Photographer Jeremy Freedman got a bit short of breath while raising �11,000 to help restore a synagogue in London’s East End.

He was 19,000 feet up Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest peak, where the air is so thin you start seeing things in black and white.

The founder of Friends of Sandys Row Synagogue in Spitalfields has just returned after his epic sponsored mountain climb which tested his strength to the limits.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” he told the Advertiser this week. “It took eight days to get to the summit— I was physically drained.

“The thin air affected me badly. I was seeing black and white and having headaches for the first time in my life.”

Jeremy had to drink a lot of water on the climb, but admits to a tot of whisky when he got to the summit to celebrate L’Chaim—to life!

The Sandys Row synagogue recently had to replace the roof of the former Huguenot building which surveyors discovered had shifted off the rafters and was resting on the plaster ceiling after the 18th-century building was shaken by the Blitz 70 years ago.

Now the congregation is starting a �1 million fundraising project looking into the synagogue’s future as a possible cultural and heritage centre in addition to a house of worship.