The Only Jews in the Village

We are what you might call a modern, assimilated Jewish family. I was born in London to an Israeli mum and an English dad. They made Aliyah in the late seventies and I grew up in the coastal Israeli town of Haifa. 20 years later, I decided to come to the UK to study Occupational Therapy. I got a place in Queen Margaret College (as it was called then) and fell in love with Edinburgh instantly. I decided to stay there, particularly after meeting my husband, Stephen. You might be thinking that Potts is not the best name for a Jew - well, technically, Stephen isn’t but since we decided to bring up our children culturally Jewish, he has embraced our traditions, learnt some Hebrew and proudly wears my Sabba’s lovely leather kippah for all Jewish occasions. We are members of Sukkat Shalom, the Liberal Jewish Community in Edinburgh where the children attend Cheder. So I cannot say we are truly culturally isolated, but living 30 miles south of the city means that we don’t have the immediacy of neighbours and friends who share our traditions.

Since subscribing to PJ Library

A whole world has opened up to the kids. We read the stories at bedtime and they ask so many questions, some of these I was not quite ready to talk about, for example: Shanghai Sukkah - I did not know how or when I would broach the topic of WWII and the Shoah, yet I found myself reading: “Berlin wasn’t safe for Jews anymore” which of course triggered a discussion about those troubled times. I felt relieved when the kids said “OK, let’s get back to the story” and I didn’t need to get into too much detail. Having been fed Shoah stories since infancy, I wasn’t ready to go further with my own kids, not just yet.

Stories that bring a lump to my throat are the more traditional folklore type stories: My Grandfather’s Coat, It Could Always be Worse (which my son instantly recognised as A Squash and a Squeeze - retold by Julia Donaldson) and my own favourite is Bone Button Borscht. Of course, the kids had not heard of borscht, and to be truthful, they didn’t really like the sound of it…. But I told them how delicious and healthy borscht is, and how it was one of my Papa Joe’s favourites. When my brother and I went to London for our summer holidays, Papa would cuddle me and say: “I wouldn’t change ya for a top borscht!”. I needed to get to my late teens to work out what he meant! The other reason I love the story is because it reminds me of the Yiddish jokes my Sabba Uri used to tell us, they always had elements around food (of course!) and a degree of witty trickery, which this book so beautifully introduces.

Stories about Israel are also firm favourites in our house, and before going to Israel recently, we all agreed that The Cats on Ben Yehuda Street is the best. My son Gabriel likes to play the part of Mr Modiano as he says “lo, lo, lo”. This was a particularly useful discussion point about stray cats in Israel: for my kids, cats are an animal that people choose as a pet, not an animal regarded as a pest, so this particular story helped to explore these ideas. When we visited in April, the kids saw how my mother and my aunt look after some of the strays around them and we were able to relate to the story really well.

We look forward to our books every month, and I know that Emily is nearly at the age when her envelopes will stop coming through the door, which I am sure she will be sad about. However, we will continue to read Gabriel’s books as a family, with great joy.