Reverend Levy (1910-2005) was brought up in London and went to University College London and the leading Talmudic academy, Yeshiva Etz Chaim. He also studied at Jews College where he became a lecturer. He obtained his PhD in Rabbinical History at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He became a minister in the mid-thirties and his main ministry began with Hampstead Garden Suburb Synagogue, where he served from 1936 until 1938. He used to say that he acted as everything but caretaker there. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered as an army chaplain and was assigned to the Middle East as Senior Jewish Chaplain in 1941, where he was briefly captured in the Western Desert by German forces.  After managing to escape, he became Chaplain to the British Army of the Rhine, and was among the troops who liberated Bergen-Belsen.