Sun, sand and self-sufficiency: growing up at the seaside

Our member, Women’s League President Shirley March, tells us of how a visit to a dairy farm triggered memories of her early years and how profoundly they shaped her attitude to life subsequently. Shirley writes:

The final visit on the recent Shul trip to the Galil took us to the Dugma Dairy Farm, where we learnt about cheese-making and sampled their many products. This brought back fond—and not so fond—memories of my childhood.

I was born and lived for the first 17 years of my life in Eastbourne, a seaside town on the South-East coast of England, where my Father zt”l was Rav of a very small Jewish community made up of local business people. My younger sister and I were the only Jewish children in the town; this meant no Jewish schools and, consequently, no Jewish friends. In addition, there were no Kosher shops or facilities, so everything was made at home, with my mother z”l baking bread, challot, cakes and so forth.

Another of these tasks was cheese making. My father would go to the local dairy, give the workers a pack of cigarettes (a common form of currency over 70 years ago), and come home with a churn of milk.  In fact, at that time, the dairies would take the cream and pour the rest away, unlike now when the residue is used for animal feed or sold as skimmed milk.

Once home, this milk was placed in our outhouse to get sour.  My mother would sew conical-shaped bags from fine sacking. Once the milk had become curds and whey (the curds are the solid, clumpy masses of milk protein, while the whey is the remaining liquid) it was poured into these long bags and allowed to drip over a drain in the outhouse.  After a few days when all the liquid had dispersed, my father would mix in salt and caraway seeds, tie the bags tightly and place them between two boards weighted down with heavy stones.  Waiting again for a few days, the result was a hard white cheese which could be sliced and was known as gomółka.

Below: The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, where Debussy composed 'La Mer'

Of course, there was no Kosher meat in the town.  My father, also being a shochet, would drive out to a local farm, often with me in attendance, shecht four chickens and bring them home where my mother and I would pluck them (I still remember the tiny lice that used to jump onto us, but luckily they didn’t live long on humans), singe the skin to get rid of any remaining quills (what a terrible smell!), open them, clean them out and then kasher them.  No popping into the local butcher to get a nice clean, ready koshered chicken!  However, it was always exciting to see how many little eggs (just yolks at this stage) we could find inside. These went into the chicken soup and were always fought over.

It was with these chickens that I got my first biology lessons. My father would take the lungs, insert a straw and blow to show me how they worked, open the heart so I could see the how the blood runs, and pull the tendons in the feet so that the toes would open and close.

At that time Rakusens used to supply Rabbanim with free matzo so that problem was solved, but my Mother would make Bureke Eingemachts (beetroot jam) and Ingber (trays of carrot candy) to solve the lack of “sweets”.

Around Purim, my father would take hops and honey and make bottles of “Med” [the Yiddish for 'Mead'] which were kept in the cellar.  The problem was that the alcohol content was so high, we could sometimes hear the sound of popping as the corks were forced out of the bottles!

Things were easier for my mother when my Booba z”l moved in with us as she was also an amazing cook and seamstress.  In fact, all my dresses were made either by my mother or grandmother until I moved up to London at the age of 17.  My Booba only spoke to me in Yiddish, which I learnt to speak quite proficiently and have found very useful since we moved to Israel, using it to converse with my husband’s Chareidi family.

I attended a Church of England primary School and have vivid memories at the age of 7 or 8 of standing in the playground with all the children in a circle around me chanting “You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus!”, to which I replied “Jesus was Jewish, Jesus was Jewish!”, but of course they didn’t believe me!

I started the Girls’ High School a couple of weeks late as I had an infection.  I walked in the classroom and all the girls were staring at me.  When I sat down, I asked the girl next to me “Why are they all staring?”  To which she replied: “We were told a Jewish girl was coming and we are looking for your horns and tail!”

I was always in the annual School Play, but balked when they wanted me to play Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, just because I was Jewish!

I wasn’t allowed to go to University, but went to a local Commercial College to learn shorthand and typing so that I could support myself when I went to London where I was sent to find myself a nice frum Jewish boy which B”H I did.

These are only some of my many experiences of being a frum Jewish child in a totally non-Jewish environment and it made me determined that my own children should go to Jewish schools and not have to experience what I went through.