East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press

Vivid firsthand accounts reveal the lived experience of London’s Jewish East End community.

Through the words of twenty-six Yiddish writers, this book offers an unparalleled view into the life, labor, politics, and joys of London’s historical Jewish East End community, from its heyday in the 1890s until the 1950s. Drawing from the light feuilleton section of the London Yiddish press, these deceptively accessible, often humorous sketches capture incisive and sometimes cheeky encounters with challenges and debates of the time. Translated for the first time by Vivi Lachs and Barry Smerin, these narratives highlight the complex interactions between Jewish immigrants and their British surroundings, from celebrating a new Torah scroll to enlisting in the British army during World War I without citizenship. Sketches take readers on a journey through local tradition and significant social change, tracing the ideas and events that impacted the community, including women’s independence and periods of poverty. Detailed historical context, biographies of each writer, and evocative illustrations support this meaningful collection of urban sketches and enrich our understanding of the Jewish East End.

Dr. Vivi Lachs is a social and cultural historian and a Yiddish performer and translator. Her books include Whitechapel Noise and East End Jews (both Wayne State University Press). This volume is the result of a research fellowship at Queen Mary University of London on the project Making and Remaking the Jewish East End. Lachs records with the band Klezmer Klub, leads tours of the Jewish East End, and runs London’s Great Yiddish Parade. Barry Smerin holds a first-class degree in Hebrew Literature and Jewsh History from University College London. He is a translator of historiography and original historical source documents from Yiddish, Polish, German and French, and has taught Yiddish language and literature at universities in Poland, France and England for over thirty years.