Old Synagogue, Merthyr Tydfil

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
Lao Tzu
A Walk Through Merthyr
I’m finishing this little series of a walk through Merthyr with an image of the Old Synagogue, a reminder that a community once flourished here, as in other valleys towns in the industrial revolution. The influx of immigrant, incoming, populations – Irish, English, Scots, Welsh to name but four - to service the industrial leviathans created a pressure cooker of nationalities and languages that sporadically erupted as tensions mounted over working conditions, slum housing, poverty wages, religious tensions and more – select a pressure point, choose a scapegoat, stir well and the result was explosive – still is. The story is – literally - as old as time, but as author Carl Greer penned, Change Your Story, Change Your Life. The building has been through a few incarnations; it seems to be at a crossroads while its future is determined, I wonder what it wants to be next.