Day 34
HAPPY CHANUKAH!
On Day 34 of 100 days of Leith, Adrian Harris and GIllian Raab reflect on Leith’s Jewish heritage, and the Festival of Chanukah.
Thursday 10th December marks the first night of the Jewish Festival of Chanukah, the eight-day wintertime ‘festival of lights’. Jews across the world will light a candle each night on their menorah, the Chanukah candelabra, until the final night when all eight candles are ablaze.
As Jews in Scotland share a virtual festival this year, we remember the special place Leith has in Scottish Jewish history. It was the port where immigrants fleeing from Czarist Russia arrived in huge numbers from 1880 to 1914. Although the majority travelled on to Glasgow searching for a passage to New York, many stayed in Leith sensing a safe haven for themselves and their families.
As the community established itself economically and socially many moved into the Pleasance area of Edinburgh. Those who made good moved on over time to better neighbourhoods including fine houses near Leith Walk.
One such was Philip Dresner who lived in a four storey house at 7 Smith's Place at the 1901 and 1911 censuses. He had several businesses across the city as a clothier and jeweller but, most profitably, as a pawnbroker. Philip was born in Eastern Europe, but his wife Esther was from South Shields where they were married in 1878. Before Smith’s Place they lived in various flats in Sandport Street where their 7 children were born.
From cramped tenement flats (28 and 32 Sandport Street), to a four storey house (7 Smith’s Place).
Philip was very active in the Leith Chamber of Commerce and in charitable works. By 1914 he had become a Leith Baillie. The history of the Lochend golf club records him as proposing a response to a delegation from the golf course on costs for extending the course - something that did not happen until much later on account of WWI. Two of his three daughters were married in the Edinburgh synagogue in what is now Keir Street, near the art college, to grooms from Dublin and from Bradford.
Bringing light into darkness is one of the tenets of the festival of Chanukah and that’s how it must have felt for the thousands of Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who fled persecution to make their home in Scotland. Find out more about some of these journeys in the Edinburgh University project - Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces, exploring Jewish Migration to Scotland from 1880-1950 linked below.
Many from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds are still making that journey today and we hope that the light and warmth of our menorah candles provides the same welcome to new arrivals that Leith provided all those years ago.
Adrian Harris has worked in the cultural sector for over forty years pioneering programmes with seldom heard communities. He was Chief Executive of the Queen's Hall for fourteen years and is a board member of both Starcatchers and Tinderbox Collective. He is currently Chair of the Edinburgh Jewish Cultural Centre.
Gillian Raab is Professor Emeritus of Applied Statistics from Edinburgh Napier University. In her retirement she continues to work on various research projects using administrative data including research into Jewish life in Edinburgh. Gillian is a founder member of Sukkat Shalom, the Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Community.
