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garment trade. By the early 1890s Ashkenazi
shuls
(synagogues) and clubs and societies called
chevrah
were
springing up all over Spitalfields and Whitechapel. On the
doorposts of the old Huguenot houses mezuzahs appeared.
14 shuls popped up in Spitalfields alone with many more
chevrah that had their own small prayer rooms attracting
Jews from the same village or town back in Eastern Europe.
Some chevrah were thus known by names such as
The S
ons
of Lodz Chevrah
or the
Brethren of Konin Chevrah
but
others had more colourful names like the
Society for
Chanting Psalms
and
The Society For Giving Alms to the
Poor To Avoid An Evil Death.
For a small insight into the Jewish East End of living
memory see if you can’t find a copy of the 1953 Wolf
Mankowitz novel
A Kid For Two Farthings
online or even
a DVD of the 1954 Carol Reed film of the book in one of
those little catalogues that come with the Sunday paper.
Mankowitz (who went on to write screenplays for James
Bond movies) grew up in the Jewish East End and it is here
among the small tailoring shops and clothes stalls that the
book is set. The book’s title refers to the traditional
Passover song Chad Gadya which begins
One little goat
which my father bought for two zuzim.
Right at the end of
the film version (which has a wonderful ensemble cast
including Celia Johnson, Diana Dors, Irene Handl and Sid
James) the tailor Mr Kandinsky sings the song in English.
A Kid For Two Farthings is the story of a small boy Joe
who lives with his mother above Mr Kandinsky’s tailors
shop on Fashion Street off Brick Lane. In the story Joe is
about six years old. If Wolf Mankovitz had written a sequel
with Joe reaching the age of 12 we might have seen him
cramming Hebrew at the Fashion Road Chevra as he
prepares for his
Bar Mitzvah
– the Jewish coming of age
ritual.
Bar
is a word of great antiquity from the days of
Babylon and it means son although the Bar Mitzvah
ritual is only 500 years old. Mitzvah as we saw earlier
is a commandment or law. Put together the rabbinical
phrase Bar Mitzvah means
subject to the law.
According
to Jewish law when a boy turns 13 (12 for a girl’s Bat
Mitzvah) he becomes accountable for his actions – he
becomes subject to the law. Celebration and ceremony
are not essential – a boy automatically becomes Bar
Mitzvah at 13.At the synagogue a boy may wear tefellin
for the first time and he will read aloud from the Torah
for the first time – no easy feat as it is written in Hebrew
so typically in the year leading up to his Bar Mitzvah a
boy must attend Hebrew class. The celebration and
religious significance of Bat Mitzvah for girls varies and
you’ll not be surprised to hear that the more Orthodox the
community the less significance is given to Bat Mitzvah.
The grand Bar Mitzvah party is very much a modern
phenomenon reflecting more opulent times. East End
Bar Mitzvah boys have included Bud Flanaghan,
Bernard Bresslaw, Alfie Bass, Marty Feldman, Don
Black and Len Goodman from Strictly Come Dancing
who has just published a book about his memories of
growing up in London (prize draw for a copy
Discover the story of Jewish life in London and visit the
Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue at Bevis Marks and the
Jewish Museum in Camden as part of our full day Jewish
London tour which is described in this month’s
magazine on page 18 in a little more detail than we have
room for in the brochure.