Jewish East End Celebration Society
4A Cornwall Mews South, London, SW7 4RX
[email protected]

"I feel completely overwhelmed by everything everybody has said today that has helped make this wonderful celebration of Bill's life. I know that Bill touched many lives in many ways and we all have our own memories of him. He was my best friend, my lover, my soul mate, he was just my Bill," said Doris Fishman at the end of a celebration honouring the life and work of her historian husband Professor Bill Fishman, honorary president of JEECS.

David Mazower's article (in issue 25 of The Cable) on the London Imperial Russian Singers was both interesting in its depiction of the choir and the psycho/social appeal it had to Jewish immigrants.

Victims of the last rocket attack on London were commemorated at a JEECS event on March 29 at Hughes Mansions in Vallance Road in Stepney, 70 years after the tragedy that left 134 people dead.

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. 

Latest news

  • Do you know the Gramophone Man?

    JEECS has been asked if anyone knows the name of the Gramophone Man, pictured here, his back story, when he retired, and the sort of music he played. Read More
  • More emerges about H Lotery and Co

    A while back, we had a reader asking if anyone had any information about a company his mother had worked for in the East End and which she remembered as being called Lottries. The inquiry sparked some fascinating replies, which identified the company as H Lotery and Co, and we've just had a response from the grandson of the company's Read More
  • Project seeks material and memories from the legendary Yiddish poet A.N. Stencl

    Did you know or do you have material from the Polish-born Yiddish poet Avrom-Nokhem Stencl (also known as A. N. Stencl) who was once famous in east London for selling his celebrated Yiddish magazine Loshn un lebn (Language & Life), for running his Friends of Yiddish Saturday afternoon literary society and for his many acclaimed publications of Yiddish poetry? Stencl Read More
  • Two great East End events

    Two great East End related events take place next month. First, Tower Hamlets Local History Library in Bancroft Road, Mile End, has what should be a fascinating free talk on Thursday, 5 September (18.30 - 20.00hrs) entitled “The Petticoat Lane Foxtrot”. The next day, September 6, sees the opening of a great exhibition at the Brady Arts and Community Centre, 192-196 Hanbury 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
  • From Polish immigrant to East End artist: the lost Whitechapel boy

    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
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For the old Jeecs site, visit www.jeecs.org.uk/archive