Historians often emphasize very rapid socio-economic mobility among Jewish immigrants. David Feldman challenges the notion that every Jew was ‘a Rothschild bursting to get out’, arguing that it is a ‘teleological bias’ to assume that the post-1945 Jewish socio-economic pattern is part of a continuous trend that began in the early days of migration. Overall, from 1880 to the Second World War, the movement into the professional classes is striking, but census data and interviews suggest that this movement occurred during the interwar years and beyond. Thus, by 1935, World Jewry argued the time had come to replace images of the ‘stunted, pallid Jew of the ghetto’ with ‘the reality of the young East-Ender of today … whose love of sport and exercise is as ardent as that of the Englishman with generations of sporting tradition as a background’.

Broadly speaking, that change occurred in three stages. Adults who arrived between 1880 and 1905 tended to cling to familiar Eastern European customs of language, food, work and, in many cases, religious and political beliefs. Established Jews reacted to their arrival with mixed feelings – a sense of solidarity and tzedakah, alongside fear of an anti-Semitic backlash. Hosts responded to the immigrants with a set of expectations that incorporated class, religious and gendered expectations. Among these were decorum, a certain submissiveness and gratitude, modernized Judaism, domesticity for women and girls, and self-reliance for men and boys.