British Jews
British Jews are citizens of the United Kingdom who are Jewish, one of the country's many religious minority communities. Jewish presence in Britain dates to at least the 11th century, when William the Conqueror encouraged Jewish merchants and financiers to migrate from northern France to London. The Jews were expelled from England under Edward I in 1290, but a continuous community was re-established following the readmission of Jews under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. From the 18th century onwards, British Jews became increasingly integrated into national life, contributing to commerce, science, literature, and politics while maintaining distinctive religious and communal institutions. Some 60,000-70,000 British Jews served in the British Army during the Second World War, serving in all branches and theatres of war. Prominent British Jews have included Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli; financier and activist Moses Montefiore; scientist Rosalind Franklin; playwright Harold Pinter; businessman Michael Marks; and philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin.
Waves of migration from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries transformed Jewish life in Britain, particularly in London’s East End, Manchester, and Leeds, substantially increasing the community's numbers while altering its cultural composition. The community has since diversified, including both long-established Anglo-Jewish families and more recent arrivals from Europe, the Middle East, and the Commonwealth.
According to the 2021 UK census, 277,613 people identified as Jewish, representing about 0.4% of the total population. The majority of British Jews live in and around London, which is home to about two-thirds of the national Jewish population. The largest concentrations are in the boroughs of Barnet, Harrow, and Hackney, and in nearby Hertfordshire suburbs such as Borehamwood, Bushey, and Elstree, which together form one of the largest Jewish urban areas in Europe. The second major centre is Greater Manchester, particularly Salford, Prestwich, and Whitefield, where a rapidly growing Haredi community has developed alongside long-established congregations. Smaller but historic Jewish populations remain in Leeds, Gateshead, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Birmingham.
History
The first recorded Jewish community in Britain was brought to England in 1070 by King William the Conqueror who believed the Jewish population's commercial skills would make his newly won country more prosperous. At the end of the 12th century, a series of blood libels and fatal pogroms were perpetrated in England, particularly on the east coast. On 16 March 1190, during the run up to the Third Crusade, the Jewish population of York was massacred at the site where Clifford's Tower now stands.In 1275, King Edward I of England passed the Statute of the Jewry. This restricted the community's business activities, outlawing the practice of usury. Fifteen years later, finding that many of these provisions were ignored, Edward expelled the Jews from England. The Jewish population emigrated to countries such as Poland which protected them by law. A small English community persisted in hiding despite the expulsion. Jews were not banned from Scotland, which was an independent kingdom until 1707; however, there is no record of a Jewish presence in Scotland before the 18th century. Jews were also not banned in Wales at the time, but England eventually annexed Wales under Henry VIII. When Henry VIII's England annexed Wales, the English ban on Jews extended to Wales. There is only one known record of a Jew in Wales between 1290 and the annexation, but it is possible individuals did persist there after 1290.
A small community of conversos was identified in Bristol in 1609 and banished. In 1656, Oliver Cromwell made it clear that the ban on Jewish settlement in England and Wales would no longer be enforced, but when Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel brought a petition to allow Jews to return, the majority of the Protectorate Government turned it down. Despite the Protectorate government's rejection of the Rabbi's petition, the community considers 1656 to mark the readmission of the Jews to England and Wales. In mid-nineteenth century British-ruled Ireland, Daniel O'Connell, known as "The Liberator" for his work on Catholic Emancipation, worked successfully for the repeal of the "De Judaismo" law, which prescribed a special yellow badge for Jews. Benjamin Disraeli, of Jewish birth although he joined the Church of England, served in government for three decades, twice as prime minister.
The oldest Jewish community in Britain is the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community, which traces back to the 1630s when it existed clandestinely in London before the readmission and was unofficially legitimised in 1656, which is the date counted by the Jewish community as the re-admittance of the Jews to England. A trickle of Ashkenazi immigration primarily from German countries continued from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. As for the second wave of Ashkenazi immigration, a large wave of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire due to pogroms and the May Laws between 1880 and the imposition of tighter immigration restrictions in 1905 sought their way to the Isles. Many German and Polish Jews seeking to escape the Nazi Holocaust arrived in Britain before and after the Second World War.
