Many aspects of Jewish life could be described as physically or mentally unhealthy, whether it’s full-fat cream cheese, chicken schmaltz and fried latkes or kvetching, facing down antisemitism and supporting Spurs
Like many traditions, it was hardly healthy but then many aspects of Jewish life could be described as physically or mentally unhealthy, whether it’s full-fat cream cheese, chicken schmaltz and fried latkes or kvetching, facing down antisemitism and supporting Spurs. But, as Auntie Sissie once replied when asked, “How are you?”, “What’s the use of complaining?”
Smoking has declined in Britain. Bans, tax, awareness of the dangers and healthier lifestyles have seen to that. It is, quite literally, a dying habit and, of course, that’s a good thing. But I missed it and the more I think about it, the more I realise it felt like it was part of my Jewishness.
Like many Jewish kids in the Seventies, I was surrounded by smokers. Every time we saw uncles with names like Mendel and Hymie and aunties called Sissie and Renee, it seemed they were never without a cigarette or cigar in their hand. Auntie Lily even went further and had a cigarette holder, along with a tiny gold Ronson lighter on a chain. But then she’d married an American during the war and lived in New York so we thought she was sophisticated.
The parents of my Jewish friends were usually smokers, their homes always had a big, fancy ashtray – often onyx or green glass – on the coffee table and, occasionally, one of those circular metal box jobs on a stand where you push the middle bit down to let the fag end disappear into it.
Committed puffers: Mark's grandparents outside their Stepney council flat[Missing Credit]
My grandparents smoked like chimneys in their two-bed council house in Stepney. The ceilings were covered in yellow tar – what Farrow & Ball would probably call “Amber Sunrise” today. They lived into their nineties. My own parents didn’t smoke. My mum grew up in a country pub and detested the smell. She died of breast cancer at 66 and my dad of a heart attack at 74.
Smoking Jews were not just limited to family functions. Turning on the TV or going to the cinema was no different. Jews on screen, it seemed, were perennial smokers. Syd Tafler and Sid James, Grades Lew or Michael, Groucho Marx, Barbra Streisand, Miriam Karlin, right up to Robert De Niro as Sam Rothstein in Casino and Krusty the clown.
Two of my favourite Jewish writers, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, were smokers. Bellow once wrote: “When a man is smoking a cigar and wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it is harder to find out how he feels.”
I blame being Jewish for my first cigarette. It was a result of a series of mid-Seventies bar mitzvahs, including my own. Those of you old enough to remember will recall that tables had, in their centre, a container of free cigarettes, often in a round box branded with the black and gold of John Player Specials.
I blame being Jewish for my first cigarette. It was a result of a series of mid-Seventies bar mitzvahs, including my own
As our parents dad-danced at the Sir James Hawkey Hall or Lambourne Rooms to a band with a name like Melvin Shapnick’s Swinging Seven and a vocalist resembling Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, us kids would grab a handful of smokes and go outside to try them out. Some, such as my friend Andrew, took one puff, gagged and has never touched a fag since. But for some of us it felt dangerous, cool and rebellious and the habit remained.
Meeting up in Valentines Park after shul services on Yom Kippur, literally scores of young Jewish teenagers would deem that having a cigarette did not constitute breaking the fast.
And so years of smoking followed. It didn’t help that I went into journalism – from a weekend job as a messenger when aged 15 to my local paper, the Ilford Recorder at 19 and then on to Fleet Street and, subsequently, running my own agency. In those earlier years, everyone smoked. Cigarettes would be lit when starting to write copy, another lit when checking it through, then off to a smoky pub and back again to a smoky office.
But let’s face facts. Taking up the habit is not something I recommend, it’s a personal choice and the negative reaction is both expected and justified. It’s not the cost either – my wife travels abroad for work and her sister is cabin crew so I survive on Duty Free. It’s all about health. I reckon that, at 62 years old, I have 20 years left if I’m lucky and more if I’m unlucky. If this means I knock a few years off a dementia-ridden future where I am a burden on my family, then fine.
I have many friends who feel life beings at 60. Good luck to them. For me, it was a signpost telling me time was running out so, sod it, I’m going to do what I want. Yes, it’s probably stupid and unhealthy but it’s also a simple, life-affirming pleasure and, for once, I can claim to be doing my bit to keep alive a declining Jewish tradition.
