The Jewish Community of London

After the Norman conquest of 1066, a few Jews attracted by the economic opportunities came over from the adjacent areas of the continent (duchy of Normandy, including Rouen) and established themselves in London. The earliest recorded mention of the London community dates from the reign of William Rufus (1087-1100), who appears to have favored the Jews to some extent. In 1130, the Jews of London were accused of killing a sick man, possibly some sort of blood libel, and were forced to pay an enormous fine. Intellectual life in the period was sufficiently flourishing to attract a visit from Abraham Ibn Ezra, who wrote his Iggeret Ha-Shabbat and his Yesod Mora in London, in 1158. Anti-Jewish feeling manifested itself in London during the coronation of Richard I (Sept. 3, 1189) and during the reign of John (1199-1216). The baronial opposition, both in his reign and in that of his son Henry III (1216-1272), considered the Jews to be royal financial instruments and maltreated them accordingly. There was a baronial attack on London Jewry in 1215.

Study Center of the YAKAR educational foundation, London, 1983 Beth Hatefutsoth, Visual Documentation Center Courtesy of Rabbi Michael Rosen, UK

A girl studying the Torah, London, 1981 Photo: Rachel Rutman, UK Beth Hatefutsoth, Visual Documentation Center Courtesy of Rachel Rutman, UK

During the period of maladministration under Henry III, the Jews of London with those of the rest of the country, were oppressed. The climax came in 1224, when it was alleged that some gashes found on the body of a dead child constituted Hebrew characters and the Jews were accused of ritual murder. This resulted in a savage punitive levy on the Jews. In 1278 a number of London Jews were included in the 680 from all over the country who were imprisoned in the Tower of London on the charge of clipping the coinage.

Nearly 300 were said to have been hanged. Theological odium against the London Jews had been increasing. In 1232, Henry III confiscated their principal synagogue on the pretext that the chanting could be heard in a neighboring church.

In 1283 the Bishop of London ordered all the synagogues in his diocese to be closed, only one being subsequently reopened. Finally, in 1290, the Jews were expelled from England and the London community ceased to exist. The number of Jews in London in the Middle Ages probably did not exceed 500.

In 1409, after the expulsions from Spain and Portugal, a few Marrano refugees settled in London. At the close of the reign of Henry VIII, the crypto-Jewish community comprised some 37 households. In 1609 the Portuguese merchants living in London, who were suspected of judaizing, were again expelled. Nevertheless, when in 1632 the Marrano community of Rouen was temporarily broken up, some fugitives, the most important being Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, found a home in London. Other Marrano settlers went directly from Spain and Portugal. Thus, when Manasseh Ben Israel went to England in 1655, there was already established a secret community numbering several families. A petition was presented to Cromwell asking for protection (March 1656). A house was rented and adapted for use as a synagogue in the following December. A few months later, a piece of ground was acquired for use as a cemetery. After Cromwell's death various attempts were made to procure the suppression of the community. Charles II, however, intervened in its favor, and it henceforth enjoyed de facto recognition. The original synagogue, in Creechurch lane, was enlarged and remodeled in 1674, and in 1701 a new place of worship in Bevis Marks - still one of the architectural monuments of the city - was erected.
As its spiritual leaders, the newly established community appointed a succession of foreign Abendana (1681-85), Solomon Ayallon (1689-1701), and David Nieto (1701-28). There was a considerable influx of Spanish and Portuguese Jews from Holland. In the course of the reorganization of the royal exchange in 1697, it was arranged to admit 12 Jews - the so-called "Jew Brokers" - who remained a feature of the city of London until the beginning of the 19th century.

Meanwhile, the original Sephardi settlers had been followed by Ashkenazim who arrived for the most part via Amsterdam or Hamburg. They organized their own congregation around 1690. The historic synagogal organization of the metropolis was completed in 1761, when another rival body, still called the New Synagogue, came into existence. R. Solomon Hirschell was the first formally recognized Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi communities of the whole of England. The Ashkenazim were by now the most numerous and influential element in the London Jewish population.

