Glasgow Jewish Community Trust
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The Trust gives the following description of itself:
- The Trust was formed in June 1963 by Ephraim Goldberg, Michael (Melach) Goldberg, Sir Maurice Bloch, Samuel Ross Campbell, and Isidore Walton. It has however grown over the years. In 2010 the Bloch and Winocour Trusts merged with the Community Trust. In 2011 the reserves of the original Glasgow Talmud Torah and Board of Jewish Education (later known as Calderwood Jewish Education) also found a home in the Community Trust. In 2012 surplus funds held by the Glasgow Rabbinical College were transferred to the Community Trust and most recently in 2016, Habonim funds were also deposited with the Community Trust and a Habonim and Youth restricted fund was created.
- There are seventeen Trustees of the Glasgow Jewish Community Trust, and they meet three times a year to consider all applications that have been submitted.[1]
History of the trust
- That's when Isaac, on behalf of the Trust, approached Matthew Dickie of house builders John Dickie and Son, which later became the John Dickie Group. Isaac already knew Matthew Dickie as when he and his brother Louis moved to Glasgow, they bought houses back-to-back to each other in Douglas Avenue and Otterburn Drive. As the street name suggests there was a burn at the bottom of their land with the surrounding area virtually a swamp. The brothers drained the ground with landfill topped off with soil which they then sold to house builders Dickie who put additional houses on it. That's how they became friends with Matthew Dickie.
- So when the Trust members began to wonder about the land they now owned at Braidbar, Isaac Jesner arranged to meet Matthew Dickie at the Braidbar site. The builder liked what he saw and offered £10,000 for each acre that was able to obtain planning permission for housing. The company also undertook test borings to check what land was safe for buildings. It seemed that initial £5000 investment was going to pay off handsomely.
- The road to profit though is not always straightforward. Many meetings took place with the local planning authority who initially seemed positive but then ruled after further investigation by experts that the drainage on the land was insufficient for a scheme of 100 houses.[2]
- Then three years later house builders Wimpey expressed an interest and were talking about offering £240,000 for the whole site. It was a vast sum, but Isaac told his fellow trustees to hold their nerve as he still believed it was worth far more than that. But then Wimpey pulled out of the deal. As Isaac said: "Ephie was despondent and I was delighted."
- The Trust had to be patient. Another four years passed and Wimpey returned to the table. Matthew Dickie were again approached and was told about Wimpey's interest. At that Dickie's offered £84,000 for each buildable acre. The science of land reclamation over old mines had moved forward in the ensuing decades and it was now likely that more of the land could be economically reinstated and built on. Improved drainage had been installed by the council nearby which would also help with house construction on the land.
- Finally, in 1986, nearly 20 years later, the first phase of Braidbar was sold. At last, the Trust could see some profit from that initial £5000 purchase all those years ago. And the profit was vast, giving the Trust the additional funds to drive forward their plans for the community.
- Initially they achieved a return of £647,000 from Braidbar with another £106,000 the following year. In total, before the millennium, it eventually raised over £900,000 for the Trust which happily put it to good use helping much-needed projects, particularly in social housing. It really took the Trust to another level.[3]
- rebuild was the only viable answer and therefore remaining was not the cheap option some had hoped for whenever they argued its case. Previously the ever-resourceful Isaac Jesner had circulated a further suggestion - building to the rear of a traditional villa, one of the oldest in Giffnock, further south on Fenwick Road named The Glen which had the attraction of having a large plot of land of over an acre to its rear, which would be a suitable site on which to build. He had told a few friends about his proposed solution which is why a phone call one morning changed everything. It was one of his friends who asked him if he had seen an advertisement that morning in the Glasgow Herald stating that The Glen on Fenwick Road was for sale at offers over £7000. Suddenly decision time was upon them if what might have been a whimsical idea was to come to fruition.
- With two other members of the shul, he went to see The Glen, and more importantly its land, the following day. A brief stroll around convinced him that his initial idea that the spare ground behind the house was large enough for a synagogue was a sound one. But convincing the members of the shul could be time-consuming, as the discussions were sure to be numerous and lengthy. The immediate problem of course was that houses in desirable areas can sell quickly - there would be no time to call meetings and debate in minute detail the pros and cons of the site. So Isaac swallowed hard, and said he himself would buy it. His mantra had always been, If you want something done, just do it".[4]
- If the shul members eventually rejected the proposal, he hurriedly thought, he could always build flats or shops on the land and recoup his investment so it was not such a foolhardy endeavour that some people might assume. As he later recalled: "On my return to my office I phoned the solicitors and asked if they were in a position to accept an immediate offer of £7000. They thought the offer too low but promised to discuss it with their client.
