If, for a minute, we imagined our Jewish communal leaders were a bunch of A-list actors, Raymond Simonson would surely be known as “one of the nicest men in showbusiness”.
Like those megastars who are known for making cups of tea for their film crew, on the short walk from the foyer of the Jewish cultural centre JW3, where he is CEO, to his office for our interview, Simonson greets a visitor like an old friend, checks in on a café employee, shouts “Bless you!” to an elderly man with a nasty cold and gives a hug to his mum, who has dropped in to help with the food bank.
It’s partly this intrinsic warmth which has, no doubt, enabled Simonson to climb up the ranks of Jewish leadership – starting out as a youth leader at his local Redbridge Jewish Youth and Community Centre, becoming director of informal education at the UJIA/Jewish Agency and later, the first full-time executive director of Limmud – before arriving in 2012 at what must be one of the best jobs in the British Jewish community, the first CEO of what was soon to open as JW3.
Raymond Simonson, CEO of JW3 (Photo: Gaby Wine)
As a leader in a Zionist youth movement, I remember Simonson as a legendary figure – rather gangly with long curly hair, bouncing around while feeding us nuggets of advice on how to engage 40 sleep-deprived rebellious 16-year-olds on an Israel tour.
Nearly 30 years later, the 51-year-old might not be quite as gangly or bouncy and the curls are significantly shorter, but the indefatigable “can do” attitude remains undimmed.
Among the neat rows of black frames on the wall of his office, with quotes such as Rabbi Tarfon’s “You are not obligated to finish the work; neither are you free to desist from it”, are printouts on JW3 headed paper of “Our Vision”, “Our Mission” and “Our Values”, which, says Simonson, act as a constant reminder as to why he does what he does.
The vision, says Simonson, who can quote it almost word for word, is “of a vibrant, diverse, unified Jewish community… We want that community engaged with Jewish life and actively contributing to wider society.”
In March 2020, when Covid-19 forced the country into lockdown and the pause button was pressed on all in-person cultural activities, Simonson went home and wrote down the vision and values of JW3 on a giant post it note, which he stuck on his bedroom wall. “Because I have a standing desk at work due to back ache, I put the ironing board up [at home]. I had a box of Kerplunk and put the computer on top of that. I always thought that was a bit prescient – everything was about to fall to pieces.”
But during what felt like apocalyptic times, Simonson ensured that the vision, mission and values of JW3 remained solid. “[They were] in front of me, stuck on the bedroom wall…and every decision we took…went through that prism.”
Raymond Simonson, in his office at JW3 (Photo: Gaby Wine)
The idea for JW3 came about after the philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield visited the JCC in Manhattan. “She was blown away by what she saw. It was a high-quality building of the type we didn’t have here. She saw Jews of different types using the same space… She also saw that there were non-Jews coming in to use it. That was highly unusual.”
While Duffield was contemplating how something similar could be set up in London, Simonson, meanwhile, was at the helm of the cross-communal organisation Limmud and envisioning how the community could enjoy its annual conference all year round. “Once a year, Jews of all different types come together and celebrated Jewishness in all of its flavours, having arguments for the sake of heaven.
“In one room there is someone studying Torah, and in another room, there is a Jewish comedian, and, in another, someone is thinking: ‘What’s the Jewish response to the refugee crisis?’ [I thought:] ‘Could there be something more year-round, where different Jews come together, where it’s about vibrant Jewish life?’”
Ray Simonson presenting "millionth visitor" certificates
Today, JW3 attracts around 3,000 visitors a week to its classes, workshops, screenings and concerts. It has become so well known that it features on a TfL poster of landmarks of the Metropolitan line, being just up the road from Finchley Road Tube station.
Not driven by any sort of political agenda, its visitors and speakers alike come from what Simonson describes as the “broad tent” of mainstream Anglo-Jewry.
A case in point was the pantomime it staged in December. As people were still reeling from October 7, Simonson and his team were not banking on people being in the mood for laughter and frivolity. In the end, more than 6,000 people came to see it “from Orthodox rabbis to LGBTQ-plus groups of people in their twenties and thirties. There were grandparents, people from the nursery. People brought non-Jewish friends, The reason we kept hearing was that it was a place to come for a warm, heimische, Jewish hug, where people could laugh Jewishly, where they could sing Jewishly, where they could feel safe.” Tickets are already on sale for this winter’s pantomime of Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah.
