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Sharonah Dance and Modern Food Store

There are few more inspiring sights than seeing film of a mixed party of roisterers dancing away, unconcerned about appearances, to different music to what’s on the soundtrack.

Home movie 1975 19 mins Silent

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

The Dance of the Year, indeed, as our joyful, and doubtless inebriated, revellers see in the 1976 New Year with a fine display of dancing, mostly classic 1970s style, though some from an earlier generation. A jovial contingent of the Jewish community in Leeds show how to make merry as they bop along to everything from Harry Lauder’s rendition of I Love A Lassie to Rag Mama Rag and Neil Sedaka. Then it’s back to work at the Good Jewish Grocer, with a fine selection of kosher food.

This film is from a collection of films made by Leeds based filmmaker Jack Goldberg, who owned the family Modern Food Store at 80 Street Lane in Leeds. The parents of Jack Goldberg and his wife Flo had fled from the persecution of Jews in the Russian empire which grew from the 1880s. Many refugees, thinking they were headed for the US, arrived in Grimsby and Hull instead. In the wonderful film about the Jewish community in Leeds by Simon Glass, The Last Tribe (2013), Jack and Flo are among many who recount this history and their experiences, from the poverty of the Leyland district to the relative affluence of Chapeltown, noting just how much the community had become integrated into British society during that time.