Mick Hartley

Meanwhile Josh Glancy looks back to the “quiet genius” of Jewish life in the UK, centered on Golders Green where his grandpa Harold settled:

Harold was a proudly Jewish man and ran a kosher food company. But he also lived a British life almost indistinguishable from any other suburban small business owner, checking his share portfolio on Ceefax, jumping in his Rover to nip down to the tennis club, cheering on the Arsenal. 

Harold’s story embodies the quiet genius of British Jewry in the late 20th century. Having seen off Hitler and the threat of domestic fascism, Britain and its Jews then somehow contrived to make being Jewish in this country almost boring. If you know your Jewish history, that is no small achievement. Each Saturday we would say a prayer of thanks to the royal family, to acknowledge our good fortune.

This was the lucky world I was born into. Of course antisemitism nibbled away at the margins, we still had security at synagogue, but we were safe, our place in British society settled and secure.

My fear today is that this long and peaceful chapter of Jewish life in this country may now be ending….

There are lots of different stripes of antisemitism in this country, from the golf club to the far right, but it is the prejudice now commonplace in some British Muslim communities (and I really do mean some), advanced and echoed by parts of the progressive left, that represents a threat to the Anglo-Jewish future. 

And a comment:

Beautifully written. You have said what so many Anglo-Jews are feeling right now. As I sat in synagogue today for the yahrzeit (memorial) of my father’s death, I wondered what he would make of it all. The only Jewish boy in his grammar school, to which he won a scholarship, he became head boy, head of football and of cricket. A qualified solicitor, he joined up early, was at Dunkirk and in India in WW2 and married my mother, a GP in 1948. We were always taught to honour the country which gave my grandparents a home. I want the country for which he and others fought, one of liberal and tolerant values, back. I hope and trust that will be possible.