To South London on my own for a weekend visit to my sister. Although she has North London DNA like me, some years ago, she was persuaded by her husband to Cross the Border and go south. He lured her with seductive promises of good schools, lovely cafés, and cheaper house prices — shame on him. All those things turned out to be true but it was an underhand trick.
The night before the move, she rang me in tears: “How did I let him talk me into this,” she wailed. “There’s no tube down there! And where am I supposed to get challah? You’ll have to post it to me.”
My brother-in-law is not Jewish and so my sister does not lead a Jewish life in the conventional sense. She doesn’t even have a synagogue to not go to, which is a must. However, when it comes to the two great Jewish sports of Talking and Eating, she has few rivals, often combining both at once in an impressive time-saving Duathalon.
When I go for a visit, naturally I have to make up a food parcel for her: challah, of course, plus mini-bagels, cinnamon rugelach or mini-Danish, plus smoked salmon from our Jewish fishmonger.
“You know that they do actually sell smoked salmon south of the river,” says The Husband. “I think she’s just getting you do all her shopping for her.”
“Yes, but she says it’s not the same.”
“But it is literally the same thing,” he insists.
“Well, it’s a tradition, I’ve always taken it when I visit so I can’t stop now.”
He can’t argue with that, as Tradition trumps all in his family. Tradition dictates that whoever gets landed with hosting Breaking the Fast after Yom Kippur has to provide two different types of soup, and cold fried fish even though everyone who actually liked it is now dead.
My sister must have challah with poppy seeds, because that’s what my dad bought on Fridays when we were children. Our mother only bought brown bread ordinarily, leaving my sister and me with a junkie-like fervour when we encounter white bread, especially challah.
The Husband, however, has barred poppy-seed challah from the house. Fret not: there is no obscure talmudic injunction prohibiting the ingestion of poppy seeds. No, it’s “because the seeds roll around and get everywhere.” I point out that poppy seeds are not marbles; if they roll around, how much damage could they actually do? But, no. Sesame seed challah it must be as, when the seeds fall off, they stay neatly, boringly in one place.
It’s Open Studios weekend in The Sister’s locale, when artists of all sorts welcome visitors into their homes where they display and sell their work. Some have borrowed temporary space to have more wall space. One exhibition is in an industrial unit-cum-showroom where they make kitchen cabinetry. The paintings are on the walls with samples of cabinet doors, handles and worktops all around. As I am very shallow, while I am sort of looking at the art, I am also thinking, “Ooh, I like that cabinet door but hmm, not sure about those naff drawer handles.” Luckily, the paintings aren’t tempting, so I come away feeling pleased that I have saved tons of money by not buying a painting, and also that my own kitchen drawer handles are worthy of an exhibition; I was right to spend so long choosing them.
In one house, a very chatty woman starts talking to us (she’s not the artist, who is hiding in the kitchen). My sister immediately susses that the woman in Jewish (my J-dar is famously hopeless. I literally never know unless someone is davening right in front of me or wearing an outsize Magen David). Maybe my sister’s J-dar is more finely attuned because Jews are thin on the ground down here. It could be an atavistic ability to spot a fellow member of the tribe in case you need someone to kvetch to in an emergency?
We ask the chatty woman if she is the only other Jew in the village, but it turns out that she doesn’t actually live there. Like me, she is just making an anthropological visit to see how this other species lives.
I realise that the visiting Jew is in fact like a Shabbes goy in reverse. The shy non-Jewish artist can paint but clearly finds it difficult to talk to people. She’s brought in her Shabbes Jew to do what we do best — draw complete strangers into conversation so that they feel like friends after only three minutes. In ten minutes, my sister has the Shabbes Jew’s email and has offered her both career advice and tips on dating for the over-50s.
For my next visit, maybe I should leave the food parcel behind and just take some extra Jews for my sister to play with?
Zelda Leon is half-Jewish by birth then did half a conversion course as an adult (half-measures in all things….) to affirm her Jewish status before a rabbinical board. She is a member of a Reform synagogue. Zelda Leon is a pseudonym.
