Comments on: In Celebration Of Cockney Yiddish

By: slope

slope — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 02:04:43 +0000

That’s nice information here.

By: David Lawson

David Lawson — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 23:42:59 +0000

When I was very young, I heard my grandparents talking gobbledygook to my father and he was replying in English. I thought it was a game and asked if I could join, which made my grandparents angry. Many years later I learned they were speaking Yiddish. He could understand but had forgotten how to reply in this strange tongue.
I discovered my grandparents were something called “Jews”, who fled Ukraine [then part of Russia] before the First War. The family spoke this strange language to each other but learned English for others. Unlike my cousins, aunts and uncles I wasn’t a member of this group because my father, who had been born and raised in Spitalfields and Stepney rather than Wales where we lived, left London before the Second War, married a Welsh gentile and adopted an English surname.
We could only afford crossing the country for family reunions every few years and this schism never seemed to come up except for that almost forgotten childish faux pas. My parents died in my teens. I wish I had talked to them about it but it never seemed important.
With no family ties, I became a wanderer, ironically ending up decades later a few miles from my father’s birth place in a street cleared for Spitalfields market. – something I discovered via online family history research.
That is why I have followed this blog assiduously for many years, soaking up details of places my father would have known growing up. It makes me feel closer to him than I ever was when he was alive.

By: Vanessa Coldwell

Vanessa Coldwell — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 01:11:10 +0000

Hands down one of the most interesting articles ever published by the Gentle Author!

By: John Cunningham

John Cunningham — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 19:44:37 +0000

It’s great to see the old East End, largely vanished Jewish culture made the subject of what looks to be a fascinating podcast. I’ve subscribed on Spotify!

By: Adele

Adele — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 14:47:23 +0000

My late grandfather would go to the Whitechapel Library Reading Room to read all the Yiddish newspapers . At one point the Police ,’raided’ the Library and round up all the Jewish immigrants as illegal aliens! He spent two weeks at a facility in Seven Oaks, Kent before his family could round up enough paperwork to prove he was no enemy of the state. Understandably, he never went back to the Library !
Great article Gentle Author!

By: Bernie

Bernie — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:36:20 +0000

Thank you for presenting this item, which ‘rings a bell’ with me because of my family history. My mother, and her siblings, arrived in the East End as immigrants from Austro=Hungary around the first decade of the 20th Century, and my father’s parents and their first children came from somewhere in Russia in the 1840’s. The immigrant generation had a hard life, but scraped a living in the tailoring sweatshops of the times, and inculcated in their children a strong will to succeed. Most did, and migrated to Hackney or thereabouts as soon as they could, my parents going from their flat at 98 Commercial St to Evering Rd, N16 in the late 1920’s. With hindsight, the East End environment, with relations and congenial services close by was in many ways a healthier locality in which to raise a family. Less salubrious, perhaps, but with many social connections ‘on the doorstep’.

By: Andrew Caplan

Andrew Caplan — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:35:25 +0000

Bill Fishman’s East End Jewish Radicals is another useful source of the Jewish experience at the end of the 19th century.

By: Allison Holmes

Allison Holmes — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 11:05:40 +0000

This looks so interesting. I’m really looking forward to listening to the podcast.

By: Andy Strowman

Andy Strowman — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 07:09:36 +0000

I am very pleased to see this article and a great praise from me to the Gentle Author and Dr Lachs and Professor Valman .

I will try to listen to the podcast .

The wealth of memories comes in but I can hardly imagine writing on here without a mention of Sophie Tucker the Yiddish singer and her Yiddish rendition of “Mein Yiddisher Mama ,” on 78 rpm .
My Baba used to play it on a gramophone that wound up and it was my mother’s favourite record.
Many people could not bear to listen to the song because of the tears it would evoke .

Her English sung version became a popular song for Jews and non Jews alike .

How could I leave without mentioning Avram Stencl ?

He deserves a big mention too and his paper he used to sell called “Loshun und Lieben .”
Yes I remember him standing outside the famous theatre called The Grand Palais in Commercial road selling copies .

If anyone wants to contact me about all this the Gentle Author knows my details .