This scroll, known at North West Surrey Synagogue as “The Black Scroll”, is now in the care of two families, descendants of SAMUEL HORWICH who lived in Manchester in the 1890s. They were his daughter, Sylvia (known as DOLLY), born in 1900, and my father, JERRETH HORWICH, born in 1902. Dolly married Jack EPSON, and her children were Eric EPSON and Marcia, who married Mervyn ABRAHAMSON.
Late in 1902, Samuel travelled back to his birthplace, Chasnik, near Vitebsk (now in Belarus), when his father, Eruchim Gorewitz (or Horowitz) was dying. On his return he brought this family scroll back to Manchester where it was housed in a small shtiebel for around fifty years. For a further twenty years or so it was in the large London suburban United Synagogue where my father, Jerreth, was a member.
My husband, Donald, and I took over the care of the scroll when my father died in 1971. North West Surrey Synagogue was founded in 1968 and when we joined in the early 1970s, we took it with us on extended loan to the synagogue. Donald soon became a Warden and the scroll was taken to the various halls and schools where we held our services, travelling in Donald’s stout National Service kit-bag, and resting in our beautiful mobile Ark made by a founder member. It has been in Weybridge for over 50 years and used at all our own family’s landmark celebrations including the b’nei mitzvah of our three sons and the marriage at Bromley Synagogue of our oldest son, Jonathan. It was also handed to Jonathan at his Ordination at West London Synagogue in 1981, after completing his rabbinic studies at the Leo Baeck College.
During that time the scroll has travelled several times to Crawley and what was then Woodford Liberal Synagogue, and elsewhere for the b’nei mitzvah of the children of other Horwich descendants, all of them the descendants of my father’s sister, Dolly.
Before 2024, the last time it was fully checked and repaired by a scribe was in 1979 when we had a very special occasion. This was the triple bar mitzvah of the sons of Dolly’s own three children. All three grandsons had been born within the same fortnight in July 1979, two in Dublin and one in Jerusalem. The service was held in the Dublin Orthodox Synagogue, and the young Irish Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, insisted on a full check and repair of any faults before allowing the scroll into the synagogue.
From 1975-92, I was assistant to the Executive Director of The Reform Synagogues of Great Britain (now Reform Judaism). Every two or three years the movement’s elected Executive spent a long residential weekend together for in-depth policy discussions and the scroll came with us for our Shabbat services in the hotels. After retiring from teaching, Donald combined a part-time degree in Hebrew & Jewish Studies with a part-time job of Congregational Development Officer and the scroll went with us for the early services at now established communities such as Milton Keynes, Darlington and Kol Chai.
ENA BLACK
