We have some great Jewish entertainers over here. But—with a few exceptions — they have not been as out there in their heritage as Woody Allen, Jackie Mason, Joan Rivers, or Nora Ephron. Why is it that New Yorkers had Seinfeld, and we managed only the embarrassing Friday Night Dinner?
Perhaps the confidence in American Jewish identity starts with that country’s constitution: it’s enshrined in the First Amendment that all religions are equal. England had centuries of Christian persecution in the Middle Ages, but the first known Jewish settler, Dutchman Jacob Barsimson, came to New Amsterdam (as it then was) only in August 1654, closely followed by a group of Jewish settlers from Recife in Brazil.
Then, at the turn of the last century, 2.5 million Ashkenazi Jews arrived from central and eastern Europe, settling in the Lower East Side, like my ancestors in London’s East End. By 1910, a million Jews made up 25 percent of New York’s population. And so Jewish language and cuisine became part of the fabric of the growing metropolis.
There’s an Asser Levy Park in Coney Island, named after the first Jew to own a house in north America. There even used to be an International Beigel Bakers Union, which existed up to the early 1970s, after which bagels — note the new spelling —went global. ‘Local 338’ was established by 300 Manhattan “bagel craftsmen” in the early 1900s. All the members were Jewish and meetings were conducted in Yiddish, their recipe as closely guarded as Coca-cola’s.
This legacy remains. Even now, perfectly gentile bagel shops offer a ‘schmear’ of cream-cheese on their sandwiches. New Yorkers schlep uptown; taxi drivers call one other schmucks.
These days, there are 1.5 million Jews in New York — more even than the city of in Tel Aviv. This compares with only 250,000 in the UK, with nine out of ten of us living in London. But, for me, it’s not just the numbers game. What stands out for me in New York is the easy meshing of the secular, the religious, and the simply cool.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a case in point: a glorious mix of hipsters and frummers. A short walk from the Lower East Side over the Williamsburg Bridge, Wythe Street, it’s all fashionable beards and the fancy Hoxton Hotel. Wander a few blocks, and you’ll find peyot and yeshivot in the most concentrated Chasidic Jewish community in NYC.
Perhaps the most enjoyable lunchtime on this particular trip found us at Twelve Chairs, one of the New York’s hottest restaurants with branches in SoHo, and a newer one in Brooklyn. Twelve Chairs has hummus, schnitzel, shakshuka and Yemenite chicken soup to die for. The kosher wine is actually… nice. “Good Shabbat dinner,” declares its website on Fridays and Saturdays.
There are Israeli restaurants in London, but they tend to be in Jewish areas, or rolled in more generally with ‘middle Eastern Cuisine’. Twelve Chairs was in-your-face Israeli, the walls festooned with street signs in Hebrew. It was also clear that the diners were not all Jewish, but of various ethnicities.
I know comparisons are odious, that the histories of our two great nations are different. Yes, there is a small, noisy antisemitism here, even if it largely exists on social media. And for sure we made a start in being more vocal in the Jeremy Corbyn era. But maybe it’s time for us to follow our American cousins further in our Jewish confidence. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a bit more Brooklyn?
