Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus

A reliable informant (one of my daughters) told me that the 1979 television film of Jack Rosenthal’s The Knowledge was available on Youtube and that it had stood up well to the ravages of time. I found it and watched. The Knowledge refers to the qualification required of London taxi drivers, knowledge of topography and routes from any one place in London to any other. The story concerns half a dozen hopeless hopefuls, learning the Knowledge and being examined by a sardonic and bullying instructor gloriously portrayed by Nigel Hawthorne.

One of the candidates, Ted Margolis (Jonathan Lynn) from a Jewish family of cab drivers, is eager, borderline sycophantic and blessed with a retentive memory. Highly motivated, he is the first of the group to qualify as a cabbie by completing the Knowledge. When he breaks the news to his fellow candidates, they share his euphoria. They want to take him to the pub to celebrate but Ted tells them that he doesn’t drink. The worldly Gordon finds this difficult to believe and Ted says, ‘What do you want, I’m a Yiddisher boy. Cards, yes; women, certainly; drinking – one small [sounds like ‘eggnog’ but the sound isn’t quite clear] at Christmas.’

Nevertheless, they go off to the pub together and subsequently Ted loses his new green badge for being drunk in charge of a motor cycle. He is later seen applying his photographic memory to Hebrew phrases, and finally is in Tel Aviv, wearing a tembel hat and studying a road map of the city.

1979. I tried to imagine these scenes being written and screened today: Jewish references in a bitter-sweet comedy and, more than this, the fearless, unself-conscious way in which Ted reminds his friends, ‘I’m a Yiddisher boy.’ Didn’t we all do this: make humorous references to our Jewish lives to offer our non Jewish friends a bit of metaphorical chren, a spicy, tasty condiment daubed on the side of the conversation? Maybe we didn’t. In any case, who would do that now? Who would write it into their comedy?

The author of The Knowledge, Jack Rosenthal, who died twenty years ago, was married to Maureen Lipman. She was herself well loved by the public at that time and it was much later, particularly during her opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, that she was vilified on Corbynist social media. It happened often to Jewish women who spoke against Corbyn, whether they were politicians or entertainers: Margaret Hodge, Maureen Lipman, Rachel Riley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Louise Ellman were reviled but Miriam Margolyes who was anti Israel was considered exemplary as a Jewish celebrity.

The bile against Maureen Lipman was staggering in Corbynist groups on Facebook, as you see here:

Notwithstanding being Jewish, Maureen Lipman had come close to being a National Treasure. Jews can still hold this position if they repudiate Israel, unless, like Stephen Fry, they speak out against the renaissance of antisemitism. Then they become persona non grata in certain circles.

The United Kingdom seemed one of the safest places on earth to be Jewish, for most of my life. Ted Margolis, in The Knowledge, made aliyah before it was strictly necessary.