Jews in the United Kingdom
Though the statements as to the presence of Jews in Roman and Saxon England are more or less legendary, it is tolerably certain that William I brought a number of Jews with him from Rouen to England. Under the Normans, the Jews enjoyed some privileges; they developed a communal life of culture and distinction; but they were practically restricted to financial pursuits as a means of livelihood.
The Norman conquest of 1066 heralded the arrival of Jewish communities in England. Jewish financiers from Rouen soon arrived at William I’s invitation. Leading Jewish figures, like Josce of Gloucester or Aaron of Lincoln, were key funders of English kings and their policies in the 12th century. By the 13th century communities had been established in London and other major centres such as York, Leicester, Norwich, Winchester, Gloucester and Oxford.
Jewish individuals and families are usually identifiable because they have typically Jewish names but, of course, this is not an exact science. Many surnames widely perceived to be Jewish are, more accurately, German or Eastern European, or in the case of Sephardic Jewish families, Spanish or Portuguese. So surnames may not be uniquely Jewish, and many Jewish immigrants who came to the UK anglicised their surnames or simply changed them. Jewish forenames are typically from the Old Testament, but again were not unique to Jewish people, and many such names were also favoured by some English and Welsh nonconformists, for example.
Henry I granted them a charter, but at the coronation of Richard I serious massacres occurred in London and elsewhere, especially at York, where the ordeal of martyrdom was heroically endured. The "Exchequer of the Jews" was then founded to preserve the Jews from some of the effects of such riots and to enable the Crown, as chief partner in the Jewish money-lending business, to secure its share of the gains.
The close connection to the Crown led to a flourishing of Jewish businesses built on trade in goods, property, finance and commercial loans. The perceived wealth of the Jewish community was reflected in the heavy taxes – tallages – imposed on Jews by all monarchs. They paid particularly heavily towards the ransom of King Richard I in 1194. Richard I set up the Exchequer of the Jews to administer the collection of taxes, and to register loans and other financial dealings. It was also a legal body, settling disputes between Jews and handling the suits of Jews with Christians.
The early 13th century brought stronger restrictions on Jewish communities. Henry III followed other rulers throughout Europe in limiting the building of synagogues and concentrating segregated Jewish communities in larger towns and cities. Defamatory cartoons and sketches found in 13th century records indicate that medieval Jews endured constant prejudice despite being under the king’s protection.
Anti-semitic pressure on Jews included allegations that they kidnapped Christian children for forced conversion or even murder in mysterious rituals. Accusations of kidnapping, mutilation and ritual murder by Jews, many of them baseless or explained away, begin to appear more frequently in the king’s courts from this part of Henry III’s reign.
Though protected by the Crown, statutes of Jewry in 1253 and 1275 regulated the Jewish community stringently. The 1275 Act sought to end Jewish rights to loan money at interest and though open trading between Jews and Christians was encouraged, restrictions on residence and the Crown’s close control effectively ended the legitimate ways for Jewish business to survive.
By the middle of the 13th century the Jews were chattels of the king, and their unpopularity on religious grounds was increased by the power they gave the king to obtain a revenue indenendently of barons and people. In 1275 the Statutum de Iudaismo forbade the Jews to lend money, and as there was no other function for them in feudal England, their expulsion followed as a matter of course in 1290.
Emigration left a Jewish population of c.3000 by the 1280s. With a significant fall in royal tax income from Jewish communities, Edward I no longer saw them as a valued resource for the Crown. The related hostility of the Christian church whipped up popular discontent and the expulsion of Jewish communities by other European rulers was among the final elements in convincing the king to expel the Jews from England.
In 1287, King Edward ordered all Jews to leave his French lands in Gascony. In July 1290 it was proclaimed that all Jews were to have left England by 1 November that year. They could take personal goods but their lands, rents, debts and property were taken by the Crown. After the expulsion, though no practicing Jews lived in England, a small number who chose to convert remained. Having forfeited all their possessions at the expulsion, they lived at the Crown’s expense in the Domus Conversorum on Chancery Lane in central London. The last Jewish person born in England before the expulsion, Clarice of Exeter, died in the Domus in 1356.
For the next three and one-half centuries a few Jews visited England from time to time; Queen Elizabeth had a Jewish physician. Toward the middle of the 17th century a number of Marano merchants came to the front in English colonies and in England itself. These men, who had escaped the Spanish Inquisition by assuming an outward garb of Roman Catholicism, now boldly asserted themselves as Jews.
Although after 1492, when the Jews and Muslims were expelled from the Spanish kingdoms, Marrano (Portuguese-Spanish) Jews and New Christians (Jews who had accepted Christianity), sought homes in northern Europe, including in England, they were not free to practice as Jews. The official re-establishment of a Jewish presence in England was made possible in the years following the English Civil War (a period known now as the Interregnum), by the religious tolerance of Oliver Cromwell’s government. There was also lots of interest in Hebrew scholarship of the Old Testament during the Interregnum and various conferences were proposed to address the petition of the Marrano Jews to settle in England. The numbers of refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal rose during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the 16th century the presence of the small Jewish community in London caused the king’s council to investigate those suspected of being practising Jews. Records of the Privy Council and in State Papers Domestic of the Tudor governments show orders to investigate individuals and provide evidence that the Jewish religion had to be practiced in great secrecy.
