THE JEWS
The traditional unit of Jewish organization is a territorial one-the community.
The history of the Jews in London and its environs has centred on the tension
between maintaining the unified community and progressive fragmentation,
due more to successive waves of immigrants from different communities than
internal schism. The earliest division was between the Sephardim (adherents of the
Spanish rite) and Ashkenazim (adherents of the German rite). The first synagogue of
the Resettlement, opened in Creechurch Lane in the City in 1656, was attended by
both until 1692 when the Ashkenazim opened the Great Synagogue. (fn. 1) During the 18th
century a few wealthy families, mainly Sephardim, had country houses in Middlesex,
where they sometimes held religious meetings, (fn. 2) but they all belonged to one of the two
communities and most held seats at one of the City synagogues, the Sephardi Bevis
Marks (1701), (fn. 3) or the Ashkenazi Great, Hambro' (1725), (fn. 4) and New (1761). (fn. 5)
Most Sephardim lived in the City near the synagogue and its associated institutions-
Talmud Torah (teaching of the law), Hebra (burial society), and schools dating from
1664 and 1730. (fn. 6) But the Ashkenazim early began the movement out of the City and five
synagogues had been opened for them by the beginning of the 19th century, one near
the Strand, and others in the East End. The dispersal of the Ashkenazim led to
the first positive efforts to maintain the unity of the community. In 1808 the City
synagogues (fn. 7) agreed to maintain the framework of the original Ashkenazi community
under the authority of its rabbi. Even more important was the rabbinate of the two
Adlers, Nathan (1845-90) and Hermann (1891-1911), especially as this came after the
community had received a shock with the foundation in the West End of a Reform synagogue, formed mainly by a group of dissident Sephardim, but also linked with the
continental Reform movement. Formal relations between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi
communities were polite and both co-operated in the Board of Deputies, founded in
1760, to further the interests of the Jews in England, in the Beth Din (Law Court) and
Shechita Board (to deal with kosher food), both set up in 1804. But each community
maintained its liturgical traditions, and a proposal for a joint West End Synagogue in
1849 was rejected on liturgical grounds by the Sephardim. (fn. 8)
Nathan Adler's policy of consolidating the Ashkenazi community began with the issue
in 1847 of regulations confirming the supremacy of the Chief Rabbi in questions of
religion and ritual practice, and in 1855 the Jews' College was opened in Finsbury
Square for training teachers and ministers. Adler also encouraged a group of young
Benthamite Jews in 1859 to found the Board of Guardians, which was an attempt to
co-ordinate and supply the gaps left by the large number of heterogeneous, overlapping
Jewish charities. Adler's initiative also lay behind the United Synagogue, created by
Act of Parliament in 1870. Consisting of the City Ashkenazi synagogues and making
provision for the admission of other synagogues and the erection of new ones, the
United Synagogue was characterized by a common financial system and governed by a
committee. (fn. 9) Orthodox, but increasingly characterized by Victorian 'decorum' in worship and by sermons in English, the United Synagogue was the expression of the more
prosperous, longer-established Anglo-Jewry. Through its newspaper, the Jewish
Chronicle, it advocated a policy of Anglicization, which was largely accomplished by
the Jewish schools, the Westminster Jews' Free School (1811), the Jews' Free School,
Spitalfields (1817), the Stepney Jewish Schools (1865), and the Bayswater Jewish
Schools (1866). (fn. 10)
The chief challenge to the United Synagogue came from the East End, into which
immigrants from eastern Europe flooded during the period from 1882 to 1914. A
Jewish Dispersion Committee (1902) tried to attract them to areas like Notting Hill and
in 1899 the United Synagogue adopted an Associated Synagogue Scheme to facilitate
the establishment of self-supporting but less expensive metropolitan synagogues.
Some of the immigrants joined the United Synagogue, but the majority preferred to
remain in the East End where they found their relatives and familiar institutions like
the hebra or chevra, a benevolent society to which a small synagogue was often attached.
The earliest hebra dated from 1853 and there were 20 in 1870, but the numbers multiplied greatly with the arrival of the immigrants. Small, noisy, often dirty and insanitary,
and outside its control, the hebroth were attacked by the United Synagogue as a barrier
to social assimilation and a potential source of anti-Semitism. As an alternative, in 1889
it proposed an East End Scheme, to consist of a large synagogue with all the ancillary
services the immigrants required. Many immigrants, however, distrusted the westernized and often lax Anglo-Jew of the United Synagogue. The East End Scheme had to be
abandoned and in 1887 twenty-one hebroth joined in the Federation of Synagogues, a
large burial society 'to preserve the structure of east European Jewry'. (fn. 11)
Another challenge to the unity of the Ashkenazi community came from the Machzike
HaDath. Established in 1891, it was the first attempt to form a community based on
very strict observance, particularly in relation to the Sabbath and meat-slaughtering.
It clashed with the Chief Rabbi over the latter and set up its own organization which
still survives, although within the framework of the Shechita Board. In 1905 economic
reasons forced it to join the Federation's burial scheme. (fn. 12)
Immigration also introduced into England Hassidim, followers of an 18th-century
east European pietist movement. In 1886 a Hungarian and German separatist movement founded the North London Beth Hamedrash, which in 1911 developed into the
Adath Yisroel congregation. This was an independent orthodox community outside the
jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbi, with its own courts and other institutions. In 1926 a
number of small synagogues, affiliated to Adath Yisroel for burial purposes, established
the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations 'to protect traditional Judaism'. At the
other end of the religious spectrum, the Jewish Religious, founded in 1902, opened the
first Liberal synagogue in Hill Street, St. John's Wood, in 1911. (fn. 13)
The severe damage caused in the East End during the Second World War hastened
the dispersion of Jews to other parts of London and to more distant suburbs. Refugees
from Nazi persecution tended to concentrate in North London, forming two nuclei
of Union synagogues around Stoke Newington and Golders Green and a colony of
Hassidim in Stamford Hill. Most of the synagogues serving congregations in the outer
suburbs have been established under the auspices of the United Synagogue. Liberal and
Reform synagogues, both affiliated to the world union for Progressive Judaism, although
numerically a minority, have grown steadily, being especially strengthened by the influx
of German and Austrian Jews in the 1930's. Most Federation synagogues are still in the
East End, with a few scattered elsewhere, although there has been a general decline.
The Sephardim have opened Persian and Bokharan synagogues in Stamford Hill. (fn. 14)