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Crowd turns out for the Great Yiddish Parade in London's East End

Marchers chant and sing Yiddish songs at event recreating famous rally of Jewish workers nearly 130 years ago

November 20, 2017 12:58
The marchers in period costume parade through Whitechapel
2 min read

 The East End of London rang out to cries of frayhayt and glaykhkayt on Sunday as Yiddish was once again heard on the streets of Whitechapel. 

Chanting for “freedom” and “equality” and clutching banners bearing Yiddish slogans, a crowd of 50 people marched down the busy Whitechapel Road towards Mile End, the area that 100 years ago thousands of Jews called home.

Singing from Yiddish-language song sheets accompanied by a klezmer band, they stopped off to listen to speeches delivered in both Yiddish and English, breaking out into occasional shouts “What do we want? Frayhayt! When do we want it? Yetst!”

This was the Great Yiddish Parade, a recreation of a march that took place  in 1889, when East London was gripped by strikes. It was a time of high unemployment, miserable working conditions miserable and low wages. Hundreds of Jewish workers, most of them tailors employed on low wages, flooded onto the streets in a show of working-class defiance.