1487 Life Magazine - 3 September 2026

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I AM ISRAEL YOURS TO EXPLORE.

SHANA TOVA

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E D ITO R ' S L E T TE R

To have Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz with Mélanie Laurent together on our cover is thrilling. I’ve been privileged to watch Fauda season five ahead of its release, and it is haunting.

There are dramas about October 7 that have been painfully hard to watch, but because of our investment in Fauda characters, seeing them experience the horror is different. I won’t say more except that the way two different faiths open and close the season is the work of writers Avi and Lior – and it is brilliant.

This October 7 marks three years since the attacks and Life acknowledges other anniversaries: another steeped in sorrow – 25 years since 9/11 – and others in joy – Punk’s 50th and Elstree Studios’ 100th. Israeli-Palestinian Nas Daly and Jewish-American Aija Mayrock, in their first interview together, symbolise what is possible with peace and understanding.

This Life will take you to November, when UK Jewish Film celebrates 30 years and The Righteous Road Trip, part of the festival, acknowledges brave non-Jews who saved us during the Holocaust. On 4 October, 90 years will have passed since we stood up for ourselves at the Battle of Cable Street, my own grandfather among those heroes who took on fascism.

Enjoy the week of celebrations organised by the Board of Deputies and Jewish News.

Eat enough apples and honey to stock up on sweetness for the new year. It feels as if we are constantly lighting memorial candles, but on Yom Kippur when I light yahrzeits for my parents, I will pray for them and that our community is challenged less and accepted more for who we are.

Shana Tova.

137 Editor Brigit Grant brigit@jewishnews.co.uk Art director Diane Spender Jewish News co-publishers Richard Ferrer & Justin Cohen Features editor Louisa Walters Sub-editor Alex Galbinski Creative consultant Dermot Rushe Contributors Jenni Frazer, Etan Smallman, Candice Krieger, Hannah Litman, Rob Rinder, Michelle Rosenberg, Lara Benjamin Advertising sales Beverley Sanford 020 8148 9709 sales@jewishnews.co.uk Gabbie Greenberg Cover photo by Ohad Romano and Moses Pini Siluk

Brigit Grant

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A R TS & EN T ER TA I N M EN T

Pop Goes Deborah

FROM THE VALLEYS

Jewish Welsh comedian Bennett Arron, who supported Ricky Gervais on tour, appears in I Regret This Already at JW3 on 27 October

Circle this

On 8 to 10 September, Anoushka Cowan and Elijah Lifton’s Marigold Productions returns to Steve Furst’s Circle & Star in Hampstead, with 2.36, a razor-sharp drama about inheritance, identity and the lies families inherit.

Across one long night on an ancestral trip to Luxembourg, a brother and sister discover the journey was never really about reconnecting. On 6 October, Sleeve Notes – The Listening Salon, hosted by Jonathan Wingate, turns its attention to Jeff Buckley’s Grace. The story comes first – the voice before the album is played in full.

Lights low, phones away and just 55 seats listening together. tickettailor.com

Once upon a time, the internationally recognised, artist Deborah Azzopardi – think hot red lipstick and even hotter women – didn’t even have the bus fare to go to art college.

But, today, Azzopardi is probably Britain’s best-known Pop Art practitioner, beloved by collectors worldwide, whose bold, witty images are a calling card for her distinctive voice.

Now the British Art Fair, which runs in London from 24 to 27 September, is celebrating Azzopardi’s 40 years in the business.

And her success had the most unlikely of beginnings, as she was a young wife and mother living in Golders Green. She had suddenly fallen acutely ill with meningitis and was not expected to survive.

She said: “I really thought I was going to die. They were asking me if I wanted to see a rabbi – and when they talk about bringing the rabbi in, you know you’re finished. I remember thinking: ‘What a shame.’ But then I woke up. I couldn’t believe I was alive.

And at that moment I had this thought: ‘I have to paint.’”

Azzopardi left hospital, quit her job, bought some materials and began to paint. Right from the beginning, her paintings showed independent women, clearly calling the shots. Probably the best-known is Sshh – a stylised pair of lips, covered by a warning finger.

So struck were Mitch and Janis Winehouse by Azzopardi’s vision, they commissioned the painting Love is the Answer in 2016 in memory of

By Jenni Frazer

their daughter Amy. Azzopardi says: “I’ve spent 40 years painting women who live life on their own terms. They’re playful, glamorous and sometimes mysterious, and they’re always in charge of their own story.

“Looking back over four decades, I feel incredibly fortunate. To spend a lifetime doing what you love and sharing it with collectors around the world, that’s pure gold”.

And Pure Gold is the name of one of her paintings at the Art Fair.

Cynthia Valianti Corbett, director of the Cynthia Corbett Gallery,

represents Azzopardi and told Life: “Collectors fall in love with Deborah’s bold colours, but they return because of the women. Full of wit, confidence and psychological complexity, her characters have captivated audiences for 40 years. We are proud to celebrate this milestone.”

Deborah Azzopardi is on Stand 18 at the British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London, this month

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 9

A R TS & EN T ER TA I N M EN T

Fill up on Phil After eight seasons of eating his way around the world for Netflix, Phil Rosenthal has moved to YouTube.

It sounds unusual because shows generally go from YouTube to Netflix, but Phil is delighted to be doing things backwards.

Production giant Banijay approached Lucky Bastards, Phil and his brother Richard’s company, about working together. “I said, ‘How would you like to do Somebody Feed Phil?’ They said, ‘But you’re at Netflix.’ And I said, ‘What if I wasn’t?’”

Crucially, Phil owns the intellectual property, which meant he could take Somebody Feed Phil with him.

“YouTube is the future,” he says.

“It’s the most democratic – with a small ‘d’ – of the platforms and anyone can watch for free. I love the idea of the show’s message getting out to everybody.”

A 17-minute mini episode inside Max & Helen’s, the Los Angeles diner Phil opened in memory of his late parents, who were regulars on the show. Max’s fluffy eggs are even on the menu.

Family has also taken Phil into publishing, as he and daughter Lily have written the bestselling children’s book Just Try It! Someplace New! and now have sold a third book.

Anglophile Phil hasn’t forgotten us.

He is collaborating with Fortnum & Mason on a peanut-butter version of his favourite chocolate biscuits, due to appear at its new Biscuitorium in December.

The show isn’t changing. The food, jokes, small restaurants and people encounters stay the same and season nine begins filming in Greece this autumn. But the first taste is already there.

Chez Feltz

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Steven’s Story At 89, Steven Berkoff is still making plenty of noise. In October, his new memoir, Shouting at Night: From East End Rebel to Hollywood’s Favourite Villain ( Aurora Metro Publications, £19.99) looks back on an extraordinary life, from a troubled East End childhood to becoming one of Britain’s most uncompromising actors/writers/ directors. With characteristic bite, Steven recalls encounters with Stanley Kubrick and working with Johnny Depp, Joan Collins and Christopher Walken, while charting the creation of the radical theatrical style that made his name and the screen villainy that took him to Hollywood.

10 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Vanessa Feltz is making herself at home on YouTube – quite literally. Her new YouTube show At Home with Vanessa is filmed entirely at Feltz Towers, be it mostly on the bed, where Vanessa stays decorously above the sheets for intimate chats with guests. Then she’s in the kitchen, where, in episode one, it was build your own bagel – or beigel, as Vanessa prefers — with assistance from Pumpernick’s of Borehamwood. Finally, it’s the bathroom, where another guest confesses all – albeit fully clad – with Ness perched on the tub.

We’re hoping for bubbles in the future and we wish Vanessa luck – and Life wants an invite.

A R TS & EN T ER TA I N M EN T

Where Were YOU? Twenty-five years on, a generation with no memory of 9/11 needs to learn why it still matters There are moments in history when people remember exactly where they were.

September 11, 2001, is one of them. But 25 years on, there is now an entire generation for whom the attacks on New York and Washington are history rather than memory.

It is that generation that SINCE 9/11 was created to reach.

The UK educational charity was founded by Peter Rosengard on the tenth anniversary of the attacks, with the aim of ensuring the legacy of 9/11 could, through education, “build hope from tragedy”.

On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamist terrorists hijacked four passenger planes, flying two into New York’s World Trade Centre and another into the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back. Almost 3,000 people were killed, including citizens of more than 90 countries and 67 British victims. To this day, it is the largest number of British citizens murdered in a terrorist attack.

“While we all remember exactly where we were on 9/11, no child at school today was even born,” says Peter. “Many of their teachers were children themselves. It is vital we educate them about what happened.”

Working with UCL’s Institute of Education, SINCE 9/11 provides free school resources on the attacks and their aftermath, as well as workshops tackling extremism, conspiracy theories, racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The charity has also taken its work beyond the classroom. Its National Schools Competition asked more than 1,000 pupils to consider the

Steve Furst

question: How did 9/11 Change the World? Winners of the competition travelled to New York to meet first responders, family members and others affected by the attacks.

Its most visible legacy in Britain is at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park:

a 27ft tall, 4 tonne public artwork created from steel recovered from the World Trade Centre.

Commissioned by the charity from New York artist Miya Ando, it was unveiled in March 2015 by then London mayor Boris Johnson and US Ambassador Matthew Barzun.

And it is here that SINCE 9/11 will gather on Friday 11 September for a 25th anniversary event, hosted by broadcaster Adam Boulton, to remember victims and consider what has been learnt in the quarter-century since.

For Peter Rosengard, the work feels more urgent.

“Some hoped 9/11 was so horrific it would wake up the world to the pointlessness and pain of terrorism.

But international terrorism has increased. There is a greater need than ever to build understanding among young people that violence and terror never solve the world’s problems.”

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 11

A R TS & EN T ER TA I N M EN T

Reeling at 30

Jason Isaacs

Love the title Focker-In-Law? Good – because the Fockers are back, with Ben Stiller as Greg, alongside Robert De Niro and a cast that now includes much-talked-about Ariana Grande as the prospective fiancée of Henry Focker, Greg and Pam’s grown-up son. No Barbra Streisand, we notice, and she recently recorded with Grande. So why no mother of the Focker? It seems she wasn’t asked and has since revealed she was paid less than her male co-stars. Hopefully being awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes was a distraction.

French Favourite Just an Illusion arrives on 11 September, having made big money at the box office in France. It is a warm and nostalgic crowd-pleaser, centred on a Jewish family living in the suburbs of Paris in 1985. The primary focus is Vincent, the younger of two brothers, in the lead-up to his barmitzvah. This autobiographical film is inspired by the adolescence of film-makers Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache and one can feel the emotional truth in every scene. It’s a film about love, music and assimilation – and absolutely not to be missed. Darren Richman

12 • LIFE MAGAZINE

The UK Jewish Film Festival rolls out the red carpet for its 30th anniversary from 5 -15 November – and chief executive Michael Etherton says there will be plenty to celebrate.

Among the treats, a specially curated selection of 30 of the best films screened during the festival’s three decades. The opening night gala - now with BFI back on board - is the highly anticipated The Wedding Entertainer ((The Tale of Moishe Badhan) an Israeli comedy-drama directed by Gidi Dar and starring Shuli Rand and comedian Elon Gold (pictured). The gala night is at BFI

Southbank, while the festival will have screenings at Everyman, Curzon and Picturehouse cinemas nationwide.

There is also talk of Maureen Lipman 80th birthday celebrations, so look out for the full programme out this month. ukjewishfilm.org

OH, HOW THEY SUFFER Alison Boshoff’s addictive new book Brand Beckham: The Fame. The Feuds. The Fallout (Century £22) has more than its share of Jewish references – notably at the Peltz-Beckham wedding, where Victoria’s 21.5-carat diamond necklace was eclipsed by the 94.78-carat Star of the East worn by mother-of-the-bride Claudia Peltz. But amid the sparkle comes a useful lesson: always get a rabbi who knows the family to officiate. With the Peltz’s regular rabbi unavailable (what a gig to miss!), his stand-in made quite the slip under the lavish floral chuppah, calling Brooklyn ‘David’! Sir David has Jewish credentials – his maternal grandfather was Jewish – but this had nothing to do with this gaffe. The football knight was clearly more firmly lodged in the soccer-loving rabbi’s mind than his son – the groom.

This is just one of many mishaps deliciously detailed in Alison’s book.

Status Update Out 9 October, The Social Reckoning has writer Aaron Sorkin logging back into Facebook, 16 years after his Oscar win for David Fincher’s The Social Network. But this time Aaron is also directing, with his attention on Facebook’s impact

and whistleblower Frances Haugen, played by Anora Oscar-winner Mikey Madison. Succession actor Jeremy Strong, who is Jewish on his father’s side, plays Mark Zuckerberg – and even reached out to him while preparing for the role.

The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White is Jeff Horwitz, the real-life Wall Street Journal reporter behind The Facebook Files, who helped Frances to expose the social network’s secrets. And there are many, as you’ve seen on the news.

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A R TS & EN T ER TA I N M EN T

The man who made New York run!

Fifty years of the Big Apple marathon and Estee Stimler remembers her uncle who made it happen to Central Park and running the There’s nothing quite like same loop four times. By the New York City on marathon fourth lap, it must have felt day. Strangers hand out like Sisyphus pushing his drinks, cheer until they’re boulder uphill for eternity. hoarse and high-five But Fred believed New York exhausted runners. itself should be the course.

More than 26 miles Where others saw logistical Estee separate the start from the Stimler obstacles, he saw possibilities. finish in Central Park, but what Six years later, the marathon carries people to the end is that wound through all five boroughs, extraordinary New York spirit. And transforming a small club race into behind it all was a Jewish Holocaust one of the world’s greatest sporting survivor who arrived in America with events and now welcoming more determination and a belief that joy than 50,000 runners. should be shared.

Fred believed running was for Growing up, I never quite everyone: elite athletes, first-timers, understood why my Uncle Fred young, old, fast and slow. He was also attracted so much attention. an early champion of women’s Wherever we went, people smiled at inclusion in marathon running. him. In restaurants, he got the best The Chasidic Williamsburg stretch table and strangers sent over bottles of the course is a favourite memory. of wine as though he were a hero.

Standing in an open-top vehicle with And in some ways, he was. a megaphone, Fred The sixth of seven children – my called to spectators in mother was the youngest – Fred perfect Yiddish: “Dee Lebow was born Fischel Lebowitz in loifer darken vasser!” The Transylvania. Aged 14, he came to the runners need water!

United States with his older brother He even established through a rescue effort. He would a pre-race minyan for not see his parents again for 15 years. observant Jewish Wanting to get fit for tennis, Fred runners, which still began running. He had no idea it exists – a meaningful would become his destiny. legacy of how deeply he In the 1960s, running wasn’t cared about Jewish life. glamorous and marathons were for Even when life tested elite athletes. The idea that ordinary him, Fred kept running. In 1992, aged people might want to run through 60 and battling brain cancer, he streets seemed ridiculous. completed the marathon (pictured) Fred saw something different. with his friend Grete Waitz.

The first New York City Marathon Thousands waited at the finish line, in 1970 had just 127 runners, confined

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14 • LIFE MAGAZINE

cheering as they crossed together in tears.

When Fred died in October 1994, Mercedes-Benz took a full-page advert in The New York Times, writing: “Most people are remembered with a monument that’s six feet tall. Fred Lebow’s is 26.2 miles long.”

Fred’s story was told in the award-winning documentary Run for Your Life. His statue stands in Central Park and every November is moved to the marathon finish line in honour of the man who made it happen.

To me, he was Uncle Fred.

To others, he was a man who made everyone believe that, with a little chutzpah, they could go the distance.

The 2026 TCS New York City Marathon is on Sunday 1 November

Taika Talent Coming out on 23 October, Klara and the Sun is written and directed by Oscar-winner Taika Waititi, who proudly describes himself as a “Polynesian Jew”. His adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling novel stars Jenna Ortega as an “Artificial Friend” created to combat loneliness, alongside Amy Adams and another proudly Jewish favourite, Natasha Lyonne.

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Astrologers Ophira and Tali Edut are identical twins

16 • LIFE MAGAZINE

A S T R O T WI N S

WRITTEN,

not sealed Ahead of Rosh Hashanah, astrologer and rabbi’s daughter Ophira Edut addresses what two thousand years of rabbis never agreed on. By Hannah Litman

E

very autumn, on Rosh Hashanah, Jews recite: “And so it is written” and on Yom Kippur “And so it is sealed”.

Astrology makes a similar claim in more casual language: something is ‘written in the stars’, fixed before you arrive at it. The two phrases sound like they’re saying the same thing. Ophira Edut suggests they aren’t.

On 12 December 1940, a ship called the Salvador, carrying Bulgarian Jews fleeing the Nazis, sank in the Sea of Marmara.

One of Ophira’s father’s older brothers drowned along with more than 200 other passengers. Her father wasn’t born yet; he arrived four years later, on 12 December 1944, the exact date of the wreck that had killed his brother.

Ophira doesn’t tell this story as a metaphor. She tells it as a fact that sits at the exact intersection of the question she’s built a career answering: do dates mean something or are they only ever what we decide to make of them?

Ophira who, with her identical twin Tali makes up the AstroTwins (they have authored more than 20 books), has written astrology columns for Elle since 2009 and published national bestsellers.

Born in Detroit in 1972 to a father freshly arrived from Israel and a mother who would later become a rabbi, she grew up, she says, with “a Jewish operating system, questioning everything, seeking curiosity, but the front end is astrological”.

Astrology, like the study of the Bible itself, was for most of its history a serious scholarly discipline, argued over by rabbis rather than dismissed by them.

The instinct, when a Jewish astrologer comes up, is to reach for the line ein mazal l’Yisrael, there is no constellation for Israel, supposedly Judaism’s blanket

rejection of the whole enterprise.

But the page it comes from, Shabbat 156a, is an argument, not a verdict. Rabbi Yohanan says there is no mazal for Israel.

Rabbi Hanina ben Hama, on the same page, says the opposite: the stars make one wise, the stars make one rich, there are stars for Israel. The Ritva reread the line as meaning Jews could override a bad chart through good deeds.

Maimonides, characteristically, rejected the whole premise. Ophira’s own mother, Rabbi Dorit Edut, reads it differently again: not a rejection of astrology, but of the idea that one sign could speak for an entire people.

“There is not one sign for all the Jewish people,” she says, “and we are not to forget our relationship to the Creator and what is expected of us.

Two thousand years of rabbis arguing and no ruling. Nothing unusual in that, says Rabbi Dorit: Jewish tradition deliberately preserves minority opinions, on the belief that a rejected view might one day become the accepted one.

Ophira rejects outright the idea that a chart is an excuse.“I strongly believe in free will and my approach to astrology increases your free will and choice because it increases your consciousness,” she says. A client, in her account, can always act their way out of a difficult chart.

It’s the same fault line the Ritva was navigating: mazal is real, but repentance and good deeds can override it.

This year, Rosh Hashanah falls at sundown on 11 September and, for Ophira, the timing is not incidental.

“Rosh Hashanah falls at a new moon, just

like Rosh Hodesh,” she says. “It’s the new moon that’s also the new year, and always either in Virgo or Libra.”

That range isn’t coincidental. The rabbinic month-sign system shares its cardinal points with Western astrology, Nisan and Aries at the spring equinox, Tishrei and Libra at the autumn equinox, though the Hebrew calendar’s lunar months drift against that fixed solar frame, even as the underlying logic, judgement in the seventh month, weighed on the scales, never moves.

For 5787, her reading is about contraction giving way to connection.

“It’s going to be a time when people need to come together and share their resources, find community across the boundaries they’ve created, and prioritise personal connections over accumulating more stuff and seeking separateness,” she says.

The tool she’s using to track that shift is one Kabbalists also use, the north node, known as the Tikkun. She draws the line to teshuvah herself, unprompted.

“I align with the concept of teshuvah and the idea that planetary moments give us opportunities to use our free will to shift the outcome of our lives,” she says. It’s the same argument the Ritva was having a thousand years ago, translated: the year is written, not sealed.

Ophira doesn’t limit that idea to one day.

“Every day and every moment is a ‘new year’ in the sense that there’s a chance to do better, be more virtuous and righteous, in every second of the day.”

Readings and astrological tools are available at astrostyle.com.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 17

SHANA

TOVA Wishing you a sweet and peaceful New Year.

We look forward to welcoming you back in AM 5787.

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I N T ER V I E W

THE COURAGE

of Coward

Tracy-Ann Oberman tells Brigit Grant how discovering the real Noël Coward inspired her bold reimagining of Present Laughter

N

oël Coward is remembered for cocktail parties, clipped one-liners and cigarette holders. Tracy-Ann Oberman would like us to remember something else. Behind the silk dressing gowns was a man who despised fascism, worked for British intelligence and refused to be seduced by the politics of appeasement. It is one of the reasons she feels such an affinity with him – and why she believes Present Laughter deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation.

“There is a beautifully preserved myth surrounding Noël Coward,” whispers Tracy-Ann. “Researching him made me realise he was not just about perfectly enunciated vowels. He was someone with far greater substance than his polished public image suggested.

“The more I read about Noël, the more I admired him,” she tells Life. “People forget that he was passionately anti-Nazi and worked for British

intelligence during the war. More than that, he had many Jewish friends and he wasn't frightened to stand apart from people in the theatrical world, where he found the views morally repugnant.”

In the current climate, this really chimed with

ABOVE: Tracy-Ann Oberman in a scene from Present Laughter BELOW: Noël Coward

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 21

S TAG E

Tracy-Ann’s concerns about her industry. She was particularly struck by Coward’s refusal to indulge those who flirted with fascism.

“He couldn’t bear people who admired Hitler or excused Nazism. He had absolutely no time for them,” she adds.

"He wasn't interested in fashionable opinion; he was interested in what was right.”

Tracy-Ann also learnt about Coward’s friends.

“I read about Blanche Blackwell, who was Noël’s muse. She was also Ian Fleming’s muse and lover.

Very interesting, but the point is she came from an extraordinary Sephardi family, and I realised he surrounded himself with Jewish people – and they weren’t token friendships. These were people he admired and loved.”

For Tracy-Ann, that moral certainty gives Present Laughter an unexpected resonance. Present Laughter is more than a revival. It is a conversation across almost 90 years between two artists who understood that charm and conviction are not mutually exclusive.

Understanding the man also changed the way she looked at what many regard as Coward’s most autobiographical comedy.

“Present Laughter has always been one of my favourite plays,” she says. “But when I looked at it more closely, I saw something beyond the sparkling comedy. I saw a portrait of the cost of celebrity – of a fragile ego trapped inside a gilded cage, desperately trying to hold back the one thing that catches up with every icon: time, and the fear of becoming irrelevant.”

Coward’s original centres on celebrated actor Garry Essendine, whose private life teeters permanently on the edge of chaos. Tracy-Ann wondered what would happen if that towering ego belonged not to a man but to a woman.

22 • LIFE MAGAZINE

“The moment I flipped the gender, the stakes suddenly became even more fascinating,” she beams. “Enter Geri Essendine – who has been 39 for the best part of a decade.”

This triggered thoughts of other women who set their own rules.

