The Kosher Comedian New Wales

LAUGHTER

There was a big Jewish community in Port Talbot.

but by the time I was born, my family was the only Jewish family there,

but I've got to say, I never came up against any anti-Semitism.

Apart from the occasional, jocular,

"your people killed our Lord."

LAUGHTER

Bennett Arron is a Jew from Port Talbot.

His stand-up comedy

explores what it is like growing up as a Jew in Wales.

I get things like, "What do you do with your sheep, then?

"Shag them or sacrifice them?"

LAUGHTER

He's now on a journey to discover what's happened

to the Jews who once lived in communities across Wales.

I'm hoping to learn a lot more

about my grandparents

and why they came to Port Talbot

and also what it was like living in the place I grew up

when it had a large, thriving Jewish community.

I think it's going to be an interesting experience.

I think the whole thing's going to be fascinating, whatever I find out.

Originally, there were over 6,000,

but now numbers are dwindling.

It is a community in decline.

We're Welsh Jews. Quite simply.

We know what team to support

on a Saturday.

He'll discover a sad period of anti-Semitism

in South Wales.

I warned you the Chief Constable was very anti-Jewish in what he said.

Yeah, he didn't really hide that, did he?

Since the mid-1800s, Jews have played

an important part in Welsh society

and have been able to practise their faith in synagogues

across Wales. But their future here is in doubt.

This vandalised cemetery

is the final resting place for generations of Welsh Jews,

including those from Bennett's hometown of Port Talbot.

I haven't been here for...

I can't remember the last time I came here.

Too long ago.

His dad Charles is one of the remaining handful of people

struggling to care for the site.

It's a cemetery that dates back to the 1700s,

and over the last 20 years,

it has been repeatedly desecrated.

Unfortunately it was here they broke them all. You can see all of these.

It's a shame the way everything has been damaged, you know.

They throw things over.

We had, at one time, there was glass on top of the walls.

We had to take that down, because it's not allowed.

Very upsetting.

I always forget how huge a community it was,

because growing up, going to the synagogue in Swansea,

I know that it was always full.

And I remember going there and I remember that sometimes

the children wouldn't get a seat and you had to stand

or wait until somebody would go to the loo, and you grabbed their seat.

It was, it was absolutely packed.

You just forget how many people were here.

That's my dad.

-He was only 64 when he died.

-I didn't realise how young he was.

When Bennett's grandfather came to Wales from Lithuania in 1913,

he spoke hardly any English,

but eventually became a well-respected pillar

of the Port Talbot community.

This is where the glazing company was

that my grandfather had and then my dad after him

and I used to work here in the summer.

I was rubbish.

He used to have his vans parked outside here.

It was a good business.

Nearby is his grandparents' home.

This is where they lived and see that?

My grandfather made that himself.

Isn't that beautiful?

So, he was an incredible craftsman,

brilliant at business. I wonder why,

of all the places he could have gone,

he chose to come to Port Talbot?

At Swansea library,

an expert on Jewish history, David Morris,

has been doing some investigating.

In the West Glamorgan archives,

he's discovered records of nearly all

of Bennett's ancestors and even an account of the day his grandfather,

Ben Arron, aged just 17, first arrived in Port Talbot.

It's a local history book.

This is the first reference that I can find to the Arron family

in Port Talbot.

The beginning of 1913,

a timid young man arrived at Port Talbot General Railway Station

and feeling unkempt after his long journey from Lithuania,

one of his first acts was to visit a barbershop,

where the thruppence he paid for a hair trim

represented a week's wages in Kovna,

an agricultural region of Lithuania

and his birthplace, which he had now forsaken.

I mean, it's an incredible story, really.

I don't know much about my grandfather's life.

I mean, he died before I was born. I know I was named after him.

TRAIN WHISTLE SQUEALS

His grandfather Ben decided to come here

because he'd heard that Port Talbot was a booming steel town

with great opportunities.

There was a small group of people from this small little town,

had come to this small little town in South Wales.

I don't think this was random. I think this was chain migration.

They came because other members of the family were here,

so they came here.

