Ashley Blaker describes himself as “an armchair Jew”, and he is being literal about the matter. The comedian lives opposite an Orthodox synagogue and watches shul-goers enter and leave the building from the comfort of his living room.
It is a far cry from his days as a strictly Orthodox Jew, a life that entailed daily mikveh visits and a rigid dress code.
In fact, as Blaker joked to a group of journalists ahead of Sunday’s BBC2’s new series of Pilgrimage, he was once “certainly one of the top five religious Jews in the world”.
Now in its eighth series, Pilgrimage takes seven well-known personalities of different faiths and beliefs, and sends them on a physical and spiritual journey in Britain, with the aim of exploring their own beliefs and learning more about each other along the way,
In this series, which begins on BBC2 on Sunday, the celebrity pilgrims set off on a 390km network of trails through Northumberland, which celebrate early Celtic saints, taking in Whitby Abbey, Durham Cathedral, Newcastle Reform Synagogue and Lindisfarne, a tiny tidal island off the north-east coast of England, also known as Holy Island.
Joining the heavily tattooed and peroxide-haired Blaker are practising Christian Ashley Banjo, leader of the dance troupe Diversity; stand-up comedian and observant Muslim Hasan Al-Habib: Spooks and Cold Feet actor Hermione Norris, who believes the divine can be found in all living things; self-proclaimed “a la carte Catholic” Patsy Kensit; TV presenter Jayne Middlemiss who describes herself as a spiritual and atheist TV personality; and non-religious Tasha Ghouri, who was born profoundly deaf.
In one scene Ghouri joins Hasan Al-Habib and Banjo at Durham University’s Islamic Prayer Room, where they meet Mahshid Turner, the first woman to be made a Muslim chaplain at a British university.
For Al-Habib the highlight of the pilgrimage is a visit to the synagogue with Blaker, Norris and Kensit. He also describes his time with Blaker as a “a privilege.
“All my comic heroes are Jewish – Jon Stewart, Sacha Baron Cohen… We got on really well and I think we bonded quicker than everyone else.”
Early on in the first programme the travellers spend the night in three wooden chalets on a farm situated between Whitby and Durham. The three men share one of the pods. “A Jew, a Muslim and a practising Christian walk in to a pod,” quips Al-Habib. Another pilgrim responds: “We should move this idea to Jerusalem and solve all the problems.”
In the final programme, as the pilgrims are approaching the Holy Island, their guide tells them that tradition demands they arrive in bare feet. Only Blaker is game for the exercise.
“She told us we should either now put on Wellington boots, which we didn’t have because we were obviously travelling light, or take off our socks and shoes. It was seven in the morning, and very cold and everyone was like, oh God. I texted my wife, a headteacher who’s juggling our six kids and who’s also not the kind of person to give you sympathy.
“Oh don’t be so pathetic, she said. You’ve been very well looked after, you’re well paid and well fed. Just take your socks and shoes off and do it properly. So she shamed me into doing it.”
After the screening, Blaker spoke candidly about his neurodiversity and the series of “hyper-fixations” in his life that had led him first to being an obsessive Liverpool football fan and then a frum Jew for 15 years, before abandoning Orthodox Judaism for a fully secular life.
Three years ago he was diagnosed as neurodivergent. “I’d written a book called Normal Shnormal about parenting children with special educational needs – two of my sons have been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. As I was writing the book I thought, oh my God, this sounds so much like me.”
Until then neurodiversity was something that people had teased him about. “They’d say I think you’re autistic, in that way that people say it as a kind of a put-down. In fact, I once said to my friend the comedian Matt Lucas, I think I might be on the spectrum. And he went, ‘On the spectrum? You are the spectrum!’” Now, he sees patterns in his behaviour. “I was probably, I’d say, as religious as it was possible to be. And now I am now as non-observant as it is possible to be. I mean, you know, my tattoos. I really have gone from one absolute extreme to another.”
And what of his Jewish identity? “Before taking part in this programme, I would have definitely have said I’m a proud Jew, but I think going on this journey has solidified my identity. Going to Durham Cathedral and the Reform synagogue really brought this home to me with particular force. When I was in the Reform shul I felt that this isn’t Judaism as I know it and yet I still associate with it, I feel a connection. The experience made me feel quite defensive.”
When the comedian is asked why he gave up on religion he replies with a joke. “In the programme I tell Ashley [Banjo] that I had completed it. I finished it.”
Bond: Ashley Blaker and Ashley Banjo[Missing Credit]
His quip reflects how he feels, he says. “I think this is the experience of somebody who is neurodivergent, of somebody who’s very prone to hyper-fixations. And the thing with hyper-fixations is that some will last half a day, a week, a month, and some can last 15 years. But once it goes, it has gone. I just lost interest in being religious. Completely. Just kind of went, ‘Nah, it’s not for me.’” Although his wife and six children had also been observant during Blaker’s 15-year stint, he now knows that some of it was performative: “After we’d stopped being frum I found out on a Saturday afternoon, my two elder sons had a routine whereby one would distract my wife and the other would bring Kentucky Fried Chicken into the house and they would eat in their bedroom. So on the Sabbath, they’re going to KFC on the high street to buy non-kosher food.”
Every “single day” someone will, he says, ask him where he goes from here, he says, what the next chapter in his life will be about.
“And the answer is I’m writing a book, a 400-page book, about that because it’s not a question I can answer in one sentence.
The book won’t dwell on his six children’s experience of Orthodoxy, though. “I try not to talk about their experience. They’re adults now and have their own stories to tell.”
Though domestic life has changed radically for the Blakers, he says relations with his frum neighbours have remained cordial. “We still live in the same house, across the street from the most religious synagogue in my neighbourhood. I always joke, it’s a bit like having been a member of the Branch Davidian cult and leaving, but staying in Waco and still seeing their leader David Koresh every morning. For I still see the rabbi every morning. And honestly, everyone in the community very friendly. And I’ve not really had anyone ever try to convert me back, as it were, either.”
For his part, he says he now feels “freer” than he did in his previous life and notes that there are people who sense this and who are “kind of secretly envious. But just because I’m no longer obsessed doesn’t meant I don’t have a very strong Jewish identity. I do and I think this will come across to viewers.” In addition to what we see in the programme, Blaker says the pilgrims had many intimate discussions about religion and prayer, which were not filmed.
One was with Middlemiss: “I remember saying to you on the first day that for 15 years I went to synagogue three times a day. So there was a lot of prayer in my life and I was always kind of waiting to feel something. I was always waiting for it to kick in. I’d say to myself I know if I keep going, I’m going to feel it. But I must be honest, I never really did, So, no, I certainly don’t pray now. But I have watched you meditate. And there were moments where you took yourself away.”
Ashley Blaker[Missing Credit]
As for the tattoos that cover his body – “I’ve kind of run out of room for any more” – he says: “I never do anything by halves. I’m not the kind of person who’s going to say, I’ll do a bit of Judaism, I’ll get a few tattoos. I’m not going to get three tattoos. I’m going to get completely covered or not bother.”
And as for God, he is hedging his bets. “I am an agnostic. I mean, I would love there to be a God, but only if it was a God who had my best interests at heart, and isn’t kind of going, there’s Blaker having another tattoo or eating bacon.”
Pilgrimage is on BBC2 at 10pm on April 5
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