Celebrating 350 Years of Jewish Life in Britain

When Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell reversed Britain’s almost 400-year old ban on Jews in 1656, he lay the foundation for a well-integrated Jewish community that would find success in many fields and that would project British values of freedom and justice as it aided oppressed Jewish communities elsewhere. The self-confident and successful British Jew became a powerful symbol to Jews in Eastern Europe in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Because of its acceptance of Jews, Britain became a magnet for Jews from the continent and particularly Eastern Europe and Russia. Of course, Britain was not free of anti-Semitism, which was always present at some level, and which intensified during times of economic downturns or social upheaval. At times, real or perceived anti-Semitism muted British Jews from aiding their coreligionists abroad.

Britain continues to enjoy a vibrant Jewish life, with the second-largest Jewish community in Europe. Only France has a larger community. On the occasion of the 350th anniversary, British politicians have lauded Jews for the contributions they have made to the nation.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair penned an article in the Jerusalem Post’s 29 September-5 October 2006 edition titled “My hope for the Jewish New Year.” He wrote, “It is impossible to imagine modem Britain without its Jewish community. But for almost four centuries, Jews were forbidden to worship in Britain, even in private. All that changed with Cromwell’s decision in 1656. Since then, arts, sciences, commerce, politics, the world of learning and thought, have all been illuminated by the names of distinguished Jews who have made their mark, added to the store of knowledge and helped to make the United Kingdom a better place.”

Blair cited a poem written by a primary school student that was presented to him in June when he attended the thanksgiving service at the Bevis Marks synagogue. The poem read: “Am I Jewish or English? This keeps me in confusion / I’m both you see, that’s my final conclusion / Judaism is my religion; I make it so, clearly / I adore England, I love it so dearly.”

On 14 June 2006, Britain’s House of Commons commemorated the anniversary with a number of Members of Parliament praising Jewish contributions to the nation. Dan Rogerson, a Member of Parliament from Cornwall, stated “The Jewish community’s resilience and determination to practice its faith reminds me of the Catholic tradition in which I grew up” because of its role as a minority that helped pave the way for other minorities. “The Jewish community has contributed famously to the worlds of business, science, and the arts, and, as we have heard, to sport and to the military.”

Before Cromwell Jews did not arrive in Britain only in 1656, but formed a community there almost 1000 years ago. Jewish merchants who moved to Britain from France after the Norman Conquest formed a prosperous community in the late eleventh century. Jews occupied prominent positions in British society as merchants and moneylenders performing a useful economic function, above all as a source of revenue for the king. However, “when the Jews’ wealth declined dramatically in the second half of the thirteenth century as a result of new restrictions on moneylending and exorbitant royal imposts, they lost their fiscal utility,” writes Todd M. Endelman in “The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000.” This phenomenon, coupled with growing religious hostility, led to their expulsion by Edward I in 1290.

The religious hostility slowly grew as a new phenomenon emerged in the relations between Christians and Jews — the levelling of false charges. There were two main libels whose effects were to increase the number of Jewish victims. These were the blood libel and the libel of desecrating the host. Historian H.H. Ben-Sasson notes that, “The explanation and logic of those who believed the accusations were that once the Jews had crucified Jesus, they thirsted for pure innocent blood. Since the formerly incarnate God was now in heaven, the Jews aspired to the blood of the most innocent of believers, i.e. the children, the tender Christians. As a result of this reasoning, the season of the most libels or charges of ritual murder was that of Passover, which was close in time to the Passion of Christ.” Desecration of the Host is the medieval supersititon that Jews stole the consecrated Communion wafers from churches and desecrated them with knives, in a re-enactment of the Crucifixion.

Ominous Incident In 1144, there occurred an ominous incident in Norwich in East Anglia, then the richest and most populous area in England. Described in detail by V.D. Lipman in “The Jews of Medieval Norwich” (London, 1967), on March 20, 1114, shortly before Easter and Passover, a boy called William, son of a substantial farmer and apprenticed to a skinner, disappeared. He was last seen going into a Jew’s house. Two days later, his body was found east of the city “dressed in his jacket and shoes with his head shaved and punctured with countless stabs.” Our knowledge of details comes largely from “The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich,” compiled by Thomas of Monmouth, a monk of Norwich Priory, shortly afterwards. According to Thomas, the boy’s mother and a local priest accused the Norwich Jews of murder, saying the crime was a re-enactment of Christ’s passion.

