The city of
Leeds, in
West Yorkshire, England has a Jewish community, where many notable people originated or settled. They have played a major part in the clothing trade, the business, professional and academic life of the
City, and the wider world. The community numbers now fewer than 7,000 people.[1][2]
Demography
A community of nearly 60 Jews was present in Leeds by 1840, with their numbers rising to 219 by 1861.[3][4] Around 1,000 were present prior to the
increase in immigration from the Russian Empire starting in the early 1880s.[5] In 1891 there were 8,000 Jews in Leeds, with more than 6,000 in the
Leylands area alone by 1901.[6][7] The concentration of Jews in some areas was so great that Templar Street was described as like a continental Jewish ghetto in the Yiddish press.[8] The population continued to rise in the early 20th century, numbering 12 to 14,000 in 1901, and around 25,000 after 1914.[6][5]
With the addition from 1933 of refugees from
Nazi Germany, evacuees from the
London Blitz, and later
Holocaust survivors, the Leeds community may have peaked around 1945 to 1950 at 25 to 29,000 people.[9][10][5] The population has since been in decline for many years, despite arrivals from smaller regional communities.[11][5] Steady
emigration to Israel began post-war and has continued,[5][12] but during the 1970s Leeds still had the highest Jewish proportion of population of any British city.[13]
The
2011 UK census recorded 6,847 people reporting their religion as Jewish in the
City of Leeds metropolitan district, 0.9% of the district's population.[14] In the Leeds built-up area, there were 6,136 (1.3% of population),[15] concentrated in areas such as
Alwoodleyward (3,270, 14.4% of population).[16]
Development
The first settlers in the 18th century were mainly German-born;[6] many were wool-merchants attracted to this major industry of West Yorkshire. The first marriage was recorded in 1842.[6] Early residents included Lazarus Levi.[3]
The history of the community is closely linked with
Hull, which was connected by railway to Leeds from 1840.[17] Most of those who settled in Leeds immigrated via the
Humber ports of
Hull,[18] and
Grimsby,[6] and many
lived in Hull, or stayed temporarily,[19] part of a migrant population mainly bound via
Liverpool for America.[18][6] As Leeds was a city undergoing economic expansion, on this migration route, and as Jews had tailoring experience or local contacts, a sizeable community developed.[18][5] Settlement was primarily in the poor
Leylands district of Leeds,[20] a low-rent area which attracted immigrants.[21] By the mid-1890s Leylands was predominantly Jewish.[22][3] The great majority of Jewish immigrants in this period were
Lithuanian Jews from within the Northern
Pale of Settlement of the
Russian Empire.[6][23]
Jews worked in notoriously insanitary sweatshops as tailoring became the dominant trade.[24][23][5] With the slum clearance of 1936–7,[7] the Jews of Leeds moved northwards, from the central Leylands area, up around
Chapeltown, and then further into
Moortown and
Alwoodley.[1][11]
Many 1930s European refugees came to Leeds, often well-educated, including in 1937 the
ORT training school from
Berlin,[25] and in 1938–40,
Kindertransport children,[26][27] followed by later survivors of the
Holocaust. Before the war a local branch of the
Association of Jewish Refugees was formed,[28] and more recently the Leeds-based Holocaust Survivors' Fellowship Association.[29]
Synagogues
The first synagogue in Leeds opened in 1846 in a converted private house in Back Rockingham Street, on the site of the current
Merrion Centre. In 1861 it was replaced by a purpose-built building in Belgrave Street, known as the Great Synagogue, which closed in 1983. An office block was built on the site, and the synagogue is commemorated by a
blue plaque placed by
Leeds Civic Trust in 1991.[30]
A synagogue in St. John's Place, New Briggate was opened in 1876, known as the Grinner Shul.[31][32] It was replaced by the New Synagogue in Chapeltown Road of 1932, built in Byzantine style; the building closed in 1985, and is now used by the
Northern School of Contemporary Dance.[33]
The Vilna synagogue began in St Luke's Terrace, and moved to Exmouth Street before 1885. It merged into the New Vilna Synagogue in 1955, at Harrogate Road 1973–91, and incorporated into the Etz Chaim synagogue 1994, also on Harrogate Road, since 1982.[34] Etz Chaim has its roots in the Leeds Jewish Workers' Burial and Trading Society of 1899, the Psalms of David Congregation originally in Bridge Street in 1884, as well as the New Synagogue.[35]
