English Jews

English Jews

The history of the Jews in England goes back to the reign of William I. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times. The Jewish presence continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290.

After the expulsion, there was no Jewish community, apart from individuals who practised Judaism secretly, until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to Britain, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain.

The Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in England, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish Emancipation to either 1829 or 1858 when Jews were finally allowed to sit in Parliament, though Benjamin Disraeli, born Jewish, had been a Member of Parliament long before this. At the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell, in 1846, the British law "De Judaismo", which prescribed a special dress for Jews, was repealed. Due to the lack of anti-Jewish violence in Britain in the 19th century, it acquired a reputation for religious tolerance and attracted significant immigration from Eastern Europe. In the 1930s and 1940s, some European Jews fled to England to escape the Nazis.

Jews faced antisemitism and stereotypes in Britain, and Antisemitism "in most cases went along with Germanophobia" to the extent that Jews were equated with Germans. This led many Jewish families to anglicize their often German-sounding names.

Jews in Britain now number 300,000, and England contains the second largest Jewish population in Europe and the fifth largest Jewish community worldwide.