Initially, local church authorities were hostile to the story. But two years later a monk who favored the cult which grew up around this charge was appointed Bishop of Norwich and his formal election in the priory was made the occasion of anti-Jewish demonstrations. That same year, Eleazir, a local Jewish money-lender was murdered by the servants of one Sir Simon de Nover, who owed him money. Slowly, the legend expanded. Theobold of Cambridge, a convert from Judaism, said the murder of William came about because a congress of Jews in Spain picked by lot, every year, the town where the ritual murder must take place and that in 1144 Norwich was chosen. Accusations of ritual murder now tended to be made whenever a child was killed in suspicious circumstances near a settlement of Jews — at Gloucester in 1168, Bury St. Edmunds in 1181 and Bristol in 1183. In 1255 the Jews of Lincoln were accused of having crucified a Christian boy after having taken him down from the cross, of having removed his intestines, apparently for purposes of witchcraft.

“Canterbury Tales” The image can be found in “The Canterbury Tales,” written by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who was born in 1340, fifty years after the expulsion of the Jews from England. Chaucer completed the work in about 1387, almost a century after the Jews had been expelled. The “Prioress’ Tale” tells of an innocent child, the son of a widow, who was walking through the street of the Jews singing songs in praise of Mary, mother of Jesus. The Jews seized and murdered him. The crime was miraculously revealed, and the whole community of Jews was put to death.

The preaching of a new Crusade always heightened anti-Semitic sentiment. The Third Crusade, launched 1189-90, in which England figured largely because Richard the Lionheart led it, whipped. up mob fury, already aroused by the ritual murder charges. A deputation of wealthy Jews attending Richard’s coronation in 1189 was attacked by the crowd, followed by an assault on London’s Jewish community. With the approach of Easter the next year, anti-Jewish violence broke out, the most serious being at York, where the Jewish community was massacred, despite taking refuge in the castle. One chronicler, Ralph de Diceto in “Imagines Historiarum” (quoted in Lipman) reports of events in Norwich: “Many of those who were hastening to go to Jerusalem determined first to rise against the Jews ... So on 6 February all the Jews who were found in their own houses in Norwich were slaughtered ...”

It became steadily more difficult for Jews to earn a living. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, tried to organize a boycott of Jewish business. The Jews were in economic decline throughout the 13th century. Aaron of York, who told the chronicler Matthew Paris he had paid the King over 30,000 marks, died impoverished in 1268.

Decline Accelerated Under Edward I, the decline accelerated. The Jews’ role as lenders to the great had been taken over by the Knights Templar of Jerusalem and their European commanders. The Jews were pushed into small- scale lending, coin-changing and pawnbroking. In 1275, Edward passed an anti-Jewish statute making usury illegal. This was later linked to blasphemy, a more serious offense. In 1278, groups of Jews were arrested around the country. Many were taken to the Tower of London. One chronicler says 300 were hanged. Their property went to the Crown. In 1290, alleging widespread evasion of the law against usury, the Jews were expelled from England and the King took all of their assets.

At the time of the expulsion the community numbered 2000, already a significant decline from the 4000 to 5000 Jews who lived in Britain in the middle of the century. Jews had found Britain uncomfortable because of arbitrary arrests, exorbitant taxes and pressure to convert. The majority of the exiles settled in France where they quickly assimilated with the Jewish community there.

The Jewish newspaper The Forward reported that although Jews were formally barred from England from 1290 until Oliver Cromwell removed the ban in 1656, many continued to live there, even in prominent positions. In October 6, 2006, Raphael Mostel outlined the new research in an article titled “Jews in the Court” in The Forward. This research “has revealed that not only were there Jews in Britain; they were right under the royal noses. ... And we’re not talking just a few, but, rather, it seems, the majority of the court musicians of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were of Jewish heritage.”

