Goodbye Mr & Mrs Chips!

By Chloe Grant - Thursday 23rd July 2009


Staff and pupils past and present this week said a fond farewell to a rabbi and his wife who are set to retire from Hasmonean Primary School after teaching there for a combined total of 87 years.

Rabbi Yisroel Beaton, 73, joined the institution in 1958 and has taught Jewish Studies there ever since. He has also served as the school's Rav for the past 13 years. His wife Bessie has worked at the school for 36 years and is credited with helping to lay the foundations of Jewish knowledge for generations of Hasmonean's younger students. The pair are to leave Hasmo next Tuesday before making aliyah.

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On Sunday, many who have attended the school over the past five decades joined staff at a packed reception to say their goodbyes. The emotional event included presentations and an address by Hasmonean Primary's principal, Rabbi Mordechai Ginsbury, who spoke of the couple's amazing qualities as both educators and as people. The Hendon United minister also read out a message from the Chief Rabbi.

Writing about the "pivotal roles" the Beatons played at Hasmonean, as well as expressing his gratitude for teaching his own three children when they were pupils at the school, Sir Jonathan Sacks commented: "Both Rabbi and Mrs Beaton are living role models of all that is best, not just in Jewish teaching but also in Jewish living.

"Full of energy, enthusiasm and commitment yet with the most modest, gentle and caring of dispositions, they have brought flair, dignity, integrity, sincerity and sheer warmth and goodness to all their remarkable avodas hakodesh at Hasmonean Primary School."

Expressing his "deep and heartfelt appreciation" for Yisroel and Bessie, and reflecting on his experiences under their tutelage at Hasmonean, Rabbi Ginsbury said during his address: "To see Rabbi and Mrs Beaton in action, in what are their very last few days in the school, after so many wonderful fruitful years of endeavour, is to wonder at their clearly undiminished zest for and love of Jewish education."

He added that the pair were an "inspiration", saying: "May Rabbi and Mrs Beaton be blessed to enjoy only every possible and richly deserved happiness as they prepare for the next exciting phase of their lives in Israel."
Some of the children also recited a poem to the couple at the reception, while headteacher Jenny Rodin noted: "The Beatons are irreplaceable and will be greatly missed. All at the school wish them hatzlacha for the future."

Rabbi Beaton - who thanked everyone who had supported them over the years - said he and his wife "want to go and live in Jerusalem while we're still young enough to enjoy it".

Separately, more than 200 people gathered at North West London Jewish Day School last week to honour Rabbi Melvyn Bloom, the school's rav, who has taught there for 35 years. Tributes highlighted his pioneering work in the field of special educational needs within the Kodesh department and his popularity with the children he taught.

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