Jewish East End Celebration Society
P.O. Box 57317, London E1 3WG
[email protected]

Over 100 JEECS members and Isaac Rosenberg aficionados gathered in St John’s Wood, north London,  on Sunday May 26 to celebrate the great East End artist and poet’s artistic and literary legacy in an event organised by JEECS with the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, who hosted this fantastic evening.

Dora Diamant was Franz Kafka’s last love, fled to Britain to escape persecution, suffered wartime internment, and devoted her final years to working in the East End to preserve Yiddish language and culture. PROFESSOR KATHI DIAMANT, her biographer, tells her extraordinary story. On May 26 we have a day of events celebrating her life.

Jews in Uniform

Did you or any family members serve in the Armed Services during World War 2?

Having just published a book on the iconic wedding photographer 'Boris', I will now be publishing a Photo Book of the Jewish Community, both male and female, who served in the British, Commonwealth & Allied Services. I will also include those in the fire & ambulance services, auxiliary police, air raid wardens, land army etc.

If you would like to be considered for inclusion and have access to good quality photographs in uniform plus biographical details, please contact:-

Michael Greisman. Tel: 0208 458 2631. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Bernard Kops, the acclaimed East End-born dramatist, poet and novelist, has taken on the mantle of JEECS honorary life president in succession to the late Professor Bill Fishman.

We are delighted – and honoured – to welcome Bernard, long a great supporter of JEECS, as our new president.

Back in 2006, just ahead of his 80th birthday, Bernard gave a fascinating interview to JEECS magazine The Cable. In tribute to his new position as JEECS president, the interview is republished below.

Holocaust survivor Henry Glanz, 92, sounded the shofah with a vigour belying his years at the close of the Holocaust Memorial Day Interfaith Commemoration at the East London Central Synagogue in Nelson Street on February 1. Henry came to England in 1939 on the last of the Kindertransport. 

Marlow Road cemetery in East Ham is the final resting place of many East End Jews. Owned by the United Synagogue, it covers 25 acres and was founded in 1919.

Stephen Pushkin, creator of the East End documentary film My Jewish London, died on New Year’s Day.
 
A retired assistant film director, he spent six years working on the film, initially in conjunction with producer Peter Harrison, interviewing people about their East End experiences as a way of telling the history of the East End and the people who settled there in the latter part of the 19th century.

Eastside Community Heritage is seeking budding young historians to work on its fascinating oral history project East End to Essex, documenting the social and cultural heritage of the Redbridge Jewish community.

Bill Fishman, honorary president of JEECS who has died at the age of 93, was an extraordinary figure in the life of the East End: inspiring teacher, ground-breaking academic and highly regarded author. 

Veteran actor HARRY LANDIS looks back on an East End childhood, the origins of his acting career, and the battle against racism.

Isaac Rosenberg, one of the greatest of the First World War poets and a talented artist, has not received the widespread recognition he deserves. The time has come to remedy this. Click on http://rosenbergww1.weebly.com/ or use the link above to go the Rosenberg Appeal website for more details. 

Boris Bennett (1900-85), born Boris Sochaczewska in Poland and known professionally as just Boris, was famed for bringing Hollywood glamour to an impoverished area of east London. His Whitechapel Road studio was the fashionable location for wedding couples and families in the 1930s and 1940s.

 

Latest news

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    Andrew Whitehead, whose new book on the Siege of Sydney Street, an iconic event in the Jewish East End, has just been published, is one of many fascinating speakers at the Hackney History Festival in May. Read More
  • East End playwright, novelist and poet Bernard Kops dies aged 97

    Bernard Kops, the great East End playwright, novelist and poet, and honorary president of JEECS, has died at the age of 97 The son of Dutch-Jewish immigrants, Bernard was born in 1926 and brought up in Stepney Green Buildings in a world whose frontier was Aldgate East tube station, a world in which clothing from the Jewish Board of Guardians Read More
  • Seeking the human being within, behind the cloak

    Bernard Kops, the great East End playwright, poet and novelist has died at the age of 97. Honorary life president of JEECS, he was an astute observer of both the old Jewish East End and the modern world. The interview below is from the JEECS magazine The Cable in 2006 and is being republished as a tribute to a great Read More
  • A fresh look at the Siege of Sydney Street

      The Siege of Sydney Street is the subject of a new book published on March 1 that provides a thrilling account of this iconic East End event. Read More
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    Morris Goldstein, a near forgotten member of the remarkable group of artists and writers that flourished in the East End in the early part of the last century, deserves wider recognition. RAYMOND FRANCIS, his son, gives us a taste of his story in this extract from his book about his father's life. This article was published in JEECS's magazine The Read More
  • East End Brady days

    An exhibtion devoted to the history of the Brady Girls' Club opens in London on October 6. So it seemed a timely moment to republish these reminiscences of an iconic East End organisation originally published in our magazine The Cable in 2010. Read More
  • Exhibition celebrates the Brady Girls' Club

    The history of a seminal East End organisation, the wonderful Brady Girls’ Club, is being celebrated in an exhibition at London Metropolitan University opening next month. Read More
  • Sikh peddlers in the Jewish East End

    The role of Jewish East Enders in working with early Sikh arrivals in the UK is set to form part of a new documentary film whose creators are seeking people who can talk to them from a Jewish perspective about the partnerships that developed. Read More
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For the old Jeecs site, visit www.jeecs.org.uk/archive