Rubber Challahs

The four marble columns stand tall and majestic, striped in burgundy, black and gold. On the top of each are beautiful domes embellished with royal blue and gold. In between them all, decorated with resplendent finery, a similar, but larger dome, reminiscent of the finest Moorish architecture, inscribed with a quote in ancient script.

It is all, quite simply, breath taking. Awe inspiring. I am in Princes Road Synagogue in Liverpool, which is quite rightly referred to as 'one of the most beautiful synagogues in the world'.

And yet.

In the entrance are two staircases leading to the women's gallery. They are cordoned off with a sign warning of their instability. Plaster is peeling from the walls. The husband of our guide potters around, fixing things from a never-ending, always growing list.

Our guide, Linda, is a long standing member of the community. She guides groups, mainly school children, teaching them some of the basics of Judaism as well as the history of this Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation housed here.

There is a table laid out with familiar Jewish items:

Candlesticks we use each Friday night to welcome in Shabbat.

A shofar (ram's horn) which, when blown reveals its haunting sound which in every Jewish community around the world ushers in the new year.

Two challahs - braided breads - wait patiently under their special cover to be blessed before the Shabbat meal.

Linda explains our rituals and lifts up the challahs to show us. She admits jokily they are made of rubber.

I suddenly feel overwhelmingly sad.

I have visited numerous Jewish synagogues in Eastern Europe, which were once thriving centres of local Jewish life and are now museums. Their judaica now sit behind glass, with explanatory cards next to them, to teach and explain about a community that once lived there, for no Jews remain.

But that is not the story of this place. It is not a museum. It is a functioning jeiwsh community space in a thriving northern city.

The Grade I listed status was presumably received with such pride when it was first awarded. At its prime, over 700 people would see the building as their hive of jewish life in the city.. Now, 40 elderly members are desperately trying to keep its pulse beating.. They are guardians of a magnificent historical building, but powerless to stem the flow of their children leaving Liverpool, or finding jewish communal life elsewhere. Where once the space overflowed with jewish prayer and song, only disrepair and emptiness are present now.

The sadness of the liminal space; not fully dead, yet not fully alive either, symbolised by two rubber challahs.