Jewish Community
‘Jewish’ can describe a person’s ethnic background, culture, religion, or a combination of some or all of these. There has been a Jewish presence in Britain for almost a thousand years.
The first Jewish settlers came to Britain after the Norman conquest in 1066. Some worked as moneylenders, a profession from which the Church discouraged Christians, as at that time lending money for a profit was considered sinful. However, anti-Semitic preaching by the Church during the crusades and a growing resentment of Jewish wealth and privileges led to the Jews being expelled from England in 1290.
Under Cromwell Jews were gradually readmitted to Britain in the 1650s. Many Jews worked as skilled craftsmen or ran small trading businesses hawking clothes, stationary and medicines. In the 19th century, the Jewish community gained increasing civil rights, Jewish families such as the Rothschild’s became household names and philanthropists; Walter Rothschild founded a Zoological Museum on his family estate in Tring, Hertfordshire.
From 1881 to 1914, 150,000 Jewish people fled to Britain to escape harsh conditions and persecution in Europe. In 1905 the government passed the Aliens Act to limit the number of immigrants entering the country and at the outbreak of WW I immigration was almost at a standstill.
In the 1930s, 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Britain to escape the Nazi regime. This included 10,000 children who arrived unaccompanied on the Kindertransport (children's trains). The 1950s and 1960s saw continuing migration from Jews in the Middle and Far East, as the political situation worsened for Jews in many Arab countries.
In Hertfordshire there are approximately 17,000 Jews. Many Jewish families relocating from London to escape the German air raids; the Letchworth Jewish community was founded in 1939, they had a kosher butcher, mikva (ritual bath) and a Talmud Torah (Type of Jewish School). Hitchin also had a wartime Jewish community and historically a medieval Jewish community, a yeshiva (Jewish religious school) still exists in the village of Great Offley.
Today the largest Jewish community in Hertfordshire is in Hertsmere, where one in nine people are Jewish. The Hertsmere Jewish community was established in the 1960's. Many Jews moved north from central London during the 50s and 60s as their wealth and general prosperity increased, Hertsmere is generally considered an extension of the larger Greater London community.
