Every year, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical
Societies (IAJGS) sponsors a
Jewish Genealogy Month which takes place during the Hebrew month of Cheshvan
(17th October to 14th November 2012). It is probably not a coincidence that the
Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain will hold its annual conference on
Saturday, 28 October 2012, at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Maida Vale,
London. Clearly, it is the perfect time to talk about UK Jewish records.
The history of the Jewish people in the UK is long, complicated and at
times, not very pretty. The records available today are affected by the community’s
history. The first Jews came at the invitation of William, the Conqueror, who
needed their financial expertise, but the Church put restrictions on their
ability to earn a living in other ways, such as trade and agriculture. They
were Sephardic Jews, who are from Spain, Portugal and other places in the Mediterranean area. Jews were expelled from England in 1290.
In the
1650s, Oliver Cromwell allowed Jews to return, and a small group of Sephardic
Jews were allowed to lease a building for a synagogue and land for a cemetery
in London. The congregation still exists and will host the annual conference
mentioned above. A fascinating history of the Spanish and Portuguese community
is found at www.sandp.org/history.html. For this
group, records are written in Portuguese from 1657 to 1819 and then in English.
The oldest, 1657 records are for burials.
Ashkenazi
Jews from northern Europe spoke Yiddish and began arriving in the 17th
century. There was some friction between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi who opened
their first synagogue on Duke Street, London in 1690. Generally, they were poor
but reasonably well educated when they arrived.
After 1880, new Ashkenazi immigrants settled in the east end of London
and were the driving force in the clothing industry. Jews were in trade and
established retail stores in many UK cities, not just London.
The records
of the Ashkenazi community are usually handwritten in Hebrew using a person’s
Hebrew name. Further complicating matters is the fact that the earlier arrivals
were still using patronymic names, such as Rachel bat Ezra. However the records
are ‘modern’ enough to make searching worth the effort.
North
Americans are probably surprised to note the Sephardic community still intact
today in the UK. We have an overwhelming number of Ashkenazi Jews on this side
of the Atlantic. Now the Ashkenazim are the majority group in the UK as well.
©2012,
Susan Lewis Well
