Sometime during the winter term of 1977, my final year, I saw an announcement about a meeting of a proposed Jewish Society at the university. Intrigued, I went to this meeting; I have a recollection that it took place in a lecture hall with banked seating - not a room that I ever frequented.
After introductions there would have been some discussion as to what the society was intended to be and what it intended to achieve - presumably a place where Jewish students could feel at home and discuss issues close to their heart.
There must have been some development regarding the society and me, as I have a further memory of pleading the case of the society in front of the student governing body - was I asking for money or just for legitimacy? I know that I had to hide my future plans, i.e. emigration, and blandly claim that the society was for Jewish students in the same way that a Christian society would be for Christian students; we were not interested in Zionism, God forbid. The chairperson of this governing body was a 'professional student': she was employed by the students union. She either was or had been the chairperson of the London Union of students' union so was a powerful figure. She was also Jewish, although how I knew this then eludes me now.
I don't recall what happened after this meeting; I don't recall even why I was there - was I elected treasurer or similar? I don't recall any further meetings.
The only real outcome of this was that I discovered that there was a Jewish girl in the first year of my course's intake and that she lived not far away in Swiss Cottage. We went out a few times but nothing much happened. Most of this particular story has already been told here.
There was another Jewish girl doing my course but in a different year. Due to the strange structure of the course (study/work/study/work/study), we were only in the university buildings at the same time in my final term, and I don't think that I even met her then. The sole meeting that I recall was as a group sitting outside in the sun while my class was celebrating the end of our studies. She had more than a few drinks and was getting rather tipsy, which was when I stood up and took her at least part of the way home (she lived somewhere like Edgeware or Stanmore, a district that I knew to be 'Jewish'). Somehow we both knew that both of us were Jewish and that I was not trying to take advantage of her.
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