David has discovered Bennett's grandfather's application

for British citizenship.

Originally, his surname was Aronovitch,

but he felt he had to Anglicize it to help fit in.

And that's his signature there.

We do Bs in the same way.

Incredible you've got this. I mean...

Bennett's grandmother Sarah was also from Lithuania.

She was just a child, and with her father,

they had to flee the country.

There'd been brutal attacks on Jews,

and the Russian authorities were preventing Jews from leaving.

Can you imagine how scary it must have been for my grandmother,

four or five years of age, smuggled out of Lithuania,

away from the family she was living with, put onto a ship?

She must have been petrified.

My family's history represents the story of other Jews who came over.

Some came over because they were fleeing persecution,

some came over just to find fortune,

and they had skills that were required.

Some were shopkeepers, glaziers, builders.

I wonder if there were any comedians.

It's Bennet's experience of growing up as a Jew in Port Talbot

which is the raw material for his stand-up act.

My grandparents were very orthodox, very religious Jews.

I don't know if you know much about religious Jews,

but religious Jews are not about to do any work on a Saturday.

You couldn't build or make anything.

They couldn't even light a fire,

because to light a fire you had to strike a match.

Striking a match created a spark. Creating something constituted work.

So each family would ask someone to come and light the fire for them,

and the person who lit my grandparents' fire

was the local baker, who came along with his young son,

and that young son was actually Anthony Hopkins.

I often wondered if he ever struck the match to light the fire,

burned his finger, and suddenly went...

By the mid-1920s,

the population of Orthodox Jews in Port Talbot had grown to around 100.

To accommodate the rising numbers, they opened a larger synagogue.

Bennett discovered this from his grandmother,

but had no idea that this building was once it.

They'd have a big congregation here, and if you didn't come early,

you wouldn't get a seat, which is unbelievable.

Today, there is neither a synagogue nor a rabbi here.

It's now a spiritualist church.

Do you understand the name of Margaret? Five foot four,

-five foot five, dark hair.

-Yes, that's correct.

When they took over the building years ago, they felt a presence.

When the services used to go on,

the medium that was up there taking the service

always seen a rabbi coming up and down,

and whatever medium come, he'd be disapproving. Didn't believe in us.

But one year he did come back and he gave his approval.

And it's OK. And from then on we've just thrived.

Bennet's looking for any reminder of its Jewish past.

You go up in the attic, there's a window there.

-It was the original window of the synagogue.

-Oh, really?

-Can you get up there?

-Oh, no, you won't get...

You've got to go through that little hatch there.

BENNETT LAUGHS

This is really exciting.

There's every chance my grandfather is the one that made this window.

It goes right down, it does.

The actual window's in there but no glass in it.

In fact, I'm touching a piece of glass that's stuck in the corner.

-Really?

-Yeah. I'm actually touching it, yeah.

Now it's all gone.

-Nothing to see.

-Nothing.

Only the top part. Only the A-frame.

Oh, what a shame.

Thank you for looking.

It's surprising just how little remains

of the Jewish presence in Port Talbot,

and how much has gone in such a short space of time.

Even after World War II,

there were still around 20 Jewish families here,

but just 30 years later, there were insufficient numbers

to keep the synagogue going.

Bennett's family soon became the only Jewish family left,

and eventually, they had to move from their Port Talbot home

and became part of the active Orthodox community in Swansea.

So I come from an Orthodox background,

although I have lapsed slightly over the years,

but I still go to the synagogue with my children

and they go to Sunday school and I still keep kosher.

I've never eaten pork or ham

and my children aren't even allowed to keep their money in a piggy bank.

And this is the synagogue he attended as a boy.

The membership here is declined,

which has resulted in the building being sold

to a thriving Evangelical church.

This whole place was the synagogue when I was younger,

and it would be absolutely packed, especially on the Jewish festivals.

You couldn't move here. It was standing room only.

This has completely changed.

This is where the women sit here and the men sat in front there,

and my mum and my grandmothers and my auntie would sit here,

and my dad in the front and my grandfather sat in the front also.

