Simcha Snaps!
For JW3's B'Mitzvah year what could be more amazing than a giant photo album of Bar and Bat Mitzvah's from across the decades?!
The inspiration for this project was the collages my mum and her friends made of their children's B'nei Mitzvahs in the early and mid 1980s - what if you took that idea and used the inside and the outisde of JW3 as your gallery? We invited JW3 audience members, staff and volunteers to send us in their favourite photos from their simchas and added into the mix a project Ivor Baddiel had been working on collecting photos from 1970s simchas, as well as some photos from the Jewish Museum's collection.
The final touch was to ask Ivor and the artist Zoom Rockman to curate the submissions and decide where around, or on, the building the photos should sit. Most of the photos were taken in the UK or have a link to UK Jewry or to JW3. We have Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, progressive and orthodox, lavish parties and cosy get togethers. Touching, funny and often surprising, the album tells a story about the British Jewish community over the last a hundred or so years. So many shared memories, moments of joy, relatives and friends we remember, times we can never forget.
William Galinsky, Programming Director
I have so many happy memories of different JW3 events that I’ve attended and taken part in over the years. Talks, book launches, plays, concerts, being given the opportunity to put on my first major London show, Zoom Rockman’s Jewish Hall of Fame, back in 2023, and later hosting one of the first screenings of my animated film SURVIVOR, which is now streaming on ITVX.
Designing the special Bar Mitzvah brochure covers for JW3’s own Bar Mitzvah year has been a pleasure and co-curating this exhibition with Ivor Baddiel has been a lot of fun too. There’s also a nice coincidence in that it will be 13 years since my own Bar Mitzvah later this year. In fact, Ivor was standing right beside me on the bimah that day and even helped me write my speech. So it feels quite fitting that we’ve ended up working on this exhibition together.
Wishing Raymond, William, Greg, Michaela, Thamar, Lydia, Oliver and all the team a huge Mazel Tov, and looking forward to seeing what the next 13 years bring.
Zoom Rockman
I was bar mitzvahed in 1976, by the late, great Rabbi Louis Jacobs. It was at New London Synagogue, at a time when it was still actually quite new, and the response when I’d read my small Torah portion was less, shakoiyach, and more, thank God it’s over, which is how I felt too.
My parents spared every expense for the reception which was at our house in Dollis Hill, and notable mainly for the punch, which my father, a doctor of chemistry, had made with 100% pure alcohol purloined from work. He claimed it was better for you because it didn’t give you a hangover. He was wrong.
That’s a snapshot of my bar mitzvah, there was joy, nachus, quirkiness, togetherness and of course, Jewishness. That’s what we’ve tried to capture curating this exhibition, the eras may change, the fashion, the food, the party traditions; but the spirit, the ruach, running through it all, is a shining beacon that binds us all.
Happy b’mitzvah JW3, enjoy.
Ivor Baddiel
