Hindsight: thinking about your past.
A series of interviews with members of Bet Tikvah by Lina Fajerman

Hindsight Interview 4: Sidney Sanders Vice President, lay reader,
choir member and ex treasurer

 What were the happiest times in your life?

My two marriages: I  had a wonderful first marriage to Sylvia lasting 42 years and consider myself extremely fortunate to have been happily married to Miriam,  my second wife now for almost 25 years. We will be celebrating our twenty fifth anniversary in April with a kiddush  at the shul.

I also look on the achievements of my two sons with a sense of great pride.

What were the saddest times in your life?

The loss of family, especially my first wife who, while in and out of hospital  for several years, displayed great courage. Even at the end, she was more concerned about other patients on the ward than about herself.

What was the loneliest time In your life?

When I first went abroad in the RAF.  .Although I  was surrounded by people and had the companionship of other service personnel, I was missing affection and love. I was just over nineteen and Sylvia nineteen and a half. when we married, even though we were advised to wait; told that we were too young; that our relationship would not last. Just a few months later I was called up, and after training in Bolton as a wireless mechanic, I was sent to India in 1943, initially to Bangalore and then to North Bengal. I was away from home for more than  three years.

Did you have any special memories of the war?

After about two years there, we were transferred to the Cocos Islands where we established a base on which we serviced the aircraft carrying out operations against the Japanese.  The islands – a coral atoll  -  are situated halfway  between India and Australia. The island we  were on was less than a mile long with the highest point only 6 foot above sea level, and very vulnerable to an anticipated tidal wave, which thankfully did not materialise. Happily the only ‘danger’ we had to guard against  was being hit by coconuts falling onto our heads !!!  I even learnt to swim in the Lagoon. It was indeed an idyllic coral island.

On the way back to England we were located for a time in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, I was once given a lift by officers in a staff car. When I got in I found that I was sharing the back of the car with a leopard. Both the leopard and I survived the journey.

Are you happier now than when you were young?

In some ways yes. I don’t have the worries that beset young people.- such as making a living, developing a career. I am not happier though when I think of the state of our world today.

When I was young we had idealism. We were optimistic about the future and the opportunities to do things with ones life.

Now I am worried about the world that our grandchildren are inheriting from us. There is disillusionment with organisations that we once looked up to, and concern as to way peoples’ values and motivations have changed.  We have not overcome the disparities between communities and peoples. So in that respect I am less happy than I used to be.

Do you think your generations is happier than the younger generation?

This is a question that I often ask myself. Technology and science have opened up so many possibilities. In many ways things have changed for the better but we have also lost a lot. We  got pleasure and satisfaction from small things. I don’t know whether  the present generation, with so much  available  to them, get that kind of satisfaction.

If you could turn the clock back is there anything you would change or do differently?

Careerwise I would have done something different. While in the service in India, I did a correspondence course in Accounting and Company Secretaryship. I sat up nights studying, but the course ended without a formal qualification. When demobbed, I went straight into employment, which was really easy to get in those days when there was a labour shortage. This was unwise – I  should have studied and got a formal qualification.

My father was a Russian immigrant tailor and my mother died when I was two,  and I don’t think I had  the right guidance as a child.  In those days and in the  circles in which I grew up, it was generally taken for granted that one went into a trade and that “pen-pushing in books” was not a real job. I was more fortunate than my older brother who was forced to take up a trade which he  really disliked,  while I  was allowed to go into the commercial world.

How important is Bet Tikvah in your life ?

Synagogues have always been important in my life. I have always been religious (although not ultra orthodox). As a child I was a choir boy and loved
the orthodox service with its ritual’s and music, but I did not like the lack of decorum and the way people behaved in shul.

I was a founder member of the New Wimbledon & Putney District Synagogue which was Federation,  and which rented a room above a council laundry for its services. I was its treasurer for some time..

A sense of community is very important to both Miriam and myself and when we planned to get married in 1985, we decided to join a progressive synagogue so that we could be together rather than separated.   I was treasurer of our  synagogue for about 12 years; am still a member of the Finance committee,  and also a lay reader and choir member.

Our membership of Bet Tikvah has played an important part in our later lives,.