| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 5,847 – 0.1%(2022 Census)[1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| East Renfrewshire | 1,511 – 1.6% |
| City of Edinburgh | 1,270 – 0.25% |
| Glasgow City | 973 – 0.16% |
| Languages | |
| Scottish English,Scots,Scottish Gaelic,Hebrew,Yiddish | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism | |
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 6,448 | — |
| 2011 | 5,887 | −8.7% |
| 2022 | 5,847 | −0.7% |
| Religious Affiliation was not recorded in the census prior to 2001. Source: National Records of Scotland | ||
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Thehistory of the Jews in Scotland goes back to at least the 17th century. It is not known whenJews first arrived inScotland, with the earliest concrete historical references to a Jewish presence in Scotland being from the late 17th century.[2] Most Scottish Jews today are ofAshkenazi background who mainly settled inEdinburgh, then inGlasgow in the mid-19th century. In 2013 the Edinburgh Jewish Studies Network curated an online exhibition based on archival holdings and maps in theNational Library of Scotland exploring the influence of the community on the city.[3]
According to the 2011 census, 5,887 Jews lived in Scotland; a decline of 8.7% from the 2001 census.[4] The total population of Scotland at the time was 5,313,600, making Scottish Jews 0.1% of the population.
There is only scant evidence of a Jewish presence in medieval Scotland. In 1180, the Bishop of Glasgow forbade churchmen to "ledge their benefices for money borrowed from Jews".[5] This was around the time ofanti-Jewish riots in England and so it is possible that Jews may have arrived in Scotland as refugees, or it may refer to Jews domiciled in England from whom Scots were borrowing money.
In theMiddle Ages, much of Scotland's trade was withContinental Europe, with wool of theBorders abbeys being the country's main export toFlanders and theLow Countries. Scottish merchants fromAberdeen andDundee had close trading links toBaltic ports inPoland andLithuania. It is possible, therefore, that Jews may have come to Scotland to do business with their Scottish counterparts, but no direct evidence of that exists.[6]
The late-18th-century authorHenry Mackenzie speculated that the high incidence of biblical place names around the village ofMorningside near Edinburgh might indicate that Jews had settled in the area during the Middle Ages. This belief has, however, been shown to be incorrect, with the names originating instead from the presence of a local farm named "Egypt" mentioned in historical documents from the 16th century and believed to indicate aRomani presence.[7]
The first recorded Jew inEdinburgh was one David Brown who made a successful application to reside and trade in the city in 1691.[8]
Most Jewish immigration appears to have occurred post-industrialisation, and post-1707, by which time Jews in Scotland were subject to various anti-Jewish laws that applied to Britain as a whole.Oliver Cromwell readmitted Jews to theCommonwealth of England in 1656, and would have had influence over whether they could reside north of the border. Scotland was under the jurisdiction of theJewish Naturalisation Act, enacted in 1753, but repealed the next year. It has been theorised that some Jews who arrived in Scotland promptly assimilated, with some converting to Christianity.[9]
Unlike their English contemporaries, Scottish university students were not required to take a religious oath. Joseph Hart Myers, born in New York, was the first Jewish student to study medicine in Scotland; he graduated from theUniversity of Edinburgh in 1779.[10] The first graduate from theUniversity of Glasgow who was openly known to be Jewish was Levi Myers, in 1787. In 1795, Herman Lyon, a dentist andchiropodist, bought a burial plot in Edinburgh. Originally fromMogendorf,Germany he left there around 1764 and spent some time in Holland before arriving in London. He moved to Scotland in 1788. The presence of the plot onCalton Hill is no longer obvious today, but it is marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1852 as "Jew's Burial vault".[8]
The firstJewish congregation in Edinburgh was founded in 1817, when the Edinburgh community consisted of 20 families.[8] The first congregation in Glasgow was founded in 1821.[11] Much of the first influx of Jews to Scotland were Dutch and German merchants attracted to the commercial economies of Scottish cities.[12]
Isaac Cohen, a hatter resident in Glasgow, was admitted aburgess of the city on 22 September 1812. The first interment in theGlasgow Necropolis was that of Joseph Levi, a quill merchant and cholera victim who was buried there on 12 September 1832. This occurred in the year before the formal opening of the burial ground, a part of it having been sold to the Jewish community beforehand for one hundred guineas.[13] Glasgow-bornAsher Asher (1837–1889) was the first Scottish Jew to enter the medical profession. He was the author ofThe Jewish Rite of Circumcision (1873).
The story of his own family's experience was immortalised inJack Ronder's book and TV series calledThe Lost Tribe, starringMiriam Margolyes andBill Paterson.
In 1878, JewishHannah de Rothschild (1851–1890), the richest woman in Britain at the time, married Scottish aristocratArchibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, despite strong antisemitic sentiments in court and the aristocracy. They had four children. Their son,Harry, would becomeSecretary of State for Scotland in 1945 duringWinston Churchill's post-war caretaker government.