Over there is where myself

and all my contemporaries sat, trying to vie for space.

Bennett and all the other children studied the Old Testament here.

I can read Hebrew but don't really understand what I'm saying.

Still, I read it well.

And inside this new church property, the Swansea synagogue still remains,

but now in a smaller room rented from the new owners.

-His dad Charles and mum Joyce are here...

-Hello.

..along with family friend Norma.

Behind this curtain is the synagogue's Holy Ark.

Each of these ornate scrolls make up the Torah.

These are the books of Moses,

the laws by which Jewish life is defined.

Which ones are from Port Talbot? Those two?

These two, the ones that used to have little mirrors in there,

we donated them here when our synagogue in Port Talbot had to close, unfortunately.

For generations, the Swansea Jews have lived in relative harmony

with their neighbours, but in 2002, the congregation here

was badly shaken when the synagogue was the target

of an anti-Semitic attack.

This is what they did to the sacred scrolls.

It was a terrible sight to see.

There were graffiti for Combat 18, Ku Klux Klan,

and they really did damage, and I felt very sad.

But this wasn't the first time the Jewish community in Wales

experienced a racially motivated attack.

I've come to Tredegar.

There were riots here in 1911 which were called the anti-Jewish riot,

so I want to find out whether or not that was the actual case.

150 years ago,

this was one of the boomtowns of the industrial valleys.

Local historian Peter Morgan-Jones

is an expert of the town's Jewish history.

-Heard a lot about you. Welcome to Tredegar.

-Only good things.

-Thank you very much.

-It's an interesting little town.

How big was the Jewish community here?

About 150 people all told.

This is where the synagogue was.

It was small, but absolutely vital.

They lived all over the town, and in the community,

but they didn't become part of the community.

If you can understand that Jews wearing their different costume,

their different robes, long robes, for example, wearing long beards.

They appeared to this community, appeared hostile.

The appeared alien, should I say, not hostile.

In 1911, riots broke out across the valleys,

in the Rhondda, Ebbw Vale, Cwm and here, in Tredegar.

A rail strike meant that coal could not be transported

and thousands of miners were laid off without pay.

The Jewish press reported that 20 Jewish shops were ransacked

and looted and rioters sang Christian hymns

as they wreaked havoc in the town.

Some dismiss claims that it was a deliberate attack on Jews.

One account says that a group of young man singing

came in to this circle

and marched across here to a shop that was just behind us

and smashed the windows and started looting it.

Whether that's true or not, we don't know, but it possibly was.

Is it not true that the police informed Jewish residents

the day before there might be problems?

There were warnings about this.

Surely if there were warnings,

that means that it was pre-planned to some extent.

They certainly warned Jews,

"Your shops are likely to be attacked if any trouble breaks out."

"It broke out in the Rhondda, it could break out here."

For the local unemployed, the only way to raise cash to buy food

was a visit to the pawnbrokers, some being run by Jews.

They were well known, some of the pawnbrokers,

well-known for being only too ready to retain goods

which had been pawned when people had stopped paying the interest on the pawning.

-Which is business, really.

-Which is business.

And to an extent, would've given grounds

for some type of anti-Semitic feel. If you have Jewish people doing this,

then obviously that's going to build up.

Yes it would. Yes. Of course it was.

Anti-Semitism was here but I maintain

and I always have maintained that much of this would have taken place

if the shops had been owned by Chinese.

It must have been horrible. You're serving customers one day,

the people in the town who are coming up and buying your furniture

and your clothing and everything, and then the next day you go to work

and your shop has been vandalised by those same customers.

That's awful.

Bennett's next stop is the town's library.

These are some of the damage claims that went through the court.

Archivist Janet Karn has discovered documents about the victims of the riots.

We've got Cohen, which is my mum's maiden name.

We got Cohen, we've got Eastman, Marks, Rosenbaum.

I mean, very traditional Jewish names.

Again, tailor, draper, outfitter, jeweller, cabinet maker.

She's also found the Chief Constable's 1911 report

citing Jewish business practices as a reason for the unrest.

-What, that he thinks that the Jewish population here started it?

