Jewish Social Groups in London: The Map by Life Stage and Interest

Moving to London, the hard part is rarely the paperwork. It is the quiet. You can sort a flat, a bank account and a SIM in a fortnight and still have nobody to call on a Friday. London holds one of the largest Israeli and Jewish communities outside Israel, and finding your corner of it is mostly a matter of understanding how it is organised. This is that map, sorted the two ways people search it, by the stage of life you are in and by the things you enjoy.

A group is the people you keep seeing

There is a distinction worth holding onto before you start looking. An event is a thing you attend. A group is a set of people who keep turning up to the same things, and it is the second one that changes a city.

That distinction sorts the rest of this page. If what you want is a listing of what is running this week, the guide to Jewish events in London is the live view of that. What follows here is the slower map: the ongoing circles, who is in them, and which one is likely to fit.

Groups by life stage

The fastest way in is to start with the people already living a version of your week.

• Students. Campus first. Most universities have a Jewish society and the bigger ones have an Israeli society as well, and there are city-wide student nights on top of that. Everyone in the room arrived knowing nobody, which makes it a straightforward way in. More in the guide for Israeli students.
• Twenties and thirties. Dinners, drinks, weekend socials and professional evenings, for people building a career and a personal life at once. It is a stage with a map of its own, and the young professionals guide covers it properly.
• Young families. With small children your social life reshapes around them. Family picnics, holiday afternoons and children’s activities are where parents meet other parents, and friendships form fast because everybody is deep in the same year.
• New mothers. The early months with a baby are a lonely stretch, especially far from your own mother and the friends who would have dropped in daily. Groups for new and expecting mothers, some of them in Hebrew, give you company and honest advice from people having the same week.

Groups by interest

If life stage does not click, a shared interest is the other door in, and it skips the small talk entirely.

• Food and cooking. Communal meals, supper clubs and cook-alongs. For Israelis the food is a language of its own, and the Israeli food map is the tour of that world.
• Sport and the outdoors. Running crews, five a side, cycling groups and hikes. Turning up weekly is its own quiet form of belonging.
• Culture, Hebrew and ideas. Talks, film nights, book groups and Hebrew-speaking meet-ups. It is also the gentlest way to keep your own Hebrew and your children’s alive, and the Hebrew learning guide covers the classes side of it.
• Work and industry. Israelis in London cluster in tech, finance, property, food and hospitality and the creative industries, and the circles around those sectors are as social as they are professional.
• Volunteering. Working on something together bonds people faster than a drink does. The guide to Jewish charities in London is where to start if that appeals.

The five circles inside HBayit

HBayit is a community charity for Israelis in London, and rather than one undifferentiated crowd it runs five circles, so that you land somewhere that already fits.

• Young Professionals, for the after-work, career-building years.
• Tech and Business, a network across London’s tech and startup world.
• Students, the softest landing for anyone new to the city and to adult life at once.
• Young Families, where the children’s playdate is also the parents’.
• New Mothers, warm company for the tender early months.

Running underneath all five are the open-door Friday night dinners, one long table with home cooking and a chair for whoever turns up, and the chagim marked together through the year.

Choosing one group and staying in it

The mistake is collecting groups. Five WhatsApp groups you never post in do less for you than one circle you show up to.

• Try two or three, then commit. It usually takes a couple of goes to find the room that fits, and that is normal rather than a verdict on any of them.
• Ask for the group chat. It is where the smaller and more last-minute things live, and it is the single most useful thing to walk away from a first outing with.
• Go back within a fortnight. The second visit does the real work, because by the third people start greeting you by name.
• Give the group something. Bring the salad, help stack the chairs, suggest the next walk. The people who do a little end up at the centre of things quickly.

Everyone in every one of these circles started with a first message to somebody. One message to Ari is how you get into ours, or write to [email protected] if that is easier.