Jewish Immigrants in London, 1880–1939

Susan L Tananbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781848934429
• eBook ISBN: 9781317318781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Between 1880 and 1939, a quarter of a million European Jews settled in England. Tananbaum explores the differing ways in which the existing Anglo-Jewish communities, local government and education and welfare organizations sought to socialize these new arrivals, focusing on the experiences of working-class women and children.

1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ACCULTURATION OF A JEWISH COMMUNITY: LONDON, 1880–1939

Three Stages of Change, from 1880 to 1939

Three periods of change emerge during the years 1880 to 1939. Each features distinct reactions of Jewish immigrants and their hosts and signals evolving patterns of adjustment among London’s Jewish immigrants. From 1880 to 1905, the period of most intensive immigration, migrants from Eastern Europe settled in Stepney and Aldgate, areas where Jews had lived for nearly two hundred years. Anglo-Jewry created and expanded social welfare services to meet immediate needs. The period 1905 to 1918 saw the passage of the Aliens Act, the rate of immigration decrease and Anglo-Jewry develop programmes with an interventionist emphasis. During 1918 to 1939, the period of most extensive change, concerns emerged that acculturation had gone too far.¹

1880–1905: A Period of Intense Immigration

Poverty characterized the experiences of the majority of first generation immigrants.² Assessments of the nature of that poverty, such as Charles Booth’s study, provide extensive information and insight into the attitudes of those gathering data.³ East Enders shared subdivided housing, often came up short on rent day and faced the cold and damp English weather with inadequate food, clothing and shoes. Employment in seasonal trades deepened financial stress. Jews living in dwellings such as the Rothschild Buildings suffered disproportionately higher rates of consumption than Stepney as a whole.⁴ Slum clearance in the East End, an effort to stem crime and prostitution, intensified pressure on housing.⁵ These conditions created anxiety among established Jews which led to communal efforts at damage control and the provision of basic needs.

The generation who arrived as adults, especially grandparents, often remained the least anglicized. Writer Cyril Spector’s mother settled in Bethnal Green in 1902 and some fifty years later spoke little English, and wrote none.⁶ Raised in Eastern Europe, comfortable only in Yiddish, and unaccustomed to urban life, these women focused most of their attention on their families’ survival. Generational changes developed quickly – anglicized children differed in language, appearance and self-perception from their elders.⁷

1905–18: Immigration Lessens, Acculturation Accelerates

While poverty remained pervasive, growing numbers received an English education, medical treatment, particularly prenatal care and perceived themselves as British. Acculturation resulted in fundamental changes. In 1910, the East End correspondent of the JC commented that ‘the fact that the sheital [wig worn by religiously observant women after marriage], is going out of favour’ served as one index of ‘gradual Anglicisation’. Young immigrant women now rebelled against covering their heads. A wig maker too, noted the shift. Foreign ‘Jewesses’, except those with ultra-Orthodox husbands, now refused ‘to submit to petty tyranny which decrees that her natural locks should be covered’.⁸ While only impressionistic, this evidence suggests that women may have adopted modernized forms of observance before their husbands, or challenged structures of patriarchy thanks to influences of their new environment.⁹

During the years before World War I, many Jews began discovering a world beyond the East End. The children of first generation immigrants entered a wider array of occupations. Just before the First World War, the Girls’ Apprenticing Sub-Committee noted difficulty placing all the girls seeking clerical positions.¹⁰ Girls and boys young enough to attend school straddled two worlds. As the Chief Rabbi noted in 1914,

The younger generation has tasted something of Western life, and to that extent has become alienated from the older generation … The foreign speech, the old ideas – are a little strange to the children, and while they beget no sympathy may even attract derision. The young Jews and Jewesses, revelling in their English up-bringing look contemptuously upon their fathers.¹¹

Intergenerational tensions intensified as children negotiated between anglicizing messages at school and in clubs and homes that remained suffused with Jewish culture, religious or secular, socialist or Zionist.

The advent of war bolstered doubts about immigrant Jews’ commitment to the nation. East End Jews’ lack of enthusiasm for enlisting deepened concerns in the Jewish community about behaviours that could arouse anti-Semitism. While many East End Jews enlisted, a significant proportion sought to avoid military service either in Britain or in Russia. Perceptions of Jews as a nation within a nation who took soldiers’ jobs, reinforced notions of Jews’ alienness.¹² The Russian Revolution, internal Jewish tensions over Zionism, as well as nationalistic fervour during World War I, left Jews feeling insecure about perceptions of their loyalty to Britain.¹³ Jewish charities redoubled their efforts to aid poor Jews and to avoid charges that immigrants constituted a financial burden on the state.¹⁴

Communal priorities shifted from the absorption of unprecedented numbers of newcomers to the moulding of good British Jews. Schools emphasized English language skills, literature and culture, physical exercise, neatness and discipline. Club leaders wanted to keep Jewish youth out of the music halls and focused on appropriate use of leisure time. The established Jewish community still tried to remain inconspicuous – a longstanding Jewish approach to hostile surroundings – but also worked quietly to increase rights and minimize disabilities. The JBG reminded readers that Christian friends had gained many concessions for Jews and that it made sense for Jewish MPs to ‘remain in the background’.¹⁵ Slowly, the communal power structure shifted as children of immigrants moved into leadership roles and Anglo-Jewish elites lost exclusive control of communal institutions.¹⁶

Evidence of acculturation emerged alongside persistent old world traditions, apparent in the hiring of a Yiddish-speaking manager at Lloyds Bank. The bank ‘cultivate[d] a “Yiddish’ business”’ by advertising in the Yiddish press. While many continued to think of ‘the Ghetto’ as ‘a terribly dismal place – the abode of squalor, penury, and ignorance’, a place for ‘self-sacrificing charity’ workers – a great bank had opened there. The time had come to sweep away ‘many musty delusions about the East End Ghetto’, to replace outdated ‘popular notions … with elementary fact’.¹⁷ As change unfolded, some worried that rather than too foreign, many Jews became lax in their Jewish observance and the dangers of the street enticed impressionistic youth.

