Intrepid Pioneers & Creating a Storm: A Conversation with Isabelle Seddon

ISABELLE SEDDON, a peripatetic British tour guide and traveler, authored her first book, East End Jews and Left-Wing Theater, in 2020. After completing her PhD. in 2019, she spent two years researching the Jewish women who appear in her second book, Intrepid Pioneers: Jewish Women in the Public Arena and its sequel, Creating a Storm: Jewish Women in the World of Art and Culture, scheduled for publication in January 2025. Now 70, Isabelle lives in London’s chic Hampstead neighborhood. Barbara Gingold, her friend of almost half a century, interviewed Isabelle in London and via Zoom from Jerusalem in September.

BG: Isabelle, we go back a long way, back to our days as new immigrants in Israel in the 1970s, trying to make it with just a few words of Hebrew between us. But let’s go back even further, to your childhood. Unlike most British Jews I’ve ever met, you came not from the very Jewish areas of Northwest London, but Plymouth, on the southern coast of England. How did your family end up there?

IS: My parents’ families both came from Eastern Europe in the 1870s. On my father’s side, from Lithuania; my mother’s, from Russia/Poland. When my father’s family arrived from Europe their boat docked in Plymouth, the site of the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in England, and there my father stayed. My mother grew up in London’s East End.

BG: How did your Jewish identity develop?

IS: Far from London, Plymouth was a dock town with just a tiny Jewish community, a few hundred people. We were almost the only Orthodox Jews; we didn’t ride on Shabbat, and I was made aware of being “other” at a very young age. Kids taunted me, called me names and made fun of my curly hair. My dad was a very successful businessman, but the Yacht Club and other clubs in town rejected his applications for membership. My parents didn’t talk about it, but I already knew what antisemitism was. When I was 14, my family moved to Bournemouth, which had a reasonable Jewish community.

BG: What propelled you to make aliyah?

IS: My family was very Zionist; I visited Israel for the first time when I was a young girl and spent two months on a kibbutz when I was 18. So moving to Israel was natural for me – though when I announced my plan to my parents, it didn’t go down well!

BG: When you and I met, we were both struggling to find our professional footing in Jerusalem. I’d just bought my apartment on a dark little street in the German Colony; you and our Dutch friend Leah von Soutendorp, the daughter of a prominent Amsterdam rabbi, were running a little coffee house at the end of my street, above what had been the barn of a 19th-century Templar building. There were still chickens crowing in its back yard. How did your life in Israel evolve from there?

IS: Actually, I was involved with the coffee house for only a year. It was great, I met so many people and it was the perfect way to integrate into Jerusalem. And at the same time I was freelancing non-stop for all kinds of English publications: the Jerusalem Post, Israel Economist, magazines at the Israel Museum and The Hebrew University, etc.

BG: In 1981 you wed Jonathan Broido, whose mother Ethel founded the well-respected Gordon Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. Jonathan’s father Ephraim was an influential Hebrew essayist, translator, and editor. Essentially, you married into Israel’s cultural elite. Your apartment was filled with Jonathan’s exquisite collection of oriental rugs, and you got a job as curator of the fledgling gallery for immigrant artists at the Jerusalem Theatre. Did you feel you were being transformed into an Israeli?

IS: Never! I had a language problem; I never did learn Hebrew. On the other hand, I felt so at home in Jerusalem; I really felt a part of the place.

BG: You and Jonathan had two daughters and returned to England in 1989. You and Jonathan were divorced when they were teens. How and when did you meet Ivor Seddon?

IS: It was on a charity trek along the Great Wall of China in 2001. We’re a perfect match. I’m the intrepid traveler, I love walking, and I’ve encouraged Ivor to come along to all kinds of exotic places. We’ve had fantastic adventures around the world: to Iran, North Korea, and Papua New Guinea, across South America and Africa, and more.

BG: How did you get involved in dramatherapy and counseling?

IS: When we were still in Israel, I gave birth to triplets, who died at birth. A personal trauma, and there was no psychological help available, no support groups. When we got back to England with two young kids, after 11 years away, I didn’t want a full-time job at a newspaper; I realized I wanted to help people overcome their traumas. I decided that counseling would be my next professional step. I trained as a traditional therapist and drama therapist, and got part-time counseling work in a doctor’s surgery [clinic], where I stayed, one day a week, for 20 years. In the meantime I also found a job with Jewish Care [social services]. I was in charge of creating and running programs at their largest day-care center, where we served about 200 people every day – the elderly and those with mental health issues and dementia.

BG: Let’s talk about your interest in London’s historic Jewish community. The first book you published was East End Jews and Left-Wing Theatre. What piqued your interest in England’s 19th- and 20th-century Jews?

IS: Politics and campaigners and theater were my passions. I’d already become a certified London tour guide, a “blue badge,” specializing in the Jewish East End. By chance I had an opportunity to do an MA in Jewish Studies; it was a program just being set up by the London Jewish Cultural Centre (now known as JW3), in association with Southampton University. My thesis was on radical Jewish women – trade unionists, anarchists, etc. – in the East End from the start of immigration in the 19th century. I wanted to do something at a deeper level, though, staying in the same general area. I thought I’d do a PhD., until I discovered there wasn’t enough first-hand material for it: women had been written out of history. Then I found this very revolutionary theater group that started in the 1930s, backed by the Communist party; it had huge Jewish involvement and membership. There was lots of information available, all focused on the men in the group. I decided to write my thesis on it anyway. After I finished, I wanted to find out more about the women who I knew had existed, but hadn’t been sufficiently recognized or researched. So I decided to concentrate on the post-World War II period, where I could find more data. That was how Intrepid Pioneers: Jewish Women in the Public Arena evolved, featuring women ranging from politicians and campaigners to scientists, media personalities, and “agony aunts.”

BG: In the end, you actually went much further back into the social and cultural history of the UK’s Jews. When we met in September at the Tate Britain to see four centuries of Women Artists in Britain, you whisked straight to the two Jewish artists in the exhibit, Catherine da Costa and Rebecca Solomon, to nab some last-minute revelations to add to your forthcoming book. What did you find?

IS: Sorry, you’ll have to read about that in Creating a Storm, where I discuss what women in the UK were doing in general, and whether there were any differences for those women of Jewish background.

BG: Of all the impressive women you’ve dug out of history, do you have one or two favorites?

IS: Most of them I liked, though I was allergic to some, like Shirley Porter, a tough, successful Tory politician who ended her political career caught in a major scandal. I loved Bertha Sokoloff, a highly respected political organizer who came from a poor home in the East End. The poverty of her childhood shaped her radical spirit and drew her to the Communist Party, where she was active for decades. But I admire all the women in my books for their tenacity and determination. Gender and religious discrimination didn’t stop them, and they never took “No” for an answer. They were open to everything. That’s how I like to live my life.

BG: Were there any women you particularly identified with?

IS: I loved my agony aunts! The twin sisters Eppie and Popo Friedman, known to their millions of readers as Ann Landers and Abigail van Buren, were huge in America, and their sister columnists across the pond, Jewish East Enders Marjorie Proops and Claire Rayner, became the UK’s national confidantes. I’d like to be an agony aunt! That must be my therapy background.

BG: Isabelle, wherever, whenever we’ve met over the years, we’ve always shared a good laugh together. What are you finding to laugh about these days?

IS: It is becoming more of a challenge. A year ago, on October 5th, I was doing a tour of Jewish London and was asked what it’s like being Jewish here. I felt blessed to have been brought up in England. I never thought I’d see the kind of antisemitism that started flaring up here just a week later. Talking with my friends in Israel, going to memorials since October 7th…I’m very saddened by it all.

BG: In your second book, you note that the UK was 10-15 years behind the USA in terms of feminism and opportunities for women. When did you start to identify yourself as a feminist? Have you personally experienced gender barriers in England?

IS: Well, maybe I experienced some in the early days, in the macho world of journalism before I made aliyah [emigration to Israel]. I never put the “feminist” label on myself; I just did what I wanted to do, like the women in my book. And I’ve done so many things. I love to learn new things, and nothing would stop me. Gender never made a difference.

BG: Neither did illness. You were diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer seven years ago; it metastasized a few years later and the outlook was grim. Since that diagnosis you’ve completed your doctorate, published two books and another on the way, guided innumerable tourists through the city of London, traveled to Israel and the Caribbean, did Jewish tours of Transylvania and Italy. This morning you spent hours in hospital, getting your weekly dose of chemo, followed by a matinee in the West End; tomorrow you’ll be in town again leading a bunch of American tourists through the East End. Isabelle, what keeps you moving?

IS: I’m more centered now; things I used to take for granted, I don’t any more. And the one thing I’ve learned: you’ve got to take something good out of every situation, to treasure each day, each moment. The present.