The United Hebrew Congregation opened its current Shadwell Lane synagogue in 1986, incorporating congregations originally of the Great Synagogue, New Synagogue, New Leeds Congregation, Chapeltown United Synagogue, Louis Street Synagogue, and the Moortown Synagogue of 1937–86.[36][37] The Byron Street Polish synagogue was founded 1893; moving to Louis Street around 1933,[38] it closed in 1974.[39]
Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue, Templar Street, founded 1874, moved to Hope Street in 1886, Newton Road Chapeltown in 1937, and its present building in Street Lane, Moortown in 1969.[40]
The
Sinai Synagogue in Roundhay, Leeds was established as a congregation in 1944, and is affiliated to
Reform Judaism.[43] A new building was opened in 1960.[44]
Cemeteries
The first Jewish cemetery in Leeds was opened in 1837,[45] with local Jews previously having been buried in nearby Hull.[46] There are today five Jewish cemeteries in Leeds:[47] the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol cemetery, established 1955;[48] Hill Top Cemeteries, established 1875;[49] New Farnley Cemeteries, established 1896;[50] the United Hebrew Congregation Cemetery, established 1840;[51] and the Sinai Synagogue Cemetery, established in the 1950s.[52]
The New Farnley cemetery contains nine
Commonwealth war graves of Jewish service personnel, two from
World War I and seven from
World War II,[53] with an additional World War II serviceman buried in the adjacent Louis Street Polish Jewish Cemetery.[54] The United Hebrew Congregation cemetery contains 18 Commonwealth war graves of Jewish service personnel: six from World War I and 12 from World War II.[55]
Charities and communal organisations
The first Jewish
friendly society was founded in 1852.[18] The Jewish Board of Guardians (est.1878) covered a range of activities, especially loans and grants in great numbers for immigrants to set up in business, or to continue on to North America.[18] The Leeds Jewish Welfare Board has provided aid since 1878.[56] The Leeds Jewish Housing Association has 500 homes.[57] The Leeds Jewish Institute was founded in 1896, and the Jewish Young Men's Association by 1901.[18][58] The Leeds Jewish Representative Council has been active since 1938.[59]
The first Leeds Jewish trade union dates from 1876.[8] The Amalgamated Jewish Tailors', Machinists' and Pressers' Union was officially founded in 1893, arising out of early organisations and strikes.[18]
Schools
A Jews' Free School was founded in 1876, and Gower Street and other Board Schools in Leylands was effectively taken over by Jews by 1888.[58][18] Brodetsky Primary School, which dates from 1968,[60] and the secondary age Leeds Jewish Free School,[61] opened 2013, both in Alwoodley, are affiliated to Orthodox Judaism. The Menorah primary school in Sandhill Lane is affiliated to the
HarediChabad Lubavitch movement.[62]
Businesses
Leeds had long been a centre of the wool trade.[17] The first Jew in the Leeds mass wholesale tailoring business was Herman Friend around 1856.[6][17] Large numbers of men and women were employed in back-room cutting and sewing,[17] but not in the factory sector.[63] In the 1930s, Jewish factories employed refugees from Europe.[64] Jewish refugees also founded a law firm in Leeds in 1930.[65][66]
Anti-Semitism
This section needs expansion. You can help by
adding to it. (December 2021)
Mocking Jews in their sabbath clothes was once common-place in Leeds;[23] and some town cafes refused to serve them.[6][23] Violence culminated in the infamous riots of 1917 in the Leylands, destroying property and looting shops.[67] Job discrimination was one reason Jews changed their names. Later, they found it almost impossible to join local golf clubs, so in 1923, they set up their own.[6][3] Antisemitism continued in Leeds during the 1930s as refugees from
Nazism arrived.[64]Mosley's fascists marched in Leeds in 1936 leading to the
Battle of Holbeck Moor.[68]
Meir Rekhavi (born 1962), founder and first chancellor of
Karaite Jewish University, Hakham of Karaite Jews of Europe, member of the Karaite Religious Council in Israel.[155]
Pat Solk (1924–2008), charity volunteer, President of Age Concern Leeds, chair of Leeds Council for Voluntary Service and Leeds Eastern Health Authority.[156]
Arthur Saul Super (1908–79), Rabbi, wartime Army chaplain, chief editorial writer of The Jerusalem Post.[157]
