Casgliadau Arlein

Oral history recording with Stella Harry Lightman collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.

I was born in London in 1928. We moved to Stoke Newington where our whole row seemed to be filled up with Jewish families like mine. My mother’s family was the biggest influence for me. My grandmother, my bubbe, never spoke a word of English but I remember so well all her ways. My memories of my bubbe’s kitchen are very, very vivid. It was an enormous room and in that kitchen everything happened. People came and went; there was a divan in the corner of the room and people would come in and lie down and have a rest and go out again. My bubbe was very keen on cleanliness and she would scrub and scrub. She did a lot of frying of fish and there was always a yuch, a soup cooking in a big, black cauldron on the stove. In fact, my whole memory of my bubbe’s kitchen was a place of bounty, where there was always plenty to eat, and people coming in and talking and arguing and discussing because it was a big family. The atmosphere was generally very Jewish, very happy, relaxed and animated. As for growing up in Stoke Newington, all I can recall overwhelmingly is the worry and the hardship of poverty. Absolutely everything in the house was second hand and there was a lot of physical discomfort. But culturally speaking, I think we were very fortunate because my mother was very musical and my father had had violin lessons and also loved music. There was a great deal of music making and fun and we children would tap on our glasses with a teaspoon and keep the rhythm. And there was also a lot of reading, lots and lots of books. Mostly my parents took us to the library and they used to talk to us about books. We didn’t buy books; nobody thought to buy books. My father was a lovely father and he loved his children and gave us a lot. My mother really believed absolutely whole heartedly in education, and her burning ambition was to make doctors of my two brothers and she managed it miraculously. She used to go to members of the family who were better off and she would borrow, negotiate; she would do anything to get them on their feet. They became doctors and I became a teacher. When I met Ivor my parents were still struggling. I was coming up to about twenty or so and my parents agreed I must get married and marry someone in a good position, preferably a doctor. Meanwhile, I happened to have met Ivor and we began a conversation and it never stopped. At that time he was just a customs officer so we were in a dilemma. There was enormous pressure from my parents but Ivor and I decided to get married, and fortunately the minister of Belsize Park Synagogue was able to marry us and at very short notice. Our son Brian grew up in a very Jewish home and had full knowledge of what he was. One thing is certain: a mother’s influence is so strong and I imbibed all my mother’s influences. She first of all taught me about kashrut and that stayed with me for many, many years. It’s now slipping because we’re easing into vegetarianism anyway. The other thing that stays with me is if you hear of anybody who’s a stranger there’s this feeling of neighbourliness or warmth. We’re always supportive of the Refugee Council and those causes attract us.