A Walk on the East Side

Into the heart of East London there poured from Russia, from Poland, from Germany, from Holland, streams of Jewish exiles, refugees, settlers, few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb, but all rich in their cheerfulness, their industry, and their cleverness.

Israel Zangwill

“Children of the Ghetto,” 1892

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The story of England is a story of migration. Even in the earliest chapters of English history, wave after wave of settlers were leaving their mark on the land--Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans--each bringing their own language, culture and traditions. For most of these groups, integration was inevitable, as England, and especially its capital, London, became the melting pot of northwestern Europe.

I’ve always been fascinated by this idea of merging cultures. My country, Canada, is a nation of immigrants. My parents were Polish Jews who came to Canada after the war. And, though they both grew up in Warsaw, it was in London that they happened to meet. Perhaps that’s part of the reason that I’ve always felt drawn to this city.

It’s a cliche, perhaps, to say that visitors come to London because of its rich history, but I’d take it a step further and say this city has had many histories. Everyone, regardless of their background, can probably find a part of their own story somewhere in London.

For most of the city’s history, London’s Jews carved out their own separate world within this great human conglomeration. The city’s East End eventually became the center of that world, serving as a focal point for Jewish immigration from across the Diaspora.

But if you set out to discover the Jewish East End, as I did last spring, be prepared for some detective work, for another immigrant tide has swept over it.

In the first decades of this century, 90% of England’s Jewish population lived here. Those who became prosperous enough to leave the ghetto behind settled in a few suburbs to the north.

Those who remained, as usual, were the poorest. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to one guidebook, the local soup kitchen was serving 5,000 kosher meals a week.

During the Nazi bombing campaign of World War II, many Jews--and Londoners in general--moved to less vulnerable neighborhoods farther from the city center.

In the years following the war, the number of Jews in the East End continued to decline. Today an estimated 2,000 remain, scattered throughout what is now known as Banglatown, home to thousands of Bangladeshi immigrants. Still, a few landmarks of the Jewish legacy remain.

Before delving into the East End, I stopped for a moment just to the west of the Bank of England, in the heart of the old city. Here, a street sign is one of the last remnants of London’s first Jewish quarter. It marks Old Jewry, a tiny street connecting Poultry and Gresham streets. Another reminder is a church nearby named for its neighborhood--St. Lawrence Jewry.

The city’s first Jews arrived here in the years following the Norman Conquest of 1066, settling within the walled medieval city. Barred from most trades, many of them became moneylenders (Christians were forbidden to loan money at interest). Anti-Semitism was a perpetual threat, and intolerance became even more fierce during the Crusades. Jews were banned from attending the coronation of Richard I; when several Jews tried to make a presentation to the king, an angry mob turned on them and then burned the Jewish quarter. A century later, Edward I had hundreds of Jews hanged or imprisoned before finally expelling them from the country in 1290.

When the Jews were readmitted under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century, many of them settled in the East End. This was always one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods: Winds blew from west to east, and the stench of London’s slaughterhouses made the East End the city’s least desirable area. First to arrive were Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal, followed by Ashkenazic Jews from Eastern Europe. While some of the Sephardim were wealthy merchants, most of the Ashkenazim were desperately poor. Many struggled to make a living in the clothing trades, working in cramped shops and dim warehouses. Their numbers swelled in the 1800s, when pogroms--organized persecutions of Jews in Eastern Europe--drove thousands from Russia and Poland.

Having read up on Jewish London (I recommend “A Travel Guide to Jewish Europe” by Ben G. Frank, and “Ethnic London” by Ian McAuley), I set out to search for the handful of landmarks that remain and the sites of many that have vanished.

One great Jewish cultural treasure has survived. The Bevis Marks Synagogue stands in a well-hidden courtyard a few blocks from the Liverpool Street train station. This grand house of worship, founded in 1701, was modeled after the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam; it is the oldest surviving synagogue in Britain. Saturday morning services, honoring the Jewish Sabbath, are conducted as they have been for centuries. As they read from the Torah, the rabbi and other leaders of the congregation are dressed in formal black suits, prayer shawls and top hats. Men sit on rows of wooden benches, facing each other across a central aisle, while women (who always worship separately in Orthodox congregations) sit in a balcony above.

