Marie van der Zyl

Origins and early life

Marie Sarah Kaye was born in the London Borough of Redbridge in November 1965, the daughter of Barry Kaye, who worked in tailoring, and of Szusanne Kaye, a beautician, and grew up in South Woodford, where she went to the local comprehensive school. She took a law degree at Liverpool Polytechnic and became an employment lawyer, later a partner in London firms, while rising through the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which elected her one of its vice-presidents in 2015.

Work and career

A long-standing member of West London Synagogue, where she sat on the management board, she represented the Jewish Lads' and Girls' Brigade on the Board. On 13 May 2018 the deputies elected her, in the third round of voting, as the 48th president of the Board and only the second woman to lead it; she took office on 1 June 2018 and was re-elected in 2021. During the pandemic she worked with Muslim leaders to have the government's emergency legislation on burial and cremation amended to respect Jewish and Muslim traditions.

She commissioned an independent report on racial inclusion in the Jewish community, published in April 2021, and in 2022 led the procession of religious representatives at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth. In the 2023 New Year Honours she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to faith and integration, and that year she became the World Jewish Congress commissioner for gender equality and inclusion.

Personal life

In September 2022 she married the lawyer Adrian Cohen at West London Synagogue, the flagship synagogue of the Reform movement, and she stepped down as president at the end of May 2024 after six years in office. The Jerusalem Post named her among the fifty most influential Jews in 2018, at number 40, and again in 2023 among its five Jewish Community Guardians.