David Baddiel on the mural bringing ‘Jewish joy’ to London
Where can you find a flying Amy Winehouse[1] shooting marbles out of a toy gun at policemen on winged horses trying to protect Sir Oswald Mosley’s fascists? Or a golem – an anthropomorphic creature magically brought to life in Jewish folklore – guarding St Paul’s Cathedral from the Luftwaffe during the Blitz? On a nine-storey building on Finchley Road, London, that’s where.
These dreamlike vignettes – along with more than 150 other faces charting centuries of Jewish life in London – feature on a new, kaleidoscopic mural on the side of the JW3 community centre in NW3. It all started when the artist Leon Fenster was introduced to the organisation’s programming director over a cup of tea. William Galinsky asked him for his craziest proposition.
The 37-year-old pointed at an empty 85ft by 46ft wall and said: “What about that?” Eighteen months, one planning application and GBP60,000 of public funding later, and his design has been printed onto a giant sheet of vinyl for the installation, with visitors to be lent binoculars for a closer look. The maelstrom of images is packed into the stalls and balconies of another arts venue, the Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel, which became the home of Yiddish performance at the turn of the 20th century.
Leon Fenster unveiling his mural in North London todayCredit: Julian Simmonds
“My artworks have a glorious chaos, which is the atmosphere of the Yiddish theatres,” says Fenster about his first public art in Britain. “Throwing programmes around, telling the actors to get a move on if they’re saying their lines too slowly.”
It covers all Hebrew life, from boxers (Daniel Mendoza and Harry Mizler) to agony aunts (Marjorie Proops, Claire Rayner and Irma Kurtz); from Mizrahi Jews hailing from the Middle East and North Africa (a jar of Waitrose zhoug paste) to Ashkenazi Jews (Brick Lane’s two rival beigel bakeries); and from Progressive (Britain’s first female rabbi, Jackie Tabick) to Orthodox (a group of Haredim). There is also a kind of wish fulfilment. Fenster says he wanted Winehouse – so trapped by addiction and media intrusion in life – to be liberated to play marbles in the skies.
Judith Kerr, who wrote the bestseller When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, was, as a child refugee, forced to leave behind her favourite toy when her family fled Berlin in 1933. But on the mural, the bunny is spirited to safety in London atop a Kindertransport train. “I like these slightly whimsical historical counterfactuals,” says Fenster, who grew up in Edgware, north London, before training as an architect at University College London, and developing his signature style of teeming cityscapes while living in Singapore, China and Taiwan.
“Some of them are profound and some of them are just fun. I really wanted to put in some sort of Chagall reference. Then I discovered that he did do some paintings for the Watergate Theatre in London, which are now at the Tate.
So that gave me the chance to make this nice connection between Chagall and Freud, because I thought, well, Freud is the master interpreter of dreams and Chagall is the master painter of dreams.”
‘I am militantly unashamed about everything about myself, including Jewishness’: David BaddielCredit: Leon Fenster
He also immortalises Finchley Road’s history. What is now one of the city’s busiest non-motorway roads was nicknamed Finchleystrasse by bus conductors during the Second World War because of the number of German-speaking arrivals from Nazi Europe – including Sigmund Freud. The new mural comes during a time of mixed fortunes for Jewish life in the capital.
Reported incidents of anti-Semitism nationwide reached a record high of more than 4,000 last year, surging after the October 7 attacks in Israel and the war in Gaza. JW3 last year celebrated a decade since it opened with the promise to “turn up the volume on Jewish conversation”, and premiered Britain’s first professional Jewish panto. But its single biggest cost is security, having to fundraise GBP400,000 on top of the cash it receives from the government.
The Jewish Museum London – founded in 1932 – closed its doors last year due to funding difficulties and is now operating online. Meanwhile, the UK’s oldest synagogue in continuous use, the 17th-century Bevis Marks in the City of London, is fighting plans for two high-rise blocks that, if built, threaten to plunge it into darkness (a crane bearing an artificial sun is featured in Fenster’s mural, as is a real-life visit to the synagogue by Samuel Pepys). Fashion City, an exhibition on the contribution of Jews to global fashion at the Museum of London Docklands, was so successful, its run was extended until last week.
However, the word “Jewish” was absent from its main title. Similarly, Jewish Book Week – founded in 1952 – changed its name this year to Book Week 24.
‘Liberated to play marbles in the skies’: Amy WinehouseCredit: Leon Fenster
One can understand why the community’s organisations want to reach out beyond their own walls. The United Kingdom’s 292,000 Jews make up less than 0.5 per cent of the population.
But though they may not count numerically, that does not mean they should be wary of proclaiming their presence, says David Baddiel[2], the author of a 2021 treatise on modern anti-Semitism. “One of the things that became clear to me after I wrote Jews Don’t Count[3] is that there is a bit of an epidemic, amongst Jews, maybe in particular British Jews, of Jewish shame: as in Jews who don’t like to tell people they’re Jews,” says the comedian and novelist, who is featured in the artwork. “Shame is linked to fear, and in a time of increasing anti-Semitism, more Jews than ever perhaps feel the draw of the closet.
I, though, am militantly unashamed about everything about myself, including Jewishness, so I’m therefore supportive of anything that celebrates the history and culture of Jews in the UK.” Galinsky says, “This whole idea of not being hidden is a massively important thing for me. I think we’re at a place now, particularly after the Corbyn years, where there’s a new generation who are more confident about their identity.”Fenster says he is on the hunt for a “bigger and bigger” canvas for his next project and is working on an artwork looking back at the global experience of the pandemic.
All corners: boxers Daniel Mendoza and Harry MizlerCredit: Leon Fenster
Baroness (Julia) Neuberger, a crossbench peer and the UK’s second woman rabbi, is one of the guests at Benjamin Disraeli’s imagined bar mitzvah.
The Victorian prime minister’s father fell out with their synagogue, Bevis Marks, when his son was due to celebrate his coming of age. Instead, he had Benjamin baptised as Christian – which would allow him to reach Downing Street at a time when Jews were excluded from Parliament. Neuberger says she loves the project’s Jewish joy. “I think that Jews should be out and proud, just like everybody else, really.” After asking what she thinks of its significance post-October 7, I inquire whether she objects to the question; that Jewish Britain must be seen through the prism of Israeli politics, the Holocaust or anti-Semitism.
“I think it’s ridiculous. What’s great about JW3, and why this mural is important, is it’s not about dead Jews. There’s something about what living Jews do, and how exciting that is.”
The London Jewish Mural is free to visit until January at JW3, 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3; jw3.org.uk
References
- ^ Amy Winehouse (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ David Baddiel (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Jews Don’t Count (www.telegraph.co.uk)