“I thought of Mae West, who wrote and produced her own work and famously enjoyed the company of many of her leading men. I thought of Joan Collins and her uniquely British glamour, of Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli.”

The next leap was geographical. Rather than remaining in pre-war London, Tracy-Ann transports Coward’s world to New York in 1977, at the height of Studio 54.

“I found myself drawn to the endless queues outside, the celebrities gliding into those hallowed VIP spaces, the glamour, excess and intoxicating sense of belonging to the ‘in crowd’.”

“And I began to wonder: what if Geri were an expatriate British actress? A hugely successful West End star who had arrived in America 15 years earlier with her chosen family – her dashing ex-husband, her fiercely loyal secretary and her producers – all determined that she would conquer Broadway and make all their fortunes.

"Geri needs them desperately, and they need her.

Without each other, can they even exist? Can Monty, Len, Henrietta, Morris – and Geri herself – survive the arrival of the handsome Johannes, whose presence threatens to blow ‘the firm’ apart?”

Tracy-Ann is keen to stress that while championing Coward for his courage, it is alongside his wit and she is not modernising his play for modernity’s sake.

“We haven't broken Noël Coward’s masterpiece.

Quite the opposite. Beneath the mirrored disco ball, Present Laughter remains what it has always been: a dazzling comedy about love, vanity, friendship and the strange business of being adored.”

And for Life readers who follow the actor and writer – there's nothing strange about adoring Tracy-Ann Oberman.

Present Laughter runs at Theatre Royal Bath until 5 September, then tours until 24 October, including at Richmond Theatre from 22 to 26 September

ABOVE: Tracy-Ann Oberman and James Dreyfus in Present Laughter BELOW: Blanche Blackwell and Noël Coward in, Blue Harbour, Jamaica

A remarkable life should remain just that.

At Loveday, care is designed around everything that still lies ahead.

Exceptional nursing and clinical expertise sit alongside meticulously designed surroundings, chef-curated menus and a rich programme of cultural events and experiences, with highly tailored support.

Offering permanent residential living, nursing and memory care, post-operative recovery, respite stays and Loveday Club membership.

Arrange a private visit or conversation. enquiries@lovedayandco.com 020 3540 9043 Belgravia — St. John’s Wood — Kensington

DAILY MAIL

‘ABANDON YOURSELF TO THE MADNESS’ THE TIMES

FINAL CHANCE TO SEE ORIGINAL CAST

MUST END 26 SEPTEMBER

SHANA TOVA

Happy New Year

HOW THE

Lyons roared

Anthea Gerrie discovers how one Jewish family’s ambition transformed the way Britain ate, drank and was entertained

I

vy Benson and her all-woman orchestra! The Restful Tray which followed her into the Marble Arch Corner House in an attempt to elevate cafeteria food to a fine dining experience! The Knickerbocker Glory I so craved but was never allowed to order!

Only the last appears in the Jewish Museum’s eye-popping exhibition, now at its temporary home in JW3. It tells the extraordinary story of the J. Lyons empire – a family whose ambition transformed British eating habits before their century of against-theodds success ended in one of the country’s most baffling business collapses.

The lack of detail about the restaurants my parents schlepped me to every Sunday was a personal disappointment, as they gave me my first taste of eating out. But it is a fair omission. The restaurants were only one part of a vast family enterprise whose founders eventually expanded from cigars into everything from munitions to computers.

Few will know that by 1906 J. Lyons was Britain’s biggest private caterer, and still fewer that, long before dabbling in tea and cakes, founder Samuel Gluckstein made the family fortune selling tobacco.

His father, Lehmann, a Hebrew teacher with an entrepreneurial streak, supplemented his income by inventing a travelling picture show, which he and his son toured around Belgium and Holland before heading to England in 1843 to escape rising antisemitism.

That heady habit of starting a totally new business – then another – was the lifeblood of the crazily ambitious crew who launched J. Lyons 40 years later.

As family descendant Thomas Harding reveals in his book Legacy: One Family, A Cup of Tea and the Company That Took on the World, Joe Lyons was not a member of the family but a business partner whose

26 • LIFE MAGAZINE

less obviously Jewish-sounding name fronted the company. The real force behind the empire was Monte Gluckstein, grandson of founder Lehmann and an even more formidable entrepreneur than his father Samuel.

A move into tobacco, once the family settled in Whitechapel, seemed almost inevitable. Virtually every generation from Lehmann smoked, but it is still astonishing that within a few years they grew from street hawkers of homemade cigars into tobacconists with almost 200 shops. As the tobacco business flourished, so did the catering empire, drawing customers with good tea, affordable cakes and entertainment.

The same family who mastered tobacco, brewed the perfect pot of tea and built a café empire also had the imagination and chutzpah to stage what became the Greatest Show on Earth. A successful refreshment tent for Barnum and Bailey’s original Greatest Show on Earth was followed by a mind-boggling recreation of Venice in London. Produced by Imre Kiralfy, an Austro- Hungarian Jew who later constructed White City, it was Monte Gluckstein who went to La Serenissima to buy 40 gondolas, recruit gondoliers and photograph the streets, piazzas and canals replicated within the Olympia exhibition

ABOVE: Nigella Lawson’s great-great grandfather was Barnett Salmon of the Lyons dynasty BELOW: Lyons acquired the US ice cream brand Baskin-Robbins

LYO N S CO JRENWI ERS H HO CU AS RE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Imre Kiralfy’s Venice, the Bride of the Sea; a ‘Nippie’; the Cumberland Hotel; Hannah Gluckstein; Wimpy Bar; the Trocadero; Strand Palace Hotel; Samuel Gluckstein; Joseph Gluckstein; the first J. Lyons tea shop; a vintage blue and white Lyons design; Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 27

Holland

LYO N S CO R N ER H O U S E

hall. Opening on Boxing Day 1891, it was a huge success, attracting nearly five million visitors and surpassed by an even more exotic sequel, Constantinople.

By now the company owned Olympia and had amassed enough to exploit a new national appetite for eating out affordably but in an establishment safe for women and free of alcohol that encouraged rowdy behaviour.

Enter the first white-painted J. Lyons tea shop announcing its presence in letters of real gold.

By1895 J. Lyons had gone public, selling shares to outside investors that did not come with the voting rights reserved for family.

The first signs of trouble came the following year when the Corner House’s predecessor, the Trocadero, ran far over budget. Even so, it was another huge success, followed by a bakery business that earned a royal warrant. In 1901, the Glucksteins and Salmons – the two heavily intermarried founding families – made a fortune by selling their chain of tobacconists to Imperial Tobacco for the equivalent of £41 million.

The first Corner House opened in 1909 – a Trocadero for the working classes – followed by further expansion into Lyons loose tea and a hotel empire that included the Strand Palace, Regent Palace and Cumberland.

Always preoccupied with his Jewish identity, Isidore Salmon went into politics to fight off the wave of anti-immigrant feeling perpetuated by an influx of Jews fleeing the pogroms in Europe. Monte Gluckstein, meanwhile, took on the reform of Jewish worship itself, founding the St Johns Wood Liberal Synagogue in 1911. Unlike Isidore, who would go on to become vice-president of the Board of Deputies, Monte broke the Orthodox habits of a lifetime by choosing to sit with his wife and children listening to prayers in English. It caused the first dissent in the family, although sexual orientation was less controversial, even in an era when homosexuality was a crime. The Coventry Street Corner House became a hangout for gay males and Hannah Gluckstein enjoyed generous family financial support as the lauded cross-dressing artist known as Gluck. But Lyons’s principal female star was a generic one – the tiara-sporting waitresses known as Nippies.

Fascism reared its head with the rise of Oswald Mosley but J. Lyons was a Jewish firm powered by the Gluckstein and Salmon families and their huge economic power persuaded Viscount Rothermere to withdraw his support for Mosley when threatened with the withdrawal of all Lyons advertisements from the Daily Mail. They established a loving children’s house for 23 Kindertransport refugees personally met off the train by family members, and as a final act of commercial genius Isidore saw the war in by establishing the Army Catering Corps.

Lyons, which by then was also catering Buckingham Palace garden parties, even made bombs for Britain when asked by the government to set up a munitions factory.

28 • LIFE MAGAZINE

‘ Monte broke the Orthodox habits of a lifetime by choosing to sit with his wife and children’ How could such a brilliant company fail? Blame the 1960s, when a younger generation with even wilder ideas took the helm, followed by the economic turmoil of the 1970s. While embracing American innovation launched Lyons into the ice-cream business – it bought Baskin-Robbins after inventing the Mivvi – and dominated the new burger market with 140,000 Wimpy bars, over-expansion and the collapse of the pound forced it to close the Trocadero, tea shops and Corner Houses to stay afloat – and sell its 35 hotels.

The saddest chapter in Harding’s book recounts how devastated family members called in a Tavistock Centre psychotherapist to provide weekly counselling at company headquarters, helping them come to terms with the loss of the empire that had once seemed invincible. It was that very empire that had enabled so many of them to leave Whitechapel for Mayfair, Kensington and Hampstead.

The Jewish Museum deserves congratulations for focusing on the extraordinary rise of a family that went from rags to riches. And let’s not forget its gift for tempting our tastebuds continues in their most famous living descendant – Nigella! She is directly descended from the family through her mother Vanessa Salmon, an heiress to the Lyons fortune. *Legacy: The Jewish Family who Founded J. Lyons and Fed Britain runs at JW3 until 18 October

ABOVE: Lyons’ waitresses at work

Holland Real Estate Ad - Trim: 210 x 297 mm (+3mm Bleed) - CMYK 300 DPI

I N T ER V I E W

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 29

Arnona Residences, Arnona Jerusalem BELOW: Hofim West, Park Hayam Netanya

W

hen people think about buying property in Israel, the conversation often begins with location. Jerusalem or the coast? A holiday home or a future retirement residence? A place for family gatherings, business trips, or perhaps, one day, aliyah?

These are important considerations, but for many overseas buyers, particularly those purchasing from thousands of miles away, another question often matters even more: Who is behind the project?

A home is one of the most significant purchases a family will ever make. When buying internationally, trust becomes just as important as location, design and price. Buyers want confidence that the company they are investing with will deliver on its promises, stand behind its product, and remain a trusted partner long after the keys are handed over.

That philosophy sits at the heart of Azorim. For more than 60 years, Azorim has been one of Israel’s leading residential developers, creating communities across the country and helping shape the modern Israeli landscape.

Azorim’s national footprint spans some of Israel’s most desirable cities, offering a diverse portfolio of residential opportunities for every stage of life. With approximately 48,000 units in its development pipeline, the company continues to shape communities across the country, giving buyers access to an exceptional range of lifestyle options,

More than a home Build a lasting connection to Israel with Azorim 30 • LIFE MAGAZINE

P R O M OT ED CO N T EN T

from the historic streets of Jerusalem to the vibrant energy of Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean coastline of Netanya.

creates a place where children and grandchildren can gather, where Jewish holidays can be celebrated together, and where a lasting bond with Israel can continue to grow.

The difference is not simply in the apartment itself. It is the confidence that comes from knowing there is a trusted developer behind it, guided by a long-term vision and a commitment to creating communities that people are proud to call home. In that sense, Azorim offers something more valuable than real estate alone. It offers a place to belong.

For more information, contact global@ azorim.co.il or visit azorim.co.il.

legal procedures to financing options and mortgage solutions. For many families, owning a home in Israel is more achievable than they initially imagine.

The Azorim portfolio showcases the many faces of Israel, from the timeless appeal of Jerusalem and the relaxed coastal lifestyle of Netanya to the vibrant pace of the greater Tel Aviv area.

Ultimately, however, the story is not about any single project. It is about connection.

For many British Jewish families, owning a home in Israel represents a commitment to future generations. It

Melach Ha'aretz, Arnona Jerusalem

Azorim wishes you and your loved ones a Chag Sameach!

For more inf conta global@azo

Images are for illustrative purposes only

Images are for illustrative purposes only

Images are for illustrative purposes only

The values that guide Azorim today are closely tied to its owner and chairman.

Hershy Friedman is a Canadian-born businessman and committed Zionist, whose long-term vision has helped transform the company into one of Israel’s leading real estate institutions.

Under his leadership, Azorim has embraced a philosophy that extends beyond construction. The goal is not simply to build apartments, but to create communities, invest in infrastructure and deliver environments where people can build their lives for generations to come.

That approach is particularly meaningful for overseas buyers. Whether purchasing a family home, holiday residence or future retirement property, international buyers are looking for more than square metres and specifications.

They are looking for stability, credibility and a sense of partnership throughout the buying process.

Through Azorim Global, the company provides dedicated support for foreign residents, helping buyers navigate everything from project selection and

One trusted name.

Endless opportunities.

LEFT: R Nof , Har Nof, Jerusalem ABOVE: Melach Ha'aretz, Arnona, Jerusalem

Har Nof | Jerusalem JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 31

TH e P UNK J E WS Fifty years after Anarchy in the UK was released, Brigit Grant joins rebels at JW3 to remember the role Jewish musicians, managers and mavericks played in the music revolution that changed Britain forever

32 • LIFE MAGAZINE

PUNKS

I

f you had wandered past JW3 on a Sunday afternoon at the start of the summer, you might have wondered whether someone had torn a hole in time.

Even with the 20mph speed limit, cars slowed for a better look. Outside stood a melange of bondage trousers, zoot suits, mohicans and, towering above them in sculptural drapery, fabric artist Daniel Lismore, once described by Vogue as “England’s Most Eccentric Dresser”. For one afternoon, London’s Finchley Road was transported back to 1976 for L’Chaim/L’Chaos: 50 Years of Jewish Punk.

One suspects the late Malcolm McLaren would have approved, and perhaps even laughed. Punk’s chief architect had little time for nostalgia. He wanted to provoke, disrupt and move on before the establishment caught up. Yet 50 years after the Sex Pistols released their debut single Anarchy in the U.K. on 26 November 1976, and made a notorious appearance on Bill Grundy’s Today programme, the movement Malcolm helped to unleash can still get people who refuse to surrender their individuality to show up.

Before Malcolm McLaren became punk’s great impresario, he was a Jewish boy growing up in Stoke Newington being raised by his formidable Sephardi grandmother, Rose Corré Isaacs. It was she who encouraged him to question authority and impressed upon him a maxim he never forgot: “To be bad is good. Good is simply boring.”

Few people embodied those words more completely than Malcolm who, by the mid-1970s, had immersed himself in New York’s underground scene, briefly managing the New York Dolls before returning to Britain to detonate youth culture.

Alongside his brilliant and equally uncompromising partner Vivienne Westwood, he transformed their King’s Road boutique into a place where fashion, music and rebellion fused into something new.

Britain was never quite the same again and, among the handful of people watching from the inside, was Philip Sallon.

FROM TOP: Debbie Juvenile, Siouxsie Sioux, Philip Sallon and Malcolm McLaren at Club Louise, 1976, Malcolm and Vivienne in the first shop, Sex.

Philip was a special guest at the JW3 soirée hosted by lifelong punk champion Mark Jay and music historian Alain Dein. Philip made quite the entrance, dressed in a Union Jack ensemble, and was soon regaling the audience with tales of his regular pilgrimages to Westwood’s shop with his sister Ruth – “she’s in the audience!”

“It was called Let It Rock then,” reminded Philip. “I walked in and thought, ‘My God, what’s this?’ It wasn’t really punk. It was more 1950s and early-’60s revival.

“There was no such thing as punk then,” he barked.

“It wasn’t called that. It was just a mood. A King’s Road trendy rebel mood.”

Among those sharing that mood was his close friend Caroline Medlen, whom Phillip describes as one of the earliest Jewish punks. “She started wearing all the Vivienne stuff – and she’s in the audience!” he said, pointing. Caroline had flown in from Los Angeles for the reunion. Raised in Jewish north-west London, she met Philip and soon found herself behind the decks at Louise’s, spinning American soul in the tiny Poland Street club that would become punk’s spiritual home.

It was intended to be a lesbian club, and Philip ended up there by accident.

“I was going to all these Jewish clubs,” he recalled.

“Nice Jewish boys and girls. Well... I had to be one of them. Obviously, the girl. Then a friend said, ‘Come to a gay club with me.’ I thought, ‘Oh, how liberated!’

So we schlepped over to Louise’s.”

Working on the door, Philip found himself signing in Bernie Rhodes, The Clash and later the Bromley Contingent who became the Sex Pistols’ earliest followers.

“All the King’s Road trendies started moving in and all the lesbians ran away,” Philip laughed. “So I ruined that club.”

Not Caroline, however. She became Louise’s resident DJ and was the first to play Anarchy in the U.K. after Malcolm ran in from nearby Denmark Street clutching the first pressing.

Philip already knew Vivienne from the shop “and I remember Malcolm hobbling around the periphery.

‘ My mother said, ‘You brought those characters into our house! How dare you!’’

He told me he was putting this band together and he was auditioning musicians.”

Philip wondered whether he should throw his hat into the ring.

“I said, ‘Well, do you think I should have a go?’

Malcolm looked me up and down and said, ‘You’re too old.’ It wasn’t a joke. He was serious. That was my claim to fame for being in the Sex Pistols.”

Then Malcolm and Vivienne called. There was someone they wanted Philip to meet. That was the day they arrived at Philip’s home in Dollis Hill, where he lived with his mother Anna and father Ralph, one of Britain’s best-known caricaturists, with Johnny Rotten in tow.

“My mum met Malcolm and Vivienne briefly, then we went into the back room. They’d brought Johnny and, from that day on, we were best friends. We went everywhere together, every club. He was very nice, you know, very nice.”

Days after the release of Anarchy in the U.K. came that TV appearance that propelled punk into living rooms.

“That was the Bill Grundy interview,” Philip explained. “I was meant to be on that. I never bothered to go.”

Asked whether he would have sworn live on air like the rest of the Sex Pistols, Philip cackles.

“Well, I’ve got a big mouth.”

Instead, he returned home to face a different reception.

“My mother had been watching TV and she said, ‘You brought those characters to our house! How dare you!’

While Malcolm was shaping The Sex Pistols, Jewish manager Bernie Rhodes was doing the same for The Clash. Asked whether his Jewish upbringing had influenced him, Philip

remembered once asking his father Ralph what made Jews different.

The answer stayed with him.

“He said-Jews are very individual.” Host Alain Dein suggested this might explain why so many Jewish figures were drawn to a movement built around a refusal to conform.

For Philip, Caroline and those close to him, his Jewish identity remained a constant.

“I’ve never missed Yom Kippur and now go every Saturday because of what’s going on, and show solidarity with my fellow Jews.”

The audience cheered. Joining Philip on stage, Jon Moss reached much the same conclusion from his different journey. Before finding worldwide fame with Culture Club, he had drummed with London and The Damned. Adopted as a baby and brought up in a Jewish family in Hampstead, he said both his adoption and his faith gave him “a sense of otherness”. “Reading about the Holocaust as a 10-year-old really, really haunted me,” he revealed.

Punk, he said, changed everything. “You could do it. You could just join bands.”

And although the moment had its Jewish detractors aplenty, he believes Jewish identity and punk share the same instinct.

“Individuality in your own way. It’s a Jewish thing.

Everybody’s got their own way of expressing it.”

It could have been Philip’s father talking, yet London’s most eccentric clubber loathes looking back.

“Most of my life has been about what’s next. Me sitting here reminiscing is not really me.”

Asked to define Punk, there was a beat.

“It depends what you call punk. To me, it’s about being a rebel and ‘anti’ and off the wall. But it’s still here, isn’t it?”

Judging by the renewed fascination, he may be right. Caroline Medlen has developed her memories at Louise’s into a TV series, DJ Punk and, next spring, the V&A opens Punk to Pop, a major exhibition exploring the movement’s enduring influence on music, fashion and art. Half a century on, punk is still refusing to behave.

RIGHT (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT): The Bromley Contingent; Punks at JW3; Jon and Culture Club; Philip Sallon at a protest; Caroline Medlen; Vivienne and Philip; Jon Moss and The Damned

P U N K J E WS

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 35

P R O M OT ED CO N T EN T

BE THE FIRST Be part of Tel Aviv’s next chapter

All images are for illustration purposes only

IN LUXURY REAL ESTATE, timing matters almost as much as location.

After a period of relative quiet, Tel Aviv’s residential market is beginning to show renewed momentum.

The fundamentals that have always underpinned the city remain firmly in place: exceptionally limited land, persistent demand for prime locations, and an international buyer base drawn to Tel Aviv – not only as an investment market, but as a place to build a life. These forces are creating a rare moment in which current pricing has yet to fully reflect the city’s long-term potential.

Tel Aviv retains one of the most valuable fundamentals in real estate: a finite supply of high-quality homes in genuinely desirable locations. For overseas buyers looking to establish a lasting foothold in Israel, this may be one of the most compelling entry points in recent years.

At the centre of that evolution is Hagag Group, one of Israel’s leading luxury real estate developers.

Founded by brothers Tzachi and Eido Hagag, the group has played a significant role in reshaping Tel Aviv’s urban skyline through iconic projects, including Meier on Rothschild, Port TLV Residence, MOMA Tel Aviv, Masterpiece Bavli and Infinity Tower. Across its portfolio, Hagag Group has helped move the definition of luxury

beyond the apartment itself, towards an international standard of living with a fully serviced, elevated and resort-style experience.

Its latest flagship development, FIRST, takes that philosophy to Tel Aviv’s next great coastal neighbourhood. Located in the new Sde Dov district along the city’s northern shoreline, FIRST sits within one of Tel Aviv’s most ambitious master-planned developments. The neighbourhood is being designed around a different vision of urban living: proximity to the Mediterranean, beachfront access, extensive green spaces, community infrastructure and direct connectivity to the city.

Designed by internationally renowned ODA New York, FIRST introduces a striking new architectural presence to the coastline. The development brings together a 45-storey residential tower and three intimate boutique buildings, with approximately 350 luxury residences with uninterrupted sea views, ranging from two-bedroom apartments to duplexes, mini-penthouses and expansive penthouses with panoramic views of the Mediterranean.

But the ambition of FIRST extends well beyond the residences themselves. The project has been

All images are for illustration purposes only

conceived around a resort-inspired lifestyle, with direct access to the beach, an infinity pool, fitness and wellness facilities, spa areas, a private cinema, private residents’ lounge and bar, a children’s club and concierge services designed to make everyday living feel effortless.

For international buyers, purchasing property in Israel can involve far more than selecting the right apartment. Financing, taxation, legal documentation, currency transfers and the logistics of buying from overseas all require careful coordination. Hagag Group’s experienced international team works closely with foreign buyers, providing guidance from the initial property selection through to contract, financing, payments and delivery.

The most compelling real estate opportunities are rarely the ones everyone is already talking about.

They are the ones people recognise just before everyone else does.

For more details: info@hagag-group.co.il first-sde-dov.com/en/

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 37

While they are still here Etan Smallman joins a remarkable Christmas pilgrimage across Eastern Europe to thank the last surviving Righteous

W

hat is a nice Jewish boy from Finchley doing wearing the gaudiest of acrylic festive jumpers and lugging Christmas trees about in snow-blanketed Poland?