- "I had a sleepless night. At 10a.m. the next day they phoned to say the least they would take was £7250, and we finally closed the deal with our lawyer's offer in their hands the following morning. I don't think our solicitor had ever worked so fast in his life."
- So, shul members, now accepting that the Tudor site was not to everyone's taste, and that remaining at May Terrace was more costly than envisaged, now looked more closely at Isaac's land behind The Glen. Of course, support was not unanimous as there were concerns that the ground would not be large enough and that there would be insufficient space for parking. Nevertheless, it was finally agreed that they would build the new shul behind the existing house at The Glen at an estimated cost of £140,000, and fund-raising began immediately. It was then the Trust was on hand to help it come to fruition, and in a way which helped not only Giffnock shul, but the Maccabi youth organisation.[5]
- Since the Jewish community had spread south of the Gorbals, raising doubts about the future of the existing three major synagogues there, shuls had been established in first Queens Park just before the First World War, then Langside, Pollokshields, Crosshill, Newlands and Clarkston, and finally Newton Mearns. But by the sixties a number of them were seeing members move even further south to Giffnock and Newton Mearns and so they began to face the pressure of falling memberships that had dogged the congregations in Gorbals. There was also a fall in regular attendance by members of the Jewish community which was not immune to the growing secular trend in Scotland as a whole. And so, they turned to the Community Trust for help. [6]
Benefactors
The trust lists the following as benefactors since its creation. Ashdown Trust Clive Jay Berkley Foundation Maurice & Joseph Bloch Trust Calderwood Jewish Education Campbell Foundation City Site Estates plc Cohen Family Trust (Sheila and Denis Cohen Foundation) Dover family Harold Dykes Victor Fields Gerber family Ephraim and Clarisse Goldberg Glasgow Jewish Educational Trust Glasgow Rabbinical College Goldberg Family Charitable Trust Betty & Joe Kingsley Charitable Trust H. and E. Livingstone Charitable Trust Geoffrey Ognall Alexander Stone Foundation Talteg Limited Walton Foundation Westleague Limited Dora Winocour Charitable Trust Alma & Leslie Wolfson Charitable Trust
Donations
1971
According to Fred Samuel Berkley Chairman circa 1971 of Hillel Foundation Glasgow, the Trust gave Hillel a grant of £2,500 and the Jewish Youth Fund in London gave a six year loan bearing 5 per cent interest for a 'similar amount'.[7]
2016-2023
| Recipients - Annual grants | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friends of Lubavitch Scotland | 4,000 | 4,500 | 7,000 | 15,500 | |||||
| Glasgow Jewish Representative Council | 18,000 | 18,000 | 17,500 | 18,000 | 18,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 149,500 |
| Glasgow Maccabi | 18,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 5,000 | 58,000 |
| Jewish Care Scotland | 12,000 | 12,000 | 24,000 | ||||||
| Jewish Student Chaplaincy Scotland | 20,000 | 22,500 | 17,000 | 59,500 | |||||
| Lubavitch Foundation | 4,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 | 6,000 | 22,000 | |||
| Newark Care | 5,000 | 5,000 | |||||||
| Northern Region Jewish Chaplaincy | 11,000 | 11,000 | 11,000 | 12,500 | 45,500 | ||||
| Scottish Council of Jewish Communities | 7,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 | 8,000 | 10,000 | 71,000 |
| Scottish Jewish Archives Centre | 2,500 | 2,500 | 3,000 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 15,500 | ||
| UJIA | 4,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 | 4,000 | 16,000 | ||||
| Total | 69,500 | 54,500 | 51,500 | 56,500 | 37,000 | 59,500 | 79,500 | 73,500 | 481,500 |
| Recipients - Special grants | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