Eugene Black (1928–2016). When he was a teenager, his family was murdered in Auschwitz. Surviving slave-labour in a
V-2 rocket factory, and a
forced march to
Belsen, post-war he was a
Marks & Spencers manager. In the 1990s he talked in schools."[163]
Liesel Carter (born 1935) She escaped from Germany age four, unaccompanied, via Sweden and Norway, to a foster family in Leeds, and began to tell her story from 2005.[165]
John Chillag (1927–2009) Raised in Hungary, he survived
Auschwitz, where many of his relatives were murdered, and a forced march to
Buchenwald. In Leeds from 1962, he published his memoirs, and spoke to 25,000 young people.[166][167]
Ruth Grant (born 1928 Cologne) was five when the
Nazis confiscated the family home and business. Witnessing the aftermath of Kristallnacht, she followed her brother to England, with a place on a Kindertransport. She has published her life-story.[168]
Leslie Hardman (1913–2008) minister at Chapeltown synagogue, as an Army chaplain entered
Belsen in 1945. He supervised the burial of an estimated 20,000 victims. Broadcasting and writing thereafter he was an early Holocaust educator.[169]
Joseph Henry Levey (1881–1970) A veteran of the
Boer War and
WW1, on the eve of
WW2 in 1939 he lobbied to evacuate
Berlin's ORT School. Marching in his kilt into
SS headquarters, saving many staff and students, he re-established and oversaw the school in Leeds.[171][172]
Martin Kapel (born 1930) experienced
Nazism in Leipzig; expelled by the
SS into Poland in the forest at night, he lived in an impoverished
Hasidic community soon to be eradicated. After the
Kindertransport and the
Coventry Blitz, he heard that his mother alone remained of the extended family. He is a Holocaust educator.[173]
Iby Knill (1923–2022) was liberated from
Auschwitz in 1945, and settled in Leeds, working for the Home Office. She has given talks and published her life story.[176]
David Makofski (1892–1973) was wounded in World-War I; in the 1930s he organised immigration and found work for refugees to Leeds, as chairman of the Leeds Jewish Refuge Committee.[177]
Rudi Leavor (1926–2021). Brought to
Shipley from Germany in 1937, Rudi qualified at Leeds in dentistry. Cantor, Bradford Reform Synagogue Life President, 50-year member Leeds Philharmonic Choir, composer of cantatas, champion of Inter-faith relations, and Berlin Jewish Museum, he was also a Holocaust educator.[178]
Judith Rhodes (born 1953) of Leeds made a film and gives talks, in the UK and Germany, about her mother Ursula Michel's experiences, including the
Kindertransport.[179]
Suzanne Ripton (born 1936) who lives in Leeds, hid during the war in Paris, into 1947, finding she had lost her parents in
Auschwitz. She has shared her experiences.[180]
Trude Silman (born 1929) fled age nine before the
Nazis invaded
Czechoslovakia. She lives in Leeds, where for many years she ran the Holocaust Survivors Fellowship Association, and is now its Life President.[181]
Ernst Simon (born 1930) experienced
Kristallnacht, and arrived from Austria on the
Kindertransport in 1939, followed by his family. He has been recognized for services to Holocaust Education.[184]
Heinz Skyte (1920–2020) was a refugee from
Nazi Germany who pioneered the concept of
sheltered housing in Leeds. Founder-chairman of the Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association, he frequently talked in schools.[185][186]
Les Gaunt (1918–1985, aka Les Goldberg) Born in Leeds (Chapeltown), he played as Right Back for Leeds United FC from the 1930s, with two England Schoolboy caps, and returned from war service in India. After 33 appearances, he left for Reading FC in 1947. He changed his name by deed poll to Les Gaunt [188]
Gerald Krasner (born 1949), an insolvency accountant and
Leeds United-fan, became chairman and led the 2004 financial rescue of the club; thereafter he was a specialist in managing imminent football bankruptcies.[189]
Wilf Rosenberg (1934–2019), a South African Rugby Union international, made 81 appearances for
Leeds RLFC, helping the club to its first championship 1960–1.[190]
Saul Adler (1895–1966) was son to a Russian Rabbi in Leeds, studying medicine locally. As a wartime army doctor in Mesopotamia, after Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, he became the world authority on
Leishmaniasis, Professor at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1928–55.[192]