The sight of Jonny Daniels loading his candy cane-covered van might seem an odd one but, for the 40-year-old and his dog Tyson, this is an annual pilgrimage.

Jonny becomes an unlikely Father Christmas each winter, as he travels

38 • LIFE MAGAZINE

3,000km across Eastern Europe in a race to thank the last remaining souls who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

I first meet him at his flat on a street just outside the Warsaw Ghetto. The base of his From the Depths foundation – established after a conversation with Nobel Peace Prize-winning survivor Elie Wiesel – is piled high with enormous individually-wrapped hampers, brimming with gifts.

They range from the fortifying (jars of celeriac and cartons of borscht) to the cheering (Christmas baubles and chocolate Santas). Many are practical: magnifying glasses, gloves and hefty bottles of cooking oil.

“The heavy stuff,” says Jonny, “that they won’t be able to schlep from the supermarkets themselves”.

The 75 elderly men and women he will visit “all seem to be on the top floor” without a lift, he notes, underlining what

FILM

he sees as their forgotten state: the heroes of the 20th century often living out their final years in poverty as well as obscurity.

Righteous Among the Nations, or Chasidei Umot HaOlam, is a term that originates in the literature of the Sages – used for non-Jews who supported the Jewish people in their hour of need.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, enshrined the concept in its earliest mission statement when it was founded in 1953. To this day, it states that among its principal duties is “to convey the gratitude of the State of Israel and the Jewish people to Righteous Among the Nations”.

It has bestowed the title on 28,707 rescuers. According to records collated

by Jonny, only 65 survive.

His work is the subject of The Righteous Road Trip, a new documentary that follows him across Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary on his odyssey of thanksgiving.

On a –4°C December day, the film crew, led by Oscar-winning director Vanessa Roth – and assembled at a fortnight’s notice from the US, Belgium and Austria

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: A van takes gifts across countries; Jonny Daniels knocks and doors and delivers gifts to Righteous people

– squeezes into the modest Warsaw flat of Łucja Jurczak (née Nestorowicz).

Aged 95 at the time of filming, she was just 16 when she took on the Nazis. She had befriended a Jewish girl called Bella before the war but had lost contact.

During a visit to Bella’s Polish home town of Międzyrzec Podlaski in 1943, Łucja saw her old friend – on the other side of the ghetto fence.

Bella obtained false papers and sought shelter on the “Aryan” half of the town, just weeks before the ghetto would be liquidated. Łucja shared the secret with her parents. They agreed to hide her, placing their entire family in mortal danger. Łucja aided Bella’s escape, walking 5km with her under the cover of a storm, as the rest of the neighbourhood sheltered indoors.

“We weren’t afraid of anything anymore,” she recalls, before getting up to check on her cooking.

Łucja, who says half her class was Jewish before the war, concealed Bella in the family grain store. Her brother, Stanisław, then took Bella to Germany, posing as her fiancé, and found her work with a German peasant family from where she could be liberated – while Mr and Mrs Nestorowicz continued helping Bella’s parents, who also survived.

What had propelled Łucja to help was having seen a Jewish neighbour, Doba Sztejn, “and her two very beautiful children sent with the first transport” to the extermination camp Treblinka.

“There are fewer and fewer Sprawiedliwi,” she tells me, using the Polish word for the Righteous. “So many people died this year,” she laments, “and I’ll be next.”

More than half of the Righteous Jonny visited – aged between 91 and 101 when filmed in 2022 – are no longer with us.

He has been to so many funerals.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 39

FILM

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Jonny with Stefan Mikolajczyk who, as a teenager, saved a family; Kazimierz Kalwinski (pictured seated next to Jonny and family) saved 24 people when he was 15; and Imre Csik who, aged 11, saved four men

“I even understand when to sit down and stand up during mass,” he says.

But Łucja was unduly pessimistic; Jonny was able to visit her last Christmas too.

“The unifying comment of almost every single one of them is, ‘Thank you for remembering’,” he tells me on a pit stop between Warsaw and Lublin. He is on the way to see 95-year-old Helena Kuśmierz for what will be the first time that she has ever spoken publicly about her family’s gallantry, after 80 years.

Her uncle was caught hiding their Jewish friends, the Rajs family, for which he and others were murdered by the Nazis.

Sara, the Rajses’ daughter, escaped to Helena’s family. Alerted by neighbours, the head of the local Polish police had advised her parents to kill Sara and dispose of her body but, instead, they risked everything to secure her a false identity card and spirit her to another hiding place, ensuring her survival.

The documentary is the brainchild of Justin Cohen, news editor and co-publisher of the Jewish News. He had been aware of Jonny’s work for several years and “became increasingly frustrated that there had been no film made of it”.

So he called Stephen D Smith, co-founder of the UK’s National Holocaust Museum and former executive director of the Steven Spielberg-founded USC Shoah Foundation. Stephen, acting as co-producer, got on the phone to

40 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Vanessa (whose mother Linda had recorded survivor testimonies for the charity in the 1990s).

“She dropped everything,” says Justin of the documentary’s director, writer and producer. “We talk about the ‘survivor generation’ fast disappearing and this being the last chance to hear their stories. The heroes of the Holocaust are necessarily even older. So I’m glad we got out there in time.”

While the Righteous are often moved to tears by a visit from Jonny, they all shrug off any suggestion that they are in any way special.

Jonny asks Łucja how he can teach his two daughters to be as brave as she was.

But she uses the question only as a chance to credit the kindness and wisdom of her parents and schoolteachers.

“You have to explain to the children that this can happen to you tomorrow as well,” she says. “Always have that feeling for another person – help them when they are in need.”

In the film, Jonny notes of Helena to her son: “Every time I say, ‘You’re a hero,’ you’ll see, she just gets up and runs away.”

It is tempting to ask what made these individuals stand out in summoning what Elie Wiesel called the “courage to care” – when all around them entire populations succumbed to tyranny. But

perhaps the answer is that they simply did not stop to ponder such questions.

Jadwiga Szczeszak, 97, helped save the lives of brothers Moshe and Chaim Frymel by hiding them under the floorboards. “Sometimes,” she says as she gestures her hands towards thin air, “this courage came out of nowhere”.

The Righteous Road Trip is touring the international festivals and will be shown at UK Jewish Film Festival in November. For screenings, visit: therighteousroadtripfilm.com

F I LM C R E D IT S Vanessa Roth won the directing award at the Croatian International Film Festival in July and, in August, best documentary short at the Burbank International Film Festival.

The Righteous Road Trip is a Big Year Production, produced in association with From the Depths, 18Reflections, Memory Workers and Jewish News. It is executive produced by philanthropists Eitan Neishlos and Jonathan Zlotolow and Elliott Joseph and Elizabeth Heyman Winter.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 41

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HOLY ROLLERS From first idea to fast-growing brand, Candice Krieger discovers the secret ingredient that has led to the success of SushiDog

M

ost holiday ideas disappear before the flight home. Greg Ilsen and Nick Goldstein's turned into one of Britain's fastest-growing food businesses.

Their company, SushiDog, sells around 40,000 made-to-order hand rolls every week, employs more than 200 people and, with 17 sites either open or about to launch, is rapidly rolling out across the country.

Recently named in this year’s Sunday Times 100 list of Britain's fastest-growing private companies, the brand has grown from a single kiosk in Westfield London into a business targeting 50 locations by 2029.

Yet the idea behind SushiDog didn’t begin with sushi at all.

Greg and Nick, who became friends at Immanuel College, were in their early 20s when a holiday in Israel sparked a conversation about launching a business together.

“There was a restaurant concept there that we really liked,” Greg tells Life. “We were talking about how cool it would be bringing it to the UK. That particular idea never materialised, but it got us thinking that we wanted to start a business together. It could have been in any industry. It just happened to be that the first idea we spoke about was in hospitality.”

Instead, the pair looked to Australia’s grab-andgo sushi hand rolls and adapted the concept for the UK, creating a made-to-order format that allows customers to build their own oversized sushi roll from a choice of proteins, toppings and sauces.

Both Nottingham graduates, Greg was working as a business project manager at Ocado, while

44 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Nick was a geography teacher with Teach First when, at the end of 2017, they took the leap and left their careers to launch SushiDog. “I remember my mum saying, ‘I think you should try to do it while staying at Ocado’ – probably like any Jewish mum would,” Greg says with a smile. “But I said, ‘If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it properly.’

“We didn’t have kids or mortgages. It seemed the perfect time.”

Today, both founders are 34 and fathers themselves – Greg has two children and Nick has three – making the prospect of taking the same risk feel very different.

With the help of the Government-backed Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), which encourages investment in start-ups through tax breaks, they secured early backing and opened their first kiosk in Westfield London, which remains SushiDog’s best-performing site.

Even then, there was no grand blueprint.

“We never thought it would get to anything like this,” Greg admits. “When we started, it was really just ‘let’s get one open and see what happens’, rather than ‘let’s build a huge business’.”

The first six months were relentless. The pair routinely worked 100-hour weeks, arriving at

‘We’re a healthy graband-go concept. But we offer customisation’

BR AND

7am and often not leaving until after 11pm.

“We were serving customers while also trying to do rotas, pay suppliers and run the company. It was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done,” says Greg.

Rather than chasing rapid expansion, they chose to grow steadily. “It has been eight years,” he says. “That’s a good amount of time to make a lot of mistakes, learn slowly and do lots of hard work.”

That patient approach is now paying dividends.

Earlier this year, SushiDog opened its first site outside London – in Birmingham, which has traded ahead of expectations and given the founders confidence to accelerate their regional expansion.

The business has also continued to grow in the capital. New sites have opened in Canary Wharf and Camden, with a further opening in St James’s, joining locations including Brent Cross, King’s Cross, Baker Street and The Strand.

Expansion comes at a time when much of the hospitality sector continues to face significant pressures. While casual dining has struggled with rising costs and weaker consumer spending, Greg believes quick-service restaurants (QSR) have proved more resilient as diners increasingly trade down from more expensive meals.

“We’re actually quite lucky,” he says. “VAT doesn’t affect us as much as it does a lot of the hospitality sector. For us, it’s more about business rates. As you open more stores, that’s what has the biggest impact on the business.”

To fuel that growth, SushiDog has raised around £2.5 million, predominantly from Middleton Enterprises across three funding rounds, including an £800,000 investment earlier this year that helped finance four new London openings.

The company has also built a loyal online following. Earlier this year, it launched its first

app, giving away 2,018 free SushiDogs – a nod to its founding year. Every giveaway had been claimed within 90 minutes.

The app attracted 15,000 downloads in its first two weeks and, at one point, ranked second in the App Store’s Food & Drink chart, ahead of McDonald’s, Wagamama and KFC. Greg believes the brand’s success comes from understanding how eating habits have changed.

“We don’t claim to be at the super high end of healthy eating,” he says. “Gen Z customers are less interested in super-healthy salads. They’re focused more on having a nutritious, complete meal with protein, carbs and flavour.”

Rather than competing directly with traditional sushi restaurants, he believes SushiDog has created its own category.

“We’re a healthy grab-and-go QSR concept. But we offer customisation. If you’ve got a couple more minutes to spend, you can get something made exactly how you want it.”

Looking back, Greg says the support of experienced entrepreneurs helped to shape the business in its early years. Among those he credits are hospitality entrepreneur Maurice Abboudi, whose career has included Domino’s, ASK Restaurants and Wagamama, and Sam Anstey, managing director of Mildreds Restaurant Group.

“They gave us brilliant guidance during SushiDog’s formative years. The great thing about being part of the Jewish community is there are so many people you’re introduced to and the vast majority are always willing to help.”

With 50 locations firmly in its sights, it seems this dog is really having its day. sushidog.co.uk

ABOVE: Greg Ilsen and Nick Goldstein, founders of SushiDog BELOW: They describe their venture as a ‘healthy grab-and-go’ concept

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 45

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AU C T I O N H O U S E

Carmel Shayle helps to sell some of the world’s most coveted works of art. She tells Michelle Rosenberg about the thrill of bringing down the gavel

T

he room is silent and the paddle lifts almost imperceptibly. Millions of pounds are riding on the next few seconds as the auctioneer scans the faces in the audience before bringing down the hammer.

Sounds like a film? For former Yavneh student Carmel Shayle it’s her day job, and she relishes the moment when another masterpiece is sold. At just 29, the Bushey-born art specialist has become one of the auctioneers at international auction house Phillips, where work by the world’s greatest artists routinely commands astonishing prices – including Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, which sold for $85 million (£63 million) in 2022.

The self-confessed art-history nerd adores Edouard Manet, Jan van Eyck and David Hockney (“a true icon, genuine superstar artist, icon of our times”), more of which later.

She had a “lovely upbringing, where Friday nights were the highlight of my week”, confiding that, inspired by her beloved late father, she has “absolutely perfected cooking the proper Ashkenazi Jewish roast dinner”. She and her fiancé (“who will kill me if I don’t give him a mention”), enjoy hosting people for Shabbat.

After graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art, Carmel’s first job was as an executive assistant at Christie’s when she was 20. It’s an experience she

GOING, GOING...

GOLD describes as “a good entry point into the art world”, explaining: “All of a sudden at this young age, you are seeing at the highest levels how companies work, how Christie’s works, how auction houses work; it was a magical time.”

She continues: “Auction houses are the centre of the commercial art world.

They draw in an international pool of clients, across so many different objects, prices, categories and specialists.”

She converted that first role into a permanent one in the classical art department before making the move, in 2021, to Phillips auction house, where she is now a senior manager in its client strategy department specialising in modern and contemporary art, across paintings, design and photography.

Client strategy, she says “is almost one of those secret departments. It is not advertised on our website, but every auction house has one.”

With a virtual Rolodex of hundreds

of thousands of clients, part of Carmel’s job is helping Phillips “better understand, engage, and build long-term relationships with our collectors, ensuring we’re connecting the right collectors with the right specialists and the right works of art at the right moment.”

“We engage with everyone,” she expands. “The young, the old, the experienced collectors, the ones making their first purchase. For each one, it’s a super-exciting moment.

“What is genuinely great about working with collectors is when they’re buying something. It’s so sentimental.

There’s so much joy when they’ve finally won the work. It might be a painting that’s super rare to come by, and this is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for months, maybe years, to have in their collection.”

As for being an auctioneer, it’s a finely-tuned artistic production of its own. The preparation is

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 47

AU C T I O N H O U S E

RIGHT: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, in acrylic and spray paint on canvas, from 1982, sold at Phillips for $85m in 2022 (the estimate was around $70m). Credit: Phillips BELOW: A Year in Normandie by David Hockney

“rigorous”, with Carmel and her colleagues “lucky enough to have a creative director of a major West End London theatre give us training on pace, on tone, on confidence, on how to stand. Because in that moment it is almost like being an actor or a performer.”

And as the room of bidders waits expectantly, the auctioneer is front and centre of the action.

“You’re on the rostrum,” Carmel says.

“It’s years of practice. Each auction house is responsible for training its own cohort of auctioneers, and every auctioneer you ever see, they’ll have their day job within the auction house.

But then, let’s say one day a month, they’ll put their ‘out of office’ on and go down to the sale room.”

Everyone has a slightly different way of bidding. “It’s about having a beady eye and being able to think: ‘Is that a bid? Is that a bid? And sometimes you can ask rhetorically. You can say, ‘Austin, thank you so much. Was that a bid in the front row?’ And yes, you can nod your head. But for Phillips auctions, if you’re bidding in the room, you will need a paddle as well.”

Phillips is gearing up for the fifth installment of its dedicated David Hockney sales on 19 September; the famed artist died aged 88 on 11 June 2026.

Carmel explains that the auction is primarily made up of editions, not the original works, “which obviously go for millions. That means for a David Hockney, the price points are much more accessible and it attracts a much wider audience”.

She adds: “If you love Hockney, this

48 • LIFE MAGAZINE

is the best route into the market and the best way to have one hanging in your home.

“What is really fun about these auctions is obviously David Hockney had such a wide practice, and this will be able to offer things that are newer, older, different colours, different subjects.

“There’ll be something for everyone in that auction.”

Carmel’s father never got to see her realise her dream of being an auctioneer. “When I did it, I just thought, ‘Dad, I’ve done it, and you’d be so proud.’ That was one of the

happiest moments of my career.”

She describes her passion for art as “one of those very rare things that exists in this modern world, which is still made by a human being and is communicating something non-verbal, maybe irrational”.

She adds: “Everyone has a different way of viewing the world and everyone has the same blank canvas.

“But every artist has come up with such a different view and such a different way of interpreting the things around them.

“Art can really transform ordinary things into something extraordinary.”

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JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 51

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B E YO N D F I CTI O N

FAU DA FAC E S REALITY

As Season Five launches, Brigit Grant asks co-creator Avi Issacharoff whether Israel’s most successful drama can spread the truth

54 • LIFE MAGAZINE

I N T ER V I E W

M

atan Meir would never have expected to see his name in The Hollywood Reporter.

A longtime member of Fauda’s production team, he was hugely valued but knew that it is only the names in big type on the credits that matter.

That changed tragically on November 11, 2023, when Matan, 38, a reservist in the 551st Brigade’s 697th Battalion, was killed in Gaza. Suddenly the Fauda man behind the scenes made the headlines.

Idan Amedi made them too. A star singer-songwriter in Israel, internationally he is Fauda’s Sagi, the impulsive but romantic member of Mista’arvim – the elite undercover counterterrorism unit. But, in January 2024, it was Idan who was severely burned and wounded by shrapnel from an explosion in Gaza that killed six of his fellow reservists – two of them close friends from early army days.

Idan told Fauda producers his extensive rehabilitation meant withdrawing from Season Five. And it’s against this backdrop of loss and profound sorrow that Fauda returns - a drama forced to confront a reality more terrible than anything its creators thought they could write.

And they did think about it. Together, co-creators Avi

Issacharoff, 53, and star Lior Raz, 54, who plays brooding warrior Doron Kavillio, discussed a storyline in which terrorists breached the Gaza border and seized an Israeli community.

Lior thought it was the worst thing that could happen to Israel. Avi simply rejected it as “not realistic”. He tells me the discarded storyline has haunted him ever since as we discussed the season I have already watched and can’t forget.

Fans – of which Fauda has many – hate spoilers and Avi knows this. But spoiler is a tasteless term for a season of heartbreak with two dedicated episodes about the horror of October 7, which carry an advisory warning.

This naturally raises the question: should they have been made at all?

“There was a debate. An ongoing debate,” says Avi. “Maybe it’s too early. Maybe we cannot show stuff that refers to October 7 because of the sensitivity; because of the people who were killed, the families and residents of Gaza’s periphery.

“But, at the end of the day, we thought it was too important.

Fauda is not the typical TV show. It’s an action drama, but very much based on reality. You must be in a dialogue with this huge event that changed the face of the Middle East for good and bad. So, you can’t ignore it. It’s not the elephant in the room.

It’s a herd of elephants in one room.”

Fauda Season Four ended with Doron, Sagi, Eli (Yaakov Zada-Daniel), Steve (Doron Ben-David) and Shani (Inbar Lavi) grievously wounded after a firefight in Jenin. Viewers were left not knowing who would survive.

Season Five opens two years after October 7 with a broken Doron having PTSD therapy so while fast-forwarding the Oct 7 decicated episodes seven and eight is an option – don’t. The plot moves seamlessly to episode nine while the recreation of

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 55

THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Fauda crew member Matan Meir was killed in Gaza; Avi and Lior; Lior as Doron Kavillio and Yaakov Zada-Daniel as Eli in Fauda; Idan Amedi as Sagi

Israel’s darkest day is tough – and more so than other October 7 dramas because we know the characters. It also extracts extraordinary performances from a cast accustomed to emotional extremes, although to single out individuals would reveal too much. In a world more predisposed towards Israel, Fauda would get every award.

Avi takes the compliment with a half-smile. He is calm and controlled. The weight of what we’re discussing has me stumbling over my words. His composure is borne of experience. He has reported on the Middle East for more than a quarter of a century and, like Lior, served in the Israel Defense Forces’s undercover counterterrorism unit Duvdevan, where his fluency in Arabic proved invaluable.

Avi completed his MA in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and his books on the Second Intifada and Lebanon took him deeper into the conflict. Decades spent talking to Palestinians – including Hamas leaders and militants – forged relationships that not only informed Fauda’s Arab characters, but allowed him to see the humanity in people he regarded as enemies.

Which is why October 7 was beyond anything even he could process.

“I couldn’t believe that even Hamas were capable of the atrocities they committed. I was naive to believe that they would follow the rules of Islam, meaning respecting the laws of war, the laws of hostages and prisoners of war.”

“What I found is that people inside Hamas, and those who were part of the mob looting Gaza’s periphery, didn’t have any kind of human aspect to them. They were just coming to slaughter Jews. But they also slaughtered Muslims... and

56 • LIFE MAGAZINE

foreigners from Nepal, from Thailand. What is their connection to the conflict? What is this?”

Two days after the attack, Lior and Avi headed south with former Israeli politician and special forces officer Yohanan Plesner to “the bombarded town of Sderot to extract two families”, as Lior wrote on Instagram, posting footage of rockets overhead.

Lior has spoken since about how one terrified family opened its door to find the Fauda star standing there. They looked at him and said: “Doron.”

“No, it’s Lior,” he replied. “And now it’s real. This is the real deal.”

The story gets laughs when Lior tells it, but this chilling collision of Fauda and reality would define Season Five.

Another defining aspect is the season’s core theme – tha’r (‫ )رأث‬Arabic for blood revenge. Into this fauda (‫ )הדואפ‬chaos in Hebrew – comes Mélanie Laurent.

Best known as Shosanna Dreyfus in Inglourious Basterds, the French-Jewish actress and film-maker told director Quentin Tarantino that she wanted the role because “I want to kill Hitler”.

The symbolism of her Fauda casting is inspired, as Avi knows.

“But we wanted to take her in a completely different direction.

Meaning being part of the ‘bad guys’ side.”

Deliberately subversive, instead of seeking Nazi vengeance, Mélanie, as Anne Aubert, is a Frenchwoman living in Marseille married to a Palestinian, who she loves.

“She represents the kind of naive woke generation in Europe,” explains Avi. “You know... the ones with the slogans ‘Free, free Palestine, la la la... It’s cool, you know.”

I N T ER V I E W

‘ People inside Hamas were just coming to slaughter Jews. But they also slaughtered Muslims and foreigners...’

ABOVE: Actor Idan Amedi is also a musician; Mélanie Laurent; Mélanie stars as Shosanna Dreyfus in Inglourious Basterds

Mélanie didn’t need much persuading to join Fauda. She and Lior had talked about it for years. “So when he mentioned Season Five would feature a French woman, I’m like, ‘Who are you gonna take?’” she recalls, sitting beside Lior. “And then, literally, it happened in three minutes when I yelled at him and the deal was done.”

According to Avi – who resists speaking on Mélanie’s behalf – she really liked Tel Aviv. But filming there coincided with the Iranian attacks. Becoming close friends while making the Netflix films 6 Underground and Operation Finale, Lior extended an invite.

“I told her, ‘Come stay with us.’ I thought there’d be one or two explosions and that would be the end of it,” says the actor, who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodyguard after his military service.