As services for immigrants developed, they generated a growing number of voluntary and paid opportunities for middle-class women. These women faced extensive scrutiny. The JC, for example, complained that women workers tended to ‘apply to all a measure or rule which excluded a sufficient amount of sympathy and kindness’. The writer conceded that evidence already existed that women’s work would become more effective as they gained experience.¹⁸ Despite new freedoms, female community leaders expressed frustration with resistance to women’s appointment to committees, arguing that membership on committees ‘should be solely a matter of merit and should not be restricted by considerations of sex’. Many organizations successfully drew on women’s talents, raising questions as to ‘why archaic prejudices’ continued to affect women’s opportunities.¹⁹

1918–39: Emphasis on Full Acculturation, New Generation Leads the Way

East End services grew in size and sophistication during this last stage. Both denominational organizations and local governments increased the numbers of health visitors and infant welfare centres.²⁰ Immigrants became more independent and built their own institutions such as the London Jewish Hospital. Schooling, social organizations and the First World War facilitated some social and economic mobility. In this latest period, most East End Jewish schoolchildren were native-born, but many still had foreign-born parents. School leavers entered an ever-wider array of jobs and many became less religiously observant than their elders. The fear that anglicization had gone too far brought renewed attention to the leisure choices of Jewish youth, the content of programmes sponsored by the Jewish community and a focus on keeping young East Enders committed Jews.

The growth of the leisure industry in the 1920s and 1930s spurred development of settlement houses and girls’ and boys’ clubs. Although commercialization began before World War I, workers had more time and discretionary income after the war.²¹ Boxer Jack Kid Berg noted that

in the early twenties, the first British-born generation of Jewish boys was reaching adulthood. Since birth, Jewish children had been assailed on all sides by churches, youth clubs, schools and various other institutions that had, consciously or otherwise, aimed to rid them of their ‘alien’ heritage: vicars and youth leaders, scoutmasters and schoolmasters and school teachers had systematically chipped away at the Yiddish language and the culture it had carried, gradually loosening the hold of the Orthodox elders who had once held sway.²²

Among the younger generations especially, clothing and cultural interests no longer identified them as ‘aliens’, as Jews’ activities more closely resembled their English peers. Jewish youth responded to the new ‘dance craze’ and frequented clubs such as Mile End Old Boys’ Club, where they made many shidduchs, or matches. Complaints increased about the looseness of women and their immodest dress and language.²³

In 1935, World Jewry ran a series of articles on the East End, claiming: ‘The East End is changing, rapidly – inexorably’. Many Londoners remained unfamiliar with the area or still associated it with ‘crime, anarchy, and slums’. Just a few years before World War II, the East End combined narrow ‘mediaeval-looking street markets [that] might be vivid reproductions of the ghettos of Eastern Europe’ with wide boulevards and ‘chromium-fitted shopfronts and Neon signs [that] are characteristic of an East End which has travelled a long way from the poverty, dirt and ignorance of fifty years ago’.²⁴ Nonetheless, Jews’ ‘race and tradition’ created ‘a more highly coloured character than the Gentile of his class’. Even Jewish writers believed the speech and clothing of Jews reflected this inner colour. ‘There is a slight extravagance of cut, a tendency to vigour in the shade and pattern of the materials which, although classed by some as “flashiness”, is probably a reflection of Oriental influence in the Jewish make-up’.²⁵ While Jews had become more modern in behaviour and outlook, the article’s language identified Jews as foreigners.

During this period, Anglo-Jewry laid the foundations of modern Jewish life in Britain. Increasing numbers of East Enders emerged from the working class and moved to areas such as Stamford Hill and north London.²⁶ Many Jews remained distinct from Christians in their educational and occupational patterns and retained ties to their ethnic heritage, albeit a more British version than they brought from Eastern Europe. According to Jack Kid Berg, the younger generation, generally children of immigrants, demonstrated more confidence and less anxiety than immigrants. During the interwar years, young adults ventured beyond the East End with increasingly regularity. Berg, typical of his generation, found the lure of the West End very strong.²⁷ Others recalled that an evening out involved a trip to Lyons Corner House in the West End, where ‘you would get an egg mayonnaise for eight pence, old pence, a baton and butter for two pence and a beautiful cup of coffee for four pence’.²⁸

Men, Women and Children Face Different Challenges

Leave-Taking

For Jewish immigrants, even before t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• 1 A Brief History of the Acculturation of a Jewish Community: London, 1880–1939
• 2 Public Health in London’s Jewish East End, 1880–1939
• 3 Communal Networks: Taking Care of their Own and Efforts to Secure the Community’s Reputation
• 4 The Impact of Education: Anglicization of Jewish East Enders Begins with Schooling
• 5 Religious Education: Conflicting Educational Views within the Jewish Community
• 6 Jewish Clubs and Settlement Houses: The Impact of Recreational Programmes on the Anglicization of East Enders
• 7 Women’s and Children’s Moral Health in London’s East End, 1880–1939: The Making and Unmaking of Jews and ‘Jewesses’
• 8 Becoming English in the Workplace
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index