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Popery, Rabbinism, and Reform: Evangelicals and Jews in Early Victorian England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

David Feldman
David Feldman*
Affiliation:
Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol
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Extract

In this brief paper I discuss the relation between Christianity and Jewish religious reform in early Victorian England. More specifically, I want to suggest that there was a close relation between the Evangelical critique of Judaism as a form of popery and the direction and meaning of religious reform within Anglo-Jewry. If, indeed, this was the case, then what follows has a significant bearing upon the way we interpret Jewish integration in nineteenth-century England.

There were roughly 50,000 Jews in England in 1850, two-thirds of whom lived in the capital. Synagogues, like other communal institutions, were dominated by a wealthy elite. Synagogue attendance was thin, and in 1851, on census Sabbath, only 10 per cent of London Jews were found in a metropolitan synagogue. Although nominally Orthodox, the general temper of religious observance within Anglo-Jewry was relaxed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 29: Christianity and Judaism , 1992 , pp. 379 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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References

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