BIOGRAPHY

Background and Education

I was born in Cardiff, South Wales, on 31 May 1933. This coincided with the Jewish festival of Shavuot and with the running of the Derby, won by Tommy Weston on Lord Derby’s Hyperion. The first of these events was by far the more influential on my development, for the festival celebrates not only the First-Fruits but the proclamation of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

Cardiff, capital city of Wales, was still a major port, and came under attack from the air in World War II. It was a great place to grow up, enlightened, tolerant, with a vigorous musical life in which I was able to take part. There was a small but active Jewish community, inclined to Zionism (they were fond of pointing out that Israel was comparable in size and population to Wales); they were not on the whole very religious, but I came under the influence of some families of highly observant refugee German Orthodox Jews.

From Cardiff High School I entered St John’s College, Cambridge in 1951 with no break; though National Service was still obligatory, HM King George VI had declined my offer to serve in his Royal Air Force, accusing me of being flat-footed (which was and is true). At Cambridge I read Moral Sciences for Tripos Part I and Music for Part 2, gained a teaching diploma at Bristol University, collected an ARCM in Composition, a B.Mus. degree from London, and in 1961 a Rabbinical Diploma from Jews’ College, London. In the summer vacation of 1953 I had spent some weeks at Gateshead Yeshiva, and I continued to study rabbinic texts under private guidance.

In 1955 I married Devora (Doris) Strauss, with whom I enjoyed 43 happy years of marriage until her death in 1998. From her I have four children and four grandchildren. In 2000 I married Hilary Nissenbaum.