Roger Prior, a Shakespearian scholar, who conducted much of the research, wrote “The evidence suggests that at least until 1600, and probably beyond, all these musical families thought of themselves as Jewish, but they varied in their determination and desire to hold on to that identity.” These musicians were identified as “Italian” rather than Jews. Prior explains why Jews were welcomed to England in this role: “It was doubtless realized at an early stage that Jews would make more reliable servants precisely because they owed loyalty neither to the Pope nor to Luther.” Jews were attracted to these positions despite having to hide their religion because they offered wealth and an opportunity to work as musicians.

Small numbers of Jews also continued to live in or visit Britain working in other professions, primarily as physicians and merchants. One notable example is that of Elias Sabot, a Jewish doctor from Bologna who traveled to Britain after being summoned to treat Henry IV.

The Return of Jews to Britain Cromwell had pragmatic reasons for the readmission of Jews to Britain, including their utility in mercantile and military affairs. He probably saw it as an opportunity to attract some Jewish capital and ingenuity away from Britain’s chief rival, Holland. He also had already been receiving political intelligence from recently-converted Jews in Britain, including a man named Carvajal, a major army contractor. As word spread that Britain’s stance toward Jews may have been softening, the famous Sephardic rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel, began to actively push for Jewish readmission. Raised and educated in Amsterdam, Menasseh was born into a family of “New Christians,” Jews who had publicly converted to Roman Catholicism during the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, but privately maintained their Jewish faith.

Menasseh traveled to London with a pamphlet titled “The Humble Addresses” in which he argued for Jewish readmission to England. Menasseh defended the role of the Jews, refuting slanders against them and emphasizing their commercial and political utility. He presented this document to the English government’s Council of State, and afterward a majority favored resettlement, with some restrictions. Still, there were some opponents, most prominently merchants who feared competition and the clergy for traditional anti-Jewish arguments.

The resettlement of the Jews in England really began in Amsterdam. Here various messianic hopes and tidings along with the religious convictions of the more radical Protestant and Puritan sects in England helped bring about the resettlement. Economic considerations carried considerable weight. Attention was drawn by those who supported Jewish resettlement to the success of Amsterdam and The Netherlands in general after the reception of the Marranos and Jews there, after their expulsion from Spain in 1942. Many in England envied the economic success of The Netherlands and these facts served to demonstrate that the return of the Jews would promote English trade and commerce.

Menasseh ben Israel informed his English readers, “Hence it may be seen that God hath not left us; for if one persecutes us another receives us civilly and courteously, and if this prince treats us ill, another treats us well; if one banisheth us out of his country another invites us with a thousand privileges; as divers princes of Italy have done, the most eminent King of Denmark and the mighty Duke of Savey in Nissa. And doe we not see that those Republiques doe flourish and much increase in trade who admit the Israelites?” (“The Hope of Israel,” London, 1652, Sec. 33, in L. Wolf ed., “Menasseh Ben Israel’s Mission To Oliver Cromwell,” London, 1901).

Not Only Economic Factors Economic considerations were not the only factor. Many theological ideas and religious emotions combined to produce favorable public opinion. Among the radical Puritan sects of Cromwell’s time, there were some who regarded the Civil War and the distress of England as punishment for the expulsion of the Jews and these proposed that Jews be allowed to return to alleviate consequences. Menasseh Ben Israel and some of his Christian sympathizers in England expressed the view that the remains of the Ten Tribes of Israel were to be found in the New World. According to this eschatology, the coming of the Messiah was delayed by the fact that Jews were not to be found at the “end of the earth,” as the Norman name of England, Angleterre, was interpreted by them.

In addition, there was an increasing trend toward toleration in some radical circles. In 1644, the New England religious leader Roger Williams, who would go on to establish the colony of Rhode Island on pioneering principles of religious freedom, had published a work in opposition to religious persecution and in favor of tolerance, in which he expressly demanded that the Jews be permitted to display their capacity for good citizenship by granting them equal rights even though they rejected Christianity. In even more extreme groups such as the Puritan sect known as the “Fifth Monarchymen” it was suggested that the Jews should even be helped to redeem the Land of Israel.

