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Jewish History Association of Wales
The JHAW are delighted to share a new heritage trail to their growing collection. The Wartski Trail celebrates the contribution the Wartski family made to the commercial and community life of Bangor. Wartski is now an internationally renowned antiques dealer specialising in fine jewellery, silver and objets d'art. Secondly, they invite you to their exhibition launch on Llandudno's Jewish heritage. Please see flyer below for the information.
Aug 231 min read


Ochberg Orphans: search for descendants
Isaac Ochberg was "South Africa's Schindler". In 1921 he rescued about 200 Russian orphans from the pogroms in eastern Europe and brought them to safety in South Africa. The South African Jewish Museum is trying to trace UK descendants of the Ochberg Orphans for an exhibition in December this year. If you are a descendant, please email researcher3@sajewishmuseum.co.za or respond to the survey using the link below. Respond to this short survey
Aug 231 min read


Introducing the JLF Player
The Jewish Literary Foundation (JLF) presents the best in contemporary Jewish literature and ideas. From its flagship annual festival Jewish Book Week, to its JLF Player streaming hub, creative opportunities and live cultural experiences, the JLF connects, inspires and entertains year-round. Explore their JLF Video Player, presenting some of the best history debates and talks from Jewish Book Week, featuring Miri Rubin, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Anne Sebba, Simon Schama, Clare
Aug 181 min read


Yiddish Culture Weekend 2026
28-30 August - London The Jewish Music Institute is delighted to present Yiddish Culture Weekend, a celebration of Yiddish language, culture and creativity. At the heart of the weekend is our Sunday Learning Day at SOAS on 30 August — a full day of 16 inspiring sessions exploring Yiddish language, literature, history, politics, music, dance and contemporary culture. With talks, workshops, screenings and participatory sessions led by leading scholars, artists and practitioners
Aug 171 min read


A Tonic to the Nation: Immigrant Contribution to the Festival of Britain
Wednesday 9 September | St John's Waterloo Marking 75 years since the Festival of Britain, St John's Waterloo - the official Festival church - will host events exploring the overlooked role that immigrants and refugees played in shaping the festival. Overview of the day: Symposium | 9:15am Aimed at both a general and a specialist audience, this symposium will explore an important but still widely overlooked aspect of the 1951 Festival of Britain and its legacy: the disproport
Aug 171 min read


Recommended listening
Unholy: Two Jews on the News is a podcast hosted by Jonathan Freedland and Yonit Levi and in a recent episode on the medieval image of the Jew and why its lasted, former JHSE President, Prof Miri Rubin is their expert guest. Listen here Or watch on Youtube Episode description Three of the oldest myths about Jews — relating to money, blood and the way they look — were forged in medieval Christian Europe, mostly in places where there were almost no Jews to observe. Miri Rubin,
Aug 131 min read


Third NGG Conference: 'Voice, Narrative, (Self-)Representation'
UCL’s Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, fittingly named after the JHSE’s former president Gustave Tuck (1857—1942), hosted the New Generation Group’s annual conference on Monday 11th of May 2026. The NGG is the Jewish Historical Society’s network of emerging scholars of Jewish history. Entitled Voice, Narrative, and (Self-)Representation, this was the NGG’s third conference, following the inaugural conference at Queen Mary University of London and last year’s event at the Parkes
Jun 184 min read


British Jews in Jeopardy - 1933-1945 and Beyond: The Role of the Trades Advisory Council
by Lenny Goodrich Introduction “A Nation….is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbours”. i We are indebted to the family of the late Maurice Orbach (former Labour MP and prominent Zionist) for depositing extensive papers and other material with the National Archive relating to a significant, yet under-reported aspect of pre-war years Anglo-Jewish life. Orbach was the influential general secretary of the Tr
Jun 159 min read


Upcoming Book Launch in London
A unique and exciting event that will combine a book launch for James Brown's book, Moral Superpower in the Cold War (Bloomsbury, 2026) with a public event for Avram Taylor's BA/Leverhulme funded research project, Jewish Activism and Anglo-Jewish Identity in Cold War Britain: The Campaign for Soviet Jewry. This campaign was one of the most significant forms of Jewish activism during the postwar era. James Brown's research looks at how the USSR responded to Western support for
May 121 min read