“Mélanie ended up living with us for about a month. Every day we went to the safe room, and every Friday I made kiddush.

I think it was the first time in her life she experienced kiddush.”

Interviewed on set, an emotional Mélanie said, “He protected me... like Doron.”

Of her character Anne, little can be said beyond her life not being what it seems, which sets her off in search of “truth and revenge”. Mélanie encapsulates the connecting thread of Season Five.

“We have one thing in common in the season: it’s grief.

I think the season is about grieving a lot of things.”

That grief is felt by Avi. The storyline he dismissed. The conversations that took place in Israel before October 7.

“Just before the massacre, the talk was about whether to allow more Palestinians from Gaza to go into Israel to work.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 57

‘Can we reach some kind of compromise or temporary ceasefire with Hamas? Yes or no?’ That was the debate. We weren’t aware that what Hamas had in mind was a genocide, eliminating every Israeli that got in the way – men, women or children.”

It’s hard to move on, but we do and he tells me scriptwriting now takes precedence – behind him is a poster of Hit and Run, the 2021 Netflix series, created with and starring Lior. Avi, a former Arab affairs correspondent for Haaretz, will never abandon journalism, and his politics are widely known. “I’m the last one to be supportive of my government. They have made terrible mistakes; I don’t like this government, and I hope that there will be a change here, a shift in Israel soon.

“But having said that, any other government that would have dealt with October 7 would have done the same, if not worse,” he says, although he considers that another government might have pursued a political and diplomatic process that produced a different reality in Gaza rather than, as he puts it, acting “so stupidly” as Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.

Avi is equally emphatic about separating Hamas from the religion it invokes. “There is a great Islam and a very kind and liberal Islam. It’s not Hamas. It’s not Muslim Brotherhood.

People don’t get it. People don’t understand the difference.”

He points to Hamas’s violent conflict with Fatah and the Brotherhood’s clashes with other Arab governments. “They are a threat to Arab nationalism, to secular Arab liberals.”

Avi and Lior knew each other in Jerusalem, then became writing partners. “We are family,” he says of them now,

ABOVE: Fauda 's team of force ABOVE RIGHT: Mélanie as Shosanna in a memorable scene from Inglourious Basterds RIGHT: Mélanie and Lior in Fauda

58 • LIFE MAGAZINE

‘ We weren’t aware that what Hamas had in mind was a genocide, eliminating every Israeli in the way’

I N T ER V I E W dismissing anything less. That sense of family extends to the Fauda ensemble, which has always depended on Arab as well as Jewish actors. Nazareth-born Hisham Suliman, who played Season One’s Abu Ahmad – The Panther – is one. But Season Five asked something very different of its Arab cast.

“Those who came did so very strongly, believing they were doing the right thing,” says Avi. “Even though they’re playing terrorists, they knew their message is that what Hamas did on that day was wrong, terrible, and something the world cannot allow to happen again. Not for Jews, non-Jews, Israelis or non-Israelis.”

Avi’s willingness to cross the divide leads us to a story I’d read about him. A meeting with Palestinian Baha Nababta, a community activist at Shuafat refugee camp in 2015.

Baha watched Fauda and when Avi told him he wrote it, was surprised how impressed Baha was, telling others in the camp.

I asked if Baha would watch Season Five. Avi shook his head.

“Less than a year later he was murdered by armed Palestinians in the camp. This is part of the chaos.”

It’s a shocking answer, but Avi continues: “Would Baha still be one of the fans? Yes, he’d have watched all five seasons. Definitely.”

Finally, I ask if Season Five can break through the lies and deliver the truth about October 7 to the millions of fans globally?

Avi doesn’t hesitate. “Don’t be naïve. You think that

watching Fauda would change their perspective or thoughts about the Middle East and what happened here on October 7? They will watch it and say, ‘Oh, come on, it’s the Zionist propaganda.’”

For once, I pray Avi Issacharoff has got it wrong.

Fauda is on Netflix from 8 September

PHOTO: ILYA MELNIKOV

TOP RIGHT: French-Algerian actor Hakim Djaziri plays terrorist antagonist Saeed al-Khatib – the Sinwar of Europe – in Season Five ABOVE: Lior and Eli in disguise, also in Season Five RIGHT: Avi

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 59

THE MAN WHO brings Jews home

After a career spent recovering people from disasters across the globe, Colonel Golan Vach now helps Jewish families build new lives in Israel

60 • LIFE MAGAZINE

T

here are few people with a better reason to lead an organisation that brings Jewish families to Israel than Colonel Golan Vach. It is, after all, the country he has spent his entire adult life fighting to defend.

But his courage has never been confined to Israel.

To rescue organisations across the world, Vach has been the commander who has led elite search-and-rescue missions after earthquakes, terrorist attacks and some of the worst humanitarian disasters for more than three decades.

To families waiting desperately for news, Vach has been the man who arrived when hope was almost gone.

As commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) National Rescue Unit within the Home Front Command, Vach has led rescue missions from Haiti to Mexico, Albania, Brazil and the Philippines. In 2021, his team worked around the clock following the collapse

of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, refusing to leave until Estelle Hedaya, the final victim, had been recovered and returned to her family.

Then, in 2023, after devastating earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria, Israeli rescue teams once again became some of the first international responders on the scene, pulling survivors alive from beneath collapsed apartment blocks.

Throughout it all, one principle has guided Vach’s work: no family should ever be left without answers.

Nothing, however, prepared him for October 7.

After Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, Vach’s unit was sent into devastated communities to rescue

I S R A EL

survivors and recover victims.

On a freezing January night in a cemetery in Gaza City, Vach led a 60-man engineering and rescue team searching for the remains of Ran Gvili, the final deceased Israeli hostage still being held. Intelligence gathered from aerial surveillance and captured Hamas terrorists suggested Ran had been buried beneath a cemetery riddled with tunnels, close to the home of a Hamas commander.

Hour after hour, the team excavated the site. One body after another was carefully recovered, photographed and sent to forensic specialists for identification. As the night wore on, morale inevitably began to falter. Had the intelligence been wrong?

But returning without Ran was never an option for Vach. Only days earlier, he had spent Shabbat in Kibbutz Alumim, which Ran had died defending on October 7.

“One of the residents looked me in the eye and asked, ‘Are you going to bring Rani back?’” Vach recalls.

“I simply answered, ‘Yes, we are.’ At that moment, I felt the whole kibbutz – and the whole nation – was standing behind us.”

Then, after more than 250 photographs had been examined, the call finally came. Ran had been found.

“It was nothing short of a miracle,” Vach says. “A miracle made possible by hundreds of people who worked tirelessly to bring it about.”

For him, recovering Ran was about far more than returning one fallen soldier.

“As a senior IDF officer, I felt that, in some small way, we were redefining what it means to be responsible for protecting this nation – something we failed to do on October 7.”

It is a belief that extends far beyond military service.

The same sense of responsibility for every Jew – areivut, mutual responsibility – now lies at the heart of

Left: Ran Gvili is brought home from Gaza

Vach’s work as chief executive of Israela, an organisation helping Jewish families make aliyah together rather than alone.

The project itself has deep roots.

More than three decades ago, Vach’s father, Shalom, began helping French Jewish families to settle successfully in Israel. Under Golan Vach’s leadership, that vision has evolved into a comprehensive model now expanding to English- and Spanish-speaking communities. Its philosophy is simple.

“Ultimately,” Vach says, “it is a community – not the government – that integrates olim [immigrants].”

Months before a family boards a plane, Israela brings groups of likeminded families together on pilot visits to Israel, introducing them to schools, neighbourhoods, employers and potential communities. They choose where they want to build their future together before returning home to prepare.

Weekly online meetings follow, alongside Hebrew lessons, practical guidance on housing, employment and healthcare, and support from dedicated project managers who accompany each group throughout the process.

When the families finally arrive in Israel, they are welcomed not simply by officials but by neighbours. Local

families help them settle, while educators support children through the challenges of new schools, new friendships and a new language.

The support continues long after the flight has landed. It is one reason why an extraordinary 98 percent of Israela families remain in Israel.

At a time when antisemitism is rising across much of the world, Vach believes more Jews will look towards Israel as their future. But he is equally convinced that Israel has a responsibility to receive them with compassion, preparation and community.

“The national emotion we felt when Ran Gvili came home,” he says, “should be felt every time a new family of olim arrives at Ben Gurion Airport.”

The two homecomings could hardly seem more different. One returned a fallen hero to the country he died defending. The other welcomes families choosing to build the country’s future.

For Colonel Golan Vach, however, they are driven by exactly the same belief: no Jew should ever be left behind.

For more information or to register for Israela’s upcoming pilot trip in November 2026, visit israela.org or scan the QR code

‘ One of the residents looked me in the eye and asked, ‘Are you going to bring Rani back?’ I simply answered, ‘Yes, we are.’’

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 61

62 • LIFE MAGAZINE

I N T ER V I E W

Love across the

Divide

Jewish-American Aija Mayrock and Israeli-Palestinian Nuseir Yassin tell Etan Smallman how they found each other against the odds

A

s a ‘meet-cute’, it was about as mundane as it gets. A mutual friend made the introduction, they checked each other out on social media and met over dinner.

But Nuseir Yassin was well aware of the complexity of this romantic equation. “I mean, look, it takes a specific kind of person to show up to a date with a Palestinian Muslim if you’re Jewish-American,” he says. Then there was the fact that their rendezvous took place two weeks before October 7.

For Nuseir – the Tigger-ish online megastar behind the Nas Daily videos – it was love at first Instagram swipe. “Men know at first instance,” he says, adding that he realised: “I want this to be my girlfriend, future wife, and I’m going to work towards it.” For fellow content creator Aija Mayrock, it took a few months longer.

“There wasn’t a specific moment,” she says, sitting next to Nuseir on a video call from New York for their first joint UK interview.

But their conversations about the trauma of 2023 were what sealed the deal. “After October 7 happened, he was the only person I wanted to talk to because he just has this incredible way of looking at even the most horrible things in the world: there is a way to rebuild and to come together.”

Not everyone in their lives was singing from the same hymn sheet. Aija was thrown out of a Shabbat meal because of the relationship. Nuseir had a similar experience with a distant family member, but is keen to stress about negative feedback: “The truth is that it’s minuscule.”

Aijia says she was heartened recently to hear from a Jewish acquaintance who “to my face was very supportive”, but got in touch to admit to different feelings in private.

“When I started following you, I saw a special Jewish girl,” the message read. “I was then disappointed to see that you were dating a Palestinian. I’m writing to you because I felt like I needed to out of guilt, but also because you should know the impact you are making. You are truly two special people made for a big purpose.”

Nuseir adds: “And because of dating her, I get invited to more Jewish Shabbats!”

Aija is an author and poet who has written

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 63

books on bullying and women’s empowerment, and produces videos on mental health and ageing. This year, she visited six countries in six months to tell the stories of Jewish communities across the globe.

But, for a long time, the 30-year-old struggled with being a “self-hating Jew”.

Growing up in Santa Barbara, California, “a town that had very few Jews, there was a lot of very normalised antisemitism. I think I didn’t even see it as antisemitism. I just thought, ‘I don't want to be this thing that I am.’”

Once she was at New York University, studying film and TV production, she found herself in “an antisemitic echo chamber”. She says: “NYU is known to be very Jewish. It’s just that, for some reason, I was not in those circles. I was in very progressive circles, and those were very antisemitic.”

Just as she was soon converted to “the joy and beauty and culture” of Judaism, she similarly came around to seeing the benefits of websites

64 • LIFE MAGAZINE

that had once seemed purely doom-laden.

“I started my life seeing only the dark sides of social media. I was bullied really badly. I was told to kill myself every day. A girl dressed up as me for Halloween. I really suffered from it, but then social media gave me everything. It gave me a voice, a platform, a career, a way to connect with people.

It gave me my partner.”

Nuseir quit his job at an online payments company in 2016 to embark on a 1,000-day trip across 64 countries, posting a one-minute video every 24 hours as Nas Daily (Nas being both his nickname and Arabic for ‘people’). It embodied an openness that has amassed him 68 million followers.

When he last spoke to Jewish News, three years ago, he revelled in his candour: “I have not seen any downsides of sharing my private life yet. I share everything – from my relationships to my financial status.”

Does he still adopt the same approach? The couple grin anxiously at each other. “You want to talk about tensions in the relationship?!” asks Nuseir. “It’s not about Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli, whatever. It’s about: she’s very private, I’m very public, and how do we reach a middle ground?”

They have posted “paid partnership” videos detailing everything from their weekly online therapy sessions to their two-bedroom flat in Miami. However, “even this [interview] makes me feel nervous,” admits Aija, visibly cringing. “I love posting about things I learn, things I believe in.

But personal, personal things, it’s hard for me to.”

In 2023, Nuseir revealed he was worth $5 million (£3.7m). Would he like to update the figure today?

“Oh yeah, I'm happy to share. It’s a lot higher now. Baruch Hashem!”

“Sorry, this is not something to share,” says Aija, after rolling her eyes. “I don’t care,” reassures her boyfriend. “Well, I care,” she replies softly.

“It’s in the 20 to 30 [million] range,” he tells me.

“I’m very transparent.” Sensing Aija’s profound discomfort, he exclaims: “Babe, who gives a shit?

Alhamdulillah, baruch Hashem, we made it. You know, I come from a village with no money, so, like, it’s awesome. I made money!”

Nuseir grew up in the Arab city of Arraba, northern Israel, the son of a psychologist and special needs teacher, and did not befriend a Jew until he was studying economics at Harvard. But from the age of 12, he was disturbed by friends who refused even to “say the word ‘Israel’” – and he began actively identifying as a “Palestinian-Israeli”.

“We could probably say that we’re both spending our adulthood kind of righting what we thought was wrong in our childhood,” he muses.

But the 34-year-old took this one step further on October 8, 2023, taking to X to make an announcement.

“I realised that if Israel were to be ‘invaded’ like that again, we would not be safe,” he wrote.

I N T ER V I E W

‘It gave me a voice, a platform, a career, a way to connect with people. It gave me my partner ’ “All citizens are targets. And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish: Israel.

“Palestine should exist too as an independent state. And I hope to see the country thrive and become less extreme and more prosperous. I love Palestine and have invested in Palestine. But it’s not my home. So from today forward, I view myself as an ‘Israeli-Palestinian’. Israeli first. Palestinian second. Sometimes it takes a shock like this to see so clearly.”

Nuseir – who has said he loses 100,000 followers every time he mentions “the I or P word” – smiles when I ask if this means he is a Zionist. “I mean, obviously. This whole idea of the ‘Z word’ being scary is, frankly, stupid. Do I want Israel to continue to exist? Did my grandmother just get treated at the Zionist project of Hadassah Hospital?

Are my parents eating food from the Zionist project of turning the desert green? An uneducated person sitting in Pakistan telling me that Zionism is bad will not make me stop

using the word.”

He insists he is far from the only PalestinianIsraeli (or Israeli-Palestinian) who feels this way.

So where does he get the nerve to be so vocal?

“It’s from the number I just shared with you.

You get a lot more courage when you don’t have to financially rely on anybody.”

Such bravery has its limits. His profile means he has to have security when appearing in public.

“Only in the UK,” he clarifies. “There’s a live event in the UK… double the security!” I can’t tell to what extent he is joking. “No, he’s serious,” says Aija. “The UK is definitely a place of high concern.”

Nuseir continues: “Some of these big European cities have brought in a lot of immigration, but they have not focused much on assimilation and so you allow these states to exist within the country. Go to Birmingham and it’s a different country.”

The threat is so grave that Britain is the place in which he will not wear his trademark T-shirt (it shows a battery gauge with a percentage of how much of his life he has lived, currently 44%).

“I don't want to be identified. I love the UK. But it’s become a hotbed for Islamic extremism.

And as somebody who also lived in Dubai for years – everybody that's not welcome in the UAE goes to the UK.” Nuseir has already built a personal brand into a business empire that helps clients such as Google and Meta tap into “The Perfect Formula To Go Viral”.

But he says that in 10 years’ time – when his T-shirt has hit 57% – both he and Aija may have moved on from content creation to climes yet unexplored.

One thing is clear, though, he adds.

“We do know we want to make sure we’re together for that.”

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 65

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TH E Y S HALL Ninety years after the Battle of Cable Street, a Facebook community, a film-maker and hundreds of family memories are ensuring Britain’s most famous act of anti-fascist resistance is never forgotten

By Brigit Grant

68 • LIFE MAGAZINE

O

n a faded black-and-white photograph, my grandfather Maurice Shaw – born Maurice Shapiro – stands confidently and immaculately dressed. An amateur boxer with slicked-back hair, he looks every inch the proud young East Ender about to go out for the day.

But the photograph was taken on Sunday 4 October 1936.

Within hours, he would become one of the thousands of ordinary Jewish Londoners caught up in what would become known as the Battle of Cable Street.

Now, 90 years later, that photograph means more than it ever did. It has become part of one of the defining stories of British Jewry. Scrolling through the Facebook group Jewish East End, I’ve watched people who have never met rebuild an entire vanished world. They share treasured family photographs, remember the smell of pickled herring and the sound of Yiddish drifting through Whitechapel, and identify the sweet shops, kosher butchers, tailors and doctors’ surgeries that once lined its streets. One memory at a time, they have rebuilt the Jewish East End. The houses may have disappeared, but the memories remain astonishingly vivid. One person who understands that better than most is film-maker Elliott Leigh.

For more than 20 years, Elliott has researched the Jewish East

C A B L E S T R EE T

N OT PAS S End, recording family histories and interviewing many of the last surviving eyewitnesses to the Battle of Cable Street. His grandfather, Harry Coleman, owned the kosher butcher’s shop at 11 Cable Street, which gives his work a personal connection.

“I always felt a huge responsibility to record the voices of my elders,” he tells me. “I sensed that if we didn’t document this story then it would be lost forever.”

Many of those voices have now fallen silent but, fortunately, Elliott captured them for his documentary The Children of the Ghetto, allowing them to tell the story of that remarkable day in their own words. This includes his 97-year-old grandmother Ruth Coleman, who met her husband Bernie Tucker on Cable Street. “On the day of the battle, my mother Leah put me under her bed to be safe. I was seven.”

To understand why Cable Street still resonates, you have to imagine the East End of 1936.

It was one of the largest Jewish communities in the world outside New York. Tens of thousands of families – many having fled persecution in Russia, Poland and Lithuania – had settled around Whitechapel, Stepney and Spitalfields.

Jewish cabinet makers, bakers, fishmongers – market traders – filled almost every street.

Elliott believes today’s generation often forgets quite how extraordinary that world was.

“The East End wasn’t simply a place of poverty,” he says.

“It was one of the last great transplanted shtetls. It was noisy, argumentative, creative, political and ambitious. Every trader was trying to build a better future for the next generation.”

Yet alongside that hope came something darker.

Britain was still gripped by depression and antisemitism was becoming increasingly visible.

Into that atmosphere stepped Sir Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, with provocative rallies openly blaming Jews for Britain’s problems.

Among those Elliott interviewed was the late historian Professor Bill Fishman, whose own family knew the East End intimately.

“It was a time, post-1929, of economic distress,” Bill recalled.

“Ready-made for a demagogue coming in and saying they are the cause of your trouble – the Jews of the East End. And who came into the breach? Oswald Mosley. It grew into a reign of terror.”

When Mosley announced that 3,000 Blackshirts would march through Whitechapel, many saw it as a deliberate act of intimidation. Nearly 100,000 people signed petitions calling for the march to be banned, but the government refused.

Instead, thousands of police officers were deployed to clear a route through the East End.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 69

By the morning of Sunday 4 October, residents had made their own decision: Mosley would not pass.

Trade unionists, Irish dockers, socialists, communists, church groups and Jewish families poured into the streets. What united them was not politics but a shared determination to stop fascism marching through their neighbourhood.

As barricades appeared across Cable Street, furniture, market barrows, timber and even an overturned tram were dragged into the road.

Watching from upstairs windows were children who would remember the day for the rest of their lives.

Among them was 12-year-old Jack Schwarz.

His family lived above B. Schwarz & Company at 68 Cable Street, where his grandfather Benjamin made ladies’ jackets and coats.

“My father saw it all from the bedroom window,” recalls his son David Stanford.

Another eyewitness Elliott interviewed was Monty Garson, who never forgot the extraordinary ingenuity of residents.

“On some of the roofs were saucepans of hot boiling water and dustbins full of rubbish, so we could throw it down on top of them. That’s the only thing we had to fight back.”

Debby Lee recalls how her grandmother Esther Stockell, who ran a small haberdashery from the family’s home at 73 Cable

70 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Street, spent the day throwing marbles and milk bottles onto the cobbles to slow the mounted police. “My mother Frida was four, and her three-year-old sister Rivka hid beneath the kitchen table comforting each other,” she says. “My grandfather Moishe, a Polish-born tailor, went to Gardiner’s Corner to join local men building the barricades.”

The officers on horseback charged the barricades, and violent clashes broke out – not between Jews and fascists, as is often imagined, but between police determined to force a route through the unmovable East Enders.

Among Elliott’s interviewees was Dublin-born Max Levitas, who was the son of Latvian Jewish parents and became one of Britain’s best-known anti-fascist campaigners. As secretary of Mile End’s Young Communist League, he helped to mobilise local people against Mosley’s supporters.

“There was a common understanding among all the people there,” Max recalled. “They were not going to pass through Whitechapel.”

Max never viewed Cable Street as an isolated moment. “This all played a part, well before Cable Street. It was part of the struggle against antisemitism and racism. No such marches of this kind had taken place before in Britain... If the people didn’t protest, the march would have gone on. The only idea in all our minds was that they will not march.”

C A B L E S T R EE T

‘ There was a common understanding. They were not going to pass through Whitechapel’ Eventually the authorities conceded defeat. Mosley’s Blackshirts were ordered away from Whitechapel. The East End had stopped fascism in its tracks.

Today, those streets tell a different story. Many of the buildings have disappeared beneath redevelopment, but on the Jewish East End Facebook group those addresses still exist.

Judith Kirwilliam’s grandparents lived at 3 Cable Street – eight doors from Elliott’s great-grandfather’s kosher butcher’s – where her grandfather made ladies’ evening wear. At 15 Cable Street, Jon Daniels’ family ran a sweet shop where neighbourhood children, including my grandmother Annie

Beerman and her brother Robert, who walked from Batty Street, spent their pennies before visiting the ravens at the Tower of London.

Perhaps she passed by the home of Sandra Wilson, who lived at 100 Cable Street until the building was demolished in 1959.

“My mother’s family lived there for many years,” she says.

“They had a tailoring workshop at the back. They were the Gilbert Brothers.”

Unusually for the time, The Magpie & Stump at 98 Cable Street remained under Jewish management for decades, ending with Samuel Gimmack in 1936. Conveniently near to the pub at 198 Cable Street lived Dr Hannah Billig, who devoted her life to treating East End families. A Blue Plaque commemorates the pioneering doctor who lived there with her mother and siblings.

