The date of Samuel Lyons’ bar mitzvah passed by without celebration. But then, almost nothing went as planned for the hardy souls living in London’s East End during the Blitz.

The term (German for “lightning”) refers to the relentless bombing campaigns by Germany carried on Britain in 1940 and 1941 during World War II.

“We spent the nights in the shelters, listening to the booming of the bombs,” recalls the feisty 85-year-old in a cockney accent peppered with Yiddish. “They shuffled us from school to school. Every few days, the school would be bombed, and we’d begin again in another. We kept busy picking through the rubble searching for shrapnel.”

RELATED

Although he had begun preparing for his bar mitzvah before the war began, taking cheder classes at the Jews’ Free School, or JFS, it closed down when students were evacuated to the countryside. (The building was destroyed in the bombings and ultimately reopened in a different location.)

Young Samuel had been evacuated as well, but his parents soon brought him back to London, when they determined that he was not being looked after in the country.

For a while, he and some other boys were tutored in Judaic subjects by an Eastern European Jew known to them only as “Rabbi Scratchy,” but that ended after a few weeks as well.

By the time the war ended and Samuel joined the Royal Air Force, his bar mitzvah had been all but forgotten. Like many of the buildings in his old neighborhood, it seemed as if it would be forever written off as a wartime loss.

When he married his late wife Malka in 1957, he returned to Sandy’s Row Synagogue, the ornate religious establishment of his youth, where his sister (and his parents, he believes) had married before him.

Lyons at his home in London
Lyons at his home in London

In the meantime, the Jewish East End had fallen into decline. Most of the Jews moved west to roomier and more “respectable” suburbs, such as Hampstead and Golders Green. The lively Jewish center Lyons had known growing up became home to a new wave of immigrants.

‘Something Big’

However, Sandy’s Row Synagogue—the oldest surviving Ashkenazi place of worship in London, founded in 1854—remained a stoic monument to the neighborhood’s past, held tightly by the dwindling population of pensioners and suburban families that maintained their multigenerational connection to the congregation.

This spring, the congregation invited Rabbi Mendy Korer (co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Islington with his wife, Hadasa) to become its rabbi. He had already been assisting them for a while now, and the congregation felt that it was time to make the connection official.

A monument to the neighborhood’s past
A monument to the neighborhood’s past

Korer promptly invited Lyons, who had maintained his connection to the synagogue, to attend services on Shabbat morning. “The rabbi bushwhacked me,” says the octogenarian, chuckling. “He told me something big was going to happen, and he needed me there. Mendy’s a nice chap, so I figured I would go support him.”

Upon his arrival this past Shabbat, Lyons was surprised that the “something big” was his own bar mitzvah celebration. Heavy with emotion, he recited the blessings of the Torah for the first time in his life.

“A lot of chaps of my crowd never had their bar mitzvahs,” reflects Lyons, who put on tefillin for the first time in his life this week. “But if I can do it; anyone can. It’s never too late.”

The windy way to the historic synagogue in London's East End
The windy way to the historic synagogue in London's East End
The exterior of Sandy’s Row Synagogue, where Korer now serves as rabbi
The exterior of Sandy’s Row Synagogue, where Korer now serves as rabbi
The interior of Sandy’s Row Synagogue, where Lyons read from the Torah for the first time
The interior of Sandy’s Row Synagogue, where Lyons read from the Torah for the first time