Jewish East End Celebration Society
P.O. Box 57317, London E1 3WG
[email protected]
JEECS is working with an American film company making a feature film on the life of Daniel Mendoza, known as the father of scientific boxing.
The organisers of this event are seeking information from Jews who have World War One connections. The London Jewish Cultural Centre has been awarded a substantial lottery grant to establish a website dedicated to the role London Jews played in the First World War.
If Lewis Altman is remembered today other than by immediate family it is as a leading character in two City scandals of the 1970s. But he has quite another claim to fame; he was one of over 540 British, Dutch and Empire prisoners of the Japanese during the second world war. Many, including Altman, were East Enders.
Do you have memories, or stories from your families, of going to the dogs or the races? Or what about popping down the pub in the days of the old East End? If so, JEECS member Isabelle Seddon would like to hear from you.
Bernard Kops’s place in the canon of English writers is probably assured. And anyone with doubts will have had them dispelled by the May 17 event at JW3, the Jewish cultural centre in north London.
We have to declare an interest; Bernard is JEECS life president. He is also the last of that band of writers, including Emanuel Litvinoff and Sir Arnold Wesker, who, coming from the Jewish East End, have used consummate artistry to capture its ethos and atmosphere.
HAROLD POLLINS investigates an old headline and discovers a forgotten project to give East Enders the opportunity of less crowded living in a new development.
A US resident wonders whether a photograph on an East End blog might be of someone to whom she is related. The subject of the photograph, a Mr Ralph Burns, bears a striking resemblance to the writer’s grandfather, who went to the US as a child. She thinks they might be relatives. Can you help her contact Mr Burns?
Holocaust Memorial Day was marked in the East End with a wide range of events, culminating in the annual Interfaith Commemoration at the East London Central Synagogue in Nelson Street.
Michael Philip Davis, born Posimensky, came to the East End as a small child in the 1880s. Some 70 years later, he wrote a fascinating account of his early life, his eventually fulfilled dreams of settling in what would become Israel, and his first visit there. His great grandsons have kept his memory alive and Eliav Schmulewitz, one of them, contacted JEECS for help in tracking down more about his time in London. A posting on our Facebook page yielded at least one new discovery. Here below (unedited except for some explanatory additions in brackets) is Michael Davis’s account of his East End days, followed by some of Eliav’s findings and his request for further information. You can read more of Michael Davis’s own account on http://www.cabinetmaker.blogspot.co.il/.
The Jewish East End is to feature in a new Living History series on BBC television – and you could be part of it. Wall to Wall Television, the production company responsible for such hits as WhoDo You Think You Are?, Turn Back Time: The High Street, and the recent BBC2 series Back In Time For Dinner, is seeking people willing to relive the East End of the late Victorian era, including what assistant producer Emily Thompson calls the “rich story of the Jewish community living in these areas at the time”.
Fieldgate Street synagogue, which had been one of the last remaining active synagogues in the East End until relatively recently, has been bought by the adjacent East London Mosque.