A new Board of Deputies project brings together snippets of Jewish life from across the UK, Dawn Waterman reveals
Hidden Treasures is a new project from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It celebrates Jewish archives in Britain, telling the stories of Jews in Britain through photos, documents, videos and other archive material. Our earliest items date from the 11th century and we have uncovered some fascinating material from all walks of Jewish life and experience in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Already over 30 archives have joined the project, both national and local, universities and Jewish archives. These range from huge institutions such as The National Archives and British Library to smaller, specific organisations such as Hesped, which collects eulogies given at Jewish funerals and shivas. And more are joining all the time. Hidden Treasures: Celebrating Jewish Archives acts as a portal to these archives and showcases their ‘treasures’. You can also see the very best of our featured items on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
L-R: Letter by Victor ‘Vicky’ Weisz © Hull History Centre; London Jewish Baker’s Union banner © Jewish Museum London. (Click to enlarge)
One of my favourite finds, from around 1962, is a cartoon illustrating a letter sent by the celebrated cartoonist Victor ‘Vicky’ Weisz to his fourth wife Inge. It's one of 269 letters; a collection now held at the Hull History Centre. Weisz (1913-1966) was a Berlin-born political cartoonist of Jewish Hungarian origin who fled Nazi Germany in 1935 and found refuge in Britain. By the 1940s, using the pseudonym Vicky, he was one of the leading British left-wing cartoonists, becoming the Daily Mirror‘s chief political cartoonist in 1954.
The cartoon I've selected shows the couple sitting naked in what appears to be a colourful Garden of Eden scene. They are surrounded by butterflies and foliage, sitting next to a palm tree and a house. Victor sits in discontent, his mouth coloured in blue, whilst Inge engages happily with a butterfly. The whole scene is represented within the base of a table lamp with a bright yellow shade. Weisz writes to Inge thanking her for her last note and says how much this garden illustration depicts how he would like to spend his time with her. On the reverse he writes, “For Inge”. Weisz suffered from insomnia and depression and committed suicide in February 1966, four years after this letter was written.
Another, quite different, favourite is a painted silk banner, made around 1925, from the London Jewish Baker’s Union – the longest-running Jewish trade union, operating from 1905 to 1970. It is one of only two surviving Jewish union banners in Britain and is part of the Jewish Museum London’s collection. The banner reminds shoppers to buy bread with the union label that guaranteed it was baked under acceptable working conditions. The other side has the same slogans in Yiddish and the union label.
© Liverpool Record Office. (Click to enlarge)
Photographs are also an important part of many archive collections. I like the Alexandrian family portrait, Roger Bilboul’s photograph of his father in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1915. Bilboul and his family left Egypt after the Suez Crisis. The image comes from Sephardi Voices UK, an oral history video-based archive documenting stories of childhood, displacement, migration, exile and resettlement from Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews.
Closer to home, we have the magnificent wedding photo of the Clumpus, Finestone and Bennet families, dated around 1900. It comes from the Merseyside Jewish Community Archive, part of the Liverpool Record Office. This city was home to the first organised Jewish community in the north of England and, until the mid-19th-century, was the largest provincial Jewish community in England.
Dawn Waterman is Heritage and Archive Adviser at the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Discover more Hidden Treasures at celebratingjewisharchives.org.