With the founding of JFS, more and more educational opportunities were opening up to the Jews of England. In 1826, University College London became the first university to admit students regardless of race, religion or gender, Jews included. Indeed, the Victorian era meant increasing emancipation for the Jews. In 1837, the great philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore received his knighthood from the queen; in 1855 the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London was appointed. In 1874, England voted in its first (and so far, only) Jewish prime minister; Benjamin Disraeli had been baptized, but his parents were Italian Sephardi Jews. During Disraeli’s lifetime the first Jews, both members of the Rothschild family, took up seats in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The Zionist movement began to take root in England at the close of the 19th century. In 1899, English Zionist Federation was founded and famously, in 1917, Lord Balfour issued his declaration recognizing Jewish aspirations to a homeland. Despite the renewed interest in a Jewish homeland, Jews felt increasingly at home in England. Some 50,000 Jews fought for the English military during World War I, and a fifth of these heroically lost their lives.
During the years that followed, Jewry in England became increasingly Anglicized, with well-to-do, middle class communities springing up in the suburbs of North and North West London. All this changed in the 1930’s however, with the influx of refugees from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. The end of World War II marked an upsurge in religious Jewish life in England, with both the Hirschian Menorah and Hasmonean schools movements established in 1945.
Although, as has been well-documented, recent years have seen a rise in anti-Semitism in the UK, we who reside here, members of both the older and younger generations, are apt to reflect upon the fact that we are privileged to live in a malchus shel chesed.
This was perhaps never more evident than at last year’s services to mark 60 years since the liberation of the concentration camps by British soldiers. Holocaust survivors were invited to meet Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at a beautiful kosher reception at St James Palace. My own grandmother, who was among their number, has seen three generations born and raised in England since her arrival on these rainy shores all those decades ago.
Three hundred and fifty years of English Jewry is, of course, just another period in the long, mostly unhappy history of the current galus, but it is, for all that, still something to celebrate.