Watch: I am the only Jew in the East End square where I live
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Leon Silver, 75, is the President of the East London Synagogue, in Tower Hamlets, East London. Born and raised in the borough he still lives in, his parents worked in the ‘rag trade’ and were part of a substantial Jewish community in Stepney post World War 2. At one point in primary school he was the only Jewish child in a class of 44, Leon recalls a classmate asking if his eraser was a ‘Jewish rubber’. Now new neighbours have replaced his Jewish ones.
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Writing for Yahoo News he talks about feeling unsettled walking amongst Palestinian flags and of Netanyahu being the kind of politician he would not want to talk to. Leon is part of the Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum working to foster community relations and feels as at home visiting the East London Mosque as he does visiting a synagogue.
Anyone with a shred of humanity cannot but be horrified at the sight of a child being dug out of the rubble in Gaza or of bereaved parents or orphaned children weeping for their loss.
There are many terrible things happening to the people there and the suffering of so many innocents is truly terrible. But the genuine ongoing tragedy is trivialised if it is distorted into something it is not.
I have felt unease watching the marches when I didn’t see a single banner condemning Hamas nor a single placard calling for the release of the hostages.
For many Jewish people, walking in London right now – among so many Palestinian flags – can make them feel deeply unsettled.
Leon Silver, President of the East London Central Synagogue
A few days ago, I saw three Palestinian flags hanging from lampposts in a Bethnal Green road. I’m aware it is perfectly legal and if someone wants to fly it from their own home – it is their right. But hundreds of flags, some over public buildings, is intimidating.
I also don’t understand why the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the monstrous persecution of the Uyghur in China arouses no passionate response.
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The constant singling out of Israel while expressing little concern for anything elsewhere, no matter how tragic, leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Leon Silver’s mother worked as a dressmaker. He and his brother and parents lived in Stepney, East London, post World War 2. (Supplied)
Even if the criticism is legitimate, and some is and some isn’t, the double standards and hypocrisy result in the demonisation of the Jewish state. That is antisemitism.
And despite what some appear to think, I cannot pick up the phone and talk to Netanyahu (Israel’s Prime Minister). He’s not the kind of politician I would want to talk to anyway.
I do, however, have relatives from both sides of my family who are Israeli.
Most Jews that I know have Israeli relatives.
And if anyone wonders why Jewish people tend to be insecure, they only need to ask a random half dozen about their family history.Leon Silver
For some years now I have remained as the only Jew in the East London square where I live – and where I grew up.
My Bengali neighbours have replaced the Jewish ones as the predominant ethnic minority. Other neighbours include old-time Cockneys, some of whom I have known since childhood.
A few of my neighbours are friends, several more are friendly on a nodding basis but, unlike my childhood, I no longer know who most of my neighbours are.
Leon’s father worked as a tailor in the East End, which for more than 250 years was home to many clothing manufacturing businesses often referred to as the ‘rag trade’. (Supplied)
It began in the 1960s when the houses were knocked together to create flats.
People stopped sitting outside what had been their own front doors and so one didn’t chat or get to know them when walking past.
It would be wrong to claim there wasn’t antisemitism years ago but, on the whole, people got on pretty well. The Jews were the main minority ethnic group with much smaller East End communities of Maltese, south Asians, West Indians and others.
Right-wing groups led by some decidedly peculiar individuals even targeted Jews in the 1950s and 1960s and expressed their open approval of the Nazi atrocities.
I was born in Mile End Hospital 75 years ago, part of the post-War baby-boom. My father was a tailor and my mother a dressmaker. Apart from three years as a student, I have lived in Stepney my entire life.
When I was a child there was still a substantial Jewish community in the area although many were starting to move away to the suburbs to get away from the wartime ruins and the deprivation.
Leon was born in Mile End, Tower Hamlets, East London, 75 years ago, part of the post-War baby-boom. Apart from three years as a student he has lived in Stepney his entire life. (Supplied)
I was aware that there had been a terrible war but the bomb sites – which were everywhere around where I lived – seemed quite normal as I knew nothing else. Some were even fun to clamber over with friends.
