When I was growing up, my late zaide introduced me to one of his oldest friends. The man he presented had a white beard, a black hat and the most expressive and beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen. This guy, I thought, could be the moshiach (it didn’t seem impossible, my zaide knew a lot of people).
In fact, his name was Yisroel – “Sruel” – Rudzinski and, I was told, he’d held me as a baby. He came from Pietrokow, the same town in Poland as my grandpa, and they’d then survived in the slave labour camps together. Sruel once explained to us how, when they were starving, my zaide had searched for crumbs and scrapings of flour and turned them into matzah that had saved their lives.
You couldn’t ignore Sruel’s spiritual magnificence. It filled him with a special light. I should say that this wasn’t only felt by me – there’s an extraordinary photograph of him meeting the late Queen (as part of a group of survivors) and you can see even Her Majesty was utterly captivated by him. Everyone was.
To me, Sruel was simply a great Jewish man. It never occurred to me to ask more. My zaide’s shop was on Windus Road (just off Stamford Hill) in the heart of the community where Sruel lived, yet I failed to make a proper link between him and the Charedi world.
It was part of a lack of interest I had about the Charedi way of life. To me, it was just a vague mish-mash of black hats, half-watched Netflix dramas and semi-remembered stories. Yes, I knew the strictly Orthodox were outwardly the most obviously Jewish and thus faced horrifying levels of anti-Jewish racism. Yes, when listening to sermons as a child, I’d always been entranced by the parables told by wise European rabbis of the past centuries – but that was more or less it. I’d filed away “what is Charedi life?” with other random bits of Judaism to think about later (like “who invented gefilte fish?” or “which dinosaurs were kosher?”). They take care of themselves, I thought, and there’s lots of other interesting stuff going on.
It seems odd now to recall being so incurious. An impossibly rich Jewish universe was less than ten minutes from me in Islington, but somehow didn’t spark my interest. I just never thought to reach out.
But recently I was invited by Levi Schapiro to a roundtable discussion with the Jewish Community Council (set up to look after groups of strictly Orthodox Jews) and, as my zaide would say, my eyes were opened.
The strictly Orthodox who live, worship, love and laugh in our cities have had to create their own micro-climate of care and support. They have their high-tech Hatzola ambulances (used by other communities because they’re the quickest to arrive) and the Shomrim, a specialised neighbourhood patrol to protect their streets. Or there’s the amazing Schmichel – the “cheer up squad” – visiting hospitals to provide entertainment and “clown care” to the unwell and MARS (Medical Advocacy Referral Service) who advocate and help liaise with medical professionals. The list goes on and on.
Yet the Charedi are also facing some of the most serious socio-economic challenges. Among other things, free school meals have been stopped for most of their kids. Many of their children are educated privately and there’s not enough resources left to provide them with food. Despite saving taxpayers the tens of millions of pounds it would cost in state- funded education, increasing numbers of Charedi children are leaving home and going to bed hungry as their pupils aren’t entitled to the comparatively small sum it would cost to feed them.
The community is doing what they can – they always do – but it’s heart-wrenching to learn that now, in 2024, within walking distance of my kitchen, Jewish children go to learn (the national curriculum and Torah) on an empty stomach – and I knew nothing about it.
Part of the problem is the way in which I – who likes to think of myself as a proud Jew – permitted myself to disregard a whole chunk of British Judaism. I’m guilty of being surprised and shocked that so many Jews experience this level of poverty. Having been to look and, importantly, to talk to members of the Charedi community, it’s a mistake I’ll not make again.
To be sure, there’s much on which I disagree with my friends in Stamford Hill (after all, we are Jews) but there are many lessons about what a Jewish community can be that we can all learn from them.
We must never forget that all of us – left and right, secular and Charedi, bagel and beigel – are plaited together into one magnificent super-challah of faith and history and, right now, at this exceptional moment for our people, building conversations and mutual support feels more important than ever.
