The former Soviet Jewry activist and Conservative civic figure Rabbi Alan Plancey, who has died aged 84, is remembered for having developed Borehamwood and Elstree Synagogue from tiny shoots into one of the fastest-growing Orthodox communities in the UK today.
Launched in 1976 with less than 100 families in 1976, by the time Plancey retired in 2007 the shul was a flourishing community with 1,200 families. The emeritus rabbi won friends and influence through his open, friendly manner, and was described as an expert in the art of the schmooze. One interviewer said he found common ground with everyone, from senior royals to the young police officers in the force where he served as chaplain for 35 years, guiding and counselling them through the effects of violence and social unrest. Described as “the first black hat in his suburban community”, he was also chaplain to Luton Airport.
After retiring from Borehamwood, he served the Northwood community for two years before being called to local politics. He became a councillor for Borehamwood North and South for nine years, and for the Borehamwood /Brookmeadow ward for three years. He was made an honorary alderman of the county and twice appointed to Mayor of Hertsmere, in 2019 and 2020. In recent years he sat on the Children’s Services, Education, Standard and Licensing committees. He was appointed MBE for political and public service in the King’s Birthday Honours of 2023.
A staunch advocate of interfaith work, Plancey also held the interfaith relations portfolio in Chief Rabbi Sacks’ cabinet. He was so deeply involved that Lady Amélie Jakobovits once reproved him. “Alan,” she said, “recently you’ve been going to church more than you’re going to shul!”
Tributes on his passing came from the United Synagogue, from Hertsmere Conservative Association, from Alex Clarkson, Conservative councillor for Borehamwood Hillside, and from Oliver Dowden, Conservative MP for Hertsmere, a personal friend, who described him on X: “as a pillar of Hertsmere’s Jewish community.”
Rabbi Plancey had many strings to his bow. A past Soviet Jewry activist, he chaired the United Synagogue’s Rabbinical Council, and in that role he represented the Chief Rabbi – from Lord Immanuel Jakobovits to Lord Jonathan Sacks – at official functions. He met every member of the British royal family, the Pope and the Dalai Lama and, as he recalled, every British PM since Harold Wilson.
He was invited to everything – from a Muslim Ramadan breakfast to the king’s first garden party – where he reflected that “he could not even get close enough to make the brachah over royalty. Earlier, when he met the late Queen, he did manage to convey his rabbinic blessing for which she politely thanked him.
Rabbi Plancey relished certain measures of appreciation: a sterling silver leaf from Pope John Paul 11 in 2002 during a rabbinic delegation to the Vatican, and a slice of Prince William and Katharine’s £56,000 eight-tier wedding cake, presented in a tin.
Alan Plancey was born to Russian immigrant parents in Edinburgh, during the Second World War. His father was a baker. While German bombs were still targeting Scotland his parents moved to Glasgow, home to Jewish immigrants since the 1790s.
In an Edinburgh accent which he retained all his life, he told the online journal, Mishpacha: “My grandparents had arrived in the UK from Poland with the name Polansky, which became Plancey.” They lived in the decrepit slum areas of the Gorbals, now gentrified and prestigious. “I know it was tough there over the years, but at the time it was a mechayeh, a nice Jewish area.”
A turning point came for the young Alan when the local rabbi, Moshe Dryan, invited him to study with him every Shabbat afternoon. These study sessions made an enduring impression on the baker’s son. He attended a local school, one of the 80 per cent of the Jewish pupils, but few were as knowledgeable as he was. He was challenged by the headmaster: “Are you the only Orthodox boy in the school?”
“I said ‘Yes’. That same headmaster had made a no-head-covering rule, but I wore my yarmulke the whole time. I wasn't going to take it off.” After an approach by his rabbi, the Scottish Board of Education told the school he had the right to wear his kippah. Drawn to Yiddishkeit, the young Plancey attended cheder after school. Apart from his studies with Rabbi Dryan, he walked 45 minutes to the Jewish neighbourhood of Giffnock to learn with Rabbi A L Rubinstein, which deeply influenced his future life.
Anticipating high grades in his A levels, he won a place in university to study maths. But everything changed when Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva, visited Glasgow on a fundraising mission.
“Rav Kahaneman got hold of me. I spoke no Yiddish, but he asked me very clearly what I was going to do. I said that I was going to university to study Maths. He took me, kissed me on both cheeks, and then he said, “Nein, nein. Gei arein in yeshivah und zei a talmid chochom’”.
His father allowed Plancey to study at yeshivah provided he would also still study for a profession. He went on to Gateshead yeshiva where it became clear he was destined for the rabbinate.
1965 proved a very fortuitous year for Plancey. In June he met his future wife, Miriam née Hirsch, from Stamford Hill, and he gained his first rabbinical position at Luton United Synagogue. There he discovered that the owner of Luton’s football team, which competed in the national league, was a member of the shul. The new rabbi, pressed to attend the match, agreed on condition that for every goal Luton scored the balabatim would come to an early Friday night davening. Luton was losing heavily, but when Plancey attended the match, they won five-nil. “Everybody came to daven for five weeks...Came the fifth week and I asked them, ‘So was that it?’ They said, Rabbi, we enjoyed it so much, we’ll keep on coming early.’”
Plancey then served as a youth rabbi under Rabbi Isaac Bernstein in Hampstead Garden suburb. Already experienced with Glasgow Jewish youth movements, he had learned to play the bagpipes and now arranged musical events drawing large crowds eager to hear the bagpipe- playing rabbi. In his mind it all helped to equate Yiddishkeit with worldliness.
Rabbi Plancey attributed his rabbinic success to a simple formula: “Make the people your family. Invite them in. We opened the door to our home.”
Yet the rabbi’s life was not free from controversy. During his time as Tory councillor for Borehamwood Brookmeadow, he was accused of homophobia after advising the LGBT community in a 2014 video, to be “quiet” and “unobtrusive” about their sexuality. His remarks drew fire from the Hertsmere Labour Group who dismissed his view as “homophobic”. Rabbi Plancey responded by clarifying that he was quoting the Torah: “I stated that it was the homosexual act that was forbidden in the Torah, not the people.....We have rules and regulations which have been handed down to us from Mount Sinai.”
He said LGBT demonstrations calling for acceptance, were “completely wrong....You would get more acceptance and more love if you do it quietly and unobtrusively.” While he respected LBGT people, he could not accept their actions.
But the Labour Group rejected Plancey’s statements, as having crossed a fine line, explicitly entering the territory of homophobic statements. Plancey argued: “I cannot change the writings and the laws of the Jews.” He went on to explain that on a personal level he had sought to be respectful to everyone throughout his 40 years as a local rabbi and over ten years as a county and borough councillor.
Support for Plancey came from the local police chief who told him: ‘All you were doing was quoting your religion – they should have a bit more respect.” Plancey reflected: “It was a shock, because throughout my rabbinic career, I never encountered antisemitism, only respect. But politics is another world. I have to live with this and rise above it.”
He is survived by Miriam Hirsch, his children, Susy, Nechama, Meir and Nussi, sister Phyllis, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
GLORIA TESSLER
Rabbi Alan Plancey, MBE: born October 30, 1941. Died June 8, 2025