When Vic Rosenthal posted about the Battle on the Facebook group, the photo of the police arresting Charlie Goodman (who was married to Charlie’s half-sister, Joyce) prompted memories from dozens of families. Hazel Shaw said her father Jack Schuckman was also arrested, as was Ronnie Wolman’s uncle, Sid Pitchigofsky – “who came home with a copper’s hat”.

In Elliott’s film the historian, author and AJEX archivist Martin Sugarman argues that the Jewish role in Cable Street has been overshadowed by wider political narratives:

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: Police stop a woman in Cable Street; closed shops; Maurice Shapiro (Shaw) and with wife Anne; the Battle of Cable Street.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: Debby Lee’s grandparents, Esther and Moshe; the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks; Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts; an invoice from H. Coleman butcher; Harry and Ruth Coleman; Elliot Leigh with Vidal Sassoon

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 71

C A B L E S T R EE T

“The Jewish voice has been carved out. The Jewish contribution was considered invisible. “ Martin believes the Jewish role in Cable Street continues to be contested. Unite initially omitted any reference to the Jewish community when announcing the official 90th anniversary commemoration, originally scheduled for Shabbat. After complaints, it revised the wording, acknowledged the march’s antisemitic purpose and moved the event to Sunday 4 October, while the Board of Deputies and Jewish News announced alternative commemorations.

Understandably, Elliott believes preserving Jewish voices has never been more important.

“I wanted to put the Jewish East End back on the map,” he says. “Not as nostalgia, but as something living. The story of the Jewish East End isn’t only a Jewish story. It’s Britain’s greatest immigrant success story.”

Movingly, in Elliott’s film, the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks reflected that societies were judged by the willingness of ordinary people to stand up when hatred threatens others.

Lord Sacks, who often spoke about the Jewish story as one that stretched “across all continents and 40 centuries”, said the fight against prejudice was never the responsibility of one community alone – “but of everyone who cherished human dignity”.

‘ The Jewish voice has been carved out – the contribution was considered invisible.’

Many of Elliott’s eyewitnesses have now passed away. But the affection for E1 of Professor Bill Fishman, Max Levitas, Monty Garson, playwrights Bernard Kops and Arnold Wesker and hairdresser Vidal Sassoon is captured forever.

I look again at the photograph of my grandfather, Maurice Shaw – still Maurice Shapiro then –standing proudly on Cable Street before the historic battle he rarely talked about.

As Elliott says, “Memory survives in fragments.”

Ninety years after the Battle of Cable Street, those fragments have become something much greater than history. They have become our inheritance.

TI M E LI N E – 4 O C TO B E R 1936 Morning – East End residents begin constructing barricades.

2.30pm – Mosley’s Blackshirts assemble at Tower Hill. More than 50,000 anti-fascists gather across Whitechapel and Cable Street.

Police advance – Mounted officers attempt to clear the route.

Battle – Barricades, overturned

72 • LIFE MAGAZINE

tram, missiles from rooftops and windows.

Late afternoon – Police order Mosley to abandon the march.

Evening – Celebrations across the East End. December 1936 – Parliament passes the Public Order Act, banning political uniforms and strengthening police powers over marches.

C A B L E STR E E T 90 – A N N I V E R SA RY

ABOVE FROM TOP: Charlie Goodman being taken away by police; other images from the Battle of Cable Street; the front cover of the Blackshirt newspaper

Marking the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, the Board of Deputies is staging Cable Street 90, an 11-day festival of art, music, film, performance, talks and heritage events across London, with Jewish News as media partner.

Running from 1 to 11 October, the programme spans venues across the capital, including Toynbee Hall, Wilton’s Music Hall, EartH Theatre [sic], Sandys Row Synagogue and JW3. Among the highlights is the premiere of artist Inam Zimbalista’s Murmur Mural, a moving-image installation projected onto Toynbee Hall that transforms archive footage through the movement of vast bird murmurations to explore collective action, resistance and community.

Acclaimed band Oi Va Voi brings its distinctive fusion of Jewish and Eastern European music, contemporary songwriting and electronic influences to a special East London performance.

Tracy-Ann Oberman MBE, Howard Jacobson and Brigid Larmour come together for The Merchant of Cable Street. Inspired by Tracy-Ann’s acclaimed East End adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, the evening explores memory, adaptation and the continuing cultural resonance of Cable Street. The wider programme includes Cable Street Matters, exploring the battle’s significance for British Jewish identity; a screening of the documentary Jews Defending Jews; family workshops inspired by Tanya Landman’s The Battle of Cable Street; walking tours of Shadwell, Wapping and the East End; an open house at historic Sandys Row Synagogue; and guided Jewish heritage taxi tours.

Cable Street 90 is showing at venues across London bod.org.uk/cable-street-90

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 73

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ELSTREE ST U DIOS:

100 years in

the making 76 • LIFE MAGAZINE

EL S T R EE

Just like Hollywood, there will soon be a sign to guide visitors to the Borehamwood studios that Jewish talent helped to put on the movie map. By Jenni Frazer

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 77

EL S T R EE

L

ike any good Jewish institution, the household name that is Elstree Studios has made sure to mark its big anniversary in style – by stretching its centenary celebrations over three years.

As Councillor Morris Bright MBE explained, it’s legitimate. “The land for Elstree was bought in 1925. The studios and stages were built in 1926. And the first films came out in 1927. So we’ve been able to celebrate each of these landmark occasions in 2025, 2026, and we have plans in place for 2027.”

Over the past 100 years – with a short break during the Second World War, when Elstree was requisitioned by the Royal Army Ordnance Corps to serve as a military supply depot and secret workshop space for the British war effort – the studios have become synonymous with internationally successful feature films, as well as today’s home of the BBC’s EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing.

There is simply nothing like Elstree anywhere in the world, which is perhaps why it comes as a slight surprise that there is not already a ‘Hollywood sign’ welcoming visitors to the suburb, on the outskirts of north-west London. In fact, plans are in place to erect just such a sign over the A1.

But unlike the Hollywood sign, the Elstree banner will not be an immovable fixture. Instead, its coloured lights will spell out different messages according to the season – watch out for a Chanukah theme at the end of this year.

Morris, a board director at Elstree Studios and a film historian, is, together with Elstree’s official historian Howard Berry, a reader in film heritage at Hertfordshire University, a font of (nearly all) knowledge about Elstree. Many of us know that it was an early home for the great director Alfred Hitchcock, before he went to America, and that big names such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick flocked from America to Elstree for a unique British experience.

Among the biggest films developed or fully filmed at Elstree were, of course, the original Indiana Jones trilogy and the Star Wars f ilms. Between 1981 and 1989, for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Elstree’s production team built extensive indoor sets, water tanks and sound stages.

But Morris and Howard have more to share – not least the Jewish creatives who worked at the studios, a combination of home-grown talent and refugees who had fled Nazi Europe, to deploy their skills in leafy Hertfordshire.

Elstree has been through a number of changes of owner in its 100 years – not least the Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who, operating as Cannon Films, briefly ran the studios in the mid-1980s while Superman IV was filmed, Christopher Reeve’s last outing as the Man of Steel.

Today, however, Elstree Studios is owned by Hertsmere Council – almost certainly the only such pairing in the world. The ownership, says Morris, enables the council to develop both civic pride and help with the economic regeneration of the area.

The Elstree team is now working with the council on the Elstree Immersive Experience, where visitors can learn how films have been made at the studios, from Britain’s first talking picture in 1927 – Hitchcock’s Blackmail — to present-day film and television work.

Central to that history was Joseph (Joe) Grossman, studio manager from 1927 to 1949. He oversaw the production of hundreds of films, from Blackmail itself to major films such as The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Private Life of Henry VIII. Grossman, say Morris and Howard, was “one of the most respected and influential figures in British film-making”. Dartford-born Joe and his identical twin William were the sons of Myer Grossman and Rosa Morris, from a German-Polish Jewish background. William, with whom Joe performed

PREVIOUS PAGE Lord Grade of Elstree and Kermit; Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher on the Star Wars set CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Alfred Hitchcock and Anny Ondra in 1927 Elstree talkie Blackmail; the ‘Well of Souls’ set for 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark; Jack Nicholson and Stanley Kubrick at the Overlook Hotel built at Elstree for The Shining BELOW: A 30ft-high set was constructed at Elstree For Raiders of the Lost Ark

78 • LIFE MAGAZINE

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EL S T R EE

as a child double act with magicians and illusionists, reportedly died after attempting to recreate Houdini’s famous chained water tank escape.

Working alongside Joe were one-time refugees such as German-born scenarios editor Frederick Gotfurt, and Mutz Greenbaum, who changed his name to Max Greene and worked as a cinematographer at Elstree, described as a man who “transformed the visual language of British cinema”.

Greene worked on productions across British studios, including The Thief of Bagdad, The Stars Look Down and The Importance of Being Earnest, and Morris and Howard say this “demonstrated how refugee talent enriched British film-making with technical innovation, artistry and international experience”.

Another former refugee who became a key creative at Elstree was producer Victor Skutezky, a Vienna-born contemporary of Some Like It Hot director Billy Wilder. His films included Woman in a Dressing Gown, The Bespoke Overcoat and The Mudlark.

With film must go music, and one of the most renowned composers was Elstree’s musical director Louis Levy, said to have defined the sound of British cinema during Elstree’s golden age. He supervised scores for big-name productions, including Blackmail, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

Other creatives included director Paul L Stein, Vienna-born and admired for “continental sophistication” in the 1930s, and Cyril Frankel, who worked on seminal TV shows such as Department S and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased).

Few entrepreneurs shaped the modern history of Elstree more than legendary Ukrainianborn media tycoon Lew Grade (pictured, main image with Kermit), who turned the studios into a powerhouse of British TV, notably by persuading Jim Henson to make The Muppet Show there as American networks had shown little enthusiasm.

In 1976, he became Baron Grade of – where else?

– Elstree, the most fitting of titles for the man

who did so much to keep Elstree Studios alive and thriving.

It’s not just Jewish men who have helped to shape Elstree. Morris and Howard point to actresses such as Carrie Fisher, who, during the first three Star Wars films made at Elstree, endured months of sweat and gruelling wire stunts inside the stifling hangar bays of Stage 8 and 9, using her biting wit to command absolute respect in a notorious “boys’ club”.

Decades later, Natalie Portman used the quiet, claustrophobic intensity of the Elstree stages to construct her raw, breathtaking performance in Closer.

In 1983, Barbra Streisand took total command as writer, director, producer and star of Yentl, and used the sound stages of Elstree for intensive musical rehearsals.

Jane Goldman, one of the UK’s most commercially successful screenwriters, set up her entire creative headquarters directly on the Elstree lot for her superhero smash Kick-Ass. Morris concludes: “To thrive in its next century, the studio must actively tap into the extraordinarily large, deep skills pond of Jewish creative talent – both male and female – that continues to flourish across the British entertainment industry today.

“By welcoming the next generation of Jewish writers, directors, and visionaries onto these historic stages, Elstree will ensure its future remains just as revolutionary as its past”.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Councillor Morris Bright with the Elstree 100 logo; Audrey Hepburn with Young Wives’ Tale director Henry Cass and producer Victor Skutezky; Natalie Portman in Closer

80 • LIFE MAGAZINE

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TOAST TO

Recovery Born from one soldier’s PTSD struggle, an award-winning Israeli nonprofit is helping combat veterans rediscover life beyond war. By Jenni Frazer

O

n the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the thoughts of many of us turn to celebratory meals — often accompanied by fine wines.

This is the story of an extraordinary Israeli initiative that grew out of one man’s pain, and then vision, and has led to the production of some of the best wines in the country. Along the way, this project – known as Terra Uma – has helped combat veterans who live with the anguish of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Teaching them to make wine, and take part in a process known as vinotherapy, has enabled these former Israel Defense Forces soldiers to reclaim their lives.

Often, Terra Uma says, those who come to its organisation are both physically injured and “bearing the invisible wounds of combat”, and some have been unable to leave their homes at all. But the ex-soldiers who join Terra Uma in its newlyrevamped two-year programme are clearly benefiting from vinotherapy. They are never going to be entirely ‘cured’ of PTSD and its triggers, such as crowded places, flashbacks and loud noises, but Terra Uma is helping them reintegrate into society.

Terra Uma, a non-profit organisation, is the brainchild of Tomer Weinberg, who was just 26 when he was seriously wounded at the beginning

of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

He developed PTSD as he slowly recovered from his physical injury.

But the mental scars were much more profound. “For many years I tried unsuccessfully to return to the level of functioning I had before the injury,” Tomer says, “until I came to terms with my outbursts and my inability to change the situation”.

It was the death of his father, Yitzhak, in 2021, which was the turning point for Tomer. He says: “My father had a makeshift home winery where he made wine as a hobby. During the shiva, I stared at the wine barrel that stood in the centre of the house and promised my father that I would continue his hobby. I didn’t know then that I had received from my father the ticket back to life”.

So Tomer took his first steps in the world of wine with Assaf Margalit at the Margalit Winery and with Haifa wine family the Wurtmans.

He says: “Leaving home to work in the vineyards and winery awakened something in me. I felt that I and the wine in the barrel were going through similar processes. The fermentation, the sediment, the breathing. Everything spoke directly to my soul.

In the vineyard, the soul calmed down and the body relaxed”.

He then decided to take a course at the Soreq Winery Winemaking School.

ABOVE: Tomer Weinberg at work at Terra Uma

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 85

WI N E

As the UK wine writer Adam Montefiore observed, the appropriately-named Weinberg “discovered that when he was around wine, the anxiousness, fear and tension dissipated as if by a miracle”, adding: “He made his own wine. At the end of the process, he was able to hold a bottle of wine in his hand, which was his creation.”

Ultimately, he realised that the benefit he felt could help other combat veterans. So in April 2022 he founded Terra Uma, initially a one-year programme, but now extending to two years, where ex-IDF soldiers whose condition is recognised by the Ministry of Defence, can learn about the healing power of making wine.

The participants engage in hands-on work among the vines, barrels and their own personal wine casks. Through this process, says Terra Uma, “abilities worn down by the invisible wounds of combat are gradually restored, and personal resilience is strengthened”.

In June 2023, a private individual agreed that Terra Uma could plant its first grapes in a plot there.

The grape planting is, says Tomer, “an important component of the participants’ process. Direct contact with the earth allows for an opening of the heart and the release of physical and emotional energy, learning the presence of mindfulness from the observation of nature’s cycles and the wisdom that comes from caring for the vines”.

Terra Uma is currently raising funds so participants who use wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs will also be able to work in and fully experience the vineyard.

The programme is deliberately kept small and select, this year hosting 42 participants divided into two groups, ranging in age from 20 to 60. In the first year people meet in two locations in Israel on a weekly basis, and in the second year twice a month, while the graduates of the first-year programme act as mentors to the new intake.

Remarkably, there have been “zero drop-outs”, and the project is now the subject of a new University of Haifa study to see why it has succeeded when so many other

86 • LIFE MAGAZINE

mental health programmes in Israel have failed.

One pointer is a determination to give people privacy — for these are often people who have not shared their condition and fears with their friends and family.

Israel’s finest winemakers have wholeheartedly embraced the project and give their services on a voluntary basis. That goes for vineyard owners, too, who welcome the participants. Even if they are commercial rivals, they believe that “vinotherapy” is a vital aid to recovery, and they are glad to offer their professional knowledge in every aspect of winemaking.

This ranges from picking the grapes to learning how to blend the wine and making the barrels in which the wines begin their life. There are even designers on hand to teach the ex-soldiers how to make the best labels for their personal wines.

During the programme, each participant will create their own “personal barrel”. This, says Terra Uma, “symbolises the inner self – the internal fermentation, the emotional sediments left behind by combat experiences. The wine bottles that each participant produces embody new life, renewed capabilities, and the dreams they aspire to fulfil”.

The transformation for many of the veterans is remarkable. Moran, one of the Terra Uma spokespeople, told Life: “You see them on their first day – they come with their heads down, they are broken. They have tried almost every other kind of therapy there is, and they are stuck.”

By the end, the participants have a pride and a confidence which are, almost literally, being bottled.

Each barrel produces about 300 bottles of wine – it is kosher certified – and 200 of those are offered for sale by Terra Uma. The new winemakers keep the remaining 100 bottles to give to friends and family or to celebrate festivals or achievements.

This year, one of the Terra Uma wines, Layla Adom 2023 (Red Night), won a gold medal at the Terravino International Wine and Spirit Challenge. The “Night” series of wines are named to reflect the long nights in which those with PTSD have been unable to sleep.

In just a few short years, Tomer and his team have developed wines in high demand in Israel. To which one can only respond: “L’chaim!” terrauma.co.il/en

ABOVE: Participants at Terra Uma LEFT: The Layla red and white wines

STUDYING IN

Dreamland University in Israel – it’s a utopia but it can also be a reality.

By Louisa Walters

G

oing to university in Israel is a chance to experience life there beyond the perspective of a holiday, tour or gap year. There are world-class universities with vibrant student communities and opportunities to pursue a wide range of subjects.

All this while strengthening your connection to Israel, living alongside Israelis and international students and gaining a truly distinctive university experience.

Tel Aviv University is the highest ranked Israeli higher education institution, placed in the top 250 globally by Times Higher Education, while the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion are both in the top 350. This is no mean feat, given the number of US, British and Chinese universities they are competing against.

The success of Israeli universities speaks to the kind of importance the country places on them.

Ranked among the top three percent of universities worldwide, Bar-Ilan University is one of Israel’s leading research institutions, recognised internationally for its work in innovation, entrepreneurship and academic collaboration. Located in central Israel, close to Tel Aviv, the University offers access to the country’s academic, cultural and professional centres.

88 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Through its International School, Bar-Ilan welcomes students from around the world to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes taught in English, as well as doctoral studies and advanced research opportunities.

TOP: Hebrew University; BOTTOM: Tel Aviv University

ED U C AT I O N

Tuition fees are subsidised for international students.

Alongside their main field of study, students can explore courses in Israeli history and society, Jewish heritage, archaeology and the modern Middle East.

At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a global top-100 university, students can choose from more than 50 programmes taught in English, including bachelor’s and master’s degrees, research opportunities and short-term programmes. It is a chance to challenge yourself academically, grow personally and gain skills to make a meaningful contribution to society and the world. With Jerusalem as an extension of the classroom, students encounter new perspectives and become part of a welcoming international student community.

The Technion is deeply embedded in Israel’s start-up ecosystem. It considers itself right at the heart of the Startup Nation – and with good reason. Seven firms founded or led by former Technion students have been named among the most exciting in the country. It offers programmes to help bring the work beyond academia. Aaron Ciechanover and Dan Shechtman, the 2004 and 2011 winners of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry respectively, are among its famous alumni.

For Britons put off by the language barrier, an option might be Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. With campuses in Be’er Sheva, Sde Boker and Eilat, it offers English-language courses taught alongside Israeli students – providing both academic immersion and an authentic

cultural experience – along with opportunities ranging from summer courses to post-doc work.

There is also Reichman University, the first private, non-profit higher education establishment in Israel. Located in Herzliya, 2,000 of its 8,400 students come from more than 90 countries. The university says “the myriad graduates who have established themselves in professional, business and public service roles are proof of our success”.

TOP: Ben Gurion University MIDDLE: Bar-Ilan University BOTTOM: Reichmann University

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 89

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Rosh Hashanah marks a new beginning and the chance to imagine what is possible.

This year, we celebrate Eitan, Danny and Kuba as they graduate from Wohl Campus, Kisharon Noé School, A Loftus Learning Centre and start an exciting new chapter at Kisharon Langdon College.

Your support can help ensure that every person can reach their potential and achieve milestones that once seemed out of reach.

Help support more bright futures Make a donation today, scan here or visit kisharonlangdon.org/RH26 Shana Tova and thank you for your support.

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“What they gave my father was the experience of being known” After Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s visit to Jewish Care, barrister and broadcaster Rob Rinder shares his speech from the annual dinner, which explains why the charity sets the benchmark for care

M

y father is called David.

He is a Tottenham supporter. A black cab driver. A man with strong opinions about politics, the weather and the correct route to Edgware, which he’d happily share whether you’d asked or not.

He wanted a son who liked football.

He got me.

When he had trouble at the Public Carriage Office, I represented him. Of every client I’ve ever defended, he was unquestionably the guiltiest. It involved his cab, the weather and what the examining officer described as “breathtaking” optimism about road conditions. I got him off.

He didn’t say well done. He didn’t say

94 • LIFE MAGAZINE

I’m proud of you. He just was. For the first time, in the way that matters most, he just was.

My father loved life. Football. Women.

Cruises. Conversation. Put him in a room full of strangers and he’d leave with several new friends and at least one new opinion. He was happiest surrounded by noise, company and possibility. Life, for my father, was something to be embraced and remarkably, until a year or two ago, very little of that had changed.

He is 72. An age that still felt, to all of us, like the middle of the story.

And then dementia arrived.

And suddenly none of that mattered.

And all of it did.

Because kibbud av va’em, honour your

father, does not come with instructions.

It does not tell you what to do when the man you never quite found the words for is slipping beyond the reach of words entirely.

Dementia steals in fragments.

A memory. A name. A piece of the map.

And what it leaves behind is something I had not prepared for.

Not grief. Something stranger.

Grief with the person still in the room.

My extraordinary family have shown up for him fully. We have tried, together, in different ways, to be there. But love is not a care plan. And there came a point when we knew we could no longer give David the care he needed by ourselves.

We needed somewhere for him to live.

No family arrives at that moment

J E WI S H C A R E lightly. We talked about it endlessly, changed our minds, then changed them back again. Because when the person at the centre of the discussion is somebody you love, every decision feels enormous.

There is a particular sadness in realising that love cannot solve every problem, but there are moments when what is needed is beyond love alone.

So I called Daniel Carmel-Brown at Jewish Care.

I don’t remember every detail of that conversation, just how I felt afterwards.

Relief. Not because everything was suddenly solved, but because for the first time we were no longer carrying it alone.

Somebody understood. Somebody knew the road ahead. And from that came Otto Schiff care home.

What strikes me about Otto Schiff care home isn’t the building but the feeling. People are known there, not reduced to diagnoses. People grow old with dignity.

On Friday evenings, Shabbat candles are lit. On Rosh Hashanah, there is honey cake. The festivals arrive and, with them, music, memory and traditions that reach places words no longer can. Somebody understood that familiarity is not a luxury. It is part of what makes us who we are.

What Jewish Care gave my father was this: the experience of being known.

Not managed. Not processed. Known.

His stories. His humour. His habits.

His opinions. Lord knows, his opinions.

The man, not merely the illness.

And the people who do this work do something I used to think only family could do. They show up every day.

Not out of obligation or guilt. Out of real care.

There is a carer called Walid. He is Muslim. My father is Jewish. Last year, on my birthday, a message appeared on my phone. Walid sent it because my father couldn’t. A small act of kindness that reminded me – the people caring for my father were caring for our whole family too.

Walid looks after my father like his own. So do others such as Leila (pictured opposite with David and Rob Rinder) – also Muslim. While fasting during Ramadan she was still working hard caring for my dad. Leila jumped out of a plane to raise money for Jewish Care. And I find myself thinking so often about a Jewish idea I have known all my life: b’tzelem Elohim.

