"My father was a wandering Lubliner"

Identity shift

Those of us who get teary-eyed watching Fiddler on the Roof may not instinctively feel this, but an important Jewish tradition (“Tradition!”) is to abandon out-of-date perceptions of ourselves. When times and circumstances change, so must our understanding of who we are. It’s obvious on a personal level: my name is ‘Vos’, but though I eat chips with mayonnaise, I’m not Dutch.

Change of self-perception is visible too, through our communal history. Of the 160+ shuls which have existed in the City and East End of London [1], more than 30 had toponymic names, including the Kalischer Chevra [Kalisz, Poland], the Sons of Klatsk [Kletsk, Belarus] or the Sons of Britchan [Briceni, Moldova].

Less Fiddler, more Textile Worker

Another such community, the ‘Sons of Lodz’ synagogue off Petticoat Lane, merged in 1934 with the Lublin Synagogue in Cannon Street Road. The founders of both shuls presumably had roots in the cities after which they were named: Lodz was a multicultural industrial metropolis, preeminent in textile manufacture, while Lublin was a much smaller and more Polish place.

Did the founders of these communities think their old territorial affiliations would endure? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Thoroughly Modern Minhag

Today, not a single non-Chasidish Ashkenazi shul in London seems to have a ‘name’ connection to anywhere outside the UK. Many old affiliations have been superseded by new, broader identities, capping the demise of vast political, financial and cultural divides that were a divisive feature of Anglo-Jewry at the turn of the 20th century. British Jews, in the main, meet as ‘Jews first’, rather than as ‘Lodzers’ or ‘Lubliners’, hochfensters or hicks, middle-class or crushingly poor.

If Anglo-Jewry is less eclectic than it once was, we arguably have more in common than ever before. Not only does nobody primarily identify as a Lodzer or Lubliner, but we are aware that how we perceive ourselves now – an Essex boy; a Hendonite; a south Londoner; a family rooted with seeming permanence in Dollis Hill – can change quickly.

From Lublin, to Cannon Street Road, to north London, to… Stevenage?

Between 1977 and 1983, the number of Jewish households in Hertfordshire grew by 400, largely accounted for by Jews moving out from Greater London.[2] In the 2011 census, more than 14,000 people recorded their religion as ‘Jewish’ just in the borough of Hertsmere.

Simultaneously, Jewish populations in several London boroughs shrank substantially.

This protracted move out of London is a continuation of a century-long trend, starting in places like Cannon Street Road. The 2021 census results will indicate whether Hertsmere is still drawing Jews in from the UK in general, perhaps even if we’re now moving ‘beyond Borehamwood’. The 1980s papers from the Board of Deputies, and latterly the recent censuses, directly support work that the US is doing in East Borehamwood and Hatfield, for instance, addressing nascent Jewish communities.

“Maybe that’s why we always wear our hats”

The full 2021 census data won’t be published until 2023, but this is a call to engage with demographic data in general, particularly any analysis published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Demographic information enables us to refresh our understanding of ourselves and the community at large: how many school-age children do we have, how many foreign-born Jews who perhaps don’t speak English as a first language; how many elderly people who may need visiting? No more ‘sons of Klatsk’ or even ‘daughters of Lublin’, we should aim to be well-informed about ourselves and our communities in order to be prepared to take on the future before it arrives.

After all the work is done, of course – as ever, l’dor v’dor, unchanging – we can sit back and sing Sunrise, Sunset with gusto and feeling, if we want, as if nothing ever changes.

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[1] Jewish Communities and Records UK: https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/London/East_End_London.htm [2] Synagogue Membership in the United Kingdom 1983, by Barry A. Kosmin and Caren Levy, Research Unit, Board of Deputies, 1983: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/download?id=2934