Lord Jakobovits by Chaim Bermant

Author:Chaim Bermant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

10

The Rabbi’s Wife

Jewish tradition barely accords any formal function to a rabbi’s wife, and, in so far as it does, it is a retiring one. Rabbis’ wives, it suggests, should be seen but not heard, and preferably they should not be seen either: but as there are few specific guidelines on the matter, each wife is more or less free to assume any role she chooses. Lady Jakobovits, as we shall see, has assumed a great many, but the one in which she has particularly excelled is that of public relations officer to her husband, and many people believe that he would not have got where he was without her.

‘The trouble is’, she explains, ‘he’s very shy and very modest and never says a good word for himself, so I say it for him.’

They are an obviously happy couple. The affection between them radiates across the length of a room and he will never pull her up in public – perhaps not even in private. However, he sometimes winces when she enlarges on his qualities.

‘That he’s brilliant everyone knows, but nobody knows how good and helpful he is, the way he puts himself out for people, how deeply he cares and how hard he works. That’s why I got so upset when he was attacked in the early years.’

She goes through the papers before breakfast and, during their first years in London, there were occasions when he returned from synagogue in the morning to find her on the stairs in tears.

‘He doesn’t seem to be bothered by criticism, he takes it all in his stride. He even takes praise in his stride. I wish I could be more like him.’

‘How did you meet?’ the Queen once asked her.

‘Through mutual friends,’ she said.

‘Funny,’ said the Queen, ‘that’s how I met my husband.’

Lady Jakobovits is happy with her role, even if it has turned out to be more onerous than she expected.

‘A girl should think twice before marrying a rabbi,’ she says. ‘Her time isn’t really her own. She must always be ready to give of herself and not everyone is cut out for it.’

As for herself she had always hoped to marry a rabbi or a doctor, for she believed that both callings involved the husband and wife as a team. Certainly her own marriage was to offer abundant scope for her energies.

If she had the chance she would start a school for rabbis’ wives, for they have so much to learn and so many things to do, and they do it – as she did by a process of trial and error. Only one of her four sisters married a rabbi; the others would not hear of it because of the demands which would have been made on them. Of her own four daughters only one is married to a rabbi, ‘but he doesn’t do it for a living’, she is careful to add. ‘He’s an accountant.’

Amelie Jakobovits was born in 1928, in Ansbach, Germany, where her French-born father was district rabbi.

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