Until I was 16, my parents, my older brother and I lived in the top four rooms of a house in an early Victorian square. My brother and I shared the top floor back bedroom.
The only heating was by hot water bottle which we shared as the bedroom fireplaces had been sealed long before. The ceilings and walls were damp, undoubtedly not helped by the damage caused by the blast of a V-2 German rocket during the Blitz which had exploded in a neighbouring street.
Irwin, my brother, twice tried to rig up a small electric heater in our bedroom. With no power sockets, he used an adaptor that fitted into a lightbulb socket. Both times the heater began to glow and then the fuse blew and all the lights went out!
There was a cold water tap in the kitchen and my parents paid for a small Ascot water heater which gave a thin stream of hot water when turned on. The pilot light was left on permanently.
Irwin Silver, Leon’s older brother. (Supplied)
A second tap was by the two outside toilets in the back yard in front of the workshop.The toilets were shared with the father and son who lived on the ground floor and basement and, on weekdays, with the people from the workshop built on what had once been the back garden.
There were numerous synagogues in my part of the East End.
Some were burnt-out shells from the Blitz, others simply closed as congregations grew sparse. These prayer houses were an indication of how large and vibrant the community had once been. As I stayed on, it became smaller and smaller.
East London Central Synagogue, of which I am president, became one of only three synagogues remaining in the whole of Tower Hamlets. Known simply as Nelson Street shul, it is 100 years old this year and is the only purpose-built synagogue remaining in the borough.
Leon Silver is the president of the East London Central Synagogue, one of only three synagogues remaining in Tower Hamlets, East London. (Credit: Rabina Khan)
It has been forced to close due to plaster coving falling from the ceiling but there is an active plan to create a Jewish cultural heritage centre in this historic building while preserving and restoring the beautiful worship-space itself as a consecrated synagogue.
Back then, Jewish working class lifestyle was generally seen as more religious since for many, though not all, social activities revolved around the family and the synagogue. Observance in varying degrees of the dietary laws, children’s Hebrew classes, even simply token observance of Sabbath and festivals, helped create communal bonds as indeed did shared poverty.
Fewer of my childhood Cockney neighbours were regular churchgoers and pub culture played a larger role in a number of the non-Jewish families.
At one point in primary school I was the only Jewish child in a class of 44. I wasn’t badly bullied but I was smaller than the others and the only boy with blonde hair. Both of these were put down to my being Jewish and somehow different.
One time, my uncle had given me a rubber eraser because we wrote with pencils at primary school. The rubber was round instead of the usual oblong. The boy sharing my desk asked me if it was a ‘Jewish rubber’.
It was an innocent question but it showed that I was never seen as being just like everyone else.
Until he was 16, Leon, his parents and older brother lived in the top four rooms of a house in an early Victorian square. He and his brother shared the top floor back bedroom.
If ever I quarrelled with someone, it wouldn’t take much for the word ‘Jewboy’ to be used. Sometimes at school boys I didn’t even know would call it out to me. At least once it was accompanied by a punch in the back as I walked home. That said, I don’t remember any of the girls calling me names.
Another time an unknown gang of boys set on me as I was leaving a Hebrew class at the long-since demolished Commercial Road Great Synagogue.
Some women shopping at the adjacent market shouted at them and they ran away. I wasn’t badly hurt but I was shaken by it.
I was nine years old.
There have been various incidents as an adult but they have been few and far between.
Inside the East London Central Synagogue, the plaque has the names of previous rabbis – Leon Silver is currently seeking to renovate the synagogue. (Credit: Rabina Khan)
Once, walking home in my Sabbath best from synagogue, some boys on the opposite side of Commercial Road threw a milk bottle at me. Fortunately, their aim was as poor as their intellect.
Another time, one of a group of young men speaking Arabic stood right in front of me breathing into my face and smiling as I was trying to walk from the kosher counter in Whitechapel Sainsbury’s.
Things grew more tense when Nelson Street employed a new young rabbi.
