By Rabbi Yisroel Roll
When I served as the Rabbi of the New West End Synagogue, I lived in London’s West End, across the street from Kensington Palace. My children would play in the playground just outside the palace and often the red Royal Air-Force helicopter bearing Princess Diana would land outside the palace. The princess would get out of the helicopter, wave to us, and then enter the palace.
We often heard Diana’s helicopter hovering perilously over our house, late at night, as she returned to the Palace following an engagement. I’d turn to my wife and say, “Diana is keeping very late hours. As her LOR—Local Orthodox Rabbi, I will have to have a word with her.”
Indeed, I got my chance. On November 29, 1996, I went into my local barbershop to get a haircut. There was a blond teenager getting his hair cut by my barber, Lucas, and there was a young woman sitting next to him who looked very much like Diana, the Princess of Wales. I turned to a middle-aged man sitting by the window and whispered, “Is that the Princess?”
With a shrug of the shoulders, he replied, “I don’t know.” (It turns out that he was her security guard.)
A young woman ran into the shop and said breathlessly to the Princess, “May I have a photograph with you?” Diana replied, “I would rather not, thank you.”
Then I knew for sure that it was the Princess, and that the teenager in the barber chair next to her was Prince William, the future King of England. I nodded to the Princess as I sat down on the sofa opposite her and she nodded back.
I mustered up the courage and said, “I am the rabbi of the local synagogue around the corner, in St. Petersburgh Place—”
Rabbis Can Take a Half an Hour Off for a Haircut?
She cut me off in mid-sentence and said: “You mean rabbis can take a half an hour off for a haircut?”
I rose to the occasion and replied, “It seems that even princesses can take half an hour off for a haircut!”
Diana had just revealed to the British people her impending problems with her marriage and I said, “Princess, in Hebrew we have a saying, ‘chazak v’ematz—be strong and of good courage.’ I wish the Princess well.”
That night was Friday night and at the Shabbat table I said my wife and kids, “You’ll never guess who I met today!” After a few guesses, I told them, “I met the Princess of Wales! In fact, I sat in the very same chair as Prince William, the future King of England!”
After the excitement died down, I said to my young children, “You know something? He is a king... and I am also a king! Diana is a queen....and Mommy is also a queen. Look at our Shabbat table – fit for a king and a queen. And you children are the loyal citizens of the realm.
