‘We need to learn to look death in the face’ – Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger

Pam Alexander and Julia Neuberger

Something that happens to us all that everyone wants to avoid was the topic of the inaugural London Speaker Series event – death.

An evening with Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE (NC 1969) was held at Coutts on Monday, April 25 2016 thanks to the support of Annette Spencer (NC 1988) and her husband Matthew Spencer.

Rabbi Neuberger, who is an Honorary Fellow of Newnham and a cross bench member of the House of Lords, said: “We have gone into a collective silence about death.

“Almost every family lost someone in the Second World War or in the major flu pandemic that came afterwards, the Victorians almost rejoiced about people dying but after the Second World War, people didn’t use the word dying anymore.

“It was ‘pass away’ or ‘popped their clogs’ – it was as if the nation went into a form of trauma.”

Neuberger, who was Britain’s second female rabbi and the first to have her own synagogue, is now a Senior Rabbi of the West London Synagogue. She famously chaired the Review of the Liverpool Care Pathway for Dying Patients and she discussed her findings and the process with the packed audience of Newnhamites.

She also traced the foundation of the NHS and its importance and how the modern hospice movement was created, she said: “The aim of the NHS was to create a healthy workforce in post-war Britain – by then no-one wanted to look death in the face but if you don’t admit it, you can’t deal with it.”

She urged ‘a roomful of the most intelligent women in the country’ to ensure they draw up an advance healthcare directive – known as living will so that their wishes are followed by their family and healthcare professionals.

She also talked about her work with young asylum seekers – she set up the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust in memory of her parents, now the Schwab and Westheimer Trust.

The lively and empowering discussion was praised as being one of the ‘best Newnham events’ by members of the audience, who asked Rabbi Neuberger probing questions about the role of faith and death, her views on assisted dying and public mourning for celebrities.

Pam Alexander (NC 1972) President of the Roll Committee, chaired the Q&A session.

Neuberger regularly appears on the Pause for Thought programme on BBC Radio 2 and is a published author.

She read Oriental Studies at Newnham College (Associate 1983–96) and completed a Rabbinic Diploma at Leo Baeck College, London (Lecturer and Associate Fellow 1979–97).

She has chaired an NHS Trust, the Patients Association, the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity, been Prime Minister’s Champion for Volunteering and a Civil Service Commissioner, and was Chief Executive of the King’s Fund 1997–2004.

She was Chancellor of the University of Ulster 1994–2000 and Bloomberg Professor of Divinity at Harvard in 2006.

She was appointed DBE in 2004 and she was created a Life Peer in the same year. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity by the University of Cambridge in June 2015.

She ended by concluding: “We need to learn to look death in the face again – it is coming for us all.”

Photograph caption from left to right: Pam Alexander (NC 1972) President of the Roll Committee with Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE (NC 1969)