Jewish East End Celebration Society
4A Cornwall Mews South, London, SW7 4RX
[email protected]

The Jewish East End is to feature in a new Living History series on BBC television – and you could be part of it. Wall to Wall Television, the production company responsible for such hits as WhoDo You Think You Are?, Turn Back Time: The High Street, and the recent BBC2 series Back In Time For Dinner, is seeking people willing to relive the East End of the late Victorian era, including what assistant producer Emily Thompson calls the “rich story of the Jewish community living in these areas at the time”.

Fieldgate Street synagogue, which had been one of the last remaining active synagogues in the East End until relatively recently, has been bought by the adjacent East London Mosque.

A classic of Yiddish theatre has at last had its UK premiere – 109 years after it was written.

Treasure by David Pinski was staged  in English  at the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre in Earl's Court, south-west London, for a four week season from Tuesday October 20 to Saturday November 14.

The glamorous world created by Boris, the iconic East End photographer whose life and work were featured in a recent issue of our magazine The Cable, is now the subject of a wonderful website, www.eastendvintageglamour.org.uk.

A theatre company in Boston in the US and an arts centre in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, have been brought together – thanks to a Cable article about the East End artist and poet Isaac Rosenberg.

Leah Lehrman was just 16 when she was killed while cycling from her East End home to central London and her job as a tailor. Now, 100 years after her death in one of the first Zeppelin raids of the First World War, her tomb has a memorial plaque after a 20-year search by her niece, Janet Foster, for the resting place of the aunt she never knew.

The life of Dora Diamant, a remarkable East Ender by adoption, was commemorated by JEECS on May 26 with a morning service at East Ham Jewish cemetery and an afternoon talk by Professor Kathi Diamant, her biographer, at Toynbee Hall.

"I feel completely overwhelmed by everything everybody has said today that has helped make this wonderful celebration of Bill's life. I know that Bill touched many lives in many ways and we all have our own memories of him. He was my best friend, my lover, my soul mate, he was just my Bill," said Doris Fishman at the end of a celebration honouring the life and work of her historian husband Professor Bill Fishman, honorary president of JEECS.

David Mazower's article (in issue 25 of The Cable) on the London Imperial Russian Singers was both interesting in its depiction of the choir and the psycho/social appeal it had to Jewish immigrants.

Victims of the last rocket attack on London were commemorated at a JEECS event on March 29 at Hughes Mansions in Vallance Road in Stepney, 70 years after the tragedy that left 134 people dead.

Over 100 JEECS members and Isaac Rosenberg aficionados gathered in St John’s Wood, north London,  on Sunday May 26 to celebrate the great East End artist and poet’s artistic and literary legacy in an event organised by JEECS with the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, who hosted this fantastic evening.

Dora Diamant was Franz Kafka’s last love, fled to Britain to escape persecution, suffered wartime internment, and devoted her final years to working in the East End to preserve Yiddish language and culture. PROFESSOR KATHI DIAMANT, her biographer, tells her extraordinary story. On May 26 we have a day of events celebrating her life.

Latest news

  • Nelson Street shul, the last purpose-built Synagogue in the East End

    When papers reported that East London Central Synagogue’s (ELCS) building was the target of alleged arson, they struggled to name it. Most, including the Slice, chose to name it a ‘former synagogue on Nelson Street’. The struggle with naming the synagogue is that, in many ways, it’s not really just one place of worship. Read More
  • Grodzinski bakery memories sought

      A request from noted historian Pam Fox, author of several brilliant books on Jewish social history, for information on and anecdotes about the East End's famous Grodzinski bakery business. If you can help, please contact Pam via her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pam.fox.108 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  Read More
  • Asleep through the Battle of Cable Street

      The distinguished Oscar-winning film director and illustrator Arnold Schwartzman OBE has sent us the following fascinating reminiscences. I may take the claim to be the sole survivor of the Battle of Cable Street! Aged 9 months, I was fast asleep upstairs in my grandfather Michael Finkleson’s boot repair shop at 292a Cable Street as the battle raged along the Read More
  • Escape from the East End Blitz

    On September 7 1940 I was four years old living with my parents in Sidney Street, in London's East End, on the first day of the London Blitz. I recall that it was a hot evening and my mother had set three salads on the kitchen table when I noticed out of the window that on the neighbouring flat roof there was a man stripped to the waist washing his Read More
  • East End Jews: Secret tales from the London Yiddish Press

    Join Vivi Lachs historian and Yiddish speaker on Thursday 26 March from 7pm-8.30pm at Finchley Church End Library, Finchley, Barnet showcasing the book 'East End Jews: Secret tales from the London Yiddish Press’ it offers an unparalleled view into the life, labour, and the joys of London's Jewish East End, from its heyday in the 1890s until the 1950s. Drawing Read More
  • Oral history of the Jewish East End

    Professor Jason Shela MBE recently contacted us about a research project he is currently conducting to collect the oral histories of people who grew up in London’s East End (which include his father, grandparents and great grandparents). Read More
  • Cinema book author needs your help

      Do you or your family have connections with the cinema in the East End? If so, Isabelle Seddon would love to hear from you. Read More
  • Do you know the Gramophone Man?

    JEECS has been asked if anyone knows the name of the Gramophone Man, pictured here, his back story, when he retired, and the sort of music he played. Read More
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For the old Jeecs site, visit www.jeecs.org.uk/archive