5 March 2020

By Shaan Knan
Lily’s Legacy heritage project manager

The Lily’s Legacy project is Liberal Judaism’s latest oral history project. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, it explores the revolutionary heritage of our movement, from its inception in the early 1900s to the present day.

It is dedicated to Lily Montagu (1873 – 1963), one of the three founders of Liberal Judaism. She was a social worker, religious organiser, and the first woman to play a major role in British Progressive Judaism.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, which takes place on Sunday 8 March, is ‘An Equal World is an Enabled World’.

What would Lily Montagu have made of this?

It isn’t completely clear if she associated herself with feminism, although it is said that she was a founding member with her sister of the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage.

Miss Lily – as she was lovingly called by many people – also co-founded the West Central Jewish Girls’ Club, giving working class Jewish girls the opportunity to develop themselves socially, intellectually and spiritually.

Rabbi Jackie Tabbick, who herself made history by becoming Britain’s first female rabbi in 1975, noted in an interview with the project: “It’s obvious that Lily’s attention to social action to social justice has become very much part of the Liberal movement today. And I think she would be thrilled by that. She was so conscious of those disabilities – social disabilities, poverty and prejudice  – that surrounded not only the Jewish world but the poor world in general.

“So, I hope she would be pleased with the growth of women rabbis and us having that equality. But there isn’t a direct connect there. There has to be a little jump somehow. But that maybe because she was a Victorian woman and remained a Victorian woman all her life, that’s what she looked like and that’s how she acted. But hopefully she would have been pleased with that.”

Rabbi Dr Miri Lawrence is the Lily Legacy’s exhibition curator. She says: “I grew up as a member of South London Liberal Synagogue, where my parent’s generation knew Lily Montagu and spoke lovingly about her and her club. South London was also one of the first synagogues to employ a woman rabbi who had sole responsibility for all rabbinic duties in the congregation.

“Liberal Judaism continues to change both from my South London days and certainly Miss Lily’s lifetime. I am enormously proud to be part of this project celebrating Lily’s Legacy and recording the diversity of our community. I hope Lily Montagu would be proud of the many ways in which Liberal Judaism still champions the heritage of our founders. As she herself said ‘I believe in progress from one generation to the other’.”

The Lily’s Legacy multi-media exhibition will launch at this year’s Liberal Judaism Biennial Weekend in May. The collection will then be deposited at the London Metropolitan Archives as well as in local and LJ community archives.

Miri added: “As we celebrate International Women’s Day this year, we are indebted to the work and achievements of women. Its theme ‘An Equal World is an Enabled World’ is surely at the heart of Liberal Judaism, influenced by the example of Lily Montagu and all those who have followed her.”