At 93, Sephardi charity head decides it’s time to retire

At 93, Lucien Gubbay is stepping down after more than a decade in charge of the charity responsible for reviving ordination for central Orthodox rabbis in the UK.

But while he has retired as chairman of the Montefiore Endowment, he will be maintaining his active association as its life president.

Over many decades of communal service, he has been a prominent lay member of the S & P Sephardi Community and a champion of the Western Sephardi heritage.

He served on the board of the endowment for two decades, helping to invest the legacy of the Victorian philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore in Jewish education.

The S & P’s Senior Rabbi, Joseph Dweck, said he had served it with “grace, integrity, and an unwavering commitment to ensuring the strength and future of our heritage”.

In a letter to Gubbay, he said, “You have always had the wisdom to safeguard our history, combined with a clear vision for the future, ensuring that the Endowment is not only a custodian of the past but also a living source of support and inspiration for generations to come.”

Incoming chairman of the endowment, Alan Bekhor, praising his predecessor’s “wonderful achievements’, said, “Lucien Gubbay has been an extraordinarily dedicated and effective chairman. Together with Rabbi Abraham Levy he has developed the charity into an important pillar of the training of leadership and higher education within Anglo-Jewry.”

When the London School of Jewish Studies (formerly Jews’ College) ended its semichah programme, the Montefiore Endowment stepped into the breach a few years later, launching a new ordination course in 2005. With the late Rabbi Levy, the spiritual head of the S & P for many years, Gubbay devised a training scheme that sought to give rabbis practical skills for communal roles and a Torah outlook that was engaged with the wider world.

Since then, nearly 30 graduates have gone into the pulpit, Jewish schools and other educational institutions.

The endowment then went one better by launching the first training course in the UK for future dayanim, celebrating its first graduates who included United Synagogue rabbis earlier this year.

It has also opened a scheme to train women as yoatzot halachah, advisers in certain areas of Jewish law, funded gap year students to study in Israel and run a diploma course for adults.

Gubbay has helped with translations for prayerbooks for the S & P and four years ago compiled Memorable Sephardi Voices, a collection showcasing the halachic moderation of Sephardi rabbis, which was published by the endowment.

He is also author of Sunlight and Shadow: The Experience of Jews Under Islam and, together with Rabbi Levy, of an illustrated history, The Sephardim: Their Glorious Tradition from the Babylonian Exile to the Present Day.