There were many conservative groups opposed to the readmission of Jews. These opponents ultimately had some influence on the debate, writes Endelman, “Having encountered greater opposition than he initially expected, Cromwell avoided making any public statement about readmission or taking any official action in the months following the conference. Indeed, neither he nor the monarchs who followed him ever voided the expulsion order of 1290 or issued a formal invitation to Jews to return. In this sense, Menasseh’s mission was a failure. Yet Jewish resettlement went ahead, but in an unexpected and indirect way that in the end provoked less hostility.”

Advantageous for Jews The fact that opposition prevented public promulgation of the decision proved to be advantageous for the Jews. Initially, Cromwell wanted to readmit them subject to various restrictions, but as the official resolution never became law, Jews who were already in England continued to live there after the Restoration of the Monarchy without being restricted by public legislation.

On December 4, 1655, a conference was held in Whitehall attended by 25 lawyers, including the Chief Justice, Sr. John Glynne, and the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, William Steele. They announced that there was no law which prevented Jews coming to England. Edward’s 1290 expulsion was an act of royal prerogative which affected only the individuals concerned. Thus, the matter was solved pragmatically without a specific treaty. Some 20 Marrano families, Sephardic Jews who had been practicing their faith secretly, openly confessed their Judaism in March 1656, declaring themselves refugees from the Spanish Inquisition.

English Jews became full citizens, subject to no more disabilities than those inherent in their own unwillingness, like Catholics and non-conformists, to belong to the Church of England, or, in their particular case, to swear Christian oaths.

Rights Are Established Over the next generation, various judicial rulings established the right of Jews to plead and give evidence in the courts. Like other non-Anglicans, they were barred from many offices and from parliament. But there were no legal restraints on their economic activities. In 1732 a judgment gave Jews, in effect, legal protection against generic libels which might endanger life. It seems that almost by accident, England became the first place in Europe in which a modern Jewish community began to emerge.

When Menasseh arrived in London there were about 20 families of New Christians already living there. However, he had little contact with this group and did not represent them in meetings with Cromwell. The New Christians were content to continue living as they had been and were not eager for Britain to become the home of many Jewish refugees.

When England went to war with Spain in 1655, many New Christians abandoned the pretense that they were Spanish Catholics and instead declared themselves to be Jewish refugees to avoid the possible confiscation of their property. As a result, an avowedly Jewish community emerged. In December 1656, the Jewish community rented a house to use as a synagogue and the following year acquired land for a cemetery. Still, there was no influx of Jewish refugees and thus the Jewish presence in Britain did not stir significant protests. However, because of the opposition from merchants and clergymen, Cromwell avoided setting out a specific charter governing Jewish rights and limitations. As a result, when Jews pursued equal political rights later on, they did not have to overturn an established code.

The New Community The new Jewish community in Britain grew rather slowly, with initial arrivals coming from Holland, Dutch and English colonies in the Caribbean, as well as Portuguese and Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert during the Inquisition. By the end of the 17th century, the community still only numbered in the hundreds. Jews worked in lucrative career fields, including as brokers, jewelers, and merchants, but there was also a group of chronically impoverished Jews. This group was large enough that one-third of the synagogue’s funds were devoted to poor relief.

At a time when Jews faced social and legal exclusion in much of Europe, their lot in Britain was comparatively very good. Endelman writes, “There is no question that the Jews’ position in England at the end of the seventeenth century was superior to that of Jews in other European states — in large part ... because the state ignored their presence most of the time and left their legal status ill-defined. Yet it would be incorrect to infer from this that the Jews of England no longer encountered the old vulgar prejudices or were accepted as members of the English nation, differing only from their Christian neighbors by virtue of their religion. The Sephardim of England, like Jews everywhere in early modem Europe, continued to be seen as a distinct national group, with their own peculiar cultural habits, mental outlook, religious customs, historical memories, and future hopes for national redemption.”

