Career
He was the prime mover and first director of studies of the Jewish Theological College of London. The college was inaugurated in 1956 and was renamed Leo Baeck College shortly afterwards at his suggestion. Van der Zyl, who was also a trained chazan, received his rabbinical training at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, where he was a pupil of Leo Baeck, qualifying in 1933.
The University of Giessen awarded him a doctorate in 1931.
He was Rabbi at the Rykestrasse Synagogue, Berlin from 1932 to 1935 and at the New Synagogue, Berlin from 1935 to 1938/9. Van der Zyl came to Britain in 1939.
During World World War II the British Government interned him at Kitchener Camp in Sandwich, Kent and then at Mooragh Internment Camp on the Isle of Manitoba as an "enemy alien". He was released from internment in 1943 and became Minister at North Western Reform Synagogue, remaining there until 1958.
He retired in 1968 to Majorca where he held the post of honorary rabbi to the Jewish community in Palma.
He died in Palma, Majorca in 1984 and is buried at Hoop Lane Jewish Cemetery in Golders Green. An annual lecture is held in his memory at Leo Baeck College. His family papers are held at the University of Southampton.
