After 25 years, I’ve returned to synagogue

On Saturday, I went to the synagogue in Béziers. I was motivated by defiance, sentiment, and an urge to demonstrate solidarity, but hardly from any rekindled religiosity. I’ve never had any to be rekindled. Like my namesake, the late Dr Jonathan Miller, said in Beyond the Fringe, ‘I’m not really a Jew… but I’m Jew-ish; not the whole hog.’

I grew up in North London when there were still some scars from the second world war. Bombsites. Prefab homes in Dollis Hill. I knew about the Holocaust but it seemed remote, impossible. My family had arrived in Britain in the late 19th century, exiles from the pogroms in Latvia. If any members of my family had perished in the camps, it was never mentioned. I really can’t recall much anti-Semitism. Although it did feel odd at school being asked for my Christian name – a question no longer posed.