NGG Conference 2026: Voice, Narrative, and (Self-)Representation
Monday 11 May 2026 | UCL | Free to attend The New Generation Group of the Jewish Historical Society of England invites you to its third annual conference: Voice, Narrative, and (Self-)Representation, held at UCL on Monday 11 May 2026. This theme confronts a central question in Jewish Studies: who gets to speak, who tells their story, and who listens? This conference explores how Jews and Jewish communities have expressed themselves – and how they have been represented, sympat
May 91 min read


Medieval Jewish London History Day
This one-day history festival brings London’s medieval Jewish community back to life, just steps away from the City’s original Jewish quarter. The Jewish Square Mile Foundation invites audiences of all ages to explore one of the capital’s lesser-known communities: the Jewish population that settled in the City towards the end of the 11th century and lived there for more than 200 years, until the Expulsion of 1290. A programme of expert talks, a walking tour and family activit
Apr 231 min read


NGG Blog: Hidden Treasures of the Rabbi's Room: The Bradford Reform Synagogue's Unofficial Archive
Very few people know there is a small Reform Jewish community in Bradford, dating back to the 1800s, when the earliest Jewish settlers arrived in the industrial town between the 1830s and 1870s. They were predominantly German woollen merchants who had travelled to Bradford because it was the centre of the wool trade. My research has also shown that Jewish people living in Bradford were born in Romania, Austria, France, Italy, Poland, and Russia, among other countries. The Bra
Mar 177 min read


JHSE Awards Report 2024/2025
It is pleasing to see the impact of last year’s award winners, including, amongst many outstanding projects, the publication of Nudrat Afza’s powerful photographs of Bradford Jewry, Kehillah, which has featured at Bradford’s City of Culture celebrations, and the Historic Towns Trust map of Jewish Ipswich which is now being widely distributed. It is also pleasing to report that the JHSE oral history project, documenting those who contributed so generously to it, is ongoing wit
Mar 12 min read


NGG Blog: Finding Jewish Life in Thin Archives: Provincial Spaces, Movement, and Minor Traces
I am currently working on a project that explores how Jewish life took shape in provincial England between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Much of Anglo Jewish historiography has understandably focused on places where institutional archives are dense: London, later Manchester, and other urban centres where synagogues, schools, and communal boards generated substantial records. Yet beyond these centres lay smaller towns and ports where Jewish presence was lighter, mo
Feb 34 min read


JHSE Grant Applications
Apply for a grant of up to £4,000 to facilitate research and publication on topics related to Anglo-Jewry and its wider context. Both individuals and institutions are eligible to apply including professional and lay scholars, PhD students, communal organisations, museums, libraries and archives. A total of £20,000 may be awarded each calendar year. Deadline: April 2026 Please visit: https://www.jhse.org/jhse-awards
Jan 271 min read


‘Packing for an Unknown Destination’: Possession and Dispossession in the Holocaust
Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies Solomon Schonfeld Lecture Zoë Waxman is Professor of Holocaust History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Writing the Holocaust: memory, testimony, representation (2006), Anne Frank (2015), and Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History (2017), as well as numerous articles relating to the Holocaust and genocide. Visitors to Auschwitz today cannot help but be struck by the sheer range of objects brought there by the vi
Nov 26, 20251 min read


The Last Survivng Jewish Friendly Society Closes
by Sonny Kosky The Grand Order of Israel and Shield of David Friendly Society the last surviving Jewish friendly society in the friendly society movement has been dissolved and its assets have now been distributed to its last remaining members. It was evident over the past few years that the society was regularly losing members through death and resignation and the final nail in the coffin has been the 2019 Covid pandemic which severely curtailed its activities which were in
Oct 27, 20254 min read


JHSE joins the Jewish Small Communities network
JHSE is pleased to announce that we have recently joined the Jewish Small Communities Network, which is a charity registered in 2016,...
Oct 1, 20251 min read


1275-2025: Queenship, Minorities, and Expulsion
The Tower of London, 30 June 2025 Academic historians and members of the public met to hear the most up-to-date research on the...
Sep 24, 20257 min read


NGG Commentary: Todd Endelman, 'Reflections'
JHSE New Generation Group select an article from the recently published Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English Speaking Jews and...
Aug 17, 20252 min read
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