JEWISH
EAST END OF LONDON PHOTO GALLERY & COMMENTARY
London's East End Synagogues, cemeteries and more......
My personal journey through the Jewish East End of London
A Ghost returns to Whitechapel,
By Jean
Nadel
  Where
are the Huguenots who came
To ply their
skills on weaving frame?
The synagogue
whose hallowed walls
Echoed the hum
of Sabbath prayers?
The Russian
baths now silent too,
Bereft of steam
and Jewish humour!
  Can
this be the market place
Where beigels
from a miller’s sack were sold?
And, wings
outstretched like scarecrows,
The rows of chickens newly plucked
By boobahs with
a tale to tell
In a language
all their own
To while away
the hours since dawn…
When a familiar
sight would hush their chatter,
For, pushed by
fragile, mittened hands,
A pram in which
no infant slept
But ancient
phonograph was laid…
When handle
turned its age old discs
Their high
pitched Yiddish songs emitted.
  Sad
memories of another place, another time…
Enough! I wander on and hope to find
That
bastion on Tower Hill remaining still,
The
ravens keeping watch!
 Jean
Nadel is in her 80s and lives in the East End
The picture of
the phonograph man is a still from the East End-themed film 'A
Kid for Two Farthings'.
website copyright of Philip
Walker
|