During the Second World War, approximately 60,000—70,000 British Jews served in the British Army, representing a higher proportion than the general population. British Jews served in all branches and theatres of war, including as pilots during the Battle of Britain, and were overrepresented in elite forces like the Parachute Regiment and Royal Air Force aircrew.
More than 3,000 British Jewish servicemen and women lost their lives in the war and many others received decorations for bravery and conduct, with three Victoria Crosses, 168 Military Crosses and 188 Distinguished Flying Crosses awarded to Jewish personnel during the war. Many European Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution also served in the British Army during the war.
The Jewish Brigade Group was formed in 1944 and fought with distinction in the Spring 1945 Offensive in Italy. The group was largely recruited from Old Yishuv Jews in British Mandatory Palestine and commanded by British-Jewish officers. They received 7 Military Medals, 7 Order of the British Empire medals, 4 Military Crosses, and 2 US awards. The group was formally disbanded in the summer of 1946.
Following de-colonisation, the late twentieth century saw Yemeni Jews, Iraqi Jews, and Baghdadi Jews settle in the United Kingdom. A multicultural community, in 2006 British Jews celebrated the 350th anniversary of the resettlement in England.
Demographics
Population size
According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, there were 271,327 Jews in England and Wales, or 0.5% of the overall population, whilst in the 2021 Northern Irish census, there were 439 self-identified Jews constituting just 0.02% of the population, but marking a 31% increase in numbers since the census of 2011. According to the 2011 census, 5,887 Jews lived in Scotland for a total of 277,653 self-identified Jews in the United Kingdom. This does not include much smaller communities in the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories; notably, there are Jewish communities in Gibraltar, Jersey and Bermuda, amongst others. However, this final figure is considered an undercount. Demographers David Graham and Stanley Waterman give several reasons as for why: the underenumeration for censuses in general; the question did not record secular Jews; the voluntary nature of the question; suspicion by Jews of such questions; and the high non-response rate for large numbers of Haredi Jews. By comparison, the Jewish Virtual Library estimated a Jewish population of 291,000 in 2012, making Britain's Jewish community the fifth largest in the world. This equates to 0.43% of the population of the United Kingdom. The absolute number of Jews has been gradually rising since records began; in the 2011 census, 263,346 people in England and Wales answered "Jewish" to the voluntary question on religion, compared with 259,927 in of 2001.The 2001 Census included a religion question for the first time in its history; 266,740 people listed their religion as "Jewish". However, the subject of who is a Jew is complex, and the religion question did not record people who may be Jewish through other means, such as ethnically and culturally. Of people who chose Jewish as their religion, 97% put White as their ethnic group. However, a report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research suggests that, although there was an apparent option to write down "Jewish" for this question, it did not occur to many, because of "skin colour" and nationality bias, and that if "Jewish" was an explicit option, the results—only 2,594 respondents were Jewish solely by ethnicity—would have been different. The religion question appeared in the 2011 Census, but there was still no explicit option for "Jewish" in the ethnic-group question. The Board of Deputies had encouraged all Jews to indicate they were Jewish, either through the religion question or the ethnicity one.
From 2005 to 2008, the Jewish population increased from 275,000 to 280,000, attributed largely to the high birth rates of Haredi Jews. Research by the University of Manchester in 2007 showed that 75% of British Jewish births were to the Haredi community. Ultra-Orthodox women have an average of 6.9 children, and secular Jewish women 1.65. In 2015, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research reported that in England the orthodox community was growing by nearly 5% per year, while the non-haredi community was decreasing by 0.3% per year. It has been also documented that in terms of births, between 2007 and 2015, the estimated number of Strictly Orthodox births per annum increased by 35%, rising from 1,431 to 1,932. Meanwhile, the estimated number of ‘Mainstream’ births per annum increased to a lesser extent over the same period, going from 1,844 to 1,889.