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

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.

A classic of Yiddish theatre has at last had its UK premiere – 109 years after it was written.

Treasure by David Pinski was staged – in English – at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre in Earl's Court, south-west London, for a four week season from Tuesday October 20 to Saturday November 14.

The glamorous world created by Boris, the iconic East End photographer whose life and work were featured in a recent issue of our magazine The Cable, is now the subject of a wonderful website, www.eastendvintageglamour.org.uk.

A theatre company in Boston in the US and an arts centre in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, have been brought together – thanks to a Cable article about the East End artist and poet Isaac Rosenberg.

Leah Lehrman was just 16 when she was killed while cycling from her East End home to central London and her job as a tailor. Now, 100 years after her death in one of the first Zeppelin raids of the First World War, her tomb has a memorial plaque after a 20-year search by her niece, Janet Foster, for the resting place of the aunt she never knew.

The life of Dora Diamant, a remarkable East Ender by adoption, was commemorated by JEECS on May 26 with a morning service at East Ham Jewish cemetery and an afternoon talk by Professor Kathi Diamant, her biographer, at Toynbee Hall.

"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.

Latest news

  • An evening with Jennifer Rinkoff

    An evening with Jennifer Rinkoff discussing The Jewish Bakery: 100 Family Recipes from East London’s Oldest Jewish Bakery. Read More
  • The secret side of Andy, Stepney poet

    Stepney-born Andy Strowman, poet of the East End, has sent us this fascinatng reminiscence of growing up in Stepney in  the 1950s, concluding with one  of his poems. Read More
  • JEECS tickets offer for East End theatre's world premiere

    There’s a great ticket offer for JEECS followers  from the Arcola Theatre in Dalston (24 Ashwin St, London E8 3DL)  for its  forthcoming production of The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt, France, 1940, a world premiere from writer and director Julia Pascal (Blueprint Medea; Crossing Jerusalem) that blends satire, physical theatre and cabaret to reveal forgotten histories of women caught… Read More
  • Whitechapel Gallery invites you to share your East End Jewish history

    London's Whitechapel Gallery is holding what should be a fascinating free event on Thursday July 16, with a "sharing evening" inviting people to come in with objects, photographs, documents or mementos connected to London’s Jewish East End. The Gallery is also holding a walk with expert guide Rachel Kolsky on the same day. Read More
  • Nelson Street shul, the last purpose-built Synagogue in the East End

    When papers reported that East London Central Synagogue’s (ELCS) building was the target of alleged arson, they struggled to name it. Most, including the Slice, chose to name it a ‘former synagogue on Nelson Street’. The struggle with naming the synagogue is that, in many ways, it’s not really just one place of worship. Read More
  • Grodzinski bakery memories sought

      A request from noted historian Pam Fox, author of several brilliant books on Jewish social history, for information on and anecdotes about the East End's famous Grodzinski bakery business. If you can help, please contact Pam via her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pam.fox.108 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  Read More
  • Asleep through the Battle of Cable Street

      The distinguished Oscar-winning film director and illustrator Arnold Schwartzman OBE has sent us the following fascinating reminiscences. I may take the claim to be the sole survivor of the Battle of Cable Street! Aged 9 months, I was fast asleep upstairs in my grandfather Michael Finkleson’s boot repair shop at 292a Cable Street as the battle raged along the… Read More
  • Escape from the East End Blitz

    On September 7 1940 I was four years old living with my parents in Sidney Street, in London's East End, on the first day of the London Blitz. I recall that it was a hot evening and my mother had set three salads on the kitchen table when I noticed out of the window that on the neighbouring flat roof there was a man stripped to the waist washing his… Read More
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
› ‹

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