Art

In London, Jewish history is larger than life in a new mural

Leon Fenster’s 9-story tableau features Freud, the golem and Benjamin Disraeli

A view of Leon Fenster’s mural of London Jewish history on JW3, the Jewish Community Centre London. Courtesy of Leon Fenster

By PJ Grisar July 25, 2024

Walking down Finchley Road in North London, you may encounter British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli held aloft on a chair at his adult bar mitzvah reception, manager Brian Epstein giving the Beatles their iconic gray suits and Amy Winehouse doing battle with fascist Mosleyites on Cable Street. Surveying it all on a ladder, David Baddiel, author of Jews Don’t Count, keeps a tally.

This grand tableaux, a Breughel-like portrait of Jewish life in London, is a 9-story mural by artist Leon Fenster, now adorning a wall of the Jewish Community Centre London (or, as locals call it, JW3). Unveiled July 12, the banner mural measures 87 feet by 46 feet and showcases Jews across the centuries, all intermingling in the opera boxes, onstage and in the fly spaces of the Pavilion Theatre, the famed hub of Yiddish theater in Whitechapel.

Young people, including Amy Winehouse, aim marble shooters at Mosley and his fascist gang, in a reference to the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, where Jewish kids rolled marbles under the horses’ hooves. Courtesy of Leon Fenster

Fenster, a trained architect who returned home to London two years ago after serving as the lay leader for the Taiwan Jewish community in Taipei, had long seen the potential of JW3’s wall, which he often walked past. When the center offered him an exhibition, he suggested they instead let him fill up the blank canvas that was their exterior.

“I’ve always been looking for kind of bigger and bigger spaces to put my artwork and to tell bigger and bigger stories,” said Fenster, who designs Haggadot, ketubot and illustrations of Jewish family histories. In this instance, the story was that of the Jewish community “in some sense in its totality,” often bending the laws of time and space to do so.

Fenster started collecting stories and emerged with an image of a golem scaling St. Paul’s Cathedral, swatting away Nazi airplanes. (The golem is a nod to the rumored creation of the 18th-century mystic Chaim Samuel Falk. The airplanes reference the Blitz while the Cathedral, which Fenster adorned in Hebrew with the words “Beit Knesset St Paul,” gestures playfully at a Cromwel-era conspiracy that Jews wished to convert the building to a synagogue.)

Fish and fishballs (a “peculiarly Anglo-Jewish delicacy” of fried gefilte fish) float toward the mural’s top. One fish carries a newspaper filled with chips, a possible reference to fish and chips’ supposed Jewish origins. Courtesy of Leon Fenster

The mural is jam packed with familiar faces — Sigmund Freud, who died in London and is accompanied by his daughter and disciple Anna Freud, debating with the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein; Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; Karl Marx being wrapped in tefillin as he writes — but also some everyday Londoners. Black cabs, once a heavily Jewish industry, feature big as does organized labor, including garment worker unions and the Jewish Bakers Union.

Other details hint at more obscure Jewish history, like the RAF fighter of Sydney Cohen, a tailor from the East End who made an emergency landing on the isle of Lampedusa during World War II. The story goes that while he was alone and there by chance, the Italian garrison posted there surrendered to him and he became their de facto military governor; his story became a popular Yiddish play.

Fenster with his mural in the background. Courtesy of Leon Fenster

Fenster’s artwork, his largest yet, comes in the wake of controversies over antisemitism in the Labour Party and concern from British Jews about pro-Palestinian protests. The artist sees the piece as an opportunity to go beyond the news of the day and emphasize the cultural influence Jews have long had in the city, from 12th century financier and creditor to Henry II Aaron of Lincoln up to modernity, with Oona King, the former MP for Bethnal Green who served until 2005.

“I don’t know how much people are aware of the sort of Jewish story in London, the individual contribution that Jews have made to London and to its vibrancy,” said Fenster.

With a large work of public art, which people might pass regularly, he hopes people will learn a bit more, maybe using the accompanying QR code, or the interactive mural on his website, to identify all the over 150 players. Even with so many, Fenster says it’s a drop in the bucket of the city’s Jewish life.

In a snippet of the mural we see Freud, a Golem, Samuel Pepys observing a shul, Jews campaigning for refuseniks and the pickle mascot Mrs. Elswood. Courtesy of Leon Fenster

“There’s so many stories that I couldn’t and didn’t have space to include,” Fenster said.

Now that it’s finished, people have approached with things he might have missed. When they speak, Fenster takes notes.

“I’ve already now got enough material I could do a whole sequel,” he said. He may need a bigger wall.

PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.

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