Jacob (Jack) [Yaakov, I guess] Gaster, lawyer, civil rights campaigner and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until its dissolution; born London 6 October 1907; married 1938 Moira Lynd (died 1990; one son, two daughters); died London 12 March 2007.
Jack Gaster was the last survivor of the 13 children of Moses Gaster, Chief Rabbi (Haham) of the Sephardic Jewish community in England, scholar and pioneer Zionist. He had a long and distinguished career as a solicitor engaged with a variety of left-wing and progressive political causes and was a legal pioneer of civil rights in Britain. He died in his 100th year.
Born in Maida Vale, north London, Jack was the twelfth of 13 children of Dr Moses Gaster, who was expelled from Romania in 1885, and later became chief rabbi of the Sephardic community in Britain, and his wife, Lucy Friedlander. It was a high-minded, intellectual household with Jewish tradition at its heart. Jack, an atheist, was a most unexpected product. His father was a distinguished scholar and a linguist, who went blind while Jack was still a child. The youngest five children - each 15 months apart - lived noisy nursery years in Maida Vale, leaving Jack close to his siblings, and with an encyclopaedic knowledge of a London explored enthusiastically on foot.
Far from being overshadowed by his formidable father, Gaster struck out on his own path, being active from an early age in left-wing politics. Gaster was initially involved with the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and after qualifying as a solicitor in 1931 was engaged with unemployment and housing and political issues linked to the rise of Fascism. In 1935, as chair of the ILP's Revolutionary Policy Committee, he was largely responsible for that group's joining the Communist Party en bloc.
He then rose rapidly in the CP, became vice-chair of the London District Committee, and was active as a public speaker and lecturer alongside his legal work. In 1938 he married a fellow Communist, Moira (Maire) Lynd, daughter of Robert and Sylvia Lynd, with whom he had three children.
After the outbreak of war in 1939 Gaster's party loyalty was put to a severe test. The Nazi-Soviet Pact led to an abrupt turn-around, imposed from Moscow, in the Party's attitude to the war, from support to "revolutionary defeatism". His initial doubts (shared by his lifelong friend Harry Pollitt and expressed in his vote against the new party line) were reluctantly quelled. When the situation changed dramatically with the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Gaster joined the Royal Sussex Regiment. A severe injury in training ruled out overseas service and from 1943 he taught "illiterate and backward" students as a sergeant instructor.
Among his many political activities he became a member of the Communist party national Jewish committee together with the legendary Palme Dutt, also passionately anti-Zionist. They produced a memorandum for the Anglo-American commission on the future of Palestine, arguing for a Palestinian democratic state with the Jews as a national minority.
In 1946 the Communist Party asked Gaster, who did not share his father's Zionism, to organise a submission to the Anglo-American Committee appointed by Clem Attlee to consider the future of Palestine, then under British mandate. The group's memorandum, presented by the Communist MP Phil Piratin but in fact drafted by Gaster and Abramsky, was described as impressive but their call for a solution based on a bi-national democratic state was rejected.
He often declared himself proud to be a British Jew and had no time for those who tried to make unconditional support for Israel a litmus test of real Jewishness. To the end of his life he followed events in Israel and Palestine closely and with increasing dismay.
(Kippah tip: Nissan)
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