| Aberdeen Synagogue | 500 | 750 | 1,250 | ||||||
| Beatson Cancer Charity | 1,000 | 1,000 | |||||||
| British Heart Foundation | 500 | 500 | |||||||
| Clarkston Chanukah Celebration | 1,250 | 1,500 | 2,750 | ||||||
| Cosgrove / Cosgrove Care | 8,000 | 5,000 | 7,500 | 7,500 | 28,000 | ||||
| Glasgow Reform Synagogue | 10,000 | 1,500 | 11,500 | ||||||
| Garnethill Hebrew Congregation | 2,000 | 2,000 | |||||||
| Garnethill Synagogue | 500 | 500 | |||||||
| Garnethill Synagogue Preservation Trust | 5,000 | 5,000 | |||||||
| The Gathering the Voices Association | 2,500 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 2,500 | 2,255 | 14,755 | ||
| Giffnock & Newlands Hebrew Congregation | 1,200 | 1,200 | |||||||
| Glasgow Friends of Israel | 5,000 | 5,000 | |||||||
| Glasgow Hebrew Burial Society | 500 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 10,500 | 20,000 | 10,000 | 4,000 | 105,000 |
| Glasgow Jewish Representative Society | 6,300 | 1,000 | 5,000 | 12,300 | |||||
| Glasgow Rabbinical College | 5,250 | 1,814 | 3,500 | 10,564 | |||||
| Glasgow Rabbinical College and Mikveh (Education) | 14,000 | 12,000 | 26,000 | ||||||
| Glasgow Rabbinical College and Mikveh (Mikveh) | 4,000 | 20,000 | 24,000 | ||||||
| Jewish Care Scotland | 10,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 | 15,000 | 12,000 | 73,000 | ||
| Lubavitch Foundation | 500 | 500 | |||||||
| Magen David Adom UK | 25,000 | 25,000 | |||||||
| Northern Region Jewish Chaplaincy | 5,000 | 5,000 | 10,625 | 20,625 | |||||
| Scottish Council of Jewish Communities | 1,377 | 1,377 | |||||||
| Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 3,000 | |||||
| Miscellaneous | 1,100 | 1,100 | |||||||
| Total | 26,500 | 57,050 | 62,016 | 46,250 | 26,500 | 50,000 | 34,250 | 73,355 | 375,921 |
| Restricted income funds | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Total |
| Calderwood Lodge | 2,929 | 2,100 | 3,220 | 1,650 | 500 | 6,100 | 16,499 | ||
| Glasgow Maccabi | 6,000 | 6,000 | |||||||
| Habonim | 22,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 15,000 | 62,000 | ||||
| UJIA | 10,865 | 16,730 | 16,730 | 16,730 | 16,451 | 20,730 | 28,137 | 26,648 | 153,021 |
| Prism The Gift Fund | 1,000 | 1,000 | |||||||
| Total | 35,794 | 28,830 | 35,950 | 39,380 | 16,451 | 20,730 | 28,637 | 32,748 | 238,520 |
| Total grants | 131,794 | 140,380 | 149,466 | 142,130 | 79,951 | 130,230 | 142,387 | 179,603 | 1,095,941 |
Note: Data from Glasgow Jewish Community Trust Financial Statements 2016-2023.
People
- Chair: Adam Lewis (Since June 2023)
- Vice Chair: Raymond Strang
- Hon. Treasurer: Mark Tenby
- Hon. Secretary: Helena Winocour
| Office Bearers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Title | From | To |
| Isaac Jesner | Original Hon President | ||
| David Walton & Malcolm Livingstone | Current Presidents | ||
| Ephraim Goldberg | Chairman | 03/07/1963 | 29/03/1987 |
| Mark Goldberg | Chairman | 29/03/1987 | 08/12/1996 |
| Geoffrey Ognall | Chairman | 08/12/1996 | 02/07/2000 |
| Malcolm Livingstone | Chairman | 30/10/2000 | 28/06/2023 |
| Adam Lewis | Chairman | 28/06/2023 | |
| Adam Berkley | Vice-Chairman | 30/06/2022 | |
| Raymond Strang | Vice-Chairman | 28/06/2023 | |
| Harold Bach | Secretary | 06/06/1963 | 30/06/1970 |
| Jack Goldman | Secretary | 11/10/1970 | 16/10/1988 |
| Larry Sellyn | Secretary | 12/02/1989 | 25/03/2007 |
| Mark Tenby | Secretary | 25/03/2007 | 28/06/2023 |
| Helena Winocour | Secretary | 28/06/2023 | |
| Mark Tenby | Treasurer | 28/06/2023 | |
Finance Committee
- Malcolm Livingstone | Adam Berkley | David Walton | Adam Lewis | Delia Berkley | Samuel Kingsley | Abigail Peters | Melville Robinson | Lawrence Sellyn[8]
See also
- Garnethill Synagogue Preservation Trust
- Scottish Jewish Archives Centre
- The Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre
- Garnethill Hebrew Congregation
- Glasgow Jewish Community Trust