Major Myer Coplans (1879–1961). Demonstrator in bacteriology and public health at Leeds University, research on contamination and purification led him, in the First World War, to command the first mobile hygiene laboratory, with effective typhoid prevention in the field, and multiple European honours.[193]
Max Hamilton (1912–88) became Professor of Psychiatry at Leeds 1963–77; a pioneer in psychometrics, the
Hamilton Depression and Anxiety Scales are used worldwide.[194]
Augusta Landsman (1893–1966) Born in Leeds as Augusta Umanski, she was the first woman to qualify from
Leeds Medical School, and later a pioneer of family planning and marriage guidance in London.[195]
Monty Losowsky (1931–2020) led the establishment of Europe's largest teaching hospital,
St James's in Leeds. He qualified at Leeds, returning to be its specialist in
liver disease and a professor of medicine and later Dean of the
medical school.[196]
Arnold Sorsby (1900–80) was Polish-born, studied medicine at Leeds in 1929, to become a noted eye surgeon, geneticist and Government advisor.[200]
Maurice Sorsby (1898–1949) a physician at Leeds (1927), published widely, and organised pre-war medical relief for victims of Nazism.[200]
Moses Umanski (1862–1936) was a Russian army doctor who moved to Berlin, London and then Leeds (1892–1930), where he became superintendent of the Herzl-Moser hospital (1905–26). He founded the Leeds Hebrew Literary Society, the Leeds Zionist Association, in 1899 the English Zionist Federation, and the Zionist paper Dos Volk.[201]
Kurt Zinnemann (1908–88) Dismissed from his medical post by the Nazis, interrogated and imprisoned in Moscow, interned on the Isle of Man, he settled in Leeds, to become Professor of
Bacteriology, world expert on
Haemophilus infection, and leader in medical teaching.[202]
Basil Gillinson (1925–2001) studied at Leeds School of Architecture, and ran a practice in Leeds known for the
Merrion Centre in Leeds, and many other landmark UK modernist leisure facilities.[215]
Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) was a sociologist and philosopher, driven out by the 1968 Polish purge, who became Professor of Sociology at Leeds, later Emeritus. Bauman wrote on modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism, globalisation and morality. The University of Leeds established the Bauman Institute in his honour.[217]
Simon Baumberg (1940–2007) was professor of bacterial genetics at Leeds University, and among many roles, chair of the
Medical Research Council Advisory Board; he was also an active participant in local Jewish communal life.[219]
Geoffrey Cantor (born 1943) is Professor Emeritus of the history of science at the Centre for Jewish Studies at Leeds, an expert on Judaism and 19th-century science.[221]
Julius B. Cohen (1859–1935) was born in Manchester; in Leeds from 1885 he was Professor of
Organic chemistry 1904–24. As well as authoring organic chemistry textbooks, he campaigned against air pollution.[222]
Frank Felsenstein (born 1944, London) of the Leeds Centre for Jewish Studies, previously Reader in 18th century studies 1971–98 at Leeds.[223][224]
Erika Harris Her Slovakian parents survived
Auschwitz and
Sachsenhausen. She is an academic expert in European nationalism. She studied at Leeds University and became Professor of Politics at Liverpool University.[226]
Benedikt Isserlin (1916–2005) son of famous Munich psychiatrist
Max Isserlin [
de], headed the Department of Semitic Studies at Leeds University, where he worked for 30 years. An archaeologist and linguist, he excavated in North Africa and the Far East, including the
Phoenician site in
Motya.[227]
Walter Kellermann (1915–2012) Born to a Berlin Rabbi, he graduated in Vienna and escaped to England. He made a contribution to the
Theory of Solids, before at Leeds from 1949, he led important work on cosmic rays (often out on the
Pennines). He was involved in University administration, the Leeds Reform Jewish community, and the
Fabian Society.[228][229]
Hyam Maccoby (1924–2004), scholar of Jewish and Christian tradition, was grandson of the Kamenitzer
Maggid.[230] After war service librarian of
Leo Baeck College, London, in retirement he joined the Centre for Jewish Studies, Leeds. He viewed Jesus as a mainstream Jewish messiah claimant, executed by the Romans, with Christianity entirely founded by Paul, a Hellenist. He wrote the play and film The Disputation.[231]
Jonathan Newman is a filmmaker and writer, trained at the
Northern Film School in
