Anglo-Jewish historiography is a contested field of research and learned argument. The bone of contention is the significance of anti-Semitism in the Anglo-Jewish experience and the protagonists in the dispute are David Cesarani and William D. Rubinstein.
In his ‘History of the Jews in Great-Britain’ Rubinstein stresses, that the rights of the Jews have always been meticulously respected and that anti-Semitism was nothing but a marginal, almost negligible phenomenon in Anglo-Jewish history.1 With his interpretation, he aims mainly at the writings of David Cesarani, who, along with a number of other historians, points to the meek public expression of Jewish identity in Victorian and Edwardian England which Cesarani attributes to the prevalence of an anti-Jewish animus, that was everything but insignificant in its influence on Jewish life and public conduct.2
Todd M. Endelman, who is Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Michigan, belongs to the inner circle of Anglo-Jewish historians and has published two monographs that have become standard reading for students of Anglo-Jewish history, so far.3 Endelman has always emphasized in his work the relative absence of anti-Semitism in English history in comparison with the continental Jewish experience, and that, despite the various utterances of social prejudices against Jews, there were never serious demands for the revocation of their integration into British society.
Against this backdrop – the ongoing discussion within Anglo-Jewish historiography as well as Endelman’s own contributions to both the field and the debate – the publication of a book titled ‘The Jews of Britain. 1656 to 2000’ stirs up curiosity. It raises the questions whether the book is intended to be an answer to Rubinstein’s work, and where Todd Endelman positions himself in the debate outlined above in the year 2002.
In his narrative of the Anglo-Jewish experience, Endelman always comes back to some five interrelating themes, that can be roughly subsumed as following:1. The unparalleled and early social success and entry of Jews into intercourse with the host population coupled with their economic mobility. 2. ‘Drift and defection’: the reasons for and the process of the departure from the Jewish context. 3. The search for ways to express Jewishness beyond Judaism. 4. Jewishness as a stigma and the consequences of the Jewish perception of stigmatisation. 5. Cohesion and diversification.
The first chapter of the book deals with the resettlement of Jews in mid-17th century. Since 1290 and the expulsion of Jews, a small number of New Christians of Spanish and Portuguese origin could always be found in London. In 1656 Sephardim from continental Europe, under the leadership of the Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, together with New Christians resident in London, successfully petitioned Oliver Cromwell to be permitted to entertain a Jewish place of worship, the granting of which was tantamount to readmission. In fact, there was no formal re-invitation of Jews or even revocation of the expulsion order. This helped to avoid tensions with Christian opponents (merchants in fear of competition and clerics in fear of religious diversity) to the return of Jews.(p.26) Endelman traces the slow and patchy return of the first generation of former Catholics, now Sephardim again, to Judaism. Their hesitant approach is to be explained with the religious isolation in London, that lay at the outskirts of Jewish culture and learning. Still, the turn of the century saw the acquisition of a plot of land for the first purpose-build Sephardic synagogue: Bevis Marks in the City of London. Around the same time, the immigration of Ashkenazim (overwhelmingly from German states, but also from Poland and Holland) gathered pace.
Eventually, Sephardim only came in small numbers to the British Isles and as a result, were soon outnumbered by Ashkenazim: the number of Sephardim remained fixed around 2.000 since the mid-18th century, against 12.000 to 15.000 Jews altogether at the end of the century. (p. 41). As the heading of chapter 2 (‘Banker and Brokers, Peddlers and Pickpockets, 1700-1800’) indicates, their occupational structure ranged from bankers to petit criminals. All of them, rich and poor, showed a degree of acculturation to prevalent norms of clothing and every day culture, that could be found on the continent only more than a century later. Hence, it is to the 18th century, that Todd Endelman dates the beginning of the modern era of Anglo-Jewish history, which was not, as he emphasises the result of a movement in any way comparable with the labours of Moses Mendelssohn and his followers. In England, Jews lived the Haskalah (enlightenment) without falling back on Maskilim (enlighteners) to lead them on (and tell them why).(pp. 59-65).4
The two intermediate chapters (nos. 3 & 4) are devoted to the ‘long’ 19th century: Anglo-Jewry’s breathtaking upward mobility, which turned a population of (largely) petit traders at the beginning of the century, middle-class within sometimes one, but never more than two generations, the successful struggle for emancipation, the Jews’ geographical outreach to the provinces - very much accelerated by the influx from East European Jews, whose constant immigration turned into a flood in the 1880s – and to clouding skies over the heads of British Jews, who had to face growing anti-Semitism.
