The Sassoon were called the “Rothschilds of the East.”
In the first half of the nineteenth century, David Sassoon, a scion of a family of Jewish community leaders of Baghdad, was forced to flee his native city because of persecution by an anti-Jewish governor.
He settled in Bombay, India, where he became a merchant prince ruling over a commercial empire which stretched throughout the Far East.
After his death, his sons extended even further his varied enterprises.
Eventually some members of the family settled in England. They rose to prominence in English society and distinguished themselves in commerce, literature and politics.
Among these who came to England were also Flora Sassoon and her son David. They were not attracted to the glamour and glitter of London’s royal society. They took pride instead in the aristocracy of their own people, in their family’s great tradition of piety and learning.
Flora and David Sassoon were patrons of Jewish scholars and houses of study.
Flora was a woman of deep piety and wide Jewish knowledge, who could hold her own in Talmudic discussions. Her spacious London residence, which was staffed by English and Indian servants, was a meeting place for rabbis and scholars.
David, who was a scholar of stature spanned continents in search of old Hebrew manuscripts and assembled the largest Jewish private collection. He described his treasures in a two volume work “Ohel David.” He published medieval Hebrew poetry and wrote a history of the Jews of Baghdad.
After the rise of Hitler in Germany, he helped many German-Jewish families to come to England. He was married to a granddaughter of the famous German-Jewish author, Rabbi Marcus Lehman. The couple didn’t send their children, Flora and Solomon to English schools, but engaged private teachers to tutor them in general and Jewish subjects.
Young Solomon had many Jewish teachers. They were Sephardim as well as Ashkenazim, for David Sassoon wanted his son to study the Talmud in Yiddish. Solomon was for many years a disciple of the distinguished Mussar teacher Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler who came daily to the Sassoon residence. Later Solomon studied all day under the supervision of Rabbi Dessler in the latter’s Beth HaMidrash. In 1936, at the age of 21, he was ordained as rabbi.
Following his father’s death during World War II, Solomon took his place as a communal leader.
After India gained independence many India Jews began to settle in London. Rabbi Sassoon devoted himself to organizing their religious and communal life. Now two Indian-Jewish congregations flourished in London.
During the 1950s, when a proposal to ban Shechita was debated in Great Britain, Sassoon wrote a booklet in defense of the Jewish method of slaughtering.
He is prominently affiliated with various Jewish institution in Israel, Great Britain and other countries, and heads the building of the “Porat Yosef” Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where a new building is being erected on the Yeshiva’s old site opposite the Western Wall.
He is also a member of the executive of Ozar HaTorah, the large educational organization which operates schools in Morocco, Iran, Syria and France.
Sassoon will settle in Israel in the next few weeks, but he took time off from his preparations for Aliya to come to New York in connection with a new project of Ozar HaTorah.
When we met him last week, he spoke of the total assimilations which was threatening the hundreds of thousands of North African Jews who had settled in France. Their rate of intermarriage with non-Jews was very high and immediate steps had to be taken to strengthen Jewish education among them.
Ozar HaTorah plans to establish a new network of Jewish schools in the country.
Talking of the activities of Ozar HaTorah, Rabbi Sassoon spoke with great reverence of the late Mr. Isaac Shalom who had headed the organization, and whose charitableness and devotion to Jewish tradition and education, were matched only by his great modesty. The death of Mr. Shalom is an irreparable loss to Ozar HaTorah.”
Mr. Shalom’s sons continued the traditions of their father and are leaders in Jewish communal endeavors.
Rabbi Sassoon speaks English, French, Hebrew, Yiddish , German, Arabic and Hindustani. He published from manuscript “Halachot Pesukot” from the period of the Gaonim and “Moshav Zekenim,” comments on the Torah by the Tosafists. He was also an editor of the facsimile edition of a manuscript of Maimonides commentary on the Mishna, which he identified as Maimonides’ handwriting and was instrumental in the translation and publication of writings by Maimonides’ son Abraham.
He is married to the former Alice Benjamin who came to England as a refugee from Frankfurt. They have two sons, David and Yitzhak. Both attend the Yeshiva of Gateshead.
The Jewish Press, Friday, December 11, 1970