This lecture will frame the history of the Jews in Britain in terms of the various waves of immigration that brought Jews to Britain's shores. It will start in 1066, when Jews living in Normandy began settling in Britain in the wake of William the Conqueror's victory at the battle of Hastings. It will continue with the arrival of New Christian, or converso, merchants in the mid-seventeenth century and their creation of the first Jewish community in Britain after the expulsion of 1290. It will move on to the less dramatic arrival of Jews from Central Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first Ashkenazi immigrants in the modern period, who created the institutional bedrock of contemporary Anglo-Jewry. Next is the great wave of impoverished East European Jews who arrived between 1870 and 1914 and who completely changed the tenor of Anglo-Jewish society. It will conclude with the arrival of refugees fleeing Nazism in the mid-twentieth century, as well as those escaping Hungary in the 1950s and Egypt and other Arab lands in the 1950s and 1960s.

Todd M. Endelman is Professor Emeritus of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, he taught at Yeshiva University and Indiana University before coming to Michigan in 1985. He is a specialist in the history of the Jews of Britain and the social history of West European Jewry in the modern period. His books include The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000; Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History; and most recently The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman: The Life and Times of Redcliffe Nathan Salaman.

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This lecture will frame the history of the Jews in Britain in terms of the various waves of immigration that brought Jews to Britain's shores. It will start in 1066, when Jews living in Normandy began settling in Britain in the wake of William the Conqueror's victory at the battle of Hastings. It will continue with the arrival of New Christian, or converso, merchants in the mid-seventeenth century and their creation of the first Jewish community in Britain after the expulsion of 1290. It will move on to the less dramatic arrival of Jews from Central Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first Ashkenazi immigrants in the modern period, who created the institutional bedrock of contemporary Anglo-Jewry. Next is the great wave of impoverished East European Jews who arrived between 1870 and 1914 and who completely changed the tenor of Anglo-Jewish society. It will conclude with the arrival of refugees fleeing Nazism in the mid-twentieth century, as well as those escaping Hungary in the 1950s and Egypt and other Arab lands in the 1950s and 1960s.

Todd M. Endelman is Professor Emeritus of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.
Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University, he taught at Yeshiva University and Indiana University before coming to Michigan in 1985. He is a specialist in the history of the Jews of Britain and the social history of West European Jewry in the modern period. His books include The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000; Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History; and most recently The Last Anglo-Jewish Gentleman: The Life and Times of Redcliffe Nathan Salaman.

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