A Cincinnati Jew in London
Hi American Israelites… It’s been a while. Let me re-introduce myself, if you’ve forgotten: my name is Eliana Garfunkel, I graduated from Sycamore High School in 2021 and since then I’ve been outside the states for my further education. First, I was in Milan then London studying fashion design and now I’m finishing a completely new degree from Royal Holloway University of London in Creative Writing and American Literature (I get why it’s funny). I lived in Surrey, where the university actually is, for the first two years of my degree, but I started to be more religious so I moved to Golders Green to be in the community.
Now, if you’ve read my column in the past, you’re familiar with my usual style of interviewing either another university student or young professional, and we discuss antisemitism, Jewish identity and Israel. Today it’s just going to be me, sorry to disappoint.
Let me catch you up on my life from the past few months. I dove into my second term of my last year of university, with a long list of books from the American canon to read. At the same time, the UK started to get a lot more attention in the media– not for a good reason.
Before I left for a pesach program in Scotland where I was going to be working as a madricha for the kids club, I went for a night out with my friend, Sienna, to Camden. We went to the Blues Kitchen where we spent the night hearing sounds from all corners of London; our evening swirling with saxophone, guitar, drums, trumpet… anything you could musically dream of. When we got back, however, and we were getting out of our uber on Golders Green Road into Sienna’s car, we heard a loud noise go off. We both looked at each other and, truth be told, we started laughing because we realized quickly that it couldn’t be gunshots, since Sienna (British) pointed out that we weren’t in America.
Before she dropped me off just a few roads down, we heard another and chose to ignore the noise one more time, writing it off as a garbage truck or a car backfiring. It wasn’t until I got home and started brushing my teeth did I get a call from another friend asking if I could see the flames from my apartment. I went out and faintly from my window I could see an orange glow, but it was night time so I couldn’t see anything that well. Trying to make out what happened, as most of the people in the area were trying to do, I soon found out that the hatzola (a non-profit EMS) ambulances were blown up just down the road from where Sienna and I were moments earlier, which turned out to be the noises we so quickly dismissed. Like the flames, I was soon engulfed in videos from that night. That was on March 23rd.
Then it was time for my pesach program and I hopped on a flight to Aberdeen! I had been to Scotland twice before, actually, but never to the Highlands. If you think French park is beautiful, you haven’t seen the Scottish Highlands, or the “Heeland Coos” roaming the fields. Now, I’ve been outside the states since I was 17, almost 6 years ago and I always try to bring Hashem into everything (a lot of the time I fall short), but it’s hard to feel spiritual in the middle of Milan fashion week… but spending two weeks in Scotland won’t just do you good for your whisky hankering or your lungs, but man oh man, could I feel God in Scotland!
It wasn’t until the night before I was heading home did something peculiar happen. I went out to a couple bars with some people from the program. One of them, being a New Yorker, got in a (friendly) fight with some random guy outside a pub when I turned to the girl next to me to say “guys, am I right?” because… guys, am I right? She must have misheard me because she turned to me and said “Yeah, I f***ing hate Jews.”
Time to go back to London.
I think it was my first day back at my job (I work for StandWithUs UK as an educator) when I got a call from Sienna (the same one from the night of the Hatzola arson attack), saying that there’s just been two petrol bombs, or molotov cocktails, thrown at her shul. At Sienna’s synagogue… Baruch Hashem they didn’t go off, but from then on we couldn’t dismiss this as a car backfiring, or a loud truck. If it could happen at my best friend’s shul, what was stopping it from happening in my neighborhood, not far off…
Around two weeks later, I didn’t have to wonder what if anymore. It happened. Again. This time, two people were stabbed. My boyfriend, who lives on Golders Green Road, just outside the bus stop where it happened, happened to be over at mine when the stabbings took place and he was about to leave, wearing a kippah. I spent the morning avoiding the videos, but eventually I couldn’t seem to ignore them any longer. Seeing the man’s hand pull back and then forward in the most violent manner. To Jews on Golders Green Road.
My favorite place to eat in London is on Golders Green Road. It’s called Pita. You can probably guess what they serve there– shawarma, falafel, chicken thigh, soups, hummus, etc. I go probably once a week (even though I’m supposed to be on a diet). I’m not the type of gal who is so stubborn I won’t try new things, I change it up. I get a meat and then green or red chili (that’s where the true freedom lies), eggplant (here they call it aubergine), cucumbers, pickles, olives, tahini, hummus, white cabbage, fried onions, but the special here is the amba. Amba makes it divine. The usual setup is takeaway, but recently I’ve had this odd sort of feeling that I can’t walk over to my boyfriend’s house, because it’s further down Golders Green Road, and while I want to try and convince him that amba is the best thing to ever taste, I find myself ubering home away from Golders Green Road. Away from the Jews. Towards safety.
