It’s rare in life to meet someone and think “I want to be your friend”. But that’s what happened when I met Rina Wolfson. She was warm, funny and clever – but all of those words don’t do her justice at all. So, let me try again: she was extremely funny, brilliantly witty, excellent company and super-clever (she had a double first from Cambridge, which I only discovered at her funeral), though she wore her intellectual ability lightly.
I met her through working for the JC, which is ironic as she was actually a fellow member of my shul (New North London) and we had a ridiculous number of Facebook friends in common. I had spoken to her husband, Paul Harris, about the Yellow Candle project and afterwards he sent me a simple email. As I recall, it said something like: “My wife is a good writer. Perhaps she could write for you.”
I’m always keen to meet new writers, so I soon arranged to meet Rina. At that point I obviously had no idea she was so exceptional, nor that she was a well-known educator within the Jewish community, whose writing was already much appreciated. But I am very, very thankful to have brought her to a wider audience. Even though she often did that writing under another name.
Rina and I met in Starbucks in Golders Green and chatted – and chatted, and chatted. As I recall, much of our conversation was about our shul, but also contained an idea she had about reviewing different shuls anonymously. I was, of course, intrigued. This was a genius suggestion, and, if she could pull it off, something I could imagine everyone reading. Of course, she did, and it was.
Rina promised to visit different shuls, of all denominations, regularly. The first piece, on Hampstead Garden Suburb, went up in June 2017 and was an instant success. It immediately became the most-read article that day, and I knew we had a winner on our hands. That initial review illustrates just why those that followed were to be so good. It was funny, incisive, feminist, clever – a must-read. “The entire service was delivered by a dismembered voice from the men’s section below,” she wrote. “In fairness, the owner of the dismembered voice did his best to be inclusive, with frequent page number announcements. But it’s not easy to follow a service in a building that was designed before women were invented.”
I told nobody (except for my husband, who has never been known to spill a secret) that Rina was the Shul-Goer. Lots of people asked me who it was, and lots of people were rebuffed. But when I think about it now, there are not many people who could have done what she did. Rina was extremely knowledgeable about Judaism. She could walk into any shul and follow the service, fitting right in. She was genuinely brilliant at speaking to people, so she could go alone and easily make small talk. And she was such a fantastic writer that each review was full of hidden gems, reviewing the kiddush, the sermon, even the website. She could make fun of herself falling asleep during davening, or be moved, as she was by the women’s (not ladies’) service at Stanmore and Canon’s Park.
Each piece was entirely wonderful.
The Secret Shul-Goer became something of a phenomenon, but of course, Rina was never able to bask publicly in the adoration. So I was delighted when she started writing for the JC on other topics, this time under her own name. Her talent shone through in interviews and book reviews, and even when she went to a Muslim convention. She wrote a story that was completely different to the one I had expected, but which was (of course) far better. Her writing could always bring out something no one else would have seen. It was forthright, opinionated and simply excellent. It did not surprise me that her blog on cancer was beautifully written, painful and honest.
I said that when I met Rina, I knew I wanted to be her friend. And I feel very, very fortunate that we did become good friends. She brought something quite different and wonderful to my life: not just humour, but an intellectual rigour. We attended the march against antisemitism together in 2018, and I very much valued her opinion, just as I valued the time I had with her. I wanted more of it, but, once she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, I was aware that she had so many friends, such a close family and so many commitments that it felt selfish of me to ask for more of that already limited time. But when we did meet, we spoke a lot about the children, her fears and her hopes.
Rina died on Kol Nidre. Her funeral was almost unbearably moving. It mentioned her talents in so many arenas, and her love for her family, especially Paul, and her children, BZ, Ava and Grace.
Sometimes I feel that I must write to make sense of the world and what is in my head, or to try to. But in this case, words don’t work properly. They cannot sum up Rina Wolfson properly as she was a one-off, someone truly remarkable. And words also cannot explain how much she will be missed.
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