-Yeah.

His handwriting is not the best, I've got to be honest.

He wrote, "They establish themselves in business and acquire houses and property.

"They become landlords and they raise rents very high,

"and I am told make their tenants deal at their shops."

I did warn you that the Chief Constable was very anti-Jewish in what he said.

Yeah, apparently so.

You would never be allowed to get away with it today.

Yeah, you know, you say that. I don't know that's so certain.

Then, in a room packed with the objects

that charts the town's history, there's a surprising find.

Let's put some lights on in here for you.

There you are. Look.

Oh, wow. Gosh.

How the gentleman got that, I don't know.

-We might be able to get it out of the cupboard for you.

-Really?

It's all that remains of the Jews' presence here.

And no-one knows for sure

if this holy book should indeed be kept in Tredegar.

Because when I saw it, I was scandalised.

I didn't think we should have it.

Wow, isn't this incredible?

1865.

It is the Talmud,

containing the laws governing Judaism

and of scholarly discussion on the old Testament.

All that is known is that this book came from the house

of the last Jew in Tredegar.

I don't think I've seen one this old before.

What an incredible book.

I think for the time being it's in the right place.

Well, that makes me feel a little easier.

Bennett leaves with copies of the documents

about the Tredegar Jews for him to study further.

As the Welsh-Jewish community prospered in the industrial valleys,

many of their children were growing up with different aspirations

and accents to their forebears.

I've always had a strong identity of being both Jewish and Welsh,

so I've been interested in my family's history,

and generally, the history of Jews in Wales

and I'd no idea how many lived here,

especially in these small communities.

It's been fascinating, really.

And just for a short while, I've stopped being a Jewish-Welsh comedian

and I've become a Jewish-Welsh historian.

It's very funny, when I did research for this show,

I contacted a lot of my friends from school on Facebook.

I know a lot of them are here this evening.

I asked them what they remembered about me

being the only Jewish child in school.

A lot of them remembered the same thing,

that I played the part of Shylock,

the Jewish moneylender, in the school play.

Which was lovely, but it was a bit odd, as we were doing Peter Pan.

LAUGHTER

It was the Glan Afan comprehensive

where Bennett first took to the stage.

Did you used to have school productions in their?

This is the first place I ever acted.

The head teacher is keen that he isn't late for THIS class.

Do you think I'm going to be told off?

No, I don't think you're going to get told off.

-This is Miss Farrer.

-Hello, nice to meet you.

-Hello there.

This is something they do every year?

Yes, it's is part of their GCSE history curriculum.

Many of these do RE GCSE

and they study Judaism as part of that as well.

And we went to the Holocaust exhibition,

which was harrowing, but interesting.

When I was in school, this wasn't touched on at all.

-It was never taught, was it?

-Never taught, never mentioned at all.

Well, I know obviously, about the Holocaust,

but I never, knew, like, so much in-depth.

-Right.

-So, it's quite interesting to learn all about it now.

-But it's still sad to me.

-Yes, no, of course.

Bennett's family were already in Wales

when Jews were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps,

where six million men, women and children were murdered.

'When I was in Poland, I went to Auschwitz'

and if you ever get the opportunity, it's not a theme park,

but if you ever get a chance to go, it's just... really incredible.

One of the most awful things I saw was that there's one room

that's got, um, just a glass front, the whole wall is glass,

you can see and behind it, is hair.

Mainly women and children's hair that's been cut off.

So, there's that room and then there's another room

which is full of children's toys that were taken off them.

The fact that they're working now on the Holocaust,

and that's one of the things they do every year, is incredible.

I mean, we didn't do it when I was here.

And now even further away from the event happened,

they're studying it and are interested in it.

I wasn't expecting that.

No Jews remain in Port Talbot

and the Jews living in the valleys have also disappeared.

Currently in North Wales, there are only about 50 Jews left,

but hopes are that their numbers will remain stable.

Most of Wales' Jews are still to be found in Cardiff,

yet now they are only two synagogues,

a massive decline from its zenith, when the principality boasted seven.

