Yiddish Civilisation The Rise And Fall Of A Forgotten Nation

Bist a Yid? Back at the beginning of the 1950smemory suggeststhe world was all in Technicolor and it never rained in summer. Nat King Cole headed the hit parade with "They Try to Tell Us We're Too Young," Tottenham Hotspur was top of the football league and Newcastle United beat Blackpool to the Football Association cup. Butter, meat and sweets were still rationed in Britain and the average weekly wage was around 7, though you could buy a house for under five hundred. Money was tight, particularly pocket money. When the weather was fine, schoolboys like me would save our bus fares for fizzy drinks and walk the couple of miles to school instead. Our school in north-west London drew its pupils from a wide and diverse area. Every morning, teenage boysin the rigidly enforced uniform of grey flannel trousers, school blazers and caps (plus satchels and shining morning faces)could be seen converging on the red-brick Victorian building like wildlife towards a waterhole. We assembled from every part of the suburb: many poorer boys from the working-class terraces leading off the busy, grimy high street, middle-class pupils from upper-bracket apartment blocks with pretentious names like Grosvenor Mansions, and a small number of rich kids from spacious six-bedroomed detached houses with carriage drives, double garages and acres of garden. One young turbaned Sikh was daily delivered to the school gates by chauffeur-driven Bentley. He was the exception; by far the largest religious minority were Jews, for whom Britain's post-war grammar schools offered the irresistible attraction of a free quasi-public-school education. Back in those days, there was little town-and-gown trouble. True, gangs of adolescent roughnecks did gather in the seedier parts of the district, but we all knew which routes to avoid and which were safe. For some of us, however, there was one peril that was much harder to escape. A section of my route took me through one of the wealthier areas, along streets lined by big houses with wrought-iron gates and plaster-pillared porticoes, past flowery front gardens, tennis courts and recreation groundsa mock-rural setting which still somehow recalled the real orchards, market gardens and country villas of no more than a generation or two earlier. It was just before entering this quiet would-be pastoral neighbourhood that menace lurked for young Jewish boys like mea danger that could result in a severe beating. If we kept our wits about us and our eyes open, we could catch sight of the threat: a group of apparently respectable middle-aged men in dark suits, loitering around the entrance to the alley which led to the local synagogue. If we were quick enough, we could take rapid evasive action. But teenage boys are much given to dreaming, and the long walk to school was the perfect opportunity to let our imaginations wander, leaving our mental autopilots to look after the practical business of working our legs and navigating them towards our destination. All too often a boy would accidentally stray within range of one of the prowlers, who would instantly dash across the road and pounce on his victim. Usually the first a boy would know of his fate was the feel of a hand grasping his shoulder and the dreaded sound of the ominous whisper: "Pssst! Bist a Yid?" and he would know that it was all up for him. The phrase is Yiddish for Are you a Jew? The boy had been captured by one of the synagogue's minyan-shleppers, those charged with the duty of dragging (shlepping) a quorum of ten ritually adult males (a minyan) into the synagogue so that morning service could begin. I hasten to explain that our reluctance to be caught like this was not prKriwaczek, Paul is the author of 'Yiddish Civilisation The Rise And Fall Of A Forgotten Nation', published 2005 under ISBN 9781400040872 and ISBN 1400040876.