To avoid persecution andpogroms in theRussian Empire in the 1880s, many Jews settled in the larger cities of Britain, including Scotland, most notably in Glasgow (especially the poorer part of the city, theGorbals, alongside Irish and Italian immigrants).[14] Smaller numbers settled in Edinburgh and even smaller groups inDundee (first synagogue founded in 1878[15] and cemetery acquired in 1888) andAberdeen (synagogue founded 1893). Small communities also existed for a time inAyr,Dunfermline,Falkirk,Greenock, andInverness.[16] Russian Jews tended to come from the lands in the west of the empire known as thePale of Settlement, in particular Lithuania and Poland, many using Scotland as a stopping post en route to North America. This explains why Glasgow was their favoured location. However, those who were not able to earn enough to afford the transatlantic voyage ended up settling in the city.[17] In 1897, after the influx, the Jewish population of Glasgow was 6,500.
This second influx of Jews was notably larger than the first, and came from Eastern Europe as opposed to Western European countries like Germany and the Netherlands. This led to the informal distinction between theWestjuden, who tended to be middle-class and assimilated into Scottish society, and the much biggerOstjuden community, consisting of poorYiddish-speakers who fled pogroms in Eastern Europe.[12] TheWestjuden had settled in more affluent areas such asGarnethill in Glasgow whereGarnethill Synagogue was built between 1879 and 1881 inVictorian Romanesque style. It remains the oldest active synagogue in Scotland and now houses theScottish Jewish Archives Centre[18] and Scottish Jewish Heritage Centre.[19] TheOstjuden in contrast mostly settled in slums in theGorbals. This led to the building in 1901 of theSouth Portland Street Synagogue, also known at various times as the South Side Synagogue, the Great Synagogue and the Great Central Synagogue,[20] regarded for many years as the religious centre of the Jewish community until its closure and demolition in 1974.
Immigration continued into the 20th century, with over 9,000 Jews in 1901 and around 12,000 in 1911. Jewish life in the Gorbals in Glasgow initially mirrored that of traditionalshtetl life; however, concerns around this being a contributing factor to a rise in anti-semitism led to the established Jewish community establishing various philanthropic and welfare organisations with the goals of offering assistance to the refugees, including support in assimilating into Scottish society.[21] Similarly the Edinburgh Jewish Literary Society was founded in 1888 for the purpose of teaching British culture to the Jewish immigrant population of Edinburgh[22] and is still active today, albeit with a different focus. The passing of theAliens Act 1905 and the onset of World War I led to a substantial decrease in the number of Jewish refugees arriving in Scotland.[23]
In Edinburgh, the appointment of Rabbi Dr.Salis Daiches in 1918 was the catalyst for the unification of several disparate communities into a singleEdinburgh Hebrew Congregation serving both the established anglicised Jews and the more recentYiddish-speaking Eastern European immigrants.[24] Daiches also worked to foster good relations between the Jewish community and wider secular society,[25] and under his influence funds were raised for the building of theEdinburgh Synagogue, opened in 1932, the only purpose–built synagogue in the city.
Refugees fromNazi Germany and theSecond World War further augmented the Scottish Jewish community, which has been estimated to have reached over 20,000 in the mid-20th century. By way of comparison, the Jewish population in the United Kingdom peaked at 500,000, but declined to just over half that number by 2008.[26]
Whittinghame Farm School operated from 1939 to 1941 as a shelter for 160 children who had arrived in Britain as part of theKindertransport mission.[27] It was established in Whittinghame House inEast Lothian, the family home of theEarl of Balfour and the birthplace ofArthur Balfour, author of theBalfour Declaration. The children were taught agricultural techniques in anticipation of settling in Palestine after the war.
The practising Jewish population continues to fall in Scotland, as many younger Jews either became secular, or intermarried with other faiths. Scottish Jews have also emigrated in large numbers to England, the United States, Israel, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for economic reasons, as other Scots have done. According to the 2001 census, 6,448 Jews lived in Scotland,[28] According to the 2011 census, 5,887 Jews lived in Scotland; a decline of 8.7% from 2001.[4][29] 41% (2,399) of Scottish Jews live in the local authority area ofEast Renfrewshire,Greater Glasgow, making up 2.65% of the population there. 25% of Scottish Jews live in the Greater Glasgow suburb ofNewton Mearns alone. Many Jewish families slowly moved southwards to more prosperous suburban areas in Greater Glasgow, from more central areas ofGlasgow over the generations.[14] Glasgow city itself has 897 Jews (15% of the Jewish population) living there, whilst Edinburgh has 855 (also 15%). The area with the least Jewish people was theOuter Hebrides, which reported just 3 Jews (0.05%) living there.
In March 2008, a Jewishtartan was designed by Brian Wilton[30] forChabad rabbi Mendel Jacobs of Glasgow and certified by theScottish Tartans Authority.[31] The tartan's colors are blue, white, silver, red and gold. According to Jacobs: "The blue and white represent the colours of theScottish andIsraeli flags, with the central gold line representing the gold from the BiblicalTabernacle, theArk of the Covenant and the many ceremonial vessels ... the silver is from the decorations that adorn theScroll of Law and the red represents the traditional redKiddush wine."[32]
Jewish communities in Scotland are represented by theScottish Council of Jewish Communities.
