The Jews of Downton Abbey

JORDAN MOSHE

Across six seasons, the period drama enthralled audiences with its riveting narrative of early 1900s England, the aristocratic Crawleys, and their devoted cadre of servants. The triumphs, trials, and tribulations of our beloved characters took place against the backdrop of idyllic Yorkshire, far removed from us and our modern-day lives. However, certain Jewish personalities and influences at various points give us an added dimension of connection, and might enhance our appreciation of the series.

Jewish identity is at the heart of the Crawley family. The Abbey’s Lord and Lady Grantham, Robert and Cora Crawley, are in fact an interfaith couple. Though not born strictly Jewish, Cora is the daughter of Martha and Isidore Levinson, therefore Jewish on her father’s side. She hails from a wealthy American family, and this seems to matter more to her upper-crust British in-laws than the fact that she comes from an interfaith family.

Judaism more broadly rarely comes into the storyline. But as the series progresses, creator Julian Fellowes introduces a Jewish love interest of Russian lineage in the form of Ephraim Atticus Aldridge for Lady Rose MacClare. Tall, dashing, and a lord to boot, it turns out he was a member of a Ukrainian Jewish family that fled the infamous pogroms of Odessa. His family’s struggle to be accepted mirrors the experience a wealthy Jewish-British family might have faced in the 1920s, and even the Rothschild family is mentioned during the episode.

His heritage raises little objection from Rose, but acting like typical Jewish parents themselves, her parents and Ephraim’s are resistant to the match. His father, Lord Sinderby, is as opposed to his son marrying outside the Jewish faith as Rose’s mother is to her marrying into it. Sinderby tells his son, “Our family has achieved a great deal since we came to this country. Not just for ourselves, for our people. We have a proud history, and we’ve taken our place among the leaders of this land. And now you want to throw all that away for this little shiksa (gentile)!” He also objects to the fact that their children won’t be Jewish, to which his son retorts that they might choose to convert.

Complex though the issue might be, it’s an all too familiar reality for many of us. In fact, Fellowes reportedly received a personal thank you from a Jewish peer in the House of Lords for accurately portraying what it’s like to be a Jew in British society. The series might be set 90 years ago, but the antipathy of Rose’s family to Ephraim speaks volumes about the anti-Semitism which still resonates today, and which Fellowes says he aimed to address.

He told Ha’aretz, “English aristocracy anti-Semitism has always interested me. It’s quite mild and so ingrained, they’re sometimes hardly aware of it. Someone will say something like, ‘You’re rather Jewish looking.’ They don’t know they’re separating a whole category of people.” Fellowes himself dated a Jewish girl in his youth, a match on which neither side looked on favourably.

The series’ Jews are not the only victims of prejudice and hatred. With the arrival of the late twenties, the fifth season is the first to mention Hitler and the Nazis. The dreaded brownshirts (the Nazi militia founded by Hitler) are mentioned, and “Nazi thugs” are said to have supposedly murdered Lady Edith’s beau, Michael Gregson.

“I find anti-Semitism weirdly illogical,” Fellowes said. “The English Jewish community supports the arts, it supports science, it supports education. It has great family values. Everything people approve of is rooted in this culture.”

Add into this decidedly Jewish mix the fact that certain people behind the scenes are Jewish. One of the series’ directors is Minkie Spiro, whose mother is an Israeli educator who, together with her husband, founded the Spiro Ark, one of the best-known Jewish education institutes in the United Kingdom. Moreover, the director of the film is none other than Michael Engler, who is descended from Russian-Jewish pogrom refugees on his mother’s side, and German-Jewish immigrants on his father’s.

Although not central to the show, there’s a distinct sense of varnishke alongside the vichyssoise in Downton Abbey. A Jewish presence is often felt in the most unlikely of places, and as the dowager countess says, “There’s always something, isn’t there?”