During the 17th century, the Jewish community in Britain lived almost exclusively in London and was made up of Sephardim. In the 18th century, thousands of Ashkenazi Jews from Holland, Poland, and the German states made their way to Britain. Ashkenazi Jews founded their own institutions and quickly outnumbered the Sephardim, although the Sephardim continued to dominate in terms of wealth and influence. By the end of the eighteenth century, London boasted one of the largest urban Jewish communities in Europe, and Jews had begun to breathe life into Jewish communities in a dozen provincial towns. It was in 1748 that the grandfather of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), who was Sephardic, emigrated to Britain from Cento, near Ferrara in Italy. In the Britain of the 19th century, Disraeli was to play a leading role as Queen Victoria’s favorite of the eleven prime ministers who served her, the one who put the jewel — India — in her crown.

Avenue to Success Many Jews saw commerce as their avenue to success, and Jews became identified with certain trades, including the sale of oranges, lemons, glasses, costume jewelry, lead pencils, and other items. Just as in America, Jews often started their commercial enterprises as itinerant peddlers going from town to town. Above all other trade, Jews were most closely identified with the sale of old clothes.

Jews were also well-represented in some trades, most commonly as makers of pencils, pens, and quills. Endelman writes, “While German guilds excluded Jews from membership and thus prevented the growth of an artisanal class within Central European Jewry, the skills represented here either fell outside the pale of guild supervision or were linked to the purchase and repair of secondhand goods, a Jewish specialty everywhere in pre-Revolutionary Europe. This group of artisans, along with shopkeepers and other merchants, became the backbone of Anglo-Jewish institutional life. They constituted the majority of regular synagogue worshippers and members of hevrot (societies) devoted to traditional learning and practice. They were also the founders of Jewish friendly societies, which, aside from providing the usual death and sickness benefits, offered a range of religious services.”

At the end of the 18th Century, about 20 British towns had small Jewish communities. The largest of these was in Portsmouth, which by 1800 had about 50 Jewish families. Jews generally did not venture outside of the south and east of the country. For example a city as large as Manchester had no Jewish settlement to speak of as late as the end of the 18th Century. Despite the relatively small dispersal of Jews, they were still well-known figures outside of London due to their travel as itinerant peddlers.

Adopting English Habits As time went by, Jews in both the upper and lower classes increasingly began adopting English habits. Endelman writes, “Economic success brought in its wake familiarity with upper-class living standards and social habits and kindled an interest in emulating them. Jews who had made their fortunes in the City began to adopt the habits, values, tastes, and outlook of the upper class. They copied their mode of dress, personal adornment, and home decoration, adopted their manners, pursued their recreations. They attended the theater and the opera, gossiped and played cards in coffee houses, collected paintings and had their portraits painted, hosted lavish parties and entertainments, patronized musicians and singers, took the waters at fashionable spas, ... acquired homes and even extensive estates in the countryside. The purchase of country homes and the subsequent pursuit of rural pleasures, such as hunting and racing, are potent symbols of this process of acculturation. In the first quarter of the [18th] century wealthy Sephardim with their primary residence in London started to purchase or rent homes in nearby villages or the surrounding countryside to which they could retreat on weekends or in the summer.”

Jewish poor in Britain also adopted the habits of their Christian counterparts, creating distinctive characteristics of popular Anglo-Jewish culture. Endelman writes, “They embraced, not the standards of upper-class gentility, but rather the rough and tumble ways of their impoverished gentile neighbors, with whom they lived in close proximity, frequently sharing the same buildings and rooming houses. They abandoned the traditional Jewish garb of Central and Eastern Europe, eventually acquiring a reputation for flashy attire. They were often quarrelsome, undisciplined, riotous, violent, and hostile to authority. They routinely employed physical force to settle scores, defend themselves, and protest verbal slights. The most striking example of their acculturation was the passion they developed for prizefighting, both as spectators and participants. From the 1760s through the 1820s, several dozen Jews achieved fame in the boxing ring, including the greatest fighter of the period Daniel Mendoza (1763-1836), whom early historians of the sport credited with introducing a more ‘scientific’ form of boxing, one emphasizing finesse and agility over brute strength. When Jewish boxers fought, friends and coreligionists flocked to the ring, and matches became rallying points for ethnic assertiveness, as well as opportunities for heavy wagering. When Mendoza fought, for example, he was always billed ‘Mendoza the Jew.’”

Jews in Britain were immigrants who had already broken the rigid structure back home by choosing to emigrate. When they arrived in Britain, they were not restricted by mandatory communally bodies or synagogue attendance. The Jewish community did not close them in, and the British community did not lock them out, giving them extensive opportunities for interaction on all rungs of the social ladder.