Anti-Jewish petitioners rehearsed the old claims that the Jews had damaged English society, undermined trade and harmed the Christian faith, with demands for heavy Jewish taxation and a licencing system for residency. Yet the king was very aware of the value of Jewish trade and the wealth that had flowed into London and the colonies during the Interregnum as a result. There is evidence of royal policy to protect Jewish traders in London who had expressed fears of threats to their livelihoods and lives.
In 1655 Cromwell, as a result of the Whitehall Conference of that vear, connived at the open resettlement of a Jewish community in England. Reactionary attitudes to the greater religious tolerance exercised by the Interregnum government were given greater voice with the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, which brought with it an expectation that Jews would be expelled from England once again.
Two centuries more were to pass before the English Jews obtained full civil and political emancipation. In 1753, Pelham prematurely passed a naturalization bill, which he was forced to repeal next year. The struggle recommenced in 1830. In the years 1828-9 Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics were relieved of most of their disabilities. But the Jews were still excluded from Parliament, from membership of the University of Oxford, and from degrees and posts of emolument in the University of Cambridge. Nor could they occupy high posts in the army or navy. Political emancipation was won in 1858. In 1870, following on the senior wranglership of a Jew, the University Tests Act conferred full scholastic rights on the English Jews. In 1858 Baron Lionel de Rothschild took his seat as a Member of the House of Commons, and in 1885, his son, Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild was raised to the peerage - the first Jew so distinguished. Since 1858, many English Jews sat in Parliament; there was a Jewish Master of the Rolls; and in the Civil, Military and Diplomatic services a goodly array of Jews has become prominent.
In 1290 the number of Jews who left England possibly amounted to 16,000. At the Restoration of Charles II. there were about 40 Jewish families in London. The increase was slow in the 17th century, but toward the end of the 18th century there was a larger immigration. Colquhoun estimated the Jewish population of London as 20,000 at the beginning of the 19th century, which would bring the total for the British Isles to about 25,000. This estimate is probably too high, for it is doubtful whether there were more than 60,000 Jews in the country before the Russian immigration of 1881. Mr. Jacobs calculated that in 1901 there were nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the British Empire, of which number 160,000 were in the British Isles. Mr. Isidore Harris conjectured ('Jewish Year Book,' X, 229) that in 1905 the total Jewish population of the United Kingdom amounted to 227,000 (of whom 140,000 were resident in London) ; and for the whole of the British Empire he assigned a total of 350,000. For the United Kingdom, this estimate makes the Jewish population 5 per cent, of the total population. All these estimates are conjectural.
Since the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine in the first centuries of the Christian era, the organization of Jewish communities has been almost invariably on an independent congregational basis. Each congregation in the mediaeval period constituted an independent unit. Sometimes there would be ft combination of these units for certain purposes, as in the famous Council of Four Lands in Poland (c. 1550-1750). In the pre-expulsion period in England, there were officials who bore the title "Presbyter Judsorum" and who were the acknowledged leaders of the whole Anglo-Jewish community. Such officials were closely connected with the royal finances in so far as they affected the Jews, and were more or less responsible for assessments of talliages.
When the Jewish community was re-established in the I7th century, the old congregational system was restored. There was first the Sephardim or "Spanish and Portuguese" Congregation which for long took the first place in the guidance of the whole Jewish life of London. Founded by a body of men distinguished alike fo culture and commercial capacity, this congregation gave to English public life many a noble son. They bore a considerable part in developing Colonial trade. This congregation, whose present Bevis Marks Synagogue was consecrated in 1701, was governed by a Mahamad or Council of Elders with an ecclesiastical head or Haham. The Mahamad claimed and exercised considerable power over all the individual members.
The increasing economic contributions and political influence of Jewish merchants in the 18th century which led to the so-called ‘Jew Bill’ of 1753, providing a route to naturalisation for Jewish settlers in England. The new law provoked anti-Semitic unrest in the country, much of which was stirred by religious and trading groups. The threat of violence became so great that it was considered necessary to introduce a new bill to repeal the act.
Gradually the leadership passed into the hands of the Ashkenazim or "German" Jews. At first each German congregation was completely independent, and this condition continued with more or less completeness till 1870 when the United Synagogue was founded. A large number of Metropolitan Jewish congregations were constituents of this united body, but the Sephardim maintained their complete independence, and besides a few German congregations of old foundation which remained outside the Union, there was established in 1841 a West London Synagogue of British Jews which introduced some ritual reforms and placed itself in an independent position. The increase of foreign Jews led to the formation, especially since 1880, of a considerable number of smaller East End congregations outside the Metropolitan Union. These were "federated" in 1887.
