Family Album

Jacobs

Family

Naturalisation Document

Isaiah & Hannah Jacobs 1932 Isaiah & Hannah Jacobs 1946 Isaiah Jacobs 1930 Hannah 1945

ISAIAH JACOBS -- of the Jewish community of Raducaneni, Romania

Estimated year of birth – c.1860

Died c. 1946-7, Jerusalem. Buried on the Mt. of Olives.

 Isaiah, accompanied by his wife Hannah and 7 children -- Annie, Maurice, Harry, Jack, Bernard, Millie and baby Marion (aged around 3 months) -- arrived in England in 1901. The present far from complete account is written by Valerie Arnon, the late Marion (and Hillia's) daughter.

The Jacob family's first known address in England was 122 Bury New Road, Salford. Like so many other European Jewish emigrants to the Manchester area, Isaiah (Shaya), probably started out "in textiles". At some point he left the town and took the family to a farm in Cheshire. What exactly he did or planned to do there is unknown. Later he went into dairy farming in Ireland, during which time he became attached to Mizrachi Zionist circles in Dublin where he met and evidently admired Rabbi Isaac Levy Herzog (former Israel president Chaim Herzog's father), who became Chief Rabbi of Ireland, subsequently of the British Isles and ultimately of the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael. Marion, Shaya's youngest daughter, a member of the Jewish dramatic society in Dublin, was always proud of her stage appearance in the title role of the play Esther performed at the Abbey Theater.

Daughter Annie, the eldest child, was by then married (to Sol Adler – a businessman), had a daughter (Eva) followed by two sons (Ben and Phil), and lived in Manchester. The Jacobs family eventually left Ireland, returned to England and settled in Wellington Street, Salford, and Shaya became a loyal member of the nearby Rumanian schul.

One of the Jacobs' sons, Bernard, fought in the Great War (1914-1918) and tragically fell at Gallipoli. His body was never identified. Subsequently both Millie (married to Jacques Levy -- businessman) and Marion (married to Hillia Rosovsky – dentist) named their sons Bernard in his honour. Many years later a parchment scroll and a bronze medal from the British Government came to light among the family relics, commending the fallen hero who served with the Lancashire Fusiliers. Curiously, however, the soldier referred to on the scroll was called Pte. Harry Jackson – leading to the speculation that the man conscripted was actually Bernard's older brother who was by then married, and that Bernard for one reason or another had taken his brother's place and thus served, and fell, under a borrowed name.

Isaiah, according to Marion, was an innovator in developing and producing patchwork quilts and exporting them to Egypt and elsewhere in Africa. The patches came from remnants picked up at the market and sown at home on treddle sewing machines.

(The present writer remembers having three such machines in our attic at 294 Gt. Cheetham Street). This, it seems, was Isaiahs one and only business success. But Isaiah had other dreams. Whether through his friendship with and admiration for Rabbi Herzog, or whether inspired by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav who said "Whatever I do and wherever I go I am on my way to Eretz Yisrael" – Isaiah, having seen all his children married and settled, packed up and set off to "end his days" in the Holy Land.

Naturally his wife Hannah had no choice but to go with him. The present writer met her widowed Grandmother only many years later, when the family brought the old lady from Jerusalem to England. Dedicated wife as she was, her time in the Holy land cannot have been at all easy: the couple were there without their nearest and dearest through WWII. During the Israel War of Independence the old lady was alone. Not surprisingly therefore (in retrospect), she couldn't hide her lack of enthusiasm at the idea that her grandchild was planning to go to Israel and join a kibbutz!