Deed of Foundation and Trust...United Synagogue

This historic document records the association of London’s Aschkenazi synagogues (the Great Synagogue, the Portland Street Branch Synagogue, the Hambro Synagogue, the New Synagogue, the Bayswater Synagogue) to form The United Synagogue. The signatories are A. Rothschild, Lionel L. Cohen, S. Lucas, Solomon Schloss, and Assur Henry Moses. "In 1870, when the promoters of the United Synagogue scheme, a federation of London's largest Orthodox Ashkenazi congregations, were drafting a charter for the new institution for submission to the Charity Commissioners and attempted to insert a clause giving the Chief Rabbi sole control over all religious matters, the Home Secretary, who was responsible for presenting the Charity Commissioner's report on the proposed union to Parliament, objected, and the clause was deleted…The Chief Rabbinate thus remained without broad statutory support, its state-authorized power limited to licensing marriage secretaries." See T.E. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656 to 2000, p.117