Our Steering Committee

Meet our Steering Committee:

Our Rainbow Jews Steering Committee is made up of leading figures across the various sectors who have been chosen for their wide range of experience and knowledge. Read more Rainbow Jews Steering Committee Biogs

Rainbow Jews also collects memorabilia  to do with LGBTQ Jewish history. We asked our committee members to tell us which artefacts have inspired them most:

Searle Kochberg (Film maker)

‘In 2001 I made my first trip to Berlin. I was there to do research for a potential series on “New Europe and Judaism.” Alas the series was never made, but the experience did kick-start my film work, and marked a sea change in my private life too. During the trip a colleague and I attended a Shabbat service at the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue in Mitte. For both of us, attending any synagogue service was a rare occurrence  We were firmly secular, and that was that, or so I thought… I was called to the bema for a mitzvah. The full weight of history seemed to be bearing down on me at that moment. My long term relationship was dying back in London and here I was feeling strangely reborn in the remnants of a Berlin synagogue largely destroyed by Allied bombing in WW2. As I recited the prayer for the reading of the Torah, I started to cry. I bit my lip, but it was no use. I knew l would never be the same again….’ This postcard was purchased on that trip. Searle Kochberg London 2013

 

David Jacobs (The Movement for Reform Judaism)
A place mat from the Friendlys Ice Cream Parlour in Great Barrington Massachusetts where in 1971 a friend of my mother’s came to visit me when I was a camp counsellor. She suggested that on my return to Manchester I interviewed by grandparents ‘for posterity’. Thus began my pioneering journey in Jewish Oral history. The library of tapes that I created formed the basis for the collection of memories which helped establish the Jewish East End Museum that I founded in 1983. David Jacobs