The Friday night meal

It was not our first visit to a synagogue but the first to hear the full Friday night service in an orthodox synagogue. We friends sat with the women -about twenty of us and only us four were christian. We tried to follow the service with the english translation but it was all sang in hebrew except for the occasional aside 'over the page' by the magnificent cantors. You can see one of them in the video- I dare not record part of the service but the clip is of the three course meal afterwards; a blessing with wine, then chicken soup, followed by gefilte fish and hummus and then chicken, potatoes and salad. Myself and a friend then finished the evening at 'the Merchant' a new cafe/type bar place at Liverpool Street station which was busy but not packed.  We could not quite face Witherspoons at the front of the station as that was heaving- as were all the pubs locally.  It was the first evening in ages where there was no rain

Open day at Sandys Row Synagogue

The roof has been restored- this poor place is about a yard from the City Of London boundary so Tower Hamlets is officially it's location. This gorgeous little place, home to the dutch jews originally, gets very little help from the local authority. Jeremy Freedman showed us round on this open day- his forefathers worshipped here and he spends a lot of his time here, keeping the tradition alive    http://www.sandysrow.org.uk/