Every human being is created in the image of God. I’ve known those words forever, but

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Rob hosting at Jewish Care with Barbara Jaye and Evelyn Middleditch; Rob at his graduation with David; with his brother Craig and David among others

I understand them differently now.

Because I see them lived every time I visit my father. In the patience of his carers. The way they speak to him and listen. In the simple insistence that a human being does not lose their value because they become ill, or vulnerable, or dependent on others.

They see David and because they see him, he remains visible to the rest of us too.

When Prime Minister Andy Burnham visited Jewish Care in July, he wasn’t simply touring another care facility. He could have gone anywhere to make his speech about social care. Instead, he chose to visit an organisation built by one of Britain’s smallest communities that has quietly become a model of how compassionate care should be delivered.

And that standard of excellence is true of everything we create and deliver, from security and the Community Security Trust to family support.

We’re less than half of one per cent of the UK population, yet through organisations such as Jewish Care we’ve learned, out of necessity as much as tradition, how to look after one another.

At a time when being Jewish so often feels like explaining or defending ourselves, here’s something we’re sometimes too reluctant to say: this is what we contribute.

My father is still here. Jewish Care sees him. And in doing so, they have given something back to my family that we desperately needed.

Peace. Not perfect peace. Nothing is perfect. But peace that comes from knowing he is safe. From knowing that when we can’t be there, somebody else is.

I know that not as an abstract idea, or as a commentator but as a son.

David Rinder passed away on 19 August. May his memory be a blessing.

Jewish Care Direct helpline 020 8922 2222; or helpline@jcare.org

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 95

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THE WORLD’S OLDEST ACTIVE JEWISH ORPHANAGE

Zion Orphanage

Where children get a second chance What is the connection between British Jewry and Zion Orphanage?

British Jewry has supported Zion Orphanage for over a century. In 1920, when British statesman and proud Jew Sir Herbert Samuel (later Lord Samuel) arrived in Jerusalem as the new British High Commissioner for Palestine, he chose Zion Orphanage as the venue to commemorate this historic occasion. Crowds gathered as he joined dignitaries to celebrate, surrounded by Zion Orphanage children and staff.

What is the unique legacy of Zion Orphanage?

Founded in 1899, Zion Orphanage is the world’s longest-running Jewish orphanage. Its mission: to care for vulnerable Jewish children whose lives have been shattered by bereavement, war, poverty, abuse, neglect and trauma. Today, its Jerusalem campus on Blumenthal Square (named after its founder Rabbi Avraham Yochanan Blumenthal) serves hundreds of children – offering not simply shelter, but the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

How does Zion Orphanage create a healthy environment?

At the heart of its success is the innovative Mishpachton family unit. Rather than living in institutional dormitories, boys live in on-campus flats in groups of 12 with a surrogate family. They share meals, celebrate birthdays and Shabbat together, enjoy outings and experience warmth and stability. For many, this is their first exposure to healthy family life. Here, trust replaces fear and childhood begins again.

What activities support the children’s healing?

At Zion Orphanage, a team of 80 dedicated professionals provides therapeutic activities, including animal care, gardening, music, martial arts, computers and photography. These programmes help children develop confidence, resilience and self-esteem.

What is Zion Orphanage’s impact?

Thousands of children who called Zion Orphanage home have gone on to become devoted parents, educators, entrepreneurs, community leaders and public

servants. Among them is Knesset Member Moshe Abutbul, who entered the orphanage age nine and says it gave him "a lifetime of tools and the confidence to succeed".

How is Zion Orphanage meeting today’s challenges?

Following the horrific October 7 attacks, Zion Orphanage opened a therapeutic home for children whose lives were devastated by war. This year, it also launched a much-needed rehabilitation residence for teenage girls at risk.

How can British Jews continue this legacy?

For the past 127 years, amid changing governments and shifting borders, one constant remains: the generosity of British Jewry. Archival records reveal that generations of British families have supported Zion Orphanage and its mission to care for vulnerable children. Today, every British Jew can become part of that legacy by sending a gift of love and hope to the heart of Jerusalem at zionorphanage.com/ukfriends

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 97

The Hand of Hope As we approach Rosh Hashanah, our community charities look to the New Year with hope – for ourselves, for our community and the future we can build together. By Louisa Walters

C O N N E C TI N G TO TH E F U T U R E

R E A D W ITH M E

■ Hope is about believing tomorrow can be greater than today and giving people the opportunity to make it so.

This year marks an exciting new chapter as Jewish Learning Exchange (JLE) evolves into Olami UK, connecting students not only to a vibrant Jewish community in London, but to a global network spanning more than 30 countries. Through local relationships, international experiences and world-class opportunities, young Jews are building meaningful friendships, strengthening their identity and becoming part of a thriving Jewish future.

■ Rosh Hashanah is the perfect time to fill your home with stories that inspire, delight and spark Jewish pride.

PJ Library helps strengthen Jewish identity by sending a free book every month to more than 8,500 children and families across the UK. This year’s collection celebrates stories that are both playful and profound – offering mirrors that reflect Jewish family life and windows into rich traditions and customs that may be new or unknown to your child. Make sure any Jewish children aged 0 to eight in your life don’t miss out on this much-loved gift by signing up at pjlibrary.org.uk

P R AC TI C A L H E L P I S AT H A N D

98 • LIFE MAGAZINE

■ For those who Paperweight supports, hope means believing that overwhelming challenges can be overcome, unopened letters can be faced, debts managed, welfare benefits secured or difficult family breakdowns no longer faced alone. Hope is found in every volunteer, donor and supporter who makes that transformation possible. Paperweight aims to reach individuals and families before their crisis deepens, providing practical help, replacing uncertainty with reassurance, helping individuals and families to regain stability and hope for the future.

CH A R I T Y

RAPID RESPONSE ■ With only four minutes before lack of oxygen affects the brain, speed of medical response is often the difference between life and death. Rapid response gives hope to those in medical distress, and United Hatzalah of Israel exists to provide this hope, bridging the gap between an emergency call and an

VO LU NTE E R I N G ■ Judaism teaches that each of us has a responsibility to care for one another through acts of chesed and gemilut chasadim. Volunteering brings those values to life, creating meaningful connections between people, charities and communities. JVN believes that every act of volunteering, however small, helps strengthen our community and offers hope that, together, we can create a kinder, more connected future.

ambulance’s arrival. United Hatzalah’s network of more than 8,600 trained and certified volunteer medics means help could come from next door or a kiosk down the road. In urban areas, response can be as fast as 90 seconds and this is the organisation’s goal nationwide.

Hope can’t wait.

H AV I N G FA ITH ■ Emunah means faith, and for vulnerable children and families across Israel, that faith can be the beginning of hope. They need more than a single act of kindness – they need people who will stay beside them, providing safety, stability, professional care and belief in their future. Through Emunah’s homes, schools, therapy services, family centres and day care centres, children get support to rebuild confidence, discover their strengths and begin to imagine a different future. With greater support in the UK, more children and families can find their way from darkness to light.

YO U ’ R E N OT A LO N E ■ Chai Cancer Care is inspired by a simple mission statement, expressed by one of its earliest clients: “You (Chai) cannot rest until you are the first port of call and not the last resort.”

Every day, Chai supports and gives hope to cancer patients and their loved ones, providing expert support and care from diagnosis and throughout the cancer journey.

As more people are living with and beyond cancer, demand for the 70 specialised services continues to increase. The commitment is constant: everyone in the community affected by cancer can access and benefit from specialised support, ensuring that no one faces cancer alone.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 99

H E LP I S G ROW I N G

BUILDING CONFIDE NCE ■ Jami’s mental health service is helping more children, young people and adults to live well, stay connected and access the support they need at every stage of life. Rhian, 23, diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, turned to Jami when her mental health reached a crisis point. Since receiving regular support from a mental health practitioner in Jami’s Dangoor Children and Young Person’s Service for 11 to 25-year-olds, Rhian has learnt to manage overwhelming emotions, build confidence and recognise her triggers. Jami has also helped her reconnect with Judaism. Now married and thriving, Rhian says: “Jami didn’t just help me cope – it helped me build the life I wanted.” Jami’s focus remains on ensuring more people like Rhian can access timely mental health support, build resilience and look forward to a brighter future.

B E T TE R DAYS ■ At Camp Simcha, hope means something different to every family with a seriously ill child, explains chief executive Daniel Gillis. “For some, it’s the hope of recovery or a successful treatment. For others, it’s a good day or simply knowing they’re not facing their child’s illness alone. Camp Simcha’s mission is to stand beside these families, providing hope in the practical support that eases the

100 • LIFE MAGAZINE

pressures of daily life, in the friendships that remind parents they are not the only ones facing a child’s serious illness and in the moments of joy that help families spend precious time together. As we look towards the year ahead, our hope at Camp Simcha is that every Jewish family facing the unimaginable knows they don’t have to do it alone, supported every step of the way by their community.”

■ Jewish Blind & Disabled (JBD) hopes for a future where no one in our community faces physical disability or sight loss alone. As demand for services continues to grow, so does determination to reach those who need them most.

In the new year, JBD will be expanding community services, from occupational therapy to a new sight loss service and peer support groups. While everyone’s circumstances are different, the aspiration is the same: to live life to the fullest, with independence, choice, dignity and a true sense of belonging.

YO U R LE G AC Y ■ Sheila and John Ottensooser believed that investing in people was the greatest expression of hope.

Through a legacy gift to KKL, the legacy arm of JNF UK, they ensured their values would continue to shape lives long into the future. Today, their legacy lives on through the Ottensooser Young Adult Centre in Kiryat Malachi, Israel, where young adults receive education, guidance and confidence to build brighter futures. Their story reminds us that hope is not simply something we wish for – it is something we create through generosity, vision and a lasting commitment to future generations.

‫בס”ד‬

The JFC supports Jewish families with practical, emotional and therapeutic support.

Help starts with knowing where to find it

• Family support and social work • Counselling and parenting guidance • Child contact services • Programmes for parents and children • Child, adolescent, adult and family therapy • Helping families navigate challenges and build resilience • Connecting families with the support they need

Make this a Happy, Sweet New Year for all our families 2a St George’s Road, London, NW11 0LR Email: info@jewishfamilycentre.org.uk Phone: 020 8209 1117

Scan to donate

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 101

The Emunah Times For children who are too often unseen, unheard and forgotten.

Emunah was the difference between falling apart completely and keeping my head above water.”

A safe place to sleep.

Therapy after trauma.

Donate now

Food, clothing and education.

Help ensure no child is left in the dark emunah.org.uk/rh26

Day Care Centres

95

Support for families in crisis.

Gilad, Supported

by Emunah

Across Israel, Emunah helps children feel safe, supported and seen.

5

Residential Children’s Homes

5

Multi-purpose Family Centres

12

Therapeutic & Crisis Support Centres

6

Educational Centres

British Emunah Fund, 74 Grove Park, London NW9 0DD • 020 8203 6066 • info@emunah.org.uk • emunah.org.uk • Charity no. 215398

“The best part of my week is Jami.”

Through her sessions with a Jami mental health practitioner, Rhian has learned to manage her emotions and gained confidence to move forward in her life.

This Rosh Hashanah, your support can help more people like Rhian find stability and hope for the future. Thank you.

To donate, scan the QR code, call 020 8922 2600 or visit jamiuk.org/roshhashanah

Charity Reg No. 802559

Before Jami, Rhian was just getting through the week.

Now, she can’t wait for the best part of it.

CH A R I T Y

G I F T S W ITH HEART ■ Kisharon Langdon looks ahead with hope and co-creation at its heart. The people it supports create sellable products for each Jewish festival, showcasing their talents. From personalised Rosh Hashanah honey and Pesach wine to greeting cards and gifts, these lovely items are sold through Equal, Kisharon Langdon’s gift and homeware store in Temple Fortune.

The charity is also focused on creating accessible resources to help make Jewish festivals and services more inclusive.

LEARNING JOURNEY

WO M E N A N D W E LFA R E

■ Masa Israel Journey is the largest immersive educational experience for young Jewish adults all over the world, offering opportunities to live, learn and volunteer in Israel. Through internships, study programmes, community service and leadership initiatives, Masa enables participants to deepen their connection to Israel, explore their Jewish identity and develop personally and professionally.

Masa helps strengthen Jewish identity and creates enduring ties between Israel and Jewish communities worldwide.

■ As Israel’s largest social welfare organisation, WIZO supports some of the country’s most vulnerable communities through shelters, schools, youth villages, day care centres and community programmes. Through WIZO UK’s Emergency Appeal, supporters have helped to fund trauma and mental health support for women and children, maintain safe and nurturing day care centres, strengthen women’s domestic violence shelters and sustain youth villages and schools providing structure and protection for at-risk teenagers. In the New Year, WIZO UK’s groups will continue to play a vital role in bringing communities together through fundraising and events in support of WIZO’s projects across Israel.

SA F E T Y A N D S U P P O R T ■ At a time when many feel increasingly vulnerable, the Community Security Trust (CST)’s mission is not only to protect Jewish communities, but to help them continue to live openly, confidently and proudly. In the coming year, CST will continue its vital work protecting Jewish life across the UK, strengthening security provision for synagogues, schools and community organisations, expanding training for volunteers and community members, and working closely with police and government partners to respond to evolving threats. CST will also continue

RISING R E S I LI E N C E

to monitor and combat antisemitism, support victims of hate and provide guidance to help Jewish communities remain safe and resilient.

WORLD OF HOPE ■ Founded in the 1930s to help Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, World Jewish Relief (WJR) still embodies that same spirit of compassion; last year it saved, changed or touched the lives of nearly 180,000 people. This Rosh Hashanah will be the fifth under the shadow of war for Ukraine's Jewish communities. The learning crisis for children is catastrophic; they are traumatised and the country is at risk of losing a whole generation. WJR is prioritising thousands of children who need psychological and educational support for the chance of a better future.

■ At a time when emotional support has never been more important, UK Friends of Natal provides British Jews with a meaningful way to stand alongside Israel. Natal, Israel’s leading trauma and resilience organisation, helps those whose lives have been affected by war, terror and ongoing conflict. Through fundraising, education and community engagement, the charity enables children, families, veterans, first responders and civilians across Israel to access specialist psychological care and resilience programmes.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 103

Your Independence.

Our Support.

Jewish Blind & Disabled offer a range of support for Jewish adults with physical disabilities or vision impairments to help maintain independence in their own homes.

Services include home-based assessments to help make life at home easier, and supportive peer groups to connect and share.

Contact us to find out more: jbd.org | communityservices@jbd.org | 0204 548 8690 The Occupational Therapy Service and Sight Loss Support Service are funded by our principal supporter, Wohl Legacy, alongside generous individuals from across the community. To support these services, visit jbd.org/donate.

Charity No. 259480

How does Chai care?

“The sweetness of the pomegranate and the sound of the shofar nourish our body and soul to savour life’s meaningful moments.

So too at the art workshop, we find all-round support and healing through sharing our journey together.

Even in life’s most challenging moments, here we discover hope, peace and strength.”

The Chai Art Workshop Group (Artist, Anna Goldfarb)

For more information on our extensive range of specialised services and care across the UK, please call our Freephone helpline on 0808 808 4567 or visit www.chaicancercare.org Chai Lifeline Cancer Care Registered Charity No. 1078956

“Last year I held his hand on the way to the children’s service. This year it’s on the children’s ward.”

Rosh Hashanah looks very different when your child has been diagnosed with a serious illness. Help us be there for families when they need us most.

PLEASE DONATE

Visit campsimcha.org.uk/rh26 or scan the QR code to donate

Camp Simcha, Amélie House, 221 Golders Green Road, London, NW11 9DQ • 020 8202 9297 (London) 0161 341 0589 (Manchester) office@campsimcha.org.uk campsimcha.org.uk • Charity No: 1180646

W

hen the time comes to consider care for a loved one, the decision can feel overwhelming. Beyond clinical expertise and practical support, families are increasingly looking for an environment in which an individual’s dignity, personality and independence remain at the heart of everyday life.

Food, family, friendship and social connection all matter, as does the reassurance that professional care is there when it is needed. For some, that means a residential care home; for others, it is remaining at home with carefully tailored support. And for those who want to continue living independently, there are increasingly sophisticated retirement options that combine privacy with a sense of community.

Loveday combines clinical expertise with highly

personalised care and an uncompromising standard of service. With locations in Belgravia, Kensington and St John’s Wood, care is shaped around each individual’s needs, preferences and way of life. It provides permanent residential, nursing and specialist memory care alongside respite stays and post-operative recovery. For those who remain at home, Loveday Club offers enriching experiences.

Nursing and care teams work alongside physiotherapy, hospitality, culinary and lifestyle specialists, with clinical excellence underpinning the experience. The philosophy is simple: needing care should never mean life becomes less rich.

At Nightingale Hammerson, emphasis is on ensuring that a longer life remains a fulfilling one,

106 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Caring

comes first

Needing support should never mean giving up the things that make life worth living. By Louisa Walters

CARE HOME with stimulating activities, exceptional care and opportunities to maintain mobility and independence. Across its two care homes in The Bishops’ Avenue and Clapham, 10 residents have reached the milestone of 100 years and beyond.

Among them is Joe, aged 107, the oldest Jewish man in the UK, who is enthusiastic about technology and is known for his happy disposition. Bobbie, 105, has lived at Nightingale Hammerson for eight years and says she loves it.

For those who would prefer to remain in their own home, SweetTree Home Care Services provide personalised support designed around the individual. Its services include personal care, live-in care and specialist support for older people, those living with dementia, physical and learning disabilities and other complex needs. It aims to enable people to remain in familiar surroundings while receiving care and companionship.

Birchgrove offers self-contained flats in Mill Hill,

homes, focused on supporting those with physical disabilities, learning disabilities and the elderly, placing emphasis on the emotional wellbeing of clients and their families. Its mission is to provide personalised, life-enriching care at home, shaped around each person’s choices and connections.

where residents can maintain their independence while knowing support is available. What can be striking for new residents is not how much their lives have changed, but how much they feel themselves again. Neighbours become friends, days can be shaped around interests and community comes naturally. With utilities, housekeeping, broadband and 24-hour staff presence taken care of, residents can concentrate on enjoying life.

Oakland Care operates purpose-built homes

offering residential, nursing, memory and respite care. Ensuite bedrooms and communal spaces give residents privacy, while encouraging them to spend time with others. Care is tailored to each individual, with teams taking the time to understand residents’ routines, preferences and needs. Oakland places importance on details such as good food, social activities and opportunities to stay connected so residents can retain as much independence, choice and control over their daily lives as possible.

Right at Home also provides care in people’s own

And then there is Riverstone, which offers an entirely different model: luxury retirement apartment living on The Bishops’ Avenue with care available when required. Residents have their own flats alongside restaurants, fitness and wellbeing facilities. There are talks, classes, parties and outings and a health concierge can coordinate healthcare within their own flat.

MAIN IMAGE: Communal living at Loveday OVERLEAF BOTTOM: Riverstone CLOCKWISE FROM BELOW: Oakland; a bedroom in Springdene; making connections at Nightingale Hammerson; a flat at Birchgrove

Springdene’s motto is: Life is for Living. The

family-run north London homes emphasise person-centred care, social connection and keeping residents active and engaged. Activities include concerts, quizzes, cookery, exercise and outings, alongside specialist dementia and respite care.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 107

LUXURY ALL-INCLUSIVE CARE HOME IN CHIGWELL Exceptional Residential, Nursing, Memory & Respite Care Proudly welcoming the Jewish community of Chigwell and the surrounding areas, Lambwood Heights offers exceptional personalised care in a warm, supportive and luxurious environment.

Residents enjoy beautifully appointed facilities, engaging activities, and the freedom to continue cherished traditions, hobbies and interests.

020 3973 5600 clientrelations.lh@oaklandcare.com 244 Lambourne Road, Chigwell, Essex, IG7 6HX oaklandcare.com/lambwood-heights

For more information please scan the QR code

With world-class wellbeing expertise, the energy of a members’ club and refined hospitalit offers luxury living for over 65s.

Exceptional residences.

Bespoke service.

For life.

With world-class wellbeing expertise, the energy of a members’ club and refined hospitality, Riverstone offers luxury living for over 65s.

Discover Riverstone Bishops Avenue, opening November 2026.

020 3994 8218 enquiries@riverstoneliving.com riverstoneliving.com

Kensington

Fulham

Bishops Avenue

FERTILITY SERVICES AT WEST MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL FERTILITY TREATMENT

FERTILITY TREATMENT AND SERVICES FOR ALL GENDERS

A RANGE OF FIXED-PRICE TREATMENT CYCLE PACKAGES

REGULAR CLINICS AND APPOINTMENTS

AVAILABLE FOR BOTH NHS AND SELF FUNDING PATIENTS

Consultations, tests, prescribing and scans are all undertaken at West Middlesex University Hospital with patients attending Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for egg collection and embryo transfer procedures.

THE FERTILITY CENTRE West Middlesex University Hospital, Women’s Day Unit, 1st Floor, Queen Mary’s Building, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 6AF For further information or to book an appointment please contact us www.chelwest.nhs.uk/private-care • acu@chelwest.nhs.uk • 020 3315 8585

New Year,

NEW WARDROBE

By Lara Benjamin @lara.thestylist

R

osh Hashanah dressing comes with a familiar brief: polished, festive, appropriate – and ideally comfortable enough to survive synagogue, lunch and slice of honey cake.

But perhaps the most interesting way to approach the New Year is not to ask, “What should I wear?” but, “How do I want to feel?”

Rosh Hashanah is about reflection and renewal and your wardrobe can follow the same principle. Start with one piece that makes you feel unmistakably like yourself: a beautifully-cut blazer, a silk skirt, a favourite dress or earrings that instantly make everything look more intentional. Then build around it.

A midi dress with shape at the shoulder or waist, a fluid trouser with a silk blouse, or a polished matching set looks smart without looking overdone. The goal is to look considered, not as though you spent the entire week considering.

Colour can do a lot of the work. Ivory, blush, sky blue, olive and soft metallics feel seasonal and elegant. Texture helps too: satin, embroidery, velvet or a touch of shimmer can make an outfit feel special without demanding sequins before noon.

While many people rush to wear something new for the New Year, don’t underestimate the appeal of wearing items you already own. There is something reassuring about beginning a new year in a piece that already holds memories.

Fashion is often obsessed with reinvention, but Rosh Hashanah offers a more appealing idea: renewal without erasing what came before.

So dress beautifully, but dress like yourself.

And preferably in shoes you can still tolerate by dessert.

