JEWISH EAST END OF LONDON PHOTO GALLERY & COMMENTARY

London's East End Synagogues, cemeteries and more......

My personal journey through the Jewish East End of London

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Jewish Walking tours with Phil - explore your Jewish roots

If you would like me to give you a guided walking tour of the Jewish East End of London or perhaps of Jewish Soho in the West End of London, please email: Phil  Read more about my tours here

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Isaac Rosenberg, 1890 - 1818, has a plaque to his memory on the wall of the Whitechapel Art Gallery (formerly the Whitechapel Library, known as the University of the Ghetto), next to an exit of Aldgate East tube station.  Isaac Rosenberg was both an artist and a writer whose life was cut short on the Western Front in 1918.  He was the only private soldier poet of World War One.  His most celebrated poems are probably 'Dead Man's Dump' and 'Break of Day in the Trenches'.  My favourite is 'Through these Pale Cold Days'.  Rosenberg wrote this in 1918 shortly being blown to bits on a night patrol.  His poem speaks of a yearning for other times and other places.  It speaks to us still.

 

Through these Pale Cold Days Through these Pale Cold Days By Isaac Rosenberg 1890–1918   Through these pale cold days What dark faces burn Out of three thousand years, And their wild eyes yearn,   While underneath their brows Like waifs their spirits grope For the pools of Hebron again— For Lebanon's summer slope.   They leave these blond still days In dust behind their tread They see with living eyes How long they have been dead.

Isaac Rosenberg plaque on the wall of Whitechapel Public Library - now the Whitechapel Art Gallery.  The library was known as the University of the Ghetto.  Rosenberg and fellow East End Artists and poets played and studied there and in their day were referred to as 'The Whitechapel Boys'.