Jewish Archives in the UK

Abstract

As the longest established non-Christian minority group in the UK, the history of Jewish archives in this country has a particular significance. Following the readmission of the Jews to England in the 1650s, Jewish created archives exist, though through communal neglect and the blitz they are uneven in coverage until the later eighteenth century. Only by the end of the nineteenth century were conscious efforts made by British Jewry to preserve its own heritage. Our chapter focuses on the formal efforts post-1945 to locate, collect and preserve Jewish archives from slow and uncertain beginnings to the situation in the first decades of the 20 first century when there are major collections of Jewish archives in the University of Southampton and the London Metropolitan Archives, successful local and regional initiatives, as well as projects enabling a more inclusive Jewish archive such as that of the Liberal Synagogue's Rainbow Jews to document and record the LGBTQ+ experience. It concludes that Jewish archive preservation in the UK is a story more of success than failure.