I used to perform in the West End on Friday nights. Now I stay in to light Shabbos candles

Caroline Pakter[Missing Credit]

After being spotted as a London Jewish Performer of the Year finalist, aged 19, by world-renowned choreographer and judge Arlene Phillips, “who said I had the potential to make it in the West End”, Pakter left Birmingham University, where she was studying languages, and auditioned for the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA).

“It was all very last minute. I was learning songs on the way in the car.” But, two weeks later, she was “shocked” to find out she had been accepted and began a degree in music with performing arts, studying alongside big names such as award-winning director Jamie Lloyd. While they were both students, Lloyd directed Pakter in a show called Falsettoland at the Edinburgh Festival.

What blew me away at the Shabbat dinner was the way people were harmonising so beautifully. I wasn’t used to people throwing themselves into singing in any way that wasn’t for applause

Despite loving everything about the school – “It’s modelled on the New York performing arts school in Fame” – she missed Shabbat dinners at home, when all the family would congregate at her grandparents’ home “with the TV on in the background”.

At Birmingham University, thanks to the JSoc, Jewish life had continued, but at LIPA, anything remotely Jewish was hard to come by.

“I had a Jewish friend from Liverpool, and I asked if she could put me in touch with a rabbi, so I could go to Friday night dinners,” recalls Pakter.

Through a local rabbi, she was invited to a Shabbat dinner at Liverpool’s Hillel House. “There were quite a few religious Jews there, and what blew me away was the singing round the table and the way people were harmonising so beautifully. I wasn’t used to people throwing themselves into singing in any way that wasn’t for applause.”

The experience opened Pakter’s eyes to the world of Orthodox Judaism – “My only exposure to religious Jews until then had been from Fiddler on the Roof” – and she began attending Friday night dinners at Hillel every week.

One Shabbat, she was invited to stay in the area and go for a Shabbat lunch the next day at the home of a Lubavitch rabbi. “It was my first insight into a religious home, and it was the most beautiful atmosphere. The kids were running around and I loved seeing the way the rabbi interacted with them. I came away wanting more.”

As well as attending Shabbat dinners, Pakter started going to shiurim (lectures on Jewish thought) and went to Israel with educational organisation Aish UK.

While she was becoming more observant, Pakter was juggling Orthodox practices with her performing arts course at LIPA, moving into a shared house with non-Jewish friends, where she had her own set of kosher plates and “tried to keep Shabbos”.

Caroline Pakter performing (Photo: Robert Leach)[Missing Credit]

But by winter, when the days became shorter, the tensions between the worlds of religion and performance surfaced, as Pakter found she “wasn’t always able to get to the Jewish area in time for Shabbat”.

Her college schedule also became more intense. “On Fridays, I would run home and light Shabbat candles and then run back to college for my next lesson, without carrying anything.” (Shabbat laws mean that one is prohibited from carrying objects outside a designated boundary.)

Unable to spend Friday nights with other observant Jews and instead finding herself with her non-Jewish friends in the pub “but not buying a drink”, Pakter found Shabbat increasingly lonely.

But this was not the only challenge. “I was also becoming much more sensitive to Jewish laws about the interaction between men and women, like dressing modestly and men not being allowed to hear women sing who aren’t members of their family.”

During her third and final year, Pakter found herself faced with the dilemma: “Was I going to pursue a career on stage or be an observant Jew?”

But the decision, she says, “was taken out of my hands” when her agent called her to say she had been invited to audition for My Fair Lady in the West End.

Within a week, she had been given a part in the chorus, while also understudying the role of Eliza Doolittle.

“Although I thought about staying overnight in the West End once a week, so as not to travel, in the end, it was impossible to keep Shabbat. But I said to my agent that he needed to get me out of having to perform on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Thankfully, he managed to, but the attitude in showbusiness is very much: ‘The show must go on.’ One actress had to miss her brother’s wedding.”

As one of the youngest cast members, Pakter got an insight into how her career could pan out over the years. “I saw that showbiz was all or nothing, that it had to come at the cost of everything else. I knew I wanted to keep Shabbos and have a family in the future. It was when I was at my sister’s wedding that I asked myself again: ‘Do you really want to be in theatre all your life?’”

After her run in My Fair Lady, Pakter decided not to renew her contract and turned down other acting offers.

Caroline Pakter in her show (Photo: Robert Leach)[Missing Credit]

Her agent was shocked by her decision to walk away from the stage for religion, and Pakter was afraid that her parents, who had invested so much in their daughter’s love of performing, would be equally disappointed. “I remember asking my dad if he thought I had let him down, but he was very sweet, saying that I had to live my life for myself and not for him, and the most important thing was that his children had grown up to be good people.”

Soon after she left theatre and while feeling unsure of what her future professional life would hold, Pakter was contacted by a rebbetzin in Wembley, who invited her to share her story with congregants. So began Pakter’s creation of her show From Showbiz to Shabbos, which she has since taken to Israel, South Africa and America. “It’s me telling my story, intertwined with songs – some from the West End and some I have written myself – which sum up particular moments in my life.”

At the same time as performing for exclusively female audiences, over the years, Pakter has taught singing and dancing to women and girls and helped create shows starring just women, sometimes in partnership with her sister, who runs MOUVE by Dancing With Louise.

Now married to Grant, a GP – “I was set up with him on a date when I was invited to sing in South Africa” – Pakter is a mother to six children, aged four to 16 and has come full circle back to Edgware, where, as members of Seed Shul, Shabbat – and singing – are very much part of their lives.

“When I look back at my time in the West End, I feel it was a blessing in disguise that although I was the understudy, I never actually had to play the role of Eliza in My Fair Lady, as I imagine the feeling of all those people applauding you is quite addictive and it would have been harder to walk away from.

“But today, I feel that my life is more meaningful. I am still able to use the gifts that I was given. I am just channelling them in a different way.”

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