110 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Farm Rio Bird Poetry shirt £210

ME+EM Topstitch midi dress £275

Gold sandals Mint Velvet £120

Farm Rio Stained Glass Beauty Mixed Scarves dress £298

Burgundy JW Pei Bag, £140

Burgundy scallop trim knit top Mint Velvet £79

FA S H I O N

ISRAELI I DO

1

4

2

3

5

1. Mint Velvet metallic ruffle trim midi dress £190 2. Lyocell blouse with embroidered details Mango £49.99 3. River Island lace jacket, £49 4. Karen Millen satin skirt, £89 and jacket £89 5. COS brown single-breasted velvet blazer £139

CHAIN REACTION

Step into Hila Sade shop at 30 Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv and you won’t want to leave. With a fashion career that began in New York 14 years ago, Hila has opened a tiny boutique that is a jewellery lover’s sweet shop filled with her distinctive handmade designs, which are made to be mixed, layered and piled on: short and long necklaces, stacks of bracelets, rings and delicate hand chains. @hila.sade.design +972 50-688-8173

ISRAELI BRIDAL DESIGNER MIRA ZWILLINGER has never been one for understated wedding dresses – and her new autumn/winter 2026 collection is appropriately magnificent.

Created with her daughter Lihi at their Tel Aviv couture house, The Magnificent Seven comprises just seven gowns, each designed to capture a different way of expressing femininity. So that’s romance, ethereal lightness, confidence, strength and a touch of mystery.

Mira’s signature hand-crafted details are everywhere, with clouds of weightless fabric, intricate lace, sculptural silhouettes and extravagant threedimensional florals creating gowns that seem to almost float around the body.

The dresses, which all have names – Felicity, Serina, Raffa, Merry, Celia, Jessy and Aylli – also come with veils and accessories to complete the looks and there is a distinctly modern air about these romantic dresses that are not for shrinking violet brides.

It’s that aesthetic that has made the mother-and-daughter team an important international bridal name.

Note that Mira recommends beginning the process six to eight months before your wedding, although an express service may be possible.

Available at Browns Bride in Marylebone, where you will be guided, although if you’re about to say I do then perhaps you would like to personally meet Mira and Lihi in Tel Aviv? mirazwillinger.com Browns Bride, 12 Hinde Street London W1U 3BE 020 7034 1400

FA S H I O N

THE

Perfect Lara Shamash discovers how a friendship became a fashion success story

N

FIT

early 17 years after Sarah Tankel and Philippa Bloom met at an M&S press day, the friends are returning to where it all began – this time to see their own fashion brand, WAT, hanging on the rails.

“We each felt like we’d met our soulmate,” Sarah recalls of that encounter. A week later they met for dinner and discovered an extraordinary number of coincidences: identical first jobs, fathers both called Stephen and grandparents who had once been close friends. They even turned up in the same outfit.

“We both went home and told our mums we’d met someone special who was going to be in our lives for a very long time.” Neither imagined that this “someone special” would also become a business partner.

“We started our Instagram We Are Twinset because we love fashion,” says Philippa. “People were always

112 • LIFE MAGAZINE

‘We reached a point where it felt like now or never’

asking where our clothes were from, so we created a space to share what we were spying, buying and how we styled it.”

Evenings and weekends were spent photographing outfits, with husbands and mums behind the camera. The women’s friendship quickly became as central to We Are Twinset as the fashion itself.

With a loyal following behind them, the pair began thinking about creating a label of their own.

Becoming mothers provided the impetus. “We reached a point where it felt like now or never,” says Sarah. “Not trying would have been the bigger regret.”

WAT The Brand launched with a 13-piece loungewear collection that sold out in just 11 minutes.

But success brought its challenges. When a pre-order shipment failed to arrive, the pair personally called every affected customer, explaining what had happened and offering full refunds. “It was one of the hardest days we’ve had as founders,” Philippa admits.

Sarah and Philippa went on to launch WAT The Brand with co-founder Nicky Green. “The three of us all bring very different strengths,” says Philippa, who also credits their close-knit families with instilling the work ethic behind the business.

Now comes the perfect full-circle moment: WAT The Brand is launching on 16 September in the retailer that brought Sarah and Philippa together.

“Our dream retail partner was always M&S,” says Philippa. “To see WAT sitting alongside brands we love, in a retailer we’ve both grown up shopping at, is such a pinch-me moment.”

A chance meeting, a shared obsession – and 17 years later, they’re back where it all began.

Handmade Jewellery Colourful. Unique. Meaningful.

Made to be layered.

Unique handmade jewellery, designed and created in Israel.

From meaningful symbols and colorful necklaces to statement bracelets, rings and hand chains – each piece is made to mix, match and create your own unforgettable layers.

Wear it your way. Layer it your way.

Shenkin 30, Tel Aviv hilasade@gmail.com | +972 50 688 8173 We ship worldwide – DM to order

@hila.sade.design

The Jewish Agency for Israel and IMAP Invite You To ↘

25 OCTOBER ↘ LONDON

ARE YOU A DOCTOR INTERESTED IN ALIYAH? AT MEDEX, YOU CAN: •

Meet with the Ministry of Health to apply for your Israeli medical license

•

Attend relevant sessions and get your questions answered

•

Network with hospitals and medical centers to discuss your career in Israel And more!

REGISTER AT: WWW.IMAP.ORG.IL/MEDEX-UK

MINISTRY OF THE NEGEV, GALILEE AND NATIONAL RESILIENCE

There are more ways to be connected Jewishly than you can count!

However you connect to being Jewish, you can count on PJ Library to help you explore and learn about Jewish festivals, heroes and history together. Pretty sweet, right? For your child’s FREE monthly Jewish book, scan the code and sign up.

TO SUPPORT THE LIFESAVING WORK OF UNITED HATZALAH OF ISRAEL THIS ROSH HASHANA Scan to donate

Health beauty

By Brigit Grant

THE COMEBACK CLINIC If you spot a Premier League footballer slipping into a discreet clinic in Primrose Hill before breakfast, they haven’t taken a wrong turn on the way to Wembley. They’re there to recover.

Inside At The Core, elite athletes are treated alongside people with more modest goals. Walking without pain, opening a jar or picking up a grandchild. They have all come for MBST, a non-invasive magnetic resonance treatment that changed the life of entrepreneur Ray Kelvin.

The founder of Ted Baker and now owner of Sealskinz had spent more than 15 years battling chronic psoriatic arthritis. His hands were so painful that even a handshake became unbearable. A born people person, Ray abandoned the traditional greeting for a hug. “I’d tried every medication available, but nothing really worked,” he says.

“When my wife Clare found MBST I was sceptical, but after just two sessions I couldn’t believe the difference. Three years later I no longer need prescription medication or anti-inflammatory drugs.”

The experience prompted Ray and Clare to establish At The Core in 2021.

“Watching Ray get his hands back was extraordinary,” says Clare. “It wasn't simply about reducing pain; it was about restoring his quality of life. We wanted other people living with arthritis, inflammation and musculoskeletal conditions to have access to the same opportunity. Every day, we see people who believe they’ve run out of options. Watching them regain confidence and mobility is incredibly rewarding.”

Despite the name, MBST is not the same as an MRI scan. Instead of creating diagnostic images, it uses magnetic resonance technology to stimulate cellular repair processes within bone, cartilage and other musculoskeletal tissues.

Patients sit or lie comfortably while targeted magnetic resonance sequences are delivered. Research continues and it is not considered a replacement for conventional medical care, but it is increasingly being used alongside physiotherapy by sports professionals recovering from injury as well as those who have osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, which often occur during menopause.

Ray Kelvin built a global brand to help people look good.

Now, together with Clare, he’s helping them feel good – whether they’re chasing a Premier League comeback or the chance to shake someone’s hand without pain. atthecore.health

116 • LIFE MAGAZINE

Healthy Taste

What could be better right now than apple and honey in a health product?

Just Bee's Gut Health Honey with apple,cinnamon + vitamin C ( £24.99) supports digestive health and maintains normal immune function. You can also hold on to summer fruit with SunVit-D3 as it has turned its vitamins with berries into gummies. The family-run company has also gummified its most popular supplements for hair, skin and nails, high-strength Biotin and a daily 12-strong multivitamin. Yummy health! sunvitd3.co.uk

Simply Red’s Holding Back the Years is a good anthem for the beauty industry, and here are some new products for the new year: ChitoCare AntiAging Repair Serum (£139) is from Iceland and impressive. It uses marine chitosan with hyaluronic acid and 14 women aged 50 to 70 using the serum for six weeks saw a 22 percent increase in firmness. chitocare.co.uk/en-gb

Biome+ Cloud Crème and Dew Bright Serum appeal to my new year resolution: to glow and look as though I’ve slept for eight hours when I haven’t. Pricey at £86 but if holds backs the years... imageskincare.co.uk

H E A LT H & B E AU T Y

Handbag alert:

How d’ya like them apples?

The moment I spotted the apple and honey duo, I was curious.

Surely these perfumes are of the faith? I dug deeper and bingo. There’s no Ellis Brooklyn, but there is Bee Shapiro, the Taiwanese-born former New York Times beauty columnist who founded the fragrance house and is married to an Israeli.

Bee has spoken about her Israeli mother-inlaw, Israel trips and two daughters speaking Hebrew. And the brand name? Ellis is her oldest daughter and Brooklyn is where they live. So in the spirit of shana tova, try APPLE LOVE, a collab of red apple, peach skin, plum blossom and vanilla, and BEE, a honey, dark rum, cinnamon, vanilla and cocoa blend. spacenk.com

Still in Iceland (I’ve never been) is Blue Lagoon, creators of Cleansing Balm powered by their BL+ COMPLEX ™, which contains bioactives that nourish skin, lashes and brows. It turns into a silky oil that dissolves make-up and impurities, leaving skin soft and refreshed. So much more glamorous than Imperial Leather and a flannel – my nana’s way – but she did have lovely skin. uk.skinscience.bluelagoon.com

My favourite fragrance, Miller Harris, has slipped eight of its best-loved eau de parfums (Rose Silence, Tea Tonique into sleek 10ml pocket editions for late summer holidays. (£25–£30 each) or pick any three for £70 complete with a drawstring pochette. millerharris.com

Head UP

The late Diane Keaton taught me that rollnecks and scarves would hide the age reveal indents on the stem holding my head. I’ve also tried other tricks, including an elastic contraption worn under hair that supposedly pulls everything up and back.

It didn’t!

However, I succumbed recently to an Instagram pitch for neck glue! It’s actually The Ayurveda Experience Firm-Focus Neck Mask (£35), which promises tightening of the stringy gloop. Watch this space. theayurvedaexperience.co.uk

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FO O D

title. “I really do believe that cholent, at least arguably, is the most Jewish food on earth,” he says. “It is the Eastern European version of a Shabbat stew. At the core of the stew is always a type of grain and some type of meat. Based on the region that you’re in, the grain and the meat changes. In Asia, meaning primarily the Middle East, it is rice with chicken. From North Africa would be wheat and lamb, and in Europe it is barley and beef.”

I chatted to him early in the summer and we discussed the London heatwave, which seemed an odd juxtaposition when talking about something which is, to me, winter food. But Joel begs to differ.

“I eat cholent all year round. I think that’s about going back to your roots and comfort food and what comfort food means to different people. For me, cholent or a bowl of chicken soup would be comfort food, but for your average British person, it’s baked beans on toast.”

Talking of beans, they feature heavily in cholent recipes and, in Joel’s opinion, tinned versions are fine. “I don’t taste a difference in a Shabbat stew between tinned beans and dried beans. So why put in that extra effort?

“After all, Shabbat stew cooking is not fancy cooking. I’m not saying that there’s never a reason to pre-fry onions or sear your meat first but I think that, by and large, the Shabbat stew does not suffer by more or less throwing it all in the pot and letting it stew. It is simple home-style cooking that is really delicious due to the long cooking technique.”

We are familiar with the eating of symbolic foods on Rosh Hashanah, especially apple and honey, but there are many other foods that are traditional for Jews around the world and these show up in cholent. “A common one is chard or mangold [a type of beet leaf]. There is a type of stew from Tunisia that uses that. It’s called t’fina pkaila, and I have come across references to that community eating this specifically for Rosh Hashanah,” Joel explains.

“The Shabbat stew truly embodies Jewish peoplehood and Jewish culture. We are an extremely diverse people, and yet there’s a tremendous underlying unity within that diversity.

Finding foods of other Jewish communities that you might not be familiar with is an embodiment of that and Rosh Hashanah is one of the best times to embrace it.”

Joel is keen to point out that this is not a cookbook, although it does include recipes (some of which you can see overleaf).

“It’s a book of food writing that includes recipes for Shabbat stews from around the world. The whole reason that this dish exists is because people wanted hot food for lunch on Shabbat but, according to Jewish law, we’re not allowed to cook actively so they left it cooking the whole night.”

As someone who likes to do her annual visit to synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, it suits me to get something in the oven the night before and have lunch ready by the time I get home.

So, cholent it is!

A POT OF TR ADITION For Joel Haber, cholent is far more than a Shabbat stew – it is a window into the extraordinary diversity of Jewish food. By Louisa Walters

L

oving food is one thing, but creating a career out of it is another. When Joel Haber lived in the US (New Jersey, New York City and LA), he dabbled in food writing but when he moved to Israel in 2009 – “because it’s awesome” – an initial role as a tour guide led him to develop food tours in Shuk Machane Yehuda, the famous open-air market in Jerusalem.

Researching the tours opened up the world of food history and he devised a lecture called 18 Jewish Foods, which became the name of the podcast he ran a couple of years ago. Then came the idea to turn it into a book but, realising that it was too big a subject, he pulled out the chapter about the Shabbat stew and published a book on the subject.

Cholent: The Most Jewish Food on Earth is not a facetious

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 121

FO O D

Three recipes from Joel Haber’s Cholent: The Most Jewish Food On Earth to grace your Rosh Hashanah table

NORMU / GENDUMEDUSH SERVES 8 With sweetness from plums and dates, this is the ideal cholent for Rosh Hashanah and you can always add more for richer flavour.

INGRE DIE NTS

• 3 tablespoons olive oil • 425g can white beans • 425g can chickpeas • 100g dried brown or green lentils • 100g barley • 100g wheat berries • 1 large onion, cut into eighths • 4 cloves garlic • 3 medium potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped • 2 medium courgettes, cut roughly into 5cm chunks • 1.15kg beef, cubed • 2 marrow bones • 2 medium tomatoes, cut into chunks, or a 400g can diced tomatoes • 1 sprig rosemary • 8 dried sour plums (see Note for substitution option) • 3 dates, pitted • 8 eggs, still in their shells • 1 teaspoon salt • ½ teaspoon ground turmeric • ½ teaspoon ground cumin • ½ teaspoon ground black pepper • ½ teaspoon sweet paprika • ½ teaspoon hot paprika

122 • LIFE MAGAZINE

METHOD

1. Pour olive oil into a large pot (or slow cooker). Scatter the white beans, chickpeas, lentils, barley, and wheat berries inside. On top of that, add the onion and garlic. Next, layer on the potatoes and courgettes.

2. P ut the beef and marrow bones on top of everything, then cover with the tomatoes, rosemary, dried sour plums and dates. Gently insert the eggs into the other ingredients.

Over everything, sprinkle the salt, turmeric, cumin, pepper, sweet paprika and hot paprika. Add water to cover.

3. I f using a slow cooker, put everything in and leave on high for about an hour, then switch to low for overnight cooking. If using a regular pot (ideally a heavy one, such as a Dutch oven), place in an oven set to 100°C (210°F) for overnight cooking.

Note: If you can’t find dried sour plums you can substitute regular prunes, plus 1 tablespoon tamarind paste or pomegranate syrup stirred into a glass of water.

T'FINA PKAILA SERVES 8 Many Tunisian Jews prepare this for Rosh Hashanah, with the pkaila serving as one of the holiday’s traditional symbolic foods.

INGRE DIE NTS

For pkaila sauce: •9 00g chard or spinach leaves • 1 bunch fresh mint (or 1 teaspoon dry mint, saved for later) • 1 20ml olive oil • 1 medium onion, diced (optional) For t’fina: •9 00g fatty stewing beef, cut into chunks •2 –3 teaspoons olive oil •2 –4 marrow bones •4 25g can white beans, or 165g dried black-eyed peas • 1 head of garlic, peeled and separated into individual cloves • 1 teaspoon salt •½ teaspoon ground black pepper

METHOD

1. P repare the pkaila. If using chard, remove and discard the hard stems.

If using spinach, you can leave the stems attached. Chop the leaves into smaller pieces. If using fresh mint, pull the leaves off the stems.

2. H eat the olive oil over medium heat in a large pot. If using the onion, fry it first in the oil until it softens, approximately five to seven minutes.

3. A dd the chard/spinach, and mint (if using fresh leaves). After about five minutes, lower the heat to medium-low. Leave everything to cook down, stirring periodically to prevent sticking or burning. As the leaves give off their water, pour or ladle it off into a separate bowl and reserve. The leaves will continue cooking for around 45 minutes to an hour, shrinking in volume drastically, by 80 to 90 percent. They will also turn very dark, almost black. You will know they are done when you begin to hear some crackling coming from the leaves. As they near this point, be especially careful to avoid burning.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 123

FO O D

If using dried mint, stir it in now.

4. Once the leaves are ready, remove them from the heat. If the pieces are still too large, you may blend them slightly using an immersion blender, though this is not completely necessary.

5. Make the t’fina. About 15 minutes before the pkaila is done, you can start the beef in another pot. Brown it in the olive oil over medium heat, turning it on all sides.

6. Addthemarrowbonesandwhitebeans.

Scatter the garlic throughout the pot.

Sprinkle the salt and pepper over everythingandpourinthereservedliquid from the pkaila.

7. Finally, add the pkaila itself, and stir everything to mix. Add about two cups of water.

8. I f using a slow cooker, put everything in and leave on high for about an hour, then switch to low for overnight cooking. If using a regular pot (ideally a heavy one, such as a Dutch oven), place in an oven set to 100°C (210 °F) for overnight cooking.

9. S erve with couscous or rice.

Note: Spinach leaves may not give off as much liquid as chard so watch them more carefully. A dash or two of salt may help them soften and reduce.

V E G E TA R I A N H A M I N SERVES 8 Flavours from around the Sephardi diaspora combine here, while avoiding meat.

INGRE DIE NTS

• 3 tablespoons olive oil • 2–3 medium onions, chopped roughly • 2–4 cloves of garlic, sliced • 1 large or 2 small green chillies, seeds and membranes removed, diced • 3 tablespoons tomato paste • 1 tablespoon ground cumin • 1 tablespoon ground turmeric • 1 teaspoon ground cardamom • 1 teaspoon salt • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper • 2 x 425g cans mixed beans (red or white kidney, lima, chickpeas or other) • 200g green or brown lentils • 300g wheat berries • 1 large handful dried mushrooms, rehydrated in hot water • 4 medium potatoes, cut into chunks • 1 large sweet potato, cut into chunks • 8 eggs, still in their shells

124 • LIFE MAGAZINE

METHOD

1. In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Fry the onions until they start to soften and turn brown, but not until they turn dark brown or black, approximately five to seven minutes. Add the garlic and chilies and continue frying for 1–2 minutes. If using a slow-cooker, transfer now.

2. A dd the tomato paste, cumin, turmeric, cardamom, salt and pepper.

Mix well. Next, add the beans, lentils, wheat and mushrooms (with the water they soaked in). Scatter the potatoes and sweet potato on top.

Then add enough water to cover the contents by about 1.25 cm. Tuck the eggs gently around the top of the stew ingredients, making sure they are at least partially submerged.

3. I f using a slow cooker, leave on high for about an hour, then switch to low for overnight cooking. If using

a regular pot (ideally a heavy one, such as a Dutch oven), place in an oven set to 100°C (210°F) for overnight cooking.

Options •A dd one large carrot, or one large turnip, peeled and chopped.

•A dd seitan strips or vegetarian sausages.

• I n place of, or in addition to the dried mushrooms, use chopped fresh oyster or portobello mushrooms.

•S wap thoroughly-rinsed long grain white or brown rice or pearl barley instead of the wheat.

•F or a spicier flavour, leave in some of the chilli seeds and membranes, and / or add 1 teaspoon of cayenne.

•F or a different flavour profile, leave out the cumin, turmeric and cardamom, replacing them with one teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves.

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As the season changes, so will our palate, and there’s much to tuck in to says Louisa Walters

NE W Y E AR, NE W FOOD GARDEN OF ENGLAND You may think of it as purely a Middle Eastern fest but, several times a year, Claro in St James’s chooses a region to explore and brings the produce of its growers, farmers and artisan producers to the table. When I had lunch there recently, the bounty of Kent was in full harvest across tuna tataki with corn gazpacho, a tomato, cherry and lavender salad, a baked peach with cheese, celery and honey, and lamb kebab with apricots. A very special treat.

BAGEL BONANZA Tucked just behind Haverstock Hill on an unassuming road leading to the back of the Royal Free you’ll find Brad and Dills, a haven for bagel and coffee lovers, bringing a little slice of New York to Hampstead with a carefully-curated selection of brunch dishes and bakes from the iconic St John.

Expect bagels with a chewy interior, crisp exterior and well-thought-out fillings. Standouts include the Vegano Picante with hash browns, vegan ’nduja, mozzarella and crispy onions, and the Lebanesey, a clever take on a falafel pita – or keep it simple with a classic cream cheese. It’s spacious inside, with a terrace for al fresco dining and staff who go above and beyond. Amber Royston CHALLAH QUEEN The inimitable Tami Pearce, aka Challah Queen of Hampstead, has opened a glorious new bakehouse in the up-and-coming Brent Cross Town. Shiny cabinets displaying her stunning wares and a large seating area in the window will be sure to render this an exciting new destination for breakfast, lunch and treats to take home.

WINE AND DINE Honey & Co Great Portland (where Honey & Smoke once stood) is a new restaurant where the thinking is different – the wine list came first and the food was shaped around it. A deli by day, a dining room and wine bar by night, it’s warm, intimate, rustic and “designed around the way London wants to eat now” according to founders

128 • LIFE MAGAZINE

TOP: Tuna at Claro LEFT: A bagel at Brad & Dills BELOW: Challah queen Tami Pearce

which is celebrating 100 years of everyone’s favourite bear. The cake plate includes a vanilla and raspberry lolly inspired by Piglet, a chocolate and orange striped loaf cake inspired by Tigger and a honey and apricot mousse inspired by Winnie the Pooh and his love of honey – making it a perfect pre-Rosh Hashanah treat. Finger sandwiches are simple and classic, from chicken mayonnaise and egg mayonnaise to cucumber with cream cheese, while plain and fruit scones are served with clotted cream and strawberry preserve.

A showstopping coconut cake with passionfruit ganache is circulated on the silver roaming cake trolleys for extra decadence.

Itamar and Sarit. The wine list throws up interesting options, including Txakoli Rosado – a beautiful pink version of my favourite slightly fizzy wine – and a very unusual Lebanese Chateau Musar. The menu screams “eat me, try me” – we tried a velvety smoked haddock beignet with basil and caper sauce, a punchy harissa and ricotta bun, goats cheese and peach skewer with salted almonds, rack of lamb with fermented green chilli and smoked duck with cherry relish. Did we finish with the Dubai chocolate mousse? Of course we did.

