Jewish London

My plan when I went out Running London yesterday was to end my exertions at the Stanmore and Canons Park synagogue and take a quiet breather nearby, contemplating lessons from the past. Sadly, I fell behind time and had to head home by Tube before reaching my intended destination. Even so, my journey achieved part of its goal in that, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it focused my mind on London's part in Jewish history and how my knowledge of it needs improving.

What I do know I mostly owe to social historians and the old Lefties I became friends with in my earliest days as a Londoner at the start of the 1980s. William J Fishman, a Cable Street veteran, is the scholar whose works the latter introduced me to, and I keep his East End Jewish Radicals: 1875-1914 beside my desk. The other vital information a learned comrade imparted was that Bloom's restaurant in Whitechapel served the finest salt beef sandwich in the capital. I don't know if that was true, but what David Schneider said after the Whitechapel Bloom's closed in 1996 strikes a chord:

We used to go and eat salt beef sandwiches with that delicious kosher mustard. I don't know if they count as sandwiches because the meat to bread ratio was so large. That was the joy of them.

As you'll notice if you read this piece about Bloom's from the Jewish Chronicle, which includes Schneider's recollection, it was getting a bad press by the end. But, like some of its critics, I'm sad it's gone and also glad a Jewish influence endures in the East End despite the m! igration s north to Stamford Hill, home of Europe's largest Orthodox community, and to the suburbs beyond. The Stanmore and Canon's Park synagogue has the largest membership of any in Europe. I'll make sure I pass it on the next leg of my Marathon Endeavour.

The GLA marked Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday. The clip below, posted by the Jewish Chronicle, features survivor and Barnet resident Mala Tribich.

You can read more about Mala Tribich here.


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