About the Foundation

The Foundation is intended to be a catalyst - it should provide the funding and a kick-start to any process that can then go forward to fulfill the objects defined. For example, there was no base for the Arts in Medway, no affordable studio space, little exhibiting space, and no facilities available. We were the catalyst to start the process to provide these things, to start the Art Centre, but we have also acted as a catalyst for other similar Art Centres in other parts of the country as we provide a model to work and learn from. The process however does not end here, we must keep looking at what artists need, and continue developing the model.

Whilst we could give a donation to a single person in need, it is within our sights to make that donation to a group that really needs our catalytic help, for example buying a property to convert into a safe haven for people with mental health problems. We have experience of converting properties into medium term hostels for people with mental illness in Rochester and Chatham, and this model could be taken and improved for those with mental illness or mental or physical disability.

We appreciate that it may seem that the three objects are disparate, and it is true that there is no immediate link between the Synagogue and our other objects. However there is a clear link between the provision of Arts and the relief of mental illness and mental and physical disability. The Art Centre has already begun to forge links with people in the local community with mental illness, and mental and physical disability. We have visits by groups with head injuries who find the Artworks on display very stimulating. Workshops are available to such people on request; indeed artists and exhibitors have been known to give one-to-one workshops for people with disabilities. Drawing facilities are always available in the café. Some of our artists also teach for Art For Life, a Rochester based organisation for people with mental disability. We hope to forge stronger links with this organisation, and provide holiday activities for their members.

The relief of persons with mental illness and/ or disability

We hope to be the catalyst to create, together with funding from other groups, a safe haven for those with mental illness/ disability which would provide positive treatments and therapy to enable them to live, in the long term, on their own, and to be able to look after themselves.

Referrals for prospective beneficiaries could be taken from various sources. In the main they would be from hospitals, but they could also be referred from GPs, the community or rehabilitation centres.

Services provided in this haven would be tailored to meet the specific requirements of the beneficiaries, whether they are mentally or physically disabled, or suffering from mental illness.

In relation to mental disability or illness, the purpose would be to take those persons suffering from long term disability or illness who have not responded to conventional treatments, for example persons with schizophrenia. These persons may have problems such as:

• Difficulty with communication
• A tendency to reclusiveness
• An inability to plan
• Paranoid states
• A lack of social skills
• A lack of self-help or self-care skills
• Mild mental handicap
• Mild brain damage

The haven could take persons who had been sectioned, but not those who demonstrated severe aggressive behaviour, or substance abuse.

The haven would envisage stays of six months to one year, although it would be very important not to let the beneficiaries leave too early. Each case would need to be assessed individually on its own merits. It would be a key part of the project to ensure that each beneficiary had a place to go to when leaving the haven, whether it is to family or to another place.

The staff in the haven would be doctors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists and psychologists, or other such staff as are required for the running of the haven. They will be fully qualified professionals.

Chatham Memorial Synagogue

Chatham Memorial Synagogue, High Street, Rochester is a beautiful Grade II* listed baroque synagogue.

Whilst the synagogue is the heart of the Orthodox Jewish Community in North Kent, it is now also the centre for all Jewish people in the area.

The Chatham Jewish Community, although small, is one of the oldest in this country, being nearly three hundred years old. Indeed, Hobbes, in his “Reminiscences of Seventy Years” quotes that as early as the twelfth century there were families of Jews in the area. Local archives show a plea for shelter to the Lord of Rochester Castle in about 1180; Jewish families were then allowed to live for some months in the outer parts of the castle.

The Community assumed some importance during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century when some members were listed in Geoffrey L. Green’s book “The Royal Navy and Anglo-Jewry, 1740-1820”. Amongst those recorded for Chatham were Lazarus Magnus and his son, Simon Magnus, the builder of the present synagogue. Rochester Guildhall Museum has exhibits of local Jewish interest, such as the gold mayoral chain and signet bracelet donated by Lewis Levy who was elected to that office twice in the mid-nineteenth century. In the old cemetery behind the Synagogue, an ornate memorial records the achievements of Daniel Barnard who owned theatres and music halls in Chatham, Dartford and London, and who, amongst other benefactions, founded Chatham Fire Brigade.

The present Synagogue replaced an earlier building on roughly the same site that was referred to in Bagshaw’s Street Directory of Chatham, dated 1847, as being “... a small building of brick and wood, about one hundred years old, with a clock, visible from the High Street, noteworthy for having a face with Hebrew characters”. That earlier building is believed to date from around 1740, and to have been of a Polish timber design.

The oldest decipherable grave in the cemetery dates from around 1790, though some of the graves are certainly older than this. It is interesting to note that a combination of synagogue and cemetery on one site is rare.

Simon Magnus built the present synagogue as a memorial to his son, Captain Lazarus Simon Magnus. It was built in 1865, and formally opened and consecrated in 1869. The land originally belonged to St Bartholomew's Hospital, Rochester. They would not sell the freehold of one strip of land that purported to be the passageway used by lepers and other incurables between Ship Pier on the river opposite, and the hospital. The rent for that strip is now 5p per annum.

The Synagogue was designed by well-known ecclesiastical architect, Henry Hyman Collins, and is described by local press and national architectural records of its day as being a structure of outstanding beauty. To quote, “The Synagogue proper is at first sight awe-striking in its beauty and richness of colour. Lovely tinted windows and beautiful green and red marble (scaglio) pillars”.

The Synagogue’s Centenary Hall is also used by other local charities for meetings, visits by schools and colleges and for local Inter-faith meetings.

The Synagogue is a charity in its own right, the Charity Commissioners having ordered such in March 1971.

The Halpern Charitable Foundation will make such donations as are necessary (if synagogue funds are too low to enable such works) to maintain, repair, restore, preserve or reconstruct the synagogue, its monuments, fixtures, fittings, furniture and other chattels, together with other groups, as are necessary to benefit the public.

To provide The Art Centre, Chatham

The Art Centre is the only centre of its kind in Kent, and currently provides studio space for up to 24 (twenty-four) artists. It has two galleries, one for internal and external exhibitors holding rotational exhibitions and the other almost exclusively for the use of internal exhibitors. It has a small Arts café, a Friends scheme and a newly started education programme.

For further details, click here.

Trustees

There are four external trustees of the Foundation: Barry Mackenzie (Accountant), Ian Wilson (Solicitor), Beryl Davis (Secretary) and Nusrat Baloach (Psychiatrist). In addition, there are five internal trustees: Hilary Halpern, Marie Halpern, Saul Halpern, David Halpern, and Dalia Halpern-Matthews.

Trustees do not personally benefit from the Foundation or its activities.