Page 17 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - January 19

was only years later when I actually read the trouble. My all too short apprenticeship took place
Hebrew phrase ‘aish hadliki be’libi’ which means behind shuttered blinds when the barber’s shop
‘kindle a flame in my heart’ and the last word – was closed. I got a real penchant for the snip, snip
be’libi’ – in my heart – that the penny dropped. of the scissors, and the click, click, of the clippers
Alas poor Billy! – a kind of salon-speak for trigger-happy! Just as
well I didn’t use electric clippers otherwise my
I longed to contribute to the Zionist cause and a ‘victims’ would have become the prototypes of
few years later I was accepted as a member of the skinheads! Fortunately, the kindly barber made
David Eder farm. I felt I needed some form of good my tonsorial disasters, no doubt with an eye
practical skill whilst we were training for our new to his reputation.
lives in Palestine. I’ll never know why I decided
that men’s hairdressing would fit the bill, nor Thus duly equipped with a ‘profession!’ I left
remember how I managed to convince the barber home aged 19 in the summer of 1948 to be
– a total stranger- to teach me a profession which warmly welcomed at the David Eder training farm
was then a strictly male preserve. So, equipped in West Sussex. My new life had just begun and I
with a comb, a pair of scissors, hair clippers and a welcomed it with open arms.
neck brush, I embarked on a brief, fast-track part-
time training to be a barber. At the time, I worked *Reprinted from: “Oxford Menorah
Magazine” (Magazine for the Oxford Jewish
as a secretary of the Southport Hebrew Community) Issue 225. September 2018
Congregation so it was a simple matter to bribe www.ojc-online.org
unsuspecting cheder boys at 6d. a time for their

Jose and Dave Patterson: Biodata:

David and José first met in 1949 at the Habonim
Institute, on a 3-month study course run by David
and held in the Manchester Bayit. They married in
November 1950 and went on Aliyah to Kfar
Hanassi on 1st April 1951. David became a
renowned scholar at Oxford University. In 1972,
he founded the prestigious Oxford Centre for
Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Yarnton Manor
serving as its Founding President until his
retirement in 1992. In 2003, David was the first
person since the Order was founded in 1917, to
receive the CBE from the Queen (see right) for
“Services to Jewish Studies.” As a busy mother of
four children, in 1970 José qualified as a primary
school teacher and later went on to become a
successful children’s author

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