Search Results

A number of historiographical problems are addressed concerning ‘Science and Religion’ to provide a grounding for present study. This study focuses on two religious communities — the Quakers and Anglo-Jewry — both of which stood outside the Established Church, with its close alliance with state power. It aims to ascertain how these two religious communities responded to various aspects of science, from their foundation in the mid-17th century to the end of the 19th century. Having framed this leading question, the scope of the present study is specified.

This chapter provides a brief outline of the histories of the Quaker and Anglo-Jewish communities, from the mid-17th century to the end of the 19th century. The development of Quakerism is charted from its radical roots, through the ‘quietism’ of the 18th century, to the evangelicalism that dominated the 19th century. In discussing Anglo-Jewry, the inter-related themes of assimilation, toleration, and discrimination are explored, with particular emphasis on the early-Victorian perception that British Jews had not contributed adequately to literature, music, and science.

This chapter opens with a discussion on some of the contexts in which science was deployed intersected with Jewish observance during the 19th century, including calendar-making, the use of electric light on the Sabbath, and the possibility of chemical tests for non-kosher additives to food. During the early 19th century, some Jewish writers followed Christian authors in trying to ascertain the natural philosophy hidden in the Torah text, but this project was largely abandoned by mid-century. In contrast to Quakers, Anglo-Jewry made little use of design arguments, these being directed primarily to children and, on occasions, to working men. Jewish writers on science appear to have been more willing to entertain speculative hypotheses than contemporary Quakers.

Drawing mainly on the Anglo-Jewish periodical press, it appears that Jewish writers were generally supportive of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Having been chastised on many occassions as anti-intellectual, Jews could portray themselves as traditionally siding with science and rationality at a time when many Christians strenuously opposed evolution. Yet Alfred Henriques was alone in perceiving that Darwin’s theory was as damaging to traditional Judaism as it was to mainstream Christianity. Following Henriques, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore and others pressed for the development of a modern form of Judaism — what became Liberal Judaism — that could encompass an evolutionary account of the physical world. Among the scientific community, Raphael Meldola — who looked to Darwin as his mentor — was the leading Jewish evolutionist.

The scientific practices and attitudes to science of the Quaker and Jewish communities are compared and contrasted. Quakers tended to be more involved in science — especially the observational sciences like botany — but they were somewhat reserved when it came to scientific theorizing. In contrast, Jews, although generally less involved in science, were philosophically more adventurous. Two important conclusions from this study relating to the late Victorian period are: first, in both communities, modernizers drew on contemporary science — including the theory of evolution — in opposing traditionalists; second (although for different reasons), Quakers and Jews were generally sympathetic to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

This introductory chapter discusses issues of modern Jewish identity and definition. Specifically, it explores how emancipation in Europe's nation states dissolved traditional patterns of Jewish life, and forced Jewish communities to confront modernity and previously inaccessible modes of existence. The ambivalent and ambiguous impacts this had on Jewish identity are highlighted. The chapter also reviews the state of historiography on Anglo-Jewry, and, in particular, on the community's reaction to equality and immediate post-emancipation existence. The state of historical source material on Anglo-Jewry is briefly surveyed before the structure of the book is outlined.

This chapter provides historical background on the Jewish experience in modern Britain. Surveying the history of the minority from the mid-17th century Resettlement to the mid-19th century campaign to achieve emancipation, it reviews and outlines the basis of Anglo-Jewish settlement, community formation, and identity. It also explores the context and content of the emancipation debate in Britain from both the Jewish and Gentile perspective. Discussing the impact this had on Anglo-Jewish identity, it introduces the essentially ambiguous nature of the subculture's equality. Emancipation is established as a ‘symbolic point of departure’ for British Jews, not necessarily a hard-and-fast historical discontinuity but a milestone inaugurating a new phase.

This chapter focuses upon Anglo-Jewry's internal communal government, in particular the activities and operation of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. This quasi-democratic, quasi-oligarchic institution claimed sole responsibility for representing British Jews to the outside world, whilst also seeking to maintain a coherent group governed by a certain pattern of Jewish existence. After examining the workings of the Board, the chapter explores attempts to protect what it perceived as the community's interests from a variety of incursions within the broader scope of British society. It demonstrates the confusing and often conflicting stance of a minority espousing both equality and exceptionality of treatment. The chapter also investigates the minority's activities on behalf of persecuted Jews abroad, exploring the impact of Anglo-Jewish diplomacy upon both Jewish beliefs and contemporary British foreign policy, as well as illustrating the polity's opinion of the minority.

This chapter examines a range of issues concerning Anglo-Jewry's socio-cultural life, concentrating upon the religious component. It assesses the institutional nature of communal religiosity and its identity implications before evaluating the evolution of Anglo-Jewish religious practice in the period, illustrating how Anglo-Judaism adapted to its modern situation as a British confession and the loss of traditional faith this entailed. The chapter moves on to discuss Jewish education, highlighting both the deficiency of faith instruction, as well as the class-orientated nature of provision. A final section discusses topics that demonstrated continuing Jewish religious feeling and group identity — out-marriage, proselytizing, conversion — before examining issues influencing the dualistic character of the minority — connections to the Holy Land, Restorationism, concepts of the Jewish Mission. With the latter, this chapter suggests that religiously, Anglo-Jewry achieved a remarkable integration of British and Jewish interests.

