It never used to matter, she adds, but it has in the period since October 2023 when someone told her she was “very brave” to wear it because “it could be dangerous”. But before this “nobody ever noticed it”, she says. “It is now something that makes people say, ‘Hmm…’ so that in itself is worrying. I don’t know that you would say, ‘Oh, you’re a Buddhist,’ would you?
Actress Felicity Kendal with Richard Briers, Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith, the cast of The Good LifeBBC
“I don’t want to live in a world where you can’t wear a cross, or a Sikh cannot wear his turban because he will be automatically looked at not as a person, but as different, and as an identity. Now people see different groups of people as enemies because of something they wear.
“You just have to look at people as people. Let’s build a bridge, not build a wall for goodness sake.”
Kendal is troubled to have heard of young actresses not wearing their Stars of David at auditions, fearing these may cost them roles.
“That’s the reason I wear it, because I’m older now, and it doesn’t really matter. I haven’t got to find who I am, and I also don’t have to be afraid. It’s the fear people have now that is a horrible thing that’s going wrong. No peoples in the world should be afraid of their identity.”
Even before October 7, she had heard from some younger members of her family and friends, who she does not name, that they had witnessed or been involved in “unpleasant [antisemitic] bullying” at university. “That was affecting me,” she says. “Hiding one’s identity out of fear cannot be the way we live. It cannot be allowed in a society. Children in school and in university should not, because of a political situation that’s not of their making, be bullied or terrified. And a little boy not going in to school with a kippah… this is a terrible thing.”
At the opening night of A View From The Bridge at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2024 (SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Live News)Alamy Stock Photo
Kendal has always loved reading. Lately she’s been reading about inherited trauma, and how it has been proven to be carried – encoded in our minds, bodies and DNA – down through generations. “The wounds of our ancestors do not disappear,” she says. “They shape us in a way that we do not often realise.
“Research suggests that what happened to Jewish people during the Holocaust changed us genetically for many generations, likewise, what happened to Israel on October 7 changed Israelis and many of us, but the ongoing trauma of the devastation in Gaza and the West Bank is shaping generations of Palestinians.”
A magnet bearing the slogan “Never Forget” stands out on her fridge door. The Holocaust must be taught in school, she says. “We have ‘Never Forget’, but a lot of that history has not been passed on because it was so horrendous; the people that went through it either did not survive, or they survived and they did not want to talk about it. They’re not taught because it’s too horrible. That’s the history one must know.”
Felicity Kendal in 1974 (Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Getty Images
Kendal was raised as a Catholic in India, where her actor parents ran a touring theatre company. In her thirties, she decided to convert to Judaism. She says it had “nothing to do” with Michael Rudman, the acclaimed Jewish American film director whom she would go on to marry. Instead she puts it down to having lived in a very “multicultural situation” with the people in the theatre company, some of whom were Jewish.
She felt drawn to Judaism and a close friend invited her to a service. Wanting to know more, Kendal went to see Rabbi Hugo Gryn at West London Synagogue, and when he asked her why, she replied: “Because I think this is what I believe in now.”
The rabbi invited her to attend services, gave her some texts to read and suggested she come back in a year after she had done some thinking.
“I couldn’t wait a year,” she says. She embarked on lessons. “I just felt I’d come home. I knew that this was what I wanted in my life.”
While she knew Rudman back then, they weren’t yet a couple. “We had no intention of getting married or having kids or anything like that.”
When she told him of her intentions to convert, he said, “Don’t be ridiculous. No.”
“And, of course, being stubborn, I thought, ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’ We didn’t know then that we’d be together for 45 years. Roll on two years, and we were married and had a son, and his family and he could not have been more delighted.”
Attending the Chelsea Flower Show 2018 (Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)Getty Images
After Rudman died in 2023, Kendal became more involved with her shul. “It became a really comforting thing to me, the whole tradition, the structure that is there to be like a hammock to guide you through and the feeling of calm. I felt a reawakening of why I converted in the first place.”
She believes the Hamas-Israel conflict is the current “excuse” for this latest surge in antisemitism.
“What is so wrong, is that the fact that Israel is a nation state is somehow the cause of all the terrible things that have happened in the last year. And actually, if you go back in history, there’s always been a reason for antisemitism.”
What she feels has not helped was the failure to call out things such as the rejoicing that took place on the streets of London in the aftermath of the Hamas atrocities.
“There’s a certain cruelty which must be recognised for what it is. That must be called out. It then boils down to somebody saying something awful to a student, because they’ve got a kippah on, or they’re wearing a Star of David. We can’t live in that society. We’ve got to say that’s not good enough.”