Well, this is the Cardiff synagogue.

And I'm going to see a Jewish-Welsh male voice choir.

TRADITIONAL JEWISH MUSIC

Good evening. Hello.

These are members of Cardiff's last remaining orthodox Jewish congregation.

-Nice to see you.

-We last met at the comedy club. We came to see you.

-At the Glee?

-At the Glee, yes.

-Of course.

We were part of, in the audience.

And your folks were there.

-They were there.

-That's right.

-That was an interesting evening.

-Grab a chair, Bennett.

-What?

-Grab a chair.

-I'm not singing. Honestly.

-Don't sing with us, we...

THEY SING

There was a time when the Cardiff choir

were gigging all over the country.

A few years ago, we produced and made a CD

and there's one or two copies left if you're interested.

One or two boxes. Hundreds left.

Next door, the synagogue itself has a capacity of 150,

but typically, fewer than 40 people attend on the Sabbath

and these days, the choir too struggles to attract members.

-How many are in the choir?

-There are more than this, but this is, what,

er, three, five, six, seven here tonight.

And it's not just the synagogue's choir that struggles.

Is there a growth in Cardiff, or is it also on a decline as other places?

-Er, decline.

-It is?

The truth of the matter is it's declining everywhere.

Bennett's realising that he's one of the many Jews

who have abandoned Wales to seek their fortune elsewhere.

And most, just like him, have gone to London.

So, apparently it's the fault of me

and my generation that there's such a decline of Jews in Wales.

He heads back to Swansea to his parents' synagogue,

where the decline is even greater than in Cardiff.

Here, there are less than 20 people attending services.

The synagogue's future is uncertain, as Jewish law requires a minion,

a minimum of ten men over the age of 13

to perform communal daily prayers.

Somebody at the synagogue at the service the other day,

because the men and women sit separately, you see,

the men sit at the front.

And second class citizens, which are the women, we sit behind.

SHE LAUGHS

And one man turned round and he started to laugh.

I said, 'why are you laughing at me?' And I'm 71,

and he said, 'You're the youngest member in the community at the service.

Oh, my God, at 71 and it just,

reached home to think that we're such an ageing community now.

'People moved away, like the Bennetts of this world

and all our children moved to go away for university,

or for work or better prospects,

found their marriage partners

and made a life where there were more viable communities.

So really, we've been left now as a very small community.

I've only just realised the fact that in, what?

30, 40 years' time,

there might not be any Jews left in Swansea.

So, from a huge community, to having nobody.

At all.

That's a sad thought.

Bennett's studied the documents he's collected on his journey

and discovered that his mother's grandparents

are linked with the last surviving Jews of Tredegar.

-You said to me that you had family there.

-I did.

-Who was there?

Your great-grandmother was Ellen Fine.

-And she married..?

-Morris Cohen.

Who wasn't from Tredegar and I don't know how they met.

Well, that's the interesting thing.

I was given a list of weddings that happened in Tredegar and look,

March 26th...

-Oh, my gosh.

-Ellen Fine.

-How old was she?

-22. Ellen Morris Cohen.

-Oh...

-There we go.

Oh, it's amazing.

-I'm so glad you've shown me this.

-Good.

Quite emotional.

Uncovering the wider history of the Welsh Jews,

as well as performing his stand up for the first time

in his hometown has been a revealing experience for Bennett.

I sometimes feel like I've got a rabbi on one shoulder

and a dragon on the other,

which would be a brilliant name for a pub, I think.

The Dragon and Rabbi. GENTLE LAUGHTER

It would only serve bitter and the head of the pint would be missing.

LAUGHTER

I talk about beer and I have this a lot.

One of the other reasons I do this show

is people say, "What's is it like? you're Jewish and you're not allowed to drink."

Jews can drink. It's when I will let my Welsh side take over.

LAUGHTER

'Do you know what? It's been an emotional few days.'

And it's been interesting learning about my family,

been interesting learning about what happened to other Jews in Wales

and it's been sad knowing what the future holds, really.

Thank you very much for coming. I hope to see you again. Good night.

APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd