John Gulliver: saying Kaddish for Eric Gordon and Michael Rudman
Felicity Kendal was among the mourners at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue
Friday, 14th April 2023 — By John Gulliver
Felicity Kendal and Michael Rudman at their daughter’s wedding [supplied by Ms Kendal]
CHUTZPAH!
“That is of course a mixture of ambition and audacity,” so said Rabbi Igor Zinkov during a service at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John’s Wood on Saturday.
I was there among friends to say Kaddish – the mourner’s prayer – on the second anniversary of the death of the Camden New Journal co-founder and editor of almost 40 years, Eric Gordon.
I can’t remember the example of chutzpah cited by the rabbi precisely, but it was something to do with Moses convincing God to change his mind on behalf of the people.
Eric certainly had his fair share of audacity and ambition – especially when it came to standing up for the paper’s real owners – the readers, as he liked to say.
It was notoriously difficult to second guess him, but I think he would have enjoyed what was at times a thought-provoking theological service.
Eric Gordon in the Camden New Journal office
We were serenaded with songs from a graceful choir and also treated to readings and digression from Rabbi Zinkov including, rather unexpectedly, what was described as an “almost erotic” poem.
The service concluded with the names of a dozen people being read out and a moment for the families there to reflect.
Some were in the grip of nascent grief; others fondly looking back on the long-lost. We all have our anniversaries.
And among the mourners was one of the country’s national treasures, The Good Life star Felicity Kendal, CBE.
It was just a few days after the love of her life, the former Hampstead Theatre artistic director and Tony Award winner Michael Rudman, died aged 84.
I last caught up with Ms Kendal back in February 2021, when the country was just coming out of a lockdown.
She had wanted to talk about the excellent care Michael received while fighting for his life on a ventilator in the Royal Free’s intensive care unit, after contracting Covid that winter.
The couple’s daughter Amanda was also doing food runs for staff, using produce provided by independent shops, at the Hampstead hospital through a charity called Feed the Front Line.
Ms Kendal told me at the time about how frustrating it had been to not be able to go and see Michael in the hospital because of the lockdown rules and risk of spread of infection.
“The thing that gets you through family sadnesses and illness is that you can bind together,” Ms Kendal had reflected.
“You go out together and have a coffee after bad news. You chatter. If you have a sick child, one of you will take in the ice cream, and the other one will go round the next day with a balloon.
“People will cross the world to be with somebody for one last hour, because that’s what we do.”
She had refused to get caught up in questions about who to blame during the pandemic and urged me to look at the positives in all situations.
Ms Kendal compared her time in isolation to a kind of naughty chair for children where “you are made to think I will try and be better – in the future I will not throw my jam tart at my friend again!”
And she had particular praise for the NHS hospital staff, saying: “We have to remember these guys while we are waiting to have another life.”
I got the feeling she would have crossed the world to be with Mr Rudman during his final hour.
He lived in Hampstead for decades and ran Hampstead Theatre in what many suggest was its artistic 1970s heyday.
He went on to run the National Theatre and Crucible Theatre in Sheffield before his Broadway production of Death of a Salesman won a Tony Award. He died on March 30.
It was comforting to think that the couple had been able to share the last two years together, free from the prison of pandemic rules. And to see her family, as she put it, “binding together” saying Kaddish.
The Liberal Jewish Synagogue, which opened in 1911, is the oldest and largest of 40 Liberal Jewish communities in the UK.