Previous incumbents had lived around the corner but due to falling numbers, the synagogue was no longer open for twice-daily services. The new rabbi was part-time, for Sabbath morning and festival services only, and he would walk from his Stamford Hill home.
Like his predecessors he is an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic rabbi who wears the traditional black hat and coat. He was fine on his early morning walk to the synagogue but one day on his walk home he was spat on.
Two of us began to escort him and after the other one moved elsewhere I continued to escort the rabbi for years afterwards.
Once we got past Bethnal Green Road he felt secure and I could turn back as all the abuse directed at him would happen in Whitechapel.
Leon outside East London Central Synagogue. He is part of Tower Hamlets Inter Faith Forum (THIFF) outreach work which has led to strong bonds of friendship and understanding in the borough. (Credit: Rabina Khan)
Abuse didn’t happen often, maybe just once every few weeks, but it always rose when there was trouble in the Middle East. We have had stones thrown at us, drinks cans thrown from a balcony and we have been jostled.
There has been verbal abuse from passers-by and from passing cars.
On one occasion in Cavell Street a large man getting out of a car as we walked past said in a heavy African accent, ‘there go those people who take everybody’s money from them’.
It struck me how much antisemitism is embedded worldwide if someone who had probably never met a Jew in his life would not only think that but be hateful enough to use it as a verbal barb.
I once worked briefly with someone from Sri Lanka and overheard him saying that he had never met a poor Jew. I told him he had now. He simply repeated his statement as if I hadn’t spoken.
Jew hatred knows no borders nor does it need any knowledge of the Jewish way of life. It is based on racist stereotypes, paranoid conspiracy theories and mediaeval superstition.
Over the past 20 years, the creation of Tower Hamlets Inter Faith Forum (THIFF) and other contacts and outreach have led to strong bonds of friendship and understanding in the borough.
None more so than between the local Muslim and Jewish communities.
Inside the East London Central Synagogue in Tower Hamlets, East London. (Credit: Rabina Khan)
Through many contacts, including at senior level, we have all learnt that we have far more in common than many realise. Our faiths are related and we have a common history of immigration, settlement into the same areas and facing similar prejudices and difficulties.
British Jews and Muslims should have the closest of ties.
Inevitably, we come to the elephant in the room: Israel and the Palestinians.
No-one can deny the appalling suffering of so many innocent people caught up in the terrible conflict deliberately engineered by Hamas through the barbaric pogrom of October 7th.
For Hamas, the propaganda value of anti-Israel demonstrations around the world and the suspension of the Abraham Accords is seen as a victory worth the price of thousands of dead.
Like most, I have seen the pro-Palestinian marches on television. Hundreds of thousands, some chanting ‘From the River to the Sea’ (a call for the end of the state of Israel).
Undoubtedly there are good people on the marches who simply want the war to stop, nothing more.
But the leadership of Hamas has already said it wants permanent war with Israel. Its charter calls for the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.
Leon Silver, president of the East Central Synagogue in Tower Hamlets, East London is part of the Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum. (Credit: Rabina Khan)
In the mainstream Anglo-Jewish community of which I am part, there are vast differences of opinion about Israel, its policies and the plight of the Palestinians.
Unlike those on the fringes, however, there is a deep and ancient emotional connection to Israel regardless of politics. It is part of our religion, our history and our culture. It is also seen as a lifeline.
A mediaeval Spanish rabbi wrote: My heart is in the East and I am in the West.
People of good will have worked together for years to counter misunderstanding and to create lasting bonds of friendship. I feel as at home visiting East London Mosque/London Muslim Centre, Brick Lane Mosque and others as I do when I am visiting a synagogue.
I have been a guest speaker at numerous iftars in different venues. We have so much in common and with continued good will, friendship and love, we – in our diverse inner city London borough – can be an example to the world.
Diverse members of one great family, we grieve together at so much loss of innocent life, we pray for peace and reconciliation and above all we pledge that events elsewhere will not tear our communities apart.
Shalom and salaam.
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https://uk.news.yahoo.com/i-am-the-only-jew-in-the-east-end-square-where-i-live-165456514.html
