Howantisemitismpickedme

THE DEPUTY editor of the — a former colleague of mine at — is known for her unnerving persuasiveness. So a few weeks back she emailed and asked me if I would contribute to a series of TEDlike talks on “my Jewish dream”. And I hummed and hovered and fretted, and didn’t reply, and she persisted and eventually I told her that I just didn’t think that I was Jewish enough to have “a Jewish dream” and she told me that of course I did because whatever dream I had was bound to be a bit Jewish.

It seemed rude of me to contradict her so I agreed. Now I’m saddled with it and I have no idea what to say. Can you help? You are, after all, readers so it’s likely that a few of you at any rate are Jewish.

My problem is an obvious one. My mother used to say “oy veh” and my father never did. But my father was Jewish and my mother wasn’t.

My grandmother lived in Upper Clapton where we visited her once a month or so. She wore a flowered smock, a headscarf and spoke Yiddish but rarely put her teeth in so we had no idea what language she was speaking. She gave us matzahs which we thought were exciting versions of Jacob’s cream crackers (was Jacob Jewish by the way?).

No shul, no synagogue, no Friday nights, no Adonais and no Amens. No kippots and no rabbis. When, at secondary school, the Jewish boys went off to “Jewish Assembly” that sounded too much like a religious choice to me and since I wasn’t religious, I chose Christian assembly instead. Anglicanism is so secular.

I had no idea that bagels (which my dad liked) were any more Jewish than bacon sandwiches (which he also adored). We never once kept a Jewish holiday and it’s only now that I know what the main Jewish celebrations are, even if they are still a confusion of herbs, exiles and biblical characters. And, all this time, my Uncle Joe — who we sawonBoxingDay each year — was, unbeknowntome,being observant in far-off Ilford (a place Jews used to live before Columbusdiscovered Hertfordshire). I had a rough idea what “kosher” was, though it seemed as pedantic as veganism.

All in all, I imagined my Jewishness to be like my Irishness, a sort of ancestral strain lying in the past. It was nice to be able to say it, but I didn’t know what it meant.

Of course, as I grew older and people asked me about the name, I discovered that I could cherry-pick this identity. If there was anything I particularly liked about Jewishness, I would lay claim to it.

The obvious example was humour. With a name like mine I was allowed to tell Jewish jokes. I plundered Leo Rosten, read Hyman Kaplan, noticed the cadences in my dad’s speech and that of Jewish actors who had also been brought up in the East End.

It was a sort of mild and secular version of Masorti. I’d take the jokes but pass on the circumcision. My Jewish dream was to lay claim to Cable Street, sound like Alfie Bass when I wanted to, recite Jackie Mason scripts and then revert to gentility.

But there was one problem and you’ll all have guessed what it was. I could cherry-pick the Jewishness, but the antisemitism picked me. Not I’ll-kill-you-Jewboy antisemitism but the myriad assumptions and attributions that a majority makes about a minority of whom it feels nervous or envious.

It first cropped up when I was 24. I was National Secretary of the National Union of Students and we were having a problem with the goons that Saddam Hussein’s regime had sent to Britain to police Iraqi students. So I “derecognised” the National Union of Iraqi Students.

Within weeks, a two sided document had been circulated to student unions purporting to be copies of letters of encouragement to me from the Communist Party (which I had plenty to do with) and the Israeli embassy (which I didn’t).

There it was. Name equals Jew. Jew equals tribal conspiracy. But what amazed me was how many ordinary British students bought into it.

Since then it, or something like it, has happened over and over and over again. And the only people who have understood, by and large, have been Jews. Their comprehension has, perhaps, become my Jewish dream. I hope so, because otherwise I really don’t know what to say.

I wasn’t religious, so I chose Christian assembly