A Holocaust survivor, a woman who suffered from antisemitism at school and a trans man converting to Judaism feature in fascinating new film Being Jewish in Scotland
October 20, 2022 11:32
An elderly Holocaust survivor, a young woman who suffered from antisemitism at school and a trans man converting to Judaism all feature in a fascinating new BBC television documentary exploring the Jewish community in Scotland.
“I have been frightened about being Jewish all my life,” says Hungarian-born Kathy Hagler, most of whose family died in the Shoah, and who ended up in Inverness via Israel after being forced to leave Hungary as a child in the 1930s.
“But I fell in love with Scotland. I felt that the Scots suffered over the centuries just like the Jews have suffered over the centuries and the millennia.”
Bullied: Anita Spivack
Marketing executive Anita Spivack recounts how she was the only Jewish pupil in her Aberdeen primary school and secondary school. Bullying followed, including vile slurs from other children such as “Hitler should have finished the job.” She now lives in Edinburgh. “I always felt this umbilical cord, pulling me to Judaism.”
Voice actor and illustrator Ash talks about his conversion to Judaism at the same time as going through a personal transition.
He jokes about having the barmitzvah he never had as a youth “by not being brought up Jewish and not knowing I was a boy at the time”. Ash has joined Edinburgh’s Liberal Sukkat Shalom community, the only Scottish shul whose numbers are going up.
At one time, explains the documentary, Scotland had a Jewish population of around 20,000 which supported 20 synagogues and a thriving collection of kosher butchers, bakers and grocers.
Deborah Haase
