Radio
Turbulent history
Michael Vestey
ewish Journey: 1,000 Years of Jewish Life in Britain has been something of a triumph on Radio Four (Thursdays), a four-parter unravelling the mixture of tolerance and persecution of the Jews since they first arrived here after the Norman Conquest. The actor Andrew Sachs, best-known perhaps as Manuel in Fawlty Towers, charted their turbulent history here with the help of historians and there was much to discover in the course of it.
At first, the English were surprisingly tolerant for those superstitious times when William the Conqueror arranged for an influx of Jews from Rouen, granting by Royal Charter their freedom to live here, protected by sheriffs, in return for paying higher taxes. They became moneylenders not by choice. Many trades were barred to them as artisans had to belong to guilds and take a Christian oath and moneylending was denied to Christians under Church law. With little social mixing, resentments soon built up and in Lincoln in 1255 the 'Blood Libel' led to trumped-up charges that Jews had reenacted the Crucifixion by murdering a boy later known as St Hugh and entombed in the cathedral. Ninety-one Jews were found guilty and 19 were hanged.
In York leading Yorkshire barons led a mob to wipe out the Jewish community so that their debts would be cancelled. About 150 Jews, knowing they were to be slaughtered, killed themselves. They had to endure the Disputations where they were forced publicly to justify their faith in public arguments with Christian theologians attempting to convert them, and every Jew over the age of seven was forced to a wear 'Jew Badge' of bright yellow, predating the Nazis by centuries.
Then in 1290 Edward I expelled the Jews from England altogether forcing them to return to France and it was 400 years later that Jews were allowed back by Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans identified with Jews as a religious minority believing they were guardians of the Old Testament while Catholics revered the New Testament. He failed officially to admit them after the Whitehall Conferences, set up to debate the issue and secure national approval, didn't go his way: but Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition came anyway, many of them pretending to be Christian but practising their own religion in secret.
In the 18th century Jews regarded England as fairly enlightened compared with Germany where they still wore Jew Badges, were confined to ghettoes and had no political rights. A certain Nathan Mayer Rothschild left Frankfurt, settled in England and became an Englishman. But there was a hysterical reaction to what was known as the Jew Bill of 1753 which was designed to enable wealthy foreign Jews to be naturalised without having to take the Christian sacrament. Some people feared they would buy St Paul's Cathedral and turn it into a synagogue. The government panicked and repealed the Bill the following year.
Jews were barred from holding public office without a sacrament certificate which was supplied only to Christians and nor could they enter Parliament. Nathan Rothschild's son Lionel, however, became the first Jewish MP. Disraeli had been baptised after a quarrel with his synagogue though was said to quietly celebrate his Jewishness. By far the biggest exodus came between 1881 and 1914 when 3 million Jews were forced out by poverty and governmentsponsored pogroms in Russia, the largest mass migration in history. Among these was Michael Marks, a penniless pedlar who set up a stall in Leeds, and expanded into a firm called Marks and Spencer.
Wealthy Jews already here weren't particularly keen on these poor ones coming in in such numbers in case they spoiled the atmosphere; opposition led to the 1905 Aliens Act which did control immigration for a while. Many Jews, as we know, settled in the East End of London before upward mobility dispersed them to Golders Green and St John's Wood. Assimilation was encouraged by the remarkable Jewish Free School, the largest school in Europe where Yiddish was banned.
Sachs himself came to Britain from Berlin in 1938 thus escaping the Holocaust. His narration of these programmes was straightforward, without gimmicks, and made rather compelling listening. His experts were all fluent talkers though my one niggle is that there were moments when it was difficult to follow who was actually speaking as introductions weren't entirely consistent throughout. The series was produced by Nicola West for Martin Weitz Associates, an independent programme maker with a good record of documentaries on Radio Four.
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