A few blocks away is Middlesex Street, better known by the name of the market that sprouts there every Sunday: Petticoat Lane. This was once a Jewish-dominated market street, where clothes and accessories changed hands at rock-bottom prices. A few Jewish names can still be spotted on the shop fronts--Ginsberg’s Leather Goods, Che Bina Shoes--and many door frames carry a mezuza, a tiny case housing a religious text, signifying that Jews live or work inside. The shops in this neighborhood still keep the Jewish custom of closing on Saturday.

The Sunday outdoor market sells clothes of every description, along with newer items like plastic toys, batteries and $10 portable cassette players. The street teems with life as vendors and bargain hunters go elbow to elbow.

It takes little imagination to picture Petticoat Lane as it must have appeared at the end of the last century. Israel Zangwill, in his 1892 novel “Children of the Ghetto,” describes it:

“It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and the crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeezing and shouting, in the hubbub and medley. Such a jolly, rampant, screaming, fighting, maddening, jostling, polyglot, quarreling, laughing broth. . . . Mendicants, vendors, buyers, gossips, showmen, all swelled the roar.”

Zangwill’s home, at 288 Old Ford Road, about a mile to the northeast, is marked by a bright blue plaque.

Another plaque, next to the Whitechapel Library on Whitechapel High Street, honors Isaac Rosenberg, a turn-of-the-century poet and painter. The library served as a meeting place for Jewish intellectuals, with Zangwill, a prominent Zionist, and Rosenberg among its regular visitors.

One of my guidebooks recommended Bloom’s Restaurant, a kosher deli at 90 Whitechapel High St. But I found no trace of Bloom’s there; in its place stood a Burger King.

The proprietor of a neighboring shop, the D & G Espresso Bar, explained that Bloom’s closed about a year ago. “I used to get my [corned] beef there,” he said. “I miss it.”

There had been four restaurants in the Bloom’s chain; now there is only one, in the northern suburb of Golders Green.

These tales of suburban retreat seem to be everywhere. The family of Britain’s current chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, followed a typical route. His father, Louis, had come to the East End from Poland as a child; at 14, he left school to work, selling cloth in a shop on Commercial Road. When Jonathan was still young, the family moved to Finchley, a more affluent district in North London.

In the Macabi falafel shop at the corner of Wentworth and Toynbee streets, I saw another sign of the great northward exodus: A bright yellow poster, in Yiddish and English, advertised a Jewish holiday celebration complete with a musical band from Jerusalem. The festival was not happening here in the East End, but in Finchley.

One of the most evocative landmarks in the neighborhood, on Brune Street, is a simple building built for a simple purpose nearly 100 years ago. The lettering carved in the facade reads, “Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor,” with the date 1902. The building has been renovated and converted to upscale apartments; the last remaining unit, at the time of my visit, was selling for 200,000 pounds (about $357,000).

Perhaps the most unusual testimonial to the old Jewish community is the Cable Street Mural, which covers the side of a building at 236 Cable St. It commemorates a 1936 rally when hundreds of Jews took to the streets of the East End to stop a march by brown-shirted fascists. The mural shows, among other caricatures, Adolf Hitler in his underwear.

As I was taking photos of the mural, I looked behind me. Someone had wheeled a piano outside, and a Bangladeshi child was playing it. His young friends were running and playing in the alley. But even this image--the new East End, with this new wave of immigrants--is a temporary one. Each wave of newcomers, as it grows more prosperous, inevitably leaves this neighborhood; already there are more immigrants arriving from Somalia than Bangladesh. But the Jews of the East End are an enduring presence. Their story--faded but still visible--is one of tradition, fortitude, survival and progress.

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GUIDEBOOK

Jewish London

Getting around: Most of the sites mentioned in this article are within walking distance of Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations on the Circle Line of the London Underground.

Walking tours of the Jewish East End are offered by Original London Walks, telephone 011-44-171-624- 3978, Internet https://www.london.walks.com; by Stepping Out, tel. 011-44- 181-881-2933; and by Historical Tours, tel. 011-44- 181-668-4019.

The Bevis Marks Synagogue, in a small courtyard off Bevis Marks between Houndsditch and Leadenhall streets, is open to visitors on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Local tel. 171-626-1274.

The Jewish Museum, 129 Albert St. in Camden Town, is open Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tel. 171-284-1997.

For more information: British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10176, tel. (212) 986- 2200 or (800) 462-2748.