• Introduction
• History
• Key Dates
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The congregation also directed that all disputes between Jews were to be settled within the community or by rabbinical law. This seems to have sprung from an episode in the very beginning of the communities' history when three assault charges where brought by Jew against Jew in Portsmouth. No doubt this was intended to ensure that the community did not fall into disrepute before the city at large - a wise precaution perhaps given the anti-Semitism in Portsmouth.

Even in the published laws of the community, republished in 1927, there are listed laws of long standing. All weddings or regular minyans outside of the synagogue were forbidden unless approved by the community. It may be recalled that in the 19th century it was common for marriages to take place at home or in hotels. Those breaking the laws stood to be fined or excluded from the rights and privileges of community for a year.

The issue of burial rights is of some interest. The right to be buried depended on ten years continuous membership of the congregation. The rest had to make up the difference between the number of years fees they had actually paid and the ten years period. This regulation was probably designed to discourage those who merely wanted to use the synagogue as a burial club as well as to secure synagogue income. As will be described later, burial rights were a major lever used by the synagogue to retain their religious authority.

It must of course be pointed out, counter the impression that the community was especially holy, that regulations tend to be created and maintained to address particular infringements! The community were evidently noisy and uncontrolled at times in their worship, Sabbath breaking to conduct or conclude business was doubtlessly a regular temptation.

The community were apparently not meticulous in their use of the mikveh in pursuance of the laws of family purity, even though there was apparently mikveh at an early date in the town. This was a common feature of provincial Jewish life, though in the case of Portsmouth the allegation was revealed early on in its history in dramatic fashion. Immediately after the Drowning Disaster, the Rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Hart Lyon, declared from his pulpit that this catastrophe had come upon the Portsmouth community as punishment in kind for their neglect of the Laws of Family Purity - because they had neglected the purifying waters of the mikveh, by the waters of the sea came divine retribution!

The community suffered a major schism in 1765-6, when one half of the congregation decided to accept the leadership of the Great Synagogue in London and its rabbi (David Tevele Schiff), the other the leadership of the Hambro' Synagogue and its spiritual leader (Rabbi Meshullam Zalman). This followed directly on from the dispute that had so engaged the Askenasim in London between 1763-5 in an effort to create a united rabbinate when the principal rabbinical posts had all fallen vacant simultaneously.

The Portsmouth Jews found they had to choose their spiritual leader, thus the unsuccessful Hambro' faction - led my a minority consisting of influential "old" members of the synagogue who had voted against accepting the leadership of the "Great" - succeeded and formed a new break away synagogue at Daniel's Row on Portsmouth Common in 1766. This was effected in dramatic fashion at the dead of night in February of that year, when the succesionalists broke into the synagogue and took away all the synagogue appurtenances that belonged to them so that they could use them in their new break-away congregation. Rabbi Lieb Aleph also took money from the synagogue building fund, some £50 which did not belong to him! Rabbi Lieb Aleph seems to have been one of the key figures in the secession along with Mordecai Moses. The first child of the new congregation was duly circumcised in 1766 by rabbi Lieb Aleph one of the leaders of the breakaway group: and the only local mohel. This fact forced a degree of local communal co-operation and eventually by 1771 helped the two sides view each other more generously. In any case the issue between the two communities seemed largely to do with rabbinical authority than practical local animosities.

The two synagogues came to call themselves the "Old" and "New" respectively, though the "Old" sometimes also called itself the "Great" no doubt in consequence of its allegiance to the Great Synagogue in London. Eventually, despite the negative feeling engendered by the split the two groups reached an amicable accord in 1771 whose formal provisions included one that allowed the mohel to operate freely in both the synagogues. In 1789 the sucessionalists rejoined the parent body. This may have been because of problems in membership and that the rabbi of the Hambro' was to leave London in 1780.

The end of this synagogue was important as it marked the moment when the Chief rabbi of the Great Synagogue was accepted as the chief rabbi of all the Askenasi congregations in this country - at least until the inter-communal rifts seen in the 1990s.