MAKE MINE MEATY After a summer of sunshine and salads, carnivores’ paradise Habiba’s Smokehouse (kosher) will beckon us in this autumn with a menu designed for meat heads. Start with nachos topped with slow-cooked pulled beef, or glazed rib pieces coated in a glossy sweet-and-savoury glaze. Smoked lamb breast, slow-cooked until tender, delivers deep smoky flavours and a peppercorn crust adds another layer of complexity. Our side of smashed potatoes was an unexpected triumph – crispy, golden and expertly seasoned. The pièce de résistance is smoked pastrami short rib, which practically surrenders at the sight of a fork or, if you prefer something more refined, go for smoked duck breast with broccoli dressed with soy and chilli.

Simple food, done well. Alex Davis SWEET TREAT There’s still time to catch the children’s Winnie the Pooh-inspired afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason,

TOP: The Winne the Pooh-inspired afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason

ITALIAN STYLE While the days are still warm, the terrace at Cent Anni in St John’s Wood is the ideal place to enjoy contemporary Italian food with a menu comprising pasta, fish, grills and a great range of desserts.

When chilly, the interior is warm and welcoming with an open fire. There is also a set lunch menu at just £20 for two courses and two private rooms on the first floor ideal for larger gatherings.

O N TH E S I D E Thursdays are thumping at Mazal (kosher) in Camden, where, alongside surely the best shawarma meze in town and that famous blooming onion, singer Pini Brown is hosting Leil Shishi, a weekly evening of “delicious food, drinks, awesome music and amazing people”.

Jake Finn and the team behind Cinder have opened No 49, a bakery, bistro and wine bar in St John’s Wood. They are baking breads and pastries on-site and dishing out salads, steaks and sharing plates (inset) with an interesting wine list. Weekend brunch is a thing here – all in all a great addition to the high street.

Tavlin, London’s first kosher supper club, has an innovative line-up of foodie experiences scheduled for the new season, including an intimate fine dining experience and an afternoon tea. Details at tavlin.co.uk

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 129

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JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 131

TH E

TAI L

END

This is a space for pets of all kinds, regardless of their level of observance.

So send stories and pics to pets@jewishnews.co.uk

The superhero award So there was Pug Man with a soft robotic hand for humans to hold. Kira, who can make objects appear and Olivia, whose superpower is kindness.

Super Crunchie always saves the day, Nome helps homeless people and “The Dog” (a simple name) helps to “lead disabled people everywhere”.

Choosing a winner of the Israel Guide Dogs Centre’s Martin Segal Superhero Award was no easy task.

Hundreds of imaginative entries poured in from primary school pupils who were asked to create a lone superhero dog or one attached to a human superhero.

The challenge was to show who their hero helps and why kindness can be the greatest superpower of all.

Launched in memory of the charity’s much-loved former executive director, Martin Segal MBE, the competition celebrates the life-changing work of the Beit Oved-based Centre.

Martin’s widow, Rebecca Segal, joined

132 • LIFE MAGAZINE

the charity’s UK chief executive Karen Brosh, ambassador Lisa Marlowe, illustrator Daniel Winston and Life’s Brigit Grant to judge the entries.

Nine-year-old Lyla from Sinai Jewish Primary School was the inaugural winner. To celebrate Lyla’s win, Sinai held a special assembly, during which Rebecca gave her the award and presented a certificate and voucher in recognition of the school’s support. “We were delighted to take part in such a meaningful competition, helping to raise awareness of the incredible work by the charity,” said Sophie Judah, head of Jewish Studies.

Karen added: “Naming the award after Martin sends a powerful message to children that heroes are not confined to comic books but exist in everyday life. The competition reflects Martin’s values by encouraging creativity, kindness and an understanding of how guide dogs transform lives.”

FROM TOP LEFT: Lyla’s entry; the five competition judges; Indy’s entry; Sophia’s entry ABOVE: Ori and Leara’s entry

P E TS

FELINE FELLAS It seems that two of Britain’s comedians are obsessed with cats. Sadly for Ricky Gervais his new animated sweary series Alley Cats has felt the critics’ claws. It’s a shame, because away from four-letter words it is a moving lesson about loneliness and growing old and it’s a shame children can’t watch. More popular is David Baddiel’s gentler Cat Man, which is set for a second series.

There’s exciting news from the Centre, where Peggy (pictured, below), a very special German Shepherd, welcomed her first litter of seven puppies – Gerry, Pepper, Barry, Ozzie, Jack, Petra and Phyllis.

Renowned for its golden retrievers, the Centre has bred German Shepherds before, but Peggy is a testament to the close relationships IGDC has built with guide dog organisations globally. She was donated by Guiding Eyes for the Blind in New York.

Save the date: Israel Guide Dogs UK has a special event in Manchester on 28 October, featuring Leehi and her guide dog Sony, who are coming from Israel to share their inspiring story.

CREATURE COMFORT Listen up, pet lovers. A siddur for our four-legged friends is coming. Beloved Creatures, created by Rabbis Jonathan Wittenberg, Charles Middleburgh and David Mitchell is a 150-page collection of prayers, poems and meditations for every stage of life with a beloved animal. It would be a precious addition to Rosh Hashanah, but we’ll have to wait for the November launch. No doubt animals will be lining up two by two to get their paws on a copy.

Sister Act A paw of applause for my sis Harriett Grant-Pena, whose fundraiser at the Dungle Club, Quarteira, Portugal, raised a substantial sum for Tiny Shelter Rescue – and possibly found one lucky dog a home. Next up is an October Halloween costume party tinyshelter.org Back home, London’s Smiths of Smithfield is hosting a Halloween Pup Up Café on 18 October, with prizes for the best-dressed, and Kennel Klub South in Brighton celebrates similarly on 25 October.

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 133

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T R AV EL

Skyscrapers, SUPERTREES and synagogues Louisa Walters discovers a world of difference between Singapore and Hong Kong

JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 137

17:10

T R AV EL

“T

wo days is enough in Singapore,” everyone tells me. “Not if you stay at Raffles,” is my response.

For this is a hotel you would never want to leave. In its very first iteration, it was a house facing the beach and it has been a hotel since 1887. It is so steeped in history there is a two-hour tour offered to residents to learn all about it. Its magnificent white wedding cake façade is somewhat at odds with the steel and glass of modern Singapore, but its refined gentility is not.

Our suite, with a verandah overlooking the tranquil courtyard gardens – a little oasis in the middle of Singapore – has the classic Raffles aesthetic: colonial proportions, elegant furnishings and a feeling of old-world luxury. Our very own butler knocks at our door to present an assortment of chocolates from which to choose a selection to enjoy during our stay.

Singapore is compact enough to explore easily on foot, even in the intense heat and humidity. We visit The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands (although not all 270 of them!) and wander through the tropical Gardens by the Bay, home to the awe-inspiring supertrees, returning at night to see them lit up in a Vegas-style light show.

But it is away from the modern structures that we find the atmosphere – in Little India, we are transported straight to the streets and markets of Delhi, and in the Kampong Glam District, we discover a cacophony of indie shops, perfume sellers and Middle Eastern restaurants alongside

ABOVE: Raffles Hotel, Singapore LEFT: Louisa and her husband enjoy afternoon tea in the lobby lounge at Raffles BELOW: The interior of the Long Bar at Raffles

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colourful cafés, cocktail bars and street art.

The Lau Pa Sat hawker centre, with 80 food stalls under an ornate Victorian roof, is surprisingly not air-conditioned so it is almost an appetite killer in the heat – but not quite! We indulge in a tasting menu at Butchers Block, a mood-lit, fire-driven meat-focused restaurant in Raffles arcade, and authentic Indian food at The Tiffin Room in the hotel.

As residents, we bypass the queues for the Long Bar, home of the famed Singapore Sling – a not-to-be missed experience, complete with the chance to do a little cocktail-shaking ourselves.

The biggest treat of all, though, is afternoon tea in the magnificent lobby lounge. With a harpist playing, dainty finger sandwiches and perfect scones served with clotted cream, champagne and English Breakfast tea, the long-gone days of the British Empire are brought firmly into focus.

There are 1,500 miles between Singapore and Hong Kong, yet the differences between them make the distance feel even greater than this.

Where Singapore is calm, ordered and spread out with a canopy of tropical greenery at its heart, Hong Kong is frenetic, crowded and rises dramatically into the sky.

We check in to the Hari in Hong Kong, a 30-storey hotel neatly positioned between the riot of colour and sounds that is the famous Wan Chai market, and the thrill that is the modern skyscrapers and malls of Causeway Bay. A sister to the Hari in London, British interior designer Tara Bernerd has created a sophisticated oasis decorated with dark wood, velvet, marble and lots of greenery. A London gallery-curated art collection adds to the feeling of a private members’ club.

Rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows and sleek

bathrooms and are surprisingly spacious.

Unusually for a city centre hotel there is an outdoor terrace, perfect for a drink before heading out for the evening. Breakfast is Western-style, with a couple of Asian dishes each day.

Our first day is spent hopping on and off open-top tour buses. We marvel at the bamboo scaffolding that is traditional in this city, and the beautiful Victoria Park, which hosts a stunning flower show every March. We visit Man Mo Temple, with its gigantic spiral incense coils that fill the interior with pungent smoke, ride the outdoor lifts and take the ferry across to Kowloon to watch the light show across the water as night falls. Loud, bustling and gritty by day, the city takes on a certain magic at night, as neon lights bring it to life and make it feel like one giant Times Square.

We eat superb Chinese cuisine at Mott 32, including a speciality duck course, and dim sum with a French twist at Man Mo Dim Sum. On the rare occasion the sun shines in Hong Kong, the narrow streets and tall buildings prevent the rays from reaching the ground, so we ride the tram to Victoria Peak, more than 400 metres above sea level. From here, the city is spread out in all directions and sparkles in the sun.

Notably in both cities, in the 19th century, Baghdadi Jewish merchants following the trading routes of the British Empire arrived from Iraq and India. They established businesses, bought homes and built synagogues.

The Sassoon brothers – Jacob, Edward and Meyer – were among the earliest Sephardi merchants from India to settle in Hong Kong; the whitewashed Edwardian façade of Ohel Leah Synagogue, built by them in 1901 and named after their mother, sits proudly alongside the skyscrapers. Singapore has Maghain Aboth

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The Hari in Hong Kong; the light show in Hong Kong; Man Mo Temple BELOW: Ohel Leah Synagogue

Synagogue, built in 1878, which is the oldest and largest in Southeast Asia, and the beautiful Chesed-El Synagogue, which was built in 1905.

These are a fitting reminder that, before the skyscrapers, shopping malls and futuristic architecture, these two cities were shaped by generations of people who arrived from elsewhere in search of a new life.

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T R AV EL

Mind, body and soul

Michael Ben Baruch, Director of the Israel Government Tourism Office UK and Ireland, on why 5787 should begin in Israel

I

arrived in Britain with my family in the summer of 2023, full of the optimism that comes with a new posting. Since then, I have stood alongside the British Jewish community as it navigated one of its most challenging chapters, while the tourism industry in Israel that I represent endured one of the hardest periods in its own history.

But British Jewry has never stopped travelling to Israel, through thick and thin, and for this I thank you all. This July, UK arrivals were up 46 percent on last year and, despite the disruption , more than 40,000 people have travelled to Israel from the UK in the first seven months of the year.

The recovery is nascent and UK visitor numbers are still well below their 2019 highs, but the direction is promising, and Israel is building for what comes next, with the Ministry of Tourism backing 58 new tourism projects totalling more than NIS 360 million

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(£90m), from the Galilee to the Negev.

Rosh Hashanah is the season of teshuvah, a word usually translated as repentance, but which literally means return. And when better to think about returning once again to Israel? I could appeal to you as Jews, as supporters of Israel, and encourage a visit as an act of solidarity. All of that is true, and your visits are critical to the recovery. But I would argue you should do it for yourself and for those around you.

Because no other travel experience offers what Israel has. It is the complete destination: something for the mind, the body and the soul.

Mind. Nowhere does history sit this close to the surface. Walk the Pilgrimage Road beneath the City of David, on street levels last walked 2,000 years ago. Lose an afternoon in the Israel Museum, where the Great Isaiah Scroll, the most complete of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is displayed in its entirety for the first time.

And in Tel Aviv, a city with far more than beaches, give a morning to ANU, the Museum of the Jewish People, where our story is told in one extraordinary sweep, and where you will, quite literally, find yourself. This is a country that feeds the culturally curious.

Body. The Mediterranean in the

OPPOSITE: The Old City, Jerusalem; Tel Aviv/Yafo CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The Dead Sea and Masada; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; spices in the market; Jerusalem

morning, a float in the Dead Sea by afternoon, the Golan trails or exploring the reefs in Eilat’s Red Sea. Cycle all over the country across our radically varied terrains, or maybe a hike with the most majestic sunrise over the Negev. For those who like to treat their body more gently, there is more comfort than ever to come back to, with plenty of breathtaking luxury hotel openings offering a collection of rooftop pools and sumptuous spas, all part of a new generation of world-class hotels built for proper indulgence to complement all the adventure on tap.

Soul. It begins with the land itself, the physical fact of standing in the Galilee or the Judean hills and knowing that your story happened here. It continues with the people, a whole world compressed into one small country, arguing and celebrating in a dozen accents, and

somehow all of it family. You feel it at the Shabbat table to which you get invited by people you met on the Tuesday. In the Friday afternoon when an entire city exhales at once. And you taste it, everywhere: at the Carmel Market before lunch, at the new tables of Israel’s celebrated chefs, and above all at the meals where guests become family, because what is better for the Jewish soul than sharing wonderful food?

The Israeli phrase is dugma ishit, personal example. Not duty but leadership. Someone always goes first, and this community, which stood by Israel through its hardest years, is best placed to lead its recovery too, not just as the right thing to do, but because for mind, body and soul, there is simply no holiday like it. Book that trip and make it a highlight of your 5787. Wishing you all a good and sweet new year.

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Should I STAY or should I GO? From eating out to renting a home or even buying one, travel means something different to everyone

BRIGHTON BEAUTY

The BNJC (Brighton & Hove Jewish Community), a remarkable project to create a Jewish seaside holiday resort and homes, is celebrating its third anniversary. Comprising 45 homes, it has Shabbat-friendly lifts, a campus with a restaurant, a nursery for children and a reception hall for events.

The project is reviving a Jewish tradition whereby thousands of families flocked to stay in kosher hotels in seaside resorts such as Bournemouth and Blackpool. The scheme also provides affordable housing to Jewish families, while the holiday accommodation starts at £120 a night for a flat for up to six people.

The flats have a spacious kitchen area and sizeable dining tables and some even have a balcony. There are also 10 five-bedroomed mews houses. There is a kosher deli on-site, highchairs and cots available and visitors are coming from all over the world as word spreads about everything BNJC has to offer. It is very much a haven, enclosed within a metal-fenced compound with 24/7 security and an eruv so visitors can feel safe as they eat in the restaurant, go to their homes or the synagogue and send their children to the Shoresh nursery. The Orthodox synagogue is on the campus but separate to the BNJC and it has benefited from the new arrivals, with its congregation swelling and services held three times daily. Caroline Friedman

UPPING THE GAME

There is plenty of confidence in Tel Aviv’s prime property market too. Eyal Hartogs of Holland Real Estate, a specialist in prime local properties and exclusive broker for the David Promenade Residences adjacent to the Kempinski Hotel, is seeing a surprising surge in demand despite the war, political unrest and a strong shekel.

Eyal says premium listings, particularly along the beachfront, are achieving record prices after spending considerable time on the market. Much of the new interest is coming from foreign buyers, some seeking refuge from rising international antisemitism and others looking for a ‘just-in-case’ haven in Israel.

The supply at the very top of the market is increasingly strained, says Eyal. He receives almost daily inquiries from buyers looking for properties priced between £5 million and £20m but has relatively few suitable options to show them. While overseas buyers dominate this end of the market, he is also seeing strong interest from Israeli high-tech executives.

And with international travel to Israel still difficult, Eyal believes the current demand may be only the beginning, describing it as “the trickle before the flood”.

OPPOSITE PAGE: Brighton Pier; a bedroom at the BNJC CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The David Promenade Resdences; the waterfront in Tel Aviv; food at Yofi restaurant at the BHJC

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OLÁ PORTUGAL

It’s probably one of the few kosher restaurants you can walk to from the beach – and the only one in the Algarve. Noah, owned by Ido Itshayek and Leah Luisa (above), has genuinely good food and is part of Kosher Village Algarve.

Ido is president of the Algarve Jewish Community and has created a hub that is not just for guests at the village, but for residents and visitors from across the region. There is also a synagogue, kosher food shop, gift and art shop, and the Little Maccabees Kids Club – as well as spaces for weddings.

It’s somewhere Jewish families can eat, pray, learn, shop, and celebrate - close to the beach.

And while we’re in Portugal, Comporta is the name to know. Around 90 minutes south of Lisbon, this was once a sleepy stretch on the Alentejo coast but is now one of Europe’s hippest escapes.

It’s dubbed the Hamptons of Portugal, because it attracts a glamorous crowd – some of them footballers, others from the tribe – and you’ll find them at the seriously chic Sublime Comporta, five-star hideaway. Happy to be of help! Brigit Grant

STAY LONGER

If a holiday in Israel has you seriously considering a more permanent getaway – or even a move – start with one of the many hotels, then book a viewing or two with Azorim. One of Israel’s largest developers, it has been building homes for nearly 60 years, with an emphasis on good design, community and everything you need close by.

Particularly tempting is Azorim Hofim WEST in the Park Hayam neighbourhood – a luxury residential tower on the westernmost line, closest to the beach. Because sometimes checking out of the hotel just doesn’t appeal.

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DINNER OF DREAMS

Lighting a lantern and dropping it into the water on a nighttime river cruise in Hoi An is just one of many magical reasons to visit. The Old Town has ochre buildings, narrow streets decorated with more lanterns, and shops filled with pretty things to buy. It is famous for its tailors, and having something made is part of the experience.

Outside of the town there are rice paddies and villages to visit (by Vespa if you dare!) and stunning restaurants such as Nayuu (meaning love, dream) at the Four Seasons Nam Hai. With just 16 seats at a counter wrapped around an open kitchen with Spanish-born, Japanese-trained chef Alex Moranda at its heart, this is a unique and intimate 12-course omakase experience with a dose of theatrical flair here and hugely entertaining storytelling.

Dishes here are explained and created in front of your eyes, so that by the time the masterpiece of abalone with yuzu miso cucumber or wagyu foie gras nigiri enters your mouth you are bursting with anticipation and if you have never had a wasbai potato parmentier, then frankly you haven’t lived.

We had dishes served inside a hollowed-out lime, atop a little box, on a flower-shaped plate and one even on a flaming banana leaf. Dessert, described simply as yuzu parfait, presented as possibly the prettiest plate of perfection I’ve seen. A special treat in a special place. Louisa Walters

TOP: Nayuu at the Four Seasons Nam Hai INSET: A dessert at Nayuu LEFT: Noah in Portugal BOTTOM: Azorim Hofin WEST in Netanya

Next Year in Jerusalem!

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JEWISHNEWS.CO.UK • 145

Last word

By Kenny Wax Theatre producer

I

n my early twenties, I spoke with the father of one of my best friends.

He had enjoyed a successful career in the music industry and was concerned my chosen career in theatre was shortsighted. It was the early 1990s; was public interest in live theatre fading? Would there still be an appetite for it in 30 years’ time?

As it turns out, the music industry has undergone a far more seismic change over the past three decades, with the rise of streaming and near disappearance of tapes, CDs and LPs. Enthusiasm for cinema has also diminished – even though the cinema experience can’t be bettered in my view, but with films available on streaming platforms weeks after big screen release, is it any surprise?

And yet, there is still something extraordinary about discovering a new piece of theatre. Sitting in a darkened room with others who have chosen to be there, experiencing the same thing at the same time. Theatre can take an audience on a shared emotional rollercoaster and, in some cases, be life-changing. Yes, theatre is very much alive and kicking.

While maintaining its popularity, the interest in ‘experiences’ has grown. Secret Cinema, together with immersive theatre such as The Great Gatsby, Sleep No More and the extraordinarily named You Me Bum Bum Train, are two such popular examples.

The appetite for museums, galleries and exhibitions also seems undiminished and we are incredibly lucky in London that many of these are free.

And every now and then something unique comes to London… some weeks ago I went with some trepidation to the Nova Music Festival Exhibition (not that I mean to put this in the category of entertainment). We heard a first-hand testimony from a survivor of that appalling massacre. There, more by luck than judgement, he described his experience

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on that fateful day when only half of his party of six returned home.

As a member of the Society of London Theatre, I am also an Olivier Award voter, so am fortunate to be invited to every new West End play and musical.

I’m often asked by family and friends for my recommendations and a few of my highlights are: Paddington the Musical and the play 1536, set against the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s beheading, both produced by the indomitable Sonia Friedman.

My friend Michael Harrison has been working his way through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s catalogue: two years ago it was Sunset Boulevard with Nicole Scherzinger, then Evita with Rachel Zegler and, now, a lively production of Jesus Christ Superstar with Sam Ryder transferring from the Palladium to Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

I’m interested to see the manga musical Death Note at the Barbican and The Truth at the Apollo Theatre with Stephen Mangan, who is always good, and Adrian Lester, back as Cyrano de Bergerac, as he’s wonderful.

The joyous and energetic Andy Nyman finishes a very successful run in The Producers at the end of September.

Finally, look out for a transfer of the RSC’s Game of Thrones, which opened in Stratford-upon-Avon early August.

My own story has come full circle this summer. In 1985, I saw the magnificent production of Me and My Girl at the Adelphi Theatre, starring Robert Lindsay and an unknown Emma Thompson. I was 17 and walked out thinking, “That’s it…

I want to be a theatre producer!” If one production can send 1,500 people dancing down the Strand, then I wanted to have something to do with creating that feeling.

In August, I opened The Comedy About Spies, in partnership with Mischief Theatre Ltd, at the very same theatre, which had

a sell-out first week. It’s the first play in that venue for 15 years, which says something about the popularity of Mischief (creators of The Play That Goes Wrong and other TV and theatre spin-offs which I’ve produced for the past decade).

Next year, with some luck and a dose of producer’s optimism, we’ll be taking The Comedy About Spies to Broadway. And, in December, we’ll have three productions of Mischief’s newest offering, Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, on a UK tour either side of a run at the Wyndham’s in London, the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and the Sydney Opera House.

Looking back, I realise that the greatest privilege has never been opening a hit show or seeing my name on a programme.

It has been the opportunity to create experiences that bring people together – to make strangers laugh, cry and forget the divisions of the world outside for a few hours,.

Perhaps that’s one of the lessons of Rosh Hashanah. We cannot rewrite the story of the year that has passed, but we are all given the chance to write the next chapter. Every one of us has the opportunity to become a little more generous, more patient, more forgiving and a little more present for the people who matter most.

In theatre, most performances begins with the raising of a curtain. Rosh Hashanah offers us the raising of a different curtain – the opening of a new act in our lives. The question is not whether the script will be perfect; it never is. The question is whether we will use the year ahead to become better versions of ourselves.

May the coming year bring health, happiness and peace to you and your families. May it be filled with meaningful experiences, treasured memories and opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

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Next year in

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