Bristol Record Office, Ref:BRO40097/19 

This is an invitation to a Civic Service held at the Park Row Synagogue on 27th of March 1962. The letter lists the city officials in attendance, including Councillor Helen Bloom and Councillor Berta Sacof. Helen Bloom became Bristol’s first female Jewish Lord Mayor in 1971. Her family had come to Bristol a century earlier. Helen and her two sisters, Jeanette Britton and Berta Sacof, all served as Labour Councillors on the City Council. Jeanette was a journalist for the BBC and President of the Fabian Society, and Berta was a magistrate. The invitation reminds the officials invited that Hebrew is read right to left, so ‘the first page of the book is that which would normally be the last’. 

27/03 1960s