RABBI HERTZ

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 194, 12 May 1921, Page 8

RABBI HERTZ

A REMARKABLE PERSONALITY. (By F.E.8.) The Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire (Dr. Joseph H. Hertz) has established a precedent by his visit to the outlying portions of the British Empire. His visit to Now Zealand marks the first occasion on which a Chief Rabbi has toured on a mission, to his people. The present pastoral tour has been urged repeatedly by representatives of the Jewish communities in the Dominions, and many questions of communal administration, will be dealt with by the reverend gentleman in the course of his travels. There are a few vital matters to Jewish communities that he will especially deal with. They are the organisation of religious education, the provision of Jewish Rabbis and ministers, end the provision of Jewish ecclesiastical courts. As has been already indicated, he will take advantage of tho tour to urge support for tho Jewish war memorial scheme.

In the whole of his tour, tho Chief Rabbi has not been interviewed. Ho says what he has to say from the public platform, to Jew and Gentile alike.

F irae introduced to the Chief Rabbi by Mr. Albert Woolf, and his official secretary, Mr. A. Henriques Valentine, not long after he had left tho steamer. Mr. AVoolf was smilingly cautious. "Mind.” ho said, "no interviewing. Will you promise?” I promised. Tho Chief Rabbi is a remarkable man, and looks it. Ho is a trim figure in his clerical garb, the coat of which is very similar to that worn by a British King’s Counsel, with the wellknown buttons and braid on the sleeve. Young looking, he possesses bright eyes —brown and sparkling—which seem always to bo smiling. When ho speaks, he speaks forcefully, briefly, crisply. He is the same on the public platform as ho is in the sitting-room. The personality of the Chief Rabbi does not change. The' Chief Rabbi is an idealist at aR times. What he says—but that promise to Mr. Woolf must be observed. As shown in his address at yesterday's civic reception, he is a thinker, keenly interested in the goings on of a world that ho does not find humdrum; n dreamer, whose ideals do not stop at the highest star; a shrewd mnn of business. with the welfare of his race at heart.

There is ono thing that Mr. Woolf will not mind seeing published. Ono of the first things the Chief Rabbi said io me was this: "You have n popular Rabbi in Wellington. . . . They gave Rabbi Van Staveren a great ovation at tho wharf this morning.” There can I>o no doubt that the visit of T)r. Hertz will have a great effect on the Jewish populations that he has visited.