On the first morning of lockdown easing, I experienced what the Talmud calls “an irresistible urge”. Being of a Talmudic disposition, I consulted the page at Moed Katan 13 and did as it recommended, dressing in black and heading off to a town where one is unknown “to perform his heart’s desires”.
In black-tie, trainers and Covid mask, I ran up the hill to West Hampstead from where, I remembered, there was a train to Brighton. Why Brighton? After eight weeks at home I had a need to see and smell and touch the sea, no matter how briny the water or how stony the beach.
The station screen flashed up an 11:41 service getting in at 13:17 and I was about to leap over the barrier when I saw a sign saying that trains are running for key workers. Now while my work for the JC is assuredly essential, it has not yet been included in the government’s list of exemptions. Memo to self: ask Boris if my Talmudic urge might qualify me for a 110-mile round trip to the coast.
So, Brighton. Actually, the only person I know there is someone I last clinked glasses with at the Queen’s jubilee party at the Royal Academy, way back before Facebook took over my address book. No idea if she’s still alive. As for Brighton’s other attractions — antique shops, whelk stalls and gay minyanim — these are not my irresistible urge, not yet anyway. No disrespect, but Brighton would not normally be one of my top ten destinations for desperate Jews, even with a kosher takeaway and a community dating back to the 1780s, half a century before a dying British monarch gave it competition by muttering on his deathbed (it is said) ‘baruch Bognor’.
Hove, now that’s Jewish. Hove is where people’s grandparents bought a 2-bed flat with a balcony so they could spend their 70s kvetching at seagulls. The gulls in Hove swoop for gefilte fish, like out-of-towners at a shul kiddush.
The real Jewish seaside was further west in Bournemouth, where kosher hotels ran along the front as far as the eye could see. There was the Cumberland, the Normandie, the Majestic, the Green Park and any number of kosher pensions, each with its peculiarities; you cannot imagine how peculiar, and I haven’t the space to tell you here and now. Suffice to say that the distinguishing feature of Dorset’s kosher hotels was their strict diet: cooked breakfast with kippers, elevenses on silver service in the garden room, proper lunch, English tea at four, four-course dinner and finally “refreshments” before bedtime. That’s a diet. That’s why people went to Bournemouth. For their health.
The strictest Bournemouth hotels had a rabbi. He sat in the lobby looking as if he’d found heaven on earth.
I don’t remember guests using sun lotion. At dinner I saw bald pates baked to a lobster shade of red and upper arms that peeled like Jaffas. Not pretty, but Bournemouth was not big on looks. The objet d’art at the Cumberland was a stone dolphin that spat water into the swimming pool.
After ‘the Continent’ became available under an easing of the Exchange Control Act 1947, when all the sterling you could carry was £10 in cash, I got taken to a Belgian resort called Knokke-le Zoute, hybrid name for Hebrew games. Gambling was illegal in Britain. Jews got a summons if they were caught spinning a dreidl. Under liberal Belgian law, Knokke had a casino. And a kosher hotel. Across the road from one another, if I remember right.
One evening I saw a man check in at the hotel, smartly dressed, nice hat, two leather suitcases. Next morning, he was sitting in the lobby, waiting for a cab to the station. “Lost it all at the wheel,” my Dad said. I took away an important lesson that no good would ever come out of Belgium.
My other takeaway was an ideal of the sea as a space out of time, somewhere I can always go to when I need to find myself. I have walked all night along the Tel Aviv beach, reaching Jaffa for coffee with sunrise. I have sung a Mahler symphony at the top of my voice in out-of-season Biarritz. I have roared at the surf in Sydney. I have swum into the Sephardi Atlantic at Lisbon.
Sea is my sense of freedom. The need for sea after lockdown was a primal urge and the only thing that stopped me from catching a train was an ancestral respect for rules, allied to an over-developed sense of the ridiculous: who does he think he is? So I slunk back down the hill and prepared to wait a bit longer.