By 1830, when the emancipation debate set in, there were roughly 30.000 Jews living in England, two thirds of whom resident in London. To be sure, Jewish disabilities in England, were few compared to those of Jews in Central Europe. The most irritating restriction for Jewish businessmen was, that they were barred from becoming freemen of the City of London, that is, opening a retailing business. In 1871 the last Christian fortress was taken with the ancient universities (Oxford and Cambridge): from then on, Jews could hold fellowships and participate in the university governance.(pp.101-107).
When turning the page to chapter 4, readers find a picture of ‘Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler in full ecclesiastical costume’. Rabbi Adler, who was holding his office between 1891 and 1912, wears a gown, and just like most of his continental counterparts, looks a bit like a protestant priest. - This very British Chief Rabbi (with a German background and Prague rabbinical training) personified everything the East European immigrants found hard to respect and accept, and the decades following the 1880s witnessed a constant power struggle within the Jewish community, with individual immigrant synagogues employing their own rabbis and the Chief Rabbi making use of his prerogative to legalize (that is, turn them legally binding under English law) Jewish marriages and certify slaughterers, in order to rein in ‘dissident’ groups. - In reaction to the East European immigration, (gentile British) calls for immigration control became louder and eventually led to the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905.
The debate leading up to the passage of the Aliens Act had been permeated by xenophobia and anti-Jewish sentiment. This caused stir amongst the anglicised Jews, who strove to lessen their public ‘otherness’ by reforming their services, stressing their Englishness, and pushing the East European Jews towards Anglicisation. But Anglo-Jewry was in for much more, with the outbreak of the First World War, the interwar period and the Holocaust, as Todd Endelman proceeds to elaborate in chapter 5.
But these were not only the years of increasing pressure on Jews to demonstrate their loyalty to the national cause, anti-Jewish violence in 1917, conspiratorial theories, overtly anti-Semitic political parties and occupational discrimination in the 1920s. Endelman devotes ample space to Zionism, that began to take hold amongst a growing number of British Jews after the publication of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the assumption of the Palestine Mandate by London. For the inner-communal development it was also the time of a slow takeover of power and votes by ‘new men’ with an East European background, who gradually succeeded members of the old Anglo-Jewish elite.
The systematic expulsion and persecution of Jews from, in, and by Nazi-Germany had deep repercussions on Jews in Britain. Endelman convincingly argues that the reaction of the Anglo-Jewish leadership to the Jewish plight was largely the result of fear of anti-Semitism at home. This fear was heightened by the fact, that British Jews witnessed violent persecution abroad, which made them cautious not to appear disloyal and increased their awareness of anti-Jewish prejudice in England itself. Hence, the Board of Deputies never petitioned Whitehall to open the gates to Palestine, and actually strove to keep the number of exiles to the country down. In addition, the Board of Deputies of British Jews refused to lend its support to a boycott of German goods starting in 1933.(pp. 212-214)
The last chapter (no. 6) deals with the post-war history up to the year 2000. Just like the interwar years, the 1940s and 1950s saw suburbanisation and geographical dispersion. Above all, the East End of London lost its ‘Jewish’ character. While Jews in London moved into the northern and north-western parts of the town, the Jewish communities in the provinces suffered from the pull-factor exercised by London on the young. At the same time, the second half of the 20th century Anglo-Jewish life turned diverse as never before in its history. In the religious sphere, the immigration of Reform rabbis from Nazi-Germany provided the Reform and Liberal Judaism with an university-trained spiritual leadership for the first time ever. At the other end of the religious spectrum, ultra-orthodoxy took hold as never before in the Anglo-Jewish tradition. This led to an unprecedented polarization of Anglo-Jewish religious life and triggered the formation of the Masorti movement, a group of independent synagogues, that corresponds rather with the ‘moderate traditionalism’, that is, the mildly orthodox orientation, of the pre-war years – and again, led to a further diversification of Anglo-Jewry.