The Chief Rabbi was the official head of the great bulk of the congregations of the British Empire, but except for statutory powers conferred over the constituent Synagogues of the United Synagogue by the Act of 1870, the influence of the Chief Rabbi depended on the voluntary acceptance of his jurisdiction by the various congregations. As to the rest of the communal organization, it did not differ from that found in other Jewish centres all the world over. The distinctive mark of Anglo-Jewish arrangements was perhaps the tendency to centralization. In Germany and in America there were Rabbis for every separate congregation ; in England there are "Ministers" who would preach and teach rather than Rabbis who exercise judicial functions.
Cromwell re-admitted ttie Jews unconditionally, and though the acquisition of political rights was a slow process, the English Jews were never subjected to restrictions of the Ghetto type. On the other hand, the fact that emancipation in England was gradual and not sudden gave the English Jews a training in civic adaptability which had rather exceptional consequences. The Jew easily assimilated, but in England assimilation was not accompanied with any wide-felt desire to forsake Judaism. The English Jews who had taken the lead in serving the state had been on the whole been identical with the English Jews who had served the synagogue. The Disraeli family was an exception that proved the rule. But while English Judaism thus gained in coherence and stability by the fact that the leadership of the community was in the hands of its chief men of affairs, the communal life suffered some loss of idealism.
English Jews, indeed, had consistently taken the lead in dealing with crises in the fate of the Jews of the world, but on the whole, communal life was respectable rather than brilliant. The institutions which resulted were, however, striking examples of practical philanthropy. The Board of Guardians for the relief of the Jewish poor (founded in 1859) occupied a high place among institutions of its class. It not only prevented the Jewish poor from falling on the rates, but it took an enlightened view of the aims of poorrelief, fostering self-help by a carefully organized system of loans and emigration.
The whole communal life was vivified. In the first place, the presence of these Jews for the first time made evident a passing wave of anti-Semitism which culminated in the futile Alien Bill. Anti-Semitism had no deep roots in England, but the anti-Alien agitation did undoubtedly rouse the Jews of England to a sense of their responsibilities.
In Britain, modern antisemitism, that is, the perception of Jews as a ‘race’ as well as the employment of pictures of the Jew in social and political debates, developed around the same time as did its French and German counterparts, in the second half of the 19th century. Concentrating on the years between the South African War and the conclusion of the Great War, this essay explores the functional character of antisemitism and the discursive context of negative images of the Jew. In Britain, too, Jews were identified as a negative ferment within the nation, and they figured largely as an agent of representative government. In addition, Jews were continuously used as a negative foil for the definition of what was ‘English’ or ‘British’. However, unlike their continental counterparts, British anti-Semites did not question Jewish emancipation and even distanced themselves from ‘antisemitism’ at a time when elsewhere in Europe, being an ‘antisemite’ was a positive social and political stance.
Again, the Zionist and Territorial schemes introduced some of the previously lacking idealism. The Anglo-Jewish Association (founded 1871) had, under the enlightened presidency of Mr.C.G.Montefiore, had its horizon widened partly by the Hirsch Colonization Scheme which was directed in part by the Anglo-Jewish Association, and partly by the revived interest felt in the Jews of the world in consequence of the propaganda of Dr. Herzl and Mr. Zangwill. The Russian persecutions had considerable influence in the same direction.
Anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in the 1880s drove Jewish communities west and thousands of Jewish people from these communities came to the UK to settle or to move on to America. People born outside the country and who did not have British parents were classed as ‘aliens’. If immigrants came to Britain from the British colonies they were not classed as aliens but were simply Britons. The government established an Aliens Office in the 19th century and various Aliens Acts were passed.
Tens of thousands of Jews who escaped Nazi persecution in the 1930s and settled in the UK were assessed for internment at the start of the Second World War as they held German or Austrian citizenship. Many were imprisoned in internment camps along with Italian Jews in 1940. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s came to Britain, either temporarily, en-route to the United States and elsewhere, or to settle permanently. They included thousands of Jewish children from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories known as Kindertransport children, who were given homes in the United Kingdom just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms.
Among the tens of thousands of Jewish soldiers who served in the British military in the First World War were those of the Jewish Legion, Britain’s first all-Jewish regiment, which fought in Palestine. Another Jewish unit, the Jewish Labour Corps, formed in 1915 in Egypt, served in Gallipoli. In the Second World War, the Jewish Brigade, formed in 1944, fought under the command of the British Army and served in the Italian Campaign.
By the end of the 20th century there were over 250,000 Jewish people living in the United Kingdom. The most significant period of Jewish migration to the UK was not, as might be expected, during or just before the Second World War but between 1870 and 1914 when, it is estimated, some 200,000 Jewish immigrants arrived, mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe.
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