Actors Josh Glanc playing "The Big Bad Pig" and Gemma Barnett playing "Red" perform during a preview of "Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Pig" at JW3 (Photo: Getty Images)
But the “broad tent” approach doesn’t come without its challenges. As Simonson, who wears a badge with the words “Two Jews. Three opinions. One JW3” on his lapel, concedes: “diverse and unified”, while not opposing ideas, “can be in tension with each other”.
As someone who welcomes a spectrum of views, he feels frustrated by the communal divisions which have surfaced, particularly over Israel and Gaza in the past year. “I feel there has been a lack of nuance in community conversations…Very quickly, we too often turn into children in the school playground – the slapping, the screaming, the shouting.”
Simonson himself has, at times, found himself at the receiving end of “school playground” bullying, something which visibly upsets him. “If we have an event here with more of a left-wing speaker, people will write to me or go on social media, calling me ‘self-hating Jew’, ‘a kapo’ and ‘anti-Zionist’. I find the word ‘kapo’ one of the most offensive things a Jew can say to another Jew. I don’t want to big myself up, but you’re talking to someone who’s spent their entire career, 30-plus years, working for the Jewish community.”
It was those early years as a youth worker which proved formative for Simonson. “I met kids who had all sorts of different views, and actually talking and listening in a proper dialogue is hard work, but [these are] courageous, meaningful conversations. As Jews, we’ve been doing that for millennia. It’s what we’re good at when we decide we want to do it.”
Since October 7, JW3 has become a focal point for the community’s campaign to highlight the plight of the hostages held in Gaza. Soon after the terrorist atrocities, JW3 put up the Empty Shabbat Table, with posters of hostages on vacant chairs, and a similar Empty Seder Table was displayed at Pesach.
In collaboration with branding expert Marcel Knobil, the cultural centre opened the Lovelock Hostage Bridge in February, where hundreds of people have since attached padlocks.
Lovelock Hostage Bridge at JW3, assembled to highlight the plight of the hostages still held in Gaza (Photo: Gaby Wine)
The displays attracted the attention of national broadcasters, and when Simonson went on TV, while he mainly spoke “about the Jewish people and the hostages” he also made sure he talked of the “innocent Palestinians whose lives have been lost”. As he had anticipated, his empathy for innocent Palestinians wasn’t well received by some members of the Jewish community.
Simonson says he is not alone in feeling that “nuance is the first casualty in war”. “I have spoken to lots of Jewish community leaders and lots of rabbis, who, privately, are having absolute anguish at the moment about the scenes they see in Gaza, who are being torn up because of their Jewish values and their Judaism. But, publicly, standing up and saying that is very difficult because the reaction in the community is: ‘You are self-hating.’”
As the son of a mother who was born in Nazi-occupied France and hidden by a Catholic neighbour, Simonson’s compassion for “the other” runs deep, not only in his concern for innocent Gazans and the JW3 food bank, which he set up during Covid, but also in the care he shows non-Jewish staff at JW3.
After October 7, Simonson took it upon himself to check twice a day that the Muslim women wearing headscarves working in the café, were doing OK after “a couple of people made comments about them”.
He notes that some of the security staff, “who protect us”, are Muslim too. “It’s ridiculous to me that there are people in our community who think: ‘Everyone who is Muslim is a problem.’ When we say we want a diverse, unified, Jewish community, we’re also trying to help British society become unified because that’s good for the Jews as well as for society.”
At the JW3 Krav Maga school, which is the largest in the UK, 80 per cent of the students aren’t Jewish. The centre is also home to an independent nursery, where Jewish children learn and play alongside children of diverse faiths and cultures. “I like to say I’m a particular universalist or a universal particularist. As in, I really believe in the particular – this tiny Jewish community that we are. I’m passionate about it, and it’s part of me. But I’m also a universalist.
“I see the wider world, and I see our place as part of it.”
For dates and tickets for “Goldie Frocks and the Bear Mitzvah”, click here