The Jew Bill English-born Jews were citizens, a status that Jews in many other parts of Europe did not enjoy. However, they still faced legal disabilities owing to the fact that they were not members of the Church of England. Along with Catholics, Protestant Dissenters, and others who were not members of the Church of England, Jews were unable to serve in Parliament, vote in parliamentary elections, hold municipal office, and suffered from several other restrictions. These limits notwithstanding, Jews still enjoyed the ability to engage in any trades they might want to pursue and were not burdened by special taxes.

Jewish merchants, however, continued to be restricted from certain avenues of commerce because they were not members of the Church of England. In 1753, they made an effort to change this through the proposal of the “Jew Bill,” which would eliminate this requirement for foreign born Jews. The merchants’ potential competitors launched a noisy effort to block the bill, in what led to the most expansive debate on the status of Jews in Britain. The debate including anti-Semitic slander, and the tone became quite heated. Ultimately, the backers of the bill became concerned about the ensuing furor and withdrew their support. Jewish status did not change until the next century, although Jews continued to enjoy a status superior in many ways to that of their continental counterparts.

Jewish Emancipation The remaining Jewish disabilities began to increasingly chafe well-integrated Jews in the 19th century. Second- and third-generation British Jews were dismayed by the remaining restrictions because their very existence suggested that Jews were inferior. As more Jews reached the middle class, these disabilities became increasingly intolerable.

Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a leader of the emancipation effort, told Sir Robert Peel in 1845 that the Jews “desired to be placed on an equality in civil privileges with other persons dissenting from the established church not so much on account of the hardship of being excluded from particular stations of trust or honor, as on account of the far greater hardship of having a degrading stigma fastened upon us by the laws of our country.”

The first Jewish emancipation bill was introduced in Parliament in 1830. After initial defeats, the House of Commons passed the bill in 1833, but despite repeated attempts, it was continually defeated in the House of Lords. Opposition primarily came from religious Tories. The repeated elections of Jews who were unable to be seated as well as the bestowal of titles on Goldsmid, Anthony de Rothschild, and Moses Montefiore, made the Tories’ position look anachronistic and intransigent. By 1858, the Conservative Party relented.

Board of Deputies The election of Jews to parliament, the bestowal of knighthoods and baronetcies, as well as the tremendous financial success Jews found in Britain, sent a powerful message to the rest of the world about what Jews could accomplish in a society with few legal barriers, Jews from elsewhere began to look with pride and hope to self-confident English Jewry, most publicly toward the Board of Deputies of English Jews, which represented the Jewish community in its relations with the state.

Sir Moses Montefiore With few breaks, from 1835 to 1874, Sir Moses Montefiore served as President of the Board, which became involved in overseas diplomacy, advocating for repressed Jews abroad. In 1840 at the time of the Damascus blood libel, Montefiore traveled to the Middle East to push for the release of Jews imprisoned in Damascus on the charges of having murdered a priest and his servant to obtain their blood for ritual purposes. This latest resurfacing of the medieval “Blood Libel” became an international diplomatic incident, protested by many European governments as well as the United States.

The mission was successful, and the Jews were released. Montefiore and the Board subsequently led other missions to aid persecuted Jews in Russia, Romania, and Morocco. Although few of these missions were successful, Montefiore was flooded with requests for assistance. Endelman writes, “Perhaps what he symbolized — Western Jewish confidence, wealth, and access to power mobilized in the defense of persecuted Jews — was more important than what he in fact accomplished.”

Confidence in English Society The activism of British Jews in this regard illustrates their confidence in English society: they did not fear that their positions would be endangered by advocating for the interests of their less fortunate co- religionists. They did not fear that they would be accused of being less English.

As the 19th century came to an end, an increased immigration from Eastern Europe would permanently transform the character of the community. The 20th century would bring new challenges, with the rise of Hitler, World War II, the creation of Israel, the growth of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, and the increasing opportunities — and pitfalls — of the modern world.

(A subsequent article will deal with the story of Jewish life in Britain in the modern period.)