Demonstration in front of Chabad House, London, 1980 Photo: Rachel Rutman, UK Beth Hatefutsoth, Visual Documentation Center Courtesy of Rachel Rutman, UK

The tailoring workshop of J.B. Calmus, London, 1915 Beth Hatefutsoth, Visual Documentation Center Courtesy of J. Calmus, UK

The 19th century was a period of expansion and reorganization. The first synagogue outside the city had been organized in Westminster around 1761. The Board for Shechitah, in which Sephardim and Ashkenazim cooperated, was organized through the offices of Baron Lyon de Symons in 1792-1804. As early as 1760, the Sephardi community admitted representatives of the Ashkenazim to their committee of Deputados, appointed from time to time to represent the community vis-à-vis the government. This ultimately developed into the Board of Deputies of British Jews, on which until 1838 only the London communities were represented. The old Talmud Torah of the Ashkenazi community, established in 1732 and placed on a broader basis in 1788, was reorganized in 1817 as the Jews' Free School, originally intended to meet the menace presented by the schools which were now being set up for Jewish children by Christian missionaries; this developed in due course in to one of the largest schools in Europe. The struggle for Jewish emancipation in England centered in London. In 1831, Jews were given the privilege of trading, from which they had hitherto been barred. In 1835, David Salomons was elected a Sheriff of the city, the first Jew to attain that distinction. In 1847, he was the first Jewish alderman, and in 1855, the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London. From 1830, the city of London had shown sympathy with parliamentary emancipation of the Jews, and its persistence in electing Baron Lionel de Rothschild, notwithstanding the fact that he could not take his seat because of the form of the statutory oath, was in large measure responsible for the admission of the Jews to Parliament in 1858.

The growing Anglicization of London Jewry hastened the reorganization of the community. A reform congregation was established, near the fashionable centers of population in 1840. To meet this challenge, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi congregations established branch synagogues in the West End. A modern theological Seminary, Jews' college, was founded in 1855, and a model charitable organization, the Board of Guardians for the Relief of the Jewish Poor, was established in 1859. In 1870, a union of the principal Ashkenazi congregations in the Metropolis was formed under the title the "United Synagogue".

With the mass emigration from Russia starting after 1881, there was a great influx especially to London, and the population rose in the course of the next quarter of a century from some 47,000 to approximately 150,000. A majority of the newcomers was absorbed by the tailoring, shoemaking, and cabinet-making industries. A Yiddish press and an active trade-union movement came in to being. In 1887, Sir Samuel Montagu (later Lord Swaythling) created the Federation of Synagogues to coordinate their religious activities. The Aliens Act of 1905 stemmed the tide of immigration, though it continued in modified form until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The Jew of the East End, as he became more well-to-do, tended to move away to the newer suburbs , particularly in the North East (Stamford Hill) and North West (Golders Green), where important congregations sprang up.

The period between the two wars witnessed a considerable economic and geographical expansion of London Jewry, as it attained a greater degree of affluence, extended its interests and hastened the movement from the traditional center of the East End into the northern suburbs. A communal center for the major London Jewish Institutions and a Jewish Museum was established at Woburn House in the Bloomsbury area. The beginning of the persecutions in Germany in 1933 brought about a considerable influx of refugees who did a good deal to stimulate certain aspects of London Jewish life and to consolidate the organization of the extreme orthodox wing. On the other hand, for a short while, the British fascist movement under Sir Oswald Mosley led to some anti-Jewish disturbances, which were however limited in their extent.

The Chief Rabbinate and its Bet Din today administer the religious life of large sections of provincial Jewry through other Battei Din and Rabbis. The two leading bodies dealing with religious education, the London Board of Jewish Education and the Central Council for Jewish religious education dealing with the provinces, both operate from London. The pattern was similar in the political and philanthropic spheres. However, after World War II, and particularly in the 1960s, there was a growing trend toward decentralization. The total Jewish population of Greater London in 1970 was estimated at 280,000. In 1997, it was estimated at 300,000.

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