For a generation of British Jews, his was the voice of Sunday morning. Over the best part of a quarter century, a fixed point in the Anglo-Jewish week was 9.30am on a Sunday, when BBC Radio London would broadcast the opening notes of that unmistakable violin melody from Fiddler on the Roof, soon giving way to the voice of Michael Freedland as he introduced the latest edition of You Don’t Have to be Jewish.
Over the course of an hour, Freedland, who has died at age 83, would report on “the world through Jewish eyes, but not necessarily for Jewish ears,” as the weekly billing in the Radio Times put it. The programme, which debuted in 1971 and whose unbroken run ended in 1994, might lead with an interview with an eminent Israeli politician – every prime minister from Golda Meir to Binyamin Netanyahu appeared – or a report from a far-flung corner of the Jewish world, or a guide to an upcoming festival. Jewish novelists, artists, comedians and musicians would appear, but only once they had cleared Freedland’s key editorial hurdle: the mere fact of being Jewish was not enough – they had to have a Jewish story to tell.
Before long, the programme had become an established part of Jewish life, taking its place alongside the Jewish Chronicle as the dominant forum for communal discussion, some of it vexed and heated. It was on YDHTBJ, as it became known, that two rabbinic regular contributors squared up against each other, as Orthodoxy’s Cyril Harris told Reform’s Hugo Gryn –- already emerging as Britain’s best-known Holocaust survivor ––“There are Reform rabbis who don’t known an aleph from a swastika.”
Freedland was insistent the programme should not be parochial. He would explain that Jews in Hendon were not especially interested in a synagogue bring-and-buy sale in Edgware, but that Jews in both places were passionately interested in the wider Jewish world. And so he adopted a format loosely modelled on Radio 4’s The World at One, as he broadcast live coverage of, say, the Entebbe hostage rescue of 1976 or travelled to Moscow and what was then Leningrad to make undercover recordings of his encounters with refuseniks, Soviet Jews denied exit visas to Israel.
In the process, he built up a repertory company of correspondents and pundits around the globe, deploying a sharp eye for talent. His man in Washington was a young Wolf Blitzer, who went on to become a CNN star. On the line from Jerusalem was Chaim Herzog, who went on to become the country’s president. And he did more or less everything himself, producing the programme and even editing it – labouring deep into the night following recording day on Thursday, as he cut and spliced the quarter-inch tape by hand.
He fast developed a devoted audience, tuning in over breakfast bagels or in the car as parents ferried kids to cheder. Freedland delighted in telling the story of the rather attractive woman who once told him, “You do realise I have you in my bath with me every Sunday morning.” Or the Catholic priest who wrote to protest at the dropping of the regular Monday afternoon repeats. “Please bring them back,” the priest wrote. “As you may know, I have other things to do on a Sunday morning.” As it turned out, such was its success, BBC Radio London added a second, live Thursday evening edition of the programme.
YDHTBJ was pioneering in two ways that now seem striking. First, for a community that had long believed in keeping its head down, YDHTBJ represented a remarkable shift: on the air – and on the BBC, no less – was a young, charismatic radio journalist, out and proud about being a Jew. What’s more, he was avowedly pluralist, hosting Orthodox, Reform and Liberal rabbis, including women rabbis, and treating them all with equal respect. Such inclusivity was rare in communal life back then. It’s perhaps telling that at the shiva for him this week, reminiscences were offered by the leaders of Reform, Masorti and Orthodox Judaism, Laura Janner-Klausner, Jonathan Wittenberg and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. He enjoyed good relations with every Anglo-Jewish wing.
Long though it lasted, YDHTBJ was but one part of a portfolio career. Born in London in the last fortnight of 1934 and raised in Luton, Michael Freedland fell in love with newspapers while still a child. He left grammar school in 1951, aged 16, to join the Luton News, graduating from there nine years later to Fleet Street and eventually life as a freelance writer. He was proud to say that his very first freelance work had been back in 1951, for the JC, filing a short item about a contingent of Lutonians at the annual parade of Jewish ex-servicemen. He continued writing for the JC for another 67 years, with a feature published on these pages just last week, which must surely make him the longest-serving JC contributor in the paper’s history.
But his true specialism was showbusiness and the Golden Age of Hollywood. He wrote more than 40 biographies, from Gregory Peck to Katharine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra to his favourite, Al Jolson. His Jolson book, published in 1972, remains the definitive study of the subject, and was adapted into a hit West End Musical in 1995, Jolson, starring Brian Conley in the title role.
He broadcast regularly, writing and presenting documentary series for BBC Radio 2 on the showbiz greats right into his 80s. Earlier this year, BBC Radio 4 Extra aired The Freedland Files, a three hour retrospective of his most notable interviews, plundering an archive that included encounters with every British prime minister from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair.
In recent years, he wrote on more personal themes, including the death of his beloved wife Sara, in 2012 and his first-born daughter Fiona, in 2014. Those were grievous blows to this perennially optimistic man. But with astonishing resilience, he carried on writing and broadcasting. He was researching a new biography, visiting the far-flung town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, when he suffered that fatal heart attack. He died while pursuing one last story.
He is survived by his daughter Dani, son Jonathan and grandchildren Beth, Ellie, Ben, Jamie, Jacob and Sam.
JONATHAN FREEDLAND
Michael Freedland: born December 18, 1934. Died October 1, 2018
