Ernest Joseph

Who was Ernest Joseph?

Ernest Martin Joseph, architect and youth worker. He was a leading designer of synagogues, including the Art Deco synagogue at Sheepcote Street, Birmingham, and the classically styled synagogue in St. John's Wood Road, London. He was also a partner in the firm of Messrs Joseph, whose best known building is Shell Mex House between the Strand and the Thames Embankment in London. He was one of six children of Nathan Solomon Joseph, also an architect and social worker, and his wife Alice who died in his infancy. N. S. Joseph was brother-in-law to the chief rabbi, Hermann Adler.

Ernest Joseph was educated at St Paul's School and devoted himself to Jewish youth from his twenties until days before his death. In the First World War he worked to provide buildings for what later became the NAAFI and was promoted Major and awarded the MBE. In the years before World War II he worked to provide for the influx of Jewish refugees from Germany. He returned to NAAFI work in World War II and was appointed OBE in 1947.

Ernest and his wife Emma had been founder members of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in 1910.