I’m a Jew in disguise – and I can spot antisemitism - The Jewish Chronicle

I’ve recently written a memoir, which obliged me for the first time in decades to think about and consider my usually joyful childhood. Usually, but not always.

The first time I consciously realised I was Jewish I was seven years old. In those innocent days we’d spend summer holidays at the recreation ground a few streets away from where we lived. Spontaneous games of football would develop, we’d eat chocolate bought from local shops and then cycle home. We’d also make instant friends and on one of these dreamy, insouciant days, I began chatting to a boy who didn’t go to my school. He asked if I wanted to go back to his house. I agreed. Then his dad came home. It was as if darkness had entered the room in a man-shaped cloud: he was angry and unhappy and there were loud voices. Then the boy said to me, in obvious fear, that I had to leave.

It was only later that I realised what the father was saying. “Who is he? Is a Jew? He is, isn’t he? Get him out of here!” I don’t think the boy knew what a Jew was. Not sure I did either, really. I suppose I should have explained my background and then said, “I’m only half-Jewish. Could I at least stay for lunch?” But at seven such comebacks aren’t so easy.

Three quarters really, because three of my grandparents were Jewish. Not, however, my mum’s mum. So, I was brought up less with ambiguity than indifference. I was what I was, and it was rarely a problem. I could write here of the complexities of it all but that would just be pretentious conceit.

The back story is far from unique. My maternal grandparents lived two doors apart in Whitechapel and Dave Schneider and Bertha Jones fell in love. The result was Sheila Schneider, who then married Phil Coren from Hackney. That was mum and dad. I was born in 1959 and had a bris but no bar mitzvah. Story of my life really. Pain without pleasure.

There was a battered, plastic Christmas tree brought down from the loft each December, I attended the hymns and prayers that were then standard in state primary schools, but there was a mezuzah on the door at home, we visited my grandparents for Pesach, and dad wouldn’t work on Yom Kippur. It never seemed to matter.

Culturally, the Jewish influence was obvious. Dad was a cab driver, so working class Jewishness was everywhere. Bagels (then almost exclusively Jewish), following Tottenham with a passion, beautiful, noisy love and affection and conversations that were more demonstrative and obvious than those that took place in the families of my non-Jewish friends. Which, now I think about it, was almost all of my friends.

Other than the fascist ghoul who ordered me out of the house, I seldom encountered antisemitism when I was a child. When I was a teenager, however, the National Front and British Movement climbed out their stinking graves and it was time for physical confrontation on the streets. There was solidarity back then, no screams that “Zionists” weren’t welcome, and a feeling that we weren’t alone in fighting Jew-hatred. How tragically distant all that now seems.

There was no angst about who we were, probably because that’s more a preoccupation of those who can afford the time. When I think of the number of hours my dad worked to pay the mortgage and put food on the table there are tears in my eyes. Was I sufficiently appreciative? Of course not!

It was only in my adult years that I asked deeper questions about family and faith. I don’t regard myself as theologically Jewish and I’ve found a belief system elsewhere, but ethnically and even politically I’m very much part of the Jewish world. And if ever forget that, the tide of antisemitism that ebbs and flows but never evaporates gives me a stinging reminder.

Here lies an authentic problem. Whatever the extent of our Judaism or Jewishness, while we must never allow the filth of antisemitism to define us, nor can we live as though it wasn’t part of the greater context of what and who we are.

I’m an Anglican priest, but if you spend any time on my social media pages the level and extent of the racism will shock you. Not only am I a Jew but a Jew in disguise, and that’s even worse. In other words, they’re still telling me to get out of their house.

Thing is, I’m a big boy now and I have the comebacks. I’m not going anywhere.

Heaping Coals is published by Dundurn Press. Michael Coren’s website is michaelcoren.com

Topics:

Antisemitism