I’m one of those Jews Felicity Kendal thinks is wrong - The Jewish Chronicle

When Felicity Kendal said she’s worn her Star of David necklace every day since October 7, I couldn’t claim the same. “I know young people who would not dare to wear a Star of David now. That is wrong,” she told The Times. Wrong as it is, I am one of them.

It took a former colleague and fellow Jew some time to realise I too was one of the tribe. Squinting at my wedding pictures, and then at my face next to him, he said, “You’re Jewish? I didn’t know that. You don’t look very Jewish.”

This took me back to being a little girl when my maternal side of the family debated whether or not I was growing the “Levison nose”. I didn’t. I got my father’s – the Bray one. But I did inherit the Levison frizzy dark hair, or Jewfro as it’s affectionately known in my house. And although I now have less time than ever to straighten it, for reasons that are too plentiful for this article, never have I felt it more necessary to tame or lighten the unruly hair. Because it might just make me look Jewish.

It’s funny giving birth to babies expecting them to emerge with your own dark hair, only for them to be blonde with piercing blue eyes – and even stranger when the eyes stay as blue as when they first opened. “So Aryan!” an Iranian friend teased as she cuddled my latest blonde-haired cherub.

I’m sort of ashamed to admit that, since October 7, while many of my friends have, like the Good Life actor, worn their biggest Chais and Magen Davids proudly on show, I have fantasised about running away with my family to Suffolk’s green and pleasant pastures or the remote mountains of the Scottish Highlands and hiding my roots altogether. As if you can just shut your identity away in a box, and expect it to dutifully stay in there like woolly jumpers packed away for winter.

Because being visibly Jewish does not appear to be the safest option given the surge in antisemitic incidents that have taken place since the Hamas attack.

And I am not alone. An annual poll by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in 2023 showed that 70 per cent of EU Jews said they have occasionally hidden their Jewish identity, while more than half worry about their safety and that of their families – and nine out of ten have experienced antisemitism.

Not that I have experienced any of that first hand. I comfortably get on with life as normal as a British Jew, going about my work and hanging out with friends of all backgrounds.

“Except you do make constant adaptions,” a good friend who anxiously observes every act of antisemitism pointed out. “There’s lots of ‘trying to ignore it’ in your everyday experiences.”

He is referring to my actively avoiding town on a Saturday for fear of getting caught in the pro-Palestine marches, my weird compulsion to sidle up protectively to religious brethren on the Tube just in case someone bothers them, or, even the way I accept as normal the extensive additional security measures at my children’s school and our synagogue. All are things that have subtly changed a way of life.

And my concealment, my friend asserts, is a huge part of this. “You’re experiencing it constantly,” he says in response to my unsettling examples of casual antisemitism, when a friend and work associate gave me a generous introduction to her colleague that entirely omitted the name of my workplace. I didn’t need to ask why.

Now that time has passed, so too has my urge to take my young children up a Highland mountain to restart life with fresh identities. Or at least it had, until a message came through with instructions for what to do in the event of an emergency at an upcoming community family event – at the recommendation of CST. There’s nothing like killing off the carefree spirit and joy that a community event is supposed to bring like the thought of a warning bell followed by everyone running for their lives. This is what it’s like to be Jewish today, I thought.

But that warning bell did not sound. Instead, we made Havdalah around the fire, sang Jewish songs together, laughed and danced. How could I have given even a passing thought to leaving something so beautiful behind?

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