Leeds and its Jewish community
Leeds and its Jewish community
A history
Edited by
DEREK FRASER
Manchester University Press
Copyright Manchester University Press 2019
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 2308 4 hardback
ISBN 978 1 5261 2310 7 paperback
First published 2019
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or thirdparty internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Typeset by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
The publication of this book has been made possible by the support of Phil, Jane, Amelia and Rebecca Fraser.
Selig Brodetsky by Jacob Kramer, c. 1943.
A portrait of the leader of Leeds Zionism by the most famous Leeds Jewish artist.
Contents
1 National: Jews in Britain a historical overview
Geoffrey Alderman
2 Local: Leeds in the age of great cities
Derek Fraser
3 Demographic: The Jewish population of Leeds how many Jews?
Nigel Grizzard
4 Jews as Yorkshiremen: Jewish identity in late Victorian Leeds
James Appell
5 Britishness and Jewishness: integration and separation
Aaron Kent
6 Pragmatism or politics: Leeds Jewish tailors and Leeds Jewish tailoring trade unions, 18761915
Anne J. Kershen
7 The Edwardian Jewish community and the First World War
Nigel Grizzard
8 Zionism in Leeds 18921939
Janet Douglas
9 The unwalled ghetto: mobility and anti-Semitism in the interwar period
Amanda Bergen
10 The Second World War
Ian Vellins
11 Jewish heritage in Leeds
Sharman Kadish
12 Fellowship and philanthropy
Derek Fraser
13 At rest and play: leisure and sporting activities
Phil Goldstone
14 The influence of personalities
Michael Meadowcroft
15 Spaces of Jewish belonging
Irina Kudenko
16 The community today and its recent history
Derek Fraser
Selig Brodetsky by Jacob Kramer, c. 1943. A portrait of the leader of Leeds Zionism by the most famous Leeds Jewish artist. Estate of John David Roberts. By permission of the Treasury Solicitor
Derek Fraser is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Teesside where he served as Vice-Chancellor for eleven years. He has published books and articles on British social and urban history, including A History of Modern Leeds (1980) which he edited. He is best known for his book The Evolution of the British Welfare State, the 5th edition of which was published in 2017.
Geoffrey Alderman is the Michael Gross Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham, formerly Professor of Politics and Contemporary History and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of London. He has published extensively and is the acknowledged authority on the history of Jews in Modern Britain.
Nigel Grizzard is a historian and researcher who has written extensively on Jewish affairs in Yorkshire and takes Jewish heritage tours. He was awarded a Social Science Council Research Grant to survey the remaining Jews in Chapeltown, Leeds in the 1980s. He managed a Heritage Lottery Project Making their Mark on the contribution of the Jews to the building of Bradford from 201113.
James Appell has studied both history and Russian and Eastern European Studies at Oxford. His MPhil thesis was on Jews in the Kovno region. He has spent time as a journalist and has published an article on the differences between the Jewish communities of Leeds and London.
Aaron M. Kent has taught history at Austin Community College, the University of Phoenix and California State University. He is currently an instructor for the University of Maryland (Europe). His Leeds doctoral research has been published in his book, Identity, Migration and Belonging. The Jewish Community of Leeds 18901920 (2015).
Anne Kershen was Barnet Shine Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London 19902012 and founder and Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration from 19942012. Her area of specialisation is migration with particular focus on London and she has acted as a consultant for radio and television. Her publications include: Uniting the Tailors: Trade Unionism amongst the Tailoring Workers of London and Leeds 18701939 (1995); Tradition and Change: A History of Reform Judaism in Britain 18401995 (1995); Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 16602000 (2005); and London the Promised Land Revisited (2015). Her latest book, jointly edited with Colin Holmes, is An East End Legacy. Essays in Memory of William J Fishman (2018). She is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary and an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and is a FRHS and a FRSA.
Janet Douglas was formerly Principal Lecturer in Politics at Leeds Beckett University in the Cultural Studies Department. Since her retirement, her research has largely focused on the history of her adopted home town of Leeds. She has lectured widely on a variety of subjects relating to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century city, and is the author of a number of publications, many concerned with Leeds architecture. Currently she is researching Women and the Leeds Library for a volume which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Library in 2018.
Amanda Bergen originally qualified as a solicitor. She completed her history masters degree at Leeds University. Her thesis on anti-Semitism and the Leeds Jewish community in the 1930s won the Marion Sharples Prize and was published by the Thoresby Society. She has since completed a PhD on Victorian social policy.
Ian Vellins studied at Oxford and graduated with a degree in Jurisprudence. He is a retired solicitor and immigration judge, who has done masters research degrees in Jewish history at both Manchester and Leeds. He has researched the impact of Kindertransport in Yorkshire and lectures frequently on Jewish history, particularly with reference to Jewish art treasures stolen by the Nazis.
Sharman Kadish was born in London and educated at University College London and St Antonys College Oxford and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has taught at the universities of London and Manchester and is the author of a number of books on Anglo-Jewish history and heritage, including companion architectural guides
