Heritage

London

1840 to 1841
In 1840, at a time when London was the center of the world economy and in the process of becoming the cultural capital of the world, the West London Synagogue was established, England's first Reform synagogue.

The new synagogue reflected the assimilationist tendencies of some of London's most prominent Jewish citizens, who at the time included David Salomons, the first Jewish sheriff of London, and Baron Lionel de Rothschild, a member of the international banking family, who became, in 1847, the first Jew elected to serve in Parliament.

The Jewish Chronicle, one of the first Jewish weekly newspapers in the world, began publication in London in 1841.

Still published today, it is the world's oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper.

1881 to 1914
Between 1881 and 1914 London was a mecca for Jewish immigrants fleeing economic hardship and persecution in Eastern Europe. London's Jewish population swelled from about 47,000 to 150,000.

Most of the new arrivals lived in slums in London's East End, many of them working as shoemakers, tailors, and cabinet-makers. There, they created a number of communal institutions, including a Yiddish press and a trade union movement.

By 1905, however, the Aliens Act had set stringent limits on immigration from Eastern Europe, and Jewish immigration decreased sharply.

1918 to 1939
Between the two world wars, many Jews left the crowded East End of London for suburbs to the north of the city. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, some German Jews fled to London, where they helped revitalize Jewish communal institutions.

In the 1930s a British fascist movement was founded, the British Union of Fascists (BUF), with its headquarters in London. The BUF espoused anti-Semitism, and, on October 4, 1936, BUF "Blackshirts," under the leadership of Sir Oswald Moseley, marched through London's East End, attacking Jewish residents and vandalizing homes and businesses.

Oxford & Cambridge
1871 to 1878

As a result of the Universities Test Act, which eliminated religious criteria for university admission in 1871, Jews were for the first time permitted to pursue advanced degrees at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

The first women's college at Oxford was founded in 1878, but women were not admitted to full membership in the university until 1920.

Paris

1789 to 1791
At the time of the French Revolution (1789), there were no more than a few hundred Jews living in Paris. These Jews had no legal status. Two years later, however, their representatives petitioned the Paris Commune for the emancipation of Jews throughout France. Full citizenship rights were granted to Sephardic Jews in January 1790; all French Jews were emancipated in September, 1791.

1860
In May 1860, the first international Jewish organization, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, was founded by Adolphe Crémieux and other Jewish leaders in Paris. In the years to come, the organization (dedicated to defending Jewish rights worldwide) lobbied government leaders

for the improvement of the legal status of Jews in the Near East and Eastern Europe, facilitated Jewish emigration, and established dozens of modern Jewish schools in North Africa, the Near East, and the Balkans.

1894 to 1906
In 1894 a Jewish colonel in the French Army, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of espionage.

His trial became a cause célèbre, which split French society along conservative and liberal lines. Paris was the battleground for a national feud between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards, and the city became headquarters for the new political ideology of "Anti-Semitism".

In 1906, after several court proceedings and years of imprisonment, Dreyfus was fully exonerated.