Channels

Photo: AP
London
Photo: AP

Jewish life trickles back to London's East End

Britain Jews were banished from Britain in 1290. Now they renovate the streets of London's East End, neighborhood that once was their home

London's East End was once at the heart of Britain's Jewish community - the bustling street

markets were kosher, the shopkeepers Jewish and the packed theatres showed plays in Yiddish.

 

Walk down Whitechapel Road or Brick Lane today and it's hard to find any traces of a community that dates back 350 years to when a small group of Jews - who were banished from Britain in 1290 - returned and settled in London.

 

Today, the East End is best known as the city's main Bangladeshi neighborhood, as famous for its curry houses as it once was for its kosher food and bagels.

 

But the area is rediscovering its Jewish roots, as loft conversions and creeping gentrification lure back younger generations - decades after most Jewish families left, escaping endemic poverty and the devastation of World War Two bombs.

 

"It's not a flood, but it's definitely a trickle," Said David Russell, who moved to the area after university to take up a public relations job in London and now helps out at one of the area's four remaining synagogues.

 

"For a long time it was an area people couldn't wait to get out of, but it has become more fashionable - and it is still one of the more affordable areas of London."

 

The Eisens, in their 40s and raised in northern England , moved into a flat in a converted synagogue two years ago.

 

"We moved without really knowing, but very quickly we found the Jewish community, and I'm glad we did," Says Susan Eisen, who now collects immigrants' memoirs, films and photographs of her home when it was the East London Synagogue, which hosted 22,000 weddings in just over a century of existence.

 

"Last Yom Kippur we felt old - it was all people in their 20s and all people from around here," she said.

 

Coming back

The first signs of urban renewal are appearing: pavement cafes and new art galleries. But those hoping for a version of New York 's gritty-but-hip Lower East Side may be disappointed.

 

Badly bombed during the war and later ravaged by urban planners clearing out slums, few buildings here bear testament to the area's role as the heart of the Jewish community from the 17th century to the wave of East European immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Only a handful of reminders survive, like the facade of the Jewish soup kitchen or the Sephardic cemetery, founded by Portuguese and Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisition and known by its Portuguese name as the "Velho", Or "Old."

 

"There is simply less of the East End than of the Lower East Side in New York," Russell said.

 

"So much of the built heritage got lost in the Blitz. As a result, there is less for people to come back to."

 

After the war, many Jews moved out of the poor East End to wealthier north London, to the suburbs, or to Israel after its creation.

 

For many of these, the East End would forever be associated with poverty and deprivation - a feeling that explains a lack of community enthusiasm for conservation efforts, says South African-born lawyer Clive Bettington.

 

Bettington became involved with the area's history through his work as a guide, and in 2003 he set up the Jewish East End Celebration Society to promote the area's history, often through walks picking out hidden landmarks.

 

"The Jewish establishment is not interested in the East End, a period they associate with poverty and failure," He says. "But it was not just poverty and suffering, it was a vibrant society of artists, politicians, businessmen."

 

Tensions

Anna Tzelniker, the last of London's Yiddish acting stars, smiles at the thought of the four Yiddish theatres that once staged melodramas in the language of the newly arrived Eastern European immigrants.

 

Her most popular play, "The King of Lampedusa", Ran for seven straight months with 10 shows a week.

 

But there is nothing to mark the site of the last playhouse, now one of a string of cheap clothes stores along a busy road.

 

"We did sketches to try to carry on, as long as people wanted some sort of a Yiddish performance," Tzelniker, 84, says in her apartment, surrounded by photographs of her showbiz family's heyday, including pictures from the 1983 film "Yentl", in which she had a supporting role alongside Barbra Streisand.

 

"One by one the actors left me, and one by one I lost the people who understood Yiddish - the actors died and the audience died."

 

But with the Internet helping to fuel interest in family history and with the neighborhood never far from the public imagination - Jack the Ripper once roamed the streets around Whitechapel - tourism is slowly burgeoning, helping to keep the East End 's oral history alive.

 

For those preserving the memory of the Jewish East End, the going is undoubtedly tough. Relations with some elements of the Muslim community - the latest wave of immigration to the neighborhood --are not always easy. Local gangs have targeted elderly groups or rabbis from a nearby Orthodox Jewish community, who come to help out on feast days.

 

There is little money to buy up or restore the buildings that were once dear to the community and many of the new arrivals are younger and less religious. Most of the handful of remaining synagogues still get little more than a minyan - a quorum of 10 men or more - for the Sabbath service.

 

But at least, community leaders say, the numbers are no longer falling.  

 


פרסום ראשון: 10.11.06, 18:07
 new comment
Warning:
This will delete your current comment