is a phrase which is very, very frequent in in our liturgy in Hebrew, bet Israel. Literally, of course it means the house of Israel.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn31:50

And we have quite deliberately translated this when we did it in the late 70s as the family of Israel.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn31:59

In a family you can have all kinds of differences, but you know you have to look after each other.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:05

And you have to protect one another, and you look out for the vulnerable, and you celebrate with the successful, and

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:11

You are not alone.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:13

then you are not an alien in your world.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:16

My greatest worry, my greatest fear is is the alienation that has come with modern conditions and urbanization.

Presenter32:25

What are you going to do on this desert island?

Presenter32:27

Rid of all material possessions, rid of your congregation. I mean, how are you going to manage without them? What are you going to do with yourself? How will you stay busy?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:36

I've been worried about this now for several days, Sue. I certainly don't see how you can be sort of Jewish on a desert island. You can be a sort of a God fearing person. Because being Jewish, I think you need community for it. Though there was one man, I'm told, who who was once on a desert island and he was rescued.

Speaker 232:53

Island

Rabbi Hugo Gryn32:55

And he shows the rescuers, Look, here's the house that I build, my bath house, the synagogue I build, the barn for my animals, the other synagogue I built. They said, Wait a minute.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:05

Two synagogues, one man says, Yeah, that's the synagogue I don't go to.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:09

So I might on my desert island spend my time building synagogues I will not go to.

Presenter33:15

Record number eight.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:17

This is the melody, but the words which are constantly in my mind come from Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, a a remarkable teacher and mystic thinker of the beginning of the last century.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:34

Life, kolhaolam kulo gesher tzar mu'ord is the Hebrew. The whole world is a narrow bridge.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:42

And the important thing, the ikar.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn33:45

is not to be afraid.

Presenter34:35

The whole world is a narrow bridge. You can give us the Hebrew there.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn34:38

Kolhaolam kulo gesher tsar mu'od.

Presenter34:41

And it was played by Israel Zoha.

Presenter34:44

Now it's the difficult bit if you could only take one of those eight records.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn34:48

I think probably Geschirts are more, because I think that on the desert island that would be really a kind of a narrow bridge. It would test you. And the important thing there would be not to be afraid.

Presenter35:00

What about your book?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:00

Uh

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:01

Well

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:03

If possible, Sue, I'd love to have the Bible, which I know is there already, with a good rabbinic commentary. And if I could take my friend Martin Gilbert's Churchill biography. Churchill was a man in our century who actually had vision, character, and he was the right man at the right time.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:25

And I feel I owe a lot to him, and so do we all.

Presenter35:29

And your luxury.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:30

Well, I live in central London, Sue, and what I would like is a parking space.

Presenter35:36

On a desert island, we can give you a parking space. Rabbi Hugo Green, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn35:43

Thank you.

Speaker 235:52

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.