Rabbi Alan Plancey

A staunch advocate of religious dialogue, Plancey also held the interfaith relations portfolio in Chief Rabbi Sacks’s 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 chief rabbis – from Lord Jakobovits to Lord Sacks – at official functions. He met every member of the British royal family, as well as 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 bracha 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 key mementos of appreciation: a sterling silver leaf from Pope John Paul II 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 he retained all his life, he told the 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. “I know it was tough there over the years, but at the time it was a mechayeh, a nice Jewish area,” he recalled.

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 where 80 per cent of the pupils were Jewish, 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. Beyond his studies with Rabbi Dryan, he walked 45 minutes to the Jewish neighbourhood of Giffnock to continue with Rabbi A L Rubinstein, who 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 Yeshivah, 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 learn a profession. He went on to Gateshead Yeshivah where it became clear he was destined for the rabbinate.

The year 1965 was to prove a very fortuitous one 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 Football Club, 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 were on a losing run, but when Plancey attended a match, they won five-nil. “Everybody came to daven for five weeks… Come the fifth week, 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 United Synagogue. Experienced with Glasgow Jewish youth movements, he had learnt to play the bagpipes and now arranged musical events drawing large crowds eager to hear the bagpipe-playing rabbi. 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 his life was not free from controversy. During his time as Tory councillor for Borehamwood/Brookmeadow, he advised the LGBT community in a 2014 video to be “quiet” and “unobtrusive” about their sexuality.

His remarks drew fire from the Hertsmere Labour Group, which 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.

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 LGBT people, he could not accept their actions.

But the Labour Group rejected Plancey’s statements, as having crossed a fine line and 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.

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.”

His beloved wife Miriam, sadly died just a few days after him.  Borehamwood and Elstree Synagogue paid tribute to her “years of quiet strength, unwavering dedication, and support she gave to so many”.  They are survived by children, Susy, Nechama, Meir and Nussi,  grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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Rabbi Alan Plancey, MBE: born October 30, 1941. Died June 8, 2025