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

Abstract

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.