Cantor, composer of cantata Enosh, community leader in Bradford, West Yorkshire; fled Germany with his parents in 1937 aged 11.

Gender	Male
Nationality	United Kingdom
Website	http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors/Rudi-Leavor
Birth	31st May 1926 / Berlin

Rudi Leavor, BEM (born 31 May 1926, Berlin, Germany) is a Jewish community leader in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Leavor, along with his parents and sister, left Nazi Germany for Bradford in 1937, when he was 11, all were refugees. He attended Bradford Grammar School, and later Leeds University where he trained to become a dentist. He later had a successful dental practise based in Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire.

Leavor became President and Chairman of the Bradford Reform Synagogue in 1975 and represents the Bradford Jewish community at civic events in Bradford and further afield. At the age of 86, with the financial assistance of the local Muslim community, he was involved in restoration work on the Grade II listed Bradford Reform Synagogue.

Jani Rashid joined the Synagogue council in January 2015; the council is involved with the administration and operation of the Synagogue. This appointment is thought to be the first for a Muslim. Leavor, Rashid and Zulfi Karim, representing the Bradford Council of Mosques, work to strengthen social bonds between the Jewish, Muslim and other communities and faiths in the City of Bradford.

In 1975-77, Leavor composed the cantata Enosh (Op. 5) for soprano solo, chorus and orchestra. Dedicated to Alec Robinson, the work’s soprano solo lines threads together a series of apparently traditional synagogue choral movements, all, however, infused with a distinctive harmonic idiom of Leavor’s own.

In 2017 Leavor was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, for his work with the local Jewish Community and in interfaith and community relations.

(Based on article from Wikipedia.org, with minor corrections, amendments and additions)