Every Israeli guest who comes to the Stamford Hill neighborhood in London for the purpose of their children's wedding, a family celebration, or a vacation, will encounter the lake on Clapton Common Street.
This street has a large concentration of synagogues, yeshivots and educational institutions, a restaurant and a kosher grocery store.
As an Israeli who came to live in London, the first place I knew was the lake with the swans, ducks, and the huge expanses of grass in the middle of the street. It did me good to sit there every day with the kids. Together we noticed that the swans live together.
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Towards 5:00 PM (in winter), sunset time, we always see the same spectacle: one swan will begin to coo and soon his mate will miss him, they will approach each other - and fly out of the lake together... and another pair will follow them. And after them the next pair. Until the big swans disappear completely from the landscape.
But all day long I would sit there alone. There was no family there except mine.
Only on Sundays, when girls don't have school and boys finish earlier, did the park fill up with mothers, foreign babysitters, and lots of children.
Each of them had a bag of challah left over from Shabbat. The children quickly threw small pieces of challah at the ducks, enjoying watching them feed themselves with the bread. This was despite the fact that there were always warning signs not to feed the ducks.
Until one day, the Stamford Hill Neighborhood Council decided to reach out to Israelis and Jews in their own language. Signs in Yiddish (at a high level) and Hebrew were hung around the lake for mothers who came to spend the day with their children. The signs asked visitors to only feed the ducks bird food and seeds.
Signs in English warning against feeding with bread - didn't help. We'll wait and see if changing the language will help.
What is certain is that the State of Israel can learn how to address each citizen, in their own language.
