East End Jewish Life

East End Jewish Life

Vivi Lachs • London

Vivi Lachs will introduce her new book, East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press, with a lively presentation and performed readings. The book offers an unparalleled view into the life, labour, politics and joys of London’s Jewish East End, from its heyday in the 1890s until the 1950s. These accessible, often humorously-written sketches capture incisive and sometimes cheeky encounters with challenges and debates of the time. They highlight the complex interactions between Jewish immigrants and their British surroundings,
from celebrating a new Torah scroll to enlisting in the British army during the First World War without citizenship. They take readers on a journey through local tradition and significant social change, tracing the ideas and events that impacted the community.

The book will be on sale at a 30% launch discount price.

Vivi Lachs is a historian of the Jewish East End, a Yiddish performer, translator and associate research fellow at University College, London. She is the co-presenter of the Cockney Yiddish Podcast, manager of the Great Yiddish Parade, vice chair of the Yiddish Café Trust and leads tours of the Yiddish East End. She sings and composes tunes for archive London Yiddish songs with the bands Klezmer Klub and Katsha’nes.