This chapter analyses the changing nature of the community's make-up and identity during the 1880s. It focuses on the revolutionary impact of mass Jewish immigration upon the character of the established community and its position within British society, covering issues such as altering socio-economic patterns and the minority's acculturated charitable ethos. The chapter also explores the concomitant identity changes Anglo-Jews experienced, tracing the emergence of increasing ethnic conceptions of Jewishness on one hand, and more de-nationalised articulations on the other. It suggests that these developments stimulated Anglo-Jewry's historical consciousness, leading to events such as the 1887 Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, which is examined as an indication of the closure of this period of Anglo-Jewish experience, the end of the immediate post-emancipation era.

This concluding chapter brings together the book's analysis to summarise the nature of Anglo-Jewish identity in the post-emancipation era. It demonstrates that emancipation did not provide a solution to the perennial debate about Anglo-Jewry's position within British society. Reviewing developments between 1858 and 1887, it discusses the integrated and acculturated aspects of the minority's character, contrasting these with examples of continuing minority specificity and Jewish particularity. A spacious but unstructured identity is suggested, one which benefited from the generally tolerant British environment but could be criticised if not closely correlated to the prevailing culture, when necessary. The conclusion highlights the centrality of ambiguity to modern Anglo-Jewish identity.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the history of Jews in Great Britain during the period from 1656 to 2000. This book deals with the resettlement of the Jews in England from 1656 to 1700 and describes their rise from poverty to prosperity during the period from 1800 to 1870. It examines the conflict between native and foreign Jews and the fracturing of the Anglo-Jewry. It suggests that for historians of the Jewish people, Britain's importance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is linked to its role as an imperial power rather than to its treatment of its Jewish citizens or impact on their cultural and intellectual life.

This chapter examines the conflict between native and foreign Jews in Great Britain. The permanent settlement of East European Jews in Britain between 1881 and 1914 radically transformed the character of the Anglo-Jewry. Their poverty and foreignness drew unwanted attention to them and native-born Jews alike and once again gave the Anglo-Jewry a lower-class cast. Their old world religious practices offended those accustomed to the polite but somnolent atmosphere of anglicized synagogues and they also created intracommunal friction and fuelled the fires of xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

This chapter describes the experience of the Anglo-Jewry from the time of World War I to the Holocaust. Although British Jews escaped the death and destruction that swept over continental Jewish communities, they were not spared their repercussions and consequences. Communal leaders and organizations were forced to confront a host of novel problems. The persistence of anti-Semitism heightened the unease of communal leaders and thus inhibited their defense of Jewish interests. For fear of being accused of championing Jewish over English interests, they were cautious in challenging wartime policies that discriminated against Jews or that ignored their suffering.

This chapter focuses on the fracturing of the Anglo-Jewry during the period from 1945 to 2000. It explains that after the war Jews were able to enter the professions and the new service industries and some of them were appointed high-profile positions in government, in universities, and in public life. However, this development was accompanied by indifference to ritual and worship, ignorance of Jewish learning and lore and radical assimilation which threatened the demographic health of the Jewish community. By the end of the twentieth century, the religious life of Anglo-Jewry was more diverse, fractured, and contentious than in any previous period.

This chapter provides an overview of the Anglo-Jewish community. Anglo-Jewry, like other post-emancipatory Western Jewish communities, defined itself almost exclusively as a religious community. Its central institutions were voluntary and reflected this formal religious definition. The most basic, local level of affiliation was the synagogue, to which members paid annual dues. The synagogues, which exhibited a considerable level of internal religious differentiation, divided themselves into a number of religious groupings, including the Ashkenazi Orthodox, Sephardi (these two groupings viewed themselves as traditional elements), Reform, and Liberal (these latter two viewed themselves as progressive elements). The essential theological demarcation between the traditional and the progressive groupings lay in their claimed relationship to halakhah, the Jewish legal code, and its practical application. In essence, however, the actual difference in thought or observance between members of different groupings was often blurred.

This chapter presents an overview of the social and political philosophies of the Anglo-Jewish community. A community of some 385,000 people with such a polygenetic communal background as that of Anglo-Jewry cannot be said to have thought with one mind on any issue, even on those which directly and explicitly concerned Jewry. Most particularly, this period saw a certain liquefaction of the Anglo-Jewish political system caused by political and social circumstances. Despite this, a communal consensus on many issues did emerge, mainly because the ramifications of the nineteenth-century struggle for emancipation continued to dominate Anglo-Jewish political thought. Indeed, commonly held ideologies regarding emancipation and the non-Jewish world confined the scope of ideological divergencies within the community to a very narrow range. The community saw the civic equality which resulted from emancipation as a gift, and the hospitality bestowed upon Jews by the British as one side of a contract demanding in return loyalty and gratitude. Beneath it all they still feared that they were aliens. As a result, public controversy with the government was assiduously avoided by all Jewish leaders — political invisibility was the goal. British Jews took civic loyalty to mean conformity. Consequent to this, virtually all self-identified Jews pursued a policy of what is today called 'acculturation' — of social integration and acceptance.