AS
A SCHOOLBOY, growing up in the then flourishing East End, had
its advantages. Everyone was more or less in the same boat and
class distinctions were indiscernible. Though the elementary
and central school populations were mixed, there was no
barrier between the Christian and the Jewish children and no
feelings or expressions of racial discrimination. Not in the
classroom, not from the teachers, nor in the playground or the street. We
were all of a kind—identifying with English history, its folk
tales and songs, keenly interested in the annual Boat Race
(somehow always cheering Cambridge rather than Oxford), mad
about cricket and soccer, playing together all the seasonal
games that were played all over the country. The hymns at
morning assembly were clearly universal and never overtly
Christian, thus making it possible for all to sing together in
comfortable unison.
We lived on
the third floor of a large complex of tenement housing, but
the huge number of stairs were no hindrance to a boisterous
and energetic young boy who enjoyed his life as I did. The
distinction came, when and if you attended “cheder” in the
afternoons, after you had your tea. My mother enrolled me at
the renowned Redman’s Road Talmud Torah when I was seven. It
was as if one attended a second school every day, an
additional duty for being Jewish! The instruction,
organisation and discipline were identical to those of a
regular school. This “cheder” was very different from the
usual Jewish religious educational institutions, in that all
the instruction was in modern Hebrew (although the Ashkenazi
pronunciation was used and not the Sephardi, as is now common).
The spirit behind this, was the character of the man who
founded and headed the Talmud Torah—the Rev. J. K. Goldbloom,
a fervent Zionist who had been acquainted with Theodore Herzl
himself. He was a wise and learned scholar and a much loved
and revered
leader in the wider community. He had to fight a bitter
struggle to establish this visionary type of Hebrew-speaking “cheder”,
but the orthodox rabbinate forced him to adhere to the
Ashkenazi rather than the Sephardi
pronunciation, which for them was too closely
associated with Zionist ideology.
The
teachers were thorough and soon I became enthralled with all
the subjects taught—Grammar, Chumash, Rashi, Mishnah, Gmarrah.
In becoming a star pupil, I was also earmarked for
participating in the annual Prize Day play, written, directed
and produced by the headmaster himself. This was, of course,
always in Hebrew, on a theme connecting the current pioneering
in “Palestine” with past celebrations of the major nature
festivals. Whenever he visited Palestine, he would return with
the latest songs being sung
there by the pioneers and would introduce them into the plays
he wrote. He was a man of innovation and introduced events
into our lives to make them interesting and more satisfying.
On Tu B’Shvat, we would be presented with small boxes
resembling the JNF collection box, filled with almonds from
the holy land. Annually, there was an outing to the
countryside, replete with games and picnic, an unforgettable
thrill riding in the then prevailing “charabanc”—an open-top
type of bus.
From a very
young age, my mother would take me to the Yiddish Theatre and
I can still recall climbing the endless number of stairs, lit
by gas jets set into the walls, to reach the highest gallery,
which were, of course, the least expensive seats. This was her
most enjoyable form of entertainment and little did she
realise how she was inspiring me with a lifelong love of the
theatre. The plays were mostly musical melodramas plucking at
the
heartstrings of the audience but ending happily. My own
dramatic efforts came eventually in school plays, by appearing
in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” and George Bernard Shaw’s “St.
Joan,” and also in the annual play staged by my “cheder.”
My deep
grounding in Hebrew and love of the history of my people, was
to lead me naturally to the Zionist youth movement Habonim, in
the mid-Thirties. There was never much in the way of homework
from school or cheder in my youth, so being the possessor of a
pleasant treble voice, I was
able
to belong to a synagogue choir, at the Stepney Orthodox. I
also played the violin for a time and was obsessed with the
idea of becoming a conductor. Surreptitiously I would stand in
front of a mirror and throw myself into the part, while
listening to a few old 78 rpm records on a manually driven
portable gramophone that came into our possession at home. In
adolescence I went to sing in the mixed choir (children and
adults of both genders) of the East London United Synagogue,
where at the beginning of World War II, I was to be asked to
conduct the choir in the “temporary” absence of the permanent
conductor. I had already begun to lead a choral group,
organising a Habonim Chorus that specialised in singing
“Palestinian” folk songs for all manner of youth movement
events. I had also joined the Habonim
Central Choir, which met weekly at the movement’s offices in
Soho. Sight-reading music and being able to impart the various
voice parts by repetition, led eventually to my becoming the
conductor of this choir too. There are two outstanding
performances which I conducted that remain in my memory. The
first is the full choral wedding service we performed as a
gift for our original founder and conductor Shubi Olsvanger,
and which we had prepared in the utmost secrecy, with the
connivance of the minister of the Highgate Synagogue, until
the day of the wedding. I had to teach all four voice parts of
the responses and the hymns, etc. after the regular weekly
practice was over, without Shubi cottoning on. The second is
the four part rendering of the song “Sovi Sovi Mamterah” which
I taught from a handwritten score, written especially for the
sound-track of a film named “The Promised Land” that was being
produced. The choir was accompanied by the London Symphony and
was conducted at the recording studio by Muir Mathieson, a
famous conductor of the time.
Both my
knowledge of Hebrew and music were gifts that were to stand me
in good stead in the years to follow.
