Anglo-Jewish Historiography and the Jewish Historiographical Mainstream

Abstract

This article examines how the writing of Anglo-Jewish history became detached from the writing of modern Jewish history more generally. It suggests that the price of this isolation has been the loss of a pan—Jewish, transnational perspective with the potential, ironically, to shed light on events and trends in Anglo-Jewish history and to explain what is uniquely ‘English’ or ‘British’ about them. It also argues that this detachment has impoverished mainstream Jewish historiography by depriving it of the contributions and insights that are the hallmark of Anglo—Jewish history writing—a tradition of social history and a well-developed sense of the way local environments and social formations and customs shape historical outcomes.