The Rev Dr Isaac Levy

Jewish army chaplain posted to Bergen-Belsen after its liberation in 1945

Isaac Levy was a formidable spiritual force within the Jewish community and also in the wider world, as a result of his deep commitment to inter-faith harmony and co- operation, which was mainly channelled through the Council of Christians and Jews. This commitment was driven by the formative experience of his life, the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 60 years ago last month, by the British army - in which he was serving as Senior Jewish Chaplain.

Isaac Levy, army chaplain and minister of religion: born London 14 September 1910; OBE 1953; married 1937 Tonie Landau (died 2004; two sons, one daughter); died London 31 March 2005.

Isaac Levy was a formidable spiritual force within the Jewish community and also in the wider world, as a result of his deep commitment to inter-faith harmony and co- operation, which was mainly channelled through the Council of Christians and Jews. This commitment was driven by the formative experience of his life, the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 60 years ago last month, by the British army - in which he was serving as Senior Jewish Chaplain.

Levy, known to all as Harry, was born in London and educated at Yeshiva Etz Chaim and at Jews' College (London University), finally obtaining his PhD in Rabbinical History at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He became a minister in the mid-Thirties, a time when only the Chief Rabbi of the grouping of British and Commonwealth synagogues known as the United Synagogue was called "rabbi". When times and tides changed, this true rabbi did not take the formal steps necessary to acquire the title and remained a "reverend".

His main ministry began with Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue (1936-38) and Bayswater Synagogue (1938-39). But his life changed forever when he volunteered as an army chaplain on the outbreak of the Second World War - a matrix, a crucible, that formed so many leaders - and was assigned to the Middle East Forces as Senior Jewish Chaplain in 1941. He was briefly captured in the Western Desert by German forces.

Then, as Major Levy, he was appointed Senior Jewish Chaplain to the British Army on the Rhine in 1944-45. In 1946, he was promoted to Senior Jewish Chaplain to HM Forces, a post he held until 1966. His deeply reflective and sensitive memoir Now I Can Tell: Middle East memories (1978) provides a highly illuminating account of Palestine under the British Mandate. In a parish that extended from the borders of Turkey to Tunisia, he observed - more often than not as a critical "outsider" - not only the course of the war against the Nazis in the Middle East, but also the political and socio-economic upheavals of the region where Jews were seeking a homeland.

What consolidated his passion for liberalism and tolerance, his sense that righteousness entailed compassion, and his indefatigable commitment to improve, and where possible, heal, the quite unbearable suffering that is so much part of the human condition, was his time in Germany, culminating in his posting to Bergen-Belsen after its liberation by the British army. There this mensch came face to face - as very few people at that time had - with the consequences of radical evil. There this man of wise disposition, tolerant nature and gentle countenance observed how hatred of "the other" not only dehumanised the victims, but also their persecutors.

In 1995, in response to many suggestions that, in his own words, his "testimony as an eye- witness was essential because, with the passing years, there would be a paucity of reliable witnesses to that painful chapter of Jewish history", Levy published the second of his several books, Witness to Evil: Bergen-Belsen, 1945. His account of his nightmarish sojourn in the camp, of his efforts - originally described in letters he wrote at the time, particularly to his wife, Tonie - to bring life to that place of death, makes this short book one of the important resources for any research on what later became known as the Holocaust.

His labour there was Herculean. He helped in and officiated at the burial of the thousands who had died before liberation and thousands more who, suffering from starvation and disease, died immediately after.

Witnessing how Bergen-Belsen's inmates, despite the horrors they had suffered, had retained their desire for life and sought to regain their individuality, he assiduously beseeched assistance, day after day, from various British governmental and Jewish organisations so that those who had survived - and those who could be saved - would not only be restored to physical and mental health, but also brought back to a semblance of normal life. Equally importantly, he defended the petitions of those surviving Jews who, wishing never to go back to the countries where local anti-Semitism had contributed to the near complete success of Hitler's "final solution", sought to go to Palestine, there to re-establish a Jewish homeland.

After his exhausting war service, he was appointed to Hampstead Synagogue in 1946. On the "left wing" of the centrist orthodox United Synagogue, he was personally and professionally close to the outstanding scholar of Anglo-Jewry, Rabbi Louis Jacobs. In 1965, in the aftermath of the battle that raged around Jacobs (who was not appointed Chief Rabbi on theological grounds involving the nature of divine revelation), Levy quit the ministry and Jews College, where he had been lecturing in homiletics.

Always a passionate Zionist, he became National Director of the Jewish National Fund (1965-77). He was chaplain to Ajex, the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen, from 1945 onwards, becoming its Vice-President in 1995. In 1947, he became a Founder Member of the Hampstead Branch of the Council of Christians and Jews and served, over the years, in various capacities, ending up as Vice-President. In 1953 he was appointed OBE in the Queen's Coronation Honours List.

At home, the Levys held Sabbath afternoon "salons" in Childs Hill. On a day you are not allowed to drive, nobody asked how you had got to the house if you lived a long way away. Skullcaps for the men were not obligatory. This was a rare citadel of old-fashioned traditional Anglo-Jewry, a denomination now largely vanished, with many of the children of its devotees moving "right" to ultra-orthodoxy or "left" to the Masorti movement - the true theological centre of modern Judaism - founded by Louis Jacobs, or further left to Reform and Liberal Judaism, even secularism.

And yet, even though the United Synagogue has itself moved to the right, the Rev Isaac Levy stayed with it, his title a permanent reminder of the days when you could be an English gentleman of the Mosaic persuasion. Here, in his house, you could stand your corner, a friend among friends, and argue a radical case about Israel with people who may have disagreed with aspects of your views, but never claimed that this put you beyond the pale.

With the death of Harry Levy, a chapter in the long narrative of Jewish diaspora existence is almost closed. Despite and even because of his German experiences, he was, in the words of the prophet Zechariah, "a prisoner of hope".

Musa Moris Farhi and Anthony Rudolf