In
comparison with today's pace of life, the pre-war days of my
youth, though lived in a relatively teeming city, were
absolutely tranquil. There was no constant prevailing noise
from motor vehicles, for there were very few indeed, apart
from the commercial ones. Airplanes were a thing of the
future, and became familiar only when the war was on. I
remember seeing the enormous R101—the world’s largest airship,
moving oh so slowly over London in 1931. The wailing of
sirens, the blaring radios that seem to punctuate life
wherever you are these days, were unknown. Transportation was
by horse-drawn carts and the public conveyance, was the tram
that rode on iron rails embedded in the cobbled streets. The
greatest thrill was to climb to the upper section of the tram
and view the scene going by at the daring speed of some 10
miles per hour! There was no telephone to disturb the home at
all hours, no radio or TV, no stereo. They were not yet even
invented. Pollution was a word that remained hidden in the
dictionary.
I recall
graphically the daily delivery of milk, when the horse-drawn
“chariot” would pull up with its large urns and you would ask
for a pint to be ladled into the jug you had brought to the
milkman. Later came the bottle delivery. No cars were ever
parked in our streets, but one would see the horses resting
between their traces, with their nosebags raised for them to
munch away. When they left, there was a rush to collect the
manure for the gardens.
Each season
brought its traditional sights: the muffin man with his large
tray balanced on his head and the wonderful smell when you
toasted the muffins with the special long fork in front of the
open fire; the glowing fire in the barrel of the roasted
chestnut vendor; the large slices of watermelon on the open
cart of the greengrocer; the triangular fruit-ice brought by
the Wall’s Ice Cream man pedalling his square locker near the
school. There were regular visits by the coalman, always with
blackened face and hands, wearing a leather cowl over his head
and heaving the coal-laden sacks on his shoulders, walking up
large flights of stairs, if necessary, to dump his wares.
An
interesting sight for us as youngsters was the knife-grinder
who would work his wheel on a hand drawn cart and sharpen the
knives for the women of the neighbourhood. Our street games
were also dictated by the seasons, something that was
instinctive and countrywide. We would enjoy pushing hoops of
iron along the streets with a stick; playing cricket in the
summer and the winter in the middle of the road, without fear
of the traffic which was so mild; stringing hard chestnuts for
playing conkers; matching fast revolving wooden tops against
each other, games with nuts during Pesach.
My friend
Yankel and I would spend hours at constructing elaborate
machinery with the ubiquitous Meccano set, the favourite hobby
of all boys of that era. Later we experimented with building a
crystal set in order to hear the first broadcasts of the BBC
through headphones. When the actual “wireless” came into
being, we had to regularly take the glass acid-accumulators
for charging, in order to give the set its power! Pocket money
was never higher than a penny, unless you went to the cinema,
where for a sixpence, at the new vast Troxy Cinema, you were
entertained by a programme that is inconceivable today—2
feature films, a cartoon, a newsreel, a stage show with at
least 3 different items accompanied by a live orchestra and a
sing-along performance on the Wurlitzer organ! I still
remember the first sound film—”The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson
which was screened at the Mile End Cinema, next door to the
most famous of the East End’s Chip shops “Johnny Isaacs,”
where for a penny you got a whole mound of chips and sprinkled
them generously with salt and vinegar (to this day chips
without vinegar are totally tasteless for me!).
Whenever I
visit England I still compare the experiences of those times
with today’s “technological advances”— I miss the steam trains
of yore with their separate compartments and the corridors
that ran for the length of each carriage; the two mail
deliveries per day brought by the uniformed postman with his
helmet that resembled an inverted gravy dish; the old familiar
smells of the chimney sweep; the bread baking in the oven of
the
corner baker, the flat irons on steaming
laundry, the fog, the special Jewish holiday foods. We had no
electricity and all lighting and cooking were done by gas for
which a penny had to be inserted into a slotted meter. To save
on gas, I would read deep into the night by candlelight.
Borrowing books cost nothing and my favourite haunt then as
now was the local municipal lending library. They may have
been hard times, those years of economic depression and
rampant unemployment, but people’s needs were simple and there
was no intrusive advertising for the “better life.” Whatever
limited means parents possessed, they skimped on themselves
for the sake of their children. They were conscious of the
need however, to do what is expected when a Jewish holiday or
a family celebration occurred. Somehow these events were made
into milestones and though modest by today’s flamboyant
standards, probably necessitated borrowing money from
relatives and neighbours to ensure a measure of enjoyment.
Such was my
Bar-mitzvah, held, after my having read the entire weekly
portion instead of just the customary few sentences, in the
humble abode of a family member. It was a home-cooked dinner
and not catered, but the atmosphere was a happy one. I had
written my speech inspired by my growing enthusiasm for the
hoped-for renewal of the Jewish people’s future in their
homeland—Palestine. I said that my dream in life was that when
I grew into adulthood, I would be able to achieve my ambition
by going to Eretz Yisrael to be a pioneer! Like others in my
circle of friends and classmates, I was giving expression to
the deep influence on our lives, by our “cheder” headmaster,
the renowned “J.K.”, a number of whose star pupils became
active in the Habonim youth movement as a result. Many of them
who came through the war, made it to Palestine.
I could not
have foreseen what eventually transpired—the major historical
and cataclysmic happenings that my generation has witnessed,
culminating in the unforgettable thrill of achieving an
ambition that could
only
be dreamed of for centuries—to be present at the establishment
of the State of Israel, to have participated in its defence
and in its construction.
