Died today. A voice friend on Radio 4, Thought for the Day, through 70’s and 80’s. Yet this gentle folksy man was, I learn today, tormented and sometimes ‘a mess’
‘I’ve never felt this world was home – more like a departure lounge.’ he opens his own quirky obituary, then proceeds to talk, not about his chronological life, or belief, but about love and relationahips in his life: Not only Jewish but also homosexual, a friend describes him as ‘A complete psychological mess at his time in Oxford’. As Blue reflects ‘Garbage transforms into Jewels’, and this reawakened his faith, studying semitics at London University and to becoming a rabbi in 1960, having been one of the first rabbinical students at Leo Baeck College Finchley. ‘Although I found mystical truths in religion, i never found honesty.’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/19/rabbi-lionel-blue-obituary
Kalikellett 