After enduring a “horrible” lunch six years ago, 17 north London women were inspired to start monthly home cookery meetings.

Now the friends have published a cookbook, raising £15,000 to be split between the Israel Cancer Association and Norwood’s Hope Centre, supporting young people with learning or development problems.

The Jazz Singer is a classic film about a young chazan who abandons the synagogue for the music hall. Rabbi Daniel Glass has gone in precisely the opposite direction.

The new rabbi of Shomrei Hadass Federation Synagogue in Hampstead was a jazz pianist who used to play at Ronnie Scott’s.

Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue is a byword for genteel respectability, zealously guarded by its inhabitants. The kind of neighbourhood where every bush is trim and no brick out of place. So the local United Synagogue, too, you might imagine would be a bastion of conservatism, the eptiome of the decorous traditions of Minhag Anglia.