In theMiddle Ages, while Jews in England faced state persecution culminating in theEdict of Expulsion of 1290, there was never a corresponding expulsion from Scotland, suggesting either greater religious tolerance or the simple fact that there was no Jewish presence at that time. In his autobiographical workTwo Worlds, the eminent Scottish-Jewish scholarDavid Daiches, son of RabbiSalis Daiches, wrote that his father would often declare that Scotland is one of the few European countries with no history of state persecution of Jews.[33]
Some elements of theBritish Union of Fascists formed in 1932 were anti-Jewish andAlexander Raven Thomson, one of its main ideologues, was a Scot. Blackshirt meetings were physically attacked in Edinburgh by communists and "Protestant Action", which believed the group to be an Italian (i.e. Roman Catholic) intrusion.[34] In fact, William Kenefick ofDundee University has claimed that bigotry was diverted away from Jews by anti-Catholicism, particularly in Glasgow where the main ethnic chauvinist agitation was against Irish Catholics.[35]Archibald Maule Ramsay, aScottish Unionist MP claimed that World War II was a "Jewish war" and was the only MP in the UK interned underDefence Regulation 18B. In the Gorbals at least, neither Louise Sless nor Woolf Silver recall antisemitic sentiment.[36] (See alsoJews escaping from Nazi Europe to Britain.) As a result of rising anti-semitism in the United Kingdom by the 1930s, Jewish leadership bodies including the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council adopted a position of trying to prevent drawing attention to the city's Jewish population, such as through the promotion of assimilation.[37] This was in line with the national leadership at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, although the Edinburgh Jewish Representative Council was notably more active and visible in its campaigning for support to be offered to German Jews.[38]
In 2012, the Scottish Jewish Student Chaplaincy and the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities reported a "toxic atmosphere" at theUniversity of Edinburgh, in which Jewish students were forced to hide their identity.[39]
In September 2013, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities published the "Being Jewish in Scotland" project, which researched the situation of Jewish people in Scotland through interviews and focus group attended by approximately 180 participants. The report included data from theCommunity Security Trust that, during 2011, there were 10 antisemitic incidents of abusive behaviour, 9 incidents of damage and desecration to Jewish property, and one assault. Some participants described experiences of antisemitism in their workplace, campus and at school.[40]
During theOperation Protective Edge, in August 2014, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities reported a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents. During the first week of August, there were 12 antisemitic incidents – almost as many as in the whole of 2013.[41] A few months later, an irritating chemical was thrown on a member of staff selling Kedem (Israeli cosmetics) products in Glasgow's St Enoch Centre.[42] In 2015, the Scottish government published statistics on abusive behaviour inReligiously Aggravated Offending in Scotland in 2014–15, covering the Protective Edge period, which noted an increase in the number of charges filed for anti-Jewish acts from 9 in 2014 (2% of those charged with religious offences) to 25 in 2015 (4% of total). Most dealt with "threatening and abusive behavior" and "offensive communications". The penalty imposed on those convicted was typically a fine.[43]
Anti-semitism continues to be a topic of political debate in Scotland.[44][45][46] In 2017 theScottish Government formally adopted theInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.[47]
Scots-Yiddish is the name given to a Jewish hybrid vernacular betweenScots andYiddish, which had a brief currency in theLowlands in the first half of the 20th century. The Scottish literary historianDavid Daiches describes it in his autobiographical account of hisEdinburgh Jewish childhood,Two Worlds.[48]
Daiches explores the social stratification of Edinburgh's Jewish society in the interwar period, noting what is effectively a class divide between two parts of the community, on the one hand a highly educated and well-integrated group who sought a synthesis of Orthodox Rabbinical and modern secular thinking, on the other a Yiddish-speaking group most comfortable maintaining the lifestyle of the Eastern European ghetto. The Yiddish-speaking population grew up in Scotland in the 19th century, but by the late 20th century had mostly switched to using English. Thecreolisation of Yiddish with Scots was therefore a phenomenon of the middle part of this period.[citation needed]
Daiches describes how this language was spoken by the band of itinerant salesmen known as "trebblers" who travelled by train to the coastal towns of Fife peddling their wares from battered suitcases. He notes that Scots preserves some Germanic words lost in standard English but preserved in Yiddish, for example "licht" for light or "lift" for air (German "Luft").[48][49]
The Glaswegian Jewish poetA C Jacobs also refers to his language as Scots-Yiddish.[50] The playwright and director Avrom Greenbaum also published a handful of Scots-Yiddish poems in theGlasgow Jewish Echo in the 1960s; these are now housed in theScottish Jewish Archives Centre in Glasgow.[51] In 2020 the poet David Bleiman[52] won the first prize and Hugh MacDiarmaid Tassie in the Scots Language Association Sangschaw competition for his poem "The Trebbler's Tale" written in "macaronic" Scots-Yiddish.[53] Bleiman describes the poem as being 5% "found" Scots-Yiddish, the rest being reimagined and reconstituted from the component languages.[51]
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