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List of British Jews

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Template:Jew list

List of British Jews is a list that includes Jewish people from the United Kingdom and its predecessor states.

Although the first Jews may have arrived on the island of Great Britain with the Romans, it wasn't until the Norman Conquest of William the Conqueror in 1066 that organised Jewish communities first appeared in England. These existed until 1290 when the Jewish population of England was expelled by King Edward I of England. (Hence plays such as The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice, regarded by many as antisemitic, were written when Jews did not live openly in England.)

There was never a corresponding expulsion from Scotland. Indeed, the eminent Jewish-Scottish scholar David Daiches states in his autobiographical Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood that there are grounds for saying that Scotland is the only European country with no history of state persecution of Jews.

Jews were re-admitted to England and Wales in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell, and emancipated in 1858. In the late 19th century there was mass Jewish immigration from Russia due to anti-semitism, and in the 1930s an influx of refugees from Nazism. The Jewish population peaked at 450,000, but has since declined due to low birth-rate, intermarriage and emigration. According to the 2001 census, the current population is around 240,000, most of whom live in London, though many experts consider this an underestimate. The following is a list of some prominent British Jews. Template:JewsByCountry

Political figures

MPs

British Members of Parliament listed chronologically by first election date (in brackets):

"Sir Anthony ... is a representative of the enlightened haute juiverie"

Other

Concise Dictionary of National Biography: "became a Jew"

Religious leaders

Scientists

See also: List of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society

Physicists

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: "In 1946 Dennis Gabor became a naturalized British citizen."
"study at the university was open to him, despite being a Jew ... Kurti became a naturalized British citizen just before the outbreak of the Second World War"

Chemists

Biologists

Mathematicians and statisticians

"These include the papers of Anglo-Jewish leaders, such as Selig Brodetsky"
Concise Dictionary of National Biography: "became naturalised British citizen, 1947"

Computer scientists

Academic figures

Philosophers

"Born less than a week apart, Adolf Hitler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein attended the institution together. There is a haunting school photograph of the young, complex, Jewish philosopher just one row away from the most evil tyrant of the 20th century."
"Wollheim was an outstanding representative of a generation of Central European Jewish intellectuals"

Social scientists

"You are a Jewish, Zimbabwean, Mancunian philosopher... I have lived in Manchester more than half my life and am very much at home here."

Medical

Economists

Historians

"Born in Oxford, she had moved to Cheltenham at the age of five when her father, the polymath Jacob Bronowski, author of Ascent of Man, took up a research post with the National Coal Board. So it was that this nice little Jewish family moved in to Cleeve Hill, a small village four miles from town."
"Five years or so later, I decided to define publicly my identity as belonging to the Jewish community by becoming a member of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue."

Theologians and Hebraists

Arts

"Waley, born Arthur David Schloss, was a member of an elite Anglo-Jewish family"

Showbusiness

Film actors

The Express 23 May 2003 (Paul Callan)

"She was born Joan Henrietta Collins, a nice Jewish girl from Bayswater"
"(Noel) Coward was less complimentary about (Maureen) Lipman's fellow Jewish stage star Fenella Fielding"

TV actors

Directors/producers/executives

Comedians

"Eagle-eyed viewers of Channel 4's music show Popworld might have spotted its Jewish presenter Simon Amstell"

Theatre

Radio

Other

Musicians

Popular musicians

"Elkie Brooks and Graham Gouldman are two Jewish pop star graduates of Sedgley Park Primary School, Prestwich"
"as JC readers know, Kelly Osbourne is actually Jewish."

Richard Keight, a solo rapper, who formerly belonged to the groups 21 Eyes and PFD, is Jewish. He has recorded several tracks which reference this and has used beats based on Jewish folk music. Keight caused some furore with a strongly pro zionist track recently.

Producers/managers

Classical musicians

Songwriters

Other

Writers

Authors

Jewish Chronicle 13/3/1998 p1
"Dame Muriel Spark, the author of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and

several other celebrated works, is halachically Jewish." (Says her mother was Jewish too.)

"Israel Zangwill, Anglo-Jewish writer and political activist, was probably the best known Jew in the English-speaking world at the start of the twentieth century."

Poets

"Abstract: "Difference at War" is a comparative study of three Jewish poet-soldiers of the First World War: Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, and U. Z. Grinberg. ... The poetry of each of these Jewish poets was transformed by the War"

Playwrights

Journalists

"Conrad Black's wife Barbara Amiel, a Jewish writer"
"whose 44-year-old Jewish American-born wife, née "Bimberly" Solomon turned Kimberly Fortier turned Kimberly Quinn"

Artists

Fine arts

"London's four leading Jewish painters, including me"
Listed as a British painter in Hutchinson's Encyclopedia of Britain, 2005

Designers and Architects

Business and the professions

Food

Retail

Manufacturing

Arnold Weinstock, Lord Weinstock, Chairman of GEC - JYB 2002, p211

Civil service

  • Sir Hermann Bondi , Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Energy
  • Sir Claus Moser , Lord Moser, Government Statistician

Law

5/7/1996 p7: "The Liberal Democrats' sole Jewish MP, Alex Carlile"
25/6/1999 p10: "Alex Carlile is on his way back to Westminster as one of four Jews among the 36 working peers"

Media

, former teenage dot.com millionaire

The Times (London); Dec 3, 1992; Ruth Gledhill
'Lord Rothschild, who is head of the English branch of the Rothschild family, says: "I would not like to disguise that I am first and foremost a secular Jew."'

Finance

Sports

Boxing

Chess

Other

Military

Miscellaneous

Bibliography

  • Celmins, Martin. Peter Green: The Authorized Biography. London: Sanctuary Publishing, Ltd.; 3rd edition, 2003. Pp. 23-32.
  • "Obituary: Sir Edward Sassoon". The Times, Saturday, May 25, 1912; pg. 11; Issue 39908; col C.

See also

Categories:
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