Todd Endelman takes a clear position with respect to the controversy outlined above. - He attributes many forms of Jewish public behaviour, such as a weakening of religious observance as well as the frequently expressed wishes to modify the traditional religious service (e.g. confirmation services for girls), changes of the occupational structure, and concerted efforts to anglicise the East European immigrants, to the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment since the last decades of the 19th century that, according to Endelman, worked as a catalyst towards a blending with the host population.(pp. 150-174) For the interwar period, he contradicts Rubinstein, who, by pointing to the political irrelevance of far right parties, especially the British Union of Fascists, in terms of votes, concluded that they were of minor significance. Endelman underlines their methods of intimidation (e.g. marches through Jewish neighbourhoods, violent attacks on Jewish shops and individuals), that were intended to cause fear and ‘succeeded’ to do so.(p. 203) At the same time, he untiringly points to the fact, that prejudices, however strongly expressed at times, never led to demands of a revocation of Jewish emancipation and also didn’t mean that Jews could not move relatively free in upper class circles, in comparison with their German coreligionists. From early on in the 18th century, wealthy and educated Jews were elected into the Royal Society, became members of various lodges, lavishly entertained their gentile neighbours in the country and hence had close social intercourse with Christians, that didn’t make baptism a precondition. Legal disabilities, the exclusion of Jews from holding parliamentary and municipal offices as well as from entering the ancient universities, which were abolished in the second half of the 19th century, were never exclusively directed against Jews, but against all non-members of the Church of England. The advent of Jews to Parliament and their elevation into peerage started unimpeded by (strong and widely held) anti-Jewish views once the christological oath was abolished in the second half of the 19th century.
Thus, in short, Todd Endelman disagrees with both the Cesaraniim and the Rubinsteinim. Instead, he puts forward a multifaceted and complex interpretation of Anglo-Jewish history open to contradictions and seemingly opposing results.
Todd Endelman set out to write a history of “English Jews rather than a history of their rabbis and merchant princes” (p. 12), that is, to focus on broad developments and the middle and lower strata of Anglo-Jewry rather than the elite. This approach sometimes leads him to give information on individual luminaries a very low key, or to omit it altogether. For example, neither the Goldsmids nor Moses Montefiore are introduced to the readers, but are merely mentioned by their names: for obvious reasons, the latter figures prominently all through chapter 3, but it is only towards the very end of this section (p. 121) that the readers learn, that Montefiore served as president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1835 to 1874. Such omissions or late information can be confusing for freshmen and freshwomen to Anglo-Jewish history or Jewish history in general. Todd Endelman might consider adding some biographical briefs when preparing his history of ‘The Jews of Britain’ for the second edition. The reviewer was surprised to find that Lucien Wolf receives very fleeting mentioning, and this only for his anti-Zionist stance. But then, Todd Endelman paid tribute to Wolf by choosing his picture (with documents on foreign affairs in his hands) for the opening of chapter 5 and thus indicates that there was more to Lucien Wolf than his anti-Zionism. Since Endelman frequently compares the Anglo-Jewish experience with that of Jews in the United States and on the continent, an inclusion into the bibliography of some titles for further reading in these realms of Jewish historiography might be helpful, again, especially for newcomers to the field.
The latter suggestion points toward the particular strength of ‘The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000’: readers find Anglo-Jewish history deeply embedded in two historical frameworks: British history as well as Jewish history, which gives the study – in defiance of its title - a comparative touch. Todd M. Endelman offers a magisterial synthesis of more than half of a century of Anglo-Jewish historiography, which he has generously enriched with new research.
Notes
1 William D. Rubinstein, A History of the Jews in the English-Speaking World: Great Britain, Basingstoke, 1996.
2 David Cesarani, British Jews, in: Liedtke, Rainer, Wendehorst, Stephan (Eds.), The Emancipation of Catholics, Jews and Protestants: Minorities and the Nation State in 19th Century Europe, Manchester, 1999, S. 33-55. Ibid., An embattled Minority: the Jews in Britain during the First World War, in: Immigrants and Minorities, Vol. 8(1-2), 1989, pp. 61-81. See also Tony Kushner, Kenneth Lunn (eds.), Traditions of intolerance. Historical perspectives on fascism and race discourse in Britain, Manchester, New York, 1989. Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice. Anti-Semitism in British society during the Second World War, Manchester, New York, 1989.
3 Todd M. Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656-1945, Bloomington, 1990. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830. Tradition and Chance in a Liberal Society, Ann Arbor, 1999. (First published 1979).
4 For a critical discussion see David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key. Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of modern Jewish Thought, Princeton, Oxford, 2000.