I had to be taught everything about Christianity and midwifery. Ann Tricklebank, our endlessly conscientious producer, arranged for on-set ‘nun tutorials’. Being Jewish, I didn’t know how to cross myself properly. Mummy had stopped me from reading the New Testament. Plainsong was quite beyond me, so I mimed when we were in chapel, just like when I was on Broadway. And getting dressed was a marathon; who knew that under those dark blue habits there were so many layers of costume? Thank goodness I was allowed a dresser; she knew which bit went where. The programme is scrupulously accurate in every department. I’m still wearing the wedding ring on my right hand (nuns are the brides of Christ) so that I’m ready for the call when it comes again.
As the benignly bossy Mother Mildred, I did shake things up a tad at Nonnatus House. For a start, I asked Ann to provide a loo on wheels, close to set, to placate my frequent micturition. I also commandeered handyman Fred Buckle’s van — Ann immediately understood I was unlikely to ‘do’ bikes like the young nuns and midwives. Anyway, I think a Mother Superior would travel around the Poplar cobbles more decorously than that — and I couldn’t ride a bike in a nun’s habit without breaking my neck; it’s a long time since Cambridge when I cycled everywhere.
A particularly memorable episode was the Christmas one in 2019. Usually, we shoot at Longcross Studios, an old speedway test track in Surrey, where Nonnatus House has been cleverly adapted from a lovely Edwardian manor house. Heidi had thought of Malaysia as the location for this Christmas special. But probably for logistical reasons, it was moved to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. She is nothing if not flexible! That was fine, I love Scotland and we were going in March, far from the months of the midges.
What no one had reckoned on were the freak storms and cloudbursts which descended. The wind really whipped across the island, and the frigid temperature made it feel like December. Acting is hard at the best of times, but dripping wimples proved a definite health hazard. A sodden habit is a particularly dreary garment to spend the day in. One of the many places we shot in was a church at the top of a steep hill, looking out to sea. The tempest roared, the rain poured, as I struggled up the path fully costumed, only to arrive in the sublimely beautiful but freezing church. I’ve only been colder when I walked along the Great Wall of China one December.
In another scene, the midwives visit the late-Neolithic Callanish Stones but we could hardly see in front of our own faces for the howling storm. None of us could hear the other speaking, so Jenny Agutter and I had to look carefully to see if the other’s mouth was still moving before we spoke the next line through chattering teeth. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much at being so uncomfortable for such a long time — not a loo in sight. However, after work we stayed in unusual luxury at Amhuinnsuidhe Castle. This amazing place was built in 1865, but the dining hall fulfilled every fantasy of gracious living and for a week we midwives, erstwhile of Poplar, thoroughly relished the delicious food and frequent drams served to us after work. One teatime, I asked for an onion with my Welsh rarebit and they just sprinkled bits on top. I had to explain I wanted a whole one, raw, on the side. Happily, such was the level of service at this extraordinary retreat that the chef complied with alacrity and good grace. (I discovered that a previous chef working there had been my darling Rosemary Shrager from The Real Marigold Hotel.)
It was a glorious, if rain-soaked, week and Harris is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to. Despite the appalling weather, when you’re with good people the sun always shines and every one of my dear midwives warms my atheist soul.
Being Jewish
What is an English Jew? And does it matter? It’s no exaggeration to say that every day of my adult life I’ve thought about the Holocaust. When I was seven years old, my father’s refugee patients would show me the numbers on their arms. ‘What is that?’ I asked them. I don’t remember their answers; they said nothing that stays in my mind or hinted at horror. But, of course, inevitably, I learnt as I grew up about the camps, the Nazi infamy, the lines at Auschwitz where Mengele made his selections of left and right. It’s part of my life. It fuelled my genealogical hobby, now an obsession. It has also coloured my feelings about the world that let it happen, and makes me sharp at spotting antisemitism, even in a mild form. (Thought: is there a ‘mild’ form?)
I feel intensely Jewish. It’s the first adjective I apply to myself, it’s how I introduce myself to new people. I watch the reaction, always primed to notice a flinching, an embarrassed smile, or a little laugh, unusually high-pitched. It is my belief that the English don’t like Jews and never have. After the Second World War, it wasn’t possible to express antisemitism, but some eighty years on, once again, antisemitism has become quite common. Most English Jews (and we number less than 0.57 per cent of the population) are law-abiding, middle-class and fit seamlessly into the suburban world. Yet, because of Israel, because of Netanyahu and the way he’s behaved, the band-aid over antisemitism has been ripped off. Watching events in Israel, people feel that it’s all right now to voice antisemitism. Violence against Jewish graves and shops and synagogues is on the rise, and so I have become more strident in talking about being Jewish, forcing people to absorb it, challenging them to deny their prejudice.
I’m militantly secular — religion has caused so much horror in the world — but I believe in tradition; I want to honour the past, honour my parents, my ancestors and all those who died, and so I follow many of the Jewish practices. To this day, I am a member of two shuls (the Yiddish word for ‘synagogue’) in South London: an Orthodox synagogue in Streatham with friendly Rabbi Myers, plus I can’t resist the delightful Chabad rabbi of Battersea, Rabbi Moshe Adler, a young American, and his family of three children and sweet English wife, who wears a sheitel.[22] They have treated me with warmth and frequent offers of hospitality, as I am a woman alone — most people are in couples.
I fast on Yom Kippur (and always have), maintain the dietary restrictions during Passover (no leavened bread etc.), and have never eaten bacon, shellfish of any kind, ham or pork in any guise — not even at a restaurant. I may not believe in God, but I’m very proud of my roots: they nourish me. I’m fascinated by the pull of Judaism and its culture — the food, the jokes, the vitality, the suffering, the guilt and the history — it’s all part of who I am and what I’ve inherited. The fact of my being Jewish informs the whole of my life. It informs connections with people. More than anything else, being Jewish informs my actor’s aesthetic: emotion is always trembling on the brink for every Jewish woman. It comes with the territory, and it’s very useful as I don’t have to delve to find joy, despair, laughter and tears.
Why, being so militantly atheist, do I want to be Jewish? Why do I still belong to a synagogue everywhere I live? In LA, I was a member of Beth Ohr, a liberal reconstructionist synagogue in the Valley with the most delightful rabbi. Straight out of Central Casting. Rabbi Michael Roth was an elderly Hungarian exile, with a wise face and a strong accent. When I confided in him about my lack of faith, he said, ‘Miriam, don’t worry, I don’t know if I believe in God, either. Who knows? But for me, it’s better that I do, so I carry on.’ That’s unusual; I don’t know any other rabbi who would say that. He was insightful and compassionate. He had a wisdom and open-mindedness that was both reassuring and illuminating. That’s what you hope for in a rabbi.
22
A wig — Orthodox Judaism forbids a married woman to show her natural hair to anyone other than her husband.