Leeds, whose work includes the critically-acclaimed
Foster, winner Best Feature film at the Rhode Island Film Festival.[233]
Griselda Pollock (born 1949) came to Leeds in 1997, professor of social and critical art history, and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at Leeds University.[234]
Jay Prosser (born 1966) is reader in humanities at the University of Leeds, winner of the 2020 Rowley Prize for Empire's Loving Strangers, a biography that explores his Jewish family's experiences and connections across empires and centuries.[235]
Geoffrey Raisman (1939–2017), born to a Leeds tailor who worked for Burton's, attended
Roundhay School, went to
Oxford. He was a
neuroscientist, who demonstrated the plasticity of nerve synapses and the mechanisms of nerve regeneration.[236]
David A. Shapiro (born 1945), Professor of Psychology at Leeds University 1995–2006, son of
Monte Shapiro, led the Sheffield-Leeds Psychotherapy Research Programme.[238][239]
Max Silverman (born
c. 1957 London) is Professor of French, and Director of Research at Leeds School of Modern Languages since 2011. At Leeds since 1986, his interests cover contemporary French society, including post-Holocaust culture, and race and memory.[240]
Johanna Stiebert (born
c. 1970 New Zealand), is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Leeds University.[241][242]
Geoffrey Wigoder (1922–99) born in Leeds, editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, professor, columnist and international broadcaster from Israel, writer on archaeology, and an advocate of Jewish-Christian dialogue.[243][244]
Community historians
James Appell (born Leeds 1984), now a New York sports journalist, he has written about the Jews of Leeds, Britain and Eastern Europe.[245]
Joseph Buckman (born Leeds 1926) wrote about the politics of the class struggle amongst the Jews of Leeds.[246][247]
Ernest Krausz (1931–2018) was son of a Leeds Rabbi, who conducted a pioneering survey on the Jews of Leeds. He became an Israeli Professor of Sociology, and
Rector at
Bar Ilan University.[250]
^Parkes, James; Freedman, Maurice; Neustatter, Hannah (1955). A Minority in Britain; Social Studies of the Anglo-Jewish Community. Vallentine Mitchell.
^
abcdAppell, James (2019). Jews as Yorkshiremen: Jewish identity in late-Victorian Leeds. In Leeds and its Jewish community: A history. Edited by DEREK FRASER. Manchester University Press. pp. 49–62.
^Vellins, Ian (2019). The Second World War. In Leeds and its Jewish community. Ed. Derek Fraser. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 149–72.
ISBN9781526123107.
^
abSilver, Bernard (2000). Three Jewish Giants of Leeds: Professor Selig Brodetsky, Sir Montague Burton & Jacob Kramer. Jewish Historical Society of England (Leeds Branch).
^"Kay Mellor". www.jewishlivesproject.com. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
^"Second Notice, The portraits, and more particularly by Mr. Philip Naviasky, are the outstanding features the Yorkshire Union's show at Leeds. They compel attention by their extraordinary vividness, and certain clear cut quality .". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. 24 October 1921.
^Meadowcroft, Michael (2019). The Influence of Personalities. in: Leeds and its Jewish community: a history. Ed: Derek Fraser. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 267–93.
ISBN978-1-5261-2309-1.
^"Remarkable Growth. The Lord Mayor of Leeds (Mr. A E. Wilkinson) opened yesterday the new Sumrie House in York Road, which has been erected for Messrs. C. and M. Sumrie, wholesale clothiers. In the presence of a large company of employees, he was handed a large cheque ...". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. 10 May 1934.
^Meadowcroft, Michael (2019). The Influence of Personalities. in: Leeds and its Jewish community: a history. Ed: Derek Fraser. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 283–5.
ISBN978-1-5261-2309-1.
^Blackshield, Anthony,
"Stone, Julius (1907–1985)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 8 January 2022
^Buckman, Joseph (1983). "The 1912 Anarchist Conference in Leeds as Reported by the Local Jewish Group". Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History. Issue 47: 13–6. {{
cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (
help)
^Saipe, Louis (1978). A Century of Care: The History of the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board 1878–1978. Leeds.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)