Episode 6 takes a wallow in nostalgia. Nadia and Vivi listen to a shmaltzy song yearning for Jewish Whitechapel and look at how postwar Yiddish and English-language writers remembered and reinvented the East End. We hear a story, movingly read by Miriam Margolyes, in which the smell of traditional Friday night gefilte fish in the back streets of the East End triggers memories of the Eastern European ‘shtetl’ (town) where the writer grew up and which was destroyed in the Holocaust. We look back at the origins of Jewish East End nostalgia in the nineteenth century, explore Alexander Baron’s fiction from the 1960s and continuing resonances in Eastenders’ memories. Aditi Anand shows us around the Migration Museum in London exploring how migrants to London from around the world remember their origins through food.

‘Gefilte fish’ (Gefilte Fish) (1951)

Ella Zilberg, translated by Vivi Lachs

Ella Zilberg was primarily a poet. She wrote poetry regularly for the literary journal Loshn un lebn from the 1950s and throughout the 1970s. She was a weekly attendee at the Saturday afternoon literature group, the Friends of Yiddish, where she read from her work and sang.

Why, when I smell the aroma of gefilte fish, do my eyes well up with tears and my heart beats with painful longing? Oh the sweet, spicy smell awakens so many dormant memories, reveals images of old times, brings back the faces of dearly beloved forever wiped off the face of the earth… [read more]

Listen to the story in Yiddish below

‘Vaytshepl, mayn vaytshepl’ (Whitechapel, my Whitechapel) (1951)

Chaim Towber, translated by Vivi Lachs

Chaim Towber (1901-1972) was born in Molev (today Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine). He became an actor touring Eastern Europe, and emigrated to Canada in 1925. He wrote plays and theatre songs. He visited London in 1951, performing in the Grand Palais Theatre.

Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl,
dos harts fun london yidisher,
du bist amol geven dem yidns kroyn…

Whitechapel my Whitechapel,
The heart of Yiddish London,
You were once the crown of the Jews… [read more]

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guest: Aditi Anand, Artistic Director, Migration Museum

Contributor: Celia, Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Yiddish group

Archival recording: Georgia Brown from the radio programme Our East End (BBC Home Service, 1962)

Reader in English: Miriam Margolyes

Reader in Yiddish: Tamara Gleason Friedberg

Featured story: Ella Zilberg, ‘Gefilte Fish’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)

Featured song: Chaim Towber with Johnny Franks Orchestra, ‘Whitechapel’ (Shellac, 10″, 78 RPM, 1951). Digitised on the CD Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World Yiddisher Jazz in London’s East End 1920s-1950s (Playloud, 2018)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Website images:

• Maurice Sochachewsky, ‘An Aldgate Scene’ and ‘Old Montague Street’ (courtesy of Dave Skye)

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson