As Blanche du Bois bravely states as she is dragged off to a mental home in the last scene of Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” The Jewish communities of the world are back on that same streetcar, reliant on the whims of tyrants and the gullibility of their moronic followers. The appalling ambulance arson attack is the result of genuinely sick minds.
David unearthed a 1994 copy of this very paper and honestly, save for the design differences, it could have been today’s edition.
A suicide car bomb had exploded during the Middle East Peace talks, killing eight people and injuring 50 civilians. Even before the bombing, a poll revealed that one-third of Israelis thought that the demands of peace could cause civil war. Thirty-two years of existential battles later, does the world have any idea of how tired the people of Israel are?
The BBC and reporters worldwide do not go into the shelters where children are trained to lie on the floor when the sirens go off. A dear friend told me that his grandchildren have needed to enter their safe room more than 200 times since the current battle began.
Neither do they report on the closure of schools. Most Israeli kids have missed some school every day since Covid. Are the media even aware of the fear of the elderly in Israel? “I am alone,” said one, “I spend the nights scared of the bombings. If anything happens to me will anyone notice?”
In the same 1994 edition, there is a review of a biography of Roald Dahl, citing him as a coming from the Goebbels school of propaganda. In an interview in the Independent, he said of the bombing of Beirut during the first invasion of Lebanon: “It was hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned.” This drivel coming from an avowed antisemite and blatant self-publicist, with unhampered access to the media. When the JC phoned him for a quote on his Independent diatribe, he said:
“I’m an old hand at dealing with you buggers. No comment.”
We had form Dahl and I. He once was so insulting to me, as in “You people…” on a chat show, that I was struck dumb. Years later in a Sydney hotel he was in the lift as I got in with my small children. I had always vowed that if I ever met him I would confront him. Except once again my courage failed and I think I mumbled, “Good morning.” I met his wife once on a cruise. She was a beautiful woman and a great actress. Dahl, in fairness, nursed her back to health after a severe stroke. Then he left her for a younger woman to live on higher moral ground.
Page seven of the newspaper is of particular interest with an NUS conference calling for measures to be brought in against militant Muslim students distributing leaflets calling for the death of Jews. Plus ça change… except the NUS may not be quite so philosemitic these days.
Beneath that is an item about Britain exerting diplomatic pressure over Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Douglas Hogg had told the Israeli government that “their construction was illegal and …an obstacle to peace.’’… plus c’est la même chose.
On the left of the page was the reason that my husband, David, had shown me the paper in the first place. He showed me a photograph, taken by the JC drama critic John Nathan, of a swimming pool, off Bishopsgate, in construction. An Israeli architect had designed a massive polycarbonate glazed dome to cover a 25-metre pool, to fill a hole left by a 17th-century burial site for victims of the plague. The whole project was David’s idea and he had it shipped over in pieces from Tel Aviv. It became a successful addition to the city leisure life for several years until the whole site was redeveloped. I had not known David in his leisure centre days so it was of great interest to me.
It was only later, when consulting the yellowing paper for this piece, that I turned to the back page and the hairs on my neck stood up. There was a large photograph of the Family Rosenthal. Jack, myself, Adam and Amy (misnamed Lucy but hey...) at Buckingham Palace after Jack had received his CBE, (misnamed as an MBE). I mean, come-on, it’s 32 years ago and I know my JC profile has loomed large over the last 60 years, but of the 1,728 copies he could have retained and shown to me… isn’t that at least synchronistic, if not spooky?
Stephen Smith MBE, of the amazing, altruistic Smith family, spoke recently at a wonderful dinner to raise the profile of Beth Shalom, the Holocaust educational centre in Newark. He was dazzling in his commitment to Holocaust education, and stunning in his belief in the Jewish people. We have no finer representative than he and his brother James. Stephen has now converted to Judaism and done his first Mincha and sermon in his synagogue in Palm Springs. “It’s a fine time to take up Judaism,” I said, “are you absolutely sure about this?” He laughed, “I have never been more sure about anything,’’ he said, “I absolutely love it.” Sometimes, when I talk at events, I mention my love for Beth Shalom and I am shocked by the number of Jewish people who have never visited it. Please go. Believe me, it is truly an obligation and it will be an astonishing experience. Just get on a train and go.
This, sadly, will be my last column for a while as I start rehearsals for my tour and have only one week left to cram thousands of lines into my dizzy little head. Last night I got into bed and found a handbag in it. Cue Lady Bracknell… I checked to see if my faithful hot water bottle was on the handbag shelf and it was. I have already started with the actor’s nightmare dreams. Last night I was running desperately along a rocky shoreline with Kleenex boxes on my feet. I once took part in a documentary about the fact that there were 22 psychotherapists in Fitzjohns Avenue, almost all of them émigré Jews from Europe. If any of their children are still alive and practising their craft, please analyse that dream!
My thanks to all of you for reading my diary of thoughts and uncertainties over the last year, and I will be back occasionally to engage with you further. I have loved learning more about my treasured and tenacious tribe through the research I have done each week. Looking back, I think my best find was the Jewish man who invented the suitcase on wheels and my realisation that you could report it as: “Jewish man relieves travellers who are frail or disabled, have children or are just serial over-packers.”
Or, you can report the same story as: “One Jew puts thousands of porters out of work.” Sadly, fashionably, the current media favours the latter approach.
I’ll end again with Tennessee Williams: “Not facing a fire”, he wrote in his play Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, “doesn’t put it out.’’
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