On 7 October of this year, the Progressive Jewish communities of Essex and East London united together for a commemoration service. One of the most challenging parts of the event was reflecting on how our Jewish identity has become more intense and more hidden since that terrible day.
This is something we, understandably, are all struggling with, especially as protests again wind their way through the streets of London.
An answer might come from the way our community acted during the most famous protest in the Jewish community, the Battle of Cable Street. We stood up to adversity, and Jewish identity shifted from an insular sense of being ‘well behaved’ to being a place of audacious inclusivity. Many families, including my own, have their stories of Cable Street, as do a few institutions still around today.
The story of Progressive Judaism can be told through the Settlement Synagogue. Founded by Basil and Rose Henriques out of the youth clubs they ran, it held the honour of being the only ever community affiliated to both the Liberal and Reform movements. Through a series of mergers and name changes, it’s what we know as Oaks Lane – my synagogue – today.
In her research for the book Remembering Cable Street, Nadia Valman presents a letter Rose wrote to mothers just after the Battle of Cable Street, which ends with a circular titled What the Jewish Woman and Girl Can Do to Combat Antisemitism.
The answer, according to Rose, is to “give by their whole lives, both at work and socially, the impression to their non-Jewish friends of being Loyal English Gentlewomen of the Jewish Faith”. When I presented this concept our synagogue teens, Rose’s children of today, they told me it spoke to them and their aspirations.
Rose’s call was that of the Jewish establishment trying to avoid Jew-baiting, and Jews being seen as a violent lower-class mob, easily drawn into a fight. Yet ‘the street’, the younger generation, was different. The children of Cable Street found the best defence against antisemitism was to join with the diverse community around them.
We know this was true among the club’s younger members. Some were secretly meeting, raising money for the day’s Communist cause, the Spanish Civil War. One, anonymously, is quoted as saying: “Food for Spain we used to do. All from the Club. Henriques never knew about it… he’d go mad.”
Scholars like Benjamin Lammers mark this moment as a generational shift in Jewish identity, from a “passive, almost hidden, Jewishness” to an “inclusive Englishness” which celebrates the diverse participant base in the battle of Cable Street.
Every time a protest winds its ways through the streets it tests us, and the hiding resumes. We need the strength to at least be Rose’s children, who were respectful and incredibly proud of their Judaism.
And we can push further, and be the Children of Cable Street. We can be audacious and continue to do interfaith work and work across communities, learning the stories of immigration from other cultures and people. We can create an image of an English Jew that would have made the diverse group on Cable Street proud.
