A conversation between Jewish Museum London & Raymond Simonson, CEO, JW3
Museum: What’s special about JW3?
Raymond: JW3 is London’s Jewish Community Centre, the only Jewish cultural space of its kind in the UK. I’ve been here for 11 years; I started a year before we opened our building, and we are coming up for our 10th anniversary.
Museum: Tell us more about the journey of JW3 over this past decade
Raymond: In 2012 I was given licence to develop the programming vision and try to do something very different that didn’t exist before. A truly cross-communal space that is completely open and accessible to all people, whatever their religion, background, gender, sexuality, Jewish, not Jewish, Black or White, it didn’t really matter. Our aim was to strengthen Jewish identity. We wanted a space where all could come together to celebrate Jewish culture and be engaged with Jewish thought, art, learning, and enjoy the best of Jewish life.
For about seven years before opening, we had been running the Jewish Community Centre (JCC) and because we didn’t have a building, we ran around 120 events each year in all sorts of places; museums, festivals; we’d rent a room above a pub; we’d do something at the Southbank Centre; large events, small events.
When we opened our doors it grew very quickly. In our very first season, we had about 120 activities per week, literally increasing our programme by 50 times during our first year. The build-up to the opening had a huge campaign called “In the Beginning”. We opened just after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year; it was the start of a brand new academic year for those that came to study; and it was also the time of Bereshit, the very first chapter of the very first book of the Torah. Bereshit means “in the beginning”, so it all tied in beautifully.
The big thing that marked JW3 as different was that we were loud about our Jewishness. Loud and proud. There’s this perception that British Jewry is conservative, often stemming from worries about antisemitism. You could walk past most Jewish buildings around the country, without knowing that it’s a school or synagogue. From the outset, we had big campaigns that set the tone for what we wanted to be – JW3, the new postcode for Jewish life – with a vision of a vibrant, diverse, unified Jewish community that’s engaged with Jewish life, and that actively contributes to wider society. That vision was central to our entire launch campaign and our approach to turn up the volume as we often say.
Museum: What do you remember about the launch of JW3?
Raymond: Without a doubt, the launch weekend will always be a highlight of my life. It was just after Simchat Torah and we hoped we’d get around 2000 people. It was a free event and there were activities everywhere. We turned our whole piazza into the Garden of Eden, with a giant, artist-designed tree of knowledge whose hanging fruit could be opened up to reveal a Jewish joke or a Jewish proverb, or a Jewish question to ask. We had Adam and Eve with fig leaves covering them walking around, there were Jewish musicians on giant stilts performing; all kinds of activities that were going on under this theme of “In the beginning”.
6000 people visited on that first day. BBC News ran live reports throughout the day, something unprecedented in the history of British Jewry. This wasn’t the BBC reporting on antisemitism or a terrorist attack or Israel. This was about joyous Jewish community and life with children and old people and adults and Jewish celebrities; Sephardic, Ashkenazi; gay, straight; teenagers, and babies; all in a Jewish celebratory space
Museum: What’s been a recent highlight?
Raymond: Only last December, we were one of the first public visits for the new King of England – it was his first public engagement with the Jewish community as king. He came here the day before Hanukkah.
We kept it a total secret. The building was open as usual and although staff knew a VIP was coming, no one knew it was the King. And you know, we had activities taking place; we had ice skating, volunteers in the food bank, refugees & volunteers in the demonstration kitchen, and a local Jewish secondary school were in the cinema. A group of Holocaust survivors were also in for a regular special lunch that takes place during festivals and much to their surprise in I walk with the King of England.
Suddenly, as he walked near the front, some of them got up with our volunteers and were dancing to the klezmer band that was playing an uplifting, joyous song about life. Eva Schloss, Anne Franks’ stepsister, reached out for his hand and he took it and he joined in the dancing with them. And it was all captured on camera with that video footage and photo going around the world.
Like JW3’s launch, this was another moment of positive, uplifting, joyous Jewish celebration. And you know, if we can be the vehicle for turning up the volume on Jewish joy, then long let this continue.
Items On display
-The 2008 architectural model shows how we moved the building back, creating a piazza at the front whose concept as a public space says, you’re welcome to come in. You’ll see our beach in the summer, the ice rink in the winter, there’s Jewish food festivals, bar mitzvahs and even concerts take place there. But the other radical design in terms of Jewish buildings is that from top to bottom there’s glass. There’s nothing to hide. That’s our version of “hakhnasat”, opening your home to all visitors.
-The leaflets show that the style of events we do now reach back as far as those seven years when didn’t have a building. Even then events were designed to celebrate the vibrancy in the Jewish community and designed to be cross-communal, providing multiple entry points into Jewish community life.
-The posters from 2010, three years before opening. It was saying we’re on our way and you can see the building blocks of it – a building built up by the activities and the values of what we want to be, not by bricks and mortar
-Finally, the invitation. The opening was actually delayed; staff moved in on the 1st/2nd July 2013, and our first test event was on the 4th! Lord Daniel Finkelstein moderated a conversation between Dame Vivien Duffield, JW3’s main benefactor and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. It was a powerful discussion about culture, community and Jewish identity and one that absolutely set the tone for the decade that followed.
Visit the JW3 website to keep updated with events and activities: www.jw3.org.uk
