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Oral history recording with Ben Soffa collected as part of The Hineni Project, an insight into the life and stories of a Jewish community in all its diversity. Hineni was a collaborative project between Cardiff Reform Synagogue and Butetown History & Arts Centre.

I was born in Cardiff in 1982. I’ve got one sister, Vicky, who’s a couple of years younger than me. I went to a small primary school, St David’s Church of Wales. For some time I think I was probably the only Jewish child there but there was a small group of other people who were not Christian, so when there would be various churchy bits of assembly, we’d sit out separately. I definitely had a Jewish upbringing. We went to synagogue regularly on Friday nights or Saturday mornings, and I went to the Sunday school, which my mum led for a number of years. Whilst there were some children’s events like the cheder plays, some of which my grandmother organised, there wasn’t a huge amount of a social life for young people in the synagogue in any kind of formal, organised way. But growing up being able to mix with lots of different sorts of people was fascinating. I went to university in Liverpool and studied genetics, and then had a bit of a winding career path to where I am now. In 2006, I got a job in London working as the press officer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and now I’m a journalist, editing a trade union members’ magazine and managing their website. I’m a member of the Labour Party and quite active in all sorts of campaigning and political areas. There’s definitely a strong Jewish component to my identity as well as a Welsh one. I don’t speak Welsh, but even though my family’s only been in Wales a hundred years, it feels like it’s something of me. Cardiff is a multicultural city and there’s a total acceptance that you can be Jewish and it’s just part of the mix. Being in London, there’s a lot I miss about Cardiff – for example being able to see the hills and be out in them in fifteen minutes – having grown up there, there’s all sorts of attractions from that familiarity. So if work took me to Cardiff, I’d be very happy, but I’m not seeking out opportunities to go back just because it’s home. I go back to Cardiff about six times a year and some of that is for festivals, which will often involve going to shul. There’s a lot about that community I miss: the enjoyment of everything being the same for the most part, and being able to catch up with people who I’ve known for thirty years, some who are now in their eighties and nineties. It’s familiar places and music and faces, and that’s a very nice thing in and of itself. In Judaism there’s the cultural heritage: the music or stories or theatre, which I enjoy and feel is part of me and how I relate to the world. And then there is the religious element, though it’s perhaps not the most important element within my Jewish identity. It’s probably more about a more cultural- and community-based identity than a strictly religious one. Reform Judaism is definitely within the spectrum where I’m most happy, both in terms of its view of religion and acceptance and human equality. I think Judaism is an ethical code, and while it’s not the complete way that defines how I behave, I think it’s a big part of how I see things like injustices, and that feeds into a fair amount of what I do, even if it’s in an indirect kind of way. I guess I’m someone who’s quite interested in the world around them and constantly seeking out ideas, and trying to leave the world a better place than when I arrived.