Jewish involvement in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain: navigating multiple identities in the Diaspora

Abstract

This article has two main areas of focus. The first will explore conversations, debates, and attitudes within the Jewish community, and the second will examine the relationship between non-Jewish suffrage leagues, both religious and secular, and Jewish suffragists and the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage (JLWS).1 Through these two main sections, I will shed light on the attitudes and involvement of Anglo-Jewry in the suffrage movement in Britain, a topic that remains vastly unexamined. In the first section, I will rely primarily on letters, articles, and records of meetings and debates from the Jewish Chronicle (JC). The JC published a rich variety of opinions on the topic, and provides insight into the different attitudes in the Anglo-Jewish community on the subject. While the JC itself appears generally to have had a more pro-suffrage stance, and includes many letters and contributions from suffragists and supporters of the movement, the publications between 1898 and 1928 also include letters and contributions from anti-suffrage Jews and therefore illuminate (at least part of ) the debate between Jewish suffragists and anti-suffragists. The very existence of a specifically Jewish league in the suffrage movement begs the question of what relations were like between Jewish and non-Jewish suffragists before the JLWS was created, as well as the nature of subsequent interactions between the JLWS and other leagues. Thus, the second part of this article will examine interfaith relations among suffragists and suffrage groups. It draws from various letters, interviews, photographs, and pamphlets from the London School of Economics’ Women’s Library, the British Library, and the JLWS Annual Reports. I hope to illuminate relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish suffragists, the level of inclusion of Jews in general suffrage events, and collaborations between the JLWS and other religious and nonreligious leagues.